The $2k Session Framework

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Summary

In this episode, Christa shares her framework for achieving $2,000 portrait sessions, emphasizing the importance of transitioning from a shoot and burn model to a full-service approach. She discusses the significance of mindset, understanding pricing, and creating a premium experience for clients. Krista also highlights effective marketing strategies and invites listeners to a workshop for further insights.

Takeaways

• I had a framework and a system that works.
• Transitioning from shoot and burn to full service is crucial.
• Mindset is key to achieving success in photography.
• Understanding your pricing and numbers is essential.
• Creating a premium experience can justify higher prices.
• Marketing and client engagement are vital for growth.
• You can achieve higher average sales with the right framework.
• Investing in education and mentorship is important.
• Don't be afraid to ask clients what they want.
• A solid framework can lead to consistent success.

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Transcript

Christa (00:00.652)
In this episode, I'm going to share my framework for how I was able to consistently have $2,000 portrait sessions. And so there is a rhyme and reason for this. This is not happenstantial. This is not because I'm just in a crazy affluent area. This is not because I have the best work out there. I could go on and on about the things it's not. It's not because all my clients rolled up in Porsches and Teslas or whatever. This is because I had a framework and a system that works.

And that's really important when we're diving in to note that I am not a fluke. The fact that me, it's just a girl from South Carolina can do it. And now that I've coached photographers all over the country and even in other countries to do the same, you 100 % can do it too. So let's dive on in. So the very first thing is where I was at before was I was very...

your typical shoot and burn photographer. That's all I was taught. actually was really frustrated when I realized there's a better way to do things. Like why did no one tell me sooner? And so that's why I'm out here really wanting to share and educate on that because I, one of my biggest regrets, I've been a photographer now for over a decade, but it took me five years to shift to a full service framework off of shoot and burn. And it was really just lack of knowledge. It was lack of education on it. I didn't actually know it was possible.

I'm over here building up the shoot and burn brand. Then I hear weddings are the answer. So go over here and build up this wedding brand. And I loved weddings. I love, my clients. They're all such wonderful people. And because I loved like the experience and just that proximity with them, you get to know clients just at a different level at wedding days. Like you feel like you're part of their family on the wedding day. I craved that and like did not have that in the portrait space. And you can't because you can't afford the time it takes. It's such a low touch point shoot and burn just kind of

through an online gallery and calling it good. When you look at your cost per time, you really don't have the time to add in additional touch points with your clients. And so when I figured out, I actually met two girls at a conference, both of them have been on the podcast, both of them have come and guest spoke to my students who were already shifted to a full service framework after shooting bird. And they were telling me like the results they were having and how happy their clients were. And I was like, wait, what? Like this is a thing and totally dove in head first.

Christa (02:13.966)
And so I share this because I was at the point, one of the reasons I dove into this, where my work was great. My clients were happy. I didn't need to take another editing class. Those are great. If you're struggling with consistency, by all means. But most of the time when photographers are like, oh, I need to work on my work first. It's like, no, that's actually not the problem. Oh, I need to work on my marketing first. OK, maybe. But if you're still booking sessions that aren't paying you your worth, that's not the problem. That's not the root of what needs to change. You need a better framework.

And I saw that with myself and it was frustrating because my husband and I had just gotten married, just bought our first house. And I was just doing so much and I felt like bringing so much to the table, connecting so well with my clients, serving them so well and just wasn't having the results bank account-wise from that. And I remember I paid out taxes when January and I like, I feel like I've been shot and I'm doing so much over here. And the thought of just booking more and more and more weddings, I knew was not where it was at.

And so I decided to like make that shift to full service and it was scary. It's always scary to make a shift. But what I will say is my students who are actually like years into their businesses have often more mindset work because they've been doing something the same for so long. And I can help them and I get it because I was there where I was like, but I've been, I was told XYZ for years and to do this. And now you're saying this is the most sustainable way and there's a better way. Like that's a hard shift. And the ones that are willing to make that shift to have incredible, phenomenal results.

when they coach with me versus my students. I talk about this who are established. Audrey has been on the podcast before she mentioned this, like how much better just to get going with your business and a framework in the right way and like know what actually makes sense and what's profitable from the get go instead of doing what I did building up for years and years and years and then having to make this shift. So that's a little bit of the backstory of how I got here. So I do know what shoot and burn is. I did do it for years and my biggest regret is how long I did that.

So let's talk about what did I set up, what did I do to go from maybe a $400 average, I would sometimes quote higher than that, right? But around then to get to an over 2K average in a matter of like a couple of years and have huge income growth, doubling my income during COVID. What happened here? Okay. The very first thing is mindset. And before you log off being like, oh, Christa is about to get all wooey, I'm not a wooey person. I don't repeat monitors in the mirror to myself or affirmations. Like that really works well for some and I'm not here to put it down.

Christa (04:38.326)
I just wanna share where my heart is as a coach. But when it comes to mindset, one thing that I stayed hyper-focused on is where I wanted to be next. And sometimes that meant I had a really discouraging days where I felt like quitting and wondered if I was ruining my business because I got told no for the fifth time in a row. And I think they maybe normally would have booked, but they didn't and that's really discouraging. But I had to keep mindset wise focusing on where I wanted to be. And I knew it was possible. Had I knew it was possible?

I think the sky is the limit. I truly believe that for any business owner. I also knew of other people doing this and there was no reason that I could not be successful in this. And that is what I told myself. I filled my mind with positive thinking, with business books, with podcasts on this. What I didn't do is sit around counting up the nose, beating myself up over it, blaming the economy or blaming my area demographic clientele on and on and on.

And that is very not going to serve yourself in any way. I also didn't sit around telling myself, I'm not good enough to do this. Like I must, something probably needs to change. Instead, I looked for every and any opportunity to get more of the yeses. I had mentors that helped me. I was constantly investing in my education, surrounding myself with other people who helped me, you know, who helped lift me up and encourage me and I could encourage them.

And I share that because while I used to not really start addressing the mindset piece, the longer I've been coaching, the more we see that with potential photographers, especially ones who are possibly about to shift to full service and then don't, even though they literally say, okay, yeah, I know something needs to change. Okay, great. I know what I'm doing, Christa is not sustainable. Okay, great. I know it's not worth leaving my family for this much. okay, great. Okay, so you want to go ahead and shift to full service. There's a framework for this. You can make so much more with products. No, I can't do it.

Well, why? Right? Well, I'm just going to stay doing what I'm doing. OK, but you just told me like something is not working. Right? And that goes back to mindset. When you have the strategy, but don't allow yourself to have those results, it often goes to mindset. Well, I can't do it. Right? Or my clients won't pay that much. That's even mindset. My area can't sustain this. That's also mindset, actually. That's not necessarily strategy. OK? So I always like to start with mindset now because I've realized so much of success stems from that.

Christa (07:03.916)
And so the way I addressed my mindset as number two, I looked at pricing and I looked at my numbers. And the reason I did that is, I had a coach really help me see that of like, you have to know your numbers. And most shoot and burn photographers that I've coached and mentioned this to don't, and I didn't either. And that's why I wanna be here saying, you need to know like what you're actually making per hour with your clients.

after all of this time. And when you do that, it really doesn't matter what the girl down the street is charging. It really doesn't matter what when people, I've had people screenshot and say, this is my median income for my city. And I'm like, I don't care. Like who cares, right? I'm not like, again, you're just trying to validate a weak mindset. And I'm getting a little bit fired up here because you have what it takes. And that's what I'm passionate about. It's like, you can do this, but you have to know your numbers. And when you see,

What I'm doing doesn't work. It helps validate taking that step forward of this is what I actually need to support my family based on how much I want to shoot and be away from them. And if you're not clear on that, of course you're going to make your rates based on your competition and always stocking their sites. And well, this client said no, so let me go down a bit. Oh, and this client said yes, and I think they would have paid more, so maybe I should bump up a bit. And there's no actual plan. You don't know your numbers. You don't know how you're going to achieve those goals.

And so once I really sat down and looked at my numbers, that gave me the permission to work towards what Christa needed to be sustainable. Not what my competition did, because I don't even know their goals. I don't even know they're profitable. And I say this, guys, I've talked to so many photographers that if you'd seen their Instagram, you would have thought, wow, they're killing it. But they're not making enough money. And we've seen that over and over, photographers being open about burning out, possibly closing up shop because what they were doing wasn't worth the time they were leaving their family.

and what they were making for that to be the case. So when you look at a pricing strategy, you have to start with knowing your numbers and then you have to set up your pricing for success. So you need to get clear on how much you want to be shooting. So I'm gonna give you a simple exercise. If you're sitting here, take out your calculator. If you're driving, come back to this, okay? And pull out your calculator and just put down the amount that you would love to make, that you would love to see, okay? Let's do gross not net, which means not with all taxes and everything taken out, just.

Christa (09:26.74)
overall, I want my business to hit this. Now we need to know obviously what our business is profiting, what we're making. So a lot of photographers, it's honestly that six figure mark. Okay, so I'm sitting here, I typed in 100,000. Now whatever that number is divided by 12, and that's gonna show you that's how much your business needs to bring in on average each month. Some months will be less, some months will be no more, but we need to bring that in on average, Which if it's 100,000, it's a little over 8K per month. Okay, great. So we have that down. Now I want you to decide

How many shoots do you want to take on average a month? Not during busy season, okay, but on average. And think that every one of those shoots, we're gonna be serving clients, it's gonna take marketing. I would say I have done over 10 a month. I've had years with over 100 shoots. Over 10 a month on average is a lot when you think about it, okay? So I am not telling you it needs to be less than that. If you wanna be very volume-based, whatever, but over a...

If you want to make over a grant a month, let's say you want to take on, let's say six shoots a month. So like a shoot a week, two weeks out of the year, you take on two shoots and maybe you take on more during busy season. You might have to shoot closer to like 12, 13, 14 for the other months that you can't make any. Okay. So if I want to take six shoots a month, that means I have to average it's about $1,400 per session. So.

When you're pricing yourself, if you know that's the case, you can be really intentional about that and set up your rates and upsells in a way where is it easy for you to hit that? Or are you having to sell a gazillion things? Do your bundles align with that and point the client to do that? I kept a really easy barrier of entry and then allowed my clients to upsell. And I was very upfront about all of that. So pricing isn't something we just pull out of our booties. It's

We have a plan we know we need to hit. And that's what I actually look at my students when we do a pricing audit of like, if your average is this, if your goal average is this, and this is your menu, you're gonna have to be selling a lot of things to get there versus you're really clear on how you need to set things up to hit that average. Now, let's talk about that. Okay, Christa, see I need to charge more, but I feel weird just throwing my rates up. Exactly, that would feel really weird. I validate that. And instead what we're gonna do is we're gonna add in more value as we raise the price.

Christa (11:46.254)
So that both are increased. And I've given this example before, but one time I was hiring a copywriter and I got two names from, I think it was actually my coach gave me two different names. And it was for actually, it was actually for education. I sent both an email because I just needed some emails. I said, I need like four emails to cycle through to nurture my audience. One copywriter wrote back, said, yeah, I can help you $200 an email. I was like, okay. The other one said, hey, I want to dig into more of what you need.

Let's pop in a Zoom call. I'd love to hear a bit more of what you're doing, who your audience is, what the goal is of this. We dug in together, she dug deep and helped me realize I don't need just emails. I needed a stronger sales page that was even gonna convert those people. I needed a full email sequence for over here and like ads copy. And I ended up paying that copy raider $7,000. Guess how many times I've hired her since then? Two more times after that. I wasn't scammed and pushed into a corner saying you need to buy this now.

I sell the value so much so I've been a returning customer of her for years. And that's what happens when we share the value effectively. If that had been over an email, I would have laughed and said, okay, you're saying 3,500 for the emails, 3,500 for the sales page. What? But because she took the time to lay it out and share the value and serve so much more than just, yeah, let me shoot an email over to a couple of emails over to $200 each. I was thrilled to invest more with her. Okay. So the secret to premium pricing is a premium experience.

And so when you have this upper level framework, you also don't have to compete with all of the hundreds and maybe thousands of shoot and burners in your area. You can stand out because they're all competing with the same work, same kind of experience, same welcome guides, same PDFs, blah, blah, blah. You're offering something so much further. So the way that you can start by standing out right away is obviously just what you're sharing and promoting. If you're offering products, you immediately are already standing out and positioning yourself as a higher end photographer.

And then if you could start having a phone conversation with them, you'll see your average immediately increase for bookings. And my students get an exact script to that, but I just want to kind of quickly walk you through this. So I do an inquiry call where I get really clear on it. And that's why I've had people reach out saying, hey, I just think I want a quick mini session. Then spending over $1,000 on a session with me happily and end up with beautiful products because they saw the value. If I had just sent that in a pretty PDF or email, it wouldn't have been the same. That's what everybody else is doing.

Christa (14:08.098)
I also do a design consultation before we sit down, map out their session, all the details, and I get clear on their products. So literally I walk into a session already having an idea of what products my clients want to walk away with. And then I close it out with a final meeting. We celebrate their images, look at their favorites, look at any final edits, and finalize their product order. This is an incredible experience I offer.

that often shoot and burners can't afford to do, it allows me to share the value so effectively and serve so much further past the digital. Because like we've talked about, I don't know what I'm going to do with 100 digitals. But when you have it in your home to see and enjoy and cherish in a beautiful, tangible way, like that's what I'm passionate about. It brought more meaning to my work. So that's the experience. You're offering so much more and guiding them through it. And then,

Lastly, might be saying, but Christa, where are these clients? Let's talk about marketing and booking. OK, I get it. It's scary, especially if you're like, I love this. I just don't know if my clients would be down. Well, the cool thing is you don't know until you ask. I have had multiple students have over $2,000 sales from clients that were already on the table for them. They already were in their queue. My students just had to start by serving, even if it was after they'd already booked their shoot and burn rates. And the clients were like, yeah, like, of course we want products, right? That's not always the case.

but often there's clients right in front of you that were just missing out on serving and having these sales because we haven't offered it to them. So sometimes when students say, Christa my clients only spend 300 with me. And I'm like, well, how much are you charging for a shoot? And they say 300. Okay, well, I'm not sure what we're expecting here. Well, they don't buy from the gallery. Well, of course not. Like I don't either, but when I have someone holding my hand and walking me through, it's a completely different experience, right? It'd be like if you went to a fancy steakhouse,

and they slapped a kiosk in front of you like they have at Panera and the waitress wasn't there walking and guiding you through. There's a difference there. You're not gonna have that same experience and probably not invest as much in that meal because you don't really understand how it's serving you fully. So if this was interesting to you guys, I have a workshop coming up where I'm for an hour going to really dive into this.

Christa (16:18.678)
and share more about my 2K framework and how it's so possible for any photographer to have a higher average consistently with products. It doesn't have to feel so far-fetched and it doesn't have to feel like it only works for some with a certain type of work. I've coached photographers in all different industries that I would be happy to share with all different styles. And you can use the same framework and plug and play it into your business.

Also for signing up, we're including our free pricing calculator so that even before the workshop starts, you can really start looking at what do you want to make per session when it comes to your costs and what you want to pay yourself and all of those things. So for an invite to that, if you DM me on Instagram at Christa underscore Renee, R-E-N-E, Christa the CH, if you DM me the number two and the letter K, just 2K, that's it. I'm going to send you that workshop invite. It is totally free.

It is April the 21st. So if we've already missed it, still reach out. We'll still get you something. We'll just still get you something good. But I'm excited to dive into this even further and would love to see you there. We'll also link it in the show notes, because guys, two case sessions, three case sessions, just getting to the average and goals you need for your family is possible. It just takes a more solid framework.

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