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Wedding photography invoice for non-profit organizations

guys this is my first time on Facebook live so I'm a little bit nervous and I hopefully I don't ramble too much what's up Kendall glad you could join me Kendall if you have any questions please please let me know and Kris is here too that's awesome hey so I'm gonna be talking a lot about branding today and how branding has helped me grow my business from charging $1,000 per couple all the way up to you know on average fifty four hundred dollars per couple now well I'm Josiah Blizzard I'm a wedding photographer based in Philadelphia Pennsylvania I shoot you know 20 to 30 weddings a year with my wife Steph we're a husband-and-wife team and yeah we've just been doing this for the last couple years awesome Justine can hear me cool I'm not just talking to nobody here awesome good so yeah so I'm based in the Philadelphia region and I launched my brand with my wife in New Year's Day 2014 and since then we've been Josiah and Steph photography and we started out shooting weddings you know for 200 bucks our first wedding was two hundred dollars and I think that money went to gas and memory cards and batteries to you know to shoot the wedding and then from there we went and charged four hundred and eight hundred all the way up to $1,000 for wedding photography which was such a massive deal because I couldn't I thought I was blown away when I got paid 200 at first wedding and to get a check for $1,000 was just unbelievable to take some photos so I've loved every second of it what's up Chris yo Chris is here it's a party now so we've just been working on our business since then and you know we've we've grown it to an average of fifty four hundred dollars per wedding starting out you know when you start a business and you don't really know how to run a business it's kind of like a toddler you know you're just trying to learn how to walk and talk and do the right thing and so we're just kind of taking one step at a time try not to fall down and we're just making the best guests that we can on how to on how to run this business so it's uh it's kind of scary to be honest and it but it's so much fun at the same time and at that moment when we were when we were starting our business we were trying to learn as much as we could and I think this was this was really before the explosion of online courses really really started there was a lot of in-person workshops and we just didn't have the money from our business at that point to invest in those workshops and travel and we were working and in school and that's just how how things went so we were soaking up as much information as we can from Caitlin James's blog and Amy and Jordans blog and some other photographers around around the world and around the United States just trying to learn as much as we could and then Matt Carissa launched the international academy of wedding photographers and I knew that this this was it this is what we should invest our money in to fast-track our business to get it to the next level to be charging 2,000 3,000 4,000 and maybe someday five thousand dollars for wedding photography so we hopped right on I think I was in the first class of Academy students that that joint and you know they had everything from you know business to branding marketing shooting editing they had everything that we needed to know and we didn't have to make the mistakes first we could learn from their mistakes and learn from what they are doing in their business and applied to our own business and so many of you who are in the Academy you know this already but I'm just here to tell you that it's possible to grow your business from a thousand dollars all the way to five thousand dollars it's still like a dream come true I can't even believe that I'm doing this full-time so early in the Academy you know we we started taking you know the business course and applying those and then we hopped into the branding course Caitlyn James's branding course and that course was probably the most fun for me just because I love I love design and I love web design and I just love I don't know just bringing to life this brand you know again it's like a baby like you've you had the baby and now you have to raise it on your own and a business is like that and a brand is like that so it it just and it took a long time to to grow it and we weren't really sure what we were doing as far as like what is gonna look good on the web and what's gonna you know come across the right way we didn't know what a high-end font or colors or patterns looked like so we were just kind of take it was just a stab in the dark we didn't know what we were doing and the second we got into Caitlyn's course she laid everything out you know she's a branding expert and she's like a ridiculous amount of content in that course it's like seven or eight hours worth of video content I've heard teaching about branding and how she's utilizing it in her business and obviously everybody knows Caitlyn you think of Caitlyn off the bat your mind probably goes to teal and it used to for me it used to go to teal and then it went to Boca but now it goes to Evie and you know it's just she's she's so iconic as far as like branding goes and you know she laid out everything from you know the fonts you should probably use if you want to have a high-end brand the colors you might want to look at to have a high-end brand and not just the the the logos and the fonts and the colors but also the also the experience that comes with that the the service that comes with with that and treating your clients and how you should provide a client experience because ultimately that's part of your brand as well so as we were going through the branding course it was so much fun to kind of take what I was learning from Caitlyn applied to my own business and I think it took me a solid like two years the full two years to finish the Academy only because I saw our business grow as we were as we were learning in the Academy and what we were applying we saw our business grow and it took forever to finish the Academy because we actually had to work now because our business was growing and we had clients and couples booking us for weddings and it was just it was awesome it was so great and you know from there we we got to the point to where we were we were charging thirty two hundred dollars on average for for our starting package and we thought this is it we made it we're at the thirty two hundred dollar mark that's about what we paid for our wedding photography when we got married back in back in 2015 and we just couldn't believe we're like that's so much money I have to write a check for $3,200 now and that's just unbelievable and now we're at that point and you know we knew we that we we knew that we had to raise prices again because this was the start of 2017 we had just raised pricing to 3200 and we were shooting about I think it was what browned 25 weddings that year so we waited that entire year until around November to raise prices again we wanted to make the jump from 3200 to 4200 and start in the in the four thousand dollar range we had done some testing we hit a dead zone in the thirty-five hundred dollar range we weren't booking anything at 35 nothing at 38 we dropped back down to 32 we hit that dead zone because our brand wasn't matching our pricing and so when we knew we wanted to kind of skip that middle $3,000 range and jump right over the four thousand dollar mark we knew that we had to take our branding to the next level and we had just been like DIY branding this at this point right we were just kind of guessing like sure these colors look great and this spot looks good and our logo is so it's okay but you know we were just making making you know the best suit with what we had and we didn't know what we were doing and I like to think I'm a good designer but chances are I'm probably not but we knew that we had to take take it to the next level so in November of 2017 we met with Davey and Krista at show it United and we hired them in November to launch and design and do everything for us so you know brand new brand new website all that good stuff and you know from the time we hired them in November to February we had a brand new pretty much a brand new business it felt like we had added wedding highlight films to our services so we rebranded from to science stuff photography to do science stuff wedding photography and films and February we launched our brand and from there we you know we booked we have I think 23 weddings happening so far this year we're shooting seven less weddings in 2019 than we did in 2018 were already at the same number as far as revenue goes from 2018 shooting seven less weddings and our average now is fifty four hundred dollars of wedding and it just completely it blows my mind but we wouldn't have been able to charge forty two hundred if we didn't increase our brand to a higher-end luxury brand if you're if your price and you Brande don't match up then it doesn't it doesn't really work people aren't gonna people aren't going to book you for $4,200 if if your brand doesn't match right if your website doesn't match if you don't look high-end and for example and you might you guys might have heard this in the news he was the end of 2018 there was a there was a store that opened up in California called Poletti if you've heard about this comment below but Poletti opened their stores they invited a bunch of social media influencers out to hype it up and you know they were selling high-end shoes luxury shoes so these influencers came and I think they sold a pair of shoes up to like six hundred dollars somebody bought like a $600 pair of shoes which is ridiculous it was only after that uh they bought the 600 hour pair of shoes that policy said that they're not actually Plessy and they're in fact pay less so pay less disguised their $30 or $60 pair of shoes as a high-end brand in policy and sold $600 worth of shoes just for one pair right so if if you walked in to pay less right now and you saw a price tag for $600 in pay less for a pair of shoes chances are you're not going to buy it but when you disguise your brand under a high-end luxury you know vibe like that's that's when you can start selling a higher volume or a higher at a higher price point people are going to trust that brand is high-end they're gonna go crazy about it and it was because of the the font the colors the chic design in the store and the customer experience the you know the the service that the clients were getting in the store that ultimately sold that shoes so taking that to your business you know a lot of people think that branding is just it's just logos it's just fonts it's just colors when in fact branding is is really just the personification of your brand's personality of your business's personality online and in person through the use of design and and the actions of its employees and owners you know if I if I just sit back and don't do anything and just let my web design you know try and talk for my talk for my business like that's not really gonna that's not really gonna sell but the fact that we are investing in our clients and we're we're we're doing special things for them like you know welcome packages and date night you know movie date nights we send out like we send out to AMC gift cards to them to see a movie you know about two months before the wedding and then you know it's everything all the little things you do from the time you book to the time you know that you're finished with their workflow what are you doing to leave an impression on them because because branding is it's the experience it's not just the colors fonts and logos it's the it's the the response that you know are you going to respond to your clients in 24 hours 48 hours a week how fast you can reply to their email there's so much that goes into branding isn't just design its its client experience and that was something that even though Davey and Krista are incredible we loved working with them so if you need a designer you know a new brand go higher Davey and Krista they're amazing but there was something that they couldn't do for us and that was the client experience side that's something that we needed to take control of on our own so and for example if you know who Gary Vee is does Amy know Gary Vaynerchuk Gary Vee awesome business owner entrepreneur does a lot of motivational podcasts and videos and that sort of thing and and go look him up if you haven't if you don't know who he is if you haven't already looked him up check him out disclaimer he is vulgar he curses a lot but he has a lot of good content and he will motivate the crap out of you so go check him out but he was telling a story the other day that I was listening to and he owns a store called Wine Library he in his 20s he grew his father's wine business from a three million dollar company to a sixty million dollar company through Google Adwords and online marketing so this dude's a pro right and what he did was somebody came and bought a hundred ten dollar case of Pino a bunch of wine right under $10 case Gary decided to look this dude up on online found his Twitter learned that he was a huge Jay Cutler fan Jay Cutler was I believe he's in NFL quarterback right and so Gary went and found a signed Jay Cutler Jersey for $300 and sent it to this guy who just bought $110 case of Pino that's not that's it doesn't sound like good business he's losing money he's losing like 200 bucks on that anyway two weeks goes by three weeks goes by and he hears nothing back until some guy randomly orders four thousand dollars worth of wine from Gary from Wine Library and the description in the order said that his friend got a signed Jay Cutler Jersey in the mail and he had to come check out Wine Library and he spent $4,000 and in the description also said PS I'm a huge Bruce Springsteen fan hoping that he could get something out of Gary as well but ultimately he he went and checked out Gary's Wine Library because of the client experience that Gary gave to this Jay Cutler fan he spent $300 lost two hundred because of the you know his profit was two hundred because he spent you know three and of us on the $110 order whatever and instead in turn he made four thousand four thousand dollars so it comes down to your experience as well as your brand okay as well as the logo fonts colors guys if you have any questions please leave them in the comments I'd love to answer any questions you have them I'm kind of winding down here needless to say I think you need to stop thinking about your client experience as something that is under marketing and start thinking of it as something that is that falls under your branding I think branding is super important that's how we've kind of grown from from 1,000 to fifty four hundred dollars on average for a wedding and you know there's there's really not all there's really not much else I can say about that other than it's gonna grow like you just have to put the time in you have to to work on the brand as your business grows because as you grow as a business owner your brand should be going should be growing as well what we did was I think it was like every six months I was like let's tweak our website a little bit we had to tweak our website we had to add newer images we had to we had to change up the fonts and the copy and the wording as we grew as business owners we had to kind of change all that I think blogging is another huge thing as far as branding goes are you gonna be somebody who celebrates your couples or are you just gonna go silent you know are you gonna maybe are you gonna deliver your your clients galleries in nine weeks six weeks four weeks two weeks something we do is we say you know it's gonna take four to six weeks for your for your gallery to be delivered and then we turn around and and deliver it in two weeks that is branding that's all under your brand because like I said your brand is the personification of your business's personality online and in person through the use of design and the actions of the employees Chris is asking how did you get from the mid range of 3,000 to 5,000 5,000 dollars plus yeah Chris we I guess a lot of it to comes down to where you are located right we're located in King of Prussia Pennsylvania and there's a there's a place here called mainline Philly which is I mean if you drive 10 minutes you know north of us you're gonna force I guess it's it's like south whatever back into like a place called Wayne and Winwood and Gladwyne there are multi-million dollar like houses they're massive so this is a pretty prolific area it's pretty there's a lot of money going around and so we what we did was we increased our branding to something we knew it was going to be a little bit more high end as far as fonts colors logos that all of that there but also like how we were serving our couples we started gifting more we started we ended up going out with a lot of our couples for for dinner and just hanging out with them outside of of the wedding and we were receiving responses at the wedding like you guys were the best decision we made for our wedding day and I'm like you haven't even seen the pictures yet well like we might have not put an SD card in the camera like you might we you have no idea but we were getting that response from the experience they had with us because we weren't treating them like clients we were treating them like friends and so that's something that has stuck has stuck with me from from the very beginning as I want to I want to become friends with my clients and not have them just be a dollar amount so growing from $3,000 to $5,000 like I mentioned like we got stuck in that dead zone 3500 didn't work for 3,800 we saw no bookings but once we increased our brand with with Davey and Krista and and kind of made that grow up we jumped to 4,200 and we saw bookings happening in the forty two hundred dollar mark now as far as five thousand dollars we started adding wedding films to our services so I shoot both photo and video on a wedding day sometimes and that is an extra nine hundred to $1,500 for for a wedding highlight film so that has has aided in you know it's another service that we're able to sell and that that brings us more money for something that's not all that much more work I'm not hiring out a second shooter for a video all that often and so that has added a lot and then we've incentivized couples to to have albums added on and more hours so if I'm gonna break down my packages for you guys forty to fifty is our starting package and you know we're we're doing eight hours engagement session two photographers if you want to pay 5050 5050 is our is our top package and that is ten hours and a thousand dollar album credit and then we trying to upsell the album after the wedding to something that is you know not the base package that the one thousand dollar album credit covers so as far as it's it's and it's taken a lot of testing to figure out what's the best thing to do but on average most of our couples booked us at 5050 and then they add on they add on the highlight film which brings us up to I I mean at this point if that happened our average package will be $6,500 I booked two of those yesterday at $6,500 which again like just blows my mind that people are willing to invest that much money but it just shows how far we've come as wedding photographers not just from our shooting and and and talent and skill that we've you know that we've uncovered over the last couple of years in the talent that we've been able to you know to grow in we've I mean we've take we're all taking the same courses right we're all we're all shooting with the same cameras we're all 5d mark 3 s or mark fours or Sony's or nikon d750 s or 850 s or whatever camera bodies you're using same l-series glass we're all shooting with the same stuff posing from Kaitlyn's posing course or Amy and Jordans posing course are using the same prompts and games that we've we've acquired from online groups like prompt ography or the unposted field guide stuff like that we're all using the same tactics what separates you is your branding and how you serve your clients they all they all flow together so what other questions do you guys have I would love to answer any other questions because I'm kind of out of meta content I'm not a Content speak now forever hold your peace either way I hope you guys learned something I hope I didn't just ramble on for 21 minutes and and bore you to death I'm glad thirteen people are watching and super excited that you guys are here on the International Academy wedding photographers page I'm unsure I believe there's some kind of deal happening I didn't get too much from Karissa maybe Krista you can post in the comments a link or coupon code or something to the Kaitlyn's branding course and the International Academy of wedding photographers I believe there's some kind of deal that's happening with that but guys if you're thinking about joining the Academy do it because it it has increased our business like tenfold we wouldn't we would not be where we are today if we hadn't taken and invested in these courses I mean you're learning from some of the best in the business Matt and Carissa Kaitlyn James Amy and Jordan I believe hope Taylor is now teaching the posing course you just learned from some of the best and sweetest people in in the photography industry so go check them out other than that thank you guys so much for joining any other questions leave them in the comments or you can DM me on Instagram I'm at Josiah Blizzard I'll leave a link in the comment comments here in a second but other than that thanks for joining me guys hope you guys have a great day y'all thanks so much for tuning in please subscribe wherever you are listening whether that's on the podcast or on YouTube I would love for you guys to become regular listeners and you know maybe involve me in your life a little bit that would be a lot of fun thank you guys so much hope you guys have a great day and I'll catch you in the next one you