There's a lot of talk in the photo community these days about inquiries being down. And inevitably, that leads to a conversation about pricing. Some people will tell you, you should raise your prices when things are quiet. And then although that may seem counterintuitive, there's actually some validity to that argument, right? Higher prices may attract less price sensitive buyers, and it may help your brand be seen as more valuable.
On the other hand, if you raise your prices, you may lose the clients you currently have. Other people and probably like the little devil on your shoulder, will tell you to lower your prices when things are quiet, maybe some people have told you that they can't afford you. So it stands to reason that lower prices would reduce the barrier to entry. Then again, you might worry that lowering your prices might tarnish your brand, or make the clients who paid your regular prices angry.
Then there's the fact that none of these changes are as easy as they seem to implement. Obviously, you can just quote, you know, the next inquiry a different price. But when you start doing that over and over again, it gets complicated, fast, right. And if you've got your prices on your website, or if you have them in proposals or anything like that, then there's a lot of admin that can accompany even just a minor
change. So if your inquiries have been down lately, and you've been considering a shift in your prices, or any other major shift in your business, today's episode is for you. I'm covering how pricing is just one piece of the bigger business model puzzle, and how having a well aligned business model is vital to running a successful business, especially when there are fewer jobs to go around. 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. So I want to start this episode by having you think of three different hotels, maybe it's
three that you've stayed at. Or maybe you can just think of, you know, three hotels that you've seen in the movies. The first hotel I want you to think of is like the budget airport hotel, it's all about convenience, right? It's nothing fancy, but it's clean. It's a place to sleep, it's there when you need it. The second hotel is a fun little boutique that you you know, have pinned on Pinterest
as a super cute option. When maybe you want a romantic getaway or your girlfriends are getting together something like that. The decor is on point, it's very Instagrammable, it looks really cozy, whatever it's you know, thing maybe. And then the last hotel I want you to think of is like that five star resort that you save for, maybe you take your honeymoon there or a big anniversary trip or something special, it's an event, they've pulled out all
the stops. This is like a once in a lifetime thing for many of us. So all three of those hotels exist out there. Not just one, but many of them, right. And they all attract customers, but they attract them for different reasons. The first attracts customers specifically based on convenience and price. The second kind of leans into either that fun cute factor or the cozy factor. Or maybe there's a theme for a particular hotel or Airbnb
or something like that. And then that last hotel really attracts people based on this luxury experience. The you know, it's it's sort of an aspirational Hotel. So if I were to ask you to book a hotel for tonight, if you needed to book hotel for tonight, which one of those three would you choose? Okay, you got it. I really want you to answer that question for yourself. If I were like you need a hotel tonight, which one of those three kind of general versions of a hotel would you
book? All right, and now let's modify that question to ask if price were no object, then which one of the three would you choose? So chances are your answer to the first question was either the cheapest option or maybe like the cute boutique, maybe you've got a little bit more money in the budget and you're like, yeah, if I'm gonna stay somewhere, I'm gonna go find someplace cute whatever.
And then chances are your answer to the second question when I took money out of the equation was either the cute place or you know maybe you were like, Screw it if I'm you know, If money is no object I'm going all in right? Now, there are people in the world who will never stay at anything but the cheapest possible hotel that they can find. My uncle is one of them. He has money, like he's not on a
budget about everything. But he has this like, you know, Duggan opinion about why would you spend any more money than absolutely necessary on a hotel, when all you're going to do is show up there and sleep as long as it's clean, like, that's good enough. And so he's he's one of those people. And then there are people on the other end of the spectrum, who have the budget, and will never stay anywhere, but you know, the Ritz or whatever super fancy hotel they,
they can find. Because that has become sort of part of their identity, right? They are people who stay at fancy hotels, but most of us fall somewhere in the middle, right? If we have the budget, we might splurge for something different. If we've got an occasion or whatever, then we're going to spend more money. But if we're literally at the airport, and we need a place to stay because our flight got canceled, we're just going to look for a cheap, clean place
that we can sleep. So back in 2018, I was asked to give a talk about pricing to a group of photographers in Australia. And the harder I tried to come up with kind of a formula that I could give to everyone for pricing, the more I realized that pricing is just one piece of this bigger business model puzzle, right? No matter what happens the same the hotel by the airport, the you know, budget hotel is not going to be priced the same as the five star
resort. And nor should it be those are two completely different things. So I ended up when I was putting this talk together, I ended up writing a talk that was really more about business models, and how that informs your pricing than it was about the pricing part itself. And as part of creating this talk, I actually named the three basic business models that I see out there in the world, not just in hotels, not just in photography, but in all kinds of
sectors. I named them the donkey, the workhorse and the unicorn. So the donkey model of business. And don't be fooled by the name. This is nothing against the donkey model. That is like the airport hotel. Right? This is a business that at least the successful versions of these businesses provide the basic service that they're selling. And they do that well. But they do it without a lot of frills. Instead, they are very specifically deciding to market their business on some
combination of cost. And you know, in the hotel case, it's like convenience or location, but they really do kind of go in on we're here when you need us. This is for everyone. And it is this broad appeal. Because we all need that sometimes the unicorn model is like the luxury resort, right? There's no expense spared, it is all about luxury and sort of exclusivity and feeling fancy and all this. It's the way a small percent of people can afford to live all
parts of their lives. And for the rest of the world, it's an opportunity to potentially taste that right. Again, it's this aspirational thing where if we value that, and we save up enough and decide that that's how we want to spend our savings, it's there for us. Finally, the workhorse model is like the cute boutique, right? And I'm saying cute boutique, because I think we can all relate to that. But there are different versions of this. Basically, this is not the cheapest option, it's not the
most expensive option. It's somewhat exclusive, because obviously not everyone can afford anything other than the cheapest. There are people who can't even afford the cheapest option out there. But this fall somewhere in the middle. And because it falls somewhere in the middle, it has to attract people based on something other than price, right? So maybe it's not that it's Instagrammable. Maybe it's not the cute factor. Maybe someone is traveling with a dog and they need a pet
friendly Hotel. Or maybe they're on like a surfing vacation. They're a big surfer and they find a hotel that caters specifically to people with, you know, wetsuits and surfboards that they need to store and dry and all that sort of thing. Whatever the case may be. There are businesses out there again, in every sector, not just hotels, not just photography, but that find some sort of specific niche that they are kind of talking to that is what they differentiate themselves
on. That's how they attract the right people. So that sort of falls into the work. Horse model. Now, it's important to note that none of these models are good or bad, they're not right or wrong, they're not better, they're not worse. In fact, I get a lot of pushback from people being like, Oh, I would never be a donkey model business as though there's
something wrong with that. But I can point to so many donkey model businesses out there in the world that are actually the most successful businesses, because they have the broadest appeal, right? So no right or wrong just right or wrong for you. There is no one way to run a successful small business, photography or otherwise, people purchase all kinds of products and services at all kinds of prices, and for all kinds of
reasons. So that said, every business is going to have some kind of thing that they want to be known for. But at the very high, and the very low ends of the pricing spectrum, often price becomes what they're known for, right? It's sort of built into their identity. So again, for the businesses in the middle, that means that they just have to lean even harder into whatever that thing is, in order to stand out. Back in
2010. When I started my photography business, I was coming from a healthcare background, and I had very little idea of what I was doing when it came to running a business. So I, you know, knew that about myself. And I spent a lot of time and money at the beginning, in particular, learning from educators in the industry about how to be successful in my business, I wanted to quit my job, and go full time with photography, and I was like, I need help tell me
what to do. But almost everyone who was teaching at the time was kind of saying the same thing, which was that the only way to succeed in photography financially, was to create one of these unicorn businesses, right, basically to be the photography equivalent of like the Ritz Carlton. So that meant at the time having a studio doing in person sales, you know, creating custom albums and custom wall galleries, building this roster of clients who was
all about luxury. And it wasn't the thing that I really felt like I wanted to do, but I was like, Okay, I'm going all in, I really want to make this work. And I did, I learned how to do that I built a business. And I built what turned out to be a pretty profitable, thriving business. But the fact of the matter was several years into it, I could tell that there were parts of my business that I
actively didn't love. And then not very much time went by after that, before I got into a situation where I was getting divorced. And my business model, the way that it was set up was not going to continue to work in my life, I needed more money, I needed to make that money in less time. And I had to kind of figure out how to either reconfigure my whole business, or just kind of give up photography altogether, which I
didn't want to do. So at this point, you know, my mind is wide open, I'm just like, everything is burned to the ground. So I have to like figure everything out. And in that moment of sort of eyes wide open, I looked around, and I realized that if other businesses in the world, you know, not photography, but other things, if they had successful businesses that worked not as luxury businesses.
So again, not just talking about photography, not just hotels, everything restaurants, cars, clothing, jewelry, services, things like meal delivery services, or spa treatments, you can even find evidence of these business models in what you would think would be kind of unlikely places my kids, orthodontists office, our veterinarians office, those do cater to specific kinds of people. Are they marketing themselves as like, this is the
budget option? Are we talking about like this is where you take your dog, if there's nothing too good for Fifi like, they're all out there. So if other business models in the world work well, in these other fields, why can't they work in photography? Why are we stuck, either going the super cheap route, or like the super luxury business model? And the answer is, and this is what I came to, like, it doesn't have to be that way. You know, we can succeed at all different kinds of levels.
There is certainly a market for all three business models and photography. But as I started to explore this, what I realized was in order for any of those, like different options, there's different models to work properly. The key was that all the parts of the business needed to be in alignment. So for exiting Simple. Imagine if you went to book a stay at this fancy resort, and you get to their website. And it's like, really bad, right? pixelated
photos, broken links. And then, you know, it's but they're saying it's $1,200 a night or something for the room, it would be weird. If that didn't give you pause, right? You're about to fork over a whole bunch of money. And this is a company that can't even get their website, right? Like, would you think, Oh, I'm sure it's just the website, everything else is going to be fine. You may not go through a whole lot of thought process about it. But somewhere in your brain, it would say, Ah,
that's a red flag. You know, let's look for the next luxury
hotel. Similarly, if you went to book, a last minute hotel by the airport, because your flight got canceled, and you were in a desperate situation, and you were like, I need a place to stay tonight, and then you get to the website of the airport hotel, and it talks about how they give a complimentary bottle of Dom Perignon to all of their guests on check in, you'd be like, wait a minute, what, what's the room rate, what's happening here, you're gonna, you know, there, you're going to
give me a multi $100 bottle of champagne at a cheap hotel, that doesn't make any sense. And even though that might sound appealing, it would also sound like oh, what's like the hidden fee that I'm missing here. And it may cause you to go book a different hotel just to be safe, right. So in order to avoid that kind of brand confusion, as photographers, there are five factors that we need to focus on making sure are all aligned in our businesses. And again, this isn't restricted to photography.
But I've been talking a lot about other industries. So I want to bring it back to us. So let's talk about how these five factors sort of build your business. The first two, and I call these the five P's, just to make them easy to remember. So the first two P's are your preferences and your parameters. Now, preferences are all about how you would run your business, if there were no limits, right? Like this is your ideal business. It's what you were
dreaming about. When you were thinking about starting a photography business. It's the vision you start out with, right? So what kind of work do you want to do? What kind of people do you want to work with? What kind of niche or market do you want to be known for? What kind of hours do you want to work? Like, you know, what space do you work in? Are you working in people's homes? Or you are a wedding photographer? So obviously, you're doing wedding
venues? But do you have a specific kind of wedding that you see yourself photographing? Or do you have a studio like, you know, what's, what's your ideal scenario. So preferences are a fun thing to check in with. And there's something that I very strongly recommend that you check in with regularly, because they do change over
time. But the important thing is that, you know, we at least pay attention to those, because that really should be the North Star that you are building toward that you're working toward, even if you're not quite there yet, or even if your circumstances kind of dictate that right now, you can't have the pie in the sky version. But we know what that is. And so we're working
toward that. And in terms of your like, the things that keep you from achieving that, then we're going to introduce the second P, which is your parameters, right. So parameters are kind of the facts of your life, they are your circumstances, I often say that they are, you know, there's like a good side and a bad side to
parameter. So you've got your restrictions, the things that, you know, it's like you've got time restrictions, you've got monetary restrictions, money that you do, or don't have to invest in your business money that you do or don't need to make in your business. But then you also have your resources and parameters have to do with your
resources as well. Like maybe your pie in the sky idea of a business means that you have this like fancy studio, but currently you don't have the equipment for that, like you don't have the resources for that. But resources come down to all kinds of other things too, right? Maybe you have the special resource of a partner who is a an SEO whiz or something like that, that's a resource that you have that other photographers probably don't have, or not all of them
have. Other parameters include things like the the hours you're available to work, the specific tools and talents that you can use in service of your business, all those kinds of things. So, when you sit down and catalogue your preferences and parameters, and I mentioned like you should check in on your preferences, you should also check in on your parameters because those change
over time too. So I try and do this once a year and I say okay, what do I have at my you know, what are what's, what's the dream and what's my reality? Based on that those two things things. That's how you decide which of these business models the donkey, the workhorse, or the unicorn makes the most sense for your business, right. So I always say after the first two P's preferences and parameters, then you pause, and you decide
on your business model. And unlike your preferences and parameters, typically, your business model is stable over time, you are generally going to be attracted to one of those three models more than the others. So once you've decided on the right business model, based on your preferences and parameters, then that dictates the other three P's, which are your products, your pricing and
your policies. So products is kind of a broad term, a neat, you know, immediately we think of things like oh, albums and framed prints, those are products that I sell. And if you sell albums and framed prints, then yes, that that is included in this, but it also just means your general offers, right your your product is your general
offer. And it really also comes down to your brand, like your brand needs to reflect the business model that you are selling, you want to either lean into that super luxury experience, or you want to focus on whatever it is that sets you apart from all the other workhorse businesses out there. Like what is it that you offer that's different, that is part of your product line. And it is something that needs to be reflected in all the different
parts of your brand identity. So products include both your like the goods that you sell the services that you offer, and then your brand as a whole. Your pricing is obviously how much you charge for those goods and services. But remember, the more exclusive your brand, the more kind of unicorn your business is, the higher your markup needs to be, the higher your prices need to be to be in line with
that brand identity. So again, you know, if you were to go on the website of an airport hotel, you're trying to book kind of a last minute cheap place to stay. And you see that they have all these extra bells and whistles. Again, that sounds nice. But we all are pretty well conditioned to see something that seems too good to be true. And believe that it's probably too good to be true. I went right before I recorded this, I went on pratas website and I looked for a basic
cotton t shirt. So I can go to Old Navy and get a t shirt for like five bucks right on sale and the sale been for $5 If I want a t shirt to cover my body. And you know, that's exactly what I need, I can get that extremely cheaply. Prada also sells T shirts, but they do not sell them for $5. They don't even sell them for $50 or $500. That cotton t shirt that has the product logo on the front that is sold on prada.com was $875.
So obviously product isn't paying a whole lot more for a cotton t shirt even if they're sourcing it in better places, or it's like higher end cotton, it's not enough to justify $900 by itself. However, Prada is putting all kinds of money into building this brand identity as I was poking around their website. They've got you know, Benedict Cumberbatch and Emma Watson modeling their stuff in you know, various places on the website. So clearly, they are paying for these very expensive
spokespeople. And the you know, we all know that Pradas ads are running in Times Square. And they're you know, they're buying really expensive ads, and they're at the Met Gala, and all this sort of thing. It's a different thing than Old Navy. Now, there are not many people out there who are able and willing to buy a $900 T shirt. Whereas plenty of people are out there buying T shirts from Old Navy, but they have to sell a lot less merchandise in order to make the same amount of money.
You know, they sell one t shirt, and then whatever the math is on 900 divided by $5. That's how many that Old Navy needs to sell. So it's just a different business model. But pricing is part of the brand identity. And if a product a customer sees a t shirt for, again, even $50 It's going to change what they perceive as that brand identity. They're going to say, Oh no, I'm a $900 T shirt shopper. I don't buy T shirts for $50 Whatever you may feel about that there
are those people out there. And so we need to kind of get comfortable with the fact that that's just a different kind of a it's a different product. It's a different pitch. If that pitch isn't for you, that doesn't mean it's not for someone else. And then the third P in that equation is policies. So policies really are kind of the boundaries around your time and
services, right. So, if we go back to the hotel example, at a lot of high end hotels, if it's raining, you'll, you know, start to walk out the door, and they will hand you a big golf umbrella. And I'm not entirely clear on whether you're supposed to get that back or not. I don't even think it really matters. Like, they probably build that into the cost. If they're, you know, clientele are about to
walk outside. And they don't have something to cover their fancy hairdos, or their fancy clothes or whatever, the hotel is just gonna say, Here you go, here's the $60 umbrella that you can keep on us, because they've got enough padding in their margins to do that. And it contributes to this sense of like, when you're here you are being taken care of like royalty, right? You wouldn't expect that at a budget or like airport hotel, it just wouldn't
happen. And they wouldn't be able to afford to give you the rates that they were giving you if that was their policy. So, again, I know that I have packed a lot into this episode, and I am getting to the end of it. But there is a lot more to this whole concept where this came from, if this is something that you are interested in, if it sort of piqued your curiosity about how your brand identity and your pricing and all of these things can be positioned
at any level, really. But as long as they are cohesive, they can attract the right customers, even when the market is a little soft. I would love to invite you to come over to this can't be that hard.com/quiz take a quiz that I have there. It's a short quiz, but it'll help you determine your ideal business model. And then, when you get your results, I give you a whole bunch of additional information about what your preferences and parameters mean for your
business. So most of all, I hope that if you have been feeling stressed about your inquiries, or concerned about maybe it's your pricing, that's the problem. Before you make any big changes, I really do want you to consider how your business alignment stands up. Pricing is just one piece of the puzzle. And making changes without taking that into consideration can actually make your situation
worse. So remember, your preferences and parameters should guide which of the three business models the donkey, the workhorse or the unicorn is best suited for you. And then once you've determined that model, then you can ensure that your products, your pricing and your policies are all aligned with that model. And by focusing on alignment. First, you create this cohesive brand that builds
trust with your audience. When your business model your products, your pricing and your policies are all in sync, your brand becomes stronger becomes more recognizable. And that cohesive brand helps people understand what you stand for and what they can expect from you, which builds trust. And trust is such a powerful tool. Honestly, I feel like trust is the thing that gets someone to purchase from you, rather than someone else. Or, unfortunately
the opposite, right? When a client trusts you, when they see the value in what you offer, they're more likely to choose to work with you. Regardless of the price they understand exactly what they're getting what they you know, need and want, and they feel confident in their decision. So that well aligned business with a cohesive brand is always going to attract better clients, build stronger relationships and ultimately lead to a more successful and
fulfilling business. Thank you guys for sticking with me today. If you have any questions or need further guidance in aligning your business remember the information is that this can't be that hard.com/quiz Or you can feel free to reach out in the Facebook group or on Instagram. Have a great week. 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 like 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.