Freedom Focus Photography

Revolutionizing Online Sales with Courtney Bryson

• Nicole Begley, Courtney Bryson • Episode 277

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277 - What if you could streamline your photography sales process, save time, and still hit $6K average sales? 

This week, I’m chatting with Courtney Bryson of CM Bryson Photography, who’s mastered a unique approach to client sales. Living in a town of just 800 people, Courtney has found innovative ways to serve her clients through boutique, high-touch experiences—even without in-person meetings. 

Tune in to learn how her hybrid video sales method is transforming her business and what it can do for yours!
 
 What to Listen For:

  • The simple tools Courtney uses to implement her hybrid sales process.
  • How to design pre-session consultations that set clients up for success.
  • Why pre-designed albums and wall art galleries are game-changers.
  • Courtney’s approach to managing client expectations with video presentations.
  • The importance of showing clients physical samples—no matter your sales method.
  • How Courtney’s sales averages have steadily grown to $6,000 (and beyond!).
  • A step-by-step walkthrough of her sales workflow, from inquiry to final product.
  • Who should consider this hybrid video sales approach—and what you’ll need to get started.

Courtney’s hybrid video sales method proves that you can simplify your workflow, serve clients better, and increase your average sales—all while having more time freedom. If you’re looking for a way to enhance your client experience and boost your profitability, this episode is a must-listen!

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Nicole (00:00)
There's always been this great debate about live sales, in-person sales, or Zoom sales versus an online gallery. And by and large, in the past, online galleries were not the best choice often for those running a boutique business. However, today in the podcast, have Courtney Bryson on,

And she has created an online gallery workflow that includes online galleries, plus the little secret sauce that enables her to still get consistent $6,000 average sales from using online galleries. If you have a boutique business and if you want to serve your clients at a nice high level, you are definitely going to want to listen to this episode. Stay tuned.

Nicole Begley (00:38)
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 to $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 (01:38)
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Freedom Focus Photography podcast. I'm your host, Nicole Begley, and we have a hat trick guest back with us today. Courtney Bryson from small town in Georgia. She runs CM Bryson Photography and Courtney is just awesome. So she was on this podcast two other times, episode 41, where she has found tremendous success as a full-time pet photographer in a town of 800 people. It's a much requested re-listen.

when people are always like, how do I get success in my small town? I'm like, go listen to Courtney's podcast. And then also number 162, which is what you need to know to partner with rescues because Courtney also is very involved in rescues and you guys run one of your own, right? Yeah, awesome. I love it. So Courtney, welcome back to the podcast.

Courtney (02:22)
Great.

Yeah, I'm super excited to be back.

Nicole (02:27)
Yay. Awesome. So glad that you're here. For people that maybe haven't listened to those previous podcast episodes, can you give us just a super high level overview of your path in business, of how long you've been in business and kind of what that looked like?

Courtney (02:43)
Yeah, so I started pet photography in like 2018, mostly just photographing my foster dogs and other foster dogs in the rescue I was working with at the time as a way to market them because I had a marketing and sales job. And so I kind of wanted to take that and put it into these foster dogs.

From there I kind of started getting requests to take photos of other people's dogs and I officially started my business at the end of 2019 and I plan to go full-time in 2020. So I guess I'm moving now into my sixth official year as a full-time pet photographer and I live out in the middle of nowhere. I'm about an hour from any major city.

Now we're less than a thousand people from our last one. So we're a really small town. We don't have a red light.

Nicole (03:38)
You didn't even have internet until recently. Like the last podcast you did was from your car because you had satellite internet at home.

Courtney (03:40)
Yeah, why should we get internet?

Yes, I was sitting in a parking lot to connect to Wi-Fi.

Nicole (03:50)
Amazing, amazing. my gosh. So you guys, literally, I don't want any excuses of, can't make this work because my town's too small. Courtney was making it work without internet. Amazing. my gosh. Okay. So yeah, if you guys want some more history on her background, definitely go listen to those past two episodes. Especially, yeah, it's just, really, really eye-opening and really, really good.

So one of the reasons we want to have Courtney back on to the show is because she has a really fun new way of doing some in-person sales that are not in person. So we've talked a lot about here and you guys know that I am a huge believer in what I've been calling live sales. So some way to be with your client as they make decisions and

often that has been in person or especially since the pandemic on like a Zoom or a phone call or something like that. But Courtney, you've started to change it a little bit from that. give us again, kind of what is your sales process been as you've gone through your business? Because your business has always been a boutique business. So you've always been serving clients at a high level, focusing on artwork, having fairly high session averages.

So what has that sales process kind of looked like? Does it ebb and flowed?

Courtney (05:07)
Yeah, so I pretty much started with in-person sales. I came from selling high-end bridle and that kind of thing, and so I knew how to sell to people in person. I also knew that I didn't want to just leave my clients with all the work of trying to decide what to print and how to print it and on what mediums and all of the things that we do. It just didn't feel right. And then I kind of ran into an issue when

COVID happened and suddenly we couldn't do anything in person and I had no internet. So I tried to like drive and like sit in a parking lot and connect to wifi. Like we did our podcast interview so that I could talk to my clients, which was weird to try and bring samples in your car while you're sitting there. So that wasn't, that didn't really work. Plus most of my clients wanted to either meet in the evenings or on weekends. like,

Nicole (05:51)
Yeah.

Courtney (06:01)
I couldn't go into the library where I was at one point using their little conference room because they weren't open. And so I was just kind of, I kind of felt a little lost for a minute. I thought about like, okay, do I just have to go to an all-inclusive model and just hand over files? And I still just didn't feel like that was right for me. So this was also the same time that you had started talking about Loom.

Nicole (06:10)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Courtney (06:26)
and being

able to record these videos on your computer and then sending them out, which I thought was brilliant. So I took that idea and instead applied it to my clients. So I would sit here in front of my computer, turn on Loom, give a sales presentation. I'm holding up samples. I'm talking about the things that I'm doing. I've created a gallery that I walk through with them that has their proof images.

pre-designed album and pre-designed wall art so that I'm telling them like this is what you should do with your images. And that's really, really worked. So I've kind of perfected and tweaked it over the last four years, almost moving here and now it's live to figure out a great system.

Nicole (06:58)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

I love that. I love that so much because yeah, I think the reason that the live sales as I call them work is because people don't know what to do with their images, right? Like they come to reach out to us and they're like, I just know I want photos of my dog and I don't know, do we do prints and digital files? Because they don't really realize there's other things. know, hopefully now we're starting to put more artwork on our websites. We're talking more about that. So maybe now they're coming in knowing maybe they want some artwork, but still that's a.

That's a lot to ask them to figure out that they know that they want that and what size and where to put it. And they think that 11 by 14 is like the really big one. So being able to offer that kind of level of service, I think is really, really important. And I've always been a big proponent of the looms and having a way for people to connect with you.

I think it's really important in the inquiry phase of things, but it can also work throughout the process as you've discovered for sales. So yeah, this is really, really great. So tell us if you could like give us maybe a high level overview of kind of what your process, your workflow looks like when people are interested in the session, they're at your website, are you doing a Zoom or a Loom or anything as the front end to book them? Kind of what does that process look like for you?

Courtney (08:29)
Yeah, so typically people are reaching out from my website, so some kind of email inquiry. From there, I will often record a short video on my phone and I text it to them, letting them know I got their email and I've replied so that they can find it if it goes to spam. And to kind of reach out, let me know that you've got that. Let them know that I'd love to jump on a quick phone call with them to talk about what they're looking for. I still find that phone call in the beginning is really helpful.

Nicole (08:39)
nice.

Courtney (08:57)
kind of be able to tailor the session to what they're looking for, give them a ballpark of what we're looking at, kind what the scope of their project is. Once we've done that, from there, they either book or don't book. If we book, then they go through like a questionnaire process so that we can narrow down where we're gonna do the session, because I work on location and most of the time I'm traveling out closer to my clients because I live far out.

Nicole (09:21)
Hahaha.

Courtney (09:21)
And then we have the session, usually during the session, I'm also kind of talking to them. I always bring samples with me so that they have a chance to like hold an album, see a small piece of wall art, kind of have like the same thing printed on a canvas and a metal and a paper print so they can see what those differences are. So they get a chance to...

Nicole (09:38)
Mm-hmm.

Courtney (09:42)
see and touch and hold before we get to the sales process where they get that video so they can kind of go back and think about the things that they got to see at the end of their session so they kind of know what they're getting.

Nicole (09:46)
Yeah.

Yeah, no, I think that's a really important piece is that they are able to see, touch, feel and hold some of our work at some point. Doesn't have to be during the sales session, but I think if we can try to make sure that happens at some point during the process, then they can see that this is not like the same quality of something they're going to get it like Shutterfly or some random consumer lab online. I think that's really important piece. Awesome. Yeah, good.

Courtney (10:15)
Right. Yeah, throughout the process,

like everything I talk about is that, you know, my clients, 95 % of them get an album and then they add on the wall art. So it's like before we ever get to the sales thing, they know this is what we're which is really helpful. And so then when we get there, I'm just showing them this is what we've talked about. This is the way it now looks on your images.

Nicole (10:29)
Mm-hmm.

Yes.

my gosh. That is another great point. I've always said for a long time, the sale happens long before the sales room. So it's happening during that education piece, before they book with you, when you're talking with them, when you're planning your session, when you're showing them the samples, like all of that is when that sale is actually made. So by the time your clients now get to the sales portion, like they already know what to expect. So now it's more just a choosing those final details.

So that's one reason that can work really well for you. I love that. So can you tell us a little bit about your pricing? Is it all a cart? Do you have collections? What does that look like?

Courtney (11:15)
Yeah, so I have collections and I kind of found that it was helpful doing the video sales to kind of give my clients a box to gravitate towards because it still just kind of felt a little overwhelming.

Nicole (11:25)
Mm-hmm.

Courtney (11:29)
And then we can kind customize from there. So the collections are really based around the album because my clients buy an album. So we kind of which size and how many images in their album. And then each collection includes like a credit towards their wall art.

So they're getting an album, which includes the digital files of that album, plus something to kind of start moving them towards the wall art piece, which is the next step in the process for them.

Nicole (11:47)
Love it.

love that. I love that. And then are they choosing which collection they want at the sale session? So when they book with you, it just this is the one session I do. I'm showing everybody the same amount of images, and then they're choosing their collection? Or is it when they're booking, they have to kind of fall into a collection at that

Courtney (12:18)
So when they're booking, there is just the session fee to kind of get started, which includes a small credit towards their collection, and then they're actually deciding their collection after the sales session.

Nicole (12:26)
Yeah.

OK, I love that. love that. people go outside the collections? OK, all right, how does how have you noticed with the way that you're doing your sales? Or has it changed the number of people that do collections versus not or a la carte? Have you noticed a shift in that or has it been pretty consistent?

Courtney (12:34)
Yes.

It is pretty consistent. I would say 90 % of my people choose a collection. Typically the ones that are gonna go outside of the collection, we find that out kind of during their discovery call and we're creating something different from the beginning. So I recently photographed for a client, him and his fiance ride polo horses and he knew he wanted a big art piece of the four polo horses.

Nicole (12:49)
Yeah.

Hmm.

I love it.

Courtney (13:13)
is that's really all we did. That's all we shot for. We kind of went in, this was our plan. Those are the people that know little more what they want, and so they kind of recustomize a little more for them.

Nicole (13:16)
Yep. I love that. So much so fun.

Yeah, I love that. I've had a couple clients like that too, where they came in. There was one woman that just wanted a photo of her granddaughter and her daughter's dogs for a Christmas gift. And so we did the session. We created enough images to have plenty of selection of that shot for the wall. And then it was like, would you want me to take some of just the dog? She's like, no, no, just the sit. So I mean, it was.

It was great. It was such an easy session. shot for like 20 minutes and it was a beautiful wall piece that we did. I'm like, I will do this all day long. That was fantastic. Especially I don't have to travel quite as far. So that does make a little bit of a difference. But yeah, no, I love.

Courtney (13:53)
Yeah.

Nicole (14:01)
I love this and I think one of the biggest lessons that all of you guys listening should take away is how much of the process is contingent on Courtney's pre-session consultation, right? Like if you took away that pre-session consultation, I feel like this would be a much harder way to make work because people might not have any idea kind of what they want. Like when they're going into the sale session, you've already talked with them so much about what the options are and kind of where they

they want to enjoy their images. at that point, it's like, all right, here's your images. Here's what we talked about.

Courtney (14:36)
And I think even when you're doing in-person sales or Zoom sales, having all of those pre things, just makes the sales process not feel like a sales process. Yeah.

Nicole (14:40)
Mm-hmm.

Right, right. It's so fun. It's my favorite

part because we get to like decide how we're going to showcase these images that we're so excited for. So, yeah, I 100 % agree. Okay, so they book, you have your consultations, you have the session, they see things. What's kind of the next piece? How long do they wait till they have to see their images and kind of take us through that last half of it?

Courtney (15:09)
Yeah, so after the session, we kind of go back to the cars. I show them the samples. I let them know, you know, kind of my next steps that I go home. I'm going to lightly edit everything, you get rid of the blinks and the silly faces and those kind of things. And to let them know to expect their images in about two weeks.

I usually turn them around in a week and in that week I have a series of emails that go out automatically. So one goes out and talks about like why people choose an album. One goes out and talks about like how to decide where you're going to hang your wall art in your house. So that, you know, I'm kind of letting the automation process do a little work for me there while I'm working on the images. I don't fully edit everything. You know, I'm just running them through Lightroom.

Nicole (15:49)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Courtney (15:56)
From there, I pre-design the album. I use Fundy, I've used Smart Albums in the past. They all work. And I'm pre-designing the wall art for them. So I use Framesuite to design my wall art. I usually will show them, I try to show everybody four different arrangements. So one that's like a big single piece that would go like over a mantle or over a couch. One that's like a three piece gallery.

Nicole (16:03)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Courtney (16:24)
that I found just kind of works really well for my clients. Like it lets you feel like you're getting a gallery wall without it being a really big gallery wall. Then I'll show you, I'll show them some other kind of gallery wall. So usually like a five to seven piece gallery wall as a bigger piece. And then one other design. And that's usually something that we've talked about. Like if they know they wanted something for their kids room with the kids and their dogs, I'll do something for that.

Nicole (16:37)
Okay.

Awesome.

Are you getting photos from them of those walls then for this presentation?

Courtney (16:55)
I ask, I don't often get them.

Nicole (16:56)
Okay, so are you then just pulling in like a couch or just like more generic? Yep.

Courtney (17:00)
Yeah, so I'm just using block

images for my roots.

Nicole (17:04)
Okay, gotcha,

gotcha. That's good to know. you noticed a decrease? Because I find that it's sometimes harder to get those images. I think just because everyone's so much busier than we ever have been. And when you start to look at the client experience you want to give, we don't want to make our clients do any work. So yeah, have you noticed a shift in, did it used to be easier? Is it more difficult now? Or have you noticed also a shift in?

It sounds like the sales have not changed if you're using stock versus their own.

Courtney (17:35)
Yeah, so my sales average has been kind of slowly increasing over the last four years. You know, as I get to be a better salesperson, as costs have gone up, you know, that's part of it too. You know, I offer a little more high-end items than I used to.

Nicole (17:40)
Yeah.

Yep.

Courtney (17:50)
But I haven't really seen a difference whether they show me a picture of their couch or if I'm just showing them a couch. Most people's fireplaces are about the same size. Most people's couches are about the same size. Like they know like, this my couch also seats three people, you know, has three cushions, this will work. And if I get a client that's like, I'm just really not sure, then sometimes after they've seen their presentation, they'll send me a picture of their room.

Nicole (17:57)
Yeah.

nice.

Courtney (18:18)
as a way to like, just let's just make sure that this is gonna be perfect for you. But even that's rare. Most clients are like, yeah, this is the same size as my couch, this makes sense.

Nicole (18:21)
Yeah.

Perfect, I love that. Yeah, and that's a really good point too, that you're still available to give them assistance and letting them know, hey, here's the gallery, here's the other way. Are you offering that when you send the gallery? Are you offering them, hey, if you wanna see what these look like on your actual wall, you can send me a photo.

Courtney (18:48)
Yeah, so because I'm going through the gallery with them, you know, because we look through the album, I let them know, you know, if you really love this image that I've chosen to be smaller, you want it to be big, we can make that swap. We can do some customizing to pick the image that's going to go on the front cover of your album. And the same thing kind of with the wall art. So I'll be like, you know, these are my favorite images if this was my session of my dog, these are the ones that I would choose.

Nicole (19:00)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Courtney (19:14)
If there's another one that you really love, we can swap them out. If you want to see what this looks like on your walls, send me a picture of your wall. So that they kind of feel like this isn't like I'm just delivering it to you and that's it. It's more like this is what I would do. I call them like my artist selection. But let me know if you want to customize something.

Nicole (19:25)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, no, that's great. people are hiring us, especially at this price point when you're in the several thousand dollars and above price point that they're hiring us for artistic vision. You know, it's not just photographs at this point. So they want to know what we recommend. so whether you're doing kind of this hybrid sales or zoom or in person or whatever, like, don't be afraid to share what you think would work really well. So yes, I love that.

Courtney (19:59)
Yeah, I think 95

% of my clients are like, no, I want the album the way that you designed it. And so I always design it to fit in my biggest collection.

Nicole (20:04)
Yeah, same.

Yeah. I love it. That's great. So yeah, so you mentioned, yeah, you different collections. And so your album is kind of the anchor of your collections. And it gets bigger. Does it have different finishes as you go higher, or is it just really more images?

Courtney (20:21)
It's really kind of more images and they go from like the two smaller collections have an eight by eight album and the biggest collection has a 10 by 10. So you get a little bit bigger as you go up.

Nicole (20:26)
Yep. OK, I love it. Yep.

Awesome. OK, and then when you are sending them your gallery with the Loom video kind of talking about what we just talked about, like, hey, here's my recommendations. Here are the different options. Everything can be customized. How long do they have? Do you talk with them before of a, you know, like,

I'm gonna send it to you on Thursday and you have like three days. Like is there any sort of urgency or limitation around how long they have to get back to you?

Courtney (21:01)
Yeah, I give them seven days to sit. And so I let them know up front, as we're finishing the session, these are the next steps, you'll get your gallery, you have seven days. I try to make sure, I want seven days, because I want there to always be at least one weekend, because that's when I find most people are looking at it. So they've got time usually to sit down together and kind of go through those.

Nicole (21:03)
OK.

Mm-hmm.

Courtney (21:22)
And I would say every year I have one or two people that contact me and either need an extension or, you know, I've told them that they should expect about two weeks and I'm really turning them around in a week and they're like, oh, we're on vacation. And I'm like, okay, I'll just turn it off and I'll turn it back on when you get in. And that's kind of worked.

Nicole (21:34)
Mm hmm. Yeah.

Okay.

Have you found that you've had anybody that has like paid the session fee and then you're sending them the gallery and they don't follow through? That's my biggest concern with sending things online is that, you know, even though we can watermark them, like people can screenshot and you know, I worry unless, I mean, your initial investment might be enough to deter that, but just wondering your experience with that.

Courtney (22:05)
Yeah, so my session fee is $12.90 and that includes $1,000 towards whatever they're gonna buy at the end. So I think that kind of helps. It's a big enough barrier that you don't wanna just leave that. In all the years that I've been doing this, I've only ever had two clients that didn't and it was actually a mom and then two years later her daughter, which I thought was bizarre. And they were both end of life sessions. And I think it was more like they just weren't ready to see the images.

Nicole (22:11)
Yep.

Mm-hmm.

Ha

Yeah.

Courtney (22:33)
But those are the only ones that I've ever had that are like, you know, just don't ever hear from it. It's just gonna disappear.

Nicole (22:37)
but didn't do anything.

Yeah, gotcha. Do you have any sort of urgency like after the seven days if they haven't decided that price has increased or there's a re-gallery fee or anything like that to encourage?

Courtney (22:51)
I just haven't had to deal with it. Yeah, so I think because we talk about it so many times, like this is the way that it works, that it's just the way that it works. There's not a lot of kind of wishy washy, I don't know what's next. I do send them an email as we reach day five if I haven't heard from them. I use CloudSpot for my gallery so I can see if they've logged in.

Nicole (22:52)
That's fantastic. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Courtney (23:13)
If they haven't logged in, I would probably give them a call. But most people are so excited. I can see the second I send out the email, like Loom notifies me that they've watched the video, and then CloudSpot notifies me that they've seen it. Even if they're not making decisions that first day, they're going in and looking.

Nicole (23:17)
Yeah.

Yeah, no, I love that. That's fantastic.

do you think there's some photographers that would definitely benefit from this or maybe other photographers that maybe are not ready for this stuff in their business? Who do you think would benefit most from possibly testing this out if it sounds like something that they might be interested in?

Courtney (23:47)
Yeah, I think this is really great for photographers either like me that live really far out from their clients, photographers that have like a super busy outside life. So I also run a dog rescue. We primarily do medically fragile dogs. So I might be tube feeding puppies every two hours. So getting out for a session is hard, much less doing a multi-hour ordering thing. So if you had, or if you had young human kids, you know, they're hard to leave without a big process of arranging childcare and all of those kinds of things that go into it.

Nicole (24:04)
Yeah.

Okay.

Courtney (24:16)
I think this fits really well for those people. It also works really well, I think, you wanted to try and do something at a slightly higher volume but still have a high touch experience. know, my videos now, it takes me about 15 minutes from start to finish to kind of record it so that I'm, I feel like I'm saving a lot of time, but I can do them a little bit faster.

Nicole (24:19)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Courtney (24:39)
If like in the fall when I'm busiest, I will kind of set a day aside to batch everything I've shot that month. I'll record all those videos in one day. I only have to do my hair one day.

Nicole (24:53)
mean, that

is truly the biggest limitation here. Let's be real.

Courtney (24:57)
Yeah.

that

I could just sit down and do it. So like that's been really helpful. So I think you could make it work if you wanted to do either a higher volume or like I still work part-time in photography business. You're kind of by choice. So this lets me do that because I'm not out and about so much.

Nicole (25:10)
Yeah.

Yeah, no, that's brilliant. What do you think people need to have in place in order for this to be successful? Like for instance, like they definitely need to have a strong education process going through this, because I would imagine if it's just a, yeah, let's go shoot and okay, now here, go choose your images. Like I feel like that education piece coming through is critical. I mean, for any higher sale and higher experience, but.

certainly for this, is there anything else that you feel like just has to be in place in order for this to be successful?

Courtney (25:52)
So I think you have to know how you want your clients to enjoy your artwork.

know, our clients, a lot of times come to us and they have no idea what they want. Even if they have a vague idea that they might want something on the wall, they don't really know if they want a canvas or a medal or a print or what frame or if they want it framed at all. is it like there's just so many options that I think, you know, knowing as an artist the way I want my work to be enjoyed is really helpful so that I'm kind of giving them all of that direction.

Nicole (26:11)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Courtney (26:22)
when I'm telling them this is how these images are best enjoyed.

Nicole (26:26)
Yeah, I love it. And then for your artworks, I know you said you'd love to specialize in albums and then add on the artwork. I'm more of an artwork forward, album secondary. But you know, we all have the different things that we love. Do you have a lot of different types of artwork? Have you found it challenging for people to choose like, which finish or framing and things like that? Is that resulted in a lot of back and forth? Or do they usually kind of take your suggestions?

Courtney (26:53)
they almost always take my suggestion. And I think that kind of comes down to the confidence of saying like, I designed this for you, this image will look beautiful as a canvas. do have, basically there is framed wall art or there is like the guild canvas painted canvases.

Nicole (26:55)
I love it.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Courtney (27:12)
are kind of really the only choice that they have to make. Whereas, you know, the painted canvases are much more expensive. And then all of the others, whether they, whatever finish they pick is all priced the same. So it's just picking the right sizes. And then I'm telling them this is the right finish. And I'm telling them this is the right frame. And every once in a while, someone will be like, I see you picked a black frame, but everything in my house is brown wood.

Nicole (27:18)
Mm-hmm.

Okay, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, okay.

Yeah.

Courtney (27:40)
doesn't happen very often.

Nicole (27:43)
Okay, I love that. Are you asking people during the consultation kind of the style of their house or what they might like?

Courtney (27:49)
Yeah, so I do ask them like what colors they love in decorating. What are some, like how would they describe their style in their home to kind of help give me some parameters when I'm picking out what I want to put in there for them.

Nicole (27:56)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. my

gosh. This has been so, so, so good. It just goes to show there's so many different ways that we can run our business and be successful. I think one important thing that we can always ask ourselves for ourselves and our clients is I think it's a really good exercise maybe once a year to kind of go through our entire client experience and kind of looking at all from the client side, looking at all from our side and ask ourselves,

you know, it be streamlined? Can it be better from the client's experience? Like, how can I make this easier for them? So you've made this so much easier for them in terms of they can do it on their own time. You're giving them so many suggestions and they're taking them. So that's obviously working. And, know, and I love that that you're not forcing to get a picture of their wall because, you know, it's working without that too. So

Like having that that that ability there. I know I've given my clients a little bit more choice in things over the past couple years. Like I'll still have some in person sales in my home. The only reason I'm bummed that I don't anymore is because I got a big 40 by 60 acrylic that I can't really take anywhere. But like when they come here they get to see it. It's like but I want everyone to see that. But you can do that digitally a little bit too. Anyway.

I just went off the rails and forget what I was going to say. just asking ourselves, like, how can I make this easier for my client? Because just because something has been done in the industry for 10, 20 years doesn't mean we have to do it that way. I know when I looked at the experience and I was like, all right, what's one of the biggest client pain points? For me, I would look at and be like, they don't really know what things are going to cost. You know, that there's so much

So much kind of not hidden, but like we don't tell them until after we've started the process. And so I was like, how can I make this easy? All right, let me have some collections that are available for people to kind of see what could be included or letting them know like, you know, more upfront kind of what things are going to cost or making things more transparent. And so you've kind of done that with the sales piece of like, all right, how can I make this work for me? How can I make this work for them? And it's working really, really well. So.

Courtney (30:17)
I think that's

the best part of running our own business is that we get to be our own boss and we can make our own things up.

Nicole (30:22)
Yeah,

yeah. And we can just test different things. And like if you had tested this and it didn't work and then you were like, my gosh, I went from, you know, $4,000 average sale to $2,000 average sale. Okay. You probably would have tried something else, but are tested or tweaked it until you could continue on. But, I mean, it sounds like it's working really well. Like you said, your average sale continues to rise, which is fantastic.

Courtney (30:34)
Yeah, it's right here.

Yeah,

just under 6000 now. Yes.

Nicole (30:47)
Oh my gosh, that's so much more even though when I talked to you last, I was just going

to say, do you mind sharing because I don't want people to think, oh, well, what is a high, you know, thinking that it's like, oh, she's getting $1,500 sales like you're doing what I consider a lux business. Like you are in the the the highest echelon of portrait photographer experiences and price points, which is like a $5,000 plus average sale. And yeah.

Courtney (31:12)
Yeah, and I've sold everything

from, like I said, the average is about $6,000. I have clients that have spent as much as $15,000 on these video sales. So I think it works for a lot of different reasons.

Nicole (31:20)
Wow. Yeah.

Yeah.

I would say it works. It definitely works. Oh my gosh, this has been so great. Courtney, thank you for sharing this so much. Can you let people know where they can find out, follow you, connect with you, and then where they can learn more about this process if they want to.

Courtney (31:45)
Yeah, so I am on all the socials as CM Bryson. My website is cmbryson.com, so that makes it easy. And I'm working on creating a course for the video sales, so people can visit cmbryson.com and click for photographers and get on the wait list if they wanna know more about this process.

Nicole (32:04)
Yeah, cool. Awesome. Thank you for being so open and sharing with us. I think that gives a lot of people some ideas for food for thought for, know, if this could work for their business and sounds like definitely can. I love it. I love it so much. So thank you again for being here. You guys reach out to Courtney, let her know that you appreciated her sharing this and we will see you next week.