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Photography, Style, Brand, and Price Part 2

The next challenge was posing two, three, and four, because I believe that if you can get one girl into your studio with a voucher, she'll bring three girlfriends. If you can get three girlfriends, then you've made four sales, that's four networks that you now have to network around her partner, wife, husband, mother, grandmother, three generations, et cetera. This is the whole point of building on your marketing is shooting multiple genres and being able to shoot multiple genres. The feedback I got about this shoot here was, yes, that's fine but they're all of a lean body type. Let's have a look at a few tricks that I can help you with, tricks to get you through the how would you pose four curvy girls in this pose, exactly the same, but with your weight on the back foot. Come here, Valerie, I want to show somebody something. Valerie and I are doing a mother and daughter shoot. And as is common with a mother and daughter shoot, sometimes one, either mother or daughter is bigger than th...

e other one. What I'm going to do is show you a couple of basics. This is my standard pose. If you put your arm around my waist and then hold my elbow, turn towards me with your hips. Body language, no. Body language, yes. Our boob is together, that's the V to the front. And just bring your shoulder around and relax that, because I can tell that she was stretching across here. This is my go-to mother and daughter, sisters, go-to pose. And then our chin goes to our outer shoulder, and then we lean towards here. We lean towards each other, and then straight away, if we're both curvy, we need to step our back foot back, and then take our weight away from the camera. And then we push our chin forward and our arm extends away from the body. And the camera picks it up at that dimension as being slimmer, because the weight of the body goes back. Now, she's leaner than me, so she can stay on her back foot. And then our bodies are the same here, except for I look bigger, so what I'm gonna is do is take my weight back, and take my weight behind her weight. Now, she compensates for my weight. The leaner one body is, the more I turn her outwards. And the curvier this body is, the more I push back. If we're both curvy, we both go back. If you add a group, so come here other sister, and so now I've got my mom and my sister. And then we're doing the typical three pose for status, and we're bringing all of our shoulders together, opening this body out here, you can just connect here and we're all holding on, and then pushing the chin forward now. If I'm curvy, my body is gonna dominate through the center, so if I'm mom and I'm bigger than my daughters, my body weight will dominate through here. What I do is I take my weight through the back foot, I push my weight back out of the group, and then I bring the girls in around me, so that straight away they are now compensating for my body weight. From the front, my body weight has just pushed back through. If the three of us were all curvy, all three of us put our body weight on the back foot, and we all push away, and we all push forward with the chin forward and down. You don't shoot that high. You shoot that right on the eye-line. Thank you very much. Every time you add a curvy body, lean bodies can stay upright, curvy bodies pushing back. You can work the bodies around each other. If you have a couple and she's big and he's lean, work her body around his. If it's the other way around, work her body around his. But what I need you to understand is I know my body weight. I know how I look in photographs when I don't like them. Any photograph when you make me look hotter or slimmer, I like, any. I know I'm not a size zero. I'm not trying to look like a size zero. When you say but that's not four curvy girls, four curvy girls would look like four curvy girls. What you don't want them to look like is four fat girls. 'Cause four girls that look fat will not buy that photograph. Four curvy girls that look hot will buy that photograph. You're not trying to make them look like an industry standard. You're just trying to flatter what they've got. Take the weight back through, use lean bodies around, use one lean body. Or take the weight back on every body, and push the chin forward and create space here, just like I pose the curves, which I think you're gonna see at lunch time. Very, very important that we adjust to these. The next challenge was about shooting and posing families. This was more about marketing and simple posing triangles for me. This was about learning how to connect everybody with hands, build simple triangles in the studio. But what this really about is the family-first demographic. I market to her. He does not care about the family portrait; she does. I mean, he wants one, but she's gonna arrange it. She's gonna be sold on it. She's the emotional buyer. These are her babies. And she's gonna arrange for him to there and him to be there. But first of all in the family-first demographic, I take you through the girls' journey first. That's who I market to. That's I who I want in my studio. The girls bringing the boys, very important. Price, product, value. A la carte vs packages and raising that average product and price. I'm gonna talk about that next. 'Cause I'm gonna go product, price, PDF, marketing. 'Cause I just feel like you guys need a big shunt. Okay, shunt. This is not a word you use, so a big push. I know because when I say it, all my American friends go, "Shunt?" And I'm like, "Like a train." And they're like, "Like a train?" (chuckles) I'm gonna give you a big push, in terms of marketing-display connection, confidence. This is a challenge. I voice it very openly, but I think I need to talk more about this. This is something that I am very passionate about. Until you have a price, a product, and a value, and whether that's a la carte or as a package Until you set this in stone, you cannot market yourself, you cannot sell yourself, and you cannot build your own value. You need to lock that down. You lock down your brand, and then you lock this down. I'm gonna show you how to do that. The before and after. The before and after marketing is the reason I am so successful as a glamour photographer today, because we are now at a show-don't-tell marketing. This is about showing people what we do. And I'm going to show you how people are not showing what they do. They're telling people what they do. And I'm going to tell you. Right now, I'm going to show you, not to tell people, but to show them. This tells more of a story about this girl than any words I could write: about capturing the beauty within a woman as her light shines upon her glorious soul is my journey as a women's photographer to take you through. People would rather look through a before-and-after gallery, thank you, and you need to learn how to do this properly. It is important that your before looks like a before shot, and your after looks like an after. None of this. I don't want to see this. She looks too good. And this is not about her looking ugly, this is about blank canvas, beauty image. I need you to nail that. This is something else I'm gonna talk about more, 'cause this was the challenge where everybody said to me, "I need more of this." Your pitch must be within enthusiasm. You must educate your client and then ask them questions, when they come into the shoot, so that they know how much you cost, so that they're excited, they know how much you cost, and then you're providing them with the service that they came there for. Then your phone scripting you must practice. You must learn to show, not tell. We're gonna talk about that, and I'm gonna talk about pamper marketing. Opportunity is everywhere 'cause I'm hearing a lot of this, "The market is just not good enough right now, "and it's not my fault "nobody's got any money where I live." There is money everywhere. I can't stop earning money now. People just throw it at me; I walk down the street, people throw money at me. I get hit and I'm like, (audience laughs) "God, did you just throw that money?" And not coins. (audience laughs) People throwing like walls of dollars at me. I've opened up to this idea that money is abundant. And I choose now not to see that it's not. I'm gonna show you how. This was a great challenge, but this was the challenge that everybody said more. Let's do that this afternoon. Posing teens, this beautiful child is 16 years old and she's becoming a woman, but she is not yet a woman. She is still a girl, but she is not a girl either, and she does not want to be treated like one. She will act like a child sometimes, and she will act like a woman at other times, and everybody around her will tell her both. You remember what it was like to be 16. The truth is is we gotta take the six out of the 16-year-old shots, out of the senior shots. And this was really just about posing age appropriately, but still like a beauty magazine, because for me this girl just wants to look like she's in a magazine. But she wants to look like she's in a teen magazine. I'm making her mother cry (laughs). Your eldest baby. Is she your eldest, yes, she is. Eldest of nine. And nine beautiful You must have made that one and thought, "Hell, let's make eight more." (audience laughs) We are so good at this, I'm gonna make about eight more. You could give me one. I'll have one; I'll have that last one. She's magnificent or you could just give me this one. I joke that my folios cost your firstborn. This girl is beautiful. Obviously, she's a beautiful girl. But her beauty is not in her sensuality. She has zero sensuality. 16 year olds don't have sensuality. Even though they have a hot body, they have zero sensuality. The paltry mouth and the little doe eyes, you do that as a photographer and you don't need to do that. This is a very essential pose for me. I want to take glamour back to the world, but I don't want to see nine year olds lying down in cat pose with their hip up. I don't like it; I don't want to see it. It will put a stain on my industry, and you need to pull that back. This is a very important challenge for me. When I go back to the family, this was about marketing and shooting to this demographic, so we can talk about marketing again this afternoon. This was about taking these three girls here, and doing their hair and makeup, and watching their experience. And then having them come in, the two men come in, join the family and have an incredible family portrait, which ties up my family session. Am I a family-portrait photographer? No. Do I advertise myself as a family-portrait photographer? No. Is this higher than my average sale? Yes. Why, dad's in there. Money just went up. Business is about building a network with each client. With each client you maximize their network around them, who they love, who they want be photographed with, and every time you include somebody new, your sale goes up, and your opportunity to market to another network becomes quite obvious. Do you understand? This is smart shooting. This is shooting to get the final result from that group. I could have just marketed to this girl and said bring your daughters in for a mother and daughter shoot. Well, that's fine but he's not a 30, 40 on a wall, if he's not on it. He'll appreciate the smaller album. He'll appreciate the girls went and spent a lot of money on girls' day. He might even moan about, whatever. He might say he loves them, but if I can get him in. And the only person that's gonna get this guy in is that woman there. Now, she has control over him and how much money they spend collectively. That's good marketing. Shoot to market. I open this back up, the corporate head shot. I opened it back up because I realized that for 23 years I have been offering a corporate head shot in my studio because it was an entirely new marketing avenue. Have you watched that video yet, where I talk about me going into that corporate space to meet my friend for lunch and I watched about a thousand women walk past in gray suits and I was like, "These women need makeovers." (audience laughs) These women need me. This is a marketing pod. And I could not believe in the corporate world that one skyscraper of corporate offices held hundreds and even thousands of people that I could be marketing to. How do I get them into my glamour studio? I offer them a corporate head shot. And it's a 15 minute shoot. Did this freak you out when you watched the video? 23 years ago, I charged $300 for a corporate shoot, and that's higher than most of you are charging for a folio shoot now, for three 5 X 5s. 23 years ago, how appalling is it to me that you send me your price list and that a photo shoot is $253, when I've been charging that for 23. And you're not making any money. Really people? You are professional photographers. It is time you started to act like one. Give a professional service and charge a professional amount. I have been charging that for 23 years. I was shocked when I saw it. And every time a corporate comes into my studio, I have the opportunity to book their family, their wife, their girlfriend, if they're a male, their family portrait, if they're a father, their husband, boyfriend, and best friends, girlfriends. One evening, bring a girlfriend, paint the town red, girls' day out, mother's day, family first, 50 and fabulous. I have the opportunity to market to every single girl in her network or his network from one 15 minute shoot that pays me $300. Now, if you get four corporate shoots a week, and you earn $1200 and it takes you an hour to shoot them, and 15 minutes to eat at them, and you get to network and market to those people. That stands to reason that you should not be not offering this in your studio. And the natural light corporate look really was so basic and so simple. They're the same three poses. It's a recline, make the body look lean, drop the front shoulder, bring the chin forward on everybody, except for the boy doesn't need to drop his shoulder forward. He doesn't need a reflector 'cause he needs harder light to the face. The girls don't and they can even do arms folded and there's no big smiles. It's all half smile, open up, good business, kick ass, take names kind of portrait. And a really great avenue into hundreds of other people to market to. That challenge was about In fact, everyone of these challenges is about opening up a marketing avenue into your studio, because I think if I teach you how to shoot it, then you'll shoot it and then you'll create a folio out of it, or rather, you will build a folio that then markets and advertises that you shoot this genre. If you don't have it in your repertoire, how can you market with it? I took a glamour shoot outside, and I didn't know where I was going. We're in Seattle, it's a little bit wintry still. It was cold for her but we tried to go as fast as we could. We looked for locations, we stopped in the car, we looked around us, and we were just trying to shoot on the fly, just my style outside. So many of you might already shoot portraits outside, but I wanted to shoot my style outside. I was very challenged by this. I should've had more reflectors. I should've done a location scout, but I didn't because I really needed to show you that I could find walls and angles and corners and flare exactly as I would in the studio. The cool thing about this is the question I've been asked and the challenges over and over again was what if I haven't got a studio. What if I haven't got a studio? Then find location. What about the weather? I'm sorry, I have no control over that one. I'll ask upstairs but I don't think they're gonna make me director of world weather. Do your best, it doesn't rain all day, unless you live in Seattle. I can only do my absolute best on location with what I've got, and I did that with Amanda. The good thing was the hard light that you get outside and the city in the background is counteracted with a reflector. Susan was holding a Gatorfoam board, a foam core board, over her head like this. That's all we had, one Gatorfoam. I've exposed for the face and then I've lost the city in the background. And then you've seen me Photoshop this in the Photoshop challenge, so you know when I open it from raw what it really looks like. And you know that it was caught in camera like this. Then just finding something so basic, hard light to the face and a stairwell, but I could still recline her back that way and crop nice and close. And we were just walking up the stairs, and I went sit there for a minute. The hard light hit the top of her head. I took that photograph there, and then I came around the side. You see it in the video, so easy to capture. Looking for little spaces. Yes, you can do this anywhere. Anywhere, any situation, and this challenges is about proving that. The Photoshop contouring. One of the cool things about Photoshop is I will do a face in under two minutes. I do a face, dodge the eyes, and then I contour the body. I want to do this in two minutes 'cause I want to show the images to my clients, 25 to 30 images to my clients. I need to be able to prepare it within 16 minutes, because I then want them to purchase it. I do not want to show it un-Photoshopped. This is something I'm very passionate about. I followed the same clone map, and that's up there, so you can see I go from the central, highlight out on the forehead, I go for the lightest spot on the cheek up into underneath the bags. I go from the highlight on the chin out and hit the puppet lines. And then I do the necklines, I contour the body. I dodge the bottom half of the eyes and around the iris and then I'm out and clear. I repeat it over and over again in that two minute challenge. Really important that you learn how to get fast at Photoshopping. Do I contour my clients with the Warp tool? Yes, I do. Do I use liquefy? No, I don't. Hotly debated subject on Facebook, couldn't care less. Never use liquefy, takes too long, pushing it in one by one, when I can move an entire body in one go. Do what feels right for you. Try the Warp tool before. You make that decision. I think it's 10 times faster than liquefy, personal choice. Would I take in this? Yes, and that, yes, in order to sell that portrait, yes. Because a woman will look at this image, and instead of looking at how beautiful she is, she will go, "I've got muffin top, "and look at that fat roll, "and my arm looks fat." Won't we, 'cause we photograph women and we know that's what women do, and it's just crazy, but if you take away what they don't like, then they only look at what I do. The first thing she sees is I look great, no muffin top, my arm looks really good, look how beautiful I look, I love my hair. And then they love the photograph. Is that worth two minutes to sell a portrait? Yes. And I needed to teach you how to be faster at that. I took my teen and then I edited her beautiful mother. You know that this is my biggest-marketed-to genre of all of my genres. The mother and daughter is the biggest-marketed-to genre. You need to get more mother and daughters in your studio. Here's the strange thing, all the daughters want to be photographed. All the daughters want to bring in their mothers. All the mothers will pay for it, but their daughters are the ones that bring in the mom. You photograph them separately, and you photograph them together to make it very clear in your advertising that all your shots are not together, that they are gonna have individual shots, because she's gonna want to bring mom, but at the end of the day she wants hot shots of herself. Then I teach you about the mother and daughter special to tack on $900 to the package. Then I teach you about flowing: I shoot her, I shoot her, I shoot them. I change the background, I shoot her, I shoot her, I shoot them, and then I change the background, I shoot her, I shoot her, and I shoot them. Because when you get that flow, you're shooting fast and you're creating series, and when you create series you sell images. Everything is about how do I market to this genre, how do I sell to this genre, how do I shoot this genre, how do I network with this genre. That's what every single one of the challenges comes down to, shooting it better, shooting it faster, Photoshopping it faster, marketing it better, and making money. This one, marketing and shooting the 50 and fabulous demographic. This demographic, best demographic in the world. How many times have I been on CreativeLive in the last year? Six times I've stood either for an hour in a presentation or at a full day or at a workshop. And six times, I have said, "If you don't want "to shoot this market, give them to me." 'Cause this market is my market. This market spends money. The most of all of them. And this one has a daughter, yes, she's the mother of the bride. She's a new grandma. She's a wife. She's a single woman, I don't care. She's 50 and she's fabulous. She has more income than anybody else, any other demographic in the world. She's collectively controlling the world's wealth. This woman is magnificent, 'cause nobody in the world markets to this woman. Name a single marketing campaign to 50-plus woman, that is not a retirement village. I was driving up behind a bus and I saw this big billboard on the back of a bus, and it had this hot-60-year-old woman, could have been Valerie, getting out of a pool at a resort. And I was like, "Oh, my gosh, look at that. "She's gorgeous and she's clearly 60, "but she's hot." Then I got up close and it said Green Acres. And I was like, "Oh, my God, "that's either a funeral home "or a retirement village." And then I realized it was a retirement, well, lifestyle village. Retirement village. Lifestyle village, which is a retirement village. The truth is is show me some marketing that has this woman, that's not breast cancer. Show me some marketing. Have we forgot this woman? I'm so sorry ladies. After 50, you no longer exist in society. We'll stop looking at you anyway, once you go through menopause. It stands to reason we don't really want to service you in any way, shape, or form, even though you're the richest people on the planet. This demographic of women has more money collectively, than the millionaires of the world. Did you know that, in the western culture? She dominates and she is the most neglected demographic. Valerie, you're 66. Where do you see marketing of your age group? Is there any that you see that's marketed to you? I know Estee Lauder doesn't. Victoria's Secret certainly doesn't. In fact, how old's your daughter? Chico's maybe does. Who? Chico's, but I don't What's Chico's? It's a clothing store for women over 50, 60. It is, Chico's? Send me a link, I'll put them on my blog. They market to age or size? Size, age? I don't wear those clothes. They're too old for me (laughs). Bingo! Because I don't think you need to dress like a 66-years-old woman. What is that anyway? I'm not sure, because I try not to. All right. Why is it that curvy girls or anybody over a size can't wear mainstream clothes? It's like shouldn't they just make normal clothes but bigger? No, there's something attached there, isn't it. There's a message there. Uh-uh, after this weight, you have to wear this. After this age, we're generally gonna forget about you. How is that possible that as portrait photographers, you're all photographing the 26 year old, when she's got all the money? And she will spend it. She is a goddess and she feels beautiful for the first time in her life. She is leaving behind every stupid, dumb, immature thought that she ever had about herself, her body, her sensuality, her confidence, her maturity, her ability to nurture as a wife, and a woman, and a mother, and a lover, and a business woman. She's smart, she's capable. My mother operates, 65 years old, genius level at Sudoku. Genius. I've never seen anything. It's like Rain Man, sort of Sudoku, going on here. I challenged my mother to Scrabble, took me years to beat her. I'm not going to challenge her to Sudoku. I'm not stupid. 65 years old, she's just like, leaving dead skin. Shooting the backlight, this was one of my favorite challenges. Why, it's one of my most popular shots. Why, people ask for it. Here's the challenge here. When I expose, that's what came out a camera, so you saw it as I was shooting. The camera gets confused. It's a digital camera and it's a good camera. It's in fact, one of the best in the world. The problem is it's getting confused because there's a lot of white light here, and it tells me that I'm gonna have to cut down my exposure 'cause there's so much white light, 'cause I'm metering to the face. And then what happens as I push it up, my shutter speed, and so all of the sudden it starts to come up, but it's not until I'm shooting it one to two stops over in my internal meter in my camera that it starts exposing correctly for the face, and then it starts to blur out the background. What I taught you was to hit that average there, which doesn't look that good in camera. This one looks good in camera but does not look good on the roll window on Photoshop or Lightroom. And then adjust with your recover. Then I teach you how to do it in Photoshop. This one here is about showing you, in the backlight, how to correct something so simple, like this 15-minute-Photoshop job. Turn her around, and did you like the Lassoing gradient? I have never showed that to anybody before, and I can't believe I haven't done it. For those of you who haven't got the challenge yet, I actually show one thing. I go to my Brush tool, I select this area here. I hit the switch on the swatch on the bottom-left, I go to my Brush tool, I hit that there. So, my swatches show this color and this color. I draw a Lasso area around here with my Lasso, and then I create a new layer with that little Lasso circle. Then I hit the Gradient tool, G for Gradient, and I swipe it and it puts a gradient straight across here, and the background disappears. It takes about what, 10 seconds? I do that all the time, and it was something I've done for so many years. I've never shared that. I'm glad that you can use that 'cause that's a great little tip. I love the backlight. This girl here, this is the daughter to 50 and fabulous. She's more receptive to marketing, because the world markets to her. She's between the age of 18 and 30, without children. If you have children, you're not in this demographic anymore. You're in family first. This girl here usually still lives at home. This girl here is quite happy for mom to pay for everything. But this girl here is gonna bring me more business than any other demographic, and spend the least amount of money. This is a demographic you all go after, 'cause she's young, she's hot, and she's got a cute body. She photographs easily, and she's not the big payer in your studio, but she brings the payer. She also brings the payer in the form of the boyfriend. I chose with this demographic, this gorgeous, young woman. I could've got her mom in. I could've got her three best girlfriends, or I could've got her boyfriend. We all know when the boys come in that the girls spend more money. When the girlfriends come in, that's three times the sale. And when mom comes, that's double the sale. I could've hit her in any way, and I chose to do it with the young couple, because I wanted to take a couple shoot, like Tiff and Mark, and just make them more Calvin Klein. And that's exactly what I did. They look hot. I did the lying-down-Calvin-Klein shot, which I posted on Facebook, in my blog, the other day. Super sexy, enlarge that in your studio, and there isn't a girl that comes into your studio that says I want a shot like that with my boyfriend. Because that is hot and they look gorgeous, they look Calvin Klein. You can see the connection. And this age group of male demographic will pay for her photographs. I don't care who pays, as long as they're happy and someone is paying me, and I've done my job well. Then I go back to this girl, and I market girls' day out with their girlfriends, or bring mom in, and I give her an extra voucher and reward her for that. The beauty shot. This was pretty simple for me. If you create a beauty image like this, that is a guaranteed folio buy. And then you can extend the background and make a gift voucher. The beauty shot is your quintessential marketing tool for marketing a glamour genre, or even a portrait genre. But this was about getting the recline, getting a beautiful body, taking some space here, and then making that voucher out of it. The beauty shot is the one that all girls come to me for. It's about creating a piece of artwork, and I show you all of my editing in AlienSkin, 'cause I can't stop using it. I'm a bit crazy about it. Marketing and shooting the independent women demographic, that's me. This demographic is exactly like the 18 to but with more money. No children 'cause she's not a family first. This is my demographic. We are the highest earning of the demographics, and we're the highest debt of the demographics. We are all about We are all about our inner circle. When you market to me, when you market to Susan, when you market to Kenna, you get Ariella and Kathy. That's what you do because Kenna comes with these three. Susan comes with these three. They make big ticket purchases, decisions, together. They're independent women. They're high earning income, balanced lifestyle, really easy to market to as the girls' day out, that's why you need to shoot them. The shot that I do together is gratuitous. This is not about selling a group shot. I make them bring in a black dress to shoot them at the end, so I could get their little film strip, a contact sheet or a freebie, to give them as a gift for when they purchase their own folio. This demographic won't come in and spend $300 on a portrait of her and her girlfriends. She just wants to experience it with her girlfriends. Then they buy their own folio, and you reward them for buying that folio by giving them all the voucher, and then giving them the free shot, at the end, the one shot, which you did as a series, beautiful. Sales and production, more. Phone Scripting, pricing and products, sales and production. This is where you all said, "More, I want more." You were like sponges when I talk about this. You entice your client by communicating what you do, that educates them as to what you're selling, both in service and product. You ask questions. You provide the service that they are asking for. I want to be shot like this, like this, and like this, and I want something for the wall. You provide that, and then at the sale, they have already been enticed, they've been communicated with, you know what they want, they have been serviced, and you're providing with the exact product that they asked for. And then you get out of the way, you close the sale, and you deliver the product. That system is in the workbook. We're gonna work through these systems together until you nail this in your systems and product, in your after service. This here gets you clients. This here gets you clients. This gets you clients, 'cause you can entice, communicate, and educate, that gets you sales, and that gets you referrals. And we're gonna work through that. Then you follow up your current database and reward them over and over again. Posing men was the last challenge. Again, don't want to shoot men, don't want to advertise it, but a lot of you do. And a lot of you wanted to know how and why they are different. They don't need a reflector. Their arms are always wide. They can cross the body comfortably. And men can cross the body with their arms folded. Women have to be holding their body. Women don't fold their arms unless it's corporate. They have less changes, a faster shoot, no makeover, but they also don't spend the full folio. This was just about teaching you how when I get men in for the studio, men into the studio, how I photograph them individually. If you want to open up a male genre folio in your studio, by all means do that. It's not what I would do, but I've always shot men, because I'm always trying to get the men to come in with their partners. Correct? What it came down to was you said more product and more price, and I did the Q&A last Monday about the folio, because suddenly I realized that you were all selling by packages, and you're all selling by low packages. Who here sells by package? Everybody's a la carte. But everyone knows the average sale, 'cause everybody tells me that, and then I ask what their average sale, and they go, "Two to 600." So, 400? Everyone's selling a la carte, but what people want to know is how much it's gonna cost them. You've gotta learn a new language to sell by package, even if you're using a la carte. I sell by a la carte, my images start at $275, my folios start at $1,200. The best package I have is $3, and that includes. What I'm doing is telling them my a la carte menu, but then I'm showing them my package price list. I really, really needed to discuss with you how to make that package look better, how to make it more valuable, how to sell it better. And I came up with that. Last Monday, if you didn't see it, it's on the re-watch. And it's definitely It's up on the CreativeLive course page. I talk about maximizing this folio, selling this folio as a shoot, creating it and selling it, and then making it look really valuable, and then how I present it on my cards, I just put on my blog, and just how to make it a strong, gorgeous folio. And then you're shooting, selling, marketing, and creating one sale. I said that this value had a minimum value of $1,200. If you are earning less than $1,200 for a photo shoot, and you want to up your average, this is a perfect video for you to watch in order for you to put together one packaged sale, that's going to get you 1,200. If you're beyond that, that's fine. If you're working up towards that, this is where you want to be. You want to be creating a folio that then tells people what you do, and then you can put it in an advertising PDF and make that happen. This is about selling with images, not selling with words. This is about taking photographs and selling a folio, and then showing the before and after that communicates, and then showing beautiful photographs. And then saying commissions start at $1,200, which opens up more bookings and inquiries, and then I wrote the big one down here, which payment plan is available. That caused a flurry of question on Facebook, on the In Bed With Sue page. Flurry of questions, payment plans. Yes, payment plans, because I would rather 20 clients pay me $1, over twelve months, $100 a month. So, I'm getting $1,200 a month. Sorry, $2,400 a month from 20. I would rather have a consistent payment income than not get a shoot, because they didn't think they could afford it. Do I want to make that my most advertised thing? No, but maybe you could include it in the consultation, if you don't want to put it on your PDF. Let's talk about a couple of really amazing things that came up out of these challenges now. One of them was whilst I was talking about this folio, this one here, I realized that when I sell a folio, I'm selling the folio, I'm selling the experience. I'm not selling what the book is. I don't care if you go, "It's a 12 X 12 leather bound book, "with a white border and black background, case, "and you can choose." That's not what I am selling. If you're a consumer, and you get pitched on this, what are you thinking right now? You want to do a folio with me, and you're seeing this shoot here, what are you thinking? Can I look like that? Who thought that? Put your hand up. Can I look like her? I wish I looked like her. Would I wear a black dress? What would I wear? Wow, that's a cool folio. I would love Sue Bryce to take 20 photos of me like that. What else, tell me? Anybody got a microphone? Be quick, pass it over, just tell me and the short impact. I want that. I want that. Valerie. I had a question about it. When you presented this and you had the 41 shots, black and white on the DVD, is that along in the same price list with your folio box? No, that was just for you guys. I just did this for you guys. This is not what I do. No, but if someone were to offer this to me and then you still offer the folio box or just this. No. I was confused about This was not about me. I'm at the next level. another option. No, a person. I'm already at the $3,000 folio box. I don't need to go back to burning on a disk. This was for you guys to get you up to 1,200. Instead of doing folio box, okay. This was not to put me as a cheaper product than my $4,000 product or my $3,000 product. This was to get you guys up, over, the $1,000 mark. Honestly, my first thought as a guy is how valuable would a folio of my wife be like that. Anybody else? Here's the cool thing. What was yours? I was just gonna say, so this is basically a shoot-and-burn situation? I just want to know how you felt as a consumer, when you saw this. Do I get a disk of images is what I'm asking as a consumer? Yes. Then, yes, I want that. It's a folio. Have a look, folio, before and after, images, commissions start at $1,200, makeover and photo shoot. What's the first thing you're gonna do when you read that? Is ask that question, what am I gonna get for that? You're gonna get the makeover folio shoot and 40 images on a stick, in this beautiful 10, but you have to call me to get that answer. What I did was enticed you. Any other initial reactions that nobody else has said that you think. You open that up, folio, before and after, beautiful image, gorgeous image, gorgeous contact sheet. One outfit. Well, she was in one outfit. One outfit. Amazing, right? Here's the cool thing. There's no words on this, doesn't need words. Doesn't, right? Because you get it. And you can put as many words on there as you want, but I do not need to give more than what is already on there. It's obvious to me that that is a folio package. How much do I get for that? That's when I get them to call me. After they get this, then they call me, and then I ask the questions. Who am I speaking with? What's your name? Anybody have a microphone? Who am I speaking with? Kristen. What can I do for you today, Kristen? I'm calling because I got your PDF and I'm interested in what that includes. Which PDF did you get? The folio one. I love the folio package, so basically you get to come into the studio, you can bring in three or four outfits, you have a beautiful hair and makeup done, and you can experience the entire folio shoot, and at the end I give you a thumb drive stick. So, I have this beautiful and I save these gorgeous images onto it, these 40 images of my choice. I just went straight back and said, "Sue Bryce folio then." Then you get 40 beautiful images, and they are high resolution, and that's $1,200. So, no prints or anything like that? No, the folio package is all digital, and it's about giving you everything as opposed to making you choose the 10 top ones and printing them out for you. You can go and print them, you can put them online, you can use them in a folio box, and I can even recommend where you can get them professionally printed in my local area. Sounds great. If I can't get you away from printing your work, if you are so set in your way of having a digital product, then have a professional digital product. Have a digital product that's over $1,000, that's presented in a beautiful 10, that is exactly what you want it to be, that is exactly at the price point that you earn money from this, so that you can make it better for yourself. I'm not telling to shoot and burn. I'm trying to stop this one thing from happening. I asked you what your average sale was, and I got 623 price lists, and when I collated all of it together, your average sale was $573. $573, people, was what average of you making. And there was some big averages that brought you up, trust me. And that is not enough for what you are doing. I need to pull you up into a more professional bracket, so if I can't make you stop shoot and burn, then I've gotta do it in a way that is this quality and that is a minimum of $1,200, and that is has the value of that. You can watch that shoot tomorrow. It's a 29 day 29 Days with Sue Bryce, bonus video. And you can see how quickly I shot this. Her Photoshop is less than a minute per face. My question is what if you want to offer this with DVD, and you have product that you really want to sell as well. If you offer this, our customer is gonna go right to the DVD product and not to your other. Do not do both. It's like saying I have two packages, one is 600 and one is $2,000. What do you think everyone is gonna buy? The $600 one. If you want to eliminate the DVD, go straight to product. Don't charge $1,200, charge 200 for the shoot and then sell product afterwards, but this is about stopping the people who aren't doing that. Yeah. What I was gonna say is I get a lot of questions. Get up now. I'm so sorry. I get a lot of questions, people saying can I get the DVD all the time. Everything you buy, I give you on DVD as well. I now sell on digital stick so I don't sell on DVD 'cause they don't last. What if they just want the DVD like that? Well, you get both. Everything you buy, I give you on DVD as well. Got it. I know and they get it when they call me. But what if I just want the disk? Everything you buy, I give you both DVD and prints. And everything you buy in your album, you get on DVD as well. But what about can I just have the DVD? But you get both, you get the album and the DVD. Why wouldn't you take the album? And then they go, "I get it." As soon as they answer, eliminates that question. It eliminates it immediately. You are selling the folio and you're selling the experience. You're not selling $1,200, and herein lies your problem, because if you have a fear or a block around money, your biggest problem is that you're gonna try and sell money to me, instead of what you're giving for that price. Let's start confronting money blocks, because this is priceless. AlienSkin downloads. AlienSkin is how I edited that whole shoot, so when you see it and when you watch the re-watch of last Monday, I'm editing in AlienSkin, that's what gives me these black and whites, that's what gives me that film look, the contact sheet. I love it. I bought it last year. Laura Jade showed it to me; I bought it. We were on a workshop together in Brisbane, and I was watching her edit. We were editing late at night, and she was like, "Have you ever seen AlienSkin?" I had never heard of it. I got online and purchased it that night. Exposure four, I used just about every single thing on there. I wouldn't live without it now, don't know how I lived without for so long, taken my work to the next level.