00:00:00          Welcome to the hair of the dog podcast today in episode number 50, can you believe it? I'm talking with Eugene from N photo photo lab, and we are going to be talking about moving from selling digital files to starting to move into product sales, that great conversation. And there is a special offer from  Nphoto. If you stick around to the end,

00:00:23          so stay tuned. Welcome to the hair of the dog podcast. If you're a pet photographer, ready to make more money and start living a life by your design, you've come to the right place. And now your host pet photographer, travel addict, chocolate martini connoisseur, Nicole Begley. Hey everybody. Nicole here from hair of the dog.

00:00:45          I'm here with Eugene from N photo. And today we are going to be talking all about pet photography products. Woo. Hey Eugene. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here. Of course, of course. So excited that you made the time to chat with us today before we get started, I guess we're going to have just a conversation today about products,

00:01:09          why you might want products, products versus digital, how to get started in that whole product thing. One of our most popular podcast episodes is actually episode seven and it's one of a pet photographer that went from shoot to burn to boutique business. Yeah, it's one of our top five episodes. So people are definitely hungry for this information of like, how do I build these businesses with products?

00:01:31          What does that look like? How do I even get started? So super excited to chat about all those things with you today, Eugene. So again, welcome. That was a long welcome, but yeah, I guess tell us a little bit about you and how long have you been with N photo and just, just a little bit about yourself. Absolutely.

00:01:51          And I just want to start by saying, you mentioned boutique to a shoot and burn the boutique and the pet photography realm. And I can attest to looking at all different genres and professional photography, that it is a consistent theme that you see. So we'll get into that much later, of course, but again, hello, everybody. As Nicole mentioned,

00:02:09          diamond Jean from and photo and stay tuned because later we'll have something very special for you from a print lab. So you can get started with your current products or update them and make them better if you already have them. So what brought me here? How did I get to end photo? You know, I'm been working on photo for about five, six years now.

00:02:29          I've always had a tremendous interest in photography and now I kind of got the back end experience with it, working with the print products, reaching out to photographers from that perspective is really great. I'm specializing in of course, marketing and sales and talking with different photographers. So it's really great. And I've really been able to absorb so much information about the industry and the trends and things like that.

00:02:52          So I'm really happy to be here to help you guys out and get you started with print products or again, make them even better. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. So great to have you here. I know I am one of those people that love the business side of it. So I think it's fascinating to like start to learn more about these different aspects of our industry,

00:03:10          because gosh, you guys, there are so many different vendors out there of that help us from our print labs to our, you know, obviously our gear and our software. And there's just so many pieces of this industry. So I'm excited, so excited to talk about products today, but I guess we should probably start with the first question, which is,

00:03:29          you know, if I have pet photography business or really any photography business, you know, so many of us, myself included started with like, Oh, I'll just start with digital files. Cause that's easy. Why would we want to consider print products? Like what, what are the benefits? And that's such a good question. It's such an important one.

00:03:46          And as you say, most people get started with the digital, but the reason that you want to quickly move on from that is kind of with that in and of itself. And that is there's an over-saturation of digital photographers, but also digital in our landscape as well. And also of course, just the value of print in and of itself. But again,

00:04:10          one of the values of it is that it's not digital to be quite honest, especially when you want to make your photography, something that is so valuable and something that your clients are going to see as being something of high quality and something that they're going to cherish forever. It's much easier to see that value in something like a print product, like a physical,

00:04:33          tangible product than it is only a digital product. Because before I get any further, I don't want to cast the gate. Anybody who offers digital products to their customers, I mean, it can be done and it's not a bad thing, but certainly I would recommend to pair it at least with some print products and not solely do that because like we are in the 21st century.

00:04:53          So digital medium is here and it's probably not going to go anywhere, but why you should offer some print again, is if you're really looking to set yourself apart, make yourself stand out and give your clients something that they appreciate and understand is valuable and something that's going to last generations and be that staple heirloom product. It's gotta be print. It's gotta be.

00:05:18          I agree. I agree. Yeah. I feel like, you know, definitely can you make a profitable business doing just digital? Of course you can. Anything is possible. And I have seen a few people do that, but the price point to do so, I mean, it becomes much more challenging if you're doing, you know, a session for $200 and here's all the digitals because of the amount of time that you have in there.

00:05:38          Once you break down the actual profit you have in your business, versus the time you spent, you'd be shocked at how little money you're actually making. So in order to have a profitable digital only, I mean, in my opinion, most of the numbers that I've seen and I've helped a lot of photographers run their numbers. It's always four figures, usually $1,500 per session for somebody that wants to do,

00:06:00          you know, a hundred sessions or less a year. And when you're doing just digital at that price point, it becomes really hard to let our consumer potential clients know the difference because they go to your website and okay, maybe they like your photos a little bit more than somebody else who's offering. You know, that all inclusive at $200 and their images,

00:06:23          you know, aren't as professional as yours, or they're just getting started that our clients don't necessarily see. They can see that they like one better, but they don't see the value often to be like, why is this such a big disconnect in that price? Where if you, you know, start having some physical products in the mix, even having digital paired with physical,

00:06:45          then that just starts to bring that value up and they start to understand it more. And when you start to have some physical products that they can't buy at Costco or Walgreens, then they can, you know, they, they just don't have that disconnect and it helps build that value. So yeah, Honestly we can, I can talk about this topic for an hour and you know,

00:07:08          itself, because you bring up so many great points about the value of prints and you were coming from the perspective of the photographer as a business. And that's something that I might not have gone to so directly, but you hit the nail on the head. And that is that you can do more with a print product as a professional photographer looking to sell it.

00:07:26          So kind of on top of what you've been saying, I challenge our listening audience to think of it kind of like a car, right? You might often hear something like, not all the money, of course, but most of the money from car sales actually comes in those attitudes that people add on to the car, the upselling things, when you're sitting down and you say,

00:07:44          I want the Mercedes, but then the sales person. Okay. What about the heated seats? What about automatic air conditioning? What about the automatic windows? What about the performance tires? What about, you know, and next thing, you know, you're paying an extra $20,000. You can do something similar with print that you offer, but how can you do that with only offering a USB?

00:08:03          Really not much you can play with with that of, like you said, you can abstractly try to convince your clients look well, I'm giving you more photos or whatever if they buy, like, but they're not going to appreciate that. They're not going to understand that that's, that's something that they don't know. And it's important. I think for professional photographers to remember too,

00:08:21          like, look, we're sitting here talking about professional products to professional photographers because they might not understand all about it. Imagine how their clients, you know, they're completely oblivious to the world of professional print products and professional photography. So you got to give them saying that. So you've got to give them something that they can relate to. Again, trying to sell more on a USB.

00:08:43          It's not as easy for a client to appreciate, as opposed to saying, I'll give you an extra book or I'll give you an extra five cards in a folio box, or I'll give you, you know, more pages in the album and you know, you can meet with them and sit down and show them and say that as they're looking through it,

00:09:02          that's something they're going to be able to understand much more. Yeah, I agree. And I was actually taking it a step further and saying that if you are offering only digital files to your client, you're actually doing them a disservice. Because as I look at my computer screen right now, and I periodically clear off everything off of my desktop, all those files,

00:09:25          but then somehow it all sorts of gets cluttered again pretty quickly. Like we are all drowning in digital clutter drowning. And I work in this medium all day long and I still have a hard time containing it. Imagine what our clients who are busy working full-time jobs, taking care of their dogs, you know, volunteering, doing whatever, like people are busier than ever.

00:09:48          And to give them these digital files that they're like, Oh, these are beautiful. And they appreciate at that moment, then they put them on their computer. And even with the best intentions, it's so hard for them to actually go print it a, they don't know what to do. B they don't have the time. See, they just then have to make decisions.

00:10:05          Well, wait, what do I put that one there? This one, Oh my gosh, what size? It's so overwhelming where we can actually sit down and help them make all those decisions and give them this final product. And then you can also give them the digital files that helps build the value, whatever that's cool. I'm not against digital files,

00:10:21          but digital files alone just become, I think, a disservice to our clients. I totally agree with you. And one thing that you can do again, because I think the real power can be having both, but you can flip it. And instead of, you know, having the USB be the main product, you can make that kind of the cherry,

00:10:42          like make that be the incentive in their eyes. Of course, in the end, they're going to realize, Oh my God, like the print is actually the awesome thing, but you can kind of do that to entice them, to spend a little more spending to a certain Mark to get it because you're absolutely right now. I w what I can bring to this conversation immensely is just the real person perspective who doesn't have much of the experience as a professional photographer to kind of make me not realize why other people don't understand it.

00:11:13          I'm just the light in that perspective. I'm just a layman, Which is, yeah. Which is so important, because I think so many times we're so close to it because we're in it. And we don't realize what, you know, our potential clients, what they're experiencing, because we've been living in this world for so long. So, yeah.

00:11:29          Excited for this. Go ahead. Exactly. And it's, it's essentially going to be just confirming what you had said, because not everybody, like we say, everybody, unfortunately today is a photographer, aren't they? So on top of what digital files are going to give them, what do you think they have in their own phone? What do you think they have stocked up on their own computer at home?

00:11:48          What do you think? So they're like you say, you're just adding to that digital clutter, and I gotta be honest, a lot of your clients, like you say, Nicole, unfortunately, they're not going to see the difference between their photos, from their iPhone compared to yours as much as they should. Right. So again, when they're sitting around and they're popping in their USB,

00:12:06          like a year after they got their photos and it's with all the other clutter, like, are they really going to be able to appreciate like, Oh yeah, that's the professional one. And this is one of my uncle, did you know, or whatever. So again, make it look better than something just sitting on their computer, because we're all in that position where we have stuff that's left over.

00:12:23          Like you said, that we're, we're extremely cluttered with, and it's just going to add to that stress of, Oh my God. And so imagine like, we, we feel that way again, if you take pictures with your phone and you put them on a USB, like just, you're like, well, I can't say that to the professional photographer audience,

00:12:37          but is your people with like no camera skills and you take family photos or photos of your dog, which is like a child for a lot of people. And you put it on a USB to get it off your phone, but you don't print it. But then you're like, Oh, where's,<inaudible>, where's that USB. Now imagine how you feel if you spent like 500,

00:12:55          600, a thousand dollars on such USB, how much stress? Oh my God, where's that USB? What have I done with it? Where's it going to go? Because there are things that can be easily lost. And there's that conception that digital lasts longer than print? No, it doesn't right. It doesn't last longer than printer. We, we I'm sure we all remember floppy disks.

00:13:14          Right? Right. I looked up the fluffy Dixie up disc the other day. Cause I was cleaning out something. I'm like, Oh my God. And they were like the step up from the big soft, like six inch floppy floppies should like the smaller, like three by three inch, like hard case floppies. And I think it had like 25 megabytes on it.

00:13:31          I'm like, Oh my God, I couldn't even fit one image. One image for my<inaudible> could not go on this entire disc. Yeah. Technology changes so fast. And you know, our clients too, they're dealing with, you know, computers. They don't have the backup systems that we do. Maybe they're working with some cloud-based backup. But a lot of times people aren't like the,

00:13:52          you know, regular, everyday people are the ones that, you know, if they have a massive hard drive failure, which you know, happens to anybody and they've now lost all these images and they don't even remember necessarily that they had them to lose them. And you know, I'm, I'm okay. I'm a professional photographer. I had family pictures done with,

00:14:12          by a friend in Pittsburgh. Gosh, a couple of years ago they have a couple little prints behind me on my thing on my wall. But have I actually made those into an album yet? No bad, bad me. I'm a professional photographer. I have the software to do it in 10 minutes and I haven't done it yet. So imagine what potential clients are doing.

00:14:34          They don't have the software to design an album in 10 minutes. They're just not going to do it. I mean, I need to do it. Yeah. It's crazy. And like you say, there's giving so much more value is taking that away from them. And again, taking that stress away, like, Oh my God, where's my USB.

00:14:50          Like where did it? You don't have to worry about that with a print product, you know, it's there and it's not changing. And because a lot of people might be thinking about while you could send it through some service. Right, right. You can have digital biggie, but even those services like are changing. Right. You never know, you know,

00:15:04          I have, you know, and there's so many of them now, right. It used to just be like Dropbox. And so I made one in a account and now I'm getting all these emails, like it's going to close them. Cause you're not on it at all. Cause there's so many arteries. And like, you never know when they're gonna start charging for the service.

00:15:16          And all of a sudden what you thought was a good value for a client just becomes a kind of hassle, another fee for them. Right. Where they might just give up. And, and yeah. If they come back to you, some for some photographers that might be easier than others. If your client comes back and like five years and it's like,

00:15:30          Oh, you know, you send me that file to the link, to the thing, but I can't find it out. Can you give it to me again? You know, so I can easily send them a new one, but some maybe not. So I think the other part we're kind of going all over the place, another really important. And I think this is especially important for you professional photographers.

00:15:49          The other reason that print is so important for you is that's the finished products. If you give them the digital, that's only half the battle. And what I'm trying to say is, and as a photographer audience, you can appreciate this. The print aspect can make or break your photo. Yeah. It's like getting, ordering a wedding cake and they'll be like,

00:16:09          okay, here's your cake and here's the ice cream. Go ahead. You can isolate yourself. Okay. That'll look nice. Exactly. Yeah. And you know, and, and your name, I'm saying you, as in the profession is all over that digital you get. So even if they go to some silly Walgreens or something like that, and the print is obviously terrible,

00:16:29          they're going to say, Oh, this photographer is terrible with these images. Right. And you have no control over that. They're going to meet with their friends. And I'm just say, Oh yeah, I remember that dog photographer. I paid a thousand dollars for look at the images that they gave me. But of course you didn't give them the prints you just gave them.

00:16:44          You know, they're not gonna, they're going to associate your name with the bad printouts that even they put themselves and you have so much more control Agreed. And if you wanted to do the digital, like, I love adding digital on as an add on to my sale. But at that point they have received printed products. Like I basically refuse, I have it on my product guide that they could buy just digitals,

00:17:05          but it's priced in such a way that it's a really stupid financial decision to do so. So they're much better off served doing one of my other things and adding on the digitals. So, because I, I don't want to say when they ask me that question, do you, can I buy just the digitals? Yes. So that opens the door.

00:17:21          I'm not stopping that conversation and making them defensive right away on the inquiry process, but then I can educate them on. Yes, I do sell just the digitals. However, most clients choose to do this and this then actually becomes a better value. Plus you receive, you know, X, Y, and Z product that you can enjoy in your home.

00:17:38          And I explain why, because digital and meta media changes so quickly and you know, how much digital clutter we have. I want you guys to see and enjoy these images every day. And in over 10 years of my photography business, I have had exactly one client purchase, just the digital files. And that was because they were moving internationally. That's it just one.

00:18:01          So there are ways to do this in a way that, you know, can improve your sale, can still give your clients what they want, you know, with products and digital files. Yeah. So as you see, print is, is much more popular for you and a lot of clients can get it. And well, let me say this,

00:18:20          just to kind of, to go back to the longevity of print and the ease of it. Again, we're in a society now where I'm speaking, you have an American platform, but this is true. Even in, in Western Europe, too, it's an aging population. You know, the, the older age groups are going to become more and more of a dominant factor in society.

00:18:39          And what is easier than appreciating a print product? What is, you know, as hassle-free as appreciating a print product and the flip side, how difficult is it for some potential clients to have to figure out how to work the digital aspect. And again, the digital aspect is going to constantly be evolving. It's going to constantly be changing and kind of a case in point about this is now I can hear I'm important.

00:19:08          It's some people might wonder why, how, how that happened. Cause I was born and raised in America, but I have, I have Polish ancestry and my ancestors came to America over a hundred years ago from Poland. But I have images of the people who came here in print. That's so cool in print. This is over a hundred years and it's still in tech.

00:19:27          You know, not to say pictures are indestructable because of course they're not, but they're still intact. It's a medium that we can still enjoy today. Nick, if they had done it in their digital version in 1896, Be useless for me Now. And if somebody takes a USB from today and tries to plug it into something 50 years from now, forget about it.

00:19:48          And or the website that existed 50 years ago, isn't going to exist, you know, 50 years from now, even these clouds and things like nothing is nothing lasts forever. You know, some companies that we feel like are never going to disappear, you never know what's going to happen with them, right? If you a book, if you want an album,

00:20:05          if you want a folio box, if you want a piece of wall decor, it's yours. And a lot of labs, including ours is if, if you have a print product that falls apart for clearly, you know, like manufacturing error, we'll replace it. So essentially, so essentially that's really something that's gonna last you for a long time, and you're gonna be very comfortable and confident as a business selling it to your client.

00:20:30          And they're going to be able to really appreciate it for, for a very long time. Again, if, if you are taking pictures of a pet, that's a big family figure in the field, a big family path, and it's really important dog or cat or something from your family. It's going to be so easy to share print products with the children and bring it back out in 10 or 15 years when the kids were like,

00:20:50          Oh, remember Bubba, like what, you know, bringing over an album and bringing out this, those print products, or we'll just look looking up at the wall. It's so much easier than to have to find the USB plugged in or remember the password to the, and that's value. And that's the convenience is value, right? Convenience. Yeah.

00:21:09          And you know, like you said about your ancestors images. I was at my uncle's house a couple of years ago and he had some boxes of images from my grandmother's house who has since passed before that, but we just pulled out like these boxes and everybody was just like, Oh my gosh, this is so incredible. Then they were just even just print.

00:21:27          So, you know, of course we want the Walmarts and the albums, but gosh, just even giving them, like, if you're doing the digital files, here's our reference prints in a, you know, lovely folio box. Then you just have these things that are going to stand the test of time. So yeah, gosh, so many good things,

00:21:45          but I want to move this conversation a little bit to choosing the lab because I think one of the reasons a lot of people were like, I'm just going to do digitals is they think it's easier because they're overwhelmed trying to figure out, I don't know who to order from or how to do this or what I should order. So what are some things that they should look for or how do they start to go about like,

00:22:06          trying to figure out what, what lab that they want to start working? And that's a very good question. And there's a lot of us out there nowadays. So what'd you want to do what I would recommend is finding one with a good reputation. Again, there's, what's out there now. A few of us who've been here for a while now,

00:22:21          so go with somebody with a good reputation, you know, here, you're just kind of putting yourself in your client's shoes and what they might do to find you, you know, go on to the reputation and therefore like the dependability and the service that you're going to get. I think that's kind of the X factor. I know a lot of photographers might think,

00:22:38          you know, immediately to like print and a, how good is that, which is of course very important. But I think it's fair to say that a lot of the professional print labs today are very good with the print quality. So of course, quality is a factor. So I'm looking kind of at the X-Factor is the service, what kind of service are you going to get?

00:22:52          Are you going to talk to people? Are you going to talk to some kind of automated system? Do they have big enough staff that you can depend on you getting an answer quickly or getting a person quickly? So those things I think are very important in terms of the, kind of the service. So of course the quality and, and therefore the kind of the turnaround time,

00:23:12          how quickly can you get it? And what's their policy. If there's a mistake or something like this is also huge to get into that dependability factor, you know, of course, and photo is something that, that checks all these boxes. You know, we have many members of our staff, again, probably mostly this will be directed to the U S particularly to the U S but for the UK Europe as well.

00:23:33          So you're always going to be sure to, to get a person. In fact, when you become a client of ours, who will be assigned a specific person to cooperate with, and to, to, to, to talk with, so you have a name, a real name, a real face that, you know, to talk to and to contact,

00:23:48          and it's not going to be changing every day. And they're going to remember, like, if you send an email like a month later, they're going to remember something like that. So that's a huge plus and we kind of got we're in Poland. So I think a lot of you might be thinking, Oh my God, what's the, what's the,

00:24:01          we have a very good turnaround time, you know, eight to 10 business days from the time he placed the order to the time you get it at your doorstep, which is great. Some domestic labs in the U S you know, I know a lot about the labs, some domestic labs in the U S take longer than that. That's great. And of course,

00:24:16          quality we'll just try us out to find out how great our quality really is. And the cost to quality ratio. I'm not going to get into pricing because that's something we'd like to keep pub private to our users, to protect the photographers from their clients. There's some photographers who were like, why do I, why can't I see the pricing? Fair enough.

00:24:33          I understand your interest, but it's to protect you. Cause we don't want your clients coming on our website, finding the prices and then taking charge in negotiating or something like that. I know you only pay, I believe you guys, when you sign up for us and you see our prices, you'll understand even more. Why we do that because your clients really have a field day if they saw our pricing.

00:24:54          But again, it's not at any expensive quality. Those are beautiful. The pieces that I've seen. So I two thumbs up and I know a lot of people, you know, then those places to find out some information or ask around, you guys can ask in the hair of the dog podcast, community, Facebook group. I mean, people are asking in there often make sure you say where you are,

00:25:13          because if you're Australian based, obviously probably not gonna use the same labs as a us or EU based, but there's, you know, quite a few labs such as an photo that will ship from Europe to the us. And of course, if you're in Europe or the UK, it's in your backyard, I'm gonna stop you real quick. We also go to Australia to go to New Zealand,

00:25:34          or I saw somebody ask about that the other day, we, we go to New Zealand, we've shipped to Israel, we've shipped to Russia. Like if you live in an exotic place, just tell us it's more than likely 99.9%. Sure. We're going to send it there anyways. So don't worry. Don't make that be your reason to not check us out again.

00:25:50          We've sent all over the world. Nice. So if you're listening to this podcast, I'm on the planet earth, you should definitely check it out. Well, yeah, we're working with the line. I love it. I love it. Quality of course, service dependability. So the big ones, some of you might find something. Okay. So just look on the forums,

00:26:18          go to the websites and Facebook pages and things like that a different way. Yep. And you can always reach out to customer service if you have questions and you can kind of use that sometimes as a judge to like, Oh look, they got back to me really quickly. Super professional. Yeah. So I'm going to continue to give them a try.

00:26:32          Do you guys do test prints too? If somebody wants to, you know, get a sample or we talking samples like how's that work, we have so many ways For you to help you to get started, you know, so we can do something like that. We can do calibration prints. We have so many sample discounts to allow you to easily get started on a full product,

00:26:54          essentially very quickly and very cheaply. And, you know, we have demo packs, so you can see different cover options that we provide. You know, in person, of course we offer tangible swatch books. We also have electronic versions of our swatch books to show you all the different materials, which are real options. So yeah, really go ahead and dig into our website and photo.com.

00:27:14          You can click on how to get started if you're new to us or just simply browse around. It's pretty, user-friendly the, the, the website, I think you'll have no problem finding your way around. And the one thing I wanted to mention, you were talking about calling or contacting, which you can, and the good thing I want to say to again,

00:27:29          us audience, but also we are working on the U S working time. So we're in Poland when you're up. So of course we're going to be there during the, the European working day, but also the U S so, you know, if it's, you know, right now, if you're listening to this podcast at 11:00 AM or 1:00 PM Eastern time,

00:27:47          you can still call us a human is still going to answer the phone and you're still going to get your problem resolved. So, yeah. Awesome. Definitely check it out, everyone. They do great work and they're great team. Yeah, I think so. That's definitely one of the biggest struggles. I think for people trying to make the jump from digital to selling products is,

00:28:05          Oh my gosh, who do I use? And then once they narrow that down, they're like, Oh my gosh, what do I sell? And I see a lot of people making a mistake that think they have to have, I have to offer every option. And every thing that my lab offers, I have to offer all of those things. And so no wonder they get overwhelmed.

00:28:24          Right. So do you have any Eugene tips for, I'm starting to kind of figure out what it is that you might want to explore and start selling in your business? Yeah. On that, don't tell my boss. I said this, but less is more. Yeah. You could actually sell more. I think when there's, when your client's not overwhelmed by the possible,

00:28:44          yeah, Here, I kind of want to take a half step back, but it's going to be transitioned into this. And that is what you get out of a Prince lab and all this kind of stuff. But one other great thing that we offer within photo is free online designing software. And this is usable for, you know, our products. So I'm using this to segway kind of albums.

00:29:02          Cause I know a lot about it all the time. It takes to design an album or I don't want to pay for like a Fundy or something like that. No problem for free online, you can design your album through us at end photo. And we even now have capabilities where it's done automatically, whereas done in five minutes and things like this. So this is something that you can also take advantage of when you use us.

00:29:27          And we also are partnered with Fundy smart albums. Pixel Lou is the same. What's the other one. There's one more super easy album. Stop. That's one easy to design your products through them and to upload through them, ah, and a pick time we're cooperating with pick time. Now you can find our products through pick time. So it's just super easy for you to use us,

00:29:53          which is another good thing to have in a pre-lab like how easy is it to use them and to help you save time? Yes, we're gonna help you save time. So to come back to the products, sorry, that was a little bit of a backtrack, but the products, you know, it starts again, kind of start small with what you're showing to the,

00:30:07          what you're showing your clientele is if you want to buy a million things from us. Okay. But don't show them to your clients at one time, start small, start with one, one or two big main products and what those are. It really comes down to a what you like and B your environments and what you believe your clientele or your target clientele is going to watch.

00:30:30          Now, there are some big Pete keys you can maybe pay attention to, for example, if you're like centered in the center of Manhattan or something, probably huge wall art pieces are not going to be what your clients are going to be needing on the flip side. If you're, you know, in the middle of Kansas, that might be what they're looking for.

00:30:47          So in terms of exactly what to, to start with, I'm going to kind of toss it back to you, Nicole, and with your experience in industry of pet photography, do you see any trends, albums for me like across all genres seem to be very, very effective and very popular. Is there some kind of trends you are noticing with the pet photography industry?

00:31:11          Yeah. The trend that I noticed is that it all sells well depending on what the photographer loves and shows. So I, for instance, love Walmart. I love a big giant statement piece of wall art. That's what I show that, you know, I still talk about galleries and albums and things like that. I still sell some of those sometimes,

00:31:32          but almost every client of mine walks away with a statement wall piece. And that's just what I love. And, you know, I know other photographers that run a very successful business that have the same target demographic as I do young professionals that every client of theirs usually walks away with an album because they love the albums and, you know, and maybe some ad on a wall piece.

00:31:55          So it really just depends on finding products that you love and showcasing it. And, you know, I always like to say too, that our sales process starts long before we sit down in a sales session and say, okay, here's our offer our products that you can choose from, you know, put those mockups on your website to showcase the, you know,

00:32:20          what you sell right there in the website, when they're looking for their photographer, you're talking about what you sell during your consultation. You know, the whole process you're talking about this end goal, which is, you know, either an album or Walmarts or collections with both, you know, that really just depends on they, it all sells well, as long as you love it.

00:32:41          And you're talking about it. I go there too. You know, I completely echo that too. And I don't know if some people want to like build their brand around the guy, sell albums or something like that. Okay. I will just tell you from our perspective, like whatever you decide, we'll have it for you. You know, we have an extensive offers.

00:32:57          So again, don't please show everything we offer to your clients. It will guarantee you, it will overwhelm them. We offer albums, photo books, Walmarts, foil boxes, you know, everything. So whenever you decide on, you can be sure that you're going to find it here at unfold again, over 80 plus material options. So, you know,

00:33:15          and if there is something that you like and something that you seem to not find, let us know. We're always looking forward to a professional photographer opinions of what they would like that we don't have or something like that. But Nicole, you know, I can't stress it enough to just what you love to sell, because it's going to rub off. I'm having so much fun talking about this right now,

00:33:32          because I love this Stuff when we're talking about something I didn't, like I said, okay, okay. What is the next question? Wasn't it? When is this done? Yeah, exactly, exactly. And one of the other things about that is not only choosing, okay, there's like these 37 products and I'm going to choose to focus on these five.

00:33:53          And of course, if a client's like, you know, I've had a couple of people like, Oh, I really want metal. I don't have metal on my price list because it's just not something I love. It's not something that I feel is like the best representation of the majority of my work. But I had a client that really wanted a metal piece.

00:34:08          Oh yeah. I sourced him a metal piece. I just don't have it on my, on my product guide. So if you have a client that wants something specific, you can certainly still offer that to them. One other piece too, that I think people get hung up on is they're like, okay, I've got my five products, but I'm going to offer 38 different options for this album.

00:34:28          Do you want this paper, this paper? Or do you want, you know, and of course it can choose the cover, but you know, I recommend looking at say the print options or the album options and figuring out I love this paper. I love the stick paper with this check texture in this size. And this is my main album. And then my clients can choose from,

00:34:49          you know, whatever covers and cover options or a print, like instead of saying, okay, do you want a Lester print or a satin print or a metal print? Like, no, you figure out what print your work looks the best on. And that's the type of print you offer because your clients, if you ask them, do you want a linen print or a satin print or a metal print,

00:35:09          they're going to be like, I thought a print was just to print. They're going to be deer in headlights. Yeah, exactly. And do you want the styrene backing or the matte board backing or the Gator board? You know, so figuring out those options and just picking one and knowing that if you have somebody that knows there's something specific that they want,

00:35:31          that you can then of course get that for them, but that streamlines it so much and makes it so much easier for our clients to make decisions because all of us can only make so many decisions in a day. And if you're spending all their decision time on a satin versus metal paper, then they're not going to have enough decision ability left to finalize their order and say,

00:35:54          Oh yes. Okay. I do want the album. Absolutely. And those are two great points. And you know, the over choice, decision fatigue, it's a real thing. And don't, don't put that on and don't think too, you know, I don't want this to come up with the wrong, but don't think, you know, just cause we offer what we offer,

00:36:08          that you have to offer that too. Like we, we, our print lab, like that is our job to offer as much as we can for you guys and girls and, and wonderful photographers. But that doesn't mean you have to have one of everything. And so please don't do that. You know, and there's, I've spoken to some fantastic photographers who figured it out the hard way where they did kind of start almost offering everything,

00:36:26          or they took one of our catalogs because the only great thing about us is we don't brand anything. So you can take a product catalog with no pricing in it and no branding, and you could show it to your clientele. But again, I don't recommend that because then they're going to see everything. They're going to be overwhelmed. Again, another way you can add value to your service and therefore reasonably charged a little bit more is by doing the legwork for your clients.

00:36:45          And like you say, making the choices and again, so we offer things like, like you, the photographer can see our whole product range. You, the photographer can order our paper bundle, which has sample of every paper option available. I don't necessarily recommend you turning around and point giving it to your client saying which one do you like, right.

00:37:03          But that's at your disposal. And then it's a matter of what you love. And or if somebody comes to you and says, they really, really want this because that's the only part too. Cause this comes back to like photographers, you, you photographers do this. I hear the photographer, mentors telling photographers this and that is, you know, you don't have to advertise everything that you do and you don't have to do something that you don't advertise.

00:37:25          You know, your pet photographers, you might, and you advertise that way. But if somebody says like, Hey, I love what you did for my dog. Would you photograph the family is like a family thing. You can do that. If you're comfortable, it doesn't mean you have to put it on your Facebook page or something. So it's a similar thing.

00:37:37          As you suggest with products as well too, again, we, we can have your back for anything. So if you were like, I'm only offering albums and wall art, but somebody's like, I really love these folio boxes. You can say, okay, this one time I'll do it. You can come back to us. We definitely have folio boxes,

00:37:52          but you don't have to advertise that. And that's getting to another point I want to want to make. And maybe we're going to go here about print products. Because again, like the question is, well, how do we sell these where you sell? What's your show. So again, if there's something that you really like, that you want to sell,

00:38:05          talk about it theoretically and show it, show it everywhere. Like if you are a photographer who sells print products, products are just as important to you as your pictures too. So if you're going to put your picture somewhere, also include a picture of your picture and a product in that same place. And that's going to also help to filter out some of these clients who walked into your door,

00:38:27          expecting you to be a shoot and burn photographer. Of course, they're going to think that if all they see are your, you know, your digital images and they never hear you talking about print products, they never any pictures of your print products. It's understandable for them to think in this 21st century that you're just another shoot and burn photographer. And then that gets into that.

00:38:42          That's usually the client that causes the issue of like, well, I don't want to pay this much for that. Are you kidding me? So if you show on your social media, your websites here, Instagram, everywhere, the print products you have on offer and the ones that you want to sell and the ones that you really love, that's going to let your clientele before they even talk to,

00:39:02          you know, okay, I should expect to get that. And then it's also going to tell them, okay, where is this? I want this and get them excited about it and make it easier for you to sell it and make it easier for them to accept any kind of price you later throw out at them. So remember that too, when you're wanting to sell the print price,

00:39:19          you have to show them, you have to show them and kind of a third thing. So you're asking maybe the best and the worst person, because I can go through what we're talking about, the value. And we're talking about whittling down to the, you know, the product selection as we've also kind of alluded to too, is making it easy for your clientele.

00:39:36          And that is to say, don't carry the shop. Talk over to your clientele, like the print lab. We're probably going to talk a little shop talk. You know, we're going to talk about specific specific paper types is really, you know, set in 180 GM squared, you know, flush, mounted, like your clients are not going to understand what them means.

00:39:58          I mean, wanting, I say I'm in here for like five years now, probably a year ago. I finally, it was like, I got this four years to finally understand all the terminology and all the different products. So your client, and I'm sure some of you photographers feel the same way and you're in the industry. So do your homework there too,

00:40:15          and try and translate some things that you might find on the website into plain to plain language. Cause if you're gonna, if you're gonna put your picture of your album on your full social media and you gonna say, come get my beautiful flush Mount 800 GSM silk album. They're gonna be like, all I hear is photo album A hundred percent. That is so funny.

00:40:41          I wrote down the note that basically was going to be the same exact thing that you just brought up. So we're just like right there in our brains, but is one way that I've heard it recommended to talk about these products is to describe the benefits and not the features. So for instance, my prints that, you know, like a quote loose print that they can buy is a Lester print with a styrene backing and a linen texture.

00:41:05          And so, and it has a UV coating on it. So I basically tell my clients, these are my fine art prints. They have this plastic backing on the back so that it doesn't bend. It has a UV coating. So it won't fade. And it has a linen texture just because it's pretty. So like, it just, it lets them know,

00:41:21          this is what it has, but this is why, this is why you should care that there's backing on this image. Because if you just get that floppy print from Costco, Oh, it's going to bend. It's not going to last as long. It's going to. So explaining those benefits in ways that the clients would care about is definitely something that builds that value.

00:41:41          Perfect. Yeah, absolutely. As you said, talk about the practical benefits and not the shop technical aspects of it too. If you don't know, you can ask us, you can ask me, you can send me an email. You didn't have photo.com. You can ask the sales customer service representative that you get to, or the sales consultant this year assigned to when you registered,

00:42:00          like don't hesitate to ask if you're struggling to find a why, why is this a good thing? I wasn't going to bet that we'll be happy to help you with and yeah. Cause then they're innocent. Their language is they're going to say, yes, this is how it helps me. This is why I, why I want this again. Don't tell them,

00:42:14          Oh, is sturdy 800 GSM spreads? What does that mean? What'd you say is going to last forever. It's flush-mounted is on the page. It's sturdy. You feel this, if you go to Costco, like you said, it's going to be like your son's home Magazine pages. Yeah, exactly. So, absolutely Awesome. So Eugene, this has been so good.

00:42:35          Do you have like one last piece of advice for photographers out there that are like right on the fence on they're doing the digital and they're like, all right. I think, I think I'm ready. I think I can do this. Yeah. I'm gonna pull, I'm gonna steal from Nike and I'm gonna say, just do it, just do it here.

00:42:54          We are in 2021, we all want to move on right. To try something new and, but commit to it. We did what we all talked about. Like, it's going to take them probably a minute for you to decide what you like. It's going to take a minute for you to learn what it is you need to know to sell to your clientele.

00:43:09          But once it's finally there, again, the potential is so much higher. And, and oftentimes when we see a lot and we're kind of overwhelmed, we think, Oh, and you don't do anything, but on the contrary, you just, you gotta start. You gotta start somewhere again. So go on a website, your initial gut feeling. I like that.

00:43:25          And just try it, just see it, explore it. Because when you come across these numbers, I've seen some in your group. I've seen some in many other groups about all different kinds of genres. When you see people say like, Oh, I made 10,000 in one sale on my 12,000 on one sale, I made, you know, 80,000 this year or something like when you whittle those down away,

00:43:42          99.9% of them have a common theme. And that is that people who sell print products. So the ceiling on what you can earn is so much higher when you're doing print products. So just try it and we're happy to help you here. And I'm 40. Always have an ally with us. We have a lot of information to help to educate you and help you get off the ground.

00:44:01          Then again, even if you're, even if you have been in this business for a while, you know, we can help you there as well. If you want to just add one extra thing or swap something out or completely start over, or we're upset with somebody at some other company, fine, we're gonna, we'll be happy to take you on as well.

00:44:16          So just do it. I think come on now more than ever is the time of the year for action. The time, time, or for action. I love it. I love it. And at the beginning we alluded to a little special offer. Do you want to let everybody know what little promotion we have going on? Yeah. Speaking of getting started And just doing it,

00:44:33          we are happy to extend to our audience today. 60%. Ooh. That's six zero zero. Yeah, of course. Terrible product. Now you can choose either one complete set or one folio box sets sample with this promo for any size. Any collection, all you have to do is use the code H O D 60. So hair of the dog 60,

00:45:03          and this will be valid on until the end of March. So there is your place to start. If you don't know where to start, go on our website, check out our complete sets and our folio boxes and you can get one sample for 60% off. Nice. I love it. Thanks so much, Eugene. It's been so great to have you here.

00:45:23          Thank you for sharing your expertise and letting us know more about and photo. Yeah, I guess let everybody know one more time. Just where they can find and photo.com on the web. Is there any place else they can follow along with you guys? I know you have the live interviews that I did. One with you on your, so the Facebook group or page recently.

00:45:43          So you guys can find that too, if you want. Yeah, absolutely. Check us [email protected] for our store. Be sure to follow us and like us on our end photo lab page ask one of our employees about our private groups, that we have a dedicated to the professional photographers, where you can talk shop with your colleagues around the world. The lives,

00:46:02          as Nicole mentioned, can be found on our Facebook fan page and be sure to sign up for our newsletter, to get all the latest information about anything and everything. Nice. Awesome. Thanks again, Eugene for being here and thanks for everybody for sticking with us and make sure you share with us in the hair of the dog podcast, community pair, the dog academy.com/fb

00:46:22          group. We'll take you there and share some of your products. Do a quick, like hashtag for the lab name. Hopefully we see some nice end photo products in there. I know it's a popular lab amongst us, many of the pet photographers. So look forward to seeing that. And again, thank you Jean for being here and we'll talk to everybody next week.

00:46:41          Bye everyone. Bye. Thanks for listening to this episode of hair of the dog podcast. If you enjoyed this show, please take a minute to leave a review. And while you're there, don't forget to subscribe. So you don't miss our upcoming episodes online. If you are ready to dive into more resources, head over to our [email protected]. Thanks for being a part of this pet photography community.