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.
Well, well, well, what do we have here? A brand new episode of the Posers Podcast. My beautiful, beautiful posers. Welcome back. I was missing, I was in my A for, it feels as if I missed two episodes because I'm recording this episode late, but I really didn't. I [00:01:00] only missed one. It was, I would, you know what I was gonna say?
It wasn't my fault, but it kind of was. I went to the Dominican to celebrate my mom and my dad's 50th wedding anniversary. And knowing that I had to record the podcast there, knowing that I had to run the Mastermind while I was there, I thought that I took everything that I needed for my little stint in the dr and unfortunately, I forgot my podcast recorder, I took the equipment, but the recorder has one of those mini sds, and the mini SD has to fit inside of the bigger SD card so that I can stick the bigger SD card into my computer so that I can get the file off of the recorder. And I forgot that one little piece, so [00:02:00] I did record.
The episode of the podcast while I was there, and then I even went and got headphones that had a microphone on them so that I could record it straight to my phone. And I recorded it probably, I think three or four times actually. And the audio on each one of those devices was simply. So awful because I mean, I'm in a hotel room, I'm on a resort.
People are loud. Air conditioners in tropical places like that are incredibly loud. And even with my like main recorder, I got back to the US and I listened to that audio file and it was. Horrendous. So even though I did the work, it was not of any sort of quality that we could even salvage in order to post it for last week's episode.
But then whenever I [00:03:00] got back the very next morning, we got back late 'cause our flights were delayed. There was a bit of a fiasco. We were sprinting through the airport at DFW in Dallas and we got off of our plane. Through customs back to baggage claim to get our baggage from the international flight back through to bag drop our, our bags again, back through security, back through the terminal and to the same exact gate that we had come into.
We were leaving from the same exact gate. So we had to do all of that in the time period that they simply turned the plane over for the next flight. And we didn't, and we were, sweating so bad all through the Dallas airport, but we made it. So anyways, we got back super late on Sunday night knowing that we had to be up, we had to be like back at work on Monday.
And I woke up on Monday and I was like, Ooh, I don't [00:04:00] feel all that. Correct in my bones. And I was nauseous and I was just like, you know what? mind over matter. You're not gonna get sick. You're just really tired. I get on the treadmill, I go about my day. I'm like, low grade nausea the whole day. I wake up the next morning and I had that live masterclass that morning and I sent in a message to the team and I was like, you guys, I am sick. And again, I was like, mind over matter. You've got to get through this. You've got to just at least do this masterclass call. So back on the treadmill, get my mind right, get the masterclass call done. And after that masterclass, I like basically hit the tile and I did not get up from the tile of my bathroom for.
Four days or so until symptoms got. Even worse. And then I went to the [00:05:00] emergency room fully, fully convinced that my organs were exploding. I literally, I went to the ER thinking based on the symptoms that I had. I was like, I'm gonna have to go into surgery. Something is wrong, something is going to have to get.
Fixed. Like I was gonna have to have some sort of organ removal. A gallbladder was gonna have to, something was coming out of my body that day and I was, I was not in a good head space, but turns out. I simply got some sort of an infection in my stomach from something that I ate. So it wasn't food poisoning, it wasn't just like a virus, it wasn't just something like that.
So I had a full round of IV antibiotics and all of this mess, and after a couple of days of that whole process, I am finally back up. And back to the, the world of [00:06:00] the living. All of that to simply tell you why I missed a week of the podcast. Okay, but so I went to the Dominican and you guys saw my dad's content coming out of the Dominican.
That man is. By and far the funniest human I have ever encountered in my whole entire life. And clearly clearly he created me and I am hysterical.
I just kidding. I am a incredibly diluted version of my dad, So while we were in the Dominican, of course we were just like drinking, having fun. We were celebrating the fact that my parents were having their 50th wedding anniversary. They were doing a vow renewal. So on one of the days that we were there, I booked a private charter so that we could get off the resort, we could go out.
This probably. where I collected the infection. Not gonna lie because [00:07:00] the charter was gorgeous, but we went to the sandbar like out in the middle of the ocean or whatever. And at the sandbar was also where all of the other like booze cruises were, which with my dad on board our.
Boat also turns into a boost cruise. But anyways the, the water around what would've been a very gorgeous sandbar was very polluted with tons of boats, obviously. Prob, I mean, I don't know how pollution works, but I'm guessing gas in the water. And, anyways, it was a diabolical mess of partying and debauchery and so much fun, and that is likely where COVID started.
And it's also where I got an infection. Okay. But for the most part. The day on the boat was so much fun. There was gorgeous water while we were out there, music [00:08:00] playing. My parents are dancing. My dad casually just picking up a twerk or two on the boat, you know, while dawning his alien shirt as he does, you know, the the norm.
This is the huge for my family. But anyways, on this private charter with the like inclusive package that we had, there was also a photographer. Included, which I was fully prepared to get scammed by, and I did, but it was the way in which the scamming happened that just kind of started to spin my wheels a little bit and make me look at our businesses in a little bit of a different way because.
Well, you know, now that I think about it, it, this is in fact the first time that I've been on a private charter that included a cheesy photographer that I've been on other private charters [00:09:00] since I have switched my business over to a portrait business, and then I'm running IPS and all of that. But this is the first one that included a cheesy photographer with that private charter.
So, it definitely hit a little bit differently and I was looking at things a little bit differently, but I already kind of knew how this would go. I assumed that we would take the photos and at the end there would be like some sort of an upsell or I don't know, they were gonna charge me an arm and a leg, or that they were gonna have me like purchase the whole gallery or whatever.
Like I was expecting all of that. But what I didn't expect was how much this would actually turn into a masterclass in both good and bad sales psychology at the same exact time. So let me like set the scene a little bit because you have to also know this other piece of it, which is a little like nugget in like [00:10:00] business knowledge too, but.
The posing that we had to do for this photographer was so painfully bad. It was like glamor shots of the nineties. Bad. Okay. My, it was like. You know, he would ask my husband to flex his two biceps and really have that manly, stern kind of like, I'm so hot. look on his face and he's flexing two biceps like, he's I don't know, Mr.
Clean out in the ocean or something. he's Mr. T and the photographer is wanting me to wrap my arms around him. And kinda lean out to the side with my head right next to his like, as if we're in some like really cheesy, bad stock photo. Okay. But the funniest part of all of this is that there was three couples.
It was my mom and my dad, me and my husband, and my sister and her husband. And he had the whole entire lineup. He had the same [00:11:00] exact poses. He had a roster that he was running us through where. Also the cheesiest, like every husband would hold their wife like a newborn baby in the water. He did those really bad, like us women had to, you know, put our hands up on our faces.
I can only equate this, to whenever. You have your hands like up on your face and they're kind of like little spiders, like your fingers are like little spider legs, sort of like framing your face and you know, you're looking up at the sky trying to be like so, gorgeous as if you're shooting for Sports Illustrated or something.
But in the cheesies way you could ever imagine it was. So incredibly bad, so bad that we just started dying laughing and we honestly took it even a step further. We fully committed to the bit, and honestly, that saved it because if we had tried to resist, like it would've just made it way worse. So we [00:12:00] let it be fun and we let it be ridiculous.
But. Here's like what matters the most is that even in the middle of all of that, like there was still actually a handful of images that meant something to me, especially like of my parents, but I am usually. On here talking all about posing and how comfortable my clients are in front of their camera and how important that is and, and what a huge reason that is, that they come back to me.
And I wanna point out here that even without all of that, it was actually the experience that mattered more than anything. even with awful posing and the photos, not being incredible photos, and I've said this before, I will say it again. I will say it a thousand times because I will stand on this hill with 10 toes in the ground.
I've said it here on the podcast, I say it inside of the Mastermind. I say it on social media, I say it everywhere, [00:13:00] that it is not the quality. Of the photos that makes the photographer more money. Granted. Is it wonderful to be talented? For sure. Will you make more money if you're making better quality photos?
Sure, maybe. But that's not necessarily the case. The talent isn't the way that you make money as a photographer, your business and your pricing structure is, okay. So out of this whole set, I literally wanted maybe five, maybe 10 photos. Okay. But that wasn't an option and he was smart enough to know that his pricing structure should not allow for that.
Alright. But we'll get into that here in just a little bit a little bit later in the story. But. We were finishing up with the charter and we were heading back to dock and get off the boat and head back to the resort and all of that, and the [00:14:00] photographer. Pulls me and my sister and my mom to the back of the boat and he made it a joke.
He made it fun. He made it light. He was like, oh, you know, come right over here with me to my office, which is literally just the back bench of the boat. And my mom chuckled. She thought it was charming. He was, he was really great at like having fun with us all day, but. I immediately clocked it. I knew right away that this was a psychological move because he took us not just from the front of the boat, not just to the back of the boat so that we could pay attention.
He took us away from the min and I immediately clocked that as being so incredibly intentional and honestly, like I was looking at him, I was like, okay, okay, I see you game sees game because. On the surface of it all, you could say that obviously he like [00:15:00] isolated the decision makers, but my mom and my sister didn't clock it.
They just sort of looked at it as okay, he's removing extra opinions. He is removed, other distractions, he's removed. O the other people who might say oh, no, no, no, we don't need any of those. And he's obviously isolated. The people who are usually the ones who are making the decisions about these things.
Great. Yes, that's absolutely part of it. And that's why I said, I was like, okay, game Cs game solid sales psychology. Do I do that? No. I would like to have all the decision makers in the room, including the men, but. I saw it as okay, he's at least understanding this very solid like tactic inside of sales psychology to control the environment because the environment shapes the decision.
Okay. But it wasn't just that it was, it was [00:16:00] so much deeper than that because he knew to isolate the emotional buyers because. Now here's the part, here's the part of the scam that I wasn't expecting. I was going through the photos. And I was harting the ones that I liked 'cause he handed me his phone. So I'm just going through and I'm putting a heart on each one of the photos that I liked and I am flying through them quickly, very quickly, very fast.
Harting the ones that are good, knowing like what the poses are gonna come up at. Knowing that I'm gonna want the ones that are a little bit more candid, where we laugh about like how silly the posing was. And my mom and my sister are looking at me like I am insane. And I look back at them. I'm like, you guys, I've been doing this for almost two decades.
I can cu photos in my sleep. And they just kind of like laughed. They stepped away and they left the task up to me. So. Then the [00:17:00] photographer steps in and he tells me, he's Hey, there's no need to do that, because there's only one option is you're either gonna buy all of the photos or you're gonna buy none of them, and it's $300 for all of them, right?
I expected this, but it's still annoyed me. So with full annoyance, I start to talk to my mom about whether or not we actually really needed the photos. And at this point he can tell that I'm the person who's either going to purchase the images or not purchase the images at all. So he corners me a little bit harder and he starts talking to me, but he's only talking to me in my ear because obviously like it's loud, the music is going.
My dad is yelling of. Course he's cracking jokes. Everybody's laughing. The wind is like blowing, the waves are crashing the all of it. It's a very loud environment. So he leans in and he's talking just directly into my ear, [00:18:00] and he says to me that if I don't buy these, he's going to. Not only lose his job, but his family's not going to be able to eat if I don't buy these photos.
And I was pissed the moment that he said that because I knew that he was lying. It was so transparent. I could see straight through it as a sleazy, slimy, scammy sales tactic. But. He also knew that if he had leaned over to one of the men and said that the sale would've been over immediately, it would've been dead in the water, pun intended.
It would've triggered irritation, skepticism, obviously, but it maybe would've even triggered confrontation with one of the men. But by cornering me. He [00:19:00] was banking on my emotions. He was banking on the idea of pulling my heartstrings and also probably banking on a little bit of like gullibility. But,
but, but he chose the wrong girl. Did he even, did he even know who he was stealing with? So. I like sober right up and I look him straight in the eye with like irritation on my face and I said, I, I probably waved my finger 'cause it was so loud and I said, don't do that. Do not do that. And I just, I looked right at him.
I said, I am not stupid. I know exactly what you're doing. And I kind of pushed his phone back into his hand and his eyes got a little bit bigger and he sort of like tucked his tail and slinked away to the other side of the boat for a. And I went and sat down thinking that, like I went back to the front of the boat thinking that I wasn't gonna buy any of the photos simply [00:20:00] on principle.
Because what he did wasn't just environmental control. I can, I can game. He's game. I game respects game. I can 100% understand the environmental control. He took it to a really gross place. He took it to emotional targeting, and that's really where the line is. Understanding your client's psychology. That is your job for sure, but manipulating your client's psychology, that's where you lose integrity.
That's guilt based selling, and that's one of the fastest ways to destroy trust because. Now, like I'm not buying something that I, that I want, or if I had just sort of like, you know, sort of fell for it, I'm not buying something that I want, I'm being forced. I'm being pushed into feeling like I'm responsible.
I'm responsible for somebody else's wellbeing. [00:21:00] I'm responsible for his children not eating that. That's not sales, that's just slimy. That's just gross. It's scammy. It's a really dirty way of doing business, obviously. And understanding this as a photographer is important that you never want your client to feel, to feel manipulated.
And obviously like we would never do this and we would never go to that place of manipulation because we want our clients to feel clear. We want them to feel confident. We want them to feel like they're choosing exactly what's meaningful for them, and we're simply guiding to make sure that we're keeping them in that emotional buying heads.
Space and that we're controlling that environment. Now here's the crazy part and the psychology that gets even more powerful. I still bought the photos. And not because I believed a single word [00:22:00] of what he said, and definitely not because I felt guilty, because I could see straight through it. I knew his kids were going to eat.
I knew he was getting paid. Right. I knew that his wife was one of like people who like ran the charters, but I bought the photos because he had something that I wanted. He had the photos of my parents from. A once in a lifetime trip from their 50th anniversary, something that we could never recreate, and we hadn't taken out our phones all day long knowing that there was a photographer there.
We stayed present. We stayed in the moment, so he held the only version of those memories. Now, no matter which way you slice it. Power. And if you're running any type of pricing structure that has you sending off the gallery to your client without them sitting in a meeting with you first, [00:23:00] you're giving every ounce of that power away.
Imagine, honestly, just imagine if he had said to me on the boat like, oh, I'm so sorry. I'll just send you a gallery of watermarked images and you can choose later. He knew better than to do that. He would've lost all the power. He would've never gotten my $300 because the emotional buying window would have closed.
I wouldn't have looked at them until I got home, at which time I'd have a ton of images on my phone from the trip, and I would have the professional photos from the vow renewal on the way. I wouldn't have felt so emotionally attached to the images, obviously, and I would've been sober, okay, and I would've been stuck cheeked down to the tile of my bathroom doing things that I don't need to mention [00:24:00] on this podcast.
For the sake of it being way too much information, okay. This is the real lesson here, because even despite the bad tactic, he still closed the sale because he controlled the environment. He controlled access. He held something that mattered. Therefore, he owned the sales room even though the sales room was simply the back bench of a boat.
Okay? And even though. That room pissed me off and even though he mishandled me, he still had the photos and he wasn't going to give them to me ever. It was buy them now or lose them forever, which also is definitely not something that I'm suggesting that you fear monger your clients with, but you have to admit, [00:25:00] that's crazy powerful.
And the thing that this whole entire crazy story proves is that people will spend money when you hold something that matters to them, but the way that you handle that really matters. That's what builds or breaks your brand. Because yes, I bought the photos from him, but would I ever hire him again? No.
Would I ever refer to him? Again, no, I would never talk about that experience in a positive way, so I want you to see that difference too. The difference between making a sale. Versus building a business that continues to print money, because it's not just about the sale, it's about the way that you take care of the client, about the way that you take care of the experience, and how you also hold the sales [00:26:00] room.
That's whenever it all comes together. So with my fun and entertaining story from the Dr. I am signing off. Having been fully swindled by the photo pirate of the Caribbean but with lessons learned along the way, I am so happy to be back in the fold and back here on the podcast, even though I only missed a week.
I still missed you guys. So that's it for today. Bye for now, posers. Bye.
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 [00:27:00] 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.
