It doesn't happen very often these days. But for a long time, after I went full time as a photographer, people would periodically asked me about whether I missed nursing as a career. And then when I got divorced, some of you have heard me talk about how I had several people who asked like, so when are you going back to your
career as a nurse? And so I, every once in a while, think about like, if photography just disappeared as an option for me, for whatever reason, like let's just say cameras magically stopped being a thing, or for whatever reason, I had to go out and get a completely different job. Would I go back to nursing? My answer to that is a pretty easy no, like, That was never the right fit for me. As a career, I enjoyed parts of it.
But But no, the answer is no, I wouldn't go back to being a nurse what I would do, it's hard to say, but I do love being an entrepreneur, I love running a business. But if I were to start a business now, it would be
really different. The experience of running a new business or starting a business would be very different from my experience back in 2010, when I started my photography, business, and obviously much of the difference there would come from the fact that I now have all of these years of experience as an entrepreneur. Yes, my entrepreneurial experience has been focused on photography. But I've learned tons of lessons that are applicable to any
business, right? Everything from marketing, to systems to setting myself up, financially, all of the different pieces that I learned kind of haphazardly and chaotically along the way. And it is kind of fun to imagine what I might do, or how I might start a brand new business. And I wish like we all do sometimes that I had been able to take this knowledge that I have gained over these past 13 ish years, and like deliver it via
FedEx back to 2010. So that I could skip over some of the hurdles and the points of stress and pain that I have experienced. But obviously, I can't do that. But what I love about the conversation that I'm sharing with you today is that allene my guest is in the position that most of us aren't in where photography was not only her second career, but it was actually her second venture into business. So she was an entrepreneur, before she switched her focus to
photography. And because of that, she went about setting up her brand new business very differently. And so she's got a great story to share. I know you're gonna love this one. Because it's the sort of thing where I'm like, Oh, I wish I I wish I had your story. But that's okay, because we can all learn from the stories that other people have to share. And so with that, I will cue the music and introduce Elin. Welcome to this can't be that hard. My name is Annemie Tonken.
And I help photographers run profitable, sustainable businesses that they love. Each week on the podcast, I cover simple, actionable strategies and systems that photographers at every level of experience can use to earn more money in a more sustainable way. Running a photography business doesn't have to be that hard. You can do it. And I can show you how. Elina, it is wonderful to have you on the podcast. Welcome to this can't be that hard. How are you today?
I'm great. Thank you so much for having me. I'm a guest on my favorite podcast. So it's a good day.
Oh, that means so much. Um, yeah, well, I am really excited to chat with you. Several months ago, you came on. And we're sort of a guest presenter or presenter, you were just part of a panel in a challenge that I was running, where you were talking about your experience as a relatively new photographer, and your story resonated with so many people.
And I just knew that I wanted to have you come on and chat with the wider audience of podcast listeners, because I feel like your story is one of these that is, so it is such it's something that I feel like people should pay attention to take inspiration from and not because it's some sort of like pie in the sky, you know, oh, and then she hit six figures in this or anything like that. Very
achievable. You have a story that is very achievable, very relatable, but it's different from the way that a lot of photographers go about Got it. So, so this is going to be this is going to be a great conversation, I would love to just have you start off by introducing yourself telling everybody who you are, where you work. And then and then giving us a little background on before you were a photographer. Sure. My
name is Eline Arganun, I'm based in Los Angeles, and my photography is catching sand.com photography, and I am relatively new to being a photographer. As a profession. However, I come from about 12 years of business background in a whole different industry. It was ecommerce sales, I had, there were employees, there were numbers, all of these things. And so 12 years later, I didn't want to do that anymore for a
variety of reasons. And I wanted to go back wood to what I always loved, which was photography. And so there was a question though, in my mind, how can I do exactly what you say? Make it a sustainable business, profitable business? And could I make a living from it? And so that's the first question I tried to answer was the business end of things? What would it look like as a business? What kind of
numbers? Would it be? How many clients would I need to have that what rate what kind of a living do I want to make? Because when you're your own your own business, you pay for your own health care, and you have to fund your own retirement, and you have to have a variety of insurances. So those are all the questions that I tried to answer first. And it was during that exploration that I came across the simple Sale
system. And I looked far and wide, because first I went to W PPI to even get a glimpse of what the industry was going to be like, I was exposed to a lot there. And it was through that where I was like, Okay, this I can do, this does not sound that
appealing to me. And the reason why I ended up going with the simple Sale system, myself, personally, was not only did it have all the tools that I needed in there, but I felt like it had the perfect balance of being in a world where everything is so digital, there's a good chance that whoever would even reach out to me would be through some digital media, whether it was most likely social media of some
sort. And how do you take that kind of digital world and then combine it with the world that it used to be, which was in person sales, and a lot of a lot more FaceTime interaction, because of in person sales, having people come and do purchases after the shoot and things like that, I can't do that. I'm such an introvert. I'm an extrovert, when I'm shooting outside of that, I have an introvert. Like I can't do that
gives you license that you may not have otherwise.
Yes. So that's how I came across it. And I was like, This is great. It teaches me how to do my numbers, which were so much higher on me than I thought they were gonna be I was like, I was like, Oh, I have a camera that's paid for I have a computer, that's but then I'll know there's a lot of other costs associated with it. So that was eye opening itself. And I was like, Okay, I need to go in depth about the business end, and then see if it'll work, which I can work which I
learned, which is great. And so that's how I kind of combined the business and the photography together.
There's so much to unpack here. This is so good. So I kind of want to find out more because we didn't talk about this when you were when we were chatting with the with that challenge group, but about your visit to WPI. Like, so you show up. And it's such a I mean, like WPI for anybody who hasn't been is like a mega conference. It's huge. You can learn anything you want about you know, photography, business and shooting and all the different things like every kind of photography seems you know,
represented there. But it is, I mean, it can be pretty overwhelming, I'm sure, especially for a self proclaimed introvert. But here, what some of the like gut, if you remember gut reactions were that you had in terms of like, oh, that I do like or that I don't like, like, what were the things? What were the big takeaways for you from that experience as a brand new or you hadn't even started your business at that point, right?
No, people are like, Oh, hi, I'm so and so with. This is my business. I was like, Oh, Hi, I'm Melina I don't have a business name. And so and I found out that I didn't find anyone else there that was as new as I was. So on the one hand, it was great because I was soaking in so much information about this new new to me industry. And I attended as many classes as I as I could there.
And one thing that I had not even heard the phrase IPS before, where I had to like I felt like I was in school and I turned to the person next to me and I was like What does this mean? For like, in person sales? I was like, Oh my God, look, I'm I'm like, No, I'm not doing that. I can't it's, I'm not
built for it. And I knew that if I was going to be successful in really any business, but especially photography, where there's a lot of personal time with, with clients, that I had to set myself up in a way that I could realistically do it, I couldn't force myself into a situation, I wouldn't like to be
in long term. And, of course, there's things in business that you have to do, whether you like it or not, but to like taxes, your paperwork, but but to build in something that that is so not built into my personality was not going to work for me. So immediately, IPS was was a hard no for me. But I really love print products. And I just, it makes me really sad that when people just get their photos, and then maybe they post a couple here or there, and then it just stays somewhere in like
cyberspace. And nothing else happens to it, because it's happened to me. Sure. You know, you know, I come from an era of floppy disks and stuff. Good luck accessing those
these days. Exactly. So I
learned that that was not the business model for me. And I also knew, I personally didn't want to do the, just give everything on a hard drive or USB and call it a day. I had learned since then, that there's lots of other business models. It's not only those two, but those were the main two that I was exposed to at WPP. I felt like people were doing either this or they were
doing that. And I was kind of looking for a happy medium there that would work for me and provide my potential clients with everything that they would want. And then so I didn't necessarily find anything to model too much there. As far as business structure, I was exposed to some very talented business minded people. But I was like, but how am I going to build my business? That was a
thing. And one of the things I learned in my other business was there has to be systems in place in order for things to run smoothly. And so that I don't get confused and overwhelmed along the way. There's like a clear path of like, client contacts you till the final touch point. That makes sense. So then after I was like, Okay, I really want to do this. And now Now it was how do I build the foundation?
Yeah, yeah. So I wish this is the this is the time when I wish that the people listening to this podcast, were not largely people who were already in business, because you know, here you are at WPI. There's 1000s of photographers there, and you're the one that you meet the entire time, who hasn't yet started their business, like you're the
newest. And it's a shame because the fact of the matter is like what you did in doing that is genius, like to take that kind of an opportunity before you open your doors really is so smart and so good. And it's one of the reasons I was saying before we hit record, like, I have no doubt, you're still in the beginning of your business, I have no doubt that this is going to be a business as you're in for a long time. Because of that kind of thing like putting you're getting your ducks in a
row. So I you know, I wish that the people listening to this podcast were like in that outs outset time when they're in the planning stage. But that's not true for a lot of people. And I was the same way I got into photography, it just kind of like fell forward for several years. But it'd be like, oh systems, oh, I should be doing it that way. Like, I don't regret that time. But I certainly could have leapfrogged a lot of problems. And I feel like that's exactly what you've
set yourself up to do. So you were at WPI, you came home, you're like going through all this stuff. And really, you're thinking about setting up a business that suits your personality and all this sort of stuff before you're even really thinking about like, how do I market my business? Or how do I, you know, improve my camera skills and that sort of thing. And it's the way I guess we should all do it. But it's the way that I think we all look in retrospect and say, Oh, I should
have done it this way. So it's just fun to kind of hear that story. So talk to me a little bit about like, the way that it went from there. So you started, I guess how long after WPI? Did you even come across the simple Sale system?
I wouldn't say fairly quickly because I really started searching because I wanted to, you know, I knew I wanted to start a new business. My other business wasn't there. But for several reasons. I was like, I just I don't want to do this anymore. Yeah, so I was pretty diligent about getting it started because I was looking at I'm starting a business One I'm passionate about. So I was trying to put the two together and trying to do it as quickly
as possible. The marketing I didn't worry too much about because I knew for myself personally, that I mean, not worrying too much about but it was at the top of my list because I knew if I didn't have first of all confidence in that it would be profitable. And then confident that when someone contacts me, I know what I'm doing. And I started marketing too early. I was just gonna be like flailing about, and I didn't want to give my clients especially the early ones, that
kind of impression. Yeah, so I came, I did a bunch of, you know, like, the free classes that other educators were offering to see what I could find. And I took value from everything. There's a lot of great things out there. But the simple Sale system spoke to me the most. And part of the reason was, well, first, you had me out sustainable and profitable, I was like, yes, that's my
language. Then, after that, as I was listening, I was like, This is great, it's to the point, it's clear, there's not all this fluff just to make it longer on like this is I could tell the rest of the program was going to be well thought out organized and clear. And I loved loved the part where it did combine digital, and it combined print products, and it left it to the client to decide how they were
going to do it. Whether they took advantage of the print credit, or if they didn't, I was simply saying, I encourage you to I'm offering a way to, not i because is your system. But you know, here, here it is. And so I loved that combination. And that was just enough personal time where I'm like, I'm I want to get to know my clients, I want to put all those personal touches. However, everybody is so busy. It was just the perfect way to offer everything to them.
And the part where it's, there was a calculator in there have costs of doing Cost of Goods Sold cost of doing business, because like I said, there was a lot more involved than if I was just left to my own devices to do. Right. So I loved that.
That's amazing. Yeah, when you say it's my system, I appreciate that. But at the same time, one of the things that I really love, and one of the reasons that I love chatting with people who have like now adopted that system and made it their own is that there really is a range of the way
that people use it. And the thing that I think makes it most successful is the fact that it can be calibrated to your personality and kind of fit the way that you like to do things and the way that you're the things that your clients value as well. So there's sort of like this basic framework that you can then add your personal stamp on. So it's your system now.
It's all of our systems. And that's
what it needed to be was a system that helped people, or I guess it wasn't originally it was an it was intended to help me. But now that I teach it, it is intended to help other people. So So I love the story that you have told about your first client. So you know, unlike so many of us, myself very much included, you went through the process of sort of setting up a system before you took on a single client in your business. But then it's like the rubber meets the road.
Right? So. So talk a little bit about that experience.
Because a very fun and mildly chaotic experience. Because I, I did the thing, I bought the program, and I was going through it. And then I remember that I think either you said or I read somewhere in the group that about two weeks, you can get it done, brush it within two weeks, I was like, okay, I can do that, because I had a lot of other things going on at the same time, too. So that was my goal two weeks, and I had set
the end date and all that. And I was in your Facebook group when and also during this time, I was doing portfolio building shoots and posting them on my Instagram when somebody reached out to me through one of those shoots and wanted photography. And I was like, oh my god, I'm not I'm not ready. I'm not I'm not finished yet. And then, of course you don't want to turn down like your first ever actual lead, but I had not finished the program. So I went into the group. I'm
like guys, this happened. And then everyone's like, finish it, get to the finish line, do all of it and take it on. So I was like yeah, I'm gonna do that. So I fast forwarded I cleared out the next three days. And I mean, I reached out back to her. And I finished it. I can't even say three days it had to have been less. And one of the best things that I also liked about the program is it gives you a script. And so I was like, okay, good. This gives me a script,
it's gonna be a phone call. So I got on the phone, and I was reading the reading the script. And all I was thinking to myself, I had like, tweaked it a little bit to my personality, but like, I'm holding the phone, my palms are sweating. I'm reading, I'm reading it. And all the while I'm thinking to myself, like, and you're talking way too fast, slow down. And, but I went, I went through it. I did the follow up email, I did
all the things. And it ended up she ended up booking me and I couldn't believe it, it was, it was really, really great. And it's like you said I didn't, and then she became a millionaire. No. But it was so encouraging for me. Because one, it does validate just the photography aspect of it, that somebody was like, I like this, I want you to do it for for my family. And then the other aspect was, I really got to test out the system in a very real world way, and see how it felt for me and
how my clients liked it. And my we ended up doing that shoot, I think the following week or so. And I had my first ever client that way. And I tell you, it was far more than when that first time I went to WPP I what I was imagining I was going to charge and how I was going to do it, it was far more than that it was well in the $900 range for my first client, including the This includes the print purchases she
made. And I was floored because I was like this, like I can actually do this, like this will work. So it was such a fantastic intro to me, for me with the system and with the with the client, especially considering it was my first one. But it was I felt like the groundwork was so laid out that even though I was nervous, I still knew what the next steps were going to be all along the way, which I think was a very big part of the success of it.
Well, it's always a leap of faith, right, like taking on. I mean, a new career is just a major thing. nevermind the fact that you're running your own business. And you know, it is it's a it's a I feel like there's a lot of courage just in taking that step that first client experience is such a I mean, I think we all remember our first and it is mine, my story was very
different. Just because it was one of these, like my stories, like a lot of other people's where I was like, I don't know, how about 100 bucks, and I'll you know, burn you a CD. And then I had to like go figure out how to burn a DVD of photos. Like I didn't know what I was doing at all, I had no script, no foundation, no whatever. And so I was also nervous. But my nerves i didn't have there was nothing, I wasn't tethered to anything, I was just kind of
making it up. So I love hearing that, that gave you that confidence. Because in the end, the fact that it took me I should back up and say it took me about another year because I was I did then go take a business class and work on my pricing and all this other stuff. Before I had that first client where I was like, Oh, wow, I could replace my, like, I could quit my job. And I could make a real thing. And people are willing to pay these prices.
And I don't just have to take any old job that comes my way. And you know, and it gave me that confidence. And I I think that once you taste that once or twice, it changes your whole mindset about it, you know, you it's like you believe on the inside, that your work is worth the you know, money and the time and all this other stuff and that you've got a sustainable business plan, which is just it's like that simple mindset shift makes all the difference.
So I love I love that that system was able to provide that for you right from the get go. And well, good.
Mix the two of us.
Yeah. And so it's now been a year
ish, since almost, yeah, almost
any other sort of thoughts or lessons to share as you have kind of gotten your bearings since then.
Oh, so so many. But I've you know that experience that you were just describing when you started your business. I had that experience in my previous business where you're figuring it out as you're going along. And so that having had that experience is part of what made me want want to do
these things so differently. I heard Um, when we were doing, I believe that I know it was one in one of your podcast episodes, where we were talking pricing, you were talking about pricing and setting your price in such a way where if you got clients, you'd be profitable versus starting off lower to get clients and then raising it later. Because I tell you even even after that first client, there were times where I was like, well, maybe I should
change my pricing. And another photography photographer mentor that I reached out to and had conversations with said that I should lower my prices. And then I was like, but if I lower them, that's because that's a conversation I have internally, because the instinct is always I feel like in business, well, if I lower my prices, I'll get more clients. It's like, but then will you keep those clients if you have to raise your prices, and then will you even be profitable, I live in a kind of
pricey part of the country. So I was like, I can't, if I have to do that, then I'm not, I'm not doing this at all, I could be doing other other things, I want to be doing this, I need to be making it work somehow. So there's always been that kind of temptation to change things around or like to go against your own. There's always that like, good enough type of conversations, and internally
that happen. So those kinds of battles, mental battles still take place, but I'm going to stick to it in a way that it it makes sense to stick to it. Because it's an art form. It's a passion. I have loved it. Since I was very young. My dad was a hobbyist photographer, and he's the one who taught me everything. So I've had camera in hand since I was strong enough to physically hold one as a child, but But now, this is
also a business. So I have to, I have to keep the two balanced together in order to make it work. It can be sometimes mentally challenging, but I got to be careful which side wins. In the end,
I wish that you were holding a microphone so that you could drop it right now like that. Perfect. That was it. I wish that I could like bottle that up and hand it as a gift to every single photographer I knew and, and yours in on that. I think that that's so valuable. And I just love what you've shared today. I really appreciate you taking the time to come on the show and and share your experience because sometimes I feel like as an educator it you know, no, people listen. And they're like, oh,
no, that's good information. But it doesn't apply to my story or it's not, you know, it's not the way that it works for me. And there is no one size fits all story. But I do think that many of the things that you have shared today, the importance of sort of setting yourself up with a solid foundation, finding systems that fit your that feel good to you, like align with your value system, all those kinds of things. They're just they're so so important, and you
share them so beautifully. So thank you so much.
Thank you so much. It was such a pleasure to be here.
Well, Alan, tell everyone where they can find you and see your beautiful work.
So my name is spelled e l i n so my Instagram is e l i n.to Catching sand. And you can find my website at catching sand.com Awesome. Well, we'll
link that in the show notes. But thank you again and and have a great day.
Thank you so much.
Well, that's it for this week's episode of This can't be that hard. I'll be back Same time, same place next week. In the meantime, you can find more information about this episode, along with all the relevant links, notes and downloads at this can't be that hard.com/learn If you liked the podcast, be sure to hit the subscribe button. Even better, share the love by leaving a review on iTunes. And as always, thanks so much for joining me. I hope you have a fantastic week.