The Confident Entrepreneur With Jennifer Ann Johnson
Jennifer is a multifaceted entrepreneur while also actively involved in her community. She owns True Fashionistas (Florida’s largest lifestyle resale store), CooiesCookies, Pink Farmhouse (online store), and Confident Entrepreneur, which encompasses her podcast, blog, motivational speaking, and coaching business for women entrepreneurs. Jennifer is an inspiration to other women business owners - showing it's possible to be successful in business while also making a difference and giving back to her community. Jennifer lives in Naples FL with her husband and twins.
The Confident Entrepreneur With Jennifer Ann Johnson
Elevating Visual Marketing with Scott Markowitz
Scott Markowitz, the visionary mind behind Reinvent Studio, returns to discuss the transformative power of visual storytelling in business. You’ll discover how authentic, professional photography can shape perceptions and build trust with your audience. Scott reveals the significance of using locally relevant and candid imagery of staff and customers to create a personal connection and influence buying decisions. It's all about showcasing the human side of your brand through images that resonate emotionally.
Venturing into the fascinating realm where technology meets creativity, we explore how artificial intelligence is revolutionizing photography. Scott shares insights on harnessing AI tools to enhance imagery, from improving resolution to customizing backgrounds, thus offering businesses a chance to craft personalized stock photos that speak directly to their audience. We also touch on the strategic planning required to maximize these visuals in marketing. This episode promises to equip you with new perspectives on leveraging both artistry and technology in your visual marketing strategy.
Visit us at jenniferannjohnson.com and learn how Jennifer can help you build the life you dream of with her online academy, blog, one-on-one coaching, and a variety of other resources!
Today we welcome back into the studio Scott Markowitz, and he is the owner of Reinvent Studio. Welcome back.
Scott Markowitz:Hey, thank you, absolutely Great to be back.
Jennifer Johnson:You know, the first time we were talking all about video and how video is so important for your business, but so is photography in everything that we do.
Scott Markowitz:Yes, photography is everywhere nowadays. And what do they say?
Jennifer Johnson:A picture is worth a thousand words, but maybe it's worth more than that. It's like the Visa commercial. I like that, You're right, Because I can tell. I mean you're using it on social media. You're using it in print. If you're doing print, you're using it everywhere In-store signage or signage on your brochures, everywhere.
Scott Markowitz:What is the first thing somebody does when they hear about your company? They go to your website right, yes.
Scott Markowitz:And so the photography that's on your website. That really is the first clue that somebody has about the quality of your business. So it's A, is the website fluid, is it designed well? And B, are the photographs professional, are they beautiful and are they representative of the solution or the service or the skill that you're selling Right? Service or the skill that you're selling Right? If it's, if the, if the answer to any of those things, if the answer to any of those three things is no, then they're moving on Right. Yeah, the pictures are priceless.
Jennifer Johnson:And you know, what I also find is that there's a lot of authenticity. That has to happen there too, because if you use stock pictures and then they come and visit you at your office or you come and visit them and that doesn't match up like that image, then it's like I've already. There's my trust.
Scott Markowitz:Right, so prolific, and so the chances that somebody else is using the same stock photography that you are is pretty high. So the best answer to that is make your own stock photography.
Jennifer Johnson:Because, honestly, if I see somebody's brochure or somebody's website, I remember a lot of the pictures. And then you go on someone else's and you're like, oh, they just went down a notch in my book because you called it in. Yeah Right, you basically just called in doing that. That you know your, your website. You didn't, you didn't put any effort into it.
Scott Markowitz:You didn't put effort into it.
Jennifer Johnson:I call it, calling it in.
Scott Markowitz:You just phoned it in. You phoned it in, you telegraphed it.
Jennifer Johnson:But it's important that you get it right, because first impressions are everything.
Scott Markowitz:Yeah, first impressions are everything, and photography is such a good opportunity for you to tell more about yourself than just the words on your website or just the caption in your social post.
Jennifer Johnson:I know, in our video we talked about telling a story, but how can you? I feel like you can tell stories in pictures. I mean, how does that translate? Can you do that or not as much? Or is video still the better way to do that?
Scott Markowitz:Not only can you do that, but you absolutely should do that. Okay, yeah. So let's think about somebody's wedding day. When you get married and you hire a good photographer, they're going to tell the story of not just who was there, but they're going to tell the story about what happened. And how do they do that? They show a wide shot of the church that you got married at, they take a wide shot of the beach nearby, they take some shots of the trees and the surroundings and they get some big, wide shots with people occupying small portions of the frame to give you like a scale of how big the event is. And then they start taking close-ups of the details. They get close-ups of the ring, they get close-ups of the shoes. They get close-ups of the ring, they get close-ups of the shoes, they get close-ups of, maybe, the cocktails being served, and then these details will flow into the shots of people arriving, and you have a variety of different distances of the subject to the camera and in an individualistic standpoint, these are just single pictures, but when you put them all together into an album, it does, of course, tell the story of your wedding, and so any business can take advantage of that same type of process.
Scott Markowitz:You want to have a variety of different things over time that tell the story. So you want some details about your business. So you want some close-ups of your products, of your services, of people doing or performing the skills that your business is known for. You also want to see some wide shots of, maybe the end results or just the surroundings.
Scott Markowitz:Here in Southwest Florida I know businesses that belong to national chains but they are coming to reInvent Studio because they want to have something that's local, right example. Or construction companies they want to see some shots of their building products in a Southwest Florida setting with palm trees and the beach, because the national materials that they're given to promote their business don't speak to their customers as well. Yeah, so you definitely want to have all those components closeups, medium shots, smiling people, happy customers. You know your representatives, your salespeople. What do, what do they look like? Maybe some candid shots of them preparing for a sales meeting, or some candid shots of them after they got a big sale and how excited they are. And you know, because you want to not just portray yourself as the service provider, but you also want to portray yourself as a real breathing human being who gets excited about what you do and celebrates your wins. Right, you know it's important.
Jennifer Johnson:You know you had mentioned weddings. Okay so weddings. Looking back at your pictures, for us as humans it provokes the memories of those times, right, but when you're working in the business aspect, you're using your photos to tell an emotional story, because emotion sells.
Scott Markowitz:Oh, jennifer, you totally hit on it, right yeah, I mean, selling is all about emotions. People make their buying decisions through their emotions. Mm-hmm, despite what they think they're making their decisions on, right, they're not even aware, right yeah? So photography is a fantastic way to start tapping into that emotions, and it begins with the photographs you have on your website, obviously. And so let's answer that question really quickly. Like, how does a photograph that connects to somebody's emotions Right? And the way that it does is that it connects to something that they want, okay, okay. So let me explain that a little bit more the things that we want. Let's say that we want to hire I'm just going to pick a service out of my like. Let's say, you want to hire a maid service to clean up your house, a maid service to clean up your house. Well, do you want to hire a maid service? Because it's going to make you a person that has a clean house. Well, on the surface, yes, but why do you want a clean house Right now, we're starting to get somewhere.
Jennifer Johnson:I see where you're going with this.
Scott Markowitz:Yeah. So like you want a clean house, because maybe in my case, you want your wife to feel happy when she comes home from work that her house is clean. Well, why do I want her to feel happy when she comes home from work? Because then she's going to feel more comfortable and relaxed to talk to me. And why do I want that? Because I want to have a meaningful relationship with my wife. And why do I want that? Because I want to be loved, right?
Scott Markowitz:Exactly, exactly so you hire a cleaning service. So I hired a cleaning service so that I can experience a better loving relationship. And you know, but that's not the first thing that comes to mind when I start.
Jennifer Johnson:No, right, it's deeper.
Scott Markowitz:Yeah, I mean, the first thing I think about is oh, I just need somebody to pick up this mess.
Jennifer Johnson:And I think of wow, I picture a person sitting back with their you can see their feet in the picture on a chair at the beach, yeah Right.
Scott Markowitz:There you go.
Jennifer Johnson:Like I want that so that I can do that. There's the means to my end. Yeah, so let's the ends to my means, the means to my end. I don't know.
Scott Markowitz:No, but exactly correct. So let's put that together in a picture story. So now we see a picture of of a happy maid service going through your home cleaning up your kitchen and your bathroom, and then next to that there's a picture of you at the beach with your wife wife and then next to that there's a picture of you you know, like you know, close to your wife, engaged in an embrace, Right, Right. That tells the whole story and that connects you to the emotion that you want.
Jennifer Johnson:We just did a whole ad campaign for some cleaning service out there. That is wonderful. That is wonderful. Is your closet overflowing? Or maybe your kids' closets are as well, or maybe you just want to redecorate your house. If you're wondering what to do with all that stuff that you've accumulated, bring it all to True Fashionistas, or even ship it to them for free. They'll sell your unwanted items for you and take away all the hassle by doing all the work, and all you have to do is sit back and collect your money. You can reach out to them online at truefashionistascom. Come into the store or check them out on Facebook or Instagram and that's truefashionistascom. Welcome back, friends. We are in studio with Scott Markowitz and he is with Reinvent Studio, and we're talking all today about photography and how important it is to tell a story, because stories sell product and services.
Scott Markowitz:That's right, by connecting to people's emotions.
Jennifer Johnson:The whole cleaning service we were just talking about. Yeah, I mean, that is so so, true. So I want to talk a little bit about AI. Yeah, because everybody's talking about AI everywhere. How can you use that coupled with photography, or how did those two fit in?
Scott Markowitz:Well, there's probably a million ways that you can use AI.
Jennifer Johnson:And by the time we air there'll be a million and a half.
Scott Markowitz:There's going to be a million more.
Jennifer Johnson:Yeah, you know.
Scott Markowitz:Yeah, I mean right now there's generative tools. By generative, I mean there's AI tools that will create imagery based on a text prompt that you provide.
Jennifer Johnson:And I just heard about this and I went what Hold the phone? This is really weird.
Scott Markowitz:I've not tried them, but yeah, and as of the time that you and I are talking right now, it's not a hundred percent perfect. You know, the AI engines that are driving these imagery solutions don't always know how to recreate the human form, so, like you, will get some goofy results, like people with five fingers on one hand but seven fingers on the other hand. Or you know people with missing a leg.
Scott Markowitz:Yeah, I've seen images like with people with three legs and um, and the funny thing, the really frightening thing perhaps uh, or funny, depending on your point of view is that you can post those pictures with people with seven fingers and three legs and, for the most part, no one will even notice, because people are scrolling their feet so fast that they don't even see.
Jennifer Johnson:But then wait a second. What's that?
Scott Markowitz:Yeah, but so AI can definitely get you out of a pinch. If you need to have some kind of imagery for your posting or for your blog, or whatever, you can definitely use an AI tool to do that, and, yeah, the thing that I think is more exciting, though, is to use AI to augment existing photographs.
Jennifer Johnson:That's what I'm wondering about. Yes, Like put some makeup on me.
Scott Markowitz:Yeah, can I look?
Jennifer Johnson:taller.
Scott Markowitz:Oh, absolutely. So you can. Yeah, you can use some of the tools like say, in Photoshop.
Scott Markowitz:Photoshop and Adobe are some of the leading like authorities in this space and so, like if you have a adobe subscription to their creative cloud, you have access to their ai tools and you can absolutely, for example, take a picture that you have and make it maybe more resolute, maybe clearer you can, you can tell ai to uh to make the background larger. So if you, if you need to repurpose a photograph that was taken for one specific use case and you have to try to conform it into a new use case, like maybe for a brochure or a sales package that you want to present, you could redefine what the parameters of that photograph are. And, for example, if you have a headshot that was taken professionally but now you need something with more environment in it to put a sales copy on top of, you, can ask Photoshop to create or recreate the background.
Jennifer Johnson:So could it take me from the office to the beach.
Scott Markowitz:Yeah. Like okay, just stick me here. Yeah, you can definitely do that Now. It may not be as quick and easy as you're imagining, right?
Jennifer Johnson:I'm thinking oh, here, I want this backdrop.
Scott Markowitz:Usually it does take a little bit of experimentation and sometimes you'll have to ask the AI to regenerate it several times before it gets a result that you're going to like.
Jennifer Johnson:Not much unlike the written. You know, BARD, or chat GPT Correct With how you're doing copy. The same thing goes true with video or pictures, sorry.
Scott Markowitz:That's correct. That's correct and, just like chat, gpt, the more you put into the prompt, the more detail you put into the prompt and the more clever you are about how you describe what use those AI tools more and more as something that, as a business owner or a marketing professional, you can get more traction from or more efficient use of your time.
Jennifer Johnson:How should we be using our photography that we paid somebody to do or we've done? How should we be using this? I mean, we talked about using it on the website, social media, right, and coming in here to this year, what are things that are maybe new, on the horizon as well? So purpose or use, and then tools, things that are new.
Scott Markowitz:Yeah. So let's go back a little bit and say that the best way to get the most miles out of your video and your photography is to be strategic about it. So before you even start snapping pictures, you should have, maybe a list of things that you want to accomplish with your social media and with your marketing efforts, so that you want to accomplish with your social media and with your marketing efforts, so that you can better be equipped to go out and capture the images that will relate to those goals. Here's a great example you could be using your camera to take pictures and make your own stock photographs. You know, stock photography used to be something that was leveraged a lot and we just talked about it earlier that now it's kind of a stale thing because there's so much use of it that we become aware that it's stock now, and then you look lazy. And then you look lazy and look like you phoned it in. You phoned it in.
Scott Markowitz:Right, you look like you phoned it in. You phoned it in Right, so but but it's easy enough for you to pick up your phone and you can go and maybe take some pictures of a laptop in your office. Now it's stock photography, but it's specific to your business. Now you can take some stock photographs of plants that are in the front of your lobby. You can take some stock photographs of your storefront out of focus and you can now put sales copy in front of it and the storefront's just a background.
Jennifer Johnson:Because no one else is going to have that.
Scott Markowitz:Nobody else is going to have it. It's serving the purpose of what stock photography was originally meant for, which was to become Stock. Photography was originally created to become the background for sales copy.
Jennifer Johnson:Oh, how funny yeah.
Scott Markowitz:And you know, to become just the bedrock in which sales copy was delivered so we can make our own, and that's, I think, a powerful way to think about photography and how you can start using it to accomplish your marketing goals. To accomplish your marketing goals. Besides that, like I said, we can take things that were shot already and we can start using AI tools to repurpose them and put them into different.
Jennifer Johnson:That was a question I had, repurposing your content.
Scott Markowitz:Yeah, so anytime you can repurpose your content, it's a great thing. So if you had some Say you had somebody come in to take photographs of your work environment or some environmental portraits of you in your work environment, well, now you can use those and repurpose them for a blog post. You can use that photograph and repurpose it for the heading of a LinkedIn post or a LinkedIn article Right post or a LinkedIn article Right. You know, if you're, if you're creating some professional, industry specific content, you know that's a fantastic way to repurpose your, your photographs, to create more authority for you as an individual, not just your business. So, yeah, I mean anywhere that you can post a photograph, you can reuse things that you've shot before.
Jennifer Johnson:You know it's kind of interesting. So I'm a big proponent of Pinterest, okay, and I believe in repurposing a photo three times on Pinterest with three different headings. Oh, I like that and I'm telling you it has garnered really great success because Pinterest, it's going to the image.
Scott Markowitz:It's going to the image it's going to recognize the image, but if you change the copy, it's going to look new. Oh, I love that and that's so true. Jennifer, that's such a great tip. I love it. And the same thing is true for your photographs and social media. I mean, you know, you can take the same photograph and repost it today, three months from now, six months from now, nine months from now, right, and so you don't need to have a never ending new, you know, generation of photographs. If you have like a really good, solid pool of photographs, you're going to get a lot of mileage, right.
Jennifer Johnson:Because on social media after like three days it's so far down your feed you're not going to find it unless you go to that person's page.
Scott Markowitz:Yeah.
Jennifer Johnson:Right, so they're not going to be none the wiser. It's not going to really.
Scott Markowitz:Yeah, so anytime you have a new offer or anytime you have a new product, reuse the same photographs, as long as it works with that sales message.
Jennifer Johnson:But then I would imagine there's become some familiarity there where they're like oh yeah, I know that person you know. Then they connect more with their business. Maybe Is there a thing to that, or not there is. Like, if you keep using the same photo, they come to recognize that as your company.
Scott Markowitz:Yeah. So the caveat, jennifer, is that it has to be a beautiful photograph, as long as it's a really well-crafted photograph. Here's what I suggest Use it over and over, vary the crop a little bit. You know, crop in just slightly differently. So, like people Good tip, yeah, people will recognize the familiarity of it and they'll create like a nice, a nice feeling for themselves associated with your brand, because anything familiar to us is a positive feeling. So, like anytime that you can create a nostalgic notion in someone's mind, then they're going to have that positive association with you, right? But if you just do something very simple, as as doing a different crop or changing the aspect ratio of a photograph, they might not remember that they saw that photograph, right, because our visual memories are actually very hyper-specific. So even if you change something slightly, it might appear to somebody as new content. Wow, that's interesting, love, that Fabulous.
Jennifer Johnson:It might appear to somebody as new content. Wow, that's interesting. Love that Fabulous. Well, I have loved having you on talking about photography today, and then I just it's fascinating because I know that a picture does tell a thousand. What is that word, that thousand words?
Scott Markowitz:Picture tells a thousand words.
Jennifer Johnson:Very, very true. If our listeners would like to get ahold of you, Scott, how can they do so?
Scott Markowitz:Yeah, I would encourage anybody to reach out to me. There's a couple of great ways you can email me. Okay, just Scott at Reinvent. I'm sorry, scott at ReinventStudiocom is a fantastic way to get in touch with me. I will respond to everybody's email. And another great way is to reach out on X. My handle is at teachvidscott.
Jennifer Johnson:Fabulous. Thank you so much for coming on today.
Scott Markowitz:Jennifer, thank you for inviting me. This was really a lot of fun.
