00:00:00               Welcome to the hair of the dog podcast. I'm Nicole Begley. And today we have an incredible conversation with Michael puck from canine photo.org, talking all about how to start selling dog artwork to different businesses. This is an incredible marketing strategy, and not even that, it is part of a marketing strategy that actually has even a much bigger impact than individual businesses.

00:00:29               This particular podcast has the ability to change the lives of millions and millions dogs and humans throughout the world for years to come. So you definitely don't want to miss this. 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.

00:00:54               And now your host pet photographer, travel addict, chocolate martini connoisseur, Nicole Begley. Hey everybody, Nicole here from hair of the dog. And today I have a very special guest with me. I have Michael puck from K9photo. Welcome Michael to the podcast. So excited to have you here. Thank you so much. I am super excited to be here today.

00:01:17               Not as excited as I am to have you here. I'm just, yeah. Ever since I first spoke to you and learn about your very unique slant on the whole pet photography industry, this conversation has been a long time coming. So super excited to have you here and with that lead in, I guess, why don't you tell everybody a little bit about what makes canine photo different than most of our other businesses?

00:01:43               Nicole, there are two reasons that I would mention right up front one is it's nonprofit. So it is something that I do for, for a purpose that's super important to me, but it is also a business that is delivering dog art, not to your regular customer, but to businesses. And I think those two aspects probably make it different from most other dog photography businesses.

00:02:07               Absolutely. What's the mission of the Monton nonprofit. The mission is if you boil it down to just a few words, it's to prevent animals suffering and protect lives, but the larger vision mission statement is that Keenan photo's vision is to artistically capture the unique personalities of 1 million dogs by 2030, and to showcase the benefits of the human canine bond to prevent animal suffering and protect animals.

00:02:36               So there's a lot in there. And if you do the quick math on this, so a million dogs, if I would take pictures of one dog per day for the rest of my life, what it actually wouldn't be enough time because it would take 2,700 years to take pictures of your million dogs. So this division has been Good thing. You chose million and not billion,

00:02:59               right? But this mission Has been created with other dog photographers in mind. And again, it's a nonprofit and I realized early on that while I can make an impact on public, be more impactful. If I can engage others in the process, if we can come together and pursue a joint objective. And so if you think about it this way, if you have a hundred doc photographers doing the same,

00:03:22               the 2,700 years would shrink down to 2.7 years. So it's amazing what you can accomplish. If you have enough people moving in the right direction. I love that. That's, that's some great math. That's fantastic. So what, well, first of all, I guess this hasn't been your, your main, you haven't been a pet photographer for, you know,

00:03:45               the past many, many years. So what do you do for your regular work? And then how did this interest in pet photography develop? Yeah. Nicole, if you don't mind, let me start with the interest, because for that, I'll take your 51 years back into the past. It was 19, it was 1970. I was four years old.

00:04:09               I came in from the backyard into the house of my parents. I was covered in dirt. I was actually crawling among the strawberry bushes and eating strawberries. I was pretty self-efficient as a 44 year old. So it was by myself in the backyard. And I came in, I was covered in gray, very fine dust. And my mother said, you are taking a shower right now.

00:04:33               So I marched towards the bathroom and we had gone through the routine many times I was able to easily take a bath by myself, even. So it was just for in this particular case, I stepped into the bath tub and there was a, there was a shower handle and, and a boiler hanging right above the bath tub. And so while stepping into the bathtub,

00:04:53               I slipped because I was still a little water in the bathtub and it was trying to hold onto something. And unfortunately you're going to hold up the handle that controls the temperature of the water and also turns the water on. So I slipped, I was laying with my back, basically in the bathtub and the boiling water started to come down on me at a rapid pace.

00:05:14               I wasn't shocked. I was screaming and my mother was a two and two rooms further in, in the apartment. She was hollering back from the kitchen, Michael, stop making that much noise. Yeah, it's funny. Now it wasn't funny then. And, and so she finally realized after about 30 seconds that I was in serious trouble. And so to make a long story,

00:05:38               relatively short, I had suffered severe burns on both of my legs, the front of my legs, anywhere from first to third degree. So I was driven. My, my dad came, I was driven to the hospital. I ended up being in an isolation unit because I had basically two open wounds on my legs. And I spare you the graphics of what happened between arriving and getting into the hospital that,

00:06:03               but I was covered from the hip down in a dome over the dome was a blanket, but both of my legs were basically flashed at this point in time, at least in the front, While this, while the physical Side of that accident healed over time, the mental scars that, that had cars, nobody really paid attention to. And the mental scars,

00:06:25               because, because I had two open wounds on my legs, nobody was allowed to visit me. My parents weren't allowed to come in and visit me. I was, I was four. I was in tremendous pain, as you can imagine. And I was giving him a lot of medication for pain management purposes, and nobody showed up for three weeks. And,

00:06:45               and I don't remember the pain, meaning this has long gone, but the mental impact, the reflections of a four year old on what just happened. Why is it that nobody loves me any longer? Why is it that nobody is coming in that didn't really realize that obviously for a long time myself, but I came back out of the hospital. I was a change shot.

00:07:04               I became a loner. I didn't trust anyone. I had control issues. I couldn't make decisions usually received. When my parents asked me in the past, do you want to go shopping with us? It was a half hour disaster for me to make up my mind if I wanted to stay at home by myself. And that was at the age of maybe eight or nine more.

00:07:21               If I wanted to go with my parents and nobody realized what was going on that changed at the age of 12, when we got our first dog was a black lab. And I quickly connected was that black life on a personal level where I had never connected with anyone, neither human nor no animal. And so out of that beautiful relationship, we spent hours.

00:07:43               Every day, we walked through the woods, we went down to the river. We weren't gone for hours at a time. And, and her ability, she was not a therapy dog. She was just a regular housecall and her ability to reenter it reintroduced me to the world around me, helped me to open up and to build connections with the people around me.

00:08:04               She literally saved my life from a mental perspective. And so with that experience, she was around for 14 years. And I bawled my eyes out when I was devastated. I don't think I'd talked to anyone for three days when that happened. And so that early experience connected me to animals too, in a way that is hard to describe. And since then I always had dogs because I spent time in the military and I was traveling around.

00:08:32               I grew up in Germany and now I live in the us in between. I spent some time in the UK, so it was hard to have dogs, but I've always tried to give back and to donate and to drive. I would take tons of dog food to the shelter to make a difference, but it always felt like there was more that could be done.

00:08:52               And it wasn't until five years ago when I connected photography to helping dogs. And that's when I started initially supporting shelters, then doing private photo sessions. And then that has evolved over the last two years now, working almost roughly with businesses to provide them with stock wallet. Yeah. Let me stop here before. I just, I can't even imagine. I can't imagine how hard that was for you as a four year old and like your parents,

00:09:23               I mean, Oh my gosh. To not be able to go in and see your child in the hospital at that age, like, Oh, the parent and me, I'm like, Oh my God couldn't guarantee it. Yeah. And they were there. I I've been told afterwards. They were there every single day. I had a door that had a little glass,

00:09:42               little glass window in it. And so they were looking through a glass window at the moment I looked towards the door, they kind of pull the head away, but I did see them because I nightmare. I was still the age of 27. And that was always the last image that I saw at the end of the nightmare. When my parents were kind of pulling their heads away out of a little glass window in a door,

00:10:04               I know at the start that there were there, but it wasn't the subconscious. Yeah, it was, it was a forming experience. But in the end, something really positive came out of it, meaning it was painful. And as a child, it was hard as a teenager to go through these type of experiences. But nowadays I wouldn't want to trade it because it is something that has connected me to animals in general and dogs in particular.

00:10:28               And I just absolutely love what I do. I bring, I'm not a good photographer. And I say that in, in all honesty, I think I'm, I'm at best an average photographer, but I bring passion to what I do. And I think many or most, probably all the photographers are doing what they do because they're passionate about animals. I mean,

00:10:48               do you know any Nicole, do you know somebody that's a photography and is not passionate about No, I'm pretty sure all dog photographers do this because they love animals. Cause there's, you know, there's plenty of other photographers genres and you know, so much as often, I think people are so attached to the animals that they sometimes forget that this is still a business and the dogs don't have the checkbook.

00:11:15               So you have to deal with the humans. And like, man, I wish I could just photograph the dogs, but Alaska, you need to deal with humans too. But yeah, no, I, I think that everyone has that. And I think one of the things I love that you mentioned too, that, you know, I'm not the best photographer on the planet like me too.

00:11:33               Like I've never been like the, you know, most amazing photographer, a lot of people that have very successful businesses have very successful purpose. You know, there's always this level of technical proficiency, of course, and we're always striving to improve our craft of course. But I think a lot of people get up on this idea that they need to be the most amazing photographer.

00:11:59               And you know, that's basically the secret to everything. But I think truly the secret is connecting with that purpose because there has been so many different people on this podcast from you to Kaylee Greer, all these people that connect with their purpose and they find, you know, incredible success. And whether they're working on Kaylee's works amazing now. But you know,

00:12:22               when she first started, she started just like the rest of us and she was finding success then, because I think she had this deep connection to her passion to her purpose, to her drive her. Why? So yeah. I encourage all of you guys to really think about what your why is, and that can be different for everyone. And I think a lot of people get in the thing of like,

00:12:41               well, I don't have some big transformative story, but you don't, you don't have to have that. There could be something that's, you know, not as, not as stressful, you know, I don't, I don't tell that story. When I, when I talked to my business customers, that's not something that I, so I don't take advantage.

00:12:59               They just respond to me being passionate about dogs in general and dog photography. And when I then explained to them how a dog photography, just a cute picture on the wall, but it actually has scientific reasons why it is effective in client, customer prospect facing environments. When they see those two pieces come together, that's when they pay attention. Because now I'm speaking about pain points that they're having.

00:13:24               And just to say a little bit more about that. And I think Nicole, you asked that question earlier, what do I do for a living? I'm a people scientist, and that sounds fancy, but really fancy. So, so I'm spent after eight years in the military, which was in Germany, I joined the ranks of human resources and I know human resources or HR as a disease called here.

00:13:46               It doesn't necessarily has a good rep. And that's because HR has always stuck between management of the company and the employees, and sort of balance the two out. But I have learned some great lessons and, and sort of studied people for the last 25 years. And so in my current role, I'm heading up a department, that's human insights. We're very much specialized in understanding why people do what people do.

00:14:10               And it's a complex matter. It's, it's amazing to study when I realized because of that role have a lot of face-to-face contact with business owners and larger businesses and companies fortune 1000 companies in a very intently listening to the stories that they tell us because we're coming in we're subject matter experts were strategist and, and consultants. And so I've identified certain patterns over and over in the stories that we're hearing from companies and they have pain points.

00:14:40               And once you understand what those pain points are, you can provide solutions. And it was really by happenstance that are connected. What I do for a living, identifying pain points that businesses have and, and dog photography and how those two merge together, because what doc photography brings to the table to a large degree addresses some of the key pain points that businesses have.

00:15:04               And this might sound strange when I, when I could connect it at home, but it's actually relatively straightforward to figure out how to address one. Was that be happy to go down that path and give you examples? Yes, Absolutely. Please do. So one Of the key issues, and there are different angles that you can look at, but let's start with employees.

00:15:24               The big issue is that companies have with employees is that only 10 to 15% of the employees are engaged, which would Suggest that the rest is not. And I don't know why we have as, as a, as a society or, or why businesses have not taken more active steps to address. But if you think about it, worst case scenario of 10% of employees only aged and the rest is not actively engaged.

00:15:50               Then one out of 10 people is basically pushing the purpose of the organization forward, making a difference, coming to work in the mornings, fully energized and wanting to make a contribution. And the rest just shows up. And so that's a huge issue. And that has been consistently measured by the Gallup Institute for the last 20 years. And it has never been anywhere else,

00:16:14               but between 10 and 15%. Wow. So why is that? And companies have engaged in employee engagement activities and tried all kinds of things, but I'm sure that a lot of doctors are still working. So they're like, but isn't they like to get out is because they don't feel engaged. They don't feel they're making a difference. They don't feel they're being treated fairly.

00:16:35               And so that's the underlying issue. There is no Beltran giving and taking and or receiving. And so employees are just not satisfied with that. And companies tried solutions. And one of the solutions is to engage employees holistically, to allow them to bring more of themselves, to work, to build deep relationships at work versus just a transactional relationship where it's just about money.

00:17:00               You give me time and that's the end of, so let me move over to, what's probably more relevant to most businesses is the same applies with clients, with customers, with prospects. The way company is if they build relationships that last deep relationships was clients and was customers. But how do you do this? And depend Damick has really put further strain on that by not being able to have face-to-face discussions,

00:17:27               but not being able to patient ships quickly and official. And so what I've found by really by happenstances, some of my customers two, three years ago, own businesses ended up putting their donut that I created for them in the business environment. It was about three years ago when one of my customers decided to put the dog Walla that I've created for her in her business environment.

00:17:49               She owns the Private side of the local airport, and she put the images in lobby area and the flight planning room. And for the next three to four weeks, I was getting emails from her every other day, telling me about the amazing conversations that she ended up having with the folks passing through the lobby. And shortly thereafter, I had a customer who owned an insurance agency and she wanted to have a large 40 by 60 piece of wall light in her waiting room and showing herself in her for your case and the same happen there.

00:18:24               She kept emailing me about all the amazing conversations that she ended up having with people, people in some cases that she had never met before. So prospects that were coming to her inquiring about insurance options, and they fell in love with the artwork. They connected deeply. We serve a cause of that. So when I looked at those two incidents or occurrences,

00:18:47               the publisher call them, I figured they got to be something behind there that's worth researching. So I had researcher in Australia. I asked her to look at scientific papers that are out there and tell me how docs influenced people. I kept it very broad and she was digging up a lot of information. And after reviewing it and after condensing it down to what I really needed,

00:19:14               it became very apparent that there was a tremendous amount of work, scientific information that supported the tremendous impact that dogs have on people, on people's health, on people's wellbeing, on how people perceive their environment, how much trust they experience, how comfortable they are. And this was the point in time where I connected what I do for living, addressing the pain points that companies have with the benefits that doc wallet has provided.

00:19:44               I love that. I love that so much, and that's definitely not a path that I think many pet photographers have ever even considered. They always are thinking of, okay, how can I connect with other similar businesses, other businesses in the pet niche, or, you know, charities in the pet, in the pet industry, you know, and of course you can definitely connect outside of that,

00:20:07               but to be able to offer this service to, you know, insurance agents, airports, places that you don't usually, you know, associate dogs with is, is just really, really smart. And from the, you know, insurance agent's perspective, like selling insurance is not really all that exciting. And that can definitely be a differentiator when people come into the office.

00:20:34               And, you know, we, we all know that we've heard that you do business with those, you know, like and trust. And I'm sure there's gotta be some stats of how many people like animals and love dogs, whether they have a dog or not. Maybe they've had a good interaction in the past, a large number so that, you know,

00:20:54               would just bring the people that are like her right to her, and then have a differentiator where they'll, they'll stay with her versus going shopping around for somewhere else. Yeah. This Nicole, this research around that, I can quote it if you want me to There's one particular research article that I read where people that were exposed to a dark 84% of them reacted in a positive way.

00:21:19               The other 16% reacted in a neutral way. Nobody wrecked it in a negative way. So that's one aspect. And then we know that in the United States, we have anywhere between 67 to 70% of individuals that own dogs for, or at least an animal in their household. So we know that two thirds, we immediately speak in a very positive way to two thirds of our potential customers are prospects.

00:21:47               And that's huge. There is something that's called the social catalyst effect of dogs and the research around that such as the doc's social catalyst effect increases interactions with strangers. And now hold onto your chair 21 fault. When do you, one times more likely to have a conversation interaction with somebody that you don't know when there's a dark around the interesting aspect that I was able to confirm that also applies when there is just a picture of a dark hanging on a wall.

00:22:24               Now it can't be the size of a postcard, meaning it has to be a decently sized image and it has to be taken in a certain way. You want to see the dog's face for the most part, but that in itself makes the person that you are in front of. Let's say, it's your prospect. You will appear to be more human because of the presence of a dog.

00:22:47               Did you know that across the first 45 presidents of the United States, they had a total of 230 dogs while in the oval office. Wow. That is five dogs per president. There's actually a guideline in, in both parties that suggest if you are a presidential candidate, we highly recommend that you have appearances in public together with a dog at a minimum, speak about having a dog,

00:23:17               because it will humanize the experience. It will make you appear to be more friendly. More people focused. People would be able to connect with you more easily. And this is going on since well, since the 45 presidents have been in office. So basically since the beginning of this country, this insight has been leveraged by both large political parties in the United States.

00:23:43               And if that is not an endorsement for businesses to say, Hey, can I use doc photography in order to help myself to build more effective relationships more quickly? I don't know what is Wow. That is fascinating. I, I, yeah, I'm floored. That's just absolutely incredible. And you know, I think one of the ways that most people would struggle with this is,

00:24:06               you know, as I mentioned before, the podcast, when we were chatting about this, you know, so many people get so nervous with even just reaching out to a small local business like groomer or this or that. And they're not sure what, what can I offer? What do I really have to offer to them? How can I help them?

00:24:25               Well, this leaves the door wide open to explain, Hey, look, pictures of dogs help create connection with your clients and we'll bring you more business. You know, that's so straightforward and easy. Yeah. And Nicole, I think this might be a good point in time to say I'm in the process of putting a free e-course together. And in there,

00:24:47               I have put that research, meaning a lot of the research in bite sized chunks that individuals can just really use as it is printed and, and leverage that in dialogue with businesses. And you need normally only just one or two less, what was it? Yeah. Late last year I was looking for a financial advisor and I was calling up a few different offices and I always,

00:25:10               I'm so excited about this topic, about dog wallet that I asked that unsuspecting advisor on the other side, in the middle of our conversation, by the way, how do you feel about dogs? Probably not the usual interview question they get, but that's all right. I love it Was, it was a very informal, very informal discussion. And so she said,

00:25:34               you know, I have two dogs at home. I absolutely love dogs. And the next question, and I dropped it there. And then I said, okay, what's most important in your line of business. And she says, Oh, hands down, having a trusting relationship with our customers because they give us sometimes, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars,

00:25:52               sometimes millions of dollars so that we can manage their money. Trust is paramount. And so I just basically ended up, finished that up by saying, do you know that dogs and dog Walmart in particular have a trust evoking impact on the environment that they displayed it? And she says, wow. And she could immediately, that was the fun part. I didn't have to convince her of anything.

00:26:18               He said, I love my dogs. I know how people that come to our house respond to our dogs. How would they immediately, that makes so much sense, but they had never connected the dots. They had never considered how dog Wal-Mart could be a contributing factor to creating an environment that is helping them for customers to feel clients or prospects, to feel more comfortable and,

00:26:43               and to build trust more quickly by building deeper personal relationships. And, and so in this particular example, I ended up putting, I think it's four conference rooms, two hallways, one operations room. And the lobby has a total of, I think, 14 Walnut pieces right now because they were all in. They said, we need to do this.

00:27:04               And they did it together with the employees. I mentioned earlier, how employee engagement is an issue. They asked the employees if they wanted to participate in a police has, Oh yeah, absolutely. So free photo session out of that. And we have now the images of the employees hanging in the work environment and just imagine that how much fun this is when you have interactions with customers and clients,

00:27:29               and you can point to the wall and say, Oh, by the way, this is my dog over there. And the relationships that are being built because of that, how much more fun employees have to come to a work environment where they have something of themselves that they're passionate about, that they love, and it's not part of their workplace. So there is a lot of dynamic that I explained in that e-course to say,

00:27:51               you can take advantage of all of these things. And not that this is not more difficult to sell than it is to sell a private photo session to a dog owner, to know what to say and how to position it. And again, I'm sharing this because I'm running a nonprofit, I want to help as many animals as possible. And that's the reason why I'm basically giving the farm away here to say,

00:28:15               Hey, if you're interested in that, explore this, this makes a ton of sense. And there is an untapped market that is humongous. I love that. No, what I love too, about that conversation you had with the financial planner is how you elicited her values. And you asked what is the most important piece of you know, of your relationships with your client,

00:28:34               because then based on what they say, you know, what pieces of this dove, these studies to share with her, and when she says trust, then you're like, Oh yes. Okay. Well, this is how you can wrap up this number one value that you need in your business, which just brings so much more buy-in even before you, even before you answer it,

00:28:55               Pull versus a push because I'm a terrible sales person, meaning I'm excited, I'm passionate. But if you want me to sell something that I don't feel strongly about, I am really not any good to avoid a little bit confusion in, in the audience. Let me give you a couple of examples of what type of businesses might best qualify for this. Okay.

00:29:15               Sounds good. At a high level, I would suggest it has to be a business that is striving to have strong one-on-one relationships. Walmart would not be the place to hang up. All right. So let me go through a list. So a law offices, there's a lot of trust involved. I obviously already mentioned wealth advisors, insurance agents, doctors,

00:29:42               doctors, any type of medical field, because there's also a large body of research that suggests to actually how the healing process is positively impacted by dog photography. And that makes a lot of sense. If you think about the fact that many hospitals have therapy dogs, but the therapy dogs, meaning there are few of them and there are a lot of patients.

00:30:05               And if you're lucky you get a visit that's five or 10 minutes long. Right. But how about extending the impact of the therapy dog to all day and all night by putting dog photography into hospitals and the most powerful connection there is, if you target children's hospitals, I'm talking with one right now, 69 patient beds. Oh, wow. Yeah. Just imagine,

00:30:27               just imagine the possibilities of relating this type of research to medical facilities. Also retirement hopes, very effective consultants in general realtors, car dealerships. I just put an 18 piece wildlife collection in a car dealership. And the only piece of information I needed to understand if it was a good match or not is to look at the advertisement that this particular car dealership was putting out in a realized there was always a dog in the advertisement.

00:30:59               So I approached the owner and say, Hey, this is a really smart, smart move to have a dog in your advertisement. And he said, why is that? He hadn't really realized the benefits. So I educated him in the poor sense to say, yeah, because your customers feel more comfortable in an environment where there are animals. But I also noticed visiting the dealership a couple of times that the dog was most belaying somewhere in the back office,

00:31:26               napping dogs normally do. And so this little impact of the dog isn't really there, but I told him, you can have an all day, every hour impact. If you put some pictures of dogs on your walls. And he says, that's a cool idea. And then, so he asked me to put dogs and vintage cars together in a picture.

00:31:47               And he now has 18 of those images in, in large format, hanging in this dealership, learned that. And he's telling me, I talked to him yesterday. He's telling me that customers come into his dealership and taking selfies in front the dark, Fantastic, got some viral marketing going on for his car dealership. Now, how did for, for instance,

00:32:10               for him, like how do you recommend making that initial context? I know a lot of people are really reluctant to do any sort of cold calling or just showing up. So what's the best way to make that initial contact. I have never done any cold calling because I'm not a big fan of cold calling either. You know, put yourself in the shoes of the recipient.

00:32:29               He had called us the guy who was a deep, deep voice German accent. What do you think? How much time I have on the phone five seconds before they hang up. So I know it's the way I've gone about it. And I actually started this in a more systematic way at the beginning of the pandemic. Last year, I reached out to my contacts in town and I basically told them what I was trying to do.

00:32:54               And I reached out to them not to sell them anything, but to basically get the input, I created a little video, which by the way, also included in the e-course you say, Hey, take a look at this. It's an idea I have, I don't know if this is gonna fly, but love to get your opinion on it. And so they agreed to come on a quick phone call.

00:33:11               We chatted for 10 minutes. They provided their feedback. I thank them. And then at the very end, I said, one other final favor. If you don't mind, would you happen to know a business owner that might be interested to learn about this and was every call that I had, I got two or three references. And so I call up the reference.

00:33:31               And first thing I say, Hey, by the way, I've talked to such and such last week and he thought, I'd give you a call. Do you have 10 minutes to talk quickly? And that led to a nice informal conversation. I basically asked the same question, Hey, this might feel or sound awkward, especially coming from a German receding hairline,

00:33:52               just to loosen it up a little bit. How do you feel about dogs? And I've yet to find somebody who didn't say, Oh, I love dogs. Meaning if I make enough phone calls, I'm sure it gets folks to say, yeah, I'm okay with dogs, but then you just say, Hey, in that case, this is not for you.

00:34:11               I'll thank you for your time and your hang up. You don't have to sell everyone. I made, I went back and counted. I made twenty-five phone calls in March, late March, early April, last year, that led to five customers that generated over $40,000. And again, I'm just doing this on the site. So that's all I could handle for four last year.

00:34:35               And I can just imagine what else could have come out of that more phone calls, but no, no cold calling, just calling people, asking for the, for their opinion. And you could do it by email, but email is, I don't think as effective to get responses. Agreed. Agreed. And yeah. And you can leverage, I love the leveraging your,

00:34:57               your network and, you know, can leverage clients that already love you and explain like, Hey, you know, you, I know how much you love your dog while art, like other businesses have these benefits. Do you know any, you know, lawyers, blah, blah, blah, all the different people you mentioned that maybe would be interested in learning a little bit more about this and yeah.

00:35:17               Making that personal, Hey, so-and-so recommended I chat with you is such a great opening. Yeah. And I'll tell you what I did was the car dealership I just finalized was them phase two of the wallet. So the wallet has been up since I think November of last year. And as part of the package that I offered the owner of the car dealership was 10 gift vouchers of a value of $750.

00:35:40               And, and I, we agreed upfront these gift vouchers will go out to his best customers, that own businesses. Yeah. And so this is, this is going out next week, Monday, there is a really nice quote from, from the business owner in the letter it's being sent out by the service team of the dealership, but he has a big fat coat in there.

00:36:05               And this is, I don't have to do anything about it. The cost for me to, to produce the $750 gift certificate is basically $50 per customer that comes on board. And that obviously provides the opportunity for upsell for new business relationships. And I think a $50 investment per customer per business customer is very much worthwhile putting this out to see if I can gain one or two really good customers out of that.

00:36:35               Yeah, absolutely. Is that $750 voucher for doing the business wall art? Not for private session, Correct? Yes. It's it includes the photo session on location. It includes 20 images for them to pick from and includes 16 by 20 piece of wallet. So they get something tangible, even if they decide not to pursue it any further. Right. And I think that's important and I don't want them to feel obligated to purchase anything,

00:37:08               but again, the 16 by 20 might cost me $50. Yeah. And there is a chance because they're business owners and I very much told the dealership, here are the type of businesses that this would work for. It has to be a business that relies heavily on, on one to one relationship and the support from the owner, the letter written very nicely.

00:37:32               I I'm really curious to see what comes out of that, but if this is working the well, I think it will, I'm done with marketing. There's no more need to put all the campaigns and social media into this and do that in order to, to when an individual customer and Nicole going back quickly to the wealth management office. I took pictures of the dogs of eight of the employees.

00:37:55               I sold wallet to 600. So that's just complimentary to meaning I charged them for it obviously, but that's just the icing on the cake in addition to what the business already pays for. I love it. Speaking of that pricing, do you have like a kind of economy of scale as if they order X number of wall pieces, did they get a discount or the pricing of the pieces aligned with kind of what we're used to charging for consumers?

00:38:23               Are they more, are they less? So I tried to intentionally stay away from that because I've sent so many individuals, I potentially private customers, as well as business customers and work to price this quite differently. So that is no side-by-side comparison for businesses. I charged by room or by Walmart, but it's just an upfront value. It's not the final value.

00:38:45               Let me explain what I mean by that. So I'm putting a $1,500 wallet credit on a particular room or wall. So if a business comes back and says, Hey, we have three conference rooms and we would like to have wallet in all three. Then I say, okay, that's $1,500 per room. And for that, you can get a nice size print that we put in that room.

00:39:06               So 4,500 is what that is for three rooms. You pay me 50% upfront. You pay me the other 50% or the true-up before I ordered the wallet. And the true-up means, let's say at 20 by 30 is what I figured in for $1,500. If they want to go with three panels, they eat 20 by 30. Then obviously the cost overall is higher.

00:39:29               And then I charge them not the remaining 750 for the 1500. I might charge them an additional 2000, right? And so this way I get money upfront, they get a sense of, okay, I pay X dollars for a certain size of image. I prize Alma materials about the same. I don't distinguish between canvas or metal or something else to make it really simple.

00:39:54               And that works well this way. They know. So the, the wealth manager office, they purchased a total of seven of rooms. And then I gave them three credit for three. In addition to that, because that was kind of the, the scale that I have created. So they had, they ended up having something like $10,000, I think,

00:40:14               $12,000 in total for a wallet credit, they ended up purchasing 16, 16,500, something like that. And so the Delta was charged was the second invoice. Well, I'll tell you that much as working with private dog owners, my average sale was $1,500 last year. My average sale was 7,500, and I hadn't done anything different than working with businesses instead of individuals.

00:40:50               No, absolutely. I think one of the biggest challenges for the average pet photographer to get over, to do this is going to be their own limiting beliefs that they have around big orders and numbers and being uncomfortable with bigger numbers like that, which is really just us learning that, Oh, wait, this is possible. Oh. And like, these businesses would be paying for art of some kind anyway,

00:41:16               and this artwork actually brings back a bigger return than going to home goods and picking up some like, you know, Tuscan village that, you know, but, but getting comfortable with that, Oh, it's okay that I can a $10,000 sale because I think what happens is people get in their own head and then the business is talking about I'm going to do 10 rooms and this and that.

00:41:43               And you're like, Oh my gosh, a thousand dollars room. Oh my God, it's gonna be $10,000. Oh my God, they're going to kick me out of here. So then we immediately don't even say 10,000. We're like, okay. So since you're going to do 10, it'll be four rooms free will be $6,000 and you start wheeling and dealing,

00:41:58               even though they haven't asked for it, just because we are uncomfortable with it. So I think that's a big thing to work on and kind of figure out where your comfort level it is and try to find ways to, to get more, more confident with the fact that, Hey, look, this happens and it's okay. I fully agree. But if you predefined that and by the way,

00:42:18               I'm sharing that as well. The entire pricing structure is in the e-course as well. If you predefine. And if you make it as simple as $1,500 per room or wall, there's not much to talk about meaning. That's what you put out there as a stake. And then in the end, if they purchase something that's $1,200, then they just, you charge them $300 less than the half of 1500.

00:42:38               So it's really simple math. You don't have to paint yourself on the corner, but I do understand that being potentially an issue at the same time, not every company, not every business is buying something immediately for eight rooms or for even the wealth management office. They didn't know me from Adam when I offered them. Okay, you can do either one or two rooms and you get no discount.

00:43:01               And by the way, you also have to pay for the photo session. If you go with one or two, three or more, then I include the photo session at no cost. And you actually get an additional discount on top of that and form of wallet credit. So it's a bonus. It's not something I take away. It's something I put on top of it.

00:43:17               And they started out with one room. They wanted to see what type of pictures I produced. I wanted to see what type of experience I provide to the employees. And once they seen that, they came back and said, okay, we need seven more. Right? Right. And then it becomes easier. You don't have to sell the big lots all at once.

00:43:37               You can just go for one room, one space, one wall prove yourself. And that's the reason why I said Nicole earlier, I'm not a really good photographer. I'm an average photographer. And if my, my art, my wallet sells 18 piece collections to a car dealership, there's a, a large percentage of dock photographers that can do the same.

00:44:00               Absolutely. Oh my gosh. This has been so eyeopening. And I loved everything about it. The mission, the, the process, the possibility tell us where people can go to find this amazing pre resource that you will have so generously created. Yeah. So the address is a canine photo. It's the letter K the number nine photo.dot org forward slash e-course.

00:44:31               So that's E and then course, there's one other aspect of my work for this year that I wanted to mention briefly, Nicole, okay. With you. So last year was the proof of concept for selling dog Wal-Mart to several businesses. And, and I think that pass was flying colors for this year. I'm working on something that is even more ambitious,

00:44:52               but it's, it's the global dog art gallery, because I realized if I go about it the way I did last year, I basically limit myself to my geographic reach and I wanted to make it broad. And I also wanted to bring more photographers into benefit from this. So what I'm doing this year is I create a global dark art gallery, which is basically an opportunity for photographers to share their work,

00:45:17               to showcase their work. And I will drive businesses to that global dark art gallery so that they can purchase and dock photographers can take advantage of really using the existing work for a second purpose. And since this is all run through my nonprofit, the money generated through that is going back to the purpose of preventing animal suffering and protecting lives. But there will be also a substantial royalty fee that photographers gain in the process.

00:45:49               This is being built as we speak. There is a mock-up site out there. And the address for that is global.art.com. That is just the initial playing around. Was it what it could look like? And, and what the structure would be? The actual site will be much more sophisticated, including augmented reality, where businesses can go in, they can pick out their images that they like.

00:46:14               They can use the iPhone hold in front of their wall and immediately see what the water Walnut looks like on their walls. And this will be also fully automated, where it goes directly from ordering to fulfillment being delivered there still quite a bit work that has to occur to get to that stage. But that's the vision. And this year is proof of concept to see,

00:46:37               can I sell dog wall art to businesses through an online gallery versus being the middleman and the process I'm going to invite dot photographers. I will reach out to dock photographers that I like for, to be part of that journey about this mission. And so this is what's happening this year. I'm super excited about this because this could get us to the impact that I'm seeking the million dogs being impacted in relatively short.

00:47:06               I love it. It just keeps getting better. So excited to see where you take all of this. And of course, hair of the dog community is at your disposal because I totally believe in all of, all of the things. So, gosh, thank you, Michael so much for being here and sharing that with us. And if you just want to let us know one more time again,

00:47:30               where people can find you the global dog art.com and then for the other website as well, the course is canine photo.org forward slash e-course. And it's just eCourse one word, no dash or anything, right? Correct. All right. Perfect. Perfect. Thanks again, Michael. Really appreciate you being here and thank you everybody out there and the hair of the dog podcast land for joining us on yet another incredible interview,

00:48:01               and we will see you next week. Bye everybody. 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. One last thing, if you are ready to dive into more resources,

00:48:22               head over to our [email protected]. Thanks for being a part of this pet photography community.