You might think that being an amazing photographer is enough to get hired by high-end clients. It’s not. In this episode, I’m chatting with my nephew, Ross DeCesare—who’s just completed the arduous and eye-opening task of hiring an interior photographer for DeCesare Design Group (my sister’s interior design firm). The photographers that Ross considered for the job were all creative, talented photographers with stellar portfolios of work. But that is where the similarities ended. Ross breaks down...
May 23, 2025•39 min
Be honest—do you ever feel like you are collecting money from your clients, just to hand it over to your vendors, or the tax man? You are NOT alone. It’s actually one of the most common struggles I hear from photographers. That’s why I’ve invited Venus Michael to the show. Venus is a bookkeeper who specializes in helping photographers stop the financial bleeding and finally take control of their money. In this episode, Venus and I dive into the real reasons you might feel broke, even when you’re...
May 15, 2025•59 min
Are there too many photographers in your town? How are you supposed to stand out when the field is full? Today’s guest on the ReWork suggests playing a different game. Rick Trummer from Mid-South Color Lab spends every day helping photographers to distinguish themselves from their competition by developing products that defy comparison. MidSouth lab specializes in custom digitally and oil painted portraits and stripped canvas artwork. He’ll also tell us about a new image substrate with a metalli...
May 08, 2025•40 min
Have you ever had a customer service experience so good you wanted to bottle it and recreate it in your own business? That’s what it’s like talking to Matthew Hodgman , Senior Client Success Manager at White House Custom Colour . While his title might sound corporate, Matt leads with heart—and serious empathy chops. If empathy were a competitive sport, he’d be on the podium with gold. We’re not talking about empathy as a feel-good bonus. We’re discussing empathy as a vital business essential . E...
May 01, 2025•34 min
Does the thought of selling your work still make you cringe, even a little? Do you wish you could focus solely on creating beautiful pictures and let someone else handle the sales? Can you imagine what it would be like to sell your portraits before the session even happens? If any of this feels familiar, listen up. Joining me for this episode is my brother from another mother, Drake Busath of Busath Photography, and his incredible portrait designer and sales associate, Linda Smoot, to talk all t...
Apr 24, 2025•1 hr 14 min
What if I were to tell you that confidence in your business doesn’t come from booking more clients or getting that one huge sale, that it actually comes from having a solid process in place ? Joining me for this episode to help me tackle this topic is my good friend and popular repeat guest Jeff Dachowski. We get real about this because it doesn't get talked about enough. Again, it is not about landing big sales or hoping for good luck; it’s about having processes that keep things running smoo...
Apr 17, 2025•1 hr 13 min
Feeling the slow season slump? This episode is your wake-up call. When business is slow all we can think about is getting MORE— clients that is . And Connecticut-based photographer Seshu Badrinath is here to show you how to get them NOW and keep them coming year-round. With 25+ years of hustle under his belt, Seshu shares real-deal strategies beyond simply posting pretty pics on Instagram. From leveraging local parent forums to sending thoughtful, personalized texts, he breaks down exactly how h...
Apr 10, 2025•58 min
As kind, accommodating portrait photographers, we seem wired to constantly ask ourselves, “How can I add more?” More services. More products. More options. More experience to my experience! Doesn’t adding MORE make it MORE VALUABLE to my client? What if adding more is actually costing you in ways you might not have considered? This week on The ReWork, I’m joined by Nicole Gates —former FBI agent turned full-time portrait photographer (yes, really)—who learned (the hard way) that more often leads...
Apr 03, 2025•40 min
We need to talk about the B-word. 👀 Yep— boundaries. You’ve heard it. You’ve probably rolled your eyes at it. It’s become a buzzword among Millenials, Gen Z and memes everywhere. But let’s be honest— just because it’s trendy doesn’t mean it’s wrong. In this episode, I’m joined by the one and only Čedna Todorovic, a portrait photographer who immigrated from Yugoslavia and has spent the past two years building her business from the ground up in Canada. Coming from a high-powered corporate job, Če...
Mar 27, 2025•48 min
“I had NO idea that you were SO EXPENSIVE!” “Can I get a refund (on the custom artwork that you just spent hours on)?” “I REALLY want just the digital files, why can’t you just do that?” If you own a business, you must get used to difficult conversations or you won’t be in business for long. It comes with the territory. Potential clients hear what they want to hear, don’t pay attention or you mess up and don’t give them the right info to begin with. No matter the cause, you are going to have day...
Mar 20, 2025•39 min
Are you still in love with what you’re shooting on the daily? Maybe you’ve gotten a little bored and are feeling the siren’s call to expand into another genre of portraiture or another type of product or presentation. You’re not alone. Joining me this week to discuss the need for expansion and change in our business is portrait photographer, Kristine Logan . Kristine is from Fort Wayne, Indiana and in the last few years, she took her business from specializing in personal branding and editorial ...
Mar 13, 2025•39 min
Experiencing major setbacks in your business? You definitely are NOT alone . Marcela Límon , owner of Lemonshoots Photography in San Francisco, joins The ReWork this week to talk about her journey Marcela has been running a successful portrait studio for over a decade. In fact, her income has increased year after year, until 2024. Cue screeching tires soundtrack. For the first time ever, Marcella questioned herself, her approach to business, EVERYTHING. Was it her? The economy? Was it the impend...
Mar 06, 2025•31 min
What does it mean to be emotionally resilient ? Emotions are part of our design as humans. We all feel them, but many of us take far too many things PERSONALLY . You know the drill. A client says, “Wow, that’s expensive,” and you go straight to, “They hate me, they’re never going to use me again, they are going to tell everyone that I suck.” If this sounds familiar, you’ll want to tune in to today’s episode as Jessica Mackey helps us unpack how to be more emotionally resilient at work. Let’s be ...
Feb 27, 2025•54 min
For something that exists only in our heads, fear can really do a number on our confidence , slowing us down, keeping us from being the best we can be. What’s the best way to manage our fear and, ultimately, get out of our own way? Today’s guest, Kathryn Langsford of Photos By Kathryn in Vancouver, Canada joins me to talk about how fear has paralyzed her in the past and the specific actions she’s learned to break free from its grip . Kathryn, like most of us, has faced HUGE personal, financial, ...
Feb 20, 2025•22 min
We’ve cracked the ReWork Vault for one of our favorite conversations about conversations. Client conversations that are key to creating the sales that will make your business profitable. Nobody can do what you do, in quite the way you do it. Take that in. Because it’s the truth. If more portrait photographers could internalize this truth there would be less fear and less weird behavior when dealing with clients. Weird behavior like, shooting off a mile-long contract or multi-page price list to a...
Feb 13, 2025•1 hr 10 min
What is the best way to ask for referrals? Is it possible to do without feeling like a used car salesman? Today’s guest will share her favorite methods for getting stellar referrals without feeling like you're begging for a favor. Lesa Daniel and her husband Gregory of Gregory Daniel Photography have created an incredibly successful portrait studio by building relationships and using trigger marketing to get authentic referrals . Listen in as Lesa shares her favorite strategies for staying conne...
Feb 06, 2025•35 min
We want our clients to always be happy, right? Each year, we devote time and energy to upping the ante and improving our product and client experience so that it’s the best it can be. It’s a cause worth pursuing, but only if you realize that, as hard as you work, it just isn’t possible to make everyone happy all the time. ……………Wait what? So we just give up, throw in the towel? Or how about we double down on our people-pleasing ways which leads to…..burn out? No go. Is there another way? Returnin...
Jan 30, 2025•36 min
Happy 2025, friends. Join me for the first episode of the year as I talk all about how to best structure your calendar for the year. “If it’s not on the calendar, it’s not real.” Sound familiar? After fifteen years in this business, I have learned time and again that having a strategic calendar is incredibly important in order to run a profitable and enjoyable photography business. Tune in as I use real-life examples from our studio to explore how properly setting up your calendar can give you c...
Jan 23, 2025•18 min
Being an expert means confidently guiding clients using your vision and skill. As portrait photographers, it’s up to us to help clients document their memories, and decide where each portrait will “live” in their space. The problem is, we offer TOO MANY CHOICES. Showing too many images to clients is probably the single, biggest sales mistake I see photographers making. As a result, clients are overwhelmed and paralyzed trying to decide between images we should have already tightly curated for th...
Nov 21, 2024•29 min
Are you overwhelming your clients with too much experience ? You know, the creative whirlwind that sounds like a great idea during your brainstorm session but that, in real life, might just be a tad too much. You want your clients to have an AMAZING, UNFORGETTABLE experience with you. An experience they brag about to others. An experience that transcends just getting their “picture taken.” An experience they can’t get anywhere else. But are you overdoing it on experience to the point that it bec...
Nov 14, 2024•28 min
Are You Losing Clients by Saying Too Much? We all want informed clients, but here’s the truth: too much information can backfire. As photographers, we often overwhelm clients by piling on details—especially with words. And when that happens, confusion takes over, and we risk losing them altogether. In this kickoff episode of our “Overwhelming Clients” series, we’re diving into the first culprit: word overload. With the best intentions, we try to explain everything, but too often, it muddies our ...
Nov 07, 2024•26 min
This golden nugget of marketing genius has been pried from the ReWork Vault to give you a fresh shot of marketing inspiration. Marketing is, hands down, one of the most requested discussion topics here on The ReWork. Why? Because marketing is hard! And it takes a lot of time, energy, and you never really know what is going to work. Especially in uncertain economic times, it can be difficult to know where to spend your marketing time and money. That’s why Drake Busath is joining the podcast again...
Oct 31, 2024•1 hr 2 min
We are cracking open the ReWork Vault and re-releasing some of our most popular episodes in time to get you inspired and motivated to survive the busy season. Today’s episode has ranked as one of the top 3 episodes every season since the ReWork Podcast began! It’s all about the First Client Phone Call, where the tone is set for everything to follow. Have you ever wondered if you can create a business out of portrait photography? You may want to increase your income, and your first thoughts are t...
Oct 24, 2024•47 min
This episode featuring the incredible Tim Walden is all about transforming the portrait process by building trust with your clients. Tim lays it all out for us, talking about treating every client like family (like his 50-odd cousins) and how that approach brings sincerity and genuine connection into the mix. I have always found it valuable to develop a framework for how we view our clients , and Tim's insights really resonated with me. How do you relate to your clients - as family, friends, or ...
Oct 17, 2024•1 hr 4 min
We are cracking open the ReWork Vault and re-releasing some of our most popular episodes in time to get you prepped for the upcoming busy season. After a long summer, getting back into the real swing of things at work can feel like pushing the proverbial boulder up the hill. 💡Do you need some new concepts and ideas to inspire upcoming sessions? 🖌️Does the studio need to be painted? 👀Is the studio even clean? 👀 📸What “surprise and delight” trick will you have up your sleeve for clients this ...
Oct 10, 2024•41 min
Gregory Daniel is back in The ReWork studio, and he’s got another soap box to speak from. This time, he’s talking about FEAR of pricing our work, FEAR of embracing the value of what we do and the FEAR of change in our industry. We discuss why so many photographers struggle with valuing their art . It’s a challenge that hits home for so many of us who started out driven by creative passion but need to transition to a more business-minded approach because, hey, we have bills to pay, and, more impo...
Oct 03, 2024•1 hr
How can portrait photographers turn what is normally a stressful situation (i.e. family portraits) into a joyful experience ? How can you anticipate client needs to elevate the perception of your portrait photography service? As we gear up for family portrait season, Kathryn Langsford joins me on the show again to share her insights into crafting an exceptional client experience . We are discussing the three essential pillars that elevate every session, ensuring that families not only receive st...
Sep 26, 2024•36 min
Ever been stuck on how exactly to direct a family portrait session? Ever been in a situation with a less-than-cooperative subject who is making everything difficult? If so, this episode has your name all over it. Listen in as two family portrait photographers discuss our best tips, tricks and wild experiences in the trenches of photographing families of all sizes and kinds. Drake Busath is my guest this week. As the co-owner of the legendary Busath Photography in Salt Lake City, he’s one of our ...
Sep 19, 2024•1 hr 26 min
“All of us got into this industry or into this profession as artists . We love creating , and we love the feeling of what people say or the reaction when we show it to them.” I think that this probably strikes a chord with many of you, right? Being creative is amazing BUT, most of us also need to balance being an artist while also trying to pay the bills with our talent and THAT is where things can get a little bit sticky. Joining me today is Rudi Marten , CEO of Clark Marten Photography in Bill...
Sep 12, 2024•58 min
Fall is in the air, and although you may be way past your school days, this season always gets me excited to refocus, organize, and reevaluate ! That’s exactly what this episode is about - taking a step back to give your portrait studio a “report card” of its own ! 😱 Are you hitting your financial goals , or are you afraid to take a peek at the numbers? Don’t worry; I’ve got your back. It’s time to take a closer look at your revenue. Are you growing, or is it time to make some adjustments? In t...
Sep 05, 2024•29 min
