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, hello, hello. My beautiful posters. Welcome back to episode 19 of the POS podcast. I am enjoying a weekend with my family here, actually. It was a little bit of an unexpected visit actually. Here's what happened. So I know that I've been teasing on my social media that I have a. Really, really, really [00:01:00] big secret that I'm keeping.
And so for this weekend, I had actually planned that there was going to be this really big surprise party that was happening because of this secret that I have, that I am keeping, that I'm holding inside of my personal life right now. And so my parents had blocked off the weekend and them and my ab.
Absolute favorite nephew on the planet was, he's basically my first son. Um, I say that because he is a direct clone of me and my dad and my brother, and anytime that we're all together, we just have the most incredible time. So my parents and my nephew were planning on coming out to Las Vegas this weekend because I was having this.
Big surprise party that they don't even know what this secret is, and so they had it [00:02:00] blocked off, but then I had to change the date of the party. The date of the party is literally TBD. I have no idea when it's going to be happening, but because they had already blocked it off and because today actually happens to also be my youngest.
Son's 13th birthday, they decided to still come out for the weekend. So even though it was sort of my fault that they were gonna be here and then not gonna be here, and then gonna be here, and they're not gonna be here I hadn't planned for them to actually be here. So my schedule is a little bit up in the air getting all mixed.
Stop in regards to when I am recording this podcast and when I'm getting work done from yesterday and today and into the weekend. So it's a little bit crazy, but what I will also say is that whenever my family is here. I enjoy my time with them so much. They are so much of my tribe [00:03:00] who know me through and through who I can just sit at a table and laugh endlessly with that.
Um, when they come to town, I am so stoked and the whole rest of my world just seems to. Kind of disappear. It's almost like nothing else matters whenever they are here with me. Now, what I will also say is that my dad is quite possibly what, who I think is the funniest person on this planet. I get my sense of humor directly from him.
Anything that you hear. For me that is anything of a storyteller or a joke teller or sort of loud and crass and I don't know, having a bit of a, of a punch to it, a little bit of a shock value to it. Uh, I get that directly from my dad, so you can only imagine what kind of a [00:04:00] man he is. And I joked with him.
We were out on the golf course this morning watching my son's golf tournament and it was this big huge qualifier tournament that he has going on. So the fact that they were here to watch that is huge to begin with. But I had so much fun just bantering with my dad on the golf course, and I kept on saying to him, I should really have you.
On the podcast and every single time that I said that, he said something so wildly inappropriate and so disgusting that I was like, okay, actually you need to stay so far away from my podcast because if you come anywhere close to it, you will. Single handedly sink my business and or get me canceled. But I am feeling this sort of tug of like, oh my God, I wish so bad that I could introduce you to this huge.
Personality of a man and somebody who has influenced [00:05:00] who I am so incredibly much, but he will not be on here today. I know you're, you are probably so sad about this because you would be so wildly entertained, but just know that I am coming to you today with. So much of like happiness and joy inside of me.
I, I can feel myself smiling even as I'm recording this because my family is just truly like my rock and they are everything to me. Okay, so let's dive in to the episode that I have planned for you today. And I have to confess something that hasn't really happened to me in a really long time. This last week I was in the studio and it was my first week back from vacation.
And the brain fog must have been so incredibly heavy because I made the biggest amateur rookie mistake that, a mistake that I haven't [00:06:00] made in years. And I weirdly did it without even really realizing it in real time. I felt like I was almost on this weird autopilot, but I wasn't even acting as myself and even.
Thinking as I was inside of my business, just kind of like foggy headed coming off of vacation. But honestly, it's embarrassing to admit it because I really pride myself on the fact that I lean so hard into understanding human behavior and that I love to read and understand the psychology of selling and buying.
So the fact that my brain self-sabotage this to this degree is honestly like. It's kind of rude of my own brain to do this to me. Um, it's like I feel like I should be in some sort of like confessional, like, forgive me Lord, for I have sinned. Okay, so let me just confess right here before I turn this into a full like Dateline episode with the level of drama that I'm already bringing to it, but.
[00:07:00] I had an inquiry come into my inbox the other day, and when I tell you that I haven't been ghosted in years, I mean years because I've ironed my approach to be as wrinkle free as. Caroline Stan Barry's new facelift, which is honestly like it is bowling, ball level perfection. She is a real housewife of Dubai and they did their reunion and she came to the reunion with this face that is just, it is faceless lift perfection.
So if you imagine. Emails coming from me that are honed into that level of perfection. That's what I'm talking about. So I was aghast at this ghosting and you know, that it pro, that it crippled my ego and that I had to go digging at what I had done wrong. And honestly, I spotted the error the. Second that I [00:08:00] opened my reply email to this potential client.
The error, the mistake literally slapped me in the face faster than like Theresa flips a table. Okay? It was laughing at me. So I had this client who, or this potential client, who had written an email saying that she wanted. Pricing, right? She was like, something along the lines of like, Hey, I'm interested in your work.
I'm interested in doing a family photo session with you. Can you gimme some information on your pricing? And what I wrote back to her was a paragraph, a long paragraph, and it was packed with. Every bit of information that she did not ask for. I mean, I had basically written her my life story. Honestly, I hadn't, but almost I, I basically should have.
She had written me three sentences. Literally her exact three sentences were, I'm interested in a family. Photo session this fall. I see that the session session fee is [00:09:00] around a thousand dollars on your website, but what's the cost of the image sets? Can you send me a little bit more detailed pricing information?
Right, three. Sentences and I wrote back a telenovela. Okay. Am I being a little bit dramatic? Sure. But I did give her the entire full rundown of how my fall family photo launch goes. Along with pricing, along with styling, along with the my process and every bit of information that I could have possibly like verbally.
Spewed at her. And the question is, is what did she do with all of that information? Absolutely nothing. She vanished, poof, gone. Just like my sanity and my soul as she should have, because. I played that like a freaking rookie, okay? And what kills me is that I know better, I teach better, but this [00:10:00] vacation brain fog, it just kind of got to me and I slipped and I forgot the golden rule of human behavior.
Don't ask people to make a big decision before they've made a small one. I skipped the mental transaction that needs to happen. I skipped the engagement. I skipped me of all people I skipped. The psychology, like there is no need for you to stone me in the square publicly because the shame that I'm having and just having to admit this is plenty of punishment for me, but.
I told you that we are building something together through the raw, through the messy, through the mistakes. So today we are breaking down exactly what I should have done and what you can do in order to make sure that your next inquiry doesn't ghost you faster than. Some mediocre man on a hinge date.
Okay, so let's get into it. So let's [00:11:00] say that at this point in your business, you are finally getting inquiries. You check your inbox and there are potential clients and they are asking about your pricing, and your heart sort of skips a beat, right? And you think, oh my God, yes. I have inquiries coming in and they wanna book me.
So what a probably like the majority of photographers do. We open up our email, we pour ourselves maybe a little drinky drink, and we prepare to send like a three paragraph email that includes our entire pricing guide, our photography philosophy, our favorite quote from like. I don't know your favorite photographer, Annie Liebowitz or something, and some kind of a soft pitch for wall art.
That's exactly what I did in my last email. And trust me, I understand the pool. To do this, you want to look polished, you want to look prepared. You wanna share that studio guide that you've worked so hard for. You want to look. Professional and I get it. But if we do this, we're gonna be [00:12:00] hanging out and we're all gonna be watching Ghostbusters together on the weekend when we should be nailing the shoot that we literally just lost in our inboxes.
Okay? So whenever someone emails you and asks for pricing, they're not ready to buy yet? Not yet. That email is not a commitment. It's, it's like a, it's like a temperature check. It is curiosity. It is not conversion. And if you respond with your full price list and a dissertation on your process, you are giving them too much too soon.
And that kind of overwhelm triggers what psychologists would call as cognitive overload. Or decision fatigue, which I'm sure you've heard of before, and the brain literally shuts the tab instead. Also, there's this, there's this paradigm that's happening too in this exchange, in that whenever somebody asks [00:13:00] in an email, Hey, like, how does this process work?
Or, Hey, can I see your pricing? They don't want to hear about your business. They don't want to hear about you. At all. They wanna hear about how your business can meet their needs. So instead of going into this pitch of everything that your business does and creating this decision fatigue, instead I need you to create what I call a mental transaction.
You need to respond with short, emotionally engaging questions that are really easy to answer. So my potential client, she gave me that three sentence email with a couple of direct questions, and I should have matched that energy and pulled her in slowly. I should have said her name was Rachel. I should have said like.
Hey Rach. Notice right away I'm calling her by a nickname. I'm already extracting the [00:14:00] idea that we are in a relationship and we're in a friendship enough so that I would say, Hey, Rach. Okay, so I would start off this email. Hey, Rach, quick question. I do a ton of family photo shoots. Have I ever photographed any of your friends before?
And what I'm doing here is I'm establishing social proof right off the bat without saying, I'm a highly sought after photographer and here's my process and here's my pricing, and here's all the things that I'll do for you. Instead, I'm just saying like, Hey. A lot of people use me and I'm also laying the grounds for social hurting.
That would happen later in my next email after she responds back to me, because whenever I tell her in a later email that most of my clients spend between four and $5,000 per shoot, the message that I'm already sending is, oh, hey. I do a lot of photo shoots for people, especially here in the Las Vegas area.
[00:15:00] Do I know any of your friends? Have any of your friends booked? Me? Possibly. Did any of your friends refer you to me? That's what's getting woven into this email exchange is that whenever I tell her pricing later, she's already clueing in of like, oh, hey, this person paid her this much. Oh, hey, my friend who booked her before they paid her this.
Much so then even if it's a high number, a lot of people are already spending that amount. It's social hurting. Once people know that other people are already doing it, they're more likely to jump on that bandwagon. So I'm normalizing the high ticket offer before she ever even knows that it's high ticket.
Okay, so if I've gone through this. Quick, quick email where I'm like, Hey, quick question. How do any of your, have you, any of your friends ever booked me? Then I'm going in and saying like, oh, oops, two questions. Really, how many people are in your family? And that's it. It's a three sentence email back to [00:16:00] her.
And that last sentence, me asking about her family, that gets me the guaranteed mental exchange that I mentioned before that I wanted because show me a mom who won't answer a quick question about her beloved babies, and I'll show you. No one. Okay? You ask a mom a question about her babies and she is responding, she is telling you, all right.
So that's it. We're not asking for a booking yet. We're not pushing a price, we're just asking for engagement. And that small reply, that mental transaction, here's why it's so powerful. Okay? So when someone responds to your email. Especially whenever it feels personal and especially whenever it feels aligned with their needs or it taps into their excitement about this, about the session, they're already forming a bond.
They're already forming a relationship with your brand. So think of it [00:17:00] like. Storytelling in marketing and how a client is now. They're not just gonna see you as a service provider. They're going to see you as being part of their narrative. So we've stepped into the idea of being into each other's world, and this leads us into a micro-commitment.
Making a small commitment, like even if somebody's making a minimal purchase with you or they're sending this email inquiry, it creates a psychological link with the business. Once this connection is established, the customer is more likely to act in line with their initial commitment leading to a larger future purchase, rather than if they email you.
And they get a response, but then they ghost you. They don't make that micro commitment, but if you get them into a point where they're having a conversation with you, then that small amount of commitment has happened, and this is just [00:18:00] like a customer signing up for a free trial or subscribing to a newsletter.
It's a subconscious alignment that they are making. With your brand, which is making them more receptive to taking bigger actions and making a bigger purchase down the line. And what we're also doing is we're starting to create little tiny habits. The more that they engage with their brand, even through these teeny tiny like.
Small touch points, like answering an email, the more familiar and safe your brand becomes to them, and that starts to create a pattern of interaction and a habit will breed investment. So we're gearing towards making sure that this mental transaction happens so that we can tap into all of this.
Psychological influence. We're keeping the email really short. We're asking some really pointed, easy to answer questions, and we're making [00:19:00] sure that there is an easy follow up question at the end of the email because humans have a hard time not answering whenever we're baited into questions like this.
We're hardwired to not disrespect someone's time. We're hardwired to make sure that others have a positive social interaction with us, and we're also hardwired to maintain good relationships. And to kind of basically just be viewed as your, like you're not being a jerk by not responding to somebody's email that's hardwired into us.
It's our nature to respond. So us as business owners, we can really capitalize on that as a way into starting a conversation. That will lead into the booking. Okay, so then what's next? What happens here? Um, there's a debate here, right? The debate of should I just get them on a discovery call? And here's my take.
[00:20:00] Discovery calls can be really great. For some people, in some businesses, in some seasons of your business, if you are selling something custom, if you're selling something high touch or high ticket and you're not already showing up online with consistency, then a discovery call is probably really essential for your business because on a call, obviously you build connection, you ask questions, you hear the tone of their voice, you become a person and not just.
A profile photo, or not just an Instagram feed or not just a brand. Right, and here's the part where I really lovingly kind of lay down a truth bomb for you. Uh, you cannot just copy what another photographer is doing. If another photographer is saying, oh, you have to do a discovery call, or, oh no, you don't have to do a discovery call, or, oh, you should do it this way or do it that way, you cannot.
Copy what another photographer is doing and just think that [00:21:00] that's gonna be the best fit for you. You have to test it, you have to track it. You have to decide what works for you because the, the fingerprint of your business does not look identical to the fingerprint of anybody else's business. You might.
Love talking to people on the phone. You might be incredible at building rapport in person, or you might feel more powerful behind the keyboard. You might be a great storyteller behind a keyboard. You might be really great at sending strategic emails that invites. The right responses from your audience.
So at some point you have to put on your big girl, CEO panties, and you have to figure out what is best for you and your business. If you are not getting replies in your business, you have to try something different. If you are getting replies, but you're not getting bookings, then you have to try something even more different from that.
But. This is important. I don't think that you need discovery [00:22:00] calls in order to convert. I rarely do them, but that's because my business runs on deep. Ongoing word of mouth. I show up constantly on Instagram, in client emails through storytelling, through emotional content. So my audience or the people who are looking to to book me, they come to me pre-sold.
They've already been part of my story. They've already been part of the story of my business. So whenever they reach out, they already know that they want me. And it's not a discovery call situation, it's a, okay, when and where are we doing this kind of deal. So. If you know that you're not going to be out there pounding your marketing and advertising publicly via like social media or blog or any other way, uh, then you really need to consider the discovery call as an asset in your business because.
There's no other way that you're going to [00:23:00] be creating that connection to lead to a conversion. I rarely do discovery calls because I run my booking system completely differently than most photographers. I book out my seasons six months in advance because I hate the feeling of not having enough. Work on my books, and this is a method that I only teach in my Mastermind.
So if you're wanting in on the next round of that, it's gonna happen in January. You'll need to get on the wait list. It's linked in the show notes here or in the email that goes out for the podcast, but I'm also not above a discovery call. I see the value in them, and honestly, right now I'm launching a 40 over 40 series, and I've never done this before, so it's not selling out as easily as my usual sessions do because it's a new offer, because it's a new concept that my audience hasn't seen before, and that means that.
I can't expect them to just jump in blind. [00:24:00] So just as I said before, whenever something wasn't working in my business, I put on my big girl CEO panties, and I'm testing discovery calls for the very first time in my business to see whether or not it can be an asset to me and listen. I can kill a discovery call.
I've got a sales script that locks in conversions like it's Fort Knox. But truthfully, I hate them. I hate having my day interrupted. I hate scheduling calls. I hate being on Zoom with strangers, which is surprising 'cause it seems as though I could talk anybody's ear off, but I'd rather not do them. So I'm in the middle of figuring out.
How I want to use discovery calls, and I'm testing what parts I can automate, what I can cut out, who I can hire it out to, because I prefer to only do things in my business that don't want to make me like fake my own death. Okay? Discovery calls make me unhappy. I don't want to do [00:25:00] them. So the moral of the story is.
Is test your systems, find your flow. You don't have to love every single tool in order to use it strategically for a reason or a season. I know that there is so much to this topic, and we didn't even get to the idea of like, what goes into email number two, once you have gotten that first response email back.
So maybe that's where we're gonna pick up next week, but for now. Don't let one ghosted email make you think that you suck at sales. Literally, just as I got ghosted last week, I am not fretting. Over that email. I know that I made a mistake. I know that I didn't handle that well. I'm going to pick myself right back up and I'm gonna move on because I know that that one ghosted email does not mean that I don't know what I'm doing.
Okay. You do not suck at sales. I will. You know what? I'll keep you posted on whether or not Rachel books a family session in the fall after [00:26:00] she read my. Monologue my whole manifesto, but I'm guessing that she's not going to, and that's okay. And we'll just lovingly refer to her as Casper from here on out.
Okay? Until next time, posers, I absolutely love you to pieces. God, don't make this weird, Jody. Okay. Bye 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.
