You're listening to Take It Personally, a podcast for photographers about the personal side of business and the art of standing out. Here I'll help you build a business and a brand that is uniquely you. If you want to attract dream clients and stop looking at the competition to decide your next move. to show up as a confident branding authority to help you serve your clients and consider your goals and priorities too. If you want to make your mark in a new, underserved niche of photography, then this is the place for you. I'm your host Maddie Pachon, South Dakota brand photographer and educator. I'm a straight shooting, Instagram obsessed, and Instagramer. Diehard Swifty who has built a multi six figure business on the back of brand photography all while raising a family. And I know you can do the same. Let's get ready to take it personally.

This episode is part of my quiz series, where I tell you all about the four types of brand photographers. If you want to find out what kind of brand photographer you are in your brand photography journey, I want you to go to Maddie Dot com slash quiz. And there you're going to take the, are you ready to be a brand photographer quiz? And it's going to tell you what type of photographer you are and what you need to be working on in your business to be able to charge four figures for brand photography and become the brand photographer that everyone in your area wants to work with. This episode is all about the exclusive brand photographer. This is the most common. Photographer that I work with inside of rebrand. These photographers are ready for the next stage of their business. They do not want to continue doing portraits or weddings in a perfect world. They would leave those things behind and pivot completely into brand photography. They want to get their nights and weekends back. And very possibly they are okay with a little bit more of a slow pivot. It's not that they necessarily want to only take brand photography clients as of today, maybe in a perfect world, but they're okay with this low pivot, but they know that eventually they really want to be offering. Only brand photography. But they definitely have that voice in the back of their head. Can I actually make this work? Can I only shoot brand photography? Or am I going to have to keep shooting all of these things that I don't want to do? These photographers can start to feel really overwhelmed because there are times where it feels like they're starting a business from scratch, and while they are not completely starting a business from scratch. They are marketing to a totally new client. Their business is going to have to change, and that can feel really overwhelming. They're also not totally sure that they can replace the kind of income that they have made with weddings in particular, with brand photography. I promise you, you can. but if you're an exclusive brand photographer that can feel like a really tall order. Exclusive brand photographers are in a really good spot because it is going to be easier to stand out among other photographers. If you can really confidently say, I am a brand photographer, it gets a little bit more diluted when you are offering other types of photography. Like we talked about in the dual positioned episode, it's absolutely doable, but it does take some strategy and some thought, so exclusive photographers have a little bit of a leg up because they're able to get crystal clear on their positioning. I will often hear from exclusive brand photographers that weddings and portraits feel so much easier to book than brand photography. This is probably one of the biggest struggles that exclusive brand photographers have as they pivot into brand photography, they feel like it's harder to book these types of clients. And that's because when you are booking portrait and wedding photography, clients, those people know that they are looking for a photographer when the majority of people get engaged. They know that the next step is to book a photographer. Even portrait clients, they know that there are certain times of year. Where they want family photography, or they know that every other year they want family photography every year, whatever it might be. Brand photography is different because our clients don't always know that the problems they're experiencing can actually be solved by brand photography. So marketing to brand photography clients can feel a little bit more difficult because they are actually not aware of their problem yet. So there's a whole piece of marketing that you really don't need to consider when you're talking to a portrait and wedding photography clients that is crucial when you're talking to brand photography clients. There's a few other things that exclusive brand photographers need to be thinking about where are they going to find these new clients? That's another question that I hear really often, where do I find brand photography clients? How do I grow my reputation as a brand photographer, when people already know me as a wedding or portrait photographer, how do I make that change to my brand? And then how do I shoot a brand photography session? It's different than shooting a portrait session? How am I going to fill three hours or four hours or whatever it might be shooting with only one person. When you are used to working with couples at engagement sessions or at weddings, or if you're used to working with families, it can feel really daunting to have only one person in front of your camera to tell the story of the brand. So shooting a brand session absolutely feels different than shooting other types of photography. And you need to figure out what that looks like. But the good news here is that everything that you have learned as a wedding and portrait photographer up until this point can serve your new brand photography clients really, really well. There are so many skills that you have as a wedding and portrait photographer that can transition into serving brand photography clients. If you are an exclusive brand photographer, I really want to hear from you. I want to know if you are currently working on making the pivot into only doing brand photography, or if you've been at this for awhile. And once you take the quiz, I'm going to give you some really specific things that you can be working on in your photography business, to be able to charge four figures. When you take the quiz, you're going to get access to a private podcast. And that podcast is going to go into further detail about your particular type of brand photographer. As well as the things that are going to help you scale your business.

Thank you so much for listening to Take It Personally. If you haven't already, would you head over to iTunes and leave us a review? This is the best way to let other photographers know about the show and help keep us creating content you crave. And if you want more tips and tools to build your personal photography brand, head over to my website, MaddiePichon. com. Here, you can access my downloadable ultimate personal brand session shot list to get your clients singing your praises and browse my blog for more trade secrets to help you hone your craft and grow your business. Love to learn while you listen, visit MaddiePachon. com and click on podcast for all things. Take it personally. From show notes to recent episodes and incredible guest profiles. Remember friend, the most important part of any brand is the people behind it. Branding and business is personal, so let's take it personally.