How to Exit Your Photography Business the Right Way with Mike Price

Pat Miller: 00:00

I'm Pat Miller, and this is The Professional Photographer Podcast. Welcome in, boys and girls. Welcome in. Sit down. Grab a snack. Got a beverage? Good. Got a pen? Got a paper? Great. We're gonna have an uncomfortable conversation today. We're gonna talk about what happened if right now, immediately, your business had to close and you weren't around to close it. Blink, blink. What? Yeah. Every single day, all across America, photography businesses close. They close because someone retires. Yay! That's happy. They close because someone gets really sick or they die. Ooh, that's sad. Or fifty percent of small businesses won't make it past five years. Yikes! So one way or another, at some point, your business will close. Well, what would happen if it had to close and you weren't there to show someone where the financials are, and where are the passwords, and who do you owe money to, and who owes you money, and how much is that room full of gear worth anyway? What would happen if you had to close? Mike Price is our guest today, and he wrote a book called Quit Like a Pro. And it walks you through everything you would need to do to turn your business over to someone you trust so they could close it on your behalf. Now, again, critical conversation with stuff you need to hear. I'm daring you to listen to this episode and take action for the betterment of your future. We're back with Mike Price next. Mike Price, welcome to The Professional Photographer Podcast. How are you today?

Mike Price: 01:51

I'm doing great. Living the dream, Pat. How about yourself?

Pat Miller: 01:54

Little bit of dream living. I'm playing golf tomorrow, so life is good. If I'm golf adjacent, I can't have a bad day. That's for sure.

Mike Price: 02:01

Nothing wrong with that at all.

Pat Miller: 02:02

Today's topic is something everyone needs to hear, but they need to know a little bit about you first. If they haven't met you yet, tell us who you are and what you do.

Mike Price: 02:09

Sure. I am a professional photographer based in Columbus, Ohio. I've been doing this full time for about nineteen years. Tomorrow is my anniversary as the day of our recording. But I actually worked back in the film and darkroom days back in high school and college. I was the college newspaper darkroom tech for four years. Took a twenty five year time out to do corporate America IT work and then got back into running my own business and photography, action sports, senior portraits, weddings, did the whole thing. Primarily focused right now on just headshots and corp commercial architectural work.

Pat Miller: 02:42

What's unique about our conversation today is we're not talking about architecture or headshots or action sports. We're talking about quitting our business. It's something we all need to think about, but how come nobody wants to talk about it?

Mike Price: 02:53

You know, it's not a pleasant topic. And whether it's the standpoint of a planned retirement or somebody's just trying to make their business work and they just can't quite hit that orbital trajectory yet, or the thing that people really don't want to think about is they have a medical emergency, heart attack, other kind of issue that takes them out of their business. It's not as pleasant and fun to talk about that as it is for shutter speeds, f stops, and ISOs, yet it's so important for us to be able to do, to be able to take care of our business going forward. And for those that we leave behind or the business stuff we leave behind that we're well-organized and we've got a plan in place.

Pat Miller: 03:27

And that's really what this is about. If we take the time to organize everything, we're doing a kindness and a gesture for whomever may need to take care of our business when we can't. Is that the right way to think about this?

Mike Price: 03:40

That'd be a great way to look at that. You know, a lot of times for the photographers, they maybe a solopreneur, they've got their business. Their spouse partner may have their own business completely unrelated to photography. And if something were to happen to the photographer, and the other spouse has to step in and try to figure out, well, where is the financial information? Where a thing as something as simple as passwords for the bank accounts or other information or the fact I've got tens of thousands of dollars worth of camera gear sitting on the shelf. What do I do with that stuff? Unless you've done some plans ahead of time, unless you've talked about that, unless you've organized it, it's a tremendous burden on that spouse or partner who may in that moment, be more focused on being a caregiver for the photographer than trying to take care of the business and dealing with the customers who are expecting photos.

Pat Miller: 04:26

The happy version of this is we decide to retire and ride off into the sunset with a check. The tragic version of this is something happens and we can't take care of ourselves. But, unfortunately, a likely version of this is our business fails. And while we're hurting and trying to shovel a bunch of debt and we're wounded, we still have to act to undo the business. That's another likely scenario.

Mike Price: 04:50

Right. I mean, as I've mentioned tomorrow, as of the day we're recording, tomorrow is my nineteenth anniversary for my business. I made a lot of decisions nineteen years ago about forming my business, business formation documents, sales tax information, all those business forms and documents. It took me a while to find those and dig those out and get myself organized because we kinda forget where that's at. So even if you're doing a planned retirement or something down the road, getting things organized today for when you do plan to exit the business means that everything is there, everything's at your fingertips. You're not stumbling around making mistake or wasting time as you're trying to find stuff.

Pat Miller: 05:26

There are two ways that we can go at this. We can get the book, Quit Like a Pro. Great. But you also offer people a chance to kinda ease into this concept. Tell us about the Jump Start.

Mike Price: 05:36

So what I put together is that if you–and thank you for the the mention on the book there. I've recently published a book on actually closing your business. It's a big meaty guide. It's a guidebook. You fill it out. It's a document you're gonna can write in. It's not a PDF on that, but it's quite a bit of material because we try to cover everything involved in closing the business. However, that's also a big, daunting task that may be a lot for someone to jump into right away and get traction. The idea of a Jump Start is a two page document I put together, and we're gonna share a link here in a second, that you can actually attach maybe some of the most important information that you want to be able to have available to share with somebody, whether it's an emergency or whether it's eventually a planned retirement for things as simple as where are my passwords located at, where's my cell phone that I get two-factor authentication information at? Where do I keep my financial data, my customer data, my image information for my customers? All the photos I've taken, where are those located? The computers that, a lot of times, somebody gets into and can't find stuff at, a little guidance, a little help would be go a long way to make it easier for that person that's going to help out. And that's what the jumpstart intended to do. It's free PDF. You download it at quitlikeaproguide.com/ppa, and you can fill out that form and at least get some initial information together that's going to help you be able to share what's important with a spouse, partner, business partner, somebody else, family members to be able to help carry on the business, stabilize it, potentially even close it if you're not there. Or if you're doing a planned retirement, at least to remember where you put everything, and you can go through and be able to close that.

Pat Miller: 07:13

As someone that guides people through this process, is anyone as organized as they think they are?

Mike Price: 07:17

No. I mean, I consider myself a fairly organized person. Even I realize, wait, where did I put that? You know, we forget things. Over time, we forget where stuff is at. We put things in a box, but the box gets moved and the box gets reorganized. And, we're photographers. We're creatives. And I think they'll be some of the first people to say, we don't handle that structure and rigor very well. We like to be creative. And yet, this is a task that really calls for a little bit of structure and guidance. And things like the Quit Like a Pro book, things like the Jump Start guide are ways to be able to easily help somebody get a little bit of structure to help them out.

Pat Miller: 07:52

A few of the things you've already mentioned made me go, oh, yeah. I don't know where that is, but let's make sure we hit on the critical elements of the Jump Start. You talk about a designated agent. What's that?

Mike Price: 08:03

So a designated agent is going to is a term I came up with to identify a trusted person in your circle who may be able to operate on your behalf to be able to go through and lead the effort if you can't do it. Say you're in a hospital, or worse, or circumstance where you're not actually able to close the business, a designated agent is someone who's been given a power of attorney. It's a legal fiduciary relationship, and it's a document that your attorney can help you fill out, and this person would sign and give them authority to be able to act on your business accounts, to be able to write checks and pay vendors, to eventually close business accounts, to sell product on your behalf. They're the quarterback that may reach out to another term we call trusted advisors, which be people like your accountant, your banker, your insurance agent, other people that help you with your business, while being not photographers, they help with the business part, the quarterback can go do that. And then, a designated agent, what's really important about them, is that really shouldn't be a family member or a spouse. Because again, in an emergency, in a crisis situation, that spouse may be more involved in caring for the photographer or involved in the crisis rather than being able to have their really thinking straight about what they need to do for business aspects. And the designated agent can operate independently and provide that continuity to help out through the process.

Pat Miller: 09:26

You mentioned some of the little things that are hard to remember, two-factor authentication, keys and combos, those kinds of things. But the big stuff, like financials, what kind of stuff are we pulling together for our financials to help out that designated agent?

Mike Price: 09:40

So at least letting the designated agent know where those are located doesn't mean he always have to have a copy of those. But being able to document, I store them in this file folder in the computer or they're in this binder over here on the shelf that would be things like your profit and loss statements. Things you're going to need to be able to complete that year's income taxes, potentially the monthly or a semi-annual sales tax, depending on your local area there, things that the person's going to be able to at least know what we have, what bills need to be paid on a regular basis because that represents money that's kind of coming out of the business. And if the photographer is not shooting new projects and there's no new money coming in, it becomes really important to understand where the money is going out that we can turn off things that aren't necessary, reduce some of the other areas that we have, and be able to manage the money in the account. So knowing where the financials are, bank account statements, bank accounts financial profit and loss reports are all going to be valuable to know where those are at. Again, doesn't have to have them in its hand all the time, just needs to know where to find them.

Pat Miller: 10:43

And I understand that for financials. Okay. Here's how we get into QuickBooks. Here are my financial, like, my bank account passwords. Okay. But the thought of cataloging our assets seems so overwhelming. To go and list out every lens and every stand and every camera body and every backdrop, that just is gonna make my head explode. Is that the type of detail we need to do?

Mike Price: 11:04

It's a scale. Okay? What I kind of suggest in the guidebook is to establish maybe a financial threshold. Maybe any asset over $2,500 we're going to document. Most people that have business insurance or business loss insurance have something called an Inland Marine Policy attached to their insurance, and it is a list of all the items that the insurance company is insuring for you. So you could start just with that list, print that out, copy of that from the insurance company, and just put that with your notes and go, here's the big ticket items. This is how I identify it. It's this camera, it's these lenses, it's a vehicle if you're a trailer, if you're doing that kind of work, things over a certain dollar threshold. And everything below that, you can just kind of begin to fill in as they have value to you. Or you can also do things where you have, maybe some personal items that aren't part of the business, but you're storing with your professional equipment. Maybe you also note that this information, these items, these assets are personal, not part of the business, so they don't get included in the liquidation and they get pushed out. So you can go either direction on that.

Pat Miller: 12:13

You mentioned some of the go-to people earlier, the insurance agent, banker. But I would imagine the go-to people list is longer than we think, especially for photographers. My editor that works remotely is someone that I need to know who they are. Who else comes to mind as far as go-to people that we might not think of immediately?

Mike Price: 12:31

Sure. One of the first ones you want to be able to have are what we call the trusted photographers. Those are the people that are in your personal sphere of influence, if you will, your folks that you have coffee with on a regular basis, maybe members of your local or state guild that you might be able to reach out to and say, hey, I can't shoot this project. Can you shoot it on my behalf? Or can you take this customer because I'm not shooting anymore, but this customer does and needs exactly what you do great. And how do I provide that to you? So having that group around you to shoot projects, edit for you, carry on the sales process of some of the/ orders that are in flight can be valuable.

Pat Miller: 13:11

What about our clients? Do we need to catalog who our clients are and where they are in the client journey? And if so, how much and how frequently do we need to update that?

Mike Price: 13:19

You know, one of the things about putting together this process is it also helps a photographer go back and really try to identify maybe opportunities for best practice, ways to organize your customers, whether it's using, a tool like a 17hats or, those other types of tools here to help organize that, or just having a good list in QuickBooks or an Excel spreadsheet. Going through and actually organizing that and saying, these are my active customers, here's my past customers in whatever form you're using is a best practice. We know who those people are. Now it becomes useful for that designated agent to be able to find that list and be able to go back through and at least make phone calls and go, do we owe you anything? Do we have any projects in flight with you? Do you have any work that's going on that we need to be able to work through to be able to make sure we take care of you and represent that photographer and maybe protect the reputation by ensuring that customer gets what they need.

Pat Miller: 14:13

In your experience, do people just wake up one day and say, I need to do this. Or do they have a health scare or they see something bad happen to a friend? What makes someone go, I need to quit like a pro and do the Jump Start?

Mike Price: 14:26

Yeah. No one starts motivated that way. And I found that when I was at Imaging USA earlier this year and kind of sharing the concept in some pre-release versions of the books and showing people going, do you think this is valuable? And to a person, everyone said, I've done this for my personal life. I have a will. I have a trust. I have stuff in place. I never thought about even doing it for my business, and their eyes get really big around. And I think it's just an area that no one has ever really brought up because we focus so much on growing our businesses. And you know how many books out there and seminars and tapes and CDs and workshops you can go to, to build your business, but we've never really built the vocabulary, built the conversation around what do you do at the end of the business the same way. And until someone goes through it on a medical scare, watches somebody go through that on a medical scare, or maybe draws the connection when they do their own personal estate planning and realize I need this for my business too, no one's going to get that motivation unless they listen to a podcast like this. Maybe some presentations and stuff that I'm doing on this to really say this is an equal part of the business as it is growing the business.

Pat Miller: 15:37

When you watch people go through this, is there an area where they struggle?

Mike Price: 15:40

Boy, you know, the struggle is just the getting started. It is that is the biggest one we've seen. You know, no matter whether you want to do the full scale, Quit Like a Pro program or even just doing the Jump Start, admitting that you need to do this is really challenging for a lot of people. Once they get started, maybe one of the areas I find, again, from a creative photographer's perspective, is that not everyone does a great job of organizing their business financials. There's a shoe box full of receipts. There's a bookkeeper that once a year gets paid a handsome amount to sort it all out and then tell the photographer, did you make any money this year? And then, you know, you do a lot of stuff with coaching with folks that are business owners. It's a case of you've got to be on this every week, every month, you've got to have your finger on the pulse of your business. And going through this process may help people get a better insight to their profitability of their business and be able to maybe run a better business.

Pat Miller: 16:38

If we find the courage to go through it, I would imagine that by the time you're done with it, you'll at least have more confidence. What are some other side effects that are positive by going through this process?

Mike Price: 16:47

Well, some of the things you're gonna find out is that, and I've had one person actually went through the guide and came back and said when I was documenting all the vendors I work with, I realized I had multiple vendors I was paying annual fees for that did the exact same thing and I never turned them off. So by shining a lot of heat and light into those areas, you start realizing, do I really need that $49.95 subscription every year or three of them when one would be sufficient? Or maybe something else takes over and I don't need that anymore? So that inventory process, understanding where things are at in your business, can really give you some insight for maybe what you really need and what you don't need anymore. I think the other thing it does, it really creates a great conversation with your spouse or your family. They're the people that are going to be–I'm gonna pick the worst example. I know you're kind of the optimist. You talk about the planned retirement and things like that. And so in that case, we do have the chance to talk in the moment to our spouse, family, partners, things like that. But pick the worst situation. You know, if there's an accident, there's a major medical emergency or worse, and you have to leave this all behind to somebody to figure it out. Having this conversation upfront with them is hard. It's challenging. It really makes us think about our mortality, yet it's a gift we're giving to people. We're giving them the information about how to recoup all that capital, all that money in our business. We're giving them guidance through our designated agent to take care of our clients and preserve our reputation. Even if we're never gonna be back in business the same way, everyone's gonna have a really good impression about how we exited the business because we had a plan to be able to take care of them if something bad were to happen.

Pat Miller: 18:24

This might be a little bit off the topic, but I'm curious. Do you think people overvalue how much they think their business is worth and this process helps wake them up as to what they really have?

Mike Price: 18:34

That's a great question. You know, I'm going to split it two ways. I actually think that in a lot of cases, people don't realize how much money they have in their business. When we think in terms of assets and equipment and gear. If we wanted to, we can actually sit back and go and look over the course of the last five years and say, how much money have we spent on stuff that's sitting on shelves and in our gear bags and in our vehicles that we're using on a day-to-day basis? Because if we buy it incrementally in small pieces, we don't actually see the total amount. Yet if family members needed to be able to convert that to be able to pay medical bills, the light bill, whatever other, and have cash to be able to pay family expenses, there's tremendous value in there. And I don't think the photographers have ever really organized it in a way, understand what that potential is that they would do and be able, and then have a process that says, you know what? If this all happens, I want you to go to this used photography store who buys studios and take them down and take all the stuff to them, and whatever he gives us, take the check because that's he's gonna give us a fair price, and I'm going to convert all that gear to cash. Now, conversely, when we think about accounts receivable, we think about we've shot all these customers and we haven't received orders yet. We're always optimistic that that's going to be our first ten thousand dollar's order with that customer. And we're very optimistic of what that's going to be. And the reality is we know it's still going to be somewhere around our average order of value. So having some insight to that, having thought through that, having talked to our family and spouse about what that really consists of and set expectations can be very powerful in the moment of a crisis that people aren't assuming something this big and it's really only this big or vice-versa.

Pat Miller: 20:08

If we get the book, we dive into the process. Is this a six month journey to be ready? Six weeks? Six days? How long does it take to do this right?

Mike Price: 20:16

You know, it's a progressive effort you're going to go through. It's big. It's meaty. We have tried to consider every possibility, and some things people are gonna turn to a page and look and go, this doesn't apply to me. And that's fine. You skip that page. Realistically, from experience, it takes about two to three weeks to get the initial pass through. It's reading the material. It's finding that information. It's things like we recommend about how to put together the right powers of attorney to be able to help folks. Well, you need to engage with your attorney and have them craft up those powers of attorney, talk to the designated agent and make sure that they're willing to do the work and get them on board and get them to sign. So those all take time. And then what you typically find after that is that periodically you're going to open the book and go, you know, I could add a little more detail here. Now that I've done this for a little bit, I've thought about this or I've researched it. I went looking for something. I finally found it. I need to add this a little bit more in. So it's a continual process then that evolves over time. And of course, it's never static. It's things that periodically, maybe when you're doing your income tax or once a year or you're doing the sales tax on a monthly basis, you just flip the book open and go, what was different this period? What was new? To help with that, one of the recommendations we have in the book is being able to have what, kind of a practice run–it's once a year, open up the book, bring your designated agent in, buy him an adult beverage or a pizza and sit down and walk through the book and go, if you had to act upon this book right now, is all the information in the front part of the book, which is the inventory, does it make sense to you? Can you read this? Do you understand what this is? Ask me questions if it's not clear. The back part of the book is about 25 pages worth of step by step actions to take. You know, do you understand what these steps are? Because all those steps refer back to inventory information in the front part of the book. So that process there can also help create that conversation to help make that maybe more a smooth process and and not feel so overwhelming to have to do it at once, but we do it over time.

Pat Miller: 22:20

We're intrigued. We can see the value of why we need to have all of this work done. Can you tell us the story of someone that's done this process, or can you share your perspective on why this is so urgent? Because this is real life stuff that we're talking about.

Mike Price: 22:35

It is. You know, I have several people, and the people who have bought the book so far are all underway. So I'm still waiting for that first person to say, I'm done and this is what my experience was. But what I can share is the example that really kind of motivated and drove this. And I think people could then make the relation or the correlation to their circumstances. And, you know, last January in 2024, a lot of people know David Beckham, one of the premier senior portrait photographers in The United States. And, and Dave's in my same hometown here, a little town called Pickerington. We're a suburb of Columbus. And Dave and I had adult beverages. We had a couple of beers and to get together and just talking about business and shooting the breeze on a Wednesday night and Friday morning, David woke up and had a stroke and his entire left side of his body was paralyzed. And at that point, Dave's life changed, but also his wife's life changed. And they needed to find ways to be able to help get organized. They're right in the middle of senior portrait order season. How do we take care of all those seniors that represent the income for the family and the reputation of David? Because all these people put their trust in Dave to be able to get their photos. They struggled for a while. They tried to muscle through it, his wife tried to muscle through it with one part-time helper he had, and they just were struggling. And in April of that year, they asked me to get involved and to help put structure and organize this. And everything you see in the book was stuff that I started trying to write down and and document for them, but we had to do it on the fly. It's like changing the engines on the airplane in flight. We didn't have a plan, and we didn't have the details. And a lot of times, we had to wait till David felt better enough to be able to ask him a couple of questions. You know, where is this located? Who's this customer? And we were fortunate to be able to talk to him periodically about that, but things took a lot of time. And we made mistakes because we just didn't have things organized well. And that really drove home the value of having a tool like this in place for others to be able to benefit from that experience.

Pat Miller: 24:38

The journey begins with the Jump Start. If we want it, where do we get it?

Mike Price: 24:41

So my recommendation, go to quitlikeaproguide.com/ppa. It's a special landing page I've built for this podcast. Tells a little bit about the Jump Start, and you can download a free two-page PDF right from there. And if that intrigues you, you're interested in learning more, you can click on a link there. It'll take you over to the information about the Quit Like a Pro guide. We have the, preview pages. You can see the first thirty pages of the inventory section. You can see the first five or six pages of the action section, the execution phase, on the step detail we've put in. It's a tremendous resource for you to be able to have a really strong business base to be able to make sure you're protected and ready to be prepared.

Pat Miller: 25:21

You're helping a lot of people. Mike Price, thank you for what you're doing, and thank you for joining us on The Professional Photographer Podcast. I appreciate it.

Mike Price: 25:28

Thanks, Pat.

Pat Miller: 25:28

Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of the Professional Photographer Podcast. I promise you, next week's episode will be a lot happier. Before you go, can you do me a favor? Can you give us a like or a comment? Preferably a comment, because I wanna know what you thought of this week's episode. Was this an important topic to cover? Did it wake you up to what you need to do for you and your family's future? Either way, leave us feedback so we can build a better episode next time out. One more thing, if you're not yet a member of Professional Photographers of America, you're missing it. PPA offers incredible resources like equipment insurance, top-notch education, and a supportive community of photographers ready to help you succeed. It's perfect for photographers who are serious about growing their business in a sustainable and profitable way. At PPA, you belong here. Discover more about membership at PPA.com. That's PPA.com. I'm Pat Miller, founder of the Small Business Owners community and the publisher of the Small Business Owners summary newsletter. Check that out at smallbusinesssummary.com. We'll be back right here real soon with another episode of The Professional Photographer Podcast. Thanks for tuning in.