Allison Tyler Jones: 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. Gregory Daniel is back in The ReWork Podcast studio, and let me tell you, he has got a new soapbox that he’s up on and I am here for it. I honestly feel like Greg missed his calling. He should have actually been a philosopher. Actually, he is a philosopher here, he’s a photographer philosopher, and I’m here for it. He’s my brother from another mother. We love to dig into the philosophy behind why people in this industry are doing what they’re doing, why we are doing what we’re doing, and how we’ve come to those decisions.
Allison Tyler Jones: So what started as a pricing conversation went deep into some philosophy behind how we talk about our work, what we’re really selling, how huge a sea changes in the industry cratered many businesses and not others. Some were able to weather storm, and as we all know, nothing stays the same, everything changes, and of course, we know that there’s more change ahead.
Allison Tyler Jones: So how can you structure your business or philosophize about your business so that you don’t miss a beat? How can you make sure that you’re structuring your business to be a sustainable business model? Well, it’s all going to start with your mindset. It’s all going to start with the product that you’re going to build and the price that you’d like to have every time you do the sale. Greg’s going to offer advice about how to get there, how to start dreaming, how to have creative discipline, a creative exercise that you can do to help you make the change that you’ve always dreamed of so that you can actually see your way forward. Instead of being tossed about by the winds of fortune and change in the world, we even go down a ChatGPT rabbit hole and ask ChatGPT what photographers should be charging for a 16 x 20?
Allison Tyler Jones: I think you’re going to really enjoy this one. It was a great conversation, wide-ranging as always, and full of great inspiration and value as always, from the one and only, Gregory Daniel. Let’s do it.
Allison Tyler Jones: What’s your soapbox? I can’t wait to hear-
Gregory Daniel: Look you pushed my button. You said you want to know when pricing our own work, why is it so scary when you cut your own work? And you know when to push a button. And thank your whole family because you know exactly the buttons that push to get me going and I head on a ramp.
Allison Tyler Jones: I love it. I love it. So yes, so feel free. It’s funny because that last topic that hit a nerve big time. That hit a nerve big time. Like, I got DMs. “Okay. I have been doing it wrong. He’s exactly right. I never thought about it this way before,” you know, when you were talking about doing the experience without a product is just like the souvenir.
Gregory Daniel: The commemorative portrait. Yeah, it didn’t go over well or did it-
Allison Tyler Jones: No. So well, everybody loved it. Are you kidding me? It was one of the most downloaded episodes, and I don’t think of you as a controversial person. You’re not one that’s just going to poke the bear just to poke the bear, but I think speak truth to power, man, it’s the truth. And I think for so many portrait photographers, especially, I think we’re nice people. We love people and we want to give and we want to just layer in all the sexy frames and the painting and the love and the candy and the treats and packaging, and we want it to be so we don’t have any problem adding to the list of things that we’re going to bring into our clients. We have no problem adding value, but man, when it comes to asking for the money or insisting that somebody buy a product, that’s hard.
Gregory Daniel: Yeah, I think you wanted to talk about that, why it’s so scary pricing our work, and I’ve thought too long about this and spent a lot of time in my brain going, “Why is that? Why is that? Why is our industry so different? What is so different that we can’t figure out how to price things and what the value is what it’s worth?” And you hear, well, “X times this, X times that. Look at how much your product costs are and multiply it and all of that.” And I’m like, “This drives me crazy. Why? Why? Why?” I think it revolves around the word, change. Really, that change, meaning when we get into our industry, most of us get in because we love photography, we’re loving what we do, and we are doing it for free. At some point that ladder on that wall, if you want it to be a business, you’re going to have to flip the ladder on a different wall.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah.
Gregory Daniel: Flip the wall-
Allison Tyler Jones: From the hobby wall to a business wall.
Gregory Daniel: Hobby wall to the business wall. So that’s just change. I mean, natural change is inherently difficult for us to do, right?
Allison Tyler Jones: Right. And it makes me think that most doctors don’t get into it as a hobby, but I do think there are some doctors that have a hard time charging.
Gregory Daniel: Yeah. But they work-
Allison Tyler Jones: Because they love to heal and they want to help people and somebody might not be able to afford it or whatever. So you got to get an HR business office manager, that’s like a battle axe is going to be put in front of you and like, no, no, no, you got to pay to play.
Gregory Daniel: So if that ladders on that wall, you got to move it. Now you’re dealing with change, which now you’re dealing with natural fear. Change is fear. And so the whole thing then revolves around the fear is how do you overcome fear?
Allison Tyler Jones: Right. What’s behind the fear?
Gregory Daniel: Yeah. So what’s behind the fear? I think you can overcome fear. You can overcome fear, and you change management. There’s a whole series of how to do the change and how to manage that change and get from point A to point B, so that’s the good news. The good news is that you can do this and you can start charging, then you can get over that fear, like, that fear jump. So that’s the good news. The bad news is where my rant comes in is that, I believe our industry business model’s rigged. I just think it’s rigged. I think it’s set up for failure on just the whole business model, how it is and how it exists. And-
Allison Tyler Jones: Say more.
Gregory Daniel: … how we charge-
Allison Tyler Jones: Say more about that? What do you mean? What you mean the business model is rigged?
Gregory Daniel: Well, for one, we wanted to circle back around… My whole goal today is to try to get you to raise your hands up in the air a couple of times ’cause I like that when you do that.
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay. You’re going to have to convince me.
Gregory Daniel: Okay. I think it’s rigged ’cause I think that what happened there was this huge mess up when we had the transitional from negative to digital.
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay.
Gregory Daniel: There was this transition disaster that happened when we made that transition and it wiped out the product. In between, it wiped out the product. And then I think when it started wiping out the product, it started wiping out all of these businesses. So there was this huge shift of the whole business model from having a product, and they all kind of went away to not having the product. And they’re all in here and they’re all starting to teach and tell people how to do things. So I think the new influencers, so I was raised back over here on these influencers. There’s a whole new influence world, and I think the new influencer world got it wrong.
Gregory Daniel: I think they got it wrong, and that’s why I had that rant the other time about it turned into an experience, not a product, because the absence of a product, now what are you going to sell? So if your industry is absent of the product, because digital really isn’t a product, right. Like, the same thing as negative. So let me say it this way, that I believe digital, for me and my perspective standpoint, digital was just a different tool. It’s not a product. A negative was a tool and so is a digital, just like microwaves. When the microwave oven came out, it’s a tool. It doesn’t replace anything. It’s just a different tool to achieve a product, to create a product, to become a product. And I think what we’ve done is we’ve turned this tool into a pseudo product and it’s not, it just erased the product.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah. Well, and we erased I think three quarters of the whole process too. Okay, so let me back up for a second because I want to go down a tiny rabbit hole with you on this because I 100% agree with you, have thoughts, but why do you think it wiped out all those businesses? That is interesting to me. What happened to them? Why aren’t they still around?
Gregory Daniel: Well, there was a shift that they had to technically shift from film basically to digital. I mean, they were basically forced to shift, and so most of them didn’t want to make transition, so they stopped, right? Gave them excuse to stop. Because circle back around to our initial discussion was just why is it so scary? Well, it’s change. Right. Change is fear. So a lot of the folks aren’t going to make the change. They’re just not going to deal with the fear and the change of what the future is going to bring. So they stop. They don’t want to make that transition. So now we get flooded in the market with all of these folks that are making the change, but they’re basically not even making the change. They’re starting in the digital world. So they’re starting with that as their thing. And they don’t know anything about sales and products or products and sales.
Allison Tyler Jones: Right. And so I think going back to, I’m just going to call them the old guys, okay.
Gregory Daniel: Yeah.
Allison Tyler Jones: So I’m not casting aspersions, but I think we can all kind of get in our head the Hawaiian shirt, the former electrical engineer that’s got more camera gear than you’ve ever seen in your life, and that was doing business a certain way.
Gregory Daniel: Right.
Allison Tyler Jones: And then here comes digital, not only digital, a ton of women-
Gregory Daniel: Sure.
Allison Tyler Jones: … and much looser shooting style, much more candid, much more photo journalistic, and a lot of those guys, they started out, like, “Well, their lighting’s crap. Those are just snapshots.” They’re kind of dismissing the whole thing like, it wasn’t really going to go anywhere, but then watching the whole thing. So I think that the change wasn’t just digital, it was also the style and how those moms with the camera women were working with the clients in a different way. So it was like a sea change in so many areas, not just the camera, the medium, but also the style. Would you agree?
Gregory Daniel: I would agree with that. Yeah, I would agree with that. But I would agree the foundation of the change that weren’t for digital, there would’ve been a change of that as well, but it would’ve been in a different manner and a different way, and it was already happening. It was already happening with Sarah Smith and some of the others prior to that. So they were the creators of the boutique kind of studio experience back before digital. So the wave was already starting and would implemented its way in through the system, but the digital revolution changed everything really, really, really fast. And so you hit the disaster moment. It all came together as a disaster moment, and people ran into the fear wall.
Allison Tyler Jones: Right. And really went, I think into this resistant, rather than like, “Okay, hold on. How could we make this work? We’re convinced of product, we’re never going to not do product, but how could we maybe evolve our style, maybe evolve our branding, maybe evolve, look at the things that we’re attracting other clients?” Because I think a lot of those guys looked at it and thought, “Well, it’s just because these girls are all married to attorneys. They don’t have to work. They’re giving it away. They’re just doing digital files and they’re ruining the industry industry.”
Gregory Daniel: I would agree with you, but I think of it as a transition plan. That there needed to be a transition plan to get from point A to point B. We all agree that there is a future state, and without whether digital on the foundation happen or not, there was going to be a future state. There always is a future state and a transition and getting from point A to point B. What digital did is it disrupted the transition, and so there was no dovetail. So the bad that you’re kind of talking about the negatives or the cons, there were positives and pros within the foundational principles of sales, marketing and product. Ok you like the branding of it, the foundations of it are age-old, and what happened, it didn’t come across. It was like a barrier split because of that transition issue. And now you ended up throwing the baby out with a bath water. So now they didn’t get those pieces. And as they’re trying to develop these pieces, they’re trying to do it based on a thing only foundation of digital, which that foundation is a unsustainable business model.
Allison Tyler Jones: Right.
Gregory Daniel: It’s just unsustainable as many ways as you hit it ’cause if they’ve tried to deal with it in many, many different angles, since it started from shoot and burn to all the different transitions that it went into, the problem is they never dovetailed in all of the good that came from what is viewed as all of the bad. It was all just balled up and said, “Throw that away.” And then now they’re trying to-
Allison Tyler Jones: Right. Because I feel like everybody went into two camps. So the younger women that came in that wanted to shoot in a looser style and maybe weren’t really starting as a business to start with, but they were looking at these other guys. Like, maybe you’d go to a PPA affiliate meeting or whatever and these guys, it’s like there were two camps very much. And these guys were over here like, “Rah, rah, rah,” not really mentoring and helping you guys, “You could be doing better if you would do product because here’s why.” And then these other girls are like, “Oh, that’s great. We made $500.” They’re not realizing, “Oh, this could be better.” You’re not doing three quarters of the job if all you’re doing is giving them digital files. So I feel like they kind of split into two camps and they weren’t necessarily really helping each other at that point.
Gregory Daniel: There was no transition.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah.
Gregory Daniel: There was none of that future state and current state, that transition plan that went together. So from my perspective, it’s that because I’m on both camps.
Allison Tyler Jones: You’re on both camps, exactly.
Gregory Daniel: I’ve seen both worlds and been through both worlds. So I think of it, like, “Why did it fail? Why did that transition not fail? Why didn’t it take place appropriately? Why did all that foundational good stuff not come over to the other side?” And I think it’s another kind of a social thing that happened. Let me give you this crazy story here. This is going to make sense in a minute.
Allison Tyler Jones: It’s making sense now, dude. But I’m ready. I’m here for a story. Let’s go.
Gregory Daniel: So years ago we were going to a basketball game, and so we were waiting for my brother-in-Law to come from Tampa and we’re standing up and in the old arena, there were doors all the way around the arena. So you come in at any place. There’s this 50 doors that you could enter all the way around, and all of them are open, and you could come in any one of them. And you have to go up these stairs and stairs were all the way around. So you had your choice coming in from the parking lot, you could come up and go in any door that you wanted to. And Lisa and I are up at the top and we’re talking to one of the security guys and we’re just chatting with him, just chatting it all up. And he said, “You want to see something interesting?”
Gregory Daniel: “Sure.” He says, “You see this group of people, this wave, this huge group of people that’s coming in from the parking lot?” He says, “I can make one comment to a guy down there to make a comment to the leader person and tell that person to walk all the way down, past all the doors and go to the end door and go in it.” And he said, “Watch, that entire group of people will wave like minnows and go all the way down to the end and go up in that door.” And he did it and they did it. And I’m like, “Are you kidding me?” They could have gone in any door and they were just following the mob. It was like a herd mentality of movement. The bandwagon effect, the group think effect that you just kind of move with everything.
Gregory Daniel: And I think what’s happened is that I see these influencers that came in to the new market without any thought of, “Let’s throw all this out. I’m smart enough to create this thing from scratch. I can do all this by myself. I can invent this thing that looks cool and fun,” and now all these people that are coming into that market from the parking lot, right. They’re coming into the parking lot and they’re following this particular influencer or influencers that have this convinced thing, “This is the way to go.”
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah.
Gregory Daniel: I think they got it wrong. I think they got it wrong from saying, “Digital is a product,” when digital is a microwave.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah, it’s a tool.
Gregory Daniel: Tool, to get to the product. If we did that at the beginning, if digital was a tool and product, I go, “Well, why?” And I think to myself, “Why did I not suffer the consequence from that whole event happening? Why did we never miss a beat? Why did we stay current and on top and why did our sales even grow over all of those years? What was it? Why did I not have that problem?” And I really believe it was because my whole world from the nineties when we started the mixed media, when we helped usher that into the industry, when we did that, I shifted to the artist gallery world. I shifted to the artist gallery mindset. So when I stepped out of the mindset of photographer into portrait artist and into the artist gallery mindset, then I visited all these galleries, I visited all and I was sold to by all these different galleries, someone tell me, I want to see, I want to hear your language.
Gregory Daniel: I want to hear how this works. How do you sell mixed medias? How do you do this? And just understand that. Then we created a model and a business that was more art-minded, more art appear in a different level. It’s a different business model, and it stayed. It was not impacted and in fact affected by the digital world, right. But interestingly enough, that art world used digital to create a whole new product called embellished reproductions. So if you can imagine, embellished reproductions became a gigantic, big, huge product bolstering the art community and bolstering artists and bolstering… So they used it as a microwave. They used the tool. They used it properly.
Allison Tyler Jones: Right. The art world didn’t say, “Oh, you know what? Now that we have the scanners and Giclee printers, we can just, “Oh, we just want to print.” Well, we got a printer in the back, so it costs us 30 bucks to print it and we’ll mark it up twice. So for 60 bucks you can get… It’s like, “No, no, no, no, no.”
Gregory Daniel: No, no.
Allison Tyler Jones: No, no, no, no.
Gregory Daniel: They created a product out of it.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah, only photographers do that to ourselves.
Gregory Daniel: Right.
Allison Tyler Jones: Not the gallery world.
Gregory Daniel: So there’s the foundation of my rant.
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay, so put a pin in your rant for one second ’cause I want to… I think that’s interesting because you came from both sides. You were the guy, not in a Hawaiian shirt, but in your NASA outfit, and now you’re on the other side of that and you didn’t miss a beat. So I was a hobbyist before 2005. I came into the industry in 2005, and I had been a purchaser of portraits from a local photographer that I loved and admired and had photographing my children for years, and then I became the provider. How I look at those two things is when I was purchasing it, the guy that I was purchasing it from, he ran a good business and he had product, and I liked the way that he did it, but there were other portrait studios that had what I call the old school oversell.
Allison Tyler Jones: And so they would give you the free 8 x 10 to get you in, take a bunch of pictures and then give you the whole, “We’re going to shred grandma if you don’t buy it today.” And I hated that pressure. I hated that bait and switch. I was like a young mom. I didn’t really get what they were doing. Now I own a portrait store. I understand what they were trying to do, but it was just slimy and I hated it. So when I came in to the industry, thinking I’m going to do this for six months in between businesses, I don’t want to do that and I don’t want to deal with prints and I don’t want to deal with having something come in wrong or whatever. I’m just going to give them digital files. And I did it for 30 days and I realized, “Oh my gosh, this is so much work to stay up and be retouching and fixing all those files.”
Allison Tyler Jones: And I had a friend say to me, “You’re leaving so much money on the table and you’re going to work yourself, you’ll burn out and you’re not going to do this.” So I realized that the new school was actually undersell. It was no sell at all.
Gregory Daniel: …sell.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah. It was like, here’s X number of files for X number of dollars. And so then I realized, “What do I really want my clients to have?” Because what I love that’s in my house and that’s in my mom’s house that I’ve inherited from her when she passed away, is those physical artifacts, is that product. That’s the hustle. That’s the thing that makes the difference and is worth having. So I think they both kind of did it wrong, but the ones that, like you’re saying, had that artist mindset and really the idea of what is best for the client, what’s the highest and best use of my talent and how we get there, like, what the negative is, whether it’s on silver gelatin, whatever, celluloid, or whether it’s in 1’s and O’s on a hard drive, that doesn’t matter. It’s where you want that to end up.
Gregory Daniel: Right.
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay. So take the pin out of your rant and let’s go. So pricing. So now we realize the baby got thrown out with the bathwater with the new school. Some of the old school may change and came along, we could probably put you into that category. And some of the new school that came in, like me mom with the camera, decided pretty quick, you’re not going to be able to support a family doing it like this, so-
Gregory Daniel: Yeah, I would say, I mean, obviously what you described was an unsustainable business model. That’s why you made a change. But unfortunately, so many folks, again, because of that change word, that came in, they’re gone. But tons and tons of them that came in when the digital revolution happened, they disappeared too because this is unsustainable business model.
Allison Tyler Jones: Exactly.
Gregory Daniel: They’re just-
Allison Tyler Jones: It’s a churn.
Gregory Daniel: It’s a churn because now it’s a different one and now it’s a different one, and now it’s a different one. It’s just tweaks of something very similar, but foundationally, it still is an unsustainable business model. So with that said, and now we’re talking about having more of a product and what I speak to, which is, if you’re in an artist gallery, you’re looking at product, right. That whole business model, you’re looking at product. You’re looking at one product, basically, one price, one brand, one voice. So I think what we talked about last time, I think we talked about it last time, I can’t remember exactly what we talked about about last time, but it was having one thing, right. Dreaming and creating that one thing. And what is that one thing? What’s your milk, right. Well, what is that thing that you’re going to have? And that’s kind of like the mindset of the artist gallery.
Gregory Daniel: So when you think in terms of shifting to the mindset, that’s why I keep pushing it that way. Then all of a sudden pricing becomes different. When you think about pricing from that perspective, from an artist gallery perspective, your pricing becomes a complete different animal and how you would price and the thought process of pricing and the value of the product becomes very different than if you’re in the photography world and you’re thinking about how do photographers price.
Allison Tyler Jones: Right.
Gregory Daniel: Even if you went in and Google the way, or you go to clod or ChatGPT or whatever, you go, “What is?” I challenge you, just go in there and just say-
Allison Tyler Jones: I’ve done it.
Gregory Daniel: Okay, “What is a photographer’s 16 x 20 average?”
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay.
Gregory Daniel: And then go-
Allison Tyler Jones: Hold on. I’m going to do it right while we’re here. Hold on. I am literally going to do it right now. Okay, I’ve got ChatGPT. Let me start a new one. Okay.
Gregory Daniel: Just ask, “What is a photographer’s price for… What’s a good price for a 16 x 20?”
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay, what is a good price for a portrait-
Gregory Daniel: No, just a photographer.
Allison Tyler Jones: I have to say portrait photographer?
Gregory Daniel: Portrait photographer, 16 x 20, canvas.
Allison Tyler Jones: 16 x 20. Is it framed?
Gregory Daniel: No, just say, “16 x 20 canvas,” ’cause that’s what somebody would say right-
Allison Tyler Jones: Canvas print. Okay, well, what is a good price for a portrait photographer 16 x 20, canvas print. Enter.
Gregory Daniel: Guessing it’s probably 100 to 300 bucks.
Allison Tyler Jones: Oh, you’re going to die. Okay, “Pricing a 16 x 20 canvas print can vary depending on several factors, including,” and here, this is such crap, “a photographers experience, market, location, and quality of materials used,” all largely irrelevant in my opinion. “Here are some general guidelines. Entry level photographers, price range, 75 to 150-
Gregory Daniel: There we go.
Allison Tyler Jones: These photographers might be newer to the industry or building their portfolio. Mid-level photographers price range, 150 to 300. These photographers have more experience and a solid portfolio. High-end photographers, price range, 3 to 600 plus,” at least they gave us the plus. “These photographers are well-established, have a strong reputation, and often provide a more personalized experience and premium product. So the considerations for product pricing,” I’m not going to go into it, but it’s like cost of goods sold, time and expertise, market research, brand positioning, client base, example, breakdown.
Gregory Daniel: Okay, so just think about that for a moment. What you just said is the foundational, what they think, right. What the world would think.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah.
Gregory Daniel: Now go in and ask for artists.
Allison Tyler Jones: Oh, okay, hold on.
Gregory Daniel: An artist, but how much-
Allison Tyler Jones: I’m going to do it.
Gregory Daniel: … do artists get a 16 x 20 canvas for? This is from photographer to artist.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah. Okay, I’m going to do it. Here we go. What is a good price for a portrait painter? Portrait artist. I’m just going to say portrait artist. I’m not going to put photographer in there. Portrait artist, 16 x 20.
Gregory Daniel: Canvas.
Allison Tyler Jones: Canvas. Okay, here we go.
Gregory Daniel: I guarantee you it is significantly larger.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yep. So it’s saying, I won’t read the whole thing, but it’s like several factors depending on experience, reputation, location, level of detail and customization, emerging 1 to 300, mid-career, three to 1,000 established artists, 1 to 5,000, special considerations, the level of detail market factors. So already just taking photographer out of it, which is so sad.
Gregory Daniel: Yes. Okay, so foundationally, where do you want to start? Foundationally, you just got a gigantic raise if you’re considered an artist, right. It’s a mindset. It’s just changing the mindset. Where do you want to pivot from? Do you want to pivot from the mindset over here where you’re maxed out at this mentally mindset, you’re pushing against a wave, right. You go over here and you work in this other world, the mindset is different. The thought process is different. The verbing is different. Everything’s different.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah. But you have to take that on because when I look at that first prompt, it’s like the things that vary according to ChatGPT is the photographer’s experience and quality of materials used. Those are the two things, it’s like irrelevant.
Gregory Daniel: Irrelevant. Yeah.
Allison Tyler Jones: It doesn’t matter how much experience you have, if you’re good at what you do, and then… Yeah, it’s crazy.
Gregory Daniel: So just thinking from the mindset, I think that’s way more important and probably foundational to feeling comfortable in deciding what your price should be for whatever you do, whatever you want. What is that product going to be in that one thing if you’re thinking from a mindset, it’s easier to think that way when you’re thinking about the product that you’re going to build. What is that thing you’re going to build and you want to be known for and then create a price that you believe you would like to have every time you do the sale? Now we’re just dealing with one price, one product, and now we can build a brand around it. Now we can build a voice around it. Now we can make easy marketing around it. It’s very easy to communicate to somebody what it is and what you do and who you are and what you’re about ’cause you’re from the mindset of a whole different language, a whole different verbiage, a whole different world. And it’s so much easier to explain and market and come across. It’s just lightyear easier, the value then makes sense.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah. Okay. So when you say one product, ’cause I know I can feel our listeners in the back of my… I get my spidey senses are tingling. You mean you only have one product, you’re only selling one thing?
Gregory Daniel: I would say you would be better off. This is, flip them all out. Okay.
Allison Tyler Jones: ‘Cause I know you don’t only sell one thing, Greg Daniel.
Gregory Daniel: I understand that. But you would be better off to start off dreaming about one thing and building a price list around one thing and put on your blank price list one thing and put a price on that price list of that one thing and make marketing material from that one thing. It’s training wheels. You get the one thing down, you can build your whole business around the one thing, and then whatever that one thing is that you would love to create every single day that you get up, when you don’t have to do it for money anymore, you would still do it. It is where I am. It is what I do. It is everything that I do. So it becomes part of who you are.
Allison Tyler Jones: So that’s a good creative exercise to put yourself in a room somewhere with a pad of paper and a pen, a no smartphone, and just start listing, like, if you had to strip it back, because I think most of our listeners have businesses. They actually are serving clients, so they have businesses, but they may not be doing exactly what they want to be doing. Some still have school contracts, so they’re still doing weddings or they’re hanging onto the meal till the horse comes in, you know what I mean? They think, “Oh, I can’t let this go, I hate schools. I don’t want to do weddings anymore. But I can’t only do families ’cause you couldn’t possibly make money doing that.” They’re afraid to let it go, or they let client request creep happen. Oh, you’ll pay me to show up with the camera to do that. I don’t want to do that, but you’ll pay me. So they’ve let the clients kind of determine what the product line is. You see that?
Gregory Daniel: Okay, so this is how I would say it.
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay.
Gregory Daniel: Well one is I would get off to maybe a cabin in the woods and have an off the grid kind of retreat.
Allison Tyler Jones: We know somebody who has one of those. Yes.
Gregory Daniel: So I would say this, you’ll never make a change unless you dream first, unless you give yourself permission to dream first. If you don’t give yourself permission to set a dream out there, you’ll never dream it. You’ll never see it-
Allison Tyler Jones: Totally agree.
Gregory Daniel: Once I gave myself permission to make a change, we were known nationally as one of the top wedding photographers in the country. On the top of our game, on the top of our market. And it became unsustainable for us to have that business model of a wedding market, even though we were that at the very top. We gave ourselves permission to change because it was unsustainable for our family. And because we put them first, we put our family first. And because we were having to fly and do all these things like, “No, this is not a good business model for us. We need to change.
Gregory Daniel: So I gave myself permission to see something different. If I hadn’t given myself permission to dream, I don’t think I would’ve ever walked into that gallery in San Francisco and would’ve actually noticed a business model that I think we were able to dream about that we were able to create at that moment. And we were light years from that business model at that moment. But I dreamt it at that moment, and I put it out here as a future state, but that’s where I was going to go. And then I figured out how to get there.
Allison Tyler Jones: I want to call out to that. So if you’re on a treadmill and you’re kind of half listening or not really, or you’re retouching, you’re half listening, that is absolutely the core. I think if you take nothing else away from today, it’s not the seeing is believing, it’s believing is seeing. You cannot see what you haven’t ever dreamt about. So it’s just exactly like what you said. You would’ve walked right past it and been like, “Oh, cute, ballerina, portraits, whatever.” It would never have entered your mind. But once you start down the road, it doesn’t mean you have to do it tomorrow.
Allison Tyler Jones: It doesn’t mean you have to cash in, throw away all your weddings tomorrow. I’m sure that was a process for you that you had to phase that out and phase something else in. But just allowing yourself to believe, I feel like so many people are so locked in fear that it can only be this way, that this will not work for me in my town, or this won’t work for me because I’m older, younger, fill in the blank of why it won’t. But if you sit for somewhere a minute and just say, if it could, would it look like? And what would I want to do?
Gregory Daniel: I think people don’t realize in the decision tree to get from point A to point B, the first decision is to decide to give yourself permission to dream, because if you don’t make that step first, you’ll never see anything else that can get you to the end state.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah.
Gregory Daniel: You won’t see it. I mean, it’s like looking… The other day I was looking for a clip on the bag to go on the chips. I guess it’s crazy, but I look in this drawer all the time, and I know this is where the clip is for the bag of chips. I’m looking in the drawer staring at the drawer… This happened two days ago. I’m looking at the drawer and I don’t see the clip, but I think to myself, I’m staring at the drawer, “A clothespin’ll also work, and I think there’s clothespins in this drawer.” And instantaneously, right there in front of me is a clothespin. It was staring at me right in the face going, “Hey, I can do this, I can do this, I can do this.” And I didn’t give it permission until I gave it permission to let me see the clothespin. I couldn’t see the clothespin.
Allison Tyler Jones: Well, you’re also male and you guys don’t see very good anyway, so you are kind of like, the Y chromosome does limit your vision, but let’s not go there. But yes, and also my other question to that is that, does Lisa let you eat chips? I thought she didn’t allow that.
Gregory Daniel: No, not really.
Allison Tyler Jones: Oh, okay. ‘Cause I’m like now, do we need to bleep that part out so Lisa doesn’t hear it, because you’re going to get in trouble. Your blood is not going to be like the mountain stream running freely clear if you are eating chips, dude.
Gregory Daniel: That’s true. That’s probably why I didn’t notice the clip as much.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yes, you were poisoned by the chips and you’re Y chromosome, I love it.
Gregory Daniel: Right. But yeah, permission is the key ingredient for any change. It’s the way you get over fear. When you dream and you have a dream, it’ll push through fear. It’ll push through fear. It’ll let you get there… ‘Cause you’ll do it, you’ll go, “I’ll find a different way. I got to do it. I got to get to that other end.”
Allison Tyler Jones: You’re obsessed.
Gregory Daniel: And I was so obsessed to do it. And yes, it did take us transition period, and we did come up with a transition plan and we didn’t drop all the weddings at one time. It took us about five years and about drove me crazy, but…
Allison Tyler Jones: Really? Okay. Yeah, that’s interesting. Yeah. And actually for weddings, for me, I stood in a reception December 21st, 2010, and it was raining outside and I was like, “I’ll never do another wedding again.” And it was overnight and I had to replace… I mean, my weddings weren’t huge. They were about 60,000 a year part of my business. But I was like, I don’t care. I hate this so bad. I mean, mainly it was the groom that I hated so bad, but I hated it so bad. I never wanted to do it again. And so I did have to figure out how to replace that overnight. I wouldn’t recommend that, but… So five years or five minutes, take your pick.
Gregory Daniel: Take your pick.
Allison Tyler Jones: Take your pick. Okay. So giving yourself permission to dream. I just think that is so good because I feel like if I don’t have time in the year, in any given year to sit back and kind of let myself dream about the next thing or something that I’m excited about, then even when I travel and do things that will give me inspiration, I won’t see those things. But if I do, if I’ve taken the time to dream and think about those things, I see so many, I see it in retail, I see it in whatever hotel I’m staying in. I see it in any magazine that I open, it’s just coming at me from all angles. Instagram feeds, from different businesses, weird places, packaging from fashion houses or whatever, inspiration can come. Okay, so any other soapboxy pricing things?
Gregory Daniel: Well, just you were mentioning about the frame before, ’cause I see this quite often where they go, well, that doesn’t include a frame. Well, no, it doesn’t include a frame. It’s a different product. It’s a product that you can put on this product, but it’s adorning the product. But that product can range drastically from… I mean, some of our frames, they’re thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars. So these handmade frames, they have a choice between what would you like. What type of frame do you want? It’s like an interior designer, right, would say, “Oh yeah, the sofa comes with the rug.” What? That does not come with the rug. You don’t just get it with the rug, right. They are two separate products, even though you probably need both of them at the same time. And so that’s a separate product. But I’m saying to start off with this one product, that one piece, not the kitchen sink, but that product that you want to be able to create, want to be able to build and then work from there.
Gregory Daniel: And then once you’ve come up with that price and the brand and the voice and all of that, now you can pivot, but you’re pivoting from a different place. You’re pivoting from a mindset of an artist. You’re pivoting from the mindset of that product, and now everything starts to make sense. So if you build a different product, it needs to be in the same family of making sense with who you are and what it is and how does it relate to that product? How is it part of it because this basically becomes the parent, this product? So everything else becomes relational with it, but that main product is the product of your voice. So any other product that you build and you create and you make, cannot overcome an overshadow your main product of who you are and what you’re about. So it’d be like that main gallery I walked into, and it’s this painter that does all these incredible ballerinas, realistic ballerinas, and they’re all like 45-inch pieces and they’re just gorgeous.
Gregory Daniel: That’s the thing. That’s the product, right. That’s the thing. But what if they’re flyer only had on it, “Books from this painter”? That’s what you took home on the flyer. The flyer was about his books and how much the books you could get and what a deal the book was, or what if it was about the postcards that were sitting on there, the gift cards that you could buy, little gift notes, right, because that’s in an artist’s gallery. Gift notes from that same artist. And let’s say that’s all they advertise. It’s all on the flyer. That’s how they marketed. They marketed the gallery with those postcards, right. That’s not how they’re going to do that. They’re not going to market the gallery with postcards. They’re going to market the gallery what this person does and what they’re known for. And when you Google them, you’re not going to get postcards. You get this thing that they create and that they show and that they are and who they are and what’s spotlit, and when you walk in and you go, “What? That’s it.” It’s that thing. It’s that brand. It’s that voice.
Allison Tyler Jones: Well, it makes me think of Hermes handbags. So what they’re famous for is that Kelly bag or the Birkin that you have to get on a waiting list and it’s $50,000 and you can’t even buy it. And you walk in and they tell you to get out or whatever. But you could probably get an Hermes keychain or a belt. You can go to buy an Hermes, I see a lot of people wearing the Hermes belt. You can get the smaller things, but the mystique is not around the smaller things. Those are just to allow somebody to feel like they have a piece of the mystique and a piece of the brand. But the main thing is the main thing.
Gregory Daniel: Tiffany’s does it with the chains and the bracelets, right. The charms on the bracelets so you can go, but where are those charms in the bracelets? You walk in past the guard, you walk in past all the incredible rings and the thing, and you go all the way to the back and you think, “Someday…” And then you get the charm, and then you walk back through the whole scene and then you think someday. Someday.
Allison Tyler Jones: The vision is… Yeah. And I think a lot of it, for me and my employees, I call it painting the vision. It’s like, we have to dream, but we have to let our clients dream too.
Gregory Daniel: Right.
Allison Tyler Jones: We have to paint that vision. And so when you don’t have that vision, when you’re in this mode of, “Okay, I’m selling 8 x 10s and 5 x 7s,” you can’t even paint a vision for your client.
Gregory Daniel: No, ’cause you can’t dream. If you didn’t dream this end state, you’ll never get there for one, and another thing is, if you’re just incrementally trying to make a change within a business that’s basically on the other end of the spectrum, what I’m calling an unsustainable business model with… I’m talking generalities now. It’s not that all of them are unsustainable. Just in general, it’s unsustainable, tweaking an unsustainable business model is hardly ever going to work.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah, it requires scrape and start over.
Gregory Daniel: Yeah. I call it, erase the board. If you can’t erase the board to dream, then it’s just tweaking something that is just making minimal adjustments and is going to make minimal results. It’s going to bring-
Allison Tyler Jones: Well, because the foundation that it’s built on is completely different.
Gregory Daniel: Exactly. And so that’s why I talk about mind shifting over into a different world, erasing the board, and mind shifting, starting from your brain with a whole different thought process of how this other world could exist. And it does. There’s an example out there that does exist that you can go look at and understand. And I keep leaning on artist gallery business models, but you talked about business models in big business way, with the jewelry and the handbags and all that, those business models operate the same way.
Allison Tyler Jones: Absolutely.
Gregory Daniel: All the companies get out of this world and go into the big business world that pays billions of dollars in market research to figure out how all this works, because they’ve got it figured out. Because if you go into all these different really successful brands, their business models are the same. They work very similar, and it’s for a reason that they work similar. These really successful galleries work the same. They’ve worked in that same level, and they’re sustainable.
Allison Tyler Jones: Well, and I think there are other… Sometimes it’s hard, it’s difficult to compare yourself to those bigger industries. But even looking at other creative professionals. Like, you can look at interior designers, for example.
Gregory Daniel: Yeah, yeah.
Allison Tyler Jones: There are nice little girls that are going to come over and bring you 55,000 swatches and sit there and thaw through a bunch of different things and help you pick out a sofa. But you want to talk about an unsustainable business model, that’s one, right. Whereas my sister that runs an interior design studio, she’s not picking out anything until you defined a scope of work for a house. So she’s not working on a speculative, like, “Let me come in here and design your entire house. I’ll give you three options in every room, and then you can pick which one you like.” No, that’s not how it works. But yet we’re doing that all day long. “Let me come in here and jolly your 3-year-old along and make your husband who’s ticked that he has to come here, make him happy, and make your 14-year-old look good and make your pimpley 13-year-old girl who’s got a little extra weight, make her look great.” And then you decide whether you want this or not. Like, we’re doing it wrong.
Gregory Daniel: And if you look at swinging back to the artist gallery mindset, a painter is going to get commissioned. An artists will be commissioned to do the work. And so we’ve been commissioned portrait artists for a very long time because that was part of the mindset, that was part of that world and being able to operate that way. So commission’s been in our vocabulary for a very long time. And just like your sister, incredibly successful, by the way, stunning work that she does, yeah, that sets her apart from the other type of business model that actually exists in the interior design world, right.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah, graphic designers. Yeah, there’s a lot that are just, they’re too scared or like you said, they’re not able to dream. They just think, “Okay, this is the only way…” They’re in the stadium, and they’re looking at somebody walking 50 yards to that door at the way far end when there’s a door right here, right close. Right there.
Gregory Daniel: Right there.
Allison Tyler Jones: They can get them where they need to go. That’s actually less clients, way more fun, way more interesting, but let’s follow them because somehow they have 50,000 followers on Instagram. I don’t know why we’re following them.
Gregory Daniel: I led with the whole, I think the influencer world got it wrong in the beginning of the foundational, during the digital tidal wave.
Allison Tyler Jones: Well, and you know what. They could have gotten it right for themself from themselves on what they wanted to get out of it, because maybe all they wanted was an online presence and they’re getting paid a different way or whatever. It could work for them. But you don’t ever really know what’s behind somebody else’s decisions, but you have to know… Well, you don’t have to. You can be blind and be following somebody down 50 yards to the 25th door. You don’t actually have to know. But I would suggest it might be a good idea if it’s the life that you’re living, that you know what’s behind it, and that you have it clear in your mind of actually, I’m excited to get up every day. I’m excited the clients that I’m working with, I’m excited by, like you said, I would do this even if I wasn’t getting paid to do it, because there’s so much meaning and happiness in it, but it actually makes me happier if I’m getting paid to do it, because there’s meaning in that.
Allison Tyler Jones: Because to me, when you sell a big piece, I think of the one on your website, I don’t know, 9 feet, 10 feet, whatever above that fireplace, when somebody exchanges their value for your value in that way, it’s just a virtuous upward cycle of like, “I’m going to kill myself for them. If I have to print this 17 times until it’s perfect, that’s what I’m going to do. It’s going to be perfection.” You don’t have that negative when you priced it wrong, that little voice in the back of your head going, “Listen, what do they expect for 20 bucks on an 8 x 10? I’m not retouching her boobs.” And we’ve all had those feelings like, “Oh, somebody’s being demanding with me. But what do they expect? They’re not paying that much.” Well, they’re paying, so they have an expectation.
Gregory Daniel: Right, exactly.
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay, so sum it up. So the challenge is if somebody’s feeling stuck, they maybe aren’t where they want to be anymore, maybe they’ve lost their way. Maybe they aren’t feeling the love anymore, but they want to revamp. What is your suggestion?
Gregory Daniel: I’m going to answer this in a very roundabout way.
Allison Tyler Jones: I love it.
Gregory Daniel: So as our girls I’m putting them into bed every night and giving them permission to dream, I would just echo that to them that I said, “Baby, you guys, you could do anything that you want. You can be anything that you want. I’m here to support you, and I want you someday to dream of a way that you can live a life and do business in a life that you can live your life through your work, through your creations, through whatever you do. That whatever you build, I want you to be able to build it where you can live in it. I would love for that to be successful for you is to be able to create a world where you can create something, live in it, and people will want to share it with you as you do it.” So I feel like we’ve created a life that we live in. We live, work, and I don’t even like to use the word work, I live and create in this life.
Allison Tyler Jones: There you go.
Gregory Daniel: It all supports itself. It’s all integrated within, it’s not separated. And I don’t want to ever feel like I have a job and I got to go to work, and then I come home and then I’ve worked to be able to have time to be able to do this. You can. And I just instilled that in our girls and they built their worlds like that. And they’re so grateful that they’re able to have lives where they live and create in the same world that they live in. It’s all integrated together and they’re happy, and we’re happy and we’re happy as a family and as an entire family. And I say, that is the end goal for us, and that’s what I would recommend for others. And then the other thing that layers on top of it all, and if you ever heard me give a program, I start and end with the whole breathing life into others because it was done to me.
Gregory Daniel: That’s the most important foundational thing is to love one another, love each other, and to share that love and pour that love into someone else. And you have that opportunity every single day to be able to do that. It was done to me, and it’s what’s made me myself, breathing that life into me. My photography teacher, when I was 12, did that. And then also the gentleman that I photographed my very first time, who had nothing in the world to give, and he gave me everything when he told me I had a gift. Just breathing that life into somebody is everything and we have that opportunity no matter where we are in our life.
Allison Tyler Jones: Every client-
Gregory Daniel: … in business, and every day, you can start with that this second, this moment right now doing that, and your life will be so much richer and so much better, and things will open up that you go, “Wow, I didn’t have any idea that that could ever happen.” That is so much more beautiful than what I would call when I would step back and try to answer the question. Here, I’m circling back around, I’m kind of confused. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know my foundation. Things aren’t really working out. What should I do? Where should I start? Start from this thing I just said. Start from that.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah. What do you want your life to look like?
Gregory Daniel: You can do that. And it’s beautiful. And life is beautiful. People are beautiful.
Allison Tyler Jones: Absolutely. And you have such a beautiful family. If you don’t mind, I was going to ask if you’d send, there’s a particular family picture, a recent one, I’d love to put on the show notes with this, just so people can see your family, because I think it’s just… You posted it on Instagram, so I want to put that in the show notes because I love that image.
Gregory Daniel: Okay.
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay, last two rapid fire questions and we’re done. Rapid fire, any great books that you’ve read recently that you want to share? Podcasts or binge-watched, so books, binge or podcasts? Any and all.
Gregory Daniel: Podcasts. Well you know, I listen to your podcast often. Podcasts, SmartLess is the podcast I listen to.
Allison Tyler Jones: Who? Martless?
Gregory Daniel: No, SmartLess.
Allison Tyler Jones: SmartLess.
Gregory Daniel: Yeah, but it’s not a business one. It’s just fun. It’s just-
Allison Tyler Jones: That’s fine.
Gregory Daniel: Books, it’s really crazy what I’m doing right now, and I hate to even say this because you probably don’t have access to all these books. I have access to all of these crazy business books that are just pamphlets and things that I’ve just collected over the years. And occasionally I will just go up and I will grab one of those books or one of those pamphlets out and I’ll just start reading it. And it is bizarre how amazingly current they are with their ideas and thoughts and the way that they see the world and-
Allison Tyler Jones: ‘Cause the principles don’t change.
Gregory Daniel: … as we speak, I mean, I’m like, How to Sell Quality by this J.C. Aspley guy, people can’t see it, but it’s just a pamphlet from a hundred years ago that I got and I mean, there’s foundationals, the thoughts and the things in here are just spot on, perfect, at the moment. Today, they’re so useful for today-
Allison Tyler Jones: So funny.
Gregory Daniel: So principles are principles. They stick around and they apply, and they certainly apply today. And the Art of Selling is a great book. Anyway, those are kind of books I like to-
Allison Tyler Jones: So the Art of Selling, do you know who that’s by?
Gregory Daniel: I don’t.
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay, I’ll find it. I’ll find it and send it to you, and then we’ll put it in the show notes.
Gregory Daniel: Okay.
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay. And then are you allowed to watch TV? Are you watching anything?
Gregory Daniel: We watch a lot of Hallmark.
Allison Tyler Jones: A lot of Hallmark. I love it. The Hallmark channel. I love it. That tracks well.
Gregory Daniel: That tracked well. Yeah, we do-
Allison Tyler Jones: That tracks very well.
Gregory Daniel: That’s our staple is to watch Hallmark.
Allison Tyler Jones: I love it. Well, I appreciate it. I think you’ve created your own Hallmark movie, left brain math guy, turned artist with beautiful family and darling grandkids.
Gregory Daniel: Thank you. Thank you.
Allison Tyler Jones: I appreciate you.
Gregory Daniel: I appreciate you too and so does the industry. Industry appreciates you. There’s not many like you and a lot of people are so much better off because of the things that you share and that you give and that you give back to the industry more than anyone that I know. So it’s so wonderful you’re doing that. You’re changing lives every day and folks that come to our workshop that have been part of your toolage, part of your crew, they’re just, they’re changed. You changed their lives and lady, that’s important.
Allison Tyler Jones: It is important. Well, thank you for saying that. I appreciate that. I feel like, and I think you are very similar, I think we play a longer game.
Gregory Daniel: Yeah.
Allison Tyler Jones: We don’t have a quick fix. It’s not something that can be summed up in like five easy points to make a hundred thousand dollars by the end of the year. It’s like for me, the foundation is where the value lies because when scary things happen, COVID or 2008 or whatever, to know that I have a core of loyal clients that have become friends, talk about building a beautiful, meaningful life. When they come in, I mean, yes, we’re looking at their pictures, but we’re also talking about, “Dude, what am I going to do with this 14-year-old?” Or, “How do you deal with young adults?” We’re on a personal one-to-one level. That’s as much a part of my product as the product itself is that we’re all like irrationally in love with our family and how that tracks. And so to build that foundation is the key, I think, to a sustainable, profitable business that will sustain you through good times and bad.
Gregory Daniel: Absolutely.
Allison Tyler Jones: And I know you have the same. You’ve been a good example to me for that, so thank you.
Gregory Daniel: Always great to chat with you.
Allison Tyler Jones: You too.
Recorded: You can find more great resources from Allison at dotherework.com and on Instagram @do.the.rework.
