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 to another episode of the Posers Podcast, my beautiful posers. I'm gonna start with a little bit of nostalgia because I wanna talk about an old commercial because whenever I was thinking about. This episode and what I wanted to say and what I wanted to talk about, for some reason, this commercial just automatically popped [00:01:00] into my brain.
Uh, it is an old commercial for Friz and it introduced the idea of being nose blind. I'm sure that you remember it. If not, I'm really dating myself, but I actually don't think it's that old. But also at the same time, I feel like with COVID in the mix, like I have no idea whether things happened prior to or after 2020 for some reason, like that year just stunted all of us and kind of like stuck us in time.
I'm not quite sure why. I mean, I understand it was very traumatic and there was a. Like pandemic and all of that. But a lot of people talk about this, right? At least I hear a lot of people talking about this online that for some reason we can't get a grasp on time because it seems as though for that whole entire year, year and a half, two years, that time stopped.
But anyways, I'm going down a rabbit hole. I don't know when this commercial came out. Uh, [00:02:00] but it was the one where there was two teenage boys and they were in their bedroom. Their door was closed. They were, I think they were gaming or something like that. They were doing something very boyish. But one of the boys then goes to take off a dirty sock and he tosses it and the whole room turns into.
A dirty sock everywhere. That's kind of like, I don't know, you know, on a commercial they'll have those like little green squiggly air lines that show that something stinks really bad. Basically, it's two teenage boys that are like marinating in their own filth, okay? And they're completely fine with it.
They're living their best life. They're completely unbothered. They are gaming as if nothing happens. But then their mom walks in and is immediately smacked in the face with what? If you have a teenage boy, then you know that walking into a teenage boy's room feels like biological warfare on your [00:03:00] nostrils.
My oldest son's room. this, this might really be the only reason why I'm excited for him to go to college because his room is the very first bedroom that comes off of the laundry room and the garage entrance that I come into whenever I obviously park my car in the garage. And so. This happens to me all the time.
I'm constantly face smacked with a whiff of his disgusting, sweaty baseball socks. But just like the commercial, he literally cannot smell it. I'll be like, oh my God, Hudson get this in the laundry. Pick this up, do this. I'm like, can't you smell that? And he has no idea what I'm talking about.
Barn animal. He is a literal barn animal living inside of his pigsty, and he has gone like completely nose blind to it. So that commercial paints a really good picture for exactly [00:04:00] what I wanna talk about today, because for us, we're not necessarily going nose blind, but it's very easy for us to go. Kind of photography blind.
Let me like explain this a little bit further. this idea of going photography blind, it seeps into our marketing without us even realizing it. Because we've been in this industry for so long, we consume so much photography content. We study it, we obsess over it, we compare it, and we follow. So many other photographers that it's very easy for us in our own businesses to not be able to clearly see what we have gone like nose blind to.
And it gets kind of interesting because the fact that you are a master at your craft for the people who are watching you and for your audience [00:05:00] outside of other photographers who are watching you, that's the thing that actually makes you different. It's the thing that would make a client go, oh wow, she like really knows what she's doing, or she's a master at this, or she's the authority in this.
It's the exact thing that would set you apart for your audience, but it's also the exact thing that you've stopped talking about. And that's what I mean by going kind of like photography blind, not in the sense of. Looking at photos, but in the sense of marketing ourselves as an expert, as the authority in the industry of photography, because to us, everything that we do inside of our business feels really basic, and it feels kind of obvious and it feels like.
Why would I even say that? Why would I even talk about that? Because it feels [00:06:00] so elementary, and especially when we're watching other photographers and we're seeing what they do, and we know that other photographers are watching us, it kind of keeps us from saying. The things that would make us stand out as the authority to our clients.
Who are the people that we should actually be marketing to? Because our clients and our audience, if we spoke about our businesses in these way, that's the moment that they would lean in. And instead, we're looking around at everyone else and what the industry is saying, and we all kind of just start to sound.
Like each other, we all talk about, you know, the heirloom artwork or we talk about, oh, the warmth on your walls in your home. Or we all say the words that digitals die on a hard drive. And we all say that, you know, nobody is searching your iCloud whenever you die. And that is not wrong. Again, not wrong [00:07:00] at all, but also because everybody is talking about those same exact things and saying those same exact lines.
And of course, obviously our audience isn't necessarily following hundreds of photographers the way that we do, but. There probably you can guess that they're following at least two or three in your city. So if we're all saying the same thing, then there's no differentiating factor when you're simply saying the same things as everybody else. There's nothing that's setting you apart in your marketing, and more importantly, it's not making you the obvious go-to choice of photographers either.
So let's think about what happens right now whenever somebody lands on your feed or they are in your email marketing, or they're consuming your content in on whatever other platform you may be marketing on. Okay. You probably have right now in your feed, I bet you have some photos in a carousel post [00:08:00] with some soft music.
I bet there's maybe a digital mockup of a frame gallery. I bet there's something fun or something quippy. Maybe it's like the new Justin Bieber song lyrics morphed into how it fits into your business that's really popular right now. Or maybe there's a real idea that you grabbed from. Someone else on Instagram, someone on TikTok, something like that.
You maybe have some B-roll with some teeny tiny font that keeps your feed looking aesthetic. But a little bit of a hot take right here. Your ideal client is probably a 40-year-old mom. Okay? Who can't even read small font like that without having to grab for her readers, okay? Which she won't do.
She'll simply Scroll right on by. How do I know this? Because I hammer. Okay. This is literally just like hot take that has nothing to do with what we're actually talking about in this episode, but right in the middle of this episode I just wanna say this, stop using fonts that [00:09:00] nobody can see because you don't want to mess up how the photo looks on your post.
because what's more important, people reading your messages or thinking that your canvas skills are like top tier? Obviously messaging only works if people can read it. So stop using fonts that are hard to see, stop using the white background that you then take the opacity down really, really, really low and then put like a gray font on it.
Because that still makes the font and the messaging really hard to see. And if something is hard to see, then your audience is just gonna simply scroll right past it. They are not going to pause the video. They're not going to take a screenshot and zoom in and see what those little tiny italicized words say in the middle of your screen.
They're just gonna scroll. You are vying for their attention. In those like 0.0 0, [00:10:00] 0 6, 7, 5 seconds that they're like scrolling on their phone. So make it easy for them. Make your messaging easy for them to read. I took a little, took a little hop in a skip down a rabbit hole of a soapbox there.
Let me get back to being like, what I'm calling photography blind. What I was talking about before was like if you have the same standard things on your reel or on your feed with the real, with the Justin Bieber song, the Reel with some pretty photos, with some soft music, like all of the standard things that you are seeing that are on our feeds all of the time.
If that is what you are doing, then there's no moment where the person viewing your content actually stops and goes, oh wait, this one's different. She's saying something different. She's saying something I actually wanna learn from. Okay. Because instead of showing your audience your expertise, you're actually [00:11:00] filtering that out in order to just fit into the photography industry.
You're toning that down because talking about photography in a really basic way to show that you're an authority in your field is almost beneath what you want other photographers to think that you're doing. Does that make sense? It's almost like the same way as like for us girls, it's like we get dressed for the girls.
Right. We put on an outfit for the girls, if we're going out to brunch, we wanna look cute because yes, it makes us feel good, but also we want our friends to be like, oh my God, that's an adorable dress. Where did you get that? That same vibe is happening here, that we're almost creating this content in order to simply keep up with what the photography industry is doing, instead of making sure that your messaging and your content is actually speaking to.
Your clients instead of speaking to other photographers. But I wanna remind you of [00:12:00] something really, really important here. Your peers are not paying your bills. Your clients are your audiences and your clients or your audience. They know nothing. About what you do as a photographer, absolutely nothing.
They don't know why one lens matters more than another. They don't know why lighting can completely change the outcome of a photo. They don't know why. Their kids behave for you, but not for them. They don't know why. They always feel awkward in photos. They don't know any of that. And that's the stuff that would actually set you apart from anyone else.
That's the thing that would actually show that you're an expert at what you do, and instead of teaching them and teaching to that and showing that you have that level of mastery. You skip it because maybe it feels a little bit too elementary maybe [00:13:00] because you just wanna post the pretty stuff.
But I'd be willing to bet, and I'd be willing to argue that it's a little bit more of going photography blind and not realizing that even the smallest thing like. Even why you buy the sand disc Extreme Pro memory cards, because they write at 150 or 200 megabytes per second and that you need that kind of speed in order to capture, I don't know, little Jaxton or little Braden whenever he's acting like a feral hyena and he's sprinting full speed towards your camera and that's the only smile that you're gonna get during the photo shoot.
your clients don't know. That you have to have that memory card in your camera. And whenever you talk about having to have that memory card in your camera, that is making them think, oh man, she really knows what she's doing. So this is where you need to shift something in your brain that like the more duh, that something [00:14:00] feels for you, the most basic, the most elementary, the more powerful.
It could possibly be in your marketing because what's basic to you is brand new to your audience and talking about it makes you sound super duper smart. And then you get to have these kind of like legally blonde moments. Whenever people talk about your photography, you get to say Hmm, little shoulder bob.
Oh, what? Like it's hard, right? It sets you apart. In a way that this other content doesn't. So what if your marketing switched from Justin Bieber lyrics and showing that stack of pretty photos or showing a stack of albums or something like that, and you switch it into actually talking. To this tribe that you're creating, this tribe that are you, you're wanting to bring into your business.
You're wanting them to see you as this authority, and a person who has mastered their craft. And what if you started to talk to them [00:15:00] about how you get kids to cooperate, about how you make people feel comfortable. Maybe even what gear you pack for a session and why or why you chose those certain memory cards or the difference between a sized photo and a full res photo.
Why bright green grass is actually a nightmare to photograph and how they probably shouldn't choose that option if they don't wanna look like alphabet in their family photos. Okay. Or how about you talk about your styling process or why we hate to shoot satin skirts in a bright sun, or why a white linen button up isn't made for super pale men?
Okay. What about talking about why you love certain locations? Why you shoot the time of day that you like, what you love or hate about the beach or the camera settings that gives your images that super creamy look that nobody else has or any number of other topics that you can talk about until you're blue in the face and that you're actually an expert [00:16:00] on.
So instead of posting yet another reel with a voiceover about how much a mom is going to miss this season of her kids after it's gone. I'm willing to bet that marketing content wouldn't feel so hard if you approached it this way, where I'm talking about putting yourself as the expert and talking about your business and talking about why you know what you know.
I'm just willing to bet that marketing content wouldn't feel so hard if you approached it that way, instead of waiting to have inspiration of what to post next. And if you're sitting there thinking like, why would anybody care about this stuff? Trust me, your clients care. They care deeply actually, because that's the stuff that answers the questions that she doesn't even know that she wanted to ask, that this is the stuff that actually builds trust.
This is the stuff that builds the trust that makes [00:17:00] them then open. They're, I was gonna say checkbooks, but
why, why did that word pop into my head? Again, I'm dating myself in this episode a lot of times. But that's what makes them want to pay you is because then they know that you are a master at what you do because you're not just showing. A final image, but you're showing the mastery and the work that it took to get to those final images showing that you are the only reason that that image could even exist.
So building authority isn't just look at how pretty my work is. Building authority is, let me show you what I know. Let me show you what I've mastered. Let me show you why I'm the right choice for you. That's a really big difference because the [00:18:00] pretty stuff it will get likes. And I'm not saying don't post the pretty stuff because the pretty stuff does have a place.
There is an importance there too in order for them to see that. But don't skip on this other stuff just because you wanna post the pretty. Okay. Because clients understanding that you are an expert and an authority, that's what gets you bookings. Whereas the pretty stuff is what gets you likes. And I wanna bring up something else that's really important right now too, is that a lot of photographers are stuck chasing likes and a lot of times.
Those likes and those follows, and those vanity metrics are coming from other photographers. So like inside of say, a follow pod or an engagement pod, This came up in one of my groups this week actually, that. Follow pods on [00:19:00] Instagram are actually one of the worst things that you can do for your marketing reach.
Think about it like you're creating content that is supposed to get pushed to your ideal client. you're doing all the work, you're creating the content, you're hashing it, you're key wording it. You're making it as specific to your area as you possibly can, but then. Uh, the very first people who slide in to like or comment on the post are your three photo besties.
So then guess what The algorithm thinks. It needs to push your work to more. It thinks that it needs to push your work to other photographers who then also are not in your area. So don't chase after those likes and those comments just for the optics of it. Instead, focus on building trust with the people who are actually going to hire you.
You have to remove that photography and photographer [00:20:00] blindness because it makes you ignore the very thing that would make you stand out because the call is coming from inside the building. You're too close. To all of that. You've gotta step outside of it and see it from the eyes that your clients see it or see it from the eyes that your audience sees it.
You've basically normalized your own experience and you need to go back in and you didn't make what you do extraordinary again, instead of normalizing it the way that you. Walk into a session and read the energy immediately. That's a superpower. The way that you direct people without making them feel awkward, that's a superpower.
The way that you take chaos and turn it into something that looks so effortless, that is a skill, that is a talent that is not normal. That is something that has to get paid for. So turning that back into something extraordinary [00:21:00] again. Is what is going to make that attractive to your audience? Okay?
Because it's not normal that we can create what we create. We just think that it is because we sit inside of a world where we're looking at other photographers who are doing it day in and day out, and we're comparing everything that we do to what they're doing. this is our every day, but our clients and our audience, it's not, that's not what their feed looks like.
And you have to remember that your audience has no idea how you do what you do. And if you don't show them, then they're going to assume that it's not that different from anybody else. And that anybody who's a photographer can pick up a camera and do what you do. And when that happens. That's whenever you become replaceable, that's whenever you will get price shopped.[00:22:00]
That's whenever they will ghost you. After you send your pricing, that's whenever they're going to say oh, well I need to think about it, because anybody can solve that problem for you. So here's how you fix that problem. You start creating content that makes your client feel like she's been brought into.
Your business, make her feel like she's learning things from you. Not that she's impressed, but impressed and you're bringing her in. Okay? You're teaching her these things. You're showing her the millions of micro decisions that you are making. As you're walking her through your process, you're letting her see why you moved her into that light, why you adjusted that pose, why you changed the family's outfits, why you told her husband to do exactly what to do.
You show your [00:23:00] audience that this isn't random, that it's intentional and that it has been mastered, and the second that they see that. Everything changes because now you're not just a photographer, you're the expert. You then cannot be replaced. You then cannot be compared. So take this and go back to your content and look at your last few posts and ask yourself, honestly, am I talking to other photographers?
Am I mimicking what I see other photographers doing? Or am I actually talking to my client? Because if it sounds like something that the photography industry would applaud, but your client wouldn't actually fully understand, then you've gone photography blind. And with that, let me pop off and go to Target and buy some, Febreze so that I can disinfect that war zone that is my son's bedroom.
Okay, bye for now. [00:24:00] Posters.
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.
