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 posers and welcome back to another amazing episode of The Posers Podcast. If you're new here, uh, hit pause and go listen to the last two episodes before you start this one because, uh, that is where the foundation of the [00:01:00] $200,000 challenge really starts. And, uh, that is obviously what we are going to be talking about today.
In those previous episodes, we talked about how I booked 40 shoots in 18 hours by treating my calendar like an Apple product drop instead of, I don't know like Kirkland Brand at Costco because that shit never leaves the shelves. Okay. No shame to Kirkland because, i, I love Kirkland brand. We go way back.
Today we are pulling the second lever that keeps this $200,000 goal achievable. And again, it's $200,000 just during this fall season. It is August through November. Of everything that I'm photographing in that period of time. And it is also just the income that I am making on the photography side of my business [00:02:00] only.
But yeah, today we are pulling the second lever of what makes all of that possible, which is the client experience Now. A quick little progress report. I am currently sitting at $86,916 as of this morning, which is Thursday, October, who knows what day it is? October 20 something, 23rd, I think. Okay. $86,916 towards our.
$200,000 goal. The question is, is will I will make it? And honestly, that is not bad for this little quote unquote joke of a business as my ex-husband lovingly refers to it. Also a really big note as to one of the reasons why he's my ex-husband now. If you remember last week's little [00:03:00] confession because I lied to you whenever I accidentally double counted about $11,000, you'll understand that I triple checked this number before saying it out loud.
Okay? And also to note quickly before we dive into today. This episode is going to come out on October 28th, which means that you'll only have four days to lock in your spot inside of the Mastermind before the price goes up on November 1st. It's currently a thousand dollars off, so hop into the show notes.
And get signed up to have a call with me. Even if you're like teetering and you're on the fence and don't know if it's the right move for you or not, just jump on a call. Okay? There's only 30 women who are being asked to join and 12 of those are already taken. So. Honestly, if you just wanna make shit tons of money next year, book a call.
It's a no [00:04:00] brainer. Also, I told you last week that I would let you know what kind of icks. I collect during the days in between recordings which clearly has also become gonna become some kind of a signature series or a challenge. What if we were doing a challenge where it was like, how many its can Jodi collect in the next four months?
And the answer would be infinity. The amount is endless. But. I'm only gonna discuss one of those with you today. In fact, my husband gave me the ink this morning. He would kill you if I was telling you this, but I was sitting on the edge of the bed. I had just woken up. It was like, I don't know, 4 45 in the morning or something.
And he walked around around the edge of the bed and he like. How do I explain this? I'm sitting on the edge of the bed, my legs are off of the edge of the bed and I'm just kind of like stretching and starting to wake [00:05:00] up for the morning. And he came around and like sat onto my legs, but like forward facing.
And I looked up at him and I said, you better back up like right now because you, if you sit like that ever again, I'm going to get the ick and I can't get the ick inside. My own marriage. Oh my God. I should tell our podcast director that he should cut all of that out. Anyways, but no, I actually only have.
One ick that I collected during the week in between recordings, and it is an ick that I will have for the rest of my life. It is for Susan Lorenz. I don't even know if I'm saying her last name right. And she doesn't deserve for me to say her last name, right? She doesn't deserve anything. She is a murderer that isn't.
Of the adorable kind like my Eddie Geen. If you haven't watched the [00:06:00] Perfect Neighbor on Netflix, you won't understand anything about what I'm saying, but you're also a happier version right now, a happier version than you'll ever, ever be again if you choose to watch it. So, i'm not gonna put any spoilers here, but I guess go choose your own adventure.
Okay? Alright. Uh, we are going to dive in. Alright, so while the launch. Fills the calendar like we talked about last week. It is the client experience that actually fills the bank account. So, you know, let me start off with my own version of a horror story. Uh, just in time for Halloween. It was years ago.
All right, I don't know how many years, but. Before I had my studio, before I was running a strictly [00:07:00] portrait business back whenever I was still shoot and burn, and I only made about $30,000 during my fall season, which I will note that I thought I was. So back then I would do my launch and I'd sell out all of my shoots.
They were at about like a thousand dollars or 1250 or so each, and I'd make $30,000. In one day, and I thought that I was unstoppable. I used to teach this method back then. I taught my launch method back then. As a sort of segue into like once your shoots are booked, then move into the posing method, right?
So I used to teach this with like all this clout and all this street cred of like, oh, I make $30,000 in a day. Thought I was unstoppable. But what that hindered. Obviously not including just my bank account, but was also my motivation to care [00:08:00] about the actual shoot itself. Don't get me wrong. I was still like crazy neurotic.
I was super heavy, like attention to detail, uh, just as psychotic as I am today. Okay. So I would style all of my clients. I would have them approve the mood board, I would send the links for them to purchase all of that, and I would try to control as much of the shoot as I possibly could, but. When I was actually in my car sitting at the shoot getting ready to start, there was zero to no motivation to do that because I had already made all of the money that I was going to make.
So the shoot itself was just about. Collecting photos. It was just about, you know, creating photos for the client. It was, I'm laughing because I'm like, why wasn't that motivation enough to [00:09:00] like, show up and do the job that you were paid for? But it just didn't, it didn't motivate me. I was just there for basically social proof and more reasons to brag on the internet about being a good photographer.
But what nobody really knew was that I was sitting in my car before the shoot, like dreading for the client to show up. You know what need. I also mentioned that I was married to a man that I hated. I was very overweight. I was very under slept. Is that what that's called? Whenever you're too tired because you have so many kids and you're running a business and you never sleep.
So what I was also very overall like depressed in my personal life too. So maybe that had a lot to do with it, but yeah, never, never fail. I would love a reason to reschedule. So. We're kicking it back like all of those years ago. It's about probably five 30 or so, probably [00:10:00] like we're getting close to golden hour.
And I remember sitting in the parking lot at this session thinking about like, oh, like they'll get here. I know exactly what I'm about to create because I've already visualized it all. My posing method is on deck. I could do this in my. Sleep kind of energy, but also kind of hoping that they didn't show up.
But I had done their mood board. I had like done everything, so I knew what I was like walking into until they stepped out of the car and when they stepped outta the car they were in. Workout clothes, like it was a mom and her older son, like imagine teenagers. Older son. Older daughter. The son comes out in baggy gym shorts, like big like gym shorts that went to his knees.
Oversized like wrinkled t-shirt, moms in leggings and a tank top that did [00:11:00] not cover. Enough. Okay. The sister, she was. I know she was in something similar. My, my brain has literally repressed this. I, it's repressed her exact outfit, but they were all in loungy workout clothes. It looked like a family fun run.
Okay. Not a thousand dollar photo shoot. I remember I just looked sort of stunned and then I like snapped into motion. I was like, oh. Let me help you carry everything to the, to the bathrooms to change, right? And then she says, oh no, we decided last minute to just do this. Everybody just wanted to be more like.
You know us. And now that I'm thinking about this and I have teenagers of my own, what I know happened was that the teenagers gave her flack, right? They gave her shit. They gave her pushback. They were like, you want me to put on a sweater with a collar underneath it out in the desert? Absolutely freaking nut.
I [00:12:00] remember their mood board. I remember it was like. Nas, the mom wanted Navy so much so it was very Navy and it was very preppy. But she clearly got overruled by the teenagers now that I'm realizing that. And they all showed up in what they would clearly lounge around and watch TV and, and I swear to God, I had like an out of body experience.
Like the angels were pulling me, they were telling me to follow the light. Okay. Like. I don't know how long it took me to take another breath, but I powered through, uh, of Sure. Uh, of course, like, I mean, we're there, there's nothing I could do about it. I smiled through my teeth. I remember this also that mid shoot I was doing some solos of the daughter and she asked me to.
See the photos. Like she asked me to see the back of my camera screen, which I show often, so it wasn't an [00:13:00] issue for me, but I showed her a photo that I was like, oh my God, look at this one. This one's so pretty. And she started crying because she hated how she looked. And I was like, Hmm. You think like, you think your hair's pulled back in a slick back ponytail and you don't have on a stitch of makeup and you're wearing.
Lounge clothes, and then she blamed me for the photos, not looking like she did in her filtered selfies. Okay. It was a Rocky Mountain Horror Picture show of its own kind, and I had to live through it. Okay. After the shoot, I melted into my driver's seat in exhaustion and honestly. In anger too. Like I went through all of the like, who the fuck?
What the fuck? Like, are you fucking kidding me? Like, do you know who I am? Like went through my head. That's embarrassing to admit, but it is true. I literally remember thinking like, [00:14:00] haven't you seen my Instagram? But it took me a long time. I was way out in the desert. I had a 45 minute drive home and I remember thinking about it and I remember getting.
To the fact, the conclusion that the only person whose fault that was was my own okay. And that day I made a vow that never again would styling be optional. Never again would I let someone's lack of effort define my brand, and never again would I let a pair of Becky basketball shorts. Sabotage me. Okay.
Side note. The first weekend that I went to go meet my new husband, he wore a pair of silver colored baggy basketball shorts. And I proceeded to make a pile of all of his clothes that needed to go to Goodwill. Okay. Uh.[00:15:00]
Put that on the list of how to lose a guy in 10 days. Okay. Now obviously like I made this vow that never again would styling be optional, obviously, if I could help it, of course. Because could someone still today show up going completely rogue? Sure they could, but I'll know that it wasn't because of anything that I didn't do.
And I'll also know that it wasn't because my messaging. Wasn't clear and actually, no, actually, no. I honestly can't imagine somebody doing that today because what we're not talking about today is that the price tag is so much higher now that I don't think that anyone's spending $4,000 on photos would show up without effort.
But you know what? In this economy, who knows? I mean, the White House is [00:16:00] under construction and people clap whenever the plane lands. Okay? Who knows what would happen in this world that we're living in, but, that was definitely the moment that I knew that I was going to drill so much harder into the client experience and that my messaging had to control the client wardrobe because the wardrobe controls your brand just as much as your images do, and it's hella, hella, hella important in regards.
To what price point you can demand after the shoot. So for at least the last like six years or so, I have styled every single client myself. That's not that, that's not even the right. Number probably the last 10 years I have styled every single client myself. Mood boards, links, color palettes. I [00:17:00] handled all of it.
The last minute text that I'm like, no. Susan, you cannot wear an orange shirt. That has been all me. Okay? For years I told myself that no one could ever do it like me. Here's a little spoiler. If that's you, if you are saying that, that is your ego and control talking, because someone can always be taught to do what you do and many people can actually do it better than you.
Okay, so get out of your own way there. Alright. But I have been thinking about bringing on a stylist for several years now, and I have interviewed several also, but nothing has ever worked out. So I had kind of shelved it until one day recently, like back in the spring a client told me about her daughter.
Who is a hairdresser and that she has the best style, and that she actually [00:18:00] creates the mood boards for their own family photo shoots each year. Now, this client also has impeccable taste, not only in her wardrobe, but also the, the design of her home. And she just exudes every bit of like, detail oriented luxury that I love to create.
So whenever she told me that. Her daughter creates these mood boards that she approves of. Let me tell you the ways that my ears perked up. I probably looked like a doberman with my little pointed ears on the top of my head. Okay? I leaned in and I was like, tell me more. And she basically described the most beautiful angel on earth, and she sent those little pointy doberman ears, like humming and singing until they.
Slumped very happily. Like I don't snoopy all content and warm and happy. So our stylists name is [00:19:00] Kenna and I'm announcing that as if I just had the gender reveal and I know that we're having a girl. Okay. But, no, for real. This shift has changed so much about my process this year for the better. Uh, she Kenna dropped into my life, like the, like a divine intervention.
Okay. Kenna and I got on a call and I realized that I didn't need to do everything to maintain the client experience that has become synonymous. With my brand, I just needed. To train someone to think like me. So I built her a huge PDF, which included years and years and years of mood boards that I had done and dos and don'ts and the permitted color palettes and the forbidden [00:20:00] ones inspiration boards of where my brand lives and my like must haves.
And my non-negotiables, like, obviously a non-negotiable being. There's absolutely no freaking orange ever. Stop gasping, all of you Swifties. Okay. Absolutely No orange. Absolutely no red. I hate the warm color palettes. I like cooler tones. Everything absolutely has to have a pop of black. She got, uh, a crash course in everything that is the JN photography brand.
Uh, Kenna's natural vibe is a little bit more like farmhouse, a little bit more soft linens, magnolia kind of energy. And I was like, okay. We're gonna swap the shiplap for a little bit of St. Lauren. And then as soon as I gave her all of that, Kenna was off to the freaking races. Okay? She adjusted beautifully and now she [00:21:00] handles every styling detail.
We build the mom's outfit first, and then we build the whole entire family around her. Links are sent the clients order. Every single link that we send over. And by the time the shoot day arrives, then the clients walk in looking like the cover of Vanity Fair. So, it probably took us more time to iron out the systematic details of like email templates and like where we were gonna like, share style notes and the logistics of how everything ran.
Smoothly on the operations side than it did for Kenna to actually get the swing of things. And that just told me that I spent years killing myself to do it all when I could have been spending so much more time building the business rather than building mood boards. Several photographers asked me if Kenna's [00:22:00] available for hire.
She is not. I do not share. Well, I would never rent out my studio. I would never share my stylist. Those are items that set me apart from other photographers in my market. They are my, like blue ocean makers. Okay. And honestly, I don't even know that Kenna would want to do it for anybody else. Because she is also a hairdresser.
She does have another full-time job. So let's get back to the actual, like client experience though. Here's the thing. Styled clients show up differently. They are confident, they perform better. They love their photos more, which means they're going to spend more. So the wardrobe side of things is no, is is not fluff.
It is literal behavioral psychology. Whenever people. See themselves elevated, they behave elevated. Bringing Kenna on wasn't just about styling. It was also about me being able to step into more of the [00:23:00] CEO role instead of staying in a place where I was the employee inside of my business. I used to think that being the CEO meant.
That I had to be running everything. And now I, I know that it means that I'm only running the right things. Delegation gave me back my brain and I'm focused on like strategy and the whole client experience itself and the stuff that really moves the needle in my business. Your next level requires.
You to let go. You can't scale and white knuckle control everything. Adding the stylist inside of the $200,000 goal was a no brainer. It allowed for my clients to actually be taken care of better than I ever could have done for them. Each time that I mention the stylist during, like, I would do an initial style meeting over a Zoom with each client, [00:24:00] and then I would send them my notes over to Kenna.
Okay. Next year, I don't even think I need to do that style meeting. I think Kenna can. All right, but every single time that I mentioned the stylist during that initial style meeting, each client was like, oh, wow. Or, oh my God, or, Ooh, fancy. Every single one of them got so excited to be placed on that pedestal.
I actually had one client who. Before she booked, she kept on like DMing me and asking me questions and asking me how much each digital photo would be because she could only buy three of them. But she wanted to book me so bad because she's just got divorced and she wants me to photograph her and her boys, and it just like it has to be me.
Right? She's so excited for these photos and, she had been sending messages back and forth of like what she could afford, knowing that she was gonna have to have this like really strict limit. And then she got to working with Kenna, and [00:25:00] Kenna found her the dress, and I'm talking this dress. I cannot wait for this client to come in the studio because it is stunning and I hope so badly that it photographs the way that it is in my head.
But it was just exactly the same as the dress. For Carrie Bradshaw in the Sex and the City wedding, the dress changes things, and now this client isn't talking about those photos anymore. She's talking about making sure that she has an album. It already elevated her expectations of what she's doing.
So these luxury elements obviously change things, and there's so many more of these luxury touchpoints in my client journey that we're not hitting on today. But adding the stylist was a huge game changer. People ask me often like, how do you, like whenever I'm teaching, it's like, how do you define luxury?
And I always tell them like, it's so much [00:26:00] more of an intention. It's so much more of a point of view. Luxury is like. Like, it's like the decision to romanticize everything that you touch. It's paying attention to the smallest details and making them feel so intentional and it's giving, whenever you do these things, it's giving your clients the feeling that nothing was left to chance, and then that in turn is what creates.
Authority, and also maybe even more importantly, it's what removes the sticker shock and it completely changes the playing field. Now, I don't regret doing this work for years inside of my business, though obviously, like I had to do the work in order to teach somebody else exactly what I wanted to have done.
But. I don't necessarily regret it. If I could tell myself one thing back then I probably wouldn't be like, oh, [00:27:00] hey, hire a stylist. Your life would be way more easy. No, I probably would've just said like, keep going. I would tell myself, you're on the right track. You're building something beautiful. I would tell myself that, you know, you don't know it yet, but you'll find the people.
Who will help you breathe again, and you'll learn that handing off control doesn't make you weaker. It actually makes you wealthier. And I don't know, I would probably also tell myself that you, you never know what you don't know. And you can only learn it at the right time. I'm never really one to get like too soft and sappy here, but I've had the song, the Mountain is You, it's by, uh, an artist named Chance Pena, who I've never heard of before.
But this song I listen on Spotify, I listen to the Playlist that's just called like chill hits or chill mix or [00:28:00] something like that. This song comes on all the time. It has been stuck in my head. Forever, not stuck in my head in the sense that I'm singing it all over the place, but the message behind it has been stuck in my head forever.
And I actually played it to one of my students during a one-on-one because she really needed to hear it and she cried, and I tried not to cry because I was teaching and talking to her. But the whole song is obviously about the mountain being you, but it took me so many times of hearing it to realize that it wasn't a love song because it's like, I don't know, very like slow and beautiful.
And and I swear after I finally sat in my car and listened to the words, I've never felt anything really hit. So hard. The mountain is you. Obviously the mountain is a metaphor for like internal struggles, right? Like fears, worries that hold us back. And then the [00:29:00] mountain is you is saying over and over again so many times because it's kind of like this mantra for the idea.
That we're both the problem and the solution, the song's about, like finding courage and finding a way to like climb those like inner barriers because like that's, that's what the whole, this whole thing that we're doing, like building a business, that's what it. Feels like is that you're actually like climbing a mountain.
This $200,000 challenge, this $200,000 goal that I have, it's like it's not just about chasing those numbers, it's about climbing the parts of myself too that still sort of whisper like, oh, that's too much, or, oh, that's not a goal that you can reach. Or like, oh, I can't get there. It's about like holding my hand on my chest and breathing into.
The wealth that is expanding the health, that is expanding my family being so [00:30:00] amazing and benefiting from this work that I'm doing. And if I'm being honest, I know that the mountain that's inside of me can also be fear. Fear that someday it'll all stop working and this business will be a joke. Like my ex-husband likes to claim that it is, or like fear that I can't get to the seven figure mark that I've been chasing for three years now.
Fear that I won't be good enough to make it, and I mask all of that with. A lot of humor and a lot of overworking, and a lot of reading until, until I feel like my eyes will bleed because it's like a, a defense mechanism. It's a coping mechanism that I have to feel smart or I have to feel like I'm seen as being smart.
[00:31:00] So. Yeah. Like I know that that mountain has always been me, but the climb, I mean, that's me too. That's the little raggedy girl who grew up poor and covered in dirt and running feral across a, across farmland. Right. That's the little raggedy girl who's beating up the boys in third grade.
She is the one who's doing the climbing. And every single time that I figure something out, like a new system or a new level of like doing something easier in my business or a new way to make more money, I can't help but notice that I first had to trust somebody else to help me, like hiring Kenna.
Hiring my editing team, hiring my assistant, hiring the team that's behind posers. All of them have taught me that I don't [00:32:00] have to climb alone. And it's starting to feel so much less like cha like, like chasing that seven figure mark. And it's starting to feel more like I'm kind of just having fun and kind of also like I'm just getting started.
So. If you are in that season two where you are doing the scary work of letting go, or hiring help, or believing that your work is worthy of more money and more momentum, please don't forget that you're not fighting the mountain. You're simply learning that the mountain is you. And if you want to climb.
That mountain with a sassy little guide who will show you where to take each step so that you don't have to waste all of those years of trying, uh, that I wasted in order to figure it [00:33:00] out. Then Poser is the Mastermind is the perfect place for you. It's obviously the system, the psychology, the strategy, the step-by-step framework that helps you scale your business without.
Losing yourself in the process. The early bird pricing ends October 31st. It's a thousand dollars off right now. Uh, you can book a call to see if you are going to be one of my 30 who makes it inside, and that link to book the call is inside of the show notes because this climb doesn't have to be lonely.
Because I'll surely keep you entertained. But that climb does have to start with you. All right, my beautiful posers, uh, tits up ears open, and I'll see you right here next week.
Outro: Okay, so that is a wrap on this episode of the Posers Podcast. If you loved it, please subscribe, rate, and [00:34:00] 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.
