5 Key Steps That Took My Photography Business to $400K

Here's a 15 min crash course on my exact system! https://christarenephotography.com/video-page-organic

Summary

In this episode, Christa shares her transformative journey from struggling in her photography business to achieving significant success. She outlines five key shifts that propelled her growth, emphasizing the importance of mindset, outsourcing, effective marketing, strategic pricing, and continuous education. Christa also introduces her Uncapped program, designed to help photographers elevate their businesses and attract high-paying clients.

Takeaways

• Investing in education is crucial for growth.
• Shifting from shoot and burn to full service can increase profits.
• Outsourcing tasks allows for more focus on growth.
• Consistency in marketing leads to better client engagement.
• Pricing should reflect business needs, not competition.
• A proactive mindset is essential for overcoming challenges.
• Continuous learning helps navigate business hurdles.
• Don't let temporary setbacks deter long-term goals.
• High-paying clients are out there waiting for you.
• The Uncapped program offers a structured approach to success.

Here's a 15 min crash course on my exact system! https://christarenephotography.com/video-page-organic

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Connect with Christa on Instagram HERE!
Enjoy a free 20-min training on adding $50k in income from products HERE!
Apply for Uncapped HERE!

Transcript

Christa (00:00.514)
In this episode, I'm going to share five steps that grew my photo business to 400,000. And I wanted to start with like a backstory of just very transparently where I was before this pivot happened. And often we look on Instagram, we look at social media, and we only see the highlight reel and we don't actually see what went like down. And I will say it's really interesting. Like the top students I coach have times where they thought about quitting. They have big mindset blocks. It's not just all, you know,

roses when you hit a certain point. At every single stage in business, there's hardships and there's growth, but I personally hit a point where I just really saw like the writing on the wall of like, this isn't working. I was pouring so much out. I was pouring so much into my business. I was working so hard. And here's the deal. Like I always invested in myself from the beginning. I have entire podcast episodes on this, but I did not want to mess around. And I saw very quickly,

If I can learn from someone ahead of me who has it figured out when it comes to the basics, like shooting, editing, lighting and things, it's going to elevate my work, this elevate my clientele, this bring in more bookings. You always see an ROI when you invest in the right education. And so because of that, I really had things moving and I felt very confident in my work, pretty confident in my client experience. My clients were very happy. I loved working with them and the connections we'd have.

And I shifted from portraits to doing mostly weddings. And a lot of reasons for that were, first of all, I just really enjoyed weddings. And second of all, I was just told, hey, weddings are really where it's at if you want to scale, Christa, if you want to make this full time, if you want to make a good amount of money. And also doing shoot and burn, showing up for 45 minutes to maybe an hour, shooting, throwing a gallery at them at the end of the day. There's only so much I could charge for that, where the experience was low.

because I wasn't necessarily this industry leading photographer, I hovered my prices pretty average around that and really didn't even market portraits at a time and just focused on weddings. So that leads up to where I was at. My husband and I got married, bought our first house, and I remember paying out taxes one January thinking, this isn't making sense. What I am doing and the amount of work I am putting in, also I knew my level as a photographer,

Christa (02:24.118)
I should have more left than what I have. And out was not an option. I had poured too much into my business. I think as wedding photographers, we are one of the hardest working industries and as photographers, not just wedding photographers, one of the hardest working industries. And it just was not even a thought on my mind of like quitting. I wasn't there. I spent years, you know, while balancing college, like getting to this point.

I hit that point of something needs to change. And I want to encourage you, like if you're at that point, change something. It's not going to magically happen overnight. You have to take action and that can be the scariest thing. And often the decisions that I made were the scariest, brought the biggest results. And so within a few years, I went from feeling that way to my husband and I beginning real estate investing, buying our second house, buying my new car with cash.

him quitting his second job that he had had just for benefits, allowing us to have a lot more time together. We got to travel to really cool places that I had only dreamed of and the investment didn't really feel like much. And the reason I'm sharing that is because it changed our lives, but I had to hit that point of like, this isn't working. And I also had to take action. And if a girl from South Carolina can do it, y'all, like I believe, I truly believe anyone can be a successful photographer if...

they are willing to put in the work and stay consistent. And so I wanted to take this episode to share when I think about what were the five biggest shifts I made to go from, hey, this isn't working to this incredibly successful, profitable photographer, I'm gonna break them down for you, okay? The first thing I had to do was, and you probably guessed where this was going, I had to stop with shoot and burn. And I had to stop the low level experience

charging three, four, or $500 and calling it a day. Because when you do the math on that, when you look at how to scale that, the only way to scale is volume. And that's only going to get you so far. At that time when I was scaling, I did not have a kid. So that was very different. Now I do. And it looks different. And a lot of the students that I coach come in because they do have a child or children.

Christa (04:51.276)
even if they don't have children. They have other obligations or responsibilities and that's why they join my coaching is because they want this fast track. They don't want to sit around and have to figure it out and they don't want to have to scale by always shooting more. So the math at like $400, $500 sessions just wasn't making sense. I had a student who joined coaching. If you look at Michelle, you can listen to her story and she joined and she was at a thousand dollar shoot and burn average. And even then she was like, I'm leaving money on the table. I don't like that to hit 70 grand. I had to do 70 shoots.

So what I started doing is I shifted to full service, and I'm gonna go into, this is just point number one, y'all, there's a lot to go. But I shifted to full service to uncap myself and my clients so that the investment could be greater, so that I wasn't capped. And I also had to add back in marketing for portrait sessions, because like I said, I really had just started marketing to weddings. But the cool thing is I also started upselling within weddings as well. And my clients could walk away with now beautiful albums and things. And...

That was very pivotal. And I had invested more education that year than I ever had before that to really become hyper-focused on this. And I want you to know, because again, social media can be such a highlight reel where you're like, wow, Chris, to jump from here to here. And you're like, no, there were times I almost, like I wanted to quit. And there were times I sat in our bedroom crying, like telling my husband, like, what have I done? I don't want to burn my business to the ground. But I had to keep going back to the why of like the numbers before just were not making sense.

Okay, so that was step one. Now, number two, as I did this and really started scaling, I began outsourcing more. I began thinking more like a CEO. Instead of little Christa the photographer, I always viewed myself as like the next level that where I wanted to be. So for instance, if you're at 25K, you would say, what would a $50,000 photographer, what kind of decisions would they make? You're at 50K wanting to get 100K. What would a six figure photographer

decision be in this case? You want to get to 300k. What would a $300,000 photographer be doing in this situation or what would they be working on? Right? Like I always viewed myself as the next level. I really didn't stay stuck or I had a pretty strong mindset I would say too, because I always was filling my brain with books, business books and podcasts and positive thinking and truly and still believe like the sky is the limit. And so as I was learning and growing, I realized, okay,

Christa (07:18.961)
CEOs of businesses aren't doing really small, mundane things that are sucking a lot of time and not moving the business forward. So I became really hyper-focused on what do I need to outsource? What is eating into my time that if I took it off of my plate, I could spend a lot more time marketing and getting clients in and growing my sales average and investing in my education. And a lot of photographers really get stuck at outsourcing because they see it as just the cash they're bleeding out.

And because of that, they don't ever clear enough off of their plates to take the time and the energy to actually grow their businesses, to spend time on their education. Or maybe they're filling their time with tasks that just feel really draining. So maybe they do have time at the end of the day to spend with their kids, but you just feel so drained and sucked from the day that it's just really hard and you just are mentally elsewhere, right? But because I came to that thinking,

early on and had great mentors and great advice. And again, viewed myself as like, yeah, I know I'm here, but what do I need to do to get over here? Well, I can't be doing these tasks and stuck behind my computer editing for hours or doing these things that are the same thing on repeat. I need to get them off of my plate to scale. So at the height of my photo business, I had a foolish time team member. She actually was a stay at home mom. So it was basically part-time like,

a super busy week for her would be 35 hours, but that's 35 hours that I had back, right? And so she was like my admin assistant. She helped me with a lot of different things. The purpose of this really isn't to go into exactly what she did. And then I also had some subcontract work when it came to things like editing, when it came to things like a website redesign, because I knew that spending my time on those things was not best utilized when there's someone who could do it better than me, faster than me.

And especially when it comes to design and branding, more professional than me where it's actually done correctly. And I even look back at like some of the investments I made, whether it was an education or outsourcing, like, that was a little bit of a risk there. But because of that, it brought me to the next level. So I outsourced things that didn't need to be me as number two. Number three, I showed up with more intensive marketing.

Christa (09:37.418)
So instead of sitting around waiting for clients to come to me, refreshing my inbox or my Instagram, complaining that no one's reaching out, right? Which it's so easy to do because how great would it be if we launched a new offer and the masses just came in? And I coach students all the time where they say this, like, I sent out an email announcing something and no one's interested. Like, well, was that their first and only touch point? Well, yeah. Okay, well, when are you buying something, seeing it for the first time, right? It takes a lot of touch points, but I really had to get out of my head worrying.

What will other people think? And instead, get really creative on how I could put myself right smack in front of my ideal client, which can change year to year. And mine has shifted and evolved through the years. So it's great to really map out your client avatar. Where are they going? What are they doing? How can you get in your circles, in their circles? How can you be where they're going in person, as well as on social media, right? What local shops are they frequenting?

What influencers are they following? Like basically really mapped out who they were and put myself out there. And it's scary. And our brains literally tell us to run when we might face rejection, right? When we might hear a note from reaching out to someone about a collaboration or about them coming in for a session. And our brains say, don't do it. And that's often when we actually need to do the task because a lot of other people quit. And I had a mentor who really talked about that. And that's why.

You know, lot of photographers will stop at a certain point and some will keep going because they feel that resistance and stop, okay? And then the other thing that I did with marketing is I became hyper-focused on consistency and I saw how it paid off, but it pays off when you stick with it. So sometimes what photographers I see will happen is they try a marketing tactic and then, I'm just gonna be candid here, okay? I'm like on fire today. Maybe I had too much coffee. I made cinnamon rolls this morning. Maybe it's the sugar.

But then they whine that it didn't pay off or it didn't work. Christa, it didn't work. And it's not sticking with it. You can't post one blog post and expect to rank for SEO. It's gonna take time. You can't do one Instagram post and wonder why people aren't flocking to you. It's going to take time. It takes time to build trust. People are seeing it who might not be buyers now, but when you tap their shoulder down the road, they'll be there. And so I became super consistent in my marketing.

Christa (12:01.312)
I used my employee to help me stay focused and aligned and consistent. Started with an intern who would make sure we blogged twice a week to rank for the things we wanted to rank for. And we ranked really high on Google, which is where a lot of clients came from. And we also had a lot of clients from Instagram because I made it a point to be consistent. It wasn't because I was an Instagram guru, right? Like I don't have a course on Instagram. I would say like consistency and speaking to your ideal client is truly key. Okay, number four.

I began really looking at my prices based on what I needed and my business model based on what I needed, not my competition. And that's a big reason that even though no one I personally knew in my area was doing full service and charging the rates that I wanted to charge, even though I would say there were photographers way better than me in my area, and it felt weird to be making more percession than some of them, I couldn't let that stop me. And I couldn't let that be a benchmark, even if you need to mute other photographers.

Don't be going on their page looking at what they're charging, basing what you're charging on that. That's a great way to stay stuck and stay small. Their goals are not your goals. They might be completely burnt out and hate their business. And because of this, I have seen and personally coached photographers with very mediocre work, very mediocre online presence, but able to have over $1,000 sales. And I've seen photographers come in

who have been very established in the industry, very beautiful, refined work, absolutely burnt out. And that's why they come to me to make that change. And I help both of them. And that's why I believe anyone can be successful, but you have to have a business model that works. And you also have to be clear on your goals because it is going to be easy to quit. I was told no all the time. There were some weeks I was told no every single day and my VA would just go in and delete it so I wouldn't see it.

But guess what? On some of the days I was told no, I remember specifically sharing with my students, there was one day I was told, no, Christa, we basically just want a shoot and burn experience and a ton of digital thrown at us. That was the same day that I had an over three grand upsell from an engagement session. And so I can't focus on the no's. I have to focus on what are my goals and how do I need to get there? And that goes into number five. In order to do that, I had to fill my mind with education to get to where I wanted to be.

Christa (14:26.501)
and I had to start really being proactive in what I was doing instead of reactive, right? So reactive is, I was told no, because I was too expensive. Well, let me go change all of my rates on my website real quick because I don't want to be too expensive and lose clients. Reactive is, my client, I tried full service Christa and my client said they don't want any wall art or albums. So like, I'm just going to nix it and not offer. I feel so stupid, right? That's making decisions based on being reactive instead of proactive, which is saying, hey, I see my business model isn't working.

something needs to change and I'm going to change it. And I'm going to find a way I'm going to invest in education to get there. I'm gonna fill my mind, like we talked about before, with positive business books, positive thinking. I don't repeat manifestations to myself in the mirror. If that works for you, great. But for me, really filling my mind with books written by very successful people and what they did in business has been so inspiring and encouraging to me.

and it's helped my personal growth both in business as well as like I just mentioned personally with my relationships. And so I had to really, really focus on that. I really focused on learning more about sales and sharing the value and what like learning from my mistakes, taking responsibility. It was not a walk in the park as I shared earlier. There were times I wanted to quit. There were really tough client situations that made me really upset.

And so sometimes I'll have a student who's like, my gosh, Christa, this happened. And I'm like, I can help you because I've been doing this for 10 years. The same thing has probably happened to me at some point, right? And it makes me so excited and eager to help photographers who want to get there. So I just wanted to end this with, you don't have to stay stuck. You don't have to stay where you're at. It doesn't mean it's gonna be an easy journey shifting to where you want to be.

but the end result is so worth it. Don't end this year wondering what would have happened had I taken action? Where would I be had I taken the step to start learning how to grow through the gaps that I'm seeing, whether it's upselling, whether it's your pricing, whether it's your sales strategy. For me, I always am investing in myself, in my education.

Christa (16:48.91)
I did it, I always had a photo coach the years I was doing photo full time. Every single year I was full service, I had a photo coach. Now doing it actually overlapped a bit. Then when I was growing my education business, I've hired different coaches for that. I've always had a coach. Again, there was some overlap because I was running both, like where I had my photo coach overlapping with my education coach. And the reason for that is I don't know everything. I still run into roadblocks.

and hurdles as now I'm learning this education business and scaling it. And I say this humbly, I've had people kind of watch me and say like, this is amazing how fast you've grown now your coaching business after growing your photo business so fast. And like, I kind of want to humbly say it's because I had help. I wasn't sitting there like trying all these different things under the sun. I decided from the get-go that I was going to take myself seriously. I was going to rise to the next level.

and that I was going to do what I needed to get there. And if you feel like you're there with your photo business, I wanted to take a second to share about our Uncapped program. So this is the place where I help photographers who already have a photo business. They already know shooting and editing. They know their clients are great, their work is great, but they're seeing I'm leaving money on the table. I am financially not where I want to be. I also coach a lot of wedding photographers who are building up portraits. Maybe they wanna scale back with weddings or

keep doing weddings, but add in this extra income line. I've seen that a lot as well. And actually our photographers who come in, who are also doing weddings do really well. I think it's cause they've like built a full fledged business before and know what it takes. And so when you get to that point and realize something needs to change, I was there. And so what I did is I've put together, literally I made it as step-by-step as possible and bite-sized modules. I don't wanna say there's a lot of them and overwhelm you,

They're very organized on here is each step of the full service process so that you can chat with more clients and have them excited at the beginning, eager to book you so that you know what products to offer, how to price them, how to share them, how to actually confidently sell them. It's not a surprise and shock to the client after the session. Like that would be ick, but everything is super upfront. It's sharing the value and educating so clearly before.

Christa (19:12.901)
and it's serving at a new level. So now your competition isn't the bajillion $300 to $500 photographers in your area. You're able to rise above that because there is a client out there waiting to spend thousands with a photographer, with a portrait photographer, and that could be you, but it can't be you if you're so busy chasing those three, four, $500 sessions that are still leaving you burnt out, missing time with your family, and wanting more. So in Uncapped, I share my exact full service process.

From the very first touch point to the finish and within the last couple years, I've even added this entire marketing section too. If you're really worried about where can I get these high paying clients, I need cash now, I also need cash long term. Now, I don't want that to be the biggest focus because if we're just focused on always getting more, more, more, more, right, we're gonna get stuck again in that volume game instead of like, hey, do your systems make sense? Does your pricing make sense? But also, yes, we need to attract that ideal client.

So I'm going to put a link to a 15 minute crash course in the show notes that's going to walk you through this exact process and even have a step if you wanna strategize together what that could look like for your business. You can watch it on double speed. It's gonna take you 15 divided by two, what is that, like seven and a half minutes. Totally worth the time to show you my exact process. Thanks for listening.