Get More Portrait Clients with Dance School Photography | Susan Michal’s Proven Strategy
Discover how veteran photographer Susan Michal uses dance school photography to build a steady stream of high-value portrait clients without spending money on ads. In this episode of The Professional Photographer Podcast, Susan shares her step-by-step method for turning volume dance school shoots into profitable portrait sessions, including how she books $2,800 fairy sessions and even $18,000 family portraits simply by showing up in the community.
Episode Highlights 🎤💡:
(11:08) - You have to be willing and able to work with people. Because I don't care if you're selling landscapes, you still got to sell it to somebody, because a rock is not going to buy a landscape. A person is going to buy a landscape. We're in the people business.
(26:22) - It's all about relationships. Photography is all about relationships. And you can be closed off and not friendly and not benefit from those relationships, or you can realize that every time you interact with someone from one of these schools, that is a potential family session, a potential wedding, a potential anything that could lead to a $20,000 portrait sale.
(30:50) - I just don't think photographers always think as far ahead or outside the box as they need to. And really and truly, all we're talking about is very basic business models. I mean, this is how a lot of small businesses work. We just happen to be photographers. I think photographers get caught up in the fact that we're artists, and they don't often realize that we're business people first, really, because the art is about 10% of your business and the business is 90% of your business. And if you can't handle the business, then the art is never going to flourish.
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Transcript
I'm Pat Miller and this is the Professional Photographer Podcast.
Speaker:On today's show, we're going to do something a little bit different.
Speaker:We are gonna grow your portrait studio, but we're not gonna grow
Speaker:your portrait studio by talking about portraits hardly at all.
Speaker:We're not gonna talk about Google Ads, and we're not gonna talk about a ton
Speaker:of different social media strategies.
Speaker:Oh, no.
Speaker:We're gonna talk about showing up.
Speaker:For thousands of families a year doing volume photography.
Speaker:Susan Michael is our guest today and she's got one whale of a business,
Speaker:taking photos of dance studios, building great relationships with
Speaker:all of those families, and then converting them into portrait clients.
Speaker:It is a beautiful model, and if you're a portrait photographer,
Speaker:I mean, you gotta get in on this.
Speaker:I. Susan gives us all of the detail that you would need to take action.
Speaker:So if you wanna make more money with your portrait studio, you
Speaker:gotta get into the volume game.
Speaker:Susan is standing by.
Speaker:We'll talk to her next.
Speaker:Susan, welcome to the Professional Photographer Podcast.
Speaker:How are you today?
Speaker:I am super excited.
Speaker:I'm good.
Speaker:We're in Florida, it's a hundred degrees, but it just started raining outside.
Speaker:So we'll see how much rain we, how much rain we hear.
Speaker:A hundred degrees.
Speaker:I'm a gentle Midwestern.
Speaker:Or a hundred degrees makes like shake.
Speaker:Maybe it's 98.
Speaker:Oh,
Speaker:there's really
Speaker:a difference between 95 and a hundred.
Speaker:Not much.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Well, that's true.
Speaker:That's true.
Speaker:Well, it's great to have you here, hopefully in the air conditioning.
Speaker:And if someone hasn't met you yet, tell 'em who you are and what you do.
Speaker:Uh, my name is Susan Michael.
Speaker:I've been a professional photographer for, um, th 30 years, that's hard to believe.
Speaker:And I'm in Jacksonville, Florida.
Speaker:I, um, am a PPA master and I was also past president of PPA, so I've been
Speaker:around the block a little bit with PPA.
Speaker:So we say this to the military folks, but thank you for your service.
Speaker:And how long were you, the past president?
Speaker:How, how and what was that experience like?
Speaker:Year?
Speaker:Well, my year was, um, officially 14 and 15 and I was on the board for nine years.
Speaker:So it's about a nine year run, give or take.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Well, uh, thank you for being a part of it and helping us get to where we are today.
Speaker:And you're not done giving because today we get to learn from you how to
Speaker:build a volume to portrait pipeline.
Speaker:Let's start by talking about volume.
Speaker:You say you need to have a sure thing in your business.
Speaker:What do you mean by that?
Speaker:Well, for years I was a wedding photographer and pretty by and large,
Speaker:wedding photography is a sure thing.
Speaker:I mean, you've got a contract.
Speaker:There are times that things don't work out, but nine times out of 10, if you've
Speaker:got a contract in the bride and groom, you know that that's gonna happen and
Speaker:you know that money's gonna come in.
Speaker:Um, as I got a little bit older, I wasn't.
Speaker:Um, willing to do the kind of weddings I did back in the day.
Speaker:I would do 40 weddings a year and, uh, you know, at some point you're just not gonna
Speaker:continue to do 40 or 50 weddings a year.
Speaker:So I had, um, a client that owned a, a dance school.
Speaker:I, me, I would say a medium sized dance school, 250 kids, which is actually
Speaker:a fairly nice sized dance school.
Speaker:And, um, we had done the, um, the.
Speaker:Daughter of this person, and she said, is there any way you would
Speaker:consider doing a dance school?
Speaker:And I said, no.
Speaker:This was back in 2004 when digital cameras were just coming out.
Speaker:And it was a crazy time to be a photographer and just the technology
Speaker:and all the changes that were going on.
Speaker:But she finally convinced me to do it.
Speaker:And I said, well, I'll do it under one condition that I can do it digitally.
Speaker:And she said, fine.
Speaker:And I said, well, I, we don't know what we're doing.
Speaker:We have to figure it all out.
Speaker:We'll, but we'll figure it out and there'll just be stumbling blocks.
Speaker:And she was good with that.
Speaker:And, and she know all these years later now I did that school,
Speaker:this is 21st year, this year.
Speaker:And um, she gave me the op the best opportunity, the opportunity to learn
Speaker:how to do this on the job because there are lot of moving pieces to
Speaker:photographing 250 kids multiple times.
Speaker:And it's easy to think we sold online, now we sell online.
Speaker:It's no big deal.
Speaker:15, 20 years ago it was a really big deal to sell something
Speaker:online, just the software.
Speaker:And you know, we've been through so many different software changes and
Speaker:different things over the years, but that's kind of how it all got
Speaker:started and it was kind of crazy.
Speaker:And of course, you know, now this year I felt so good going into it.
Speaker:We added another big school at the last minute, you know, 400 kids.
Speaker:So to add 400 extra kids at the last minute is not.
Speaker:Normal and is, you know, a lot of extra work and I was perfectly
Speaker:calm, didn't have any issues because after all these years, of course
Speaker:we know exactly what we're doing.
Speaker:We know how to, you know, work with any obstacle we meet.
Speaker:And that's a really good feeling.
Speaker:I did not feel that way 20 years ago.
Speaker:No.
Speaker:So you transitioned from your Sure thing, being a wedding photographer to
Speaker:dance schools and volume photography.
Speaker:Did it ever feel odd to you to not.
Speaker:Do bride and groom pictures.
Speaker:Oh, yeah.
Speaker:And now you're just churning through kids in a dance school.
Speaker:I have mourned not doing weddings, but you know, as you, as you get on in your
Speaker:career and as you get a little older, you, and especially in Florida where
Speaker:most of the weddings are, when it's really hot, it's, it's difficult to
Speaker:go stand out in the sun for 10 hours and be on your feet for 10 hours.
Speaker:And so I really think, you know.
Speaker:God just had a plan to kind of help me transition out of that.
Speaker:I still miss weddings.
Speaker:I still do weddings.
Speaker:We call them legacy weddings now because I don't advertise for weddings.
Speaker:But, um, a lot of the kids that I do, a lot of the dancers that I do
Speaker:are getting married and of course they want me to do their weddings,
Speaker:so, so I can do that and that's fun.
Speaker:Um, but back when I first started with the dance schools, I never expected.
Speaker:It to take over the weddings.
Speaker:It was just something that I decided to do.
Speaker:I thought it was fun.
Speaker:I was in the music business for, for.
Speaker:20 years of my life, I was a professional singer and so I have
Speaker:a natural affinity for dancers and the arts and that kind of thing.
Speaker:And um, so 20 years ago when I started this, it was just something else to do.
Speaker:The money was just extra money.
Speaker:It was not something I really thought about.
Speaker:And then eventually I picked up another 500 kid dance school, and all of a sudden
Speaker:it turned into something different.
Speaker:And over the last, you know, 10 years, it's just become much bigger and
Speaker:I just saw it as a natural way to.
Speaker:Um, have that Sure.
Speaker:Income coming in.
Speaker:And I do love the dancers.
Speaker:I mean, what is, what is more fun than photographing a little baby in
Speaker:a tutu sitting on a chair, you know?
Speaker:Aw.
Speaker:The concept of a sure thing is interesting to a photographer though.
Speaker:When you have a camera, you have a studio.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:And hopefully people come to you.
Speaker:But when you have a sure thing like a. Dance contract, you can kind of forecast
Speaker:and it adds that extra layer of security.
Speaker:That must feel great.
Speaker:Well, it's something that I've kind of had my entire career and I, and
Speaker:I, it took me a while to realize that some photographers don't have that.
Speaker:They just have never thought about it from a business perspective enough
Speaker:to understand that every business is gonna go through ups and downs,
Speaker:and they need to have something that they know is gonna come in.
Speaker:I mean, with a portrait business, it's all great, and yes, I make a lot more
Speaker:money on average doing a portrait client.
Speaker:But if a child gets sick.
Speaker:Or a, a grandparent passes away or anything happens.
Speaker:Dad loses his job.
Speaker:Now all of a sudden you've lost income.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:And, um, that's something you can't control.
Speaker:I mean, if it rains three times in Florida, I.
Speaker:And a client gets rained out three times.
Speaker:The, we always are like, okay, well that's, that's a done deal because
Speaker:after three times it's hard to keep them wanting to reschedule and come back
Speaker:because coming and doing a family portrait session is a lot of work for the mom.
Speaker:And after three rain outs, she's like, oh, so now there goes your income.
Speaker:So you know, you can't run a business like that.
Speaker:I mean, you need to have.
Speaker:Sure.
Speaker:Income coming in, however you're gonna do that.
Speaker:I, there's a lot of ways to do it.
Speaker:It doesn't have to be the kind of work we're talking about today.
Speaker:I mean, it could be headshots or it could be, you know, doing a nursery
Speaker:school or it could be doing, you know, portraits for boards or there's a lot
Speaker:of things you can do that's not your normal speculative kind of work that's
Speaker:a little more solid and a sure thing.
Speaker:So I'm fond of a sure thing.
Speaker:We're gonna take time to talk about how to turn volume into portrait
Speaker:clients in a minute, but I wanna make sure we spend a second talking
Speaker:about getting the volume clients.
Speaker:So how would you recommend starting a partnership?
Speaker:And let's stay on dance.
Speaker:'cause just that's your specialty.
Speaker:So how do you recommend opening the door with someone so we can get
Speaker:one of these coveted relationships?
Speaker:Well, and they are coveted relationships.
Speaker:I'll tell you, you know.
Speaker:Building your name up in that community and getting to know people
Speaker:in that community is a very important thing, if that's what you wanna do.
Speaker:Now, if you're gonna do Little League, of course you could do the same thing
Speaker:in Little League, but with dance, you know, they're very particular
Speaker:about their pictures and they want somebody that understands how to work
Speaker:with dancers, if at all possible.
Speaker:I mean, I think how it happens for every person is a little bit different for me.
Speaker:I got that job 20 years ago and it was a place where I could learn.
Speaker:And then of course, word got out and people started calling me.
Speaker:And then over the years it just turned into what it is now.
Speaker:Um, but I think it's gonna be different for every person, but
Speaker:the most important thing that someone could do is if you're gonna.
Speaker:If you wanna do this kind of work, don't just do it kind of haphazardly.
Speaker:Say, you know, you have to have a plan.
Speaker:Say, okay, I'm gonna do this, so now I'm gonna go to the performing arts school and
Speaker:donate something to their silent auction.
Speaker:Or, I'm gonna think of any of my clients that have dancers and maybe
Speaker:they would introduce me to their, you know, their dance school owner or,
Speaker:um, you know, any way that you can.
Speaker:Pushed yourself.
Speaker:It's not really unlike anything we would do for any other kind of photography work.
Speaker:Put yourself where those people are and get to know them and
Speaker:be helpful in their community.
Speaker:Donate, do whatever you can do, and eventually you will get the work.
Speaker:Isn't it wild that YouTube is full of podcasts talking about how to
Speaker:make money and if you boiled them down to their salt, it really comes
Speaker:to show up and be a good person and business will just fall all over.
Speaker:You just
Speaker:show up.
Speaker:That is exactly what it is.
Speaker:Exactly, and so many new and younger photographers don't.
Speaker:Understand that basic concept, it does not have to be that difficult.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:You know, it's a people business.
Speaker:That's the one requirement as a photographer.
Speaker:There are a lot of requirements, but that's the one photographer.
Speaker:It is a people business.
Speaker:I don't care what kind of photography you are doing, you have to be willing and
Speaker:able to work with people, because I don't care if you're selling landscapes, you
Speaker:still gotta sell it to somebody because a rock is not gonna buy a landscape.
Speaker:You know?
Speaker:A person gonna buy a landscape.
Speaker:Yeah, we don't need to go into all the specifics, but what's in
Speaker:it for them when we're trying to build a deal with a dance school?
Speaker:Obviously they want someone that will make their dancers look and feel great,
Speaker:but do they get anything out of it?
Speaker:How do we light them up to get them to say yes to you?
Speaker:Well, first and foremost, I would say don't go in thinking it's all
Speaker:about money, because nine times out of 10 it's not about money.
Speaker:Yes, we do do some commissions with some of our dance schools.
Speaker:There's other dance schools we don't do commission with.
Speaker:It just depends on the school and what the original agreement is and
Speaker:how many kids are in it and so forth.
Speaker:But what they really want is someone who's gonna come in there and treat their.
Speaker:Clients, there are dancers and their dance families.
Speaker:The way that we would treat our clients as a, as a portrait studio owner,
Speaker:because we are a part of their team now, and anything we do reflects on them.
Speaker:You know, if you dress nasty or you, you know, cuss all the time, which I, I,
Speaker:everybody that knows me would laugh when I say that, but, you know, I don't cuss in
Speaker:front of my dancers, you know, because you can't, I mean, you have to be appropriate
Speaker:and, um, they want you to be efficient.
Speaker:They want you to do what you say you're gonna do.
Speaker:Not be late on jobs.
Speaker:You can't say, oh, we're gonna have these up in five days and then it's
Speaker:10 days, or We're gonna deliver these at recital and oh, something happened.
Speaker:We can't deliver it at recital.
Speaker:That never happens.
Speaker:That just is a a given.
Speaker:You have to do what you tell them you're gonna do.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:You have to be efficient and you have to know, they have to feel like you know what
Speaker:you're doing and then they will trust you.
Speaker:I wanna ask one more question about the schools and then we're gonna get on
Speaker:to converting the volume to portrait.
Speaker:But are there red flags you have to look out for?
Speaker:Because not all dance schools are created equal.
Speaker:Sometimes they're not a good client even if they say yes.
Speaker:So what are the warning signs?
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:If, if a dance school owner is immediately worried about your pricing,
Speaker:there's probably gonna be a problem.
Speaker:Because that's gonna reflect back to their parents.
Speaker:It's not gonna work for you.
Speaker:Um, if they wanna do it completely different from the way you
Speaker:know, is the best way to do it.
Speaker:I mean, you can approach it.
Speaker:With an open mind in the beginning, but for example, I am never
Speaker:knock on wood, knocking on wood.
Speaker:I'm not gonna shoot dance pictures on recital day.
Speaker:That's just ridiculous.
Speaker:Those kids are nervous.
Speaker:They're running around like crazy.
Speaker:They're sweating 'cause they just came off stage.
Speaker:They're on a strict time thing.
Speaker:It is the worst day that you can photograph dancers.
Speaker:And the other thing is, is all of my dance schools, we photograph all of the dancers
Speaker:during their class time prior to recital so that we can deliver for recital.
Speaker:That way we photograph all the dancers because it's a numbers game.
Speaker:It is absolutely nothing but a numbers game.
Speaker:You photograph 500 kids, you're gonna make twice the money
Speaker:as you photograph 250 kids.
Speaker:It just as absolutely works that out that way.
Speaker:All the time.
Speaker:And so if you've got a dance school that wants you to come in on the weekend
Speaker:and photograph, who wants to show up?
Speaker:Well now maybe you get 40 people.
Speaker:You are really working just as hard because when we're photographing these
Speaker:dancers, we have 28 babies standing there in their little tutu's and we're
Speaker:boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
Speaker:They're all doing the same pose.
Speaker:The teachers are there helping us.
Speaker:Now if it's on the weekend.
Speaker:We could go from a baby to a teen, to a girl that wants to jump, and
Speaker:now we're going back to the baby.
Speaker:And your brain is constantly readjusting for these ages.
Speaker:You're dealing with parents now, whereas in the dance school,
Speaker:you're not dealing with parents.
Speaker:So you know, you have to understand what works for you and be willing to do that.
Speaker:And if the, if the dance school owner doesn't wanna work with you in the
Speaker:way that you feel is the best, then maybe you should not take that job.
Speaker:We could spend the rest of the episode talking about tips for volume, and I
Speaker:know you've got 'em for days, and thank you for sharing what you already have.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:But let's pretend.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:I've got a dance school.
Speaker:How do we start that coveted transition from volume work with a dance school
Speaker:to portrait work inside my studio.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Well the very first thing that I did, and people have laughed at me 'cause they say,
Speaker:why don't you hire somebody to do this?
Speaker:'cause it is hard to do when you're doing a bunch of dance schools back
Speaker:to back and they've all got their recitals or their, so we typically
Speaker:deliver our portraits in person.
Speaker:We do not mail them.
Speaker:Either on recital, a rehearsal day, or at a designated day at the studio
Speaker:when other things are going on.
Speaker:For example, my big, one of my big schools has a day where they pass out
Speaker:all their tickets, their t-shirts, their programs, and they do this for
Speaker:two or three days as they got a 500 kids at this school and we are up there
Speaker:passing out pictures at that time.
Speaker:Well, it seems like a waste of my time.
Speaker:But this is the only time those parents get to meet you.
Speaker:Ah, so you get to say hello.
Speaker:You can have anything up there you want.
Speaker:All of my dance schools support me a hundred percent.
Speaker:They put a, an ad for me at no cost in their program.
Speaker:Um, and this is when the parents can meet me.
Speaker:So when we do special things, like I know we're gonna talk
Speaker:about the fairy thing that I do.
Speaker:This is the perfect tie in for dancers.
Speaker:Of course, we put little stickers on every envelope that is applicable.
Speaker:To the side, you know, the age, the right age for this.
Speaker:Um, we pass out cards, we talk to parents about it.
Speaker:We have posters up and whatever we're wanting to promote at that time, we wanna
Speaker:let the parents know that we do that.
Speaker:If I know that a parent has a junior, or that's gonna be a senior next year,
Speaker:I make a point of saying, Hey, don't forget, we do senior portrait sessions
Speaker:at the studio and we give all of our dancers a complimentary senior session
Speaker:if you would like to do it with me.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:And so we just are constantly promoting it.
Speaker:Um, but that's the big thing.
Speaker:I think if I did not pass out my own pictures.
Speaker:Um, then I wouldn't be able to meet them.
Speaker:And there's no one else that's gonna do that for me, the way I'm gonna do it.
Speaker:So it's a, it's a very important thing for me, even though I'm tired and worn out by
Speaker:the time I have, you know, I'm delivering school number six and I'm sitting in
Speaker:some auditorium for five hours, people think, you know, that's a waste of time.
Speaker:It's a lot of money coming in because I sit there for five
Speaker:hours in the air conditioning.
Speaker:Now I wanna draw attention to this, and I hate to be that guy, but you
Speaker:sit in a gymnasium, you hand out 150 families worth of dancer pictures.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:And you leave with how many leads?
Speaker:Oh, well, we have co we have communication with all of them.
Speaker:I mean, we, and we've been doing, doing a lot of these schools over the years.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:So we now have programs that we do with our dance schools, um, to help
Speaker:them raise money for their team.
Speaker:So, for example, I know we're gonna talk about the fairies as we get to
Speaker:it, but we give 50% of our session fee back to the dance school to
Speaker:help raise money for their teams.
Speaker:And that's just something we've been doing in the last.
Speaker:Three or four years, and it's helped tremendously.
Speaker:Just, you know, we'll send out a, they'll send out the email for you
Speaker:and we'll have 25 people sign up for a ferry session where the average sale is.
Speaker:$2,800.
Speaker:And that's what I was trying to find out.
Speaker:So you can show up in the gymnasium for a day or go to a school and deliver
Speaker:and close 10, 15, 20, 30 sessions, portrait sessions, because you've built
Speaker:the relationship and you showed up
Speaker:Absolute.
Speaker:We had, we had two people sign up for portrait sessions today for the
Speaker:little fairy sessions, just because I sat there and passed out cards
Speaker:and put the little thing on their little envelope because it's that,
Speaker:that thing What is that you say?
Speaker:You have to meet?
Speaker:It was back in the day.
Speaker:It's, it was six or seven times of meeting.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Somebody, now they say it's 10 or 11.
Speaker:Well, if, if they never meet you.
Speaker:They're never gonna have an opportunity to bond with you.
Speaker:And you tell them how beautiful their children are and, you know, put little
Speaker:smiley faces on the cutest little ballerina and, you know, tell them, tell
Speaker:'em which one, one picture of the year.
Speaker:This little ballerina this year stuck her tongue out at me and put her hands
Speaker:on her hips, and she was about two feet tall and this huge tutu, and her mom,
Speaker:of course, bought one of those pictures.
Speaker:And I, I applaud her mom for buying that picture because
Speaker:it's that kid's personality.
Speaker:And you know, for me that was the dance picture of the year.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:Her mom was super excited when I made a big deal out of it.
Speaker:When she picked up.
Speaker:You got the school, you got the leads, but you get the sessions because in my
Speaker:opinion, you got really creative and come up with a really cool program.
Speaker:Finally, explain the fairy program 'cause I think this is so cool.
Speaker:Well, you know, we've all seen fairy pictures done.
Speaker:I mean, back in the day there was a beautiful photographer in, I believe
Speaker:it was Texas, Lisa Jane Murphy, and she did these beautiful fairy pictures.
Speaker:And this was when I was first starting my career.
Speaker:So this has been 30 years ago.
Speaker:And I always thought they were super beautiful and um, one year.
Speaker:15 years ago probably.
Speaker:I said, you know, I wanna do some of those fairy things.
Speaker:And I started thinking about how I would do it and what I would do.
Speaker:And then of course I realized over the years what a perfect
Speaker:fit it was with the dancers.
Speaker:All the dancers love to come be fairies, and so we provide all
Speaker:the costumes, we provide all the.
Speaker:Wings and all the stuff, we make a big deal out of it.
Speaker:I build a set worthy of Disney World and, um, I mean, it's a, it's a,
Speaker:it's a big deal to build the ferry set and it just looks very real.
Speaker:It does not look cheap.
Speaker:It does not look fake.
Speaker:I. And when the kids come, they just have a fit.
Speaker:And um, you know, we promote it that there's no bugs, there's no
Speaker:heat, something that people can do.
Speaker:You know when, when they wanna do something, but they don't, they're not
Speaker:gonna go do Disney World or they're not gonna do, you know, something major.
Speaker:They love to come do this.
Speaker:Plus, who doesn't love pictures of a beautiful little girl in a fairy costume?
Speaker:And you don't just do fairies.
Speaker:What do you do for boys?
Speaker:Well, recently we've added gone fishing.
Speaker:It was something that I would do if a parent said, well, I've got a boy and
Speaker:I really don't wanna leave him out.
Speaker:And I would say, well, you know, I can turn the ferry set into gone fishing.
Speaker:I've got the little docks and all of this stuff.
Speaker:And it really was just a matter of me figuring out how to do it easily.
Speaker:And now we do gone fishing, so now we're not leaving the boys out.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:So now it's just double the potential income because anyone can come.
Speaker:You know, another thing was I was telling people that I would do the fairies.
Speaker:I thought the perfect age was three to eight.
Speaker:Honestly, two year olds do not love to put their feet in the moss.
Speaker:Now we can do a 2-year-old, but typically we're gonna concentrate,
Speaker:you know, on three and up.
Speaker:And then I realized I was leaving out a whole segment of girls because
Speaker:I have 10 and 11 year olds that wanna come in here and do this.
Speaker:So we bought some bigger dresses and I tell a mom, Hey, look, if a
Speaker:10-year-old wants to be a fairy.
Speaker:I applaud that.
Speaker:Let's let her do it, because that's just the end of their innocence at that
Speaker:age, and it's just so sweet that someone that age wants to still come do it.
Speaker:So we added another three years onto the, you know, the years that we
Speaker:thought would be the right years and, and, and got so many more sessions
Speaker:because we weren't excluding, you know, nine, 10, and 11 year olds.
Speaker:So you have this relationship.
Speaker:You offer the ferry sets, you offer the gone fishing set, and you kind
Speaker:of cruise past something that I wanna make sure we spend a minute on.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:You offer the students in your dance schools a free senior picture session?
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:If they convert another way that you're getting in front of them,
Speaker:I would imagine that's popular.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:You know, so there's about, on average, I'm gonna guess there's
Speaker:20 to 25 seniors across the six or eight dance schools that I do.
Speaker:And um, so why wouldn't I want these kids to come to me and why wouldn't
Speaker:the parents want to come to me?
Speaker:Now, of course, they have to do the normal thing where they have to go to the normal
Speaker:school photographer and get their headshot and their robe and all of that stuff
Speaker:done, but they don't have to go to them.
Speaker:For their specialty, you know, for their real senior portraits.
Speaker:And while senior portraits are not here, what they might be in the Midwest, for
Speaker:some studios, you know, you get eight or 10 or 12 seniors in a, in a summer.
Speaker:That's, that's a hefty little, um, bunch of money right there.
Speaker:Yeah, for sure.
Speaker:And a great way to get them to say yes.
Speaker:It just reduces the friction of making a decision.
Speaker:Well, here's a photographer that I liked.
Speaker:She's already done good work for me.
Speaker:Why not do this thing I have to do anyway?
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:And, and I'll tell you, we've got two dancers getting married this year and um,
Speaker:I, I feel pretty certain I'll be doing the weddings and that is really crazy.
Speaker:I mean, when you're standing there and that bride's coming down the aisle
Speaker:and you have photographed her, she and a tutu, it's really, it's crazy.
Speaker:It's amazing.
Speaker:Alright, beyond selling individual portraits to the members of the
Speaker:school, there are other ways to get additional revenue from the school.
Speaker:So how do you go about doing that?
Speaker:I. Well, the ferry sessions of course, are a big thing, but I have to say,
Speaker:you can't believe how many people will come and do family portrait
Speaker:sessions or if a mom has a newborn.
Speaker:I mean, people are looking for someone they know and trust.
Speaker:And if you're already that person, then mm-hmm then you're gonna be the
Speaker:one they're gonna reach out to first.
Speaker:And if you can snag that business, well then the, the, when you do the
Speaker:math, it just becomes incredible.
Speaker:For example, last year we did, um, a family.
Speaker:Portrait session.
Speaker:The granddad actually came with the son to look at the ferry
Speaker:pictures because grandma was sick.
Speaker:And, um, it's very, the first time we've ever had two gentlemen
Speaker:come look at the ferry pictures.
Speaker:And the granddad, um, was a, uh, just had retired as a CEO of a very, very.
Speaker:Big global company that is based here and that I knew
Speaker:that they were really into art.
Speaker:And he said, you know, this just looks like art.
Speaker:And he goes, I really want you to photograph all my grandkids.
Speaker:And I'm like, okay.
Speaker:So Christmas rolls around, he calls me, he wants me to come
Speaker:photograph the whole family.
Speaker:And all the grandkids was an $18,000 portrait sale.
Speaker:That all came from dancers.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:That's not there.
Speaker:I could tell you countless other, um, you know, it goes backwards too.
Speaker:For example, um, I just hugged the guy who's playing, um, who's
Speaker:the guy in Beauty and the Beast.
Speaker:That's not a nice guy.
Speaker:I. Um, Garone?
Speaker:No, not Gar Gar.
Speaker:Is it?
Speaker:He played Garone in the recital.
Speaker:Well, he was a, uh, NFL, uh, NFL player here with the Jaguars, and I
Speaker:did their wedding 25 years ago, and I've done all three of their kids.
Speaker:I. At this dance school.
Speaker:So we always laugh and you know, two of 'em have already graduated,
Speaker:we've still got one left.
Speaker:And so he played Garone this year in the recital.
Speaker:And it's just always funny when we hug.
Speaker:He's like, can you believe we're still doing this all these years later?
Speaker:You know?
Speaker:So it just, it just, it just goes back to what we said in the beginning.
Speaker:It's all about relationships.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Photography is all about relationships and you can be closed off and not friendly.
Speaker:And not benefit from those relationships.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Or you can realize that every time you interact with someone from
Speaker:one of these schools, that is a potential family session, a potential
Speaker:wedding, a potential, anything.
Speaker:That could lead to a $20,000 portrait sale,
Speaker:which is amazing.
Speaker:And before the YouTube police come for us, I don't think we're right with Garone.
Speaker:We're close.
Speaker:It's a G word, but I, I don't remember.
Speaker:Anyway, it's not, oh, well, okay.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:It sounds familiar, but, okay.
Speaker:This seems like the type of thing that portrait photographers, like
Speaker:they should all be doing, like this is their farm team to go out and take
Speaker:a bunch of volume photos and fill up the portrait side of the business.
Speaker:But it doesn't seem to be as mainstream as it could be.
Speaker:Why not?
Speaker:I.
Speaker:Well, first off, volume business has always kind of had a
Speaker:little, you know, it's not as glamorous as the other business.
Speaker:Of course it's not, it's a lot of hard work, but isn't everything that we do
Speaker:a lot of hard work and um, just from a business perspective, it makes sense
Speaker:to think about, okay, how could I get involved with 2000 families a year?
Speaker:I. 2000 families, let's say.
Speaker:Each one of my dance schools, this is the way I look at it.
Speaker:Each one of my dance schools have between 40 and 60 new baby ballerinas every year.
Speaker:And you multiply that times eight.
Speaker:That's 400 families that you are going to personally work with that someone
Speaker:else is giving you that business.
Speaker:You have the potential to turn it into whatever you wanna turn it into, but you
Speaker:have to be nice and you have to know what you're doing to make all of that work.
Speaker:2000 families, I mean, that's like buying Google ads, 2000 families,
Speaker:but you're actually meeting them all.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Imagine a monopoly board.
Speaker:And someone's got their little guy.
Speaker:I'm always the thimble.
Speaker:I dunno what you are, but I'm always the thimble sitting on uh,
Speaker:the go and they wanna do this.
Speaker:What's the first thing they should do to start down this road of
Speaker:turning volume into portrait?
Speaker:I. Okay, well first off, you have to realize that any kind of volume
Speaker:is gonna give you access to people.
Speaker:Either email, address their personal, you know, their phone numbers.
Speaker:If they buy something from you, you're gonna have all that information.
Speaker:So come up with what is gonna make sense.
Speaker:That will work for you, that's authentic to what you do, that you
Speaker:can then push it out to all of those people and really use, it's not unlike
Speaker:anything you hear all across YouTube.
Speaker:Find somebody else's business that has your clients and work with them.
Speaker:And that's exactly what I'm doing.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Only I'm making a hundred grand a year in six weeks, and I'm doing all of that.
Speaker:You know, when people are constantly calling you, wanting, giving you, giving
Speaker:you money, that's a, that's a good thing.
Speaker:So the first thing, the very first thing I would do is think, okay, what is
Speaker:gonna be right for me if dance school's not right for me, maybe little league
Speaker:is, or maybe shooting kids on horses.
Speaker:Not shooting, but photographing kids on horses.
Speaker:I mean, equestrian, there's some tennis, sports.
Speaker:There's so many different ways that, that you can, you know.
Speaker:Do this and then think broader than just that job.
Speaker:Think, okay, if, if I can get these kinds of jobs, how can I turn these
Speaker:kinds of jobs into portrait business?
Speaker:Because that's where the real money is gonna come in.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Having, you know, say, let's say I have a hundred of these people come a year,
Speaker:and let's say the average is $3,000.
Speaker:$300,000 that I didn't have to do one Facebook ad. I didn't
Speaker:have to do any advertising.
Speaker:All I had to do was my job and be nice.
Speaker:And while we're brainstorming for all the band nerds out there
Speaker:represent, don't forget the band kids.
Speaker:There's a lot of kids in an orchestra, right?
Speaker:Band kids need love too.
Speaker:The band kids for sure.
Speaker:My, my nephew played, uh, Al Alto sax in the Tennessee band.
Speaker:It says Saxy aunt on the front of my.
Speaker:That's awesome.
Speaker:Alright, the last word on pipeline of volume to portraits, what haven't
Speaker:we covered that you'd like to share?
Speaker:I I, I just don't think photographers always think as far ahead or
Speaker:outside the box as they need to.
Speaker:Really and truly all we're talking about is very basic business models.
Speaker:I mean, this is the, this is how a lot of small businesses work.
Speaker:Um, we just happen to be photographers.
Speaker:I think photographers get caught up in the fact that we're artists and they don't
Speaker:often realize that we're business people.
Speaker:First really, because the art is about 10% of your business, and the
Speaker:business is 90% of your business.
Speaker:And if you can't handle the business, then the art is never gonna flourish.
Speaker:I love it.
Speaker:And for the record, I looked it up.
Speaker:Gas stone, not Garone, gas stone.
Speaker:That's right.
Speaker:Gas stone.
Speaker:Yes,
Speaker:stone.
Speaker:Susan, thanks for coming on the Professional Photographer Podcast.
Speaker:I appreciate it.
Speaker:Well,
Speaker:thank you so much.
Speaker:I hope this helps somebody.
Speaker:And of course, I'm gonna be speaking at Imaging USA this year on Tuesday at 10 30.
Speaker:We're gonna go a lot more in depth in all this and I hope that
Speaker:everyone will, will join us there.
Speaker:I'm excited to be speaking there again.
Speaker:Thanks for tuning into this week's episode of The Professional Photographer Podcast.
Speaker:I'm pretty confident that this one's gonna make you some money if you take action.
Speaker:So now it's up to you.
Speaker:Are you gonna act before you go?
Speaker:I do have an action for you.
Speaker:Can you like and subscribe to the show and even better leave us a comment.
Speaker:What did Susan say that made you go.
Speaker:Oh, I never thought of it that way, or, wow, I'm gonna go do that.
Speaker:The comments seem like not a big deal, but they're an uber big deal
Speaker:because it helps us know what are we doing that's connecting with you.
Speaker:So like, subscribe, comment, whatever, but we'd love to hear from you.
Speaker:One other thought, if you're not yet a member of Professional
Speaker:Photographers of America.
Speaker:Well, you're missing out.
Speaker:PPA offers incredible resources like equipment insurance, top-notch
Speaker:education, and a supportive community of photographers ready to help you succeed.
Speaker:It's perfect for photographers who are serious about growing their business
Speaker:in a sustainable and profitable way.
Speaker:At PPA, you belong here.
Speaker:Discover more about memberships@ppa.com.
Speaker:That's ppa.com.
Speaker:I'm Pat Miller, founder of the Small Business Owners Community,
Speaker:and the publisher of the Small Business Summary Newsletter.
Speaker:Thanks for joining us on this episode.
Speaker:We'll see you right here next time.
