The Marketing Photographer Success Story: The Truth About Your Niche and Your Visual Brand

Transcription

1 The Marketing Photographer Success Story: The Truth About Your Niche and Your Visual Brand TRANSCRIPT With Lindsay Miller

2 The Marketing Photographer Success Story The Truth About Your Niche and Your Visual Brand With Lindsay Miller TRANSCRIPT Anne Cleveland: I m Anne Cleveland and I m hosting the call today, and I want to acknowledge you for taking the time out of your busy schedule because I know we are all very busy, and any time you are listening to or you make a choice about a class, you are really making a choice about what you want to focus on in your business. We just thought niche marketing is such an amazing topic because it s so important and so foundational, so I acknowledge you for listening in. What we are going to talk about today is why niche is so important, the biggest challenges to finding your niche, and what it really has to do with photography. So what we are going to cover, just so you have an idea, is in a sea of photographers, Lindsay is going to talk about how she separated herself from the crowd and rapidly grew her successful business. She s also going to talk about how thinking about your niche gives you three tools for finding your visual brand, which of course, is her specialty, and then the importance of niche in your photography, your visual brand and three things that you can do right now to align your message to your visual brand. I just would like to introduce our guest. Her name is Lindsay Miller, and I want to tell you a little bit about her before we get started. She is the owner of The Marketing Photographer. She helps coaches, consultants and speakers who have a big message and a big mission who are ready to take their business to the next level, and together 2

3 with her clients, she creates outstanding photographs. I can vouch for that, she s taken my photograph and she s amazing. She sells a person and their business by aligning their message with their visual brand. She is the secret behind the camera of topnotch coaches like Kendall SummerHawk, Lisa Sasevich, Andrea Lee, Max Simon as well as many of the experts on this symposium like Jesse Koren, Vrinda Normand, Bill Baren, Jenn August and PJ Van Hulle and myself, Anne Cleveland. So after a successful career as an award-winning photojournalist, Lindsay now uses her skills at visual storytelling to make images that help her client change their world. Welcome, Lindsay. Lindsay Miller: What a great introduction. It s great to read all those things. I thought what we could start out with is if you could talk about from your perspective why niche is so important. Lindsay Miller: Well, thank you, Anne, and I just want to take a second too to say thank you for holding such an important telesummit and to say thank you to all these people that are checking in and really taking the time to focus on niche in its clarity. I think you are right, Anne, it s one of the things that it s one of the basic foundations in doing and building a business and it s so important. I m so lucky I get to work with such a wide range of clients. I get to work with people that are just starting out, and I get to work with clients that are at six figures and struggling to get past it, and then I get to work with coaches and companies that are making seven figures and more, and I get to see what the difference is between the three groups. One of the things that I found that is the biggest difference between them is that the wildly successful ones absolutely know who their target market is. They know who their niche is. If I ask them, they can tell me it concisely and clearly within seconds. Their graphic designer knows it. Their team knows it. The whole company is based on it. 3

4 The photographer knows it, and that s no different from the businesses that are just starting out but don t really know who their target market is, or the ones that are six figures and struggling to make more who often have three different niches and they are targeting them and them and them. So it leaves me a challenge on how to visually go after those three niches. In working with so many clients I ve really gotten to understand and come to the conclusion that niche really is the single most important thing in marketing. It really is the secret to attracting clients rather than going after them. Lindsay Miller: It s the secret to positioning yourself as an expert and it s a secret to branding your image to your message, even looking like and feeling like a million dollar business owner, right? Lindsay Miller: Have you felt this too? It is so important. Anne Cleveland: It s so important, and I can hear it when you are talking, it s just the basic element, and then from your angle as a photographer, you can see how this plays out in the marketing and maybe having to spend more money because you get these very photograph but they are not really targeting the people that are going to be your client in the long run. Lindsay Miller: Exactly, exactly. Anne Cleveland: I m wondering what do you see as the biggest challenge for your clients in terms of picking a niche. 4

5 Lindsay Miller: It s such a great question. There are quite a few challenges, but can I just like to take a moment and talk about brand for a second? Anne Cleveland: Oh please, yes. Lindsay Miller: So what is brand, right? Right? Lindsay Miller: We ve been throwing this word around and there are a lot of definitions of brand that s out there, and we could probably have a whole call on branding, right? Lindsay Miller: And we could really learn a lot, but for right now, what I want to say about brand and a common definition of brand is that it is the connection to the company through symbols and visuals that convey the company s mission and message. Would you like me to repeat that? Anne Cleveland: Yeah, that is great. Yeah, please. Lindsay Miller: Okay. So a brand is the connection to the company through symbols or visuals that convey the company s mission and message, and this is so important to my clients because as transformational coaches, healers and speakers, they are their walking logo or visual, right? Lindsay Miller: They are their walking brand. They are not Pepsi or FedEx or companies who brand their service to a product or a logo. They are what the marketing is. They are the personality, which identifies their business and sets them apart from 5

6 others. So the truth behind brand, and this is where I come in, is that to create a successful, one needs to create an emotional connection with that brand and that is the most important thing about brand. So for solo entrepreneurs, you have to create that connection to you to make your brand stick, and it s really, really what you want because emotions make every connection stronger and it s what draws them to you, it draws them to your product. It makes them know, like and trust you and remember you. I often find my clients really working hard on their logo and their graphics thinking that they are working on their brand. Now, I don t want to put down logo and graphics, they are important, but they are leaving out a couple of things. They are leaving out their emotions in them. Anne Cleveland: Right. Lindsay Miller: You have this really nice logo and website, but you don t create emotions attached to it, or if you do, the brand, is not showing up, then really one has misspoken, and I have seen this show up in many ways with marketing from somebody having a nice logo and graphics, but using a photo from a party last week or a photograph from ten years ago or actually having no photograph at all. So really if your business and your personality is what identifies your business and it s going to set you apart from other people, then this is really important for you. On this call I m going to teach you how to make a visual identity that is consistent, authentic and full of emotions, and this is what s going to make you look a million dollar business owner. So that s why this call is so important because the beginning of this visual brand starts with who your niche is, so once we know who your niche is, it allows us to know what emotions need to be captured, what we are trying to say, and it gives me the tools to visually capture that, and that s going to answer your question of why Anne Cleveland: Yeah, I think it s 6

7 Lindsay Miller: One of the biggest Lindsay Miller: Go ahead. Anne Cleveland: I think it s the perfect time. Lindsay Miller: Okay, good. So the number one thing that I see that my clients have a challenge with niche is that when they are thinking of their business they are thinking of themselves rather than who they are trying to reach. They are thinking of what they can do using their marketing to showcase them and their skills. For example, just last week I was looking over a client s website, and her first word of her copy was I, I can t do this. I can do that. I can do a whole bunch of these things. I have these degrees. It was all about her. She could do things from painting children s bedroom to wedding photography. Anne Cleveland: Aha. Lindsay Miller: So to help her with this niche clarity, I wanted her to completely turn around in marketing and start thinking of her clients first, which ones she likes the best, which ones she knows the best, and which ones she can serve the best. So if she had done this, she would spend less time spinning her wheels, right? Lindsay Miller: And hopefully make money faster, but nonetheless even with all this good information, she was resistant in doing it like us all. If picking a niche and going after it was easy, we wouldn t be here on this phone call, right? Anne Cleveland: Yeah, right. 7

8 Lindsay Miller: So I really do understand this from my own story. It s really hard to give up the security of doing a lot of things for a lot of people. But really, it s not a real sense of security. It s a false sense of security. Lindsay Miller: Yeah, do you think so too? Anne Cleveland: I really agree with you on that. It s funny, because like you said, it s a process for everybody and everyone who talked on these calls has really emphasized that each person has gone through their own process in order to come to their niche. Lindsay Miller: Yeah. Anne Cleveland: And you almost can t avoid the process. You can maybe speed it up. You can get information and know how to direct yourself. Lindsay Miller: It s really a process, one that I look back on and wish I ve been kinder to myself through the process, right? Lindsay Miller: It s okay to pick your own niche. It s okay to go for it and be like, Oops, I don t want that one. Lindsay Miller: Okay. Anne Cleveland: I would love to hear more about how you really niched yourself, how you separated yourself from? There are so many photographers, and you ve grown such a successful business. 8

9 Lindsay Miller: Well, thank you. So yeah, I left my newspaper job. I don t know if you knew that. Well, you did know that, you just read it. Lindsay Miller: So I left this highly demanding, it was a high stress position as an award-winning photojournalist. I worked for the newspapers for ten years, and as a photojournalist I was trained to do everything from spot news to sports to documentaries to foods to portraits. I was trained to do everything. That s what a photojournalist is as I can do almost anything. So when I left the newspaper job, what did I do? I went into business to do everything, and I did, I did weddings. I did magazine work. I did newspaper work. I did babies. I did high school seniors. I did portraits. I did parties, products and events. Oh my goodness. Anne Cleveland: Wow! Lindsay Miller: But then I struggled, oh my gosh. Every time I had a new client, they wanted to see some of my work so I d have to create a new brochure. I d have to create a new workflow. I d have to create a new way of pricing and estimates. Oh, I was totally overworking and I was really a walking disaster, and I was also undercharging because I couldn t see the extraordinary value of my gift because I wasn t focused. I was too busy doing everything and not charging it for anything. So there is a pivotal moment in my story. I was hearing leaders in the coaching industry say to niche, but then I would talk to industry leaders in photography and they would say the opposite. They would say, You must be doing everything in photography to make it right now. You can t be a specialist. These are hard times for photographers. We are in a recession, and if you don t like it, you better get out of the business. Now is not a good time. 9

10 So I m glad that people are saying to niche, and I m so glad that I listened to the coaches in the industry and I didn t listened to the other photographers. I had to ask the question, Well, what group? Who do I choose, and why do I choose them? So what I do know is that when I was a photojournalist, I had a real sense of purpose, a big mission. I was out to change the world, to tell stories that were untold and make a difference to the lives of the people that I was photographing, and that s what gave me the greatest satisfaction in my work. I thought that was a good place to start in finding my niche, so I looked through my clients to see which ones gave me that sense of purpose. So instantly, and this sounds bad, but instantly I knew I wasn t feeling a sense of purpose in doing people s weddings. Some photographers really do. It s a really special day and they are making images that will be preserved in the family for years to come, but in my gut, I didn t feel that passion or that reward in making a difference. So the clients I did feel that I was helping the most and who I was doing a service for were the solo entrepreneurs whose business was based on them. I could create images that made them look good and feel good and have others want to buy from them, then I had helped them, that I had contributed to the success of their business and I had changed their lives, and for me this was a really worthy mission. I felt that sense of accomplishment that I had done it and changed the world one photograph at a time. I just love it because it s the kind of question that everybody can ask themselves what your Lindsay Miller: Right. Anne Cleveland: This is a great example of where is it. You are doing all these things, but where is it that you really have that thing, that sense of purpose and you are really making a difference where you want to, because it could be for somebody else, weddings is really the thing. Lindsay Miller: Yeah. 10

11 Anne Cleveland: And then for you, it turns out to be something different. Lindsay Miller: Right. Anne Cleveland: Right. Lindsay Miller: So when I m in the marketing strategy session with my clients who are struggling with niche, that s the one question that I ask them if they can t answer who their niche is, What is your mission? Where do you get the biggest reward? And who are the people that you are working with? So it s really interesting in my story because that was how I narrowed my niche, right? Lindsay Miller: I was working with solo entrepreneurs, but Anne, that is a big niche. Lindsay Miller: Right? Anne Cleveland: Right. Lindsay Miller: I was photographing food. I was photographing jewelry. I was photographing product. I was photographing events. I was doing portraits. I had groups like real estate agents, restaurants, store owners. It was still too large of a market, and so I had to niche even more. I had to narrow it down, and this time there were two things that happened in that niche. One, the biggest rewards that I got were for working with the people who are really out there changing the world. The more that they had a bigger mission, the more that I could help them with that the better I felt. But the other thing that happened at the same time was I started to look at who was raving about my services, and it turned out to be the same group of people. 11

12 Anne Cleveland: Perfect. Lindsay Miller: Yeah, lucky me, and so it turned out to be people that created transformation in others like transformational coaches, healers, speakers, and those that are guiding people spiritually. These people were raving about me because they were so excited that I capture their emotions in their portraits, and how that emotion helped them in their marketing and helped to visually connect potential clients to their brands and remember them. So one of the fears that people have that I didn t touch on earlier is that when you are saying no to a group of people, you feel like you are losing them. You feel like you are not making a connection, because you are saying no and you are going to exclude people and lose money and lose clients, but no is such a powerful tool in our business because once I started saying no to those other business, no to weddings, no to babies, all those things, and eventually to restaurant owners and solo entrepreneurs that weren t transformational coaches and speakers, all of a sudden I had room to fill in more people that I could actually help the most. Now, I have more clients that I ever had as well as I have clients I work with over and over and over again because they know, like and trust me and they get great reward from using my photographs and me. Anne Cleveland: Right. Lindsay Miller: There is actually another part to this too because one of the other fears I see my clients have, and I had too, was that if I pick a certain niche, I was going to be stuck doing this same thing over and over again, right? Lindsay Miller: And once I said no, once I focused on this group of people, I have been able to use every tool that I know within those niche, so I do their portraits, capture emotions and authentic message to their photograph, even event photography. 12

13 I also do video, and we are just now dabbling in graphic design and web design for clients because since I help people align their message, we want all of that to be aligned and guided. If you have one person shooting your portrait, one person shooting your event, one person doing your video, one person doing your graphic, you have six to seven different flavors into your brand, and we are spearheading this so that we can align all of it together so you create that consistency so you specifically know your message, so you know who you can go after so that you can get results. Anne Cleveland: That is incredible in putting all that together because it really is so linked up. Lindsay Miller: Right. It s that visual identity, that visual consistency, and that emotional connection that grabs people and make them stick to you and your message. It makes someone want to know more. So really focusing and creating that niche has allowed me to actually open so many doors for me and my business. Anne Cleveland: And I have heard Lindsay Miller: I m so lucky go ahead. Anne Cleveland: Go ahead, sorry. I was going to say I ve heard this over and over again, that when you close a door, other doors open that you didn t even realize. Lindsay Miller: Yeah. Anne Cleveland: In people and myself included, it s really scary to close that door, but there is something on the other side and you are giving us that evidence that yes, there really is. Lindsay Miller: Yeah, but also it s closing the door because I really think that when we have a really strong message, when it really focuses on the person, even people who are not in the target market will be attracted to the strength of our message, right? 13

14 Lindsay Miller: So for trying to target three or four different groups of people, people are confused and they are turned off by it. But if we have a really strong message, if we go after one group, people in other groups will just be attracted to the strength of our message and want to be a part of it too. So in a way, we are not even really closing doors. Anne Cleveland: So I like that. So yeah, so really, you are actually making yourself more visible. Lindsay Miller: Right. Anne Cleveland: So people can find you even if they are not in your target market, right? Lindsay Miller: Yes, you ve got it. There are a couple of things that we can take from my story, you know? Lindsay Miller: Basically, if you are struggling with your niche, thinking about what the mission is in your business, where do you have that greatest joy and reward. The other thing that we can ask ourselves is who is your favorite client and why. Who do you have that you can offer the most who you can serve the best? Who raves about you the most? Then once we get that far and we create that visual identity, we want to ask ourselves, who do you have to be to serve this group of people? How do I want to show up in all my visual identity? How do I want to be seen by this group of people? Who would I like and trust and I have to buy from if I were that potential client? 14

15 Anne Cleveland: I wonder if you can talk a little bit about the process because you ve taken my picture and you ve taken lots of people s photographs and it s just such a transformational experience, at least that s how I had experienced it. Lindsay Miller: Oh okay. Anne Cleveland: How you go through with your clients and really pull out the truth of who they are. Lindsay Miller: Right, right, because once again, it s all about creating that emotion and capturing that message in the photograph. So really it starts from the basis of understanding who our niche is, but seriously that is the first question to ask, who is your niche? Who is it? What s your mission, and how do you want to be seen by that target market? It s really my secret. I m giving it away right now, right on this phone call. That is my marketing strategy session. Lindsay Miller: Later on I m going to talk about three calls that I m having where I m going to do that with three clients right on the call so people can hear it and see what I do, but it is done in multiple things because I think when those three things are singing with who we are authentically then we really have this visual brand that captures our message. But there is one thing that I think that people get really confused about in their photography, and I d like to clarify it. Is that okay? Anne Cleveland: Oh, please. Lindsay Miller: So when I ask a client what is the purpose of their photograph as I want to talk about it a little bit because most often people say the purpose of their photograph is to show potential clients who they are, right? 15

16 Lindsay Miller: And this is a fair answer, but once again it s like that client I talked about earlier who had a website that was all about her and not about her clients. It s a million dollar business and those photography should be about the clients and how to best convey your core message to them in your image so that s what we are diving into that marketing strategy session and how to do that. Because every piece of marketing has a purpose, your s title, its purpose is to get people to open the , right? Lindsay Miller: The s purpose is for them to click on the sales page, and the sales page is to get them up buying. It s all client oriented. So what is the purpose, what is the marketing purpose of your photograph? It s the question I m trying to answer here. Anne Cleveland: Yeah, yeah. Lindsay Miller: And then really I m going to give you an answer, it is for your target market to know you know you better, like you better and to trust you more. I know it s a little cliché. We hear it all the time, to know, like and trust you, but the more they know you, the more they like you, the more they trust you, then it s more likely they are going to buy from you. So this is my strategy, and I m going to give it away, and I d like us to break this down and talk about it a little bit and how this know, like and trust you better works in your visual identity. So I m going to talk about know. I m going to break this down. Let s talk about how do you want people, how do you want this target market to know you. What qualities do we need to show with your visual identity? So for an example, if you were coaching people undergoing chemotherapy, what are the qualities where people want to know you have? Let s think like stability, groundedness, compassionate humor, healthy vitality. Would those be the things that really connected to make the emotional connection with the viewer? So that s the first step. Then I want to capture those qualities in your photograph so people will know you a little bit better. 16

17 We want them to know us for the qualities that we are going to provide and then like us for who we are, but we want this to be tailored to our market and to have an underlying theme of quality. When we hit that sweet spot of being authentic with a niche that are just like us, that s when it sings. This is an example of my likes. I like working with a target market that is on the cutting edge of marketing. It s who I love to work with, so in my images, in my photography, I want to convey that I m cutting edge. So for example, I have this photograph of me in a black-colored jacket, bright blond hair and my big, expensive cutting edge camera. I kind of like look like Cameron Diaz, but what it does is it shows up my quirkiness and my willingness to play but it shows me in a cutting-edge fashion, so this makes it aligned to my message. Does this make sense? Anne Cleveland: Yeah, it really makes sense, and when people think about photographs and making you look good, people go, Is that really me? But you are talking about really pulling that altogether and bringing out an aspect of yourself that will really reach your market. Lindsay Miller: Well, you said it better than I did, Anne. Exactly, so this brings me to trust, the last thing in the know, like and trust. So trust is reached when we are seeing this somebody who can solve problems, somebody that bring around results, and it s when people think that we are being genuine and not blowing smoke, right? Lindsay Miller: So how do we do this? And I m going to talk about quality, and if you have a high quality, well thought out visual identity, people are going to trust that you have a high-quality, well thought out business approach. So the quality of your visual element is the first thing people see when visiting your site so you can t have a photograph that was taken in a picnic like I said before and cropped for your website or a photograph taken ten years ago. Anne Cleveland: Right. 17

18 Lindsay Miller: They need to be taken by a photographer who understands your message and your niche, and then of course, you need to have professional makeup and clothing aligned with that message in your niche too. You need to be fresh and updated and capture the know and like factors that we talked about before. So these things can be conveyed in just seconds by just a glance of a photo and they will keep people around to read your copy and stay in your site when it gets them to know you a little bit more. So like I said before, big business and coaches that are making seven figures or more have figured this out. Big businesses have figured this out. In the society right now, we are such a visually savvy society. We are always inundated with visuals that big business has spent huge budgets on creating. They are trying to do that same thing. They are trying to create that emotional connection to their brand, what all they are advertising is about, and it s so funny because when we go into business and we use an image that was taken in a coffee shop with our web cams and there is quite a discrepancy. I think people just don t know what it takes to get a good photograph. Other people don t like having their photograph taken, maybe because they ve had so many bad photos taken in the past, but really also I want to say that I believe that every single one of us can take a good photograph. We just don t know how, and another thing that happened to my clients is some clients have such a big mission and such a big message that caring about what they look like or what they are wearing doesn t seem so important. They really could be out changing the world instead of spending a day in front of the camera. But once again, I want to go back to that point that our business is about our client and our clients need to know us, like us and trust us and that s true for this one. It s about caring enough for this potential client to package our fabulous, wonderful and great service in this professional looking package, so that it s credible. Once we get over the fears, it s so exciting to be able to step forward and take that leap and jump into our niche head forward. 18

19 Anne Cleveland: Yeah, I love that part where you talked about you might feel like, Oh, I m not spending time where I could be out changing the world. But really we are such a visual society and I know that with people things are quicker and quicker so people are spending less time on a visual, on websites and all that kind of stuff, so that it has to be really effective really quickly. Lindsay Miller: Really quickly. I know we have just a few seconds and if they are confused or don t like it, people are gone. Anne Cleveland: Yeah, and I m wondering you had mentioned people don t know what it takes to make a good photograph or maybe they don t like having their photograph taken, but can you say a little bit more about what it takes to make that photograph really zing and just hit the market in a couple of seconds? Lindsay Miller: Sure, it s a really good question. I want to go back to when the client comes to work with me, we have this marketing strategy session where, A, we get to know each other because really to take a great photograph that captures the emotions, there has to be a trust between the photographer and the client. Because in the photo studio, to be vulnerable, to be authentic, to show up with presence, to capture those emotions, we have to play. We have to let go of our inhibitions. We have to take all that resistance, that nervousness, that fear and leave it at the door, so I work really hard at creating the sacred space for people to step through their fear so that they can show up authentically and beautifully and full of life and all the attributes that we have figured out what we want to showcase in our marketing strategy session. Does that makes sense? Anne Cleveland: It makes so much sense that you really create the space for the inner self to come out in a way that you actually capture on film. Lindsay Miller: It s so funny in photographs. If there is any hesitation, if there is any reluctance, it s shown ten times in a photograph. So I really guide my clients to get past that, to really let go of that, and really what it takes to get past that is a willingness to 19

20 play, a willingness to make mistakes, a willingness to try your body this way to flirt with the camera a little bit this way. Like they say in America s Next Top Model, it s all about the eyes. To get that energy, the flow, that connection through the eyes. But I do work with the stylists. I work with the color specialists and the makeup artists and we all take those marketing words that we come up with, that visual identity, whether it s being authentic, warm, approachable, grounded, all the words that I talked about before and using everybody s talents to align ourselves with that. For somebody who is targeting professionals or CEOs, when they show up in their photograph, we don t want them in a flowy white dress. We want them in something that s geared professionally, and they also might want to showcase power and confidence. So in a session with me, we really want to focus on showing that personality part being grounded, whereas somebody who, let s say, is targeting mothers who are learning how to teach their babies how to eat raw food, we really might want to show them as spiritually guided or grounded or healthy and vibrant. So those are the intentions that we set forth in the makeup, in the wardrobe, and definitely in emotions that we are trying to capture. Anne Cleveland: So you work with the whole team? Lindsay Miller: Yeah, I work with the whole team. Yeah, absolutely. Anne Cleveland: I mean, it s great because you all understand the same message and you all work together so people really get that benefit. Lindsay Miller: Yeah, and they can put themselves in their hands and not have to worry about what they are going to wear, how they are going to position their body or what makeup do they need to run out and get. They are really guided to really align with this message because consistency is key. There are actually some things that people listening can do right now to align their visual images or message. Should I go now with that? 20

21 Anne Cleveland: I think that would be perfect. That s what I was just wondering about. Lindsay Miller: Okay, so of course, the first one is going to be that photograph that s high quality is going to reflect the high quality in service, so you need to have a high quality image. The second thing that people can do right now is to use more than one photograph. So we want our potential clients to know you a little bit. We want to know you better, so each place in your marketing is an opportunity to tell your potential client something about you. We also want to use more than one photograph and change them often so that the visual seemed active because do you know what that says? That your company is active, and that s a message we want to send. So the third thing is that we want to use a variety of images in appropriate marketing medium. I don t know if that quite make sense, but we want to use a variety of photographs that are appropriate to the marketing medium. We do not want to use the same one. We do not want to have the same photograph on our website or About page or Facebook or newsletter. That s not branding, that is a waste of opportunity to tell your clients more about you. You will want them to know you. You want them to like you and trust you. So let s see, on the front page of your website, you might want to use one that s a little bit more professional and a little bit more intimate on your newsletter or your blog, and then on Facebook, being more fun and playful a little bit. Show a little bit of your personality to your clients. So there are these three things people can use right now to guide them in aligning their visual images. Anne Cleveland: Can you go over those again? Those are really good. Lindsay Miller: Oh good. Okay. Lindsay Miller: So first, they have to be of high quality. They have to capture your message. It s really important. It s the foundation of your well thought out, high quality 21

22 photograph done by a professional. Two is to use more than one photograph in your marketing. Change them often. Change them often. Change them often as I say it again, because this makes it show that our business seems active. Third, then we want to use a variety of photographs that are appropriate to the marketing media, not the same ones, but different ones. Anne Cleveland: That s something that I have not done. Well, I just love the way you put that, but really it has to be at the appropriate place. Lindsay Miller: Yeah. Anne Cleveland: It s like you can be your playful self. It s more powerful if it s in the right setting. Lindsay Miller: Yeah, exactly. You ve got it. So if people are actually looking at their photographs right now, looking it and we change our thinking about photographing and showcasing us into thinking about our clients, what I would like people to do that on this call right now is look at all their images that potential clients can see. Where are they? What are they? Are they on their website, in the About page, in the newsletter? Are they in their blog? Now, what is important, the more important ones? What is on Facebook? Look at every single image, and what does it say about you? Is it aligned to your niche? And is it aligned to your brand, to you? What does it say about you? So you ve got your favorite client and think about why they should know and like and trust you, and then look at those photographs that are in your marketing and does it match? Does it have an underlying message of quality. Do you have different images that you can change often and does it capture your message of your business and your position as an expert? So to tie this in right again, the more you know about niche, the more that you can develop this message, the more you can develop the emotions and the transformations you create to align these people to your message, that they know, like and trust you before they even walk in the door. 22

23 Anne Cleveland: Yeah, this is great. I have to bring up these questions. Actually, I have two questions. Lindsay Miller: Oh, great. Anne Cleveland: One is the process that they go through with you and having their photographs taken sounds like it can actually help clarify their niche and their message. Lindsay Miller: Absolutely, absolutely. Those sessions, those marketing strategy sessions have led to breakthroughs that have aligned somebody s message throughout their whole website. You can take those and use them in your website graphics. You can use them in your videos. You can use them as you show up in what you are wearing when you attend an event. You can actually take those marketing words, those visual message, and match them to everything that you do visually in your business. No longer are the days if we go into business ourselves that we can walk out in the streets in our pajamas. We can t put photos of us in flip-flops playing in the creek in our Facebook anymore. We really need to think about what we are saying with each visual image. It s like I got off in tangent. Did I answer your question? Anne Cleveland: You did. You did answer the question. Lindsay Miller: Okay, yes. Anne Cleveland: But yeah, that through that process, that people can really identify with their message, their niche, and it s actually going through that photograph process can help clarify things in a way that just thinking about it might not. Lindsay Miller: Yeah, and it s actually really one of my brilliances of taking that mission and taking that message in and capturing it in a photo. My team, and I really align. 23

24 Anne Cleveland: That s excellent. Well, I m thinking that we are getting towards the end of the call and it would be nice just to sort of recap a little bit what the three tools are for finding your visual brand. Lindsay Miller: Great. Great. So they are basically the know, like and trust factor. Anne Cleveland: Right. Lindsay Miller: The three tools, how do we want our clients to know us. What are the results that they get from working with us? What are the qualities that we want to show? And the like factor which is how do we want our audience to like us. This is where we get to be authentic and show our personalities off. It s a little feeler to how we want them to know us with an underlying message of quality, underlying message of quality, underlying message of quality, and then to trust, so it s making sure that everything is aligned and fresh and updated and then of high quality. So these are the three tools that I would say to you as well as just make sure, this is the number one tip I think, to really look through all your images and say, What are these things saying about me, and do they align with my target market? Anne Cleveland: This is great. I just love how you have woven together all these questions about niche clarity and message and purpose and woven it into your business around photography. It s just so clear about your passion on how people can get their message out. Lindsay Miller: Thank you. Thank you. It s a worthy topic, and I m so lucky that I get to do what I love on a daily basis. That s great. So is there anything else that you wanted to say? We just have a few more minutes left about either importance of niche or just giving people one more little tidbit about niche clarity and how people get clear about what they want to do. 24

25 Lindsay Miller: Sure. What is the most important thing? I just have that great thought. I would really like people to know that it s really okay where they are, and picking a niche, at least for me has been going in the wrong direction a little bit and then going in the right direction and going on the wrong direction, and that s okay. It s just okay. If we are out there, we are playing, we are trying, we will be guided to the right place. We will know it if we are paying attention and listening to our gut, in our instinct, but we don t have to pick the perfect niche right now. We go after one and if we like it, we can go after another. If you feel a lot of pain that people have, that I have to do this right now and it has to be right process and we are okay wherever we are along in the process, and really to guide, to help us listen to that intuition which is the right niche is to really think about it, to really take a look at how can I be most useful. Where am I getting that reward from? Who do I like helping the most? I want to make a difference in the world and so if I m not, I m really not living in my purpose and I m living in pain. So how can I make a living doing what I love and what I have a passion for and what makes me feel so uptight as I get up in the morning. Anne Cleveland: This is great, and it is taking it back to the beginning of the call when we were talking about being gentle with yourself in the process. Lindsay Miller: Right. Lindsay Miller: I know we want it now. We want the result now and everything to be perfect now. Lindsay Miller: But really it s a process. Anne Cleveland: So what you are saying is to just get out there, do what you do. 25

26 Lindsay Miller: Yeah. Anne Cleveland: And I even think if you make a mistake and it s a big mistake, then you really get to see where you would rather be so you can make that course correct. Lindsay Miller: Yeah, exactly. It s like exactly. Do we have opportunity for people to ask questions or should we go on the blog? Anne Cleveland: There is a question here that someone asked. It s someone who said they want to do baby and children s photography as their niche, but they are from a very small town and they are afraid of excluding other avenues of income. Do you have any thoughts on that? Lindsay Miller: Well, it s a great question. I m just looking right here. All right, baby and children, what a great field to go into. Well, this is what I would say for them. We are not actually excluding other people, we are just focusing on one, and if we focus, focus and have a message that s strong about babies or children, it doesn t exclude people. It doesn t exclude the high school seniors because once you ve photographed them as babies and you can funnel them into things. What I would really suggest is that have a message that stands strong for babies, but have a funnel that you can accept other things as well, but don t have a website that includes everything. Instead have a website that really is strong with babies and children and then you can funnel those people into doing something else instead of marketing wedding. Am I making sense? Anne Cleveland: Yeah, it s like if you niche yourself and get known for the quality of what you do, then people will recognize you and maybe ask you to step out of your niche, so you will get more people that way. Lindsay Miller: Exactly. Anne Cleveland: Nice. 26

27 Lindsay Miller: Exactly. You could say it better than I did. It s a really good question, and that was from Nicole. It s Nicole. Lindsay Miller: Yeah. Anne Cleveland: Yeah, yeah. So that s the main question that is on there. Lindsay Miller: Great. Thanks for that. Lindsay Miller: And your clients are special. They re really a good crowd, I have to say. Anne Cleveland: Yeah, definitely. So any last things that you are thinking about you want to say. I love the last, what you said with just about being gentle on yourself. Lindsay Miller: Let me say what is your mission. I don t know. How do we want to be seen really is the biggest question. Who do we want to be when we show up in our visuals? Lindsay Miller: So yeah. Anne Cleveland: And I think you re seeing just incredible transformations. Lindsay Miller: Oh, my goodness. Anne Cleveland: Once they had those photos, you must have seen amazing things happen in people s businesses. 27

28 Lindsay Miller: Yeah, really. I mean, a lot of the times when we have all these bad photos taken of us, we feel bad about ourselves. When we get photographs that just make us beautiful and captures our spirit, we just want to jump on board and show them to everyone like, Wow, this is us. We look and feel like a million dollar business owners because we are. We all have that potential. We all have that potential to take that good photograph, and really that s something I want people to know and that I ve never met somebody that can never take a good one, but takes the bad ones. They just don t know how. Anne Cleveland: Yeah, that is a great message, and I just want to emphasize once again how Lindsay is really a genius at getting you to be yourself. It s really incredible. So I want to thank you for your gift and your talent. Lindsay Miller: Thanks Anne. I appreciate it. We sure have fun. Should I tell the secret of Anne s photo? Anne Cleveland: Oh please. Lindsay Miller: She did the salsa in front of the camera for about a half an hour. Anne Cleveland: It was so much fun. Lindsay Miller: I know. We captured your spirit, and your essence, it s coming out of your eyes and the joy that you have when you are dancing. Anne Cleveland: Yeah, yeah. Lindsay Miller: Yeah, yeah. Anne Cleveland: So I just want to thank you for being on this call and sharing everything that you shared. So thanks again, Lindsay. 28

29 Lindsay Miller: Okay. Lindsay Miller: Thank you again. Anne Cleveland: All right, bye-bye. Lindsay Miller: Bye-bye. End of Audio 29