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 episode taps into a problem that I think many of you are struggling with, and I know that I have struggled with for sure. And that is the idea of how do we make everyone happy? Of course, the customer is always right. Of course, we want our clients to be thrilled, so we want to do more and more and more for them.
Allison Tyler Jones: Every year, we want to up the ante, we want to make their experience better. There’s just a push to always do more, but is that the better way? Is that really going to make everyone happy? Well, of course, if you’ve done any therapy at all, you know that it’s not possible to make everybody happy, but it makes for a catchy podcast title.
Allison Tyler Jones: So without further ado, we are going to jump into our conversation with Ms. Kathryn Langsford, in talking about how can we make our clients happy? And some ways that maybe we try to, that actually backfire. Let’s do it. Okay. Well, today it’s been a little while since we’ve had one of our very, very favoritest guests ever from up north in Vancouver.
Kathryn Langsford: It has been a little while. I’ve missed you.
Allison Tyler Jones: I know, I’ve missed you too. So I’m so glad to have you back, because we have just not had enough business conversations in our drive because now my drive is shorter. And now you’re busy with this incredible love life that you have going on, coming back and forth from Antigua and your fabulous life.
Allison Tyler Jones: So here we are, we’re going to just record our business conversation, but what we’re going to talk about today is how to make everyone happy. Just kidding, you can’t. And what you and I as women in business for 20-plus years have learned the hard way that you cannot please everyone, even though we still try.
Kathryn Langsford: Yeah, absolutely.
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay. So one of the things that you said before we got on the call, I think is where we need to start, and that is being open to realizing that we aren’t for everybody.
Kathryn Langsford: Yeah. We have our ideal clients, we’ve talked about the criteria that makes an ideal client. They communicate well, they spend in the bracket that we want them to spend. They’re very easy to make happy. It’s just a pleasure to work with them. And then there’s people that aren’t perfect for us, maybe because they are wanting something that we don’t offer.
Kathryn Langsford: Maybe because we’re priced out of their bracket, even though they’re maybe in denial of that or not willing to learn enough about our pricing that they know that. Or maybe for me what happens most often, is people like what they see and they want what I have, but they maybe don’t like the whole package. Meaning they don’t like the idea of putting art on their wall.
Kathryn Langsford: They want a collection of digital files, or they want to do something really fast and on the fly. Whereas my service is something that you need to prepare for, get the clothes thought out and figure out the art plan. And these people maybe just want something that’s really quick, they can run in tomorrow at noon and have it done.
Kathryn Langsford: So even though there’s a temptation to just say, “Okay, I’ll just do it. I need the money, I need the work.” I always regret that, because when it’s not a good match, it shows up in many different ways and it makes things hard. And in a worst-case scenario, makes the client unhappy and I never want that.
Allison Tyler Jones: Right. Right, exactly. And I think that is overarching, that’s the point, is that in trying to make everyone happy, you actually damage your reputation and have people go away mad. So let’s dig into that a little bit more, starting with going back a little bit to that to that not everybody’s your client.
Allison Tyler Jones: Now, the hard thing about this is especially when you’re newer in business or you’re heading into a slower time, you feel like, “Look, I can’t afford to have these scruples. I got to just take what comes because I got to pay the bills,” right?
Kathryn Langsford: Yeah.
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay, so speak to that fear.
Kathryn Langsford: Yeah, that’s happened many times. I just think, “Okay, they want me to,” I’m just going to make something up. “They want me to put their baby in a basket, and have some reindeer behind them and bring 200 candy canes in here for their holiday card.” I’ll just do it. I’m not busy and I need the money. But in that scenario, which by the way has never happened, but similar.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah. Just say that it happened.
Kathryn Langsford: In that sort of scenario, I would be creatively bankrupt and also just not able to serve them well. I don’t have passion for that kind of work. I can’t make it look cute. I don’t even know what we’re doing.
Allison Tyler Jones: Right, right. So they’re not going to be happy and you’re not going to be happy, and it’s just lose, lose all the way. And then because of all that, they’re not going to spend as they might. So okay, let’s go back to the idea of this ideal client and this perfect client. Well, we all know that we have a few, a handful that are just delightful.
Kathryn Langsford: Wish we could clone them.
Allison Tyler Jones: Wish we could clone them, yep. And then there’s middle of the road, like spend well, are easy to deal with.
Kathryn Langsford: Reliable, yeah.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah. And then there’s always going to be some that you thought were going to be okay, and that through life events or whatever, might become difficult.
Kathryn Langsford: Or I just made up in my mind that they were okay, even though they’re not. I told myself they were okay because of the neighborhood they lived in, or because they were best friends with a great client. Or because they said all the right things, even though they haven’t acted that way. They said something different than what they did.
Allison Tyler Jones: Which is what we call what? Red flags. We ignored the red flags.
Kathryn Langsford: Those are red flags that I ignored, and now I have them on my client roster.
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay, so let’s talk about some of those red flags. What are the red flags for you?
Because every year, I just feel like I want to refine my process more and more, so that I don’t have people like that come into my business. Because again, neither of us end up happy at the end of it, so what are those red flags for you?
Kathryn Langsford: Well, for me, there’s a million red flags for me. Off the top of my head, we’re building a house right now and we don’t want anything for the walls. We just want to have photos taken just to have. That line, just to have.
Allison Tyler Jones: Just to have, okay.
Kathryn Langsford: Meaning we want them archived somewhere where we never do anything with them, but we want to know we took them. That’s a red flag for me. A red flag might be, “Yeah. No, I don’t need to talk to my husband about it. He’s cool with whatever I do. I’ll just handle this myself.”
Kathryn Langsford: Meaning this person is walking into a situation where we’re talking about fine art and home decor, and she’s telling me that it’s no problem that her husband knows nothing about it. I know that’s a problem, but that’s for another podcast.
Allison Tyler Jones: That’s a good one, yeah. Well, okay, and then also I think one of the terms I use is minimizing language. If somebody’s really talking about it’s obvious from your website and the Instagram and how you’re talking to them what you’re letting them know.
Allison Tyler Jones: For us, it’s that we specialize in wall art for your walls or custom-designed albums. And they’re like, “Yeah. We really don’t put pictures on our walls and we hate albums. And I see that you do mostly studio, but really I would like you to come to my house and do us in our backyard.” So it’s like there, they’ve just said three things that I don’t do.
Kathryn Langsford: Oh, and I think what we’ll probably want is just a couple of 5x7s for the mantle.
Allison Tyler Jones: Or just the holiday cards.
Kathryn Langsford: Yeah, yeah. We just want a card, so yeah, those are red flags. And then there’s also the context of the way that I work. I work in a studio, black and white, and I shoot a certain way. Meaning like a certain style, so my style is very cuddled up and all about love.
Allison Tyler Jones: Organic, I think your style is so organic.
Kathryn Langsford: So when people want something that’s totally different from that, “Yeah, we really love color. Is there any way you could shoot color for us? And maybe you can just do a couple in color.” I don’t know why they’re calling me, but sometimes I have deluded myself into thinking, “Yeah. Okay, I’ll just do that.”
Kathryn Langsford: Thinking that the rest of what I do will appeal to them, and they’ll end up coming along with how I like to work. But that’s just a bad way to start off, because what I really need to do is see them for who they are. They’re telling me who they are. They’re showing me exactly who they are. They want color, they want 5x7s.
Kathryn Langsford: They want me to shoot in the backyard. They want things that I don’t do and that I don’t want to do. And really, I should not be going any further, except to educate them as to what I do. Telling them, “Well, here’s a little bit about how I work, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I work with an end in mind. I specialize in a finished fine art product.”
Kathryn Langsford: And if once I start telling people those things, they still go back to, “Well, yeah, oh, that sounds good. Maybe later we would order something like that. Right now all I want is a 5×7 for the mantle.” Then I need to listen to what they’re telling me, you know what I mean? Whereas a better outcome is when I educate them in that way and explain what it is I do and the way that I work.
Kathryn Langsford: And they say, “Oh, that sounds great. Yeah, I didn’t know that.” Maybe they didn’t know photographers work that way, or they’d never thought of their family as fine art in their home in a large-scale format but they love that idea. And that can be great, but I need to listen to what they’re saying.
Allison Tyler Jones: Exactly. So I think in this beginning process, when the client first comes, that first phone call, that first contact, you’re teetering, you’re listening. You’re paying attention for red flags, but you don’t write people off at the first red flag. So it’s not this like, “Oh, you’re just not my client,” and you’re dismissing people.
Allison Tyler Jones: You’re listening and you’re making note. Okay, they seem pretty price sensitive. They seem like they really want stuff that I don’t do. But then as you start to explain it, like you say, if they’re coming along and like, “Oh, I didn’t even know that was a thing. Actually, I really do love black and white. Actually, I really do want to put stuff on my wall.”
Allison Tyler Jones: Then they can become a client, and if we dismiss them at the first red flag, then that would’ve been a huge error. But very often, that’s not what I find that photographers are doing. Very often what I find that they’re doing is they’re the needy seventh-grader girl who wants a boyfriend, and doesn’t believe when this guy’s a total jerk. This is relationship 101, like-
Kathryn Langsford: Thinks he’s going to come around.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah, he ain’t coming around. So if you actually ignore all the red flags, and like you said to your example, I just want the 5×7 for the mantle, and what do we think? We think, “Okay. I know she thinks she just wants the 5×7 for the mantle. But when she sees what I can do for her and when she’s all these 100 images of her kids, and I get her in that room.” And they told me, I’ve heard other photographers if they cry, they buy, then she won’t be able to help but want to buy all of them.
Kathryn Langsford: Yeah, which was my business model at the beginning of my business. And probably-
Allison Tyler Jones: Sometimes it happens.
Kathryn Langsford: … worked quite well, I don’t know, maybe 50% of the time.
But the other 50%, clients felt taken advantage of, felt railroaded, felt frustrated, didn’t come back. That’s not a way that I work anymore.
Allison Tyler Jones: I agree, I love that. So being transparent up front, letting them know, paying attention to the red flags. What about the idea of why do we talk ourselves out of our intuition when we have that gut feel? Have you done that?
Kathryn Langsford: Yeah. Usually, it’s fear about money. I need the money, so I’ll just do it. So many times I’ve learned from this, but I probably will do it again sometime. But so many times I realized this wasn’t worth it.
Kathryn Langsford: It’s like entering into a situation that’s not the way I work, with a client that’s not suited for my service, is always a mistake. It’s always frustrating. And as I said before, the worst-case scenario is the client ends up unhappy, which I never want to see happen.
Allison Tyler Jones: I do think it is fear based. Or you think maybe they don’t realize how great it’s really going to be.
Kathryn Langsford: Yeah.
Allison Tyler Jones: But it’s like-
Kathryn Langsford: Again, I got to listen to them. I have to listen to what they’re saying.
They’re saying they don’t want what I offer, so I can’t rely on the hope that they’re going to decide that they want it later.
Allison Tyler Jones: Right, right. What about money? What about that red flag of price sensitivity? To me, I found that very binary. Most people when they call for a new service that they’re unaware of, they don’t know the questions to ask. So we might think that they’re super price sensitive because they’re only asking about money, but it’s because they don’t really know what else to ask.
Allison Tyler Jones: That’s not necessarily a red flag for me right in the beginning. But if they keep beating the budget drum all the way through after I’ve told them my range or whatever. Like you say, most of our clients spend north of $5,000 and they’re like, “Yeah, but I really only have $1,200 for this project. And I really need to be, what can we do for $1,200 or whatever?”
Allison Tyler Jones: Then I know that that’s not going to be a good fit, so then I can let them know that. I’m not going to try to get them in for their $1,200 session fee, and then try to upsell them when they’ve said over and over and over again that they only have $1,200. It’s not fair to them.
Kathryn Langsford: Yeah. No, absolutely not, for sure. I think that’s a recipe for disaster. I think there are cases where people aren’t sure what they want, and so they’re thinking, “Oh, I just want one piece. Tell me how much one piece is.” And then that turns into a bigger project once we go further with having seen their walls and talking about what kind of art they might want, it can turn into something more. But if they’re really clear with a hardline budget right from the beginning, I can’t count on that becoming anything else.
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay, I have another thought. So one of the things that I’ve noticed with some of our students in my MindShift Membership or with The Art of Selling Art course that tends to be really common. And I remember doing this earlier in my career, is that feeling like you need to give stuff away or discount things to make people happy. What are your thoughts on that? Do you think that works?
Kathryn Langsford: Well, I did that also, I gave client gifts. I did part of my service for free. I wouldn’t charge for installation. I wouldn’t charge for delivery. I didn’t even build it into my pricing. Now I don’t charge extra for it, but it’s built in. Absolutely, I would give things away. If people wanted to buy one 8×10, I would say something like, “Okay. Well, if you buy two, then I’ll give you the third free.”
Kathryn Langsford: I would do things like that just as a sales technique, but also just to make them happy giving them little gifts. In some ways that backfired. Something I used to give is these little books. It was a little, tiny album that was like 2×3 inches that they could keep in their wallet. And my rationale was that that would be a good marketing piece that they’d show to their friends.
Kathryn Langsford: However, what I learned over time when people would come back after years and ask if I was still doing them, is that people were enjoying their portraits that way in place of buying portraits for the wall. So something I’ve learned is never… Now I will give people little social media, like that little app that lives on the phone that you can connect it to social media.
Kathryn Langsford: I only do that with images that they’ve already bought for the wall. Whereas before I would, “Oh, they loved this one but they didn’t pick it, so I’m going to make a little set of cards and give it to them.” Giving away things like that was really shooting myself in the foot. Sure, of course they appreciated it, but that was really taking money out of my own pocket basically.
Allison Tyler Jones: Right. And I do think that it devalues how special what it is that you’re doing. If you’re going to gift a client, to me you’re not gifting the work, you’re gifting them. Some photographers will give them a bottle of wine at the installation or champagne or whatever, or a nice candle or some kind of gift that way.
Allison Tyler Jones: But the work, they’re contracting you to do the work. It’s just like if you had van Gogh paint your family or whatever, and he’s like, “Oh, I noticed that I did these couple extra paintings for you.” That’s ridiculous, it would never happen. Or my sister, “I designed a couple of extra rooms for you, just for you to have.”
Kathryn Langsford: No, it’s really good for you to put it that way because that’s how ridiculous it is. We’re giving away a photography product. I don’t even know why I would do it.
Allison Tyler Jones: That was such a thing for a while. I remember we were doing those too, those little, tiny albums. And they were a pain in the butt to order, to put together. They were not an easy thing.
Kathryn Langsford: And people love them so much, they still ask for them.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah. No, they just loved them.
Kathryn Langsford: The other thing I used to do, which is so horrible, I hope nobody’s doing this anymore, probably not, is I used to give a box of 4×6 proofs with the order.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah.
Kathryn Langsford: My thought was like this was back when there was nothing digital. So the way I showed people photos was 4×6 proofs, and we spread them out and look at them and choose that way. So I had them anyway, they were already printed, so my feeling was like, “I’m not going to throw them in the garbage.”
Kathryn Langsford: I would just put them in a box and tie them with a bow. So I basically gave them all their photos for free. And they would come in, if they came back next year or the year after, they would know they’re getting those. So then that would totally reduce what they-
Allison Tyler Jones: The sale, yeah.
Kathryn Langsford: Or it’s again, if people have a phone to look at, even if it’s small, that can replace ordering a big wall piece, because in their mind they have it.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah. They never have to decide, so it just craters your sale. Well, and I think about when my mom. So back in the day when I was a young child and my mom was having portraits done of our family and how that studio used to work. And I remember she would bring home the proofs, they would let her take home the proofs.
Allison Tyler Jones: They had a watermark on it, but they were also printed on this paper that faded over time or something like that. And I don’t even know what technology that is or how they did it now that I’m thinking about it, but it was like she had to hurry and get back to them and let them know now. And they were doing, these were pictures that were portraits that she was going to pick one of.
Allison Tyler Jones: So for example, she photographed each of us at two years old and then at eight years old when we were baptized, and so she had to pick that one portrait. And then they would print it on a fiber-based black and white, and then somebody would go in and oil over the top of it. So it was like a big deal. So it was very special, she had to make the decision.
Allison Tyler Jones: She wasn’t going to get all of those images. It was a commissioned piece of artwork, and that really stuck with me too. And I think about how we just make it so much less special by just giving so many. Because when you don’t have to decide, then you don’t have a reason why one’s more special than another.
Allison Tyler Jones: And that actually goes back to our really tightly editing your sessions so that you’re not showing them too many images as well. You need to really narrow it down so that you’re only showing them the best of the best, and then going to that creative agenda. Right?
Kathryn Langsford: Exactly. I don’t think it’s doing them a favor to show them eight different iterations of their kids together sitting in the same spot. Less is more, really.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah, it actually waters down everything. And they’re not really qualified to decide which one is the best one, you are. So it’s like maybe two or maybe one.
Kathryn Langsford: Maybe two, maybe two, and sometimes one. Yep, for sure.
Allison Tyler Jones: There’s a clear winner.
Kathryn Langsford: That change over the years, and that, I think, makes the images feel more valuable. The other thing I was going to talk about with making everybody happy is aside from the product side of it, just basically even things like, “Oh, can we come in Wednesday at 4:00?” And being able to say, “No, I don’t have anything until.”
Kathryn Langsford: Being really intentional about my schedule, because I have my schedule set up in a really specific way. And part of that is I have specific shooting days, and lots of times, people will ask for dates that aren’t those shooting days. But rather than make my schedule completely haphazard and all over the place for my creative brain, which doesn’t handle it well.
Kathryn Langsford: I tell them, “No, I’m not shooting that day. I only have this, this or this.” So much of the time, that’s fine. There may be rare occasions where it’s like, “Oh, I really can’t. My husband’s a surgeon. He’s performing brain surgery from a helicopter.” Something that just can’t be changed.
Allison Tyler Jones: Over the ocean at midnight with a balloon, yeah.
Kathryn Langsford: The same with working weekends. When you and I met, as you know, I worked every weekend. I had little kids at home, it was not easy. I did that because I thought that was serving my clients well, and that would make them happy because I’m working around their schedule. It was thanks to you showing me the light on that one, that I took that part of my life back. And now rarely, rarely do I have people ever book weekends.
Kathryn Langsford: If they do, they need to pay quite a high session fee and I’m happy with that. I probably shoot three weekend days a year. But people ask all the time, “Can we book you on Saturday?” And I just say, “No, I’m sorry. I don’t do Saturdays,” and that’s it. So again, making everyone happy, we don’t have to say yes to everything. We have a certain way that we run our business and it has really good reason, and we don’t even really need to explain the reason most times.
Kathryn Langsford: But people are going to ask because like you said, they don’t know. They’re just going to ask for stuff. Can you shoot at our house? That’s all the time. “So what happens? Do you come to our house and shoot there?” No, I have a studio downtown. “Oh, okay, great.” It’s not a deal breaker, they just don’t know.
Allison Tyler Jones: Exactly. I think when you are a creative and you have that sensitive soul, the fact that it comes out of somebody’s mouth feels like it’s a command that you have to sell. It’s a do or die when really they’re just asking. So if you don’t want to say, if you don’t want to go to your level of like, “No, I don’t shoot Saturdays.”
Allison Tyler Jones: Because for the right person or the right situation, you would be willing to do that. So if you don’t want to go that far to a no, if you want to say… Okay. Well, you can still say, one of my favorite things is like, “Well, tell me more about a Saturday. What is your scheduling situation?”
Allison Tyler Jones: Because what we say a lot is most of our clients find that Saturdays, the weekends are really hard because kids are in sports and it’s the only time that you get together as family. So most of our clients prefer to schedule during the week, either after school or maybe take their kids out of school, or on a day when they have early release or they’re out of school.
Allison Tyler Jones: So that everybody’s fresh and it’s not using one of your precious weekend dates. But of course, if we need to shoot on a Saturday, then it’s more. So then you’re letting them choose that and self-selecting. But it doesn’t mean just because somebody says something out of their mouth, that we have to go throw ourselves on an altar and slay ourselves for that.
Kathryn Langsford: I think that’s the point of this whole conversation we’re having. Just because someone asks for something, doesn’t mean that the only way to make them happy is to agree to it.
Allison Tyler Jones: Right.
Kathryn Langsford: It took me a long, long time to figure that out. And in experimenting with saying no, I don’t even really say no. I try to never say the word no. Well, just following your example, I’ll say, “Well, here’s what I can do. I can do this, I can do that, I can do this.”
Kathryn Langsford: So in experimenting with educating people about the way I work, and leading them through the way that I run my business, instead of them telling me what they need me to do, it’s had so many benefits. Not only are people totally happy to work with the way that I work for the most part.
Kathryn Langsford: But also, it’s so much less stressful for me to be going with the flow of my business the way I set it up. Instead of having to do all these things that I don’t want to do, I don’t really know how to do, I’m not great at. That is a tax on the soul to have to work that way.
Allison Tyler Jones: Right. And you don’t do your best work and you’re not your most creative, and you’re resentful and you have secret, hidden resentment that is not so hidden. It comes out and the client can feel that. So you’re basically being like a little withholding, passive-aggressive jerk to somebody who’s paying you money, so that’s stupid.
Allison Tyler Jones: When you’re in a negative relationship with a client, anything that’s going to burn down somebody that is basically supporting your business is really a bad decision. And you think about how many times have you called a service and asked somebody for something? A dentist, for example, “Can I get in and get a cleaning this week?”
Allison Tyler Jones: They’d laugh you out of the, “Yeah, okay. Well, try next year.” Or I’m dealing with a doctor right now, I’m like, “Okay. Well, I can do next Wednesday.” No, she’s only available on Thursdays for those kinds of appointments. Okay, so I’m making it happen because I want to see her.
Kathryn Langsford: It’s really good to flip it like that in your mind like, “What would I do if I called a service?” I think of certain services I work with that are very hard line about the way that they work, and you just accept it. That’s just what it is and if you really hate it, you go elsewhere.
Allison Tyler Jones: Right. But our insecurity tells us the second that we put up one roadblock and say, “Oh, I can’t do that day. We have to do another day.” All right, that’s it. I don’t even want your work anymore. I hate you and I’m going to tell everybody else that you suck, and that they should never go to PBK ever again.
Kathryn Langsford: But the other point we have to remember is in being true to ourselves and the way we have our business set up, there are people that are going to say no. There’s definitely people that are going to, they’ll say, “Oh, let me think about it and call you back or whatever.” You never hear from them.
Kathryn Langsford: Or worse, even worse, you started working with them and then they back out because they realize, “This is not what I thought.” For example, people who come to me through an auction or something like that, they’re gifted a session, and they realize like, “Oh, this is the kind of thing that I can’t afford, or that it’s too involved or whatever.”
Allison Tyler Jones: Right.
Kathryn Langsford: We need to remember that that’s for the best. And something I used to tell myself early is there’s enough work for everyone. And sometimes, that helped me to be less competitive minded, because being competitive, I found exhausting and demoralizing. So I would tell myself, “There’s enough work for everyone.”
Kathryn Langsford: And that means that sometimes someone else’s client calls me up and it’s like, “This person isn’t for me. This person should be with somebody else,” and that’s totally okay. That doesn’t mean that I’m not wonderful for the people who love me. It means this person straggled, got through a filter they shouldn’t have got through.
Kathryn Langsford: I don’t know how, I’m not sure how it happened, but they ended up on the phone with me. And it’s okay that we both realized that they should probably be on the phone with somebody else.
Allison Tyler Jones: Right, right. And I think getting to this point required, so it’s like how do you get to the point then where you have just the very best kinds of clients? And of course, in a given year, you’re going to have some that get through that drive you crazy. But for the most part, that you have really great clients that do want what you do.
Allison Tyler Jones: They want to do your process. They want to do it the way that you want to do it. They get it. They’ve drunk the Kool-Aid, so to speak, and all that. So how you do that, is that you actually have to have the rules. You have to decide what makes you happy first, before you can truly make other people happy.
Allison Tyler Jones: And really, you can’t make everybody happy, but you do know the things that you like to do. So for example, in your situation with young kids, working every weekend was not making you happy. So the rule was, “Okay. I still will shoot on a weekend, but I’m only going to shoot on Saturdays. I’m not shooting Saturday and Sunday.”
Allison Tyler Jones: And then the next year it was, “Okay. Now it’s going to be double to shoot on Saturday.” So it doesn’t have to be band-aid ripping and everything is throwing down at the first second. It can be iterative over a period of time, and then, “Okay, I really don’t like shooting on location anymore. I really just love shooting in my studio.”
Allison Tyler Jones: So filling in the blanks of what it is that makes you happy, spending that time to list of how do I want to work and how am I my most creative? How can I give my client the best experience and the best of me? Because we are the product, and so if we don’t protect the asset, which is us, our brain, our creativity, our eye.
Allison Tyler Jones: It’s like stabbing yourself in the eye with a pencil over and over and over again, and wondering why you can’t see.
Kathryn Langsford: 100%. And when I go ahead and make the mistake of taking on a client that really I know is not the right one, all my other clients pay for it.
Allison Tyler Jones: Absolutely.
Kathryn Langsford: Because I’m frustrated, I’m exhausted. I’m spending so much brain time trying to figure out how to work with this person or how to work with this situation, or how to fix this issue that I got into because I took this person on. And it’s just there’s a worst-case scenario is I need to fire this person, which is really bad, but occasionally we have to do it.
Kathryn Langsford: Maybe that’s another episode. But I’ve gotten myself into situations that I should not have said yes to. And after a while, I realized I have to end this because it’s affecting my other clients, and it’s taking up way too much of my head. It’s just such a no-win situation when we try to make people happy that aren’t the right people for us.
Allison Tyler Jones: I love it. Well, I think the takeaway for me is just when I look back and I think, “Okay, this holiday season of 2020… This will be coming out, this episode will be coming out in early 2025, but we’ve just come through the holiday season of 2024.”
Allison Tyler Jones: And honestly, this has been our most, even though it’s people are maximum distracted, it’s probably the hardest time ever to be able to get responses from clients. But as far as our process goes, as far as the clients that we have coming in, they just get it. They love what we do, they want what we do, they buy what we do, and we deliver it. It’s just easy.
Kathryn Langsford: So great.
Allison Tyler Jones: And it requires less people, less employees, and it’s almost like everything’s on skids. It’s work what we do, for sure, but when you are in a shoot with somebody who just you know is so excited to work with you. They love the way that you shoot. So for you, they love the cuddled up. For me, they love that their kids are being naughty and crazy.
Allison Tyler Jones: And then they want, we’re not video obviously, but I’m looking at these gorgeous portraits on your wall in your studio, they want that on their wall. Our whole process is set up to make that happen for them in an amazing, happy way to where everybody is happy. And when we ignore the red flags and we don’t listen to our intuition, and we doubt ourselves.
Allison Tyler Jones: When we come from a place of fear, we let things in that not only don’t allow us to make that person that we let in happy because they aren’t a good fit. But just, I think, the most important thing that you said is that it actually compromises the other clients who actually do love us. Because we end up shoving them off because we’re trying so hard to deal with this hard situation.
Allison Tyler Jones: So you can’t make everybody happy. Recognize that and figure out first what is going to make you happy? How do you like to work? How are you your most creative? And then build your business around that and people, the clients that are willing, that want that, that want what you do. And then just every year, just make it, optimize it more and more and more for that.
Kathryn Langsford: Exactly.
Allison Tyler Jones: Anything you want to add?
Kathryn Langsford: Well, just that the payoff to doing what you just said is things will just feel easy and effortless, and like they’re flowing. Of course, it’s always going to be hard work running a business, but there won’t be that feeling of pushing a boulder uphill with my clients and it’s its own reward. The rewards, you’ll be rewarded by making those decisions in your business, more so than you would be making a few extra bucks taking on someone who’s not your client.
Allison Tyler Jones: For sure, for sure. And not just monetary rewards, but also just skipping to work. Loving to go to work and loving the people that you’re working for. And when you’re in their houses and hanging on their wall and you’re hanging the art on their wall and they’re just loving it. It’s just such a good feeling, such a good place to be.
Kathryn Langsford: That’s what it’s all about.
Allison Tyler Jones: Then you’re happy and they’re happy. And then the other people that wouldn’t have been happy with you are happy because they went somewhere else.
Kathryn Langsford: Yeah, they’re happy with their perfect photographer for them.
Allison Tyler Jones: I love it. You’re the best. I appreciate you.
Kathryn Langsford: Love you.
Recorded: You can find more great resources from Allison at DotheReWork.com and on Instagram @Do.the.ReWork.