Hey guys, welcome to the Podcast. If you’re brand new to my world, my name is Jena. I’m your host here, founder of Senior Studio Success and my signature business coaching program, Studio Secrets. I love helping photographers with their systems. That’s kinda jam.

Can I share with you one thing before we get started?

It’s my podcast so yeah I can! Haha! I am totally going into stand up comedy if this whole coaching thing doesn’t work out for me.

I wanted to give the ones who listen here a heads up that I’m opening a new round of Studio Secrets this March & spots are being pre-sold right now. If you know without a shadow of doubt that you want a set in this round, email me at heythere@seniorstudiosuccess.com or send me a DM on Instagram. As of recording this episode this morning, 8 of the 20 spots available have been taken. So, now would be a good time to let me know that you want a seat at the table.

If you don’t know what Studio Secrets is, here’s the cliff notes version. It’s a 12 month group coaching intensive with me as your business coach & it also includes an amazing course (if I do say so myself) built on 4 core pillars of business - messaging, pricing, workflow & marketing. There’s also a huge concentration on productivity & mindset. If you’ve been listening to me for a while, you know that’s kinda my thing.

This is a room where we see $300 photographers turn into $3000 photographers, where we see $3000 photographers turn into $8000 photographers. This is a room where you’ll go from frazzled & frantic to confident & in control. This is where we stop letting the business run you & where your business begins to run like a machine. This is a room that you need to be in.

Ok, let’s get into today’s topic - the 3 things I believe you need to focus on to book more clients.

You’ve heard me say it before. Success in business is a combination of both mindset & strategy. And that success will come by improving these 3 very important things:

creating an amazing client experience
getting more visible
making more offers

So I’m going to break down the why behind each one of these 3 things you need to be focusing more on in your business.

Creating a client experience they’ll talk about

This gets thrown around a lot. Client experience, client experience. But do you really know what that is all about? Do you know what it means to have a great experience with a business? Like over the top, blown away, knock your socks off kind of experience. The kind of experience that you immediately text your friends about to tell them they have to try this place out? A one of a kind pampered and personalized experience that you couldn’t have even imagined if you tried?

If you have ever truly experienced something like this, you will never forget it. I have had a few of these of my own & they made a massive impact on the way I do business. One of these experiences was the time we checked into a Disney resort & immediately got upgraded to family of the day, just because. We were escorted to our new family suite by multiple in character Disney staff & treated like royalty our entire trip. The kids were given fresh cookies, balloons, special name tags & everyone knew our names & made sure to say hello whenever they saw us the entire week. Talk about feeling special!

This happened again on a Royal Caribbean cruise several years ago. We made it to the port to check in & randomly got chosen to upgrade our room to a suite. This completely caught us by surprise! Now if you’ve ever been on a cruise & stayed in a suite, you know how crazy nice this is! If you don’t let me paint the picture for you. We went from one bedroom, pull out bunk beds & one tiny bathroom to a full sized family suite with separate bedrooms, bathrooms, living room & massive balcony. Plus a special concierge’s lounge where again, they knew us by name. We never had to wait for anything, got special seating for the shows & a special pool deck just for suite guests. We were living the high life that week!

The experience isn’t about adding a few things here & there to beef up the value of your session. The experience is about creating something unimaginable for your client. It’s about making them feel like they are your only client, so much so that they can’t stop talking about their day with you.

Man, we miss the boat on this one - a lot. Why? Mindset. We are too worried about marketing to the next potential client to take care of our current ones. But if we would slow down long enough to fix our systems & spoil the clients right in front of us, we don’t really have to market all that much. Creating those experiences is sometimes all the marketing you need.

The client experience is all about how your client feels. So ask yourself this: “how do I want my clients to feel” and “how can I do a better job of making that happen”?

Getting more visible

It all comes down to this. People can’t buy something if they don’t know it exists. We all know the struggle when it comes to getting seen on social media. Because only a small percentage of our audience ever see our content, we need to be showing up more so that more of them have a better chance of seeing it.

Stop thinking about social media as a job or a chore or this massive undertaking. Simplify it. Make a plan & follow through.

It is so important to have a content plan and to understand the importance of not only planning in advance, but setting aside time to implement your plan.

Increasing your visibility online is going to do a few things for you:

Increase your brand awareness. They will know your name & what you stand for. You need to be top of mind when they are ready to hire a photographer. So many just give up because you are consistent for 2 weeks & don’t see results. Y’all, it takes a bit longer than 2 weeks to see results. You don’t get a full set of abs in 2 weeks. You aren’t going to get a fully booked calendar in 2 weeks either. It takes time, patience, persistence & consistency. Stop giving up & getting frustrated because you don’t have immediate results.

Increase your credibility. When you show up consistently & get more visible, guess what happens. People begin to trust you more. They begin to look at you differently. You become a leader in your area. Who doesn’t want to work with someone like that? That also means that demand for you & your business will grow, which in turn, means that you can demand higher prices.

Making more offers

Something I’ve never really understood is why photographers have such a hard time selling. Y’all know we’re in business, right? Unless you want to run a charity art gallery, you need to be asking for the sale. You need to be making more offers. You need to be showing up & pushing people towards the next step to work with you.

If you struggle with this, it’s time to do some soul searching. Why are you not wanting to ask people to book? Here are some things that I hear a lot of photographers say . . . “I don’t want to be pushy” or “I don’t want to be salesy” or “I’m not good at sales” or “I don’t want to annoy people”.

Business is a numbers game. The more you ask, the more you get.

Here’s where a lot of that comes from . . . a deep rooted belief. It’s a story that you’ve told yourself for 20, 30, 40 + years (I have 46 years worth of stories in me). It’s a belief that asking for the sale is “pushy, sleezy, annoying”. Is it really though?

When you believe something like that, it’s going to make you feel like you want to withdraw, timid, ashamed even. Those feelings will hold you back. They’ll keep you from making more offers. Those beliefs will keep you stuck. This is a lot of the stuff we work through in Studio Secrets. I told someone the other day that I could give them every strategy I had ever learned, but if they didn’t have the right mindset & confidence, it would never work for them. You can know all the things, but if you can’t deliver it, it’s useless knowledge.

So it’s still quarter one. We are early on in the year. You have plenty of time to correct or improve in these areas. Concentrate on creating that amazing client experience, get more visible & make more offers this year. If you do those 3 things, you will book more clients. If you need help with any of that, let’s work together. I always suggest starting out with Studio Secrets because it’s gonna be the most bang for your buck. It’s $3000 for 12 months of coaching. You’re not gonna find a better quality offer than that. If you want more individualized coaching you can always upgrade to 1:1 coaching. If you have no clue what I’m talking about, go listen to last week’s episode.

Ok, I’m gonna call that one done. I hope you got some clarity on what it’s going to take for you to book more clients. If you did, I’d love to hear from you over on Instagram. Thank you for sharing the podcast in your stories. That’s how I’ve been able to grow this message organically over the last few years. I want to keep showing up for you consistently here to help you build your business, so your sharing makes that even more possible. Let’s continue building more profitable, productive & purposeful businesses so we can spend more time doing what we love with the ones we love.

Have a great week y’all! I’ll see you online.