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. This week’s episode is part two in our, Are You Overwhelming Your Client series. Are you Overwhelming Your Clients with Too Much Experience? In episode 134, part one of, Are You Overwhelming Your Clients With Too Many Words, we learned to simplify your message to the very basics of what your client needs to know to progress to the next stage of your process. And when you do that, they feel taken care of, guided, and in good hands.
Allison Tyler Jones: This week I want to talk about overwhelming your clients with too much experience. We’ve heard again and again how we need to make our sessions and every interaction with our clients more than just a transaction. We need to make it an experience, but I honestly believe this concept has gotten a little out of hand, and it may be responsible for overwhelming your clients, which results in a lack of repeat business.
Allison Tyler Jones: Now remember, we talked about this in episode one. The two main causes to all of this overwhelm are one, our creative ADD brains, and two, our fears or insecurity about our abilities. How do these two things manifest themselves with too much experience? Well, one, the creative ADD brain in the moment is shooting anything and everything. We’re adding too many variables to the process. Too many outfits, too many backgrounds, too many poses, too many setups, too many breakouts. Hair, makeup, animals, clowns, cheerleaders, balloons, charcuterie boards. This is especially true for photographers who specialize in photographing women in this magazine style, editorial style session, or boudoir. It’s very common with senior portraits. Driving all over creation to multiple different locations. They want to wear their hair curly, they want to wear it straight, they want to wear 9,000 outfits.
Allison Tyler Jones: You aren’t selling the experience. You are selling a finished product. What are they getting out of this experience? What will they have to show for it versus just the memories? Okay? So think about that. We’re going to explore that in a minute, but this is a problem. We want to add things. It’s like ADD spells add, and we love to add more and more and more to our process because again, we’re easily bored and we like new, shiny things.
Allison Tyler Jones: We also doubt ourselves, and the fear that we have about our abilities causes us to overshoot and add more and more to the experience because we doubt ourselves. We think, if I show them a lot, they’ll think it’s more valuable. This is super common for wedding photographers making the leap to family portraiture. They think that if it’s not a 12-hour day that ends at 3:00 in the morning, that it should be either way cheaper or they find themselves adding more and more and more to the experience because they feel guilty that they’re making the same money in a family portrait session as they did in a wedding. They add in more because they’re afraid that clients won’t think an hour session is worth it.
Allison Tyler Jones: What’s worth it to a client is a 20-minute session where you got what you needed and you got them out of there. You made them feel great while they were there aaand it’s done. Men, husbands love this. They love the in and out quick concept, like, let’s go, let’s get this done. So you need to have, there’s a fine line, right? You need to have enough time for them to feel like, oh, this was great, this was so cool, I loved it. But not so much where they’re dragging themselves to the car after a four-hour session.
Allison Tyler Jones: The fear of that more equals more, results in too much process, too much experience, too many images. This fear also manifests itself in maybe letting the clients call too many of the shots during a shoot. Well, what about if we shot this, and what about if we did this, and what about if we did that? Sometimes you get a client that’s a little bit, they might be collaborative and it’s really fun. Sometimes you get somebody that’s maybe a little bit more bossy, but if you haven’t nailed it down in the consultation, then you need to be really careful about whether or not you’re shooting it in this session. We’ll talk about that in a minute.
Allison Tyler Jones: So the result is that the clients go through this process. Now, they might love it while they’re there. They might be having a great time, but it can get a lot very quickly, especially with family portraits, especially when you have kids or animals on board, it’s a lot. And so you need to be targeted and you need to be quick. You need to give them a great experience, but you need to get them in and you need to get them out of there. Otherwise, they’re exhausted by the end and overwhelmed by it and not ready to do it again anytime soon. This is also very true of this more editorial style, shooting women, either boudoir or women’s portraiture, where it’s hair and makeup and then 95 outfit changes, and it might be four, six hours. It’s too much, it’s too much. They might love it, but they are not going to do it again because it’s too much. They’re exhausted by the end of it.
Allison Tyler Jones: So in my mind, the process, it can’t be overwhelming, exhausting, and expensive. Something’s got to give, and it’s not just adding more things. Part of a selling point to what we do is making it a frictionless experience, taking care of everything and making it seamless and less hard for them, and that also means saving them time, that it doesn’t take so much time.
Allison Tyler Jones: So, part of the solution to this is really making a mindset shift to, what is it that you’re actually selling? Okay, so we’re starting with the end in mind rather than starting with the creative and how excited we are to use this new lens or this new background or these new outfits or whatever, whatever creative that you’re thinking of, we’re really starting with the end in mind. What is the product they want to end up with? And working our way back from that.
Allison Tyler Jones: Now, I want to reference quickly here, episode 113, “Who Are You and What Are You Actually Selling?”, with Gregory Daniel. And that was about focusing so much on the experience that the product becomes like a commemorative 8 x 10 from the Splash Mountain at Disney. We don’t want that. We don’t it to be so overly focused on the experience that the product is an afterthought and one more hard thing that they have to get through. And it’s the last thing and it’s the thing that costs them money, and so that’s the thing that’s going to go away. That’s going to be the thing that suffers because you’ve spent all the time front-loading all of this experience.
Allison Tyler Jones: So, how do we fix it? Well, we’re going to again, use the consultation to guide the shoot and emphasize what you’re selling, which is not hair and makeup. You’re not selling shooting time, you’re not selling outfits and getting changed. You’re selling the finished product, and for our studio, that’s wall art for our client’s homes or custom albums, so focus on that. So when you think of that, if it’s going on the wall or it’s going in an album, if there’s no place for that image to live, there is no reason to shoot it. Let the consultation guide the session, create a creative agenda as Kathryn Langsford, one of our favorite guests likes to say, she creates creative agenda during the consultation with her clients, and she follows that creative agenda during the shoot because she’s shooting for specific product. Stick to the agenda, plus a few. Of course, we’re always going to, there’s be something magical happen, a little serendipity that we’re going to capture. That’s fine, but it can’t all be serendipity. I don’t want you shooting on spec anymore. I want you to be getting paid for the work that you’re doing.
Allison Tyler Jones: So I have my consultation form with me, and for those of you who maybe are listening to this second piece and didn’t listen to the first part, my ultimate consultation form is at dotherework.com, right on the first page of our website, and it’s free. Download that form, get that form, and that will help you in your first phone call, it’ll help you use less words. It’ll help keep you on task and guide you through that process as you’re bringing your client into your world. And it helps me, I take that consultation form with me into the shoot, into the session, because it has all of my clients’ names, their kids’ names on it, so it helps me remember their names, and it also provides me a list. It’s basically the shot list, the creative agenda of what we are shooting for.
Allison Tyler Jones: Another way to simplify is to consider the medical concept of the minimum effective dose. Okay? So Tim Ferriss, famous podcaster and author, he’s the guy that wrote The 4-Hour Work Week, love him. He says that the medical concept of the minimum effective dose is that the smallest dose that will produce the desired outcome. The smallest dose of medicine or exercise or whatever, that will produce the desired outcome. So he uses this in reference to exercise and fitness, but I think it is absolutely so applicable to too much experience. Another way of saying this is to embrace creative constraint. We are often at our most creative when we are constrained, when we are constraining ourselves, holding ourselves back, putting ourselves in a box, if you will, rather than just leaving all the variables open all the time.
Allison Tyler Jones: So, let me ask you this. How do we apply what I just said? What’s the smallest shooting amount that will produce the desired outcome? Okay, what was the smallest amount of imaged photographed that is going to produce the desired outcome? You and I both know, if we were shooting film right now and it costs X number of dollars per click, we would shoot so much less than we do. Are we all over-shooters because we’re digital? Yes, we are. Am I? Do I overshoot? Yes, I do. Okay, but having this in my mind helps me shoot less and helps me be more targeted. We need just enough to capture for the creative agenda, the product that we’re shooting for, the family portrait over the fireplace, the iconic individual image of that senior that’s going to go on her mom’s wall, plus whatever’s going in the album, and for the announcements.
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay, so we’re populating those products rather than just, we’re just shooting. We’re just having so much fun, it’s just so amazing. We’re just out here in the woods thinking that we’re Kim Kardashian. Like, no, we’re not doing that. Yes, hopefully they’re feeling like that, hopefully they’re having that experience, but somebody needs to be the adult in the room that is keeping this train on track. And it’s you, because it’s definitely not going to be the client. Okay? What is the smallest amount of “experience” that produces the desired outcome? Okay, so what’s the smallest dose of experience that makes the client feel like a star, makes them feel seen, loved on, cared for, celebrated? So it’s just enough to make it special, but not enough to exhaust them. So somewhere between for these women portrait sessions, these editorial portrait sessions of women, I think it’s somewhere between three outfits and 30 outfits. You don’t need that much variety. Just don’t.
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay, let’s take it to session length. What is the smallest, what’s the shortest session length that will still produce the desired outcome, that will still produce the images that you need? Well, if you’ve had a consultation with a client and they are telling you that all they want is that one single family image for above their fireplace and that’s it, they don’t want anything else, and they’ll maybe get a holiday card out of that. That’s a short session. That’s a few different combination setups, maybe standing, one sitting, one a little bit more formal in pose, one more candid and crazy. So you’re going to keep the session as short or as long as appropriate to that creative agenda.
Allison Tyler Jones: So, how do you cut it down? Well, for personal branding work, shooting tethered is a great way to cut it down because there you’re shooting, they can see what’s coming up, and they can pick it right then, and then you can move on. You’re not just, well, I hope I got it, I hope I got it. You know you got it. All right? That’s one way. Another is just to eliminate variables. Variables actually are your enemy. Having too many choices for the photographer and introducing those into every session is the enemy. It’s too many things to consider, and it actually diffuses your genius, in my opinion. I think when you narrow it and say, “Okay, we’re going to shoot on this background and I’m going to see how many different looks I can get out of this one thing, or how many different concepts,” it actually makes you better at what you do. And that’s true of writing, it’s true of photography, it’s true of design. Creative constraints are the way to go.
Allison Tyler Jones: When you introduce too many variables, you have problems. We already have so many variables. There’s lighting, there’s the background, there’s the lens that you’re using, and that’s before we even get to locations or outfits or all of the other different variables. And I tell my clients this all the time. They’ll say, “Well, okay, so do we do clothing changes?” Now, again, this is for family portraiture, so I’m using this as an example. For a women’s photo shoot or a senior, you’re going to have some clothing changes, but for a family portrait session, I don’t advise clothing changes. And the reason why, and I tell my clients this all the time, “Of course you can do that if you want to if there’s a specific reason why we want to change clothes.” So a good reason in my mind is we’re doing the family kind of in a more coordinated type way because we want that to look coordinated. The family’s all together, it’s a bigger group, so we need to kind of think about the clothing in that way.
Allison Tyler Jones: But then if you want to do an single iconic image of each child for your playroom or for their room in their sports uniform or their dress ups or whatever, then you could make the case to change. But just going from like, okay, we want to do dressy and casual. Well, are you going to put dressy and casual on your wall? Or dressy and casual is going in the album? And if they’re like, “No, absolutely we are and we want to have a really big album and we want to have this in our gallery and we want to do this,” okay, that’s great. Then we have the creative agenda for that. But if they’re like, “Well, no, I thought we should change clothes. I just thought we were supposed to because that’s what we’ve always done with our other photographer.”
Allison Tyler Jones: I say, “Well, I often find that if you’ve done that, don’t you think so often that you’ll have the expressions that you love and the outfit that you liked least?” Like introducing that variable, it just kind of can mess you up. It’s like introducing, let’s shoot on three different backgrounds. Well, you might find that, oh, I really hated the red background but that’s where all the best expressions were. Or I really liked everything on the white background, but I like the expressions on the white background, but I like the outfits better on the gray background or whatever. It gives you too many variables to work through. So it’s better to limit the variables. And I know this is so hard for creatives to do, but I truly believe that it is the way to not overwhelm your clients.
Allison Tyler Jones: Other ways to simplify when you’ve overdone it, maybe you find yourself that you know absolutely that you’re overwhelming your clients and you’re overwhelming yourself and you’re so tired because all you can do is one session in a week because it’s taking you six hours to shoot the session and then it takes you the rest of the week to edit it. So let me ask you a few questions, things to consider. I’m not saying you have to do this, just consider it. Can they get their makeup done at home or offsite? Do they need to get their hair and makeup done in your studio? For us, we don’t do that. We used to, we used to offer it like, oh, if you want to get your hair and makeup done, you can come do it here.
Allison Tyler Jones: And then we realized, wait a minute, this is co-opting the entire studio. We can’t do anything else, we have to be “on.” We have to be like, hey, we’re attending to the client and making sure that they’re having a good experience and it affects all the other work that’s going on and nothing else can be happening in the studio at the time. So we found a makeup girl that would go to the client’s home, so much better, so much easier. And especially for the genre that I’m shooting for a family portrait session, there’s no way that we’re going to have the kids running around the studio while the mom’s getting her makeup done. That doesn’t even logistically make sense.
Allison Tyler Jones: What’s the minimum number of outfit changes to achieve the desired results? How many outfits do they really need? Because you can usually get a lot of different looks with a couple of outfits. Jacket on, jacket off. There’s ways to make it look like you have some variety without having to have the time for them to go and change. What’s the minimum number of locations? How many locations do you really need to travel to? Making the most out of each location and maybe keeping it to a single location that has some variety to it. This isn’t being miserly or ungenerous, it’s being an expert and knowing that you can get a lot of looks out of one setup or one outfit, and preserve the client’s energy and sanity, especially when you’re dealing with kids. The clients have a great time. It doesn’t take a ton of your time or the client’s time, and you get a great result with the minimum effective dose.
Allison Tyler Jones: So I want to encourage you to think about how you might simplify your client experience while still keeping it valuable. This can be difficult for those of you who have hybrid portrait businesses where you are selling finished product, as well as digital files. Clients know that they can “get everything” just by buying the files, so they might push you to shoot more and more and more. So it’s even more important for you to focus on what is most important to you and what do you want the client to have? What is your highest and best use? What do you want them to have? And that’s that finished product. Keep the focus on that, the product, and wrap that product in the experience, referencing that product all along the way. It’s the difference between shooting for a specific product and concept and just capturing a bunch of great images that the client can, well, let’s just wait and see what we get and then we’ll decide.
Allison Tyler Jones: The wait and see what we get, and then we’ll decide method is shooting on spec. That’s just shooting a bunch of images and hoping the client is going to buy them. It’s shooting from fear. I don’t trust that I know what I’m doing. I don’t trust that I can be an expert and shoot less and that I can have a concept and a vision for this client. I don’t trust that in myself so I’m just going to shoot anything and everything and anything that comes out of their mouth and anything that we can think of during the session. And it’s going to take as long as it takes, and it’s going to be a million images, and it’s going to take me the rest of my natural life to edit all of them because I’m too scared to say let’s limit it to this. Here’s my vision for this session. This is what I think you should do at this specific time in your life as a woman, as a mother, as a mother of a newborn, as a mother of a family, whatever, as a personal branding.
Allison Tyler Jones: You are weighing in with your opinion and you’re telling them how you see it, and it’s a collaboration. It’s back and forth, but you’re closing that box. You’re putting a perimeter around that experience and that session, and you’re saying, okay, here are the outfits, here are the locations, and you’re narrowing. You’re taking from all of these available options, narrowing, getting the minimum effective dose of each thing, the time that you’re shooting, how much you’re shooting, the outfits, the location, all of these creative decisions you are narrowing to what you think this specific client needs at this specific time and how it is best going to manifest itself in the product. So let me say that again. You’re going to take from all of these variables and you’re narrowing them as an expert does, and helping them see what’s best for them at this time in their life and how it will manifest itself in this product.
Allison Tyler Jones: So it’s just like what an interior designer does. She’s going out looking at all the different types of sofas, all the different types of wallpaper, lighting fixtures, tile. And rather than showing a client all of those things and just we’re so excited, and it’s just so fun to be picking all these nine million things. Nope, that’s not what interior designers do. They go and do the hard work. They curate all of that tightly based on what that client needs, based on where that house is built, the environment that it’s built in, the way they live, how many kids they have, what kind of use it’s going to have. And then as an expert, that interior designer presents them with the minimum effective dose and of each of those materials and shows them what she thinks is best for that client in their life. We need to be doing the same thing.
Allison Tyler Jones: It’s not just all fun and games and let’s just shoot five million different things in all these different outfits because it’s just a waste of time. It’s a waste of time for them, for the client, and it’s a waste of time for you, because if they’re not going to end up with the finished product out of that, then what are you doing? You can still get a great experience. They can still feel like a model. They can still feel like a million bucks, but it doesn’t have to take that many outfits, that many locations, or that amount of time, that we don’t need that much experience. What is the minimum effective dose? What is the minimum amount of experience for them to feel great and for us to get what it is that we need for them?
Allison Tyler Jones: If you haven’t kept it tight in the experience department, you will see why that experience overwhelm leads right into too many choices overwhelm, and the problems continue. Your sales sessions don’t close, clients can’t make timely decisions, and your whole sales process burns down and you’re left wondering, why is this so hard? Why are people so annoying? Why can’t they make decisions? Which leads to our next and final episode in our Client Overwhelm series. Part three, Are You Overwhelming Your Clients With Too Many Choices? We are specifically going to talk about the sales appointment and the mistakes that we all make in showing too many images and too many options.
Allison Tyler Jones: So join me next week for, Are You Overwhelming Your Clients With Too Many Choices? But for this week, I want you to get out that paper where you wrote all your words and you’ve cut them down and made them more focused and detailed and simplified. I want you to get out that same piece of paper that you were working on simplifying your words during your process for part one, and I want you to list all the areas that you have allowed to get a little out of hand in the experience department. What have you added on that is causing you brain damage that is overwhelming or exhausting your clients? Have you heard clients saying like, “Oh, that was fun, but it was just, I am just exhausted.” Okay, they shouldn’t be exhausted, they should leave wanting more.
Allison Tyler Jones: I want my clients, I want to shut the shoot down while they’re still having fun. I want to be Seinfeld. I don’t want to be Happy Days. Showing my age. Okay? I don’t want to go out when everybody’s sick of it and wants out and wants to gnaw their leg off because they want to get out of the building. I want it to be wrap it up while they’re still having fun where they’re like, oh, oh, oh, we’re done. Oh, we were having so much fun, we didn’t even realize that we… Are you sure? Are you sure we’re done? Yeah, totally. They leave. The husbands are so happy, and then the wives are like, we hope, did you get it? They think that it was maybe too quick because they’ve had other experiences that were two hours, three hours. So I’m really shocked at how many people, new clients that are booking that are so shocked that it’s only going to be an hour. And it will be less than that if we’re only shooting for a single image, a single big portrait.
Allison Tyler Jones: So make a list of areas where you feel like maybe you are overwhelming, and consider that concept of that minimum effective dose. What is the smallest amount of whatever it is, the smallest dose that will produce the desired outcome? The smallest amount of time, the smallest amount of outfits, the smallest amount of fill in the blank that is going to produce the desired outcome. Again, that creative constraint, putting yourself into that box if you will, actually makes you more creative. So make your list. Take a minute to ponder that concept, and I will see you next week for part three of Are You Overwhelming Your Clients With Too Many Choices? See you then.
Recorded: You can find more great resources from Allison at DoTheRework.com and on Instagram @Do.The.Rework.
