Mindset & Money Mastery for Photographers with Karinda K.

78. Why Your Photography Business Feels Stuck (And How to Break Free)

• Karinda K. • Episode 78

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Register for our Free Training Tuesday, May 20th at 7:30PM EST!

What does a 13-year journey of building a thriving photography business actually look like? Not the polished highlight reel we see on social media, but the raw, unfiltered truth—complete with struggles, pivotal moments, and breakthroughs.

In this deeply personal episode, I pull back the curtain on my evolution from a college student making $35 prints to running a multi-faceted photography enterprise with three distinct branches. You'll discover how my business now encompasses high-end equine portraits, volume dance studio photography, and nationwide horse show coverage—all managed with surprisingly simple systems and minimal staff.

The journey wasn't easy. I vividly recall the early days—meeting clients at Starbucks with printed proofs, calling my mom excitedly after an $800 sale, then ending the year wondering where all the money went. For years I followed conventional photography business advice without understanding the deeper principles behind it. The real transformation came when I started studying business, marketing, and pricing from experts outside the photography industry and—most critically—when I finally addressed the mindset issues keeping me locked at a certain income level.

Perhaps most valuable are the lessons learned from my mistakes. I share the four specific factors that keep photographers trapped with low-paying clients (averaging $300-$800 sales) and reveal what actually unlocked the door to consistent $5,000+ client experiences. This isn't theoretical advice—it's battle-tested wisdom from someone who built a business from nothing, once lived in a camper to make ends meet, and now enjoys a thriving photography career.

Whether you're just starting out or feeling stuck at a frustrating income plateau, this episode offers both practical guidance and heartfelt encouragement. Success as a photographer is absolutely possible, and your journey doesn't have to be as long or difficult as mine was.

Join me on May 20th at 7:30pm for a special training where I'll dive deeper into breaking through those low-paying client barriers. Let's build the photography business you deserve—one that serves both you and your clients extraordinarily well.

Connect with Karinda!

Thanks for listening!

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 super excited to be back with you today to share a little bit about what we've been up to, what's been happening behind the scenes in my own business, my portrait business and my coaching business. Something that a lot of my coaching clients say to me is like Corinda, we appreciate the fact that you're still in the trenches with us doing the thing, and I think that's really valuable is to have somebody that's guiding you in your business, that is in the trenches, that's doing the thing at the same time you are, that understands the struggle of business and where it's at and the times we're in, and all of those things. Because, no matter how hard we would all like to say like things are perfect and nothing has changed over the last year, things have changed, but really in reality, business always changes and this year marks 13 years that I have had my portrait business and something that has been constant over the 13 years is that things change. It's just a matter of how things change. Some years, the way you have to market changes Some years, the way you have to price yourself changes. Some years, the way that you communicate with clients changes. There's always these constant changes in this constant evolution of being in business. It's just a matter of what is changing. So for those of you that feel like things have changed, world's changed. This is not the same place we lived in a year or two years ago. Just take a second and recognize that there will always be this constant change and that's okay. You will constantly be evolving and growing and pivoting and changing and adjusting as business changes.

Speaker 2:

The key is is that you just have to not stop growing and changing and evolving with times as they change, and so I wanted to share with you, kind of my, a little bit more about my business, my portrait business, what I've been up to the last several months, since it's been quiet around here, and what's been going on in our coaching business as well. There's been so many things happening behind the scenes in our portrait business. We have been incredibly busy and it has been a strange year, I will admit. We've been busy, it's been great, but there have been some differences in years past. You know I've been looking at those differences and those changes like how can we overcome this, how can we adjust, how can we pivot?

Speaker 2:

And honestly, I think one of the biggest things of this year that I've noticed is that people are harder and harder to pin down for things. People are harder to communicate with. People read emails even less and less and less than they have in the past, and I think that that has been one of the most frustrating things for me this year is just looking at how to change the way we're communicating with clients, the reminders. We're even having to work on those touch points for the CL even more and even harder in our business to make sure that people know what's going on, because people are just overwhelmed with life. I think right now I think you see a lot of people that have so many things going on and to compete with all that noise and all those things they have going on, we have to work harder to make sure we get the point across to our clients, to make sure that we're communicating effectively with them, and I think that has been one of the biggest things that has just been so frustrating for me this year. I just want to say, like, can't you just read your email? But unfortunately we can't, just not at our clients. We have to find smart ways to make them read their emails. So that has been one of the big things that I've noticed, this year we have done over 150 portrait sessions so far and we have also photographed a dance studio.

Speaker 2:

So we just got back from California doing our dance studio portraits. When we were at the dance studio we photographed over 750 dancers in six days. It was craziness but it was amazing and I love it. So in my business I have also added a whole nother branch of my business as well. I have added in actually photographing horse shows and we are now photographing horse shows and covering a horse show organization. So there's kind of three really big parts of my business now. I have my equine portraits that I do and I love and we do. I will say by the end of this year we will probably do close to 400 portrait sessions this year. Then we have our dance studio section of our business, which most of you are probably like.

Speaker 2:

What you photograph a dance studio? I've never heard of this. It's something I don't really talk about a whole lot, but I do high volume dance studio work. We do that twice a year, so normally in the spring and in the fall, and I absolutely adore photographing the dance studio.

Speaker 2:

I grew up dancing and some of my biggest memories from growing up in my childhood being at the dance studio are actually from picture day. I remember our photographer, ms Brenda. It's really weird how vivid those memories are to me, even though I had no intention of being a photographer. It wasn't something that interested me as a child and now I get to be there with Brenda and I get to come and take their portraits every year and just create these memories for these parents that really capture every year of their growth as they're growing up, and it's been so fun. And so my equine portraits business and my dance portrait business are two totally different things, because in our equine portrait business we do in-person sales model. We sell wall art. We focus on really high-end, nice wall art for our clients and then in our dance studio stuff we use more of the high volume system where we are selling online and we are selling lower price points because it is high volume.

Speaker 2:

Then we also have the new segment of our business where we do horse show photography and I'll tell you all a little bit about that in case you're wondering where this came from or what this is about. I have a friend who started a new horse show organization. It's called UDJC, if you don't want to look it up or if you follow me on Instagram, I'm sure you've seen it and they started this new organization and I was approached and asked if I wanted to be their official photographer and cover their horse shows, and I decided to say yes to it. It's something that I swore up and down I would never be a horse show photographer. I did photograph a few horse shows back in the very early days of my business, but this is just another branch of our business now and we're expanding and we're growing and my goal and my vision is to do horse shows differently. So I want to do horse show photography differently than most photographers are doing it.

Speaker 2:

We are currently hiring photographers to work for us in that side of our business. So if you are a horse photographer and you're interested in applying to work with us there, we have shows that are coming up all over the United States, so it will probably cover, I'm guessing, between 30 and 50 shows this year. Next year we might have 100 shows we're covering. So if you're a horse show photographer and you're interested in joining us there, send me a message and reach out. I can send you the application to apply because we are going to need quite a few team members to cover all of these workshops and we are specifically looking for people that can do photos and reels. So if you could do video, that's amazing. If not, reach out to me and let me know you're still interested and we can connect about that.

Speaker 2:

So this year I have learned how to shoot reels, which is something that I wanted to shoot video on my camera for a long time and I finally decided I was going to learn how to do video on my camera. So that's been a journey this year. It's something that I have been learning. It is so new and so different than what I'm used to, but it has been a really fun journey there and something that I was so stumped for a long time until I just forced myself to do it and then I realized it wasn't as bad as I thought it was. I was just overreacting about the differences in photo and video in my brain and once I just forced myself to do it, it wasn't quite so bad.

Speaker 2:

So that's kind of what we're doing right now in my own portrait business, and those of you that are listening and you're like how do you do all of this, karinda? Like what is the what's the secret to build this big business, because this has become quite a large photography brand now that we have and, honestly, we keep things really simple. That's really important. Everything is simplified as simple as it can be and we don't have a huge staff. I have one full time employee and I have an editor that I use for some things and we're bringing on an editor to help do the horse show stuff. So really it's me and my assistant, but it's simple and we make it work and we do a lot, but we have systems and, yeah, it's amazing. I love it. It's a little bit crazy. I would say most people would have a few employees at this point, but we're able to make it work because all the systems and things we have in place. So that's kind of a little bit about my business and where I'm at right now and what's been going on.

Speaker 2:

Also why it's been a little quiet around here, because you can imagine, adding in this third leg of my business has been a lot and has taken a lot of my time, so we have been incredibly busy there. But while we've been doing that, we have been revamping some things behind the scenes in our coaching business, which has been really fun. I decided that this year, over the next year, I want to really help more people just learn how to start selling wall art, learn how to price products, pick out their products, do all of those things. So I've taken two of our signature programs that we had are Five Subster Wall Art and our your Magic Year, and I have combined them and created a year long program to help photographers start selling wall art or sell more wall art. So we've kind of done a merger here to make your Magic Year even more amazing and more magical. So that's what we've been working on behind the scenes there.

Speaker 2:

And what I have realized as I've been going through this process in my own business and revamping and wondering how I can help photographers more in their business, was that there are really four big things that photographers are doing in their business that are holding them back and keeping them stuck, keeping photographers stuck with those low paying clients. But when I say low paying clients, obviously it's hard to justify and say like what that is? I think like if you're stuck with those clients that are spending maybe like three to eight hundred dollars with you, maybe even like fifteen hundred dollars with you, I would say you're stuck in those lower end, lower paying portrait clients and I've really taken a lot of time trying to figure out what those trends are and what keeps photographers stuck at that point with those clients. So I am doing a training on May 20th at 7 30 pm Central Time, and I would love to have you join us there. I'm going to be diving into those four topics live and then you can ask questions about those topics, pick my brain about things if you've been dying to ask me something. So I would love for you to join us there and you can check the link in the show notes to get access to that training, to join us live. Or, if you are watching the replay, you can click that link and it will direct you to where you need to go to get access to the replay. So I am very excited about that because I think the thing that I realized is that I was fortunate enough to have really amazing people around me and to be able to hire really quality mentors along the way and on my journey in my business that have gotten me to where I'm at, and I realized that not everybody has that ability, especially right off the bat.

Speaker 2:

So I wanted to really create something that anybody could join Right. This was something that cost less than I spent on coffee a month, less than it costs to take a family of five to dinner, right? Or probably a family of four to dinner, maybe even my family of three some nights and it costs less than that a month and it is affordable. If you come into this program and you price your wall art, you pick your products, you do all that good stuff and you sell just one piece of wall art, it's going to pay for itself and it's going to be so worth it. And I have spent so much freaking money in my own business to get where I'm at and to have the knowledge and the skills that I'm at, and I want to be able to pass that on to y'all and help you and help fast track you and avoid all of the heartache and tears and staying up till 3 am working because it isn't fun and I don't want y'all to have to do that and make the same mistakes I made along the way and fall on your face as many times as I fell on my face. And I'm still right there, learning with you, and that's the cool part, right, I'm still learning, I'm still evolving, I'm still changing and as I'm doing that, I'm sharing my wisdom, I'm sharing the new things I've learned with all of me, so that way I can get you more details about that. But I would love to see you on that training on May 20th where I'll be sharing those four details. I know that was a big introduction and a big like hey, here's what's been going on to get you all back on track of where I've been going and what I've been doing. I also wanted to kind of share some things from the early days of business with all of you because, although 13 years ago feels like forever ago, but also feels like yesterday, at the same time, I have been where you're at. So wherever you are at in your business, I have been there and I just want to tell you like it's going to get better, it's going to get easier. You are going to be able to build your business that you want one day.

Speaker 2:

I think back to whenever I first started my business I was in college, and I'll give you kind of a few highlights along the way that I think are kind of big, pivotal moments and things that happen. I was in college, I started my business. I remember sitting at my coffee table in my apartment and I remember getting a message on Facebook and it was like hi, karinda, I'm a photographer. So and so told me that you're starting a photography business and I want you to come to this class that I'm teaching on photography, like how to use your camera class. And I was like, ok, I guess I'll come. That sounds good. I kind of know how to use a camera. I've been using a camera for a while, but I'll come to your photography class.

Speaker 2:

And I remember going to this photography class and at the end of the class, the instructor pulled me aside and they said, karinda, if you're really starting a business, I need you to know this. I need you to know a few things. I need you to know not to ever give away your digital files, because those are your gold. And I also need you to know that you can't undercharge for this. Do not come and undercut everything that we've worked for. Every photographer that's come before you has worked so hard to get this industry where it's at, so don't come in and do not undercut us. And she said this very certainly.

Speaker 2:

And I remember leaving and she actually gave me a price list and she said here's my price list. Look at this when you're making your pricing, make sure you're selling products. And she just gave me a price list and I remember being terrified. I was scared. I didn't want to come into an industry and start my business and start off on the wrong foot and have everyone hate me because I was too cheap and I wanted to respect what she had done and I understood what she was trying to say to me in that moment and it was definitely one of those moments that was really pivotal in me going out and selling products, because I don't know if I didn't want to disappoint her or if I didn't want to disappoint every other photographer that existed before me in this world or what I was, but I took those words very seriously and I knew that I really should sell wall art.

Speaker 2:

I didn't know how to price it, I didn't know what I was doing. I remember not long after that I had graduated from college, I was living with my now husband. We were living at his parents' house. I don't know if I was living there not at the time, but I was there all the time it felt like and I remember I bought a Mac mini because that was all I could afford. I couldn't afford a MacBook, so I bought a Mac mini which was like the little standalone computer and I would plug it into a TV to use it. And I remember having my Mac mini plugged into the TV in his room.

Speaker 2:

And I remember making a price list. That was when I made my first pricing spreadsheet and putting down on that spreadsheet and eight by 10 for $35 felt so insane and so crazy. And I remember my husband now my now husband, austin saying that's crazy. Who's going to pay $35 that only cost you 80 cents Like that's robbery, corinda. So I had a loose, unmounted luster print for $35 on my price list and then I remember going through the website for, like I think, white House custom color and putting every single size that they had on their website on my spreadsheet and trying to figure out what I was going to sell, every single size that they offered at, and being so overwhelmed, like so overwhelmed I didn't know what I was doing. And then, not long after that, I stumbled across a Facebook post, I think, from a mentor, and she was going to teach how to price products and sell wall art and I was like I'm down, I don't know what I'm doing and this spreadsheet I just made is confusing AF. So I hired a mentor and she helped me make my first price list and I can still tell you what my price list was like back then.

Speaker 2:

My 8x10s were $35. Still, they were loose 8x10s not mounted. My lowest package was $350. Yeah, $350. Maybe it was actually $300. I think it was $300, $850, and then $1,200 were my packages. My lowest package was, I think, an 8x10s. My middle package was 10 8x10s, a 16x20 and a coffee table book maybe, and my top package was like a 20x24, two 11x14s, 10 8x10s and an album.

Speaker 2:

See, I can still remember most things from my head and I remember I would go meet with clients at Starbucks actually I was photographing seniors and families and maternity and engagement sessions at the time and I would photograph my client sessions and then I would edit their photos. I would print out four by six prints that were proofs for them and I would meet my clients at Starbucks and we would sit there with our four by six printed proofs and we would make three piles. We would make a yes, no and maybe pile and then I had little pieces of paper that were cut into squares with wall mockups on them and I would show them these like layouts of wall mockups that they could make. And nobody ever went for the wall mock-ups. They only bought what was in the packages, which nine times out of 10, that 16 by 20 that was in the package did not fit on their wall at all and, yeah, they got a picture that was way too small to probably put on their wall, but I could never upgrade them beyond the 16 by 20. I was stuck there and I did that for quite a while. Eventually I started using a wall mock-up app iPad app. Whenever it first came out, everyone kept saying I needed to use this thing called Pro Select and I was like that scares me and I would download it and never do anything with it. Numerous times until I did Finally used it and then I figured out how life-changing it was.

Speaker 2:

But I remember those days. I drive past that Starbucks and every I drive past that Starbucks and every time I drive past it I think about those days. I think about getting in the car and calling my mom and being like mom, a client just spent $800. Like, can you believe that? That's insane. And I remember all of those feelings. But I also remember the feeling of looking at my business at the end of the year and going like where did all the money go? I didn't actually make anything. This really sucks. I thought I was going to make money, I thought this would be enough and I would just be so frustrated. And this happened for so many years.

Speaker 2:

The first five years of my business, I would say, were largely like this, and till I learned to look at my business from a different perspective, until I learned to understand business, until I just stopped listening to the same old advice I'd been getting for all of those years. I took my education into my own hands and I went outside of the photography industry and I started learning things about business finance. I started learning things about money. I started learning things about pricing from industries other than photography. I started learning about marketing from marketing experts that had nothing to do with photography and that had never worked with a photographer in their life. And when I started doing those things, I started to realize that the reason I was struggling was because I didn't understand so many of the things I'd learned at the photography space and I was missing that deeper knowledge.

Speaker 2:

I was using the price list that somebody had told me to use. I was using the package someone had told me to use. I was using the price list that somebody had told me to use. I was using the package someone had told me to use. I was using the script that someone gave me and said say these words to your clients. But I didn't really understand why I was doing them.

Speaker 2:

And when I took the time to truly understand those things, to understand the psychology behind the different things I was doing in my business, everything changed. But there was still one thing that really held me back, and that was my mindset. My mindset me out at a place that sucked. It was my mindset hit me at that place when I was averaging those like $3,500 clients and I felt like I just couldn't get past that. I felt like the answer to my problem was booking more clients, until I realized the problem was actually with me and I needed to fix myself first. And then I started working on myself.

Speaker 2:

At that stage, and when I started to work on myself and my own mindset and get out of my own way in my business, then the next level unfolded for me. Then I started having those five $6,000 clients, then I started having those 10, 15, $20,000 clients. Right, everything changed at that moment. But it took me making the mistakes, it took me learning business from a different perspective, and then it took me working on myself. So I want each and every one of you to take this story in my journey and understand that, like I've been there, wherever you're at, I have been there. I've had years when I didn't pay myself a penny for my business and I've had years when my business has allowed me to buy a house. I've had years when I was like sorry, hon, I don't have any money, like, what are we going to do? We'll figure it out, right, but that's business and that's the journey we're on and that's the journey we chose Right.

Speaker 2:

So, if you are at any of these places, if you're at any of these phases and you're struggling, reach out to me. Send me a DM, a master your mind money on Instagram, email me at members at current decaycom or send a carrier pigeon. I don't care what you have to do. Just reach out some way, okay, and just tell me what's going on, tell me where you're at, tell me what your struggles are, because I don't want you all to feel alone and I don't want you to feel stuck in those places.

Speaker 2:

I felt freaking alone, guys. I will not lie, it was lonely, it was hard. My friends didn't get it, my family didn't get it. My husband tried really hard to get it, but I still don't think he got it all the time. Thank goodness I had him, though, because he was supportive. But it's hard and it's lonely, and when you're doing things that other people around you aren't doing and you don't know where to turn and you don't know what to look for and you don't know what's next, it's frustrating. So reach out to me, send me a message. Let's connect. Who knows, maybe we'll do a podcast episode about your question. Grab a seat to our training on May 20th, if you are free. If you're not free, go ahead and grab a seat, maybe you can. Life changes and you'll be able to hop on. But I've been there and I want to help you on this journey. Go back and listen to past podcast episodes. There's so much wealth of knowledge here that will help you grow and learn and develop.

Speaker 2:

Guys, when I started my business, I had nothing, nothing at all. I was in college. I had nothing because my parents had gone through divorce and my mom and I were left with absolutely nothing. I went to college on financial aid from the government and scholarships. My husband, who was also in college, would sometimes help me pay for things, because I didn't, I couldn't, and when we got married, we struggled. We had to figure things out. We bought property and lived in a camper for five years. Then we built ourselves a barnhouse with our own two hands as we could afford to buy wood.

Speaker 2:

Like we have built what we have from the bottom up and we have worked so hard and it has been such a struggle some days but, like looking back now, every moment was worth it and I want you to know that this struggle and this journey that you're on is worth it. But you don't have to go at it alone. You don't have to do it the hard way and you can get help, you can get support. Like there's so many good resources now that I didn't have when I was on this journey. So if you need the resources or you need the help or you need the guidance, like, just say the word and I will help, share whatever I can or point you in the right direction. I want all of y'all to be able to do what I've done with my business. I want all of y'all to be successful and I want all of you to love your business.

Speaker 2:

I want y'all to give up the working till two or three o'clock in the morning hustling, and I want y'all to be able to just have a business that you treat like your job and your career and like you're the CEO of it. That you work set hours, that you photograph clients when you want to or on the schedule that you want to. You don't have to work weekends if you don't want to. You don't have to do all those things you don't want to anymore. You can get the help you need when you want the help. You can have the assistant to do the stuff you don't want to do. All of those things are things I want for all of you and I want you to know that it is a possibility. And whoever has been told that, like you, can't make money as a photographer, or that you know you'll never be successful as a photographer or that's not a real job Any of y'all have been told that I know I have a lot by my own family Just know that that's not true. That is a load of crap and the people that told you that just didn't know. But I'm here to tell you that there are plenty of incredibly successful photographers out there. There are plenty of photographers that are making a living, that are serving their communities and their families so well, because the money they make in their business and it is possible and I think sometimes we just don't realize that. I think people don't realize that Maybe even you listening to this right now don't realize that there is an ability to make a good amount of money as a photographer. So I hope this has been helpful and I hope this has been encouraging guys.

Speaker 2:

I have this podcast. I do the coaching for photographers because I love it and I believe that it is something I was put on this earth to do was to help other people realize their potential in their businesses and see that there is that little sparkle of business owner deep down inside of them. But this is not really how I make my money. I make my money with my portrait business and I make great money doing what I do with my portrait business. So I do this because I love it. I do this because I want to help y'all. I do this because, for some reason, I feel like this is what I'm supposed to be doing above all else, even though it's not the thing that pays me. Well, it pays me a little bit, but I will say I'll be honest. I'm an honest person. This is not what makes my money. My portraits do, and that's why I can't ever see giving that up.

Speaker 2:

I've had some people ask me that lately Do you ever think they'll just give up your portrait business to be a coach? And I'm like the day I do. I want you to come and smack me across the face If you told me I said I would never do that because I think this is more of my passion thing, whereas my portrait business is my business business thing. Not that any of what I just said makes sense, but my podcast is real, guys, and I don't do editing here. We don't cut out parts when I say things that don't make any sense, so you'll just have to go with it.

Speaker 2:

But I appreciate all of you who've listened to this. I hope that this has helped you see a little bit more about my heart and who I am and where I've been, and just not feel quite as alone on the journey, and I hope that y'all can join me on May 20th at 7.30 pm, central Time, for a recap of our training, where I'm going to be sharing one more time for things that might be keeping you stuck with those low-paying portrait clients and how to get out of that place. It's going to be so good, and also reach out to me. Tell me what you want to hear on the podcast. I'm going to be working really hard to get some more content cranked out for you here on the podcast to keep encouraging you and helping you move forward, and I cannot wait to hopefully hear from you.

Speaker 1:

Bye, guys 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 master your mind moneycom to catch all the latest from me. You can follow me 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.