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. Today’s guest is Rudi Marten, CEO of Clark Marten Photography in Montana. What started out as a small home-based portrait studio run by his parents, Clark and Rachel Marten, that was all things to all people. Shooting school portraits, shooting senior portraits, families, weddings, anything you could do with a camera to now narrowed down, refined into a powerhouse business that is Montana’s premier family portrait studio. They are on track for their best year yet. How they’ve reached this goal is by making subtle, yet intentional shifts from a hobbyist slash artist mindset to a very focused business mindset, but with purpose and intention. The Clark Marten mission is behind everything they do and how they do it, from dealing with grumpy clients to rolling out marketing that sets out their value to their clients. To setting amazing, huge goals for the future. 100,000 portraits anyone? There are so many great takeaways from this episode to help you shift your own thinking about how and why you’re doing what you do every day. Let’s do it.
Allison Tyler Jones: I am thrilled to welcome back a friend that I don’t get to spend enough time with. Rudi Marten from Montana and Clark Marten Photography. Rudi, I’m so glad that you’re here. Thank you for joining us today.
Rudi Marten: I’m honored that you wanted to have me back.
Allison Tyler Jones: Well, your episode was one of our top 10 most downloaded episodes, and I think it’s because your reputation always precedes you. Your mom and dad built an amazing business and then you coming in have just taken that to the next level. And so the last time we talked, we kind of talked about a little bit of the history of Clark photography, how you’d come in and made some changes, that your mom and dad had a great business going and you kind of came in and took it to the next level, and now you’re about to make some changes too. I’m hearing.
Rudi Marten: Yes.
Allison Tyler Jones: So I want to talk about that and just let’s talk about the business, the art, all the things
Rudi Marten: We’ve had an incredible first and second quarter of the year already and doing things that even when I showed financials to my parents just the other day, they’re like, “Holy smokes. Those are numbers we would not see even in a full year,” and we’re already eclipsing that.
Allison Tyler Jones: That’s amazing. Well, before we started recording, you had said that your mom and dad really have phased into more full retirement, which is so great.
Rudi Marten: Correct. So they are still, I consider them my board of directors. And I go to them and get counsel from them. I am showing them things. They also step in here and there if I need them in a pinch, but we are growing much faster to where I’m not needing to rely on them as much.
Allison Tyler Jones: I love that. Well, you couldn’t have a better board of directors and cheerleaders in your corner, and kinder, nicer, better people in this world.
Rudi Marten: I completely understand that I’m blessed to be able to take over a business from them, and the foundation that they have set up and what they’ve taught me.
Allison Tyler Jones: I love that. Well, okay, so let’s talk about that foundation, because I think how your mom and dad came into the business is how, so I would say 99% of most portrait photographers come into the business as Clark and Rachel Marten did. They have a love for the art. They love the gear, they love creating images. They love interacting with people and making beautiful images for them. And the art of it is what draws you. It’s what fills your soul. Is that fair?
Rudi Marten: Yes, absolutely. And it was my dad who first stepped into the industry and was going after it, and my mom followed behind. And if anyone has seen my parents speak, they often tell the story of my mom eventually was like, “We have encouraged our kids to go to college and be all that they can be,” but she came to the realization because she is the numbers person, that they could not financially support that decision for us kids. And so she went to my dad and said, “We need to figure this out, or we need to do something else, because I don’t want to continue to just get by.”
Rudi Marten: And so that’s where she really honed in on being very good at her sales skills and working through that, and then also starting to run it as a business instead of a hobby. And not just doing favors, but what is the purpose of our day? And I’ve taken that now to go, what is the purpose of the whole studio now? What are we going after and how do we be the champion of that?
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay. So I want to take you back before we get to the business part of it, because that’s going to be the most exciting part for me. But I want to go back to that hobby mindset. Now, there are going to be people that are listening to this that are going to say in their mind, “Well, I have a business. It isn’t a hobby,” but they can’t send their kids to college. Or they are not able to fill in the blank of what they want to do, quit their nine to five. They’re doing it as a side hustle or it’s not making the money, providing them the freedom or the income that they need. So what are some of the hobby-ish mindset types behaviors in your mind that you can look back and see that was holding the business back or keeping it at that hobby level in your mind?
Rudi Marten: What I would say is being all things to all people. So photographing whatever. Somebody asks you to photograph, be it weddings, children, seniors, families, babies, that’s to me being all things to all people. And then having low prices, that price isn’t even a conversation inside of a sale so that you are like, “I know they’ll take this because, and I feel comfortable with this.”
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay. So if they’ll pay me to show up with a camera, I will be there.
Rudi Marten: Correct.
Allison Tyler Jones: Right. And that feels, I think many of us start there because you’re just like, “Okay, well maybe I don’t really even know what I want to do yet.” You kind of have to try a few things and see, “Oh wait, actually I hate weddings or I hate newborns and I really love this.” So it might start out as you kind of are trying different types of product lines, but you find what your jam is. But it would behoove us to choose wisely and choose quickly to, I mean niche. But I get pushback on that from people say, “Well, if you niche too far, then you are eliminating a whole bunch of people.” What do you say to that?
Rudi Marten: I have a different perspective on that. I’m in a small population and I only photograph families. My dad made his name by photographing high school seniors and that was his niche. And we did that. And I tried to champion that, but that wasn’t where my heart was. My heart was behind the family. So unless it falls under the family umbrella… So I will photograph children, I will photograph couples, I will photograph pets inside of the family. But unless it’s under that umbrella, that is the studio rule that we don’t take it.
Allison Tyler Jones: I love that, and I totally agree with you. When you started to make that change. Okay, so great. You’re there now and you’re having success, and all that, and we celebrate that for you. When you started to make that change, there was pushback, correct?
Rudi Marten: Correct.
Allison Tyler Jones: Somebody called and wanted senior portraits or somebody wanted Clark to photograph all my kids up until now and now you’re going to tell me my last kid. So tell me what that pushback looked like and how did you talk about it or where did you have to go in your head to make that okay, so that you weren’t scared about losing that income?
Rudi Marten: Yeah, so it started as, when you say head, it started as a headache where I’m like, “Oh, we have to do this again,” which is outside of our regular system. And so that’s where it started. But yes, we had those clients who you photographed my other four kids, I really want you to do this.
Rudi Marten: And so we did take them, and I think it was after the third one that we went into it and we’re like, “We haven’t done this in so long.” And just us feeling not professional in that sense that I was like, “We’re not the right people for this. The clients”-
Allison Tyler Jones: You’re not serving them to the best of your ability.
Rudi Marten: The clients love us and I can do anything for them, but when I look at it, I’m like, “This is not what we used to create five years ago.” And so that’s where it was for me where I’m like, “No, no more. We just focus on this.”
Rudi Marten: And I think the other thing for me was my whole studio system is worked in as a system. And so this then became a thing that was different and we were like, “Oh, well, we have to hop over there for a second.” And the whole team is like, “What do we do with this? How do we schedule this? How do we send it to the lab? What products are these? We haven’t sold this product inside of a family stuff.” And so that’s where it just was interrupting, and that’s for me where I said we have to be done and we have to have a clear rule.
Rudi Marten: The same conversation happened 15 years ago when I came back into the studio and I was like, “Dad, why are we doing school pictures in the middle of our busiest high school senior season?” And he’s like, “Because it makes us $30,000,” or something like that.
Allison Tyler Jones: What kind of pictures? What kind of pictures you cut out there?
Rudi Marten: School pictures. School pictures. So going to the school taking everyone’s pictures. And it was because he had that he had done that for 30 years. And I looked at it and I was like, “Why are we doing that?” Because it interrupts everything. And so we made that decision of, okay, we’re going to cut that out. And his thought at the time was, this is going to be detrimental, but the school didn’t care. They’re just like, “Oh okay, we’ll find somebody else.” And I then filled those times with high school seniors who are paying 3,000 and $4,000. And so that’s where I kind of look at it of what is it we want to focus on and how do we become the very best at that to make the most that we can?
Allison Tyler Jones: Well, and I kind of compare that to a lot with my dad’s business. When I was growing up and my dad was running his own business, I caught the head and the plow mentality. It’s like you get something that will make you some money, right? Okay, somebody paid me to do this. And then you think you can never not do that. So then you just put your head in the plow and you just keep plowing that same field. When really if you pulled your head out of the plow for a second and looked around and said, “Okay, you know what? Actually this field over here has way less rocks. It’s got better topsoil, it’s got better exposure to light and all the ideal conditions. And I love this field. It’s got wildflowers off to the side. It makes me happy to be here.” And those are all valid concerns. I love doing it. The people love me, and we have a whole process key, which we’re heading into on the business side, built around this. We fire on all cylinders when we’re doing this kind of work for these kinds of people. And then to let something else come in, I remember our friend saying, “How much money do you have to charge for something that’s going to run a freight train through your whole process?” It’s got to be a lot or you can’t do it, right?
Rudi Marten: Yeah.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah. So I love that sometimes it takes somebody outside of us because we just are going to keep doing the same. Somebody paid me to shoot a wedding last year, so I got to keep shooting weddings or whatever.
Rudi Marten: I think that’s a wonderful analogy, because yes, you get into the industry and you’re like, “This is what everyone else is doing, so I will do that as well.” And it is when you lift your head up and go, “What do I really want?” And also having the courage to go, “I can step out of that field and into the field that I want.” And I’ll be completely honest, everyone’s field will be different. Your business model is completely different than my business model. And I have other friends who are like, “I want to photograph every single session.” And I’m like, “Go do that.” And they’re getting a $10,000 sales average, and that’s wonderful. For me, I wanted to have a business that would continue to run what I wasn’t here. And so that’s where I hired photographers to work for me, and that’s what gets me fired up and amped up where I’m like, “I’m so excited. This is what’s going on,” and my team is the same way. And so that’s totally fine. There’s nothing that’s wrong, but the key word that you said or key phrase is don’t be afraid to lift your head up and it’s okay to step into a different field.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yep. I love that. Well, and are you just doing what you’ve always done? Are you still enjoying it? And you might enjoy it for a long time, and then there might come a time where you just realize, “I don’t ever want to do this again.” I remember December 21st, 2010, standing at a wedding reception literally with Scarlett O’Hara with the potato in her hand in the field, I am never doing this again. I don’t ever want to do this again.
Rudi Marten: That was the same conversation when I was at my brother’s wedding and my dad and I were photographing, and I said, “Why the heck did we say we would do this? We will never do a wedding again.”
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah. So checking in with yourself on the regular to say, “Do I still like this? Do I still want to do this?” So we’ve started as kind of hobby, many start as generalists. You kind of figure out what you like to do. Also, style is a huge part of that, and you kind of start to develop. Now we’re a few years into business, into a hobby/business.
Allison Tyler Jones: And so let’s talk about the business side. Some of these conversations that you mentioned that you’ve been having recently that we were talking about before we started to record with friends in the industry about having that lens of a business first versus the art, the art versus the business side. Talk about that a little bit.
Rudi Marten: Yeah. So I think as you and I have talked, most all of us got into this industry or into this profession as artists. We love creating and we love the feeling of what people say or the reaction when we show it to them. And so that’s why we start in this industry. I consider that still a hobby and not a business, and hobbies don’t create much income.
Rudi Marten: And as soon as we can transition to thinking about it as a business and what is the purpose, what are the numbers, how do we need to charge, that’s when the whole thing changes. And you start to create wealth opportunity and a future, and possibly even a next generation for your kids that they’re like, “Yes, I want to do this.” Because when I graduated high school, my parents weren’t yet in that business mindset and I swore I would never go into photography because I was like, “You work way too hard. You work every weekend. We never have money, we’ve never taken a vacation. Why would I want to go into that?”
Rudi Marten: And it wasn’t until that mindset changed for first my mom where she goes, “I want to help put four kids through college.” And she then started to figure out how to price correctly, sell correctly, instructing my dad, “This is what I need to sell,” that they started to create a business that really had merit to it. And that’s when after that, after college is when I was like, “Things have changed. This is different and this is viable.”
Allison Tyler Jones: So I think about that as when I came into the industry, I had a previous business. I had a retail store that I had sold and what was coming into this industry. And so I’ve always loved the art of photography, I love doing it. I had a darkroom, all of that. I did love the art of it. However, when I came into the industry, my first thought was, okay, what’s the gimmick? What is the business of portrait photography? Because there’s got to be a pro forma. With there’s retail store, there’s a pro forma of how you make money. You buy something at X dollars and you sell it at X dollars, and the delta is what your profit is and that’s how you make money.
Allison Tyler Jones: And so I’m looking around at other photographers figuring out, okay, who’s making money? Who’s “successful” in this industry? And I was so surprised at how exactly what you’re saying, everybody had a different opinion when I would say, “Well, how do you price this? Or how do you do this?” “Oh, well so-and-so does it like this and so-and-so does it.” It was kind of the blind leading the blind. Everybody was talking about what everybody else was doing and a lot about the competition. There wasn’t like, “Well in the industry, this is how this business works.” There wasn’t a lot of that going on.
Rudi Marten: And I don’t know that there is necessarily a perfect model to follow.
Allison Tyler Jones: Which is bad and good.
Rudi Marten: Yes, my opinion has always been price what the market will bear. And so we have constantly increased prices. We are the highest priced in our entire area. We also get pushback where they’re like, “Oh my gosh, how can you charge that?” We do get that pushback every once in a while. But because of that, I’m not competing with other photographers, I’m competing with other purchases. So someone who comes in and goes, “Okay, we can spend $4,000 on portraits, but we won’t be able to purchase that hot tub, or we won’t be able to do the Disney vacation.” And I do have people who come in and say, “We chose to do this instead of going to Disney.” And I celebrate that and I say, “You will have this forever.”
Allison Tyler Jones: Absolutely.
Rudi Marten: Yep. And that’s what I’m competing with because of how we’re priced and the model that we’re running.
Allison Tyler Jones: If you’re listening to this while you are driving or on a treadmill, hit the rewind 30 second button or whatever and play that again, because that is so important. When somebody says to me, “Well, what about the competition in your area? Other photographers?” I’m like, “That’s not who I’m competing with. I’m competing with travel. I’m competing with time. I’m competing with procrastination. I’m competing with home expenditures. I am competing with a lot of other things, but I’m not competing with other photographers.” So I think that’s such an important idea.
Allison Tyler Jones: The other concept that I’ve always thought for our industry is that you’ve worked so hard to build this talent and this ability to create these images. And for me, the business is kind of putting an ATM machine around that talent. How do you get paid to do what you’re great at?
Allison Tyler Jones: And as hobbyists and as artists, some people have a very deep seated, it’s a sellout to charge or whatever. I don’t think most people that listen to my podcast feel like that. But there is a little bit of that, also definitely that maybe a middle-class like, “How could you ever charge?” Or when somebody is giving you that pushback, like you’re saying, “How could you possibly charge that much?” Rather than letting that come in and pierce your heart and think, “You know what? You’re right. I’ll give it to you for nothing or I’ll discount it, or whatever.” That you just say, okay, “Then maybe this isn’t for you. I get that.” Or whatever. So I don’t know. That was a lot of things that I just listed. I don’t know where I was going with.
Rudi Marten: I understand that. So as far as clients saying that to me or potential clients saying that, when we get that pushback, in our heads, we just say, “That’s not my client then,” and we move on. I think to think that all artists give away their work for free would destroy the entire art world. You cannot have value on art without charging it. And so if you were to go to Annie Leibovitz and say, “Would you photograph my family please?” She’s not going to do it for $300. You’re going to have to pay a lot of money to have that.
Rudi Marten: And so that’s where I would encourage people to go is how much do I value what I create? And it doesn’t necessarily… There’s two values. I think one is, how good am I? And then the other is what is the result that I’m giving or the benefit I’m giving to the family? So both of those can go into that. I focus on, what is the benefit I’m giving to the family?
Allison Tyler Jones: Absolutely. Because that first one, how good am I? If you are an artist in your soul, your critical eye is always outstripping your ability. Your critical eye develops so much quicker than your actual ability. So every session that you do, you can pick it apart 55 ways of how you could have done it better.
Rudi Marten: Absolutely. And you and I both know photographers who are absolutely brilliant and have amazing work and are entirely broke. But it’s those who step beyond that, that can make a difference in the world.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah. And so that second thing that what is the value that I’m giving the family is that for me, in fact, I was just having this conversation today with a new employee, and she’s getting ready to book clients, and she’s calling everybody and getting our calendar booked. And I said, “You have to pay very close attention to when people, especially new clients, when they’re saying certain things. If you’re getting a ton of pushback, they’re not getting back to you, not getting, it seems like it’s just kind of not working out, like they’re resistant for one reason or another. Pay really close attention to that and start to dig into it. Don’t just gloss over and just book them and hope that it all works out,” because we can only let so many people in per year into our world because of how we work is so over the top. It’s so special. It’s so amazing, this experience, and then also the final product, what it takes to get there, right? This perfect image that’s framed and installed and all that.
Allison Tyler Jones: We’re going to spend a lot of time with these people, so we have to actually be careful about how many people we can let in. We can’t just let everybody in to have that level of service or else the service wouldn’t be that good. I said, “So that’s a different way than thinking anybody that calls on the phone, we got to get them. Anybody that comes in off of a Facebook funnel, we have to convert them all. We want everybody.” Then that goes back to your everything to everybody, right? Sure. They said that they want me to only do holiday cards for them this year. Well, I can’t have a sustainable business if all I’m doing is holiday cards, because my process is built for creating large scale wall art for clients’ homes.
Allison Tyler Jones: So talk a little bit more about that, the business. So now we’ve come out of the artist mindset, we’re now building a business. You’ve gone from, “We’re not doing seniors anymore, we’re not doing weddings anymore, we’re not going to do schools anymore. We’re only focusing on families. And now our process has been built around that.” So can you speak to that a little bit, maybe how that process changed? What do you want to say about that?
Rudi Marten: Yeah, so it first comes… One, when I talk about business, it does not in any way mean we are lowering our quality. The quality is still there. But when you look at it as a business, you start to design first the life that you really want. And that’s where it started for me, where I was like, “Okay, what do I want to make?” And I said that. And then I moved back and go, “Okay, what does the business have to produce for me to make that?” And then from that, I then moved back and said, “Okay, well if our sales averages this, how many sessions do we have to photograph in that?” And then that’s where it first started for me, and that’s how I look at it every year of this is what we’re going to do this year.
Rudi Marten: Now the other thing though, and this is something new that I’ve really come into is there can be times where you get a calling to where you’re like, “I feel like I’ve been called to do something.” And that’s kind of where I’m a new vision for the studio that is driving us. So you’ve seen where other businesses have visions where they’re like, “We want to influence this many people, or we want to help this many businesses.” Now, the whole studio knows that we are on a mission to get portraits into 100,000 homes, and that’s what my goal is. And to look back and go, “We did that.” And so that’s what our driving force is. And behind that driving force, what I tell my team is the money will follow. And so that’s what we’re going after.
Rudi Marten: Now all of that said, I also tell my team we operate with purpose and intention. So we’re not just here to have fun, and chit-chat, and all that kind of stuff. Yes, I want you to have fun, but why are we here today? And it’s so that we’re on task. And so every day has goals, every month has goals so that we’re constantly reaching those. That’s why when I say if you start with why, the money will follow. And so that’s kind of how we operate now, and it’s working really well.
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay, so you start with why the money will follow. Okay, well, yes and-
Rudi Marten: Now it’s not as simple as start with the why, the money will follow. Start with the why, and with purpose and intention, money will follow.
Allison Tyler Jones: Right, exactly. I have this circled on my paper. The purpose and intention is between that, because artists here start with why. If you build the big beautiful studio, then they will come. Right? And the purpose and intention is okay, the purpose is 100,000 portraits into homes of families. I know also your purpose is very deep into building the love of families and confidence of children within families, which is definitely very aligned with how we think as well. But that intention is also intentionally pricing your work properly to support those first things that you just said, which was, what do I need to make? And then I think the second part, this is what most hobbyists, most portrait photographers don’t think about is, what does the business need to make in order for me to make that? They don’t put that second tier in there. They just say, “Well, what do I want to make?” So then they go straight to, “Well, then that’s this many sessions per year.” It’s like, no, no, no. The business has to have money too. So you got to get paid, but the business has got to get paid, because the business has got to pay rent. It’s got to pay employees, it’s got to pay taxes. Right?
Rudi Marten: I’m also a big advocate of being a on salary employee of your studio, and not just taking the pass-through money.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yes, absolutely. Because that is, what’s the word I’m looking for? That’s how business works. In regular world, in the real world, not the portrait photography world, people actually get paid to work. And so if those of you who are solopreneurs who are wearing all the hats and doing all the things, if you get hit by a bus or your retouching hand gets broke or whatever, you’re going to have to pay somebody to do that. And that should be factored in to your pricing.
Rudi Marten: Correct. And I think that also then forces you to budget in your salary of what you’re going to be taking instead of, “Well, I hope we have a good month, and I’ll take the little bit at the end.” When your bank account, and if your payroll goes through and your bank account gets to $100, that’s where you’re like, “Whoa, what’s going on? And I need to figure this out again.”
Allison Tyler Jones: Right, right. It’s forecasting and planning ahead. So start with the why. Then with purpose and intention, the money will follow.
Rudi Marten: Yes.
Allison Tyler Jones: And you’ve been proof positive of that. So any good… We love practical tips, anything that’s just come along that you’re like, “This was a game changer. This was really great for us.” Anything like that that you can share with our listeners?
Rudi Marten: There’s lots.
Allison Tyler Jones: I know you have a PowerPoint for all of them. We could probably have a PowerPoint right here.
Rudi Marten: I would say the biggest, for me, the biggest for the studio has been what is the purpose and intention? And that is one for, and I break it down into for the day. So I challenge all of my team and we’re now a team of 15. I’m like, “What is the purpose and intention of today. When you’re walking into that photography session, what are you doing? Why are you doing it when you’re walking into the showroom, why are you selling? When you’re greeting people?” All of that is, I’m always asking that.
Rudi Marten: And then also then each role is a little bit different because as I’ve started to expand our company, the photographer’s purpose and intention is different than mine now as the CEO. Mine is the health and well-being of the studio structure, financially the employees, and then where’s the vision? Whereas the photographer is working with that client, speaking hope and inspiration into those kiddos and saying, “Parents, you’re doing a great job. “That’s different. And so that phrase has really become resonant through our whole studio.
Rudi Marten: The other thing that has really helped is getting a clear vision and a clear mission of, why are we doing this? When I can champion a why for the whole studio that they’re not just going, “Well, this is just to make you money Rudi.” It’s now, no, we are influencing a next generation and in a different world that will be because of what we’re doing today. That also has been a game changer.
Allison Tyler Jones: I love that. And so what is your vision? What are the current words that Clark Marten Photography is using right now?
Rudi Marten: Sure. So our mission is to empower families and champion children through portrait art. And our vision is to get portraits into 100,000 homes in our community. And so that’s a lifetime vision for me, but it could be something that is continued on later.
Allison Tyler Jones: I love that. I love that specificity.
Rudi Marten: And that’s what all of us, when things are going on crazy and I’m like, “Whoa, let’s come back to what is our mission? What are we doing?” Or we have a grumpy client or upset client or something. I’m like, “Let’s come to why we’re doing this.” And then we talk about it, I’m like, “You’re right, I’ll suck it up and I’ll push through this.” And it’s unrealistic to think that everyone will understand that mission right away. It might take a while, but it’s something that really has brought the whole team together.
Allison Tyler Jones: So give me an example of a grumpy client, because we all have them. You’ve got a grumpy client that’s mad about something. How has this mission, which I kind of look at that as a filter, that you’re putting something through. We have a grumpy client, you have a whatever. What does that look like? Then how are you responding versus how you might have responded otherwise?
Rudi Marten: The mission and the vision is somewhat internal marketing. And by internal, I mean working with my team and all of that. So instead of a grumpy client coming in and they’re like, “Well, this is what we do and this is what it is,” it’s now so okay, let me understand this and go through that filter. Also, when someone is on a payment plan and they’re like, “I want out of it,” we approach it as, “Okay, I know this is important to you,” because in going through and looking at those images with them. And really listening and understanding instead of just saying, “Well, our policy is this,” and it’s much more personal instead of black and white.
Allison Tyler Jones: So if somebody is on a payment plan, they’re feeling the pinch. They are like, “I don’t want to finish paying for this.” Do they already have the work?
Rudi Marten: No.
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay. They don’t have the work. And so then you’re meeting with them again, going through the images again, and then just walking them through the purpose behind, or how does that look?
Rudi Marten: We’re trying to bring them back to the feeling that they had when they were first viewing their images. I have two thoughts. One is I don’t want someone to have portraits in their home that they’re like, “Ugh, I hate these because I got stuck in the sale.”
Allison Tyler Jones: Absolutely.
Rudi Marten: The other though is I still know that what they felt when they were viewing them was a special feeling that I need to bring them back to, because they’ve now stepped away from that feeling and now it’s a financial feeling. And so I need to move them back to that.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah, I think that’s really good. So you’re bringing them back in to look at them, back into the studio to look at them or Zoom?
Rudi Marten: We will invite them if they will, but most of the time it is over the phone where we’re like, “Oh, okay, let’s pull up everything. Let me pull it up,” and we’ll walk through it real quick. And then talking about specific images. We also have notes on everything, so the sales people have left notes of, they love this and this, and this is what she commented on or he commented on. And so we’ll pull that back up.
Rudi Marten: And most of the time, if someone is wanting to cancel a payment plan, they’ve gotten into a pinch and they’re trying to find how they can save money somewhere. And where’s the easiest spot to cancel? And if you can just listen to them for a little bit and say, “Oh my goodness,” and sympathize with them and then go, “Let’s just do this.” And then they’re like, “Oh, thank you so much.” That’s usually what it takes. They’re not wanting to cancel the whole thing, they’re just needing a little bit of help.
Allison Tyler Jones: Maybe a little bit more time.
Rudi Marten: Yeah.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah. Maybe one less thing or maybe something a little bit smaller.
Rudi Marten: Correct.
Allison Tyler Jones: Just a minor adjustment. But from a business standpoint, if you’re thinking about your business as a business, you have expectation that is going to happen. That is normal. You’re going to have, in the retail business, you set aside a certain amount of percentage for shrinkage. There’s going to be shoplifting, there’s going to be breakage. It’s going to happen. But because it’s our art, when you’re in that hobby mindset, when somebody calls and says they want to change something, we take it as such a personal rejection that we can’t even see a way… We’re thinking so much of our own self that we can’t see a way clear to help the client, because it’s not about us, it’s about them. They actually want those pictures, those portraits of their darling little kids. They don’t want to say no, but they’re like you said, they’re feeling a pinch. And just letting them get it out. Very often I find they will tuck themselves back around because they will realize, “Okay, actually no. The ones of the girls twirling in the ballerina. No, nevermind. I’m going to go tell my husband he can’t buy a new golf club.” Whatever. They’ll figure something else out.
Rudi Marten: Correct. And I think you’re spot on with that. I think another big change has been going into that mindset of looking at it, the more people you work with, the more you have to think of this business as a little bit like retail, where you’re going to get people who want to return, or who want to cancel, or things like that to where you’re like, “I’ve never experienced this before.” And you take it personally, but you have to approach it as this is going to happen.
Allison Tyler Jones: Well, and so for us, we work… Like I say, our business models are a little bit different. We have done payment plans, but most don’t. Most, they just order it and then they’ll say, “Do you take that all now?” And we usually just take the full amount up front. But if they’re a new client, I usually will wait 24 hours to charge that card because sometimes they will, the next day they’ll overnight, they’ll kind of have that like, “Hold on, what did I do?” And they might need to adjust, or talk about something, or whatever. So because on our invoice, it’s basically saying this is not like a Louis Vuitton handbag that you can return. It’s this customized art that we’re putting into production right now. And so this is what it is. But then they might say, “Well, can we make that smaller or whatever?” And then we can have that conversation later. Just knowing that it’s a possibility. And then having, like you said, with purpose and intention.
Allison Tyler Jones: So the purpose, if your purpose is going back to your mission, which is empower families and champion children through portrait art. So whether that’s public or not, that’s internal. So the client calls grumpy or wants to cancel something. So if that’s our purpose is to empower this family and to champion these children, having them not be empowered or championed is not an option. So we want to help them get what they truly wanted when they were sitting with us and talking. And so that’s a different approach than, “Well, in subsection A, paragraph B of the 10-page contract that we emailed you before we even shot you and that you initialed, it says you can’t cancel.” Nobody wants that.
Rudi Marten: Correct. And so another discussion I have with my team is, so we have this family and they choose not to do anything. So what happens to that kiddo who grows up in a home without a family portrait on their wall? And I said, “Those are the ones that I look at.” So the clients who don’t come through, the families who don’t come through, who are we not being able to influence? And that is truthfully, probably if you dig deeper, my biggest why is because we were lazy, or unintentional, or something like that, that I’m like, we didn’t have the opportunity to help change that kid’s life or to help them find belonging and purpose in their own life.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah. So they will grow up without the benefit of that portrait on their wall. And there might be some listeners thinking right now, “Oh, are you just taking yourself too seriously?” But I don’t think you are. I really, the longer I am in this business, the longer that I do what I do, it only confirms for me more and more the value of what it is that we do of how important those portraits. And not just the portraits, the actual act of creating the portrait, having those moments together while they are in the same room. It makes me think of a graduation. It’s like a seminal moment in a life of a family where they are all together.
Allison Tyler Jones: And it can be horrible if you do not have purpose and intention. If you’re just standing there with the camera going, “Okay, what do you want?” You have not thought this through. You’re letting them call all the shots. Instead, you’re stepping forward as the expert, and you’ve got it completely handled. You’re managing this amazing experience. You’re turning them toward each other. You’re speaking love into their family, even though they’ve shown up and they want to kill each other. You’re letting that bleed off. You’re talking to the husband about how beautiful his wife is, or husband how beautiful his husband is. Whatever the formation of that family is, and just showing them why they’re so glad they did it in the first place. Because at some point they called and they want to memorialize this family.
Rudi Marten: Correct. And you have to remind them because what you just shared right there is exactly the same experience that we have. And you have to remind them and go, “You’re doing a good job. You did great on picking out clothes, mom, dad. I understand if you’re not wanting to be here, but what you’re showing your kids is so powerful that they are so important to you, that you’ve taken this time off work to do this. And I will make this very easy for you and I’ll make you look very strong.” And just giving them that confidence back.
Rudi Marten: Going back to what my why is and where you said some people might think that’s just taking things way too serious. That’s somewhat what your and my approach is. I have other friends who they’re like, “This is just a business and I just want to make money,” and that’s totally fine. This is the route that I have gone and what I am moving towards.
Rudi Marten: But as you have even shared, the older that I’ve gotten, the more I have gone and realized that what we do as photographers is so powerful. The little bit of time that we get to be with people can change their confidence in a very positive way or a very negative way by what we say to them, because being in front of a camera is a very vulnerable spot. And we have an opportunity to encourage, to uplift, and to help them go, “I like who I am. I like how I look.” And that’s a different weight than just taking pictures. But understanding that then becomes a purpose that we as photographers have that we understand and go, “Wow, what we do matters. This is not small stuff. This is big stuff.”
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah. And also, it’s like job satisfaction. It’s like if you’re pouring yourself and your team, whether you have employees or not, into each experience, there’s so much meaning and satisfaction in that. So that goes beyond the art. It just permeates everything that you do. And like you say, the money does follow that, because they can’t get that anywhere else.
Allison Tyler Jones: But I can’t give that kind of experience. I can’t give that kind of time without charging enough for it. So if I’m running around looking at my $100 bank account and going, “Oh my gosh, we’ve got to call and do some deals and get some mini sessions in here and just rustle up some business,” I’m never going to have the time to just pause and breathe and spend that time with that client because I’m worried about, who’s coming at 2:00? And let’s go. Let’s go. We got to get them through here, and don’t give me any pushback. And sure, I’ll give it to you for a deal. Let’s just move it along.
Allison Tyler Jones: And I think that goes back to your earlier decision of, okay, how much money do I need to make? But also, what does my life look like? What kind of work do I want to do? How do I want to feel at the end of every day after I’ve worked with people? If I’ve been shooting all day, I’m tired, but I am full of energy. That’s a great day for me. If I’ve been dealing with clients, because our clients now, and it wasn’t always this way, but we attract those people. We attract the people that love their families, that want to celebrate it, and they want to memorialize it.
Rudi Marten: Totally.
Allison Tyler Jones: And so the more we speak that, the more it attracts that kind of thing. And so it’s just amazing how when I’m talking to them, I’m on the phone, I can tell who an ideal client is because it’s the mom that knows every nuance of their kid’s personality. And so I’m like, “Okay, this is going to be great.” I don’t think you can take it too seriously.
Allison Tyler Jones: So that’s great. Like you said, there are people that are like, “Look, I just want to make money.” Awesome. You can make money doing lots of different things. But I think most of us, especially if you started with the art angle, that’s how you can make the business art. There are still creative ways. I don’t think it’s either or. And I think that’s where we get into problems with photographers is they’re like, “Well, I just hate the business side. I just hate sales. I don’t want to deal with it. I just want to make pretty things.” And it’s like, okay yes. You know how to make pretty things. Let’s figure out how to make a pretty amazing, meaningful business that makes a pretty amazing meaningful life, and a pretty amazing meaningful experience for your clients. So all of that comes out and it’s all artwork in and of itself.
Rudi Marten: Absolutely. Yep. It is a decision to where you do have to say, “I want to be an artist. I want to be a photographer and I want to be successful.” And then to be successful now you have to go, “Okay, what does it take?” And these are the things we’re talking about here.
Allison Tyler Jones: Purpose and intention. I love that. I just had a dagger through my heart when you said the clients who don’t come through because we were lazy or unintentional and that they’re going to not have that benefit. And so I think that’s really important too. I want to highlight that, because it’s very easy because humans are complicated and some people get in bad moods. And sometimes people are just straight up jerks. But sometimes when somebody has gotten mad or gotten sideways about something and we haven’t been able to book them, it’s because we’ve put our own neuroses in the way. We’re assuming facts not in evidence. We’re assuming that they’re thinking, “Well you just think you’re so great because you’re in that big building in Montana, or you are charging, how dare you charge that?” And they’re thinking that we are placing our own insecurities on what’s coming out of their mouth rather than just taking a beat and stepping back and saying, “Well, tell me more about that.” Or, “I understand.” Like you were saying, about the people that want to cancel the payment plan. Hey yeah, that’s got to be frustrating. That’s got to be hard. That’s got to be scary. And just letting that breathe rather than pushing back on something.
Allison Tyler Jones: And so how can we not be lazy and unintentional? How can we not make it about us, and how can we get more of them to through? So when you see that people haven’t come through, is there a common denominator in people that haven’t booked or that haven’t purchased that you feel like the common area?
Rudi Marten: Sure. I would say the two biggest common denominators, one is price. And the second one is scheduling. So time. Price, I will not budge on that. So we charge what we charge so that we can continue to have a successful business. And so when they come back and say, “Well, you’re too expensive,” that tells me we haven’t created enough value for them to understand.
Rudi Marten: And so those are learning opportunities for me in our marketing that I’m like, “Okay, we have to come back and relook at this so that less people say that or fewer people say that.” And then as far as timing, that’s then where we come in and go, “I totally understand the schedules are complicated,” and we follow up with them to come back to, “I know this is important to you because,” and come back to it constantly. Even when someone calls and is like, “The schedule is way too complicated, we need to cancel,” and they’re three weeks out or something, we follow up with them because the cancellation is not a no, in my opinion. It is just not yet.
Allison Tyler Jones: Absolutely. And we were just in this same conversation I was having with my employee today is, I don’t know if you feel like this, I’m just going to go sideways and ask you. Don’t you feel like client communication is at an all time complicate… It’s so hard to get people to respond. I feel like we’re just working so hard to get things booked. There’s extra distracted.
Rudi Marten: I would agree with that, yeah. When you put in also texting and emails, it then becomes impersonal and it’s easy for them to just have no emotion in it and just go, “We want to do this.” And then we’re like, “Why? We need to know more.” And then we’re having to constantly follow up and try and get them on the phone to understand the whole situation and help them out, versus just a quick text for them was like, “There, it’s done. It’s off my plate.”
Allison Tyler Jones: Right. Yeah. No, that’s really good. I love that. Well, so many good takeaways. I always love to spend time with you and talk about… I just wish we had three or four more hours to go learn more things. But the thing that always comes back to me about the Clark Marten brand, and really just you as people, as a person, is that there’s just this deep level of intention and a core meaning behind what you’re doing. And then of course, you’re a smart business person and you’ve gone and taken so many classes and learned so many different things, and informed yourself to make a successful business from a financial angle. But you’ve built all of that on this purpose and meaning, which in my experience, I don’t think you could have a lasting foundation without that.
Rudi Marten: I would agree.
Allison Tyler Jones: That’s a legacy.
Rudi Marten: Yep, it is.
Allison Tyler Jones: That will go generations.
Rudi Marten: It is very much. And I truly believe that is from my parents’ foundation and the roots they put down, because there are people who still come into the studio and say, “Your dad took my senior pictures and my wedding pictures.” And even new employees that we hire, they constantly are like, “Your reputation is amazing through town.”
Rudi Marten: And that’s one of the things that I want to ensure that we continue on is I want to be the best place to work. I want to be the number one photographer. When someone says family portraits, they say, “You need to go to Clark Marten.” And even though my dad is retired and doesn’t work here anymore, it’s still Clark Marten Photography because of the history that we have here.
Allison Tyler Jones: Absolutely.
Rudi Marten: And also, the heart of everything behind it is still that.
Allison Tyler Jones: When people say, “Well, I shouldn’t have named my studio after my name. I should have named it some other name.” But like I say to my employees, we’re all working for Allison Tyler Jones Photography. I’m Alison Jones in my life. I don’t use the Tyler except professionally. We’re all working for that brand. It’s just like Coco Chanel has been dead forever, but that brand lives on, Louis Vuitton dead, still lives on.
Allison Tyler Jones: So I think that if we can think about it that way, we want it to be in our heart, but pull our business out to the side of us a little bit and set it next to us and say, “Okay, there’s us. Who’s the artist?” And then there’s this business that we can create artfully with purpose, and meaning, and attention, but it needs to stand alone and it needs to be successful-
Rudi Marten: Correct. And I think what you’re saying right there is very true. You can be an amazing artist. And when you pair that with good business, that’s where you influence and change the world. That’s where artists have become famous. None of us celebrate or look at very rarely broke and poor artists. We all look at the ones who did very well. And that’s what it takes though, is a business side and an artist side.
Rudi Marten: And that’s hard for some of us to grasp. And it’s like a muscle to where you have to exercise it and go, “I don’t like having to look at P&L statements, but I’m going to because I know that this is the way that I start success in knowing what my numbers are,” and then digging into that.
Rudi Marten: And so when I first started to do that, I hated numbers. And it was me going, “Okay, I’m going to check out of my artist side for just a little bit. And for the next two hours I’m going to check into the business side that I have to stretch this muscle and understand it,” and don’t get frustrated if it doesn’t come very quickly. It could take longer, because now I totally geek out on P&L statements and love the numbers side. And I can geek out on the artist side also. But it is an exercise that you have to work both sides.
Allison Tyler Jones: Well, absolutely. And all you have to do to give a reference for that is to go back to when you were trying to figure out that F-stop, shutter speed, ISO, that triangle. It couldn’t be two things. It’s got to be three things. If it was just shutter speed and aperture, we could do it, but you got to throw ISO in there? And that’s math. That was hard. It didn’t come super quick, but you learned it. And now it’s just second nature. You don’t even think about it. It’s just you’re sitting there doing what you need to do.
Allison Tyler Jones: And so just like anything else, you can learn it. And it’s so worth learning because it tells you a story about your business that you wouldn’t otherwise know. You can have a lot of intuition and think, “We’re up from last year. Yeah no, I think we’re doing better.” But you look at that P&L and actually, no, not doing better. Or yeah, you’re doing better here, but you’re spending a lot of money over here. It just gives you the story.
Rudi Marten: Yeah. And I think what I’d like to close with is what do you want your business or what do you want your photography life, when someone looks back on it, what do you want it to represent? And one of the things that my parents did was we want to put our four kids through college, and that was their why. That was what drove them. And for me, mine is now I want to influence the world through families.
Rudi Marten: But those are huge, audacious goals. So if you look at yours and you go, “Well, what do I want my business to reflect upon me?” Then look at it to go, “What do I want to leave my kids? What do I want them to see as our example of life that we influenced or that we got to do?” If you’re not making much money, do you want your kids to look at that going, well, like I did growing up, “We never had money, they have never had weekends, and I would never go into that profession.” Or do you want it to be, “My parents gave me opportunities and showed me things and experiences because of the business that produced and gave that money to do for that”?
Rudi Marten: That’s what I would encourage people to do is like I said, what do I want my life to look like? What do I need? And then what does the business have to do? And then that’s where you figure out, how do we get the business to that?
Allison Tyler Jones: I love that. So good. So inspiring. Okay. I can’t leave without asking you a couple of questions. Any great books, podcasts, or resources? I know you’re an omnivore as we share sources. Anything amazing, great that you’ve read recently blew your mind? It could be literally Netflix to books, to anything, whatever.
Rudi Marten: No. So my two favorite books right now, I just finished them, is Buy Back Your Time. It’s an amazing book because we all, as we get into this business, it is, we get into the mode of get stuff done. And the greatest thing in that was, okay, if you’re constantly in the business, you can’t be planning on it or having a life outside of it. So how do we then move people in to help you do that and you’ll grow faster?
Rudi Marten: The other one is called Fierce Conversations. Incredible book that will slap you upside the head and it will be amazing also because you’re like, “Oh my gosh, she’s talking right to me,” as you read it, and then there’s times where you’re like, “Stop talking to me because that’s exactly what I’m doing wrong.”
Allison Tyler Jones: Oh, okay. Of those are great. Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell and Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life, One Conversation at a Time.
Rudi Marten: By Susan Scott
Allison Tyler Jones: And that’s by Susan Scott. Okay. We’ll link to those in the show notes. I knew you would have good books. Love that.
Rudi Marten: Yeah, those are both very good. And in Buy Back Your Time, he also will talk to you about and help you kind of go, okay, what’s the life that you want? How do we design that? And then we need to structure the business behind it.
Rudi Marten: And Fierce Conversations is one, fierce conversations with yourself of conversations that we all, sometimes, especially as artists, are too scared to have, and Fierce conversations with either family or employees that you’re like, “I want people to like me,” and so I’m not having these conversations, but we need to still dig into it so that we’re all truthful and honest with each other.
Allison Tyler Jones: That’s so good. That’s so good. I think especially for really small businesses, because you may only have one or two employees and that, I mean, your HR is one person, so that really can be hard. Very difficult. I love that. Okay, well, you’re the best. I appreciate you so much. Thank you. Always good to see you.
Rudi Marten: You’re amazing as well. I love you Allison.
Recorded: You can find more great resources from Allison at dotherework.com and on Instagram @do.the.rework.