Are you ready to finally break free from worrying about your photography prices and start elevating your client experience? Pat Miller sits down with luxury sales expert Jeffrey Shaw for a paradigm-shifting episode on why every photographer is already in the luxury market and how the way you sell emotions, and transformation can make price irrelevant.

Episode Highlights 🎤💡:

(07:42) – You’re not competing with other photographers

(10:40) – Transformation is the new luxury

(27:35) – Why “great” isn’t good enough anymore and how to create exceptional client bonds that drive repeat business.

Connect with Pat Miller ⬇

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Connect with Jeffrey Shaw ⬇

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I'm Pat Miller, and this is the Professional Photographer Podcast. If you'd like to sell to the luxury market where price is not an object, it sounds like this magical land of being a photographer. Well, it's not that simple. How about we learn from someone that's been there, done that, written the book— ah, written 3 books on the topic. Jeffrey Shaw is on the show today, and he knows how to approach, serve, and delight the luxury photography market. And if you're trying to take pictures, guess what? You're in the luxury market even if your prices aren't at a luxury level. We need to start thinking about treating every customer the way that we treat the luxury market. We'll talk about that, and we'll talk about the true luxury market and what you need to do, how you need to approach them, how you need to think, how you need to sell. What is it like when you're serving the true luxury market? Jeffrey Shaw knows. We'll talk to him next. Jeffrey, welcome to the show. How are you today?

I am very well. Thank you for having me on.

I'm glad you're here. We get to talk all about the luxury market today, and I know a lot of people want to hear your secrets and how they can be a part of it too. But if someone hasn't met you yet, let's first set the table. Tell them who you are and what you do.

Sure. Well, I'll start with who I am today or what I do today anyway. So today I'm a business coach. I'm a speaker. I speak from the stage specifically on luxury sales and luxury buyer psychology. But in my coaching work, I coach most often businesses and thought leaders that want to be the best in their field. So not necessarily typical luxury business owners, but they want to be the best in their field. However, what the story that's more relatable to your audience is what got me here. What got me here is 40 years being a portrait photographer for affluent families. So, I entered into this world of photography at 20 years old and, you know, built a successful business being a photographer for affluent families, which gave me the insights that I use today. And to me, it's 40 years of incredible lab. It was a lab experience, right? I got to learn everything that I now can help others get through quicker, I hope.

Well, you'll be a good guide for us. I really believe in the advice that don't listen to people who haven't done it before, and you've definitely done it before. It would be comforting, I think to many, or educational to some. Can you just define the difference between the normal market and the luxury market? How would you define the luxury market?

Yeah. Well, here's the thing, Pat. I think a lot of photographers may not initially classify themselves as being in the luxury market, but they are. Because to me, I define being in the luxury market first and foremost by your vying for discretionary dollars. In other words, your customers have many other places they could spend the same amount of money as they might spend with you. The one exception to that might be wedding photography, because wedding photography is kind of built into the process, right? You get engaged, you find a venue, you hire a photographer. Other than that, 99% of the way of marketing ourselves as photographers is to give people the idea, because it's not inherently an idea. So that puts you in a luxury market regardless of price point. I think that's really important for people to understand because what you first and foremost need to change is your mindset. When you realize that you're in a, you know, you're a luxury item, you then realize that it's an entirely different selling process. So for example, when I'm speaking at luxury events to audiences of typical luxury businesses, spa owners, interior designers, et cetera, luxury real estate, my very first slide comes up and it says, when money isn't the issue, everything else is.

Oh, that's good.

Yeah. Because and I think this is an important message for everybody to embrace. Imagine money cannot, is not only not the reason, but it's not the excuse, right? It's so easy for us to think, oh, people can't afford it. People won't spend it. Whether it's true or not, you're not doing yourself any favors by buying into that. My challenge is how can you get people past that so-called money obstacle in other ways. That's the challenge that we're called upon. And photographers, honestly, we have a huge leverage point here because we're selling emotions. And you can get somebody to spend almost any amount of money if you can get them to see what is greater than the money—emotions, impact, transformation. you know, there's— you have to— that's the idea of when money isn't the issue, everything else is. Everything around the money has to be elevated to make the money irrelevant. And the luxury market is kind of inherent because money is not their deciding factor. But if you're not working with a super affluent clientele, it's still a really good foundation for you to think about, how can I elevate everything around my business so that money is a very secondary thought? So it's a huge— it's a terrific challenge.

It's definitely a new thought for many photographers that don't consider themselves luxury because they may be relatively fairly priced, but they're selling something that people don't have to have. So when you share that to someone that isn't considering themselves luxury, how does the average photographer react to that?

Yeah, well, I did an article some time ago. The title of it, I think, was something like, what does Louis Vuitton and pest control have in common? Right? To really hit home this point, it's like they're both discretionary. Right? Pest control. If you're fortunate enough, I live in Florida, right? So pest control is a real thing, but not everybody can afford to protect their home from termites and rodents and critters that are prevalent in Florida. Not everybody has that luxury. So even pest control could be a luxury service because it's not open to everybody. People have choices where they can put their money. I think photographers, and again, I went through this as well. I mean, the first 3 years of my photography business, I went back to my hometown, which is a very middle-class community. That's where I grew up. I didn't come from this world of affluence. I grew up very lower middle-class. That's where I started my business. The problem was I valued photography and photographs of families at such a high level. I wanted to get paid fairly for it beyond what the market was willing to pay. So it took 3 years of pounding it out, trying to get a business going that the market was not going to support. I had a conversation with a potential client one day who I needed the business, and I was going for it. I was making my best pitch possible. She sat back in the chair and she said, "Well, that sounds great and all, but I don't have the luxury of worrying about my children's memories. I don't know how I'm paying my rent this month." And that, I literally sat back in the chair and thought, first of all, it was the first time anybody ever called what I did a luxury. I hadn't thought of it as a luxury. Okay, that's when my life changed. It was then I realized I needed to completely revamp or rebrand my business, realizing this is a luxury item. As a photographer, I had a very high average sale, and this is the way I want photographers to think. Whatever your average sale is, one of the other lessons in my keynote I talk about is that when money isn't an issue, multiple choices are the challenge. There's a really good chance your customers are not deciding between you and another photographer, maybe at an early stage, but let's say they've primarily chosen you. What they're choosing between is whether they want to spend whatever amount of money in your services versus all the other places in life they can spend the same amount of money. I was high priced. My competition was not other photographers. My competition were jewelry stores, weekends in New York City, Broadway seats, right? My competition was all the places my clients could spend a comparable amount of money. And that's when you realize you're a luxury business. That's when you realize you have to think differently. And that's when you realize you have to sell and elevate everything around you bigger than the price.

And now let's dig into it. Someone is accepting, okay, I'm a luxury brand, even though I don't consider myself that. How do I meet this luxury market? So how must we change how we sell to start resonating with some of those emotions that you mentioned?

A, all emotions, right? I'm surprised at how often I go to photographers' websites. And quite frankly, they often look like more like an online portfolio rather than a vehicle to sell the emotions that drive the choice. So when I talk about elevating everything around price, emotions— what are driving the emotions? Looking back at my own marketing as a photographer, particularly when I felt like it really had switched, I mean, we're all selling something tangible. Even digital files are tangible, right? We're selling something tangible. I was selling large artwork, large portraits to the wall, a tangible item, but that's actually never what I sold. What I sold and what I spoke of, and it wasn't just emotions, it was a specific scenario. I focused on the moment the parents stopped walking down the hallway because they just walked past a family portrait that I did, and it stops them in their tracks. And they realize how much their children have changed, maybe even left the house. So when you understand, like, that's the, those are the moments you're selling, you start removing the tangible competition of it from your industry, because that's one of our biggest challenges today is that people are going to compare tangible items. You want to get out of that, that commoditizes the industry. You don't want people thinking just, I mean, you're going to produce beautiful photographs. Okay. But you have to sell it in a way that it's bigger than the tangible, driven by emotions, driven by what I'll share with you right now, I think is the most important selling message or branding message you can offer today. And that is selling transformation. Okay. Just really let that sink in. What the world is buying right now. And one of the advantages, Pat, of being in the luxury space is the luxury market is always leading the way because of their discretionary abilities, discretionary dollar abilities. They will tend to be the first to follow a trend, often the first to leave a trend and the first to come back, whatever it might be. But one of the advantages I have and have always had in the luxury market is that I could get a glimpse as to what's coming before we see it elsewhere in the mainstream market. And what I will tell you in the luxury space, what's selling is transformation. My first glimpse on this was in the luxury travel industry when my connections I have in luxury travel were telling me that people were no longer inquiring about simple vacations or relaxing vacations. They wanted vacations that were going to change their lives. They wanted vacations that were educational. They wanted to book vacations for their— that included their kids, where their kids would walk away having learned something. There's less interest in just sitting at a resort and chilling. Not that there isn't a place for that, but there's an absolute increase. So my challenge to everyone is to think about in what way does your photography actually transform how somebody feels about themselves, transforms life? Does it— boudoir photography, right? Does it transform someone into somebody more confident? Does it transform someone into feeling better about themselves? One of the most significant sessions I ever did in my 40-year career, and I was by no means known for doing anything close to boudoir, but a client that I had photographed for decades and photographed her kids, I was going through a very rough time in life and her marriage, and she contacted me to say she felt like her confidence as a woman had been stripped, and she felt like being photographed in an intimate, beautiful way For her to have an album only for her to look at— this was not being done as a gift for her husband or anything. It was her reclaiming her identity, and she chose photography to do that. Not plastic surgery, not a trip. She chose photography to transform her life at that moment from feeling stripped of her femininity to wanting to step into it. Photography has that potential in all genres. Just think about in what ways what you offer transformative to somebody's life. That's your brand messaging. That's what people are buying.

Building a session into transformation is a totally different way to think about it because it seems as though we're trained to build our sessions into a stack of Lego pieces, products to end up in this much dollar amount because I need to make this much money as a photographer. And it's almost very inward. Thank you for being my client. Let me sell you X, Y, and Z so I can make enough money. And if I'm hearing you right, it's not about all that stuff at all. It's what's the transformation we're providing for the client. And when you do that, is that when the concern about money goes out the window because you've actually rang the bell with them emotionally?

Very much. And I'm glad you're phrasing it this way because I look at it as the evolution of experience. Right? Because for 20 years, we've been, as businesses, have been focused on creating a good experience for our customers. Experiences are transactional, right? Giving somebody a great experience. And again, you asked earlier, where does this show up in the luxury space, before it hits the main market? One of the great challenges we have for those of us serving the very affluent space is there's no experience that we can provide they haven't had. Right? A glass of champagne while viewing their proofs does not impress them. They've had like, you know, whatever concierge service you're offering, they've experienced in the luxury market. So it has always upped the game where we— transactional experiences aren't enough. And it became increasingly more so, which is why, again, we're seeing this idea of what's transforming people's lives, exceeding expectations or experiences. So transformation, the way in which what you do, what you offer, it can be the experience itself, right? The experience itself can be transformative, but it has— it's only defined as transformative if it goes beyond the transactional period. If it's just a great session and they feel good about themselves, that's a great experience. If the experience made them feel confident, if the experience brought together a family, if the experience was a family reunion that was gathering, if you can tell the difference because a transformation is what they're going to talk about long after the transaction is over. So I look at the whole idea of how do we create transformative moments for our clients is they're talking about it long after the transactional experience is over. A great experience is almost not enough today.

And which sounds defeating. If you're good at what you do, it's like, I've worked so hard to make these great images. This should be enough. And now I gotta do transformation, and maybe I have to put on a bunch of, I don't know, items into the sale that I don't feel really comfortable about. But you've talked about authenticity still being important. So how do we weigh these two things where, oh my gosh, I might not be enough to offer a transformative experience, and to try and get there, I might have to sacrifice some authenticity. That's not good in the luxury market either, is it?

Well, here's the thing. Photographers are actually at an advantage here. I mean, imagine if you're selling a widget, right? That's a challenge I have posed to manufacturers of some pretty boring items. To say, well, how is this transformative, right? But technology can transform our lives. Like, technology can be sold as a widget, or it could be sold as a technology that's going to give you valuable time back in your life that you can spend with your loved ones. That's a whole— so that piece of technology, that's where it's transformative. I actually think most photographers, the ethos of transformation and power and emotions exists in the industry. They just don't realize it, and they don't sell it. But, I see— I've always seen being a photographer being an advantage in that we're already selling something emotional. Imagine if you were in the industry, we were selling something unemotional to begin with. You have a long journey to go. You're already doing something that is so emotional for people and transformative. You just have to define it for yourself. How is it transformative? How is it transforming people's lives? What can you do? What can you offer? What can you create that is beyond the experience that they're going to talk about for long after the transaction is over? That's what people are willing to pay for. That is when how people feel about themselves is greater than the money people are spending across all market segments right now. In a time and place when we're recording this, when life is pretty uncertain, but people are spending a lot of money on spa experiences, getaways that are educational are, again, transformative. People are willing to invest where I can— retreats where I can invest the money, but I can come back a different person. I can be transformed as a person. That's where people are spending their money today. So the challenge exists, like, where can we convey that through photography?

You mentioned the uncertainty right now. I've heard it said that the true luxury field, the true luxury level, really doesn't go away. The middle of the market may go away in an economic downturn, but the real luxury market, they're going to be there for you if you're there for them. Is that true?

Yes and no. And that, again, this is where I think, you know, having had a glimpse into the luxury market for so many decades is really helpful. They do lead the way. So there are plenty of people in the luxury space right now that are speaking doom and gloom, and there is significant evidence that people aren't spending it. Like, a lot of luxury brands are really scrambling because people are not spending the same amount of money. I'm vocal enough to write articles and put out content that says the issue is not that people aren't willing to spend the money. You all aren't doing anything interesting enough to get people to spend money. Right? I mean, let's just call it what it is, right? I mean, it's same with attention. How often we hear that, "Oh, consumers today don't have an attention span." Yes, they do. You're just not being attention-worthy. Right? So again, this is where if money isn't the issue, if we can stop making money the excuse, we can call upon ourselves to think more. Now, I'm not naive to think that there aren't times when money is more challenging, but again, it's not doing any good to sit and wallow in that reality. What can you do? Because people will always spend money, money will always circulate. I think one of the reasons— I mean, there's a lot of reasons why the world is uncertain right now, but when it comes to spending— so for example, you're just saying the— and I just did an article on this, the $10 million and more luxury real estate market is booming. The middle market, my house is on the market. It's only been 3 weeks, but I can tell you it's quieter. The middle market is much quieter. Over $10 million of spending, why is that? And research, and this is— I wrote the article I did because I read this article about this real estate boom over $10 million. And while I love the data, I was actually a little ticked off because the article never asked the most important question. What's the psychology of the behavior that's driving this? So, I did my own research and realized, in part, it's not just because people at that level of wealth have the money. It's not that they typically buy in cash, so they're not dealing with mortgage rates. Yeah, those are some of the logical reasons, but it doesn't compare to the emotional reasons. And the emotional reasons are people will invest anything. And if you have the money, they want retreats, right? They want a gorgeous home away from the riffraff. They're building. They want homes that— I have a number of clients, coaching clients that are in the interior designer space, that are creating homes that are complete retreats. Like the design style has changed. Now we're talking about homes that have, you know, exclusive resort types of environments to them, right? Why? Because, I mean, the interior design industry has a potential of booming because in a world that feels out of control, the one thing you can control is your environment. So, you know, I don't know that it's true that the high-end market is always thriving. I've definitely encountered many times when it came to an apparent standstill because they are very– they are the first to react. But what they're reacting to is life is boring. Somebody better show me something more interesting for me to open up my wallet. So that becomes the challenge. I just think, I said, they're very quick to respond because they get bored quickly. They're like, eh, nothing's interesting.

Do something, get my attention. And let's talk about that. So we want to be a luxury brand. You say that we have to stand out and get our attention. How do we get the attention of a luxury brand audience?

Okay, so that's a big question, Pat. if you've decided— and again, I'm always really careful, particularly with most industries, but specifically photographers because they have a soft spot in my heart— I don't want it to feel like the opportunities exist only for people in the high market, right? Because you're all in the luxury business because you're selling something people don't have to have. Having said that, if you have a desire to reach the most luxurious clients, first of all, the most important thing you can do is understand their world. And this is a huge overlooked step. I refer to it as embodiment. And you're going to embody two things. You're going to embody the life of the people you're going to serve. I think it's fair to say I don't like to speak in absolute, so let's say 99.9% of people serving the luxury buyer didn't come from that world. And I've been in this industry for a long time, and I don't think I've ever met somebody that is a sales associate at Cartier or Tiffany or a sales associate or, you know, Rolls-Royce. I've never met anyone in that position that came from a wealthy background themselves. They may have created their own wealth, but they didn't come from that. So that's the reality for most of us. If you're going to choose to serve the luxury buyer, you have to recognize you probably didn't come from their world. So step number 1 is you need to embody what the world looks and feels like from their perspective. Go to high-end stores. The brands you might not even know about today. I could toss out Brand names that you may not even ever heard of, because at that level of wealth, there's sort of a secret language thing going on, right? There's brands out there that they buy that you don't know about. Find that out about them, do some research, visit them, understand the ethos of those brands, go there, and just embody the experience if you were your ideal client. What do you need to see, hear, and feel from that brand? How can you replicate it? So step number one is you have to embody their life. You have to— what that will do is it will shed misunderstandings, judgments, assumptions, because you have to understand what their world is. Again, I spent 40 years hanging out with, you know, very affluent families in mansions. And I'll tell you what, their world is not full of rainbows and unicorns. It is challenging. I wouldn't want it, to be honest with you. You know, I wouldn't even want it because they're lovely people. I love every one of the clients I ever worked with. There are only 2 clients in 40 years. One client I fired; the other client never became a client because I didn't like her attitude from day one. I was like, I wouldn't work with her. Two in 40 years. So I think that's a pretty good— I worked with lovely people who are very family-centric. They were hiring a family photographer. They cared about their family, but their lives are challenging. Man, I said, I don't know if I would want it. So obviously, my level of empathy increased, and when your level of empathy increases, your ability to really understand them also increases, and your judgments and assumptions of what you think it must be like to live on Easy Street hopefully fall away. The second thing you need to embody is what's the lifestyle you want. This goes beyond vision boards. Like, I'm talking about embody it, right? Whatever scale of life you want, and that's a very personal choice, but it has to not be foreign to you in order for you to achieve it. So if you desire a lifestyle that's relaxed, a lifestyle that is without financial restrictions to some degree, if you desire a life of greater ease and financial ease, you have to know what that feels like. That can't feel foreign to you. So the more you can— I mean, when I was starting out with what little money I made as a photographer, I spent it on luxurious experiences, which had a twofold benefit. On one hand, I'd go to a spa, go to a restaurant, it helped me see their world, but I also didn't want such luxuries to be foreign to me anymore. I wanted it to be natural because that's a process of receiving. When you, when that becomes your normal, you're able to receive it more. So there's a real energetic quality to what it means to embody the life of the people you want to serve and embody the life that you want.

Another way that we have to show up is we have to be not just great. I've heard you say that great isn't good enough anymore, that we have to have this amazing transformation. Emotionally, but our work and our stuff, just being great doesn't match their expectations. Can you talk about that?

Yeah, I mean, it's a big part of when I launched my book, Sell to the Rich, I mean, literally the tagline was great isn't good enough, right? Great has become standardized, you know, whether it's great service, great quality, great products, that's table stakes. Right? Everybody's expecting great. So when they receive great, they don't tell anybody. It doesn't surprise them. If they receive less than great, they're going to tell everybody they know on Facebook. So you have to go beyond great. And I look at it as the exceptional level, like what's beyond— like, how do you really blow them away? One of the ways of doing this, and again, easier for photographers than most, because we're in their lives. What moves people is what you know about them. Making people feel seen is incredibly powerful. I'll give you a specific example. We had a procedure in my photography business that when someone rescheduled an appointment, which was pretty frequent— we had a very busy clientele, lives changed quickly. But anytime one of my team members received a message that a client was needing to postpone, either they called, they emailed, they text, in whatever way my team member could, they would inquire like, oh, you know, or actually, honestly, most times the clients offered it. "Oh, my gosh, I have to reschedule because my daughter's soccer team made the playoffs." Or, you know, they would give it, they would give a reason. Or my team member would ask like, oh, my gosh, I hope everything's okay. What's, you know, is there a reason? That got recorded in a central system. I'm likely to be the next person that sees that client. I'm going to see them at their portrait session. I see them at their proof viewing appointment. I knew why they postponed a previous appointment, so when I saw them, I'm like, by the way, how did Susie's soccer playoff go? They're shocked, right? Emergency dental surgeries, you name it. I've heard all the reasons something needs— or just got too busy. I hope life has calmed down for you. I always started the appointment by acknowledging something we intimately knew about them. You know, it was systemized, right? And that's the key. It's bizarre how systems and technology can actually help your business be more personal. We used technology for my team to record the reason. It's always what I looked at before an appointment. I looked at our briefing. Like, what did I need to know about this client? Even if I knew them well, I wanted them to feel seen. I also wanted them, Pat, to know that we were talking about them when they weren't around, but in a favorable way. It makes people feel special when they know they're a topic of conversation because there's no way I would've known about the soccer game or their dental surgery if somebody on my team hadn't told me. In this case, it's in their digital file. But to them, it fades. That's how, you know, that's one of the, one of the ways I refer to going from great to exceptional is don't just think about client relationships. Think about client bonds. That's an up-leveled version. So I was looking to create a bond with clients, and we did this by knowing intimate details about their lives. Knowing, you know, or offering them things that they would never— we were always a step ahead. We were always several steps ahead of our clients, right? They would be like, oh, gosh, by the way, I need this. I already took care of that. Right? We were always ahead. These are the things that you could do to create a bond and a bond that in my case, 70% or more of my business came from repeat clients. Okay, so think about the bigger picture of that, Pat. When you have a 70% retention rate, I only had to market to get 30% new business. Okay, so that was a minimal amount of marketing. I did 150 sessions a year. My business was very mathematical. I did 150 sessions, 70% of which were going to be repeat clients, which we categorized in two ways. One were what we called annual clients. They were the clients that photographed every single year. And then there were what we called cycle clients. Cycle clients were those that had some sort of pattern that was evident, either every other year, every 3 years. Like we had recognized a pattern. We're the ones that reached out to them when it was their cycle. We didn't leave it up to them to remember, or it may be that they had kids that they wanted to make sure all got photographed at the same age. We didn't wait for them to remember. We contacted them and let them know, you know, so-and-so is 5 years old. We did your older kids at 5. Time to photograph again. We were able to control the volume because we looked at who photographed every year, who was a cycle client. That added up to 70% of the business every year for 15 years, right? So we were driving the business, and that bond came from the intimacy that was created between me and my clients. I had a staff of, at any given time, 4 to 5 people. If you ask my clients, they would think it was a business of 2, myself and my assistant who was with me for 8 years, 10 years actually. It looked like a business of 2 because everybody else is retoucher, the framer, everybody else is behind the scenes. I was their go-to guy and that was the business model. Create an intimate bond that kept clients in my world for decades.

We're almost out of time, but I want to ask a question that may help somebody if they're thinking, I am serving the luxury market and they want to do it better, or someone wants to shift into the luxury market. Can you comment on branding and messaging? Because it's more than just like making your logo royal blue and gold, and all of a sudden, you're now serving the luxury market. Like, I would imagine that market can smell that a mile away. Can you talk about branding and messaging?

Yes. And it is a more challenging market because their patterns on the internet are entirely different than most. Affluent market tends to not spend a lot of time in the market. Online, they have people that do things for them, but even a strong referral, they're likely to go to your website even for credibility. And that is often a huge break. So even if you are coming highly recommended, think about your own habits. You know, I'm always asking for restaurant recommendations. I still always go to the website to look at the photographs of the— I could care less about the menu. I'll eat anything. I just wanted a place that looks cool. You know, that the photographs of the restaurant are more important to me. So people are always going to go to— so your website, your branding. There is a look for sure, but the look is clean. It doesn't— the colors do have a message as well, but this is a clientele. I'll go in a little bit of a different direction, Pat. One of the questions we would ask any new client was what was their preferred method of communication. They could say email, they could say phone call, which I hated. What we were looking for is fun to say texting. I'm like, that's going to be a good client because there's a direct correlation to the speed at which somebody wants to get through something and how busy they are in their lives doing more important things. I didn't want to work with clients that had a lot of time in their hands. I wanted to work with the clients that wanted to get this moving. And you know what, as a photographer, they're also the ones that leave you alone to do your job, right? Because they don't— so it's kind of the same idea. It's like you have to— if understanding time is one of the biggest selling components of your client, of the luxury client, your website better be super simple, clean, easy, navigable— navigable, I think that's a word. They have to be able to get through your website really simply, and it has to speak their lingo. Hence, my first book called Lingo. So start there, buy the book, and buy the last one, Sell to the Rich. The combination of the two will really round it out. But you have to, again, why do you want to embody the lifestyle of the people you're serving? So that you can understand what lingo resonates for them. How do you need to speak to them? How do they see the world? Another way of looking at it, and I see this all the time, particularly with photographers, your website should be an indicator of the range of your price point. If you're having a lot of people, if you're trying to reach the luxury market, and you have a lot of people contacting you and shocked by your price, it's because your branding isn't warming them up, right? There should be— one of the questions I get asked all the time, should prices be on a website? I believe in having a range on the website, specifically if you're higher end. Just let people know they're in the ballpark. They don't need nickels and dimes. But are they at least in the range? Because they will just as much choose you because you're too inexpensive as whether you're too expensive. So that upfront branding messaging, it really has to look like your price point. Clean. So go to some other luxury brands, mimic what they're doing, would be a good place to start.

It's a fascinating discussion. It is a different way to look at the world that folks that aren't serving the luxury market wonder how you can exist in that space. Is there anything we haven't covered that isn't covered in the book, or the first book, that you want to share with people before we end the episode?

And in all seriousness, I do suggest my third book, Sell to the Rich, even if you're not striving for the luxury market because it's my most revealing book I've ever written because I really took the time to unpack very specific stories from my photography career. It was the first book I wrote after retiring from photography. I did my last photo shoot in September of '23. So it was only a little more than 2 years ago. And I could never have written that book when I was still in it, like when my head was still in this space. That was my first book I wrote since retiring when I sat down and thought about 40 years of memories. There's a story about a client in the book called Mrs. K, which is her initial. That so many people have asked me about this because it was one of my first really high-end clients that came marching at me because she felt I was completely ripping her off with my prices. And it was intimidating as heck, but boy, did I learn so much from that. It's that first thing I learned is that she gave me a second chance. She looked at me, she goes, I don't know what you think you're trying to get away with here, but rethink your approach, redo the invoice. I'll come back. Right? So she gave me a second chance to check in with myself and realize she wasn't wrong. Right? I was trying to price this thing like it was this à la carte, one thing at a time. And she's like, I get that. But there's also a point where I'm not willing to pay you any more than XYZ for the services you provide. And she was willing to pay a lot. And I cut that invoice I'll be honest with you, the invoice went from $50,000 to $25,000. She gave me a check on the spot. She wasn't wrong, right? But it took— so I share that book, a lot of stories like that, which will teach you a lot about buyer psychology, pricing psychology, the impact of pricing. As far as what else we haven't covered, you know, honestly, the most important thing you can do and so overlooked is what I mentioned about embodiment. Like I was a 23-year-old that grew up in a tiny country town. I just clearly understood who I was meant to serve. I just felt it in my bones. I just felt like I was more comfortable. I knew nothing about affluent people. I just felt like they would respect me because I had standards, right? And my own family didn't think like I did. So I found the people I was meant to serve. And then studied them, understood their world. That's the most important thing you can do if you are looking to level up in the luxury space, or if you're not currently at the level of space. Just please understand the people you want to serve. Be empathetic. Let down your guard. Let down your judgments and your assumptions. Open up your mindset. One of my favorite lines in my entire book, Pat, and I mean this sincerely, and it's true to me today as a coach as well. I loved my clients before I met them, and I grow to love them more that I got to know them. If you're not in that position, then I don't think, you know, you're kidding anybody. I loved my clients before I met them because I only call forward people that I wanted to work with. And then I got to know them and their families and their kids, and I just grew to love them more. That's a bond that goes way beyond customer relationship.

If someone wants to get the book, where do they get it?

Anywhere you want to buy online books. Amazon, Barnes Noble, Bookshop, which happens to be one I like. Bookshop gives 10% of proceeds back to independent bookstores. So I happen to be a big fan of Bookshop, but yeah, any place you can buy books online.

Fantastic conversation, Jeffrey. Thanks for coming on the show. I appreciate it.

My pleasure, Pat. Always a pleasure to be with you.

Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of The Professional Photographer Podcast. We are already scheming for our next episode, so hopefully you'll hit like and subscribe so we will show up in your feed next time you log in. The other thing you could do, which would be really great if you don't mind, leave us a comment. Tell us what did Jeffrey say that made you go, "Wow, I didn't think about it that way. Whoa, that's going to change the way that I do what I do." Those kinds of comments help us know that we're on the right track and producing a show that you want to see. The other thing you should do is, well, frankly, you should join Professional Photographers of America. If you're not yet a member, oh, man, you're missing it. PPA offers incredible resources like equipment insurance, top-notch education, and a supportive community of photographers ready to help you succeed. It's perfect for photographers who are serious about growing their business in a sustainable and profitable way. At PPA, you belong here. Discover more about membership at ppa.com. That's ppa.com. I'm Pat Miller, founder of the Small Business Owners Community and the host of the show. Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you right here next time. Take care.