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 guests are our longtime favorites and dynamic duo, Greg and Lesa Daniel. They are here to chat about all things product development, and in particular, creating your own flagship product. That thing that you’re known for. That thing that your clients talk about. That thing, that product that everybody wants to get their hands on that is immediately recognizable in your market. Creating a flagship product for your business will literally change everything, and Greg and Lesa are going to tell you how to do exactly that. Let’s do it.
Allison Tyler Jones: I think that we should just start calling this the Daniel Lecture Series because I can always feel in the ether when you guys are percolating with something new. Whether it’s leaning a ladder on a wall, erasing a board, talking about too much experience being the photo at the end of the roller coaster ride. Which for those of you who are listeners, have listened to those episodes. You know what I’m talking about. So Greg and Lesa Daniel are here today. Thank you so much for being here.
Greg Daniel: Love being here.
Lesa Daniel: Thank you.
Greg Daniel: Yes.
Lesa Daniel: So fun. So, so, so fun.
Allison Tyler Jones: And you have a new, I’m not going to say axe to grind, I’m just going to say a new flag to fly, literally.
Greg Daniel: It’s been called soap box too. I mean I’ve been-
Allison Tyler Jones: Soap box, yes.
Greg Daniel: Yes.
Allison Tyler Jones: I have many of those myself. So I love it. So what is percolating in Daniel Land?
Greg Daniel: We were talking about what topic should we talk about this time? And I mean, it just came to me that one of the biggest things that changed everything for us was our flagship product, creating a flagship product. It made all the difference in the world. It has so many great features to it. We can get into that and unravel it.
Greg Daniel: But with that flagship product, it was one of those things where we were wedding photographers for so long. And then we decided because my mentor gave me permission to go find a different business model because our kids were going to school and it was just not working for us. That he said, “You need to go out and find a different business model.”
Greg Daniel: And with that, we found the embellished reproductions that just were introduced in the art world. And we walked into that gallery and I said, “Oh, my goodness.”
Allison Tyler Jones: That’s it.
Greg Daniel: This is it. That’s it. So it was interesting because looking back on it, didn’t realize it until not that long ago, but I didn’t realize what an incredible opportunity that was. What a great gift that was because I created a business that started from a product and it launched from this flagship product.
Greg Daniel: So we built everything around the product. And we had built the business since I was 19 around anybody that would come in the door at the beginning. So that was all. That whole wedding business that we had created, and we were doing more than weddings, we were doing everything. So that whole business model was built differently than this business model. It came from a flagship product. And so, go ahead.
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay. I think I want to call out what you’re saying is flagship product singular. You’re not saying flagship products.
Greg Daniel: Correct.
Lesa Daniel: Correct.
Allison Tyler Jones: I think that’s very important. So say more.
Lesa Daniel: You’re exactly right. I think you’re exactly right. For us, it’s an embellished piece that is not painted per se, because that is, for us, that is a misnomer for our clientele. They don’t know what painted means, so it’s embellished. Greg does the digital painting on it. He also then does the topical painting on it. But it’s more of an embellished as opposed to painting the whole piece.
Greg Daniel: And in the art community, where we brought it from, it would be called a mixed media. So we do call them mixed media.
Lesa Daniel: Mixed media.
Greg Daniel: And that’s our clients that are collectors of art and have been in art galleries-
Lesa Daniel: Understand what a mixed media is.
Greg Daniel: … understand what a mixed media is.
Lesa Daniel: And a little fun side note, we thought we would be fancy. Because we have made all the mistakes that you have a listener going, “Well, I’m making all these mistakes.” Well, we’ve made them all. And one of them was we wanted to be fancy and have a fancy name for it. So we called it a Rousseau after talking with someone who had just a little bit of French knowledge. And so we thought, oh, that sounds so fancy. We’re going to call it Rousseau.
Greg Daniel: Oh, man.
Lesa Daniel: And then-
Greg Daniel: Printed all the materials.
Lesa Daniel: … we had it all gone and we called it a Rousseau. And then one time a client said, “Why do you call this a Rousseau?” And I said, “Because it’s an embellished mixed media.” And she said, “Do you know what Rousseau means? It’s like ruse. It’s a fake.”
Greg Daniel: Fake.
Allison Tyler Jones: Oh, my gosh.
Lesa Daniel: And I said, “I will never call it that again in my entire life.” So it is a mixed media. There’s no reason to come up with a fancy word for it. People don’t know-
Allison Tyler Jones: That’s hilarious.
Lesa Daniel: … what you’re talking about. Call it what it is. It’s an embellished mixed media.
Greg Daniel: Yeah. The little card in an art gallery that you would see, it would say on canvas, mixed media and digital art. It would end photographic. It would have all of the different medias that it was created with.
Allison Tyler Jones: Right. So you’re mixing the mediums of digital photography, a canvas, and then digital painting, but then also applied oil.
Greg Daniel: Right.
Lesa Daniel: And acrylics.
Greg Daniel: And acrylics.
Allison Tyler Jones: And acrylics. Okay, interesting. Okay. Yeah, so that embellished portrait.
Greg Daniel: Mixed media.
Lesa Daniel: Mixed media.
Greg Daniel: That’s what we call it.
Allison Tyler Jones: Embellished mixed media. Okay. So an embellished mixed media. So you saw the image, the piece, the mixed media piece in the gallery. You decided that you wanted to bring that into your world. And so define a flagship product. In your mind, what does that mean? What does the definition of a flagship product for a business?
Greg Daniel: For us, we went to styles back then as well. So I’m going to just back up and say that we have styles, we have three styles. One is a flagship style, and then we have five products. One is a flagship product. So we have a flagship style and a flagship product.
Greg Daniel: So when you think about us, you would think about a style which would be environmental, maybe something at your home or something at a park or something on the beach, something environmental. It’s typically when our clients in our market think of us, they think of a environmental piece. And they think of us as a very large piece on a wow wall, and it’s a mixed media piece. So it’s an embellished piece with mixed media being part of it.
Greg Daniel: So that, when they think of that, they think of the product itself and they think of what’s in the product, which would be environmental. So from a distance from afar, if they were at a party, they walked in and they saw this piece up on this wall and it was an environmental and it looked painted, they would go, “That’s a Gregory Daniel.” Especially because of the seal on the bottom.
Greg Daniel: They’ve been taught that the seal on the bottom is a mixed media. It’s the flagship product. And it’s just beat into our community. It’s easy to market, it’s easy to talk about, it’s easy to show and create, and it’s so different than the field, than the whole industry as a whole.
Greg Daniel: When they walk in, it’s a very different piece. It’s something they can talk about. And it’s done incredibly well for us, and it wasn’t necessarily intentional. That’s what is crazy about this whole thing, is that I stumbled upon it. And it just because of the way I stumbled into it, and the way I discovered it and the way we created it, it was all just, it was right. And we look back and all of those building blocks created incredible business model for us.
Allison Tyler Jones: It makes me think of Tim Walden with the black and white relationship portraits.
Lesa Daniel: Correct.
Allison Tyler Jones: It’s something that is immediately recognizable as yours. Immediately recognizable.
Lesa Daniel: Yes, maybe Tim has that, but he also does the doctors that come in town for the hospital. But he doesn’t market that. He doesn’t advertise that. It’s just strictly what he markets as his flagship, which is the black and white relational pieces. Ours are the environmental, very large pieces on a wow wall with mixed media. And so it’s something that you want to do. That is what you strive to do. You would be happy if every single client got one thing and that’s what it was. Does that make sense?
Allison Tyler Jones: That’s a great litmus test. If they’re listeners that have lots of products or maybe a lot of different things that they’re doing, I do feel like it starts from that. It starts from that. Like, “I love this. If I could only shoot this the rest of my life, this is what it would be.” Now, are you shooting other things? Yes, but that’s the thing that is like, “Mmm.”
Lesa Daniel: Feed you. Yeah. It’s the feed you.
Greg Daniel: Yeah. When you start from that, it’s what I would call the dream exercise. Where you go away and you erase the board and you sit down and you dream and you go, “What would I love to do every single day?” And get inspired by going and looking at art galleries or wherever you want to go look.
Greg Daniel: What would just get me excited to do every single day? And create that dream and create that product and that thing. And for us, it was walking in and seeing this mixed media ballerina, a 45-inch in a gallery, spot lit just glowed at me. And so everything pivoted around that. I had it. I had that card on top of my desk on top of my computer for years because it was everything about everything I was going to create. When you find that flagship product-
Lesa Daniel: How do you find it?
Greg Daniel: … and style.
Lesa Daniel: How do you find it, Greg?
Greg Daniel: Well, you give yourself permission to look, right?
Lesa Daniel: To your listener, how are you going to find it?
Greg Daniel: Well, that’s different from everybody, but we always take them through the exercise of dreaming.
Lesa Daniel: In class. Yes, we do.
Greg Daniel: In our classes to dream.
Lesa Daniel: Okay, pretend you’re-
Allison Tyler Jones: So it might be… No, don’t erase that. That’s exactly, that’s the question that everybody driving or that’s on the treadmill is asking right now, how do I find it? And so I think it is, it’s like sometimes it’s walking in and seeing something that’s in another industry that you’re like, “Oh, I could do that.”
Allison Tyler Jones: Sometimes I feel like sometime for me, the beginning seed of that was the first 40 by 60 I ever had printed of my work. Just seeing your work in a large format, there’s nothing like it. Like you’re, “Oh.” And then I realized I am never selling digital files ever because I want my clients to feel this when they see their family on a large scale. It just elevates it to another level before you even embellish, frame, anything. It’s just so cool. Right?
Lesa Daniel: Basically what you’re talking about is the product of being a 40 by 60. That’s different.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yes.
Lesa Daniel: But the other part is what is your subject?
Allison Tyler Jones: Yes.
Lesa Daniel: Is your subject on a white background with black and white clothing and being fun and silly? Or is your subject on a dark master’s background in formal clothes? What is the look?
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay. Right.
Lesa Daniel: The whole look of that.
Allison Tyler Jones: There’s layers. Okay, so let’s dig into that. Okay. The layers of the flagship. I’m putting a pin in that for one second because I want to talk about the layers of the flagship. Hold on. Layers of flagship. Okay, because I want to go back a little bit. I want to say, because where does this term flagship come from? And in other industries, can we give our listeners a comparison of what is the flagship in other industries?
Greg Daniel: Well, in say the car industry, what would the flagship be in a-
Lesa Daniel: Ford dealership?
Greg Daniel: Yeah, a truck.
Lesa Daniel: Greg’s going to say a truck because he has a Ford truck.
Allison Tyler Jones: He’s going to.
Lesa Daniel: Flagship is the Ford F150? It’s just a Ford truck.
Greg Daniel: The 250’s better but the 150 is.
Allison Tyler Jones: No, Ivan Jones who just bought the F250 would say, “Absolutely not. It’s the F250.”
Lesa Daniel: F250. He just has one that’s not a year old too.
Allison Tyler Jones: Or there’s the Rolls Royce, but it’s Bentley.
Greg Daniel: Right.
Lesa Daniel: Right.
Allison Tyler Jones: It’s a Hyundai, but it’s Genesis.
Lesa Daniel: Right.
Allison Tyler Jones: What else? What else? Other examples?
Lesa Daniel: Well, think about a pair of jeans. There’s Levi’s. You think of that one pair, the original Levi’s. There’s a million different styles of Levi’s, but there’s the-
Allison Tyler Jones: 501.
Lesa Daniel: … original 501, that’s the number.
Allison Tyler Jones: Button fly 501s.
Lesa Daniel: The one that they’re known for.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yep.
Lesa Daniel: So it’s what you’re known for.
Allison Tyler Jones: What you’re known for.
Lesa Daniel: Tiffany’s. The Tiffany setting for a single diamond, which we could get more of those. That would be-
Allison Tyler Jones: The Harry Winston. Yeah, for sure. Yes. Okay. So it’s basically the thing that when you think of that brand, it’s the first thing that comes to your mind. Is that fair?
Lesa Daniel: That’s it.
Greg Daniel: Right.
Lesa Daniel: That’s it.
Allison Tyler Jones: And that you’re immediately, immediately, I see a black and white relationship portrait, and I don’t actually care who shot it. I think first and foremost of Tim Walden.
Lesa Daniel: Absolutely.
Greg Daniel: Correct, yeah.
Allison Tyler Jones: Because he was such an influencer in that space. So now we’re normal photographer, portrait photographer. We’re doing lots of things. We’re doing branding, we’re doing head shots, we’re doing family portraits, we’re doing seniors, we’re doing weddings. Were you guys back in the day?
Greg Daniel: Yes.
Allison Tyler Jones: So I think we answered our question a little bit earlier in that what’s the one thing that you just love? If you could only do that, so that’s subject. So there’s a layer of it. One layer is what is it? For me, it would be the family. For you, it’s family or a child.
Greg Daniel: It’s environmental.
Lesa Daniel: It’s people. It’s not… Well, it could be a dog too, but I mean it’s-
Greg Daniel: Feeling.
Allison Tyler Jones: Persons in an environment.
Lesa Daniel: Yes. Yes, yes, there you go.
Greg Daniel: And that’s when you speak of that, the subject, I think style, because prior, we had categories. We thought of our work as categories broken up into men, women, children, seniors.
Lesa Daniel: Seniors.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yes.
Lesa Daniel: Face.
Greg Daniel: So we broke it up in those categories. And for me, the difference was between styles. I’m going to do a style in the studio would be black and white or monochromatic and color. So those would be two styles. And I also would offer this flagship style, which would be environmental. So for me, environmental, I could go much larger. I can take an environmental.
Lesa Daniel: To answer your question, it could be a child.
Greg Daniel: It could be anything.
Lesa Daniel: Or it could be a family.
Greg Daniel: Any of that.
Allison Tyler Jones: A subject in an environment.
Lesa Daniel: In an environment.
Greg Daniel: In an environment, right.
Lesa Daniel: And he just loved the challenge of that every single time.
Greg Daniel: Right.
Lesa Daniel: A lot of people would be like, “Oh, please don’t make me figure this out every time I go somewhere.” Which that would be me if I was the photographer, but fortunately he did not.
Allison Tyler Jones: He loves it.
Lesa Daniel: He loves that challenge of trying to create something emotional in an environment. So that was his like, “Oh, I love this.”
Greg Daniel: And I knew that I was designing this flagship product to go in big, large spaces, interesting spaces. The pictorial thing when you walk into the door. And because of that product, I wanted a style that I could easily fit into that product and it would look appropriate.
Greg Daniel: So when you walked in, you wouldn’t see this gigantic head or a gigantic face or something that just would the awkward feeling just because that style wouldn’t lend itself to that space. So when it’s an environmental, I can create whatever I need to do when we’re designing something for that space. So the whole initiative initially was creating this. Having a flagship product that I could personally design a piece for them to go in these beautiful homes that we have all over the place.
Allison Tyler Jones: I love that. And the thing that I think is really interesting about what you’re saying is that I think with environmental work, it’s been increasingly difficult to stand out in that because so many photographers shoot on location or shoot available light or whatever, are shooting in an environment.
Allison Tyler Jones: But what you’re saying is that you’re taking a very intentional approach, and I would apply the word cinematic to your work. In that when you are looking at a movie or thinking Breaking Bad, those big, the car going across the horizon line. It’s like this very, very large canvas of an environment. And then the subject, which is in this instance, like a movie, maybe it’s a car, it’s coming across that’s drawing your attention. So you’re having this very large canvas, this very large background, and then the family or the subject or the dog is within that environment. Fair?
Lesa Daniel: Fair.
Greg Daniel: Totally. And the environment is crafted and designed to go with the interior of the home. So that’s intentional as well. So the environment is not a happening of what we’re going to do. We’re going to-
Allison Tyler Jones: It’s not an afterthought. It’s very… Rather than a lot of times with a lot of environmental work, you might have everybody posed in a triangle and then it’s just a bunch of green grass behind.
Greg Daniel: Right.
Allison Tyler Jones: Nobody’s going to, you’re not going to hang that in your dining room.
Greg Daniel: Right.
Lesa Daniel: Right.
Greg Daniel: That’s right.
Allison Tyler Jones: Or you might.
Lesa Daniel: Yeah. I could describe it as it’s a beautiful environmental setting that you would hang in your house and then you go, “Oh, those people. We know those people.” Because they’re in there. So it’s the whole thing. Yeah.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yes. And so mine, my flagship is very similar, the similar approach with what you just, exactly what you said. Because when we do the consultation, I’ll say, “What I want is that I want this artwork to be part of your home, part of the decor.” Somebody walks in and they’re like, “Oh, this is so cool. Wait, what? That’s your family. Oh, my gosh.”
Greg Daniel: Right, right.
Allison Tyler Jones: But it was cool. It was a cool piece of art first. And then the secondary reaction is that they realize, “Oh wait, this is an elevated version of your family.”
Greg Daniel: The way we designed this flagship product, flagship style, that’s for commissioned clients. Those folks that come in and they want to commission us to create these beautiful pieces for their beautiful homes. So if they’re not coming in for that and that’s not what they want, then they get channeled over to-
Lesa Daniel: A different.
Greg Daniel: Those other-
Lesa Daniel: … sets in the studios.
Greg Daniel: It’s in the studio.
Lesa Daniel: We can do those quick and easy. And it doesn’t require nearly the time or the thought and effort to create something in the studio.
Greg Daniel: And we don’t have to travel an hour to go.
Lesa Daniel: Now, if we were in the opposite place, like for you to be in the studio is what you are known for. And to not be in the studio, I mean in your case, you don’t do it. But for a lot of people not be in the studio, you’re not getting the ATJ, you’re not getting what she’s known for.
Greg Daniel: Or she could just do a green background.
Lesa Daniel: Yeah. That would work too or not.
Allison Tyler Jones: Right? No, it’s true. But it’s interesting because I think your flagship and my flagship are a really good illustration. That part of it, it has nothing to do with time really.
Lesa Daniel: Right.
Allison Tyler Jones: Because for me, my flagship is in studio, but there is still wardrobe time, conceptualization, shooting time. I mean, again, we’re not shooting that long. So sometimes I think we do get hung up on that, especially people that come at a wedding think, oh, I can’t charge for families because I didn’t spend as much time as I spent on a wedding.
Lesa Daniel: Oh, no, no.
Greg Daniel: No, no, no.
Lesa Daniel: No, no. No, no.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah. I just want to make sure we’re not linking those two things. Okay. So clients call and generally what are they falling into? You’re probably getting a lot of people that are saying, “Okay, I want the flagship thing.” They’re not using that terminology. Are you still getting some that think they want that, but then how are they getting over into other areas that are not flagship? How does that work?
Lesa Daniel: Well, let’s say they come in on either an option or a gifting of some sort. A gift certificate of some sort. Or they’re coming in because their friend told them to what have you, but they don’t know that much about us yet. So I say, “Okay, so let me just tell you a little bit about Gregory Daniel Portraits.” We have three styles. One is our environmental, and that’s where we will go on location to anywhere you would like, actually. Now there will be additional fees if you want to go out of the country, which would be fine too. But if you stay within an hour, the fees are the same.
Lesa Daniel: But we can go to a park, the beach, your backyard, whatever is personal to you, and we’ll get there. We’ll figure that out. But it will be at an environmental location outside somewhere. That is one particular price structure for the session. If we don’t want to do that there are two other price structures that your gift certificate covers, and that is these two in the studio. And the one on environmental has a minimum purchase. If you prefer to stay in the studio, there’s no minimum purchase and there’s no additional fees that are due for the session fee.
Lesa Daniel: Is there one of these that looks better to you than another? And I could tell before that even happens because I can see where their eyes are sitting and I know where they’re going. And you can tell by their body language if they flinch when they hear additional monies or not.
Lesa Daniel: So they’ll say, “Well, tell me more about this environmental.” And then we’ll look at some different examples and they’ll show me pictures of their home. And that’s how we zoom in on there. And most people end up going that direction because most people, now, I’m not going to say all, but most people come because they have a friend and somebody’s mentioned it to them.
Lesa Daniel: And they’re at this function and they get the gift certificate. Or they come in because so-and-so told them, but they really don’t know where to begin or much about us. So they just need that understanding. So that’s how we divide it up.
Greg Daniel: We’re sifting, basically. We have three doors that people come into. One is a gifting door, one is an invite door, and one is an institutional door. Where they saw someplace from our branding. And then they’re going to call or they’re going to contact us some way. Those are the three doors that they come through. And we know if they come through a gifting door, the gift, they’ll only have a gift that is for the non-flagship. They don’t get gifts for the flagship. So we know immediately when they come in.
Allison Tyler Jones: Very important.
Lesa Daniel: Directly.
Greg Daniel: When they walk in the door, they might have a gift certificate. And all she’s got, she’s sifting because she’s finding out they’re holding it in their hand. Are you a commission person coming through the door? Because you just did a dad gum it, I need to do this. I’m going to buy this gift certificate. If that’s you, we can tell. She can tell like that. And if it’s a commission, you can put the gift certificate down now, it doesn’t mean anything. We’re commission.
Lesa Daniel: We’re going to create something gorgeous-
Greg Daniel: And we’re going to create something gorgeous for you.
Lesa Daniel: … and beautiful that’s just yours.
Greg Daniel: If it’s something where they have never heard of us and they bought it because it was a gift, they might turn into a commission. I mean, you start taking them down the path’s, what she just talked about, this is what she was doing. And they might turn into a commission like that. They look around, they go, “I had no idea this existed. Yes, I want one.” Or they go, “No, I’m just here for a gift.” Well, okay, then.
Lesa Daniel: You can come on Tuesday at 2:00 o’clock.
Greg Daniel: Yeah. And we’ll give you a beautiful product. We’re going to give you what we would call a taste of a Gregory Daniel Portrait. And they’re going to have a wonderful event. And some of those folks turn into commission people.
Lesa Daniel: Later.
Greg Daniel: Later.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yes.
Greg Daniel: Or during the process, they become a commission person. It’s kind of interesting how they do that. But the most powerful door that people come through are the invite door where Lesa calls them and goes, “It’s time.” And maybe they were a collector or maybe they were somebody from the part where somebody’s getting ready to go off to college or whatever, and she triggers them. And that’s the door that’s magical because that’s the door we work with. The other doors, we don’t hardly do much. We’ve just been around long enough to where they don’t come in those doors much. Hardly.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah, agreed.
Greg Daniel: Because most all of them are coming in from-
Greg Daniel: We’re very old. Yes. We’re-
Allison Tyler Jones: Same.
Lesa Daniel: Seasoned. We’re seasoned.
Allison Tyler Jones: Seasoned, seasoned. Same.
Greg Daniel: Well seasoned.
Allison Tyler Jones: Mature. Mature and wise. I’m just going to say wise.
Lesa Daniel: We’ll go wise.
Greg Daniel: Wise.
Lesa Daniel: Wise is the word we’ll use. Wise.
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay. I do want to ask you though, I want to jump out for a second. And just ask you about how do you feel like the auction situation is going lately?
Lesa Daniel: Not as well as it was long ago.
Greg Daniel: No, it’s different. It’s getting different.
Lesa Daniel: I think people are tired of functions like that. Very. And I also see in our area, the same people go to every auction and it just isn’t the same as it used to be. It’s much slower. It’s just not. But I will also be fair in saying I used to attend a lot of them. I would go, I would schmooze. I would explain what our gift certificate was if I saw somebody looking at it. I worked them. I’m not doing that anymore. So I don’t know if it’s a fair assessment for me to say.
Greg Daniel: That’s why I’m laughing. I’m thinking she’s talking about herself.
Lesa Daniel: I’m not doing what I used to do.
Allison Tyler Jones: Right. But I do feel like it is different. I feel like so many of them have gone online. A lot of them don’t want you to have stuff sitting there that you can look to feel touch. So anyway, I just wanted to ask about that. I know I get a lot of questions about that. Are auctions still a viable? I still think they’re viable. Even if nobody ever bought it, they can just still see that it’s a presence.
Greg Daniel: I think they’re viable, but I just come at it.
Lesa Daniel: I wouldn’t rely on it totally.
Allison Tyler Jones: No.
Greg Daniel: No. And I come at it from a little different perspective on, I think of auctions in the philanthropic world. And I think in terms of, for me personally, I’m just talking about me personally. I love it when I get involved, and I still do some of this, where if I believe in a philanthropic organization in my heart, I believe, I will go volunteer. I will be part of, I will give back. And when you give back and you are with these people and you’re doing it for the right reasons, it does come back to you. But if you’re just doing it for the comeback, it’s going to get exhausting.
Allison Tyler Jones: Well, it’s transactional and it’s always going to stay on that level.
Greg Daniel: Exactly. For us, I feel so much better within my own soul when I’m loving on somebody else. And then you get love in return. And that is such a different world when I’m in that world doing that. And we still do that today. And I will work with, if they’re volunteer philanthropic organizations and boards and that sort of thing, because they give back and I can give back as well.
Lesa Daniel: Yeah. So what he’s talking about is we’ll offer different things for those folks so that we can work with them a little bit more. But yeah.
Greg Daniel: But whatever it is that you can give or that you feel like giving. But if you’re just going in there for a silent auction to here’s my gift certificate, and it’s going to be like what you said, very transactional. And those kinds of things then all of a sudden get disrupted when say the new technology is out, and we can do this by Zoom. We can do this by, you just go online and you go pick and that.
Greg Daniel: Now the transactional thing gets disrupted because you were doing it this way and you were getting it this way. It’s very transactional. But you know what’s not changing because of all the digital world? Is relationships.
Allison Tyler Jones: Relationships.
Greg Daniel: It’s when you go in and you have a relationship with the organization and the philanthropic, and they know who you are. You know who they are. And you do life together because you love each other. That’s a different world to work in from a philanthropic. So that door that comes through, yeah, I don’t get as many that file through that door. But ones that file through that door is because there was a relationship there and we’re doing something.
Allison Tyler Jones: I think that’s so good.
Greg Daniel: It’s a whole different approach.
Lesa Daniel: You beat that horse.
Greg Daniel: I’m sorry.
Allison Tyler Jones: No, no, you didn’t beat it. I don’t think you can beat that enough. Basically, the reason why I ask that is because you teach, you do mentoring. We all want the easy button. We all want the what is the email that I can send out that will have 100% qualified leads beating my door down? And it doesn’t exist.
Lesa Daniel: Not even a little.
Allison Tyler Jones: Never has and never will. And so it’s just how hard are you willing to work and what relationships are you going to build? And part of that relationship is following up with people and calling them and all of those things. So I just wanted to, I’m beating my own dead horse with you beating your dead horse.
Lesa Daniel: Well, I wrote myself a note here real quick because while you guys were doing all that.
Greg Daniel: Yes. Okay.
Lesa Daniel: Part of, I think the problem for a flagship piece, like what we have, where it’s an embellished mixed media at an auction, is you can’t see, feel, and touch it. And an embellished piece that we have elevates our portrait to another level. It is people will walk in and go, “Is that a picture? Is that a painting?”
Allison Tyler Jones: Painting? Yeah.
Lesa Daniel: “What is it?” So then I can explain to them what it is. And I don’t have that opportunity if they can’t see, feel, and touch it, and all that kind of stuff. But I think for our world, it really elevates it. And that’s something Greg is teaching now too, is how to do the embellishment.
Lesa Daniel: Because I think he struggled for a long time trying to figure it out. And went to all kinds of artist friends, took classes, did all the things. And oh, my gosh, it makes a huge difference. And I have my potential clients touch a couple of different ones of our pieces that are on the wall because I want them to feel it.
Lesa Daniel: And I explained that you cannot touch your friend’s or your neighbor’s when you walk into their house. That’s not okay. But you can touch this one here because it is meant for that. And I think that’s something that a lot of photographers might need to learn how to do is create those pieces because it does take them and make them different.
Allison Tyler Jones: So I have questions. Now this is what I can imagine. I try to imagine all of the possible ways this could go sideways when you’re deciding to do your flagship product. Like, Okay, I’ve decided I want to do something like you.
Allison Tyler Jones: And I’m going to do an environmental portrait, and I’m going to embellish it, and I’m going to sell it in this way. What I can imagine that you get, and maybe I’m wrong, is well, can you just do the portrait but not do the embellishments and have it be cheaper?
Lesa Daniel: Sure.
Greg Daniel: Yes.
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay. Tell me more.
Lesa Daniel: Yes, you can. Let me take you on a little field trip. We’re going to go around the studio. I’ll show you the differences and you can tell me what you like. There are some people that do not want any of the embellishment on there. It’s few and far between. But those that do, there are also a couple of different levels to where Greg takes it. Maybe he takes it to a real chunky.
Allison Tyler Jones: Impressionistic?
Lesa Daniel: Yeah, which I personally love if there is no face involved. If the face is looking sideways or some other way. If the face is involved, I don’t like it quite as chunky because you can’t chunk up a face really well and have to love it. So that’s a fine line to go. But yes. So we’ll walk around and we’ll look at the different ones. However, those that are embellished have the seal. And so you can always tell when you go into your friend’s homes that it is an embellished piece because of the seal right here.
Allison Tyler Jones: So again, that’s another layer of flagship. Okay. So there’s subject, environment or not. A style, technique. It could be lighting. For Tim, it’s the black turtlenecks, it’s the emotionally lit, it’s black and white. And then packaging, or what’s the layer like? Framing? I would say packaging would be the seal, but the cherry on top, the thing that’s not available in any other way.
Greg Daniel: It’s handmade frames.
Lesa Daniel: Yeah. We have beautiful, closed cornered, handmade frames. They can be modern, can be Renaissance. They can be filled with roses. They could be gold. They could be black, they could be-
Greg Daniel: They just can’t be curved.
Lesa Daniel: No.
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay.
Greg Daniel: We had one that-
Lesa Daniel: One who had a big curved wall on top of his staircase, and he wanted it curved.
Allison Tyler Jones: Dude, I know.
Lesa Daniel: It’s like, “Yeah, that would be so cool, but no.”
Allison Tyler Jones: No.
Greg Daniel: Couldn’t do it.
Allison Tyler Jones: You’re like, “It’s called a radius and it’s very different in every single house.” And no.
Lesa Daniel: No.
Allison Tyler Jones: The answer is curves are problems. We’ll just-
Lesa Daniel: Yeah, you can backlight it.
Greg Daniel: Yeah.
Allison Tyler Jones: Just ask God.
Greg Daniel: Float it. Yeah, float it off the wall and backlight it.
Lesa Daniel: Yeah. But yeah. So yeah, it has all those parts to it. You would walk in and see it and you go, “Oh, that’s a Gregory Daniel.”
Greg Daniel: But like you asked, we do have five products, and they’re for five purposes of-
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay, tell me what they are.
Greg Daniel: I don’t know if we want to peel it back very much.
Allison Tyler Jones: Why not?
Greg Daniel: But a reason I’m mentioning that is people go, “Is that all you do?” No, but that’s really all we’re known for.
Lesa Daniel: That’s what we market.
Greg Daniel: It’s what we market. You come into our gallery or our studio, whichever one, and you walk in, and it’s surrounded with flagship product. And if you want the next product, we will take you down the hall and we’ll show you the other products.
Greg Daniel: But there’s five products because there are other products like we call our flagship the milk. So you go to the back of the grocery store to get the milk. And then you’re merchandised on the way there and you’re merchandised on the way back. But you went for the milk. So the milk is basically the flagship in this case, right? We’re thinking about that as the flagship.
Greg Daniel: And then you end up with other things in your shopping cart other than the milk, but your intention was to go get milk. So that’s the way our design is kind of set up where we market for flagship. But along the way, along this journey of the commission of the flagship, they might want other things in their basket for other purposes.
Greg Daniel: So we have the wow wall, which is the big wall, the predominant wall. That’s the flagship, that’s the mixed media. Then we have a creative art line, which is how I take an image all the way up to painting it digitally. Up to painting it digitally, not painting it all. So there’s no paint digitally, but it’s heavy art all the way up to that point. And then it’s printed on canvas, and then it’s varnished on the top. So that piece is-
Lesa Daniel: Secondary.
Greg Daniel: … is secondary wall. So it’s more like over a credenza or in an entryway. Over on the side, maybe a table, maybe over a couple of chairs, things like that. So that’s a bit smaller, but it’s a secondary wall. So then our third product is for what we call a transitional wall. So it’s the small wall between maybe a door and a window or going down a hallway, something like that. And that is a floating art piece product. So it’s on art paper, and it floats in a frame with maybe a little bit of a mat that floats with it. So it’s just a floating art kind of piece, and that’s designed for that purpose.
Greg Daniel: And then the fourth are gift portraits, which are five by sevens, eight by tens, things that you give as gifts and put on credenzas. And then the fifth one is a legacy album. So that’s the remaining images that they didn’t pick from if we thought that they were going to go down that route.
Greg Daniel: I do not photograph for every one of those products, but Lesa will let me know ahead of time that we are designing this piece that came in for this piece that’s going to be this size. We’re going to this color harmony, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so I know how to design and create that. She says, “But we’re going to be doing some other pieces for them.” Because she knows.
Allison Tyler Jones: Just based on the conversation that you had with them?
Lesa Daniel: Right. Yeah. I could just tell that she hadn’t thought that far. I say she, she is usually my clientele. That she hasn’t thought that far out, and she just loves her kids and loves the other parts of them that aren’t just going to be hanging above the fireplace. So I can tell.
Lesa Daniel: Or this is just all they can do is to have this one beautiful piece that they have saved for, they’ve always wanted it. The children are at the right age. We’ve got to do it and it’s a stretch. Then we’re not going to embarrass her by having more that she can’t get. We’re not going to stress out everybody out, including Greg photographing them. So we’ll do three or four different looks of the whole family.
Greg Daniel: They might only see one image. They only might see one piece done. That’s it. So it’s to that extreme one or the other. And I’ll know going into it where Lesa wants me to take it. Because I need to know to photograph or capture the pieces that will go in there, because each one of those takes different kind of imagery.
Lesa Daniel: He’s talking about our products.
Greg Daniel: Yeah, the five.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yes.
Greg Daniel: So I will create imagery that fit in those products. And if they come in at the end and see these pieces that we’re finished with, let’s say I created all five products imagery. They would see in a show, basically. Basically they’re seeing images that would go in all of those products in order basically backwards. At the end is their commissioned piece. Sell it, back up, sell the next one, back up. Sell the next one, back up. None of this, this or that, this or that, this or that.
Allison Tyler Jones: No.
Greg Daniel: It’s an image. There’s only one image of that scene or that I created, and it’s for these purposes. Anyway, we could go forever.
Allison Tyler Jones: I totally, no, and we’re going to. It’s happening right now. And I cannot agree with you more on that single image of the family. The more I do that, the better it is.
Lesa Daniel: Totally fine.
Allison Tyler Jones: And people fight me on that, not my clients. Other photographers. They’re like, “No, no, no, no, no. They have to choose. They have to be able to choose. They have to be able to choose.”
Greg Daniel: Oh, no, no.
Allison Tyler Jones: And it’s like, “No, they don’t. They don’t need to.”
Greg Daniel: No, it’s finished.
Allison Tyler Jones: It’s your job.
Greg Daniel: I’m 90% finished with it when they see it. It’s pretty much done.
Lesa Daniel: Now, I will tell you, we use ProSelect. My way of doing it. We put all of our quote nos in level two in number two or the medium face. I put them in there. And then if they say, “Well, I just don’t like Ashley’s face, let’s go face shopping.” So we’ll pull up a number of those from the session with just Ashley’s face. We’ll pick up Ashley. Done. Oh, but look at that one right there. That looks great of Ashley, but not of so-and-so. We’re not looking at so-and-so, we’re only looking at Ashley.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yes. Okay. So, okay. So I just want to highlight that in case somebody listened to that and didn’t get that. What Lesa is saying is that I’m going to mansplain Lesa, is that they’re showing one image of the family. And what everybody freaks about on that is that well, they’re going to look at it and say, “Oh, my daughter,” which your daughter happens to be Ashley, “I don’t like her face.”
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay, great. Let’s go look. Now you’re not going into all the images that you shot. You’re going into a few other options, and then you’re keeping control. So when the mom is like, “Oh, well, let’s look at all of those others.” No, no. We’re just looking at Ashley’s face because we like everything else. And you have to take control of it. You have to keep control of it.
Lesa Daniel: Yes, absolutely.
Allison Tyler Jones: They want you to keep control of it.
Lesa Daniel: Yes, yes, absolutely.
Allison Tyler Jones: You’re not doing your job if you’re not keeping control of it.
Lesa Daniel: Yes.
Greg Daniel: Absolutely.
Lesa Daniel: I have 100% control. And I’ll go, “Nope. We can come back to that later if we need to, but we’re not doing that now.” So I won’t make them feel-
Allison Tyler Jones: And you are the nicest, sweetest, tiny little person. So I just want to, for those of you who are fraidy cats out there that think that you cannot take control and that you need to let the client run this, it’s like you are doing yourself and your client the hugest disservice by letting them control it, because they don’t know what we know. We are the experts. And so if beautiful ballerina, Lesa Daniel, can take control. I mean, people know I can take control because I’m like bossy cow. But if you can, it’s even more. Just if Lesa Daniel can do it, you can do it.
Lesa Daniel: Yeah, I do full control. Yeah. But there’s a way to say it. So you say, “Well, we’ll come back to it if we decide we don’t like Ryan anymore. So we’re just looking at Ashley.” And then I pop out of it. Or I have also done where I find one that looks bad of everybody, but Ashley. Pull it up. They go, “Oh, yeah, you’re right.” And then that’s it. I do that too.
Greg Daniel: She’s really good at that.
Lesa Daniel: Yeah.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yes. And so this is part of it. I think when you’re doing the in-person sales, there’s so many layers to it that I think a lot of times in the industry we’re like, “Okay, well you should be doing in-person sales.” Great. But how? There’s so many layers to that, right?
Greg Daniel: Yes. That’s a whole nother-
Allison Tyler Jones: How many images are you showing? I know we could do a series, right? This is next on the soapbox is how many images are you showing and keeping control of that.
Greg Daniel: That’s a whole-
Lesa Daniel: That’s a whole different podcast.
Greg Daniel: It is.
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay, we’re doing it. We’ll do it. Okay. So I love that. All right. So that you will let them have, I don’t want to use the word dumb it down, but you will let them pull back from a fully-embellished situation and you have a price for that.
Lesa Daniel: Yes.
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay. I love that. That’s great. So you’ve anticipated that need.
Lesa Daniel: Yes.
Greg Daniel: And we have different kind of embellishments around so we have-
Lesa Daniel: We call it real tight, where it looks a little more photographic. And maybe there’s some that look very, very, very painterly. So they can say, “Well, I really like this look.” Great. Val will give Greg the note and he will make it more like this. So yeah.
Greg Daniel: It’s all about merchandise. I think there’s very little merchandising in our industry. Where people, where you’re set up.
Lesa Daniel: That’s another class.
Greg Daniel: Yeah, that’s another class. Where you’re set-
Allison Tyler Jones: I’m making notes.
Greg Daniel: … where you’re set up to be able to turn as you’re doing a consultation, turn and go, or a sale where you’re doing an order appointment. Where you can go, “Do like this or do you like this? This is tight, this is loose. Which one do you prefer?” Things like that. This is the mixed media. This is the creative art. It’s all. And hold on, let me, if you want to see the creative art, let’s walk down the hallway and turn and go. And it’s in front of-
Lesa Daniel: By the bathroom.
Greg Daniel: Over by the bathroom. Yeah. So yeah, it’s all merchandising. It’s all the way, it’s how big business teaches us already on how to purchase.
Lesa Daniel: They put the cereal that’s expensive at eye level for children, and they put the cheap stuff either way up high or… It’s the same deal. It’s the exact same deal.
Greg Daniel: We’re not creating the recreating the wheel. It’s already there. We’ve been trained by all big business to do this. So why don’t we just take cues from them instead of trying to churn it within our own industry and don’t really know what we’re doing in terms of merchandising.
Allison Tyler Jones: Right. Well, the thing that I think that’s so compelling about what you’re saying with this flagship is that really you’ve narrowed it so, so narrow.
Greg Daniel: Yes.
Allison Tyler Jones: That even as narrow as that flagship is, there’s so many options within it, right?
Greg Daniel: Yeah.
Lesa Daniel: Right.
Allison Tyler Jones: So it’s like, and most photographers we’re out there, we’re selling 55 options in 55 different products. So people that are feeling like, “Well, I couldn’t niche it down that much because then people wouldn’t have a choice.” It’s like, No, no, no, you actually have a lot of choice within this one thing.” But that feels very doable. it feels like they have choice, but yet it’s very peaceful.
Lesa Daniel: Yes.
Greg Daniel: Yes.
Allison Tyler Jones: It’s easy to select. Environmental portrait, chunky, painterly, photograph.
Greg Daniel: Yes.
Lesa Daniel: Yes. Which one?
Allison Tyler Jones: Pick one.
Greg Daniel: There it is.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah.
Lesa Daniel: Yeah, pick one.
Greg Daniel: And they don’t have to pick until-
Lesa Daniel: They see their images. I mean, they don’t have to make all these decisions up front. We just want them to know those options exist.
Greg Daniel: This is what we’re designing for. We will get the finish.
Lesa Daniel: Don’t worry about those decisions now. Just let’s start at the beginning and figure out where we’re going to go.
Greg Daniel: If they do come in, if they walk through the door and go, “So this one with the seal, that’s what Sally has, right?” “Yeah.” “Okay. Well, okay.”
Allison Tyler Jones: Yep.
Greg Daniel: We’re there.
Allison Tyler Jones: You don’t want to not have the seal.
Lesa Daniel: No.
Greg Daniel: That’s right.
Lesa Daniel: No, got to have that seal.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah, because Sally’s going to judge you if you don’t have that seal.
Greg Daniel: Exactly.
Lesa Daniel: Yeah, yeah.
Allison Tyler Jones: I love that.
Lesa Daniel: And I also have them touch the seal.
Greg Daniel: Yeah.
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay. I love that.
Lesa Daniel: Yeah. I think we need to use our senses when we’re… And here’s a whole nother, I’m now opening up another box here. But when we’re selling, which is at the beginning of the marketing, you still have to use as many senses as you can. So smell, taste, touch, all those things. So if we can touch the things, I think that’s helpful.
Greg Daniel: We’ll have to get into the 12 incredible elements of a fantastic story someday too. But we’ve opened enough boxes.
Allison Tyler Jones: We’re just going to do a Greg and Lesa Daniel lecture series.
Lesa Daniel: We’ll get a full class if you can solve problems.
Allison Tyler Jones: But I do feel like that this is really helpful for the creative mind in that one of the biggest objections that I hear from students about not wanting to niche down is they feel like they might get bored, or that the clients aren’t going to want that. And I feel like that it’s actually limiting. We all have learned as creatives, that if you limit your variables, you actually are more creative.
Lesa Daniel: Absolutely, yes.
Allison Tyler Jones: And so if we can do that with our product line, then we can get really creative within that flagship. So you’re talking about an environmental portrait shot in a certain way, that seems very, very narrow. But then you’re describing different ways to present that, different ways to have it painted or not painted different ways to frame it. I mean, there’s a lot of ways that you can go, but you’re still within that flagship product that’s instantly recognizable as your own.
Lesa Daniel: You get an A plus.
Greg Daniel: Yeah, you did good.
Allison Tyler Jones: Well, because I’ve sold it both ways, and you guys have too. You’ve done it where you’re like, “Okay, well, we could print this on canvas, we could print it on acrylic, we could print it on metal. We can.” And people are just going, “Wait, hold on. I am on the floor now. And you made me spend an hour going, yes, no, maybe on each one of those faces. And now you’re going to make me figure out what to print it on?”
Greg Daniel: No, no, no.
Lesa Daniel: “We’re going to go home and think about it,” is what your client would say. And now you’ve just lost the sale.
Allison Tyler Jones: Right. Because then every time they think about it, they still think about all those decisions that they have to make because nobody guided them through it.
Lesa Daniel: Right.
Greg Daniel: Right. And a lot of those techniques, actually, we learned when we started having interior designers help us with our home, because great interior designers-
Lesa Daniel: She gave me two choices of a chair.
Greg Daniel: This or this.
Lesa Daniel: Two choices of a fabric, two choices of a rug. And if you don’t like one, either one, then they’ll go, “Okay, well, let’s find two more.” But she can look through all the books.
Greg Daniel: If I say it, she would say to me, “So let me know when you want to do it correctly.”
Lesa Daniel: So Greg’s trying to find a less expensive way. And she’s like, “Well, we’re either going to do it right, or we’re not going to do it at all.”
Greg Daniel: Yeah, we just-
Lesa Daniel: “So you just let me know.”
Greg Daniel: Just let me know.
Allison Tyler Jones: Sorry, my sister, the interior designer, calls that value engineering. So you could use that with your interior designer next time. I do not want it cheaper. I just want to, can we value engineer this? Instead of make it cheaper. So value engineer means it also means dumb it down.
Lesa Daniel: Yeah, right.
Allison Tyler Jones: But I think it’s interesting though, and I’m sure you’ve seen this with clients when they come in and they’re looking at that flagship product, is that because obviously you have a price for if it has the seal and if it doesn’t. And so some people might be weighing between those two things. But it’s how you talk about it is not like, “Well, the reason it’s more is because it takes more time to paint, blah, blah, blah.” It’s like-
Lesa Daniel: No, no, no.
Greg Daniel: No.
Lesa Daniel: You just-
Allison Tyler Jones: So how are you talking about that?
Lesa Daniel: I don’t give them explanations. I don’t go up to it and touch it and feel it and talk about how that has all this embellishment and then say, “And it’s so much money.” I just show them the product so they start to want it. And then we walk around so that they see all the others. And I show every one of our products. I say, “So now you know what we have. So let me also explain to you that we do everything here by the linear inch.” So it’s not square inch, it’s linear. So it could be a 60 by 60, it can be a 60 by one, it doesn’t matter. It’s a 60-inch print to me, because 60 is the biggest number.
Lesa Daniel: So I’m going to give you a little test. Eight by 10, 10 is the biggest number. It’s a 10 inch to me. So that’s very simple. That’s the way we do our pricing. So now let me show you, here are the embellished pieces. Here are the creative art pieces. And then here are the fiber art, floating art pieces. These are our three price structures. Just like that. That’s it. They can look and see whatever they want. I usually don’t say dollars. I never use that word dollar.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah, right.
Lesa Daniel: But I also don’t usually say money information to them. I let them look at it because I don’t know where their eye is going to go. Is it going to go to the lowest point or is it going to go to the highest point or in the middle? So I just show it to them.
Lesa Daniel: And I say, “I don’t want you to make a decision today. All I want you to know is that we are after 100% transparency. I want you to know who we are, what we do, what the price structure is. We’ll figure it out from there. Is this something that’s doable for you?”
Greg Daniel: It’s what Sarah would say out of the blue in Blue Ridge, she would say, “I’m just trying to educate you.”
Lesa Daniel: It’s a wine shop.
Greg Daniel: She’s been there. She got her.
Allison Tyler Jones: I’ve been there.
Lesa Daniel: You have been there. Yeah.
Allison Tyler Jones: This eliminates the possibility of mistakes.
Greg Daniel: That’s right.
Lesa Daniel: There you go.
Allison Tyler Jones: I have a quote from Sarah.
Lesa Daniel: I’m not trying to upsell you. I’m not trying to upsell you at all. I’m just want to educate you on the differences.
Greg Daniel: Right.
Lesa Daniel: Yeah. What she said. Okay. Got it. Got it.
Allison Tyler Jones: So good. I know that woman has inspired so many.
Lesa Daniel: A lot of people.
Greg Daniel: She has.
Allison Tyler Jones: I love it. Then just to put a cherry on top of this, what do you feel like the flagship, that honing in and creating a flagship product for your business, what difference has that made? I mean, give me some ideas, thoughts.
Lesa Daniel: Well, it just took us from being, I would call it a commodity photographer, to a designer. Where people crave that piece. So recognizable. All these beautiful handbags that are out, and everybody loves all these gorgeous handbags. There’s a million other handbags out there that do the exact same job, but because they are flagship pieces for those companies, you know what it is. You know what the value is, you know that those people value status.
Lesa Daniel: I feel like it has given us that. It’s also freed our minds from having to constantly figure out, now how do we make this next unusual product? And how do we go to a trade show and not buy a million things because they all look cool, but do they fit our look and our flagship? No. So I think that makes a difference.
Greg Daniel: And when you’re known for one exceptional product, you can charge an exceptional price for that one exceptional product. And as far as creativity goes, and I don’t have to do what we do anymore. We don’t have to be in business anymore.
Greg Daniel: And I say that to say, I do this because I love creating these pieces all the way through and into retirement. It’s what I enjoy doing. I get to create art when I wake up and I get to do this wonderful thing. It’s not like I come to work every day. We only work a few days a week. But when we do, I’m here creating and enjoying doing that. So it can last into, it’s my golf, it’s my fishing. It’s what I love to do.
Lesa Daniel: But you also love educating.
Greg Daniel: I do love educating.
Lesa Daniel: Yes.
Greg Daniel: That’s why we teach the workshops.
Lesa Daniel: Yeah. He loves the educational part. He’s a teacher by nature. I’ve often said, if we homeschooled our children, my children wouldn’t be living any longer. But if Greg homeschooled them, they would be geniuses.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah, totally.
Lesa Daniel: He is a teacher by nature, so he loves doing the pieces for our clients, and he loves doing the educational and the workshops. And I mean, I can’t tell you how many nights he doesn’t sleep ahead of time, even though he’s done it over and over again. He wants to make it right for the folks that are coming in the door. I mean, that’s who you are. Yeah.
Allison Tyler Jones: I love that. Well, and you’ve inspired generations of photographers and continue to do that. And highly, highly recommend. I mean, we share a lot of the same students that just have loved going into your workshops and learning how to do the painting. And we’ll definitely link to those in the show notes so that people can have access to that information.
Allison Tyler Jones: But the thing that I think that I’m taking away from this, and I hope that our listeners take away from this, is that you can pull up your website and pull up my website and say, two incredibly different photographers, but very similar thought process.
Greg Daniel: Yes.
Allison Tyler Jones: Very, very aligned. And there’s more than one way to be successful in this business. And you don’t have to be you, you don’t have to be me. There can be a third or fourth, a fifth, a 10th, a 15th. That you are a market of one. And so if you are a market of one, make a flagship product for your market.
Greg Daniel: Absolutely.
Lesa Daniel: Absolutely. In a big town or a little town.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah.
Lesa Daniel: Yeah.
Allison Tyler Jones: For sure.
Lesa Daniel: Yeah, absolutely.
Allison Tyler Jones: I love it. Well, you guys are the best. I appreciate you so much.
Greg Daniel: You’re so sweet. It’s always fun.
Lesa Daniel: Absolutely.
Allison Tyler Jones: Thank you for being here.
Recorded: You can find more great resources from Allison at Dotherework.com and on Instagram at 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…
Recorded: Welcome to The ReWork with Allison Tyler-Jones, a podcast dedicated to inspiring portrait photographers…