Intro: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Posers podcast, the place where we skip the fluff. Say the quiet parts out loud and dig into what really matters. This is where photography, psychology, and business collide. I'm Jody, your host, and I'm bringing you my raw takes, hard wins, and a whole lot of unfiltered honesty about what it takes to build a photography business that actually connects and makes money.
So ladies, grab your headphones and get your tits up and your ears open because we are going to build something really incredible together.
Hello, my beautiful posters. I have a huge announcement for you today. We are doing something fun and new and honestly, I don't think that this exists in our industry right now. Correct me if I'm wrong. If anybody has seen it anywhere, please let me know. But I've never seen it before, so I don't, I don't think that there's anybody out there doing this.
And honestly, maybe that's what makes it a little bit scary [00:01:00] for me. You guys, we are going after dark. , after this episode drops today, Tuesday, May 6th. We are all going to jump on a live after hours call tomorrow night, May 7th at 7:00 PM my time, 10:00 PM Eastern so that we can have a happy hour kind of vibe.
We are going to talk a little bit more unfiltered. Probably a lot more unhinged and really dissect this episode that I am about to record for you right now. And maybe even any past episodes too, so the floor will be open for your questions to go deeper into building our little cults and our businesses.
It is completely free. You can sign up with the link that's gonna be in the show notes, or I'll be posting about it [00:02:00] on my stories. But I've been having nightmares you guys , honestly, I. I came up with this thought like a few days ago and I pitched it to my team and I was like, guys, this feels so on brand for me.
This is exactly what I wanna be doing. Like if I'm going to be hosting some kind of live space, this is exactly how I wanna do it. And so in these last few days, I've been having these nightmares and I. Swear to God, if my dad is the only person who's like getting a little bit toasty with me on the internet tomorrow night, I am going to be so hella embarrassed.
So please get your kids to bed early. Slide your bra off, get your sweatpants on, pour yourself a cocktail, and meet me on Zoom so that we can really put our money where our mouth is and actually build something incredible with an amazing community. Of basically like, like-minded, bad bitches. Okay. I just, I [00:03:00] wanna put our money where our mouth is.
If we're gonna say that we're gonna build this together, then I actually want to do it together. Okay, let's dive in. Let's get into today's episode. So I'm going back two episodes. The episode that was about the Burnt Toast Theory. If you haven't listened to that. Go back and listen to it. You don't have to.
This episode isn't going to be like hinging upon that episode, but I referenced it a couple of times. So if you've already listened to that, then you know that I already peeled back some pretty personal layers on that episode. That episode really was kind of like. This love letter to every woman who's ever delayed her dreams or been beating herself up trying to achieve her dreams when the timing wasn't right.
Whether or not you've delayed that dream because of you having little kids or because you were in. A bad [00:04:00] marriage that you were struggling through like I was or that you've ever done something out of survival that was literally like my love letter to you saying, please, please, please go easy on yourself.
It was about the decade that I lost myself while I was raising three boys and running a business and. Trying to hold my marriage together. It was pretty honest and it was a little bit raw it, to be honest. It took me a couple of times of recording it 'cause I had to get through a breaking voice and a cry ball in my throat a couple of times.
Because it really was the first time that I admitted out loud, publicly and maybe even to myself a little bit, how much I really did give up trying to keep everything else from. I guess burning down. Right. But in this episode, I wanna talk about, as cheesy as it sounds, I wanna talk about like the Phoenix rising, right?
Because while the [00:05:00] last episode was about everything that held me back, this one is about. What really launched me forward once it was time for me to sort of shed all of that and the world opened and I knew that it was time for me to build and time for me to grow. So in order to do that, I needed to take a quick dip back into literally the scariest time in my life.
And I don't talk about this much, especially not publicly. My palms are sweating and my voice is already getting a little bit shaky. Just like thinking about talking about it out loud right now. But at the same time, I also know that I am ready to talk about it. I'm gonna take you back to the exact day that my world collapsed, and the same moment that I discovered that.
The foundation that I thought that I had, that I thought my life was built on was [00:06:00] literally quicksand. And if I didn't figure my life out, I was about to sink. Okay. So it was September of 2017 and that morning, oh, you guys, I've gotta like calm my throat, I've gotta calm my nerves. Like I've got butterflies that are flapping in my stomach.
Okay. So that morning I dropped my boys off at school and I took my dog to the dog park, just as I always did every other day. Before that, I had kind of felt like Groundhog Day, but this day was incredibly different because as I was pacing the dog park, I felt the weight of literally like my entire life crashing down.
Okay. Because. The night before that I had learned some things about my husband that would forever change the course of my life. And no, I am not going to give you the gas or the deets or the T about the details of the divorce because I will [00:07:00] forever protect my children from having anything being made public about that.
But you can use your imagination about the state of my marriage. So. I'm at the dog park and of course I call my mom, right? And I'm sobbing on the phone with her and probably, probably the most broken that I've ever been. I was calling her for comfort, of course. Just, I think just wanting to hear your mom say like.
You've got this, you're going to be okay. But I can laugh about it now. But her default reaction was not that, her default reaction was, I mean, it shouldn't have surprised me because my mom is a fiery person and her default to my situation was anger. She was livid. With my then husband. She was angry.
She wanted a courtroom. She wanted [00:08:00] revenge. She wanted, I'm teasing a little bit, but she wanted blood, you guys. But I didn't, I wasn't there and I couldn't be there because obviously I still loved him. I, he was my husband. I still wanted to protect him. I didn't want, my mom wanted me to literally just like take him for every dime that he was worth, but I.
I didn't want to like desecrate his business and I didn't want to like shake him down for what was rightfully my half. But if I'm being completely honest, I was still thinking that if I was. You know kind enough. If I was forgiving enough, if I was good enough as we went through this divorce, then he would really regret what he had done.
Then he would see what he gave up. I didn't necessarily want him back because I knew that I [00:09:00] could never forgive what had happened, but I wanted him to regret it all. I wanted him to want me. Like I wanted his skin to feel like it was burning from the inside, just like mine was in that exact moment, right?
In the very least, I knew that this divorce was happening and I knew that I would be forever tied to him as the mother of his children. So. Through all of the sobbing and through all of the tears I told my mom the, the only truth that I knew for certain in that moment was that I didn't want his money and I didn't want anything else from him.
I mean, aside from child support, obviously, and there was a few years of alimony. Of course, I, I clearly like to be very transparent. So I, but I didn't want his money in the sense that I didn't want to take him for his business. He had partners. I didn't want [00:10:00] to punish his partners because of actions that were happening inside of my marriage.
I didn't wanna take him for all that he was worth, if that makes sense. Right. I just didn't want anything else from him. I wanted to build my own life with my own two hands. I didn't want you guys. I, this is, this was my share moment, right? Like, I didn't wanna marry the rich man. I wanted to be the rich man.
And to be fair, like my husband made really great money. I could have taken him for far more than what happened in the divorce and it would've set me up pretty nicely. And I think because of that, my mom got mad at me. She thought that I was being incredibly naive about what it was going to take to raise three boys almost completely on my own because I had the majority of the custody.
And she wanted me to take my husband for everything that she was worth, really, because she didn't trust that I could do it on my own. [00:11:00] And we didn't talk for a really long time after that because the truth is, and it's maybe a truth that nobody really likes to admit, is that you can't expect people to trust you to do something that they've never trusted themselves to do.
So I couldn't. Like, expect my mom to trust me to do something that she had never done herself. Right? So my mom had four babies by the time she was 22. I think we talked about this in a previous episode that I was so feral as a child, but. My mom had four babies by the time she was 22, having her first one at like 16 or 17, and then me her fourth by the time I was 22.
So four teeny tiny babies by the time she was 22. I have three babies and I'm 43 years old, and I still feel like I'm drowning some days. I had. [00:12:00] Three baby boys under the age of like four and a half, and how old was I? 31 or something. And I was miserable, right? So she had four babies by the time she was 22.
The strength that it took for her to survive really shaped her, but it really shaped her in this way that it like. Armored her in, like kind of like fear and scarcity. This like she has this strength about her where she will like clutch everyone really tight around her and just like hold everything really close with this underlying feeling of fear that everything could sort of like break and fall apart in any kind of minute, right?
I knew that I wanted to be really strong like her, but not in the same way. I wanted my strength to come from a place of trust in myself, not like this heartened shell, just because I [00:13:00] was being forced to survive through something really hard. So. That year I made $41,000 in my photography business for the whole entire year, and that is not quite the empire that I could hang my hat on, but it was my starting point.
Everything that I had managed to build during the burnt toast years was going to have to be enough because it was really all that I had and deep down I knew, like I knew. That number was temporary. I knew that the second that the straight jacket of my marriage could be like. I don't know, taken off of me, I was finally going to free myself and I could chase this fire that I had been sitting on for years, and that's what today's episode is about.
Today. I wanna tell you exactly what the first five years out of [00:14:00] that straight jacket looked like. Okay. Because during those years it really felt like I was sitting on a ton of potential. And potential is great. Potential is like something that you obviously want to have, but purpose is what turns. Like your little photography business or you know, you're a mom with a hobby sort of business.
That purpose is what takes it. To be a multiple six figure business and hopefully what we're working on someday, a photography empire. Right. I, when I talk about the scrappy decisions, the mindset shifts and the exact strategy that took me from being this mom with a hobby or my little photography business to a fully booked business and a beautiful life for me and my boys, and the financial freedom that I get to [00:15:00] kind of live my life on my own terms.
Okay, so like I said. My tax return for the year of 2017 said $41,000 is what I had made, and I knew that I had to bring in at least $120,000 just to live comfortably. So that means my business had to gross around $180,000. And it, at this time, like the divorce was. Torturous. And honestly, it kind of still is that respectful relationship that I thought I was protecting in the beginning with my husband at the time.
That has never happened. But anyways, back then, in 2017, 2018 the divorce was really torturous and I was trying to move. My life and my business forward. So everything with the divorce got finalized in January in 2018, and by May of 2018, I had sold our big house, sold all of the furniture inside of it.
I had bought [00:16:00] a tiny, like 1600 square foot fixer upper home for me and the boys, and if you don't know this about me, I actually love to gut and remodel houses. I had made some money on the sale of the big house, so it was really enough to like get us set up for this next chapter. So I threw a ton of money into that.
I, I threw a ton of me into gutting and remodeling that house because it really was. Therapy for me to like not only be rebuilding in this like figurative sense, but to be rebuilding this home and creating this space for me and my boys, it was therapy. And so I dove in head first and I remember those days.
I remember that there was like construction flying around. We lived in the house through the construction, which is a little crazy, but. If you know anything about me by now, you know that I'm a little, tiny bit crazy. [00:17:00] Okay? So construction's flying. Like all around. We were sleeping on mattresses that were on the floor, and literally in the corner of my living room, the only piece of furniture in the whole entire house with like plastic draping everywhere, floors ripped out concrete floors underneath me there was just this little tiny desk and it had my computer.
That was it. That was my empire. And I got to freaking work as if my life depended on it because it really did depend on it. And whenever I say I got to work, I did not, I. Invest in ads. I did not create a Facebook group. I did not do discounts. I did not run promotions. I didn't do anything like that.
I knew that I wanted to build a business that had deeper roots than that. I wanted to build on word of mouth because. Here's the thing. A lot of business owners think that [00:18:00] marketing means more eyeballs, more followers bigger reach, like casting a wider net. But whenever you do that, that's what makes you compete only on pricing, right?
Because you're competing for the same clients in the same market. For basically whenever you're comparing yourself with other photographers for the same product too, right? So I knew that that wasn't how my business would grow with really deep roots. So instead of trying to cast a wider net and get new clients, I really decided to dive in and nourish the clients that I already had.
And I took every single opportunity that I had on my books. To nurture the client relationship and to plant the seeds of authority and to persuade people to see my value. So. Every single client, every single shoot, every single. I was a wedding photographer back then, so every single wedding, every mom, every bridesmaid, every groomsman, every couple, every grandma, every friend.[00:19:00]
They all literally became part of my strategy. And what I would do is I would use every opportunity to make sure that my clients were never able to doubt that I was not just a photographer who could take pretty photos, but that I was like. This magician at making them feel comfortable. And by doing this, they felt relaxed.
They felt cared about, they didn't feel like they were in the middle of a business deal. So I feel like that's a lot of word salad, right? That's a lot of just like, oh, okay, but how So let me give you an example. If I was shooting a wedding, I would obviously do my job of photographing the wedding. I would go above and beyond to make sure that the bride and the groom were taken care of and that they had incredible photos, of course.
But like I said, I drilled deeper. I would, before the wedding would happen, I would study social media ahead of time to know which bridesmaids. Were engaged and who they were engaged to, [00:20:00] and even which bridesmaids maybe had a groomsman who was a boyfriend or who was a fiance. And then any moment, any time that I had a spare minute in the wedding day, I never sat down.
I never had a snack. I never took a break. I would find those people who I had studied ahead of time and I would pull them aside and I would give them a really quick, like three minutes in front of my camera. I would find other couples during cocktail hour and I would do the same thing. I would make sure that I was spending time snapping photos of the parents, of the couple, everyone who could be a potential client.
They got time with me. Now I had a formula for posing people that got them to relax within seconds in front of my camera. So I knew that my reach on a wedding day could go so deep. I could work a wedding and come out with a dozen new family portrait [00:21:00] clients and two new wedding bookings, and my system was.
Flawless and it delivered. It delivered photos that weren't just pretty, they were powerful because people looked good and they felt amazing. And whenever they look back on those photos, they remembered exactly how they felt. And so that's really when the shift happened for me. That's when I realized that my system for posing people.
And being able to get them to relax in front of my camera wasn't just an authority piece inside my business like I thought it was. I thought that I was just running it as like, look, I'm gonna do this and people are gonna like know that I'm really good at what I do, so then they're gonna book me. Right?
And that of course is one element, that's one layer. But what I realized is it wasn't just saying, oh, she knows what she's doing. It was actually turning. Into a marketing piece inside of my business [00:22:00] because of how it made people feel. I was turning my clientele into a marketing strategy. So while other photographers in my city were marketing with say, like.
You know, other vendors are tagging your photos or you are making sample albums for venues. I'm not saying that those aren't good marketing strategies. They really are. I was doing those too, but I was building a brand that walked and talked for me on top of that because. When your clients feel confident and connected and comfortable in front of your camera, they don't just book again, and they don't just leave a review.
They turn into a megaphone for your business, and your brand is no longer like a grid on Instagram or a website. It's an actual movement. And this [00:23:00] transcends saturated markets. This overshadows posting reels.
This really breaks through the sea of photographers that are all positioning themselves for the same gigs, at the same venues with the same pool of clients in your city. So after I started honing my method and really getting like laser focused on how comfortable I wanted my clients to feel in front of my camera, I started to get.
These crazy reviews that were not like anybody else's reviews. And I would put these reviews inside of my, inside of my guides that I sent out to other clients inside of my pricing proposals I would use them whenever I was on booking meetings with new clients. I would put them everywhere I could, and they weren't just like a normal review of like.
Oh yeah, she is, you know, she's a great photographer. We loved our images. We became best friends. Like it was nothing like that. This is, here's a review that one of my clients said. It was one of my most [00:24:00] powerful reviews. Then it said this bride's name was Lauren. And she said, we found ourselves swept away into a place where only the two of us existed.
It was seriously like nothing I have ever experienced before. Matt was so blown away by how much fun he had too, right? So this was a wedding client that I had, and I'm able to then take this review and tell other people that not only am I a an authority, and not only are you seeing incredible images on my website.
And on my Instagram and wherever else you're coming into contact with me. But this is also what my clients are saying now with Lauren and Matt's wedding. I photographed their engagements and then I photographed their wedding and I photographed five other weddings that were a result of my work there.
And now I photograph so many of those families who were part of those wedding parties and even more of their [00:25:00] friends' families who have been seeing their photos on social media. Right. That's the power of going deeper rather than wider. And imagine back then I was doing this at about 15 to 20 weddings per year.
And now that I'm no longer shooting weddings, all of this foundational work that I did in those five years is still serving me. All of those clients are having babies and their friends who are in their wedding parties, they're having babies, and they still remember how great I was at their wedding or their friend's wedding.
And this method. That I've formulated for years. Now, this, the posing method has had profound effects on how my clients feel during their photo shoots, which has created a business entirely on word of mouth marketing. And even if I wasn't. Shooting weddings back then, and I didn't have this bigger, larger pool [00:26:00] of potential clients, sort of like at the ready.
I would've still been doing this with the family clients that I had, or if I was showing up at a friend's I. Baby shower, I would've been doing the same thing if I was going to one of my friend's kids' birthday parties. Those places are where my potential clients would have been. So even if I wasn't a wedding photographer, I know.
That I would've been working this angle in this way. I would've been at that baby shower, pulling all of the potential clients, all of the friends of the mom to be saying like, Hey, let me take some photos of you and your husband really quick. Hey, let me take some photos of you and your girlfriends really quick, saying like, Hey, let me, oh my God, your outfit is so cute.
Let me make sure that I have a really great photo for you to post with the mom. To be like, I know that I would've been working those angles if I didn't have weddings at my disposal. Because that is where [00:27:00] you find clients. So this method that I formulated for all of these years to where I could take people from the wedding and I could make them feel so comfortable within seconds, it has created a business based entirely on word of mouth marketing.
And when you. Space your business on how you're making your clients feel behind the camera. There's no other option than for it to take off like wildfire because word of mouth marketing is our Roman Empire as business owners, it is the dream business model that we wanna be creating and. I wanna get really clear on something for a second.
I have no doubt that you have really good reviews in your business. I have no doubt that your clients say things like, oh yeah, the shoot felt good, or, we love our photos, but honestly, good is not what I'm referring to whenever I say that. I focus on how I make my clients feel on a photo shoot. Good is not good enough to get you to multiple six figures.
[00:28:00] I focus on understanding human behavior. And brain chemistry so that my clients feel like I, I don't know. I knock their socks off. I blow their minds during the photo shoot, and I feel like sometimes people don't believe me whenever I say that I built my entire business by laser focusing on my posing method.
But what I'm talking about whenever I say that is that I actually control the chemical balance of dopamine and oxytocin inside of my client's brains while they're in front of my camera. I'm talking about my clients being on a high after they shoot with me, because dopamine is the same chemical that causes that drug like high in my client's brain, right?
And that's what I control during my photo shoots. So this not only blows my clients' minds, but it also allowed me to raise my prices from back then $450 a session in 2017 to [00:29:00] 1250 a session by 2021. And then whenever I wanted to make the switch to a product based business and stop shooting weddings in 2023, that's how I was able to ch make the shift to where I was making 4,000 to $6,000.
Every single session, because I'm talking about understanding human behavior so deeply, that I created a herd of people who wanted to book me all because of this one formula that I created. It's one formula that consists of three questions that I ask my clients before I ever start to pose them, because posing isn't the hard part.
We're all photographers. We all study poses. We all know what we want our clients to look like, right? We just don't know how to get them there. The hard part is directing them into those poses, removing the wall of nerves that they have in front of your camera, and really getting them [00:30:00] to move fluidly with one another so that all feels.
Really effortless and really comfortable. So that moment in 2017 was both. The scariest and the most freeing moment of my life, and I wanna be clear that it did not turn around overnight. I have always said that there is nothing in what I'm teaching. That is a quick win in my business. It did not turn around overnight, but every single day I was working toward one goal.
I wanted one thing in my life I wanted. For my boys to watch their mom build something from the ashes, not necessarily just for the money, but for the life that I wanted for us and for me to teach my boys what it looked like to have a really strong woman in their lives. And I [00:31:00] did this by focusing, for the most part, solely on how my posing method makes my clients feel.
And then five years later. That $41,000 business brought in $330,000 and now we're almost eight years since the divorce happened, and the empire that I promised my mom I would be building is happening. And that's what happens after you burn the toast, right after you scrape yourself off after the world opens up for you because.
It's finally your time. I know that had none of this ever happened, had the divorce never happened. Had I needed to stand on my own two feet, if none of those things. Would've ever happened. I know for a fact that I would not have built my business the way that I did because [00:32:00] the urgency wouldn't have been there, and I would've stayed in a place that kept me really comfortable.
And I also know that I would've never sat down in 2020 when the world collapsed. I would've never sat down at my dining room table and finally put. Pen to paper and formulated what I do inside of my business, the posing method. I would've still been using it obviously inside of my business, but it wouldn't have been something that I then thought, I need to share this.
I need to make sure that other photographers know this because. The one thing that I know about my business now is that when I don't know how to do something, I am not going to sit and spin my wheels and try to figure it out on my own. I'm going to hire somebody [00:33:00] who already knows how to do it, or I'm going to invest in something that can teach me how to do it quickly because.
Anything else is a waste of my time. And that's exactly why I sat down at my dining room table in 2020 whenever the world sort of shut down and I finally had the time to put pen to paper to formulate this thing because I knew that I wanted to be able to share it with you. So. Two shameless plugs as I sign off for today.
If you're curious about my posing method and you wanna learn more, or you wanna join the hundreds of photographers who are already like my cute little canaries who are singing its praises, then there's a link for you in the show notes to check it out. And also. In your newsletter and in the show notes, here is the link for you to get into posers after dark, completely free.
[00:34:00] And tomorrow night we are going to be hashing out everything that I just talked about in this podcast today, or anything from previous podcasts that you wanna talk about too. So with that, I will see you tomorrow night inside of Posers after Dark. So until then, five for now, friends.
Outro: Okay, so that is a wrap on this episode of the Posers Podcast. If you loved it, please subscribe, rate, and review because honestly, algorithms are needier than all of our ex-boyfriends combined. And ladies, I need all the help I can get. If you've got thoughts, questions, love letters, even hate mail, please send them my way.
I actually read every single one of them. So until next time, stapled, stay messy and don't let the bullshit win. Tits up. Ears open and go build something. Incredible. Bye for now, friends.
