Jeffrey Shaw is the go-to portrait photographer for exclusive clientele. His portraits have been featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show, in O Magazine and People, and on CBS News. He is a business coach who serves massively talented creatives who struggle with the business side. He lives on an island just off Manhattan, New York, and gets to work by cable car.
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Determining Your Lane
- What is the most important thing you can share about pricing?
- Pick a lane.
- Be aligned through your whole process – pricing, brand image, brand value.
- Strategically building a business is based on determining who you are serving first, and then focusing on serving them.
- Most people go in business backwards.
- Misalignment with regard to pricing is common.
- By looking at a brick and mortar business, you can determine whether or not you want to go inside just by looking at it.
- Why are you a photographer?
- Jeffrey went into business as a photographer when he was 20.
- He was not conscious of the business he was building then but seemed to have good business instincts.
- He does not look at what others are doing in his industry because he wants to zag when everyone else is zigging.
- He is out to take photos of “third children” since he does not have any pictures of himself growing up as a third child.
- Once he became conscious of his passion, it was easy to align.
- His 20-year old daughter had to put down her 8-year old horse.
- The man who put down the horse explained that he got into the business because his experience having a horse put down was handled poorly.
- His why made it an honor for Jeffrey's family to pay him.
- There is a true value in explaining your why.
- Why do you offer a performance guarantee?
- If you offer a money back guarantee, you are supporting someone's failure. Jeffrey wants to support someone's success.
- His “I will not let you fail” guarantee promises that if you are not happy, he will work even harder to make it satisfactory.
- The responsibility of success comes back to the entrepreneur.
- If you can look inward at your accountability and determine how you could do it differently, you gain the most control over your business and life.
- Jeffrey will fight harder to make the transformation that his customer is looking for; he will show up deeper.
- He has never returned a dollar in any of his businesses because he always approaches it with a commitment to success.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Building a business is determining who you are serving, and focusing on serving them.” quote=”Building a business is determining who you are serving, and focusing on serving them.”]
Pricing for Your Lane
- How do you price your services to create margin?
- The best thing you can do for your customers is to charge the maximum amount of money and get paid upfront.
- When you know you have margin, you can go the extra mile and the value created for the customer is tremendous.
- If you are paid before the service, you have an energetic level of freedom that empowers a healthier working relationship.
- When you get the money conversation out of the way, it frees you up to do your best work for the customer.
- The experience is different when you are pushed into making a sale.
- What is the typical way to price photography?
- The healthiest way of doing business is when there is a broad price range for people to pick their lane.
- Competition keeps industries healthy.
- One pricing formula is to take costs plus overhead and add your profit margin.
- Another pricing formula is to look at your competition and choose to be higher or lower, based on where you want to position yourself.
- Jeffrey recommends neither formula.
- How do you value the intangible?
- The current economy allows you to sell very intangible things, even if it appears you are selling something tangible.
- For the most part, the best way to sell and find your value is based on the transformation you create for customers.
- How can you put a price tag on the feeling you will have in 20 years when you look at the photo capturing your children, your family, or your wedding?
- For coaching, if you can create a transformation in someone's business by $150K within two years, then why would they not invest $20K?
- The value is in the transformation.
- Step #1 is to own the transformation – can you really transform people's lives?
- Step #2 is to determine the value of that transformation.
- Help people understand and appreciate the value of the transformation you can create for them.
- What questions do you ask to help the customer believe in transformation?
- Entice, compel and walk the customer down the path to their transformation.
- Be bold in stating how you can help transform people.
- Jeffrey's process is through the acronym, IMPACT:
- Invitation to walk someone down the path.
- Motivation, getting people talking about themselves and their dreams.
- Point out your value and talk about the transformation as a fundamental shift until the customer has an ah-ha moment.
- Act on the fundamental shift.
- Call to action is the actual sales process.
- Transformation is the deliverable.
- He has changed the value conversation into a standard process.
- It helps his team not rush the process; they might stay in the “P” stage for 3-4 phone calls.
- The organic part of the process is discovering the transformation.
- He will not take a ‘yes' on the first phone call, to slow down the customer to get them fully committed.
[clickToTweet tweet=”The best thing for your customer is to charge the maximum amount and get paid upfront.” quote=”The best thing for your customer is to charge the maximum amount and get paid upfront.”]
Responsibility for Your Lane
- What innovation in your business has created a pricing opportunity?
- The way his business innovates is based on the principle between what people know to ask for (acknowledged need) vs. what they really want (deeper need).
- Most often people ask for their acknowledged need, but they do not know to ask for their deeper need.
- To be successful, the burden of responsibility is on you to understand the people you serve.
- Since he did not grow up like his wealthy, exclusive clientele, he had to teach himself what the experience should be and what merchandising should look like.
- You can broaden the price range if you deeply understand the people you are going to serve.
- People call and ask for photos, but what they really want is to be responsible.
- When you have “money”, you have the freedom to be responsible.
- Parents with financial means believe their children should all be treated equally.
- Knowing the things that you do that are magical and for which customers do not know to ask, is what creates repeat clientele.
- Pick the lane that is true and authentic to who you are.
- You have to do the job of getting to know who your market is; it does not have to be a reflection of who you are.
- What does “When you know your life's purpose, you can wear many hats and hang them on one hook” mean?
- It is a cornerstone to how he works.
- Forcing creative people to focus on one thing blocks creativity.
- He is a freedom fighter for the creative entrepreneur to become unleashed from traditional business advice which does not work.
- Creative entrepreneurs go beyond artists and photographers.
- The freedom to be a successful creative contradicts a lot of common business advice.
- Asking a creative entrepreneur to pick a niche is too challenging.
- Instead, focus on what you stand for – everything else is a choice of medium.
- If you are in a niche, you might have to pivot.
- A diversified portfolio model is the best way to go.
- There is tremendous diversity even with brands like Apple and Virgin.
- What is one of your best stories about creating value for a customer?
- He delivered portraits one day and the customer was enjoying looking at them.
- She neatly put them on her lap in her Connecticut mansion.
- She said, “Your photography is stunning, but your packaging does not hold up.”
- She suggested he go to Bergdorf Goodman to understand how they package gifts and he took it as an assignment.
- He bought a $20 candle and was shocked at how gracious the salesperson was and then went to get it gift wrapped.
- He asked if he could watch how they wrapped the candle and they explained how and why they did what they did in detail.
- He packages every single portrait the way he was taught that day.
- Take the time to understand what people value, even if you do not come from that lifestyle, to serve them the best.
- The delivery and packaging create a great deal of value for his customers.
About Jeffrey Shaw
- Website: creativewarriorsunite.com
- Podcast: Creative Warriors
- Twitter: @jeffreyshaw1
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