The number one question I see photographers asking is “What should my session fee be?”
Join us as we walk through the exact process we use to help our coaching clients figure out what they should be charging their clients.
At the end of the day, it all boils down to this one single question.
How much money do you need to make to meet your income goals?
But really, it starts with- how much money to do you want to make in your pocket each and every year from your business.
Don’t think small, think big. Set your goals where you want them to be 5 or even 10 years down the road - not the safe number where you think they will realistically be.
From there, you can figure out exactly how much you need to bring in each and every year in your business, and work backward to figure out how much money you need to make from every client.
After you know that number, you get to decide how you will get your clients there. You get to choose which pricing method works best for you.
Will you charge a high session fee upfront that includes everything?
Maybe a mid-range session fee that includes a print credit?
Or a low session fee that doesn’t include anything?
Ultimately, it is up to you - but what matters at the end of the day is that you meet your target income for each client that walks through your door.
Resources:
Grab our Session Fee PDF Guide
Profit First by Mike Michalowicz
Join Your Magic Year here.
Use the code PODCAST to receive special pricing when you enroll.
Connect with Karinda!
Thanks for listening!
The number one question I see photographers asking is “What should my session fee be?”
Join us as we walk through the exact process we use to help our coaching clients figure out what they should be charging their clients.
At the end of the day, it all boils down to this one single question.
How much money do you need to make to meet your income goals?
But really, it starts with- how much money to do you want to make in your pocket each and every year from your business.
Don’t think small, think big. Set your goals where you want them to be 5 or even 10 years down the road - not the safe number where you think they will realistically be.
From there, you can figure out exactly how much you need to bring in each and every year in your business, and work backward to figure out how much money you need to make from every client.
After you know that number, you get to decide how you will get your clients there. You get to choose which pricing method works best for you.
Will you charge a high session fee upfront that includes everything?
Maybe a mid-range session fee that includes a print credit?
Or a low session fee that doesn’t include anything?
Ultimately, it is up to you - but what matters at the end of the day is that you meet your target income for each client that walks through your door.
Resources:
Grab our Session Fee PDF Guide
Profit First by Mike Michalowicz
Join Your Magic Year here.
Use the code PODCAST to receive special pricing when you enroll.
Connect with Karinda!
Thanks for listening!
Welcome to mindset and Money Mastery for photographers the podcast. We help overwhelmed photographers make more money while simplifying their business by mastering there, you guessed it, mindset and money. tune in each week for practical and actionable tips to take your photography business up and up. Let's dive right in. Welcome to today's episode of Mindset and Money Mastery for photographers. I'm so excited today, this is probably the number one conversation that I have with photographers about their business. I talked to so many photographers each and every week. And before we talk about anything else, this is what I asked them. So this is an incredibly valuable process I'm going to take you through today to share with you exactly what you need to know about figuring out what to charge your clients. So when I'm looking through Facebook groups, and I'm online, and I've seen photographers having conversations, I see people posting this question all the time, they're saying, what should my session feeding? What should I charge my clients for this? What should I charge my clients for that I had somebody contact me about this type of session, but I have no idea what to charge them. And this question really boils down to one thing. It boils down to what do you need to be making in your business? To pay yourself what you want to pay yourself? Let's break this down a little bit. The first thing we need to do to break this down, is we need you to look at this one question first. The first question I'm going to ask you to think about today is how much money do you want to make in your pocket each and every year from your business? If you could wave a magical wand and imagine that you're taking a paycheck from your business, how much money are you paying yourself? Each and every year from your business? Are you paying yourself $50,000 A year 60 7080 100. Maybe you want to pay yourself $150,000 a year? And when I ask this question, I really want you to think What do you want to put in your pocket? If you're going to a job and working? What goes in your pocket from your business? Not what does your business make? Right now it's all about what you're paying yourself. Because ultimately, we're for doctors, because we love it. We're also photographers because we want to make money and have a legitimate business where we're paid well, where we can afford to do things. We can afford to go buy a house, or maybe go buy a pony or maybe something simple like go on a vacation for a couple of days on the weekend with our family. That's why we do this. So how much money do you want to put in your pocket? If you have a number in your head right now, I want you to ask yourself this. Is that number what you really want to make? Or are you being conservative with that number? Because all too often I talk to photographers, and they give me a number and they say I want to make this much money. And then I poke and prod a little bit. And they're like, well, actually, you're right, it would be nice to make a little bit more than that. So what is that number? If you're sitting there and originally you thought it was$50,000. But then you said, Oh man, I really like to make like 100,000, then go with the big number, go with the scary number go with where you want to be five, maybe even 10 years down the road in your business, go with your end goal. The reason why we need to go with that number, instead of thinking small and going with what we think is reasonable, or what can happen this year, or maybe the next year, is because if we come at this with an end goal in mind, or five, or maybe even 10 years down the road, we can set our pricing now for where we want to get eventually. And we can hop off this whole bandwagon where we're constantly reinventing our pricing. You see, in the early years, I remember when I was in this place, like man, it'd be nice if I could just make $30,000. And then I get to the end of the year. And I'd be like, it'd be nice if I can make 50,000 It'd be nice. I can make 60 and then 70. And every year I was changing my pricing. And I was driving myself and my husband insane. Because I kept asking him what do you think about this? He's like, why are you changing your pricing again? Kirinda. This is crazy. And the reason I was changing my pricing again was because I kept changing the end goal. So let's just make the end goal what we want it to be and let's go for it right here right now. This first question that I asked you about how much you want to make in your business at the end of the year. This is the basis of everything unusual decision that you make in your business going forward. This is the compass that you will use in your business to figure out what to charge your clients. What really matters at the end of the day, is it you can run your business, you can make a good living, you can be paid well, you can do the things you want to do because of your business. If you aren't sure what this number looks like, what I would love for you to do is I would love for you to sit down and look at your finances, sit down and look at your bills, sit down and look and say, How much money do I really need to survive in a year? Then how much extra money do I need to do the things I want to do? So for those of you listening, maybe it's that you want to go buy yourself a horse, maybe it's that you want to go to horse shows ride with some big fancy trainer, maybe it's you want to go buy yourself that fancy hunting dog that you've been dreaming about, or some type of thinking like that, how much is it going to cost you to be able to do those things in your life. And consider that when you look at this number. Now that you know how much money you want to make in your pocket from your business, there's two different ways you can start to figure out what you need to be making from your clients. And I'm gonna explain to you the wrong way to go about this first, and I'm gonna say it's the wrong way. But I'm gonna say it's the way that most people in the photography world work tots, to figure out what they need to be charged with their clients. You sit down, you say I want to make $100,000 in my business. And then on top of that, you sit down and you write down every single little expense you have, you're like, my website is this, this is that my editor cost this much, you know, every little detail of every expense you have. And then you add that to how much money you wanted to make. And then on top of that, you add some extra money, taxes, and any products you buy, or whatever else you want to do in your business. And you come up with a number and you're like, great, I only had $10,000 worth of expenses in the last year. And I think that's all I'm gonna have. So high need to make 110,000 Plus money for taxes, let's do an extra 15,000 on it for taxes. That sounds about right. So I need to make$125,000, but $100,000 in my pocket. That's what I used to do. And that's probably what some of you are doing here who are listening to this podcast. You're just calculating what you think your expenses are gonna be and trying to piece it all together. I used to do my business this way. And I used to sit down and figure out what I needed to be charging just like that. And each and every year, at the end of the year, I would look at my books and look at my bank account, I think to myself, Where did all of my money go? Like, well, I didn't count that I was going to have this expense, it was going to come up or I didn't think I was going to need this new piece of equipment or I didn't think this was going to happen. And all of these extra things came up that I didn't account for my expenses. And all of a sudden, I've spent all of the money I've been making, and I wasn't paying myself. And that is a bad feeling. It's also a bad feeling when you work five or six, or maybe seven days a week in those early years, all day long, all night long, maybe. And you look at your bank account at the end of the year. Then you say to yourself, I didn't make any money. But I worked my butt off what happened here. What happened was you didn't know how to plan the right way, didn't know what to charge your clients. You didn't know how to get your clients to spin the amount of money that they needed to be spending for you to pay yourself off. About this time was probably like five years into business. For those of you that don't know, I've been in business for over 10 years now. That's probably five years into business. And I kept hearing this idea come up and this book being recommended called profit first. And I was like, what are all these people talking about? And I really started to dig into this book and this idea. And in this book, the author, his name is Mike. He proposes this idea that you can use percentages to plan your business finances, with the idea that each and every month, you take a certain percentage of everything that comes in and you set it aside for paying yourself. You set it aside for taxes, you set it aside for your expenses, and you set some aside for your savings. And he proposes that most businesses have essentially like standard numbers that fit for most businesses. And he shares these percentages and how he uses them in his book. And I started to think about this, and I started to realize, hmm, this makes sense. Because part of my problem was that when I was bringing in $100,000 a year When I was sitting there going, I want to hit $300,000 a year. In my business, I didn't realize how much more expensive it was going to be to run a business that was bringing in $300,000 a year. Or one day when I woke up and said, I want to build a business that brings in half a million dollars a year. I have no idea what it looks like, what the expenses associated with that work to run a business that brings in that type of revenue, because I'm not there yet. So if you're sitting here today, and you're saying, I want to put$100,000 in my pocket my business, do you have any idea what it's going to cost to get you there? Probably not. I can tell you, it's a lot more than you think. Just asked my bank account every month, y'all if you knew how much money I spent on my bank account each and every month to run my business, y'all would probably cry, I want to cry sometimes too, even though I know I can pay for it. But still, it's terrifying to think when you're sending 10s of 1000s of dollars a month in your business, because your expenses are so high to be running a business at this level. So what I did was I started to look at these percentages. I started to look at my own business over the last few years, I started to look at my coaching clients businesses. And I started to look at these numbers and say, How did these numbers really work for photographers? Does this really work for us. And I started to plan my business and my financial goals based on percentages, instead of just these arbitrary, I think it's going to cost this much. So why not? Right? Once I started planning my business based on these percentages, I took them I tweaked them a little bit. And I made them a little bit more specific for photographers. And here is what I came up. Whenever you make money, let's say a client pays you $1,000. Let's talk about where that $1,000 goes in your business. The first place that that $1,000 is going to go to is to pay for any products that your client purchases, which we call cogs or cost of goods sold. Typically, in the photography world, you'll hear recommended that your cost of goods sold is anywhere from 15 to 25%, depending on who you're talking to, I recommend that your cost of goods sold be at or below 20%. So 20% of everything you make is going to go straight to pay for the products that your clients are purchasing 20% of what you make, is going to go straight towards your expenses of running a business 40% of what you make is going to go into your pocket. So if that client pays you $1,000 That means $400 is going straight to your pocket, about 15 person's gonna go to taxes, and about 5% is gonna go to savings. These numbers are not exactly what you hear in the pop up first book, they are a little bit different. And they're numbers that I have morphed to kind of fit my own personal business and my coaching clients business. So keep that in mind, if you have read Profit First, your bliss and Profit First, and you're familiar with this idea. These are the percentages that I believe work really greatly for photographers. So if your cost of goods is 30%, right now, these numbers aren't going to work for you. If your products are marked up three times, that a five times these numbers might not work for your business. So this is where you want to start to pay attention to what your products are priced at. You want to look and be like oh man, if I'm running a business, bringing him into under $50,000 a year, want a person that that's going to be expenses, that means I have this amount of money to spend on things, and this is how I'm gonna break it down. Right. So I'm gonna repeat the numbers one more time for y'all. It's 20% towards your cost of goods sold 20% towards your expenses. 40% goes in your pocket 15% goes towards taxes and 5% goes to savings. If we keep these numbers in mind, we can reverse engineer what we need to bring in to meet our income goals. So if you are paying yourself 40% How much money do you need to make to meet that income goal with your business? And this is about the time when I say these numbers that people freak out and glaze over and go, Holy crap, that's a lot of money. I had no idea. And I didn't either. I had no idea. That's why it wasn't making money in my business. It's because I didn't realize how much of my money was really going out the door and how many expenses I really was gonna have. So if you're not a math person, I'm gonna throw some numbers out there and help you figure this out. Just make things super simple today, especially if you're driving down the road and listening to this and you don't don't really have time to sit down with a calculator. So I'm gonna throw out some most common numbers. And I'm gonna start at the low end, and I'm gonna work up to some bigger numbers. Let's say if you wanted to pay yourself $40,000 in your business, you need to bring in$100,000 in revenue. If you wanted to pay yourself $60,000, you will need to bring in$150,000 in your business. If you wanted to put $80,000 in your pocket, you wouldn't need to bring in about $200,000 in revenue in your business. If you wanted to pay yourself six figures and you wanted to put$100,000 in your pocket every year from your business, you would need to bring in about$250,000. And if you wanted to put $200,000 in your pocketing, you would need to bring in about$500,000. In your business in a year, let's consider that your goal is to put $100,000 in your pocket each year from your business. Let's take this a step further and see what we would need to make per client that comes in our door to actually put$100,000 in our pocket. So you will need to bring in $250,000 in revenue, which means 40% of$250,000 is going to be $100,000 which is going straight to you. The next question I want you to ask yourself to determine what you need to be making per client that comes through your door is how many months out of the year. Do you want to be photographing clients? It's incredibly important to remember that you do not want to work 12 months out of the year. So many times I ask people this no like I want to work 12 months out of the year it gets too cold. I'm gonna go somewhere works more so I can work all the time. Guys, take time off. Take vacation, take at least a couple months off a year photography, it's tiring. It can be exhausting. It can be physically, mentally emotionally taxing, we need to take time to recharge our creative brains. If you only shoot outdoors, chances are there's going to be months where it's too cold or too hot to work for me. I don't want to work in July in Texas, it is harder than I don't even know what and there's no way that any horse or dog or person looks good in July in Texas, they look like a even a horse of psycho. Texas, okay. And the wintertime, people in Texas are we nice guys. We don't even have cold winters. But it's below 70 degrees. Nobody wants to go outside. They're like I'm freezing. I have goosebumps. I can't do portraits outside. So you know what, I really only want to work like a month out of the year, I can take a couple months off during the summer, a couple months off during the winter, I'm perfectly fine. I would say that most photographers choose to work anywhere from eight to 10 months out of year. However, let's say you wanted to work three months out of the year, that's totally doable. For example, when COVID happened in the world shut down. I had clients all over the place. I travel all over the US for my clients. And I couldn't hop on a plane and go to my clients like I used to. So what did I do, I waited till things settle down. I bought myself a camper. And I went on the road for three weeks, I photographed all my clients and a three week time period, I have a session almost every single day I came home, I did all my image reveals and I had $100,000 month like that. You could literally photograph clients one month out of the year if you wanted to. And if you plan for it, and bring in all the money you need to make and be done. So you get to choose how you want to structure your business, you get to choose how you want to structure your, your year. So don't be afraid to do something be like you know what, I would just love to work with clients three months out of the year and then be done. That's totally fine. Now, today for our example, I'm going to consider that you want to work 10 months out of year and it makes math a little easier. So if you want to work 10 months out of the year, and you need to bring in$250,000 in revenue you need to make $25,000 per month 10 months out of the year. So if you're sitting there and you're thinking holy crap, how can I ever make $25,000 a month? I feel Yeah, I get it I was there. It is totally possible. And let's break this down. Because right now when I think about a 25,000 that's in use a month, no big deal. Right? When you are not there yet if you like crazy, it feels like how on earth can you ever get there? Once you get there? You're like how did I ever not do that? I can sit there look at my calendar like I have $100,000 months my business Now that you have four times this, of course, you can do$25,000. If I can do $100,000, in one month by myself, okay, you can do it. Let's talk about how we decide how we figure out how to break this monthly revenue that we need to bring in, down to a more manageable level. So the next thing I need you to think about and to decide is, how many clients? Do you really want to work with each and every month? What number is popping into your head right now? And you're like, I would love X number of clients. So many times, I asked photographers this, and they say something to me, like, I would love to have 15 or 20 clients a month? And I'm like, No, well, Whoa, let's take a step back. Can you actually deal with our new clients? Or how many clients can you actually deal with, with your life, the life you want to live, and like, not be drowning? Right? For most photographers, a single client can take anywhere from 10 to 15 hours of direct time related to that client. So when you think about that, is it realistic to do two or three clients every single week? Probably not. That's a full time job plus more not considering all the extra backend things we do. Let's say a full work week, they're working eight hours a day, five days a week, that's 40 hours. If you did two clients per week, and those two clients per week, you're spending about 15 hours, working on their things between communications, emails, meetings, driving to their session, photographing your session, calling editing, all of those things, that takes up 30 hours a week, not to count the time for your back and stuff like marketing, education, updating your website, scheduling, social media, being your own bookkeeper, and all of these other things that you do as a photographer. I would say that realistically, most photographers need about five to eight clients a month. And that seems to be the sweet spot. So once for like one and a half, or maybe two clients per week. Once you get your systems down really good. Managing two clients per week is a crazy. One, it can be a little bit more difficult. Let's be honest, you work for yourself. You don't want to work all the time. Really, how many days a week do you want to be working? Do you want to work five days a week five renewal or work like three days a week for four hours? Consider these types of things when you're deciding what you need to make and what you need to make per client. If you're sitting here thinking realistically, I can only work eight hours a week, I need to have one client per week, I need to figure out how to get that client to only take eight hours of my time. And I need to be my income goes from that. And you're gonna have to figure out how to do it not impossible, you couldn't do it. You just have to decide what that looks like for you. So let's say with this$25,000 a month, if you're working 10 months out of the year, let's say you want five clients per month. If you want five clients per month, that means you need to make $5,000 per client that you have. Yeah, maybe you're thinking that from saying there's no way. So let's play with some other numbers. This is when you get to plug and play and decide where your comfort level lies. Maybe you're thinking, How about eight, eight sounds like okay, that's a little bit less per client. A client's fraud sounds kind of scary. But how much is that? If you have a clients per month, and you need to bring in $25,000 per month, that would mean you needed to make $3,125 per client. Or maybe you're like, oh, that's freaks me out 10 clients per month, I'll do 10 a month, you would need 10 clients per month to pay you $2,500 apiece. Or maybe even like, you know what, heck, no, I want three clients from up Kirinda. What does that look like? If you only wanted to have three clients per month, you just need to make$1,333 per client, which an Oregon hobby is totally doable. I have a coaching client right now. And I was hanging out another day. And she switched to a system where she went from including digital files or clients paying her a few $100 to selling art and offering art to our clients. And I think she said most her clients are spinning around like $7,000 and she's in her first year of making a switch. I have coaching clients whose very first client who comes to the system after they've worked with me spend seven or eight or 10 or $14,000 with their first client like it's insane, right? So it's not impossible to have clients that are ready and willing to invest 1000s of dollars you just have to have the right systems in place. But what I hope this helps you recognize that Doing portrait sessions for 250 $300, or maybe even 1000, or$1,500, it's going to take a lot to get you there, it's going to take a lot of those $1,500 clients even to help you get to where you need to be. And I'm going to tell you this, it is so much easier to make more money from the clients you have than it is to find more clients, it is so much easier to find third really amazing clients than it is to have 15 Mediocre clients. So don't be afraid to just maximize the clients that you have coming through your door and stop feeling like you have to drag in all of these extra people, because that is not fun. That sucks. Marketing is hard, guys, I'll be honest with you, probably one of the hardest things to really master in your business's marketing. That's why it's easier just to make more money from the people that are already coming through your door. Now, if you're sitting there going, Oh, this sounds that sounds really cool. But I have no idea how I would ever make $5,000 per client. You're saying that to put $100,000 in my pocket. If I'm working 10 months out of the year, I would need to bring two or $3,000 in that year. 10 months out of the year means$25,000 per month. If I did Five pints per month, that's $5,000 per client. Let's talk about what a $5,000 client, let's say a $5,000 client could buy an album, a large album for me with about 50 of their favorite portraits and spend $5,000 a $5,000 client for me could buy 160 inch piece of art. A $5,000 client for me could buy a small album with around 25 portraits and get a couple of medium size metals around maybe 20 inches. Most of my clients are going to spend at least$5,000, most of my clients are going to get an album and a couple pieces of art and spend at least that $5,000 mark. And most of my clients don't hesitate to do that. They're excited, they're ready, they're willing. And I hear this time and time again, from my coaching clients. They say Kirinda, all of this sounds great. That's why I hired you to be my coach, I thought like this would be so cool if I could get there. But I didn't believe it would really happen. And then I had my first client. And I was like holy crap, Kirinda. They didn't hesitate spend the money, they didn't hesitate to get the art, they didn't hesitate to buy the album and spend the 1000s of dollars. And the best part, they didn't even care that they didn't get all their digital files. Is that to say that they don't have to get their digital files? No, no, no, I have coaching clients that have implemented this system that I teach, they have had an image reveal with a client that did get all their digital files, and that client is going over$10,000 on their portraits. So it's possible for your clients to get their digital files and still spend money on art still go above and beyond and help you get to those big numbers. Now, the fun part about this. And the next step is once you know what you need to be making per client, you get to decide how you get there. And there's a number of ways you can get there. The way I do it is not the way for everybody. And I completely understand that. And my business personally, my clients come to me they pay a session. Their session fee covers the session. Many times for photographing the session, my help planning the session, my travel to them all this good stuff. And it includes a credit for them to use for it's their favorite portraits after the session. Then afterwards, they spend more money, they buy art, they buy albums, and that gets me to those $5,000 more clients. Now, there's a lot of different ways you can get there to that target number. But in my opinion, it's easier when people pay a little bit less upfront, because it's hard to get into the door sometime. And then they can find more on the back. And once they see their portraits Won't they fall in love with them. Once they see the art once they see that picture on their wall, they're obsessed and they have to have it. And it's easier to get them there after the session than before. But let me share with you a few different ways you can get to this place. The first option and the option that seems like the easiest route is hey, just charge $5,000 upfront, charge a high session fee and include all their digital files. There are photographers that use this method. There are photographers that have a one session fee that's 1000s of dollars and they are so well known. They have such a great reputation that their clients will come to them and pay 1000s of dollars and be okay walking away with all their digital files. Now, you could have a really high session fee up front that gets you there. But maybe instead of including the digital files, you include a product, or you include a credit to use towards product. So my session fee could be $5,000. And I could say, my session fee is $5,000. And you're gonna get a $4,500 credit to use towards your senior portraits after that, but you have to pay me the whole thing upfront. That's big enough scary. And ultimately, I think that especially in the early phases of business, even where I'm at, it's a little scary to think like, can I just go put a $5,000 price tag out, and people would just look and pay it and we find that, honestly, as a client, myself, I am hesitant to work with a photographer like that, because I might not want all of my photos, I wouldn't know. And all of those things are included with their session fee. So personally, I struggle with out of it, I'm not that person that would go spend that money up front and just pay it and get all my images and call it a day, because that's not who I am. Now, the next route you can go is to having middle of the road session fee. So you can have a session fee somewhere in between a session fee that pre qualifies people a bit by making them buy in and invest upfront. That includes a credit of sorts, which is my go to and my preferred method. My preferred method is to have a session fee that includes a credit to use toward their favorite portraits. What that magical number is, it doesn't really matter. What matters is that that number that you choose for the session fee and the credit that's included kids clients through your door, that you can convey the value and what they're getting to them, when you speak to them, get them through your door, get them to pay your session fee, you can share with them that they're probably going to want to spend more money than that on the back end, and be clear and transparent and upfront with them of what that looks like. And then when their session is over, they're ready and willing and excited to invest more on their portraits. And although you only got a small percentage of that up front, you're gonna be able to get more of that down the road, when they see their portraits and fall in love with it. And when they can envision that beautiful portrait of them and their dog out in the fields on their wall. Or when they can imagine that beautiful portrait of their family on their wall, they're going to be willing and ready to buy and spend 1000s of dollars on it once they can see it. Versus when it's just something that hasn't even gotten yet they don't have any context of that. Not middle of the road option with having a session fee that includes your time photographing the session. And upfront credit is really my preferred route to go to. Like I said, it can come in a number of different ways. And the numbers you choose really don't matter. It could be anywhere from a $450 session fee that includes a $300 credit to a $1,500 session fee that includes $1,000 credit, the number you choose really is insignificant, so don't put too much thought into it. However, I'm going to leave you with a couple of tips to think about when you're deciding what your session fee should be, if you choose to go the middle of the road option. Now when we talk about session fees, our session fee is really a pre qualifier for our clients, we want to consider that having a session fee that's too low could mean that we get more quality clients in our door. Having especially if it's too high could also scare people off. And really what we want to do is we want to find the sweet spot, the sweet spot that pre qualifies people, and says if you're willing to spend this much money upfront, then you probably have more money to spend on art and things like that. But we want to have it in the right place. And sometimes we have to gauge that. So if you set your session fee and you find yourself getting too many low quality clients that aren't willing to invest more, or they're just a pain in your rear end, your session fee is probably a little bit too low and you should bump it up. If you're so busy or turning people away, it's your sign to bump your session fee up. Now, if you set a session fee, and you're just like really struggling and every time you say to somebody, it's so high and it makes you cringe and it freaks you out a little bit and you're not booking any clients at that rate because you chose something that might be too high. It might be your signs of the down a bit below what's theirs. There's a lot of things that go into that too. And without knowing exactly what your process looks like when you get an inquiry without knowing exactly what your methods are your systems that you have in place without knowing exactly how you're speaking to your clients. I really can't tell you if you need to consider lowering your session phenom because there's a lot that goes into it. It might not be your session. It might be something more like your script and the way you're talking to your clients when they inquire with you and might just be that you are Properly conveying the value of what they're getting. So there's a lot of things that go into that. But just kind of keep that in mind. Really, if your session fee is too low, you might get too many poor quality clients, and people that are a pain in the butt. That could happen or to get too busy, and you have to turn people away, then raising your session fee can sometimes help there. Now, the third option when it comes to your session fee, right, we talked about five session fee includes a ton of stuff that gets you all your money. And we talked about a middle of the road session fee that includes session fee plus a credit towards their products. Or we talk about low session fees, a very low session fee that literally just covers the session and includes nothing else. That's another reason go in. And honestly, and all of these things I'm sharing with you there is no right or wrong answer. I will tell you, and I told you what I think works best and what I use. So that doesn't mean that something else can't work for you. So you need to look at how much money you need to make per client. And then you need to consider these three options when it comes to your session fee. And you need to ask yourself, How am I going to get my clients where they need to be? Which one of these methods is going to be the easiest. And the best way for me to make the money I need to make. And then you need to try it. And if it doesn't work, but then you need to try something else. And if it doesn't work, you need to try something else. And if it still doesn't work, then maybe there's some other pieces broken because this isn't just about a session fee. It's about a whole lot of other things in your business. So make sure you keep that in mind. I have tried them all, I'll be honest with you, I've tried every pricing strategy there is under the sun. I had a very low session fee that included in nothing. I've had a high session fee that included everything. I've had a high session fee that included some but not everything. I've tried every pricing method, I've tried both things. If somebody out there teaches a method of pricing. I've tried it. Whether it's in my portraits, or in my wedding years, when I used to photograph weddings, I tried every single strategy there was I tried, like letting clients still pop into the front, I tried. I can't even explain to you my husband literally was like, we're doing this again, like, yeah, we are going to try something else. But the thing is, I come here to you with this knowledge to share with you all the mistakes I've made to share with you. The high the things I've tried did not work. And for those of you that might be listening to this and saying there's so many other chief photographers in my area, why would anybody come to me? Or maybe you're sitting here going, I would never spend that kind of money? How would my clients, I have a couple of pieces of advice here. For those of you that are sitting there saying there are so many cheaper doctors in my area, why is anybody going to come to me, they're going to come to you because there's a difference in what you provide when you're charging 1000s of dollars than when you're charging hundreds of dollars. There is a substantial difference. There is a service, there is a value, there's an experience you're providing to clients to be able to get them to spend 1000s of dollars. And it's not just showing up their session and taking their photos. When you are a photographer that is willing to go out there and purchase 1000s of dollars and have clients that are ready and willing and excited to spend 1000s of dollars. It's because you are solving all of their problems. You're helping them you're guiding and you're providing something that is so amazing, how could they not spend 1000s of dollars on it. And for those of you that say, I wouldn't personally spend that much money on portraits. I'm going to tell you, you don't know actually, if you would or not until you were put into a situation. Because for me personally, I probably would have said that same thing. Except for when I was very, very early on in my business like baby years in my business first year when I started my business. I hired a photographer to do boudoir photos before I got married. And I found this photographer and I was obsessed. I was in love with her work. And I was like I have to hire this girl. I remember where I was. I was sitting at Chili's when I found this girl's work online with my fiancee at the time. And I remember seeing her pictures of me like, oh my gosh, I have to have this. And you know, I remember going in meeting with her and talking to her and her saying, I'm going to provide you with this experience. I'm going to provide you with this amazing transformation. I'm gonna get to know you. I'm going to pour my heart and soul into you. I'm going to love on you. I'm going to do all of these things for you. And by the way, if you want this beautiful book, it's going to cost 1000s of dollars. No lie guys. I was fresh out of college. I was starting my business. We were paying for any wiping on credit cards, we did not have a whole lot of help from our family. And I figured out how to buy that out like two or $3,000 album in secret, and pay for it out of my pocket with money that I don't even know where it came from looking back at it. I did it. Know if you would have asked me beforehand before I went through the experience before I was presented with the opportunity if I would have done the same thing. I probably would have said no. I don't tell you again. I've been in business for 10 years now. We had maternity solo son. When I was pregnant four years ago, I went into the maternity session, I knew what I was getting myself into this photographer I know well, she's an incredible artist, she's incredible businesswoman, her clients pay her lots of money. And I said I want one photo or over my bed. I want one photo for my bed. Here's exactly what I want. Here's the dimensions. I know what I want. I went into it going I'm gonna spend a couple$1,000 on this one piece parts and I've ever met my bad. Guys, I know how this works. I do this on the daily Guess what? I should have session she killed it. It was an amazing experience. It was like I was a queen did all these outfits she's like, check this out, put this on your badass do this. I sit on the image reveal. No joke. My like, I want one photo, this is what I want turned into life. I think the invoice ended up paying over $10,000 in the end. And I was like, if I can do this to myself knowing what I'm doing and be so excited about it. Holy crap, and you're seeing how my clients can. So I'm gonna encourage you, if you're sitting there going like, I don't think I could ever do this. Go hire yourself photographer that provides a full experience, go Treat yourself to something like this go through the experience as a client. Because it is incredibly important to experience that. It's something that we do every year, we try to hire photographer to do our portraits to go through the experience. And we spend the money we invest. We do it and sometimes I come into it thinking I'm not going to do it. And then I fall into the trap, and I do it anyway. So I just want to encourage you all and know that it is possible that you can do it. my coaching clients all the time, say I don't think this is possible. I don't know how this is gonna happen. They come through the process. And they're like holy schmoly, it worked my clients and all this money, how did this happen? It is possible for you. And it is possible for each and every one of you. But the first step is having a very clear picture of what your goals are to know your numbers to know exactly what you need to make her clients. And to always make decisions that are going to get you there in your business to figure out how do I meet those goals. And if you're sitting there thinking like okay, my number I need $5,000 per client, I need five clients per month. You're saying that seems so out of reach. Remember, you don't have to get there tomorrow, if you want to 25% of the way there and the next six months, and then in the next six months, you got 50% of the way to get there. And then a year after that, you've got 100% the way there you don't need to get there tomorrow, your averages will get higher, your clients will buy more art, your clients will buy bigger art, your clients will buy high albums and more images in their albums, the better that you get at the system and the better you get with the process. And that doesn't always happen right away. And that's okay. But you just need to make small steps to get there. And your pricing can be set up now to get you there. And over time you will get closer and closer and closer. So don't feel discouraged about this idea of like, Man, I feel like I'm never gonna get there because you can and you will get there and each and every year you will get closer and closer and closer to where you want to be without having to reinvent the wheel by just simply making small tweaks. By simply getting better by honing in on your skills by becoming a better photographer by becoming a better business owner, you will get closer and closer. I hope this has been helpful for you today. And I hope by the end of the day you have a good idea of exactly what you need to be making for each and every client that comes through your door in the shownotes we're going to share with you a link to grab a PDF guide it's going to share the detail from these numbers with you too so you can break them down. But I hope this has been helpful and I can't wait to hear whatever you come up with. Make sure you head over to our Facebook group photography business tune up with her indicate and you share your results and once you've figured out once you've worked through this podcast thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to support the podcast please make sure you share it on social media or leave a rating and review. As always, you can check out the links and resources in the show notes over at master your mind money.com To catch all the latest for me you Follow me on Instagram at master your mind money and don't forget to join our free Facebook group photography business tune up with Kirinda Kay thanks again and I'll see you next time