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 and welcome back my beautiful posers to another entirely entertaining and maybe surprisingly also educational episode of. The posters podcast because honestly, who knew? Who knew that I had 36 weeks in me? And we could have, we could have made a [00:01:00] baby by now. Our podcast is completely viable to the outside world 'cause we made it to 36 weeks.
Okay. Last week I talked about my ever growing infatuation with Ed Geen. Uh, the man can really, he can do no wrong for me. I mean, sure he murders humans, but you wanna know what. It doesn't really give me the ick that it probably should. For some reason, I just watched the episode of him kill those two men in the woods with the chainsaw, and I was like, you know what?
They got what they deserved walking up into his shed like that. Unannounced while he was creating his art. He's an artist. He couldn't be bothered yet. Here they come, just meandering on through the woods, bothering him inside of his wood. She, they could have gone and knocked on [00:02:00] his front door. Okay. But obviously they saw the fact that he had someone fileted and I hate to dry.
So clear. Clearly they had to be handled. But you know what, I really do think that he did it in the easiest way possible. Like, why not pick up your chainsaw? Right. Okay. I'm getting. I am kidding, obviously he's maybe not as adorable and innocent as I thought he was last week before I got to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre episode.
But you do have to admit. That his love for a lace detail at least makes him more likable than Jeffrey Dahmer. Okay? And what is funny is that Eddie doesn't give me the ick, but you wanna know what does, or I guess maybe who does rather. But Nick [00:03:00] from love is blind, not. Nick Lasher. Well, him too. Have you seen old episodes of the show that he, what was the show that he had with Jessica Simpson on MTV Newlyweds?
Have you seen? Go back and watch those episodes and Nick Lache will also give you the ick. Wait. There was also a Nick in last season and he was a mess too. But now I'm questioning whether or not. This person is also Nick. It's Nick and Annie. Molly, I think it's Annie. I might be making that up. I might just be like, assimilating all the nicks.
What's wrong with all the nicks? Why are they all unbearable? I'm so sorry. If you're married to a Nick. Okay. But I was watching L is Blind last night and he was in. This Nick. Nick was in this argument with, I think her name is Annie. Okay. I need to be, if I'm gonna talk about this on a podcast, I need to be better about knowing their names.[00:04:00]
But the way that he kept on saying affirmations to her. Uh, they're laying in bed. They're having some sort of like emotional breakdown. This, this conversation lasts forever. It goes in circles, and first of all, I'm like, okay, wait. I am never the one to blame the woman because. Oh, clearly we can do no wrong, but Annie needs to get a grip.
Okay. We do not let men know that we need them. Okay? Men should be handled like they are appendages that can be amputated if needed. Okay? We keep men only when they entertain us, get us food and. I don't know, maybe do enough chores around the house for it to be worth it to us. Okay. So I need Annie to pull it together.
But anyways, they're laying there in the bed and she's crying. She's overly tired. I think she's probably a little [00:05:00] intoxicated too. But he's sitting there all emotionally mature and. If I'm sitting on my couch screaming at my tv, like, please stop saying the word affirmations. Like you think that it's foreplay, she's crying, that you're not in it as much as she is.
The last thing that she wants to hear is that you're there to affirm. Her. Okay. Like slip it in a little, do your thing. Put her to sleep. She's tired. That's the real support that she needs. She doesn't need your emotionally intelligent TED talk. Okay. I don't need my husband to tell me something like, oh, I know that you need your affirmation, so I just wanna make sure that you have them.
Ew. No, tell me I'm pretty, feed me a deviled egg. Pat me on the butt and walk away. Okay. That's, that is romance. [00:06:00] That is love. That is a real marriage.
Oh my God, you guys, what does this say about me? More. So what does this say about you? Because you are choosing to learn from me right now. Okay. Okay. I digress. Last week we talked about other than edgy, we talked about biting off. A really audacious goal, the kind of goal that makes your palm sweat and your brain say like, who the fuck do you think you are?
Okay. We also talked about the three levers. That I have to control inside of my business to actually make that goal happen. And those three levers were the number of my bookings, the client experience, and my sales process. And before we dive into today's [00:07:00] topic. Which is how I launch my calendar, like a product drop.
I need to confess a little small something that I discovered this week whenever I was checking in on my numbers for the $200,000 challenge. Last week, I told you in the email, not on the podcast, but in the newsletter that comes out. For the podcast, I said that I had hit about $84,000. Turns out I lied to you.
Okay. I'm not on purpose, but mostly just because I'm a photographer and I am not a mathematician. Okay? Apparently I accidentally double counted about like $11,000 because it was. Still, like in my Stripe account, it was in the shoot waiting to deposit into my account. But I added that which had already been calculated into my gross earnings.
But I added it again because math, because math. Okay, so the real total that we're sitting [00:08:00] on today on Thursday as I'm recording this episode, is $76,351. Okay. A little tiny bit of a setback in my momentum, but that's okay because here's what I know after, I mean almost 18 years of doing this, is that progress isn't linear.
Growth does not care about perfection, and really nobody cares about math. I'm kidding. We have to really, really care about math. Okay. But it's not about like an exact figure. It's about the system. It's about learning to create demand instead of waiting for it. And that's exactly what we're talking about today.
All right, so if last week was about what we're chasing, then this week is about how. We move when we're chasing it. Let's really dive in my little, my little chickies. Okay. So I was just in my [00:09:00] dms a little bit ago talking to a photographer based in England, and she was saying to me that she was doing a workshop with another photographer.
We had started to talk about the posing method and how much she was like infatuated with it and loving, what the training is that she had watched on it. Okay. That's how we started to talk. But then she was saying that she's doing a workshop with another photographer and I was stoked for her. I'm like, oh my God, who are you doing this workshop with?
And especially like diving into the world of photographers over in England. I was like, oh my God, this is like whole new world. Anyways I can't believe I just sang on a podcast. Okay. I gotta get, I've got to get a grip today. Me and Annie, we have to get a grip. Alright, but so she was saying that she was doing this workshop with this other photographer.
I looked at this other photographer. Her work was divine. Absolutely gorgeous. So I'm so stoked for her. But she said in our dms that she was going to the workshop because [00:10:00] she really needed to get her SEO on point and that she needed to be blogging more. And that is what the workshop was going to be focused on.
And like I said, I'm stoked for her. I really am. I say it all the time that I will never bag on a system that I don't know anything about. And. That system is blogging for me. I don't do it. I never have done it. Not to say that I won't do it in the future, but it's just not how I built my business. But here's the thing.
It seems like that's the only way photographers are taught to get bookings. And in fact, I just heard this the other day from a, a photographer named Ashley, who's. She signed up for next year's Mastermind, but she came to me saying the exact opposite, that she's done all of the blogging. She is, you know, done the SEO keyword, she's written the 500 word blog posts about, uh, the top five family friendly spots in her city and whatever, and it's not [00:11:00] working for her.
And that she is just kind of sending up prayers that somebody is gonna Google like. I don't know, family photographer in my area or something like that. And that's, she feels like that's the Hail Mary, that's the Sunday night Scaries is like not knowing if you'll have enough to pay the bills that month.
And I just, in my, in my heart, in my soul, in my gut, in my intuition, in my insides, in all of the things that Ed Ed ge would love about me, I just feel like. That's not a business model. That's, you know, it's Bon Jovi. It's living on a prayer. Okay? Now, I'm not saying SEO doesn't work. It works for so many photographers. I don't actually know what the nuances are regarding why it would work for one photographer and not another, but I'm also not here to dissect that [00:12:00] because that's not what I do.
Okay. I don't like to wait for clients to find me. I like to active. Bookings on my time. I like to create demand instead of waiting for it, because whenever I'm ready to book my calendar, I want to know that I can flip a switch, run my system, and sell out my entire season without having to guess whether or not I'm going to be able to make my mortgage that month.
And that's exactly what this episode is about, because when I open my calendar. I don't casually post like, oh, hey guys, I've got a few dates available. No, I launch my date like Apple launches an iPhone with hype, with buildup, with tension. I make it a moment. I want people lining up outside of the door. I want them wrapping around the building.
Okay. I learned this years ago whenever I studied. That the most successful brands in the world [00:13:00] don't wait for buyers. They train buyers. They orchestrate attention. They create anticipation. They control timing. Hermes does not beg you to buy a Birkin, okay? They just make you hope that you would ever be invited to buy one.
Alright? Dior doesn't. Do like a restock, they drop capsule collections that vanish in weeks and then you can never get those items again. That's what makes it desirable. And so I, I thought while I was studying all of this, like if, if luxury fashion can do that with clothing and shoes and handbags, then why can't photographers do that with photo shoots?
So. I stopped opening my calendar and I started launching it. My date drops are not announcements. They're events, there's buildup, there's hype, there's scarcity, there's fomo. There's that pulse of energy when people are rushing to grab a date before somebody [00:14:00] else does, because events are emotional, and I say this all the time, that emotion drives sales.
That's the why. Behind the system that books me out in under 18 hours. It is not luck. It is psychology. It's intention. It is structure. Every single year since 2018, I have sold out my fall sessions on August 1st every single year. And not because I'm lucky, but because I engineered it that way. So the secret is.
Scarcity. It is urgency. It is fomo. Those are fomo. It is fomo. Those are the three levers that make humans move. Scarcity tells us there's not enough urgency. Tells us you're not gonna have enough time, and FOMO tells us Everyone else is doing this. If I don't do this, I'm missing out. You [00:15:00] stack those three and you have built a freight train of psychology, okay?
That's what creates movement. That's what creates momentum. That's what creates sales, but. It's not just the day of the drop, it's the runway. You cannot throw a launch together and expect it to work. You have to warm your audience up. You have to prime them. You have to tease them. You have to build the anticipation.
I do this in one full month. My mastermind students from the last round, some of them did it in two weeks this last August, and they still booked out their fall seasons. I like to do it. With a month. Okay. But, and I, and I truly, genuinely and truly know that it worked with a two week runway for those mastermind students too, because we were in the fall season.
I've never tried that in the spring season. I would love to try it [00:16:00] next year so that it's just like something that I'm constantly like testing out in my own business to see what I can pull off, but. That two week runway worked for them because we all know that the fall season is much easier to sell than the spring season.
Okay. But here's what that actually looks like, because it's not just like random posting or like quick reminders of like, oh, hey, my dates are opening. Oh, hey, August 1st. Oh hey, set an alarm. It's not just that. It is strategy. From July 1st to August 1st, there are 27 emails going out in perfect coordination with a tag team of social media content every reel.
Every story, every caption, every email, they all speak to each other. This isn't like just some one woman circus e Even now my social media kind of is a little like [00:17:00] fun and unhinged and it feels very much so like a one woman circus. There is always, always strategy at play. These launches, though they are carefully choreographed.
It is a system that I've been running, refining, and training my audience on since 2018. My clients know August 1st is launch day. They wait for it. They plan around it. They set alarms to not miss it. But the most important part isn't just that August 1st date. It's the structure that leads up to it each week.
Each email, each piece of content is designed to hit a specific psychological buying factor at exactly the right time. Early June is curiosity and anticipation. Mid, I said June, early July. Mid July is trust building and authority. And then late July is scarcity, urgency and emotional pulls. It's an [00:18:00] orchestrated system with buying psychology woven completely throughout it.
While those. 27 emails, nurture my current audience. I'm also simultaneously running a new client campaign with free guides, location lists, style boards, and other opt-ins that will pull fresh eyes into my ecosystem. And those fresh eyes get captured and tossed straight into my funnel, and they get looped into the sequence automatically because.
My regular clients have had years to be trained. This new bunch, they need to be whipped into shape before August 1st before the launch day ever hits. Okay? So whenever that date does hit, and August 1st gets there every single year. My people aren't wondering if they'll book me. They're wondering how fast they can grab a date [00:19:00] before they're gone.
I'm not like yelling about it. I'm not begging for it. I'm just kind of sitting back, sending out the content casually whispering like, Hey, you don't wanna miss this. Because every single touch point leading up to that day, it has already done all of the selling. For me, the thing that I love so much about this system too is control.
Control is really the entire point of the system. You control when your clients see it. You control when they're allowed to act on it. You control the energy of the whole entire launch. You control how much you wanna shoot you control how much you want to charge. And whenever you control those things, you no longer have a reactive business.
You have a predictable one. So when people see that my calendar opens, they also see that [00:20:00] half of the dates are already crossed out. Within minutes, they are automatically seeing sold out graphics on certain months they see clients. That are posting, like, oh, just book my session and whenever they post that, they're gonna tag me.
I'm posting that too. They see this all happening in real time, and that visibility creates motion. People can actually see the demand happening and whenever they see it. They want it because no one wants to be the person who missed it. Now, here's where most photographers mess this up. Even if they are trying to launch dates, they will open the launch.
And then never close it. And they keep posting like, oh, hey, I have a few, a few spots left. Oh, hey, there's still a few mini session dates left. They keep emailing like, oh, it's still time to grab your season. Oh, don't let you know this go by. You can't do [00:21:00] that. You have to shut it down even if you still have space left because.
If you train your audience that there will always be this extended time, they'll never move fast the following year. You've basically trained them to know that your dates aren't selling like hotcakes. They're flopping. The power of a launch comes from its finality, that it's a moment, and whenever it's over, it's over.
There's so much more that goes into this process, like, like even creating a sales page that is completely separate. From your website, a sales page that never lets the client stray anywhere else, not a portfolio, not an about me section, not anywhere else. For them to navigate that sales page, it has one clear mission.
Just like the the line that's wrapping around the building at Best Buy on a Black [00:22:00] Friday. There is one clear mission for those people is to go inside of Best Buy and spend money. That's what your sales page needs to do. It needs to name the problem. It needs to rub that problem in a little bit, make it hurt, make it a pain point, and then it needs to solve that problem.
Now, I'm not going to hand you the how on this, the exact calendar set up, the 27 email sequence, the sales page assets, the timing, the framework, you know. That's all inside the Mastermind, okay? That's where I teach you to actually build this whole machine. But in this episode, I really wanted you to understand the why, because whenever you understand the why, you can start thinking in a whole new way and you can stop hoping for bookings and you can start creating them.[00:23:00]
That's the difference between being found as a photographer and being chosen. That's the difference between writing blogs and running a launch. Okay. It's really the difference between being a photographer and being a brand, and that's literally everything that I've talked about today. That is what you and I build together inside of the Mastermind, except.
You don't even have to do much because I just give it to you. I just give you mine, y'all. Y'all get to be so lazy and just steal my system that I worked on for a freaking decade. It's like a literal copy and paste and it's in your arsenal, but. Whatever. It's, it is, it's the exact system, the psychology, the structure, the demand creation, all of it.
So if you're sitting here feeling like [00:24:00] you've been blogging into an abyss or waiting for Google to bless you with a booking, and you're ready to actually learn how to take control and launch like this, then. Hit the link in the show notes and schedule a call to talk to me to see whether or not this is the right fit for your business.
There is no pressure, there is no pitch. It is just an invitation to finally like make it all. Makes sense. Alright, my beautiful posers. That's it for today. Uh, tits up ears open and I will be right here next week where I will be sure to know if I discover any more icks during my week. Okay. Which, you know, I'm, you know, I'll, because I'm a picky bitch.
Okay.
Oh, bye for now, friends.
Outro: [00:25:00] 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.
