Sarah Petty: If you’ve been in photography for a while, but you haven’t figured out how to turn your passion into real income, this episode is for you. Today I’m sitting down with the Cincinnati area photographer who’s been behind the camera since her college days. After years of moving around as a military spouse, she finally settled in 2005 and set out to build her photography business, but it was always fun money, never the real deal until she experienced a tragedy and needed her photography business to be more.
Welcome, Lisa. Share what that photography journey looked like for you.
Lisa Deaton: My husband was in the military and we moved around a lot, and I knew that having a business was going to be really difficult, and so when we settled down in Cincinnati, Ohio in 2005, I thought, here’s my chance. I started out with a digital model and did that for a few years. Dabbled in online galleries, and was trying to figure out what worked for me. After the gallery model I was selling prints, but mostly little prints. It felt like I was constantly chasing people all the time.
I’d give them a link and then it would be days without hearing anything. Their life is busy and they have other things to do besides sit down at the computer and decide what they want, and so I just felt like I was constantly not knowing how much I was going to make because I couldn’t pinpoint people as to when they were going to order.
Sarah Petty: If you don’t have a system that ensures that when you get a client, you’re going to get the order within a certain timeframe, it’s a total leaky boat.
Lisa Deaton: I ended up being frustrated, and then I had this mindset of everybody is just going to string me along and not come through. I was kind of putting everything on the client instead of realizing that I’m the one that has to change my business.
Sarah Petty: When you found our program, Boutique Breakthrough, what were you looking for?
Lisa Deaton: I just felt like pricing for me was the hardest thing. I was so confused. Getting help with my pricing and just saying, this is it, I am not turning back, I’m doing this pricing. It really has helped me be way more confident.
Sarah Petty: You went through Boutique Breakthrough and you learned pricing and we scrubbed your branding. For someone who’s been in business a lot of years, what was the hardest part for you?
Lisa Deaton: I think I had a lot of internal mindset issues. When you’re in it for so long, you don’t know what you don’t know. That was hard for me because you would think I would know, but apparently I don’t. I needed the help and I wanted the help because I want my business to be successful.
Sarah Petty: Something I think a lot of our students don’t realize is the power of a community and doing it with other people. Was that something that helped?
Lisa Deaton: Oh, absolutely. I am one of those people that I like to collaborate with people, I’m more about collaboration than I am about competition, and so I really do appreciate the coaches that are there.
Sarah Petty: Yeah, I love that feeling too, like, these are my people. The goal in Boutique Breakthrough is that you go through the process, you change your pricing, and you go and you market it and you build a presentation, you do it with the goal of you getting a “Julie”, which is an order over a thousand dollars. In all your years, have you gotten orders over a thousand?
Lisa Deaton: No.
Sarah Petty: It’s hard for me to even explain to people who haven’t done Boutique Breakthrough how the strategy that’s from the price list through the consultation, through the session, through the presentation, the strategy that makes it work. If you just follow it, it happens. Tell us what your “Julie” was.
Lisa Deaton: My “Julie” was $1,120, and I was thrilled, so excited.
Sarah Petty: How did you feel about yourself after that? Right?
Lisa Deaton: Once I finally did the total and told her the total, and she paid me, no questions asked, and I was like, I cannot believe this just happened right now. This is possible and I can do this more than one time. Now that I have a strategy and I understand what I’m doing, I can do this again and again. It’s awesome.
Sarah Petty: I love that. Your first time going through and you’re just trusting the process and it worked. That is beautiful. Lisa, thank you for being here today and sharing your story.
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