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. Well, it’s a little bit fall-ish, and that means the back-to-school aisle at Target is full of my favorite things, pencils, notebooks, markers, post-it notes of every color and size, everything that makes my office-product-addict heart sing with joy. It’s been a minute since I’ve been back to school anywhere, but this time of year always has me excited to get back to my routines and just a little bit more organized existence. For our portrait studio, it’s also a time of year where we’re looking at, okay, where are we at for the year? Where are we headed? How are we doing compared to last year? Especially as we approach the busy season of the fourth quarter.
Allison Tyler Jones: So in that spirit of reflection, I want to challenge you today to join me in filling out your own Rework report card, if you will. I want you to walk through a mental evaluation, or get a notebook and pen and take some notes if you want, and together, let’s see if you’re making the grade. Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Report cards? I’m pretty sure that I outgrew the need for report cards a long time ago.” And you’re right, at least when it comes to subjects like language, math, science.
Allison Tyler Jones: But when it comes to your portrait business, taking time to evaluate how your business is doing is essential to your continued success. In fact, we should all be looking at our businesses at least once a year, if not twice or quarterly. The idea of a studio report card will help you see areas where you’re doing better than expected, and, at the same time, it’s going to highlight any problems that could use some focused attention. The most important thing with any report card, though, is I don’t want you to get discouraged. I want you to use this information that you gather today to empower you to make positive and long-lasting change for yourself and your business.
Allison Tyler Jones: An obvious place to start is by looking at what in the corporate world they would call key metrics or KPIs, which is key performance indicators. And so what are those key performance indicators for our industry, for our businesses? Well, let’s just start with the easy. Let’s start with the money, the revenue. Are you meeting your financial goals? Okay, so do you know what your numbers are, or are you afraid to look? One of my favorite educators, Ann Monteith, once said, “Numbers are the physics of business.” You really can’t argue with physics. They just are, like gravity. You can not believe in gravity as you throw yourself off a cliff. You can argue with gravity all the way down to the ground. But in the end, gravity is going… If you’re on earth, gravity is going to win. It’s the same with numbers. We might not like math, but numbers can be our friend, because they tell us a story about the health of our business. So instead of sticking your head in the sand, I want you to take a look and see how you’re doing.
Allison Tyler Jones: So the easiest place to start, I find, is just to look at the top-line revenue, the gross amount of money that’s coming into your business, and just ask yourself this question. Is your revenue growing, stagnant or shrinking? Compared to last year, are you making more money, about the same or less? So take a minute and grade yourself on revenue. If you’re growing, give yourself an A. If you’re stagnant, give yourself a C. Shrinking revenue, just grade yourself however you think. If it’s really, really bad, maybe give yourself an F. If it’s not that great, maybe a D. Maybe a C- if it’s about the same but a little bit less than last year. You’re going to grade yourself, so think about that.
Allison Tyler Jones: The next area that I want you to look at is profit margin. This is going to take a little bit of digging, but how is your profit margin? Is it growing? Is your profit margin getting larger? Is it stagnant, or is it shrinking? So the only way for your profit margin to grow is to lower your costs of your product or to raise your prices. So if you haven’t raised your prices recently, I can state unequivocally that your profit margin is shrinking because of the I word, inflation. Everything is more expensive now than it was last year. So make sure that you’re looking carefully at the pricing of each of your products, updating your costs and adjusting your prices accordingly.
Allison Tyler Jones: If you don’t have time to dig into every single product that you sell, I would suggest that you do a spot check. Pick the sizes of wall art or albums that you sell the most, the ones that almost everybody buys, and just do a spot check on those specific items. Look at your costs. Compare them against the lab costs. Albums and prints have all gone up, especially framing costs. If you send your work out framed, framing has gone up significantly. But you know what’s gone up the most? And those of you who have employees know this, labor costs. Labor costs have gone through the roof. That’s why everybody else’s costs have gone through the roof. And then also looking at your overhead costs, the software that you’re paying for, your rent, your utilities.
Allison Tyler Jones: I don’t want to lose you here. I don’t want you to pause and think, “She’s talking about math. She’s not talking about pretty pictures, and so I can’t listen to this. It’s hurting my ears.” You can. We can do hard things, and we’re going to do it together. So just take a spot check at least. Look at your most popular album. Look at the most popular size of wall art that you sell. Definitely look at your 8×10, your gift print size, whatever you know that you’re selling the most of. Just do a quick spot check on those and see how the profit margin is looking. If your costs have gone up, your profit margin is shrinking, and your price needs to go up, or you need to find a vendor or find a way to lower those costs.
Allison Tyler Jones: So grade yourself on profit margin. If the profit margin is growing, you found a lower-cost option or you raised your prices recently, give yourself an A. If your profit margin is exactly the same, give yourself a C. And if your margin is shrinking, you’re going to be in C- to F territory.
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay, let’s look at the next indicator, which is your average sale. Is your average sale growing, stagnant or shrinking over what it was last year? If it’s stagnant or shrinking, can you look at your client orders and detect what’s going on? Is there a product that you used to sell that clients aren’t buying anymore? Is it time to refresh or update your samples? Maybe they’re looking tired, and somebody’s looking at that album that’s got scuffs on it and thinking, “Ew, that’s gross. I don’t want to buy that.” Is there a product that you’ve been dying to add to your lineup that you can introduce this holiday season that your clients will absolutely love?
Allison Tyler Jones: Let me give you an example. In 2017, our average sale was stagnating. It’d been the same for a couple of years, and I just was looking for ways to increase that. And at the time, our product lineup was very similar to what it is now, which is wall art and albums, but those things are our more expensive products. And then we had gift prints that you could purchase as an add-on to any wall art or album purchase. Those gift prints in our studio would be loose 8×10 or smaller Luster prints, so unframed photographic prints. At the time, our smallest wall art piece was about $800, and a gift print was around $200-$250. So what I realized is that I didn’t have anything in that middle $300 to $750 price range.
Allison Tyler Jones: And I had been toying with the idea of bringing in acrylic blocks, because they work really well with my style of photography, because I’m shooting a studio. That blank, featureless background, either white or dark, is really cool on those acrylic blocks, and they look great in a bookcase, so they work in a client’s home. So I’d been toying around with bringing them in, but I just hadn’t done it yet. So I finally found a vendor, added in acrylic blocks, and that gave me a product in that 395, 495, 595 range, depending on what size the client picked, that was easy for clients to add to an order and increased our average sale as a result.
Allison Tyler Jones: There’s several ways that you can increase your average sale. You can raise your prices. That’s the easiest way. But you can also add products to your product mix in different investment levels to get that average sale up. So grade yourself on your average sale. This is going to take a little investigation. Look at your average sale for this year so far. Compare it to your average sale for last year. If your average sale is growing, give yourself an A. If your average sale is stagnant, give yourself a C. If your average sale is shrinking, back to D, C- to F territory, depending on how much it’s shrinking.
Allison Tyler Jones: Now, if you need to brush up on your products and pricing, I’d suggest that you take another listen to Rework episodes 24, 25, 26 and 27. That’s the Pixels to Product series that I did with Jed Taufer. That has a wealth of information in it that will help you if you’re looking to add new products and want to price them appropriately going into the holiday season.
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay, for our next key performance indicator, let’s first just look at clients. And I’ve divided that, clients, into a couple of different categories. Let’s start with session counts. So how many sessions are you shooting year-to-date over last year? Are your session counts growing? Are they stagnant? Are they shrinking? Now, you’re going to want to look at your session counts by the type of session. I find that this is really helpful, because… And it helps you for sure to do this with your sales averages as well, because a sales average on, say, a commercial headshot is never going to be the same as a sales average on a family portrait session or a wedding. They’re completely different animals. So not to go backwards, but just something to consider.
Allison Tyler Jones: So let’s look at your session counts by type. So how many families did you photograph this year, family sessions, year-to-date over last year? Are your families growing, stagnant or shrinking? High school seniors, newborns, Santa portraits, personal branding, weddings, you might not shoot all of those different product lines, but just list the ones that you do shoot, and put your session counts by the type of session that you’re photographing, and then compare how you did this year over last year.
Allison Tyler Jones: So for example, if you’re making change in your business, and you’re somebody that, say… I’ve seen a lot of people say, “Look, we’re so tired of shooting weddings every weekend. It’s not conducive to our family. We really want to get out of weddings and replace our weddings with families.” Well, this is how you tell if it’s working or not. So you can look at your session counts and say, “Okay, well, we’ve done way less weddings this year, so our weddings might be a D or an F.” Well, I wouldn’t give that a D or an F, if that was your goal. I would give that an A, because you’re reducing the weddings, especially if the families are increasing. So this one on the session counts, it depends on what your goals are, what kind of grades you’re going to give yourself.
Allison Tyler Jones: Now, if you’ve shot the same thing last year, shooting the same thing this year, and you’re not making changes to the types of sessions that you’re doing, you can just do a direct comparison, and if the sessions are growing, then you can give yourself an A. If they’re stagnant, you can give yourself a C, and if they’re decreasing, then go the C- or F.
Allison Tyler Jones: But if you are wanting to make change, even if it’s not to types of sessions, if you’re thinking, “Well, I want to do less sessions, but I want my averages to be higher,” maybe your goal is to do less sessions. So this is a tricky grading area. You have to know what it is that you’re going for. So if you’re meeting the goals that you’ve set for yourself, more isn’t always better. Compare this with last year and see if the categories you want to be increasing are increasing. If the categories you want to be decreasing are decreasing, give yourself an A. If you’re moving toward a more boutique luxury model, you might intentionally be taking less clients, and you’re charging more, so your revenue might be the same or better. You might want to be decreasing a certain product line, like weddings or school portraits, so keep an eye on those session counts and make sure they’re trending in the direction that you’ve set for your studio.
Allison Tyler Jones: So I’m just going to repeat that again. If it’s going in the direction that you want, give yourself an A. If it’s just stagnant, give yourself a C. If it is not going in the direction you want, whether it’s shrinking or increasing, maybe you chickened out and you decided to take more weddings because you got scared, but you really, really hate weddings, you might give yourself an F, even though you’ve taken more weddings. So that’s going to require a little bit more investigation thought process with that one.
Allison Tyler Jones: Now, another area that I want you to think about when it comes to clients… And this is a metric that I haven’t ever heard. I’ve never talked to another photographer that tracks this number, but I think it’s a really important number, is tracking the number of return clients versus new clients. So are you struggling to attract new clients? Or, more importantly, are you retaining your existing clients? So in a given year, do you know which percentage of your clients are repeat clients? It’s important that we attract new clients, of course, but are we retaining our existing clients? It’s so, so important, because the existing clients are the foundation of your business.
Allison Tyler Jones: So grade yourself. If you can look back last year… And it’s very easy. I can just go on my server and go into my client folder and just count how many sessions I did last year, and then look at the names of those people and pick out, okay, which one of them are repeat clients and which one of them are new? That’s just an easy way to do it. You don’t even have to open your CRM software. You can literally just look at your server, at your client files on your server, and just do back-of-the-napkin math. Super easy. And this one is going to be a gimme grade. If you even made the effort to look this up, I want you to give yourself an A. Otherwise, don’t score this area, because you probably haven’t been tracking it.
Allison Tyler Jones: To give you an additional resource to help you be better at retaining your clients and bringing them back again, I want to refer you to a past episode of the Rework, episode 55, “Bringing Clients Back” with Kathryn Langsford, for ideas on getting clients to return. This is a good listen if you’re getting into the busy season and ways to start talking to clients as they are coming in. Maybe you’ll have new clients. Maybe you’ll have some clients that are returning. But ways to bring them back in again.
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay, for our next key performance indicator, let’s look at the processes in your business, your workflow or your operational efficiency. Are you managing your time well, or do you feel overwhelmed with the business side of everything? What areas are creating friction in your business for you?
Allison Tyler Jones: So let me give you an example. When we start the Art of Selling Art course, we do a pretty in-depth survey of our students, and one of the questions is, what are three things that are causing stress in your business, things that are making it hard for you to be successful? And so I wanted to share with you some of the answers that the students have said.
Allison Tyler Jones: So one of the most common frustrations that photographers are having is finding a good retoucher so they don’t have to be chained to a computer. That’s very common. They’re having a really hard time outsourcing that, and part of that is because we’re so dang picky, and they don’t want to spend the time to train somebody else. And so does that sound familiar? Control freak, much. It’s just like the mom that’s trying to train a five-year-old to load the dishwasher, and they make a huge mess of it, and you’re like, “Never mind, I’ll just do it forever,” and then they never learn. So it’s the same thing. You’ve got to learn to outsource and train somebody else to do what you do. And will they ever do it quite as good as you? Probably not. But can they be trained? Yes, they can.
Allison Tyler Jones: Another common complaint is accounting or bookkeeping, photographers finding themselves stuck in QuickBooks, trying to get sales tax paid or doing basic bookkeeping, which, let’s be honest, sometimes gets shoved off until it’s an emergency. The very first thing that I ever outsourced in my business was the bookkeeping and accounting. In fact, I didn’t open my business until I had a bookkeeper. That was non-negotiable. I knew that I’d never do it, and that cost was factored into my business from the very beginning. It was non-negotiable.
Allison Tyler Jones: My number one goal with outsourcing the bookkeeping and accounting is that I would like to stay out of jail. A happy byproduct of outsourcing that job is that I can ask for and get all of the information that I just am asking you about. Reports on revenue, sales stats are just a call away, versus me having to try to compile that information. So often we think, “Oh, it’s not that big a deal. I can do the bookkeeping.” But are you really going to do the reports and keep on top of all of that? Why, when you could be shooting, when you could be marketing, when you could be interacting with clients, which is so much more fun? But truly, staying out of jail was my number one reason. Al Capone could kill people in the street and not go to jail, but they were able to get him on income tax evasion. So consider this your permission slip to hire a bookkeeper today.
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay, so let’s grade yourself on workflow efficiency. Give yourself an A if you make the time to take a minute and look at who’s doing what in your business and how you could outsource or shift some of those responsibilities around. And then I want you, just A to F, give a general grade on this area for how you’re doing. How are you doing in workflow efficiency? If you’ve got it dialed, you’re outsourced, you’re just only doing exactly what you want to do every day and you’re doing the happy dance, give yourself an A. If you are doing some things that you don’t want to do, most things that you do want to do, then give yourself a C. And if you are doing all the hats, totally dying, doing so many things that you don’t want to do, feeling zero joy, burnt out, and don’t know how you’re ever going to get it all done, that’s an F, and you need to make some changes.
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay, so what about the areas that can’t be measured in a spreadsheet or can’t be counted up? These are the areas of the report card that are less quantifiable, but they aren’t less important. These are areas of the report card that, when you were in school, your teacher would cover in a conversation during the parent-teacher conference with your mom and dad, things like, “Allison works and plays well with others, but she does talk a lot and gets distracted from her math.” Are you working and playing well with others, your clients, your employees? Or are you feeling anxious, beat up and worried about your business? Are you facing recurring challenges that you can’t seem to get past, running into the same issues again and again? What are those persistent challenges that you can’t seem to get past?
Allison Tyler Jones: Going back to the student survey for the Art of Selling Art course, whenever we start that new session of the Art of Selling Art course and we survey those incoming students, we are asking them what is and what is not working in their business, and there’s common areas of struggle that will be familiar to you. So I already mentioned a couple. Retouching is hard. Bookkeeping is hard. Other common areas of struggle in this less quantifiable area is, “I’m super inconsistent in my marketing.” “I’m really afraid to raise my prices.” “My sales process is broken. I just don’t have the confidence to sell my work effectively.” “I’m not providing a high-value enough experience for my clients.” “I’m worried that my work isn’t good enough to command higher prices.” Any of these sounding familiar to anybody out there?
Allison Tyler Jones: But by far the most common obstacle to growth or success, as reported by our Art of Selling Art students, and this is three-to-one over any other obstacle, is fear. I ran the numbers four different times. Fear, number one answer to our question in our student intake survey, what is holding you back from success in your business? And if you go back to some of those that I just read to you, afraid to raise prices, that’s fear. Sales process broken, not having the confidence to sell my work effectively, that’s fear. Worried that my work isn’t good enough to command higher prices, that’s fear.
Allison Tyler Jones: So let me read you some other ones. “Perfectionism.” “I have the fear of not being good enough.” “Fear of not having the right words to say.” “Self-doubt.” “I don’t feel like I’m good enough to command higher prices.” “I’m letting my emotions get in the way.” “I’m being too nice.” “I have limiting beliefs about myself and my abilities.” “I don’t value myself or what I do.” So any of these sound familiar?
Allison Tyler Jones: This is going on your report card. It’s not really going to be A to F. It’s just going to go in that comment section of, what fears are holding you back? What fears are keeping you from moving forward in your business and experiencing the success that you might otherwise be able to experience?
Allison Tyler Jones: So in this area, let’s try to give it a grade. Let’s grade our mindset, if you will, in an A to F, a general sense on how you’re doing. So if you’re pumped, you know exactly what you need to do, and you’ve got a plan to do it, and you’re moving forward on that plan, give yourself an A. If you are just want to hold on, make it through another busy season, give yourself a C. But actually, status quo doesn’t work. There’s no such thing as status quo. There’s no such thing as holding steady, because if you’re just holding steady, you really are sliding back, because the world is moving ahead without you. So give yourself a general grade here, A to F. Just gut check. How do you feel like you’re doing on your mindset? Are you letting fear about anything, yourself, your abilities, the economy, the world interfere with the success of your business?
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay, so let’s recap. Let’s go back to the beginning. Number one, revenue, top-line revenue this year over last year, A to F. Number two, how’s your profit margin? A to F. Number three, average sale. How’s that going? A to F. Four, your session counts. Are they increasing in the areas that you want them to increase? Decreasing in the areas that you want them to decrease? Are you making your goals there? A to F. Return clients, you get an A if you even looked at it, if you went in and tried to figure it out, counted up how many clients you shot last year, how many of them were new, how many of them were return clients, and then did the same year-to-date. You get an A if you even looked at it. Number six, your workflow efficiency. How are you doing with that? Seven is your mental state, A to F.
Allison Tyler Jones: And then I want to add an extra one here. Number eight is your mental readiness to make change. Are you ready to make change in your business? Are you ready to finally dig in and figure out what it is that you want to do with your business?
Allison Tyler Jones: So how did you grade yourself? What’s your overall grade? Where are you at? Do you have clear business goals, and are you achieving them? Do you even know which goals you should be setting? Hopefully going through this exercise of this report card is going to give you at least a direction of what you should be looking at and areas that you can be setting your goals in.
Allison Tyler Jones: If your grade isn’t what you’d like it to be, I really want to encourage you to not get discouraged. This is data. It’s a point in time. It’s not going to stay the same. It might get worse. But hopefully knowledge is power, what gets measured gets managed, and having this information gives you the tools you need to move forward. You have the information that you need to help move your business forward. So if you’re at a point in time where you want things to change, are you willing to do what it takes to make that change? Are you prepared to dedicate time to work on your business instead of just in your business?
Allison Tyler Jones: I love to look at the key performance indicators in my business, because I always learn something unexpected, and it takes me in new directions. I hope this report card exercise has done that for you today. I would love to hear what your grades are, and what you think about this exercise, and if there’s anything surprising that you learned doing this exercise.
Allison Tyler Jones: I find that when our MindShift members do this exercise in our membership group, they always complain about it. They’re always so glad they did it, because they learn something that they didn’t know before. We had one student recently that reported that her average sale had increased almost 300%, and she didn’t know that, because she hadn’t been looking at her numbers. And so sometimes I think we get so down on ourselves and beat our heads against a wall and just keep thinking, “It feels slow, and I just need more clients or whatever.” But we’re not really looking at the data and comparing it year-over-year, and that is the data that gives us the direction that we need to go.
Allison Tyler Jones: So you may just want to rewind and listen to this again. If you are on a treadmill or in your car or walking your dog and you don’t have a piece of paper, I would highly recommend that you get a piece of paper and grade yourself on these areas. I think you’ll be so surprised at what you find out, in some ways pleasantly surprised, and in other ways maybe not, but you have the data and you can move forward. So consider this your permission slip to grade yourself, to do better in your business. Don’t be afraid. Take time to look at your own key performance indicators and see how you’re making the grade. See you next time.
Recorded: You can find more great resources from Allison at dotherework.com and on Instagram at do.the.rework.
