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. Hello. Hello, hello, my beautiful posers and welcome back to another episode of The Posers Podcast. Uh, before we pop off into today's episode, I am gonna hit you with a little bit of housekeeping. Uh, but it's actually housekeeping that I enjoy because it is it the type that is going to make you some.
Money. I've been tracking something for [00:01:00] you over the last 30 days, and in those 30 days I have made an extra $476 inside of my business that I did absolutely zero work for. And if we're rounding that up, which we do because duh girl math, that's about 500 bucks extra in my business that I didn't do any work for.
So if somebody's gonna hand me $500 bills, I am absolutely. Going to take it. I made a sale inside of my past gallery for $302, and then another one for. $174 and those are extra sales that come in after my IPS meetings are already complete after clients have already spent thousands of dollars with me after I've already made them cry over their slideshows and we have closed out their invoices, and yet here we are with pass, uh, weeks later, still [00:02:00] collecting the.
Maybe the money scraps you would call it. But the thing is, is that those scraps add up fast and they especially add up around the holidays, uh, because they run my automated holiday campaigns. For me, which are the ones that remind every single one of my clients that I've had throughout the year that grandma still needs an album or a frame or an ornament with those adorable grandkids on it, and I'm gonna be over here making money doing absolutely.
Nothing. It is hands down the most passive form of income I have in my business. There is no extra work, no chasing invoices, no awkward emails or dms. And I'm like, oh, hey, do you wanna order that print for grandma? No, I don't have to do any of that. It is. Basically mid-October at this point. So if you [00:03:00] want to collect those holiday dollars this year, your store needs to be set up right now.
That's the thing. Uh, luckily. This is stupid easy because you just hop on a call with the past team and you tell them, I want my store set up exactly like Jody's, and they do the rest for you. You don't even have to lift a finger. If you want to capitalize on this, there is a link in my show notes that gets you $250 off of past platinum.
And here's the craziest part, not to get all crazy like. I don't know, crazy on my own podcast, but past gives you a money back guarantee that if they don't make you any money, they are going to give you that money back, which it, it makes it completely risk free and it makes it a complete no brainer. So.
Here's what, I don't ever like to tell you guys anything without actually telling you also [00:04:00] like what this looks like in practice for me and how this works inside of my business. So basically, whenever I finish a sales meeting. I'm going to make sure to tell my clients that they will get a gallery link with their chosen images, and I am a little bit abrupt with this conversation, and I tell them that that link is attached to my professional lab and that if they are going to order extra prints or albums or frames, it is the only place that I want them ordering it from, and I tell them that that.
Aggressively that I do not want them ordering from anywhere else except for that lab, except for that online gallery. Because of the color calibration, obviously I want their photos to look exactly like they see them on their screen. So I am a little bit abrupt in telling them that I do not want them taking their digital files or anything else anywhere except for [00:05:00] that past gallery.
So. Then also whenever I email that gallery, I remind them again inside of that email that the, this is the only lab that I trust is the only place that I want my prints being made. And from their past takes over. They run the automations, they run the upsells, they run the reminders, and I just watch extra money come into my business.
So if you're sitting on. Hundreds of past clients from this last year, which we all kind of are. Then don't let those galleries just collect dust. Wake those babies up, okay? Set up your store and let past do all of that heavy lifting for you and collect that holiday money, honey. Okay. Alright. So also before we're popping into the business side of things, I wanna talk.
About a serial killer.[00:06:00]
If you don't know this about me, I have a love for serial killers and I also have a love for reality tv. Which obviously, uh, the Ed Geen real monster, uh, story on Netflix is not reality tv. Thank God, that's not our reality right now. But seeing stories about serial killers on my TV is something that makes me very, very happy.
And, uh, the Ed Geen story is what Brian and I ended up watching in the hotel in Chicago over my birthday weekend. And I don't know that I've ever felt this way about a serial killer, and maybe I'm a little bit embarrassed to say this, but Ed Geen comes off like kind of adorable to me. Don't cancel me for saying that a serial killer is adorable.
Should he have killed people? No, of course not, obviously, [00:07:00] but I feel for him because that man didn't stand a chance. His mental health was already, I mean, was he, was he going to be schizophrenic? Yes. Obviously he would've had a schizophrenic break at some point, but his mental health was destroyed by. His mother who was basically Satan in an apron.
Okay. He was brainwashed from birth. But the craziest part, the reason why I find him so adorable, one, is because of the way he talks and his voice. And I don't know if that's what he looked like in real life, but in the. Netflix documentary. He's cute too, right? But the thing that I have to give credit where credit is due is his ingenuity.
Okay? This man made a lampshade out of human flesh. That is creativity under duress, which [00:08:00] is, as you all know, an unconventional materials challenge that every project runway contestant would have bombed at. So I dare to say that Ed Keen was, I mean maybe revolutionary, maybe a little ahead of his time.
The man made cereal bowls out of human skulls. That's. Kind of genius, really. And he probably didn't even realize how perfectly the cereal to milk ratio would be in those perfectly sized human skulls cereal bowls. That is craftsmanship. It is foresight. That is innovation. Okay. But maybe he should just sort of should have stopped killing people.
I haven't finished the season yet, so I don't know exactly how he gets caught, but. I'm pretty sure he probably would've gone to prison or he would've gotten the death penalty or whatever. 'cause it was a very long time ago. But I'm really hoping for rehabilitation [00:09:00] and not prison. Just because he was so sabotaged from day one by his mother.
The real crazy twist here though. Is that my husband, I don't know if I've ever said this out loud here on the podcast or anywhere else. My husband can replicate like any sound or accent that he hears, and he can do this pretty easily. He can also sing really, really, really well. Not in that cringey way where you're like, oh my God, I have to listen to somebody sing publicly.
And then you're like, eh, I don't know what to say. I don't know what to do. No, he can actually like, really? Really sing. He actually sang the song that I walked down the aisle to, and it was literally. Gorgeous. Okay. But now my husband who can replicate these sounds or like any accent that he hears, he does a lot of characters and stuff too.
But he now has Ed Geen in his repertoire and I literally, thanks to the show, I'm, I'll be getting dressed in my closet in the morning and [00:10:00] Brian will like pop his head in around the corner and say, hello mother. The, the way that Ed Geen was, it is both. Sickening and thrilling all at once. But either way, marriage is fun.
Okay. While we are talking about bones a little bit with Mr. Ed Geen, I have one more bone to pick before we dive headfirst into today's episode. It will surprise none of you because if you follow me on Instagram. And you watch my stories, then you know that I am not a swifty and that Taylor Swift has yet again come after me personally in a personal attack.
She has single-handedly and officially introduced even more orange into the already offensively warm tones of the fall season, which I. Despise and while [00:11:00] I do fangirl over Taylor for the level of influence and persuasion that she has built into her brand, I do not appreciate her dropping music on my birthday weekend and bringing more of this hideous color into my life.
Okay, but. There is hope. There are a few things that are keeping me smiling along with Ed Geen and living with my seemingly new husband, even though I've been married for him to him for a couple years now. He is brand new living with me. Also happening in my life is that the real housewives of Salt Lake City are finally back on my screen, which means that my Bravo friendship drought.
Over the summer has officially ended and my best friends are back in my life and equilibrium has been restored. But of course, most importantly, the thing that is making me the happiest is that it is our biggest money [00:12:00] making season of the year for all of us, which means despite all of this orange slinging.
I am still a very, very happy girl. If you read my emails, then you know that I am running my $200,000 challenge this fall. Yes. You heard that number correct? I said $200,000 in a single season in just four months. It is huge. It is wild. It is an audacious goal for me and. That number might also make your palm sweat a little bit, or I don't know, maybe you're rolling your eyes out a little bit.
Maybe a little bit of both. If. Eye rolling is the reaction that you are giving. I want you to know that today's episode isn't about flexing a big number. It's about pulling back the curtain on how this actually works and seeing if I can pull [00:13:00] down multiple six figures in four months, and most importantly, sharing it with you so that, uh, you can pull pieces of what I'm doing that can help you set major goals too.
I say this because each time that I have sent emails talking about this season goal I have set for myself, my inbox kind of pops off with questions from you guys. Sometimes they're skeptical. But for the most part, they're always asking how, and I'm going to be so honest with you. I love getting these emails with questions from you because it really helps me drive this content so that it can be specific to exactly what you need from me, because the more questions you ask, the more laser focused I can get for you.
So. I am being dead serious as, as dead serious as Ed Geen would want me to be. [00:14:00] Whenever I say that, I want you to hit reply to those newsletters that come into your inbox. I am begging you to be in my inbox. It motivates me to make things. Better lately. Some of you have asked the best questions and they are so great to discuss here because I bet more of you have those same exact questions.
So today, over the next few episodes, actually, I'm gonna dissect some of those questions and some of you have said things like. That $200,000 in one season in four months feels impossible, which I totally get because I've never done it either. Okay? It feels crazy for me too. The highest I have ever pulled in during a single season was $93,000 back in the spring of 2023, so trust me, I am [00:15:00] not sitting here pretending like this number feels.
Easy. Because it doesn't, it feels crazy. It feels terrifying, and that's exactly why I chose it, because that's the point. I get a lot of emails about this goal. Many of you saying that there's no way that people in your area would spend that much, or like how are you getting clients to drop thousands and Every time I can feel the same.
Undercurrent of fear and so many money blocks. So let's talk about it. Let's name the real fear, because it's not really so much the number, it's the admission. It is the act of saying, I want this, and then letting people watch you try with the possibility that you could fail publicly. [00:16:00] That's what really scares us, and if I'm being even more honest.
It's not even just about saying it publicly, it's about saying it out loud to ourselves too, because admitting that we want a bigger life, that we want more for ourselves goes against everything that we've been taught as women. It goes against what we've been told inside of religion, and it's the exact opposite.
Of what is drilled into us as mothers, we are supposed to be gracious. We are supposed to be sweet. We are supposed to love what we have and not wish for more. We are literally taught to take what we're given and clip coupons or meal prep, or remove all the stains from the clothing or hand closed down any way you can stretch the dollar.
For our families as far as it will go. That is what has been drilled into us and [00:17:00] trust me, I get it. My ex-husband used to tell me that I shouldn't care where he was, how late he stayed out or who he was with because he made enough money. He made enough money that I should just be happy. He would tell me in not so many words, that I should just take the life that I'm being given and I should just shut my mouth and look the other way.
And literally just the other day, my videographer said to me, we were sitting, uh, waiting for some clients to show up for a shoot and we were talking about what he used to charge on weddings that we used to shoot together. I would be photo, he would be video, obviously, and he was telling me that he hasn't raised his prices at all.
Since then. And he was laughing and joking about how bad he is at business. And then he said, and I'm of course laughing and joking back, like just, we're just bantering, right? And he said, well, at least I'm not evil like you wanting all of this [00:18:00] money. And he chuckled and he laughed. It was banter. So I let it roll off as if it was a joke, but he actually said that out loud.
At least I'm not, at least I'm not evil like you wanting all of this money and I get it. That is Dr. That is literally what we are taught in the trenches of religion, right? But I sat there thinking, what's evil about wanting to send my boys to college without worry. What is so evil about wanting to live comfortably?
What's so evil about having enough money that I'll never be stuck in an abusive marriage ever again, or any situation that I don't wanna be in, for that matter. Women with money change the world. We give to those in need, we donate to campaigns that elect leaders who can actually make a difference. We build schools, we [00:19:00] fund shelters, we start scholarships.
We rewrite the stories that we were born into. Women can't take their rightful place as leaders in this world until more of us decide to make money, because like it or not, money rules the world and I see absolutely no evil in that. I completely get it, that failing publicly can be so incredibly scary, but failing yourself, what could possibly be scarier than that?
I have failed miserably in public before I've been there. I have a very personal and very public brand, and that audience watched my world collapse in divorce. The most vulnerable goal to set would be one to marry a man with. The dream of the incredible marriage and the incredible life together, and I did that.
I [00:20:00] married a man. I created a life. I built the dream, the home, the babies, the white picket fence, and then literally watched it crumble in real time in public. I was crushed. I was humiliated, and I was left. So believe me, whenever I tell you that. Setting a financial goal and maybe missing it, that's child's play compared to that.
That's child's play compared to things that I'm sure you have gone through in your life. Because what I learned from that season of my life was simple and it brought with it so much freedom, and what I learned is that you might fail. But you always have the choice to fail forward. That failure of divorce, it became the force that pushed me into a life that I could have [00:21:00] never built otherwise.
It gave me the freedom to finally breathe again and to fall in love with myself and to build a home and a business that supports me instead of suffocates me. So that same lesson applies in business. Whenever I set a $200,000 goal, I'm not chasing a number. I'm chasing the evolution that happens because of that number.
Because whenever I aim for $200,000, I start moving like the photographer who does $200,000 seasons. I get more focused and creative with my launch system. I refine my sales process again, 'cause trust me, I've refined it before. I educate myself more, I show up harder, and even if I miss the mark than my business is stronger than it ever was before.
So I fail forward. [00:22:00] So whenever I hear that number or so, whenever you hear that number, I don't want you to think. That's too big for me. I want you to think, what's my version of $200,000? Because the goal doesn't matter as much as who you become while you're chasing it. The public part doesn't scare me anymore because I'm not competing with anyone but yesterday's version of myself.
So saying my, uh, my goal out loud, all that it's doing is it's keeping me accountable. It's putting skin in the game, right? I have built a circle around me of incredible people who are cheerleaders, who want to see me win, who hype me up, who I also know will catch me whenever I fall. So everyone outside of that circle, everyone else's opinions, they genuinely don't matter to [00:23:00] me.
Okay, but here's where the, I don't know the, I don't wanna call it the fluff because mindset isn't fluff, but I always want to combine mindset with actual strategy and actual action items for you two. So. I wanna talk about the fact that for this fall challenge, I reverse engineered three parts of my business in order to come up with what my goal was.
I reverse engineered the number of bookings on my calendar. The experience my clients receive and the precision of my sales process. Okay? So knowing that I wanted to make this $200,000 goal, then I had to reverse engineer how many bookings do I need in order to get to that number? So I offered 40 shoots.
Instead of 20, those are 40 full shoots, not mini [00:24:00] shoots, instead of the normal 20 ish that I usually do in the fall. Okay. I had to crank my launch system to make sure that I was pulling every single lever of scarcity, urgency, and incentivizing inside of my launch. I made sure that whenever the shoots were gone, they were gone.
I priced them at a point that made people move, especially the ones who had watched me for years but hadn't booked yet, and I only gave them a window of 18 hours. To make their decision. This is the launch system that I've been running for the last eight years or so, and I do this in order to book out my entire season at once.
This way I can control exactly what's on my calendar and how I can calculate what I should make on average, and then set my goal for even beyond that number. Okay. [00:25:00] I also reverse engineered the experience. Portion, the client experience that my clients go through, I added a stylist to elevate immediately, whenever they saw that a stylist was involved with their booking, it immediately hits a level of luxury.
Right from the start, I have refined a few poses that I wanna add into my repertoire. I went scouting, finding new shooting locations that nobody else in my city has ever used. And of course I showed all of it on stories and reels. During my launch by design so that clients could see the value rising and the level of authority that I have in my industry in real time while that launch was happening.
Clients can feel when something is built with care and confidence. Once they taste that level of [00:26:00] service, they will never go back. It's, it's like flying first class. It changes you and you'll never want to fly economy ever again. That's how people should feel inside of your brand. And I also reverse engineered part of my sales process.
So my average sale, you've heard me say it a hundred times now, is around three to $4,000, which is mostly driven by albums. I don't sell a ton of frames, okay. But I'm aiming to tighten up my sales script here to see if I can add on one. Single frame purchase to each and every client, just one. And that alone would add roughly a thousand dollars per sale, which adds up to an extra $40,000.
It is a small tweak with a really big return that I hope that I can capitalize on. Okay, so. [00:27:00] Yes, the $200,000 goal sounds big, but it's not elusive. It's not magic. It's just math and intention and brute force to make it happen. So. Set your number and then work backward. How many sessions do you need at your current average in order to hit that number?
What kind of launch do you need in order to fill your calendar to hit that number? Where can you elevate in your experience and what's one small add-on that lifts your average sale without having to do a ton of discounting or creating any sort of chaos or confusion in your sales process? My $200,000 is just, it's like, it's a big but believable goal for me.
Yours might be 40,000, or yours might be 400,000. [00:28:00] The number doesn't matter. What matters is your willingness to declare it out loud. Own it and then build the staircase to reach it, because that's whenever the real work begins. Not the hustle, but the, well, no, that's not true. I, I love the hustle too. You need the hustle also.
But you've gotta have that inner work too. Okay. The biggest block that I hear from photographers isn't in the strategy. It's in the belief it's in. I hear you guys saying like, no one in my area would ever spend that much, or, my people can't afford that, or There's too much competition here. Right? But.
That is, that belief is your block, not your clients. You wouldn't spend thousands of dollars on photos, so you assume that no one else will either, and that's simply projection. That's your money story, bleeding into your [00:29:00] business, but your clients aren't living your story. They're living theirs. If you look around, you'll see women in your grocery store carrying designer handbags.
You will see a Louis Vuitton or two, I promise you will see people driving. $70,000 cars, or even big whatever area of the world you live in. Even big like souped up trucks that are a hundred thousand dollars and they're probably planning their third trip to Disneyland or buying a thousand dollars Taylor Swift tickets, all on that same credit card that they're telling you that they couldn't use for photos.
Money is being spent every day. The real question is, why is that money not being spent with you? This is where your mindset meets your marketing, because your photos don't sell your words. Do [00:30:00] your energy, does your confidence, does your work? Doesn't make you money. Your positioning makes you money. If you walk into your business like it's a side hustle, your clients will treat it like one.
But when you show up with authority and consistency and even emotional intelligence inside of your business, when your brand feels like a luxury experience, then price becomes relative. Luxury isn't about the sticker price, it's about the story behind it. Money is energy and whenever you open yourself up to this energetic flow, it finds you.
But whenever you block it with beliefs like, oh, you know, my clients can't afford that. You slam the door before opportunity ever even has the chance to knock. Napoleon Hill said it best in his book, think and Grow Rich, which. Honestly is a [00:31:00] horribly boring book to read, but it is one that changes the way that you think dramatically.
But he said, whatever the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve. If your mind can only conceive $300 sessions, that's all that you will ever attract. The reason most photographers stay stuck isn't lack of talent, it's lack of belief in their own value. They can't hold the energy of being the luxury that they sell.
Luxury is in the price tag. It's more of like how, what caliber you vibrate at. It's a presence. It's how you move online, how you write, how you deliver your work, and how you hold space for your clients. You can offer high-end albums all day, but if your energy feels small, your clients will mirror that [00:32:00] right back to you.
People aren't buying your photos. They're buying how they feel about themselves when they are in their, in your world. So. If you wanna attract clients who spend thousands, ask yourself, would I ask every single woman who comes into my mastermind? What version of me would someone have to meet in order to justify that price tag and then become her?
Because whenever you start showing up as that photographer, the one who believes she's worth it, your clients will too. All right. All right, if this episode is lighting something up in you, if it made you want to stop playing small and actually go for it, then I will let you know that I am unofficially but very officially cracking open the doors, just cracking open the doors to my [00:33:00] mastermind and I mean it whenever I say that early birds truly get the worm.
Because anyone who joins before October 31st is getting a thousand dollars. Off of their spot, a thousand dollars off of their spot. Okay. It's the mastermind for established photographers ready to grow with clarity and confidence and community. It is not, I wanna repeat this. It is not like a course, it is not a pep talk in any sort of way.
It's the actual place where I hand you the playbook. That has made me $1.2 million in the last three years. It is the launch systems, the sales scripts, the pricing strategy, the email funnels, the psychology behind everything that I do, and we put it all to work in instead of it being inside of my business, we put it all to work inside of yours.
[00:34:00] Okay? It is for any woman who is done hustling for. Chump change, right? The woman who's tired of throwing content at the wall and praying that something sticks, and the woman who knows that she's capable of more, but just needs the how, okay? Because here's the truth, if it was going to click, it would've clicked by now.
The gap between where you are and where you want to be isn't talent. It isn't just hard work, it is strategy and is the ability to run your business like the unshakeable woman that you were meant to be. So if you are ready to finally do this with direction and support and sisterhood and accountability, that will push you farther than you've ever gone then.
This is it. Uh, you will get live teaching calls, uh, [00:35:00] question and answers every single week. Personalized feedback, a one-on-one call with me. And full access to your own copy of every single framework and funnel and every piece of my business library. You are not just learning. You are building. And by the end of 12 weeks, your business won't just look different.
It will. Feel different. Okay. If you've been waiting for a sign, this is it. Doors are cracked. Open a thousand dollars off until October 31st, and I want to see you inside. You can head to the link in the show notes to find the link to set up a call with me, because I wanna make this season the one where you stop spinning and you start.
Scaling and I want this season to be everything that finally clicks into place and the season where you become the woman that your future self is already thanking you for [00:36:00] becoming. Okay. Until then, tits up ears open. I hope that I'm going to see you inside my mastermind and 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.
