Sarah: Hi, everyone thank you for joining us for the Get Fully Booked This Year event brought to you by The Joy Of Marketing and White House Custom Colour. I am Sarah Petty, and I’m here with the fabulous, marvelous and wonderful Tim Walden. How’s that for an introduction? Tim: That’s good. I like that. Now I’ve got to live up to that. Sarah: That’s exactly my point. Tim: The pressure is on. Sarah: It is on. Tim and Beverly run an amazing studio in Lexington, Kentucky. You guys have been mentors, friends and people I’ve looked up to since I first entered this industry. I’m just honored and flattered that we’re friends. You do so much to participate in our events to give back to so many photographers, so thank you so much. Tim: Thank you for including me, thanks for the friendship and thanks for all that you do for the industry. I’m honored to be here and honored to do what I can because we’re all where we are because somebody helped us. Sarah: It’s so true. Tim: Anything that I can do, I want to do. Sarah: Good. Our mission today for the next hour is to dig really deep into your business and not just technical things. Everybody is out there running these businesses, and because I’ve been in business longer than some people and you’ve been in business longer than me, we know that it’s never easy. We know there are always times that you are short on cash flow. When I’m short on cash flow, we wonder what about payroll? Why are we not booking clients this year like we did last year? It’s just inevitable. It happens in the natural life cycle of every business. People always hear us talking about this successful thing or that successful thing. Today I wanted to dig into what you do when you wake up and you’re panicking because you’ve been traveling for a month, or for
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whatever reason you had neglected things or business is just down, and you want to stir it back up.
Tim:
Maybe you don’t have a big budget at the moment to throw at it. I want to brainstorm about different things you’ve done over the years, and try to give people our thought process of what we do when we’re in that same situation that everybody else is in. There are seasons too where you’re investing in your business, and if you run into a bump while you’re making those investments for the future, you can run into a dry season as well. When those things build up, as you mentioned Sarah, there are tight times. I think the trick with things like that is that it starts with approaching it with a clear mind. My father used to say make a plan and work the plan. I think for a lot of people, there’s more panic and not a plan. We have knee-‐ jerk reactions to the circumstances and the challenges. Even though we have some great gut instincts, if we don’t make a plan and phase them in and at least work the plan, we never give it a chance for success. I know we’ll talk about some things that worked, but I think it starts with just a deep breath, clear your mind and begin to make a plan. Most people will do the right things if they’ll stay the course and stay on that plan. I think that’s first. That’s something we’ve been really good at. Even when we’ve made mistakes, the good outweighs the bad and at least we’ve stayed the course to give something a season of time to know whether it was the right decision or not. If you don’t do that, even the best plans will get lost amidst all the clutter. That’s very important.
Sarah: I’ve been this way, where you get in a mode where you’re reactive instead of proactive, and you’re not doing the planning. You look up and all the sudden you feel like you’re treading water. People call and you’re like I don’t know if I can do that. I don’t know if I have time or resources. So you feel that taking those steps to become a better planner is one of the things that have saved you over the years?
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Tim:
It is. It sounds kind of anti-‐climatic. We’re looking for this big special, but if you were building a house this is pouring the foundation. We still to this day, after all these years, set aside what we call ‘Target Tuesdays’. We just sit down every Tuesday as a team and we pull up the free app that we have and the software. We journal our plans, and we look and evaluate the things that we’re doing. When something doesn’t work, we journal that in our app, and we have it for the future. If something didn’t work but it should have, maybe when we go back and read it we’ll see that we’d done this or that. We dedicate Tuesday mornings as a team to doing that. I always encourage people that run a business that if they get isolated they should go find somebody that will tell you the truth. Sit down and just brainstorm, and begin to develop a plan and a process. The nice thing about this industry Sarah is that there are so many people that are willing to help. You have a wonderful jumping off point because you can get people that you trust, or people that are likeminded that have like visions, and you pick their brain. You say I’m going to take that back and I’m going to throw it out on my Tuesday morning meeting. We’re going to brainstorm it, whether it’s just me and one other person or me and three or four people. What’s amazing is out of the junk rises up the gems. People are afraid of the junk and they don’t find the gems. You’ve really got to talk it through. It’s amazing how many dumb ideas I’ve heard, and then when they’re morphed and massaged, there are some amazing gems in there. I think if I were advising somebody, I would first start by saying be willing to do the dirty work. Roll up your sleeves, make a plan, work the plan and stay the course. Yes, there are some great ideas out there in marketing. I want to share them and you want to share them with people, but really it’s got to be undergirded with a tenaciousness and staying the course.
Sarah: Even for people who don’t have someone in their life to bounce this off and they don’t have an employee yet, don’t you find that just sitting in the quiet with no phone, no Internet, no distractions and thinking about your business is so helpful, just thinking through the next week, the next month or the next six months?
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Tim:
How am I going to keep business coming in? You’d be surprised how many things are inside of you in your mind and your heart that just have to have a little silence to find their way out. You’re exactly right. Sometimes we wait until we’re desperate to close the door, turn everything off and say what am I going to do? I think it’s really good advice before the desperation or without the desperation to say here’s where I am, where do I want to be and how do I get there?
Sarah: Yes. Over the years I’m sure you’ve had times where you maybe didn’t do a good job of planning, or you looked up and you didn’t have any business. What do you guys do in that situation? If tomorrow I said you don’t have any clients on the calendar, what would you do? I know you and Bev would sit down. How would you tackle that? Where would you go first? Tim: I think I would tackle it in two ways, Sarah. First I would tackle it with a long-‐term solution, and I would tackle it with a short-‐term solution. That’s just the way I think. There’s a short-‐term problem. I need to get people through the door, but if you’re just constantly throwing a Band-‐Aid over the wound, it’s not really healing it. I also look for the greater problem. If I’m slow or I have no one here, it’s either poor decisions or decisions that I’m not making that I need to make. I want to do two things. I want to get people through the door now, and I want to avoid this problem in the future. I think you have to tackle it both ways. You have to do it without selling out your brand. To me, that’s one of the hardest things. I find it easy to get people through the door, but sometimes if you’re not careful you’re not making any money when you do. Sarah: Exactly.
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Tim:
You’re destroying your business the way you’re doing it, and the reality is people are going to typecast you, Sarah. I always say can you imagine Barney Fife as Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind? He probably wouldn’t have been cast for that role. The reason is because he’s typecast. He’s the bubbling Barney Fife. If we’re doing the Barney Fife things, we can’t expect that kind of leading man role because we’re typecasting. Now we’ve got to get people through the door, and we’ve got to do it without selling out our brand. Therein lies where the wisdom, the challenge and the effort comes. I would go those two routes. I would say why am I here? How do I get out of here and stay out of here? How do I get out of here for a short-‐term solution?
Sarah: Yes, I see so many people whose natural inclination is to panic and have a sale. We know that sometimes sales can be the right choice, but often times when you’re using it as a knee-‐jerk reaction to attract clients, you get the price-‐sensitive buyers and it devalues everything you’re doing. What are those strategies? Help us with your thought process. What do I do long term and what do I do short term? Tim: Let me start with long term. I think long term, you really work hard at defining your brand, tweaking your processes, tweaking your experience for your clients and refining and defining your brand. As I’ve traveled the country or the world, what I see in this industry is that people know what they do and it’s a terrible thing because they understand what they do as a photographer, so they think everyone else does. The reality is that in the marketplace they haven’t defined themselves. I’m a big preacher of do less to draw a bigger crowd. Sarah: Me too. Tim: Less is more. Here’s some advice that I would give people. This is hard advice but I stand by it. That is to be less concerned with whether people like what you do and more concerned that they know what you do. Think about that.
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We’re people pleasers. It’s like if somebody wants a photo on a blue background with a kid running through, they’re a classical shooter but I could do that. They’re deluding their brand. When they start doing that people don’t recognize them. I think one of the real keys to success I marketing on the left-‐brain side – the non-‐emotional side – is clarity. People understand what you do. People come to you with an expectation. The question is not that. The question is who formed it? Did you form it, or did a misunderstanding form it? Was it formed by the fact that they saw something at somebody’s home that you did as an exception a couple of years ago? They come in and they’re like I saw this thing and I really want this. They’re making decisions about who you are based on a fractured brand in the marketplace. This is so hard for photographers. They do a beautiful job and they’re so proud and somebody doesn’t like it and they say what’s wrong with it? Sometimes it’s not what’s wrong with it it’s the fact that they had an expectation – and you didn’t form it – but you didn’t fulfill it. I think that’s key. We need to do less. We need to focus. The other thing, if you don’t mind my preaching a little…
Sarah: Please. This is great stuff. Tim: It’s not only that, but I do not buy into this whole concept that creativity is doing everything. People say I’m a creative person, so I’ve got to be able to do it all. Hogwash. If you close your eyes and you think of Monet or Renoir or Rembrandt, there are very specific things that come to mind. I think truly creative people find their niche, and then every corner and every edge of it is pushed. Then they begin perfecting themselves and their art within that niche. Now they’ve become a specialist with a high level of creativity, a high level of impact in their artistry, and they’re doing it by staying in a lane and in a style. If you do that, it’s going to help you with your long-‐term solutions.
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I can’t say that’s everybody’s problem. It’s not. I know we all have different issues. The other thing is that there isn’t one problem. It’s usually a multitude of things. I will say that I see this over and over again, and it’s the core of a lot of issues. We think we just need to be better at marketing, or we need to do a better ad or have a better flyer. That’s not the problem. The center of spoked wheel is the problem. That’s what we’ve got to begin to address to really excel. That’s the long vision.
Sarah: That’s very true. It’s like people that are home builders and they want to start with the roof. You don’t have the foundation. You don’t have the walls. You don’t have anything, and then it flattens down to the ground and you wonder why. Long term people need to do that. They need to figure out what makes them different and be crystal clear on creating a recognizable style. Tim: Yes, it needs to be strategic. It needs to be thought out and it needs to be tighter than they think it needs to be. The misunderstanding is that because I understand it, so does everyone else. That’s a terrible misunderstanding because it’s not their job to understand it. It’s your job to make it crystal clear. I could go into a lot of other areas, but I think that makes my point about how tightly we need to think about our brand, our style and being excellent at it. On the short-‐term stuff, there are a number of things. You’ve got to realize that when I make a decision, I make it based on my brand. We never have a discount. We never have a special. I’m not trying to insult anybody who does. Those are hard decisions that you have to make, but I will say that I know my brand like the back of my hand. I know what’s acceptable and what’s not acceptable. There are some gray areas, but there are a lot of areas that aren’t gray and they’re just unacceptable. When I say I don’t do that, I don’t want to say that in a chastising way. You and I are talking about what we do. They have to understand that our
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brand is a high-‐end brand. We deal with low volume based on most people’s standards with a sizeable investment in the art, so we’re not going to discount it.
So how do we get people through the door? I think one of the first things – and this isn’t anything new, but I don’t think it’s done well by a lot of people. The first thing I would advise somebody if they were short of money is to go find the people that have the people you want, and figure out how to tie yourself in with them – in other words, partnerships. Find business partnerships. Who has the people you want, and how can you work together? I always ask these two questions when I go into build a partnership.
1. What can I do for you? 2. What can I do with you?
People go in and think here’s what you can do for me, but it has to be reciprocal in life. I think that you as a young businessperson who may be listening to this and trying to grow your business, you can’t walk in and look at a partner as what they can do for you. You have to do some things for them to reciprocate, and you’re going to win that loyalty and that friendship. They’re going to find creative ways to help you. Honestly Sarah, when I started in business what I called a partnership was getting a display somewhere. Then I got so many of them that I couldn’t rotate them, and they went stale. We did a poor job and it just wasn’t acceptable. Today I’m looking for the best of the best. I want to laser focus on them. Yes, I want an exhibit there but I want to work on events with these people. I want to work on drawings. One of the things that we do is we have drawings where our partners will give $1,000 gift certificate for Mother’s Day or for the holidays – Easter or Christmas or something. It’s been amazing how well this simple little thing has worked. Because we know these partners so well, after the drawing we ask them to go through the box of names and pick two dozen people that they feel would be a
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perfect Walden fit. We have the addresses and the emails, and we send a gift certificate for $300 from the partner with a timeline on it.
For us, that $300 has kind of been the trigger point, and we’re booking over 50% of these with huge sales because they’re handpicked by likeminded partners with a likeminded vision. That’s just one of the things that we’re doing with these partners. Again we romance them and we look for ways to help them. You can do trunk shows in your studio if you have a studio. You can put photographs in their business of their families. There are lots of things you can do. Laser focus on a handful, do more and make it less about how many exhibits, but rather getting the right people and then nurturing it.
Sarah: I love that. You just give me goose bumps when you talk, Tim Walden. I’ve heard you talk so many times and yet still every time you get me so motivated. Tim: Thanks. Sarah: You’ve got to admit that you and I are in markets that we’ve been in for a while. You’re highly respected. I grew up in my market. I worked in an ad agency. I was very involved with the Chamber, so I know a lot of the business owners. If you’re younger and newer, and maybe you don’t have connections, I find that a lot of photographers are really struggling with this. They say I went in and asked them, and they said they have a line of five photographers waiting to work with them, or whatever. I love how you said romance them. Talk a little bit about how you would advise somebody to go in there, build rapport and build a relationship without asking what can you do for me? What does that look like? What does that conversation sound like? Tim: I like to do what I call the 2 x 4 effect. Somebody said you can’t get the donkey to move until he’s felt a 2 x 4 across his bottom. Now you’ve got my attention.
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I like a little bit of shock value in dealing with people. I actually remember one time a local builder who was building the highest-‐end homes here in Lexington. I walked in and photographed his wife and children for their home. I said could I feature your business in my newsletter? He said why would you do that? I said because you’re the best, and I like to be associated with the best. I love your wife and kids. I can use that photograph in the newsletter to be able to share that, and I want to share about your business. I wanted to build a partnership, but I wanted a two-‐way street. I want to look for a way to do that. He said sure. I said could I have some of your brochures to put in one of my mall exhibits? I put his brochures for him homes in my mall exhibit. Here’s where photographers go wrong, and this is where I don’t have the fear factor that so many do. I think there’s validity to it. You just have to weigh it out. I will tell you that you’ve got to be bold. What happens if somebody says what if another builder saw it, and they didn’t like it? I’ve never had those what-‐ifs that end up being nothing, but I have had lost opportunities because I haven’t been bold enough to be the one starting that reciprocal relationship by doing something for somebody. There comes a decision time, and you let the chips fall. That’s why I say you look for the best of the best. I think you have to get a little boldness about you. The best way to my heart is through my stomach unfortunately, so take them some treats. Just show up with a couple dozen of those custom-‐made cupcakes that gourmet cupcakes shops have. Don’t wait until they do something for you, so that you can prove the result and then it’s worth your investment. You’ve got to be able to gamble just a little bit. Then on Tuesdays with our partners, we actually sit as a team and we schedule. There’s a lot of strategy to what we do. It looks random, but we’ll schedule a trip back to this children’s clothing store on this day, and we’re going to take this gift.
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It’s all strategically done. They don’t know it. It looks like we just dropped in with a gift, but it’s very strategic. I tell everybody that you should treat your clients and your partners like cousins because I have a bunch of those. It’s not too personal. You don’t want to get too intimate and cross the wrong lines, but I think we go the other way and we don’t get close enough. I tell everybody when I’m teaching marketing that I’ve got almost 50 cousins. I’ve got them everywhere. When one breaks their leg or has an accident, I drop them a card or send them some flowers. If another one has a child that wins a golf tournament in high school, I give them a call or drop them a note. I don’t think I’ve got to do it for all 50 of them. I do it for that cousin because that’s the one with the need. You begin to see your clients and your partners with that level of relationship and drop them a postcard when you’re on vacation. Treat them like a cousin and then you’re not going to cross the line in the wrong direction, but you’re also not going to miss being a family member that you should be to build loyalty and long-‐term relationships.
Sarah: I love how you look at that. I know you treat your clients differently, and I feel the same way. There are some that are more valuable, but partnerships are like any relationship. Don’t you think? You have friendships. You think of your friends on their birthdays. When they’re having a bad day, you give them a gift. If you’re not building a long-‐ term relationship with these business owners, you can’t just walk in and say can I hang a display? You need to get to know them. You need to send them business. If a new really awesome business opens up or maybe a private cooking class, get a group of people and go sign up for it. Make a big deal out of it. Make sure they’re referring people. Tim: Absolutely. These are just the broader examples, but when you step in with the mindset that you and I are talking about, you’ll figure out what those things are as they happen. It’s more about being alert to that and being aware of being that kind of relationship.
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Don’t just look at what can you do for me? There truly is that law of reciprocity, and that is how can I help you with your business? Someone’s going to turn around and say Sarah Petty just treats me amazingly. You need to go over there and get your portrait done. You need to go see Sarah, or I’m going to send her a gift. All the sudden you’re building strong relationships. You can’t do that by just getting an exhibit everywhere all the time. That’s why I love to laser focus on the top in each different field that has the clients that I want.
Sarah: Think about it from the opposite perspective. If somebody who wants to partner with you and just walks in and says can I put a display in your business, you’re going to say no. I’m working hard to make my own business work. If someone comes in and says I have an idea of how I can get you all these clients and it’s very little effort and can I invite my friends, you can stay open late and do a private party and let them all shop at your store. Think about how we would feel as business owners if someone did that for us. We would have a new best friend, wouldn’t we? Tim: Absolutely. Sarah: We’d say let’s do more together. Tim: That really goes back to that initial thought that I was mentioning. Make a plan and work the plan. Sometimes when you start thinking like we’re talking right now, you’ll say we could do this or we could do that. Then you’ve just got to get it in line, get it in a linear process and begin to execute it, and it’s going to be more about making and working the plan than it is about what’s the right thing to do. You’ll know. Sarah: I think people get a little hung up on a photographer that photographs kids, so I have to be in the one local kid’s clothing store. Really you can partner with anybody. There’s an orthodontist, there’s a great car dealer, there’s a flower shop. There are so many business owners who are the same quality that you are who share the same target market, and you can be so creative, don’t you think?
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Tim:
Have you partnered with anybody very unexpected over the years? I’m sure you have. Sure, absolutely we have, from home builders to pediatricians to dentists, children’s clothing stores and adult clothing stores. We have one right now and this is where the moms that have the resources are buying their clothing. It’s not a children’s clothing store. It’s amazing the kind of client base that we’re drawing from this particular partner. I’ve got to tell you that part of the trick to partnership is not just having the right store. It’s having an evangelist in that store. I mean this in the kindest way, but you want kind of a big mouth in that store saying these people are amazing and awesome. You need an evangelist. It’s not just getting in the right store, but getting in there to where they believe in you and they begin to sing your praises. I have seen what I thought would be kind of a crap shoot on partners that were amazing, and I’ve seen what I thought would be amazing partners that were really pretty dry. A lot of it has to do with those owners and getting those people as your evangelists.
Sarah: What’s worked well for us is when we realize that our clients are standing right in front of us gushing over us to their clients. They’re paying for what we do. It occurs to me they’re a dentist. They own a dental firm. I don’t know why I have many dental clients, but it’s the perfect time when they’re standing there gushing to say how would you feel about hanging one of these if I make a second one? Would you like to hang it in your practice? I had a dentist and he had seven kids. We put mustaches on all of them and did the Partridge Family or the Brady Bunch thing, and they were cracking up. One put a mustache on the uni-‐brow and it was hilarious. Tim: Only you, Sarah. Sarah: I know I’m a freak. People come into the dental office and they’re nervous. People don’t like to go to the dentist. For him, I’m thinking this would be great to get people laughing and relaxed. For me, I was kind of selling it as
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this could really help put a light mood. He’s a really nice guy, which most dentists are, but for whatever reason people just hate going to the dentist. Tim: That’s very creative. That’s a great idea. Sarah: He said do you have any marketing pieces we could put out with it? We were getting ready to design our holiday one, and I said Andrea we’re putting our kids in the marketing piece. If you know somebody who’s a gusher and they want to push your stuff out, use them for your promotional pieces when you get a budget and are able to print things. There’s a little strategy to that too. Tim: Right. I’ll tell you another thing we did with our partners that’s been huge. I don’t think I’ve shared this anywhere else. Sarah: Share. I won’t tell anyone, Tim. Tim: It’s just between us and a couple thousand people. This has been great. You know how we’ve been such been fans of these electronic magazines, these eMagazines, brochures and so forth. What we did was Bev designed a magazine. We call it ‘Pitter Patter’. It’s a magazine about children’s wellbeing, their health, quality of food and safety. Then we went to our partners that could provide an article, and we said we can’t email these to your people but there’s no charge and we’ll put you in. You have to write an article. You can give us a full-‐page ad. We’ll give you a Facebook post. We’ll give you the blog post and the promotion. You just have to simply email it to your database, and you’re going to be exclusive in it in your field. Sarah: That’s beautiful. Tim: Now we don’t have their email, which we can’t get but now they’re emailing it. We’re just providing it, parking it on our website and now we’ve got this. We put an article on there about taking photographs of your kids, and now they’re providing magazine articles.
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It’s been a lot of work in the beginning because we kind of had to build a template on it, but it’s been amazing. Now instead of our email base, which for our business is a few thousand, there are 30,000, 40,000 or 50,000 of these things being emailed out to their clients branded with the Walden brand parked on our site.
Sarah: That’s beautiful. So you get the traffic to your site. It cross-‐markets everyone. It helps these partners and that’s what’s beautiful. If some other photographer goes in there and says we’d like to do this for you and we’d like a display, they’re going to say sorry. We work with Waldens. Why would they ever consider working with anyone else? You’re promoting it to your business. You’re working with how many businesses that are in all exclusive categories, like five or 10, does it vary? Tim: We’re probably close to 10 right now. We’re running close to 10, and like I mentioned we laser focus on those 10. Sarah: I’m just sitting here thinking man that’s a lot of work, but that’s powerful. All these people who are sitting there saying I need money and I need cash flow look at those ideas that you’re throwing out. None of them cost money. This is a digital magazine that everyone can design themselves. Tim: Absolutely, and you can do your own little spin on it. What’s nice is that whole reciprocal thing. When you walk in and you say what can I do for you, and what can I do with you? If they say I don’t know, you can say well can I share an idea because I have an idea of how I can help you. My motive is that it’s going to help me as well, so there’s going to be a little partnership here. You take that approach. To me, that’s a cornerstone to marketing where you’ve got more elbow grease and creativity than you have dollars in your wallet for those who want to get the ball rolling with the real brand specific shoppers. Sarah: Yes, I love the fact that it’s not a huge investment. It’s not a full-‐page newspaper ad that you have to buy over and over again. It helps you build a relationship, and it also gives value to the person you’re emailing.
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Everyone wants to email their clients. What are you going to email to them that gets them excited about receiving it?
Tim: Exactly. Sarah: A beautifully designed magazine gets me excited. For one, there may be pictures of my friends. There may be a new product at one of these stores that I love. There may be some exciting things happening, and I want to be the one to know about it. It’s not about price. It’s not about coupon mailing. It’s about value, and you’re filling this with something that people are excited to get in their email and open. That is really, really cool. Tim: That’s just one thing. It’s more a matter of sitting down and saying what can I do? How can I be of service to someone else because I know that when I am, they’re going to turn it around and be that way with me? Then you just make the plan and work the plan. That’s the bottom line. Sarah: On a smaller scale what’s nice is that you could feature them in a blog. They could link to your blog in their email or a newsletter. It doesn’t have to start with a magazine. You start giving love before you’re asking for it. Tim: And that’s what that law of reciprocity is all about. That’s exactly right. You just start by being the giver. I’ll tell you that when we started making our marketing about other people, and sharing the success stories in our newsletters and our exhibits about our clients, just a blatant marketing banter and sharing about victories that our clients have had, all the sudden people see us differently. Those don’t see us so much as somebody that records their face. They see us as somebody who celebrates the stories and the lives of the people that we photograph. I believe to be successful you have to create gaps. Those two words we preach. If you want to be successful, create a gap and make the gap as wide as you can between you and everyone else. Don’t worry about somebody liking it or disliking it. Just widen the gaps. If you start looking for gaps, those gaps come in experience, they come in photography, they come in all of those things and part of those gaps can be
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the photographer that has maybe a strong emotional brand and tells the stories of your clients. You make your advertising about that, and then your logo is at the bottom.
These people know people in the community, and you start getting this viral exponential growth. I’m not trying to knock this but it’s always like I won this award and I won that award. I did this and I did that. Now I’m going to do this for this holiday. That doesn’t have the 2 x 4 effect. I want the 2 x 4 effect. People are like this from a photographer? It’s all about people’s lives and their stories.
Sarah: You guys are just brilliant at emotional marketing, using emotion and using these emotional stories of your clients to get that marketing that just grabs them. Tim: We try because it’s important to our photography, so it’s a natural segue. When we’re going to photograph someone, we say if this portrait were going to be a chapter in your life, what would the bold print be? We begin to hear their life story, and then all we have to do is say may we share that? That’s so touching. People would love it. Can I get your permission to share that story? Then when you do, all the sudden your marketing becomes emotionally packed, and people begin to be drawn to you because there’s such a huge gap in the way you’re connecting with them and the way every other photographer is. Sarah: That’s just awesome. I love the campaigns. We’ve been friends for a long time, and I love watching what you guys are doing. You probably won’t share what’s next, will you? Tim: Well, we’re working on this behind every face there’s a story, which is huge. It’s really going back to our roots of telling these stories. Images that speak has always been our tagline, so we’re getting back to a lot of storytelling in our marketing. We’ll cycle in and out of that. We just finished a campaign called Your Life, Our Art. It was so cool. There was a church here in town that we’re doing these at. They called them ‘cardboard testimonies’. People just write things, like little victories in their life on cardboard and they had these photos.
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We’re like what at great idea, so we started sending our clients and people we knew out with cardboard and markers, and just said write something about your family. We were using them on Facebook. We would see really cool things about family, like life’s crazy, and then they’d flip it over and it says but I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. There are these people in their homes holding these cardboard things. We were using it in our banners and our social media. What’s neat is you’re asking other people do everything. I’m giving you the Reader’s Digest version of what we did, but this is amazing. We just handed cardboard out to people that we knew and we were showing them images. They’re like oh I’ve got to get my family to do that. It was just such a cool way to get people involved. Then they see their images in your marketing pieces tagged on Facebook with their portrait, and then their little story handwritten on cardboard. We had a little action where we sepia toned them and put an edge around them. They all looked like an old snapshot. We started doing that on our physical tangible pieces on some of our e-‐magazines. That’s a whole other story. It really comes down to being creative and understanding your brand, and then making some kind of plan and being bold enough to step out and do it.
Sarah: I love that. Maybe your holiday card this year should be on a piece of cardboard. Tim: Yes, I love that. We just saw a church running an ad. Bev and I were traveling in Europe. We were doing a conference in Europe, and we were on a bus. We were talking about the next thing, and she said have you seen those commercials about his church? I said yes. She said I think there’s something in our clients with just pieces of cardboard, a black magic marker, writing some messages and then letting us use it with their art. We started this whole campaign – Your Life, Our Art. It was so much fun. It’s so viral with so many offsprings. Sarah: Yes, I love Bev. Tim: Your mind is probably going all over the place on this, Sarah, because you’re so brilliant when it comes to marketing. It’s just brilliant. You can
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imagine how many different creative things you can do when your clients get involved like that. Sarah: Yes, I love getting them involved. Then they want to tell the story. They want to share it. That’s fabulous. Bev was the one who inspired me on journaling. I thought I’m not a diary keeper, like today I feel this way or that way. Bev showed me and said I keep this with me because I get an idea and I scratch it down. She’s like I have my grocery list in here. I doodle, and anytime I get a word or a thought I put it in here. I started doing that right after I met Bev. I heard her say that several years ago, and I have all of them saved. What’s crazy is that maybe once a year or every 18 months, I’ll come across this stack and I’ll flip through old ones. It’s like oh I remember when we had that idea or we wrote down this idea and we just got too busy to use it, and now it’s perfect for what we’re doing. I credit you guys for that too. You get these ideas and maybe they’re not right for now, but I just think everybody should keep a journal with them. We’re entrepreneurs and we have ideas flooding our brains faster than we can possibly remember. Tim: I’ve got a pretty sharp wife, I must say. I made a good decision right there. One of the things that we’re doing now that everything is electronic with iPad and all the different stuff is we’re using this free app called Evernote. We have it all synced with our staff, so we can sit down at a computer, have a meeting and pull it up on the iPad. We can make a note anywhere we are. All this is synchronized under Walden Marketing ideas or whatever it might be – different notebooks. That’s part of what we do on Tuesdays. Everybody has access. We don’t have to try to remember it, and then we flesh it out. Sarah: So all we need to do is get that password. Then all of our work is done. Tim: My lips are sealed. That’s funny. Sarah: I know our time is running out. You’re talking to the Tim Walden who’s just opened his own studio, and he’s going to grow, have employees and do all this fabulous stuff. Maybe as a last question…
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Tim:
If you knew then what you know now, what would that be and what would you tell yourself about business? It kind of goes back to what I said earlier. I’ve been making this statement over and over lately, and wisdom today is knowing what not to do. I really believe that this is a profession with equipment, with technology and with marketing where for the first time in my entire career the biggest decisions that you have to make are what not to do and what to pass on. I think it’s okay to let good things go for the greater things. That is the hard thing when you begin. You go to a tradeshow and you’re like oh I could do this or I could do that. Yet pretty soon you’re doing too much, and it’s not recognizable. It goes back to branding. I would say it’s okay to let some things go for the greater cause of finding yourself, carrying that into the marketplace and being excellent. Another misunderstanding that I had when I was young photographer was that if I was really good, I’d be successful. It’s a terrible misunderstanding that the quality of your work will guarantee your success. It in no way, shape or form does. The only thing that I have found that excellent photography does is it gives you something to be excellent at marketing with. It allows your marketing to be highly effective. It also gives you direction on your marketing because as you form a style, you’ll form a marketing style. I always say that you can form your photographic style and do less and do it well. Then your style will tell you how to dress at work, what paint color to use, what lighting to use and what camera to buy. All of those things should be based on finding who you are. I think a lot of times we think if we understand technical things and we get good, we’ll be successful, but you’ve really got to do it all. Am I right?
Sarah: You’re so right. Going back to Bev and her awesome journal idea, I tend to be kind of an impulse buyer. I think that’s part of our creativity. It’s like oh something shiny. I know that about myself.
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Tim:
With magazines, I’ll pull out the pages of the clothes I like. Maybe once a week I’ll go through them and see if I still like them. I like writing those ideas down in a journal – like I saw this new product at the tradeshow, and I saw this new style of photography – and then clipping them out and sticking them in there, and then like you said asking is it good, or do I pass up the good for something that’s more consistent with my style and will be great? That may be great for someone else, but it’s going to confuse my clients or dilute my style or make it not right. I think not just jumping on every little shiny thing is a really good point, and being really focused on if it’s consistent with who I am. Easier to say than to do for a lot of photographers because like you said we’re creative people and we’re affected a lot by the moment that we’re in. It’s hard to say I can learn something from this, but I don’t want to be distracted by it or do it because I’ve got greater things to do within the parameters of my brand and style in order to get to that level I want to be. I just think that a lot of it is just knowing it. If you realize that and you truly think about that, it will help you to avoid good things in order to be great at the other things. You’ve got to let some good things go for the greater things that really shout your brand in the marketplace.
Sarah: I love that. You’re a guy, but I bet Bev has had this happen where you see an outfit on someone and you’re like that is the cutest dress or jacket or whatever. Then you go buy it and it’s just not me. It doesn’t work on me. It looks silly on me because it’s just not me. It’s the cutest thing on the right thing, and it may even fit and be flattering, but if it’s just not consistent with who you are, it just isn’t working. Tim: That’s right, and that translates over into product and into paint colors, furniture and all of that so that you’re shouting with one voice a very loud message as to who you are. That’s going to help you with your long-‐term solution while you fix the short-‐terms with some of the things that we’re talking about. Then people will know who you are and they’ll quit shopping on the two things that you don’t want them shopping on – price and location.
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Sarah: Exactly. Tim: They’re going to stop shopping on price and location, and they’ll begin to fuel the car up and say we’re going for an hour’s drive to get over to Sarah Petty because she is amazing and this is what I want. It’s because they recognize it, and it’s because it has a gap from everyone else that’s distinguishable, so people will begin to quit shopping on price and location. Sarah: I love it. Tim Walden, thank you so much for your time. Before we go, we have twisted your arm into offering some special pricing on some of your products to give people an incentive. I know there are so many different choices out there, and it’s so hard for newer photographers or photographers looking for the right product because they just don’t know which ones to try, or maybe they’ve tried some and gotten burned. I personally sat with you and picked these products. Everything you offer is amazing, but I went through and I picked ones that I feel are things that you teach that are head and shoulders above things that are out there in the market. Let’s tell them about them, can we? Tim: Sure, absolutely. Sarah: Let me just explain. What we’ve done is we’ve taken these four different video caps basically and put them in a bundle. Let’s tell everybody about what they are and what they can get in them, and how it can help their business. • The first one is called Secret Power of Emotion in Marketing. We talked a little earlier about how brilliant you guys are in that whole part of evoking emotion in people. Tell us a little bit about what’s in this video episode. Tim: I think it’s a combination of two things. It’s the philosophy and the principle, which we’ve shared just a nugget or two about today of why emotion in your marketing is so important, how it connects with people at
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a higher level and will attract the people that you want because it’s shouting a different message.
We call them video caps for video capsules. In our video caps are the ways that we do that, just some here’s how we’ve done that so that those will spawn those ideas and you can take them back and say that’s something I can do or I can massage it a little bit. The principles are also in here. I understand the principle, so I can massage this application a little bit and then it will be successful for me. Emotion is one of those gap builders. If you want to create gaps, as I’ve said, emotion is one of the ways of doing that.
Sarah: I love that. • Video two is Three Product Ideas to Boost Sales in Any Economy. I know people are always looking for ways to differentiate themselves and have something cool for their clients, but let’s face it, we need to make money. We need cash flow, so talk about that. We all need cash flow. Tim: It always seems to come to that. I’ll just give you a nugget from this. People build products that they like because they think they’re cool. Whereas what we preach is why don’t you build products that answer objections? If you’re hearing objections in a salesroom – what do I do with the rest of these, how do I handle this – and you can address those objections with product, all the sudden your product is not only cool, but it’s effective. As a salesperson, I used to beat my head against the wall saying they’ll figure out something to do with it, but until they’re convinced of that it’s not going to fly. It doesn’t matter what you think. It matters what they think. When I started selling with suggestions, Sarah, all the sudden I had to figure out what to do with all these images because I was going to make a suggested sale for these people and now I’ve got to tell them what to do with it, and I realized that I didn’t have the product to address the objection. I was like oh wait a minute.
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I want cool products, but I also want to overcome objections. So let’s talk about things like that that will help you.
Sarah: We’ve all been in a sales presentation where we’ve given them too much and overwhelmed them. They have no idea what would go where and how to pick, and we lose the sale. Tim: Absolutely. Sarah: Everybody has done that, so that’s another favorite that everybody needs. Then I picked the last two because you’re talking about style, creating your style, what makes you different and making decisions. A lot of that comes down to what lighting to use. A lot of people are running around learning so many things. What do I buy? It goes back to let’s learn basics. Let’s learn lighting. Let’s understand lighting so that we can make good decisions for our artwork, and what style goes with our artwork. Correct? Tim: Absolutely. I think if your style is a façade, you’re going to be a flash in the pan. You’ll last for a while, but you won’t last long term. When I talk about the technical side of lighting, I often say it’s like 50 restaurants open in a little bitty town. Everyone’s going to go out and taste it and try it, but the reality is that after you’ve tried all these cool new things, if the substance isn’t there you’re going to say I’m going to go back over here where the food was really good, where the quality was excellent. In today’s environment we can’t wrap a poor product up and think that it’s going to have longevity down the road. You have to undergird this with substance, and the reality is that people can look at something and maybe not know what the different is, but they know there’s a difference. When you’re the person producing excellence – and lighting is the core of that. I will tell you Sarah that I’m so proud of this. This is really a two-‐set series. There are two of these. It’s lighting, we’re in the studio and there are diagrams, but don’t be afraid. I can honestly tell you that the way Bev and I teach lighting, if you watch it you’ll understand it. You will.
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It won’t blow you away. It’s beautiful enough lighting that you’re going to flex your technical muscle, but it’s understandable enough that you’re going to be able to do it and it’s the real stuff. Roll up your sleeves and learn. Let’s go to class.
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There are two video caps on studio lighting.
If you learn that and you go outside, it will help you there because you’ll understand what to look for and what the goals are. I’m just really proud of this double set on studio lighting.
Sarah: I’ve learned lighting from you. You are one of the best teachers. For the new people or people who need a refresher or are confused on something, this is the one you want in your success library because it’s something that you can refer to over the years. Each time you’ll pick up a nugget that makes your work better and takes it to the next level. Tim: Absolutely. I’m so proud of all of these. We’ve put them in the hands of many people and without exception we get great reports back. I know it would be the same for anybody else that sits down and watches. Sarah: I agree. It’s a four pack, so basically you’ve got the power of emotion in marketing so you’re thinking about the marketing part. You’ve got three product ideas to boost sales in any economy, so you’re looking at your products and how to increase those sales without that feeling of being salesy or pushy. The products sell themselves basically. Then there’s a two-‐set of studio lighting at unbelievable prices. Everyone should make that investment in themselves and add to their success library. Tim, thank you so much. You are wonderful, and I could spend days talking to you. Tim: We feel the same way. You’re our buddy. We also say we love Sarah Petty around here. She’s our buddy. I appreciate all you’re doing for the industry. I appreciate your friendship and I’m just excited to be part of this. Sarah: Me too. Thanks to the rest of you for joining Tim Walden and me for the Get Fully Booked This Year event brought to you by The Joy Of Marketing and White House Custom Colour.
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