Why I'm no longer the cheapest - interview with Jesse from J Lawrence photography

a go . If you haven't already got someone shouting at you to put your prices up, I'm gonna start doing it.

Let's get going with today's episode. Today, I'm chatting with one of my favorite wedding pro lounge members, Jesse from Jay Lawrence photography. I know, I know I shouldn't have favorites, but let me explain from the moment I met Jesse, I knew he would be a great member. He shows up, he gets involved and most importantly, he takes big action on what he's learning, which means he sees the results. He's a lot of fun and has a really big heart. Jesse welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you.

How are you?

I also have been on a little crusade over the last, I say 18 months or so of trying to make sure that both myself and I start with myself, but, but generally speaking, trying to push with the wedding industry of being much more inclusive in the language we use, the messaging that we use and a lot of that sort of thing. Yeah,

She then explained that it was at one of the big wedding venues in the new forest where I'm based, and it was a black tie event. They had a famous news reader coming down as the patron of the charity red carpet, the full works. And I was like, are you sure you want me to do it? You might want someone else. Cause at the time I was. Many photographers, photographing flowers in the garden and all that sort of thing. She said, oh no, no, that's, that's, that's fine. You, you can do it.

You'll be fine. So I was thinking I won't be, but ok. So I basically had four, three or four months and literally outside of work, all I did night and day was. Practice practice practice. I organized photo shoots with people. You know, I I've got models in to do very relaxed photo shoots, but just getting used to photographing people, and getting used to using the camera properly in a professional way, rather than just like I say, taking pictures of stuff in the garden.

After all of that, it went really well. And I thought, you know what? I've put all this time F in. A lot of what I thought at the time was a lot of money on kit. I realise now it was small compared to what I spend these days but, what I thought was a lot of money and I thought, you know what, I'm gonna make a go of this and, and, and see, see whether I can do this properly. So I started.

You know, doing the usual things of doing a few free weddings and trying to photograph everything and everyone, in different events and then I just basically fell in love with wedding photography.

You know what it's like with the wedding industry, you start seeing the same faces around and we'd seen each other a few times and became friends and yeah. And, I built a lot of good friends and relationships out of being in the wedding industry.

If something had gone wrong, I don't think the couple would've cared how much they paid for it.

And I think that's a really interesting thing to consider actually, because you are right in that if someone has 200 pound budget for wedding photography, or if they have 10,000 pound budget for wedding photography, that's their budget that they can stretch to. And so they really value that money. So yeah, even if like, exactly, like you said, even if it had all gone wrong, they wouldn't have said, well, I only paid 200 pounds.

Because for them in that moment, that probably was all they could afford. And actually, so often our pricing and our mindset around pricing is a confidence thing and a belief in our own worth rather than whether or not the customer will pay it. So do you believe now that you're charging more, what you are worth in terms of photography, or do you think there's still room for your confidence to grow in that area? I think there will always be room for confidence to grow.

And it's one of the things that I've realized that, and this is kind of why I said, I'm not sure about I made the right journey, but because I look back now and realize that actually I'm still in five years time, I'm still gonna look back at now and feel the same way as I do. Now, about five years ago, I'm always gonna improve if I'm doing the right things. Which I think every business should be self-reflecting and improving themselves and change the way they do things.

I think if I'm still here in five years time and thinking I'm doing things the same way, and I'm doing exact and I've got everything perfect, then I've not done it. Right. Basically so, I think actually, Ignoring the, the self-belief and the confidence, and actually just going for it a little bit more is something that, that I think new people can do. And I've seen a few suppliers.

Who've had the, I guess in some respect nerves to be a brand new supplier and, but start charging sensible amount of money and, and doing. Straight away. And they're doing just as well as the people who start really tentatively in fact they're doing better, because straight away they can afford to, to upgrade all of their equipment and they can afford to get the best marketing and the best websites and things. And so the, the, the learning curve, is very quick.

The process is very quick to go from, start to, to where they want to be and actually if you undersell yourself, at the beginning, it takes a lot longer. And I know that I could have been here where I am today, three years ago, if I'd just had the nerve to accelerate.

And you're right, because it becomes a self perpetuating problem because yes, they're getting some bookings, but they're the wrong kind of bookings and they're not making the money and then they don't have the money to reinvest. So I just wanna say, if that's you listening to that and you feel like that's, you stuck in this rut and thinking you're not worth charging more, or you've always gotta charge those low prices.

You are on your own journey and there's absolutely no reason why you can't change that journey now. And exactly like Jesse's done. Look back on the time that you're in now and think why didn't I do that sooner? So if that is you listening right now, I encourage you reach out to Jesse, reach out to me and just say, look, I actually need help moving this forward and working out how to get the confidence to raise my prices. So, can you help me do that now?

So that I'm not still in this position in a year's time now, Jesse, we've kind of touched on it a little bit, but when we first met, so when I first came across you online, I think it was fair to say you felt in a little bit of a rut with your wedding business. We were kind of in the middle of COVID so that wasn't helping things, but you'd kind of got to a position where you weren't happy with how things are going, but you didn't quite know how to move forward. Do you think that's fair?

Tell me a bit about that. That that's

I, realise now that I was very much undercharging, which meant that I was then getting. Budget weddings, which meant that my pictures were of budget weddings, which means that I was getting booked for budget weddings and it was self perpetuating. Whilst I always, I, had this thing in my mind that I didn't really like the idea of doing like stylized photo shoots, because I was worried about something that looked very false. I had this, without really even researching it.

If I'm honest, I just had this thing in my mind that, that I would do, if I did a stylized photo shoot, it would look like a magazine shoot that didn't look like a real wedding. I couldn't use that in my portfolio. It wouldn't look like something that a wedding I'd shot and basically on the journey, working with you, looking at my branding, it was actually, I found it very weird because I, I guess it's because.

The the, the hardest part of that, because I I've got a marketing background, but when you're doing photography in particular, but I think this is probably true of all the wedding industry. You are, you are trying to get your, if you're trying to be somewhere else rather than where you are, you know, you want that portfolio, you want to be doing those nice weddings. It's how to make that jump essentially. and actually it also, I think all of us wedding suppliers are really impatient.

It's like, I want, I wanna be there now and so that making that leap to working out how I can sort my branding out, what that means, how can I be consistent? How can I make sure that I'm looking like that? My, my work is good enough to be charging the price that I really felt I should be at. And all of those sorts of things. That's essentially what I used. I had your help for, and really worked on with you to, to essentially make it happen.

And sometimes you just need someone to show you what that next step is. So we worked together, you went through my signature program, invisible to irresistible. You've been part of my wedding pro members' lounge. And there's certain areas that we've worked on together, which I'd love to talk a little bit more about. So the first one is your message. So. I love that when you came to me, you had a really clear message. You wanted to talk about inclusivity.

You wanted to talk about diversity and you were really passionate about it. And the thing that I identified very quickly when we started working together was that there was a disconnect so that you were saying to me, one-to-one, this is what I'm passionate about. But outwardly in the marketing world, people didn't know that message and that's something you've changed. And I know that's been really successful for you. So what have you changed?

What have you done differently to help that come into.

This is who I am as a business, and it makes life really easy. Actually, once you've got that in place, it's so much quicker because you're not redesigning everything every time. So that was a big step because then I knew that you. What words that I, you know, what I wanted people to get from my business when they that three to 10 seconds that they initially see my business, I know what I want them to get from that. And that was really a really big part of it for me.

The second thing was getting my head over the fact. Your, the style shoots can be what you want them to be essentially, and actually it was interesting because talking to other people in your pro members lounge and, and really getting that feel for people from people who are doing styled shoots that actually, you know, You're using, you can use real couples. And I never really even considered that.

I just assumed that we'd get some models, random models in, and they would have to pretend, but actually it makes such a big difference getting real couples in. So, so now my, those that styled shoot that I would do would look like a real wedding, because they're really comfortable around each other, and then doing the styled shoots meant I had real looking real wedding looking images for, you know, LGBT couples, mixed race couples, those sorts of things.

So I had images to stick on the website and I could put pages together about those things specifically. You know, as, as a person who has a lot of L G B T friends, and as an ally, it was important to me to make sure that I had a, a page on my website that literally just talked about that. And, and. You know, a year and a half ago, I wouldn't have had any images to put on that page. and it's exactly what you were saying.

You know, I, would've put, had a load of, you know, straight white couples on my website and, and that was it, which is fine. And I still have plenty of straight white couples on there, but the idea is inclusivity. So I've got everything, everyone on there. Lots of different styles of weddings, people with different body shapes, everything on there. It almost makes me laugh, looking back that I hadn't had that outside view of just looking at my website and going well, you've got none of this

And you're right, because you have to get over that thought of, I don't wanna do a styled shoot. I don't wanna force the matter because ultimately it's marketing. And at the end of the day, people can't buy what they can't see and they can't believe what they can't see. So it's hard for them to believe. Yeah. Jesse's really inclusive. When they can't see any evidence of that.

And as soon as you start showing evidence of that, and that's the same with all sorts of things, if you wanna shoot more weddings in barns, well, you gotta go out there and get more images of weddings in barns. If you wanna shoot in high end hotels in London, you need to show that you can be in those hotels even before your books. And what happens is then people see that and think, oh, they're the person to book for this kind of wedding.

And then you have to get over that feeling of, I don't wanna do this, this isn't me and realize actually sometimes. Maybe we've just got to push ourselves a little bit to get those images. And I think you've done a huge, benefit to your business by pushing past that block. And that's hard to do so you should be proud of that. So you talked a little bit about your message and how important that message is.

Why do you think it is so important for you to talk about people that don't like having their photo taken or to talk about the diversity thing?

And so not, you know, it's not for everyone. So like not everybody has to do the same thing as me. But knowing who you are and knowing what you stand for and what you, what you project and how you work with your customers and your style. You know, there's some, I know a photographer who, who only works with like model looking couples for one of a better word.

And they, and they have very, they have a very high end look very, very, they, they were predominantly a model photographer doing fashion and things like that. And so, so that was the style that they wanted to go with. And that works for them, but they were really clear about that. And so I think. Couples need you get really good customers for whatever your business is. If they know that they're the right customer for you and you know that they're the right customer for you.

And once you start projecting what you want from them and what you have to offer for them, they'll come, they'll come to you without really any questions. It's not then a how do I decide between all these people, they go, right? I'm interested in.

It stands out a mile off as a marketing ploy, but actually when it's authentically, what you're about. And I see this through you, especially with your piece on people who are uncomfortable in front of the camera, it's an authentic message. And you see that coming through in your testimonials because when people leave testimonials on your website, they say things like I was so uncomfortable in front of the. But Jessie made me feel so comfortable.

So it's really important isn't it to come from that place of authenticity?

But also, like you said, about jumping on the bandwagon, I think there's, if it's important to you, you'll spend the time to research it. Like I say, I, the L G B T Q plus side of my business was important to me because I've got so many close friends, like really close friends to me that are part of that community. And once I made that decision and started projecting that my branding, it gave me it actually, you know, I didn't assume that I knew everything about it.

It meant that I actually went and asked the questions and made sure I got feedback from the right audience, all of these sorts of things. You can, you can then get, become really good at these things. It, it doesn't, you don't have to be the expert straight away. It just needs to be really important to you and then you can work at it. Yeah,

And actually in the business world a few months, isn't that long, especially if you are gonna be a business that's running for decades and prospering, actually a few months in the scheme of things, not the end of the world. So I had to learn patience, on that side of things, I definitely feel like I had undersold myself throughout the business and.

Actually having gone through the journey and spoken to people, I've never known someone who to put up their price that actually regretted it a year later. And it didn't matter what they started with. If they put up their price a year later, they were still getting business in.

And so I think actually people, anybody listening to this, give it a go If you haven't already got someone shouting at you to pick your prices up, I'm gonna start doing it, and actually I know a lot of people it's not really about, it's about two things with the price. It's partly, it's making sure that you show people that you have the quality because there are couples out there including myself. When I went to book, it was funny.

I was charging a couple hundred quid for a wedding, but when I went, went to book a wedding photographer, I was not looking at that because. I was, you know, I was like, I don't want somebody who's new starting out. And I'd been doing it for several years by this point. And I was only charging a few hundred quid and I was thinking, actually, why an earth what am I charging a few hundred quid? Because I know that I'm not gonna be looking at that. I'm just not even starting at that point.

So yeah, and, but also businesses cost a lot of money. And the more you go on, the more you realize that if you're doing things professionally and you've got branding and you've got social media and you've got accountants and insurance and all these things and websites to pay for it all adds up. And actually, if you don't put your prices up to a professional level now, but you are trying to do everything else professionally, you're not gonna make any money to live off.

And then you don't have the work life balance, because you're just working really hard. for not actually really getting any reward out of it.

So often not true because there's lots of people out there that only book the most expensive thing, because they wanna prove that they've got more men than everyone else. And there's other people exactly. Like you were saying, I don't wanna book the cheapest because I think if they're charging more, it shows that they know what they're doing now. We all know that's not necessarily true, but there's definitely that perception out there.

So you've gotta have the confidence to charge what you're worth. And that's why it's so important to talk about the numbers. Now, another thing I know we've worked on together as part of the course and in the membership, I talk about it all the time is actually knowing your numbers and planning ahead and thinking about how much this business has cost you. What impacts that has on you?

It actually, I found it really helpful because there might be something that I wouldn't necessarily go to as my, you know, to spend my time on go and do the X, Y or Z, but actually as part of my business it was really important. And if, you know, if you've got a good understanding of how your business is operating and doing like the numbers with you has been really helpful from that point of view, it means that I could know, oh, okay. I need to go and do. I need to go and do this this week.

I need to make sure that I spend some time on this, but I think there's a more profound effect on. You as a business owner of knowing your numbers as being, making sure you've got records of where you are at, because we all see our businesses on an hour by hour, day by day basis. We do not see the changes as clearly as, other people and even. In the last six months of looking at my social media, I've realized that while I don't think I've grown things.

And even when I have a quiet month, like in last month, I was absolutely manic and I didn't do very much social media. It still grew, and I didn't realize that it was growing and how much it's grown in the last six months has been huge. And actually you look back at that and from a positive point of view. Believing in yourself and all of these things is really important.

I'd love to know where you're looking to get to next, what's your next plan, what do you want to see over the next year?.

And yeah, just seeing how I think we get tied up very much in, in the business from a, a business point of view and growing the business. But I, I kind of wanna see what I can do that's like making, adding the passion project side of the business in, you know, like doing, doing the rebranding and making sure that I cover the LGBTQ plus, element of my branding has been great, but actually I know there's more I can be doing there.

So, that's not just in my business for outside and, and in the, in the world of the wedding world as a wider, as a wider thing,

If you wanna drop so many hours in your job, well, how much money do you need to make to make up for that? Or how much can you afford to do? Or is there savings you can make in your household in able to able you to do that? Otherwise in a years, time, you'll still be sat here saying in a year's time, I wanna quit my job. If you don't make a plan. So it's music to my ears, Jesse that you have a plan. Of course you do. That's why you are one of my favorite members. Love it. Okay. Jesse.

It's very exciting. Okay. Because I'm gonna introduce a new feature to the podcast this week. It's called now it's a working title. I feel like we might need to improve it, but right now it's called wedding pros it's time to take a break. Now, one thing that I've discovered. And it seems to be coming up more, and more recently is that wedding professionals and business owners in general are terrible at taking a break. We work way too hard. We stress out all the time.

And so I wanna have a little segment on my podcast to encourage people that sometimes they need to take a break. So I've got two questions to ask you. The first one is I'd love to know. What do you do to chill out? If you could get away from your business for a few hours, what would you be doing?

So on a day to day, I'm a bit of a gamer and so I'll, I'll either be playing games or watching streamers and, and things like that. So a bit of a geek at heart

So I'd love to know if there's any TV series or films that you've been watching recently that you recommend to people listening?

So I'm going to be actually listening, listening out to what other people say on, on this section for, for my next thing, because I'm nearly at the end of. Of the entire Friends series, but that's what I've been doing is on Netflix and listening, watching some Friends

. Becca: That's very dangerous to your relationship, Jesse. I feel like if I jump ahead with my husband in a series, he is not happy about it. I would have to watch it a second time with him so he didn't know I had watched it in secret! We used to do that, but we've got to the stage where like, we will communicate with each other and go, I'm gonna carry on watching this now on my own. And we go, okay, no problem.

Okay, Jesse, before we finish, we have to do the quick fire quiz. Now my last fewguests have not really understood the idea of a quick fire quiz in that they're really slow to answer the questions. So I give you the question you give me the answer as quick as you can.

And they actually really like getting involved with the pictures and things I've got, I've got a really good following on Facebook now. And I, I would say if you've got the time, don't ignore it.

Okay. As we bring the interview to a conclusion, Jesse, I ask the same question, which is, is there one thing that you wish you'd known sooner in your wedding business?