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, mini-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. Do you have a hard time trusting yourself? We all have that little voice inside of us that usually is a pretty good guide of what we should or shouldn’t be doing in any given situation, but I know so many of us second-guess that. Sometimes you might be a shy person. Maybe you’re a younger sibling in a big family and you’ve been talked over your whole life. Maybe you tend to be a little bit more of an introvert and like to watch other people do the talking.

Allison Tyler Jones: And so maybe you have a hard time trusting that inner voice. Well, today’s guest is Nadine Priestley from Nadine Priestley Photography in Palo Alto, California. And the last time she was here, her episode was titled Nice Girls Finish First, because Nadine is the perfect example of a kind, sweet, gentle soul who runs a gangbuster business. She is proof positive that there’s no one model for “successful business.”

Allison Tyler Jones: So today with Nadine, we are going to talk about how she has dedicated her business to connecting generations, new changes that she’s made in her business in the last year, specifically about how she steps into being the expert, how she’s dealing with her clients in new ways, how she is making changes in her business by trusting herself to be the expert for her client, to be a little bit more forceful, to step forward and help the client get exactly what they need, but in her own gentle and kind way. I know that you introverts and you sweet, kind people out there are really going to appreciate Nadine’s insights. Let’s do it.

Allison Tyler Jones: I know that you introverts and you sweet, kind people out there are really going to appreciate Nadine’s insights. Let’s do it. Well, once again, we have I’m going to call you the number one Art of Selling Art student and the number one MindShift member because you are the very first person that signed up ever for The Art of Selling Art course, Nadine Priestley from?

Nadine Priestley: From Palo, Alto, California, San Francisco Bay Area.

Allison Tyler Jones: And you’ve been on before the Nice Girls Finish First Podcast. Nicest person I know. So give us a little… Just reacquaint us with where you are and what you’re doing, what kind of business you have.

Nadine Priestley: So my business is based on taking pictures of people, so it’s portraits of families. My first foray into this back in 2007 was really focused on connecting generations because I was inspired with getting two or three or four generations of people together and building a business on that. And that quickly also led to the fact that people wear more than one hat. They’re not just family people. They’re business people. They’re professional people. And I started photographing trustees of the San Jose Repertory Theatre Board of Trustees. I started photographing startup company executives when their wife was like, “Hey, you really need an updated portrait.”

Allison Tyler Jones: Always the wives keeping it real.

Nadine Priestley: Exactly. So about 50% of my business is actually photographing professional people who need it for promoting their own businesses and careers, which I also totally love.

Allison Tyler Jones: And we’ll link to that first podcast episode that we did, the Nice Girls Finish First, because there’s a lot of information in there about dealing with C-suite executives and how to do that. So that was such a good episode. I loved that one. Okay, so you’re still doing that, but then you’re also doing families and all different kinds of portraiture?

Nadine Priestley: Yes, that’s my world and most of my clients come from other clients or other connections. And most of my clients I have had some sort of relationship with for so long. For example, just last Saturday was photographing a four gen family who had come from many different places across the country to be together for this photo shoot. And it happened to be at a location that I had photographed a bride and groom for their wedding 2007.

Nadine Priestley: So full circle working with the same sales staff, or not same, but in the same department and being very familiar with some of the venues that I use because I don’t have a studio like you do. I do things on location. And my relationships with everyone no matter what venue I’m at matters so very much to me. So I think that’s one of the reasons I love the portrait business is the relationship building and the connections over time.

Allison Tyler Jones: Well, and that’s why you’re successful.

Nadine Priestley: So even when hotels transfer, a lot of times they’ll keep the same staff and it’s just so rewarding when the staff and I and the client are all working together.

Allison Tyler Jones: I think that’s what makes so successful because people know they can count on you. They know that they’re on your radar, that you’re never going to… First of all, they’re not going to look bad, but also you’re just going to make sure that they’re cared for, that their needs are taken care of. I mean, that’s just I think a defining characteristic of you.

Nadine Priestley: Yes, I do go the extra mile, whatever it takes, to make it successful. And sometimes it’s a lot of little stuff that makes it successful that clients may never even know about, but I’ll know that we controlled as many of the variables we could have ahead of time. And a lot of times the clients know some of the big rocks and are also just amazed that, wow, you took care of that for us. And it’s like, yes, of course, I did.

Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah, you got to them see a little bit of that so they can appreciate it.

Nadine Priestley: Exactly.

Allison Tyler Jones: Pull the veil back just a little bit so they can see a little bit of that. I love it. Well, I would love to talk about you’ve made changes in recent years. I mean, still your throughline is portraits and taking care of people to a very high degree. With The Art of Selling Art course that you took and/or MindShift membership community, is there anything specific that stands out that you didn’t have before then that you’ve been able to incorporate that has helped you serve your client better or make your business better?

Nadine Priestley: I think one of the things seems very basic, but it wasn’t something that I was practicing and that was really being the expert. You have taught us how much we actually do have expertise and need to share it versus thinking the client knows potentially what they want and oh, if they ask for this, then we need to do that, versus maybe something that we think is better for them.

Nadine Priestley: And even now, a couple years later, after meeting you and being part of this MindShift group, I’m still practicing these things and just being more comfortable making suggestions and recommendations to people. And nine times out of 10, they take my recommendations because they’re actually good recommendations. And I think it extends the service that I’m offering when I’m not just always cookie cutter and can see beyond the obvious.

Nadine Priestley: And I’m very empathetic, like many photographers are, and aware, but have also been around the block enough to know what some of these other important things are that we keep adding that make a difference in the lives of our clients.

Allison Tyler Jones: Well, and I think you bring up something so important there is that you are very empathetic. You are very concerned that your client is heard, that their needs are met, and you’re a very kind person. And so the kind sword can cut both ways, right?

Allison Tyler Jones: It’s so good for the client, but where it can cut against you and even against the client is that if you completely pull yourself out of it and don’t give yourself enough credit to say, “Actually, if they wear that, they’re going to hate these pictures. Actually, if we shoot at that timeframe, they’re going to hate these pictures,” or whatever, you know enough to know. I’ve watched you evolve from step into your expertise, I’ve watched you, and be okay with that.

Nadine Priestley: Recently I had an executive portrait session, new client, and this one being a new client, we’re trying to get to know one another and how we work well. And they were really admiring a lot of the executive portraits that had more of the natural background and needed to have these portraits taken in the bright sunshine on one of the longest summer days of the world here in Palo Alto.

Nadine Priestley: And I knew that was not how we were going to be successful, was standing out in the bright sunlight given all of the other variables. So I found another venue that we made the images in. We still had green. We still did things. But I had to really say, “Okay, if it’s very important to do it at this particular time, here’s what our best options are to give you what you actually really want on this particular day.”

Nadine Priestley: And they were more than happy to be in the hands of my expertise and do it. It was fantastic, but I don’t think pre-Allison I would’ve been as firm about it’s just not going to work in this other place, even though it’s beautiful, not at 9:00 in the morning on this day.

Allison Tyler Jones: And that’s hard because you feel like you want them to have what they want, but you know that it’s not going to work. And that if you let them have their way, sometimes you can do that from a passive-aggressive standpoint. Okay, sure, you want to wear that? Okay, go ahead and then let me show you how bad it looks. You’re still the one that shot it and they’re mad at you.

Allison Tyler Jones: They’re not mad at themselves. Oh, I picked the wrong outfit. No, no. They’re mad at you that you let them wear that. So if you’re going to take the hit anyway, you might as well… Oh, well, she was a little bit bossy. But first of all, you never come off that way. You always come off as very kind and very respectful and professional, but I think that’s one of the hardest things for nice photographers to speak the truth.

Nadine Priestley: Yes. And then I think another really important thing that I’ve learned from you and still learn is you really raise the bar to me about what is possible in this business and what we can bring to the table and how we must charge for what it takes to deliver the kind of expertise that we deliver. And that’s a growing momentum that you don’t just leap from A to B to C overnight, but incremental ways of thinking and doing things has helped me from a business perspective so very much.

Nadine Priestley: And I can’t thank you enough for that because it really… I mean, I know that I can’t do this business if I can’t afford my life. It’s like, okay, that is really where I get some of the skin in the game of knowing, all right, it has to be this way for me to do this for my clients. And my clients would be very sad if I wasn’t able to do it for them. So it’s just given me orders of magnitude changes in how I price and look at my business.

Allison Tyler Jones: I love that. And I think when it comes to, if we’re talking about pricing, if you’re having to look at your product line and, okay, actually this has been way underpriced and I’m losing money on this, or I can’t keep doing it this way because it’s taking me three hours to get to a location to set up, to tear it down, you have to look at all of that, right?

Nadine Priestley: Mm-hmm.

Allison Tyler Jones: But sometimes we don’t take the time to really think of everything that did go into it. And so then we think, well, then we’re just charging too much. A client or potential client might say, “Wow, that’s more than what I thought,” and so then we feel like, oh, we immediately doubt ourselves. Like, oh, wait a minute, so I shouldn’t be charging that.

Allison Tyler Jones: But if we can go back and stay calm and say, “Okay, no, I’m driving for this much time. I’m carding all my stuff out there. I have the expertise of telling them what to wear, what time to shoot. I have the expertise and all the connections of all of these locations, these relationships that I built for, I mean, it’s 2007, we’re almost 20 years,” so you start to add that value inventory up of all the things that go into make a Nadine Priestley portrait experience happen.

Allison Tyler Jones: And then you start to see, no, that actually is worth every penny. And then that’s also a part of the expertise. I don’t think you can just start with, okay, I’m just going to charge a million dollars for this thing and I’m worth it. It’s like, no, you got to build that foundation.

Nadine Priestley: And then I think another thing that I really appreciated, The Art of Selling Art class was fantastic and a great way in six weeks to cover so much. And I still revisit some of those sections when I’m updating pricing or looking at something more creative and need to go to a different module. And I really appreciate that. But I also appreciate the community on our MindShift group and the new members that come in and how we can learn from one another.

Nadine Priestley: And each of us have different personalities, and I appreciate the questions that are asked by other members of the group. And while it may not be exactly my question, there’s always so much to learn from it. And I think, Allison, the root of all of that is you, because I really, really value what you bring to every single one of those meetings, and I continually learn.

Nadine Priestley: And so I feel like I’m more on top of my business game than ever before because we’re holding each other more accountable and learning things that really do matter. I mean, taking pretty pictures is important, and that’s all a given for us. But there are so many layers beyond that that you are phenomenal at.

Allison Tyler Jones: Well, that is so kind of you to say that. I love our community. I feel like we have such good questions. It just feels like everybody is invested. They want to do better. And everybody is doing well, and they just want to level up and supportive. I’m so grateful. And you are a pillar, just so you know. You’re a touchstone. As I prepare content or different things, I’m always thinking, okay, what does Nadine need? Or what would Nadine say? Really, because I think you’re just very thoughtful and smart and you see all the nuances, which is really so satisfying.

Nadine Priestley: Well, and you have a great team that’s helping you too. And it’s sort of like how we all interact with one another brings magic to this whole experience and is the reason why I’m still a member is because I’m not done learning. A lot of my friends are now of that age where they’ve retired or are retiring or looking at winding up their careers. And I love the fact that you, like me, think we are not done with our lives.

Nadine Priestley: We have major writing and chapters to do. And I feel so validated by that because I’m unique in that way. So many people have different pillars of where, okay, I’m done when I get here, and you and I are not done. We have so much more to do in this world.

Allison Tyler Jones: I love that. I was just watching… I’m trying to think, what was I watching? I think it was like Fareed Zakaria or something, some CNN like news show. And he was interviewing somebody that was talking about, I don’t even know what the book was, I might have to go back and look, but just talking about how the baby boomers and Gen Xers, like this gen, our gen, they’re going to live way longer, 80s, 90s, longer.

Allison Tyler Jones: And so if you’re retiring at like 65 or 60 or whatever, you might have 20, 30 more years left. Well, who wants to be bored? Because my husband will say, “Well, so what’s the exit strategy?” I’m like, “Hon, there’s no exit strategy. The exit strategy is like Richard Avedon, you fall dead over your camera. That’s it, and then you’re done.”

Nadine Priestley: Exactly. That’s when we know we’re done.

Allison Tyler Jones: When we know we’re done is like, oh wait, the tripod just hit the floor, but except I don’t have a tripod, so it’ll just be the camera and me. But I loved listening to that because I thought, okay, that felt validating to me. Now, of course, health is going to factor into that, interest, all that, but I feel like you’re healthier if you’re interested in what you’re doing, if you love your life, and you’re meeting people and forming new relationships. And if I ever stop learning, just put me in a box tomorrow.

Nadine Priestley: I am with you 100% on that. And also with meeting new people and new friends, I mean, my mother is 89, and I’ve watched her have to go through saying goodbye to so many friends. And some of my oldest friends are so interesting to me because they are still interesting. They meet new people.

Nadine Priestley: They continue to make new friends. They are offering as much as they possibly can. They might be 30 years older than I am, and they’re still a vital member of our community. So I’m inspired by these generations older than us and how they haven’t stopped living fully.

Allison Tyler Jones: The baby boomers don’t think they’re going to die.

Nadine Priestley: I know.

Allison Tyler Jones: I’m like, look at Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Everybody was like, honey, you got to get out while Obama’s still in so we can get another… Nope, I’m hanging on until the end.

Nadine Priestley: Nope. I’m still hanging in there.

Allison Tyler Jones: I’m in. Look at all these people that are in politics. That’s why everybody’s like 900 years old is because they’re all like, “We’re still here. We’re going nowhere.” So funny.

Nadine Priestley: Exactly.

Allison Tyler Jones: But that’s okay. Well, we don’t want to be in politics. We’re going to be in portraits.

Nadine Priestley: That’s right.

Allison Tyler Jones: Doing all the fun things. Okay, well, I love that. Is there any advice that you have or a thought of something that you wish you had known earlier in your career? So somebody listening to this who is newer in the career, maybe younger, that if you could speak to your younger Nadine, what is the piece of advice that you would give?

Nadine Priestley: I would’ve suggested to the younger Nadine that she seek more expertise and advice of people who had succeeded ahead of her, because I think I could have moved more quickly had I had more collaborations with people at the top of their game. And I think that I probably like many photographers started developing relationships more with wedding photographers because that was a big thing when I started.

Nadine Priestley: It was like I started professionally with a digital camera, even though I’d been photographing with film before. But for various reasons, I started in that digital age and started surrounding myself with a lot more wedding photographer people. And that is a whole different game than what I am interested in doing and have been interested in for so many years.

Nadine Priestley: And I didn’t have the confidence to know that I could make a very successful business doing it in a way that actually met my needs and what I actually wanted to do by being an active member raising my family, being actively engaged in my community, doing so many different things, and wedding photography didn’t fit that for me. And so I did that on the side, like a few things here and there, a few bar mitzvahs and bar mitzvahs, and the portrait stuff was, well, I’ll just do this when I’m not doing all that other stuff.

Nadine Priestley: But yet that was what I really loved, and I didn’t give myself permission to really go head first into what I actually really loved, even though it was different from what other people really loved. And I think one of the things that you’ve brought out in our course, in our MindShift, is really trying to be more of who we actually are instead of someone else.

Nadine Priestley: And if you were to ask me if I was trying to copy someone, I would’ve said, well, no, I’m not trying to copy anyone, but I was heavily influenced by thinking, well, the only way you can make a lot of money is to do these other things. And that is so not true. And I believed that I couldn’t make enough money doing what I actually excel at. I mean, I was doing it, but not to my best ability, Allison, until you and I started working together. And that has just opened so many doors that made my life so, so much better.

Allison Tyler Jones: I want to go back because I think you made three really important points there that if anybody’s listening to this, I want you to hit that minus 30 second and listen to that again. But I want to just recap that. So your advice is that you would seek more expertise and advice of people who’ve exceeded ahead of you. And I think at the time you thought you were, right?

Allison Tyler Jones: Because you were with those wedding photographers and event photographers, and the only way you can make money is to be in wedding and event and the portrait thing is just not going to be great. I remember a commercial photographer saying to me, “Yeah, I really wanted to do portraits too, but I just couldn’t support my family doing portraits, so I just went into commercial. I don’t love it as much, but.”

Allison Tyler Jones: And I thought, oh, that’s so interesting because I don’t see it that way. So I’m going to add a sentence to that. Seek more expertise and advice of people who’ve exceeded ahead of you in the area that you would like to be successful in.

Nadine Priestley: Yes, very important.

Allison Tyler Jones: So when you see the area like I really want to do portraits, who’s being successful in portraits? Or if it’s weddings, who’s being successful in weddings? And then also, like you said, trusting yourself in what you love. Because for me, when I opened my studio… Well, I did it out of my home for a while, as you know. Then in 2009, I went into studio space, which was depth of the recession. And then I got sick the following year.

Allison Tyler Jones: And I had been doing what I thought I was supposed to do at many sessions, sending out tons of emails, trying to just get leads. I got to pay for the studio. I was really scared. All the things. Got very, very ill. Well, I got so sick that I really thought I was going to die. And I remember just thinking, okay, if I live, if they figure out what this is, then I am never doing business like this again. And I will only move forward in the way that I want to.

Allison Tyler Jones: And then if nobody wants that, then I’ll just go do something else, because I don’t want to live like this. I don’t want to do… Like you said, you’re running around shooting every weekend or shooting events and you’re just like the cake lady.

Nadine Priestley: Exactly.

Allison Tyler Jones: It’s not special. It’s not like you’re building a relationship with somebody. All we’re doing is portraits, and then I want it to be finished product, and I want it to be on their wall in their home. And if nobody wants that, if there’s no market for that, then I’ll go do something else. But why does it always take us… I don’t know why it takes us being beat down to finally go…

Nadine Priestley: Yeah, in order to be able to actually get to that place. I don’t know. I would hope if someone could get there faster that they can listen to this and get there faster for themselves.

Allison Tyler Jones: So if you’re listening to this and you’re like, children with red balls, if there’s some super specific crazy idea that you’ve had, go for it.

Nadine Priestley: Yes.

Allison Tyler Jones: Go for it.

Nadine Priestley: Totally.

Allison Tyler Jones: I love that. And look if there’s somebody else that’s being successful in an area that you want to and be able to learn from them and never stop. Love that. Do you have any favorite books, podcasts, or binge-watching that you would like to share with our audience?

Nadine Priestley: Oh gosh. I’m not prepared for this, but I do remember reading the book about, gosh, the restaurant business in New York City.

Allison Tyler Jones: Oh yeah, the Danny Gregory. Okay, hold on, I’m going to look it up right this minute.

Nadine Priestley: Good, because I have brain fade on that one, but it was delivering incredible service. And I was so inspired.

Allison Tyler Jones: It’s called Setting the Table.

Nadine Priestley: It was one of those books where I was so taken with it because it had nothing to do specifically with photography clients, but everything to do about I want to say like Madison Green Garden, The Tavern.

Allison Tyler Jones: Gramercy Tavern.

Nadine Priestley: Gramercy Tavern.

Allison Tyler Jones: Okay, so it’s Danny Meyer, D-A-N-N-Y M-E-Y-E-R, Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business. And he is the originator of Shake Shack, Gramercy Tavern, and a lot of Manhattan restaurants. Very famous restaurateur. But yeah, love that book. That has so many good takeaways for business.

Nadine Priestley: I find often the best things for my learning are not specifically photography related, but in some of these other businesses.

Allison Tyler Jones: Absolutely.

Nadine Priestley: Because that’s where I think I’m in more of a creative space or open-minded space to learn something new, or maybe it’s just because it is working in a different industry I’m more excited about maybe introducing to the photography industry. So a lot of times I’m trying to do things that don’t actually fit precisely in the photography world when I’m trying to create something new.

Allison Tyler Jones: Right. Well, and I think because when you look at other industries, you’re not like, oh, that wouldn’t work, because you don’t know that industry. So you’re applying it to your industry, so it actually makes you more creative because you’re like, oh, okay, so that was Setting the Table, and then they greeted people as they came. Oh, we could do that. That’s cool.” I love that. That’s a good one. I’m glad that you brought that back up. We’ll link to that in the show notes too. So tell our listeners where they can find you, website, Instagram.

Nadine Priestley: Really my website, because sadly I’m not an Instagram user, but my website, NadinePriestley.com.

Allison Tyler Jones: We will link to that as well. Nadine, it’s a delight always to talk to you. I hope you can go spend some time with those cute little grandkids.

Nadine Priestley: Thanks, Allison. Really appreciate everything that you do. And I hope that the people who are contemplating getting involved with Art of Selling Art or joining the MindShift Group give it serious thought if they’re portrait people.

Allison Tyler Jones: Thank you. You are the best.

Nadine Priestley: Take good care.

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