Nicole Begley (00:00)
Welcome back to the podcast. This week we are diving into photography and AI and what the future might hold, where we've been, what's happening, what changes are coming, and if there is reason to hope or not. Anyway, if you're in photography, this is a must listen. Stay tuned.

Nicole Begley (00:18)
I'm Nicole Begley, a zoological animal trainer turned pet and family photographer. Back in 2010, I embarked on my own adventure in photography, transforming a bootstrapping startup into a thriving six-figure business by 2012. Since then, my mission has been to empower photographers like you, sharing the knowledge and strategies that have helped me help thousands of photographers build their own profitable businesses. I believe that achieving $2,000 $3,000 sales is your fastest route to six-figure businesses.

that any technically proficient photographer can consistently hit four figure sales. And no matter if you want photography to be your full-time passion or a part-time pursuit, profitability is possible. If you're a portrait photographer aspiring to craft a business that aligns perfectly with the life you envision, then you're in exactly the right place. With over 350,000 downloads, welcome to the Freedom Focus Photography Podcast.

Nicole Begley (01:18)
Hey everybody. Welcome back to the freedom focused photography podcast. I'm your host Nicole Bagley. And today I've got Jane Nicole Smith. It's a meeting of the Knicks for back in the studio chatting about commercial stuff. Hey Nick, how are you?

J.Nichole Smith (01:32)
I'm great. How are you?

Nicole Begley (01:34)
I'm good. I'm good. my gosh. So much has changed. So if anybody has been around for a while, they might recognize that every spring we start to like really dive into commercial training. We have been working with our students over the past year. We were just catching up on the last coaching call that you held yesterday of one of our students was breaking down a recent commercial shoot. did and started talking about all the marketing and all the details. And, you know, we've been talking about this too, of how much

The industry is shifting. mean, industries are always shifting, but industries in general are really shifting a lot over the past few years because of AI. So that's kind of what we want to dig into today of AI commercial photography. Is photography dead or not? know, big existential questions.

J.Nichole Smith (02:22)
You know, just the small stuff.

Nicole Begley (02:24)
Yeah. Yeah. Just do we still have a business? Can we still have an industry? You know, that's fine. That's fine.

Spoiler alert. So, yeah, don't turn it off. Stick around and find out kind of what's changing. But like you and I are both been using AI now for a while. And we're just actually chatting about this too, of like a major value conflict with it is, you know, I run a conservation organization and AI generally is, terrible for the environment. However, it's also one of these things that like, it's not going away.

It is here like it or not. Literally every single software that you use now is incorporating some sort of AI. I I just went to go make a new form on Monday and it was like, let me know what you want to make in your form. So I just explained what it was for and what fields I wanted and it just made the board for me in like 30 seconds. So like you cannot get away from it.

Let's talk about it. Let's see like kind of a state of the industry, if you will, of kind of where we're at and where we think it's going.

J.Nichole Smith (03:32)
Yeah, I think you've made such a good point. And this is something I talk about a lot with my team and my clients because we are interested in doing things ethically and there is this sort of inherent conflict. think, I always think back where photography is related to when Pinterest came out. And I remember like, I was so dead set against Pinterest because I was like, your whole platform is stealing from photographers. Like, I cannot support this. This is insane.

And then like 10 years later, I'm like making my Pinterest boards, you know, but by that point, it was like, it was so normalized that how different the copyright and the value and the use of images had changed. And I feel like, you know, this is, you know, the internet times a thousand. We don't need to get into like what AI is, because we all know that it is changing everything. And I've been having a lot of conversations with people where they feel like it has already changed everything. Like,

I had a very different year in business than I last year than I've ever had. And I know that it's connected. AI is

Nicole Begley (04:30)
Mm-hmm.

J.Nichole Smith (04:31)
part of it, right? Politics are part of it. There's a lot of fear. There's a lot of unknown. And I think all of that just creates a really challenging sales ecosystem. So we can talk a little bit about the marketing piece as well, because I think that is really relevant for all of us who are just obviously concerned with making sure we have enough clients.

But that's another way that I think commercial is so interesting. And that's why I've always been a champion of it for pet photographers in particular is being able to add that revenue stream that feels a little bit more safe, a little bit more accessible, a little bit more consistent and steady and reliable when we're in times of fear. So I think there's a lot of angles here to kind of talk about where we're at and where we're going, what has to do with AI and yeah, spoiler alert, like.

Photography isn't going anywhere and all the AI experts agree with that. like you can take your sigh of relief.

Nicole Begley (05:24)
collective sigh, breathe in, breathe out. Yeah, I think, and we've already started to see this where like when it was new, everyone's like, okay, let me just use some AI generated images for my ads for this. And like, it got attention because it was new, but the pendulum is always swinging, right? And so they're already seeing that people are

I don't want to fully say rejecting, but definitely kind of starting to be more wary of AI. They are looking for connection. They're looking for authenticity. And I think that is only going to increase as more and more AI happens. mean, I'm sure you've seen it where you see a video or something. You're like, I don't know, is this real? Because AI has gotten really good. even so far, so many platforms like Facebook, Metta is starting to flag AI content so people know what's AI and what's not.

So yeah, just like, let's talk about kind of where this pendulum is swinging, where we think it's going, kind of what this has been looking like.

J.Nichole Smith (06:24)
Yeah, it's such an important point. think the overall reality fact, and again, this is something all the experts agree on, is that as we descend deeper into this AI, like insane pace, insanely digital, insanely disconnected, insane, can information overload, like image over like can have anything now.

that always brings the antithesis along with it, right? Where we get overwhelmed, we get sick of it, we no longer connect with those things. And at the end of the day, you have to remember that marketing is purely based on emotions and emotions are purely triggered unconsciously in the first milliseconds of someone's experience. all our decisions are made emotionally. So when we are doing marketing, we are

needing to make someone feel something and that feeling is so deeply connected with trust and credibility because those things immediately mess with the positive feelings we're creating to try and sell something. Having this fakeness, this not knowing what's real, this distance between reality and what I'm looking at in an AI generated whatever chips away at that trust and credibility. It makes us ask questions and wonder like,

What is this? Can we trust it? Is it real? And the whole point of photography when it's used in a commercial way is to be able to bridge that gap, create trust, create connection, create authenticity, create the feelings that people need to create in order to get you to buy from them. So if it doesn't work, if AI images aren't working as well because of all of those unconscious emotional issues, then

people are gonna keep using what works. And I have zero doubt that there is still a place for real images in an AI image generated world for exactly what you said. Like people are gonna start calling out AI generated imagery, which is gonna impact how well ads perform and how well people connect and if they click, et cetera. There's only so far you can get on the novelty of like a panda in gold hot pants, like walking through New York City, right?

that we're gonna get sick of that pretty quickly in terms of being able to see whatever we want and have it look hyper real. And so when we think about the role of photography, I really don't think that it's changing that much, especially for those of you guys who do private work and you shoot families and babies and dogs and wedding, people still want photographs of the things in their life that are real. And when it comes to the commercial side of things,

you will see that businesses will start putting flags in the ground of what they do and do not do with their marketing and the brands that are connected to authenticity and brand and connection and humanness and values and purpose, which are the companies you want to work for anyway, are still 100 % going to be working with real photographers to create images because it's part of their value system and because it's going to work better for the

marketing and brand and positioning that they're putting out into the world. It would just be so incongruent of them to do anything else basically. So you're

Nicole Begley (09:33)
Yeah.

J.Nichole Smith (09:34)
going to see this like one side or the other, like we do AI or we don't, or these hybrids where we use AI to help us. But when it comes to creating those instant connections with people visually, photography 100 % still has a really real role.

Nicole Begley (09:49)
Yeah, I feel this because I've been kind of figuring out like, what's my stance? Where am I on this? Which I am fully in the, like I am going to utilize it to work smarter, to work more efficiently. And it's still my work. I'm not like phoning it in and saying, okay, I like teach my classes for me, write all of my things. Like I'm still using it to brainstorm, to like share my stories, to just help me.

do it more quickly and more efficiently. But I feel very strongly of so many people, friends of mine that are also in the online space that have started using AI for like basically branding images for their ads of like, look, I could just put it in and I'm holding a sign in Times Square. I'm like, that feels wrong to me. And maybe because I'm in the photography space, like maybe it would be different if I was in health and wellness or some other space.

But

like for me, I'm like, absolutely not. I will not. If you guys see pictures of me, they are real pictures. I will not use AI photos of me and advertising. it just, it just feels incongruent to me to in the photography space to, go down that route. And, yeah, so I think more and more brands are going to kind of figure out where they stand on that as well. and again, there's just no.

No substitute for real images, real connection, because let's talk for a minute psychologically. If we see an actual image of, we talk about in the commercial portfolio intensive, helping people take commercial images, that we are selling emotion. It's very different than a portrait image. You are having the connection, the emotion. You want to desirability, picture yourself in that image.

And if it's AI, your subconscious doesn't picture yourself in that image.

J.Nichole Smith (11:45)
Yeah, I think we've got, you know, that sort of the uncanny valley, which obviously AI has blasted through a long time ago, where it sometimes is really, really hard for us to tell what is and isn't AI. And I'm sure we will definitely get to the point where there is no way to tell, where, you know, even those tiny little subconscious things that we're not aware of, they're telling us this isn't real are gone. And we just can't tell the difference. I'm sure we will be there. I think what is interesting about that

is the point that you made about, which I think a lot of us are asking now about AI in general, and I think will relate to photography as well, is just because I can, should I, will I?

Nicole Begley (12:23)
Mm-hmm.

J.Nichole Smith (12:24)
And I think we're gonna see discernment and people making values-driven choices continue to rise. It's not gonna be everyone, right? Like tons and tons and tons and millions and billions of people are gonna use AI. They're gonna use AI for their ads. They're gonna use AI in their marketing and for business. But there will be enough people

for whom that is not values aligned or for whom what they want to do cannot be achieved in the way that they want it to be achieved and then not have it like flagged on LinkedIn because it's an AI image and have that obvious sort of tag of using AI, right? Cause it's going to become like a badge like you did or you didn't. It's just because my eyes can't tell. It doesn't mean it won't be labeled or tagged just like you have to tag an affiliate or sponsorship or an app.

so that people can make more conscious decisions and governments are going to continue to crack down on this so that we can have that discernment that we want to have. I think overall, from a marketing, from a psychology, from a how do we build feelings standpoint, I think we are a long, long, long way from photographers being obsolete or from photography not being useful. And the other thing that you're going to see as we kind of touched on is that

we're already seeing this craving and resurgence of art and craft. We're

Nicole Begley (13:42)
Mm-hmm.

J.Nichole Smith (13:42)
already working with our hands more. We're already taking on the grandma hobbies. We are already like, we are craving creativity and creative pursuits because we're so overwhelmed. I call it the joy crisis. We're so stressed out and the world is so dark that this is a way for us to actively manage our anxiety.

And as things get more digital and disconnected, we are going to crave in person, we are going to crave human, are going to crave tactile and tangible and real, and that's going to escalate as well. And so I think there's understanding that this pendulum always happens. remember when we didn't have Kindles or iPads? Do you know how terrified the publishing industry was that books were over? Like that the whole industry

Nicole Begley (14:24)
mm-hmm.

J.Nichole Smith (14:25)
would just collapse on itself because why would you buy a book if you could have a Kindle?

And, you know, there's an obvious, there's so many obvious reasons that we still have books. And then you think about like coffee table books are even more valuable now, because, you know, people

Nicole Begley (14:39)
uh-huh.

J.Nichole Smith (14:39)
never stop buying cookbooks, people never stop buying coffee table books. There's an experience you get from that kind of book that you don't want from a Kindle, right? Like you want the

Nicole Begley (14:47)
No?

J.Nichole Smith (14:48)
thing to sit here to look pretty, you want to flip through it, you want to dog-ear the pages, like, and I think photography is going to hold a really similar place.

in our world as those sort of books did in publishing where there's still so much value in the real. And we're going to get really discerning about what's real and what's not real and what does that mean. And then when it comes to companies, I think this point around values is so important, but also that like just logistically, there will be so many uses for AI imagery that are so useful, like product images, white background, here's my prototype, here's my product, like crank it out. Like someone, just, you

you

had someone in China do it before and now you're having AI do it, you know, like, who cares? Nobody is sad that we're not having to do those kinds of images anymore. But I think for having real life products in real life, that will be possible in AI. Of course it will, but I think there's still going to be a huge demand for our real life animals, our real life products in real life situations and being, as you said, able to kind of

put the badge on yourself that says like, we don't use AI for this. There's already a movement on Substack of like human intelligence where it's like badges that people use to say like made by human basically and you're gonna see that growing as well. So yeah, I think I'm not worried.

Nicole Begley (16:10)
Yeah, exactly. exactly. And I mean, I, this goes for companies, big and small, like from the local dog walker, dog trainer, solar pannur in your area to the multinational corporations, you know, some of them making different value choices than others, but like they will have their value lanes and, and there will still be large companies that want to stay in this. This authentic lane.

J.Nichole Smith (16:37)
Yeah, it's interesting

you bring that up with the large companies because what we're seeing now, so there's this thing happening called the joy economy, which is very convenient for me as someone who is spending all their time talking about joy now. But it's an economic trend that was sort of called out in 2023 that has been escalating. And that is changing everything about like how we do business. Now, let me just caveat that by saying like the weapons manufacturers and the chip manufacturers and the Wall Street, like people who still make

tons of money from adding no value to the betterment of society, like that's going to continue. Of course it is. But when you talk about founders and entrepreneurs and people who want to make the world better and people who want to make things that matter and like that true sense of entrepreneurship where, you know, business, you know, these are the people who create most jobs. Like this is what fuels our economy really, because, you know, they're actually giving back is that those what's happening with the joy economy is that

Consumers always drive demand, right? So the world's gone gray because we keep buying gray shit. Like we drive the choices that companies make. And what's happening is we drive the trends of like, oh, things need to be more natural or, oh, we need to have better packaging that's resealable or, oh, we don't want single use plastic or like that's all because consumers stand up and say like, I don't wanna buy this, I wanna buy this and companies lose profit.

Nicole Begley (17:57)
Mm-hmm.

J.Nichole Smith (17:58)
And so they make.

decisions based on what the data says about what will make them more money. So we have control over a lot of this in terms of how we spend our money. But what's happening with the joy economy is that people are just sick of a lot of stuff, right? They're sick of not having transparency and where their stuff is made. And if it's ethical, they're sick of exploitation. Nobody wants a phone that someone had to die in a cobalt mine for, you know, like, and that is starting to really change consumer sentiment, the way we spend.

So many people I know are now buying more of their clothes on vintage because they want to buy secondhand instead of buying new. Everyone's anti fast fashion. know, these changes are happening already. And when consumers decide we create the demand, we change the demand. And right now that demand is going in the direction of the joy economy, which is about play and joy and wellbeing and connection and all these things that we've been talking about. Companies are going to have to respond to that, even the big ones. So like

they are going to do that not because they have a conscience, but because it is a competitive advantage for them to do so. They will have to, they will have to bend a consumer sentiment, they will have to compete, they will have to adjust based on what the market demands. And when you look at what, know, Gen Z and Gen Out, like the demand is for transparency, purpose driven, like talking about your social value. Like I have a lot of...

I have a lot of hope based on the consumers that are coming. Whereas like baby boomers who were like the main buyers when I came into the pet space did not give a crap. Like they don't want to know about your politics. They don't want to know about your values. They just want the best price, you know? Like, and that's just

Nicole Begley (19:34)
You're welcome.

J.Nichole Smith (19:34)
not true anymore. And when we started seeing the data about millennials when I was in school about that becoming who are now the biggest buying sector for the pet industry worldwide, like they have very different needs when it comes to buying. you know, the generations that are coming are even more extreme.

than millennials are in terms of what we want and need. So anyway, that's my massive rant about the joy economy and the fact that we can shape this demand and we are shaping this demand to be more values driven, to be more human, to be more transparent about exploitation. And what we're talking about here, hiring real people and using real images and creating real connection is going to be a part of that. It's going to be the way that companies have a sustainable competitive advantage in a world of AI sloth.

basically.

Nicole Begley (20:18)
I love it. I love it. Here's the mic. Go ahead and drop it because that was incredible.

J.Nichole Smith (20:21)
Yeah

Nicole Begley (20:22)
I love it. So yeah. So, I agree with all of that and it is, there is a little shred of hope when you start to see that and yeah, talking to millennials and like even the, generations coming up underneath. mean, I even just look at my kids and, and they're conscious of like, of buying and things and values that companies have, and they're teenagers. So it's pretty exciting.

okay. So I want to shift gears just slightly, but to kind of add on this and that is kind of what skills people need now to. Excel in the commercial space. I mean, obviously we still need to have great photography. need to be able to tell that story, share that connection and all of that. But the pricing and the negotiation is always changing, but that's starting to shift even more rapidly now because of the AI influence. So.

would love to talk a little bit more about that.

J.Nichole Smith (21:17)
Yeah, I think to your point, one of the biggest changes we're gonna see, as we have before, right, we keep navigating this change over and over again, is the way that the value of photography changes, and what becomes valuable, and what people are willing to pay, and what expectations they place on photographers who are showing up on set, or who are showing up in a negotiation, what the expectations are, what you have to understand, be flexible with, know, care about, like, to get the jobs, to...

position yourself as someone who's a really viable option. Like you said, we were just, I was just leading a coaching call yesterday for our CPPA students. And I was doing this debrief with one of our students who had this big commercial shoot and was talking about shooting alongside motion video, which is like most of the time now, if you have big commercial gigs, you're going to have to be shooting alongside video, which is very, very challenging. And we were talking about navigating that and how frustrating it is and.

and about his lessons, et cetera. a lot of what it came down to or what my suggestion was is that the biggest lesson that you can get out of those sorts of experiences is it creates a new baseline for what you are and are not willing to do. And the powerful thing about that is when you go into your next negotiation, you have a hard boundary that is

Nicole Begley (22:34)
Mm-hmm.

J.Nichole Smith (22:35)
reinforced by lived experience that you know the value of money now.

you know, like maybe that number sounds really big, but you know that if you take this job and take this money and have all this stress and can't produce results you're happy with because of situations totally out of your control, it's not worth it for you. And you start to understand what those numbers are. And what's important about that to me is helping people learn how to think, helping people learn how to think for themselves about pricing negotiation. is it worth? What is it not worth? Because

you know, we can give you a checklist of like, here's the basic client tiers and here's the basic price points and here's da da da, but A, it's always changing, B, it's different, you know, different companies, different cultures, and C, it doesn't matter because at the end of the day, as our students will tell you, what I'm famous for saying is the only question you have to ask yourself when you're pricing this stuff is how bad do you want the job? How

Nicole Begley (23:30)
Mm-hmm.

J.Nichole Smith (23:30)
bad do you want it? Because ultimately knowing what you can get out of the job is

the bit where the education comes in, right? That bit we can teach you and that bit we can help you absolutely maximize how much you can get when you maybe would have settled for less. But in terms of like being able to negotiate successfully, what you have to know going into that negotiation is what are you willing to do? What are you willing to walk away from? Which you can kind of only learn by until you have a couple of bad ones until you like do something for

Nicole Begley (24:00)
Yeah

J.Nichole Smith (24:01)
too little, just like with private work, right? Where you have a red flag client, they're a nightmare and you say never again.

Never again.

Nicole Begley (24:06)
Mm-hmm. You're like, I will

put a rule into place now.

J.Nichole Smith (24:10)
Exactly. And that's what I said to him. I'm like, while it's fresh, go write it down, all the stuff you hated. And next time you're in negotiation, have three to five non-negotiables that you say, I need to have this much time, I need to have X. And if that's not possible, totally understand that this job is not for me because I will not produce subpar work for you. I just won't. And let someone else have the job. Walk away from it. And that lived experience skill that you've created is one of the most powerful ways to get paid more.

And it's not

Nicole Begley (24:37)
Hmm.

J.Nichole Smith (24:38)
something people really understand when they're like, tell me how to price it, tell me what I should charge, right? It's not understanding just the numbers, it's understanding and having the lived experience in your body of this is what I'm willing to do, this is how bad I want it, this is what I'm not willing to do, and have the confidence to walk into those conversations knowing that. So that's a

Nicole Begley (25:00)
Mm-hmm.

J.Nichole Smith (25:00)
process and I think that...

what

is going to be very, important isn't just like those pricing strategies, which are a good start. It's being able to negotiate, being able to think, being able to use like the psychological levers that we teach inside about how to maximize, you know, what you're getting when someone comes in with a really small budget without losing the job.

without getting paid too little. So yeah, for me, 100%, that negotiation skill, that being able to hold the conversation, being able to maximize what you can get without losing the job, and the skill and confidence to walk away when that's the right choice for you, that for me are top skills for navigating the change.

Nicole Begley (25:42)
Yeah, yeah, I 100 % agree. And I find it so beneficial that our students have said just to see how this works, like when we break down these other jobs. mean, for instance, just myself, I had a job in the fall that I'm just finishing up. It's so funny how these jobs are like, okay, here we're shot in October. And I sent them, they had their gallery since like, November, I'm going back and forth. And they were like, okay, we'll get you the final. The final, was 50 that was going to be included in that.

And then I was literally thinking like two weeks ago, I'm like, I need to reach out to them. I have not, I've never gotten their final things. And then literally that day they said, okay, we're ready. Which is funny. But anyway, the long story short of that is they came in with like a very set budget that was below where I was willing to do the job. However, knowing like the different ways to negotiate and different licensing levers to pull.

I gave them that price at a different licensing that then when they came back this round, they're like, okay, we want to extend it. And then that brought it up to the price that I wanted to make in the first place. like there's so many different avenues to serve that client, get that client, but still make the money that you needed to make from that job in different ways. it's, yeah.

It's, it is not

J.Nichole Smith (27:06)
100.

Nicole Begley (27:07)
straightforward. Like, like

J.Nichole Smith (27:09)
No.

Nicole Begley (27:09)
a portrait work is like, I shoot, I have a sale. Okay, we're done. Like these jobs, I don't think I've had other than like local businesses that's like, okay, we go, we shoot, they choose, we're done. Like it was a pretty quick container. So many of these bigger jobs are like six month projects. Like they go on for a long time, not working on it every day, but it is.

It's, there's definitely a lot of moving parts that, yeah.

J.Nichole Smith (27:36)
Yeah, and what's great about that

is you got a cash injection then and you're getting a cash injection now that you weren't expecting necessarily

Nicole Begley (27:39)
Hmm. Yep. Yeah.

J.Nichole Smith (27:43)
out of nowhere. And they could come back in three months time and be like, here's more money. We want more images, you know, which I love.

Nicole Begley (27:48)
Great.

J.Nichole Smith (27:49)
I love that about commercial. But yeah, we were

Nicole Begley (27:52)
huh.

J.Nichole Smith (27:52)
talking about that on the call yesterday. We were talking about kind of building packages as options for like a local vet that someone was going to go do and like, you know, how to like

go in with like a low option and a high option and how to navigate so that you don't, they definitely feel secure that you're not going to overcharge them. There's an option for them. And then there's a nice option that they're kind of excited about how to navigate what the difference is. So you're not just giving them more for less money. And then there's nowhere to go from there, especially next time. And I think your point around like being able to step into the negotiation for sure, also to understand

you know, what they want and need. And so often that gets communicated early as a really set, really small budget. Right. And so many people find that frustrating or intimidating or depressing. And it's just like, it's just the first step. Right. It's just

Nicole Begley (28:45)
Mm-hmm.

J.Nichole Smith (28:46)
the first step of a conversation. And sometimes you'll lose those gigs because someone's willing to give them everything for that price. And that's fine. Again, that's you learn that you are fine to lose those gigs because you have saved yourself.

space

Nicole Begley (28:58)
Hmm?

J.Nichole Smith (28:58)
for someone who is willing to do it differently. So it's not like we get every job, but I think as we talk about value changing and how we're already seeing this, we're seeing this in our coaching businesses, we're seeing this in our online information, right? The value of things is changing dramatically. The value of information has almost disappeared overnight. So

Nicole Begley (29:19)
Mm-hmm.

J.Nichole Smith (29:19)
now what people are paying for is in-person community done for you, learning how to use AI.

That changed overnight. so

Nicole Begley (29:28)
Mm-hmm.

J.Nichole Smith (29:29)
like the value, like I guarantee you, you will not be seeing a lot of $3,000 courses being sold unless it includes in-person, done for you, massive community, like because people just aren't paying for information like that anymore.

Nicole Begley (29:42)
Yeah.

The coaching, the feedback, like we've been working with all of my programs over the past year of just incorporating more feedback. Like do this, submit it, get feedback. Like actually it's not just, yeah, cause information's gone. Go to chat. You can get, mean, we'll be the right information. Maybe, maybe not, but it'll be information. and, but like, yeah.

J.Nichole Smith (30:07)
Will it overwhelm you because it's not

curating it and it wants to give you 27 options? Maybe.

Nicole Begley (30:09)
Yeah. And we don't know. And

it's pulling all these things in that may or may not be accurate or may or may not go together. but then you still have to implement it and like how many questions come up when you start to implement something. so anyway, yes. Yeah. I've noticed that shift to talking to my other online friends. Like it's, it's, which is always, thankfully, thankfully you and I both run businesses that we really love coaching people. So like that was already part of it. it was never about just.

Hey, buy this thing, me money, bye. I don't even know who you are.

J.Nichole Smith (30:40)
And that's why like, like when we created CPI, you know, I think like not to toot our own horn, but I feel like that was such a stroke of genius because, you know, we had a course and we are course creators just like a lot of other people. But what we actually care about isn't selling information, it's getting the results that people are looking for. And some of that is through information, right? So that negotiations and stuff I just talked about, you got to know some stuff to do that properly. And when

that information isn't widely available, like how to do commercial stuff because nobody talks about it and nobody shares it. I'm sure chat could walk you through some of that information for sure now, will it be any good? I don't know. what is so, as I just said, what is so important about that information is the conversation, the learning and the being able to put it into action. Right? So like CPI is a program where we

We help people build their portfolio by giving them real shoot briefs, having them perform those briefs and getting feedback on the brief and the images once they're shot and then improving between shoot to shoot to shoot to shoot. Like that to me is like the future and same with CPPA. Like we learn the stuff, we talk about the stuff, we put it into action, we do the homework, we get coaching, we like, we get the lived experience in our body alongside people who can help see and give feedback about how we're going. And then

apply it and come back and apply it and come back and apply it and come back. And I just think that like that is that is definitely the future of how we're doing learning. But I think also the the when we think about the navigating all the change, right? That's affecting people in so many different ways. It's affecting people's businesses. It's affecting their mental health. It's affecting like entire countries, entire industries and

I think what we really need right now is community. We really need somewhere to go where we can be connected with people who are on the same journey. And I think we're going to see a lot more of that. And certainly I'm grateful that we have that space in CPPA that people can navigate this journey together. Cause I just think, God, like.

is so isolating and so lonely. And I think there are people sitting there probably going like, well, I just thought that maybe commercial was a direction I wanted to go. And now AI is here. why bought like stock is dead. So surely commercial is dead, right? Like, no. But how do we know if we're not surrounded with other people having these conversations? What AI would tell you about that? I don't know. I don't really know.

Nicole Begley (33:10)
Yeah.

Well, I can say, cause I've played around with AI around, some pricing things of things that I am very well versed in what they cost and, what the resale values are and just all of those pieces. And. Chat does not do a good job with that.

J.Nichole Smith (33:26)
Yeah.

Nicole Begley (33:27)
is wildly inaccurate wildly. So just my public service announcement.

J.Nichole Smith (33:32)
Yeah.

Nicole Begley (33:32)
Don't rely on it for figuring out pricing of anything.

J.Nichole Smith (33:36)
Yeah,

I think what's really fascinating about all of this to me right now. So as you know, I recently took all my 20 years of branding experience and I trained like six little chat bots to do what I do in brand building to help someone like rebrand in 48 hours. Basically, that was the promise is I really wanted someone to be able to sit down for the weekend. I like hyper-focused. I'm neurodivergent. When I'm in, I'm in. When I'm on, I'm on and like just get through it in

Nicole Begley (34:03)
Yeah.

J.Nichole Smith (34:04)
two days. Yeah.

And what I love about it is that chat is so brilliant and it's obviously we know it's just going to keep getting more intelligent. The most, the latest update of chat GPTs like helped build itself. helped train itself and improve itself, which is why it is so far and above better than the version before. And what I love about that is when you combine that potentiality with very specific instructions and, you know, embedding our own genius into it.

to give it a lane to focus on or to give it some guardrails, boundaries and input that is specific, for example, to the pet industry or branding or whatever. That's where I think we start getting really good content. So I think you'll definitely see, you already are seeing people selling AI versions of themselves, AI versions of their courses, because it's not like several, I've bought some courses in the last.

year where it's like I don't want to read and I don't want to watch videos I just want to go straight to the chat that you built for me and it work through it with me and give me the output that I want and that is that is so good, right? So anyway, that's a little bit of a tangent but I think like when we think about photography and we think about how these things are changing the value of photography is changing so when you think about like how much do I make for this or how much can I charge for that? You also have to think about how your costs

and how your time is going to be changing because you're going to be getting so many economies of scale. You're going to be able to reduce loads of expenses. My husband is on HubSpot, which is a really, really expensive CRM. And he's

Nicole Begley (35:35)
Mm-hmm.

J.Nichole Smith (35:35)
like, in less than a year, I'll be able to build my own HubSpot with Claude or chat, right? Like I'll just be

Nicole Begley (35:42)
Hmm.

J.Nichole Smith (35:42)
able to sit down and say what I want to be able to do with my email and my blogs and whatever. And I will just be able to sit down and build it myself.

I won't be paying subscription models to software anymore because I'll just build my own on

Nicole Begley (35:56)
Uh-huh.

J.Nichole Smith (35:56)
a Sunday afternoon. Right? Like it's not that simple, but it will be. It will be that simple.

Nicole Begley (36:00)
It's

getting there. Yeah. I have a one friend, her husband used to be in the software space, but he has built out all these custom things for her and her business. And we're all just like, can you please sell access to that for the rest of us?

J.Nichole Smith (36:15)
Exactly.

We're doing the same thing in my peer group. I have a friend who did that for her podcast. I'm like, can I buy that from you because you would save me hours a week?

Nicole Begley (36:21)
What the

J.Nichole Smith (36:23)
And that's what's going to be happening. We're all going to be saving six, eight, 10, 12 hours a week. Your editing is going to go down to nothing. So I was going to say about HubSpot, he pays like, I don't know, like between 15 and 20 grand a year for this software. Boom, money back.

Nicole Begley (36:39)
Mm-hmm.

J.Nichole Smith (36:40)
That's a whole salary for someone to do a job for him that

you know, he does actually need because he runs events, he can't have AI replace those people. But so it's not just the value, it's also going to be the cost. So I think when we look at the upside and what what it's about for me is staying out of that, like fear, despair, why even bother and staying in the lane of like, what could be possible? What am I excited about? What sounds fun? And for me, I love

I love commercial for that because so many people come to us because it sounds like fun, right? It sounds like fun to be able to like photograph some collars or dog beds. It sounds like fun to be able to see their images up inside Petco. It sounds like fun to be able to, you know, work with professionally trained dog models and capture those incredible action shots where someone else is, you know, paying for everything. It's,

Nicole Begley (37:35)
Hmm?

J.Nichole Smith (37:36)
It is fun. And I just want to anchor us back in that, like, you can definitely get caught into the catastrophizing spirals, but I see so much hope and excitement and fun in where we're headed with this. I hope that people who are navigating all the change and all the frustration are also able to kind of grab onto some of that as well for themselves.

Nicole Begley (37:55)
Yeah, absolutely. That's a great, great point. And, actually a perfect segue to mention something that we just put together. Cause you know, you and I have been chatting before. It's like, want to make it approachable for people to like dip their toe in the water and kind of test it out and see if it's something that they're interested in. and so we're always asking like, how can we help better serve people? So we actually put together, a, a small, just like a little $49.

product that is, oh my gosh, I mean, is worth so much more than that. Um, it's called,

J.Nichole Smith (38:28)
It's silly.

Nicole Begley (38:30)
yeah, we're calling it, um, like the commercial get starting kit and it has a shoot planner, the email templates for outreach and responses from when people come in for cold outreach or responses. When you get a, uh, an email model release invoice and commercial shoot checklist. So, um, all of that for $49. Yeah.

J.Nichole Smith (38:50)
It's crazy. I feel like this

is another trend you're seeing across the board is all of us. think once you find out that you can make what you do more accessible, which was kind of your goal the whole time without having to give away 20 hours a week in order to do that, it changes the value of everything, right? So like

Nicole Begley (39:04)
Okay. Okay.

J.Nichole Smith (39:06)
you are now in a position where we can say like, we know the value that we offer you. Like, for example, CPPA, which is our academy, it's our 12 month program and includes CPI. Like we know the value of that.

And we know what people get out of that. And we know how quickly people make their money back on that. And we know that it's not based on the things they think they want coming in, which are the planner, the checklist, the invoice, the

Nicole Begley (39:31)
Yeah, right.

J.Nichole Smith (39:32)
model release, right? So we're like, here, have that stuff for 50 bucks. We want you to have access to the stuff that helps you kind of make up your mind and get some quick wins and go

Nicole Begley (39:42)
Mm-hmm.

J.Nichole Smith (39:43)
respond to that email you already have in your inbox of someone asking about

you know, an inquiry for this stuff and being able to have a starting point of how to respond to that is great. But yeah, I feel like there's and I feel like I've had this conversation with pet photographers for so many years now of this tension between people who want to make a living and make a good living and buy back some of their time. They have time freedom and also wanting to be accessible. And I think like we're in a we're in a point in history that is so exciting because so many of us are able to make what we do more accessible now. So that's

I know that is a massive rant and again on the side, but I love this trend that we're in of everyone who was doing like $15,000 products is now doing like $29 to bite size little pieces, right? It's not the same product experience, but I'm really

Nicole Begley (40:27)
Yeah.

J.Nichole Smith (40:30)
excited that we've put this together for people to just get a taste of, it

Nicole Begley (40:34)
Hmm.

J.Nichole Smith (40:35)
free?

Nicole Begley (40:36)
Yeah, for sure. Yeah. If you want to go check it out, go to hair of the dog, academy.com slash commercial kit. All one word hair of the dog academy.com slash commercial kit. And, yeah, there you can grab it 49 bucks and you can go out and test the waters and, and yeah, and, and work with some commercial stuff. this has been a really just eyeopening, fantastic conversation.

I would love to hear from you guys too, like what you think about it. Let us know how this landed kind of where you're feeling in terms of, you know, the future of AI photography. Gosh, I mean, things are always shifting. We went from film cameras to digital and then, you know, to the, I have Photoshop continues. see people.

periodically freaking out the Photoshop's getting so easy and now like the phone can remove distractions and leashes and things like that, but they can't get the expression. They don't know what the light looks like. Like there's still a job for us. There is still a job for us and this is no, no different.

J.Nichole Smith (41:40)
Yeah, and I think that is kind of the parting thing is that

Being in times of fear and uncertainty really force a lot of discomfort, right? Like nobody's comfortable not knowing what's happening. Nobody's comfortable feeling unsafe. Like it's obviously uncomfortable. We're in a joy crisis. Things are hard. Like nobody, a hundred percent that's true. However, we can either stay in the state where that continues to like define our entire existence.

or we can make some key decisions about how we want to move forward, how we want to live. I know that sounds glib. I don't mean it to be glib, but like, I think what is so beautiful about those of us who have pursued something like photography as a career is that it is fundamentally rooted in creativity and exploration and the unknown, right? Entrepreneurship is all about being able to navigate not knowing. And so I just, I'm really passionate about helping people find and

and root into and trust and believe in the stuff that brings them joy and the stuff that makes them feel good. And right now, I would say that thing for you is photography, like double down on it, because we are heading into a place where that won't be as controversial anymore. mean, maybe in three years time, we have universal basic income. Like everyone's going to be an artist. Like that's what we do. Humans were designed to create. So I think just because things are uncertain or it's scary or there's fear, whatever, like

It doesn't make, it doesn't change anything about why you do this and why this matters to you and what is possible. It just changes some of the rules and some of the color and some of the timelines of things or might not look like you thought it would look, but I think there is still a space for this. really my parting message would be focus on finding the parts of it that really, really bring you joy, like that you really, really love. I had a conversation with someone the other day

a photographer from our world who was like, I was working with, you know, stuff in the course and I woke up and I was like, I don't want to shoot families anymore. I hate shooting families. Why am I shooting families? And she's like doubling down. Turns out she's doubling down on commercial, like, but it, you know, eight months in, she had this

Nicole Begley (43:55)
Mm-hmm.

J.Nichole Smith (43:56)
literally in the middle of the night, aha, around the fact that like, why am I still doing this if I hate it? Like.

Nicole Begley (44:01)
Mm-hmm.

J.Nichole Smith (44:02)
I don't need to keep doing this. I don't even know why I'm still doing this, but something in my mind told me I had to, right? So anyway,

Nicole Begley (44:08)
Okay.

J.Nichole Smith (44:09)
I just wanted to share that like, joy is getting its moment and it won't sound so silly to just do what you love, especially for those of you guys who have been chasing that, like, I don't wanna be a starving artist or all those things that we were running from is why we became lawyers and accountants and whatever else and now have a photography side hustle, but.

The joy is having its moment and don't be afraid to double down on your creativity and your curiosity and all of that stuff, even when times feel scary, especially when times feel scary. So regardless of what you do with your business, like don't stop, you know, diving into your creativity. And I love that you all have so many ways for people to really go deep and craft and do the retreats and like do that because it's such an important part of our joy and our wellbeing.

Nicole Begley (44:54)
Yeah, I love it. Thank you. my gosh. This was a great conversation. If you guys want to grab that little, getting started kit here at the dog academy.com slash commercial kit.

All right. See you guys soon. Bye, everybody.