Recorded: Welcome to The ReWork with Alison Tyler Jones, a podcast dedicated to inspiring portrait photographers to uniquely brand, profitably price, and confidently sell their best work. Alison 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. When it comes to marketing or selling to your clients, it can sometimes just feel icky or scary or intimidating. We feel like we don’t want to ask for the business. We don’t want to be salesy. We don’t want to have to think up one more email campaign. Well, today’s guest is April Graves, and April is a portrait photographer in Illinois. She has an amazing luxury business with great clients and has been in the business for many years spoiling these amazing great clients, and I love her approach to marketing. I love her approach to how she takes care of her clients. April also happens to be one of our favorite members of our Mindshift community, and she shares some of the things that she learned in the Mindshift community and how she put those concepts together with what she already knew in her own business to take care of her clients in a brand new way. I can’t wait for you to meet April, and I can’t wait for you to be inspired by how she spoils her clients. Let’s do it.

Allison Tyler Jones: All right. Well, we are here in the podcast studio today with April Graves. She is a friend and one of our amazing members of our Mindshift membership. And April, tell our listeners a little bit about yourself, where you’re from, what you do.

April Graves: Sure. So I am, I own Light Drawn Studios. We are a portrait studio. I have one in a town called Lake Forest, which is on the north shore of Chicago, and one in Barrington, which is in northwest suburbs. I serve a luxury and clientele, definitely more affluent communities, and I specialize in fairytale portraiture, which is kind of its own thing, and then I do family portraits and seniors as well. So I have a huge giving base. The whole foundation of my business is charity, so we’ve raised over a million dollars for local nonprofits.

Allison Tyler Jones: That’s amazing.

April Graves: I started that in 2007, but have been in business, gosh, 21 years now.

Allison Tyler Jones: Okay, so you started in 2001?

April Graves: Yeah, 2001, I think. Yeah, so it’s actually almost 22 years. That’s math. Yeah.

Allison Tyler Jones: Well, we’re photographers not mathematicians, so that’s okay.

April Graves: Exactly.

Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah. We’ll leave that to your biomedical engineer child to do the math, right?

April Graves: Yes. He can do the math for sure.

Allison Tyler Jones: For all of us. Thank you. I’ll call him when I next need an equation. Well, I really appreciate you being here, and I’m so excited to talk with you because you’ve always been such a standout in our community as far as just, you know what you’re doing. You have that luxury clientele. Did you start there? Did you start out with that luxury clientele 20 plus years ago?

April Graves: So oddly enough, yes, but in a funny way. So my career started, I was actually a fashion designer and I used to design children’s wear. I had a little boutique in Chicago and I had starved as an artist. I was serving a luxury clientele then as well, but just decided that I was going to shift gears. I had given birth to my first child. I was already doing photography for my business to save money, and people kept asking me to photograph their kids.

Allison Tyler Jones: Interesting.

April Graves: So, when I say yes luxury, I serve the communities I serve now at a lower price point, but at a much higher price point than what I was worth at the time, if that makes sense. It was like a $45 eight by 10. That was a big deal for me back then, and people were paying me for it, and I was just like, I don’t even know what I’m doing. I mean, the great thing is I still have clients that started with me and their kids are in their mid 20s now, and they still have me do their portraits at a much grander price point, but I wanted to serve that clientele base.

Allison Tyler Jones: I love that. Well, okay, so are there parallels that you’ve drawn between that fashion, doing the fashion for that clientele and doing portrait photography for that clientele?

April Graves: Yeah, actually I do. So the two have married to one another. So I started out, when I designed children’s wear, I would always see how it looked photographed. When I was designing and I did children’s wear and it was very high end and I sold it all over the world. It was beautiful, but I was like, I always was like I could see a little girl walking down the beach. There was always this story to what I was creating.

Allison Tyler Jones: Interesting.

April Graves: And so I would do these ad shoots to save money, and then as I’ve progressed with my fairytale portraits, I still design, I design all the costumes that we use for that genre of my work, and so I-

Allison Tyler Jones: Which is so amazing. Where could they get that, really, that’s so niche. I love it.

April Graves: So it’s really fun and it’s really fun because people wait to hear what’s next with her. What are we going to do next? What’s the next thing?

Allison Tyler Jones: Well, you’re just seen as so creative, and I think that having that backstory of that fashion gives you another layer, right of value, also another layer to the story of your brand. And I think many people, many listeners that are listening to this podcast right now have backstory and other things that they’ve done in their life that maybe they think that doesn’t necessarily relate to photography, but it might. It might be part of your story, it might be part of your brand in a way that you hadn’t really thought to talk about before.

April Graves: And I think your story is really important, as photographers we are storytellers, and so for people to be able to know a personal side of you adds more value as well, I think.

Allison Tyler Jones: I love that. So what are some hiccups maybe along the way? Did you have a hard time going from the $45 eight by 10 to the whatever it is that you’re charging now? As you raise prices or what was that journey like for you?

April Graves: I think a lot of choosing to raise prices, and that comes in mindset and self-confidence. And so as going through the barrier of raising prices, I found the only barrier ever was me.

Allison Tyler Jones: So true. Why is that always the case, and why is that so annoying?

April Graves: It’s so annoying because we all want to be loved. Fundamentally we all want to be loved and we all want to be enough. And for a lot of people, that’s our background chatter that isn’t healthy. And so I never found barriers from clients. I found barriers from myself. And then once I took the baby step of raising the price from the 45 to the next level to the next level, all I saw was nobody. I raised the level of experience. So it became, the value was built in more intrinsically, but it became more like, oh, I literally raised my prices and overnight my sales average went up by 600 to $1,000 and no one winced but me leading into it.

Allison Tyler Jones: Right. Well, and you realize, I think realizing when you need to raise those prices, that it does give you that space to give the better service because you’re building on a little more profit, so you’re not just running around taking the money from your clients and giving it to your vendors. There’s actually some that actually gets to come to you, and so it gives you a little bit of space to provide a better experience.

April Graves: Exactly.

Allison Tyler Jones: So often we are just running around doing too many things, overcommitted and not charging what we need to be a sustainable, profitable business.

April Graves: Completely. I can’t remember who you interviewed, but I giggled so hard because it was put the hand on the chest.

Allison Tyler Jones: Yes.

April Graves: No this still doesn’t feel right. I feel like-

Allison Tyler Jones: Kim Wiley. That’s Kim Wiley, she’s the hand on the chest girl. She’s always like, oh.

April Graves: So good.

Allison Tyler Jones: How does 200 sessions feel? No, that still feels bad. Got to go less.

April Graves: Yeah. I don’t even have to put my hand on my chest to want to go, ew.

Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah, I know. I love it. We kind of came into each other’s orbit last year or?

April Graves: Well, yes. Last year was when I took, I got to see you speak at imaging, but years and years ago, you and I were supposed to both speak for the same conference for somebody, and I got super sick and I had about 10 hours of presentation-

Allison Tyler Jones: Oh, I did not know the story.

April Graves: … to give, and I got violently ill. And they were literally trying to pull in all these other people to pitch hit for me because I couldn’t leave my hotel room in Vegas.

Allison Tyler Jones: So we would have met before.

April Graves: We would have, and my husband was like Alison Tyler Jones, he went to all the classes and people avoided him like he was the plague. He was like, I sat in the background, but ATJ, you need to listen to this woman. And so he kept encouraging. And then I was listening to your podcast, and last year I ended up having my own personal health issue. And then two weeks after I got diagnosed, which I am healthy and fine, there’s going to be a lot of people in here that know me, I’m fine, just working through things. But it was traumatic. And then two weeks later, my four and a half month old puppy got diagnosed with incurable epilepsy. And so I was a hot mess.

Allison Tyler Jones: Hardier.

April Graves: Oh my word. And I had gone from during COVID, everything was gangbusters and crazy for us. Our business was insane the last few years, to last year, I felt like the skids, the brakes got hit. I mean, I was like, okay, this is crazy. And then I had all these not so wonderful things happening in my personal life, and I was just like, I listened to your podcast. And I was like, I don’t remember which one it was, but I was like, yeah, I’ve got to get a dose of what she’s doing here because I need to figure this out. I need to get my mind straight again. I’ve never seen myself like that. My whole family, there’s a rule, if I freak out, the children can freak out. If my husband freaks out, dial 911. We were all freaked out. I mean there was no one who wasn’t freaking out. So I was like, okay, I need a little calm in the storm. And you were actually my calm.

Allison Tyler Jones: Oh, I didn’t know that. I knew the challenges, but I didn’t know that. And I’m so glad that the podcast could be helpful in that way. Well, so tell me about as you reached out for that, and I think that’s an interesting thought because 20 years in the business, you’ve been in the business longer than I have. You’re an educator. You know what you’re doing. You’re running, you have two locations of successful business in luxury. You know what you’re doing. And it’s easy I think sometimes when we get to that point where you think, well, there’s not really anything anybody can tell me, but what you did instead is reached out because I think we know if you’re smart, you know can always learn something, you can always learn something new. We can always make things better. And so what was that for you? What did you find in that reaching out that was helpful to you that either maybe you hadn’t had before or maybe was validating about what you were already doing?

April Graves: So I think having that little port of calm and then getting into your program, it really made me focus on something else, which was great. And then I started going through and yeah, there were a lot of things that I had of course had learned or even taught myself, I’ve spoken about some of these things, but I recently read something where you can read the same book over and over again, and the book is still the same, but the person is not.

Allison Tyler Jones: Absolutely. So true.

April Graves: And so I was a different person in coming to you. And so there were things that just along the way, during COVID there was so much emphasis on paid advertising and social media, ClickFunnels, all this thing. And because we weren’t out and about with people, I live in Illinois, I mean, we were in full lockdown. And so it was a lot of changing gears. I had always been so grassroots with my marketing and I’m a firm believer, but getting in with you really reaffirmed going back to my roots and going back to my clients. And by nature, because I’m continually creating, people are always like, what’s she doing this year? It’s kind of the bated breath, which is one of my brilliant things. But on the other-

Allison Tyler Jones: But also you can become a victim of your own success because it’s then it’s like you got to always up the ante. What’s the next thing? What’s the next thing?

April Graves: And it’s expensive. If I’m designing costumes, I have someone coming every Monday during the winter months making my, it becomes a thing. And so I was just like, okay. I wasn’t reaching out to my existing clients in a different way. And so it was, hey, I’m making this and I’m creating this, but it was all about me. And so in taking that, I went from that piece of it to, okay, I’m creating, but this is for you. Historically, I have a 40% of my business comes from repeat clients. That is, I have a wonderful repeat client base. This year I implemented some of the strategies that you had kind of brought about and just how you communicate with people and ended up, I think I’m at about 60%.

Allison Tyler Jones: That’s what we’re at, 60%. Yeah. Repeat. That’s awesome.

April Graves: I was just like, this is amazing. I mean, it’s been so fun.

Allison Tyler Jones: Don’t you love my existing, my existing clients, I’m just like, I’m not saying I don’t love new clients. We all love new clients, but the people that have been around for a while that have been one, two, three sessions with you, they just get it. And they totally, they become friends and family and it’s just, it’s so glorious to see them coming. It’s part of now our holiday celebration is knowing that the Umars are going to come or the Ellingtons are going to come, the Claytons are going to come, just becomes part of the celebration for us and I love that.

April Graves: Yeah, I do too. I had a client reach out. I should have had a couple clients who’ve had their own personal issues this year. And I mean, I spent a good half hour texting back and forth with a client who did, I think four sessions with me this year and we’re already booking next year’s sessions, but she’s repeat and she’s said something and I said, “Oh my gosh, how’s that going?” And I was like, “Of course you don’t have to answer.” But I’m so wrapped up in who they are as humans and in their family that as someone who cares about them, I want to know. And so it is, it’s much more meaningful.

Allison Tyler Jones: Yes, that’s the word. Meaningful, satisfying, soul fulfilling, rather than just, of course we have to market, of course, and there are a lot of ways to do that, but I find that at least for me, having it be more that organic one-to-one contact is just so much more satisfying for me.

April Graves: It is. And with the way things have gone, I mean, this puppy of mine, she’s just been a handful and we love her to pieces, but she takes a lot of care. And so if I had a day where I wasn’t going to have an appointment in my studio, I stayed home so she could be with me because she’s my girl and she wants to be with me, and it’s hard to bring her into the studio because if she has a seizure in front of someone, it’s like traumatizing. So I could take that time, but then I would just do things like text clients, how are you doing? Checking in. It just became, I created the time. And for me, I think one of the first things you talk about in the whole process is less but better. And so I allowed myself to not have to have 135 sessions, which now I say that, I’m like, oh my gosh.

Allison Tyler Jones: How did you do that? Yeah.

April Graves: Yeah. It was like Santa Sessions. I would do 40 a season, and that’s just a couple of weekends, so different, literally. This year, I’m not going to say the number, I don’t want to share those numbers, but they were great. Less but better. And my last session of the year, it was a family that was of Middle Eastern descent, and we started talking about faith and we started talking about how things are written in your book and they’re orthodox. And it was so interesting. And I said, where are your origination? Where’d you come from? Before you came to the States, where were you? They’re from Bethlehem. I know. I mean, right?

Allison Tyler Jones: How amazing.

April Graves: I don’t think that all that connection would’ve happened after their Santa session had I had someone flooding in the door to go right after them. We vetted them differently. I’ve always been pretty good at vetting, but we’ve really raised the bar, thanks to you, of Yeah, it’s either going on a wall or it’s an album. And I used to tell people, you’re not going to be happy with eight by 10, Now it’s like, I’m not going to be happy with eight by 10. So it’s either this or this or it’s the whole shooting match. And it really allowed us to work differently.

Allison Tyler Jones: I love that.

April Graves: So thank you.

Allison Tyler Jones: Well, thank you. Well, just you talking about sitting there with your sick puppy at home, and most of us would think of, oh my gosh, this is so hard. I’ve got to get to work, I’ve got to do whatever. But instead, you take that time to text clients and it just makes me think of, so often we think, oh, I’ve got to market. I’ve got to market. But really it’s just checking on your friends. It’s just checking in on your friends, whether that’s on social media, just keeping tabs on them. I saw that Beau won the golf tournament, on one of our calls the other day you said that you noticed that a client had been in the Nutcracker and you knew that was a symbol that she was going to be maybe heading for toe shoes, and so you needed to call and reach out to her.

Allison Tyler Jones: Just that level of observation, that we’re taking that focus that tends to be scattered and that we’ve been taught in all the marketing classes or the books about go out and get new and really just doubling down on our existing clients and focusing on them. Now for those, what would you say, and this is a question that we get a lot, is if you don’t have a cemented clientele or an existing clientele, if you’re newer in your career and you’re wanting to reach out to that clientele, that higher end clientele, people that you are going to spend more time with, maybe have less clients, what did you do, whether it was in the portrait world or in the fashion world to reach that clientele?

April Graves: So for me, and I still do it, is I invite to lunch, I am a big relationship builder. I love people. When I speak, I am like, if you don’t love people, jump off the ship now.

Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah, you’re in the wrong business if you don’t like people.

April Graves: It is like this is portrait photography, it is an art of humanity and an art of art itself. And so you really have to love people. So I love on them, and that’s really what I’ve done best always. And so when I didn’t have a huge business, I would be like, let’s go get manicures together. Let’s do things because sitting in a manicure chair or pedicure chair next to someone, you can go somewhere and spend $100 on them and get to know them better and build that personal relationship, I think has always been so helpful. And some of my very best friends are my clients. I mean, we have built such strong relationships, but I do think inviting them in to spend more time with you on a level that isn’t work related.

Allison Tyler Jones: So the next question I would have about that is that I think is okay, well, when they become your friends, then are they expecting a discount?

April Graves: Oh my gosh. So that’s a great question.

Allison Tyler Jones: Right?

April Graves: You know what? That oftentimes is something that we put in our minds as well.

Allison Tyler Jones: Yes.

April Graves: That is something that we are like, suddenly we deserve it less and they deserve it more. And so the big fat answer, I don’t give anything away. I’m very tight because this is how I get my kids through college and support my family, and we have a lovely lifestyle and I am all about caring for the people under my roof. And so no, it doesn’t mean that. So we are very careful with that. And if it becomes that a client would start asking for discounts, that would dissolve the relationship for me. It wouldn’t even be because I am just kind of hard on my sleeve kind of girl, it would feel abusive, but I’ve honestly never had anyone go, well, now that we’ve had lunch and done nails, how about that 20%? I get those things too.

Allison Tyler Jones: Right. But it’s like you said, we do it to ourselves because we like, oh my gosh, we went and got pedicures, now we’re BFFs and I can’t possibly charge my full price for them.

April Graves: Yeah, exactly. And if you’ve really become BFFs, they know what’s going on in your life and they know that we’re-

Allison Tyler Jones: This is how you make a living.

April Graves: Kids through college, they know that we’re doing certain things. And I once had a guy who was a surgeon come in and he did not want to spend the prices. And I looked at him, I said, “Well, I cannot perform surgery. Can you create portraits of your family like this?” And he looked, he said, “Point made.” And handed me his credit card.

Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah, I’m not in here asking you to do my knee replacement for a deal because I want it to be the best that it could possibly be, and I don’t want a deal. I want it to be right.

April Graves: Exactly. And so it’s really interesting to kind of see that. So just because we are not saving lives or joints or whatever we’re saving, we are saving their legacy.

Allison Tyler Jones: Absolutely.

April Graves: And so life changes, life happens, people change, people go away, people come in, we’re important, and what we do is super important. And as long as we have people who value the same things, it’s golden.

Allison Tyler Jones: It really can be such a beautiful relationship for sure.

Allison Tyler Jones: If you’re a portrait photographer, you know the next few months are going to be crazy. This is our busy season and how to make the most of that busy season is to make sure that our client communication is in order, that we are not having clients showing up with the wrong clothing, that we are not having clients shocked in our sales appointments by our pricing and needing to go home and measure or going home and asking their husband, and then sales burning down and our clients not getting what they need and we not being able to build a sustainable business. So how are we going to make sure that this season is the most successful that it possibly can be? Well, it starts by getting on the same page with your clients so that nothing is left to chance. And how I’ve done this is that I’ve spent the last 13 years revising my own internal consultation form, which by the way, you can download the consultation form that I use in my business absolutely free.

Allison Tyler Jones: But I realized after tweaking that form for about 13 years, that I needed something more. And it wasn’t just a pretty brochure and it wasn’t a price list with no context because we all know you can send a price list to somebody and they’re still shocked by the price because they never looked at it or they have no idea what those prices even mean. It’s happened to all of us. What I realized is I needed a single printed piece for my client to take away with them that would leave nothing to chance and that it would allow me to educate my clients about the price range of my products. It would help them to understand what we would and wouldn’t be shooting for during their portrait session, actually creating a game plan for what is it that we’re actually going to be shooting for and let’s prioritize that.

Allison Tyler Jones: And then also something that would allow the clients to feel confident about selecting the clothing for their session and a printed piece that would allow them to share with their spouse and be able to put together the game plan for their session. So I needed it to be part brochure, part getting ready guide, part last minute checklist and part consultation form, because my consultation form was internal. I was keeping that form, but I wanted this printed piece to go with my clients and I wanted it to be sexy and good-looking and that they felt completely and totally cared for. So I wanted all of this in a single booklet that the client would take with them at the end of their consultation. Now I’ve been using this, I created about five years ago. It’s called the ATJ Game Plan booklet, and I started off by using it in my studio and I’ve been revising it for the last five years.

Allison Tyler Jones: And now for the first time ever, I’m offering it to the ReWork community to use in your portrait studio. So what’s included in that? In this course, it’s a little mini course, not a big long course. There’s a video lesson with me on how to use the game plan booklet in your consultation, you will also have a video recording of an actual client consultation with me and a client using the booklet in real time. And then you’ll have layered PSD files of the game plan booklet that we use in our studio every day as well as a PDF version of the latest and greatest ATJ consultation form. So all of that is included for just a one-time payment of 2.95, just 2.95 to completely change the way that you interact with your clients, the information that they have, how taken care of they feel by making things transparent to them, putting together the game plan for the session so that everybody’s on the same page. We all know what we’re shooting for, we know how much it’s going to cost, they know what to wear. Everybody’s on the same page.

Allison Tyler Jones: This is the document, this is the booklet that has changed my business, and I want you to have it too if it works for you. So go to dotherework.com/gameplan, that’s dotherework.com/gameplan and download that booklet and start using it in your business this busy season. I know that the game plan booklet will be a game changer for your business.

Allison Tyler Jones: So going through the course Art of Selling Art, like you said, you came through and there were so many things that you have taught yourself, already knew or were a validation of what you were already doing. Was there anything specific, any concepts that you felt like, wow, this really did make a difference in my business?

April Graves: Yeah, absolutely. I have a list. So one moment, please.

Allison Tyler Jones: You have a list? You overachiever, girl, you.

April Graves: One of my goals is to go back through it again in January. Because I’m like, it is a pretty hard hitting course. You’re really digging in and doing a lot of the work.

Allison Tyler Jones: It’s a lot, I know.

April Graves: And I love that and it really is for the overachiever in me, but I was like, I really need to head back in.

Allison Tyler Jones: I have to head back in. I have to head back into all those concepts every year, for sure.

April Graves: It’s so true. So one of the things is the brand filter, because I’m constantly creating, there’s the concept of the brand filter and are you creating something that goes with your brand? And also, so in all the princess things and the fairies and all the things, that I was doing unicorns for years, unicorn portraits.

Allison Tyler Jones: Interesting.

April Graves: And I found that it was pulling in a unique clientele that weren’t quite my clients.

Allison Tyler Jones: Interesting.

April Graves: Yes. And I was like, so it’s fairytale, but it’s a different group of humanity that doesn’t fit my brand. It doesn’t fit, the people who like it don’t fit through the filter. Simultaneously, I was doing some equestrian work. I used to ride horses. I love horses. So I had an amazing session with a fantastic sale when it was done, and I realized I don’t want to photograph kids who don’t know anything about horses standing with a unicorn, which at the end of every series of unicorns, I’m like, thank God no one died this year. I mean, literally, I went through the brand filter and I was like, wait a second. The fairytale is the fairytale of the girl who gets to have her own horse and rides it, and that’s her fairytale. It’s not the fairytale, the kid who likes unicorns. That’s not it. Sometimes your fairytale is a story you’re living in your own life.

Allison Tyler Jones: Interesting.

April Graves: And so I was like, when I had the epiphany, I was like, take the unicorns off the website.

Allison Tyler Jones: But you know what? I think I’m going to stop you here because I think that so often the answer, well actually always, the answer’s right in front of us, the answer’s within what we’re already doing, but we just don’t see it because we’re like, look, somebody’s paying me to do this. I can’t quit doing that. Somebody has paid you for a unicorn portrait every year since you’ve been doing unicorn portraits and to stop that. Or it’s like, I’m going to quit doing weddings. I’m going to quit doing newborns. Wait, I can’t. Somebody paid me to do that. I have to keep doing it. But to have that nuanced focus and go, hold on, it’s not this thing, it’s this little adjacent thing over here, and that turns into the vein of gold. I think that’s so interesting. I hope everybody that’s listening to this pays attention to that because we all have things like that in our business that if you look at closely, look at the data, you’re looking at data, you’re looking at relationships, you’re looking at who’s coming in and how it’s related to your brand, genius. So good.

April Graves: So the less but better, obviously that was a big one.

Allison Tyler Jones: And that’s a shout-out to Greg McEwen, author of Essentialism. He’s the Less but Better guy.

April Graves: Yeah, I mean it’s super brilliant. And then there’s the never say no concept. And so a lot of people aren’t good at boundaries. And as I’ve matured, I am exceptional at making boundaries. I am. Nope. Nope. And I am very positive. So it’s not like I’m a negative person, but I’m very much like I wouldn’t touch it with a 10-foot pole. So I’ve got those boundaries. However, I think that I have learned to nuance no in a kinder, gentler way that turns into something else.

Allison Tyler Jones: What I can do.

April Graves: What I can do, exactly. We had someone call in last week that wanted us to print their pictures she took of her sister-in-law at an art exhibit, and I was just like, oh. And my instinct got interesting because was no, but then my graphic artist spoke with her and she was just like, “She wants you to lead the process of this. She wants you to guide how the artistry goes in it.” And I was just like, “Interesting.” Well, then I spoke to her and she came from a really good client who was like, “I don’t know anyone who would do it better than April.”

April Graves: And so I was like, “Okay, this isn’t what we do.” And I said, “This isn’t what I do, but given your relationship to this person, I will do it for you.” We’re doing is if I photographed it, same price points and we’re going to work through it and make it as good as we can because it’s not going to be great. But I was like, okay. And then she was like, well, then I’m going to want family portraits in the summertime. She’s already parlaying into something else. I literally would’ve said flat out, we don’t do that because I don’t do other. I would’ve just been like, “That’s not what I do.” And it is good to know what you don’t do, but to find a different way to say no.

Allison Tyler Jones: Well, and we really learned that. I really learned that this last year in that I had an employee that was super efficient, really super dialed in efficient, and people would call and ask for something and she had this binary in her mind like, okay, no, we’re not doing that. So she was really coming from a place of like, no. And then all of a sudden arbitrarily said, “Oh, well if you’re not photographed by October 1st, then we can’t get you anything for Christmas.” And I overheard this as I was walking through the lobby and I’m like, “Wait, have you been telling people that?” So sometimes I think we can get on our high horse or say, okay, no, we’re not doing that because we’re out of frustration. And then our employees hear it and then they take that and run with it when really it’s like, okay, tell me more. So I don’t need to say no.

Allison Tyler Jones: So when somebody comes up to you with like, “Hi, I want to burn your studio down.” I’ve used this example a million times. I’m like, “Hold on, let me go check.” Come back. “Okay, what I can do is give you the address of somebody across town or tell me more about why you’re wanting, what are you going to use to burn my studio down? Is it going to be a Molotov cocktail? We talking about a bomb? What kind of accelerant would be used?” And before you know it, you’ve had this conversation, “Oh, actually what you really wanted to do is you wanted a candle portrait and now we’re going to do this and it’s going to be amazing.” So sometimes people present, they use words that we think, words like I need digital files, or I need a unicorn portrait or something that you’re no longer doing because they don’t know what else to ask for. But if we just have a conversation to start a relationship, very often we can help them see that what we do is really what they want. Have you found that to be true?

April Graves: Yeah, absolutely. And sometimes the kind way of letting that go and having that communication that suddenly that turns into a reference. “You know what I spoke with so-and-so, and I know she hasn’t worked with you, but she felt this way.” I think there’s a great example of it in our Facebook group right now. Somebody was asking about selling gift certificates. I don’t know if you’ve gotten in the group this morning, but one of the members was like, it was a hard no. And I was like, no, I do sell gift certificates for thousands and thousands of dollars.

April Graves: And it is, this is the, I don’t give a deal. This is what we do and this is what most people buy. So yes, you can buy a gift certificate, but starting out it’s going to be $1,500. And then if you think they’re going to want the whole shooting match, let’s get them to this point. But I think a lot of people are ready to just say, “Well, no,” because their mindset was it’s giving to an auction and it’s a deal, but it’s not. There’s nothing about that that has to be a deal. But not saying no is helpful.

Allison Tyler Jones: Right, yeah. Just not closing yourself off to things without considering. And I think the reason that we do that and close ourselves off is because it’s like we’ve had a discussion about this in the mind shift about either you’re either a doormat or a dictator and that you don’t really need to be either of those things. There’s a third way which is being the expert. So an expert has boundaries, but an expert is not afraid to be mowed over by somebody that’s asking for something that they don’t do because they can listen to all the requests and go, it sounds to me April, what you need is X, Y, Z when you came in asking for A, B, C. And so let me show you how we can get there. And then if you don’t need that, then I can refer you to somebody else. But they know the next time they’re talking to somebody who wants X, Y, Z, they know that they want to talk to me.

April Graves: Exactly. You can say, you know what? We don’t do that. However, I think you can find someone else who will.

Allison Tyler Jones: And is that really what you want? Do you really only want Facebook pictures of your family? Do you really want to spend $1,200 on clothes, get everybody dressed, go to the park, run around in the heat, have all these pictures done just to post on Facebook? Is that really what you want? And so you’re rather than like, no, I don’t sell printable digital files. How dare you you Philistine? How dare you ask me that question? Because then that’s off-putting, if you had blown that person off, then she would’ve gone back to that client of yours that was a good client and said, “Man, she was really high and mighty and she was rude and she thought my picture wasn’t going to be good.” And then that might’ve made your existing client question you. So we don’t need to be walked over, a yes man, yes woman. And we also don’t need to be the hard no. So I love that. I’m glad that resonated with you.

April Graves: It really did. Yeah. I think because I was for a long time the good guy, and then when I learned how to say no, I was like, no. I was like a 2-year-old. That was my word, so now.

Allison Tyler Jones: I know, it’s so true. We overcompensate and go too far the other way.

April Graves: When you learn how to say it, you’re like, oh, that’s the word I know right now. I think a lot of it was learning how to write to your very best client in mind, in writing social media posts and that, just kind of think keeping everything a little bit more on a personal level than a sales level. They know you’re posting because you want to sell them something, but you don’t have to hit them over the head with it.

Allison Tyler Jones: And have people feel seen, like feel that, oh my gosh, she’s inside my head. That’s how I feel about my kids. The time is going too fast and I did just look at my kid this morning and I swore he grew two inches of his sleep and we need updated family pictures or whatever.

April Graves: That’s so funny. I said about my son, every time he comes home from college, I’m like, “You totally grew.” He was like, “I did not grow mom.” And I make him [inaudible 00:37:54]

Allison Tyler Jones: But they mature.

April Graves: Right?

Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah. They become men or women, they look so different.

April Graves: That’s so funny. Well, girls mature so much faster. So you see that process more quickly in your daughters, but in your sons you’re like, “Oh, there you are.” But yeah, it’s kind of just that whole, yes, being seen and it doesn’t have to be so hard for us. I mean, we really gave up paid social advertising. I will say it’ll rear its head on occasion. We know that it’s going to be a marketing bucket, but it was the only bucket just about for during COVID, and it was so uncomfortable for me. And I know a lot of people use that as a form of advertising, and I know that it works for a lot of people and that’s great, and I’ve had wonderful clients come from it, but it just doesn’t speak to my heart and how I want to run my business. And so in taking your course, I feel like it allowed me to let go of that and it feels so much better for me.

Allison Tyler Jones: Well, but I think you make a good point in that when times are different and we can all agree that during a pandemic times were definitely different, that you adapt and sometimes you try things that maybe aren’t a super great fit, but I think that social media funnels or whatever can be a great lead generation. And so that if you know that’s what it’s for, and we’re doing it for this specific purpose, if we know that we need more leads, then you’re doing it for a specific purpose, but you have a strong filter in your mind. If it’s the only thing you’re doing, just like if the only thing you’re doing for marketing is calling your clients, your existing clients and you don’t have that many, then that’s probably you need both. We all need everything. We need layers of marketing.

April Graves: And it’s a bucket. It’s just a smaller bucket. We were already doing weekly emails and we’ve got all that figured out, but they’re far less hardcore and they’re pulling in the right people. And yes, allowing yourself to look at those statistics and your funnels or your paid Facebook advertising or whatever you’re using to pay them can be very frustrating sometimes with the leads that come through and you’re like, holy smokes. But it’s just having a rational look at it and being able to say, well, that’s just one of the buckets and we’re not spending this much anymore. We’re doing this. But yeah, it was like light bulb.

Allison Tyler Jones: Oh, I love that. Well, now that we’re headed into 2024, we’re recording this right at the tail end of 2023 as we’re wrapping up our respective busy seasons. So what are you most excited about for 2024? What do you see looking ahead, what are you planning for the new year for your business?

April Graves: Peace.

Allison Tyler Jones: Interesting.

April Graves: It’s so funny, I always have a word of the year and peace will probably not be it, but it was a very unsettling first seven months of the year and then it all came through, but I found peace in it. And so in leading through my business next year is choosing to work with clients and to do work that brings them joy and brings me joy, that supports my family but doesn’t have me pulling out my hair. And to just be able to work as an artist and as a business woman, but to be able to have goals that speak to my heart instead of what speaks to what the people in the industry think I should be capable of doing. Or I feel in my own internal conversation, I should be an X dollar studio because it looks good, sounds good. I realized this year it doesn’t necessarily feel good. And so having peace in those decisions and creating from there is really what I’m looking forward to.

Allison Tyler Jones: I love that. Knowing yourself and what will truly make you happy. I think that’s such a great goal. And I love the word piece. Well, April, I really appreciate you taking the time today. I know that this is going to be so valuable for so many of our listeners to hear of your vast experience, but also struggles like we all go through. And so thank you for being willing to share that. I appreciate you more than you know.

April Graves: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Allison Tyler Jones: Can you tell our listeners where they can find you, on Instagram or your website?

April Graves: Yeah, so my website is lightdrawnstudios.com, L-I-G-H-T, and then Drawn Studios with an S because when I started it in my little teeny starter home, I always saw I have more than one studio. So there you go. And then on Instagram, I’m Light Drawn Studios and on Facebook it’s Light Drawn Studios-beautiful things with wings.

Allison Tyler Jones: I love it. All right, well we’ll link to all of that in the show notes. And thank you again so much. I appreciate you.

April Graves: Absolutely appreciate you too.

Recorded: You can find more great resources from Allison at dotherework.com and on Instagram at do.the.rework.