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 is everything high school seniors, and not only what’s working now, but where our guest, Nate Peterson, thinks the future is headed for this niche. I’m excited for you to hear about the changes and innovations that Nate is making in his studio, not only with his volume school work, but also with his commissioned senior portrait clients. He talks about his 8-by-10 LED wall that he’s had installed in his studio, the trend for hype videos, and shares his concerns and hopes for the future of this niche for our industry. Can’t wait for you to hear it. Let’s do it.
Allison Tyler Jones: I would like to welcome to the podcast studio today a new friend, new to me, but probably not new to our listeners, Mr. Nate Peterson from the Twin Cities of Minnesota. Welcome, Nate. I’m so glad that you’re here.
Nate Peterson: Thank you, Allison. Very honored and excited to be here.
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay. So Nate, we met… Well, we’ve met before, but we met for real-real when I came to TCPPA, Twin Cities Professional Photographers of America, in, was that like March-ish?
Nate Peterson: Yeah, this past March you were here, yep.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yep. Anyway, and so it was great, what a great group that you guys have there.
Nate Peterson: Yeah. I think I sometimes take it for granted, just the networking and the monthly, I call them injections of get out of your box and go reinvigorate and everything. You just go get to be with a community of like-minded people and we bring in nationally recognized industry speakers, all the great benefits of what those PPA affiliates or community network partners groups are, so that’s been my secret weapon in the last 15 years of being in this industry.
Allison Tyler Jones: It was just really a highlight, just such great people and you guys have got it so dialed in. So anyway, high compliment to TCPPA and hey to everybody. But we’re not here to talk about TCPPA, we’re here to talk about you. So what I would love for you to do is just tell our listeners a little bit about who you are, where you are, what you’re doing, your niche, all that stuff.
Nate Peterson: Sounds good. Technically, I’m in Wisconsin, just across the border from the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. I have a full commercial studio with my wife and I run it full time, this is our only income. We specialize in high school seniors in volume sports teams, like high school volleyball and football and junior hockey leagues and things like that, and then we do commercial headshots and branding images and things like that. So those are where we’ve niched down to doing what we enjoy the most and where our comfort zone is. We don’t have children ourselves, so working with kids and babies, the typical story you hear in this industry, where, “Oh, I had a baby, so I started taking pictures of that and it just grew with it,” I don’t have that. So I am 19 in my head, so working with 17-year-old seniors in high school is just my jam, and I love their language and I love their lifestyles, and I’m getting so old now that it’s getting weird to still be-
Allison Tyler Jones: It’s not weird, we’re all 19 in our head still. Even if you’ve had kids, I think you just don’t get much past that.
Nate Peterson: Well, that’s good to know.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah, I love that. Okay, so there’s several things… I have so many questions, because we didn’t get a chance really to spend time together and chat because we were busy teaching and doing those things. So with the senior, let’s just talk about that for a second, have you been shooting seniors all that time, all the 15 years?
Nate Peterson: Yes, yep. Action sports is where it started for the high school kids, and then that turned into team photography, and then finally, two years in maybe, one of the hockey players said, “Do you do senior pictures?” And, “Sure, I’ll figure that out.” So that was where it started, and that was probably closer to 20 years ago, because those first five years, I don’t really count, that was the on the side of the career and everything.
Allison Tyler Jones: Nate, you should totally count them, you’re 20 years in. Okay, so what have you seen, is there an arc, or what have you seen with Senior your portrait photography over that time? Has there been a change, has there been a shift? I’m sure there’ve been many. Just what are your thoughts?
Nate Peterson: I came into the industry in 2008, so those five years before that I don’t count. I met some great people through After Dark, through TCPPA, through PPA, all the places and the things I learned from Ralph Romaguera and Julia Keller and you and many people about the way this industry teaches you to do it the best. And this is almost like a… It’s funny that the carpet’s been ripped out from under, it feels like, because I think we have succeeded at the proper way, like the way Tim Walden does things and the way we do it on the top level, and now the trends I see are the imperfections, and I just got the newest, I’ll throw Vogue under the bus here, but the last two issues of Vogue, the cover image is not what I would really view as super high-end photography, it’s like they’re bringing down the level, and I think that’s what I see with kids and even what their personal posts are, they’re blinking, they’re blurry, they strive for imperfection so much that they try to make it imperfect.
Nate Peterson: So we’ve built this pro-level business, and 10 years ago, we were on top of the world, and there’s a slight decline this year, but I think that’s more economic than it is trend. So what we do to differentiate ourselves from the other… There’s a million senior photographers, so we do something called the Grand Experience, where we really get to know our client, sit down and talk about their passions, what’s their story, things like that, and then we put together this ultra session, three to six hours, and go to all their places, do the studio stuff, do everything, and then they get an album. And those albums can get to be up to 70 toward 90 images sometimes with 20-plus spreads in them, and it’s like their life story.
Nate Peterson: And my mission is that their grandchildren see this album someday and just think, man… I think it would be so cool to see my grandparents’ album. You were on the football team and had the leather helmet and the whatever, what was life like back then? Some kids collect butterflies or collect Legos or things like that, so it isn’t always just athletes, it’s whatever that unique thing is about each kid, and that keeps me inspired. So every time I’m working with a different subject, the story changes and the locations change, and so it’s always a challenge and keeps that fresh and fun.
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay, I have questions, let’s go back. Okay, you said carpet ripped out from under, so quantify that statement, you just breezed past that and I need to know about the carpet being ripped out.
Nate Peterson: Yeah. Well, I got master’s, certification, craftsman, all the things, built the IPS studio, and now I think the biggest population of the consumer base wants none of that. They want a quick hour in a field of daisies at sunset and just give me the files, no service level, no certifications, none of that matters. So the biggest shift away from business is that high school kids know cameras just as well as 20-year experts do, so when-
Allison Tyler Jones: Yep. They know Photoshop, they’re learning it, yeah.
Nate Peterson: Yeah. So we’re getting to be-
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay, so a couple of things. So one is that they know the tech, so it’s no longer a barrier to entry, like I’m sitting here with my RZ on a 25-pound tripod and you have no idea how this works and this is what we’re going to do. I feel like what you were talking about, how they like this imperfection, I feel like that’s been going on for a while. Don’t you feel like even 10, 15 years ago, it was the Urban Outfitters, the lens flare, the brown filter, this kind of imperfection, or the on-camera flash, the really gritty, looked like it was being taken in a heroin den. And I think with AI coming, AI is so perfect, that I do think that there is going to be a rush to imperfection and seeing, like you’re saying, the blur, the whatever. But it doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily… In the wrong hands, it’s not good.
Nate Peterson: True, yeah. And I think I see it so much with the Instagram in my face so much in their world. But yes, that actually is very comforting to hear, when you look back at those imperfections, they were just different imperfections back to 15 years ago, and those were when things were building and things were going great. So yeah, if they’ve been there-
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah. Even back in, I graduated… Oh my gosh, I’m going to date myself. I graduated in 1982, so obviously there was no digital then, and I was high school yearbook editor, and I was shooting all of my friends’ senior pictures, and there were photographers in town that were not happy about that. So that has been going on forever. So I think that can calm us a little bit, when we feel like carpet is being ripped, I think that can calm us.
Allison Tyler Jones: The other thing is, I love what you said about, “What my seniors want is they want an entire experience and an entire story,” but your seniors aren’t the ones that are like, “Look, 20 minutes in a field, give me 100 files, let’s be done.” So you know who your client is. There’s just not as many of them as there are field people that want 200 bucks.
Nate Peterson: Yep. Yeah, and I think me and my inner circle of industry friends, we talk about the 20%, the 80/20 rule, and it’s shrinking to 15% or 10%. And what we’ve found even this year, the silver lining is we don’t have as many as we have in past years, but the ones that we have had are up, so it’s actually a good thing. The entrepreneur in me is worried about when does it become too small, or when-
Allison Tyler Jones: When are you doing one session-
Nate Peterson: Yeah, too many eggs in-
Allison Tyler Jones: … for $900,000, and then you can just go home.
Nate Peterson: Yeah. I guess that is the goal, isn’t it?
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah, right. Wouldn’t it be? But I think these are the things that a lot of times… I want to have this conversation with you, because what the conversation sounds like on Facebook or what it sounds like with other people, what I’m overhearing, is it’s all going to hell in a hand basket, nobody wants this anymore, we’re doing it wrong, and that’s not the case. I don’t know why we think that there’s going to come a time where we have certainty, because there’s just never been that in any business ever. There’s always been a problem somewhere, politically, war, 9/11, 2008, there’s just always been something.
Nate Peterson: Yeah. I think that’s, again, calming to think too, because I think the perspective I come from is along the journey, it’s this build. When you’re building and going uphill, it feels amazing, nothing can stop you, and you’re always searching for the day, like you say, the day of certainty, when, okay, we’re going to get to the top of this plateau or this mountain and just ride for a while, we built a system and now we just repeat it. But that never really happens, if you’re on top of your game, constant innovation, LED lights are my new jam right now, so it’s like-
Allison Tyler Jones: I love it.
Nate Peterson: … what are we doing to stay fresh and stay changing, when there’s this other half of you, the Facebook half, sitting there going, “It should be easier than this.” But no, it shouldn’t, it’s just get excited about the change again.
Allison Tyler Jones: Well, I think senior is a particularly difficult niche, in my opinion, because barring brothers and sisters, younger brothers and sisters, you really are having to kill what you eat every single year, you’ve got to get new, new, new. Now, with you, you’ve got this team, you’ve got this in with these sports teams and that kind of stuff, so you’re right in front of those kids, which I think is freaking genius, and you hear the words they’re saying, you’re in that world. And the thing that’s great about that is that a lot of times, like when you were talking earlier about, “Oh, I had a baby”, and then you came into the industry and you grew up with your clients as you were growing up with your kids, the benefit that you have of not having the kids is that you are just staying relevant with the current kids all the time, I think that’s a superpower. This wasn’t meant to be a counseling session for you, but I think, oh my gosh, you guys have such advantage, really.
Nate Peterson: That’s great to hear it from that perspective too, because sometimes it’s not relatable or you actually think of the, well, this person, this photographer in another area, their kids are coming into high school, they’re going to be the trend for a while. But we’re always sitting in that trend area.
Allison Tyler Jones: You are, you know exactly what is cool and what’s not cool, and I love that for you. Okay, so I’ve heard from a lot of photographers, and for us too, our session count is down a little bit this year, but our averages are higher for our business. I can’t quantify that because I don’t have a three-year trend, this is just a one year.
Nate Peterson: Exactly.
Allison Tyler Jones: So I think that there’s some things, we were just talking about, what do you feel like is contributing to that, in your opinion?
Nate Peterson: Well, yeah, this is the first year that we’ll experience a down, even with COVID, there was a portion of the year that was down, but then the fourth quarter made up for it.
Allison Tyler Jones: COVID was awesome, yeah, totally.
Nate Peterson: The appreciation was off the chart for what we did, yeah. So this is the first year in 15 years that we’re going to start downward a little bit. As of right now, with the fourth quarter still happening, it looks like it could be a significant chunk. My go-to is I’ve had a few people tell me that the amount of babies this year, 17 years ago, was smaller due to 2008.
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay. Interesting.
Nate Peterson: So the class sizes are a little smaller in some of the high schools. That doesn’t stat out perfectly with all the schools I work with, but that is like, okay, so there’s less kids to begin with. AI is a portion of it, you can make things pretty darn cool without a graphic design degree and things like that. But I know myself, and just talking on any luxury level, or eating out, boating, things like that, the economy right now, the uncertainty of things, consumer confidence is a tracked stat that is officially down right now, at a low point in the last long time. I don’t have it in front of me exactly what it is, but that has to be… You talk to people, and beef prices are up or rent or-
Allison Tyler Jones: Food, everything.
Nate Peterson: … a lot of those things, our clients aren’t dealing with, but we are competing for disposable income like we haven’t in the last 10 years, and it’s on people’s minds, so it’s hard to calm them into why this is a necessary expense when there is a $200 field photographer out there, this is a great way to take that portion of dollars. And so, you’ve really got to sell, “This is a once in a lifetime, don’t let this be the thing you sacrifice.”
Allison Tyler Jones: For sure. I agree with all of that. I have so many thoughts. I just feel like 20 years in, this is my 20th year, and then I had a business before that for 14 years, I just feel like there’s always something, and I feel like we do create our own weather. And there are realities, 2008, there is no question, that was real-real-real.
Allison Tyler Jones: I also went into studio space in 2009, and the photographer that I admired and loved in town, who was like the schnizzle, everybody, he was the guy, came swanning through my studio, looking down his nose, and went, “Oh, interesting time to go into retail when the whole entire financial crash happens, interesting time.” And I literally went home and was just like, “What am I doing? Oh my gosh.” And then, he would call me on the regular, quarterly, “Oh, well, so-and-so, they closed their studio. Kay Eskridge closed her studio.” He would just… Like the harbinger of death. And I’m like, “What are you trying to do?” So I just think there are always going to be those people, and there are also realities, but I do feel like you’ve done it right, you guys have done it right, and I think you’re going to be fine.
Nate Peterson: Yeah, I don’t fear not being fine, I guess I should put that out there. I crave the easier path, or where’s the next level of entrepreneur, when you hire somebody and they do your work for you and all that. But that’s not realistic. Entrepreneurship, it’s a battle, but it’s invigorating, because the alternative is go sit at a desk and work for somebody else.
Allison Tyler Jones: Work for somebody else. Yeah, no, we’ve already been ruined for that. And I think as a creatives too, we’re creative in coming up with all of the ideas for our clients, but we’re also really creative in coming up with all the things that are going to go wrong.
Nate Peterson: That’s another, yeah, because somebody said creativity doesn’t mean art all the time, it means creative problem solving and that you are best at solving, all right, you’re down this year, you have a quarter to go, what’s your solution here? And you come up with some ideas, and that’s what we’re… Actually, this is the slowest September I’ve ever had, but it’s freed my mind up to look at what’s possible, which we’ve kind of been just stuck in the rat race for forever. So time is this gift of being able to go in and really evaluate and come up with some creative solutions to, all right, do we want to fill the gap in revenue, or is this new revenue level really where we should be? Have we been overdoing it, and now, scale it back and we don’t need that extra whatever? That’s anti-entrepreneurship, but life is-
Allison Tyler Jones: Well, it’s anti-American, truly, it is. If you’re a European, we would not even be having this conversation. You’d have a cigarette between your hands and a bottle of wine next to you and be like, “What’s the problem? I do not know. I do not understand what you’re saying.” But we just think that there’s never enough, and there’s always got to be more, and if you aren’t dying, you aren’t trying.
Nate Peterson: Yeah. Well, that lifestyle creep of… In my previous career, I never would’ve imagined the lifestyle we’re living now, that just wasn’t in the cards for the wages we made, and this industry and this life and what we’ve built has provided the next level. But rather than just enjoy where we were and have no worries, we creep up, we added some new expenses to our life, we do these things that we expect higher now. So yeah, maybe somewhere in between there is the happy point.
Allison Tyler Jones: But I love what you just said about how, okay, this is a slower time, but rather than sit and twist in the wind on that and be in the fetal position, you’re thinking, you know what? Actually, we have actually been working ourselves to the bone. Maybe we could just enjoy this time and also think of some creative solutions. So with that, what are some of the things that you’re thinking about?
Nate Peterson: Well, this opportunity came into my life in January, I think just before you came, I was talking about… There’s something called virtual production, where the Mandalorian and a lot of things you can start… Once you realize that you can see them in commercials, they’re not really in that location, there’s a screen behind them. So in the old days, it would’ve been photography with a projector, or even that there was a virtual background system that fired a projector flash behind.
Nate Peterson: But I have a 8-foot-by-10-foot LED wall now in my studio, so I can build an environment with an AI software in seconds. I need a spaceship with wolves on the benches and a pink highlight and whatever, and something like Midjourney will come up with this image or set of images, I can refine it to where I need it, and then throw it up on the screen, and I have any backdrop I want instantaneously.
Allison Tyler Jones: Wow.
Nate Peterson: And the first six months of the year, it was really hone in that, what are the settings, there’s something called pixel pitch and all sorts of technical junk of it you need to work out so you don’t have a moire pattern in the back and things like that.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yes, I was just going to ask you about that, yeah.
Nate Peterson: Yeah. And the tighter the pixel pitch, the more expensive the LED wall is. So mine is middle grade, so you have to do a few things to make it work, versus the Mandalorian was probably a million-dollar LED wall. Mine was not that much.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah. Next year.
Nate Peterson: That’s what Teresa’s afraid of. As this flies-
Allison Tyler Jones: As well she should be.
Nate Peterson: Yeah, I’m going to want the next one.
Allison Tyler Jones: But hey, you know what, Nate? You didn’t have kids to send to college, so you need a million-dollar LED wall.
Nate Peterson: I agree. I think I need a much bigger studio, I need all…
Allison Tyler Jones: Right, you need all the toys, absolutely.
Nate Peterson: Lifestyle creep in real life here, yeah. But that has been a fun… My previous career was in tech, so I love the technical aspect of being a photographer. I probably wouldn’t have been a photographer back in the film-fixer smelly chemicals days and math. It’s easier to dial in little settings, and what you see is what you get and things like that. And so, that LED wall with AI, plus the taking over of constant lights, that can be RGBWW, so any color you want, at the click of a phone remote, is super cool.
Allison Tyler Jones: So cool.
Nate Peterson: So that is setting us apart again. So it feels like off-camera flash in 2009, this is the new thing. So for the sports teams, that’s propelling hype videos and just different… Social sports teams, the high school level, are becoming like the pros or like the colleges, it all cycles down to the high school, where their social media plan right now looks as good as the pro teams, and the manager on the team is putting these graphics together, so there’s a demand for content, and we are building that plan to work with them on how do we create this for you that’s way beyond you guys just capturing stuff in the gym or on the field?
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah. So cool. Well, and that’s just something that they are not going to get some kid with a camera is going to be able to do that for them.
Nate Peterson: Correct. And that’s what downtime… When we say downtime, as a creative entrepreneur, that doesn’t mean Netflix and chill or take a nap, it’s think and process what’s possible, what are the trends.
Allison Tyler Jones: Well, it might mean a little bit of that, it might mean a little bit of Netflix. For me, in my house, there’s some Netflix going on over here.
Nate Peterson: Yes, we have one episode of Wednesday left.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah, but you’re right. To me, it’s just the negative spiral, I can’t let myself do it. I feel it, I feel the eee when something happens and you’re like, “Okay, is this going to be okay?” But I just can’t let myself go there, because I have to make it work.
Nate Peterson: Yes, yeah. We don’t-
Allison Tyler Jones: You and I are both the same. I can’t go work for somebody else, I can’t, I am unemployable.
Nate Peterson: On the deepest darkest days, it seems like that would just be… There’s easier ways to make money, and you yell about it, and then the reality is, yes, I think we would last four hours and be like, “I don’t get why you’re making me do this this way, I have to invent a different way of doing it.”
Allison Tyler Jones: No, and then we’d be fired.
Nate Peterson: And then you’d get fired.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah. Then we’d be on unemployment. Yeah, it’s not a good idea, not a good idea. Okay, so LED, AI, so you’re pushing the envelope, really exploring what all the options are, but it sounds like not only are you doing that, you’re teasing that to the schools and the teams, like, “Okay, this is where we’re headed,” so you’re leading them, you’re not waiting for them to tell you.
Nate Peterson: It’s a balance, because there is a hype video trend-
Allison Tyler Jones: Trend.
Nate Peterson: … happening, that I feel like I should have been listening to those video classes more, so I’m playing a little bit of catch-up, but at the same time, trying to eclipse all of it in one big leap.
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay. Then also, I think with seniors, I do think there is a mom, what I would call a classicist or a traditionalist, they’re traditionalist moms and they’re in every generation. So it’s not just, Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennial, now there are Millennial moms that have high school seniors, who are traditionalists, who want the finished product and they want something that looks good, they want something… I find that my senior clients, and we just do very minimal senior, but they will still hire the kid in the field, they’re still paying for that, but they’re also paying us, so they’ll hire that kid for their kid. You know what I mean? Like, okay, Nate, my 18-year-old has a friend, he wants to go in the field. Actually, it’s never a guy, it’s a girl, that wants to be out in the field twirling in her white cowboy boots, because that’s the thing, and her lashes. But the mom wants me, because she knows she wants it to have lasting power. Do you see that?
Nate Peterson: Yes, slightly different. It’s interesting you say there are traditionalists in each generation, because I think that’s the thing that’s shrinking the most. With youth comes more knowledge of do-it-yourself computer, all the things that we specialize in or that we are able to do for you, they are able to do it as well, and they’re like, “Just give me the files and I’ll take care of that [inaudible 00:28:02] but there are the busy executive professionals, the people that are more left brain professional side are, I want it done. Even I’ve paid to have graphics done, because, that’s my degree, I’m fine with it, but time is more valuable, so if somebody who’s on trend with what I need is going to do it, I think the professionals recognize that.
Nate Peterson: So the way I see that thing play out, or that situation, is that we’ll do senior portraits to instill a confidence and to build a self-image of these people, the biggest generation that needs it, and then after that, I see them go out and do more pictures with those people, their friends and whatever. But still, their official senior portrait is what we did, their book lasts forever, things like that. But now, they’re more photogenic and they do field shoots and sunset shoots and all the things I really don’t do a lot of, because I’m not going to go out at 9:00 night or whatever. It’s more for fun at that point for them.
Allison Tyler Jones: Right. And to Greg Daniel’s point on an earlier episode, when he was talking about how, if we’re so focused on experience and it’s not wrapped around a product, the photo is the little thing that gets printed out at the end of the rollercoaster ride.
Nate Peterson: Yep, yep. I always say the pictures are a by-product of the experience, and you don’t want to be truly just an experience, because that’s like going to Six Flags or something like that, we’re not a ride, this isn’t a thing you do just for the experience, part of the value is this byproduct as well. But the combo of the two is this perfect package, and the real byproduct, or the mission underneath it all, is instilling a self-image and helping these kids build a confidence about themselves, learning to make decisions on what the good photos are versus the other ones, helping plan out the day so that everything’s executed and we’re not just standing there wondering what to do next. It’s a transition to adulthood mini-moment, I like to think of it as.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah, for sure, for them and for their parents.
Nate Peterson: Yeah.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah, no, I love that. I think with the senior, just some of the things that I’m just thinking about is there is that idea of that traditional, where they do want the finished product, but then they also want it to look cool. The moms don’t want it to look like their senior photos, they want it to be relevant, they want it to be cool, but they want it to be executed well. Do you feel like that there are less people that are wanting finished product?
Nate Peterson: I think that’s an education piece of the public, or of the consumer, is they think files are control and more options and cheaper and everything, and really, done and well-crafted and done is the real thing, we’re actually going to do it. It’s not going to sit on your to-do list for the next six months, and then graduation is coming and you’re panicking, and then you call me and say, “Oh my god, I need you to get this done in three days.”
Nate Peterson: So I’ll say to the naysayer, I will sell them on saying, “We’re just going to help you get it done, almost like we’re forcing you to come in and make your decisions, and then we’re going to have you come pick it all up and everything, and then you’re just going to go, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s done, I love that.’ And you probably wouldn’t have done it otherwise, and that’s in itself valuable.” So our main marketing is pick-up day photos, when people come in and pick up their stuff, that’s always captured on our Instagram, that, “Here’s Amy with all of her product sitting there.” And what’s awesome is sometimes there’s little film reels we’ll do of the kids looking at the books, and some of the comments they say are like, “It’s real and tangible.” They don’t exist in print, except for maybe some sports pictures or whatever, but everything is… They’re used to flipping on their phone, and now it’s a real book that’s tangible and made of matter or whatever, however you say that, it’s a real thing and they can hold it.
Allison Tyler Jones: Well, and I think that as things go more AI and become… I think, man, could we be more online than we already are? But we will be more. I think we’ll look back at this time and think, oh my gosh, we weren’t even online compared to how the future is.
Nate Peterson: Yeah, when we’re in the metaverse and-
Allison Tyler Jones: For sure.
Nate Peterson: … you and I are sitting in a virtual coffee shop.
Allison Tyler Jones: Right, right. I think those artifacts are going to be even more precious and more… Just like this, as you see the AI imagery becomes so perfect, and the people that are on the cutting edge trend are trying to, how do you introduce that imperfection so that it doesn’t look like AI?
Nate Peterson: Yeah, yeah, authentic.
Allison Tyler Jones: Just what we were saying, authentic, kind of like going back to records, actual albums, rather than digital streaming, that you can hear that needle. So I think that there’s always going to be that tension between those two things, and we can provide that.
Allison Tyler Jones: But also, to your point about just it’s done, that we’re selling to people that have more money than time, and all of us are those people in some area of our life, all of us are those people, even if we’re not rich people. There are things that maybe we know how to do, it doesn’t matter if I know how to do it, I don’t want to do it. I know how to clean my house, I don’t want to clean my house, I want it done every week for me.
Nate Peterson: Yep. And that was something in this new level lifestyle, that was Teresa’s first wish was I don’t want to clean the house anymore, and having that done. I don’t want to pull my dock out anymore, I have a guy that has a crane that does it in six minutes and it’s a few hundred dollars and it’s-
Allison Tyler Jones: Close your doc? What do you mean, what’s that?
Nate Peterson: Oh, so in a lake house, we bought a lake house last year and the lakes freeze here, so you have to get your lake dock out of the water for the winter. And that means six guys, three on each side, walk in the water, in October cold water, and haul it out. And here, a guy and his employee come and lift the thing out and put it down in minutes. And that’s kind of what we are. Yes, you could go take your own kids’ pictures and have them giving you expressions that are like, I hate you, and whatever. And instead, we’re giving a chance to bond with somebody and create images that other people aren’t going to get, and then print them and finish them and hang them and everything and it’s done, and that’s the attitude we’ve taken is… And because time is so limited, yes, I will pay, I’m better at taking pictures for money and you’re better at painting that wall than I am, or whatever, and you will do it-
Allison Tyler Jones: Crafting that language for that will or whatever, yeah.
Nate Peterson: Exactly, yeah, whatever it is. I miss the days of professional craftsmen across the board. The idea of the do-it-yourselfer is not great for society as a whole.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah. Well, I just feel like that it only has the power that we give it. So when clients call and they say… Literally just before we got on today, I had a potential client call, and I think she must’ve been an auctioneer, literally was talking so fast, I’ve never heard anybody… I talk fast, but wow. And she was like, “Okay, so I’ve got my kids in town, that’s going to be the weekend of Thanksgiving, can you do it? We need it in studio, and somebody gave me your number that you do in studio. And this is what we need, and I only need a few shots, and we’re going to do a holiday card with it.” Basically, just telling me what she needed, which was great.
Allison Tyler Jones: But I was like, “Okay, hold on, let’s slow down, tell me more. What is it that you’re wanting to do?” And it’s obvious that she knows our industry, that everybody just does a few files and gives them to them for X number of dollars. And so, I was starting to talk with her about how we work, and it was just like, “Wait, what? Wait, what?” It doesn’t even exist in so many people’s mind, in the consumer’s mind, what we do.
Nate Peterson: Yeah, and that’s client education. And that’s where we’re lacking, I think, because a lot of the behind-the-scenes of the industry and the people that are trending high are, “Look at how much fun this is, we’re out having fun shooting,” but it isn’t talking about the order appointment and the narrowing down. I tell my clients, “We’re going to post your slideshow after the order appointment, and I will tell you the top 20 responses, all your mom’s friends are going to be on there being like, ‘Oh my god, how is she a senior already? Oh my gosh, how are you ever going to choose?'” And whatever.
Nate Peterson: And the funny thing is, it’s already done, wasn’t that easy? We sat down, we went through them, we narrowed down and we guided it. You don’t have to choose, there’s an album, because our generation thinks you’re going to get, at best, eight images in a leather folio, or in my case, it was one image, like, which one do you like? And you don’t have to choose, you’re getting a whole book of them and you’re getting… The reason I’m showing you this slideshow and the reason you’re seeing all these images on social media is because you already own them, you’ve done the process and you have it all and you don’t have to decide. But they probably didn’t know that prior to calling and going through the consultation and those things, we had to educate them on.
Nate Peterson: And I think some more mass media, social media things, where we’re educating them on that, educating the masses on it, would be beneficial to getting people to understand, teach them what they don’t know, like you’re talking about that. “Wait, what?” No, it’s just show up and… We’ve had people, we took families off the website recently because so much of it was drowned out and I didn’t have a competitive advantage, in my feeling, or in my mind.
Nate Peterson: So people would call and want, that scenario, “We’re going to have the kids in town this weekend and we’d like to get some pictures.” And I’ll say, “Okay, let’s start with where would you like to do it? What is the goal of the pictures? Do you want something on the wall or do you want an album of the day? What do you want to wear? And what color is your room?” And they panic, and, “This is way more than I thought it was going to be, not money, just way more effort and thinking, and I haven’t gotten that far. I just know I want pictures.” And so, yeah, that whole, “Slow down, let’s talk about these things.” And we’ve had some people just totally panic and back out and they just go find somebody that will take pictures, because, “Right now, I don’t know that answer, I just want pictures.”
Allison Tyler Jones: Right. Well, and I think that it’s a common error, and I make it still, where you dump on them, “Here’s how it works,” and it seems like this really big scary process. But just in this conversation that I was having with this woman earlier, I think if you can have a breath and say, “What our clients want us for, and this definitely applies to you, our clients, they don’t want to know how it’s going to be shot, they don’t want to pick out clothes, they don’t want to pick out framing, they don’t want to deal with anything. They just want to walk down their hall and have beautiful imagery on their wall and somehow it got there, and we’re in charge of that.”
Nate Peterson: Yes, yeah.
Allison Tyler Jones: You what I mean? So for you, our clients don’t want to know… They want us to tell them, they want us to handle it. To tell you, “Here’s where we’re going to do it, here’s how we’re going to do it, and then here’s your storybook of your senior, and then send me a bill.” That’s what they want. And so, that is a different clientele than, “Meet me in a field and give me a bunch of files that I’m going to go DIY.” And there’s no middle, there’s no middle, there’s no hybrid. People are like, “Oh, I’m going to do a little bit of both.” Nope, that doesn’t exist. Those people, the middle is gone. Like we said, we’re not going to talk about politics, but it’s gone, so it’s either this down here, quick and dirty, or it’s the full boat, but there really is no middle anymore, at least for us.
Nate Peterson: Right. No, that’s very true. Or sometimes, in real-time, people are realizing about themselves, they’re one or the other. The middle is, I think I’m middle class, but all of a sudden, you realize, well, you either do that or you don’t. So we’re looking at building a garage, and if I just call, the consumer equivalent would be I call the contractor and say, “I need a garage.” And he’s like, “Okay, so how many cars? How many stalls? How big? What kind of trim? What color?” All those things. We can’t just build a garage, we need to work together to come up with a plan. And he could say, “I look at your house, here’s what I would do, here’s a plan, here’s a rendering, done.” And I would say, “I love it,” and that’s probably the case you’re talking about. And I think sometimes, we battle with the people that just know they want to park their car in a garage, but they have no idea what color and what it’s going to look like, and we need-
Allison Tyler Jones: And that’s everybody, and you and I are those people in different industries. You don’t know from garage building, so somebody that’s going to be really good for you, that’s going to be a good contractor, is going to say, “Look, for five grand, you can go get a tough shed kind of thing with some sticks and a roof on it, like a carport. And then, actually, it’ll be 10, because you’ve got to pour a slab. So for 10 to 15 grand, you could get something like that. Now, if you’re wanting to build a garage, if you want to have an apartment above the top of it so that your cat can live in it or your mother-in-law…”
Allison Tyler Jones: So again, what does that do? That’s painting a possibility that you hadn’t even thought of before. Hold on a minute, I thought it was just building a garage, but I could have a mother-in-law quarter for my mother-in-law, that I love so much, that when she gets old, she could… Okay. Oh, well, maybe I want a casita with a garage, maybe I want something more than just a garage. Where if it’s like, “Okay, well, here’s four sticks and a roof and a slab and it’s going to be 20 grand,” that doesn’t sound great.
Nate Peterson: Correct, yeah.
Allison Tyler Jones: You know what I mean? So we have to take control of it and just own the fact… Honestly, my five-year-old granddaughter the other day… You’re going to die, this is so good. I need to make a master out of this. So she’s playing store with me and she’s got her little Fisher-Price toys out, and she’s like, “Okay, Grandma, come into my store.” And so, she gives me money, and I says, “Well, how much is that?” It’s like a little Barbie. And she looks over at the money in my hand, I kid you not, and she’s like, “Well, how much do you have?” Like she’s going to tell me what the price is based on what it is. And I’m like, “Oh, no, no, don’t look at my money. Tell me.” So I buy the things.
Allison Tyler Jones: And then, a little bit later, she says, “Well, is that all? Don’t you want more things?” And I said, “Well, I don’t think I have any more money.” And I said, “Well, what about that little record player?” And she says, “Oh, it’s $20.” And I said, “Oh, that’s a lot of money.” And she goes, “Yep.” Now, if a 5-year-old can just own the price-
Nate Peterson: She’s been through The ReWork.
Allison Tyler Jones: … what are we doing? But I mean… Yep, yep.
Nate Peterson: That’s awesome.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah. She could actually sell for me right now at five, yeah.
Nate Peterson: Yeah, it’s in her blood.
Allison Tyler Jones: Totally, yeah. So then the end of it was, I said, “Okay, well, I think I’m done.” And she goes, “Well, what about this?” She holds up another toy. I said, “I don’t know if I have enough money for that.” She goes, “That sister,” this is my sister that lives down the street, “That sister over there would love that.” She’s upselling me. So I think you guys are genius at this, it’s just knowing what people want, also, you’re always pushing yourself to the next level, and then just talking about it. So having on social media where they’re picking up the finished product, that is painting an image, a vision, that their friends are not getting that, the meeting somebody in a field, they’re not getting that.
Nate Peterson: Right, yep. With a long-term in business, you can say, “Trust me, I’ve been through this many times, this is what you’re going to want to do.” And that’s, when I build a garage, I go to the person that is going to tell me, “Don’t skimp on this part. Don’t go 24 feet, go 28 feet, you’re going to want the doors to open.” All those things that they know as an expert. And not to categorize, but the good consumer is somebody who trusts you and is willing to be open-minded and be educated and learn, and then we refer to them as our most satisfied clients. So when somebody says, “How much is it?”
Nate Peterson: “Well, some spend more and some spend less. We find that our most satisfied clients spend between here and here.” And that way… Recently, somebody said at the end of the order, they said, “How do you feel? Did I do everything right here?” And I hesitated and she caught me on that, and I said, “Well, in all honesty, I feel like we left a wall portrait on the table here, you didn’t go with that. And I think you did great, I think you did great for the goals that you were aiming for, but I think we created something extraordinary where your daughter felt absolutely like an angel and we left it on the table. It’s an 8-by-10 and it needs to be a 40-inch portrait. And I get it, that that’s not your lifestyle and everything, but you’re truly asking my opinion of did I do everything right, and integrity is everything to me, so I’m going to just be authentic and tell you, that’s my feedback. I’m not trying to sell you on it, I’m just letting you know, honestly, that’s how I feel.” And I think that planted a seed of, “I’m probably going to come back and get that before she graduates.”
Nate Peterson: Either way, it’s a win-win, I got to tell her how I authentically feel, and if she does it, she does it. But that isn’t my overall goal, it’s just I wanted to answer her honestly.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah, and I think that that rings true, people can feel if it’s a sales technique, because I guarantee you’ve also done it the reverse way, if you felt like they went too big, you’ve also said, “You know what? Actually, I don’t think it needs to be quite that big. I think we could dial it down.” So that’s just integrity selling.
Nate Peterson: Yeah. It’s not a greasy, ugly thing for those that don’t do it. I think it’s my favorite part, it’s the last piece of the entire studio I would ever give up, and that’s rare, I think.
Allison Tyler Jones: Totally.
Nate Peterson: But I will sooner hire a photographer to take over the-
Allison Tyler Jones: Same.
Nate Peterson: … creation piece so that I can work with the client and do the sale, and I don’t ever want to put a high-pressure commission person in there.
Allison Tyler Jones: No, no, because it’s… I don’t know. It’s a tender relationship, and that’s awesome. Okay, what else? What other thoughts? What are the future? You feel like… I know we’re in a weird time, at least in our country, where things don’t feel super certain for everybody in the world, feels like one side’s out to kill them, we’re a little divided, a little scary, so I think that does play into consumer confidence. Where do you feel like our industry, because you’re friends with a lot of industry leaders, you’re having those conversations a lot, where do you see that things are going, what are your thoughts?
Nate Peterson: I’ve heard what we mentioned a little bit, that the middle class is gone, and so you have to make a decision, you either want… And we ride the line between the two, we do volume sports teams, so that’s my 80%, working with them, and then my 20% is the way we run our studio proper, we’ll say, and so the senior clients, the family clients, the commercial clients. That isn’t cheap, that’s not the middle or the lower market, everything is top dollar, top quality. And then, the volume side is affordable, mass quantity, and dollar per hour, we balance the two.
Nate Peterson: And I tell the people that basically walk away from the studio side and say, “I don’t get it, this is that,” I’ll say, “Imagine you’re a co-op and 50 of your friends are sharing my time amongst each other and all chipping in $20. That’s what… Or you can have an hour of private, when it’s all about you, or three hours of private, and a finished album and everything.” So that’s the way I explain the economics of it to them, and then they get it. So they’re like, “Okay, so…” And then, that has turned into some more volume teams, like, “So you mean if I get my daughter’s softball team to come to you, we can create that stuff and I can be the beneficiary of being one of 20?” And I’m like, “Yeah, exactly. You can hire me privately, there’s plenty of people that do that, or you can do this.” So where’s the industry going was your question-
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay, hold on. You just said something genius and brilliant, and I want to explore that a little bit, because I feel like if somebody’s listening to this, they’re going to miss this. But I’m putting a pin in future industry, I’m writing it down right now, future industry. But I want to go back to this, because we didn’t even talk about volume. So you have a hybrid business, you have a volume and then you have a high-end luxury brand, so what I want to ask you… The thing that drives me absolutely insane and makes me want to just shake people by the shoulders until their brain rattles in their head is that people are charging volume prices while giving luxury service, and that is mainly women. I love you, girls, but seriously. Do you see that?
Nate Peterson: 1000%, yeah. That is the downfall of the industry, I guess, where all the-
Allison Tyler Jones: Let’s kill ourselves, let’s shoot for six hours, let’s do 75 outfits, let’s give you the experience, let’s have the fun, let’s do all these things. So the time is up here, we’re not on video but my hand is really high, and then the money is down here. And so, what you’re saying, because I want to call that out again, what you’re saying to the client, the volume client that says to you, “Hold on a minute. You’re charging me 50 bucks for this over here, and yet it’s going to be five grand for me to work with you over here, how do you reconcile that?” And you’re saying, “Look, you’re one of many over here, you’re one of one over here.” How can we get that into the minds of the photographers in our industry?
Nate Peterson: The first thing, I teach my Grand Experience program on the platform, and I basically do some coaching for business, and the first thing… I went to a private workshop for three days with your… I’m going to say the other you in the world-
Allison Tyler Jones: Oh, who’s-
Nate Peterson: Rachel Martin.
Allison Tyler Jones: Oh.
Nate Peterson: And she threw my stuff at me and said, “If you’re not willing to change this, then there’s no point in doing the rest of this trip.”
Allison Tyler Jones: Not willing to change what?
Nate Peterson: Then she kicked me out of the studio for the day, we went back to the hotel, and came in the next day with our tail tucked realizing it’s time to level up and do this. But what she did was she challenged me with a time audit and she said, “How much time do you put into every senior you work with?” And that doesn’t mean, oh, we have a three-hour session, the end. And so many people think that, I’m getting paid $500 an hour for a one-hour session or whatever. No, you’re not. There’s all the marketing beforehand, that’s before the client even calls you. Then there’s the client call and the back and forth, the emails. Then we do an in-person consultation, so that’s 45 minutes to an hour. Then there’s all the putting away those notes, planning things, calling the bus company to let them know we’re coming to the garage to do the shoot there, et cetera, et cetera. Then the actual session. Then there’s the copy of the card, there’s the backup, there’s the edit, there’s the call, the edit, create the sales presentation.
Nate Peterson: And I guessed 12 to 15 hours, thinking, yeah, that’s probably about right. And then, we mapped out the entire thing, and at that point, we were at 18 hours. And then, she said, “Now, let’s start finding all the other things.” And we got up to 21 hours per senior client. So a $5,000 average sounds awesome, but when you divide that down by 20 hours, it’s good, but it’s not thousands of dollars an hour, so it’s a misconception. So yeah, when the field photographer is out there at 7:00 at night, they should be home with their kids or having dinner with their family or whatever it be, and they’re out there for an hour and it’s $200, and then they go home and they copy the card and they do all this stuff, they end up spending five hours for $200, that’s 40 bucks an hour, minus the taxes, minus the cost of all the overhead and everything, and they’re just spinning their wheels and shooting themselves in the foot, and the average photographer, last three years, when they start to realize that truth, that they’re just not making it.
Nate Peterson: And that’s where you and I come in and teach people that, “Here’s how you actually should be priced,” and PPA’s benchmark and all the things that try and tell people, “You’re not doing it right,” that isn’t because we’re protecting our high-end studio, we realize you’re going to burn out and quit, because I’ve seen it hundreds of times in 15 years.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah. It’s hard, what we do. Even once you learn it, even once you know your lighting, it’s so much problem solving on the fly, and it’s valuable, it’s valuable.
Nate Peterson: I break everything down to hourly, and I’ve got some friends that are moving to a non-IPS digital file setup, but they just don’t have the means to put all the effort into getting all that money off the table, and they’re proving to me, they’re saying, “Three hours, 45-minute session and edit, a download, $1,500, I’m making a better hourly rate than you are, Nate.” And they’re established, they’ve built a reputation that has that higher command for an hourly rate. But that’s where I think things are going to go, because I think there’s more do-it-yourself people.
Nate Peterson: So pay us for the creative time, the creation, more than the markup on the product is probably the next phase, and there will be a middle ground of product that’s achievable. And then, there will be the Gregory Daniels and the people that have the one-of-a-kind, really high-end product. But I think the mass market will go to pay for creativity and have that be appreciated, not $200 sessions, more like $1,000 and $1,500 sessions, and then $1,000 worth of product, but at way lower rates than potentially… Or the do-it-yourself links and things like that.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah. Well, and I think also, and I know who you’re talking about, but I think also, you just deciding how do you want to live. With both of you, now it’s like, how do you want to live? Is this level of work sustainable as we age? Are we going to be on a ladder? You’ve got to start thinking about, okay, what’s next, do I hire an associate photographer? And what does my life look like going forward? And for some people, that it’s not their main income and maybe it’s a side hustle or just a supplementary income, then they really can make it however they want, it doesn’t have to be so dire.
Nate Peterson: Correct, yeah. Once it becomes… I remember Dane Sanders and the Fast Track Photographer, that was my era of getting into this, the goal was quit your full-time job and make this your life. And once you do that, especially once your wife leaves her career and joins you, all those eggs are in that basket, and the stress of this is… I always say, “This is for real.” We’re not playing anymore, we really have to make this much to pay our bills and to do this stuff. So the fun gets severely hampered.
Allison Tyler Jones: Curbed.
Nate Peterson: But yeah, that’s where you balance your lifestyle and everything. We did well prior to COVID, and then when COVID happened and the true rug was ripped out, all of a sudden, we didn’t know what the future held, we never panicked, we were financially fine, and that’s kind of a good lesson on, like they talk about, have six months of salary put away. We don’t know what AI is going to do and we don’t know all those things, but going down the rabbit hole of negativity is not great or is not the solution for it. Counseling sessions like this are incredible.
Allison Tyler Jones: Helpful, it’s helpful to talk. I’m really good at talking other people off the ledge. I’m not great at talking myself off the ledge. I’m really good at talking to other people off the ledge. But I think to your point, I think it is what you make it and your future can be what you want it to be. It might not be exactly how you think it’s going to happen, but I just find that when you’re all in, those of us who are all in, it has to work, it has to work, so we’re not out spouting theories that are not real.
Nate Peterson: Yeah. And that’s what, to come back to TCPPA, I’m on the speaker committee there, and that’s why we beg people like you to come. The people we bring in, the number one litmus test with them is, are you really walking the walk? We don’t want the people that are selling 20-year-old marketing techniques and they sold their studio a long time ago. It’s literally people who are in the trenches and finding the time to give back to the industry like that, and those are the magic people to talk to. And if you’re listening and don’t have those people in your life or whatever, I think that monthly injection of going and sharing and listening and everything is what keeps you…
Nate Peterson: Talks like this. I said to Teresa the other day, I was driving to a job somewhere and I listened to one of your episodes, and I wish I could think of which one it was, and I said to her, “That was exactly what I needed to hear right now.”
Allison Tyler Jones: Awesome.
Nate Peterson: Yeah, it was something along today’s lines of a counseling session, where it was… You do that well, talk people off the ledge and just give a wise perspective at listen to yourself. My inner thoughts are, “Listen to yourself, did you just introduce the entire thing sounding like the world is ending?” And then, “Here’s a different perspective. Have you looked at it like this?” And it wakes you up to, yeah, no, things are going to be good because they have to be, I know we’re capable and I know we’re creative, and we’ll figure out whatever is thrown at us.
Allison Tyler Jones: Well, and what we do is important. But going back to COVID, I remember, and I think I’ve probably told this story before, but it was like, let me think, maybe November of 2020, it might’ve been earlier than that, maybe fall of 2020. Actually, sorry, it wasn’t, I’m going to cut that part out. It was not long after they shut everything down, but they were going to slightly open stuff up. And in the West, out here, everybody thought it was fake, so everybody was out on the golf course and nobody was taking anything seriously. But I was worried, because I thought, okay, is this going to end my business? What am I going to do? And the comfort was that the whole world was in the same position, that rarely happens. Usually, that’s not the case.
Allison Tyler Jones: But I remember just thinking, sitting in front of my studio in my car and just thinking, Allison, you have spent, then it was 15 years, building relationships with people, this is not going to go away. It might be hampered, it might have to be done in a different way, but those relationships… If it was a one-and-done, if I had a telemarketing machine, and there are other ways to do business and I recognize that, but if it was just one-and-done and quick fix, I would be worried. But these are people that I know their kids. For you, it’s I’ve photographed their older siblings. You have these relationships with these coaches, with these schools. This is stuff that you have spent years building the foundation on, and when you have that foundation, you can count on the foundation and the reputation.
Nate Peterson: Yeah. And being honest and having good integrity and not… I just had a talk with a mom the other day who was apologizing that it wasn’t enough, she was sorry that it was a smaller order. They had some serious life circumstances going on, and I just said, “You know what? Life happens.” It was a year later that they’re ordering things, and then it was a minimal order from that, and I said, “Here’s the thing, I could have been really salesy and mean and whatever, and instead, the next year, you brought your senior to me again, knowing that you’re still not out of the woods, and we never would’ve been here where you are ordering some stuff from last year, and in the meantime, you brought a senior.” There’s just do unto others… I can’t imagine jabbing somebody for as much as I can get out of them and then kicking them out the door, because the potential of who they talked… She also talked to somebody else who they came in. So yeah, that spider network of your reputation is everything, and that’s what-
Allison Tyler Jones: Everything
Nate Peterson: … keeps us whole. Internal too, I would have such a guilt on me that I wouldn’t sleep.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah, being able to look at the ceiling fan at night and not have those kind of worries is a good one. Well, it’s been wonderful to spend this time. We’ll definitely do this again, because I have at least two more hours of questions and things I want to talk to you about. But thank you for sharing your thoughts, thank you for being vulnerable enough to share that everything is not always perfect. But we will link, in the show notes, to your website and to your Instagram. Definitely go check out Nate’s work, their work is beautiful and will give you some really good inspiration. Anything that you want to send our listeners off with as maybe a word of encouragement as we sail off into the sunset?
Nate Peterson: Yeah. Well, first, I’ll say thank you to you again. This has been a great honor to be here. Keep up the good work. I know this probably is kind of like being on the board for TCPPA, it costs you money, I imagine, to do this podcast.
Allison Tyler Jones: Absolutely.
Nate Peterson: But the injection of knowledge and everything is just priceless to those of us that get it and appreciate listening to it, and it’s my version of editing music, it’s just awesome to listen to all the time and keep your brain going, so thank you very much. I’m going to take the opportunity to pass on the very first thing that was told to me by my very first person that recognized the talent and told me, this is the industry and everything, and all he simply said, “Just honor the industry.” When you learn everything you’re learning, I think this industry… In the tech industry before this, the guy that taught me my job would literally kick the people out of their cubicles and cover up the monitor when he was fixing whatever we were fixing in IT-
Allison Tyler Jones: Oh, brother.
Nate Peterson: … because you wanted job security over everything, and it was such a shady way to do life. And when I found the photography industry, and my true, the best guy in the industry, Dave Junion, recognized me from Wisconsin at the convention he was hosting, and he said, “You should swing by my studio sometime.” And I just went, “Who, me?” And he just basically opened the doors and showed me everything, the way it works, and that’s what TCPPA does, that’s what… The community above competition, we rise all the ships with the tide, that whole everything. So honor the industry, don’t undercut each other, and be nice and sell with integrity, and that is what the key to success is.
Allison Tyler Jones: I love it. Thanks, Nate, you’re the best.
Nate Peterson: Oh, thank you very much. I look forward to the next time.
Recorded: You can find more great resources from Allison at dotherework.com, and on Instagram @do.the.rework.
Recorded: Welcome to The ReWork with Allison Tyler Jones, a podcast dedicated to inspiring portrait…
Recorded: Welcome to The ReWork with Allison Tyler-Jones, a podcast dedicated to inspiring portrait photographers…
Recorded: Welcome to The ReWork with Allison Tyler Jones, A podcast dedicated to inspiring portrait…