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Breaking the Stereotype of Pet Photography

This is my guinea pig that I was talking about. So this is hardly that I adopted from the S p. C A. Hey, comes the studio with me every day. So it was funny when I took the image. I was wondering if it was gonna be animal cruelty, like if the spc it was gonna be like, What are you doing? Sticking them in a jar. But it was really cute. I adopted him, love him. So I just wanted to end the day today talking about breaking the stereotype of pet photography. So so many people, when they hear that I'm a pet photographer, will be like Tufan. How cute. And what we do as pet photographers is a lot of fun. But I really want to challenge all of you because we're in such a niche market. I really want to challenge you to raise the bar for pet photography in how are images? Look in the experience that we're giving our clients and what we charge for a portraiture. So let's talk about how our images look. I kind of hit on this a little bit earlier with the whole Tiki torch, you know, hula skirt type o...

f thing. There's a way you can do portrait and still make them cute sea, but doesn't have to be over the top when you're doing like event Portrait's when you go to events like I mentioned, people kind of expect. I want something fun. I don't just want a brown Muslim like we want a little seen everyone a little cute. See something? We want some cute pillows or something like that. That's what sells at those types of events. When we do those events throughout the year, it's usually just two or three a year, and they're always for fundraisers. So we're shooting to raise money. So in that case, like I don't expect to make $ or even $100. It's 25 or $30 prints and all the money goes toe S, P. C. A or whatever, um, place that we're raising money for. So just keep that in mind that event clients are willing to pay about 25 to $40 report rates. So if you're doing a scene that's like that and people are going on, my gosh, how cute. Well, that's gonna be a $25 picture. But if someone's gonna go Oh, my gosh, that's gorgeous. That's a portrait that you can use is a wall portrait. So just keep those things in mind. We also do limited edition portrait specials. So those I'm gonna talk about tomorrow and those we actually do in our studio So we do those kind of, like a mini session and their themed so they'll be like, a couple of year. We'll do like a Valentine session or spring cleaning. One year we did. I bought a big tub and had the dogs. We have, like, little Yellow Mouse Rubber Ducky. Yeah, and had the duckies and had little shampoo. And I actually like Photoshopped bubbles in. So it was like, super cute sea. But it wasn't cheesy. It wasn't like over the top, you know, um, American flag. Dress them all up. It was like a still a beautiful portrait, but it was still limited edition. And we do that where? When you do those, it's a discounted pricing. It's a shorter session. It's like the many sessions you come in your there for 10 or 15 minutes. We show you the images right away. You order whatever package you want and then we send it to print. So I just want you to keep in mind when you're putting sets together. Would my clients get this is a wall portrait, So just always keep that in mind if they would great if they wouldn't kind of reserve that for your limited edition or your event. Portrait's what our clients willing to pay when it comes to their pets. So this is kind of a list of what my average client is spending money on at our studio, and we all know this. But I just want to remind you of this because my clients are doing organic, all natural human, great pet food, luxury pet hotels. Doggy Day cares. I have a lot of clients who actually work Monday through Friday, 40 hours a week, and they dropped their dog off a doggy daycare every morning and pick them up every evening. And there it all goes to doggie daycare for 40 hours a week because they don't want them at home by themselves being bored. That's pricey. That's not a $10 day. A doggy daycare. That's a huge chunk. That's like baby sitting. I mean, that's a huge chunk of their money that they're making that day in home. Pet sitting. I actually have a pet sitter who comes to my house, and when we go on vacation, I have to actually budget. How much am I paying for pet sitting? Because we're doing, you know, our flight or hotel all these things. And if we're gone for two weeks, that's close to $ for pet sitting for me. And of course, you can get it cheaper, but I don't want a cheaper. I don't want a neighbor kid coming over for five minutes. My dogs in Iran there, Weimaraners. They need to get out. So my pet sitters walking them twice a day. They're sleeping over there, hanging out with them in the evenings, and I'm willing to pay that type of money for them. And so are our clients. Monthly grooving, grooming, pet travel on There's a lot of people who are traveling with their pets now lots of pet hotels there being like pet friendly. Ah, lot of pet hotels have pet sitters that actually their contract it to work with them, so pet massages had acupuncture, veterinary care actually ran into a client the other day. A couple months ago, I saw her in her dogs. 13. She's don't really good and I said how she's doing really good And she said, Yeah, she's 13 And she said, I'm looking into stem cell therapy for her, for her dog And I never heard of this and like, Will you go? And she said, You know what? My family thinks I'm crazy, but she's my dog. She is the most important thing to me in my life, and I'm going to do whatever it takes to keep her happy and healthy as long as I can. Okay, Good for you. I met another client. I ran into her and outdoor event, and I photographed her dog a couple months ago. Now, maybe last year and the dogs I started getting kind of cloudy. His name was Rocco and he was getting cataracts. And after some of the dogs get when they're older. So I ran into her a few months ago and I looked at him and his eyes were perfectly clear. I was like, What's going on? And she said, I can direct surgery for him, and I'm like I didn't know that existed. I didn't know that people did. Catterick surgery for their dogs It's 2 to $3000 per eye for cataract surgery. You're a vet. You know this? Yeah, and it's just amazing that that's what clients are willing to pay to keep their pets happy and healthy. These clients are willing to invest money in your beautiful portraiture. So just because we're doing pet photography, it doesn't have to be fun. Cute? Yea. Oh, I don't know. $25 These air beautiful wall portrait sees clients were willing to spend money. My dog Duke actually got bit by a rattlesnake about two summers ago. Long story short, the emergency vet. He was there for 24 hours. It was $5000 for his snake bite. Just to be in the vet for 24 hours for antivenom saved his life grand. And I know we're talking about saving his life, But if they said it was $10,000 I would have paid it. And those are the type of clients that were working with when you're giving them the experience that we're gonna talk about tomorrow when you're giving them the type of wall portrait's and the beautiful art. That's not tiki torches. Dress up bunny ears. Those clients are willing to pay for your portrait. It's so that's our challenge. Raise the bar. What about doggy psychics? You know, I actually have clients who had dogs who run away, like whatever they got, Um, spooked around Fourth of July or whatever it was and have a lot of clients who did Doggy psychics. One of our clients found her dog. She was on horseback and found her dog in the desert and the like psychic led her out there and said he's by water and whatever it was, So people pay money for it. So, yeah, you're stunned. You're like, That's amazing. That's amazing. But a lot of these people, you know, it's not just a fun and cute thing When pets aren't with us for a long time, people want a beautiful wall wall portrait to remember them toe. Honor them. That's the way to honor our pets and so have them in our lives forever. And to have people come into your home and not just go like Oh my gosh, how cute, how funny he was in, You know, let's skirt. It's like, Oh my gosh, that's gorgeous. Like that captured his soul like you're looking into a soul in that portrait. So it's just a nice way to honor pets. So even though it seems like it's a luxury and it seems like it's not a necessity, have these people you guys coming in? There's pets were passing away every week, literally every week I have. We have so many clients that somehow either on Facebook, I had someone named Kelly, who had a dog named Fancy, who is 21 year old Pomeranian. And she brought her to our studio before she took her to the vet together, put down. And that was literally her last stop that she brought her in. And she's like, fancy. Just wanted to say goodbye to you and like we were her last stop before she put her down. And it was just so important, Like what we created for her. Yeah, she paid for it. Yeah, she paid $2000 for that portrait, but what we created for her was so special to her and so meaningful that we were such an important part of her life. So something prices, I'm Donna asked. How do you target those willing to pay? How do you target that audience? Because there are other dog owners that are not willing to know totally and a lot of times, and people say, Oh, there's a lot of dog owners that live in this community. It's like dog owners aren't my target market. Yeah, you know, having pets, But people who appreciate art. So when you have events, you know, don't just host an event like there was, ah, rescue, who wanted to dio an event outside of like, a doughnut shop. And they were gonna have, like, an Easter Bunny or whatever they were having dress up in there. Can you come out and shoot portrait's and raise money? And I'm totally willing to, like, donate my time? But I'm like, That's not my clientele. People who are doing that and going to the McDonald's like shopping center parking lot to do these portrait's or whatever. So we host a lot of things that are studio like art auctions, so people donate art two different rescues, and then we'll display it in our studio. People come in, they pay a cover fee. We serve wine we have ordered, so I think it's just setting yourself apart and picking things. There's an event called Pet Appaloosa that happens in Las Vegas. It's the biggest pet event of the year. There's like 15,000 people and 5000 dogs or something just crazy at this event. But it's not our target market. They have a lot of. It's a big concert that's part of the event, and they have a lot of like the big, big names, big bands and American Idol winners and people like that. They go to Pet Appaloosa and a lot of people are there for the music. It's a lot of young college kids, a lot of times here going to that not qualified families. So I'll do something like the family for in Fun Festival. And even though it's still an outdoor event and there's boots and you know they're doing like Rabies vaccinations and it's still an outdoor event, it's much more qualified families who were going to events like that. So I would say with your target market, it's just picking the right events of marketing your studio a certain way and just having a different or a I don't know how to say that about your studio. Like I said, I'm gonna walk you through everything we dio at photography tomorrow when clients come in, you know. Can I get you a bottle? Water? Would you like some hot tea? Here, Have a seat. Let me and we have, like, a little tea party with them. And sometimes when we do, consultations were spending, like 20 minutes just hanging out, being like, yeah. And this tea was imported from wherever and we're talking like, but that's just giving them that high end experience. And it doesn't always have to be about portrait's. When clients come in for ordering sessions, we don't just jump in and go high. You're ready, Slideshow. Start my sales girl. I have three people who work for me and the girl who does all my sales. I trained her to say you're not allowed to start a slide show until at least five minutes because I want you to chat. I just want I don't want them to come into. Okay. Ready? Same thing like no, I want you. They get on our pace. I want you to chill I want you to have that luxury experience and have some tea or have some hot chocolate and listen, How's your day going? And, oh, that's where you went shopping today. I love that place. So it's just about giving that clients more of an experience. It's really it's so emphasis on experience. So targeting that market is just don't do like little coupon mailers and with other people who have, like, pizza and by one sandwich get 1/ off, like just don't be next to them. Don't be associated with that, do things. And, you know, luxury. Las Vegas magazine is much more clients hell than coupons. Half off, you know, pizza. So a question came in from John in Seattle. Who asked, Are there any kind of demographic tools? You have used a target areas in your buyer location, But I guess since you live in Vegas, there's not really anything no one is he talking about, like, understand, like, direct marketing. So, you know, like maybe probably demographic tools. Excuse me? Um, yeah. No, I don't do anything like that. Um, because I don't do direct marketing, and we're gonna talk about it tomorrow. I don't do paid advertising? Um, I've never paid for magazine before. I've never paid for any kind of articles on, but we're talking about a lot of it tomorrow. It's word of mouth. It's creating buzz. We wrote an article about ourselves. It was an ARCA is awesome letter, and it was written from my studio manager, even though I wrote half of it. But she's like Archos. Awesome. This is what she does or studio. So great we give back to the community. We donate our time and we were with this great letter about how great I waas and sentence everybody. And we got three huge articles out of it. Just on while. That's so cool, like, this is what you guys do. You help animals in need and you donate your time in this and that. And we created that. It wasn't like they approached us. I mean, we were like that. We haven't had an article for like a year. Let's just see what happens, you know? So we just sent it to everyone. We sense it's Oprah and Ellen, and not that I expect that they're going to respond, but you never know. You know what We got three huge media articles out of it, and that was just creating it ourselves. So I think there's a way to get advertising like that without having toe pay. We do art displays. Yeah, we invest a lot of money. So it's not that we don't pay for those. We invest a lot of money. Some of our art displays cost us two or $3000 but we're decorating of that office and having 20 canvases in their office and every waiting room in the front area. And people are waiting and our logos big. I mean, our logo is like this big on our displays on client prints. They're like 12.5. But in art displays like I paid for those like everyone's gonna know from across the room that that's photography X portrait. So we do a lot of art display, so that is a lot of money up front. But instead of just paying, you know, $2000 for that magazine ad for one month or two months, your pain $2000. But it's in their office for years. So endorsee when you said I mean Darcy Cole, I was looking right at you, like Poland Jersey. Um, when you said you had three articles written where those all local local they were Okay, Yeah. Which is what you want. That's our market. Yeah. I mean, there's a few people who drive in from out of town or fly in Utah, California, Arizona. There's people who have rented a trailer before through their dogs and drove out the Las Vegas got portrait's and drove home. That's what they came for. Yeah, but I mean, our market really is. I try and Basil of my marketing in Las Vegas, first speaking reasons for, like marketing for, like, my workshops and things. That's of course, like all over the country. But my paying clients are all local. Do you track what is most successful in terms? Your marketing? So if you're putting your $3000 into a vet office, do it have some kind of marketing survey where people say this is where I got your name from. Yeah, yeah, well, And it's not a literal survey. It's not something. We don't have a spreadsheet or anything but every single client that books a session with us. How did you hear about us, and we literally write it down. Not just Oh, how did you hear about us? And it seems like four people this month, said Google. Like we write it in their notes, I know there are so many notes. I mean, I write notes and been like Denise broke her foot last week and, like, there's notes like that that we have because I heard about it on Facebook. So when Denise calls, it's so much more personal. Hey, how are you? We heard about your foot. Is everything okay or Hey, we've heard Alex that allergies is Are the shots working? Is he good? I mean, we have, like, when you pull up the clients notes, it's like crazy. So the first thing is, how did you hear about us? How successful, like a $ absolutely. And is that really success was out to your top? No. And that is our biggest and what you have to do, and we're gonna talk about it tomorrow. Art displays are my biggest source of referring. Besides, like adoption portrait's and some other things that we do, art displays are it for me. But you have to harvest that relationship, and there's ways to do it right. You can't just throw a bunch around the portrait on the wall and never talk to them again and expect to get referrals. You're not going to get referrals. You have to have a relationship with them. You have to visit them. You have to attend their events. You have to interact with them on Facebook. Take them cookies once a month to make sure they have business cards. I'm just show up with a stack of business cards, show up with cookies. But, oh, did you need business cards? You know, I'm just harvesting that relationship and we always photographed the owners pets. I'm sorry, the staff members, pets and the owner of the business, their pets. I'm not putting round the pictures on the wall. I'm putting staff members pets. Some people go, Oh my gosh, it's so beautiful. They're like, Oh, my gosh, that's my dog! As opposed to Oh, yeah, Oh, my gosh, that's my dog. My dog would never sit like that. No, I know Erica is so good. I didn't think my dog was that either. And all those staff members went through the photography experience where if they didn't just a random portrait on the wall. So it is my biggest source of referrals, but I am working hard to harvest that relationship. So So it's a big investment, but you have to do it with the right cos I turn a lot of art displays down. There's a lot of businesses in Las Vegas who want my portrait's if they want to pay for and put my portrait wherever you want, if you want to pay for it. But if I am paying for it, I have to really like you. And I have to know that you're a good business for me to work with. So, like, for example, just like there's places that sell puppies and like, it's just not something that you know we're into rescues and we're into shelter. So we just wouldn't put our portrait's in a place like that. And you know, so there's just different. Yeah, and we'll talk about that a lot Tomorrow we'll get into it. Your logo and the artist. Please obviously give a huge That's huge advertising for you, and you want that to be. This is our cause. Can your client photos like the samples that you have here. They're beautiful. Um, do you put your logo on the on your photo shop? Is that what you're asking? But do you actually put it on the client photos that they're gonna hang on the wall? Absolutely. Yeah, I do. I don't sign prints. It was either. That was my decision. When I started my business. I'm either going to sign the print by hand or I'm gonna put photography. You cannot read my signature. My signatures, I contribute. And it's just not cute. So some people want that, like, artist's signature. But yes, my it's photography in our Edwardian script in 14 point fun in the corner. And we always make it very discreet. We're not gonna put black background or bright white logo like I don't want to be distracting. I don't need people from across the room to know that was mine, but it's like an art piece of someone wants to walk up to it and look really close. They're going to see photography now, and that's like that's such a compliment. I mean, for someone to go like, why isn't it on there? Like I just hadn't considered it. So they're considering it. Art. I mean, that's Yeah, absolutely. So we have one less last question from the Internet to wrap up today. And it's from John in Seattle and our car. Can you just tell us what were some of the pitfalls of entering the pet photography business? And what were some of the greatest lessons that you learn as a beginner? A big question to rough it is. All right, this is my story with pet photography and keep it short and sweet. I am. I was so not the traditional. Started my basement photographing people. Oh, people like this. Maybe I should think about doing this. I went from I don't know how to operate a camera. I don't know what shutter speed and aperture is to getting a $200,000 business loan and signing a lease for retail space. No idea. How do you shutter speed or aperture? I eso no clue. I just said You know what? I wanna have a pet photography studio. There's a need for it and thats and I'm not recommending that you do that. I'm just saying this is my story. This is what I did and this is the honest truth. And I hired some. I went to WPP. I and, you know, I went there. I bought all my equipment, like $10,000 in lighting and whatever. And it wasn't that it was the business loan that we had that money. And I said, Well, just tell me what kind of lights I need and tell me whatever. And, um, I told the guy when I bottle this stuff and I signed my credit card $10, I said So when my lights Iran, how do we know what to set my camera too? And he looked at me and he was like, for Riel, You just spent 10 grand on the best high end equipment lighting in the industry, and you don't know what to set your camera to. And I was like, No, like, Well, what? I said it, Teoh. He's like, Oh, honey. So I said, why signed the lease and we're gonna open a business and four months, and this is literally what I did. This is back in 2006. So he did private training and I hired him and I brought him out to Vegas And I said Just teach me what to dio. And at the time I was, people call it confidence. It wasn't confidence. It was seriously just I was naive. I don't know anything about business. I never failed at anything in my life. I wasn't gonna fail. I just It was gonna work. There wasn't an option. Where now, having the knowledge that I haven't experienced that I have. If I were to open a second studio, I'd be like, OK, let's run the numbers. We need this many clients a month. This is how the employees I can afford were back then. I was just like, No, we're good, like, and it wasn't confidence. It was just, like nowhere. Good. Like, just we're going to make it. So that's just what I thought. So my start in pet photography was very different, and I just That's what I'm gonna do. And I'm good with animals and I just need to learn how to operate a camera. So I really learned so much along the way. And like I said, I don't recommend that you start that way. But I also want that to be an inspiration for you. Don't feel like, you know, I have to go to school for 10 years and I can't do anything I can't charge for you because I'm not really sure how to understand this lighting pattern and whatever. You don't need to know everything. You just need to be good at what you do. So whatever you show on your website, that's what you need to be good at. I don't do a lot of outdoor lighting on location lighting. I'm just not good at it. It's just not something that I've tried a lot and worked with a lot getting the sky to be really blue and then lighting people up. And I just shoot natural light and blow the sky out and just worry about the exposure on the people. And that's what I do. And that's what I show in my website. So don't feel like you getting into pet photography and starting your business and going for don't feel like oh, but I don't know that and oh, I can't do this. And you know I can't charge for that yet because I've never photographed a cat before, like you could do it like get your education and keep learning and always be a student. But like you can do it just to be good at what you do and produce what you show people in your website. That's it. You don't need to know how to do everything. Just produce what you're showing your website. Amazing story. I don't know if I even answered questions like, What were the pitfalls like? I was just like, No, I'm good like And now we look back and I'm like, I would have been $200,000 in debt like what was I thinking? But back then I was like, No like And like I said, it wasn't so much confidence. It just like it's sink or swim like hey, rents doing a week. I don't have it. All right, well, let's figure it out, you know, and just trekking forward. And now we have a whole system with, like, let's have a marketing calendar. Let's do consultations. Let's do you know, but I wind it back then