The Four Levels of Commercial Photography

228 - In this innovative episode of the Freedom Focus Photography podcast, Nicole Begley introduces a compelling new series titled "The Creative Freedom Rebellion," featuring regular guest J.Nichole Smith. This series is dedicated to emphasizing the importance of defining personal freedom and success on one's own terms. 

In today’s episode Nicole and Nic delve into various aspects of commercial pet photography, offering insights and strategies to help photographers navigate this exciting but evolving landscape.

What to Listen for

1. What Business Model is Best for You: Explore different business models from boutique models focused on products and high sales, to high volume and low cost sessions, or even mini-sessions as your main offering.  

2. The Four Levels of Commercial Photography: Discover the various levels of commercial photography, starting with accessible local market opportunities and scaling up to high-end projects.

3. Setting Realistic Expectations: Learn to set achievable goals and understand the real-world benefits and challenges in different photography business models.

4. Strategic Branding and Market Positioning: Understand the critical role of strong brand identity and effective market positioning in the competitive photography market.

5. Real-Life Success Stories: Be inspired by photographers who have made a successful leap into commercial pet photography, and learn from their experiences, including both their challenges and triumphs.

If you’ve been curious about how commercial photography could work into your current photography business - this is a must-listen episode.

We’ll be hosting more commercial pet photography training in April - jump on the waitlist now to sign up for the free training!   

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• Discover effective pricing and sales strategies for all portrait photographers.
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Transcript

I am Nicole Begley, a zoological animal trainer, turned pet and family photographer back in 2010. I embarked on my own adventure in photography, transforming a bootstrapping startup into a thriving six-figure business by 2012. Since then, my mission has been to empower photographers like you, sharing the knowledge and strategies that have helped me help thousands of photographers build their own profitable businesses.

I believe that achieving two to $3,000 sales is your fastest route to six figure businesses that any technically proficient photographer can consistently hit four figure sales. And no matter if you want photography to be your full-time passion, or a part-time pursuit, profitability is possible. If you're a portrait photographer aspiring to craft a business that aligns perfectly with the life you envision, then you're in exactly the right place with over 350,000 downloads.

With welcome to the Freedom Focus Photography podcast. Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Hair of the Dog podcast. I'm your host, Nicole Begley, and we have a new type of podcast episode, a new series for you, if you will, with a new regular special guest, J. Nichole Smith. Nic, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Welcome.

Excited, I'm so excited. So we are calling this new series The Creative Freedom Rebellion miniseries here on the Hair of the Dog podcast, which is actually, oh my gosh, by the time this airs, it's actually gonna be the Freedom Focus Photography Podcast. Oh my gosh. So many changes you guys. It's still all the good content that you love and you know,

but yeah, so the Freedom Focus Photo Photography podcast, there's whole episode on why I changed the name to that. So go listen to that if you want more info here. But Nick, talk about the Creative Freedom Rebellion. You and I were coming up with this name and we were both like, oh my God, what makes it so just empowering to you?

Mm, yeah. Oh my God, so much. So we got some plans. This brand has has some legs, but this is where we're starting with these podcast episodes. The Creative Freedom Rebellion has all the things that I care about in it, but mostly what we're looking at, what we're talking about here is how to honor your creativity, live a creative lifestyle,

be able to be creative for a living or not. But then how does that mix in with your version of freedom? So the idea with the rebellion is being able to do that in your own way and not having to like pigeonhole yourself into someone else's definition of what creativity or freedom actually looks like. So the freedom is creative. You get to be creative.

Your freedom gets to be whatever you like. And we do that in a way that is by our own terms, which I think is something you and I have both lived to the fullest for most of our life and something we're really passionate about helping other people do. Yes. Oh my gosh, so much like nothing makes me happier than one of my students ends up,

you know, taking this new big leap and just saying, you know, like F off establishment, I'm doing it this way. Like, oh yes, no, I am gonna have a pet photography business. Or yes, no, I want my business to look like X, Y, Z, or no, I wanna stay in my corporate job 'cause I like it and I wanna do this on the side.

Like, you can make your business look like anything you want. And so many people don't have the courage to pursue that, which makes me just fired up when people actually do. So. Yeah, I love it. So what we're talking about here with this mini series, this particular mini series of our Creative Freedom Rebellion is we are gonna be diving into the world of commercial pet photography quite a bit over the next several months.

And because there's a lot of well misinformation or really basically no information, it's like a secret club that, that no one has access to and there's like, hush hush this, this is how, but maybe someone will tell you, maybe somebody won't. So we, we don't agree with that. So we wanna to help you make good decisions and to know what options are out there in the world that might fit into your creative freedom rebellion of your business and your life.

So yeah, today We're, yeah, lemme just go ahead, add really quickly. I think what's important about that, at least from my perspective, is that for so many businesses there's a turning point that comes and you know, we have both experienced, you know, over a decade of stories and experiences where people are not in the right geographical area or don't have great marketing skills and then just really,

really, really struggled to build a private client business. And they're fed one version of how it's supposed to be, which we'll talk about a bit today, and it just doesn't work for them. And it's not their fault, it's not it, it wasn't designed to work for them where they live and with what they're good at. And I think what I've seen,

which has been so exciting, is businesses who step into looking at commercial as a viable business model are able to finally push through those obstacles. They're able to finally get to six figures. They're able to finally create that freedom in their business, in their life, leave that corporate job, et cetera, travel. You know, we've got former clients who are now traveling the country in a Airstream,

which is something they only dreamed of like, you know, years ago. So I think it can be the key to unlocking that freedom and the revenue that might be alluding you in a private client business. So I think it's a really important part of the conversation to help people explore. Is it a viable option for them to actually push past the limitations that have been really frustrating to date?

Yeah, I love it. So yeah, so today we're actually gonna dive into three different photography business models. And a lot of people might choose one lane, some people might choose two lanes, a few people actually work in all three lanes. So again, the name in the game here is designing what you want to do in your business and what works for you.

But in order to do that, you kind of need to know what possibilities are out there. So we wanted to dive in and kind of share these three lanes, if you will, of opportunity one being, you know, the normal boutique pro or the normal boutique private client type business, which is, yeah, what I think most of you listening to this podcast are often in that lane.

There's also the more high volume, lower cost model and then of course there's commercial as well. So where do we wanna start, Nick? Which one do we wanna start with? I think we should start with the basic one that everybody's used to. Okay, perfect. And when we dive into this, you know, we've had conversations about this before where I feel like partially responsible for the pervasiveness of this model because for those of us who are pet photographers in like,

you know, 2005, this is the model that we adopted, this is the model that helped us get to that first six figures. And then this is the model we started teaching to pet photographers in 2007, 2008, without a lot of nuance. It was just, hey, this has worked for us, here you go, take it and run with it.

And since then I've become very aware that there are a lot of constraints that make this model good or bad depending on who you are, where you are, and how you wanna live your life. So I think it's important that we demystify it a little bit and you are like the absolute expert of this model. So I think it's a really good place to start.

Yeah, absolutely. So this boutique model is basically kind of what you think of. We're selling products we're having, I kind of cut it off at like a $2,000 plus average sale somewhere in there. You know, there are, oh my gosh, I'll real quick. There are basically four levels of a photography business, four stages that most photography businesses need to go through at least three.

The fourth is optional. The first is when you're just starting out, you're holding your camera, you're like, how the hell do I work this thing? Like I'm just trying to figure out like what my style is, how to take good pictures of dogs. Like, okay, so maybe I'm just gonna do a low cost all-inclusive, sub $500, like let me just get paid to practice essentially.

That's okay. I give you permission if that's where you are, you can start there, you're allowed. However, if you stay there for too long, it's going to be really hard to be profitable. If you're out shooting on a location and you don't adopt this high volume lower cost model, which we'll talk about. But if you're trying to do the boutique model on that price point,

you will be very upset and burnout and, and just very tired very quickly. And You're gonna piss off everybody around you. Yeah, yeah. Although I am very much like you guys, put your blinders on. If there's somebody in your market that's super good and super cheap, they're going to burn out eventually. Just focus on you, focus on connecting your clients and like what other people do is none of your business.

So don't let it take up mental space in your, in your head. But anyway, so that's level one of a business. Level two is when you're like, all right, I'm ready to start offering products. So you're trying to get that first four figure sale, you're starting to offer like one or two pieces of Walmart or an album and you're just like testing the water,

seeing what products you'd like and and what your clients want and and just kind of trying to make that adjustment. And then level three, which is if you're running a boutique model, the bread and butter of the level of business you need to get to at a boutique model is usually a two to $3,000 sales average. Which really those clients can be found in just about every market.

Now if you are super crazy rural, it might be a little bit more challenging or you might have to go a little bit wider. One of our students, Courtney Bryson, I did a podcast episode with her on something about finding success in a small town, Courtney Bryson, you can check it, look it up. But she has a very successful boutique business and she lives in a teeny tiny little town.

I think it has like one stoplight, but she draws her clients from, you know, an hour and a half away closer to Atlanta. So you know, she has a big city quote nearby, but she's not in that city. So she can build her business looking like that. So anyway, that two to $3,000 average sale is kind of the bread and butter to get to six figures.

You know, you're looking at 35 to 50 clients a year, usually very doable. And then the fourth tier, which is optional, is that super luxe, like $5,000 average sales, occasional 10 K sales. Like not everyone needs to go there. If you feel called to go there and you're currently doing two to $3,000 average sales and you're like, all right,

all right, there's more. And you're starting to get resentful of people only spending that, okay, then it's time to maybe look and move into tier four. But all of you guys out here on tier one and two so far that are like, oh, I need to skip tier three to get to tier four. No, it doesn't work that way.

You need to really like dig into to really mastering the boutique model at that level. And then you can start to move up to that tier four if you wanna. And you need to, I think really importantly here, I know you would advocate for this, you have to be energetically aligned with the level that you're on. Yes. So what we see so often is people trying to jump up too early because everyone around them is telling them what they're supposed to do.

Again, rebellion guys do it your way, but they're not energetically aligned with it yet. So they can't sell at that level. They can't produce at that level. They can't provide customer service at that level. Their brand doesn't match that level. Like don't get me started on branding. Like once you move into level like two and three, a brand becomes really important.

And so like you will only move those levels like when Nicole said, where you're starting to feel resentful, people are only spending three grand. That's the point when you're looking at five to 10 grand and shifting that brand and that pricing to Accommodate that. Yeah. Because it's not just about raising your prices. So many other things need to go in. And if you continue listening to this podcast,

these are the things that we talk about in depth. So we'll get deeper into that into other episodes, but I just wanted to kind of give you that lay of the land of what these boutique models tend to look like. So Nick, you were talking before how it doesn't always work for everyone. I I, so here's the thing, it doesn't,

but I don't ever want you, if this is what you feel aligned to do and you're like, oh my God, this is a hundred percent what business I want, it can, it just might be more difficult in certain situ, certain situations. For example, he's not a pet photographer, but many of you might be familiar with Ben Sherk, who is an incredible high school senior composite artist.

He is in the middle of Iowa, like like an hour and a half from an Iowa airport, middle of Iowa. And he has clients flying in from New York and Chicago to Iowa for their high school senior pictures and spending thousands and thousands of dollars. So it is possible, if you have a super high level, I mean he is, he is the embodiment of that tier four.

His work is amazing, his experience is incredible. And he has built it up through the levels. He did not start there. So can be done and yeah, Brand like you don't drop people from New York's, Iowa without that brand piece being sorted out. Yeah, yeah, for sure. For sure. So, so we know that the boutique model can work in Absolutely.

Like, you know, I live in Charlotte or you're in New York or like any decent sized city. And also by the way, it does work in the uk, it does work in Europe, it does work in Australia. Yeah. So all of you people listening overseas are like, well it won't work here. It does. It can, it Does.

And I hope clients all over Europe. It does. Yeah, it does work. But again, I think the key here, and we'll talk about this in the different tiers, one of the most important parts of which tier is a good fit for you or which ones will be your main bread and butter and the others just come when they come, is what type of marketing and promotion you are comfortable doing and building and being consistent with.

'cause if you have, if you're a total introvert, you have no marketing skills, you hate talking to people, you won't use social media. Like you know, we know a lot of pet photographers that have kind of some of these quirks. Like there is a level at some point where if you want life to be easy, maybe you focus on this tier or this level or this strategy instead of this one because there's a bare minimum of stuff required here that might just feel impossible to you.

And I think this is the new important focus on conversations. Like this one is fit is such an important part of this. But like Nicole said, if you feel like through and through that you want to provide a boutique experience and you love curating and crafting and communicating and and doing that, then you absolutely have what it needs, have what it takes to be successful.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. So yeah, so I just wanna throw out just a couple people that are making this happened in suboptimal conditions. So Marie Wolfram is, she's been on the podcast as well, you can Google her, she had a 20 K portrait month without in-person sales. Well maybe, no, I don't even think she does any sort of live sales.

She also does not do any sort of phone like consult, which is like flies in the face of what everybody says is needed for a boutique business. So she's doing it outside the box, doing it her way and finding success. She's also in a small town. I interviewed her super Yeah. On the podcast too, so you can like look back.

Yeah, Courtney Bryson, small town, Amy Hotson, she's wander photography, she's outside of Indianapolis, but she is pretty darn new in her business and crushing it because she is feeling aligned with what this is. And also by the way, when you feel aligned with it, you tend to have better thoughts and energy around it. That alignment piece is really,

really important. Which I do wanna mention just really quickly, Nick, I would love your suggestions too on differentiating between the unaligned and just fear that you need to get over. Hmm. I feel like let's make a note and do a whole podcast about that. Okay. 'cause we need to discuss that. My hot take based on all the why finding and purpose finding and branding and talking and strategy I've done with thousands of pet photographers over almost two decades is investing time,

money, and energy in clarity. Because most people just spin and they do it because they spin in their own head by themselves. So whether you're in Nicole's group or you hire a mentor, you do some coaching, you get it yourself into a higher level container where there is actual mentorship, coaching, et cetera, with skilled people who can help pull out of you what is currently messy and spinning.

That's where the alignment starts to happen because you have to be able to see it, to be able to repeat it, to be able to say it, to be able to build it into a brand, a website, a style. And it is almost impossible to do that by yourself. And I know this from experience 'cause I do this for a living and I still have to hire people to help me do it for myself.

Yeah. You and I both invest hopefully in coaches still. Indeed. Yeah. So that's my hot take is that alignment comes with clarity and clarity is not something you're gonna achieve by yourself by just spinning in a dark room for years. Yep. Yeah. Awesome. I love that. And for me looking at it of if you are just like in a situation,

you're like, all right, is this my body telling me this is not aligned or my like higher self telling me it's not aligned? Or is this just like some fear that I need to get over and pick up the phone is for me, I tend to see like a fear response has a little bit more physiological response. Such as like, I don't know if you're fear scared of flying,

you get on a plane and you're just like, whew, you feel your heart start to race a little bit. Like you're starting to sweat a little bit more. Like, okay, this is fear. That's your body's fear response. So you can start to ask yourself, what's my body's fear response by starting to look at situations which you know, you are nervous and be like,

okay, that's my fear response unaligned. For me at least, it's gonna be different for everyone. But for me it's more of just like this internal knowing of just like there's no physiological response to it. It's just like, hmm. It just kind of has this pause in my excitement level about it and just like there's just kind of like a little stop sign that's like,

eh, I don't know. And it's really subtle, but the more you start to dig into it, you can start to see it. So that's how I differentiate. Love that Cammy just came down here, so if there's barking, we shall see. It's Almost like we're on a pet podcast or something. I know. I know. She's at the window and my neighbor's having work done at her house.

So there'll be scary, scary workmen coming out to their trucks soon. It'll be fun. Fun Moving on. I'm crunchy. I'm snoring under my desk, which you can probably hear. So I feel Love it. Feel like dogs are welcome here. Yes, for sure. Okay, just one more example I wanna throw in for boutique and then we'll move on is Kristen Murray is in Richmond,

Virginia, and she is a niche within a niche. So for you guys out there like, well I'm pet photography, I'm niche enough. Ugh. Well you can continue niching within the niche of of the niche of the niche Hashtag brand. Let's talk. Yeah, I love it. So yeah, so she actually has a whole main portion of her business that focus on like hunting dogs and like going out and creating this experience for hunters and their dogs.

So yeah, you can again and Asterisk that. That is a really, really important part of level four in the boutique business. Yes. As well as commercial, which we'll talk about later. Yeah, I love it. Awesome. All right, so that's the boutique business in a nutshell. Boutique business 1 0 1. Next, let's contrast that with high volume,

low cost, which I can hear you guys saying, well you can't have both of those Can You? But can you could mini sessions or some sort of special offering that you do periodically fit into this, hold on. High volume, low cost bucket and And yeah, definitely can. So Nick, tell us, give us a little overview of kind of,

there's two, this Sections, there's two pieces of this I wanna dive into a little bit deeply. The first point is how I came to sort of believe in this model as being extremely viable. And the second is why it can fit with a boutique model. So the first one is I ran my, I ran a pet, what did I call it?

Pet photography bootcamp back in 2015 where this was like my first sort of eight week business mindset pricing brand course for pep photographers. And one of the exercises I had everybody do, and some research I did leading into this program was to add up the hours that they were spending with an individual client in the boutique model. And I had already done this research so I knew what the answers were were gonna be,

and then to basically calculate if it was possible in the work hours they had in a given month or year to achieve their monetary goals based on their average sale and the amount of time they had to work and the number of clients that would be required to actually meet that goal spending that amount of hours with them. And for most people the answer was no.

It wasn't physically possible to make the money they needed in the boutique model. Now this is why Nicole said you need a $2,000 minimum average sale and 35 to 50 clients a year to make it work. So that's the answer where this becomes viable. But for a lot of them, they didn't have that. They didn't have enough customers or they didn't have enough high,

a high enough sale or both. So it was a good wake up call. But the point of this wasn't that the model doesn't work, it was that we give our time away like it's nothing without realizing that it's inventory and that it has a fundamental impact on how we are able to meet our goals. So we are gonna do a whole podcast on this.

Your time is inventory, we're gonna talk about that in depth, but it's a really important point. Flip over if you did, let's say your whole business model was mini sessions and you only did them on Saturdays, sometimes Saturdays and Sundays, and you could photograph 10 to 15 people on a weekend at X amount. Actually you can make a lot more money in a lot less time with that type of business model.

And guess what, it's a lot easier to sell a $200, 250, 3 50 package to more people than a 2000, 3,005,000, especially if you're marketing averse, which pretty much every Pepto I've ever met is as they come from a marketing background. So it's a viable model because it can be easier to sell, easier to fulfill, easier to market, easier to run,

and you can do it with a day job or you can do it alongside your boutique model. And that brings me to the second part of this, which is why is it important as a strategy or add-on if you look at your business strategically, I always encourage people to look at, and I'm sure you have something quite similar like a product pyramid where you have what I call a novelty product and then what I would call a core product and then what I would call premium or then super premium on top of that.

The core is mo, your average photo session that most people are coming to you in that average $2,000 sale. The novelty is the thing for the people who can't afford the core or the people who aren't ready for the core. That is an easy yes because when people say yes to you once, then they're 60, 70% more likely to say yes to you again.

So maybe they'll come to six mini sessions in a year and all of a sudden you're making more on average than you would if they did the core product or they jump from mini to premium or they never jump up, but they're happy continuing to buy this cheap product from you. So it's an easy yes. Also hot tip if you leave it on your website all year long,

instead of waiting for two weeks before the event to try and sell out the spaces, it can be a really good way to have a book now button on your website where people can buy it, book it, and it's done. And you're just earning money in a more passive way than the the boutique model. So it can be a really, really nice add-on for those of you trying to create more of an ascension model in your pet photography business.

I love that. I think one of the biggest keys that you have to keep in mind when you're doing this is, and you, you alluded to it with like, make it easy for 'em to book a book now button and then your backend systems need to be built. You need to have systems for this type of offer because $300 for 10 hours of work,

not profitable, no 300 hours for shooting for 20 minutes. And like you have a process on the back end or you're outsourcing your editing and like you have an hour and a half in the client, great, let's do that all day long. This is the reason why you see a lot of wedding photographers like, oh, I used to do weddings,

but now I just do portraits because I don't have to give up an entire weekend. I mean wedding photographer is 12 hour day likely plus preparing the night before, plus recovering the next day, plus liability, go out for an hour and photograph somebody plus Yeah. Have, you know, $3,000 average versus a $8,000 average for a whole day. I can just photograph a couple clients a week and same.

Yeah, I love it. One of the other things to keep in mind, if you're going to have this type of offering all the time, it needs to be different than your main offer. Yes. Like if it's just, oh my main offer is this and we're gonna go to the location of your choice and do this session, blah blah blah.

Or you can book it here for cheaper, but it's the same thing. Like It's just, oh wait, here's the worst bit. It's just 20 minutes instead of an hour and a half. Yeah, Exactly. Exactly. As if the client cares how long it is. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So it must be different. Is it at only a certain location,

even if it's only on certain days of the week, or this is a weekday or this is dog only or if you have studio space, this is studio or you know, there's so many different ways to make it unique but make it different than your Main dog. So my opinion on this is that it has to be set days and it has to be high volume.

One place people come to you on the same day that is like max potential for this business model is the traditional mini session of I'm gonna set up here, I'm gonna book slots on this day, you come to me, some people will do a a image reveal right then, but of course that limits the number of shoots you can do. So you gotta weigh that up for the,

the tech and the way that you like to work. But then there's no follow up after. And as Nicole said, you need to strip every ounce of time out of it as you can. So communication is automated, booking is automated, confirmation is automated. Non-refundable, like the whole deal. And I did some headshots like this, I think it cost me like 250 for some headshot and his whole system here in it was so well done and I had like a 40 minute shoot and everything was automated and like this is how he can just,

you know, keep that volume high and everything's purchased immediately online, not waiting to get an email from you to then book a time like I booked myself into his calendar. So this is, if you're like a little more introverted but like a little bit more tech geeky, like this can be a really great model for you. Yeah, a hundred percent for sure.

And if you're not tech geeky, you can find someone to help support you with that to get it set up and teach you how to maintain it. But it is, it is critical at these lower price points that has to, you have to have a workflow, automated workflow where you are taking your time out of it as much as possible. Awesome.

So yeah, so this can look like a lot of different things too. We have, you know, we have some people that do dog sports, actually just interviewed Brian Batista who has made a full-time job, left his corporate job just traveling the country, photographing dog sports mostly fast cat, which I didn't even know was a dog sport. I've always had reactive animals that could never do these types of things.

So here we are. Oh my wonderful island rescue dogs. Anyway, so yeah, so there was somebody else that you knew too that does the like a KC, tell me about that. Yeah, so I just did an amazing brand in a week development for Amy at Great Dane Photo Co. And she primarily does events and she, yeah, basically gets hired by the A KC to show up and shoot these fast action dog sports events and things like agility,

that kind of thing. And that is her whole business. And then people can buy images from her website again, it's built on a good tech platform so people just check out automatically, she doesn't have to send them to them, you know, it's a really powerful fulfillment setup. But she does a really great business in that way and she knows when she has to work and she shows up and works and edits and that's that.

I love it. I love it. Awesome. Also, one of our commercial students, Adam Goldberg is in Tampa, has built his whole business, well maybe not, but what he is known for is a lot of mini session stuff. He's actually been on, I think I just saw he was on like a, B, C today or Good morning.

Oh, I think I saw that. Yeah. Yeah, some like national like news thing with the, the work that he's doing, he brings in a lot of charitable components to it as well, which is awesome. I love. So yeah, so he's running a great business with that as well. And then of course there's all the people that are doing,

like you could do the Santa Pause type thing and you know, kind of micro sessions. So I kind of, I have a term, I have mini sessions, which again, we're not using with our clients, but just an internal term mini session for me is like kind of that medium section. Maybe it's like half an hour, maybe it's still a little bit on location.

I used to do this back in my family photography days for like Christmas card sessions. It'd be like four in a row, half hour session. It includes, you know, a, a digital file but also had some, they would still order products. And I sold from my regular menu and you know, I had $2,500 average for regular sessions and these mini sessions had a $1,500 average.

So yes please, I'll do that all freaking day. Thank you. So yeah, and then I call these like Santa Paus type things, what I did for my food for Fido, like micro sessions. So these are like a 10, 15 minute, like back to back all day. Very exhausting, but can be profitable as well type sessions. Yeah.

Awesome. Is there anything else we wanna add on about the, I think we kind of covered that. If you're looking for examples of how this works, look to the, like photographing children in schools model of not the old school ones, the new ones because old school is too inefficient, but that's the kind of model that we're looking for. You show up like at least this micro version that I'm talking about the word,

like you described it as a micro session that is the most profitable for time spent in my experience. But that's because I'm not talking about selling off your, your normal catalog. So that, I think the mini session label is kind of that in between this micro and boutique that we're talking about, which I think is a really great option as well. But again,

controlled, you have to control the variables. You have to try and batch as much as possible the shooting and the editing to maximize that time. So like the whole point of this that I just really wanna hammer in is the time spent per client, the time spent per average sale because then you just start basically taking that average sale and dividing it by hours spent and then you can see which is more profitable for you.

Yeah, absolutely. So, so good. All right, so those are our two. And you guys can have one or the other. You can work with both in your business just, it's by your design. And if you don't know like how to do that, reach out, find someone to help you. This is like my jam. It's helping people talk To Nicole because this is what she,

she does Like either side of these, like I love coming up with different business structures and pricing structures like this, but we are leaving that elusive third one off that it's time to talk about. And that is adding in some commercial possibilities, whether you wanna do commercial full-time. Some people have really made the jump and allowed their portrait photography business to take a very big backseat or a lot of people do some commercial work alongside a very busy profitable portrait studio.

So give us a definition. What is commercial photography? Well, I Get very passionate talking about this because I think it is such a great opportunity, like I said early on to push past some of the boundaries and obstacles that you might've experienced so far in trying to reach the revenue goals that you want to in your business. What I wanna say about commercial as we jump in and as like an initial definition is that the only thing that really makes commercial,

commercial is that you're shooting for a business instead of a private client. And the primary differentiation there is that your finished product is going to be high res images. So in a lot of ways it's a lot more like the wedding photography model where you're doing potentially more time, potentially more volume delivering high res as the finished product. Although obviously some wedding photographers do products as well.

And it's a shift in thinking about, you know, it's so different from a boutique model or a a low cost, high volume model. It is its own model, but it has so many advantages when it comes to things like revenue when it comes to like time spent for income created and for so many of the photographers that we've worked with. And certainly this was the case for me,

it can be so fulfilling on a level, especially when you start to get two years, three years into your pet photography business, if you're getting a little bit bored or if you end up being a business where you end up doing a lot of end of life sessions and you wanna maybe do a little more fast action shooting, you're not getting the like creative outlet that you want because of the types of,

of pets that you end up shooting. There's just, yeah, there's so many positives to it, but the basic definition we're talking about here is food shooting for a business instead of just a private client. And that can take so many forms from products to personal branding, photography even. Yeah, and there are various tiers in the commercial world too. We're gonna do a whole nother episode on that as well.

And we have a lot of episodes to record, but can you give us a high level 30,000 foot view of these different tiers? Yeah, so I think the important thing to understand is that not all commercial gigs are like $50,000 projects for Purina, Which, you know, like you're flying all over the place and have seven full days of shooting and like that.

That is a rarity. Yeah. A full team and hired models and the whole, the whole thing that is one version of this. So tier one in commercial is the opposite of that. It is usually a small business, probably a small local business. Someone who doesn't have a lot of money, doesn't make a lot of money potentially. And the,

the language they would probably use for you is they need a headshot, right? That's often you'll have a dog walker or a local pet boutique or you know, some sort of small business who's, who is acknowledging they need photos for their website or a headshot for something or a brochure, right? Some basic business collateral and they don't have any images or the images they have are rubbish and the,

you know, there's sort of set pricing and stuff that often goes along with this tier, but so many commercial photographers just prefer to stay within this tier. And we're talking like, you know, a maybe a 500 to a thousand dollars total project, but it's also like between two and four hours of time total with shooting and editing. Yeah. Like such easy work.

And this is what I would generally call show up and shoot like you're not doing a lot of production, you're not doing a lot of planning location scouting, dah dah, dah, dah dah. You're just showing up at the business and photographing and then doing very light edits and handing over. Yeah. Yeah. I had a, I had a client like that this year.

She was a local dog trainer that needed images for a website and it was $500 included three digital images and we met, we shot for like 25 minutes. So I sent her a gallery of just the call, didn't really even edit them at all. She picked her three edited, three images, sent 'em over, like done 500 bucks. Like okay thanks.

Easy. And what is the best thing about this type of shoot? What is the best byproduct? Oh, Especially, yeah, especially if you have a portrait business. Oh now you just made great connections with other business owners who have your target client, hello easy business partnership creation that you're getting paid for. Yes. And the other benefit is that when she decides she wants another three or five or 10 images,

yeah, oh yeah. There's an upsell for no more work. Just more profit. Exactly. Alright, So that's tier one. That's tier one. So tier two is the next step up from that. And these are businesses that are slightly more sophisticated, slightly more refined, slightly further along, making slightly more money and have slightly higher demand for images.

So they are operating with higher level websites, investing more in things like ads, potentially trade shows. And their need is greater, their sophistication is greater and their budget is greater. And this is another place where a lot of pet photographers just stay here for, because it's where they're comfortable. You're looking here probably, you know, somewhere between 1,530 500 for a shoot that will include a varying number of final images.

You know, again, you're doing maybe like a half day of shooting for this client and it's pretty low key. This is not a place where you'll be shooting tethered or generally not hiring models unless you absolutely have to. 'cause they're expensive and there's challenges that come with that. The customer might still be doing quite a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of production or location or,

you know, you won't necessarily have as much effort going into the pre-production and post-production. And again, there's always the possibility of the upsell afterwards. So this is the sweet spot I would say for most commercial repeating clients where they're often happy to do that 1500, 2500, 30 $500 shoot multiple times a year. Okay. These can for years on end. Yeah, these can often be the,

the like medium sized kind of product businesses that have new, new items coming out. They need to get new photographs for their new collection regularly. You get a relationship with them and it's like, okay great, here's the stuff. Create some images. Awesome. They have high demand for social media, so they have high demand for seasonal, right? Yeah.

They need the summer shoot and the Christmas shoot and the Black Friday promotion shoot. So it's a really good way to get that recurring revenue. But again, at this level, not as much of a fire drill as some of the higher tiers. It's a real sweet spot for most photographers where it doesn't feel scary or too big or too complicated, but still a high enough sort of chunk of revenue.

And the best thing, like I said, is that it's often recurring. Yeah, right? It's, it's not the one time sale, it's one client that keeps coming back and back and back, which is useful. And this is the the work that starts to be really fulfilling as well because you're doing a little styling, you are doing a little location scouting,

you're able to create a vision, do some creative direction, and bring that vision to life in a way that is really satisfying creatively. Yeah, I love it. All right, what's the next tier? Tier three. Okay, so basically I'm gonna group everything up from this as the big guys. Okay? Yep. Okay. So there's actually like two more tiers,

but for the sake of this conversation, I'm just gonna say basically anything between like five to 7,000 and up is gonna be one of those two tiers. And they're gonna be bigger, much bigger projects. They're either gonna be much bigger companies or much bigger projects in terms of like we're doing a total rebrand and we need a photo library or we're doing, you know,

some huge campaign with a lot of photography demands. We're doing a new trade show booth, we're doing a new catalog and it's a bigger project or a much bigger company to be happy spending over five grand initially. And the sweet spot here is gonna be between seven and 10 grand between these two tiers. That's that kind of next sweet spot. And then above that you'll have your 40,

50, a hundred thousand dollars projects where you're talking extremely complex production. This is where you will have a team, you will have a producer, you will have a stylist, you will have paid models, you will probably shoot tethered, it will probably be multi-day. You, you know, will have potentially multiple locations, complicated insurance, complicated paperwork that you need to fill out to hold your client in,

indemnify your client from the legal liability. You know, there's a lot more complication that come with these projects, but again, they're gonna be much sexier, much higher numbers that you'll be getting paid, but you'll also have much higher expenses. So you'll be keeping a lot less percentage wise of that money. Yeah. And a lot because you'll have keep A lot more time goes into that than Energy Doing a 20 minute session and saying here's a couple digitals.

Yeah. And it's really sexy, these jobs especially because these are the type of jobs that usually find you, these are not usually jobs you can go out and bid for. Yeah. Tier one and two are more like the ones you start marketing for. And then these other ones is people start to see that you're offering these things that come up on search,

stuff like that. You'll start getting offers for these other tiers. You will. And they, you know, as Nicole alluded to earlier, sometimes they just pop up and they are very, very inconvenient because they need you to clear the deck. They're for Almost always, They're always inconvenient, let's be honest. Yeah. We're actually gonna dive into this in the next episode a little bit more of like what does a commercial business viability like actually look like?

So we're gonna dive more into this. We just kind of wanted to give you a high level of these different options and you know, if that tier three, four scares the living bejesus out of you, we have plenty of photographers that don't even go there. They're commercial photographers that stay in the one and two playground, you know, or other people might end up at a three and four and they test it out and they're like,

oh I love it. Or like maybe a wedding photographer. They're like, no, that I, I don't love that. I know I wanna stay more in this other area. So again, it's your business by your design, your creative freedom rebellion to do whatever you want. That makes sense. We are just here to let you know what these different paths look like And to yeah.

Give you a really realistic view. I think it's, I think of this a lot like what it feels like and sounds like to publish a book where you're like, oh it's so sexy. I'm gonna like have a book on a shelf in a, in a, you know, barns and Noble and it's ama and it's gonna make me shitloads of money and da da da.

And then you're like, oh actually this is gonna cost me money. It's not that sexy. It's lot, it's a lot of time lot work. Goodness gracious. A lot of time I have to promote it. Yeah, yeah. So it's just good to have realistic expectations and know why you're doing it and and why you're going in and what the benefits are.

Yeah, for sure. So we actually have a couple examples of some awesome students that are making the commercial world. I mean, number one, one of our favorites around the commercial Pep Photography Academy is Nat and Bill. They are so incredibly generous helping, helping up and coming PE photographers and sharing their experience. We have quite a few bonuses in there from them.

And you worked with them gosh, ages ago. Did they have a portrait business first and now they are all commercial pretty much. Yeah. So Nat and Bill are the labs and CO and they're based outta Northern California. And it has been such a joy to watch their business evolve over the years. I would say as it stands now, they are one of the most hired,

respected, successful pet photographers in the commercial game for, for what they do. And they do photography and video. They also offer illustration. And we met because Bill for Christmas or her birthday got gnats a ticket to my New York workshop that I did with Jamie in 2009 I think. And she was at a point where she absolutely just had to quit her corporate job because it was literally killing her.

And they were just on that pinnacle, like taking that leap into full-time, pet photography. So that would've been what, like 14? Yeah. Oh God, I'm so old. Internet years are not normal years by the way. Many years of passed. And then subsequently after that I invited myself to their house to be a location for a commercial shoot for a client I had in San Francisco.

And they were pet photographers with pets who could assist and had a lovely house. And so we used their house as location and they assisted and we used their pets and then subsequently I introduced them to that client. When I moved to the UK I was like, here you go. And they have just gone from strength to strength to strength. Bill has a background as a buyer for an art agency.

So he knows what it's like to be on the other side of hiring photographers and that's really useful. But everything they do is just really, really high quality. And they have navigated this path for themselves of trying to find what's a good fit for them, for their brand, for what they care about. They started really heavily in the sort of outdoorsy space 'cause they do some incredible sort of hiking,

camping. They live among the redwoods and beautiful beaches. And as they've evolved, they've realized that they have both sides to them and that a lot of the work they love to do is inside. They love to do that like in the home cozy stuff as well. So we actually just did some rebranding messaging wise for them as well to try and bring that full circle,

the outdoorsy and the indoorsy into their messaging. And, and the way that that came through is this idea of them being for, for both the wildly free and the deeply grounded, deeply rooted, I don't remember exactly the words, but it was beautiful and gorgeous. And now they're expanding into that and they've done work for the Gap, they've done work for most of the major pet brands.

They've done some influencer work with beautiful stuff on Instagram, earth rated, and you know, the list goes on and on and on. And they've done the full spectrum of those tiers in terms of the types of shoots. And they've, as you said, been really generous with us in terms of sharing those experiences with our students because it is complicated and nuanced.

But they are a company where as they've evolved, they have almost exclusively done commercial and they almost, they spend almost all their marketing energies on getting commercial work. And then a lot of their portrait work is actually more like give back where they keep their portrait prices very low and they work with, they try and keep it very accessible 'cause that's part of their mission and that's become the backseat part of their business model.

I love it. I love it. Yeah. And then we have Taryn Bear Westway studio out in San Diego. She was the one in the Airstream we alluded to earlier. Yeah. Casey didn't this, she had always had a, a really successful portrait business, San Diego. Her work is stunning and beautiful and and she came to you and was like,

oh yeah, I wanna do more commercial. And here she is basically traveling around the country shooting for commercial clients for half the year each year. Yeah. So Yeah, Terran is such a wonderful success story. She probably gets sick of me talking about her, but it's, I'm so impressed with what she's been able to do. But I helped her with the strategy and then she just ran with it in terms of how to build that commercial business.

And the strategy I taught her is the same one we teach inside the commercial pet photography academy. But you know, the story I love telling about her is she did exactly what I told her to do. She actioned it, she did it, she did not mess around. And you know, of her list of like the top 10 dream clients, she got her first four or five within the first six months.

I love it. Like she just went for it and nailed it. And I think for her now as well, she's traveling around the country on an Airstream. She has corporate sponsors where she does brand photography along the way. And I think her, her private client work has taken a real backseat to that as well so that she could have her own creative freedom rebellion on the road,

which is something she, you know, was dreaming about when we first started working together. Yeah, I love it. I love it. So yeah, so I mean these are two examples of people that have gone all in on the commercial side, but there's plenty of other people that are still all in on their portrait and they're just doing a little bit of commercial work on the side or they're sticking with like tier one and two.

For instance, my friend Megan Murray and Megan Murray photography in Houston. I know she has her business' pet photography and branding photography, which is really that tier one and two client personal brands, headshots, things like that. And here's what I love, I know I mentioned it before, but it bears mentioning again why I love those tier one and tier two clients.

They are your local market. If you are a photographer that wants to continue to serve private clients, those tier one like working on this branding, you know, headshot, headshot's not the right word. It's really, it's branding for these businesses gives you all these connections in the industry and also makes you money and it's fun, you know, it can be a really fun thing.

So yeah, It's a great support. It's a great source of potentially new clients but it's also great source of networking. You know, it gets so lonely sometimes being an entrepreneur and I think it can really help you tap into, you know, some business besties as well. Even if people are not in the pet space, maybe they want to do the shots with their dog.

You know, they're a dog friendly brewery or somewhere where the dog becomes important and if you want to you, they don't have to have dogs to be personal branding shots. You wanna do, again, you make the rules, you do what you like and especially if you build a brand and you have a Y that's based on something potentially different than dogs that dogs are a part of,

then it kind of opens up the field. So another example is like Taralyn who is just outside of Raleigh. I think when she did her sort of wi finding, she sort of discovered that her thing is all about love. Like that's her jam. And she used to be a television reporter, so she's very, very good at storytelling. And so she has actually purposely kinda rebranded herself to be for dog loving families and brands.

So she opens herself up to families with kids who have dogs, people who have dogs, but know kids, people who, you know, brands that love dogs don't have to necessarily be dog brands. And it's all about this sort of what it means to know the love of a dog or what it means to be a person who loves dogs and why that makes them a good fit for her in her brand.

And it's beautiful, it's really beautiful positioning, but it's so much more strategic and delicious than just Raider head trunk. Yeah, right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And it's gorgeous 'cause she, you know, has found her brand personality type, she has shifted her style into that. So it's sunny and warm and it feels loving. Yeah. And it works really Well.

I love it. I love it so much. There's actually, speaking of niches, before one of our students that just went through commercial portfolio intensive for their, create their own brief, has kind of like a Vogue dog. She's really into like the styling and the fashion, which would not be somebody hired me and be like, you need to like do a style fashion and be like,

I, I wear a sweatshirt. Like I might get something at Target, which is a step up from Costco. She's like, I am not the right person for this job. So like, there are just so many different things in you expressing like Nat and Bill's kind of ethos and terrans and just like bringing that all in. Like that is what makes us unique.

So no matter which of these three lanes that you want to kind of steer your photography ship down, coming up with like the, the, those little idiosyncrasies that make your services unique, oh my gosh, are so critical. I know I'm being a broken record about this, but brand like, it's such an important part of this conversation both from a differe differentiation,

a messaging, a portfolio and style cohesion and consistency. And then, you know, once you get into the commercial conversation, it's around creating a body of work that when a, a photo researcher or buyer comes across your blog or website is so consistent that they know exactly what they're gonna get if they hire you. And that's what makes them email you and get in touch to say,

can you do this for us? Yeah. So like I I, I see so many articles and things right now focusing on like, next year is the year of the brand because especially like with AI coming and with all of this change that's coming, like there is no replacement for that extra bit of humanity, that extra bit of emotion, that super clear lane of what you do,

what you don't do is gonna continue to be so, so important no matter which of these strategies you fall into. Oh my gosh, yes. And the emotion is what we're selling no matter what level you're at. Whether it's commercial, low cost, boutique, like the emotion is why people buy. So gotta gotta do it. All right. We should probably wrap this one up 'cause we're coming up on 'em.

Hour Can talk about this's gonna be A quick one. But yeah, thanks for hanging with us everybody. There'll be more of these conversations coming from the Creative Freedom Rebellion, little miniseries here on the Freedom Focus Photography podcast. Oh my gosh, that's a lot of freedom and a lot of words. But if you're interested in learning more about commercial pet photography,

come on over to www.hairofthedogacademy.com/commercial and there'll be more trainings and things there that you can always jump into. So we're excited to, to work with you. Anyway, Nick, thanks for being here and we will see you guys next episode.