[00:00:00] Real quick guys. Has this podcast offered you any valuable insights for your business? If it has, I'd be thrilled if you could pass it on to a friend or another creative, share it via Instagram story, Twitter, or a dm. Whatever feels right for you. I'm driven by the goal to empower as many creative entrepreneurs as possible, but I need your help to achieve that.
Thanks so much for your time. Now let's dive into today's episode. Welcome to the Creative Biz Launch Podcast, where we talk about how to grow your creative business and scale to six figures. Whether you're a photographer, filmmaker, or designer, you'll find something of value here. In this episode, we're talking about the six ways to stay poor as a photographer.
These are the six things that will make you go broke, lose clients, and not gain any new business. All you need to do to succeed in photography is to do the opposite of these things. Humans think funny. It's much easier to find problems rather than identify solutions. So let's identify all the problems going on in our photography business first, and then we can think of our direct solutions to these problems.[00:01:00]
At the end of this episode, I'm gonna walk through my guiding principle and how it's gotten me to six figures as a creative entrepreneur. If you dunno who I am, my name is Chris Pata. I run a production company and teach creative business online. Anyway, let's talk about number one on our list here, and this is gonna be one that's gonna hit home for a lot of you only say yes to projects that you can handle.
This is a great way to stay poor as a photographer. You're a product photographer. You've had a few projects with this client and they ask you if you can do lifestyle photos with models. Now, you've never done anything like this. You've done some headshots of her, your friends, but you have no experience posing models.
This is outside of your skill range. I, are you gonna tell this client no. And for them to go find someone else? Or are you going to say yes and try and figure this out along the way? At the end of the day, you can take on this project message up completely, and the worst thing that happens is that you'll have to refund this client.
That's it. Even if you mess up, you'll have learned a lot of new skills and lessons along the way, [00:02:00] but on the upside, you can watch some YouTube videos, learn how to pose models and practice on your friends. Then you can execute the project to the best of your ability, and you'll have unlocked a whole new skillset.
And because of this, you'll be better than you were before. And this is all because you bit off more than you could chew in the face of challenge. You accepted it instead of running away. And this applies to so many things in photography or videography. When you're presented with a new challenge, go accept it.
You'll find a way to make it work out in the end. Okay. Okay. Number two, make promises to clients and break them. So number two, piggybacks right off this first one. When you take on the extra responsibility, you should do everything in your power to make sure you deliver on your promise. Even if you don't have the skills to do something, go hire a contractor.
If you promise three day turnaround times, stay up late, wake up early, and do what you need to do to deliver on your promise. Once you get into business, you have a reputation to uphold a reputation with your clients and a reputation with yourself. [00:03:00] When you say you're gonna do something, you do it. When your clients are your biggest fans, they'll refer you to their friends.
I.
You'll gain more business from them making you more money. And if things go really wrong and you have to break a promise, you need to make it right, refund their money, offer free services. Do what you can so that your reputation is phenomenal. When you make promises and fail to keep them, you'll lose clients, meaning you'll lose money.
And you will stay poor. Keep your promises to clients no matter what it takes. I remember when I was starting out, I was offering two day turnaround times for all photography projects. Now, this sounds really fast, but it was what I needed to do to stand out early on. I was able to shoot Annette photo so quickly because I put in the extra effort.
And clients saw that when those clients went out and left reviews on Google, they were all five stars. They loved working with me and they kept coming back for more. And this helped me so much early on in my business and gave me that momentum. And if I didn't go above and beyond early on, I don't know if I would be [00:04:00] doing this today.
I made promises and I stuck to them. Okay. Number three, buy expensive gear. We all knew this one was coming. Obviously, if you spend all your cash on gear, it'll go broke. Yes, your gear matters, but you don't need to upgrade it every single time. There's a new lens. Buy a good camera, buy a good lens or two, and you can do nearly everything you want with that.
All of my photography work is done with the Sony A seven R four, and the 24 to 70 G master lens, and I use this for 95% of all of my work. I do have a video camera for YouTube, but that Sony A seven R four has held up for a really long time. There was the E 75 that came out recently. And I could have upgraded to that, but the A seven R four does everything I need, so why spend the extra money on that when I can invest in other things like learning business skills, working with my coach, things like that.
Another great use of money could be paying my contractors. My team is awesome and they free up so much of my time so that I can focus on those high level tasks that [00:05:00] actually make me more money, namely getting clients and taking photos. A better camera isn't gonna help me get more clients and I can already take great photos and videos with my current setup.
The saying that you gotta spend money to make money is very true, but you also need to know what you should be spending your money on so that you get the highest return on investment. And for a lot of you, buying the best camera gear won't be that honestly. Paying your team. Using different softwares and honestly, getting more skills is a great use of your cash.
If you can pay someone to teach you skills that make you a better salesperson, better marketer, better business person, that's gonna make you way more money than a new camera ever will. Now, the exception to this rule would be if you're trying to land a client with very specific needs. Let's say they need 4K one 20 P video for an ad they're doing, and their budget is eight grand.
Your current gear won't cut it, but you can either buy a better camera for. Weigh more money, or you can rent a camera and you'll be able to land this client. So even if you spend 4K on a new camera for [00:06:00] this client, and that's gonna be written off your taxes, the budget for this project is eight grand. So you're still going to justify buying the gear and profit.
And on the other hand, you can always rent.
Okay, next up on the list, seek perfection. If you wanna stay broke, seek perfection. Just like you don't need to buy the best gear, the content you produce doesn't have to be perfect. Now, I'm not saying go out there and take mediocre photos. No, don't do that. You need to do great work. It has to wow your clients.
It has to be effective in converting people into paying customers for those clients, but it doesn't have to be absolutely perfect. I could spend hours styling a scene trying to make it just right for a single photo, but chances are the client won't notice and no one else will notice unless they're a professional photographer.
The photo is gonna look the same to them and their customers. Your time is a limited resource, and you're better off trying to create great content and more of it rather than a single piece of perfect content. You'll also learn way faster through this whole process. The more you [00:07:00] iterate, the faster you'll grow.
Seeking perfection is guaranteed. To make you stay broke. Okay, next up on this list. Only take photos that you want. There's gonna be times where you need to take your artist hat off and accept the boring projects as a photographer, not all projects are going to be fun. There are gonna be times when a client wants photos that don't align with your style or are just plain boring to take.
Are you going to tell this client to get lost and find someone else? Or are you gonna take a look at this as a business opportunity and as an opportunity to build a relationship with that client? I do a law photography for e-commerce, mainly Amazon. A set of Amazon photos includes three creative shots, which I love doing, and then two or three white background photos.
The white background shots are boring, there's nothing interesting about them. But if I told my clients that I don't want to do them for them, they would just find someone else. And I might lose their business on those creative shots too. You're going to need to treat your photography as a business, get off your [00:08:00] pedestal and realize that there are times.
When it's more important to be accommodating to your client's needs rather than to your own creativity. Now, this is hard for some of you to hear, but by doing the boring work, you'll make more money. And what does more money unlock? Freedom. It gets you the freedom to do the stuff that you wanna do, those photos that you want to take, always listen to the client's needs and figure out how you can best solve them.
Okay, last one here. Wait for clients to come to you. When you wait for clients to come to you, you're not gonna make enough money to survive in your business. That's the truth. You need to hustle. You need to be out there writing cold emails. You need to be scrubbing Amazon for companies to reach out to.
You need to be posting on social media, on LinkedIn about the services that you offer, your past work, anything that will get eyeballs on you. Clients aren't lining up to work with you. There are just too many options. It's up to you to get the clients not the other way around. Okay? If you've listened thus far, you obviously care about growing your creative business.
If you need help getting your first client, I have a free 60 [00:09:00] minute workshop on my website that they can enroll in right now. Link for that is in the show notes. Finding clients is one of the hardest parts of this industry, and honestly, it's the reason why so many people fail. They just don't do the required work.
They have their priorities mixed up. So what is my guiding principle that I think has helped me the most? It's simply to show up every day and do the work. If you make promises to clients, you show up and do the work so that you fulfill those promises. If you need more clients, you do the work to find those clients.
If you take on hard projects above your skill level, what should you do? Show up as your best self, or even better than your best self, and do the work so that you can complete that project. I believe this is what's gotten me to where I am. I show up every day willing to become better, willing to do something that will move me forward in business and in life.
If you can show up every day, it'll be miles ahead of the person dreaming on their couch. That's all I got today. My name is Chris Pieta. If you have an extra second or two, please rate the show. It really helps it grow. You know, I don't do any sponsorships or ads on this, [00:10:00] so we only grow through word of mouth.
I'll catch you next time.
