What do you do when your thriving photography studio suddenly faces a 20% drop in revenue and panic starts to creep in? Pat Miller dives deep with industry expert Nate Peterson to reveal how a high-performing studio navigates the unpredictable valleys of entrepreneurship.

Episode Highlights 🎤💡:

(03:13) – What it feels like when momentum suddenly stops

(06:54) – Realizing the studio was projected 20% down

(17:03) – Making up the 20% and finishing the year strong

Connect with Pat Miller ⬇

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Connect with Nate Peterson ⬇

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I'm Pat Miller and this is The Professional Photographer Podcast. Greetings from Imaging USA 2026 in Nashville inside the Sony Cinema Line studio, they brought out all the fantastic gear to make us look absolutely fantastic. So thank you to Sony for putting on the show today. We're talking with a high performer on this episode, and we're doing something that's a little bit unusual. Instead of leaning into how they make all their money, we're talking about what happens when the money isn't coming in. I mean, if you're a high-performing studio, that means you're doing great every day of the year, right? On today's show, Nate Peterson's going to get real and share with us what happened when his studio was 20% behind for the year in September. How did they pivot? Did they launch a new product? Did they slash their rates and do a fire sale? How did they manage to not only improve their position, but spoiler alert, make the year? If you want to learn how to make more money and know what to do when things are bad, Nate Peterson is here to share it with you. He's on the show next. Nate, welcome to the show. How are you?

Good, Pat, how are you?

I'm good. How's Imaging so far? You having fun?

I love it. Every time. It's like an energy burst of just re-get the coffers all filled up and inspired and, yeah, ready for a good year.

A little bit of inspiration, refreshing some of your personal networks buying a bunch of gear in the expo?

Of course. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's what you do. You got to support the people that support us. But yeah, learn new things, see what the trends are, take it home, and be better.

I think my wife, who's a photographer, is down there supporting the industry right now, as a matter of fact.

That's my sales pitch to my wife. It's like we got to keep everybody happy.

Got to do it. Okay, so if someone hasn't met you yet, tell them who you are and what you do.

My name's Nate Peterson. I'm from New Richmond, Wisconsin. My wife and I, Teresa, we own NP Design and Photography. We're about 45 minutes east of Minneapolis and we run a studio that is does high school seniors volume sports teams and commercial headshots and the like. So few families, few pets, but that's pretty much what we do full-time in our going into almost 20 years.

Wow, 20 years. That's amazing. Congratulations. Now you're not just running a studio for 20 years, you are a high-performing studio according to the PPA benchmark survey. That's kind of a big deal. Did you get a plaque or did you get a flag for that? A banner?

We got to go to a meeting and got a lot of information about the industry. Yeah, it's an honor. It's not the Grand Imaging Awards or anything like that, but it's green merits. We call them.

I love it, love green. That's a great line. Green merits. They have presidents on them, I hear. Yes.

Yeah. Yep. And they buy gear.

And they buy gear. We support the industry with our green merits.

It's all a big circle of life.

It is. So even when you are a high performer, sometimes things slow down. So I thought it would be interesting if we talked about a time that that happened to you because every once in a while, every photography studio hits a valley. You shared with us that you hit a valley. So I want to talk about what is it like when you are a top tier studio and things start to slow down?

Well, it was a new experience for us because basically I started in 2006 and slowly built and then by 2013, '14, we were rocking and it every year. And I just talked to a friend of mine who's also a high performer, and she kind of said this is the first year it ticked down like it's been a roller coaster up. And I think there was some consumer confidence issues, some economy hearsay, and things like that last year that set the consumers kind of into a panic. And I happened to be on your podcast last summer, I believe, and you introduced me as a studio that is like crushing it, I think. And I heard that and I listened to it and I'm like, it's like jinx. And something happened and it was like everything just froze in September, and that's normally a killer month. And we just kind of locked up and the phone stopped ringing and the email stopped coming in. And so I look back on it and think of what did we do? And I think that's a good topic today, we creative problem solved. Just like learning a new Photoshop tool or something like that. We were in new territory and needed to see what marketing, what products, what do we need to do to get some attention back, get something out there. So some good old-fashioned marketing.

Your problem solving is what helps you be a high performer. But before we get into the nuts and bolts, I want to talk about the emotional side of it. So crushing it, that stuck with you, then things slowed down. What did that feel like emotionally when you're used to winning and now you're not?

Yeah. So I think the photography industry, I often compare my career in this industry to a heart rate monitor. Like old life pre-entrepreneurship was like, yeah, there were good days, in bad days, like a sound wave, just kind of like, yeah, all right, yeah. And now it's more like everything's awesome, oh, my God, we're failing. And it's like more like a up down thing and being at that point where what just happened, like it felt like we got canceled or something and it's like, what do you do? So yeah, it was the sky is falling, but you get over your pity party in an hour or two and think, all right, we need to. It isn't a want, it isn't a game, it isn't anything like that. It's like, what are we going to do? So you get very serious about it quick and start problem solving.

How do you track the forward looking revenue? Do you look at just the calendar? Do you have a projected cash flow? Like how do you manage what's going to happen?

We have a CRM that has past years of performance and everything, and what by the quarter, basically, where are we at? What are we on track to do? Probably not as advanced as the Fortune 500 companies, but we are our own CFOs I guess and work with the accountant and see where are we at now and where were we last year and the last couple years and where is it projecting to be? So if we don't have bookings in September, that means there's no sales in October. So what do we do to turn that around right away? And we were in by the end of September, I was planning to be 20% down on the year. So that was a little, little scary. Still, in survivor territory, we would have been fine. But that's, that's not when you get to come here and support the industry and spend all sorts of–

Yeah, right.

–part of my why of doing this is to fund this hobby of cool things and gear and things like that. So I don't want to just run flat. I want to have something to put back into it.

So it's September, you're projected to be down 20%. Someone that may be less experienced would either panic or freeze. When you realize you had a problem, how did you start solving it?

Well, we started talking about what are things we've been too busy to go after. What pieces of the genre that we specialize in are we not attacking? Where could we do, maybe not mini sessions, but we call them limited edition sessions. So opportunities to lower the entry bar a little bit, let people come in and get a good experience for a little bit less price. We're a kind of a boutique studio on that level. The volume side, we have a lot of clientele on so we can market to that clientele and bring them in at more that mid range level than the boutique level. At last year's Imaging, we learned of a product that some of the photographers are calling Sportraits. Kind of the gel, cool lights and smoke and things. And what if we did 10-minute little mini sessions and create these high school pro level looking things for little kids? So it's still in my wheelhouse of fun. Our brand still carries with it, and now we can set it to just a couple days per sports season and that took off right away. So that was a good quick recovery for some of it. We hadn't been marketing families at all because there was just no time to do that with the things we specialize in. Happened to land a couple of really good families by pushing that back out there a little bit. Yeah. And then lastly we brought back the other limited edition card, like a holiday card weekend where we just opened up the studio for 15-minute sessions and brought people in for just maybe you got your family portraits a couple of years ago so you don't need it again, but let's do a holiday card $500 sales instead of multiple thousands and we kind of made that 20% back.

So would it be fair to say you did some higher end portrait things like the Sportraits, but some I don't want to call it volume but more volume kind of things?

Yeah, kind of that middle bracket is what we had closed off. We were basically all volume on the low end and all high-end boutique stuff. And we kind of opened up that middle again, which personally when you talk about the emotion or the feeling of it, it felt good to kind of service the middle again because I think the middle gets lost in the economy. There's more Louis Vuitton, and there's Walmart, and the middle is getting forgotten. So it was kind of that middle tier, and it was welcomed.

Interesting that you brought out something you had never done in Sportraits in this particular need based situation. We're not in a good spot. Let's try something we've never done was that easy, hard. How did that go?

It was more just getting over the perfectionist-ism of it because we learned about it last January-February and I was so hung up on the technique of it. Like it has to be this certain perfect way. And all of a sudden more the time to put some last-minute development to it and the desperation of we need this now. The urgency just popped up and it got over the perfectionism. I think that might be a part of the fundamental of what happened here. It was no longer an option.

How do you react in a situation like this personally? Do you become the Terminator that can work 24 hours a day? Do you start avoiding it when things go bad because everyone reacts to down times differently?

Yeah, probably the downtime in general, more the Terminator side. This isn't an option. And I am the CEO of my company, if that's what we want to call it. And so I have to show leadership in that part. The emotional side iswe're married. So it's like some of the desperation becomes argumentative at time s and stuff like that. But you work through it and we have a small staff that we need to set examples for and as much as sometimes you want to just say the heck with it. I have heard, I've talked with a lot of photographers here, and over the last six months that didn't have a great year, I've heard a lot of people talking about last year, and some went and got a day job or went back to a day job or I think that's the panic or the jumping back into something like that drastic. It's I think my bigger worry, if I'm going to worry at all is if that was a sign of something to come for this year because that was just the end of last year. What's the economy and everything coming into this year? It seems like we've turned the corner on it. So our projections on our pre-bookings for seniors and stuff are back to normal rates. So things I'm going to profess that I think we're going to be okay.

Yeah, knock on table. One thing that I think that you do exceptionally well is the way that you position your products to make them sound exclusive and unique. It's not that we had a problem, and we've rolled out a bunch of stuff to see what sticks. The limited edition holiday card or portraits. The way that you position your seniors is absolutely brilliant. It's intentional to make them feel exclusive and special, not just like another thing?

Yeah. I think that's how luxury businesses run more. If you're clearance pricing, and that isn't really where you want to. We don't want to have a clearance, a close out on senior sessions or whatever it is. We don't want to have that desperate feel. It's still art, it's still valuable. There's just we have more time now to provide more, so it's not worth any less. It's just we have more time to allow for more so we can volumize it a little more. But it isn't we can't monetize it and let it go.

Yeah. And that branding and positioning just really stuck with me. It's very cool stuff. Let's talk about Sportraits for a second. Because that's not just a kid with a basketball under his arm. It's this really unique kind of one of a kind image. Did that open you up creatively? Did that open any doors to doing more creativity in other business lines as well?

It's actually taking some of our high-end senior look that we would. That exclusivity that only a senior that's paying for this big opportunity or this big experience would get. We've done work like it from them but then twisted it into more of a volume setting on a fast. We use color LED lights so they're constant lights. Everything's just more efficient so it's everything's working faster. You can volumize it like that systematize. I'm not gonna do multiple colors per person. It's just whatever your jersey is. I'm gonna preset a color. You're in here for 10 minutes, bang out 10 like poses and go from there. Way more dramatic lighting than the volume flat light they would be used to. So it just had a lot more drama and art for when you take a 10-year-old and make them make it look like some NHL dramatic smoky image. Yeah, I've had some of the dads were, I mean, most of the time with senior portraits, you're getting the moms to react. When it comes to sports and youth, dads get in like dude, I want one of those. So I think that might be a market yet too. We'll get the 40 somethings in there and do cool like men's league softball portraits or something next.

So beer league softball.

I mean, come on. Pretty cool.

I'm excited.

40–Yeah, that'd be awesome.

One of my favorite quotes, I don't remember exactly, but it's something like, the harder you work, the luckier you get. And you shared with me that, yes, you started these new products that helped dig you out of the hole that you were in. But one time during all of this, you had just a random Sunday afternoon session that turned out to be this bonkers result. Can you tell the story of that one session?

Yeah. So we had a past client come back from 2011. We did a nice family portrait session back then. It was a friend of mine, her dad, and they did this family portrait, and we did a decent order with them this year. They came back. All the kids are grown up. They all have their own families. And he came in and they sat down, and I didn't know what to expect. You're a past client with some of my really old pricing and everything, I was almost feeling like I need to warn you, it's a little different now. And they never balked at anything and brought in a–he kind of ordered his whole waffle, secondary waffle, and then said, I want one for each of the kids too. And these little words that I wish all, I lived this life, but a lot of people, he said, you can't take it with you. And I just thought, thank you. That is just, and I did end up telling him after the fact. I said, I just want you to know that we kind of had a bit of a hiccup at the end of the year and you really helped us get out of that hole. So the gratitude I share with you is genuine and thank you very much and I will honor these portraits forever. And so, yeah, it's not only creating a legacy on their wall, but it really saved us too. But we were willing something that old us a few years ago when everything was crushing it, maybe we would have said no to that Sunday session or things like that. We kind of just let our guard down a little bit and opened up opportunity and with that, we were rewarded. So a fun little side note to that is I've been mentoring a few people in our local guild, and one of them called me with this extreme excitement a month or two before that, and he mentioned the number that he had in a big sale which crushed one, my highest ever, and now this one outdid that one. So I'm glad I helped somebody get to there. But then I was through karma or something, I was rewarded as well. So I say that, but it's like you work for it too. Like you said, the harder you work, the more you're rewarded. And we brought the experience to them and they were, whatever that is, made it. They were equal with us. Yeah.

What did the father say when you got personal and real with him and shared, hey, we weren't doing that great and thank God for your order.

He kind of, he understood what I was saying and acknowledged it. But then he said, I can't get this anywhere else, and this is a treasure we'll always have. So he said, the pleasure is all mine. So I think he just really–the exchange. I love that word exchange of value. Like, I did something for him that he needed, and he did something for me that I needed. And his happened to be a pile of money, and mine happened to be a skill. And these products exist forever now, and it's going to be amazing for them.

So you shared at the end of September, you're down 20%. How did you finish the year?

We thought, we have an annual goal that needs to be a certain number. And we got to December 31st and we weren't, we were like $2,000 under that. No. And the cool thing is Teresa closes out the monthly sports orders after the month is closed. And there was about 5,000 there. So it, it did kick over the goal. So we made up the 20%, 21% or something like that. So it was, it was good.

Oh, congratulations.

Yes. It's funny what that little annoying, that $2,000 in the grand scheme, but it is that keeps us on a steady pace of where we wanted to be the last five or six years.

So, looking back on it, what did you learn from having this slow period, how you two had to react, and you saved the year? What did you learn?

I think there's we need to schedule more downtime to work on growth and products. So a lot, the common term is work on the business, not in the business. And when it's just limited staff, whether you're a one person show or a two, a mom and pop shop or whatever, you still need to not only just come to Imaging and learn the new things, but actually take the time to sit down and build the systems and implement them. I think of the last major time we had downtime was COVID and Teresa sat down and learned an entire new CRM. And if we hadn't done that at that time, we wouldn't have known these numbers. We wouldn't have known things like that. So you have to put in time to the system. And so we looked at that, looking back on it now and knowing how it all turned out. It's like that couple of weeks of fear and time allowed us to put time into the system. But not only the fear also motivated us. Sometimes you just fall into the rhythm and take it for granted and stuff. And it was good to get woken up a little bit and say, no, you got to get hustling again. And it was refreshing to try something new too.

It's the second time in recent weeks that I've done an interview with a high performer that said things got dangerous when I got comfortable. I got comfortable, and I forgot how much I could be doing if I was uncomfortable. It sounds like that was one of those situations.

Yeah, I was at a PP Iowa. I'm going to drop a name, Ben Shirk. We've heard of Ben Shirk. He's a decent human. He's pretty good at what he does. But we were on a panel together for a college in Iowa, and one of the kids asked a brilliant question. What is your greatest fear? And he said, complacency. So I'm thinking all these, the sky is falling. I'm thinking fire, I'm thinking tornadoes, whatever, true, typical fear things. And he just said complacency. And it stuck with me so deep. It's like, yep, never get just complacent where you don't care. It's always keep climbing. And I'm reading The Gap and The Gain right now. And part of never being excited and everything is that you're always aiming for that perfection, that horizon. And you gotta take the time to look back and look at what you've done. So it's kind of a twofold. Don't ever be complacent, but also look back and have gratitude for where you've gotten to.

So right now, someone's watching this. They clicked on this episode because they are in the valley right now. Instead of saying what they should do, what shouldn't they do?

Panic. Well, give up. Don't give up. I mean, there's–I've had days, I mean, high performer confession here. I've had the days where I, me and Teresa will be screaming and just say there's gotta be easier ways to make money. And it's so the frustrating days when you just want to give up. I've been just going to go get a job and not have to sleep with this in my mind all the time. I could just like quit at 5:00 and come home and go to sleep and when I really would, we gather ourselves and say sorry about the yelling and you know, we're on the same page and we're all in on this. We come to the same conclusion every time. It's like, what other industry, what other job could we have that we get such satisfaction out of it for a talent we naturally seem to have or a drive, a passion we have? There's no other career that would provide this lifestyle, the freedom, the everything about this. So when you want to give up, don't like just reframe it, sit in the gratitude of where you've gotten to and then figure, problem solve. Like, how do we get out of here?

Yeah. You said giving back to the industry before, to have a high performer come on and talk about what didn't go well is an actual gift. So thanks for coming on the show. I really appreciate it.

Thank you, Pat. I love this podcast and can't wait to hear all these episodes you're recording.

Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of The Professional Photographer Podcast, live from Imaging USA inside the Sony Cinema Line Studios. A big thanks to Sony for doing all the hard work to make us look good. Now, if you're still watching the episode, that means you enjoyed the show, which means you should be a subscriber of the show. So click subscribe on whatever platform you're on. Also, leave us a like and a comment so we know what the guest said that really resonated with you. The other thing is, if you're not yet a member of Professional Photographers of America, what's going on here? Because PPA offers terrific benefits like incredible equipment insurance, top-notch education and a supportive community of photographers ready to help you succeed. Join now at ppa.com. That's ppa.com. I'm Pat Miller, host to the show and the founder of the Small Business Owners Community. I appreciate you tuning in. We'll see you right here next time. Take care.