Mindset & Money Mastery for Photographers with Karinda K.
Mindset & Money Mastery for Photographers with Karinda K.
Top 5 Countdown: Pricing Your Portraits for Profit
Join us as we count down some of our top episodes- as we get ready to start a new season.
What if you could transform your photography business into a thriving, profitable venture while maintaining a manageable workload? Discover how to set the right prices for your photography sessions by first pinpointing your desired annual income. We kick off this episode by revealing the significance of having a clear financial target and how it can streamline your pricing strategy, stabilize your business decisions, and ultimately help you achieve long-term financial goals.
Have you ever felt like you're constantly working but not seeing the financial rewards? Learn about the "Profit First" approach by Mike Michalowicz, an alternative financial planning method that allocates income into specific percentages for paying yourself, taxes, expenses, and savings. This approach offers a more reliable way to ensure your business remains sustainable and profitable. Hear personal stories of scaling a photography business and the unexpected costs that come with it, along with practical examples of how to allocate each dollar earned to meet revenue goals.
Managing your workload without burning out is crucial. That's why we suggest aiming for five to eight clients per month and offer detailed calculations to determine necessary income per client based on your desired annual income and available work hours. Uncover strategies for maximizing client revenue, from offering high-value products like albums and art pieces to implementing effective marketing strategies that attract high-paying clients. Additionally, we break down three main pricing strategies for your sessions and provide actionable advice on adjusting these fees based on client feedback and business volume, ensuring your pricing model works best for you and your clients. Join us for an insightful journey towards mastering your photography business finances and setting yourself up for success.
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Thanks for listening!
Welcome to Mindset and Money Mastery for Photographers the podcast. We help overwhelmed photographers make more money while simplifying their business by mastering their you guessed it mindset and money. Tune in each week for practical and actionable tips to take your photography business up a notch. Let's dive right in.
Speaker 2:Welcome to today's episode of Mindset and Money Mastery for Photographers. I'm so excited today. This is probably the number one conversation that I have with photographers about their business. I talk to so many photographers each and every week and before we talk about anything else, this is what I ask them. So this is an incredibly valuable process I'm going to take you through today to share with you exactly what you need to know about figuring out what to charge your clients.
Speaker 2:So when I'm looking through Facebook groups and I'm online and I'm seeing photographers having conversations, I see people posting this question all the time. They're saying what should my session fee be? What should I charge my clients for this? What should I charge my clients for that? I had somebody contact me about this type of session, but I have no idea what to charge them.
Speaker 2:And this question really boils down to one thing. It boils down to what do you need to be making in your business to pay yourself what you want to pay yourself? Let's break this down a little bit. The first thing we need to do to break this down is we need you do you want to make in your pocket each and every year from your business? If you could wave a magical wand and imagine that you're taking a paycheck from your business. How much money are you paying yourself each and every year from your business? Are you paying yourself $50,000 a year, 60, 70, 80, 100? Maybe you want to pay yourself $150,000 a year, and when I ask this question, I really want you to think what do you want to put in your pocket If you were going to a job and working? What goes in your pocket from your business, not what does your business make. Right now, it's all about what you're paying yourself.
Speaker 2:Because, ultimately, we're photographers because we love it. We're also photographers because we want to make money and have a legitimate business where we're paid well, where we can afford to do things where we can afford to go buy a house, or maybe go buy a pony, or maybe something simple like go on a vacation for a couple of days on the weekend with our family.
Speaker 2:That's why we do this. So how much money do you want to put in your pocket? If you have a number in your head right now, I want you to ask yourself this Is that number what you really?
Speaker 1:want to make.
Speaker 2:Or are you being conservative with that number? Because all too often I talk to photographers and they give me a number and they say I want to make this much money. And then I poke and prod a little bit and they're like, well, actually you're right, it would be nice to make a little bit more than that. So what is that number? If you're sitting there and originally you thought it was $50,000, but then you said, oh man, I'd really like to make like $100,000, then go with the big number, go with the scary number, go with where you want to be five, maybe even 10 years down the road in your business. Go with your end goal. The reason why we need to go with that number, instead of thinking small and going with what we think is reasonable or what can happen this year or maybe the next year, is because if we come at this with an end goal in mind for five or maybe even 10 years down the road, we can set our pricing now for where we want to get eventually and we can hop off this whole bandwagon where we're constantly reinventing our pricing. You see, in the early years I remember when I was in this place I was like man, it'd be nice if I could just make $30,000. And then I get to the end of the year and I'd be like it'd be nice if I could make 50. And then it'd be nice if I could make 60 and then 70. And every year I was changing my pricing and I was driving myself and my husband insane because I kept asking him what do you think about this? He's like why are you changing your pricing again? Corinda, this is crazy. And the reason I was changing my pricing again was because I kept changing the end goal. So let's just make the end goal what we want it to be and let's go for it right here, right now.
Speaker 2:This first question that I asked you about how much you want to make in your business at the end of the year. This is the basis of every financial decision that you make in your business going forward. This is the compass that you will use in your business to figure out what to charge your clients. What really matters at the end of the day is that you can run your business, you can make a good living, you can be paid well, you can do the things you want to do because of your business. If you aren't sure what this number looks like.
Speaker 2:What I would love for you to do is I would love for you to sit down and look at your finances, sit down and look at your bills, sit down and look and say how much money do I really need to survive in a year? Then how much extra money do I need to do the things I want to do? So for those of you listening, maybe it's that you want to go buy yourself a horse. Maybe it's that you want to go to horse shows and ride with some big fancy trainer. Maybe it's you want to go buy yourself that fancy hunting dog that you've been dreaming about, or some type of thing like that. How much is it going to cost you to be able to do those things in your life?
Speaker 2:And consider that when you look at this number, now that you know how much money you want to make in your pocket from your business, there's two different ways you can start to figure out what you need to be making from your clients, and I'm going to explain to you the wrong way to go about this. First, and I'm going to say it's the wrong way, but I'm going to say it's the way that most people in the photography world are taught to figure out what they need to be charging their clients. You sit down, you say I want to make a hundred thousand dollars in my business and then on top of that, you sit down and you write down every single little expense you have. You're like my website is this this is that my editor costs this much.
Speaker 2:You know every little detail of every expense you have and then you add that to how much money you wanted to make and then, on top of that, you add so much money, taxes and any products you buy or whatever else you want to do in your business, and you come up with a number and you're like great, I only had $10,000 worth of expenses in the last year and I think that's all I'm going to have. So I need to make $110,000, plus money for taxes. Let's throw an extra $15,000 on there for taxes. That sounds about right. So I need to make $125,000 to put $100,000 in my pocket. That's what I used to do and that's probably what some of you are doing here who are listening to this podcast. You're just calculating what you think your expenses are going to be and trying to piece it all together.
Speaker 2:I used to do my business this way and I used to sit down and figure out what I needed to be charging, just like that. And each and every year at the end of the year I would look at my books and look at my thing account and I'd think to myself where did all of my money go? I'd be like, well, I didn't count that I was going to have this expense that was going to come up, or I didn't think I was going to need this new piece of equipment, or I didn't think this was going to happen. And all of these extra things came up that I didn't account for in my expenses and all of a sudden I'd spent all of the money I'd been making and I wasn't paying myself. And that is a bad feeling. It's a whole bad feeling when you work five or six or maybe seven days a week in those early years, all day long, all night long maybe and you look at your bank account at the end of the year and you say to yourself I didn't make any money, but I worked my butt off. What happened here? What happened was you didn't know how to plan the right way. You didn't know what to charge your clients. You didn't know how to get your clients to spend the amount of money that they needed to be spending for you to pay yourself off.
Speaker 2:About this time I was probably like five years into business. For those of you that don't know, I've been in business for over 10 years now that's probably five years into business and I kept hearing this idea come up and this book being recommended, called Profit First, and I was like what are all these people talking about? And I really started to dig into this book and this idea and in this book the author his name is Mike he proposes this idea that you can use percentages to plan your business finances, with the idea that each and every month, you take a certain percentage of everything that comes in and you set it aside for paying yourself, you set it aside for taxes, you set it aside for comes in and you set it aside for paying yourself, you set it aside for taxes, you set it aside for your expenses and you set them aside for your savings. And he proposes that most businesses have essentially like standard numbers that fit for most businesses. And he shares these percentages and how he uses them in his book. And I started to think about this and I started to realize, huh, this makes sense.
Speaker 2:Because part of my problem was that when I was bringing in $100,000 a year and I was sitting there going, I want to hit $300,000 a year in my business, I didn't realize how much more expensive it was going to be to run a business that was bringing in $300,000 a year. Or one day when I woke up and said I want to build a business that brings in half a million dollars a year, I have no idea what it looks like, what the expenses associated with that work to run a business that brings in that type of revenue, because I'm not there yet. So if you're sitting here today and you're saying I want to put $100,000 in my pocket for my business, do you have any idea what it's going to cost to get you there? Probably not. I can tell you it's a lot more than you think. Just ask my bank account every month y'all. If you knew how much money I spent on my bank account each and every month to run my business, y'all would probably cry. I want to cry sometimes too, even though I know I can pay for it. But still, it's terrifying to think when you're spending tens of thousands of dollars a month in your business because your expenses are so high to be running a business at this level. So what I did was I started to look at these percentages. I started to look at my own business over the last few years. I started to look at my coaching clients' businesses and I started to look at these numbers and say how do these numbers really work for photographers? Does this really work for us? And I started to plan my business and my financial goals based on percentages Instead of just these arbitrary. I think it's going to cost this much, so why not Right? Once I started planning my business based on these percentages, I took them, I tweaked them a little bit and I made them a little bit more specific for photographers, and here is what I came up Whenever you make one, let's say a client pays you $1,000.
Speaker 2:Let's talk about where that $1,000 goes in your business. The first place that that $1,000 is going to go to is to pay for any products that your client purchases, which we call COGS or cost of goods sold. Typically in the photography world, you will hear recommended that your cost of goods sold is anywhere from 15 to 25 percent, depending on who you're talking to. I recommend that your cost of goods sold be at or below 20%. So 20% of everything you make is going to go straight to pay for the products that your clients are purchasing. 20% of what you make is going to go straight towards your expenses of running a business. 40% of what you make is going to go into your pocket. So if that client pays you $1,000, that means $400 is going straight to your pocket. About 15% is going to go to taxes and about 5% is going to go to savings.
Speaker 2:These numbers are not exactly what you hear in the Profit First book. They are a little bit different and they're numbers that I have morphed to kind of fit my own personal business and my coaching clients' businesses. So keep that in mind. If you have read Profit First, you've listened to Profit First and you're familiar with this idea. These are the percentages that I believe work really great for photographers. So if your cost of goods is 30% right now, these numbers aren't going to work for you.
Speaker 2:If your products are marked up three times instead of five times, these numbers might not work for your business. So this is where you want to start to pay attention to what your products are priced at. You want to look and be like oh man, if I'm running a business bringing in $250,000 a year, 20% of that's going to be expenses. That means I have this amount of money to spend on things, and this is how I'm going to break it down Right? So I'm going to repeat the numbers one more time for y'all. It's 20% towards your cost of goods sold, 20% towards your expenses, 40% goes in your pocket, 15% goes towards taxes and 5% goes to savings.
Speaker 2:If we keep these numbers in mind, we can reverse engineer what we need to bring in to meet our income goals. So if you are paying yourself 40%, how much money do you need to make to meet that income goal with your business? And this is about the time, when I say these numbers, that people freak out and go holy crap, that's a lot of money. I had no idea. And I didn't either. I had no idea. That's why.
Speaker 2:I wasn't making money in my business, it's because I didn't realize how much of my money was really going out the door and how many expenses I really was going to have. So if you're not a math person, I'm going to throw some numbers out there and help you figure this out. Just make things super simple today, especially if you're driving down the road and listening to this and you don't really have time to sit down with a calculator. So I'm going to throw out some of the most common numbers and I'm going to start at the low end and I'm going to work up to some bigger numbers. Let's say, if you wanted to pay yourself $40,000 in your business, you would need to bring in $100,000 in revenue. If you wanted to pay yourself $60,000, you would need to bring in $150,000 in your business. If you wanted to put $80,000 in your pocket, you would need to bring in about $200,000 in revenue in your business. If you wanted to pay yourself six figures and you wanted to put $100,000 in your pocket every year from your business, you would need to bring in about $250,000. And if you wanted to put $200,000 in your pocket again, you would need to bring in about $500,000. In your business in the new year. Let's consider that your goal is to put $100,000 in your pocket each year from your business. Let's take this a step further and see what we would need to make per client that comes in our door to actually put $100,000 in our pocket. So you would need to bring in $250,000 in revenue, which means 40% of $250,000 is going to be $100,000, which is going straight to you. The next question I want you to ask yourself to determine what you need to be making per client that comes through your door is how many months out of the year do you want to be photographing clients? How many months out of the year do you want to be photographing clients? It's incredibly important to remember that you do not want to work 12 months out of the year. So many times I ask people this and they're like I want to work 12 months out of the year. It gets too cold. I'm going to go somewhere where it's warm so I can work all the time. Guys, take time off, take vacation. Take at least a couple months off a year.
Speaker 2:Photography it's tiring, it can be exhausting. It can be physically, mentally, emotionally taxing. We need to take time to recharge our creative brains. If you only shoot outdoors. Chances are there's going to be months where it's too cold or too hot to work For me. I don't want to work in July in Texas it is hotter than I don't even know what, and there's no way that any horse or dog or person looks good in July in Texas. They look like a. Even a horse looks like a wet dog in July in Texas. Okay, and the winter time? People in Texas are weenies guys. We don't even have cold winters, but it's below 70 degrees. Nobody wants to go outside. They're like I'm freezing, I have goosebumps. I can't do portraits outside. So you know what? I really only want to work like eight months out of the year. I can take a couple months off during the summer, a couple months off during the winter. I'm perfectly fine. I would say that most photographers choose to work anywhere from eight to 10 months out of the year.
Speaker 2:However, let's say you wanted to work three months out of the year. That's totally doable. For example, when COVID happened and the world shut down, I had clients all over the place. I travel all over the US for my clients and I couldn't hop on a plane and go to my clients like I used to. So what did I do?
Speaker 2:I waited until things settled down. I bought myself a camper and I went on the road for three weeks. I photographed all my clients In a three-week time period. I have a session almost every single day. Came home, I did all my image reveals and I had a $100,000 month Like that. You could literally photograph clients one month out of the year if you wanted to and if you plan for it and bring in all the money you need to make and be done. So you get to choose how you want to structure your business. You get to choose how you want to structure your year. So don't be afraid to do something like you know what? I would just love to work with clients three months out of the year and then be done. That's totally fine. Now, today, for our example, I'm going to consider that you want to work 10 months out of the year and it makes the math a little easier.
Speaker 2:So if you want to work 10 months out of the year and you need to bring in $250,000 in revenue $250,000 in revenue Looking to create more magic in your business Make sure you join us over in your Magic Year. Your Magic Year is our new year-long program designed to help give you direction and guidance as you move throughout the next year in your business.
Speaker 1:Together we're going to work through quests each and every month.
Speaker 2:We're going to have a magical training every month to give you guidance and direction, but, most importantly, you're going to be surrounded in a community of people that are also working towards the same goals as yourself, so you don't have to feel alone. Check out the link in the show notes. You need to make $25,000 per month 10 months out of the year. So if you're sitting there and you're thinking, holy crap, how can I ever make $25,000 a month, I feel ya, I get it, I was there.
Speaker 2:It is totally possible. And let's break this down, because right now, when I think about a $25,000 month, I'm like that's an easy month, no big deal, Right? When you are not there yet, it feels like crazy. It feels like how on earth can I ever get there? Once you get there, you're like how did I ever not do that? I can sit there and look at my account and be like I have $100,000 months in my business. Now I do four times this. Of course you can do $25,000. If I can do $100,000 in one month by myself, you can do it. Let's talk about how we decide, how we figure out how to break this monthly revenue that we need to bring in down to a more manageable level. So the next thing I need you to think about and to decide is how many clients do you really want to work with each and every month? What number is popping into your head right now? And you're like I would love X number of clients.
Speaker 2:So many times I ask photographers this and they say something to me like I would love to have 15 or 20 clients a month, and I'm like no, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's take a step back. Can you actually deal with that many clients? Or how many clients can you actually deal with with your life, the life you want to live and like not be drowning, right? For most photographers, a single client can take anywhere from 10 to 15 hours of direct time related to that client. So when you think about that, is it realistic to do two or three clients every single week? Probably not. That's a full time job plus more, not considering all of the extra back end things we do. Let's say a full-time job plus more, not considering all of the extra back-end things we do. Let's say a full work week if you're working eight hours a day, five days a week, that's 40 hours. If you did two clients per week and those two clients per week, you're spending about 15 hours working on their things, between communications, emails, meetings, driving to their session, photographing their session, calling, editing all of those things. That takes up 30 hours a week, not to count the time for your back-end stuff like marketing, education, updating your website, scheduling social media, being your own bookkeeper and all of these other things that you do as a photographer.
Speaker 2:I would say that, realistically, most photographers need about five to eight clients per month, and that seems to be the sweet spot. So once like one and a half or maybe two clients per week, once you get your systems down, really good. Managing two clients per week isn't crazy, but it can be a little bit more difficult. Let's be honest. You work for yourself. You don't want to work all the time. Really, how many days a week do you want to be working? Do you want to work five days a week, from eight to five, or do you want to work like three days?
Speaker 2:a week for four hours. Consider these types of things when you're deciding what you need to make and what you need to make per client. If you're sitting here saying, realistically, I can only work eight hours a week, I need to have one client per week. I need to figure out how to get that client to only take eight hours of my time and I need to meet my income goals from that, and you're going to have to figure out how to do it. Not impossible, you can do it. You just have to decide what that looks like for you. So let's say, with this, $25,000 a month if you're working 10 months out of the year. Let's say you want five clients per month. If you want five clients per month, that means you need to make $5,000 per client that you have. Now maybe you're thinking that's insane, there's no way, so let's play with some other numbers. This is when you get to plug and play and decide where your comfort level lies. Maybe you're thinking how about eight? Eight sounds like okay, that's a little bit less per client. Eight clients per month sounds kind of scary. But how much is that? If you have eight clients per month and you need to bring in $25,000 per month. That would mean you needed to make $3,125 per client. Or maybe you're like, oh, that fre freaking out. Okay, 10 clients per month, I'll do 10 a month. You would need 10 clients per month to pay you $2,500 a piece. Or maybe you're like you know what? Heck. No, I want three clients per month, corinda. What does that look like? If you only wanted to have three clients per month, you just need to make $8,333 per client, which, in all reality, is totally doable.
Speaker 2:I have a coaching client right now and I was talking to her the other day and she switched to a system where she went from including digital files or clients paying her a few hundred dollars, to selling art and offering art to her clients, and I think she said most of her clients are spending around like $7,000. And she's in her first year of making the switch. I have coaching clients whose very first client who comes to the system actually they've worked with me spend seven or eight or 10 or $14,000 with their first client. Like it's insane, right? So it's not impossible to have clients that are ready and willing to invest thousands of dollars. You just have to have the right systems in place.
Speaker 2:But what I hope this helps you recognize is that doing portrait sessions for $250, $300 or maybe even $1,000 or $1,500, it's going to take a lot to get you there. It's going to take a lot of those $1,500 clients even to help you get to where you need to be. And I'm going to tell you this it is so much easier to make more money from the clients you have than it is to find more clients. It is so much easier to find five really amazing clients than it is to have 15 mediocre clients. So don't be afraid to just maximize the clients that you have coming through your door and stop feeling like you have to drag in all of these extra people because that is not fun. That sucks. Marketing is hard, guys. I'll be honest with you. Probably one of the hardest things to really master in your business is marketing. That's why it's easier just to make more money from the people that are already coming through your door Now if you're sitting there going.
Speaker 2:This sounds really cool, but I have no idea how I would ever make $5,000 per client. You're saying that to put $100,000 in my pocket. If I'm working 10 months out of the year, I would need to bring $250,000 in that year. 10 months out of the year means $25,000 per month. If I did five clients per month, that's $5,000 per client. Let's talk about what a $5,000 client looks like.
Speaker 2:A $5,000 client could buy an album, a large album from me with about 50 of their favorite portraits and spend $5,000. A $5,000 client from me could buy one 60-inch piece of art. A $5,000 client for me could buy a small album with around 25 portraits and get a couple medium-sized metals around maybe 20 inches. Most of my clients are going to spend at least $5,000. Most of my clients are going to get an album and a couple pieces of art and spend at least that $5,000 mark and most of my clients don't hesitate to do that. They're excited, they're ready, they're willing.
Speaker 2:And I hear this time and time again from my coaching clients. They say, corinda, all of this sounds great. That's why I hired you to be my coach. I thought like this would be so cool if I could get there, but I didn't believe it would really happen. And then I had my first client and I was like holy crap, corinda. They didn't hesitate to spend the money, they didn't hesitate to get the art, they didn't hesitate to buy the album and spend the thousands of dollars and, the best part, they didn't even care that they didn't get all their digital files. Is that to say that they don't have to get their digital files?
Speaker 2:No, not at all, I have coaching clients that have implemented this system that I teach.
Speaker 2:They have had an image reveal with a client that did get all their digital files and that client's been over $10,000 on their portraits. So it's possible for your clients to get their digital files and still spend money on art, still go above and beyond and help you get to those big numbers. Now the fun part about this and the next step is once you know what you need to be making per client, you get to decide how you get there, and there's a number of ways you can get there. The way I do it is not the way for everybody and I completely understand that. In my business personally, my clients come to me. They pay a session fee. Their session fee covers the session, my time spent photographing the session, my help planning the session, my travel to them, all this good stuff, and it includes a credit for them to use towards their favorite portrait after the session. Then afterwards they spend more money, they buy art, they buy albums, and that gets me to those $5,000 more clients. Now there's a lot of different ways you can get there to that target number, but in my opinion it's easier when people pay a little bit less upfront, because it's hard to get into the door sometimes, and then they can buy more on the back. Once they see their portraits, once they fall in love with them, once they see the art, once they see that picture on their wall, they're obsessed and they have to have it. And it's easier to get them there after the session than before.
Speaker 2:But let me share with you a few different ways you can get to this place. The first option, and the option that seems like the easiest route, is hey, just charge $5,000 up front, charge a high session fee and include all their digital files. There are photographers that use this method. There are photographers that have a high session fee that's thousands of dollars and they are so well known, they have such a great reputation that their clients will come to them and pay thousands of dollars and be okay, walking away with all their digital files. Now you could have a really high session fee up front that gets you there, but maybe instead of including the digital files, you include a product or you include a credit to use towards product. So my session fee could be $5,000.
Speaker 2:And I could say my session fee is $5,000. And you're going to get a $4,500 credit to use towards your single portraits after that. But you have to pay me the full thing front. That's big and that's scary and ultimately I think that especially in the early phases of business even where I'm at it's a little scary to think like could I just go put a $5,000 price tag out and people would just book and pay it and be fine with it. Honestly, as a client myself, I am hesitant to work with a photographer like that because I might not want all of like that, because I might not want all of my photos, I might not want all of those things that are included with their session fee. So personally I struggle with that a bit. I'm not that person that would go spend that money up front and just pay it and get all my images and call it a day, because that's not who I am Now. The next route you can go is to have a middle of the road session fee.
Speaker 2:So you can have a session fee somewhere in between. A session fee that requalifies people a bit by making them buy in and invest up front. That includes a credit of sorts which is my go-to and my preferred method.
Speaker 2:My preferred method is to have a session fee that includes a credit to use towards their favorite portraits. What that magical number is, it doesn't really matter. What matters is that that number that you choose for the session fee and the credit that's included gets clients through your door. That you can convey the value and what they're getting to them when you speak to them. That you can convey the value and what they're getting to them when you speak to them. Get them through your door, get them to pay your session fee.
Speaker 2:You can share with them that they're probably going to want to spend more money than that on the back end and be clear and transparent and upfront with them of what that looks like. And then, when their session's over, they're ready and willing and excited to invest more on their portraits. And although you only got a small percentage of that up front, you're going to be able to get more of that down the road. When they see their portraits and fall in love with it, and when they can envision that beautiful portrait of them and their dog out in the fields on their wall, or when they can imagine that beautiful portrait of their family on their wall, they're going to be willing and ready to buy and spend the thousands of dollars on it. Once they can imagine that beautiful portrait of their family on their wall, they're going to be willing and ready to buy and spend the thousands of dollars on it once they can see it, versus when it's just something that hasn't even happened yet and they don't have any context of that. That middle of the road option with having a session fee that includes your time photographing the session and a print credit is really my preferred route to go to. Like I said, it can come in a number of different ways, and the numbers you choose really don't matter. It could be anywhere from a $450 session fee that includes a $300 credit to a $1,500 session fee that includes $1,000 credit. The number you choose really is insignificant, so don't put too much thought into it. However, I'm going to leave you with a couple of tips to think about when you're deciding what your session fee should be, if you choose to go the middle of the road option.
Speaker 2:Now, when we talk about session fees, our session fee is really a pre-qualifier for our clients. We want to consider that having a session fee that's too low could mean that we get poor quality clients in our door. Having a session fee that's too high could also scare people off, and really what we want to do is we want to find the sweet spot. The sweet spot that pre-qualifies people and says if you're willing to spend this much money up front, then you probably have more money to spend on art and things like that. But we want to have it in the right place and sometimes we have to gauge that. So, if you set your session fee and you find yourself getting too many low quality clients that aren't willing to invest more, or they're just a pain in your rear end. Your session fee is probably a little bit too low and you should bump it up. If you're so busy you're turning people away, it's your sign to bump your session fee up. Now, if you set a session fee and you're just like really struggling and every time you say it to somebody it's so high and it makes you cringe and it freaks you out a little bit and you're not booking any clients at that rate because you chose something that might be too high, you're not booking any clients at that rate because you chose something that might be too high. It might be your sign to bump it down a bit, but there's a lot of things that go into that too. And without knowing exactly what your process looks like when you get an inquiry, without knowing exactly what your methods are, your systems that you have in place, without knowing exactly how you're speaking to your clients, I really can't tell you if you need to consider lowering your session fee down, because there's a lot that goes into it. It might not be your session fee, it might be something more like your script and the way you're talking to your clients when they inquire with you. It might just be that you aren't properly conveying the value of what they're getting. So there's a lot of things that go into that, but just kind of keep that in mind. Really, if your session fee is too low, you might get too many poor quality clients and people that are a pain in the butt. That could happen. Or if you get too busy and you have to turn people away, then raising your session fee can help there.
Speaker 2:Now the third option when it comes to your session fee. Right, we talked about high session fee includes a ton of stuff. It gets you all your money. We talked about a middle of the road session fee that includes session fee plus a credit towards their products. Or we talk about low session fees, a very low session fee that literally just covers the session and includes nothing else. That's another route you go in and, honestly, in all of these things I'm sharing with you, there is no right or wrong.
Speaker 2:I will tell you and I told you what I think works best and what I use, but that doesn't mean that something else can't work for you. So you need to look at how much money you need to make per client and then you need to consider these three options when it comes to your session fee, and you need to ask yourself how am I going to get my clients where they need to be? Which one of these methods is going to be the easiest and the best way for me to make the money I need to make? And then you need to try it, and if it doesn't work, but then you need to try something else. And if it doesn't work, you need to try something else. And if it still doesn't work, you need to try something else. And if it still doesn't work, then maybe there's some other pieces broken, because this isn't just about a session fee, it's about a whole lot of other things in your business, so make sure you keep that in mind. I have tried them all.
Speaker 1:I'll be honest with you.
Speaker 2:I've tried every pricing strategy there is under the sun. I've had a very low session fee that included nothing. I've had a high session fee that included everything. I've had a high session fee that included some but not everything. I've tried every pricing method. I've tried both things. If somebody out there teaches a method of pricing, I've tried it, Whether it's in my portraits or in my wedding years years when I used to photograph weddings I tried every single strategy there was. I tried like letting clients build packages up front. I tried.
Speaker 2:I can't even explain to you my husband literally was like we're doing this again. Like yeah, we are, we're gonna try something else. But the thing is, I come here to you with this knowledge to share with you all the mistakes I've made to share with you why the things I tried did not work.
Speaker 2:And for those of you that might be listening to this and saying there's so many other chief photographers in my area, why would anybody come to me? Or maybe you're sitting here going. I would never spend that kind of money. How would my clients? I have a couple of pieces of advice here For those of you that are sitting there saying there are so many chief photographers in my area, why is anybody going to come to me?
Speaker 2:They're going to come to you because there's a difference in what you provide when you're charging thousands of dollars than when you're charging hundreds of dollars. There is a substantial difference. There is a service, there is a value, there is an experience you are providing to clients to be able to get to spend thousands of dollars, and it's not just showing up to their session and taking their photos. When you are a photographer that is willing to go out there and charge thousands of dollars and have clients that are ready and willing and excited to send thousands of dollars, it's because you are solving all of their problems. You are helping them, you are guiding them, you are providing something that is so amazing. How could they not spend thousands of dollars on it. And for those of you that say I wouldn't personally spend that much money on portraits, I'm going to tell you you don't know, actually, if you would or not until you're put into a situation. Because for me personally, I probably would have said that same thing, except for when I was very, very early on of my business, like baby years in my business.
Speaker 2:First year when I started my business, I hired a photographer to do boudoir photos before I got married and I found this photographer and I was obsessed, I was in love with her work and I was like I have to hire this girl. I remember where I was. I was sitting at Chili's when I found this girl's work online with my fiance at the time, and I remember seeing her pictures and being like, oh my gosh, I have to have this. And you know, I remember going and meeting with her and talking to her and her saying I'm going to provide you with this experience. I'm going to provide you with this amazing transformation. I'm going to get to know you. I'm going to pour my heart and soul into you. I'm going to love on you. I I'm going to pour my heart and soul into you. I'm going to love on you, I'm going to do all of these things for you and, by the way, if you want this beautiful book, it's going to cost thousands of dollars. No lie, guys.
Speaker 2:I was fresh out of college, I was starting my business. We were paying for a wedding on credit cards. We did not have a whole lot of help from our family and I figured out how to buy that $2,000 or $3,000 album in secret and pay for it out of my pocket with money that I don't even know where it came from looking back at it, I did it Now, if you would have asked me beforehand, before I went through the experience, before I was presented with the opportunity, if I would have done the same thing, I probably would have said no, I don't tell you again.
Speaker 2:I've been in business for 10 years now. We had maternity photos done when I was pregnant a couple years ago. I went into the maternity session. I knew what I was getting myself into. This photographer I know well. She's an incredible artist. She's an incredible businesswoman. Her clients pay her lots of money and I said I want one photo for over my bed. I want one photo for my bed. Here's exactly what I want. Here's the dimensions. I know what I want. I went into it going. I'm going to spend a couple thousand dollars on this one piece of art that's going to go over my bed. Hey, I know how this works. I do this on the daily. Guess what? I showed up at the session. She killed it.
Speaker 2:It was an amazing experience. It was like I was a queen, Did all these outfits. She was like try this on, put this on. You're a badass, do this. I sit on the imagery field. No joke, my like. I want one photo.
Speaker 2:This is what I want turned into like I think the invoice ended up being over $10,000 in the end and I was like, if I can do this to myself, knowing what I'm doing and being so excited about it, holy crap. I understand how my clients can. So I'm going to encourage you. If you're sitting there going like I don't think I could ever do this, Go hire yourself a photographer that provides a full experience. Go treat yourself to something like this. Go through the experience as a client, because it is incredibly important to experience that. It's something that we do every year. We try to hire a photographer to do our portraits, to go through the experience, and we spend the money we invest, we do it and sometimes I come into it thinking I'm not going to do it and then I fall into the trap and I do it anyway. So I just want to encourage y'all and know that it is possible that you can do it.
Speaker 2:My coaching clients all the time say I don't think this is possible. I don't know how this is going to happen. They come through the process and they're like holy schmoly, it worked. My client spent all this money. How did this happen? It is possible for you and it is possible for each and every one of you.
Speaker 2:But the first step is having a very clear picture of what your goals are, to know your numbers, to know exactly what you need to make per client and to always make decisions that are going to get you there in your business, To figure out how do I meet those goals. And if you're sitting here thinking like, OK, my number, I need $5,000 per client, I need five clients per month. You're saying that seems so out of reach, Remember, you don't have to get there tomorrow If you got 25% of the way there in the next six months and then in the next six months, you got 50% of the way there in the next six months and then in the next six months, you got 50% of the way there and then, a year after that, you've got 100% of the way there. You don't need to get there tomorrow. Your averages will get higher. Your clients will buy more art. Your clients will buy bigger art. Your clients will buy albums and more images in their albums.
Speaker 2:The better that you get at the system and the better you get with the process and that doesn't always happen right away, and that's okay, but you just need to make small steps to get there, and your pricing can be set up now to get you there, and over time, you will get closer and closer and closer. So don't feel discouraged about this idea of, like man, I feel like I'm never going to get there, because you can and you will get there. And each and every year, you will get closer and closer and closer to where you want to be, without having to ram within the wheel. By just simply making small tweaks, by simply getting better, by honing in on your skills, by becoming a better photographer, by becoming a better business owner, you will get closer and closer. I hope this has been helpful for you today and I hope by the end of today, you have a good idea of exactly what you need to be making for each and every client that comes through your door.
Speaker 2:In the show notes, we're going to share with you a link to grab a PDF guide. It's going to share the details and these numbers with you too, so you can break them down. But I hope this has been helpful and I cannot wait to hear what numbers you come up with. Make sure you head over to our Facebook group Photography Business, tune Up with Corinna Kay and you share your results and what you figured out once you work through this podcast.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to support the podcast, please make sure you share it on social media or leave a rating and review. As always, you can check out the links and resources in the show notes over at masteryourmindmoneycom. To catch all the latest from me, you can follow me on Instagram at masteryourmindmoney and don't forget to join our free Facebook group Photography Business Tune-Up with Corinna Kay. Thanks again, and I