Maximizing Photography Sales Through Authentic Connections & Time Management with Brady Puryear

Maximizing Photography Sales Through Authentic Connections & Time Management with Brady Puryear === Introduction and Setting the Stage --- ​[00:00:00] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Brady, I am So happy that we're finally doing this. I feel like we've been talking about this for a while So we're here we're doing it. I am very happy to to have this conversation I know that you're a wealth of knowledge when it comes to a lot of just photography in general, but of course You've got so much experience in the photography industry on the business side that There's gonna be a lot of little nuggets here For every listener to to walk away with so I'm really excited about about what you have to share today Brady Puryear: Very cool. Yeah. Sales Challenges in Photography --- Scott Wyden Kivowitz: So so one thing that I am really bad at really bad at is sales I know that anyone can be trained to do sales I [00:01:00] know that I also don't have a salesy bone in my body to begin with So when it comes to my own photography work, I, I, I don't do, you're going to hate me for saying this. I don't do sales meetings or calls. but, I know that you have done that for couples over the many years. Can you tell me more about your workflow when it came to sales calls with your wedding clients? Brady Puryear: Yeah, so, first off, just a little bit of an intro. So, I'm Brady Puryear. I own Blacksmith Print Co., which makes photo albums. 4 Photographer's been doing that for 11 years. Prior to that, I was photographing weddings for 12 years. I photographed a little over 500 weddings. So, I have Scott Wyden Kivowitz: You know, a little bit about what you're talking Brady Puryear: I know a little bit about it, right? I've been in every scenario, every wedding photographers I've ever thought of. one of my claims to fame is, I said, I've shot so many weddings that I've shot at least 30 weddings where we didn't plan for rain and it did rain. Like I've, I've shot, [00:02:00] I've shot just 30 of those, let alone a whole. Right. So, yeah, so we're talking about kind of a post sales, like post Post wedding workflow. Is that what you're talking about? Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yep. Brady Puryear: Yeah. Creating Value in Sales --- Brady Puryear: So really, I think the thing here in terms of workflow for me is we have to think about sales, not as something that we convince people of, but as something that people want to do. and it's really more about reciprocity. You giving to someone and then them wanting to give to you in return. The example I always give is, Scott, if I take you out to dinner like 10 times and I always pay, the 11th time you're going to get there 20 minutes earlier, find the server, give them your card, because people don't like to feel like the scales are unbalanced. So if we're doing a good job as photographers, we shouldn't have to sell. We should charge a client a price, exceed expectations far beyond that price to a level where the client is happy to bring that level even Purchases after the wedding does that make sense? [00:03:00] right and so Really focusing not so much necessarily on the meeting and the and the workflow of the meeting But on the value that you deliver up to it. So here's an example of how we increased our sales, for post wedding with stuff that we did beforehand. Engaging Clients and Personal Touches --- Brady Puryear: So we would call the bride, talk with her just about all her favorite things about the groom and how he is and all that kind of stuff. Things that was about their relationship and what really connected them. Then we made sure to focus on that kind of stuff, their engagement photos and their wedding photos. We had the same conversation with the groom. However, we took it a step further and said, would we be able to talk to your parents? And so we would start to call parents and say, Hey, you know, for the dad, like, Hey, you know, tell us a little bit about how you're feeling about walking your daughter down the aisle. And he's like, ah, man, you know, I'm going to be nervous and all this kind of stuff. And then we would, we would pitch like a [00:04:00] father daughter first look. Right. And I said, you know, what's nice is sometimes we do this for father daughter first looks. They're really great. They're a lot of fun. It's just a special moment for the two to you. And you can kind of dump some of that adrenaline, that pre walk down the aisle adrenaline, have a nice moment with the two of you. and then we find people can just kind of walk them down the aisle a little more calmly. Is that something you might be interested in? And the dads would be like, oh yeah, that sounds awesome. I'm sure, you know, my daughter would love that. So then we'd put that into the schedule months ahead of time. So on the post side, Like the client's going to love it. They're going to love that. We set that up. They're going to love that. We talked to their dad. and then when it comes time to, you know, pick images, you don't think they're going to make an entire spread out of the father daughter first look. Of course. Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Of course they are. Yeah. Brady Puryear: and so we're not shooting it exclusively for the spread in terms of like our intentions. It's a by product of when we do more work for our customers and create more value for our [00:05:00] customers. There's more valuable things that got photographed, and that's more that they want to add to the product on the end of the process. Does that make sense? Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. Yeah, Brady Puryear: So like, someone would spend more money with you because you did that. Scott, you wouldn't have to do any more sales, right? You would just be like, oh, how could I, how could I go a step further here? And I mean, we went, we went far with this. Like, we, we had a client whose parents that we wanted to talk to, and the mom only spoke German. So I went on Upwork, and I hired a translator, and And I talked to the mom and said, Hey, you know, tell me a bit about some of the moments that you're looking forward to the most. and what are the parts that you love about your relationship with your daughter the most? And what, what would be like the most important things for us to capture? Just from a relationship standpoint of view, not a shot list. We're going to, we got the shot list under control, right?and have that conversation. Well, then that became a huge thing, you know, I got to kind of say hi a little bit to the mom on the wedding day. And then the [00:06:00] bride's telling the coordinator like, Oh my gosh, like Brady, like hired a translator to talk to my mom, to ask her what was important about our wedding and the coordinator was like, what? So then all of a sudden. vendor wide, I become known as the kind of person that goes way above and beyond for my clients. That leads to a lot of other referrals as well, right? And so some of the workflow side of this thing where people spend more money with you, people refer you more business. It's not all just like Lead driven, ticky tacky, spend money, there's parts to that. But really when you just give a ton of value, you get stuff back. Post-Wedding Workflow Tips --- Brady Puryear: Now on the actual workflow side, post wedding we would do a slideshow and then we would start to build the album with the client from scratch. The key difference there is a couple of things. Oh, sorry. The last one is Per image. So let's say we're pre designing. Well, now we've got to finish the wedding. Then we've got to find time [00:07:00] to pre design a book and then things get delayed from there, right? But if we can just design with the client, then all of a sudden, as soon as the wedding is being done, edited, and if you're using Imagen, hopefully, very quickly, then you can just schedule that meeting closer to when the event actually happened and excitement is still high, right? Show them all the photos. You're going to build it together. So you have zero to pre design. and then the reason that we like per images that we found in meetings where I would design with clients and bring them in the studio, we do this big design. If it was per spread, if the design got to be like at a price point that was, you know, they just chose a ton of photos and had like a really big upgrade and it was outside of their budget when they went to cut, they didn't want to cut photos. So then it was like, well, can we take these photos? eight images and these four images and put them on a spread together and cut a spread to save money and just put 12 images on one page. And I'm like, well, that's going to [00:08:00] look terrible. Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yes, it Brady Puryear: the client's like, well, I don't care if it looks terrible because I don't want to cut out this photo of my grandma. And now we're having a debate with our customer about what is appealing aesthetically and what they don't want to cut memory wise from their wedding. That's not a beta I want to be in. Right. And so if we just build it up and then it's per photo, And it's too expensive. And now we need to cut, then we can just cut images, you know, Hey, look, you got a couple, three dress photos here. Let's get two or two of those. And it's easy. So then you're building your revisions processes much faster. The other thing I'll say from being on the print side now, only the, the album company for 11 years is every once in a while we do get emails from angry brides. Right. Scott Wyden Kivowitz: You do as the printer? Brady Puryear: yes, right. They're mad at their photographer. The reason they're mad at their photographer is because their photographer has chosen to do it the first way, [00:09:00] right? Now, some of our clients do this. It works super well for them. And if it's working well for you, great, awesome. You've got great communication. You've got good customers, but I have other clients who are also good at that. And still, eventually they run into this issue, which is they get a client, they explain everything to them. Look, your album's got this, they do pre design, which I don't like, they do a big pre design, 50 spread, 60 spread book or something like that, right? Present it to the client, the client falls in love with it, then they tell them that to upgrade it to the, the dream album is going to be 4 grand, 6 grand. Now they told them all of that ahead of time, hey look, I'm going to design a bigger book than what was included, and you understand that, and they go, yes, we understand that. However, then when they get presented with it, and they're in love with it, and they don't feel like they can cut it, and then the price point is too high. Some people's reaction to that is just like, Oh, this is a, this is a bait and switch situation that I'm in. And they're using my wedding photos to do it to me. And they email us like our [00:10:00] photographer is trying to F us. And can't we just buy the album directly from you? And then I explained to them like, no, you can't also, we don't do design. So you'd have to spend hundreds of dollars on design software and all these other things. You would actually save any money by going around your photographer. and also, regardless, we wouldn't sell to you anyway. Right? In the situation where you don't do pre design, and you just show them all their photos and then design the album with them, if it gets really big, who made it big? They did. Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. Brady Puryear: So then, at that point, if they told, Hey, look, you've got 60 images included, we're gonna go ahead and build, see where we land, and then they do 160, they're the ones that built it 100 images over, not you. Right. You Scott Wyden Kivowitz: And then at that point they're going to feel so Brady Puryear: should use that one. Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. Brady Puryear: So you'll never get that. Scott Wyden Kivowitz: in their picks. Brady Puryear: What's that? Scott Wyden Kivowitz: They're going to feel so invested in their picks, Brady Puryear: Yeah. Cause they're part, Scott Wyden Kivowitz: that they're not going to want to remove. [00:11:00] Brady Puryear: you know, but at the end of the day, they'll never feel like you created this huge thing and presented it to them, like, they're the ones that chose it, right? They're like, I want this, I want this. And you're like, okay, like, you know how many you have included. Right. So, so I find for revisions purposes, that per spread works better. Also, too, if you do do retouching, you know, your cost is per image.so if you have 10 images on a page and you got to retouch 10 of them, that's going to cost more money than if you have one image on a page, right? And so I think the tying what you charge to what your costs are is smart, but more so for the revisions process, not getting into the consolidation of spreads to save money situation is good for workflow, speeds up the thing. And then also too. Why would you spend all your time designing an album that then you're just going to go and end up redesigning with the client and potentially upsetting them. So those are my kind of post wedding workflow tips, which is create the value up front so [00:12:00] that they feel like, Oh my gosh, Scott, you have just absolutely killed it for us. Like, how could we ever repay you? You've done such a great job and go so far above and beyond what we could have asked for. If they go in with that mindset after they've seen their photos, they're going to be completely happy to spend money. You're not going to have to like pitch them anything. Thank you. That's number one. And then the next couple are just, you know, if you're going to do a consult where you design with your client, don't waste your time doing pre design. It's not to your benefit anyway. Design with your customer and, you know, charge per image so you don't get into the whole consolidation thing. Those are my tips. Scott Wyden Kivowitz: let me ask you something. So Designing Albums with Clients --- Scott Wyden Kivowitz: designing with your client.are you still using the same, you know, one of the five or whatever album design software is that are, you know, available to all of us as photographers? are you still using that? in front of your client, knowing that they all have the easy, the easy button, or are you using something else to design the album that's more of a manual process to, [00:13:00] like, what, what does that look like? And, you know, whether you want to drop the name of the software that you have always used or not, it doesn't matter to me. Brady Puryear: I mean, I've used all the softwares, you know, I started shooting weddings in 2007. and so in the beginning it was just, smart object templates in Photoshop. Right. I've used Fundy. I've used smart albums with clients as a photographer, both companies. they're both great. They both have their, who they're right for in certain circumstances. but yeah, I, I designed right with the client, just drag and drop. Stuff right in front of them. We're in screen sharing, right? Hey, these three on a spread, drag, drop, boom, right? Now what you're mentioning is more recently where everything's been automated and funny enough I hadn't done an IPS session in a couple of years and I had a client or I had a friend reach out who I went to high school with and said hey You know you have an album company. My photographer doesn't order albums and they said I could design one of my own Can I buy one from you? I was like, what? So we did an IPS [00:14:00] session, like, just a couple months ago. I didn't shoot the wedding, and I sold him the album for 1, 800, something like that.and yeah, you know, good design meeting, but what we did and what I like to do now is go through and rather than pick a few images and drag them up and see that design and then maybe make adjustments there and then go to the next images, we just go through all the photos. Hey, here's how we're going to design. Brad getting ready details, Brad getting ready candids, right, and so on and so forth. And so, oh, these few, these few, these few, these few, these few, and we go and we pick images that'll fit all these spreads and scenes throughout the day. And then, yeah, I just clicked auto design right in front of a client on, I said cool. So, now that we've picked everything, what's awesome about this software, It'll just go boom and just design from here. And then from there we can just go in and tweak spreads. Hey, you know, we want this one to be a little bit bigger and you [00:15:00] know, it makes it faster, but I mean, when you, especially, you know, not in this scenario, but in others where they're seeing all their photos for the first time in this, this meeting as well. And you know, you could send them as beforehand or show them in this meeting. I'm delivering images so quickly post wedding. It's just, we do both the same time.But, yeah, it's just one of these things where people are worried that like, oh, but that was so easy. Like, what am I being charged for? In their minds, they're paying for the photography. And then like, if you've seen the book, like they're not assuming that this thing is going to be free or cheap. Right. and so, you know, I, at least in the experiences that I've had, and then also how I know some other folks do IPS, we actually work with a company, called Storybook Design Co. and they do outsource IPS, right? And so let's say you're Scott, you're a photographer, you said you're not salesy, you don't have a sales bone, and you don't want to do these IPS meetings, but you want to make money from products. They will come in and do the meetings for [00:16:00] you, and then it's a commission split. Right? Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Hey, Nate. Brady Puryear: Hey, what up, Nate? Yeah, Nathan. and so, that's awesome, because then people who don't feel like they don't want to do that or whatever, or like, they have to learn it or learn the meeting schedule and all that stuff, they just come in and like, knock it out. It's like a whole stream of passive income for your business. You just add on products, have them do the sales and it's over. Right?so, so yeah, so everybody has their little bit different way that they, that they do it. but yeah, I would say, I would say at the end of the day, You know, you got to think about what's right for your, your studio and design me, I love doing sales. I love being on calls with clients. I love doing zooms. This is like where I thrive. Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. The first thing I, I feel like when we first met, the first thing I, I, I recognized about you and learned about you is that you absolutely love The sales aspect, the business aspect, the marketing aspect, like That's that's that's your jam with without a doubt. It's [00:17:00] like so Brady Puryear: Yeah. I mean, you know, it's the people's side of the business, you know, that's what drew me to weddings specifically. Like I actually, as a photographer, I never had any interest in shooting pictures that didn't have people in them. Right. So it's like, don't really care for landscape photos. there's nothing of interest. If you see like a big skyline or whatever, I'm like, there's just a couple silhouette of a couple and it would be so much more interesting to me, but I'm a hardcore extrovert, I'm a big people person and sales for me is just finding out what people, you know, business is just solving problems, right? The better you solve the problem, the more people want to spend with you. And so if I can just sit down with a couple and figure out like what, what they really want from their photos. Which is interesting to me because I'm an extra, people are interesting, I want to hear their stories. And then I can give that back to them. Then, that's my job, I'm done. I get to hang out with people, I get to go photograph, I mean, really weddings are [00:18:00] parties. You got an hour of getting ready, you know, your ceremonies these days are like, what, like 20 minutes, unless it's some like super long Catholic wedding. and then, yeah, you got family pictures for a little while, maybe an hour or something like that, and bride and groom portraits, which are fun because you get to Play around ooh this idea that idea not for family pictures, but for bride and groom portraits, right? Then it's like five hours of party. No, I mean so as an extrovert like I loved it, you know, and Yeah, I think I think that realm probably tailors more to me and what's interesting is I'm I definitely like the sales side of it because it's it's People based I don't love marketing You know, marketing is all about generating awareness and building funnels. And like, it's a lot of backend funnel building, strategic stuff. It's not so like me and Scott are chatting and I'm telling him why I started blacksmith and [00:19:00] why I think for the certain type of person, like our company would be a great fit. And if he agrees, we'd love to work with him. And if not, that's totally cool. There's a bunch of other great products out Scott Wyden Kivowitz: what I think I think There's more to marketing than, than just the funnels and whatnot. Like, like this, what we're doing right now, Brady Puryear: Yeah, yeah, yeah. PR, right? Scott Wyden Kivowitz: yeah, Yeah. this, this, this is part that you still enjoy, Brady Puryear: Yes. Scott Wyden Kivowitz: is part of the market, right? Pricing Strategies and Industry Insights --- Scott Wyden Kivowitz: So it depends, but, I want to bring up something that, that before we started recording, you mentioned it's been on your mind lately. and it's something that, I am more, most likely guilty of like many other photographers that are probably listening to this. and I, I'm actually curious, I'm going to take a guess of saying, and I'm curious what your percentage would be, that it's probably 80 to 85 percent of the industry is doing what you've been thinking about and want to talk about. that's my guess. You think 95 plus, Interesting. Interesting. So, Brady Puryear: I've never even actually seen my side [00:20:00] of the argument be presented when the question comes up. That's why I say that. I think 95 is actually being generous. Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Interesting. Brady Puryear: So, yeah, so what's been on my mind recently is that basically we're in a service business, right? And there's products tied to it, right? I'm on the product side. And when we start to talk about products, and it's the same for service. So everything I'm going to say goes for service as well. And that includes shooting, post production, all that kind of stuff. People, when they're talking about products, they start to tend to completely stop talking about capacity and efficiency. And it becomes really hardcore about markup and margins. So I'm going to give you an example. You see a post in a group. Someone says, Hey, you know, I'm starting to sell some products. And, you know, how should I price them? Right? They don't know. They're looking for advice. They go in a [00:21:00] big group and a bunch of people start responding. Some people respond with markups, right? Oh, you got to do at least a 2x markup. Or you got to do a 4x markup. And then someone will say, What? I do a 12x markup. Oh, wow. We're impressed. Right? And then other people are go, well, it's really about, this is my favorite one. Cost of doing business. That's not a financial metric. Cost of doing goods is. Cost of doing business is not. that's just completely made up. However, cost of Scott Wyden Kivowitz: got the spreadsheets. Brady Puryear: right? Cost of goods sold, right? And so say, hey, I, you know, I try to keep a 25 percent cost of goods sold or, Or 40 percent cost of goods sold, absolute max, right? other people are like, oh, I have 75 percent margins, right? Someone will chime in and go, I have 90 percent margins. And it's like, okay, cool. Like, this, do you guys realize this is all arbitrary? And doesn't mean anything? And people are like, what do you mean? [00:22:00] Like, no, like you have to have these, These metrics, these numbers. I'm like, no, you don't actually, you absolutely don't. And I'll prove it. First off, the idea of markup is crazy, right? The idea that you would take your product and say, I'm going to do a two X markup, three X markup, four X markup or whatever, especially in this industry makes zero sense. Let's say I have a 2 print and you're like, I'm gonna do a 10 X markup. Okay. So you're going to sell an eight by 10 for 20 bucks. That's decent. You know, it's not great, but it's not bad. But if you took that same 10 X markup, and said, I have a canvas that's 130 bucks. I'm going to charge 1, 300 for this canvas, base price. Ooh, good luck selling those canvases, right? Or if you have a 400 album and your starting price for albums is 4, 000 bucks. It's not really gonna work. So then what you end up with is someone saying well I have a 10x markup for prints, but I have a 4x [00:23:00] markup for canvases and I have a 2x minimum as a markup for albums But then this cost per spread or per image and the whole thing starts to fall apart It's not an actual structure that you can just like plug in right Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Right. Brady Puryear: an actual structure that you could plug in Would be like, okay, regardless of what I sell I want to have a minimum of let's say 25 percent cost of goods You Which 25 percent cost because it's basically just 4x markup. It's the same thing.and so, the problem with both of these models is that, like I said, their, their capacity is not part of the conversation. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna dispel both of them instantly with a couple examples. Example number one.let's say I have something that costs me $4,000 and I can sell it for 5, 000 and the time that it takes me to do that is one hour. Wait a minute, Scott. Does that sound like a good deal to you? A thousand bucks an hour? Absolutely. It sounds like a good deal, [00:24:00] right? But wait a minute. If it's four grand, we sell it for five. We have 80 percent cost of goods and our margins are only 20%. I don't think the guy with 90 percent margins is going to like those numbers, right? And then also too, if it's four grand, a 2x markup, which a lot of people says is the base, we'd have to sell it for eight. But what if no one will buy it for eight? Selling it for five is what, a 0. 25x markup or something like that? Who cares? You're making a thousand dollars an hour, right? The Power of Pricing: Maximizing Your Earnings --- Brady Puryear: I mean, if you work five days a week, 50 weeks a year, you can make a quarter of a million dollars working one hour a day. That sounds pretty awesome, right? And so when we start to talk about pricing, and we start to talk about how much we're going to mark something up, or what we want our margins to be, and we just completely throw how long it takes us to do that thing, out the window, we lose so much money. We leave so much money on the table. [00:25:00] And the second example, which is just a practical example, is like parent albums, right? So your workflow, you schedule a meeting with a client, you watch a slideshow, you design the entire album, you make revisions, you come to a final price, boom, you're done, right? Now imagine that you could say, Hey, look, we have a really killer offer for parents. And let's just pretend on that parent offer for those parent albums. You only make like 150 bucks and that after they've done all the upgrades that your cost of goods on those parent albums are like 90 percent let's just say, right? So there's only a 10 percent margin, right? But you're making 150 bucks per parent album. But you've priced it affordably so that a lot of parents will take up the offer. You didn't make the parent album five grand so when everyone says no. So now a lot of parents are taking up the offer and what's your work side of it? You're ordering your book, you scroll down the page, duplicate copies, yes, [00:26:00] quantity, two, add to cart, check out. Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. Brady Puryear: now we're making 300 in 10 seconds, Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Right. Brady Puryear: however, if you go into those groups and talk about pricing the book, pricing the parent book. It's gonna be, will it cost you this much? So this is how much you have to charge for it. So that's my first example. I know it's long. Here's my second one. I had a friend once who was using a company and they had these really gorgeous walnut boxes. We do too. And the walnut boxes were 250 and they were dead set on a 4x markup. They had to markup everything by 4x. Somebody convinced them, if you don't mark things up 4x you're gonna go broke. Right? So they're like, I'm trying to sell these walnut boxes but my cost is 250 dollars. And I have to mark it up 4x, but no one will buy them at a thousand bucks. I'm trying to find a company that sells them for cheaper. Does anyone know of one? And so what I wrote back to this friend was, hey, let's say you [00:27:00] could find a company that sold them for a hundred bucks, right? Then you could sell them for 400. There's your 4x markup. And I'm gonna have to get my calculator out for this one. and you would make 300. Here's what you could do. You're already happy with 300 for this amount of work. Because in this scenario, if we found a box that was 100, and we could sell it for 400, you'd be happy with the 300 profit for designing and ordering a walnut box. Well, your current box that's 250, we can just add 300 to that, and you could drop the price from 1, 000 to 550 today, without even finding a new supplier. and I'm sure you'd sell a lot more of them, and you'd still make exactly the same as if you got a lower cost and marked it up 4x, so if your time is your time, why not just charge 550? And like, could not grasp it. Just like, the Forex had just been beaten into this person's head so much. And so, I think whether it's [00:28:00] products, or the service side of the business, if we're not factoring in the capacity that it takes, and if we're able to increase that capacity significantly, and lower the amount of time it takes to deliver, that we can have much more attractive pricing, and sell a lot more. Does that make sense? Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. So, so, what would be your recommended steps for anybody who like currently, Just went with the simple 4x, just for the sake of throwing out a number out there. and, and they want to now, they just listened to what you said. It's making sense, but they don't know how to start over, where to go. Like, do you, is there, Brady Puryear: I got Scott Wyden Kivowitz: would be step one? Okay. Brady Puryear: you. Understanding the Value of Your Time --- Brady Puryear: Here's step one for everything. Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. Mm Brady Puryear: out what you want to get paid for your time. I don't really care whether it is the service side of the business or the product side of the business. Cause even the product side of the business has [00:29:00] work associated with it. That takes time. IPS sessions take time. you know, designing a wall in a box takes time. It's a small amount of time, but it is some time, right? And if you haven't figured out what you want to make per hour. you are wildly lost. Now, lawyers have this figured out, right? Lawyers charge good amounts of money per hour, 125, 250, Scott Wyden Kivowitz: grand an hour. Yeah. Brady Puryear: But their whole thing is about billable hours and these guys make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, right? And so photographers sometimes they get caught up in listening to podcasts where people talk about, you don't want to trade your time for money. Sure, if you own a business with 50 employees, you're a freelance photographer. You're getting paid for your time. That's the plain and simple. You start building a staff. Now we can have a different conversation. 99 percent of you, you're getting paid for your time. It is what it is. [00:30:00] That doesn't mean you can't make a ton of money. Lawyers get paid for their time, they make a ton of money. So let's start there. But if you just take that charge for your time approach, it works across all, all modalities. I'm going to throw something else out there. If you make 62. 50 an hour and you work a 40 hour work week, just a regular work week, that's 120 grand a year. Most photographers don't make 120, 000 a year. They might have 120 grand a year in sales, but they don't make 120 grand a year. So as an example, at least down here in Southern California, and I know the rates are a little bit higher, but photographers usually get paid somewhere between 50 and 75 an hour to second shoot. And I know a lot of photographers who make 50k a year, 60k a year, who won't second shoot. Cause they're like, well, I could be shooting for my own business. Well, yeah, sure. If you're booked that day, but if you're not, you could be making like 75 an hour. And [00:31:00] they're like, 75 an hour. When I shoot, I make 500 an hour. Cause they do 10 hour weddings for five grand. And I go, no, you don't. You have to book the client, sign the contract, shoot the engagement session, call it, edit, deliver it, upload it to pixie, set it, back it up to your servers, pre wedding timeline, hire a second shooter, shoot the wedding. I mean, it's a hundred hours worth of work. You make 50 bucks an hour. Right. And so,people who aren't making 120 grand. are also refusing jobs at 62. 50 an hour. Does that make sense? They're like, why would I do, like, we tell people you should do IPS for engagement sessions. The slideshow is like six minutes long. The whole consult's maybe an hour, right? And you can make hundreds of dollars, right? 200, 500, 1, 000, right?and a lot of people will get into like wedding IPS. Maybe we can even convince them to add on parent albums once we show them it's 10 seconds worth of work for, you know, a hundred bucks, 200 bucks, 300 bucks. Two grand sometimes, [00:32:00] but that's one where people are like, I know people have been doing wedding IPS for years that never Add the engagement session piece and I'm like you already have the customer. They're already right there It's a super small amount of time and in my mind any time I can make more than 60 to 50 an hour I'm making a greater annual hourly revenue than 120 And that's good pay right now. If you're already making well above that, sure. Don't do a meeting unless you can make a hundred an hour, 150 an hour, 200 an hour. Right. But I would imagine that a lot of people, if he told him, Hey, here's a one hour meeting where you can make 200 bucks, they'd go not worth my time. And that same person only makes 70 grand as a photographer. So they're just not doing the math. Does that make sense? Scott Wyden Kivowitz: yeah, speaking of math, so I notoriously suck at math, always have, among other things.have Brady Puryear: bad too, but I use a calculator. Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah, [00:33:00] I have to use a calculator. so, have you considered building a tool for Blacksmith and your customers to utilize that allows them to map in all of what they want and then help them build out their, their markups per product and everything? The, the way that, that you envision it to be, rather than just a flat markup. Have you considered building a tool to, to, help everybody with Brady Puryear: you're already back to markups and not time. Scott Wyden Kivowitz: I understand, I understand. I'm, I'm, I'm trying to, to use terminology that, I think everybody's used to at this point. But like, Brady Puryear: So, Scott, think about it this way. You do an IPS session, right? And what's nice about this session is, post wedding, you meet up with your client, you see all their photos, you design their album, you finish it that day. Get it ordered. Now you're done. There's no more stuff to do for that client. You don't send them a design and then ask them to, you know, look it over and send revisions and [00:34:00] they don't send those for months and then they finally do send them and then you make those changes and send it back and then they, ah, we don't know what these changes, we might want to go back to something closer to the first design we have and it's eight months later and it's into the next wedding season and this stuff is still hanging over your head. Pass. We don't even want that. So we can fix all that just by doing one of these, right? And then in addition. we find that when we design with our client, people spend more money. Okay, so it's a win win situation. Let's say that meeting takes you three hours, right? You would want to price your products in a way to where if you thought your time was worth 100 bucks an hour That you would want you'd walk away on average making 300 bucks, right? Now, I made much more than that, right? Because you can never tell how much a client is going to spend and then also too everybody has their You Price bracket, right? So I was starting at 5, 700 in like 2017 at the last [00:35:00] year that I was shooting, my packages were just 5, 700 and 8, 200. My clients were, I could charge them a lot more for the products than You know, someone who starts at 3, 000, right? So, I wouldn't say the person that starts at 3, 000 should charge the same per image as somebody like me shooting weddings in Malibu and Los Angeles if they're shooting, you know, lower budget weddings in Michigan or something like that, right? Now, would we want to put them in a situation where they did a three hour meeting and only made 15? No, because that's a terrible hourly rate. Does that make sense? So, yeah, your average client, you know, I don't like the per spread model, but let's just say your average client in these meetings adds on 10 spreads, and you charge 100 bucks a spread, so 1, 000 bucks, I mean, some people spend zero and some people spend 1, 000 and your average is 500, and you're averaging 500 in profit for a three hour meeting, you're making like 125 an hour, which is like double 62. 50, so you're making the [00:36:00] equivalent of like 250, 000 a year on an hourly basis, that's good Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Mm hmm. Yep. Yep. Brady Puryear: If you can charge more for it, yeah, by all means charge more for it, right? But that's not the problem that we see. The problem that we see is people pricing stuff too high. No one buying it, being confused, asking photographers what they should do. Photographers giving the same advice to the game the first time, which is mark it up 4x or 2x or whatever the situation may be, and not thinking to themselves, but wait a minute, I can order these parent albums in 10 seconds. Why do I need to make 800. Why do I need to make 400 per book on something that takes me 10 seconds? The answer is that you don't. You can factor in how long it takes you to do something into your pricing. You Scott Wyden Kivowitz: I I think that like, the reason why I asked that question is, just as you said, like, photographers, all these years have been taught one method, pretty much, right? [00:37:00] I'm sure there's people who are, who are teaching it the way that, that you're explaining right now, but for the most part, they're all taught, right? This one method, and they're given the tools to determine their pricing based on this one method. So, I guess my question that I asked was, there's probably a tool that could be made to utilize your method.to help photographers get started with better pricing based on what they want to make per hour. And just, Something that, like, may, you know, somebody with your skill set, could probably build, just throwing it out there, might, might be worth, Brady Puryear: we're not Imagen. We don't have a team of developers, right. We're buying machinery. So,a little bit different situation, but yeah, in theory, it's something that you can build, but, you know, the, the rebuttal that I had to that a second ago was it would vary wildly, right. Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yes, of Brady Puryear: And even starting price doesn't necessarily need to be a factor. We have clients who started three grand who get an average upgrade of close to three grand on the book. [00:38:00] So they charge 3, 000 for service, people come in, they sit down with them, they spend 2, 700 upgrading their book, right, and buying Waller. So, you know, to even create a tool, to even create a tool that was based on what your starting price was, or what your costs are, like I said, outside of how long it takes you to do it, is arbitrary. And how long it takes you to do it can vary wildly, Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Exactly, yeah, yes, that's Brady Puryear: Some people, some people are doing IPS sessions in 90 minutes. Some people are sitting on zoom with clients for five hours or bringing them in the studio and driving there and all that kind of stuff. And it's the same thing for post production, right? I have a friend of mine who even uses imagine and ask him how long, you know, culling and post production, all that stuff he spends per wedding. And he says at least 10 hours. I'm like, I never spent 10 hours pre AI when I was using Adobe bridge and Photoshop. Right. Scott Wyden Kivowitz: [00:39:00] Yeah. Brady Puryear: right now. Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. Brady Puryear: using AI to like get them there. Right. but he knows how long it takes him. Right. and I know how long it takes me. And so both of us could charge accordingly. and I think at the end of the day, with some of the stuff, it's, We gotta force people to use their brains. We gotta force people to say, Hey look, no one's buying these walnut boxes at a thousand bucks. Right? Could I sell them for half that amount and still make a substantial enough money for my time? And if I think I can, cool, try lowering the price and see how the market responds. Right? If it responds well, let's say you lower them to 300 and all of a sudden every single client buys them. Cool. Bump them to 400 next year. Bump them to 500. See what the market can handle.that's how you price things. Right? You don't price things just purely based on your cost or what you think you're worth. I mean, that's the number one problem with pricing as a [00:40:00] whole. I The Importance of Demand in Pricing --- Brady Puryear: s, you know, people say, hey, you know, I, I don't know what I should charge. I, I only booked eight weddings last year and they go and they post their portfolio in a group, which is irrelevant, the quality of their work. And a bunch of people see the work and their work is super good and they say, Oh my gosh, your work is incredible. Maybe it's better than their work. And so that they then suggest the best person should raise their prices. And I go, no, no, no, no, that's not how it works. If I have an apartment complex and it is 100 percent full with a six month waiting list, we're good to raise prices. If you planned on shooting 20 weddings a year and you only booked eight, you're not in a position where you've created enough demand to even fill the schedule at your current pricing. Scott Wyden Kivowitz: yeah. Brady Puryear: Raising your prices from there is only gonna hurt you, right? And so yeah, it's just kind of this like thing that I tend to call well intentioned bad advice, right? Which is Just like I said, I hope I didn't offend [00:41:00] anybody, but in the pricing conversation that your, the quality of your work is irrelevant, and in that apartment complex that I, example I gave you, most people when they talk about real estate say location, location, location. What are we going to charge for the apartments based on where we're at? But I could show you right there with that example that you could actually charge more aside of location if you have enough demand. And even if you're in the sickest location in the world, if you don't have demand and you're 20 percent full and 80 percent vacant, You're probably too expensive, at least for how much marketing you're doing, right? And so, yeah, it just, it just becomes this thing where it's like photographers are doing markups for products or margins for products and not thinking about their time. They're, you know, raising their prices when they're not even filling their schedules. And then they have a crazy slow year and can't figure out why. you know, if iPhones were 50 percent cheaper, a lot more people would buy them. Right. And if they were twice as much, a lot less people would buy them. It's not super complicated. Scott Wyden Kivowitz: When, when I, organically switched my [00:42:00] business during the pandemic from, like, family portraits and headshots to basically only surprise proposals these Brady Puryear: Hmm. Scott Wyden Kivowitz: I, I, I, I didn't know what to price the proposal sessions at originally. Nobody was doing it in my area at all. So I went pretty low.and also, I have a full time job, got a family, like, I'm, Not trying to do it full time. So like I wasn't out there to, to, to get to the a hundred grand. It'd be nice to get to the a hundred grand of just proposals. so I started pretty low and I was booking and booking and booking and booking, booking, doing way too many proposals that I really wanted to do. and good problem to have. I raised the price. My wife's like, you're never going to book. And I'm, I'm, I've got the problem of now. It's like people. Either saying, I'm sorry. It's not what I was looking to spend. Well, you know what? I don't want you as a customer at that point, because I want somebody who is going to want to spend, what I want to charge, and I know that if they're willing to spend more money upfront for the [00:43:00] session, they're willing to spend money on the prints after the word afterwards as well. So, Brady Puryear: But let's say you raise it to the price where like next year you want, you still wanted to book some, but you book zero, would you drop it back down? Scott Wyden Kivowitz: not, not where it was, but yes, I would lower it a bit. Probably. Yeah. Brady Puryear: I mean, what if Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Not to where it was, though. It was, it was too low. Brady Puryear: Okay. Not to where it was, was too low. But what I'm saying is people are happy to just raise price regardless of demand. You raise price because you had the demand and you technically don't need the money, right? You've got your full time job. This is just kind of side cash for you. and so a lot of people, when they're slow. I'm like, well, if you lower your prices, like more people will be able to afford you. And I go, I don't want to lower my prices. I said, well, you don't have to do it forever. You know, a lot of people just have prices starting out on their website and then they tailor them per customer. one of the smartest things that, one of my buddies does is he has an associate brand and his main [00:44:00] brand, he made no matter what he maintains his price on that brand. And then on associate brand, he has a cheaper one.and.when things, when budgets go down, right, and people are, less people start booking his main brand and more people start doing his associate brand, he shoots those weddings. You know what I mean? Like, he just shoots the associate weddings rather than like, let's say, devaluing, I'm putting that in quotes for everybody to learn on the podcast, devaluing his main brand by losing the price, or lowering the price. And so, yeah, you know, it's just, it's one of these tricky things, you know, pricing is really emotional for people. They really, really, really want to tie it to their work, and the quality of what they think they're putting out and what they quote unquote deserve, you know? and so that's just not how pricing works, unfortunately, you know? when we couldn't get any wood in the United States during COVID, lumber prices shot at 400%. Scott Wyden Kivowitz: pricing is just supply and demand. It's, [00:45:00] it's It's, it's not anything else other than that. And so the real message should be for people who want to increase prices across the board is get out there and create a ton of demand, you know, and once you're swamped and turning away clients, yeah, raise your prices and do it again, you know, It's, this has been fantastic, Brady. I, I'm, I'm, I knew it was gonna be going into this, and I'm, I'm very glad that we were able to have this discussion. Like, it's, It's, as we talked about, it's not something that is discussed in this way in the industry, almost ever, if not ever. So I'm, I'm very glad Brady Puryear: what, Scott Wyden Kivowitz: sharing this. Brady Puryear: I'm going to say this a hundred percent, just so people don't think that like, I've been doing this the whole time, right? I shot full time for 12 years. I started shooting weddings when I was like 21, 22, I wasn't doing this. I was doing markups. I was doing margins. And you know, what's funny is. Then I got into this business, which is manufacturing. You better believe so much of what we think about in terms of profitability [00:46:00] is tied to capacity, right? If one employee could make a hundred books a day, oh my gosh, we'd be drowning in money, right? Because we would have insane amounts of capacity. all being able to be done by one person, we could just take an insane amount of clients, have one employee, and just rake in cash nonstop. And so there's such a huge direct correlation between our productivity and our ability to either make money or lose money in this business, it becomes very apparent how tied capacity is to the equation. It's way less apparent in a photo business. But it's equally relevant. So I don't want to pretend like, Oh, I was thinking about capacity nonstop when I was a photographer. Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Right. I wasn't right. I was trying to be more efficient because I wanted to save time, but I wasn't really putting it together in that way. took, it took broadening your business horizon, so to speak, to, to, to see a whole nother look at, at the industry which I [00:47:00] think is a very valuable thing for a lot of people. Brady Puryear: yeah. If anything, I would love to talk one day about like now running a manufacturing business and then going back. How would I run a photo business today with the knowledge that I already have from photographing 500 weddings. And the knowledge that I have now, you Scott Wyden Kivowitz: would be a Brady Puryear: those two together. This is a piece of that, but there's a lot of other, other factors to Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Oh yeah. Brady Puryear: so Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Well, so Brady, can you share with all listeners who, whoever doesn't know who blacksmith is, where everybody can check out Blacksmith Print Co. and see all the incredible work that you do. and also share you, you've just expanded, a bit beyond just albums. Right. So can you share that. as well? Brady Puryear: You can go to blacksmithprintco.com we're going to be at WPPI this year. You can see the product there if you're coming I'm sure us and Imagen can do some fun things there as well and then yeah, like scott you mentioned so we've been doing photo albums since 2013. and then October of this year, we launched our wall art [00:48:00] division. And so, you know, it's just to kind of solve more problems for photographers that I encountered, right? Which is you find a premium album supplier, and that's awesome. You want to buy albums from them, but then they don't sell wall art, right? So you're buying albums from one company and wall art from another company, right? And so we want to be able to, for you to, if you do a session and, and have sales of both Waller and Alps to go into one platform, be able to order all that checkout, right. so that's a little bit of what we're working on. We have a lot of, a lot of stuff we're doing for 2025. It's gonna be a lot of fun. And, yeah, that's it. That's all the pitches, all the promos there. Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Thank you so much for joining me, Brady, for this, for sharing all the, all the great knowledge with everybody. Definitely appreciate it. Brady Puryear: Yeah, man. I, I hope it was valuable for people, you know, so much of. What I hope to do when I chat in these kind of conversations is actually deliver like a practical value And what I didn't like about the conversation that I've seen before is that I felt like it led people to price stuff In a way that it wouldn't [00:49:00] sell or didn't make sense Like I said 4x this and 10x that or whatever and we're creatives like we're already confused enough with all this You know business nonsense like we don't need something that doesn't make sense, you know, and so, just trying to bring light to, clarity of this kind of situation.