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Karinda Kinsler: Tell me a little bit about your business and what it was like when we started working together.
Leigh: I was very much under the impression that photography was just gonna be a fun thing on the side for a while. I started to take it a little more seriously, mostly because I needed it to start paying for my horse habit a little bit, I kept growing. I was sort of hoping I could make a little bit more but I didn’t really know how. So I started doing research, I don’t really remember how I came across your name but I do know I had messaged you a while before I actually became your coaching client. I was really excited about it when we hopped on a call. And I was hooked. I believe I was like, “Oh my gosh, take my money. Go.”
Karinda Kinsler: Would you consider yourself profitable before we work together?
Leigh: Definitely not, I was making some money but not enough. I don’t think if I were to actually add it up on a spreadsheet, it would be nowhere near even.
Karinda Kinsler: So would you say that you’re profitable now?
Leigh: Oh, for sure.
Karinda Kinsler: So I know you also have a full time job, now that we have worked together do you see yourself making the leap and going full time eventually?
Leigh: Yes, very slowly, it started becoming a thing I considered until it became a plan to start working towards and seeing what happens. Now it’s something I confidently say out loud, it’s what I want to do, I want to be able to quit my job and do this full time. And it actually seems realistic. It doesn’t seem like it’s something that I’m settling for either. It doesn’t feel like it’s something where maybe I can make as much as I make at my full time job. It’s something that could be way better than my full time job. So it’s really cool experience and has opened up a lot of doors for me.
Karinda Kinsler: How do you think your business has changed since we started working together?
Leigh: I think I’m a lot more empathetic, it’s really strange. I think photography for me was just a fun and cool thing to do. If I made a little money, that was great. But now it is a whole experience that we’ve worked on together. I’ve connected with people a lot more because of the process we put together. People have cried at my sessions because we’ve reached this part of them that I had never been able to reach before. I’ve made connections with people as friends now because of it too. So it’s made me a better person weirdly, I didn’t expect that but here we are.
Karinda Kinsler: What piece of the puzzle caused that shift for you?
Leigh: The biggest one was figuring out my ‘why’ for sure. Once we identified that I, it was a lot more complicated than I thought. I figured my ‘why’ I was just that I want to make people happy with pictures of their horses. I’m going to capture them with their horse just like every photographer is gonna say, or some variation of it. And it went a lot deeper than that. Ever since I’ve been able to put that into words and express it with people it has opened up so many different conversations. Those are the avenues make them cry during their photo session with their horse, because they feel so emotional, and in a good way, not in a bad way. That by far has been the biggest piece of this puzzle, for sure.
Karinda Kinsler: What did you think when I initially brought up your “WHY”?
Leigh: I’m not gonna lie, in our original phone call I was thinking the ‘why’ is such a woowoo. I thought, whatever, who cares? But it’s real and it really truly does help you.
Karinda Kinsler: What’s the biggest thing that changed your business? I know, you kind of just talked about your “WHY” would you say that’s the biggest thing that you learned from working with me? Or what do you think the biggest thing that you learned from working together would be?
Leigh: I want to say it’s the pricing, but it’s not as simple as pricing. The reason pricing helped me is that it went from, how much do I charge someone to how can I take them through the experience. It took my clients from just wanting to have some pictures to post on Instagram to wanting this amazing, beautiful album, and a wall spread. I want them to enjoy their pictures. In real life, how do you get people from the first step to the next? How can you help them take that jump, there’s a ladder you have to help them climb. That goes with everything we worked on to set up the whole experience. By the end of it, people are happy to spend that money and have the amazing wall spread or album. In the end I feel like my photo clients are friends because of it. We went through so much together to reach that point where they are really happy they did it. And that came from setting up my pricing. It’s such a weird thing, like all of that came from starting with one price and going from there based on sizing and stuff like that. And it’s so much more complicated than you think.
Karinda Kinsler: What are your clients investing now that you’ve gone through this process?
Leigh: I average close to $2,345 and my biggest sale was a little a little over $2,800. And that’s just my first few clients after going through the program.
Karinda Kinsler: That is pretty much 10 times your old average!
Karinda Kinsler: When we started working together, did you actually believe that this was possible?
Leigh: No, I thought you were crazy. I thought you were just here I want you to sign up and pay me all this money to go through my coaching program. I didn’t believe it, not at all.
Karinda Kinsler: That’s so funny! So what made you decide to take the leap and invest in working with me?
Leigh: Well, I knew that I had a handle on the photography. I’m not saying I’m the greatest photographer ever, but it was something that I felt okay with. What I didn’t feel comfortable with learning, especially on my own, was the business side of things. I went to art school and literally never learned any of that. I’m an anxious person, I kind of freak out over everything. I wanted to not only have a legitimate business, but I wanted to start being able to make a little bit of money and I didn’t know how to do that. So it was everything that you were saying about wanting to teach people and how you want to help people. And then the tidbits that you gave me just on our initial phone call. I decided you knew what you were talking about and it helped me out here, and you did it very quickly.
Karinda Kinsler: So what advice would you give to someone struggling with their business, just as you were? They’re not sure if they like making money yet and they’re not sure if they can make the money. They’re trying to decide if they should make an investment in their business. How do they even go about figuring out what the right thing to invest in is?
Leigh: So I think the first thing that I have told people lately when asked what camera they should get is instead of getting a camera, something used or borrow a friend’s camera, make sure you like it. If you are liking it, then the first investment you need to make is not equipment, it is learning about the business, because that’s gonna help you get the equipment that you actually want and set you up for success. I wish I had done this earlier. I wish I’d invested in a program like this before I invested in my equipment, laptop and my education. Even like my four year degree, I learned more in this three month program with you than I did in my four year arts degree. That tells you everything you need to know right there. So yeah, when people ask me, I say invest in your education first before you do anything else.
Karinda Kinsler: That’s amazing. How big of a role do you think the quality of someone’s photography plays? Do you think that someone’s pictures have to be incredible or do you think a lot of it is what you’re doing for your clients that allows them to spend the money?
Leigh: So first of all, you’re better than you think. Everyone seems to have that issue. They think they are the worst photographer. I went through that, it’s just a weird thing that I think artists have. But second of all, no, the pictures themselves do not matter. It’s case in point my last sale that I had, my client mentioned the pictures were ever so slightly blurry. I included them because I thought they were funny poses, time I keep those my clients often end up picking them. So don’t worry about the pictures themselves at all. That will get better with time, but in terms of sales and making people happy, no. Not important.
Karinda Kinsler: Were you like totally freaked out by the thought of selling things to people in the beginning?
Leigh: Yes, I did not want to be pushy. I was like, oh my God, this lady’s crazy. She wants me to actually get on a phone call with people and sell them things. They didn’t like that I wasn’t just giving my digitals away at first. But when I said you can pay me $200 and I give you a few digitals it’s fine no big deal. No, I did not want to do is at all, but it’s made for way happier clients way happier clients.