Hello, hello, and welcome back to the Business First Creatives podcast. It is late in the afternoon here, and so I'm gonna apologize in advance. I get a bit punchy in the afternoon. My brain doesn't, you know, it doesn't fire on all cylinders the way that it does first thing in the morning. But I started to record this podcast earlier and I didn't finish, and I'm like, no, it's a topic that I really wanna get like recorded. And so today's podcast episode is brought to you by a random post that I saw on Facebook. Um, it's not really important where it was or who is actually in this group. The bottom line of the post was how long did it take for you to make an income doing this work? Okay. and I read it and I couldn't help think to myself, okay, but I made money from day one.

Like, what's the real question that you're asking? And so that is what I actually wanna talk about today. Because I feel like entrepreneurs, especially women, and especially photographers, dance around money. we don't like to talk about it. You know, it's like this hidden secret and it really doesn't need to be, but there's a few reasons why we do that.

Some of them are valid and some of them are not. Like, for example, if I ask you how much money you make, some people say, oh, well I made this much, but, and then they always follow up with you know some things to kind of clarify that number. Like, oh, you know, but I had really high expenses, or, oh, but I didn't have a lot of time to work.

It's like we don't just state the number and then move on. But the reason that I wanna talk about this today is because I don't think asking when you started to make income is the question that we should all be asking. The question should be, how many years in this business did it take for you to be profitable?

How many years in this business did it take for you to replace the salary of whatever job you were doing before you became an entrepreneur, before you became a photographer? Like, those are much more nuanced conversations and they would honestly be a lot more helpful to people who are trying to figure out and navigate their way to being an entrepreneur..

As photographers, sometimes when we're trying to figure out our own pricing, we don't, we don't do it in the best way. We go to all our competition in the area. We look at all of their websites. We're like, oh, so-and-so is charging $600 for a session. And she seems to be doing really well. Her work is beautiful.

She seems to have a lot of clients on social media and on her website, so I think I'm just gonna charge 600. Now, this is where we get into trouble. This is why, not really discussing the price, but discussing the money in the most general terms can actually be harmful. Every single entrepreneur has their own needs, their own expenses, their own goals, and their own idea of what success is inside of their business.

So just because Susie up the block is charging $1,200 for her service and it's all inclusive, doesn't necessarily mean that you can go in the exact same area and charge $1,200 and have the same level of success as Susie. First of all, do you need the same level of success? Do the two of you, do the two of you even agree on what success is in your business?

I mean, this is, when I tell you, keep your eyes on your own paper . I'm sorry. That's the professor in the and like I already said, it's late in the afternoon. Um, but I am more concerned every time I coach someone, or every time someone asks me for pricing advice, I wanna know what your situation is. Like, did you used to have a nine to five job?

And if so, how much money were you making? Do you need to replace that full salary? Like, is that your goal or do you have a goal of making more than you used to make at your old job? What kind of expenses do you have? How old is your equipment? Um, you know, what are your overhead costs? What are you outsourcing in your business? 

Like these are all questions that every single entrepreneur that you talk to is going to have a different response for it, and that's okay. There is no blueprint guys for being a hundred percent successful inside your business. But I will tell you one thing that almost every single successful person that I have met as an entrepreneur has, and that's confidence.

If you are confident in the work and the service that you are producing, if you are confident in the prices that you are currently charging, in the long term, you are going to be more successful than someone, who puts a price out into the world and doesn't believe in it. They're not committed to it. So of course, the first no that they get, they're like, oh, is it my price?

Is it too high? And guys, I'm not gonna rehash my conversation in episode one of this podcast. I'm gonna link it in the show notes. If you have not listened to that podcast episode, please go back and listen to it, because that's where I talk about all of the things that could be contributing to someone telling you no, and the price of your offer is usually not the problem. So if you haven't listened to that episode, please go back.

So in conclusion, to bring it back around because I'm tired and I feel like I need an nap, when you are trying to consider whether or not your business is successful, whether or not you need to come up with a new marketing plan, whether or not it's time to adjust your prices up or maybe even down, I want you to make sure that you are making these decisions with the right information.

And so if you are someone that is new to the industry, it is absolutely not wrong for you to ask in a group for some transparency about how much money people are making. I just wanna make sure that when someone tells you that information, no matter how high it is or how low it is, that you come up with a plan for yourself, that you feel good about, that is within your capacity and your skillset, so that at the end of the day, it doesn't feel like you're trying to put on a costume of someone else's business. You have built a business that is based on your needs and the offers that you want to put out into the world. All right, guys.

That's it for this podcast episode. See you next time.