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 episode of the Posers podcast. I don't know about you, but this busy season is handing me my ass, just like it does every single year. And every single year, it somehow, or I act like it somehow surprises me that I cannot stay on top of everything that's [00:01:00] going on.
So, , this episode is coming out a little bit late, but I know that I don't even have to apologize because every single one of you really and truly gets it. Running both my photography business and Posers during this time of year is incredibly challenging. Last year it honestly, like it almost put me six feet under.
So this year I actually tried to scale back and not take on as much on the photography side so that I could show up harder here in Posers, and clearly I didn't scale back enough because, well, honestly, because we know that I'll do anything for money. And it's very hard for me to scale back when I know that there's money on the table.
But, , clearly I didn't scale back enough because here we are with a late podcast. But The best part about running Posers and my photography business at the same time is that it really keeps me doing the exact same thing that I am teaching and the exact same thing [00:02:00] that I am building and then teaching you to build, and that I am running my business that I am teaching you how to run.
It, really keeps me in the trenches with you. I'm literally right here dealing with all of the nuances of, dealing with clients, and scheduling shoots, and rescheduling shoots because of the weather and everything else that makes this time of year so challenging. But I'm also right here with you for everything that makes this time of year so rewarding, too.
Also, with the next round of the mastermind coming up in February, I'm also spending a ton of time inside of my DMs talking to so many of you about what you're struggling with right now in order to see whether or not you're jumping in for the next round of the mastermind. I really and truly do have one foot, , firmly planted on each side of the business, and it makes me really aware of what's coming up for you and what you might be struggling with.
[00:03:00] So because of all of that, today I am maybe,, tinkering with the idea of starting something a little bit new. This is potentially the first episode of a series that I've been thinking about for the last few days. , Who knows whether or not this series will actually get off the ground.
Because this is where my Type B personality comes in, where I'm like, "Oh, this is a great idea," but then something else happens and now I've spent the next six weeks talking about something else completely different and completely forget that I'm like, "Oh, hey, I was gonna start that series." But, , I wanna tell you where this idea came from first because honestly, it came from me staring at my own face.
My own face. , I was listening to a voice note from a photographer the other day, and I was actually sitting in front of my computer. I was about to rush out the door and, , on my computer, I had just gotten out of a Zoom, so my video was still up, , the camera was still running. [00:04:00] And as I was listening to this voice note while I was kinda like packing up, getting all my stuff ready to leave, , it was almost like I had this mirror up in front of me because my video was still running.
And the minute that this photographer said the thing that we're going to talk about in this episode in just a second, I watched my face make this look that I always make And the thing is, between running social media for posers, having video of this podcast, having video of me on one-on-ones and group calls and teaching and all of that, I realized that I really make this face a lot.
It's the look that I get whenever a photographer says something to me that in my head I'm like, "Hold on. What?" But I kind of like tilt my head to the side and I close my left eye, and it has that same vibe as like whenever a puppy looks at you and they have that, like, confused [00:05:00] look on their face with, , the little head tilt and their ears kind of perk up.
It's like that kind of look. , I tilt my head, my left eye closes, and usually, like, the 11 lines in between my eyes get all scrunched up because I haven't had Botox in a really long time. But It's the exact face that you'd picture me making if I said, ", excuse me, what?" , "Girl, what?" , "Why are you thinking that?"
So that's the look . that I usually give whenever I hear something that, for me, just isn't landing in a place of facts. And that's kind of where... , if this series makes it out of this episode, that's where it was born. So for lack of a better name, I'm just going to call it the, like, Girl What series.
I have no idea how long this series is going to be. I have no idea how many of these I'll come up with. I have no idea if they're gonna run back-to-back, if they're gonna be sequential, or if it'll just be an [00:06:00] episode that happens whenever something like this pops into my life. But every episode in this series is going to take one thing that I hear photographers say, one of those beliefs that really sounds reasonable to you as you say it, but it sounds really unreasonable to me whenever I hear you say it.
And I'm going to pull that thought apart and show you why it might be keeping you stuck. Because here's what I've learned. After a really, really, really long time in this industry, the thing that's standing between a stagnant business and a six or multi figure business is never talent. I've said that before.
It is never your camera. It's never your editing. , It's not your location. It's not your market. The thing standing between you and the business that you want are really just the stories that you tell yourself. It's the stories that you tell yourself about what's actually possible, the stories about, what's happening inside of your business, and [00:07:00] really, , the things that you think need to happen that don't actually need to happen at all.
And some of those stories are so common that when you say them out loud in, like, a Facebook group or, say, like, your best photographer friend's group chat or, , a cohort that you're part of, everybody just nods along as if they're facts. But if you say them out loud to me, I'm going to tell you the truth.
I'm going to tell you that it's not a fact. I'm going to tell you that it's something that you're making up. I'm going to tell you that it's a mental block, and it's keeping you from the business that you actually want. So knowing all of that, , backstory to this, let's get into this first idea of girl what.
, Okay. So a few days ago, I was having a conversation in my DMs with another photographer, and it really turned into us going back and forth with voice notes because the things [00:08:00] that we were talking about started to get really deep. And honestly, actually voice notes are just the easiest way for me to communicate anyways, because a lot of the time whenever I'm in my DMs, I'm in my car because I'm picking up my kids, dropping off my kids.
I'm headed to violin, to volleyball practice, to golf tournaments, like all of those things. I'm out there in these streets living the exact same life that you are living. So a lot of these conversations happen from my car, and a voice note is sometimes just easier. But with this photographer, these voice notes actually really started to get pretty long, I wanna say right up front for this episode that I love this. I loved this conversation because this photographer was so honest with me about exactly where she was, or exactly where she is in her business. This was just a few days ago that this happened. she wasn't trying to give me some kind of, , highlight reel.
She wasn't pretending that everything was amazing, or ... I mean, obviously the reason why I'm in her DMs is because [00:09:00] she's on my wait list for the Posers Mastermind, right? So she wasn't just saying like, "Oh, hey, I was just like wanting to check to see if it's the right fit," or, "Oh, hey, I just needed a little bit of help over here."
Like, no, that is not the conversation that was happening at all. She was saying, "Here's where I am, and here's exactly what I'm struggling with, and I'm not sure what to do next , but also sidebar, before you start thinking this is just some kind of like sneaky sales pitch for me to slide in for the mastermind, A, I s- I pitch you guys all the time, so I am not against that idea.
, But that's really not what this is, because I actually came to the conclusion that this photographer isn't ready, and that she's not in the right mindset right now to start the mastermind with me. So this isn't me building up to like, "Oh, and then she signed up for the Posers Mastermind, and now I'm gonna like change her life, and everything is all good, and everything's better."
No, that's not what hap- that's not what's happening here at all, okay? But [00:10:00] I do wanna say that the kind of vulnerability that she was showing takes a lot of like real guts, and it takes a lot of courage, and I don't take it lightly that I'm the person who gets to hear these kind of things and that these kinds of thoughts come from so many of you.
And I also don't take it lightly when somebody comes into my DMs and shares not only that vulnerable side of her business, but also the kind of impact that it's having on, , your personal lives too. So I'm not gonna share her name, and I'm not going to play her actual voice notes like I've done in other episodes.
And, , this episode isn't going to be to pick on any of those sort of things at all. I'm sharing it because what she said out loud is what a lot of you are thinking too. And we're not even really getting into the vulnerable parts of that conversation that we were having. It's just that if I was to share a voice note, there wasn't, like, a clean take that I could take that didn't get into those [00:11:00] vulnerabilities, okay?
So I'm just gonna tell you about what it was that happened. So here's the situation. She had gone through a program because she wanted to switch her business over to in-person sales. I have no idea what this program was. I never asked, and I never want to know. I think that it is fan-freaking-tastic that she knew that she wanted to switch to in-person sales.
So I was so excited to hear that she had jumped into somebody's program. And I honestly and genuinely love that she knew to make that move for her business. So she went through this other program, and she, made the switch into IPS, which is also a really freaking big deal because so many photographers, maybe you, are having a hard time even getting to the point of...
I mean, I think that you know that you need to make the switch into IPS, but it is a scary leap to make, right? , The fact that she had made this switch is a [00:12:00] really big freaking deal. But the program that she went through, it just didn't seem like it was the right program for her. It's probably a really, really great program, but it wasn't as in-depth as what she needed it to be And she didn't get the amount of support that she needed while she was going through it And actually, like, transitioning her clients and getting them to embrace this new system, it wasn't working for her.
And her sales weren't anywhere near where she hoped that they would be, especially since she felt like that was really, like, the promise of the program, right? Is that IPS is gonna generate these, , really big sales once you get your business transitioned over. So rightfully so, she was really frustrated by that side of it.
So we were talking through some things, and then she said something, the thing that we're gonna talk about here. She said the thing that made me [00:13:00] do my, like, "Girl, what?" Like, sort of head tilt. And she said that IPS obviously wasn't going to work for her with the clientele that she had. And she said that she was going to have to go out, and she was going to have to find a whole entire new clientele.
So in her mind, what she was coming to me for was that she needed marketing from me. She needed to market to the right people, people who actually, like, wanted to do this process with her. So this is where we insert my head tilt. And I'm listening to her voice note, and I'm like, "Wait. Hold on." Now, I wanna say that I really do understand why she landed here in this spot or, , that she landed in this thought process of thinking that she doesn't have the right clientele for this.
I really do understand that because logically, it makes a lot of sense, right? You think about a luxury price [00:14:00] tag, and you know that only a certain number of people can afford that luxury price tag. So it makes sense that you'd have to market to people who kind of have the money to even buy the thing with the luxury price tag on it to begin with, right?
And whenever something isn't working, it's oftentimes so much easier to believe that the problem is out there somewhere else, somewhere outside of your business, rather than believing that it's something that you have right in front of you and you're simply not doing it the right way. So thinking, like, "No, no, no.
The problem isn't right here in my business." It's like, "Oh, no. It's just that I don't have the right clientele." That feels a little bit like it's outside of your reach. So yeah, the, the solution is I just need to go out, and I just need to get this whole new group of people who have never seen my old pricing.
That diagnosis, Oh, my clients are just the wrong clients," that feels like an easier [00:15:00] diagnosis because it also feels like it's a straightforward answer. But in all honesty, it's the wrong answer. And if you're thinking this same kind of thought inside of your own business, then I want you to hear me say that it's probably the wrong answer for you too If this photographer follows that belief, then she's going to walk away from the most valuable thing in her business, which is the people who already know her, the people who already trust her, and the people who already love her work.
Okay, so quick 180. While that conversation was happening in my DMs, the very next day, this other situation happened. We're literally taking a full, like, sidebar. We're going off into a full different direction, okay? So something completely different happened. It's almost like the universe was just, like, writing this episode for [00:16:00] me because something came up inside of the Posers group chat that tied right into this same kind of idea, and honestly, it threw up these little red flags in my head that I was like, "Ooh, this is something that I haven't fully cleared up over here in my own camp either," right?
Not that I haven't cleared it up because the thing that I said to them was the thing that I say to them over and over and over and over again. But the way that this came up inside of the group chat, it kind of took on a different form, okay? So now, obviously, every single photographer in the Posers group chat is running IPS because obviously that's what I've taught them.
That's what the whole entire Posers mastermind teaches. And a lot of them even were running it before they jumped in with me, and we simply changed the way that they were running it. So some are beginners, some of them are not, but all of them have at least gone through the program with me and have been with me for six months or way longer.
[00:17:00] So this group was chatting back and forth about their clients, and honestly, the reason why I said that it kind of just, , took a different form was that it was more of like a little venting session, which I am all for. That is girlhood, okay? But they were saying that the clients who seemed like they were the richest ones, that had the bigger houses, that had the nice cars, that had, like, designer everything, were often the ones who really struggled to spend over, you know, $1,000 on photos.
And that sometimes it was actually the clients that they least expected, the ones they would've, never really pegged as big spenders, were the ones who valued them more and spent way more. Or they were the ones that spent outside of what they had said their budget was because they ended up loving the images, and they loved the experience so much.
So Even in that setting, even inside of that group chat, [00:18:00] everyone was kind of like nodding along, right? A little bit of group think that everyone was saying, "Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That happens all the time. The rich ones are the hardest ones." Okay? Now, here's why I'm telling you this. Here's why I'm telling you both sides of these stories in this same episode.
Because on the surface, they really sound like complete opposites, right? We've got photographers in the DM saying, "I don't have the right clientele because I don't have the rich clients." And then girls inside of my group chat are saying like, "Ah, but the rich clients aren't where it's at because they're the ones who are h- struggling to spend more."
So one says, "I need more rich people," the other one says, "Rich people are the problem," right? But it's the exact same mindset in both of these scenarios that's actually causing the mental block, because in both situations, each set of photographers is looking at the client's [00:19:00] money. And whether we're talking about people who don't have a lot of money or people who do have a lot of it, that is always and forever the wrong place for our brains to be.
Completely full stop. That is not where our brains need to be. So I had to slide into the posers group chat and sort of reset their thinking a little bit because... And , this is the meat of this episode. This is the real lesson right here. Because switching to IPS is not about finding rich clients.
You know that I love repeating the things that I really, really, really want you to pay attention to. So here's where I'm gonna throw in that tagline, tits up and ears open, right here. If this is the only thing that you hear from this episode, listen to this right now. Switching to IPS is not about needing to find rich clients.
It's not about hunting [00:20:00] down the clients who have tons of money and are willing to just, I don't know, throw it at you. I mean, I would actually love that though. Like, please throw your money at me. Like, I live in Las Vegas, put me on a stage, make me dance a little bit, throw some money at me.
Okay, that was slightly inappropriate. , I would say I'm sorry, but I also thoroughly enjoyed it. , Now I can't stop thinking about some, like, I don't know, dirty, like, rich whale of a man throwing money at all of us. We're like, we're making it rain photos on top of them, like, while we're on the stage and, like, they're, like, throwing money back at us.
Okay. Okay, , anyways, I need to get back. Let get back to the topic of what we were talking about. It is... IPS is not about hunting down the clients who have [00:21:00] tons of money and just assuming that they're gonna throw that money at you because they have a lot of it. All right? It's about changing your messaging, and it's about changing your pricing structure so that people understand where the value of working with you actually lies.
And it's about aligning what you offer with what your client actually values. That's it. That's the whole entire thing. Because whenever your brain is in the right place, you're simply building a pricing structure where anybody who walks through your door has the potential to spend more with you. So the budget client can come in and they can say, "Okay, our budget is $1,000," and then your experience can lead them into spending maybe 2,000 or maybe $3,000.
And then the more affluent client, the one who has more to spend, [00:22:00] they can come in thinking that they're gonna spend 3 or $4,000, and your structure gives them the opportunity or, you know, the runway to spend 6,000 or 7,000 or $10,000 with you. It's one pricing structure, and it supports both of those clients.
Because now I know I have said this a million fucking times, but we all really literally need to tattoo this on like, I don't know, the inside of our eyelids or something so that we can see it every day. As if you could actually see the insides of your eyelids, but you know where my joke is landing. I'm gonna say it again for the hundred millionth time.
Your client's bank account is none of your business. Absolutely none of it. Your only job is to build your business and create a pricing structure so that whoever walks through your door has [00:23:00] the opportunity to spend as much as they want to spend with you. And once you understand that, this idea of I need a whole new clientele who can afford these prices with me, that belief completely falls away Now, obviously, I am not able to hand you my entire transition system in a podcast episode because that's behind the walls of the Posers Mastermind.
But I do want you to know that when you are switching over to IPS, it is not this small shift. It is not a small transition. It is not this tiny idea that you can do by sending one email and putting up a couple of posts about making the switch. Because that will 100% lead to confusion. That will create the scenario that you are terrified of having, because it will lead [00:24:00] clients inside of your sales room to honestly be like, "What the fuck?"
, It will lead them to feeling duped because it'll lead them into saying to you like, "What do you mean I have to buy all of the photos now? I got all of these images last year for the same exact price." That is not how you want your clients to feel as you're transitioning them through this process.
So Take this with you today. You don't need new people. You do not need a new clientele. You need new words, and you need a pricing structure that shows people where the value lives. And those words, that messaging that connects what you offer to what your ideal client already cares about. And you need to stop looking at your client's bank account because it is none of your business.
So whether she walks in with $1,000 [00:25:00] or $10,000, your job is to simply build a structure that gives your client the opportunity to spend as much money as they want to spend with you. The clients who are sitting in your inbox, on your email list, the one that you have photographed for years, the ones that you've already written off in your head as not IPS people, those actually might be some of your biggest sales of next year, and they're just waiting for you to show them why.
So if you've made the switch over into IPS, or you're thinking about making the switch over into IPS, and it's not working for you the way that you hoped, or that you're terrified that it won't work for you the way that you hope it would, then I would obviously love to talk with you. And that's exactly the kind of transition that we work through inside of the mastermind, and you can book a call with me using the link [00:26:00] inside of the email that is in your inbox or the link that is in the show notes for this episode.
And if you've heard a belief floating around this industry that you think that I need to dissect for this like, "Girl, what?" kind of series that we're doing here, please send it to me in the DMs, and it might just end up as the next episode in this series. So that's all I've got for you for today, posers.
Bye for now.
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.
