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, hello, hello, hello, my beautiful posers, and welcome back to another episode of the Posers Podcast. Today I'm gonna talk to you about something that really will feel pretty different than what we normally talk about, because I'm usually here with, you know, some motivational stuff. I'm here with some inspirational stuff.
I'm here with some big, foundational business changes. I'm here talking about [00:01:00] marketing and branding and the things that psychologically really move clients, and I'm usually talking about the bigger foundational part of business. But today I'm gonna come at you with something a little bit more practical, a little bit more tactical, a little bit more of, like, a really simple system that you can adopt and that you can implement it into your business and have, like, a really easy but incredible quick win.
Okay? I wanna talk about digital mock-ups or, like, room renderings that we create for our clients and how we sell big gallery walls and, things like that. Okay? So this might sound mundane to you, but to me it's not, because it's how I sell really big framing design jobs, and I'm actually gonna detail one of those out for you today, and I invoiced the client about $13,000 [00:02:00] for it.
So for me, these mock-ups are the sexiest thing that I do, because I absolutely love the process of design and being able to commingle the world of interior design and photography. So even if you hate this process or you don't feel like you're good at interior design, please stick with me on this one, because this process is really gonna make it so stupid simple that you're going to want to, I don't know, kiss my hands. You're gonna wanna kiss my feet that I have literally brought this to you, and that it is such an easy way to do this. Because it also quite literally decides whether or not a client is going to say yes to a five-figure wall or not.
So let's talk about what building a mock-up has actually looked like for me and also most of us for the entire longevity of these businesses that we're running. because I think that we forget [00:03:00] how bad it is once we've been doing it for long enough. We get kind of numb to the process and just think, "This is just how it's done, and this is always gonna take this amount of time."
So let's sort of start at the process of you have done a photo shoot and you have your client's images and you know which ones are the strongest images and you know that they would look incredible as a gallery wall, because you can see it in your head, right? But now you have to build them a mock-up that shows them what's inside of your head.
Because we all know that our clients are not just gonna hand over five figures based on some sort of a verbal description or us saying like, "Oh, hey, trust me, you're gonna wanna do a gallery wall," right? We all know this. That's never gonna happen. So you sit down in, like, ProSelect or Shoot and Sell or whatever your software of choice is and you start creating that digital rendering, that mock-up.
I use ProSelect. It is a dinosaur of a system already, and the sample mock-ups that are inside of [00:04:00] ProSelect are literally a drag. They are uninspired. They are lifeless. They are two-dimensional. It's literally like a fake couch in front of a fake wall, a fake bed in front of a fake wall, a fake staircase, okay?
Even with the update that they recently did, the rooms are... They're a little bit better, but they're obviously computer-generated. I started to try to solve this problem by going over to Etsy and buying some mockups there, and of course, I ended up spending a few hundred dollars. I got some PSD files to use for Photoshop, which then resulted in me banging my head against my computer screen because we all know that I am not a tech wizard, and I do not like to work inside of Photoshop.
It's just not what I'm the best at. then I also realized, too, even trying to do these in Photoshop, that it created an even bigger problem because you don't know the scale of the image that you're creating or the scale of the frame that you're creating. Because we're basically designing a mockup based out of, [00:05:00] like, thin air, right?
It's an AI-generated room that doesn't exist, and these mockups also look like they belong on the cover of Architectural Digest. It's not a realistic look at what my images could look like in the real world. And Whenever I was doing these with the PSD files also, I couldn't change anything. I couldn't change what the actual frame and the mat would look like.
And then all of this just... It took hours, actual hours every single time for every single client. And then it brought up another problem because sometimes I don't even know what the interior of a client's house looks like, or I don't have photos of the space, or even know if they're gonna splurge on frames or not.
Like, could I have a better system around this? Yes, I could. Do I try to make sure that I'm doing these steps with every single client? Yes, of course. But not every client is booking me for the same type of shoot. So whenever I have my [00:06:00] systems in place, especially for fall family photos, I know that I'm going to get this legwork done about styling on the forefront.
But whenever I'm booking, say, you know, motherhood sessions inside of the studio in the spring, is this something that happens? No, not usually, because clients don't go through me for their styling meeting first. They go straight to my stylist. So are there some tweaks that I could make to make sure that I'm always getting this stuff?
Yes, for sure. But let's also be honest, there's room for growth in everybody's business, and sometimes I'm seeing the final version of even just the slideshow that my assistant creates for the reveal meeting maybe 10 minutes before the client shows up. So most of the time, I'm stuck in this situation using this kind of, like, generic room that's inside of ProSelect or one of those, uh, mock-ups that I purchased over on Etsy.
And even whenever you do manage to pull all of that together, [00:07:00] you still end up with something that is so incredibly flat. It's two-dimensional. It's uninspired. It's photos just slapped onto a wall with, like, a template. There's no styling. There's no depth. There's no lighting. There's no mood. There's no emotion to it at all.
Nothing that makes a person look at it and feel something. So it doesn't sell a vision. It just sort of proves, like, yes, technically, photos, frames, prints, they can all go on that wall, and here's the size that they need to be. And that's a really big gap because the styling, the depth, the lighting, the mood, the emotion, all of that, it all stages the mock-up the same way that a realtor would stage a home because they're not just proving, like, yes, a couch will technically fit in this room.
They're selling a feeling. They want you to walk in. They want you to picture your life actually happening [00:08:00] there. And that's what was missing from every mock-up that I ever built the old way. It simply would prove that the frames would fit, and it never sold the dream So let me tell you about that client that changed all of this for me, because this, this was the, the one moment that I realized that I could be doing a much better job at this.
And honestly, the system that I have now is actually way easier than you'd ever imagine. So much so that you're going to think like, "Holy crap, that is so easy," and the end result honestly is so fucking good. How have I not thought about doing this yet? So This family that I'm gonna talk about, they did their family photos with me last fall.
They bought 40-something of the images and an album, so they had already spent about $5,000 with me. And I did their reveal at their home because they are building a new house, and of course, it's a brand-new home. It's [00:09:00] custom-built. So their walls are all blank. And we had already discussed the idea of doing some gallery walls, so it made perfect sense that I would go to their home and do their reveal there, which is not typical of my system.
But this family had these long floating shelves in their living room with a dark wood built-in cabinet underneath, also the dark wood floating shelves. And the ceilings were vaulted so freaking high. Like, I'm talking h- I'm not good at guessing these sort of things, but I'm guessing, like, 40 feet. Very high ceilings.
And, um, the shelves were completely empty. Their interior designer had done the foundational pieces with, like, a really gorgeous sofa. It had a rug. It had coffee table. It had end tables. And their open concept kitchen was behind the couch with stunning, gorgeous features, okay? But that's kind of where the design stopped.
So while I [00:10:00] was there, I snapped a photo of these shelves that they were wanting to work on, and I went back to ProSelect, like I always did, and I created the lame, like, two-dimensional mock-up that I always created. But it was just so lifeless, and I knew that I wanted to actually, like, style the shelves because I knew that if I could do that, I would also make more money, right?
So I headed to Pinterest to find, like, some knick-knacks, okay? I would take a screenshot of the knick-knacks. I would move them into Canva, remove the background. I would bring them back over into Photoshop in order to try to, like, set them onto the shelves. And I did the same thing with Artlight, try to place them up above the frames.
But it still, like, really came out looking like those... You know those old dolls that we used to have that y- it was like a paper doll, and you could change out her outfits. You could change her clothes with just, like, a patch [00:11:00] of Velcro. And the dress would just sit on the front of her body. It was nothing like being able to actually change an outfit on, say, like, Barbie or something, right?
It was just very two-dimensional and lame. And that's what these renderings were feeling like to me. And it hit me that I was like, "Why can't I just throw this into chat? Why can't I just let AI do this for me?" So- I took the base photo of their empty shelves with their real wall, their real furniture, their real actual home, not a mock-up of a fake room.
And then I added the two-dimensional rendering that ProSelect gave me with the correct scale of the frames. And then I went and found a photo over on Pinterest of a shelf that was styled the way that I wanted theirs to feel, with, like, some art books and, like, a little ceramic knot sort of structural [00:12:00] thing, a vase.
The kind of styling that their designer would have used if she went so far as to style these shelves for them. So then I also went ahead and added photos of the actual frames that we were using for their prints. And I gave all of that to Chat, and I gave it the prompt to take all of these elements and create a digital rendering of this client's home, along with the instruction to add the art lights above the top three frames, because with a ceiling that tall, lighting was going to be, like, a huge part of how this wall actually reads in person.
And what came back was perfection. What came back was their shelves fully styled, fully framed, fully lit, like a designer had already been through the house, and this was the real-life image of their home that she would probably use on, like, a before and after. It [00:13:00] had mood lighting. It had shadows. It had everything.
It looked like a real version of what their room could look and feel like, and all of it took me two minutes. I did not have to use Etsy mockups. I did not have to be in Photoshop. I did not have to do all the Canva, remove the backdrop or move the background, move it over. Like, there was no hours lost.
There was no generic look to their room. And then I looked like I had a design degree that I actually don't have, which also excites me because it means that I can charge more for my designs. All right? Now, it will not surprise you at all that I wanted to know what the, like, real psychology behind all of this is, so that I could teach it to you. So, there's this concept in cognitive psychology that's called dual coding theory, [00:14:00] and the short version of this is that our brains are actually, like, created to store information in two different ways, verbally and visually.
And whenever you give someone both at the same time, the word and the image together, it creates two separate memory pathways instead of one, which means that it is more likely to stick, more likely to be recalled, and more likely to move someone emotionally in the moment that you want them to be moved.
There's also something else called the picture superiority effect, which is a really long word. But- It basically is exactly what it sounds like, that people remember pictures dramatically better than they remember words alone. So whenever I'm sitting across from a client and I say, like, "Imagine your wall with a gallery of your family photos", that's fine.
It's a sentence. But whenever I turn my screen around or put it up onto my TV screen in my sales room and it's [00:15:00] their actual wall that is already finished and already lit and already styled, they're not having to imagine anything anymore. I've skipped the step. I've closed that gap where they have to work to picture themselves living in it, and I've handed them that finished feeling instead.
So really quickly, I wanna break this down into a clean process for you. So step one, you're gonna start with the client's real space when you can, okay? Not a stock photo, not a generic two-dimensional room, not an Etsy template, a photo of their actual wall. And an iPhone photo is enough. Don't make this step any harder than it needs to be.
You will need to know the measurements, but you don't have to know them right away. Create and sell the vision first and worry about the logistics later, okay? Step two, find a styling reference. And this works, too, even if you don't have a [00:16:00] photo of their house or of their room or of their exact wall.
Still, at least go to Pinterest and pull a photo of a space that has the feeling that you're going for or for how their home would look in, like, a dream sense. So if you know that they have, like, a farmhouse kitchen, find a photo that's a more elevated or elegant version of the dream that they have for the rest of their space, okay?
Pay attention to the styling, the little objects, the color palette, the mood. This is the attention to detail that will up-level the fuck out of this step in your business, so don't skip this step. If you skip this step, then honestly, none of this is even worth trying out, all right? So step three.
Add your actual frame choices. Either photograph the sample frames that you have at your studio, or pull images of the specific frame styles that you're proposing for this client, whether they're, like, black or white or gold or whatever [00:17:00] fits your vision. And then also note the size of the mat, or if your images will have a straight edge or a deckled edge.
If you're doing an image that is, a float or it's a traditional mat, tell all of this to Chat or Claude, whichever one you're using, so that your AI knows exactly what it's placing. All right? Then step four, give it any specific details that matter to the space, especially with how you want the frames to be hung, lighting, any sort of, like, architectural quirks that are going on, anything that would change how a designer would actually approach that wall.
And then step five, ask for Chat to take all of that information and for it to create a digital rendering of the space as it would exist in real life. So you give them the base photo, the styling reference, the frame photos, and your specific notes, and ask it to build the mock-up. That's the whole entire system.
Five [00:18:00] insanely simple steps. And what used to take hours and sometimes real money to figure out now literally will take you minutes and cost you nothing. So The thing I come back to a little bit is that, the thing that's bigger than this being just like a mock-up sort of trick, this is a lesson too about how we sell and how we up level and how we can take these images and literally print money with them.
For years, our industry has taught photographers to sell prints, sell packages, sell sizes, and obviously what I'm telling you is that nobody buys a 16 by 20. Okay? They buy the version of themselves that gets to walk past that wall every single morning and feel like they created something really gorgeous.
So your job in your sales meetings isn't to convince them that frames will just fit on their wall or what they would just look like on their wall. It is to remove the [00:19:00] distance between where are they standing and the life that they are picturing. And now with a really simple system like this, you can literally hand them the vision.
That's it. So if you take one thing from this episode, let it be to stop trying to sell the dream by simply describing it. Like, actually take this one step further and show it to them, and show them not only just that flat rendering, but show them the feeling. Sell them the feeling. Sell them what it would actually feel like and look like as they are walking through this house and they get to see that wall.
That's it for today's episode. Go off. Go start building all of your dream designs. I've told a couple of the mastermind girls about this, and every time that they drop it in, they just send me DMs back that just say like, "Holy shit, that was so [00:20:00] easy." And, I just wanted to share it. That's exactly what I want for you to have too.
So that is it for today's episode. I will see you next week, and bye for now, posers.
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.
