Shownotes
Matt & Kia interview Chris Scott in this episode. He is based in Colorado Springs and he and his wife specialize in helping shoot and burn photographers transition to in person sales and printing. Chris and his wife started out as shoot and burn photographers and switching to in person sales changed their life. Virtual/remote in person sales is a great solution to not having a sales space or working with out of town clients. We just need to educate our clients on what they can do with their pictures. The selling happens in the planning meeting. Don’t miss what Chris would and wouldn’t spend his $1k on – if you’re a consistent listener to this podcast, you’ll be surprised! You definitely want to listen to hear the best advice Chris every received and his mantra for daily life.
Chris’s Favorite Resources
Manychat – chatbot for FB messenger
10x Marketing formula (https://amzn.to/2YyfG01)
https://theprintmakersystem.com/
[00:01] Hey, this is Chris Scott and you are listening to from nothing to profit.
[00:05] Welcome to from nothing to profit of photographers podcast with Matt and Kayak where each week they talk to photographers about what is working in their business now so you can swipe those ideas and grow your business faster.
[00:21] Hey everybody, so super excited about this episode. So my friend Chris Scott is on, it’s going to be a little bit different, um, than some of the other podcasts where, where you’ve interviewed photographers because Chris, uh, and his wife actually don’t live very far from me and Carl or Colorado Springs, but they own a swift galleries as well as um, in Chris. You can tell me more about this, but you also have this whole mission right now where you’re trying to move people from shooting burn to in person sales, right? Yup,
[00:50] Yup. Absolutely. So we, we run, um, it’s a, the printmaker system, which is kind of our education side of things and a swift galleries, which is the tool itself that helps people, uh, well people helps photographers show their clients with their photos, will look like on their walls at the right size and then walks them step by step through an entire in person sales meeting. And we really kind of specialize in helping those shoot and burn photographers make the switch from shooting burden over to in person sales. That’s awesome. Yeah. Yeah. And we do that through the podcast too, which is called the print maker podcast.
[01:23] Perfect. And Chi, you’ve never met Chris before, right?
[01:26] No, but I’m super excited when you told me what he was talking about. I just feel like that, um, Chris that, you know, I want to, what I, one of the things I want to learn is why you decided to make that, you know, one of your main things is teaching people how to do in person sales. But from my viewpoint, I just feel like that is a way to really change photographers lives and change it from something that they do on the side to something that they can do full time. So that’s what I’m guessing you’re gonna say, but I’m curious. So,
[01:55] Ooh, interesting. Cause I might come at it from a different, a slightly different angle. So the reason that this is so, uh, that we’re so passionate about this is because Adrian and I did run our own photography business for a number of years and we started out at a shoot and burn photographers. We made about $150 on average per session. And in our first year of switching to in person sales, we went from those hundred $50 average is $220,000 in that first year. And it was absolutely life changing for us. You know what I mean? It sounds overly dramatic. Like it changed her life. Snow. It did. There is, it’s a completely different life when, um, you know, when you’re kind of just scraping by to like, okay, we don’t really have to worry about money. And we can really choose who we want to work with at this point.
[02:45] So we just started teaching some of our friends, this is back when we lived in Nashville. We started teaching some of our friends who are also photographers about what it is that we were doing. And that evolved into starting an APP. It was preveal, uh, that was an iPad app that that was kind of the precursor to where we are now with swift galleries. So, yeah, and, and you know, my, my goal at this point is not necessarily to take people through the exact steps that we did were where it’s like, okay, now I’m going to show, I feel like there’s so much six-figure hype in the, in the industry right now, and there’s really, there are a lot of photographers who don’t necessarily want to go full time, but they want to make this worth their time. And that’s really where we’re focused is let’s take those, those moms, uh, you know, the stay at home moms or the weekend warriors or the, you know, these shooting burners and let’s figure out how we can help them make this worth their while they’re spending this time away from their families.
[03:44] They’re spending this time away from, you know, other commitments. How can we help them just make it worth their time and help them feel as fulfilled as we did? You know, I mean, there’s something, we talk about money a lot. We talk about, Oh yeah, we made you know, x number of dollars a year and all of that. But that doesn’t even touch that feeling that you get as an artist when a client hands you a check for $3,000 and then is like crying and hugging you and thanking you like that is the most surreal thing ever. And there’s something to that as an artist that’s like, wow, I made this money. I didn’t just clock in and clock out. This person thinks I’m worth this. So if we can bring all of those things to these people who are just kind of slogging away day in and day out, then then I think that we’ve done our job.
[04:33] Very cool. Okay. Math, what’s our first question here? I think the start with kind of won’t Chris, what you see that’s working, um, in the industry now. So you know, and you can talk more about how that relates to the printmaker thing or whatever, but in the year, what do you, what do you think’s working for photographers now that you would want our audience to pay attention to? Yeah, so virtual or remote in person sales right now I think is, is a, um, something that a lot of photographers are not really tapping into. So this really fits in line with what it is that we’re doing. You know, trying to take these people who, who don’t necessarily have a sales space or you know, all of this time to travel to and from their clients’ homes or you know, any of that stuff and saying, hey, you know what, you don’t need all of that to do in person sales.
[05:21] Really all you need is a laptop and an Internet connection. So being able to run a full in person sales meeting using something like zoom and obviously I’m going to say swift galleries and being able to get those benefits of in person sales without really all of the, the uh, the overhead commitment, the, you know, the space having to clean up after your kids before somebody comes over, you know, the travel time, all of that. Um, we’re seeing just a huge amount of success with our members doing remote in person sales. Basically just doing an in person sales meeting in realtime. Just doing it all online though. Yeah. And so the right and then in person
[05:58] sales is that you’re going to guide the customer through the purchasing process and not just put it on a website and let them just figure it out for themselves and justify everything up and down and you know, you’re actually there to help them. Exactly. What you’re saying is like you’re still doing that guide and you’re just doing it virtually because you’re on a zoom call where you know, Jeff, maybe chair sharing screens are looking at each other through webcams or whatever and you’re able to still guide them through that process.
[06:20] Yup. Exactly. So the reason, there are a handful of reasons that we believe in person sales work. So number one is you are there, you’re, you’re that guide, you know, and there’s, man, there’s so much to this, there’s a lot that really needs to happen before the sales meeting. But just with respect to the sales meeting itself, you’re there, you can guide them through it. Um, another really big aspect of it is that everyone is setting aside that time to do it. So that’s a real big problem that we see with online sales is, you know, you send over an email that says, hey, your galleries ready and your client’s going to sit there in their boxer shorts at, you know, 11 o’clock at night or, or worse at five in the afternoon. And then life just gets in the way the kids need to eat and it’s time for bed and you know, all of that stuff.
[07:02] And those images that they genuinely are excited about, they just don’t, they never set aside the time to do anything with them to do something about it. And then you layer on top of that, uh, what we were just talking about, this idea that the clients really don’t know what to do with stuff. You know, everybody talks about, oh my clients only want digital files. Well that’s really our fault. We as an industry have taught our clients that that’s all they need. So if you can step into that cap now and say, hey, you know what, there are other things that you can do with these. And, and if you truly believe, and this is what we believe, that my job is as a photographer isn’t done until I’ve helped you figure out what to do with these, you know, so that, so that I’m doing more than saying, Hey, here are your files. Good luck figuring out what to do with them, you know, something like that. So instead I’m saying, Hey, I can walk you through this. And you’re exactly right. I’m doing this all online so that they don’t have the time commitment and the space commitment. Basically. I just need a blank wall behind me and a laptop and an Internet connection. So
[08:05] that’s awesome. Well, and this is really, here’s a really cool example. Like I’ve always believed exactly what you said that like, we just need, you know, we’re, I mean an educate our clients that there what they can do with their portraits because most people never buy photography. It’s similar to like them buying a car, but the auto industry spends billions of dollars a year trying to educate them on how to buy a car. Yeah. But we, we have, we have an uphill challenge of having to do that without all the advertising dollars. But, um, it’s really interesting. So we just did a dance. We just photographed as dance studio and um, did a lot of tips that we learned from Rose Coleman, who we had on the podcast a months ago. And it was amazing. We actually did more print sales and digital sales. At this and that. And it wasn’t really an incentive to do prints over digital. We just use some of her systems to kind of educate them what, what was possible. And you know, it was definitely 70% sales and 30% digital. This was really cool. Yeah, that’s incredible.
[08:59] Well, I was just gonna say, I, you know, I’ve had, I’ve been doing this for 20 years and so I was totally print and then a partial digital. And then, uh, I started a new studio and I was just like, I don’t want to deal with this. And so I was mostly digital and now my clients are coming back and saying, we don’t want digital files because we’re not doing anything with them. And so I’m actually transitioning all my pricing to have prints go with everything. And I even, I don’t know, I have a sad story that goes along with us. I don’t know, you know, how, what all you guys do to tell to convince people to do it. But, um, I can’t get into my digital archives from 10 or 12, 15 years ago. Like my, those old hard drives, I can’t get to link to my new computers.
[09:49] And so I just had a friend pass away about six months ago and I had photographed her, but I could not get to those files. And so I ended up, we had printed albums of her and I photographed images from the album and use those. And so I’m just like so, so convinced. I’m like, you have to print these because there’s no guarantee that there’s, you know, I mean, apple changes, they’re a little dongle every time they make a new thing. Right. You know, there’s no guarantee I’m going to be able to get to these.
[10:16] Yeah. We, we, we jokingly refer to it as, it’s cool. I backed all my photos up on my space. Yeah. You know, it’s like, yeah, nobody’s ever saying that, but you know, at some point that’s what everybody was thinking and, and you know, this technology’s gonna Change.
[10:31] Yeah. Yeah. That’s awesome. Okay. So real quick and kind of want to you to tell us a little bit more about your story in terms of like, just kind of quickly how you ended up into the, in the software space, um, and kind of that, and then right after that we’ll, we’ll take a break and then we’ll ask you some more questions about where you see the industry going and stuff. So, yeah. So how did, how’d you end up like, and like, I mean in software, I don’t know what you want to call it, but I mean maybe sales as a service, but our software is a service, but how’d you end up there?
[11:00] Yeah, it was, um, it was really just kind of dumb luck. We, uh, yes, we were shooting, uh, weddings and portraits full time, uh, for a number of years. And we were waiting for pro select to make a mobile version of pro select cause we were approached select users at the time and they didn’t do it. They didn’t do it. We literally waited a year and then we, um, we just said, screw it, let’s, let’s try this. Um, and it was one of these things where it was like a, the husband of a friend and I knew nothing about software development at the time. Like I was like, Hey, your husband writes code. Right? Like, and that was to me, that was like, oh, so clearly he can do this. And, um, and we just got really lucky and a, and he could do it and, and that’s, you know, preveal kind of took off.
[11:47] Right. I mean, just immediately took off. It was very surprising to us. Um, and, um, and yeah, that was right about the time that we, we had our, our first kid, we have a, now we have a, gosh, a six year old daughter and a four year old son. And, um, yeah, that was about the time that we had our first kid. We moved from, from Tennessee to Colorado, and it took over our lives, you know, as we jokingly or not, not even jokingly, we thought, you know, okay, we’re gonna, we’re gonna launch this thing and it’s gonna make us money while we sleep. And then like, now we just don’t sleep anymore. You know, it, it just took over. So it actually ended up being a really good transition for us. I, I was, um, recently diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and was starting to, I’d now that I look back, uh, I was starting to really deal with a lot of those symptoms where I couldn’t, you know, we’d get to the end of a, of a doubleheader wedding weekend and I wouldn’t be able to pick things up for a few days or you know, worse.
[12:46] I wouldn’t be able to grab a glass of water in the mornings or something like that. And I thought, wow, I’m just really out of shape. Come to find out now. It was all of this stuff kind of coming up. So all of these kinds of culminated in us moving markets and all of that and saying, Hey, you know what? This is actually a fulltime job. Let’s treat it like one. So we bowed out of, of shooting full time and then just started running software. And from there we made our, our education a little bit more formal, a as opposed to like just sitting down and having milkshakes with friends and talking about what it is that we’re doing. We started, you know, putting together some courses and stuff and that’s kind of led to where we are now with the, with the printmaker system. So what we do now is, um, is a course called the path to a printmaker and it kind of walks people through how to attract the right clients to their business, how to excite them about products, how to, um, and then how to delight them with the sales process that feels nothing like sales. And then we pair that with, with the swift galleries tool, uh, and then a, a community that we call the per maker coalition online.
[13:49] Cool. Yeah, I think so. I think so cool about your platform is like, I think the power of your, of what you’re doing is in the education. Yes. And then it’s like, but you know how the education goes, you watched the new, you’re like, oh yeah, well this sounds all great. Like, okay, I get it. But you know, in the ideal world, of course I would do all this stuff, Chris. And then you’re able to say, well like here’s swift galleries. That’s kind of the shortcut. Yup. You know, to make this happen for you, you know, like where you don’t have to like wreck, wreck your brain around it. It just makes it simple for you. So that’s pretty cool that like, you know, they, they kind of go together.
[14:23] Thanks man. That’s, and that was really our goal was this idea that like, you know, education and tools, it’s all theirs. I mean, education at this point is a diamond dozen. You know, you can find this stuff online, but it becomes this, this kind of mass of like, so we refer to it or to me it’s sort of like I’m dumping like a dozen different puzzles into one pile and then trying to make sense of the mess because I have a ton of access to education, but I really don’t how this fits together. So you know, if you look at like the Facebook groups that are out there like yeah, they’re a wealth of free information, but it’s literally coming at you every few seconds in no discernible order. And you’re like, well how does this tip from this person fit with this thing from this person fits with this step from over here.
[15:11] So we wanted to look and say like, you know what? We’re really stinking good at this. So let’s just build out this full end to end thing that says like, look, we’re going to show you how to sell. Then we’re going to show you how to take that concept of sales and apply it to the tool that we’ve already built. It was literally built to support this sales process in the first place and then we’re going to show you how to launch that. So it really is this kind of end to end solution where you could come in the front end knowing nothing about in person sales and come out the back end, you know, 21 days later with an in person sales business launched and you have the tools, you have the education, you have everything in place. So that was kind of our goal is to take that person who knows nothing about this and say, hey, you know what, don’t worry about searching all over the Internet for it. Here’s everything you need and can you make it better from here? Absolutely. But here’s your baseline. Let’s get you launched. Yeah.
[16:07] Wait, don’t, don’t move...
