How to Win in Volume Photography with Customer Service

Pat Miller: 00:00

I'm Pat Miller, and this is The Professional Photographer Podcast live at Imaging USA in Nashville inside the Sony Cinema Line studio. We get a chance today to talk about industry trends in the volume photography game. Now, if you're a volume photographer, you know, big bucks, no whammies, comes when you get a lot of people in front of your lens. Cool. We're not having a conversation about that. Today's episode with Jeff Galinofsky is talking about the customer service side of volume photography. You might get 100 kids in front of your lens, but how can you make them feel great when you're spending mere moments with them in front of your lens? And what about the care and feeding of the people that actually sign the contract? That is something you need to learn how to do. And maybe today's episode will shortcut some of that learning because Jeff is a pros pro and he's ready to tell you everything. Jeff is standing by. We'll talk to him next. Jeff, welcome to the show. How are you today?

Jeff Galinovsky: 01:02

I'm doing great. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate being here.

Pat Miller: 01:05

You're here in the industry trends series at Imaging USA in Nashville inside the Sony Cinema Line studio. I mean, this gear is pretty sweet, isn't it? It's pretty awesome.

Jeff Galinovsky: 01:13

I would love to have some of this. I'm not saying I'm a little jealous.

Pat Miller: 01:17

But, you know, we're kind of a big deal around this.

Jeff Galinovsky: 01:20

You are, you are.

Pat Miller: 01:21

It's beautiful stuff. And we're having a great time again this year and we're going to talk about volume photography. And usually volume photograph is a discussion of getting as many people in front of the camera as possible in a numbers game. But today we're going to talk about customer service. But before we do that, I want you to introduce yourself to the person that's watching. If they don't know you yet, tell them who you are and what you do.

Jeff Galinovsky: 01:42

Okay. My name is Jeff Galinoski. I have a home studio actually, because most of my stuff is on site in Folsom, California, which is near Sacramento. Been in business since 2017 officially, but I took early retirement from my corporate job middle of 24, and I'm doing this full time now and it's sustaining us and I'm loving it. We do high volume sports as our main focus. We do do high end portraiture as well. So we get a lot of connection from the sports over to seniors and we do some sportrature stuff. Some cool seniors with sports and family portraits. I have my master of Photography last year or two years ago. I got my craftsman this year and I have my cpp. So I'm well into ppa. Ppa? Not to do a little ad, but PPA has really helped me succeed in my business. So I feel like I need to give back because they've done so much for me and they've helped me succeed as a business owner and a photographer.

Pat Miller: 02:36

Congratulations on all that.

Jeff Galinovsky: 02:38

Thank you.

Pat Miller: 02:38

Tell me about when you went full, full time. What was that day like when you walked out for the last time and realized, yeah, I'm doing this myself now.

Jeff Galinovsky: 02:46

Yeah. You know it's funny, this was early 2024. I kind of got the hey, we're looking for people to leave early retirement severance package. I used to work corporate at and I had been doing this back to back like for five, six years. And I was kind of at that point where I really want to do photography. I loved, you know, I was 31 years in high tech. I loved high tech. It wasn't my passion anymore. Photography had begun. I've been doing photography since I was in high school. It was a long time ago. I won't say how many years.

Pat Miller: 03:15

Two years ago.

Jeff Galinovsky: 03:16

Yeah, just, just around the corner. But I just, I just loved it so much. And so I officially stepped away like June 15th of 2024. It was a little before that and I haven't looked back. I am just so much fun. My wife said the other day, she's like, you're working way more than you did at Intel. I said, yeah. It doesn't seem like work though. I'm having fun interfacing with clients, coming to places like imaging and talking to my friends and meeting new friends and helping I do a lot of teaching with high volume sports and helping people get into that as well as some business stuff. And it's just been a blast. I haven't looked back and I won't look back. This is the right thing for me to do. And it was, it was great that I had become successful enough and had that kind of backup where I was working corporate and doing this at the same time and building my business. I have an mba, so that helped me, yeah, I bet big time on the business side because there's a lot of photographers are great at photography and they struggle at the business side, which is one of the things we're going to talk about in customer service that's important. And I think that was, you know, my corporate world helped me a lot in succeeding in building a good studio business and being successful. That I could use this as my regular pay.

Pat Miller: 04:29

As a fellow entrepreneur, it lights me up to see you so happy. So congratulations.

Jeff Galinovsky: 04:34

Thank you. I appreciate that.

Pat Miller: 04:36

All right, we're talking about customer service inside volume. Because every time I've talked about volume, most times we talk about volume on the show, it's building the relationship. So you make Gaga amounts of money and you're putting a thousand people in front of the lens, and that's awesome. There's nothing bad about that.

Jeff Galinovsky: 04:50

Absolutely.

Pat Miller: 04:51

But the trend that we're going to dive into is customer service. So why is customer service important in volume?

Jeff Galinovsky: 04:57

So customer service has two angles, actually. So you've got kind of two customers, and I think one of the most important customers, which people think, oh, your customer. Is the people buying your photos, which in normal instances, it's the people buying your photos. But for us, our main customer are the contracts that we're building with either the schools, the coaches, the athletic directors, or the executive directors at the club. So we do a lot of club photography as well as school photography. And I found it's really important to make them happy and also to be in front of them. And so customer service there is huge. You've got to get them excited to work with you and want to work with you. Then secondarily, it's making the people who are buying the photos, because that's where you're getting money. I don't charge my schools nor my organizations any money to take photos unless they want something. I want to give every kid a memory mate or I want to buy senior banners then. And we give them special pricing, But I don't charge. I get all my money from the customer that's buying the photos, which are usually the parents or sometimes the athletes. So secondarily, you still have to focus on them. But my primary customers, then my contracts with the schools and the organizations.

Pat Miller: 06:07

So with that two customer mentality, is it relationships for the people who say yes to the contracts and systems, doing outstanding customer service to all the individuals that buy, is it. Is it like one is personal, one is technology, or. I don't want to get that granular? No, no.

Jeff Galinovsky: 06:25

That's actually a really good question. And to some extent, it's partly yes to both of those. It's the systems and it's us. So our. Our clients interact with our. Sorry, our end customers who are purchasing the photos interact with us in two ways. One, they interact with us at photo day. Right. The day we're taking the photo. Some people call it media day. I call it photo day. But we're there. We still do pre order. I'm not going to get Ray from pre order because in some cases we have 30% in big. In big contracts that still pre order in some of my schools. Like, I'll get a team. I'll get 99 to 100% pre orders for some of my teams because they love it. And the parents go, if I don't do this now and today I'm going to forget. And I know I'm going to get the emails and the reminders and I'm so busy and I. But I know today I have to send that form with my daughter or son and I'm going to staple a check to it. And then a lot of times, probably 30 to 50% depending on the type of club, they'll buy more online. But I want to capture that sale. So I advertise to them, I give them the information, I show them beautiful pictures and they're oh, yeah, that's cool. But we interact with them at the sale date and then they are interfacing with our system. So we do online ordering for post fact. We generate all of the images for every one of our clients through our automation. So we're able to do that because you're more apt to buy a photo. When you see your kid in that photo, you're like, I don't know what I want. So we were able to do that and that's where we get the rest of our sales. So some of that's the online tools. So yes, the systems. But yes, it's also us reaching out to them. Us giving them some of the marketing material that shows. Here's how to do things. We give them concise instructions. So there is some interaction. I think the most important interaction is with our clients that want to keep us on as the volume provider of their photos.

Pat Miller: 08:13

I would be committing podcast malpractice if I didn't at least ask this question before we get into all the customer service stuff. Volume, when done at a high level, isn't built on vibes. It's built on lots of people in front of your camera. That is true still, right?

Jeff Galinovsky: 08:29

It is. And it all depends what you mean by lots of people.

Pat Miller: 08:33

Okay.

Jeff Galinovsky: 08:34

Because in the high school situations, sometimes it's smaller groups like, I'll do some of my schools, I'll do a, hey, can you do the women's volleyball for our school? And we come in and there's freshman JV varsity, and there's maybe 15 to 20 kids on the team or 15 to 18 kids. So it could be 45 kids. I'm taking a picture of. To me, that's still volume, right? Because I'm still taking a whole bunch of kids and I'm with them for like 30 seconds to a minute. I might do a little more for them for the high school because, hey, we've got some seniors. So we'll do an extra pose or two because we want senior banners. And again, that drives our sales up. So I give them a little bit more of our time. But we have another contract with a soccer club. They have a rec side, recreation side where there's 3,000 kids and coaches and then their competitive side, which is 880 kids and coaches. And so we're with them. That's fast. So we have me and three other photographers. I have. My wife runs the front of house and she has sales and they get all that. And we've gotten it so efficient. And our client loves us because we make it headache free for them. And that's our marketing to them, which is, hey, zero cost to you, zero effort if you want it. We ask two things of them, place to take photos and a couple hit points to you. Sending emails out because they're more apt to answer emails from their club, their coach, their team manager than they are from some photography studio they don't know. And so that's all we ask of them and say we can handle everything else for you. And again, that leads somewhat to customer service because we're taking the effort off of them and saying we will do everything so that photos for your club are an enjoyable situation for you and you don't have to worry about anything if you don't want to. Some of them are like, no, we'll help you schedule, do this and that. But we make it so it's easy for them.

Pat Miller: 10:21

Sure.

Jeff Galinovsky: 10:21

And they want to participate as much or as little as they want.

Pat Miller: 10:24

I want to walk through all areas of a volume shoot because I figure there are probably customer service touch points everywhere throughout. Let's start with winning the gig. It's, you know, Pat's Elite soccer Club.

Jeff Galinovsky: 10:37

All right.

Pat Miller: 10:38

And you're reaching out to me. How are you?

Jeff Galinovsky: 10:40

I was expecting football. Come on.

Pat Miller: 10:41

Oh, yeah, well, no, that's okay.

Jeff Galinovsky: 10:43

The other football, the American football.

Pat Miller: 10:44

No. Yeah, no, sorry. No, believe me, I. We could talk Bears football for the entire length of the podcast if you want. But if we're talking about a club that you're approaching, how are you taking customer service into heart when you're trying to win the gig.

Jeff Galinovsky: 11:00

Yeah.

Pat Miller: 11:00

So you were sharing. It's easy, it's headache free. But what else are maybe some style points that you've learned over the years that maybe someone might not be thinking about?

Jeff Galinovsky: 11:09

Yeah, some of it's. Some of it's tenacity, to be completely frank with you, sometimes clubs already have people they work with. Sometimes they hate them and they're looking for someone else. I am not. Pat, I'm not kidding you. When we won our rec the wreck, the big rec contract with 3,000 kids, it took us two years, but one of the reasons it was two years is because they had just signed a contract with somebody and they hated the experience. But they have a two year contract. But I kept on them for two years in nice ways. Not badgering ways, but hey, how are things going? Everything going well? Hey, I just wanted to make a touch point. I said, when should we chat? Oh, well, you know, springish. So, you know, spring comes two years later. Hey, are you guys, you know what? Yeah. And so we sat down and gave them the pitch and they said, well, we'd like you to pick up the. Because I was thinking it was just the competitive side. And they're like, well, we picked up our rex side a year ago, but we have one more year on our contract and we can't stand our photography, but we have to use them. I'm like, why don't you like them? They're just hard to work with. So to me, that's that I want to be your best friend when it comes to what you're doing for your customers, your athletes, your players, your parents. Right. Your job is to make them happy so that they come back next year and pay them money for comp or rec and want to come back. And so we want to help that experience. And so that's one of the things that we talk about, you know, that tenacity. We're here to help you. It's meeting with the athletic director, it's meeting with them, it's giving your quick elevator pitch, but also having, you know, I went in with a presentation and gave them a presentation. I showed my work. So you have to have work to show them. You have to have a good body of work. If you're just starting out, I know you have friends that have friends or their kids are in some club, some sport, high school or club, go get their team and take some shots, build a portfolio. It doesn't have to be huge, but show them you can do something cool, that you stand out, that you're Doing something unique. Ours are all shot on green screen. We'll do. We'll do non green screen if we have to. Some schools are just. I don't want to do that. But our sales pitch to them is we want you away from the. Because a. It could be a bad weather day. It could be. And by the way, pictures look the same every year, right? And parents don't. And we hear that now with some of our clients. Like, I'm so glad you took over. Like, my pictures look the same every year. So they don't buy anything. Our pictures are different every year because we're shooting on green screen. We do really cool composited backgrounds. We do neat things. We change poses every year. And all that feeds into that pitch about, we match your branding. We do things different every year. So your clients, your customers, your athletes stay excited about the photos. And then, by the way, one of the things we give them as customer services, they get photos from us. So we give yearbook photos to the schools if they need marketing. A lot of the schools are moving to digital scoreboards, and they want headshots. Here you go. Here are the headshots. I don't charge them. I don't. I don't. I don't need to. Right? What if I make a lot of money from the parents? Why would I charge the schools? Again, it's one of those things. I'm giving them things now. Do I give the schools money? I know that's a big question. I do not. Only if they want to purchase something, like, we want every kid to have a memory mate, or we want to do senior banners and we have special school pricing for them, but we don't give a kickback. At least that's our market. We don't do that. But we give them everything they want. They want marketing photos. If they want team photos, we'll give those to the organization. Because again, we want them to be happy with us and want them to use us. And there's other people like, oh, we could do that, but we have to charge you for that. Why would I charge the school? I want them to be my client. I want them to be happy.

Pat Miller: 14:45

And they're also holding the keys to 3,000 kids.

Jeff Galinovsky: 14:48

They're holding the keys to hundreds or thousands of kids. And whether it's small or whether it's large, I don't care. I still make great margins on small schools or great margins on large schools or organizations. And yeah, this may be a small.

Pat Miller: 15:03

Question because it's a club kind of question, but a Couple more questions on negotiating to get the deal. How do you handle it when the director says, oh, we've got a parent that does that, or we've got an amateur that does that? And no disrespect to amateurs.

Jeff Galinovsky: 15:16

Absolutely.

Pat Miller: 15:16

Good for them. But you know, that they could and should get better service and images, et cetera. Like, how do you handle that? No, we're good. Uncle John does that.

Jeff Galinovsky: 15:26

And sometimes that's how, you know, you tell them what you give them. Right. And I think for me, it's the. I'm communicating and showing you and demonstrating to you what we offer you that a parent can't. And we can talk to that, because I used to be the parent that took pictures on the sidelines. Right now it's my business, but we can talk about the pitfalls of that, and I can tell them, hey, you've got a parent. You know, we have certified photographers on staff. We're master photographers. Right. We have the credentialing of our. Of our trade organizations. We have years of experience. I said a lot of this isn't necessarily just the photos. It's the whole process. Right. I guarantee you we can come in and do this quickly, like the 3000 Club. We do Friday night and all day Saturday, and we're done.

Pat Miller: 16:11

That's crazy for 3,000 kids and coaches.

Jeff Galinovsky: 16:14

And then within a week, usually we. It depends on makeups, because we do with that. You're going to have a couple hundred makeups, but we do. And, oh, by the way, we do makeups, and they insert seamlessly because we have everything measured out. We have everything. All the settings, all the lighting. Everything's exactly the same. So when we do a makeup, you don't even know. They didn't come to photo day because they're in the team photo, because the team photo is composited. They have everything. So we talk to them about those features that we can bring them. And I'll be honest with you. Sometimes they're like, okay, thank you, and they go with their parents. Sometimes we're like, you know what? Give us a try for a year. Tell you what, I'll sign a contract with you. And some of them. I have it in there. It's called the escape clause in my contract that says within two weeks after we deliver the final photos, if you don't want to continue the contract, you have this one time to get out. And that's the. Because we believe so strongly in how we do. And they go, really? Absolutely. Sign a contract with us. You have an escape Clause, we'll give you a week after. Right. Two weeks after we deliver photos. You have a week to decide do you want to continue? Okay. And sometimes that's the push they need. I said, try us out. Give us a try for one season or one team or whatever. If you don't like what you see, we'll let you go back to your other photographer or parent photographer.

Pat Miller: 17:33

Parent photographer.

Jeff Galinovsky: 17:34

Yeah. Yeah.

Pat Miller: 17:34

How do you facilitate the families or the end users communicating? Back to the decision maker. Are there any sneaky ways or ideas that you've kind of manufactured that communication loop? So the organizer is hearing about what a great experience you provided.

Jeff Galinovsky: 17:51

That's interesting. A lot of times in our industry, the only people that say something are the people that have a bad experience.

Pat Miller: 17:58

Yeah.

Jeff Galinovsky: 17:58

Okay. Not just our industry, lots of industries. Right. I remember talking to somebody at Home Depot one time. I said, hey, can I talk to somebody about one of the employees? Like, what happened? I said, no, no, no. They were awesome. They looked at me like, you're crazy. You want to give us a positive story. So sometimes when we have a client come to us, like an end customer comes to us and said, you guys were awesome. Or like, somebody will say, can you fix this blemish? We don't charge extra for blemishes. Like, if it's major, I might. But somebody will come to us after the fact and say, is there any way. Absolutely. Buy the photo, put a note in there, we'll fix the blemish, and we do it. And people will come back just like, you guys were awesome. Thank you. I said, can you do me a favor? Can you let so and so know at the club? Sometimes we'll even ask them for, you know, can you give us a thing? An email? And I forward those emails back to the club. One of the biggest, biggest indicators, though, when I talk to my clubs or schools is, hey, have you heard anything? They're like, we had one person complain out of the three thought, like, the three. They said, I think we had one or two people send us an email. And that was just because we know them and they're complainers and they complain about everything. And like, oh, the. The place we were at was loud. Well, you're at a sports complex and you have hundreds of people there at one time. Yeah, it's a little loud, but. But they're like, we've had less complaints than everywhere else, and that's usually their indicator, which sucks. But we encourage. The big thing I can say is encourage the people that come to you with Positive comments to tell you the league or the school. And some of them will, but I just encourage them to do it.

Pat Miller: 19:26

Let's talk about the subject and let's just keep talking about the 3,000 soccer kids because that just sounds unbelievable to me.

Jeff Galinovsky: 19:32

Okay.

Pat Miller: 19:33

How do you give a good customer service experience to people getting in front of your lens at that rate of speed? How do you make them feel special? And even if you're only with them for a moment, because the moments that.

Jeff Galinovsky: 19:44

You'Re with them, you make them feel like their focus is entirely on them. And even though I may be with one individual player for a minute or less, I'm with the whole team. So the way we set this up is my wife handles the front of house, and so she and my team up there. Usually it's about four or so folks for that group. And then we get volunteers from the club to like handle traffic and point people to things. We're giving them directions ahead of time, what to fill out. Most people don't read those. No, I'll be honest with you. Or they read the first sentence. Oh, oh, there was a form attached to that. We have extra forms. We help them. So they're getting a good experience at front of house with my wife and her team, and they're helping them with ordering, even if they don't. Well, we're not sure if we want to order. That's okay. We just need you to fill this out. Take this in. We line them up, we send them in to us and we'll get them to one of the photographers and we bring the team in. And I usually say, hey, guys, especially if they're little kids. How are you guys doing? What's your team name? Blah, blah, you know, so we're getting them excited and we're having fun. And we do the coaches first. Like, hey, let's do the coaches first and we'll do them. And then we bring the kids in and we, we jam. And usually the coaches are there sometimes to help us or sometimes we'll have a kid that's struggling and we just get in really close and make them feel important. So even though they're only there a short time, we focus our attention on them and make them feel like. And then they walk out and they're like, that's it, we're done. Absolutely. We don't have to pose for a teen phone. Nope. To get 18 little kids, you know, imagine 185 year olds trying to get them all to look and smile.

Pat Miller: 21:18

No, no.

Jeff Galinovsky: 21:19

So they're usually there for 20 minutes, I'm like, we're out. And they're like, holy cow, we're done. Yes, we're done. And they walk out and they're happy because they had a seamless experience. It was really easy. And for those few minutes we were with them, they felt like they were the center of the universe.

Pat Miller: 21:33

Yeah. You touched on it earlier about pre order versus not pre order. How do you make the customer service experience great and flexible while still keeping an eye on big stacks of cash at the end of the day? Because I mean, let's be real. We want massive.

Jeff Galinovsky: 21:49

We do.

Pat Miller: 21:49

What did Monty Python say? Vast tracts of land when it comes to our money.

Jeff Galinovsky: 21:53

Yeah, yeah. Again, that's why I do both avenues. Because I don't want to leave anything on the table and I still need to capture the kids and I'm still gonna capture the parents attitude. And so everything we give them from the order form that they get and the email that they get from the club or the school, it's visually appealing. I have samples of all of their templates that we're using for that season or that group. And I might pull kids from last year. If I photographed them before, I might grab somebody if I'm doing it for the first time. Hey, can I borrow one of the kids? And we'll take photos really quick and I'll give them, hey, you get free photos at the end. But when they see the order form, they see the poses with their stuff. So it's connected to them already where the pricing's on there. So they see it. We give them great, clear instructions. So we handle the pre order. If we're doing people helping with them to order. Usually the bigger clubs, not always do we have somebody there ordering for the schools because it's usually at 3:30 and the parents are at work and it's just the kids. But once we get through the pre order and we've made them feel comfortable and excited about what they're getting, and a lot of times we'll have samples so they can see what our products. Because we do blankets and mugs and balls and actual photographs and all kinds of things that they could put their products on. Once we're done with that, they get an email afterwards. And usually like we can turn a school, like if I do like a single, like volleyball or basketball, and I do boys and girls, freshmen, JV varsity. So six teams, 100 kids or something, we've got photos ready usually the next day. It's all processed, everything's done, the teams, the Individuals and they're posted and ready to go. The bigger clubs are anywhere from three to five to seven days depending on the club. But they get it right away and they get marketing with that. They get notified from the school. But then once they're in my system I have an automated campaign that runs so three days before the end of. So we'll see a big spike at the beginning and then little trickle. And then you can tell when the email's gone out because my phone will start buzzing. Oh, you got it. Another order, another dinner. One time and my phone's going off and I was like, who's texting you? I go, hun, those are orders.

Pat Miller: 23:59

Ding, ding, ding, ding.

Jeff Galinovsky: 23:59

They're paying for dinner. Yes, but, but that's the thing is you're sending these really cool helpful emails and once we get down to the like the last day or the day of, we'll look at hey, you haven't ordered and you have something in your cart. And we'll send them a special note saying, hey, we see you have something in your cart. We're here to help you. So it's all about I want to help you. If you need help, email me, call me and I give them my phone number and they pick up. Sometimes they call me. I'm having trouble. I can't step you through it. Oh, we see you favorited something but you haven't bought. Is there anything we can do to help make you make your decision? And I have put our contact information so that if they need help along the way or they have a special request, please ask. Sometimes they might ask I want a buddy shot. We didn't do it on site. Can you guys composite my daughter and her friend? Absolutely. No problem. Or my dad, my, the, my husband's the coach and the daughter. Can we put Absolutely. So we just go overboard to help them because we make a lot of money. Like I might. You might. You know, our 8 by 12 is $35 for a single 8 by 12. My cost is $1.90 for my lab right now. We have all our other expenses but. But I can give you an extra print if we screw up or if it gets bent or I didn't get it. I'm not going to question you. I just am going to say here you go. We, we had one client and our club asked, can we mail everything out? Really? Okay. So we made them pay for shipping. We mailed out some of them. We hand delivered especially if they're bigger orders because they were all regional. But we said no. Problem. Got a phone call. Hey, my pictures came in. They're bent. Hey, they're in this big stiff. Okay, no problem. Who are you? Okay, you ordered two 8x12s. We will reprint them. We printed them. They came. Oh, we'll come to you. Okay. They came to us. They handed us the two pictures. We gave them to. I'm looking at their pictures. I'm like, I don't see any bend at all. Like, I'm like. But I didn't question. No problem. They walked away happy. For. For a dollar, for a couple bucks, I'm gonna make them happy. So we have a hundred percent customer satisfaction. If we don't do something, this looks too dark. I'll reprint it for you. It doesn't cost us that much to reprint. And they walk away. And next year they're gonna buy. They're gonna buy again, and they're gonna buy more from you. So I'll bend over backwards for them as well to make them happy. The way to do it.

Pat Miller: 26:20

That's no different than a Craftsman computing their waste or a retailer computing shrinkage. Like theft. It's part of doing business. A couple of points here or there doesn't make a big deal. We're almost out of time. I gotta ask you one more question before we run out of time.

Jeff Galinovsky: 26:38

Sure, sure.

Pat Miller: 26:38

We talked about the customer. We talked about the client. I want to spend just a moment on the craft.

Jeff Galinovsky: 26:43

Okay.

Pat Miller: 26:44

How much of your customer service is imagining awesome sets, making the kids feel like they're on Sportscenter? And I know that some of the trends now are smoke and lights and color and, like, how much of your energy is going into the design of this year's look.

Jeff Galinovsky: 26:58

So here's the. So a lot, actually. The nice thing is I don't have any expensive sets. I don't do any sets. My set are four lights and a green screen.

Pat Miller: 27:06

Oh, perfect, right? Yeah.

Jeff Galinovsky: 27:08

And everything's done. Even so, I know a lot of people do fire and smoke. Those are the new. Those are the latest trends. A lot of times we can't do that because we can't do that in a gym. It's gonna suck. And a lot of amateurs don't know that. And so they come in like the parent. The parent comes in. Cause I had one school came up, the ad came to our first shoot and said, you guys aren't doing smoke. Right. You know, you can't. I'm like, we know. We're professionals. We do all that in post. So I've done fires on soccer balls. I'VE done fires on hands. We've done smoke. It's all in post. I don't need to light anything there. And. And then. Oh, we didn't get it. We got to take it again or we didn't get it. We got. Sometimes we'll do action shots where they're tossing a ball up. Yeah, I don't even have them toss the ball up. Pretend like you're tossing the ball and the ball's on the template. That way I can take my two shots and not have to. Oh, that didn't come out. Can you. Oh, the lights hitting the shadows hitting your face from the ball. Can you do it again? No, because volume's all about efficiency and economies of scale. And so we don't. We do so. Yes. To get to your question, we spend a lot of time, usually in the summer, with templates, figuring out, what am I going to use for this school? What am I going to use for this club? Because every year it's different. We want new things, but we're going to do smoke this year. We're going to do this design. We're going to do something more natural. So it's all about crafting. And sometimes we purchase. There's a lot of great template designers out there. A lot of times what we do is when we get templates, we have a whole library of them. We'll take them, we'll modify them, we'll combine them, but we always add some of our own stuff to it. We put the logos in, we match the school color. So that's the other pitch is the branding side. Hey, we match your logos, your slogans, your colors. We spend a bunch of time. But that's all figured into our profit margin. Right. We spend probably a couple hours, you know, doing a design for each of the schools and organizations. But that's. To me, that's exciting because that's where a lot of the creativity comes in. What poses are we going to do? How are we going to integrate those poses into the template? That's really important, and we spend some time on that.

Pat Miller: 29:06

I know that you're working on some classes and some content. If people want to follow along and continue to learn from you, what's the best way to do it?

Jeff Galinovsky: 29:12

Reach out to us. We're on Facebook. Jeff Galanoski Photography. JeffGalinowski Photography.com, we're just now putting some new stuff together, so you're going to see some dust on the website because we've kind of revamped some things and we're getting ready to actually put out a couple courses, so anybody who's interested in having us come and speak at their affiliate or their community partner, we're happy to do that. We've got some great content for teaching you guys how to do high volume shorts and we'll even do a workshop where we bring in some athletes and go from start to finish. Talk about the automation, talk about the marketing, the sales, the whole nine yards. So awesome. Just reach out.

Pat Miller: 29:48

Great conversation. Thanks for coming on the show.

Jeff Galinovsky: 29:49

Thanks Pat. Appreciate you having us.

Pat Miller: 29:51

Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of the Professional Photographer Podcast. Live from Imaging USA inside the Sony Cinema Line Studios. A big thanks to Sony for doing all the hard work to make us look good. Now, if you're still watching the episode, that means you enjoyed the show, which means you should be a subscriber of the show. So click subscribe on whatever platform you're on. Also, leave us a like and a comment so we know what the guest said that really resonated with you. The other thing is, if you're not yet a member of Professional Photographers of America, what's going on here? Because PPA offers terrific benefits like incredible equipment, insurance, top notch education and a supportive community of photographers ready to help you succeed. Join now@ppa.com that's ppa.com I'm Pat Miller, host to the show and the founder of the Small Business Owners Community. I appreciate you tuning in. We'll see you right here next time. Take care.