Recorded: Welcome to The Rework with Allison Tyler Jones, a podcast dedicated to inspiring portrait photographers to uniquely brand, profitably price, and confidently sell their best work. Allison has been doing just that for the last 15 years, and she’s proven that it’s possible to create unforgettable art and run a portrait business that supports your family and your dreams. All it takes is a little rework. Episodes will include interviews with experts from in and outside of the photo industry, many workshops and behind the scenes secrets that Allison uses in her portrait studio every single day. She will challenge your thinking and inspire your confidence to create a profitable, sustainable portrait business you love through continually refining and reworking your business. Let’s do the rework.
Allison Tyler Jones: Hi friends, and welcome back to The Rework. There’s no lack of education out there when it comes to photography. Tutorials abound on YouTube. Instagram, seems like everybody’s got a class, everybody’s selling something, and how do you figure it out and weed through all of that? Well, today’s guest is going to help us with that, Ms. Angela Kurkian, who is the director of education for Professional Photographers of America, and she is going to help us navigate where to get good solid education, and you’ll be happy to know that so much of this information is absolutely free. So join me with Angela Kurkian. She’s a ray of sunshine. She’s so smart. We’re going to talk about all things education in the photography industry. Let’s do it.
Allison Tyler Jones: Well, I would love to welcome my dear friend, Angela Kurkian, who also just happens to be the director of education for Professional Photographers of America back to the podcast studio. Welcome, Angela.
Angela Kurkian: Thanks, Allison. You know I always love, love, love talking to you. I admire you so greatly, so thank you. Thanks so much for having me.
Allison Tyler Jones: Right back at you. And you just showed me a Facebook memory on your phone that six years ago today we were at my studio filming Photo Vision.
Angela Kurkian: Yes.
Allison Tyler Jones: And we can’t believe it’s been six years. That’s crazy.
Angela Kurkian: That is nuts. And I love this picture. If you want to put it in your show notes, I’ll send it to you so everybody can see it.
Allison Tyler Jones: It’s basically how I think everybody that I know feels right now. It’s not a flattering picture, let’s just put it that way. We’ll put that in the show notes and you can see. Okay. So I wanted to have you back on the podcast because you’ve had a little bit of a journey. You were director of education for PPA, you took a break, you came back, and so we’re going to talk about both things. But first I want to talk about the idea of education, like workshops, attending conferences. There just seems to be so much out there and I think it can be confusing. But I wanted to just talk to you about the idea of education, what you think is important from a standpoint of even a new photographer, maybe a photographer that’s been in business for a while, and then especially those that are long-term, that have been in the business for a long time. So talk to me about education. What are your thoughts? Yes, thoughts and feelings and emotions.
Angela Kurkian: So what’s interesting about education, so I’ve been a member since ’94 and I feel like I’ve lived through so much. Yeah, a member of PPA for a long time, going on 30 years. And so I’ve seen a lot and I’ve witnessed so much change from film to digital and just the growth. And now we’re moving into AI. There’s just always this amazing amount of change. In that, also, one of the things I found interesting is I was reading something recently and it said that education is one of the fastest growing industries right now. Everybody’s an educator. Everybody’s wanting to teach something, sell something, show something.
Angela Kurkian: And I love the idea that we are capable of sharing our knowledge and sharing our experiences faster, better, stronger than ever before, which is fascinating because it used to be, I think when PPA first started back in 1868, they met, they had an Imaging USA back then called conference. It wasn’t called Imaging USA back then, but they had a conference back then and they had to meet in person to actually share the science of photography to actually share what they have learned throughout the entire year with one another person to person. And there was relationships built, and we actually have a photograph here on our wall here at PPA showing that very first conference back then.
Angela Kurkian: And nowadays, you can just go Google anything, you can just go on YouTube. How do I light a high school senior? You’re going to get a million different things coming up. And in that, I feel like we’ve also lost something. I was listening to an amazing podcast by Vivek Murthy is the US Surgeon General, and he was being interviewed by Krista Tippett on her On Being podcast. He talked about just how all of the things that are meant to unite us and bring us together actually serve to divide us. They aren’t doing the thing that we thought they would do.
Angela Kurkian: So when I think about education, I think of it in multi-levels. It’s not just a, it looks like this or it looks like this because I think it can look like a lot of different things, and I think the best is when you layer all those things together so that it’s not just I’m getting all my education on YouTube, I’m getting all my education in one way or another, or I’m waiting every year to go to Imaging before I educate myself. You don’t want to be on either side of that, and there’s just so much. There’s just so much out there. I think one of the challenges is discerning where do I go for great information? One of my loves and Allison knows this is business education. We are dedicated here at PPA to really helping people understand what it means to create a profitable and sustainable business. And we’ve been saying that for years.
Angela Kurkian: PPA did the benchmarking surveys, which were designed to help people understand what a profitable and sustainable business looked like. And so they did five of those studies over a period of 15 years and came up with some really fantastic benchmarks that are available to people to understand, one, how to budget, how to budget their money, how to spend their money, how to create sales projections, to understand what kind of marketing plan they might need to create. There’s so much that comes out of just understanding what those numbers are, and so just knowing that that’s our foundation. If I could say anything to anybody, I would say start with PPA for business education, y’all. I am a huge proponent of mentors because I think mentors launch you to a stratosphere based on your unique capabilities, what you bring to the table and a good mentor will know you, will understand what you’re doing and help you be the best you, not be the best them, right?
Allison Tyler Jones: Right. Exactly. Love that. You’re preaching to the choir on that one for sure. Okay, so let’s talk about PPA for a minute because this isn’t meant to be a PPA education ad, but I am a huge fan. I am where I am today because of PPA, the foundation that PPA set for me. And two, I started my business in 2005. In 2006, I attended, which is where we met, 2006, the Studio Management Services had a workshop, and it was what they do in the pre-convention stuff now, but it was like one day where Scott talked about taxes and everybody wanted to put a gun in their mouth, and then the next day was marketing and fun things, but you had to come with your numbers. They assigned you a mentor and just the act of coming up with your numbers, just the act of thinking about that, even if nobody ever gave you one bit of advice, that is educational in and of itself, knowing your numbers and just looking at that and realizing, “Oh, I do not make as much money as I thought I did.”
Angela Kurkian: Yes.
Allison Tyler Jones: And then we actually were part of the last two benchmark surveys that they did. Our studio was part of that and coming up with the information for that, same thing, it was like, “Oh, okay.” And then comparing those benchmarks, but the benchmark, and we’re going to link to this in the show notes, we’ll have a link to those benchmark studies, my accountant loves the benchmarks. He’s like, “Do you know how great this is that you have this for your industry? We wish all industries had this.” So that you can look at that and say, “Okay, I need to hire somebody. How much should I pay them? How much can I afford to pay for an employee? How much can I afford to pay in marketing? Or I want to go into studio space, how much can I afford to pay in rent?” And it’s all right there in percentages that just make sense, even to people that don’t know how to do math or that don’t like math.
Angela Kurkian: That’s the best part, right?
Allison Tyler Jones: It’s pretty picture. It’s infographics. That’s how I was able to access that information.
Angela Kurkian: Yeah, it’s so good. I had a business for 22 years and I was probably going a good seven years before I learned this stuff. And literally and I’ll just say numbers if you don’t mind, we did 180,000 in sales my first year in business. We popped out of the water and we just grew from there. And so it wasn’t like I was just floundering. We were working. And my craziness in my mind at the time, because I didn’t understand benchmarking and all the financial side was, “I can work hard, I can work harder, I can do more. I can just keep going. I can just keep going.”
Allison Tyler Jones: I call that the head and the plow. It’s like, just put your head in the plow, row another furrow, just keep going. Never mind that you’re not charging enough, but you’re working and people want you and you’re “busy.” Might not be profitably, but you’re busy.
Angela Kurkian: I must be doing well because I’m busy.
Allison Tyler Jones: Everybody wants me.
Angela Kurkian: You ever want to not feel frenetic when you own a job or own a business. That’s crazy talk.
Allison Tyler Jones: That’s against the law, to not be busy.
Angela Kurkian: And not know until you get to the end of the year if you made money or not. That was my life. It was like, “Oh my gosh, we made money. This is awesome.”
Allison Tyler Jones: No, and what it was, it was, oh my gosh, we made money according to the accountant who is now telling you how much you have to pay in taxes, but you don’t actually have the money to pay the taxes. And you’re like, “Wait a minute, I couldn’t possibly have made that much money and I don’t have the money to pay the taxes.” It was like the bloodletting every year and I would get so mad at my accountant and my bookkeeper. I don’t want this to happen ever again. And then it happened every single year. And so I realized the reason why that was happening is that accounting is retrospect. It’s always looking in the rearview mirror. It’s what already happened. And if you don’t have an ability to forecast and say, “This is what I want to have happen, so at the end of the year I want to have all my tax money in the bank and I want to have some cash, so then now how much do I have to make?” And that’s what that benchmark PPA, all of that is going to help you figure out.
Angela Kurkian: Figure out understanding managerial accounting, which sounds like so fancy, managerial accounting. Those are the things that make Scott really happy. My husband is our CFO, and he’s worked now at PPA, this is his 30th year, and he loves all of this stuff and loves sharing it because he loves helping people with their businesses, and he just loves those spreadsheets. So it’s not as crazy and as hard to understand once you can see the benchmarks and you understand, “Oh, okay, so everything gets put into a category and now I know where my money is coming from and I know where my money is going.” And if you’re over on a category or if you’re under on a category, which allows you to know how much to spend in a category, how much not to spend in a category, it’s so amazing to actually know what your business is doing on a day-to-day level versus waiting until the end of the year to see if you made any money.
Angela Kurkian: And that whole process of sales and sessions projections and how that then influences your marketing plan and it forces you to think about all those pieces. I feel like as a small business owner, it gave me rails. I needed somebody to say, “Do this next.” And it’s not the same for every business, and none of us are cookie cutter of anybody else. We all have to use our own minds, our own brains, think about what our definition of success means because it’s going to be different from somebody else’s. And then decide, how much do I want to work? How many vacations do I want to take? How much do I need to make? Am I a full-time business? Am I a part-time business? What does this look like? And then you get to make decisions to support your goals, your idea of success, not what someone else says success is.
Allison Tyler Jones: Well, and for me, the reason why I was hooked up with PPA a so early is that in my previous business, I had a scrapbooking retail store, and so we were really into the photography thing. So I’d gone and taken a couple of classes from different photographers, like a PPA affiliate or whatever, just from an interest from the hobbyist perspective. And so I knew of PPA, and so when I sold that store and I came into the portrait business, I knew, okay, I’ve owned a business for 12 years and I know there are rules about how that industry works, and I did not want to have to learn all those hard lessons like trial and error. I was like, “What’s the format? How do you make money in the portrait world? There’s got to be a proforma. What are the metrics that you look at?”
Allison Tyler Jones: So in the scrapbooking world or in the retail sales world, one of your big metrics is your average sale, so you need to know what that is. Our average sale was like $20. We did like a million dollars a year and a $20 average sale, so that was a lot of volume. That was a lot of people coming through. And then the other thing that I needed to know was what was my daily break even so we could know when we cashed out that register at the end of the day, were we down? Were we up? And so our portrait business is different. There is a retail side, but I think the photography industry, especially the portrait industry, which is who we’re talking to on this podcast is portrait photographers, it is an amalgam of, it is manufacturing, it’s a service, and it’s also retail. There’s three ways of looking at it that can get you in a lot of trouble,
Angela Kurkian: I have never heard anybody break it down like that. And I love what you just said. I wrote that down. I’m like, yes, yes.
Allison Tyler Jones: I think that I heard Scott Kurkian say that.
Angela Kurkian: Well, I don’t listen to him, Allison.
Allison Tyler Jones: I think I’m quoting your husband. What’s that?
Angela Kurkian: You know I don’t listen.
Allison Tyler Jones: Well, yeah, he’s your husband. What am I saying? You know we don’t listen to our husbands, yeah. When you look at manufacturing, a manufacturing business, you have to know what are your raw materials that go into making that product. You have to know, and you have to mark up those costs, and then you have to market the labor and all of that. And then retail is easier because it’s usually, I bought this pin for 50 cents, I’m selling it for a dollar, and then service, you got to bill your time. But we all know, you and I both know, that we want to ring the next of all the nice little photographers out there in the world because they’re not charging for the labor and they’re not charging for the time. They’re doing the retail, like, “Oh, well, it costs me 8×10 was $3 from the lab, and now I’m going to sell it for $20. I’m making tons of money.”
Angela Kurkian: Right, yes. Yeah, we’ve worked with so many studios, just so many case studies that it’s a mindset. It’s such a big mindset shift to understand that your time is valuable and that there actually is a process. There’s an equation that you can use to figure this out, to understand what your first unit sold needs to be. We use the 8×10 because it’s the easiest thing. It’s the thing that is the go-to thing that clients come in that are how much are your 8x10s? And helping people understand if you’re only going to sell one thing, what do you need to charge to make sure that you’re covering all of the expenses that have gone into creating that one thing, which includes all of your time, which is huge. It’s a big number.
Angela Kurkian: And I think sometimes when we do this math, if you want to make $60,000 a year, that’s about $30 an hour, think about how many hours goes into not just creating the images in the camera room, but also to calling them and then to doing any kind of retouching you want to do with them, and all the exporting and every little minute counts, every little minute counts.
Allison Tyler Jones: It’s death by a thousand cuts. Everything is only five minutes in Photoshop, times a thousand.
Angela Kurkian: Yes. And I think because we think it’s simple, I think that’s the challenge. A lot of photographers are like, “But that just takes me a minute. That’s easy.” But you know what? It’s not easy because here’s the thing, you’ve spent your life learning the things that you’ve learned to get to this point. You have a unique vision that you are bringing to the world that nobody else can replicate. You create an experience for those clients that they’re coming to you for. They aren’t just coming to you, I will preach this until the end of the earth, they are not just coming to you because you can sell them an 8×10. They’re coming to you because of the experience that they want to have with you.
Angela Kurkian: I’m going to throw this in here, Allison, because I just said this to somebody else. I just was talking about you. You did our portraits. It’s almost been five years now, which is crazy. And all my kids are extreme introverts except for one, and there is absolutely no way that I could ever have gotten those images that you got out of them myself, ever. And honestly, I think very few photographers, but you have a very unique skillset and capability or ability to make people feel comfortable to help them laugh and enjoy and have a great time. And the images that now hang on my wall that I look at every day, and I love them so much, are faces that I know intimately of my children, but that the world doesn’t often get to see.
Allison Tyler Jones: That’s so nice. I love that.
Angela Kurkian: And so a hundred percent, you guys, create the experience because my mentors early on told me that you cannot separate the experience from the image. And if you had an amazing time, if you’ve created that environment for your clients to have an amazing time, every time they look at that image, that’s what they remember. They just remember how it felt to be in that space.
Allison Tyler Jones: And the negative too. We’ve all looked at pictures that we’ve had portraits of in the past where you’re like, “Yeah, it looks like we like each other, but I was ready to sock that photographer in the throat because he kept fooling around with this camera and didn’t realize, we’ve got three toddlers here. Move it along.” Yeah, I want to back up to the that’s easy idea too. I’m sure for brain surgeons that have done many brain surgeries or heart surgeons that at this point in their career, that’s easy, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not valuable. So hard does not equal valuable and easy doesn’t equal value. Do you want a heart that works? Would you like to have it pumping blood through your body? Yes. What is that worth? What is that worth to you? There’s a number on that.
Allison Tyler Jones: Would you like your brain to work? Would you like the hematoma to be sucked out and you to be able to think and not be throwing up and not be saying gibberish? Okay, what’s that worth? There’s worth there. But somehow we think, “Well, I feel bad. I want everybody to have it.” I’m sure there’s nice little neurosurgeons out there feeling bad that they want to operate on everybody’s brain too. But the fact is there’s a value there and it’s exchange of value. Allow your clients to exchange their value for your value and provide and concentrate on making whatever it is that you’re doing for them more valuable.
Angela Kurkian: Yeah, and get out of your own way. Get out of your own way. I think I’ve seen that more than anything where it’s not that your clients won’t value you, it’s that you won’t value you.
Allison Tyler Jones: Exactly, yeah. And you know that. When have you ever been in a situation where you ask somebody, “How much is this?” And they say, “$3.” And you’re like, “You know what? I’m going to pay you $30 because I think it’s worth that.” You’re going to be like, “Sweet. I think it’s worth $30, but they’re only asking me for $3, so great.”
Angela Kurkian: Right. Truly, absolutely, truly.
Allison Tyler Jones: I love that. Okay, so back to education. We’re kind of going circuitous, but I think we’re getting there. Like you said, there are a lot of ways to learn. There’s so much on the internet. Like you say, you can do a YouTube video for anything, which is so great. When it comes to the business education though, I feel like that can be a little bit more problematic. With the technique, like how to light a senior or whatever, you can go and try that and immediately see whether you like that or not, or whether that’s going to work for you or not. With the business advice and money and that sort of thing, that takes a little bit longer to play out and some of that advice can get into your head and actually be not great.
Angela Kurkian: Yes, I agree.
Allison Tyler Jones: Have you seen that?
Angela Kurkian: A lot, yeah.
Allison Tyler Jones: What’s an example of that?
Angela Kurkian: There used to be a division of PPA called Studio Management Services where we worked with studios, and that no longer exists, but we learned so much throughout all of that. And what we would find is studios that had gone somewhere and they’re like, “Well, I went to this thing, or I went to this workshop, or I bought this thing,” and then they’re trying to implement it into their business and it’s like trying to take a square peg and put it into a round hole, none of the foundation work was done. There was no understanding of one, building up and understanding your value. I think when you go through the process of understanding what goes into creating your product, and there’s a process to that, again, we go back to valuing your time, then you understand, oh, this is valuable.
Angela Kurkian: You start to build your confidence. So there’s this confidence builder portion that I think is huge, and it is probably the biggest gap between someone coming in and then the next step where people are trying to teach them something. You can’t do the next something unless you have the confidence first, and there’s work to be done. It’s not something you’re going to wake up one day and, “Oh, I have confidence now.” No, there’s work to be done. You’ve got to put in the effort and crunch some of the numbers, understand your time, understand what you’re trying to create and what your, again, definition of success is. So then what would happen is these people would come in and they’d be like, “And now I’ve spent all this money on this education and it doesn’t work for me and I don’t know why. What am I doing wrong?”
Angela Kurkian: And they, of course, own it all. It’s all their fault and it’s not. It’s just that system isn’t fitting into what either A, they currently know. So if you don’t have a foundation of understanding and knowledge of how success and numbers work, the foundation of business, then of course it’s not going to work because you’re layering this thing on top of nothing. So our biggest thing is that you create a really strong foundation. And I think I work at PPA and I love this job so much because I believe in what we do. It’s not the other way around. I don’t work here and now I believe it. Do you know what I mean? I feel like I have this strong belief. And then getting to work here at PPA just really supports the fact that I believe this.
Allison Tyler Jones: Well, because you were an attendee at PPA.
Angela Kurkian: For a long time.
Allison Tyler Jones: And a student of PPA before you ever became a PPA employee.
Angela Kurkian: Yes, absolutely. And I’ve gone through every level of success, y’all. I could tell you all the mistakes I’ve made, a lot of them, and it’s just part of learning. I’ve literally had every kind of studio. So I was part of a studio once. We had 15 photographers. We did 300 weddings a year. We did 200 seniors a year. We photographed 350 bunny portraits at Easter. All of the craziness that goes with volume/nuts, lots of employees, all of that stuff. I’ve been the studio that started in my home and moved to a strip mall, and ultimately I built a 4,000 square foot studio space, and I had five photographers on staff. So I literally have lived through every iteration of that. And I only say that to just underscore what I’m trying to hopefully help people do, which is really figure out that foundation. PPA offers great classes on this.
Angela Kurkian: I’ll be doing a class at Imaging, I think it’s on Monday. It’s typically for new members, but I invite anybody who wants to come, so please feel free. And it’s all about this foundational stuff, where to find the information, how to do it, and if I could just gift that portion to every single person, and the great part is it’s free. Oh my gosh, this is the other podium I stand on. All of the education for members is free, y’all. It’s free. And it breaks my heart when I watch people going out trying to learn all of this stuff from people who are trying to sell them stuff instead of starting at their association.
Angela Kurkian: We aren’t trying to sell you anything. You are already a member. You don’t have to pay for anything. And so start here, start here because if you start here and you get this foundation laid and you’re like, “Now you have some knowledge to build on, now go to those mentors.” Allison, you’re a fantastic one. We have our people we know are doing great things and are truly helping people. But now when you’re looking for a mentor, you’re so much more sophisticated. You’re so much more able to go, “Oh, this person actually has something that’s going to help me.” This isn’t pie in the sky, this isn’t-
Allison Tyler Jones: Well, you know who your mentor needs to be actually, because you can look and see, “Oh, I want to do business like that.” Because sometimes it’s just like, “Oh, they’re “successful,” but maybe you don’t want to do business like that. Maybe you don’t want to have a call center with 12 telemarketers, maybe that’s not your jam, or you don’t want to do 350 bunny portraits.
Angela Kurkian: Right.
Allison Tyler Jones: So you say foundation. I also say another word for that is fundamentals. To me, they’re the fundamentals of business that you need to be looking at as a business owner every year, no matter how long you’ve been in business. So I think of that story about John Wooden who was the famous UCLA basketball coach, and he would start and walk out into practice and say, “This is a ball.” And they’re all college athletes on scholarships. They know how to play basketball, they’re great, but he’s going back to the very fundamentals and the very fundamentals are you have to charge more than what it costs you to be profitable. Of course, everybody would be like, “Well, duh.” But if you’re not charging for labor, if you’re not building in all of those costs, even if it’s scary, then you really aren’t running a business, you have just a super expensive hobby.
Angela Kurkian: Amen. Yes, absolutely. The other thing as you were talking that I also would love for people to, if they can take a little tidbit away to remember, is you are not your business. You need to make money and your business needs to make money, and you are not the same entity and you both need to be profitable. I think people forget that part. They think that the business is them. But think if something happened to you and you had to hire someone to fill in your spot for a month or two months, what would you have to pay that person to replace you? You’ve got to make sure that you’ve got that covered. And it also just makes you just healthier as a person to know that every little thing isn’t tied to your business in this moment. It helps you to create those reserves and to save money and to plan. It’s just a healthy mindset.
Allison Tyler Jones: So I think, to me, and tell me what you think about this trajectory, if I was brand new just starting into this business, and I knew my technique, maybe I’ve been a hobbyist photographer for years and doing it on the side here and there a little bit for pay, but I decide, you know what? I’m going to start a photography business in 2023. I think that you could do a lot worse than becoming a PPA member and going online and taking advantage of all those free resources, looking at those benchmarks, figuring out your business and managerial accounting now, that word is so sexy to me because regular accounting, I don’t like, that is not sexy to me. But managerial accounting just equals what the numbers mean, right?
Angela Kurkian: Yes.
Allison Tyler Jones: And so learning that, figuring out, okay, what’s success to me? How much money do I want to make? Then learning what my numbers and my business are and building that foundation. And then once you have that going, you know what your prices need to be, and you have a product line and you’re good with that and ready to go, then you can look and say, “All right, I need a mentor for…” You would actually know what you don’t know then. You’re like, “I’m really good in this, this. I really love sales. I’m great in sales, but I am not great at bookkeeping.” Or I’m really great in some other area.
Allison Tyler Jones: Say for example, I think this is common, I love to retouch and I love to get in and just mess with the images and just futz with them again and make the most beautiful imagery. I really actually don’t want to sell this. So then do we need a salesperson or do you want to learn to sell? So that’s how you know where your education needs to be rather than what’s the flavor of the month and what’s cool? Oh, so-and-so is doing a whatever. That’s how you will know where you can fill things in is once you have your foundation set, but that foundation you’re going to come back to year after year, you’re going to look at those financials hopefully quarterly, and then you’re going to set those goals and projections annually and be looking at those and tracking and seeing how you’re doing.
Angela Kurkian: And that’s the core of being a business person without a doubt. Just to touch on something that you were talking about a little bit too, is figure out what you don’t like and then figure out a way to outsource it because it will only drag your energy down. It will only drag your energy down. The studio that I owned, my studio manager, I hired her specifically for sales because I was the giver awayer. I liked everybody to like me.
Allison Tyler Jones: That does not shock me at all.
Angela Kurkian: Oh, yeah, of course, I’ll throw that in. All the things, all the things. And I knew that was a detriment, but I couldn’t stop myself. I couldn’t stop myself. I tried to learn from other people, but my style just wasn’t the same. And my style is I’m the creator. I’m the creative one. I’m going to love on you. I’m going to give you this amazing experience, and now I’m going to turn you over to Erica. And Erica is going to tell you what everything costs.
Allison Tyler Jones: And how she figured out how great it’s going to be.
Angela Kurkian: And she could talk about me in a way that I can’t talk about me, and she would love the images and the way that I couldn’t love the… You know what I mean?
Allison Tyler Jones: Oh, Angela is so talented. She’s just so great. Look at how she captured this of your little boy. Yeah, for sure. Well, I think about my dad and some of you on the podcast, some of you’ve heard me talk about my dad, who was a brilliant creative master craftsman. He built custom horse trailers and supported our family, but it literally killed him because he didn’t have somebody in front of him to be the buffer. He was the creator.
Allison Tyler Jones: And so when somebody would come in and say, “Well, I don’t think I should pay that much for it.” He’d be like, “Okay, well, what should you pay?” He would just feel bad because maybe it was late because he’d over promised that he could get it done so quickly and he had too many orders, all things that we can relate to. And I always thought, “Man, if he’d had a salesperson or somebody in front of him that could say, well, Ross is backed up 12 weeks and we only accept X number of new trailers per year, maybe you’re one of them. Let’s talk about this and see if we’re a match.” That would’ve been a game changer for him. And he could have just been back there creating, living his best life, but he couldn’t. He could not. He was you. He couldn’t do it.
Angela Kurkian: Yeah. I was fortunate. Erica, she actually owns the business now, so we transitioned in 2021, and she is taking the as Essenza legacy further, which is just amazing. And I love hearing that. There is no better legacy for me than to hear her say, “I am working less than ever with two kids at home, and I am making more money than ever.” I am so proud of her. I’m so, so proud of her. It’s really remarkable.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah, so awesome. So going back to that sales thing again. So from my experience was, okay, I’m nervous to sell my own work because like you said, I don’t feel like I can brag on myself. I don’t feel like I can say, “Oh, yes, I am so talented.” That felt just cringey and weird. But I knew that I was good with people, and I knew that I had sold in other businesses and in other jobs that I had. And so I knew that I could do that. But I did have a friend tell me, “I think it’s going to be a whole different thing selling your own work. I think that’s going to be really hard.” So then that made me have a pause. What I realized then in that moment was, and through that process, was that it’s not about me. I don’t have to sell me. I don’t have to sell my work. I don’t have to sell my business. I’m selling them because it really is about the client.
Allison Tyler Jones: So when somebody says, “Oh, you’re so talented,” I can say, “Well, thank you for saying that, but really look at your kids and then start talking about the images and that experience that we had together, did you notice how when he walked in, he was not going to give me the time of day, but by the end…” “Oh, yeah, well, you’re so talented. You had him eating out of your hand.” “Well, no, that’s your good parenting because that shows you that kid is confident and that he can transfer love from you to others.” There’s always a way to turn the light back on them and reflect it on them, and it’s not insincere. I see that because I love that about my clients. So I went from feeling like I needed to toot my own horn or make it about the work or me, which I was never going to do, and I can toot my client’s horn and make it all about them and brag about their kids and their family and how their dynamic is different and special and amazing.
Angela Kurkian: That is such a golden nugget. Everybody needs to re-listen that over and over again. That’s so good. That’s so good.
Allison Tyler Jones: Well, I just think for people that don’t want to be salesy and who does, is there anybody that wants to come up like a used car salesman? Well, if you do this, if you buy five 8x10s, I’m going to give you some free Christmas cards. It’s just like, “Ew, I hate that. That’s so gross. I don’t like that.” And then you have to figure out the math. Again, the math is always the stopping point for me. I know if Scott was on this call, he’d be like, can we get that girl some remedial lessons or whatever, but I have my workaround. So I think for me, how I really learned to settle into sales is to make it about the client.
Angela Kurkian: Yes. I love that. I love It. And I think it’s a gift that photographers have that sometimes they’re almost unaware of, their ability to see what other people can’t because it’s not just about seeing physically, it’s about seeing emotionally and on a whole different level. And I think that’s why a lot of moms especially come to us, is they want to be seen and not just in this pretty dress or in this great outfit. They want to feel seen. They want to feel like they’re part of their family.
Angela Kurkian: And another great friend of ours, the Waldens, when Sam was five, we did our portraits with him, and he asked me, he said, “Angela, if this time in your life were a chapter in a book, what would it be titled?” And I was like, “Well, I think I would want it to be titled present because I want to feel very present right now. This is such a sweet time. I love five.” Five was amazing. And then when he delivered the images, he kept it close, turned it around, and then when he turned it towards me, he’s like, “Does this represent present to you?” And of course, I’m just a mess, crying and bawling. But the gift that you guys have as photographers, as creators is so much more than what you maybe even know. And I think building on that-
Allison Tyler Jones: It’s so true. And back to your other comment because it’s easy, we just discount it. Discount meaning we give it no credence. We don’t value it. But really if you can sit and say… When you think about looking at an image that you’ve taken a portrait of somebody, why did you light it the way that you did? What is about that person is special? Her skin is flawless and amazing, or I love this little gesture of her toe and how when she’s shy, she kind of dips it behind one foot behind the other, or look how she’s hanging onto the brother’s hand. Those are things that we notice that moms really do notice, but they don’t necessarily verbalize it or it’s not conscious, and that you can bring that to their consciousness, that is what we’re selling. That is what it is. And there’s nothing better that they could spend their money on in this world, in my opinion, other than food, clothing, shelter. Once the bottom of the Maslow’s hierarchy is covered, it’s family portraits because it’s going to be gone.
Angela Kurkian: I think that should be the next timeline. What’s your bottom tiers of Maslow’s hierarchy? It’s family portraits.
Allison Tyler Jones: Food, shelter, air conditioning. If you’re in Arizona, you got to have that.
Angela Kurkian: Oh, I love, that’s
Allison Tyler Jones: Fantastic. But that’s like the cave drawings, right? That’s humanity, and we’re over here not thinking that it’s valuable. So I love that. So let’s just pause here because there’s another thing that you and I were talking about. So I think for education, whether you’re starting out or you’ve been in business forever, I think if you haven’t seen PPA in a while, give it a look. Go on and look at the website, ppa.com. We’ll link to that in the show notes. If you’re not a member, you should be because there are just vast resources at your disposal. PPA is a nonprofit. They just do so much lobby.
Allison Tyler Jones: There’s things politically that they do to help support our copyright rights, in addition to massive amounts of education. So I think that’s where everybody should start. And I think that no matter how long you’ve been in business, you should be going back to the fundamentals year after year. So what would you have to say to those of us who are just a teensy bit type A, ambitious, want to do more and more, more, more, more. You haven’t thought about that because you had a little bit of a break last year.
Angela Kurkian: I really do. Well, first I just want to say when you go online, download the business guide because it is literally a step-by-step. So that is available to you. So just make sure you go and pick that up because that’ll help you understand that foundational-
Allison Tyler Jones: The PPA business guide?
Angela Kurkian: Mm-hmm.
Allison Tyler Jones: We’ll link to that in the show notes.
Angela Kurkian: That’d be great. It takes all of the information from the benchmarks and shows you how to use it.
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay.
Angela Kurkian: So I had a little break. I worked with PPA for going on 10 years, and I didn’t know it was just going to be a short break. I was having a lot of stuff going on in the world. It was post COVID. I still am taking care of my mom. She’s in her eighties and just saw this really deep need to take a beat. Everything was just too much and I couldn’t fit it all in. And I’ve literally had a job since I was 13. I’ve never not had a job. And I sold the business in ’21 to my studio manager and trying to reimagine what my life could look like when I have these people who are relying on me. So I’m in that sandwich.
Angela Kurkian: I’m taking care of, our youngest is 15. We have five others that are older. And then I have my mom, and she just lives right down the street from me. With a heavy heart, it was not an easy decision, decided to let go of PPA so that I could really focus on my family and take care of some other things. And so through that year, I went through a very strange experience of not having rails, feeling really untethered, really uncomfortable, it is like I was going through work withdrawal, literally physical, it did not feel good. And slowly, and I want to say healed, but it’s not like I was… Yeah, I guess in some way it’s like a healing. It’s a mindset shift. I never let myself rest before. I always felt guilty or shame if I wasn’t doing something that had an ROI attached to it, whether it was work or if it was at home. Something had to be doing something to get something done.
Angela Kurkian: There was never just straight up downtime that was mine because we have kids and then you give all your time away, which is wonderful in its own right, but you still need time for you. So learning to rest and really understanding what rest is, the thing that I walked away at the end of that year just really got to this place where understanding who I am, my identity is not wrapped up in what I do. It’s not wrapped up in my accomplishments. It’s not wrapped up in anything for me except for my own experience of God. And so starting in that place and then understanding that rest is also not something that I do. It is a place that I start. It’s a mindset. It’s how I approach every single day. And so now in the mornings before I get up, I take a little minute to do some journaling, do a little reading, just get my mind straight for what the rest of the day is going to bring.
Angela Kurkian: I find that I’m so much more creative. I’m so much more focused throughout the day. I’m less tied to outcomes. I’m not trying to make things happen all the time. I’m allowing things to unfold and, again, just that releasing that tightness that was trying to control so many things and make things happen, feeling responsible and then feeling shamed if I didn’t get things done and all the things. So for me, it took time, and I don’t want to say you’re just going to get it one day and it’s going to click, but there really is an effort into understanding why rest matters. So I would just say to, again, just if you’re on that journey, I would absolutely encourage you. I’m happy to talk to anybody about this. I feel very strongly about it. You can reach me. I’m sure Allison will give you my email address, just about the importance and the value of understanding rest as a mindset.
Allison Tyler Jones: Well, yeah. I love that. Well, when I think of Kathryn Langsford, and I’ve done a couple of podcasts on this topic too, and I remember when the whole pandemic was unfolding and Canada was so much more locked down than the US was. And so that happened fairly early for her. And she said, “I’m just practicing the word like surrender. I just have to surrender to what this is because I don’t have any control over it.” And I think we’ve been on these peaks and valleys of a rollercoaster ride collectively as human beings on this globe, but a lot of this stuff has not gone away. Everybody thinks like, “Okay, now we’re going to be back for business as usual, and we’re pushing that boulder uphill.” You and I were just saying just before we got on, here comes another holiday season. Woo, here we go.
Allison Tyler Jones: I think it goes back to that very first thing that you were talking about is what do you want? And the answer to that usually, I think, most photographers that I talk to or anybody in business want more. I just want more. Well, more what? Do you want more clients? Well, do you really want more clients or do you want more money or do you want more time? What do you really want? Do you want more sleep? I always say, “Is there anything I can do for you?” I’m like, “Yeah, I need $8 million in a fast metabolism. If you cannot bring me those two things, then I don’t know a diet Coke, like what?” But what is it that you really need?
Allison Tyler Jones: And it sounds like to you, and I think a lot of us too, is that kept coming back to you again and again is you just need some rest. You need to take a break and pull back. If you feel like you’re pushing something, a boulder, too far, like, “I got to go to this class, or I need to attend this next workshop, or I got to buy this next set of actions or whatever,” or have a nap and go look at your fundamentals. Are you making any money? Is the business profitable? Let’s just strip it down to the bare minimum rather than trying to… We’re really good at looking at fun things. Do I need a red background? Do I need some gels? I need one of those lights, those parabolic ones that go in and out. Do you?
Angela Kurkian: That’s so true. Oh my gosh, that’s so true.
Allison Tyler Jones: I need the lens. I need a 200 1.2. That’s what I need. That is going to change my life forever.
Angela Kurkian: We’ve seen that a couple times. That might’ve been me a few times.
Allison Tyler Jones: I think actually a 200 1.2 is life-changing, but I digress. But really, so what is it that you really want? More time with family. And all those things can be translated through managerial accounting, through a little bit of education. But sometimes I think we get so frantic, and I’ve seen photographers too, where it’s almost like they’re professional workshop takers. They’re gathering so much information. There’s so much information out there and so many disparate voices. Well, so-and-so says this, well, so-and-so says this, well, so-and-so says this that they’re so busy filtering the information, they’re actually not even acting on anything. They’re not actually putting anything to action. You put one thing into action, even one piece of crap advice, you actually take action on it, you’re going to learn more than if you-
Angela Kurkian: Just keep going to more workshops.
Allison Tyler Jones: Right. You can learn theory until you’re blue in the face, but you actually have to apply it, yeah.
Angela Kurkian: And I think giving yourself permission to go through different seasons because what you might want today might not be what you want this time next year. And so creating a business that is successful is you have to constantly take stock of that. Because if happiness, if joy is going to be part of that, you have to stay in tune with your own personal needs, and it’s okay to be different. It’s okay for it to not be the same.
Allison Tyler Jones: As someone else, and based on really what you value and both of us are moms, and so what you need as a young mother, you don’t necessarily need so much as an older, more mature mom. But I think the guiding force of my life, I feel like is autonomy. I want to have autonomy. I want to have the freedom to make my own schedule and do things with my kids. That is huge to me. And so if I feel like I’m in a business where I’m just on a hamster wheel, that I never get ahead, it never quite works, and you’re just basically taking money from your clients and giving it to your vendors, you’re just never going to be able to have that autonomy, that freedom that you want. And the way that you get out of that is just by learning, educating yourself. And if you can’t educate yourself, PPA is awesome. A good place to start.
Angela Kurkian: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. I would love it. I’d love it if everybody could get their foundation, their fundamentals here, and then build from there because it is a joyride when you have some of those skills under your feet.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah, it’s amazing. And it can be done, even for people that are innumerate like me who don’t know how to do numbers. Managerial accounting is sexy, and you can tell Scott that I said that. Okay, so where can our listeners find you?
Angela Kurkian: They’re absolutely welcome to email me akurkian@ppa.com. It’s A-K-U-R-K-I-A-N@ppa.com.
Allison Tyler Jones: Awesome. We’ll link down the show notes.
Angela Kurkian: If you tell me that you’ve listened to this, just let me know. I mean, there’s some stuff I would send you. I’ve got some things that I’ve written over the years for classes. The Business Challenge was a series that we did for about five years, and there’s some stuff I can send you just to get you started on the journey if you’re interested and sincere about wanting to understand what those fundamentals look like.
Allison Tyler Jones: I love that. Thank you so much. You’ve always been, not just a friend, but a wonderful resource, cheerleader, so many good things in my life. I appreciate you.
Angela Kurkian: Thank you, Allison. I adore you completely and admire you greatly. Thank you.
Allison Tyler Jones: Thank you.
Recorded: You can find more great resources from Allison at dotherework.com and on Instagram @do.the.rework.
