Mindset & Money Mastery for Photographers with Karinda K.

80. How to Tackle a Big Change in Your Business

• Karinda K. • Episode 80

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Facing change in your photography business can feel like staring down a cheetah in the jungle at night. Your brain crafts elaborate stories about what might go wrong – you'll lose all your clients, your business will crumble, nobody will pay those higher prices. But what if these fears are just protective mechanisms that have nothing to do with reality?

This eye-opening episode tackles the emotional and practical barriers photographers face when changing their pricing structure. I challenge you to identify that burning change you've been avoiding and envision how your life, family, and community might transform if you finally made it happen. Could your $350 sessions become $3,500 or even $7,000 sales? What financial freedom might that create?

The mindset work comes first – acknowledging negative thoughts and deliberately rewriting them into positive affirmations. Once that foundation is laid, I reveal the four critical mistakes photographers make when implementing pricing changes: copying competitors without understanding, avoiding money conversations with clients, overcomplicating offerings, and failing to create repeatable processes.

Each mistake comes with practical solutions drawn from years of coaching photographers through these exact transitions. Learn why talking about pricing from day one (or earlier!) matters, why simplicity beats complexity every time, and how systematic approaches produce consistent results. 

The transformation can be life-changing. I share stories of photographers who have multiplied their average sale tenfold by implementing these principles. Even shooting just 3-4 clients monthly at these higher rates can completely revolutionize your business and lifestyle.

Ready to face your fears and make that change you've been postponing? This episode provides both the emotional support and practical roadmap to get there. Because with the right knowledge, tools, and mindset, you absolutely can master the changes your photography business needs.

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 pop in today and talk to you about something that no one wants to talk about. Well, I don't know if anyone wants to talk about this, but we're going to talk about it, and the word today we're going to talk about is change change in your business and specifically, changing your pricing, cause this is one of those topics that really is not fun to deal with and is scary, and is something that you might be sitting there thinking I know I need to change, but I don't know how to do it. I don't know where to turn, I don't know what's next. So I'm going to encourage you that, if you're sitting right here and you feel like you need to change your pricing or anything in your business, dive into this episode, follow the steps I'm going to share with you, take it and morph it to whatever topic it is that you know you need to change in your business and really decide that you're going to change. So, before I even start talking more, is there anything burning in the back of your head that you know you need to change, other than your pricing? Even? Maybe it's your pricing method, maybe it's you need to raise your prices, maybe it's. You need to change your marketing strategy. Maybe you need to change your website. Maybe you need to finally change the genre that you've been shooting, because you're like this is no longer serving me.

Speaker 2:

What is the thing, or what are the things that you feel like you need to change? Or maybe you feel like you need to change everything in your business. Okay, what is that thing? Say it out loud. I know I can't hear you, but we're going to present like I can Say it out loud, get it off your chest, because I think sometimes we just need to say the thing. I need to finally do this thing. Say it out loud. Say it to somebody you love, say it to your friend, say it to your partner, whoever it might be. How does it feel to get that off your chest? Probably pretty good. Send me a message on social media and tell me what that change is that you know you finally need to make, because I'm curious.

Speaker 2:

Now my second question for you is what if you made this change? How could your life look? How would that impact your life as a person Not just your business, but you. That's important to consider. Would it change your financial situation? Would it get you more clients, therefore also change your financial situation. Would it finally feel better? Because you are dreading shooting another wedding and if you have to show up at another wedding, you are going to literally poke your eyeballs out and you know that you need to let those go and you need to switch to portraits full-time. Is it ditching the full-time job and finally going into your portrait business a hundred percent?

Speaker 2:

If you made those changes, what change would it make in your life? How could your life look differently? Would it impact not only your life, but your family's life? Maybe it would give you financial freedom to pay off some debt, go on a vacation, buy a house, put a pool in your backyard. Would it impact your community? How would it impact your community? Would you be able to give back in ways that you never dreamt were possible? Would you be able to support a cause or give freely with your money? How would that change things for you?

Speaker 2:

I'm going to challenge you to take some time and sit with that this week and really consider what difference making this change will make, because as you're going into change, you're going to be faced with fears, and when those fears hit you, you need to remember why you're doing this. If you're sick and tired of sitting there at the end of the year and thinking, where has all my money gone? I've been working so hard, I don't even know why I'm doing this anymore then you know you need to raise your prices. You know you need to make a pivot in your pricing method or your pricing system and you know that if you make that pivot, that you're going to have some financial freedom to do things that you've always wanted to do, you're going to be able to contribute like you've always wanted to contribute. And unless you face that fear and commit to making that change, those things aren't going to happen. You have to know why you're doing this and the bigger purpose of it, because when you hit with that fear of if I raise my prices, I'm going to lose all my clients. Or maybe selling products is going to feel like salesy and high pressure. My clients don't want products. Or maybe, if you're feeling like my clients want the digital files, if I take them away from my packages, no one's going to book. What if this change messes up my entire business and it comes crumbling down? Or maybe you're even thinking selling wall art takes way too much time and I can't do it.

Speaker 2:

Whatever those fears are, when they rise up inside of you, you have to go back to the purpose and the reason of why you're doing this, because if you don't make the change, you can't stay in business because you can't afford to pay yourself and you're not making any money. And it goes back to that. From a practical level. That's what we need to hear. That's like the good old kick in the butt. You need to hear this. But on an emotional level, it's not that easy, because we genuinely believe that if we raise our prices or make that change that we know we need to make, we are going to lose all of our clients, and that is terrifying. But is that true? If you make this change, all of these fears that are popping into your head, are they actually true? Are you actually going to lose all your clients? Are your clients going to be furious because they just want digitals? Is your business really going to come crumbling down? Is it really going to take you that much more time? I'm going to tell you that these stories you're telling yourself are not actually true.

Speaker 2:

Most of the time, there's stories that our head makes up in order to protect us from the unknown. It's like if we go walking through the jungle at night. Our brain is going to say this is scary, there could be a cheetah in the jungle that is waiting to pounce on you. We don't even know that there's a cheetah out there, but our brain is hardwired to protect us from something and our brain is like sending all of these things. What if there's this? What if there's that? What if there's a snake? What if there's a spider? There could be none of those things. You could actually be perfectly safe and if you took the time to consider that the change you're making or the scary thing you're doing actually isn't going to result in the end of the world like you think it's going to to, because these stories you're telling yourself it'll make the process a lot easier.

Speaker 2:

We need to acknowledge when we have these scary thoughts and we need to take those thoughts and we need to turn them upside down and we need to rewrite them into a new positive story. If your thought is, if I raise my prices, I'm going to lose all my clients, your new story is going to be my clients love and appreciate me and will be excited to pay me my worth. They know that I am worth more. If your story is that my clients just want digitals, they don't want products, your new story needs to be my clients love the idea of printing their products and they love the idea of me guiding them and helping them select products for their home. We have to acknowledge those thoughts, we have to flip them upside down and we have to pay attention to when those creep into the back of our head, and we have to stop ourselves from acknowledging those negative thoughts. We have to rewrite our story and we have to force ourselves to start to believe the positive.

Speaker 2:

I know this sounds woo woo guys, I get it, but if this is the number one thing that I can remind you of in your business is that you're going to be faced with uncomfortable situations where you're going to look fear in the face and decide whether to run away or to face it, and the only way to face fear is to decide that it's not scary, that that's not actually a scary thing, and this is all rooted in psychology and where our brains work, and in my book, the Unicorn, I talk about this. I talk about the reason and the psychology and the logic why this works. This isn't just the woo-woo that you might think it is. This is sound, science-based stuff, guys, that we have and we can use to our advantage. We rewrite those stories, we repeat them to ourselves, we repeat them over and over again until our brain begins to believe that they're actually real.

Speaker 2:

And then we go tackle our business and when those new stories creep up, when those new fears creep up, we have to smack them in the face and say get out of here, I'm not afraid of you, I can handle this, because that is not true. It's like I like to say, it's kind of like the little devil sitting on your shoulder. It's like you can't do this. Nanny, nanny, boo-boo, this isn't good, right? It's like the little devil sitting on your shoulder that's talking smack to you and for some reason, you're deciding to listen to the little devil on your shoulder that's talking smack, instead of kicking his butt away and saying go, I don't want you anymore. You're choosing to listen to that side and I get it. These stories and these fears might sound really, really real right now, but 99.9% of the time these stories are just made up, figments of what we think we believe to protect ourselves.

Speaker 2:

So once you go through that process, then it's time to tackle the business side of things how to make these changes and today we're going to talk about how to make these changes in your pricing and some mistakes that you might be making along the way and these really can be morphed into any topic or anything. You know you need to change. The first mistake I see people making as they go to make a big change is doing what everyone else is doing Pricing based on what they see everyone else pricing. You know you need to raise your prices. You know you need to make a change. So what do you do? You go, google all your competitors. You see what they're charging and you charge the same thing as them.

Speaker 2:

Once upon a time in my own business I had a friend. Her name was Megan and she was a photographer friend of mine here locally, and I was venting. I was like Megan, I just can't seem to book weddings. And she said what's your pricing like? And I said, well, it's like everyone else's, like my packages are around like 3,500 starting and they go from there. And she said to me Corinda, that's the problem. You're priced like everyone else. Raise your prices, be higher than everyone else and see what happens, and I will tell you what. I raised all my prices so it was like $500 more than everyone else starting out Made all the difference.

Speaker 2:

Pricing based on what everyone else is doing doesn't always work. Number one from a psychology standpoint, and I get into a whole thing about why pricing yourself higher than everyone else is sometimes a good thing. But this is not this episode and I do not want to get too far off track today, but I call it the pricing bubble. It's something I also talk about in my book as well. So the book is good. Y'all should go grab it.

Speaker 2:

Just because someone else is doing it doesn't mean that it's working for them. It doesn't mean that it's working for them. It doesn't mean that it's making them money. It doesn't mean that it's profitable. It doesn't mean that they even have clients. A lot of times we see people doing stuff that looks successful and profitable and all these things, but we don't actually know if it is so.

Speaker 2:

Pricing based on what everyone else is doing doesn't always work. But the other thing is that you are not them. You don't understand why they're pricing that way. It doesn't make sense logically to you because you haven't built the pricing. What I want you to really consider is to take the time to learn and understand pricing and to build your pricing in a way that looks and feels good to you. That is something that's super important to me. I will never, ever tell my coaching clients all of you need to price this one way. Instead, I give my coaching clients the tools to make the best decision for themselves, because this is not a one-size-fits-all thing. This is complicated, and each and every one of my coaching clients my hundreds of coaching clients over the years they all have slightly different businesses and slightly different. They're slightly different people. Their session fees are all a little bit different. Their print products are all a little bit different. Their albums are all a little bit different. Because they're different and they feel confident in their pricing and it feels good to them and it's easy for them to sell because they have built it themselves and they understand it and there's logic and reason behind it.

Speaker 2:

If someone just says, hey, I'm going to fasten you to this harness and I want you to jump off this cliff, you're going to be like is the harness going to work? What's what is going to happen? What if I slam into the wall? What if I blah, blah, blah, blah, right. But if you learn how the apparatus works that fastens you in the harness, that hangs you over the cliff, and you understand the physics of it and you understand that there's no possible way for you to hit the wall, and you understand that there's all these safeguards in place so that way you can't fall, you're going to feel safe and confident going into it and you're going to be like let's go do this, let's go jump off the cliff because I know I'm safe, I understand how this was built, I understand how it works and I understand the physics of it. Your business is the same way. Understand something before you put it into your business.

Speaker 2:

The second mistake I see people making is waiting too long to talk about pricing in their business with their potential clients. Really waiting too long to talk about any new process they do in their business. Right, you put something new into your business. You're a little bit scared of it, you're concerned about it and you're like I just I shouldn't really talk about it. It's easier just to ignore it and just put it off to the last minute, because I'm afraid if I talk about it I'm going to scare someone off. So, instead of being upfront about it and clear and concise about the thing. You put it off, you don't talk about it, or maybe you whisper it underneath your breath. Once when you make changes or you're doing something new. I'm going to encourage you to shout it from the rooftops, to share what you're doing, to talk about it, to educate, to provide value with what you're doing.

Speaker 2:

When it comes to pricing in our products and things like that, if that's the pivot you're looking to make or the change you're looking to make, you have to start to talk about products and pricing from day one, actually from day negative 10, day negative a year. Before you start talking about these things in your marketing, when your client first contacts you, you talk about your pricing in a clear, concise, confident way. It matters the way you portray it, it matters the way you speak about it. It matters the way that you handle your pricing in your conversations with your clients and you repeat it and you talk about it and you talk about it some more and you give your clients a chance to ask questions. Don't wait too long to talk about the thing, because inevitably that will put you in a bad situation where your clients don't know and your clients say to you. I didn't know this, I didn't expect this, you didn't tell me this and that falls on you. You have to repeat things over and over again.

Speaker 2:

There's a little rule I like to use in my business. It's the rule of eight, and I like to say in order for a client to understand something, you have to talk about it at least eight times. But in all reality in recent years it's more like 15 times, because if you say something or you portray some information to a client 15 times, they might hear it eight times. So we kind of have to over kill here. You have to be repetitive, you have to repeat it in different ways. You have to understand that people learn in different ways, people uptake information in different ways and we have to really harp in on the things we want our clients to know. If you are feeling like your clients don't know what's happening, or maybe you're selling products right now and you feel like, oh, this really hit home, corinda, I have clients that are saying I didn't know what to expect, it's because you're not harping in on it enough. You being in on it enough you don't have a system that touches all the points is like what I like to say you have to have all these touch points for the sale to get them to that place, so that way at the end they're ready and prepared to invest and you don't feel like you're selling them anything.

Speaker 2:

The third mistake I see people making is overcomplicating things, offering too many things or just in anything you're doing in your marketing and your social media and in your website, in your pricing, in your product offerings, in your session fees. Offering too many offerings, too many pricing options, too many products. You might have all of these different size options. You might have five different waller options. You have canvas, you have metal, you have acrylic, you have prints, you have framed, you have unframed, you have this, you have that. All the frames have different prices. All of this that that you have a hundred different size categories.

Speaker 2:

Don't overcomplicate it. Keep things simple. First of all, keeping things simple is important for your own sanity and for your client's understanding. I was actually getting ready this morning and I had this like a bit of epiphany of like. I made a change in my offerings recently and the change in my offerings that I made isn't really that much more complicated, but it is a little bit more complicated and I've noticed in my clients that they are feeling a little bit more confused in my offerings and I thought to myself this morning Ooh, this is my sign that I overcomplicated things. I might've just pushed that bar a little bit too far and I need to pull back, simplify a little bit again and really figure out what I did there that caused this slight confusion with my clients. It's really easy to have things working for a while and then you're like, oh, I'm going to do this one change and then all of a sudden you're like overwhelmed yourself or your clients. So really I want you to think about this. It should be simple for you to build and create and simple for your clients to understand.

Speaker 2:

If you can have one session fee that kind of fits everything, go for it. Don't feel like you have to have a bunch of session fees. If you can have one product offering, one wall art offering, go for it. Don't have more than three. Three is my like, don't do it, but one to three max. If you can have one type of album, do it. You don't need complicated options. You don't need to give options. You are the guide here. You guide your client to where you think they need to be. You make recommendations, but we don't need to have like oh, if you want to upgrade to leather, it's $150. If you want this, it's this much more. And if you want this, it's this much more. No, here is what I offer. Here's the price for it. This will work perfectly for you. Simplify things, make them easy for you to understand and build and make them easy for your clients. The minute you start overcomplicating and your clients start asking questions, you know that you have overcomplicated. If your client's like so what's the difference between this and this? That's your big red flag.

Speaker 2:

Mistake number four is about not having a repeatable process. You need to think about as you're making a pivot and as you're making a change. Can I put this into my business and can it be a process that I repeat over and over and over again? And how do I build the system to make it repeatable? How do I get the same results every time, or near the same results every time? Right now, you might be just like throwing things here and there, seeing what sticks. You're doing it this way one time, the next day. You're doing it this way. You're typing this email one time and then the next email. You're typing it totally different and it's just like this wishy-washy here, there, everywhere, kind of thing.

Speaker 2:

You have to make a process and a plan and a system. This is what makes change successful. This is what makes it testable in a way, too, because you can make a plan, you can make a system, you can make a process and you can try it five or six times the same way, and then you can say what tweak can I make to make this better? And you can make one little tweak and see how that affects the big picture, and you can do it in a way that results in a really amazing end result, because you've been able to systematically tweak and test and see what works and make it better as you go, whereas when you don't have a repeatable process, that's not going to happen.

Speaker 2:

I hope that these four rules, or these four mistakes, I should say, if you take the thing that you know you need to change, you ask yourself about that thing. You say what change would this make in my life? What change could this make in my community? What change could this make in my business? What is the bigger picture? What am I really working for here? What if that change that you made could double, triple or even 10x your income. Really, what difference would that make? What if your $350 clients became $3,500 clients or $7,000 clients? What changed with that make in your life? I have one coaching client and when she came to me her clients were spending $350. They were getting all their digitals and now her average sale is like $7,500. That's insane. What kind of difference do you think that made in her life? Let's consider shooting four clients a month at $7,500 an average. What would that be like for you? Can you imagine? That is so cool. Let's even consider just three clients a month at $5,000 a piece, or maybe even $2,500 a piece. What change would that make for you and your business? It would make a big change For most people. That's life-changing type stuff, right there.

Speaker 2:

Remember the impact that it can make. Remember that you're going to be faced with fears and uncomfortable situations and when you're faced with those situations, you're going to have to decide what you're going to do with them. And you're going to have to decide to face them head on or to completely scream and run away when the big monster looks at you in the face and says, like your clients are all going to hate you if you do this or your business is going to come crumbling down. You have the chance to look that monster in the face and say no, it's not, my clients are going to love this. I'm going to book more clients because this new service I'm providing. You have the opportunity to kick the devil off your shoulder and be like go away, I'm not listening to you. That is your choice and you get to decide how you deal with those scary thoughts. You get to decide if you entertain them in your head or if you decide to change them and make them different thoughts, to make them positive thoughts, to change your mindset around these things. And then you get to dive in to your business. You get to learn things on a deeper level and build them yourself so that you're confident in them.

Speaker 2:

Now I'll be honest building them yourself sometimes takes help. Sometimes it's not as easy as just going and listening to a bunch of podcast episodes or reading a book. Right, you have to actually sometimes have some help and some guidance and support, because sometimes you need a cheerleader there or somebody to kick you in the butt when you need it or somebody to say hey, you should really try this. So I'm not saying you have to go at it alone, but I am saying you need to work on understanding it. So that way you're building it and you're creating it but that could be with support Then you're going to have to make sure that, whatever this changes, that you are making sure that you tackle it head on with your clients and you're not afraid to talk about it.

Speaker 2:

So if you're new to selling products or offering products or you're changing your offerings, don't be afraid to talk about it and talk about it a lot so your clients understand it. Educate them well, do your job at teaching them what they need to know. Then I want you to make sure you keep things simple, right. Don't overcomplicate, don't offer too many products, don't have too many offerings, don't have too many session fee options. Keep things simple.

Speaker 2:

And, lastly, I want you to make sure that you create a repeatable process that you can use over and over and over again with your clients Time and time again. You can come back to it, you can repeat it, you can tweak it as you go, see what works, see what doesn't work, and have amazing results in the end for you. This is the basis of what I help people do. This is the basis of what I teach people. This is the basis of the conversations I have with photographers all the freaking time. I can't even tell you how many times I've spent time on coaching calls that people have paid me to be on and I've given them the same advice Stop doing what everyone else is doing. Talk more about your products and your offerings. You have too many dang options. People are confused. I'm confused. Looking at your price list and create a process you can feel confident about and you can repeat. I say these things time and time again.

Speaker 2:

This episode was really me just dishing and sharing those things that I think are so important and, honestly, if you're in a place where you want the guidance and you want the help to do this, to create the change, and if your change right now is changing your pricing, raising your pricing, offering products, selling more products, then reach out to me, get in touch with me, because we have an amazing program right now. That is just what you need. We have taken two of our signature programs our five steps to all art program and our year magic year and combine them into this amazing, magical program where we are going to walk alongside you for the next year going through your business, helping you start selling more wall art, implementing your new pricing, learning how to make that new pricing, learning how to make the system, learning how to keep it simple and also knowing how to talk about pricing in a way that feels good. I absolutely love it when my new coaching clients come in and they're like Karinda. I talked to a client for the first time about pricing and it was so amazing, like the tools you gave me to have. That conversation felt so good and so organic and just like a conversation Didn't feel sleazy or weird or any weird feelings, and the client didn't either. And those are the things I want you to have. I want to teach you the system that I use in my own business for hundreds of portrait clients a year to take them through the journey to buy wall art and do it in a way that feels good for both them and me and also pays me well right, because that's what matters.

Speaker 2:

I need to make money in my business, because if I don't make money and I can't pay myself, it's just a really expensive hobby and for some of you listening, that might be it. For you right now it might feel like an expensive hobby. And that's not to say that I haven't been there, because I have been there. I was there for the first lot of years of my business. It was a lot of years before I paid myself. There were a lot of years when I sat there and looked at my bank account and said where's all my money gone? But that's not this case anymore. Now I finally am able to pay myself.

Speaker 2:

Now I'm finally able to do the thing, and I want you all to be able to do the same and, trust me, if I can do this, each and every one of you are capable of doing this because, look, I am not perfect. I am a mess sometimes. I am trying to keep it together with a four-year-old child and a husband and staff and keep everything running and just doing my best. The thing is is that sometimes people, like I think, see people online that are doing the thing and having successful businesses and they think to themselves like but I can't do that, I don't have them together, like she does, and I am vulnerable and I'm going to be honest with you, I don't always have it together. I'm doing my best and I know each and every one of you are too With the right tools and with the right knowledge, though, you can do it. You have to have the right knowledge and the right understanding.

Speaker 2:

If any of the things we talked about today really struck a chord with you, I want you to reach out to me on social media at Master your Mind Money, or send me an email at members at corindakcom. Shoot me an email, send me a message on social media. Let's connect. I wanna talk to you more. I want to see how I can help you on this journey, even if it's just giving you a loving kick in the butt that you need today, or whatever it might be. I cannot wait to connect and hear more about you and hear what big changes you're looking to make and hopefully be there to guide you along on that journey.

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