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.
All right. I'm about to say something so crazy important that I need you to actually stop and listen, because nobody else in this industry is gonna tell you this. Before we get into it, I need you to know that there's one pricing model, the one that so many of you are running right now without questioning it, one pricing model that is costing you tens of thousands of [00:01:00] dollars a year.
And what really sucks is that you have no idea it's happening because you've been told that this is a really great system to run for those of you who don't want to run IPS. Now, the last time that I did this, I ruffled a lot of feathers. So you would think that it would teach me to pipe down and learn my lesson, but you all know that I'm not that girl.
I want you to listen to this episode and see if you are running this kind of pricing structure in your business because, honestly, the chances are high that you are. And then I want you to take what I have to say and just see if it works for you. Nobody is twisting your arm and making you do anything that you don't wanna do.
But one of my students recently shifted away from the pricing structure that we're about to talk about, and she went from making $4,500 on a mini shoot series to making over [00:02:00] $20,000 with the same number of mini sessions. And that's because of her previous pricing, the one that we're gonna break down in this exact episode.
And actually, this pricing structure removes the 10 most important steps of buying psychology. And I'm gonna go through and I'm gonna detail each one of those steps. I'm gonna break down this pricing structure and hold up a mirror so that you can decide what system is actually the better method for your bottom line.
All right? What a fucking intro. Hello, hello, hello, my beautiful posers, and welcome back to another episode of The Posers Podcast. Okay. Today I'm coming for one of the most popular pricing structures in this entire industry, and I need you to sit down for this one because it is a lot. But right off the bat, I want to say this 'cause I've done this before, and got me in a little hot water.
But [00:03:00] I wanna say this, if this is your model, I am not coming for you. I am coming for the pricing structure that you have been taught. And there's a really, really big difference there. So I want you, before you sit down, before you listen to this episode, I need for you to remove the feelings from this episode, remove the, the, the personal way that this might feel like I'm coming for you.
I want you to remove your ego from this episode, because this is strictly about business, and this is strictly about pricing. All right? I want to first start off by defining simple sales, okay? What simple sales actually is. And if you read the title of this episode, I will stand 10 toes deep on that title.
I truly believe that simple sales is simply sabotage, because it [00:04:00] has been taught to you as a way to kind of sidestep running a true IPS system in your business. Can you make money running this system? Yes, you absolutely can. And if you want to stay making that amount of money, stay there, okay? But I want you to also realize that this system has been sold as the easier, like, stepsister to IPS, the easier path of this IPS-ish model.
It's been sold as a pricing structure that will make you feel comfortable. And if anything in business is being sold as comfy or easy or maybe the path of least resistance, chances are it's because it allows you to stay small and not do the work that needs to be done in order to build both competence and [00:05:00] confidence.
All right? So let's define it first, because I want you to recognize this immediately if this is what you're running. In a simple sales system, and I didn't name it that, I don't know who named it that, I don't know which educators have what kind of pricing structures inside of, um, their programs. So I'm just simply going off of what I've been told from other photographers in the industry, what I have studied, and what I have seen.
Okay? So if somebody named it this and it is coined, like, their program, I am so sorry, because I don't know that. All right? In this simple sales system, which I believe can also be sometimes referred to as collections, um, and it's referred to collections because the client actually chooses a collection before the session ever happens, which that collection is usually based on a number of images.
So [00:06:00] it's like 10 images for $375. You get 20 images for $450, 30 images for $500, or something similar. Maybe your prices are higher. Maybe your prices are lower. Okay? But in this se- in this system, the client chooses which one of those collections they want to purchase on the front end. And then the session happens after that, and then the client will then lock in their choice for how many of those photos that they are going to want or choose or whatever, right?
Okay. Let me... I'm getting myself even confused explaining this. Okay. So in this system, the session happens after the clients have chosen how many photos they want. That's what I'm trying to say. All right? So then after the session happens, then a full gallery gets delivered to the client, and at their leisure, they can pick their allotted number of [00:07:00] images from the full gallery, and they usually have the option to upgrade to the full gallery for some kind of nominal fee, usually a fee that's something extra.
Like, you know, for 250 extra bucks, you can, like, have the whole entire collection. And that's the first red flag that I wanna wave, that one statement right there should make you go, "Hmm, wait a minute." So if you're going to let them upgrade to the full gallery for only $250 anyway, or whatever price it is that you're choosing, why not just build that into your, like, session fee from the beginning and just be all-inclusive?
You would save yourself a lot of time. You're creating a lot of extra admin work for yourself just to sell people the thing that you are basically going to hand over to them for a very small bump in revenue anyways. Okay? But I digress from that little [00:08:00] sidestep. This model, it gets sold to photographers as, like, this simplified version of IPS, which obviously stands for in-person sales.
The pitch for it is that, like, the client goes home, they sit down with the gallery, they pick their favorites, and then maybe they order products. Spoiler alert, from what I've heard, they're, they rarely do. But because you got the full gallery, like, revenue bump, then you feel like you, the photographer, you feel like you've made more money, and you're like, "Oh, boom.
Yes. Sold a full gallery today. Yay. Made more money." Sure, you did make more money. But really But really, you didn't. You actually made way less than you could have. All right? Here's the part that I really, really, really want you to listen to. This is not a simplified version [00:09:00] of IPS. The way that people have said it's IPS-ish or, um, here's this really simple way that you can, like, grab some...
You know, easy grab for another little, like, buck or grab some product orders or things like that. It is not a simplified version of IPS, okay? In fact, it is not IPS at all. It removes every single component that makes IPS so powerful and so lucrative in the first place. Let me-- I wanna make sure you heard that, okay?
Every single component that makes IPS so powerful and so lucrative, this system strips them away. This system is completely void of every single component. All right? So think about what actually happens in this model. The client decides how much they're willing to invest before they've ever seen a single photo.
That means the [00:10:00] entire decision is happening in a logical framework. It's based on budget. It's based on numbers. It's based on everything being picked in advance. Instead of the buying decision being made on an emotional framework. There is no room left for a photo to hit them so hard that they change their mind about what they're willing to spend.
There is no room left for a photo to hit them so hard that it brings tears to their eyes, and they're like, "Yep, I'm gonna spend $1,500 to make a frame out of that." Because they already locked in the number before the images were ever even created. So they already are caged into that budget that they made while they were in the logical framework.
Okay? And then what happens after the session? They're emailed the gallery to their home, where they can peruse this gallery over and [00:11:00] over and over again by themselves with no structure, no guidance, no one in the room with them helping them see what's actually possible. It's just them on their couch, like scrolling a gallery on their phone.
Now, if you pause here and you think about buying psychology- Let's like, let's reframe this into something that you can actually relate it to. Let's imagine that you are laying in your bed late at night. If you're like me, you've got your readers on, you've got some big old granny panties on, you are comfortable, you are snug as a bug in a granny panty rug, okay?
You've got on a soft T-shirt, maybe some eye patches if you're doing a little skin care, the works, okay? You're scrolling through... This is just all in your imagination, okay? You're scrolling through the latest fall collection of, like, Dior work bags before bed, right? No. Then you're thinking, "No, you know what?
[00:12:00] Maybe not Dior this time. Maybe Prada." Because you're trying to go a little bit less feminine. You wanna go a little bit more girl boss, okay? That's what's in my brain right now, actually, like falling in love with Prada at the moment. But anyways, then you're like, "No, actually, YSL has their, like, puffer bag that I'm obsessed with for the fall," and their line is gorgeous, right?
So you head over there, right? You land on some that you like, you put some in your cart, you flip between the browser windows and you compare. You find some flaws. You're like, "Oh, that one's too small. No, that one's too big. No, this one's leather. No, this one's that," whatever. You nitpick, and you finally, like, land on something that you actually love, and then you look at the price, and it's more than you wanted to spend.
And it's not that you're not gonna spend that money, but you feel no urgency to spend that money. You feel no scarcity. You feel nothing. You're just like, "You know what? I don't need to spend $4,000 right now. Let me sleep on it." So [00:13:00] turn off your phone. You nudge your husband, tell him to stop snoring, tell him to roll over.
Clearly, I have a very sexy home life, you guys.
I'm kidding. Um, anyways, the next day you forget, right? The next day it maybe crosses your mind briefly, if you're like me, and then you get to your studio, and then you open up your, um, computer and you start to peruse a little bit more because you're procrastinating getting to work. But the next day, maybe it crosses your mind, then it's out of your, like, thought stream for weeks, right?
And you never really end up making that purchase. Now, imagine that the, the environment is completely different. Imagine that you're actually, like, out for brunch with your girlfriends, or you're on a trip with your partner and, um, I don't know, you're day drinking through the streets of [00:14:00] Venice or something like that.
That's a great trip. That's a great day trip to just be out with your partner on. No, but you know what I mean. Vacation budgets are very different than, um, regular budgets, but I'm getting away from my point. Okay, imagine you're out for, like, brunch with your girlfriends. You guys are maybe thinking about doing a little bit of shopping afterwards, okay?
You add a little day shopping. You're at an outdoor mall. The sun is shining. It's beautiful. Um, we have outdoor malls here. I don't know if you guys do anywhere else in the country where we have literally, like, 85 million days of sunlight a year. Um, but that's what we do, okay? So you see that bag, and it's staring at you, and it's right there on your shelf, right in front of you, right?
There's a sales associate who gets it down for you. You get to touch it. You get to see the compartments inside of it. You get to slip it on your shoulder. You get to [00:15:00] do a little squeal. You get to do a little shimmy in front of the mirror because she looks so freaking cute. She's perfect for you, right?
Then you look at the price. It's more than you planned to spend, but that's okay because it's just so perfect. She's so cute, right? You feel like if you walk away, you'll never get to have her. And the sales associate's there, and they're guiding you, and you know that it's perfect, so you willingly hand over your debit card.
You're thankful for the idea of handing over your debit card, and then you're like, "Actually, no. Hold on. Let me throw this down my, on my Amex. Let me get some points," right? And then you leave the store happy as a fucking clam, right? A cute little clam with a brand-new handbag to boot, right? Now, you see the difference.
It's easy to see that online shopping is the simple sales model of [00:16:00] the photography industry, right? Think about how many times you have loaded up your online shopping cart with things that you genuinely loved. And then you talk yourself out of it. That's this model. You've built an entire pricing structure around the exact behavior that costs businesses billions of dollars in abandoned carts every single year.
Except now, it's your client's investment in their own family that's sitting there abandoned because nobody was in the room to help her choose. And she might really play with, like, that store feature in your software. She might think about frames, or she might, you know, even, like, create some of those frames.
Or she might think about an album for grandma, but then she's met with a number of obstacles in her head. She doesn't know what kind of frames or which images would look [00:17:00] best, or even how to size them, or where she would hang them in her house. And designing an album would take her forever, and Grandma's birthday isn't for six more months anyway, so she'll do it later, right?
She'll always do it later. There's no scarcity. There's no urgency. There's no controlled environment at all, so there is no guided decision Another huge component of buying psychology that is ripped away from this system is the actual buying moment. Okay? You want your client faced with buying the images the first time that they see the images, whenever their emotions are at their peak.
But this system allows for those emotions to dwindle whenever she looks at the gallery 100 times trying to decide on the 15 that she's supposed to narrow it down to. And each time that she comes back to the [00:18:00] gallery, she picks it apart more, and more, and more, and that number gets lower, and lower, and lower, and there's no one there to hold that moment for her whenever she tears up looking at her kids' faces.
And she needs someone to say, "Hey, you deserve to have that feeling in your home every single day." Instead, she's just alone with a gallery and a budget that she decided to stick to weeks ago. Okay? I actually built out a comparison table across, like, five different, uh, pricing structures that are commonly used in our industry, and I scored them against the criteria that actually drives a sale.
And the 10 factors that a buying environment should have in order to increase sales revenue are these. I'm gonna list them out for [00:19:00] you, okay? So the 10 factors are, number one, emotion. Number two, a guided decision-making environment. Number three, a controlled environment.
Number four, a clear pricing ladder. Number five, a contained buying environment, which is different than a controlled buying environment, which we can go into on a different, separate podcast some other day. But number six, natural scarcity. Number seven, an expansion opportunity. Number eight, a protected pricing structure.
number nine, sales leadership. And 10, an uncapped revenue structure. All right? True IPS hits every single one of them. It is 10 for 10 on buying psychology format. All right? Simple sales actually hits zero [00:20:00] Zero for 10. It is the only model on that entire table.
And you know what? I will throw that table into the newsletter for this week, okay? So if you're on my newsletter list, you're going to get that in your inbox and, um, you can go and you can look at it. Simple Sales hits zero out of the 10. It is the only model on that entire table that fails every single category.
And yes, it is worse than being all-inclusive. It is worse than having a sliding scale. It is worse than anything else that I compared it against. So if you are trying to build a business on strategy instead of comfort, this is, on paper at least, the least strategic pricing model that you could possibly choose.
Now, again, my little disclaimer, can you make money on this model? Obviously, yes, you can make money [00:21:00] because you set your prices based on what your collections are, and you will make that much money and that much money only. Will clients decide to get the whole entire gallery? Yes. Will you get that $250 or $300 payment bump most of the time or sometimes?
Yes, absolutely. It's not going to keep them from that. But unless if you have a unicorn client who is going to sit down and purchase frames and purchase albums and make sure that they are getting everything that they actually want to get out of that gallery, then you are not going to make the amount of money that you could have made, okay?
I am not telling you this to make you feel, like, stupid or dumb or anything if this is your current model. You know me. I would never say that. I myself was all-inclusive with my pricing whenever I was a wedding photographer. Like, on my portrait side, I kept everything the same as, um, being collections-based [00:22:00] and all-inclusive, just like wedding photography is.
And I didn't make this switch until 2022, and now I've made over seven figures in that timeframe since 2022. I'm telling you this because once you hear it laid out like this, you can't unhear it, and that's the whole point. I mean, I always say this to people, "You only know what you know. You can only make decisions based on what you know."
And then once you learn more, then you can make decisions based on what you know now, right? I want you to know that I've held up my end of the bargain on this episode about holding up a mirror, having the hard conversations, saying the quiet parts out loud, just like the intro says that I'm going to on this podcast, okay?
You at least know after hearing this that if you decide to keep on rolling with simple sales, then it's because you're actively choosing to make less money. And as long as you're educated about what your options [00:23:00] are, I'm cool with you choosing whatever is best for you and your family. But for my family, I have to make money.
I have to make the most amount of money possible. I've got a kid going to college. I've got cars that I have to buy for kids. I've got two more kids going to college here really soon, so, like, I gotta make money. I gotta grab bags, you guys. So if your family needs you to make money too, then the fix is not complicated.
The fix is to adopt a real IPS structure where the client sees their images for the first time with you, where you control the pacing, where scarcity and urgency are built in because the gallery isn't sitting on a server waiting to be browsed at midnight whenever they crawl into bed. Where you're there to hold the emotion with them instead of leaving her to feel it alone on a couch with a credit card that she's now talking herself out of [00:24:00] using.
Okay? If full IPS feels like it is too big of a leap right now for you, I get that. I had to make that leap too, and I know that that leap is scary. But here's the question you really just have to answer. Do you wanna be scared with more money in the bank, or do you wanna be comfortable with less money in the bank?
That's it. That's the decision, and that's a decision that only you can make. I just wanna make sure that you know that simple sales doesn't mean better. In this case, actually, simple means less. All right? If your choice is to go the Posers pricing structure route, which is the truest form of IPS that uncaps revenue at every single opportunity, I will gladly hold your hand.
I will gladly build the system with you. I will gladly transition your clients, and I will set you up to have the most [00:25:00] lucrative 2027 that you can imagine. So check the show notes or your newsletter for the link to make sure that you're on the wait list for the mastermind because that's where we build all of this, and that's where we transition your clients over into a pricing structure that actually prints real-life money for you.
Uh, the doors are starting to crack open a little bit for the mastermind, and you are not going to want to miss, out on the opportunity of when they do. And also, you're probably not gonna wanna deal with another year of the FOMO that you're already feeling right now. Okay? That's all I've got for you today.
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, [00:26:00] 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.
