Mindset & Money Mastery for Photographers with Karinda K.

Are You Frustrated that It Doesn't Work For You- Even Though It Works For Everyone Else?

• Karinda K. • Episode 77

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Join our free Masterclass for photographers February 17th-19th, 2025. Save your seat now using the link! https://masteryourmindmoney.com/unicorn-masterclass

Is the "cookie cutter coaching syndrome" stifling your photography business? Discover how to break free from generic coaching methods that leave you feeling stuck and inadequate. In this episode, we promise to equip you with the tools to transcend one-size-fits-all strategies and embrace personalized approaches that truly resonate with your unique business needs. We'll share insights from our own journeys and tackle the frustration of following scripts and guides that just don't work as expected.

Join us as we unravel the complexities of pricing and overcoming business plateaus, particularly in the creative industry. Learn how to approach your passion with the mindset of a CEO, using trial and error to optimize your business model. We'll explore how valuing your work and adopting customized strategies can elevate your confidence in pricing decisions, turning your photography into a thriving enterprise. Plus, get a sneak peek into the Unicorn Photographer Masterclass for even more ways to boost your success. Don't miss this opportunity to transform your passion into a flourishing business!

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Speaker 1:

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:

Hey guys, I am so excited to be back here with you today and I'm going to talk about another topic that came up repeatedly while I was at Imaging USA this year, and that topic is let's just call it, cookie cutter coaching syndrome. Yeah, that's what we're going to call it for today. I really wanted to dive into this topic because it is something that is super near and dear to my heart, because I myself have been victim to cookie cutter coaching syndrome and you're like well, what is cookie cutter coaching syndrome? Karinda, that is a tongue twister. It's a really terrible term to use, but we're going with it now.

Speaker 2:

So cookie cutter coaching syndrome is what I see happening when photographers come to me and they start talking to me about their business and they say something like this I've taken so-and-so's course, or I've done this program or I've done this mentoring and it's just not working for me. Can any of you all say that you have fallen into this trap or had this happen to you as you were building your business? It's this idea that we're going to go take a class or go through a course or do mentoring with somebody and we're going to do exactly what they tell us to do and magically our businesses are going to be fixed, us to do and magically our businesses are going to be fixed. And you see, what happens is there's this level of frustration because you sit there, you do exactly what they tell you to do and then you look back and you say this didn't work for me. I must be a failure, I must not be good at this, I must not be meant for business, when in all reality, that's not the truth. And what really happens a lot of times in these situations and I'm not saying that this is all the time, but a lot of times what happens is you go through, you get the script, you get the price guide, you get the PDF. Whatever you get the do this because I said so and you take it and you go into your business and you do it.

Speaker 2:

But the problem is the script doesn't work for you. You don't really understand the pricing or feel confident in the pricing, or the PDF guide just doesn't sound like something you would ever say or do or send to a client. So you don't really feel good about what you're doing because it's like you're trying to shove a round peg in a square hole. So to say, right, you're trying to fit someone else's business into your business, somebody else that is different than you, somebody else that is unique from you, but this person's telling you to do it because they said so. And this has really caused a downward spiral effect for so many photographers, because they feel like they've watched so many other people be successful at doing that and they don't understand why they're not successful with it.

Speaker 2:

And I will say that sometimes the do this because I said so. Here's the script works for people, but sometimes it doesn't, and I have a few ideas of why this could be. I've really put a lot of time thinking about this, because it's a conversation I've had so many times with people. I'm thinking about this because it's a conversation I've had so many times with people. I think some personality types and some people do better with do this because I said so and they're like OK, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it blindly, I'm going to trust you and I'm just going to go into this full tilt confidence that it's going to work, because you said it will. And I think for those types of people sometimes it does work for some time for them. I think eventually those people will get to a place when they go, oh, something doesn't feel right now, and then they have to start pivoting and shifting.

Speaker 2:

But then I think there's another portion of people that take that do this because I said so advice and they say why, or I don't understand this, or this doesn't make sense to me. And in order for me to actually be able to do something and implement something and feel good about it and sell it as a business owner, I have to understand it. And that's, honestly, where a lot of education falls short. For photographers, the thing is that telling somebody here's the script or telling somebody here's the price list does work for a lot of people, some people and, as an educator and as a business coach, that is the easy route to take to give somebody the scripts, to give somebody the price list and say do this. It's a whole lot harder to take that and say I'm going to teach you how to create the price list, I'm going to teach you how to create the script, I'm going to teach you how to build it and, honestly, most people don't want to do the work to build it on their own and to take the time to fully understand it so that way they can build it on their own. And this is like a little me just being like cold hard truth of what I have seen in the photography industry.

Speaker 2:

In my own experience as a photographer who has digested so much information and so many courses and so much education, but also as somebody who is now on the education side of things, helping other photographers, I get asked all the time do you give us your price list? Do you give us your script? No, I don't and honestly I never will. And the day that comes that I say here's the script, like somebody needs to come, knock me over the head and be like Corinda, what are you doing? You've gone to the dark side, because I feel like it doesn't do you a whole lot of justice to just have the script or to just have the price list or just have the. Do this because I said so. It is really a reason why I have struggled so much as a business coach or photographers, because I feel like giving you just a small piece of the puzzle isn't doing you justice in your business and I don't want to set you up for failure by giving you an incomplete picture of something, and so that's why I try to choose topics for the podcast that I feel it can be helpful, and feel it can be useful when I'm giving these small snippets of business to all of you Coming up here.

Speaker 2:

This week I'm going to be doing a three-day free, totally free business masterclass. It's going to be called the Unicorn Business Owner Photographer Masterclass. My tongue tie thing is just I'm just getting all tongue twisted today, but we are going to be talking a lot on that masterclass about how to go through your business and figure out if it's serving you, to figure out if it works for you, to figure out where you need help at, to figure out where you need to grow at where you need to learn, at what things you need to learn, I should say and really help you go through your business in a systematic manner and hopefully close some of those gaps, hopefully understand some things in a different manner and hopefully close some of those gaps, hopefully understand some things in a different way, because that is so incredibly valuable and I want y'all, through listening to the podcast, through reading my book, whatever it may be, if you join my coaching programs, whatever it may be, it is my hope that I can help you be a confident business owner that knows how to take what I'm sharing with you, what I'm telling you, how to take this information to digest it in your brain and then to put it into action in your business and to feel confident about what you're doing.

Speaker 2:

I love to ask people like how do you feel about your pricing right now? And a lot of times what they say to me is it's okay. And I'll say why do you feel like that? What is it about your pricing that makes you feel that way? And they'll be like what makes me really uncomfortable? Okay, why does it make you uncomfortable? I just don't understand why I should be charging this much for this product or this thing or this album or this wall art. And I say to them next did you build your price list yourself? Do you understand the finances in your business? Do you understand the standard numbers it takes to run a business? What is your COGS percentage? Do you know why your COGS needs to be where it needs to be? An inch? Do you know why your COGS needs to be where it needs to be?

Speaker 2:

And a lot of times people say to me no, I'm just charging this because somebody told me to. I'm just charging this because this is the priceless my business coach put together for me. I'm just charging this because this is what I think everyone is doing, but I don't really understand it and that, to me, right there is one of the hardest things to hear a business owner say but do you know why it's hard for me to hear that? It's hard for me to hear that because I remember when I was in that place. I remember when I was taking everything at face value that someone would tell me and plopping it into my business. I remember when I was told do this because I said so, do this because it works for me. I was told, do this because I said so, do this because it works for me. And when I asked why, it was too much to take the time to explain, or maybe they didn't even understand themselves and that vicious cycle led me to so many dead ends. It led my business and myself to feeling like I didn't even know what I was doing, like I would sit down and look at my finances at the end of the year and go like, how did I get here? What am I doing wrong? Oh, I need to change something, but I don't really know what I need to change because I didn't build it to begin with and I was just off looking for the next best price list or whatever it was to plop in my business. And I'm telling you this today and I decided to record this podcast because I talked to so many people at Imaging that had been in your shoes, had been in my shoes where I was at that said to me this isn't working. And then I met so many other people who said I did that thing and it didn't work for me. But I learned how to pivot and make it work for me and now I'm really happy.

Speaker 2:

And that is oftentimes the piece that we're missing. The piece that we're often missing is taking something that works really well for somebody else, or taking something at face value that somebody else is teaching, and taking the time to ask yourself why it works for them, taking the time to truly understand it and taking the time to ask yourself why it works for them, taking the time to truly understand it and taking the time to tweak it and make it our own so that it works for us. That is so stinking valuable. As a business owner, that is the greatest thing you can do. It's learning from a lot of people. It's learning from a lot of different industries. It's learning from experts in different areas. It's reading a lot of books, it's listening to a lot of podcasts, right and it's always looking for that little golden nugget that's going to take what you're already doing and make it better or more unique or fit you in a way that feels good for you and works for you.

Speaker 2:

On the other side here, there comes a time when we're doing okay in our business. We feel like we've made it work, we feel like we've gotten to a place where it feels good to us, and then we get frustrated because we feel like there's not anything else there, or we feel I don't know what else to do to change this, or I feel stuck. Or how do I get over this hurdle? Or how do I get past this plateau From a pricing money, financial perspective? I typically see this from photographers. When they are at that $2,000 to $3,000 average, they get stuck in this plateau. The reason is they've taken something that somebody else gave them that was really good and worked for them, and they've gotten this far. But now they're at the point in time when they have to really start to fine tune these little bitty things and really start to understand what is going into getting those $2,000 to $3,000 clients so that they can get those $5,000 and $6,000 clients, or $10,000 or $15,000 clients, and that phase of business, once you pass over the like forgotten, going in a good direction. I know what I'm doing now, feeling good. Then you hit that plateau and then you go, oh crap, what do I do now? Because then you have to start dissecting the business that you've built and you really start to understand it.

Speaker 2:

And when I got to that place in my business is when I started looking for help outside of the photography industry. It's when I started learning from experts in totally different areas. I learned about pricing from a restaurant person and I learned about marketing from all kinds of random, different people that knew nothing about the photography industry. And it was really insightful to learn from these other industries and these other people and say, oh, I get why the photographers are telling me to do this. I get why my business coaches have told me to do this. I get why the courses I fought told me to do this. It's because of this reason or this principle or this piece of expertise that I learned over here. Now this is starting to make sense, or I was able to say, oh, there's a gap here in what I've learned and there's a gap here in what I'm doing Now. I need to tweak this.

Speaker 2:

But what was so hard and so frustrating about that time of my business is that's when I truly had to become the expert of business ownership. That's when I truly had to step into the role of being a CEO and understand that every word I said, every question I asked, every interaction with my clients could be the difference between a $1,000 client and a $15,000 client. Something as simple as asking the right question in the wrong way could change the end result and cost me thousands of dollars. But I had to take a lot of time and a lot of energy and a lot of brainpower to understand that. And then I started making all these little tweaks to my business, all these little tweaks to my process, all these little tweaks to my systems, my client interactions, and that got me to where I am today. It took me having a deeper understanding of business.

Speaker 2:

So for those of you that are listening to this and you're like I'm doing, okay, I feel like I'm at this plateau. I don't really know what to do. My challenge for you is to take your knowledge of everything in your business and just deepen it far beyond what you know or what you think right now, and also, in that same sense, know that you're now mining for gold, right? Nothing that you learn, I will say nothing. Most of what you learn is not going to feel earth shattering for you and your business now. But remember one question, asked the wrong way, can make a difference in a tiny sale or a giant, huge sale.

Speaker 2:

But to get to figure out what that one question is, you have to go through your whole business from A to Z. You have to look for every tiny little crack. It's looking over a wooden ladder with a microscope, right? You're going to sit there and look at every little piece, every little rung of the ladder and you're looking for the tiniest hairline crack. And if you find that little hairline crack before you fall through, you're going to fix problems that you didn't know were there or you're going to keep running your business and one day you're just going to hit that rung on your ladder and fall flat on your face and go. What the heck just happened Because you hadn't taken the time to really thoroughly go through your ladder and check for all those little tiny cracks.

Speaker 2:

So those of you that are right there, I get you, I feel you, I see you, I know where you're at and don't worry, it gets better. I know where you're at and don't worry, it gets better, I promise. But there is that little plateau that you have to go through and that plateau is a knowledge plateau. That plateau is learning to look at your business from a different perception or a different way, and that plateau is mining for a little golden nuggets along the way in your business. It's so hard for me to sit here and be like. Here is exactly what you need to do if you're at that plateau. There's some big things that pop into my head that I see happen repeatedly, but what I would challenge you and this is for any of you that are listening to this, whether you're at the very beginning, you're at that plateau or you feel like you've passed that plateau but you know that there's some more inside of your business that you could grow Sit down with your business and start from scratch again.

Speaker 2:

Look at the products you're selling, look at your pricing, look at your COGS, look at all the little tiny things that right now might feel mundane, or I already know that I don't need to look at that again and really spend some time reevaluating it. Go back to your financials in your business. Go back to the role of a CFO and look at your business from a different perspective, not just from the role of photographer. And as you're going through your business this way, from start to finish pricing, client experience, sales, marketing, all of these things whenever you hit something that doesn't feel quite right, getting all of these things, whenever you hit something that doesn't feel quite right doesn't feel good. It feels sticky.

Speaker 2:

I want you to ask yourself this question Does this not feel right? Because I've done something in my business that doesn't fit me, what I believe, my why Does this still feel sticky? Because I don't truly understand it and I'm lacking knowledge and understanding on this topic? Or does this feel sticky because it is nothing I want near myself and I don't know how I got here and I just woke up one day and I was like why the heck am I doing this thing? This sucks, get it out of my life right now. Period the end. I'm done with you.

Speaker 2:

It might be that you need to make some little tweaks and some adjustments. It might be that it's out of alignment from what you believe a little bit and can be tweaked. It might be that you don't understand it at all. It might be that you're terrified of it because you lack understanding. Or it might be that you have been doing something for the last 10 years that you hate every single day and you're done with it, and I want you to really think about those things in your business because that is so important.

Speaker 2:

I'm in year 13 now of business and there are some days when I wake up and I help people do this all the time. There's some days when I wake up and I just look at something in my business and I'm saying why the heck am I doing this? This is stupid. Who told me to do this and why have I been holding on to this thing that is so silly and so stupid for so many years? But then it becomes hard to let it go because you're like I've been doing it for so long, right, and it takes a minute of sitting there and looking at why this feels that way all of a sudden. And, trust me, there have been a lot of times in the last 13 years of business that I have woken up and been like what the heck am I doing with my business, what the heck am I doing with my life? And I will tell you this. I will talk about things on this podcast, I will talk about things in my book, and you might hear me say things that you are just like there is no way in hell I'm doing that. That is insane and that's okay with me. I don't want each and every one of you to do exactly what I do, but what I hope is that I can instill some knowledge in you that will help you grow and understand your business from a different perspective than you've ever looked at it before. That's what I hope.

Speaker 2:

I was talking to somebody just a couple weeks ago and they said to me you know what I appreciated about you, corinda, is I appreciated listening to you talk about making money as a photographer? And you said to us you need to know what you need to make to meet your revenue goals. Yes, you think that in-person sales is the easiest and best way, and that's what you love in your heart and soul, but I love that. You also said to us if we can charge accordingly and make enough money and we want to give away our digital files, then go for it. There's nothing wrong with that. I don't have a problem with you wanting to do things however you want to do them, but look out for your blind spots, look out for the red flags, look out for the dead-end roads that you might run into, because we have to try things as a business owner, we have to try them different ways, and a lot of times we have to hear advice that's good advice and we have to go run the opposite way and do it wrong, and then we have to learn our lesson and turn back around and say, wow, I should have really done it the way she told me to the first time. Or, man, she was right when she warned me about that.

Speaker 2:

But that is business ownership. It is simply a series of trial and error, of testing, of experimentation, of the scientific method. Right, we do something, we see what the results are. If it's not what we wanted, we test it another way. We keep track of our numbers, we keep track of our metrics. We're constantly looking for ways to optimize, to increase our revenue, to increase our time back in our lives.

Speaker 2:

Right, that is what business is about is looking at all of these things. It's making sure the business feels good to us, making sure the business makes sense to us and making sure the business pays us well, because if we are not paid well, we are simply just doing a really expensive hobby and spending a lot of time away from our families and our loved ones to work our butts off for nothing. And that's really what I want y'all to know is y'all deserve to be paid. Y'all deserve to have a business. That is something you can do forever if you want to, and that's something people always ask me and I'm putting this on the record right here on the podcast, because that's what I love to do is put myself on the spot and say things that one day I might look back at and say why did I say that? But I'm going to say it. People ask me all the time Karinda, are you still a photographer? Do you solve a business? Is this like your plan B? You're going to get out of being a photographer and, honestly, my photography business is what makes me money. My photography business pays my bills.

Speaker 2:

I wish I could stand up here and say that I am the most successful person in the world at selling my courses and hanging out coaching clients, but I'm not. I love just helping people. And I'm an expert at helping people make money in their businesses and I'm really good at it. For some reason, I am not the best at selling myself as a business coach. I am really good at selling portraits. I can sell portraits in my sleep. I can make money as a photographer in my sleep, right. That's why I'm not an expert teaching people how to be a coach and sell themselves to the coach.

Speaker 2:

I do this, I do the podcast, I wrote the book, I have the coaching program because I love helping people, because when I started my business, I had somebody sit down and look at me square in the face and she said to me Corinda, you need to charge your worth, make sure you're not being too cheap, make sure you're not undermining everything I've worked for in this industry and all of these other photographers have worked in this industry for the last hundred years or whatever she said. I don't know how many years she said, but it was a lot of years and quite literally, she scared me a little bit. I thought to myself if I'm going to do this, I do not want to undermine these other photographers who've done this, who've made this a career, and I want to make sure that, if this is my career that I'm choosing and this is the life I'm choosing, that I make the best decisions for this industry in my business and in that there was a piece of me that felt like I owed it to her and every other photographer that came before us to carry that on and to share and to make sure that photographers coming into this industry or photographers that have been in this industry and are struggling knew, without a doubt, you can make money as a photographer, you can charge accordingly and there are people here who are happy and friendly and willing to help you do that and we want to see you succeed. I want to see my neighbor succeed. I have a coaching client that literally lives in the same town and photographs the same thing as I do and I she knows everything that I know. I have downloaded my brain into her brain pretty much, but it's important to me that all of us succeed and it's important to me that this industry succeeds and that's what I want for you.

Speaker 2:

So if you are listening to this, please know you can do this. You can be a successful business owner, but in order to do that, you're going to have to take off your just a photographer hat. You're going to have to decide that you are going to be the CEO of your business. You're going to have to decide that you are going to be the CEO of your business. You're going to have to decide that you're going to put on your business owner pants. Do the hard things, put the work in and spend just as much time learning business as you have taken learning photography and your art, because once you learn how to be a business owner and business becomes easy, then your art can become fun again, because it will no longer feel like you're just the starving artist trying to make it, trying to sell your art and yourself in order to pay your bills. It will feel like you are running this rich and thriving business that feels good and looks good and is everything you could have ever imagined. And it just so happens that you get to use your talent as an artist to do that and to fulfill your clients' needs and their wishes and make their hearts happy.

Speaker 2:

I hope this has been helpful today. Guys, this is one of those episodes that I just feel like I needed to come on and share at the spur of the moment, whenever the inspiration struck me, there it is. I laid it on the table and you got to hear off the cuff Corinda, on this episode today. If you have not already registered for our Unicorn Photographer Masterclass that is happening February 17th, 18th and 19th make sure that you hop on over to the link in the show notes and register. Or, if you missed it, go there and register and we can get you access to the replace and hop on that. Listen to our masterclass that we're doing and I hope that in that masterclass you're going to find some golden nugget that you need today, this week, whenever you're listening to this, that is going to change the trajectory of your business or help you look at your business in a brand new way. If you haven't already, grab our book, the Unicorn of Business Books for Photographers the link is in the show notes for that as well. Hop on over in our Facebook group, photography Business. Tune up with Corinna Kay, send me a message, tell me what you got out of this episode.

Speaker 2:

I love hearing from y'all. Also, guys, please, when you see me out in the wild at a photography conference, come say hi. It was so fun getting to meet so many of y'all that came up to me randomly and were like hey, I listen to your podcast. It just absolutely fills my heart with joy, because when we're recording podcasts, we don't always get to hear all the cool things that people love from it. So leave us a rating review, send us a message, tell us what you think. Tell us what you think, tell us what other topics you want to hear us dive into. And do you want more Karinda rants or do you want more Karinda by the book? Let me know what you think. Bye, guys. Thank you so much for listening.

Speaker 1:

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 Corinda Kay. Thanks again and I'll see you next time.