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Sue's Evolution

Hi, everyone. Welcome. I thought long and hard about what I can share today because 28 days waas such an epic workshop for me. Um, I feel like I put my whole working life into a workshop. And yet the strange thing is, is when I keep talking about it, there's always more like I have more and more and more. I have enjoyed mostly watching people grow, uh, and work through this workshop. So today is an add on to 28 days. I'm gonna tell you this morning why you should join us in what you're going to learn from the sweatshop. Interestingly enough, I put a message on the 28 day study group page about what else you would like to learn from May. And pitching was the 1st 1 that came up, and it actually significantly changed my business in my path when I learned to sell myself in some my business. So I'm really excited. Today. I started to write slides and they just come flying out, and it occurred to me how much I had learned back in the day when I could not give anybody my business card. So I'm...

going to take you through my start up a swell. I feel like people think that life is just so incredibly in. Business is so incredibly easy for me now. But you don't realize that everything I wrote 28 days about everything I taught you was my 1st to 4 years in business when I started with zero money, no money in my garage. So I don't want you to think for one minute that it's all breezy and easy now is very different for me now. But I still remember very clearly what it was like back then and how a built up and that's really what I wanted to show you. You have to remember that this is where I came from. I came from a garage in Careca, so that's about half on hour out of the city in a country town, a rural country town that is no one for potatoes and onions. Okay, I lived in a 52 year old cottage that was not that fancy, but it was a haven. So it was the most beautiful place to come, but not a beautiful home. I had a two car garage with metal roller doors that I painted white. And for the 1st 3 months of my business, I did not have doors in the front. I had the middle roller doors. So before my client would arrive, I would roll the doors up so that they never saw them and they were too big, open doors at the front, so I would put up a little wall so that they couldn't see outside. And this is where the birth of my business really came from it. I'd be in a photographer for a few years before I have been unemployed. Photographer. It wasn't really until I put in this carriage studio that I learned about making money and about owning a business. And trust me, that's one of the hardest things to do as a creative is to actually make an income sustaining and come and believe in yourself to do it. So today, that's what it's all about. That's what 28 days is about. This is my fear studio. I remember. I can still remember the smell of it. I can still remember that blue carpet and, um, yeah, well, the memory of that I remember the very first creative life I did two years ago in March I looked at a picture on the attend. You add them up. Wanna I looked at a picture off the studio and I just started to cry. I can still recall the fear that I felt when I faced out of my business still in my body today. So I'm gonna talk to you about how I really got through. The hardest part in that was the 1st 2 years. I showed this in my opening talk in Vegas in April last year when I launched 28 days was matched the rate last year. So it's been 18 months since we launched days in in 18 months. I have watched everybody working through 28 days. Now, obviously, we have the study group of people that it's still working the workshop weekly. And then we have in big Riso where people are contributing constantly. And so I've gotten to watch your trials and where you've gone wrong and where you've gone, right? And some of the work that's going through those two Facebook groups is just outrageously good. Um, I want to show you the work that I was producing around that time again because I feel like this might have got lost in the fray. But I mean, do you tow Understand that I've never said I was the world's based photographer. I'm a combination off and a great connector of women. Um, a great connector of making women look and feel beautiful. I eggs L at connection, and I pretty much nailed down posing. There isn't a body I can't pose, but only because I photographed nearly 6000 women now. So there's not many body types or or tension or anything that I can't kind of that I haven't photographed before and say I don't get tripped up on my posing. But in terms of being like the based photographer in the world or the best business person in the world, I'm just a work in progress like everybody else. So I watch my work of over the last 20 years, I've enjoyed watching there, and it's good to go back and look at where you started. Back hit back at this time, I took some really beautiful wig, and I took some really average work, too. But I learned that what sells is the connection you have with people and the providing the good service. I just want to take you through a couple of the images that really sort of defined my business back then and you know, you can laugh or you can cry. But the truth is, is every one of these girls have beautiful portrait's from themselves back in this time. 2000 and 3 Um, I don't know when I went to that stage of de saturating the face and keeping the eye shadow color, but we all went through a selective color phase at some stage, you know, I learned about what stuff hands are and poses that you don't believe. Um, I learned about poses that are just unnecessary that really don't have any bearing on body language. I learned about creepy fingers and hands that don't belong, and hence that come out of nowhere. And I learned that the fan is probably the most incredible thing you can bring to a photo shoot. You know, I learned how Teoh educate people to bring the right clothes to the shoot, and I learned, how does she could and older women. I learned that I could include more than one woman into a shoot in self $5000 with the portrait as opposed to just doing one. I learned not to market myself as a family portrait photographer, but to include families in my portrait shoot because they were a biggest sale. I learned the power off changing outfits, changing clothes, changing poses to sell mawr work because the more variety you give people, the better it is. I learned that the mother and daughter was the most powerful Citian tool and marketing tool that I had because it was too shooting demographics. It taught me so much about marketing connected marketing and selling, um, again that the woman is a woman. She wants to be photographed is a beautiful girl, but at the end she values your husband and Children. If you can bring them in and include them into the shoot, you're just making more money. Um, I learned about connection very, very really. So whatever you see wrong with these images, whether it's a creepy foot or something, that shouldn't be there or a bad crop, or you crapped out their hands at the rest and I still get that now my Facebook page. You're breaking the rules. Who's rules? I make my own rules. Thank you very much and you know it. Whatever you see wrong, I want you to look at one consistency and that is even back then I could lock down Hell, they were looking at me. I could lock down how they felt in front of the camera. And so even though I was growing through my own posing as going through, my business is going through selling. I was growing through how we were shooting, processing. How is further shopping? Just like you are? The one thing I learned was that I could make any woman look at me like that. And when they look at you like that, they're giving you everything they've got in that moment. They are vulnerable, their incredible. They're beautiful, they're in front of your camera and they're giving you everything. And I'm connecting to it. I'm photographing it and then I'm selling it back to them, right? So I think through these years was probably the biggest struggling years off my life. Um, I learned more in three months of starting my business, and I head in 12 years of working in somebody else's studio. I learned what it was like to have employees and be a boss to have fear toe. Wonder if I could pay everybody next week, including myself. I learned that you put yourself last and really quite remarkable so you can see a consistency in my work good in bed back then. And I feel like showing you this is going to make you realize that you're doing okay, okay, that you're doing really, really good. Because sometimes we look at People's Facebook's and we look at people's websites and they all seem to be doing so much better than us, and they're putting the very best of the work out. There may be a person of it, but I have had the opportunity to go into many studios in the last years. And aside from the folio that you see on the website and the seemingly successful studios that you think you're doing so much better than you and your competition, that's rocking the world when you're struggling, the average work that most people are producing on a weekly basis is quite average. Okay, so what's going to make you stand out is the service. You give the product, you sell the follow up and said That's what we want to talk about today. And I'm gonna teach you how to pitch your way right from the beginning, right through to the end. So as much as I could pick it, these images, the irony is I'm really proud of them. I feel like a lot of you are around this level right now. Um, it's going to take you maybe 3 to 5 more years to just nail it. And when you do now it you're going to create and income that will change your life and a business that will change your life. You know, there's so many stories like this when I look at this one, this single image changed my life. I wanted to be a fashion photographer about the year 2000 because everyone told me I wasn't a portrait of total father. Look, clearly you're into fashion, So I decided to go into a fashion shoot for a magazine. I got $380. It was the worst experience of my life. This woman came in. She spent $3800. I changed her life. She changed mine. I remember thinking knife. I'm a glamour photographer, and I'm just gonna bring it back because I'm clearly out of fashion. When I look at this image, I remember stories. I know their names, you know? I know the skill is Sirrah. I know. I remember what they do. I even remember this star signs or their boyfriends names. They got married. They live in Seattle, you know. Oh, my gosh. I have. Hannah is still a friend of mine on Facebook. I remember these girls with this is their senior shoot. I got to share these stories with these women. I remember where I photographed them, how I photographed them, The experience I had with them. I mean, this is a lifetime of Wick and, you know, call it what even you want. Call it average. Call it what you want. It's, uh that's pretty damn cool. I wouldn't change it for anything. Not even the struggle. Well, I would actually change the struggle. All right. So training for 28 days how did it come about? Creativelive asked me if I could do another workshop. What would it be? I said I talked my photographers in 28 days, I talked to photographers to come into my studio, shoot my style, sound my style, and 28 days later they were producing an income. We track their income down to the last cent over the first year, and they single handedly borden out income. Both girls did $7000 sales on the first, like seven off them in the 1st 2 months of their employment. Also, interestingly enough, both girls who I love very much Christine Keuren, now run their own photography business. They're both Christie's head kids, she said. Three kids curing has now developed into traveling with weddings around the world. They both, you know, develop their own businesses, develop themselves. I think it was a really incredible experience. Toe watch these gills leave my studio and then go and start their own business because they did exactly what I did. They went out and then they made 1/10 of the income they made for me, because when you make money for yourself, it is so much harder than when you make money for someone else. And I'll tell you why it has to do with how much you value what you're making, how you're making it and receiving the money. Now I can give you all the pitch woods that you want. But today I'm going to address a couple of other things. Those girls did $7000 sales, and their first month went out on their own ended $1000 average in their own studios. What does that tell you? When they were in my studio, they valued it more. When they were in their own space, they didn't. If I can shift that today, if I can shift your idea of what you're with, then your income or shift next week, this is not a get rich quick scheme. This is not the secret. This is not. It's not a secret. You're the one blocking your value. It's not the it's not that it's not the world in calm. It's not. It's not the state of the industry. It's not the the photographers everywhere. There's always been photographers everywhere. My whole life has been photographers everywhere. I've been through three global financial crisis or to global financial crisis, and the stock market crashed and I was in business for all of them, and I survived So you know what? It's your value off what you do. So we created this 28 days based on how we built our studio. And I found this from the slides. When we replay creative life, when we replace our 28 days, this is what Christie wrote. I asked Christie to give me a quote, and it said, I remember the first few weeks. I cried a lot, but was So it's sink will swim. Yeah. So I am the school of hard knocks. I bring people into my studio, and I don't deal very well with the need for validation. So I want to get rid of that really fast. You don't need to validate yourself. You already here? You're breathing ear. You with it. Okay with you think you're a child of God? Whatever it is you're here. You deserve to be here. You deserve to be prosperous. You just even and come. You deserve a valuable life. Okay? You don't validate yourself. I'm not interested in your need to be validated. I do workshops, and there's always a cry of somebody standing there with the camera, just crying out. Why you crying right now? Good I e. I don't know why I'm crying, but I need to validate myself to be good enough to be here to do this job. Is this the only job in the world where you actually need to validate yourself to be it? Your photographer? You cry. Well, maybe you do being a waitress, are you do? Yeah, but because people treat you badly, you know what I mean? It's the value of your work of creating work. To sell is one of the hardest things. But if you get the woods right, I don't really adhere to the philosophy. Fake it till you make it. Because I never faked anything. I very much admit to my failings. There's no faking it. I'm doing the best I can with what I've got right now. I know how to make what's really good, really good. And what's really bad seem a little bit bitter because I'm learning. But I'm okay to stand up and say, Oh, I suck it this bit. But you know, I don't really believe in the fake it till you make it. I believe in practice Makes perfect. So when I got asked to do a talk and I was in Australia, in Canada, Australia, Michelle, Tottenham from Ken and asked me to speak to represent Cannon because they liked my work and they went many female speakers in the industry. Um, I couldn't speak publicly. I couldn't speak to a roomful of people. I just suffered from severe anxiety. My voice would quiver and I'd cry And I was just a big drama queen around speaking. So I walked on a beach every day for nearly three weeks, I walked along this beach and honestly, I think everybody that lived on that beach on the Gold Coast and Queen same probably thought I was crazy because I would walk along the speech and I'd say my name is Sue Bryce and I am a portrait photographer and I would just talk out loud, you know, like next time you see a crazy person, they might not be speaking to themselves. They might be practicing for Aquino on. I realized that I practise speaking until it became sick and nature. I practice selling on the phone until it became sick and nature. I practice my elevator pitch and I'm gonna make all of you today. Do your elevator pitch to me and the three people watching at home. Because I need you, Teoh. Tell me what you do, and I want to believe it.