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.
Okay, well, hello, hello, hello, my beautiful posers and welcome back for another episode of the Posers podcast. I have missed you. We've had six straight weeks of powerhouse interviews with some of the most incredible voices in our industry, and while I have loved every second of it, I've got to be honest with you that I have been chomping at the bit to get back in here into our.[00:01:00]
Weekly, one-on-one time together. Every time I turn around it feels as though my brain is saying like, oh, uh, make a note about that. Make sure you need to talk about that on the pod. Like, I am clocking things left and right so that once we got back here in our one-on-one time together, we have some really incredible things to chat about.
So today it just feels so good to be back here with just me and you for this episode. Before we dive in, I wanna take a quick little personal detour because I dropped a really huge secret recently. I teased it for a while because the details surrounding it were foggy for a little bit. It. And while it is personal in nature, it also has such a massive impact on my business too.
So I wanted to chat about it for a little bit. For the last seven [00:02:00] years, ever since the day I met him, actually my husband has lived five hours away from me. Arizona, our entire relationship was built on phone calls and weekend visits, and I regularly joke about the fact that I was absolutely nuts to marry a man that I had never lived with.
But we did get married. We got married in Italy two years ago with the plan to keep doing long distance until May of 2026, but. Something honestly, like being completely vulnerable here. Something cracked inside of me after we've got married, and I have never talked about this publicly, but it was, it was interesting because I wasn't expecting anything to change logically.
I obviously knew that he wasn't moving here after the wedding, right. [00:03:00] But my resolve for the long distance completely. Dissolved after we got married, and I had no idea that that was going to happen because I have always prided myself on being a single mom, and I loved those years of independence with my boys.
But something about being married but not getting to actually have a husband, it shattered me. And the year and a half following the wedding. Was an absolute disaster between him and I. I cried heavily every single time that he left. I couldn't pick myself up out of the depression for days, and it was a period that my business was growing the most also, and I had to show up.
So. Putting on a fake version of me all day, it exhausted me even further and it added to [00:04:00] the emotional stress of it all. So, which led to basically me having a complete and utter like minty bee in February. And I told Brian that he either had to move here or we would have to put a pin in him. Like coming into town, uh, we'd have to put a pin in the relationship side because I couldn't handle the whiplash anymore.
I couldn't handle seeing him on the weekends and like being able to hug him, kiss him, and feel that like, I don't know, just not to sound like so romantically, cheesy, but not just him like putting his arms around me, but like someone holding me. Right. So, I just, I couldn't handle the whiplash of how good it felt on the weekends to how hard it felt for the two weeks in between that, like every other weekend [00:05:00] that I got to see him.
So we really felt very defeated. Both of us did. And around the same time, things kind of shifted. A little bit as if the universe kind of knew that something had to give. And I, I don't know if I had banked some really good karma points or not. But everything started to align a little bit more for us after I had that complete like breakdown in February.
Said, like basically, I, I don't wanna say there was an ultimatum because it wasn't like, you know, you either have to move here or we are not doing this anymore. But that ultimatum of me saying like, I have to protect myself a little bit more and that we would have to put a pin in this until he was able to move here.
So anyways, the universe kind of aligned a little bit and back in June, my husband finally. Moved to my same city and [00:06:00] moved into my bedroom more importantly. But I kept it a secret for a really long time, not because of any other reason, except for like, there were still balls in the air.
Obviously with his house, with his kids, with his job but also because we needed to have some time to adjust without me adding the pressure of the way that I run a personal brand inside of my business. So now he is here and I am more obsessed with him than I have ever been. Uh, have there been hiccups?
Of course there have, have there been arguments? Of course there have, because merging, uh, household of two divorcees who have been independently living for the better part really of like the last decade. Like that is no joke. There is [00:07:00] definitely some back and forth that had to happen. There was some defining of roles.
And some dividing of rules. Speaking of most recently, you also on my stories that he likes to watch football inside of my house, and that's just not something that I've had to do for a very long period of time. But for the most part, all, all jokes aside on like the silly things that are involved with marriage it really has been incredible for him to move here.
And here's the part that I wanna be really transparent about the freedom. That this gives me inside of my business is huge. Obviously having the support at home means that there's like more space to grow, more time to scale. More of an ability to expand just in the like literal sense of like, if the boys are coming home from school, then I know that Brian's gonna be home after work.
There's somebody there, he can cook a [00:08:00] dinner, he could get a kid somewhere that they needed to be, and there's not. As much pressure on me as a solo act, right? But with all those frivolous things that happen, not frivolous, I mean, we all know that those things happened, but those are more like surface level, right?
Those are the things that have to happen on the day to day, and there's a little bit more support there now. But it also has a really big financial ripple effect, and I'm always aiming to be so incredibly transparent about the financial side of my business, especially as. You guys are seeing, like on my email series as I'm charting for you, like me setting this huge goal of hitting $200,000 within my fall season.
I'm trying to make sure that I'm always showing that financial side of my business and that transparency is huge for us to have because. I've always felt like if someone was going to take advice from me about their [00:09:00] business, then I better have the profit and loss statement to prove that I know what I'm talking about.
I built this business as a single mom, and that will always be the thing that I am most proud of. I wish I hadn't. Had to do it alone. I wish I had always had a partner to support me, but the fact that I did it, the fact that I created this multi six figure business while being a single parent. It.
That's a badge of honor that I will never minimize, and I will always say that out loud because if you're listening right now and you're doing this on your own, I want you to see proof that it's possible. But now that I'm back in the situation of having a double income household, there's a safety net.
That I've never had before. Now I'm in a different position to where money can stay inside of my business More. More can be reinvested into growth. More can [00:10:00] be reinvested into scaling and expansion where before. It had to go to my mortgage and the second biggest bill in the house, my Costco bill and club baseball dues and all of the other things that I was covering on my own.
So my husband moving here is not only a huge like emotional safety net for me personally, obviously, but it's a complete game changer for my business too. And. I can sense a full podcast coming soon about how the wrong partner can completely like desecrate your business and the right one can allow your business to soar.
But. For today. I wanna hop like a little lily pad over into talking about something that I really faced a lot during those single mom years, during the years, whenever I was building my business. This idea of vagueness and vague advice and vague ideologies. That I was fed [00:11:00] while I was building and that fluffy advice, and there's so much of it out there that this in and of itself could become an entire series.
But today I really wanna dissect a fluff piece of advice that I hear being thrown around a lot. I hear it on podcasts, I hear it on social media posts. I hear it or read it inside of newsletters where educators are saying that your why will separate you from a saturated market, that your why is the differentiator that will get you hired.
This idea of like, find your why and everything will fall into place. That kind of messaging I wish that back whenever I was building that someone had cut it straight to me back then because that kind of fluffy advice doesn't move the needle. So I wanna be here today as that person. The person who will [00:12:00] cut it to you straight and give it to you in the way that you need to hear it so that you understand the difference between your why and your actual positioning.
Okay, so I understand. That really defining your why is important for you. It's important in regards to getting yourself out of bed in the morning. It's important in regards to driving yourself to learn to be better, understanding what parts of your business are more important and how you might wanna pour into certain areas more than others for sure.
And all of this, I also understand that finding your why, it sounds inspiring. It sounds. Deep, but I need you to understand how it also sounds flimsy. Now, let me say this as plain as possible. Your why has nothing to do with your bookings. Your why is an inward compass. Your marketing is like your [00:13:00] outward.
Megaphone your outward soapbox, right? How you're getting your positioning out in front of your audience. And today I'm kind of calling a little bit of bullshit on the idea that having a perfectly articulated why is what's gonna get you hired because it might make you feel good, but it's not what clients are paying for.
I worked with a photographer one time. She spent weeks digging into her why, like childhood memories, values her mission, how a photographer made her feel, like all of it. She had worked with some other mentors and she had wrote a beautiful brand mission statement and her website was dripping with this like heartfelt copy about legacy and meaning and all of that.
But she came to me because her bookings were flatlined, her bookings were non-existent. [00:14:00] And I, I sort of urge you to think for one quick second if maybe this all sounds familiar for you also. Why was she not booking? She wasn't booking because her audience probably never read her mission to. Statement, and if they did, her mission statement probably wasn't that important to them.
Her audience maybe even never got to her mission statement. Her audience probably never even got to her about me section because her focus was on why she was a photographer, not about what problems she solved as a photographer. Her audience's attention would have been grabbed if her. Focus shifted to them because your audience, they care about clarity.
They care about seeing social proof. They care about whether they'll get predictable results. They care about whether or not you can handle their kids on the photo [00:15:00] shoot, right? They hire you for your skillset, not your mission statement. Okay, so this photographer, her why was really profound, right? But no one saw it clearly.
No one understood what made her different in practice, and her marketing didn't show them how she solved their problems. That's the problem with this whole like. Your why is your Everything movement. It leaves photographers thinking that if they don't have some miraculous why nailed down, then they're failing or even worse.
It tricks photographers into believing that once they find their why, everything else will just fall into place and it won't. Okay, so let's break this down a little bit. The why is your purpose. Your reason for getting up in the morning. It's about values, it's about identity. It's about what drives you.
Simon Sinek [00:16:00] made this famous in his book, start With Why, and yes, it can be very powerful. It can give you meaning, it can help you filter decisions, and it can really help you align your life and your business. Yeah, but the problem is that Y gets treated as if it's like this magic bullet. If you find it, then suddenly your brand will resonate.
Suddenly your clients will get you suddenly bookings will just start to pour in, and that is really. Not our reality. Your why works behind the scenes in the background as a filter for you. Your why should only be a really small pillar in your marketing content, and here's where I'm going to ruffle some feathers.
As if you expected me to do otherwise. This whole obsession with your why is honestly one of the most ego centered conversations [00:17:00] in our industry, and I don't say that lightly because let's be real. Most photographers, they're whys. Sound almost identical, right? We're being fed this idea that the market can't be saturated because there's only one you, but that's not what it means.
It does not mean find your why and that will set you apart because really like we're just not that special. You are not that special. I'm not that special. Okay. Think about it. If I asked a random group of photographers in a room to tell me their why, I would probably hear a few versions of the same exact thing.
Like you would get some people who say, I love capturing like. People's most cherished memories, right? We've got that group. We've got people who would say, I want the freedom to control my own hours, even though that's laughable because we all work more hours than we ever thought we were [00:18:00] going to whenever we jumped into these businesses.
Right? Uh, you would get people who would say, I wanna do a, I wanna build a business doing something that I love. Right. That's obvious for almost all of us. And some people would say, I want something that I can do on this side and help stay home with my kids. Right. That's another group of us. But, and maybe just, maybe you would have the mes in the room who's like, I wanna do this 'cause I'm really good at it and it's fun and I make people feel really great and I wanna make a lot of money.
Right. Like we all kind of fall into these same pools of the Y right? There's, it's either one of those or there's some sort of mashup of like D, all of the above choice, right? Are all of them valid? Yeah, absolutely. Are they all beautiful? Sure. Also, absolutely. I want that for everyone. Do they light a fire in you to get up every morning and do this [00:19:00] work?
They should, right? Because that's your why. But here's the thing, none of those why's are going to make a client hire you. Over the next photographer down the street because clients aren't scrolling your website thinking, oh wow. She does this because she loves her family and she loves photos of her family, and she wants to create that for me, so I should pay her $3,000 instead of 300.
Like Sally down the street is charging, right? No, they're looking for. Can I trust this person they're looking for? Do I love what they're creating? They're looking for? Do they make me feel confident? Do I know exactly what I'm getting? Do I feel like I'm part of what they're building? Does she have a great reputation?
Does she always deliver? Do I feel like I know her? Unless you're, why is something so dramatically different? Something that clearly sets you apart in [00:20:00] your actual positioning. It is not the factor that books clients for an example of that, like say you've survived cancer, right? And now your why is built around creating empowering sessions for other survivors.
That's powerful. That's unique. That's. Positioning. Okay. But for the majority of us, our whys overlap. They blur together. They are not revolutionary. They are not transformative, and they're certainly not a marketing plan. That's why I call this whole conversation ego centered. It makes us feel good. It makes us feel like we're building something with purpose and there's nothing wrong with that, but we have to separate what makes us feel lit up inside from what actually drives revenue.
Your why is like the fuel [00:21:00] tank, but fuel only matters if you know where the car is going. Positioning and marketing. That's. The navigation system, that's what gets you in front of clients and that's what gets them to say yes. So let's talk about what actually does drive your audience to say yes. What actually does drive bookings?
Okay. People book based on clarity. And simplicity. Can they tell in five seconds once they're coming into your ecosystem, can they tell within five seconds what you do, who you do it for, and how you're different? If I were to land on your page, is it obvious what I would walk away with? So here's how your why would impact this.
Your why usually makes this a little muddy. Right. A long poetic paragraph about your passion for memories or family. It doesn't answer the real question, what does the [00:22:00] client get if they book you, okay? And how you utilize this in your positioning and your marketing instead of inside of your why. You make sure.
That your Instagram feed is flawless. You make sure it shows your recent and best work, right? You're not posting every single shoot. You are posting your best shoots, your highlights show expanded versions of your post from your best shoots. Your website is direct and it is clear You make it. No question that you create the same branded look over and over and over again.
You say it plainly. I create blank. Four blank. Really clear, really simple, really easy to grasp. You want positioning, not poetry. Okay? They also book off of social proof. People want receipts. They want before and afters. They want testimonials. They want client stories. They wanna know [00:23:00] that you can deliver.
Okay? Here's how your why impacts this. You saying. I do this because I love preserving legacies. That doesn't prove that you can deliver, okay? That does not give you any social proof. Your why is irrelevant whenever someone is scanning for reassurance. How you utilize this inside of your positioning and your marketing.
You share actual testimonials. You share actual clients saying the thing that they say to you all the time about why they love your shoots. That is your proof. That is the kind of social evidence that builds confidence with the people who are looking to book you. You put these into another highlight gallery if you want.
You create reels with voiceovers. You add them into your captions, you have them on your website. You pin an image at the top of your feed with a testimonial inside of like a carousel post. Okay? You make this social proof so [00:24:00] ingrained and embedded into your content that the people who are looking to book you can't miss it.
All right, people book off of trust and reputation. If you look reliable, if you feel dependable, then you're going to obviously have consistent results that back that up and what others are talking about in regards to your reputation. So your why might signal that you care. But caring doesn't equal reliability.
Clients don't want to gamble thousands of dollars on someone who cares. Deeply, but has no clear track record. Okay, so consistency builds trust. Showing up to shoots before your clients and making stories in your car or as you're walking, like the area that you're gonna be shooting in, talking about the shoots, saying how excited you are for them to get there.
Showcase your photo [00:25:00] shoot timelines on how you keep your clients organized. On a shoot day, I keep a shared note in between me and each one of my clients. And my stylist, I know. That other photographers, they create an entire website page for each one of their shoots so that their clients always have a place where they can access all of the information that they need for that day.
This proves professionalism. This showcases everything that you do inside of your business, and you want this inside of your newsletters. You want this inside of your blog posts. You want this on your stories every single time that you're showing up for a shoot. Okay. People also book off of the ease and the process of which, how easy you make it to book with you.
If working with you feels confusing, people will hesitate. Your process should feel really simple, really clear, and really [00:26:00] predictable. Your why doesn't tell anyone how it feels to work with you. You saying, I shoot because I love connection. That doesn't answer. What happens after I book? How do I get prepared for my shoot?
What should I expect after the shoot? Position yourself as the guide who makes this whole thing easy, and that's what's going to get people to book. You, create reels that show how simple that process is. Create guides that show really clear, really easy, really concise. Pricing. The major rule of thumb in every single area of your business is if you confuse, you lose.
Right? And also people buy on emotions. Everybody knows this. There has to be that emotional pull. And I can already hear some of you saying, well, isn't my why? Part of that emotion? Okay, sure. But here's what's wrong with that. [00:27:00] Emotion needs to come from understanding their problem and how you make them feel.
Okay. If you are saying, my why is like preserving memories, that's your emotion, not theirs. That's inward facing. Clients wanna feel their emotion in your marketing, not your emotion in your marketing. So I want you to speak directly to the client's pain points and their desire points. Create hooks on your reels that hit them in their gut and hit them in their heart reels and hooks that make them feel.
That's what triggers booking because you have staged your content around them, being able to see themselves inside of it. All right. Are you sensing a little bit of a pattern here? Your why lives inside of you. It's your motivation, it's your personal fuel, but what [00:28:00] clients respond to is always outward facing clarity.
Proof, trust, ease, and emotion that centers on their experience. That's why your why should only be one tiny pillar in your personal brand. One of the deepest parts of my why is that I wanna make an incredible amount of money in my business because the thing that lights me up the most is when my boys get to see their mom doing something that.
For so long is only expected of their dad, right? That's the fire in my belly. But notice that my why doesn't get any airtime in my marketing. You won't see it plastered across my website. It's not on my Instagram captions. It's personal, but it is the filter that I run my decisions through, and that's exactly why.
I choose to partner with companies that are [00:29:00] going to make me a lot of money, like past Platinum, for example, whenever I signed up with Past Platinum, they made me $5,000 the very first day that they ran a marketing campaign for my business. Okay. It was a sale that I would've completely missed, and whenever that happened, I jumped at the chance to be an ambassador for Pass, because pass drives so much money into my studio that it's a no-brainer for me.
They run the marketing to my clients for me. They capture all of those extra sales that can slip through the cracks or get left on the table during like in-person sales meetings. So. And that's in the same token, if making more money in your business is part of your Y two, then you should use the link that's inside of my show notes.
Tell them that you want your shop set up exactly like mine, and they'll literally do it all for you, and you don't even have to [00:30:00] lift a finger. Okay. That's what I mean whenever I say that your why is a filter. My why drove me to make the decision partner or the past, obviously, because it aligned with the outcome that I care about, the financial growth and the freedom that it creates for my family.
But that's not something I use in any of my marketing to my clients. Obviously, okay. They don't book me because of that. Why they book me, because of how I position myself, how I deliver and experience the results that I show them. And all of that is driven by the fact that I wanna make a lot of money.
Okay? So here's the takeaway of today. Stop worshiping your why. Start sharpening your positioning. Start talking less about who you are in value statements and more about what you do that solves someone else's problem. [00:31:00] Because at the end of the day, your why is important. It is your foundation, but positioning and marketing.
Is what gets you booked. Now, I want you to take everything that you learned here in this episode today and get out there and build something absolutely incredible with all of this information. And I, I mean, I don't know when you are listening to this, but it is the end of the day for me and I am going to go home and my husband is going to go home and we are going to cook a dinner and we are gonna hang out.
As a family, and then my boys are gonna go to their rooms to do whatever it is that teenage boys do. And I am going to hang out for the rest of the evening with my husband because he lives here now. So that's it for today. Bye for now, friends.
Outro: Okay, so that is a wrap on this episode of the Posers Podcast. If you loved [00:32:00] 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.
