How I Went From a Basic Photography Business to a High-End Photography Business for High-End Aligned Clients
How I Went From a Basic Photography Business to a High-End Photography Business for High-End Aligned Clients
- Success Coach and Sales Expert for Photographers and Creatives.
I'm here to bring you a little bit of a story. I want to share with you how I went from a $1,500 basic photography service to a $15,000+ high-end and non-mainstream experience for my aligned clients.
So first let me tell you a little story about the moment I changed, literally everything in my life and in my photography and creative business.
During that moment, when everything changed for me, I was working for other people to gain experience, which was great, but it was for this big wedding company, where I was making $800 per wedding and I was really grinding myself into the ground. When I first started out in photography, I had always up until that point worked for other people as a contractor. I would do a few side jobs, as a DBA doing it, you know, on my own. But the bulk of my work did come from being a contractor for other services.
So this one day, I decided to say, fuck it, I'm worth way more than this. And it really all started with this mindset, for me to be able to own and feel and revel in the confidence needed to totally believe I was able to do this all by myself.
These are the steps I took to go from that bland, generic photography service to creating over $15,000 high-end experiences for my aligned, amazing, fantastic adventurous, and unconventional clients.
When I was working for the other company making $800 for an entire wedding and having decided to say “F, this, I'm going to do this myself”, I began by first creating my own brand. This is what most people do, but at the time, I didn't really understand what branding was. I didn't fully understand what being a business was. I just knew that I needed to create a website and I needed to find my own clients.
01- I created my first brand and started booking my own weddings under my own brand.
And it was, I believe that first full season, where I had a wedding that raised the question, what am I doing with my life?
I know you've been there too, especially if you're newer to your photography or creative business.
You have this moment of ‘I know I love to create art and I know I love to do what I'm doing but who I'm doing it for and how I'm doing it is just not fitting. It is not aligned.’ That moment for me was really a make or break in my brain!
I was at a wedding when it happened. I dubbed it the wedding from hell, it was truly awful. It was a New York City wedding and although beautiful in itself, the clients and guests treated me like total poop.
There were more flowers than I could have ever imagined seeing in one single building. I couldn’t begin to count how many guests there were, it was something like 650. The whole affair was huge. It was a giant wedding. And I kind of lost it!
Why? Well because they treated me just so badly. My feet were bleeding and I didn’t eat the whole day. It was just the most awful 15-hour experience ( when I wasn’t supposed to be there that long ) of my life!
At that time, I was still very much a baby in this whole ‘how do I be a photography or creative business owner thing?’
I hadn’t set up any boundaries yet and I didn't know at that time what the quick sentence was for ‘time’s up folks! Do you want me to stay longer? It's going to cost you more!’
As I say, it was the wedding from hell. It went beyond terrible and yes, my feet literally were bleeding, so much so that my socks were stuck to my feet and I really felt like my body had been hit by an actual train. I was really, really discouraged and just could not stop asking myself why I was doing this for other people, for them to treat me like I'm not even a human.
I absolutely love connecting with people and I love to share my introverted and unique ways. Because I'm an introvert, I'm really good at observing and noticing most things during the moment when other people probably don’t, especially if they're dancing and talking, so I had all of these skills inside of me naturally and I wasn't using them.
I vividly remember sitting in bed in my apartment in Brooklyn and having this internal conversation with myself, where I was like, ‘Steph, do you want to keep doing this? Is this really what you want to do? Is this what you were meant to do?’
I figured that if I was going to quit and stop doing weddings, I would probably stop doing photography altogether because my actual degree is in film production.
I had so much previous experience working on photography sets in New York with New York Fashion Week and the like that I had to keep asking myself why I really wanted to be in this photography business game!
After this long internal conversation with myself, I decided, yes, I do want to do this, but shit needs to change!
And change it did! I decided to turn it around and go after what I was actually meant for!
02-I had come to the conclusion that I wasn’t meant for these large weddings where I was treated like trash. That’s just not who I am. I love small, intimate gatherings.
I'm a quirky introvert and I love connecting with the couple.
I'm also a highly tattooed person and always felt like at these big traditional conventional weddings, I would get all these weird stares from family.
Basically, I wasn't booking the right people for me and so I just knew I had to find my people. So I worked on some magical branding to pinpoint what I not only wanted to do but what I enjoyed doing! I enjoy small crowds and an intimate connection. I don't enjoy being in large crowds of people moving around. I don't feel safe there and it’s not me.
03- I transitioned straight away to micro weddings. Micro weddings with very few people and in really quirky fun spaces in Brooklyn. This became my new thing.
I found myself targeting couples who loved the idea of getting married at say breweries or bowling alleys, or the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, you know, like really fun, cool places. The absolute opposite of those really giant wedding venues and banquet halls in New York and New Jersey.
I was drawn to the quirky people, the nerdy people, and the fun people who are into craft beers and good coffee.
These were my people and the kind who would walk down the aisle after saying their vows to some metal song.
This is when I went from a basic photography business to a high-end photography business by figuring out my niche in micro weddings before they even had a name. And then from there, I went even smaller and I completely transitioned into elopements, before it was cool!! But to me, they were always cool and I've always loved them. So in New York, I transitioned into micro weddings and elopements, and I loved it!
This set me up for my move to Iceland.
04- From there on, I started to really understand what my superpowers were in my own photography
and creative business.
I realized that my superpowers were not suited for traditional weddings or those large weddings. Again, I'm an introvert with ADHD, so loud places and large crowds make me really uncomfortable. I was always overstimulated. It simply just was not me, so I began to wonder what my superpowers actually were!
What was I good at? And who was it for? I felt that being observant was an awesome asset and I just love feeling close and connected with my couple. I'm really good at being able to foster a relaxing safe space where they can be their whole selves, unjudged in any way.
It’s so very important for me to create comfort for people and it’s how I am with my coaching clients as well. This is just who I am naturally.
Once I’d found my niche, I could then get to work on figuring out who my high-end aligned clients were and where they were.
What type of event were they having?
What did they actually care about for their day?
What do they value?
I figured out all this stuff about their thoughts and their feelings and who they were. And I got really, really, really specific. And I just kept building my brand around that. I upgraded my brand experience a lot, which I've continued to do. And since initially doing this until now, my brand has become this huge, beefy thing. And I love it!
I really worked on this high-end brand experience for my clients. I do it with my group coaching program as well but you can only do that by really knowing what your superpowers are and who they’re suited for.
I diversified my marketing efforts and really worked hard on being seen in those places where my high-end aligned clients actually were, what they were looking at, what they were reading, and what they were watching.
I fell in love with my service and with my skills and I've really honed in on how to communicate all of that successfully to my leads.
This helped them to understand immediately how I was different, what I could and would do for them, what value I would bring to their day, and what they can expect from me. It's all about communication and clarity.
05- I worked incredibly hard on my mindset and my own bullshit when it came to making money by charging those high-end rates for my art and my high-end experience services.
My own mindset is the sales process!
I freaking love sales and human behavior and as a success coach and sales expert, I have learned what makes people tick and how to guide them in the sales process and make it easy for them. I really wanted to be a copilot with them throughout the sales process in an ethical manner. I paired this knowledge with reframing my own mindset, gunk, and false beliefs about it. This is something that to this day, I'm so obsessed with and I coach one hundred percent from a neuroscience-backed standpoint.
What I really want to bring home here is that if you're wanting to offer and sell a high-end priced photography or creative business service, that really brings value into your client’s lives in a holy shit, this was amazing kind of way, you must have your foundations figured out.
I see so many people trying to jump and skip in an attempt to totally avoid taking the time to build that solid foundation. They try to lean into tactics or trends, without fully understanding the fundamentals required to build a very strong business. Most will go on to try so-and-so's magical complex strategy without having the basics sorted, which means that these other strategies, these complex strategies simply won't actually work because the solid foundation isn’t there from the beginning.
So, what can you take from this?
I really want you to look at what you're doing and what doesn't feel right for you in your photography or creative business. That is the key.
If you can't see yourself doing whatever it is that you're doing now in another five years, then change it my friend! Find help if you can't figure it out, or if you want to figure it out faster, that is literally what coaches are for!
As a success coach, sales expert, and mentor, I help you figure that out, so you can get it done a lot faster and you don't have to spend as many years as I spent throwing shit at a wall and seeing what sticks when upgrading your basic photography business to a high-end photography or creative business you just love.
That wedding from hell truly was a blessing in disguise. I almost quit my business. And if I had made that decision to quit instead of reconstructing what I was doing, and choosing to attract the people like me and not the people like them in the first place, I would not be here right now. I would never be here in Iceland!
I also wouldn't understand the power of mindset mixed with strategy, which is now my coaching style with my own coaching clients.
