Discover the power of pricing for massive growth in your photography business. Learn how setting prices strategically, even if it feels premature, can fast-track your success.
We share real stories highlighting the impact of strategic pricing. Learn to break free from pricing limitations and plan for a prosperous future.
Aim for bigger sales by aligning your financial goals with your desired income and lifestyle.
Let's elevate your business together!
Resources:
Mindset & Money Mastery the Coaching Program
Episode 5: What should my portrait session fee be?
Join Your Magic Year here.
Use the code PODCAST to receive special pricing when you enroll.
Connect with Karinda!
Thanks for listening!
Discover the power of pricing for massive growth in your photography business. Learn how setting prices strategically, even if it feels premature, can fast-track your success.
We share real stories highlighting the impact of strategic pricing. Learn to break free from pricing limitations and plan for a prosperous future.
Aim for bigger sales by aligning your financial goals with your desired income and lifestyle.
Let's elevate your business together!
Resources:
Mindset & Money Mastery the Coaching Program
Episode 5: What should my portrait session fee be?
Join Your Magic Year here.
Use the code PODCAST to receive special pricing when you enroll.
Connect with Karinda!
Thanks for listening!
Welcome to Mindset and Money Mastery for Photographers the podcast. We help overwhelmed photographers make more money while simplifying their business by mastering their you guessed it mindset and money. Tune in each week for practical and actionable tips to take your photography business up a notch. Let's dive right in.
Speaker 2:I want to start out this episode by asking you if you are pricing with the end game in mind. You're probably thinking current day, that makes no sense. How can I price with the end game in mind when I feel like I'm just starting out or when I feel like I'm right here at the beginning of the race? What I'm going to tell you and challenge you today to think about is how much faster could you see results in your business and how much faster could you build a profitable business if you started planning and thinking with the end game in mind instead of playing small from the place that you're at now. You might have noticed on the podcast, we've been talking a lot about doing the uncomfortable thing and stretching yourself in places that might not feel comfortable. When we talk about that, the pricing thing comes up a lot, because oftentimes, when we think about pricing ourselves, we feel like we're not ready or we're not good enough for all of those things. We don't set our prices where they need to be. I want you to consider this when you think about your pricing. As a business coach, this is actually something that I do with my own coaching clients when I think about pricing and when I help people with their pricing, I actually do not look at their work. I try to avoid looking at their website, at their work, before I help them with their pricing. After that I will look at their work. The reason being is I don't want to judge them based on their work and give them bad advice on pricing because their work isn't quite strong enough yet. Instead, what I want to encourage people to do is set their pricing with the in-game in mind, regardless of how good they feel their work is, because you see, as your work gets stronger and as you become a better business owner and a better salesperson and better at the client experience, you will sell more images, you will sell larger images, but your pricing doesn't have to change substantially or make these big shifts. What happens if you're constantly shifting your pricing and changing it all around? It's going to be confusing for you, it's going to be overwhelming for you and when you have clients come back, it's going to be really sticky with those clients that come back because you're going to feel like you need to justify raising your prices or why you changed your pricing. Whenever you're working on your pricing, don't be like me.
Speaker 2:In the early days, I was constantly redoing my pricing, changing it over and over and over again, trying all of these different things, afraid to commit to anything. I tried one pricing model with three clients and then a different one with the next three clients, and I would make these shifts and adjustments constantly. So much of the way. My husband was like Karinda, I swear, if you try another pricing method or you ask me another question about what I think about your pricing, I'm going to explode. And I was like, oh, maybe he's right, maybe I have been going a little crazy with this pricing thing.
Speaker 2:I did learn a lot, but that's why I'm here today Telling you the things I learned, so you don't do the same thing. I did, and one of the biggest things I did was I would get to the end of the year and I look at my revenue. I'd look at how much money I made and I go, oh crap, if I didn't make enough money, I need to raise my prices. So then I would raise my prices again or adjust my pricing again and jump back on the pricing of Hamster Wheel. I couldn't seem to think past the next year or the next quarter. Instead, I was just trying to survive survive where I was at.
Speaker 2:Then this idea happened in my head what if I stopped playing it safe? What if I stopped pricing for this year or this quarter or whatever it might be? What if I planned for longevity in my business with my pricing? What if I planned my pricing for where I wanted to be 10 years down the road, 20 years down the road, instead of where I thought I could get this year? This was a massive shift for me. I was like, oh my goodness, if I could just put myself out there and do the thing that feels really scary, I will get there so much faster. And I knew that that change would happen so much faster. You see, I had had a business coach that had recommended I have these packages that were like $1, $2,000 and $3,000. I was scared to death. I took the pricing she helped me create and told me to use and I just cut it by like 30 or 40% something crazy and I was like, okay, I'm comfortable here, I can do this. But then it took me a year, a year and a half later and I was right back at where she told me to be. I was making more money then, which I would have been if I would have just done it from the get go. And I want to share, like, an experience I had with the coaching client too, that might help you see this and all practicality.
Speaker 2:I was talking to a former coaching client recently, just like checking in hey, how are things going? How much money did you make last year? What was up with your sales? And she was telling me about her sales and I was like, so remind me like what your pricing is like. Where did you settle? Did you adjust it? Did you like get scared and back it down a little bit? And she admitted like yes, I did.
Speaker 2:I lowered my pricing and my A by 10s were way cheaper than what you told me they should have been, as well as everything else. And I said, okay, let's consider this. If we just look at your A by 10s, which is a very small portion of your business let's not consider Wall art, albums, all of those things If we just look at your A by 10s and let's say that you drop the price $50 from where I told you they should be, and let's consider that every client this year bought six of those, that could be $300 more per client. And let's consider you had 30 clients this year. That's a lot of money that you left on the table by being scared to charge that little bit of extra, that extra $50 for an image.
Speaker 2:Can you imagine the ripples that made if that was reflective across her entire pricing, from her wall art to her albums, all the things? I'm guessing. Let's consider her revenue was somewhere around $90,000 that year. I'm guessing if she would have kept her prices where they should have been instead of getting scared and uncomfortable and lowering them, her revenue would have been closer to $130,000, $140,000 that year. But she was scared. So she did the thing that scared people do, which is crawl back in your hole and hide in your comfort zone under your blanket. And I'm telling you this because I want to encourage you and show that something as little as a $50 difference in the price of your eight by tens, or dropping your prices 10% or 20% lower than where they really need to be, can result in huge ripples over the course of one year of your business.
Speaker 2:Then you get to the end of the year and you say I didn't make enough money and you say I need to revamp my pricing, I need to raise them. Oh, I guess I should raise them $25. And then next year I'll raise them $25 more. And you just put yourself through this whole like heartache process of raising your prices over two or three years time, instead of just doing it from the beginning, when you knew better. So don't do this to yourself. I've done it to myself. I've watched coaching clients do it to themselves and wait because they're scared.
Speaker 2:So let's think about this. If you take what you knew about pricing and what you knew about your business and what you should be doing, and if you actually did the thing from the moment you learned it, how much more money would you have made in your business? I'm guessing a lot. I'm guessing there's a lot of you who've been sitting here, learning, listening to these podcasts, listening to these videos, and you're starting to know what you need to do. But you're not just doing the thing. You're making these little, tiny changes within your comfort zone. So start to shift and start to think about the end game. Start to think about the ripples that these things could have if you did them right away Now.
Speaker 2:The next thing I want to address about this is when I talk to people and they say, yes, I'm going to raise my prices, I'm going to make these changes. I'm going to do it at the end of the year. I really want to join your coaching program, but I think I need to wait till next year because I can't make these changes now. I really want to do this, or I really want to start offering art, but I think I'll do it after the first year, or I think I'll do it after the summer or after the fall. Whatever it may be, I think I'll wait to do it. I'm going to ask you this Can you afford to wait to make the changes? Because, although right now you might be thinking I'm too busy or this is in the middle of my season, I can't do it now. What would happen if you did it now? A lot of things would happen. So let's say that you did it now, before you go into fall, and you had 15 clients this fall and you made an extra $500 from each one of those clients. Let's consider that you made an extra $2,000 from each of those 15 clients you have this fall. Let's consider that you doubled your average revenue on those clients you have this fall. What kind of ripples would that make in your business, in your life? It would make a lot of ripples, but you're sitting there thinking I'll do it after this, I'll wait till after the year. Where is this getting you? It's not getting you very far in your business by having this mentality.
Speaker 2:When I launched my equine photography brand, I built my website and launched my brand overnight. I literally stayed up all night long, did the thing, put it together and put it out there in the world right away. I didn't wait, and when it comes to pricing, don't wait. Do the thing, even when you're scared. If you could have made an extra $15,000 this year because you made that tweak or that shift that you knew you should be making, what would it feel like? It would feel pretty dang good. What if you were making an extra $3,000 or $4,000 per client Because you made the shift, the adjustment in your pricing, and you did what you know you need to do, but you're scared to death to do it?
Speaker 2:What do you think would happen if you made those shifts now and those clients that you have now came back two or three years down the road? They're going to have the same experience. They're going to have similar pricing, but instead, if you keep playing it safe and doing what you're doing and not charging what you should be charging, because you're not pricing for the end game, you're pricing in your comfort zone. When your clients come back years down the road, they're going to be like why is everything so different and why is it so much more expensive? And you're going to say sorry, guys, I had to raise my prices again because I wasn't making any money and my business wasn't sustainable. And that's a hard feeling to have. It's a hard conversation to have with your clients. We talked about this a lot in that last episode, about leaning in when you feel the moment of discomfort in your business, when things feel impossible, when things feel hard to do them anyway. So if you make the decision to do the things that feel scary today and I'm harping on this and you're going to hear me harping on this a lot this season because I think it's really, really important what would happen?
Speaker 2:When I ask photographers, hey, how much money do you want to make in your business each year in your pocket? They typically say something to me like I'd like to make like $30,000 per year in my business. And then I ask them this question if you are running your business full-time, living the life that you want to live doing the things, how much money would you want to pay yourself every year from your business? And the answer changes substantially. So if this helps frame it for you, I want you to think if I'm living the life I want to live, if I'm running the business I want to run, how much money do I actually need to be making from my clients? And I'm going to be honest, it's probably thousands of dollars. Most people who go through that exercise. They come up and they're like I would need to make $6,000, $7,000 per client. I'm like great, let's do it. Some people come back and it's $2,000 or $3,000 per client, but their answers changes substantially. When I say when you think about the end goal, when you think about living the life doing the things, being able to afford the lifestyle you want to have, it changes. So think about this when it comes to your pricing.
Speaker 2:Now, if you're sitting here working on your first six figures in your business and the ultimate dream is to have like a half million dollars per year business, you're probably struggling a little bit to think like how on earth is that possible? It's hard to think and act and make decisions like a business owner who's making half million dollars a year in their business when you're barely making your first hundred thousand in your business. So something that I've learned is to start to take on that identity of the business owner that is doing the thing. So let's say your goal is half a million dollar per year studio. You're like I'm gonna make $500,000 per year in my photography studio. So when you are making decisions now, even if you are still working towards your first six figures, I want you to ask yourself what type of decision would the business owner who's running a half a million dollar per year studio make? Because the thing is is that if you start to think and take on that identity of that person and you start to say what am I doing to get to that, in result you're going to get there so much faster.
Speaker 2:Maybe you're sitting here and your clients are spending $1,500 with you and you're thinking if only I could get to $2,000 per client, that would be great. If I could just get $500 more per client, that'd be great. Think about the types of shifts you would make. There will be little subtle shifts. But if instead you said I'm at $1,500 per client, I wonder what I could do to get to $5,000 per client and you pushed yourself further outside of that comfort zone, how do you think your actions within your business would shift even more drastically than just thinking about that little minute minus goal of let's raise our sale $500? Instead of let's raise our sale $500, let's raise our sale $3,500. And when we start to think of that, all of a sudden we start to make really big decisions for really big goals.
Speaker 2:So if your goal is $2,000 per client and you're at $1,500 right now, it might take you a while to get there, but if you're at $1,500 per client right now and you set a goal of $5,000 per client, you're going to hit that $2,000 goal like that in an instant and everything's going to fall into place and you're going to blow past that goal. So don't be afraid to set big goals and to go for them. Don't feel like you have to take those baby steps in between as you're building your business If you want to have those giant five figure sales like 10,000, 20,000 our clients but they feel incredibly outside of your reality right now. What I want you to do and what I'm going to challenge you with is to go ahead and put those high end, high priced items on your price list. Do it now. What type of products, what type of offering? What would your pricing need to look like to get to those sales? It's a dream of yours. It might feel like it's way outside of the box and something that's not even possible right now. But just consider it and change your pricing and make your pricing set up in a way where your clients could spend a lot of money with you, where they could spend 10, 20, $30,000 with you if they wanted to. You could still offer some of the things you already have. You could still offer things that feel a little bit more affordable and in your realm. But what you're going to be surprised by is the fact that when you put those high end products that will get those bigger sales on your price list, because you're thinking and you're dreaming of those giant sales, you're going to be really surprised one day when a client actually buys them and you're going to be blown out of the water and then you're going to be addicted to it Because you put them on. They're thinking there's no way, there's no way. But Corinda said just do it. And I'm here to tell you that today's going to come, when clients are going to come and they're going to buy, they're going to spend that money and everything that you've ever known in your business is just going to come crumbling down because you're going to think why didn't I do this sooner?
Speaker 2:When you're sitting there in the moment working on your pricing and looking at your numbers, I want you to ask yourself this am I playing small or am I shooting for the stars? Am I playing the long gang or am I planning for tomorrow? The second thing I want you to ask yourself is am I setting goals financially that allow me to live the life I want to live? Do the things I want to do serve others in the way I want to serve others? Give back to my community, my family? Are my goals allowing me to do those things? And the third thing I want you to ask yourself is are you feeling hesitation and restriction inside of you when it comes to going out there and setting your prices and putting them out there? And if you are, what are you afraid of? What's stopping you, what's scaring you from going and setting your prices in your business?
Speaker 2:Now, if you're listening to this and you're in that position where you're like, straight up, I have no idea what to charge, how to charge it, what to do. No idea how to set prices. That's okay, you might be right there, but there is help, there are resources. If you go back and listen to the podcast, you're going to find so many great resources on this. Or if you're at a place when you're like you know what, I'm tired of doing this alone. I want the help. Then apply to join our coaching program. We have coaching program for more advanced business owners and we also have a program for people who are just getting started with selling products and wall art and they have no idea what they're doing. If you have no idea how to set up an account with a print lab, you have no idea where to even begin. We have a program for you. So that is there to help you. If you do not want to go out this alone and you just want the help and you want somebody to hold your hand and walk you through it, Learning the financial side of business and learning how to be a business owner is 100% necessary.
Speaker 2:Until you take the time to learn business and learn finances and learn pricing, it's going to be really hard and it's going to be really easy to get burnt out and really easy to feel like I'm doing all of this work and I have nothing to show of it. This is not a skill that you're born with. This is not knowledge that we just like learn in our everyday lives or we learn in school. This is something you have to learn and it takes time and it takes effort, and I understand that. I want you to look at your numbers. I want you to see what your clients have been investing on average with you right now and really really take a good hard look at what you want your clients to be investing with you. If what they're currently investing and what you need them to invest are not lining up, then it's your sign that you need to do some work. And if you are not sure what you need your clients to actually be investing with you in your business, we have a podcast episode called what Should my Session Be. Go back and listen to that. It will help you get some really good insight on what you need to be charging and what your average client needs to be spending, which is going to help you see the difference in what you're currently making versus what you need to be making Once you look at your pricing, what your clients are spending right now versus what you need them to be spending.
Speaker 2:I want you to ask yourself is the solution selling products? Maybe you're not selling products at all and offering products and wall art and albums would be a super easy way to increase your revenue per client. Maybe the answer is you need to figure out how to sell more wall art. Maybe you're selling one piece of wall art, or maybe you're selling small wall art and you need to sell bigger wall art. Maybe you need to start selling more albums. Or maybe your offerings are not high end enough so you have very low price points on those offerings and it's going to be hard to get the sale that you need. Maybe it's just as simple as switching from all-inclusive and including everything upfront to switching to more of an IPS model where you're selling and offering products to your clients.
Speaker 2:I say selling lightly, because it doesn't have to be crazy selling high pressure or anything like that. If you've been around here long enough, hopefully you know that by now. I want to hear your responses. I want you to send me a DM post in our Facebook group Photography Business. Tune Up, send me a DM on Instagram. Master your Mind Money and tell me what do you think you need to do right now to get closer to your goal of where you want to go in your business? What do you need to do to build a business that's sustainable for 10 or 20 years down the road? What do you need to do to get there this year and not 10 years down the road, because that's a hard?
Speaker 2:way to do it. I can tell you after the first few years in my business, it's hard. After I decided to change into price for the in-game, so many things changed for me. Maybe you're sitting there and you're stuck and you're not sure how to get out of that place, where to move up, where to go to the next level, where to get the support, all of that stuff. That's what we're here for. Reach out, let's connect. If you've already applied to join our coaching program, just know we have reopened up enrollment. If you have applied in the past, go ahead and reapply, because that way we'll know that you're still interested or you want to chat more about our offerings, what we have for you, go ahead and reapply and get one of those diagnostic calls scheduled with us. They are so good and they're going to help you pinpoint exactly where you're stuck in your business, what you have going on and what you need to work with.
Speaker 2:It really is a process. I understand it's hard and I understand it can feel overwhelming, but it doesn't have to be. I'd say the number one thing my coaching clients tell me is that after going through the coaching program, they feel confident. They feel confident in their ability to be a business owner and make decisions and do the things that they need to do. That's a cool feeling, because a lot of times in business you feel lost. You feel like I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know where to turn, I don't know where to go. What on earth am I doing? I just need somebody to help me. I need somebody to tell me I'm doing a good job. Sometimes we just need that. Sometimes we need somebody to kick us in the butt and kick us off the edge of the cliff and say go, do it. And that's what this is for, like this podcast, these communities. We have the coaching program. All of that is to give you that support that you need. So make sure you reach out. Let me know what you thought about this episode. Let me know where you think that you might have some holes in your business.
Speaker 2:The other thing that can also be really great for you is our Planner Year Workshop. We do have a Planner Year Workshop that we do. It's a really in-depth dive into your numbers, into analyzing, like your sales, what your clients are spinning, what you want to do to make shifts in your business. That is a really great workshop there that could be super helpful for you If you're kind of struggling to look at the numbers and you don't even know how to begin to look at the numbers. That is something that we only offer typically once a year, which is in the winter time, so, like typically December or January, we offer that live.
Speaker 2:However, if you're listening to this and you're like you know what I would love to listen to that. I want the full in-depth thing. I want the full in-depth like nitty gritty how do I analyze my numbers, how do I analyze my business, how do I analyze my sales? That is going to teach all of that. Send me a DM and let me know if you want access to that, because I do have the recording available and I can definitely get you details on how you can grab the recording of last year's workshop If you don't want to wait for this year or this coming year, I should say. But I love each and every one of you. Thank you for listening. Make sure you check out our application and apply to join us in our coaching program, if it's something you've been thinking about, and I can all wait to hear what you uncover about your pricing and if you're really pricing with the in-game in mind, or if you're playing it small in your business.
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 Corinne Decay. Thanks again and I'll see you next time.