Shownotes
In this episode, Kia interviews Allison Tyler Jones (http://atjphoto.com), all by herself, while Matt teaches at PPA Idaho. This is Allison’s first podcast, but she’s a veteran speaker and has been a photographer for 14 years. Kia was blown away the first time she heard Allison teach. Allison says her photography business was never just for fun, it has always been to support her family. She shoots exclusively in the studio, specializing in family and kids. Listen in to hear the 3 pillars that are working now in her business. Allison is excited that our industry overall is starting to become more positive. You don’t want to miss what Allison would and wouldn’t spend $1k on. You’ll love Allison’s take on the Oscar Wilde quote about being yourself, as everyone else is taken. You also don’t want to miss Allison’s personal habit that contributes to her success or her parting guidance.
Resources
Internet Resource:
Audible (Get two free book here)
Books:
Essentialism by Greg Mckeown (https://amzn.to/2XgFWMR)
The Pumpkin Plan by Mike Michalowicz (https://amzn.to/2Er5u2l)
Transcription was done by Temi.com which means it’s an AI generated transcript. The transcript may contain spelling, grammar and other errors, and is not a substitute for watching the video.
Allison: [00:01] This is Alison Tyler John’s and you are listening to from nothing to profit.
Speaker 2: [00:06] Welcome to from nothing to profit a photographer’s podcast with Matt and Kaia. We’re each week they talk to photographers and what is working in their business now so you can swipe those ideas and grow your business faster.
Kia: [00:23] This is Kiah today and I am interviewing Alison Tyler Jones all by myself. Matt is speaking at a convention today and so this is a first for me to do a solo interview and I think it’s at first for you Alison to do a full podcast.
Allison: [00:40] It is. I’m excited.
Kia: [00:43] Yeah, we’re so excited to have you here. Uh, although this is a first for Alison to do a full podcast. She is a veteran speaker and has been a photographer for uh, Gosh, how many years?
Allison: [00:56] Um, I think 1414
Kia: [00:59] years. Okay. I know it’s, it’s hard to know how long when you get our bios. So I first saw Alison at actually the national convention and I had not known who she was and I sat in her program and was blown away by how professional she is by how well she knows how to run a business and by how great her photography is. And what I loved about it is that she had come into photography, not from like a mom’s of the camera, which is, you know, very typical for women and also not from a, uh, like, uh, you know, like a big corporate job or something and wanting to do something else. She came at it from already being in the artistic industry. Uh, and so Alison, do you want to tell us more about yourself and your expertise?
Allison: [01:46] Sure. Am I, as Kaia said, I came into this industry a little bit sideways. I had a, on my own retail store. We were the first scrapbooking store outside of Utah. And I had that business for about 12 years in the late nineties, early two thousands. And, um, when we were selling that business off, I thought, well, I’ll just take six months off and I’ll just do a little bit of photography and tell I decide what it is that I’m going to do. But one thing is for sure I’m not going to make another hobby into a business. And so 14 years later, another hobby was made into a business. But I came from that aspect of when I had my scrapbooking store, the intention always was to make a profit that it had to support my family. And so when I came into a photography, uh, even though I started thinking that I would just do it for a little bit of time, the intention was always that it was going to be a business.
Allison: [02:45] And once I realized that this is what I was going to do, the intention was we’re gonna, uh, make it into a business that’s going to support my family. And so that was from the beginning. It kind of never was. Um, just for fun. Yeah. Well, it seems to me like when you do things, you do them in a really excellent way. And so even fun to you is doing things well? I’m assuming doing them all the way. A constant, uh, constant maximizing I guess you would say or I don’t know. Trying to always improve is something that’s really big for me. It’s also the thing that puts me in the fetal position in many, many aspects of my life. But it is something that I, I’m always striving to do better. So do you still scrapbook? No, that’s so sad because that kind of ruined me scrapbooking for my family.
Allison: [03:42] I always done that ever since I was a little kid. And then once I, once it was a business, I just didn’t really do it for my family anymore. I was doing it as samples for the store and um, so it kind of, it kind of ruined that for me actually. It was really sad. That’s when I have always have this vision of myself as like making these beautiful scrapbooks and creating these amazing moments. And I actually, the only scrapbook I have is a Christmas one and it’s not really even a scrapbook. It’s just like a, a book that you can like ride in. But I cut up all everyone’s Christmas cards and put them in every year and then write on it. And it’s like, well, but I’ve done 20 years and I think my last year. So I’m like, okay, well, wow, that’s awesome. Well, I, you know, with the scrapbooking store, actually, it’s funny because I had always, you know, I like many people, I love photography from when I was young and I was the photo editor of the yearbook when I was in high school.
Allison: [04:44] And so when I started that business, I thought, I really thought it would be more photography. Like I thought we were going to do, uh, have dark room because this was pre digital. I thought we were going to have dark rooms, we’re going to be doing Polaroid transfers and all these cool art journals and this really, really photographically heavy, uh, thing. And then I realized that everybody just wanted stickers and scissors that cut paper into weird shapes, you know? And so, um, but I realized that there was actually a lot of money on that. You know, we did about a million dollars a year on a $20 average sale. So we, we run a lot of volume through that business and it was a good business for a long time, but uh, you know, nobody really wanted to photography until the very tail and as everything was going digital then it was funny because all of our photography classes kind of took off and everybody wanted to do photography at that point.
Allison: [05:34] So you thought it was going to be more like kind of fine arts fucking but you it was more crowd. Totally. Yeah. Nobody, nobody can get Polaroid transfer. What like, I mean we did do a few of those classes but I’m really, everybody just wanted to pile on, you know, 50 stickers and, and, and it was fun. You know, we definitely went, went out and like an archival standpoint in acid, this and that. But you know, it was really, really fun. I look back now and I, I when we first started and we were, you know, putting up all these racks of stickers and all that stuff. I said to my business partner at the time, I said, you know where this is all going, we’re going to end up back where we started with, with like black pages, black photo corners, black and white pictures with like the little, you know, the little late, what is the word I’m looking for, the border around it. And then Hawaii, you know, riding in white pencil, we’re going to all come back from all this like excess back to this streamline. Simple. And it’s like when you look at artifact uprising and a lot of these places now that are, you know, fulfilling. That’s exactly what it is. It’s, I’ll come back to that really simple spare clean. So it’s kind of funny.
Kia: [06:40] Well that is interesting because when I heard you and had a scrapbooking store and then I saw your work, which you really just described your work, black and white, simple, clean. I was wondering where the connection was and it makes more sense that you had assumed it would be more of like an art based and now you’re your APP at. So let’s segue into your, your uh, current photography business because that ad, it sounds to me like your current photography businesses even more successful than your scrap booking business. And so, uh, this, the name of this podcast is from nothing to profit. What’s working now in the photography industry. And so I, we would love to know kind of what, what are you doing and you’re in your studio now with your photography now that you feel is really working well. Okay.
Allison: [07:24] So our studio, I am, I do exclusively studio work. I gotten to the point where I really, we don’t do any location and I specialize in families and kids and my business is basically based on three pillars, which is that it has to have an artistic fields. So it’s our, that at least my tagline is art that happens to be your family. I want our longterm relationship with my clients, so I’m not a one and done. I don’t want to create a marketing arm that’s just going to chat, jam a bunch of people in my funnel. I’m hoping that some, some of them, well we’ll buy and then I don’t care if I ever see him again. So we’re really based on relationship and referral. And then, uh, the other pillar is a finished product. So, uh, we create pieces of art for our client’s home and that’s where we start from.
Allison: [08:18] That’s what we’re speaking from. The second, the very first phone call we’re talking about finished products. We do not sell printable digital files, so are a longterm relationship and a finished product. Those are the three things that my business is based on. So it, it’s working for us and that, um, we’re not competing with the, anybody that’s a shooting share model in our, in our market. Uh, we just, I don’t really, we don’t really see ourselves as is in competition in that respect. It doesn’t mean that we think we’re beyond competition or whether we think we’re so cold. It’s just that that’s, we’re just in a different business. We’re providing fine art for the home. Uh, we’re helping solve those kinds of problems. We’re not so much focused on, oh, what’s this cool. We’re not some, we’re focused on the shooting. We definitely want to create something amazing and fabulous for that, but it is for their home.
Allison: [09:19] And so that’s really what’s working for us is that I’m not, I’m trying not to be distracted by everything else that’s going on because I started out in my home for four years. I, when I saw my scrapbook in store, um, I didn’t, you know, want it to just go into overhead overnight because I didn’t have a business established. And so I have a home that has a basement. And so for four years I shot out of that basement and did a sales sessions in my dining room. And then once it was kind of taking over the house and I could see that I was at a certain level of income and I knew that I could support, uh, that I could still be profitable and have a studio, a rental, you know, be able to pay studio rent. Then we made the leap to s s downtown studio.
Allison: [10:08] And we’ve been there since 2009 and so, um, once, so when I was shooting from home and in the basement I was doing maybe 40% studios, about 60% location. And then as I went into the studio just more and more, the more I, I’ve always loved studio work from, from day one. I’ve loved it and I love the ability to control the light no matter what time of year when no matter what time of day. And I love, uh, I love the relationship with the subject. I love that interaction. And so I just felt like that when I was either introducing props or a lot of background or environment, it was detracting from the, to me, the most interesting part of the image, which was the person. So I just, the more spare and clean I got, the happier I was with what I was doing. And then it also happened to be that as I was not running around, you know, for three hours getting to and from a shoot and breaking it up and putting it up and taking it down, it just was so great. The studio just seemed to really be a great fit for me.
Kia: [11:16] Well, and you, uh, because you do the studio lighting and the really simple images that plays into the three pillars of your business. It’s so funny because I’m like, ah, I should be taking it. But you’re your simple simple images obviously look more like art, but, and then your, you know, the simple images are going to go in any home, but also because you’re doing similar images over time that lets you keep that relationship where you’re not creating one specific look for one specific time. So that’s really interesting. Hear that.
Allison: [11:53] Uh, so my next question for you is what are you most fired up about in our industry? Um, what is something that you’re excited about? Something that you’re worried about? Just uh, you know, you, I know you just spoke at the, again, didn’t choose speak this year emerging. Yeah. At the national convention. And so I’m assuming you saw trends and kind of thought about it a bit. So what are, tell us what you’re most fired up about the photography industry now. The thing that I’m most excited about as I really feel like, you know, 2003 was when it was the first year that more people shot digital then found. And so, you know, exponentially that’s just grown. And here we are. And I think that we had that a ton of people coming into the industry kind of churning around down at the bottom, editing 24 hours a day, not seeing their kids.
Allison: [12:46] A lot of women, a lot of women not valued and not valuing what it was that they were doing. Like, oh well it doesn’t take me that much time so I shouldn’t charge that much or whatever, you know, fill in the problem here. You know, and I, it’s interesting to me to see people that have, uh, you know, and our trade organization would say that they’re the, at the bottom, there are a lot of photographers that are new that are coming in and they kind of churn around the bottom at about the two year mark. And usually they wash out at about two years. They’ve just had it. They, they’ve, they’re editing themselves blind. They’re tired. They’re not making any money. It’s horrible. And it’s taking away from their family. They have no life. But if they can get, if they can get some education, some point in that two year period and realize, oh wait, I actually have to charge it.
Allison: [13:34] You know what I’m worth. I actually have to, you know, make this into a business and take this a little bit more seriously. Um, they can do really, really well. And so I, I saw a lot of that when I was at imaging this year. There are people that are just out there doing really, really well. And I’ve, um, I belong to a group of photographers. Um, it’s a group called XXV. Um, and it’s just, uh, you know, some of the really great portrait photographers and a commercial photographers and we s we all sat in a room in spring of last year and every single person that stood up said, this isn’t my best year yet. And so I think that’s pretty amazing when you hear the dire or if you get online, like, I mean, my gosh, if you go on to any Facebook group, it’s a doom and gloom, oh my gosh, everything’s going to hell in a handbasket.
Allison: [14:28] There’s so much competition. All these mommy, mommy know moms with the camera or just ruining, you know, ruining the whole industry. And it’s not true. It’s not true. So the, you know, the, the, um, the recession’s over people are spending and that they’re not going to just spend on just anything. There’s a specific thing and it’s going to be a specific thing for, you know, Kai, you’re going to have a different thing that people are spending with you then they would spend with me. But I think those who are willing to really figure out what their secret sauce is and how they want to do business and what the value of that is, um, are going to do really, really well. And that’s true of any industry and any time in history, uh, but this is the best time in history. It’s the baby boomers have them the largest amount of disposable income and the history of the world.
Allison: [15:18] And there, those are definitely my clients because that’s that older mom, um, that the millennials are hitting their stride in their careers and they’re starting to, I’m starting to see a little trickle of millennials, Coleen saying, um, you know, I just want a real photographer. And I’m like, well, what does that mean to you? And they’re like, well, you know, I mean, we’ve been going with my luck. Sister in law has a nice camera or somebody in my neighborhood, you know, and we just want somebody that is just like knows what they’re doing that can tell us how to dress, can tell us what to do and that we’ve heard that y’all, you know, printed out and come and hang it on our wall. And that’s what we want. I just don’t want to have to deal with it anymore. So, uh, you know, we’re not catering to a DIY clients how we’re catering to people that want to have something done for them.
Allison: [16:04] So that I think that those things are, I see more and more of that and I think that there’s enough business out there for everybody. And I feel like that the, our industry as a whole is starting to become a little more positive. You’re always going to have the negative naysayers out there who are going to, you know, just say that it’s all going bad and it’s never going to be good. But usually those are people that are either scared or what. There are people that, um, maybe they had it good at one time and never really evolved their business.
Kia: [16:36] Yeah, I think that’s definitely true because I’ve been in the business long enough to see you the transition from film to digital to see the transition from proofs to, you know, in person sales. And so every time that there’s a change, there are people that don’t have a vision and are just used to doing what they’re doing. Uh, but one of the things that you were just saying is, uh, I think what, what you’re seeing is that the consumer is starting to have more money than time. And so as a, you know, photographer, we’re in both a product in the service industry. And so to be able to help them gain more time, which is what you’re doing, uh, they’re, they’re not having to figure everything out. You’re consulting with them, you’re planning, right? Yeah. So, but you’re helping people trade their money for more time and service, so,
Allison: [17:25] right. And what I found is that even people that have a lot of money and there is still, it’s, it’s rare to find somebody who will take responsibility for something, who will...
