032: Vicki Knights – Why Mindset Is The Key To Success & How Looking After Yourself Will Elevate Your Business

June 20, 2021

“Work on having a positive mindset and your business will flow!”

VICKI KNIGHTS

Hey everyone! It’s Sally here, from Studio Ninja. Today’s episode is all about Vicki Knights!

Check out some of the biggest points from Vicki’s interview below:

What are your top tips for Family & Branding Photography?

Well I think first thing is you’ve got to invest in training. You can’t just go, “Ooh, I’m going to be a family photographer.” That’s the first thing you’ve got to do. Ask around, look at other photographers in that genre that you really like, and you like their work. But also it’s not just about their work it’s about them and how they market themselves, the feel you get from them, and find the right trainer for you and the right course and invest in that before you get started. Yeah, that’s always the first step, I would say.

I would say, in terms of family and branding photography, there is a difference. I shot three weddings when I first started but I’ve never been a wedding photographer, as such. I would say wedding photography and branding photography is more similar and that you’ve got to hold your client’s hand a little bit more. There’s a lot of preparation that happens with a branding shoot, you got to really understand their… just like you’d need to understand a bride and their wedding day and their vision for their wedding, it’s exactly the same with a branding shoot. You’ve really got to understand them and their brand and talk about location and the feel for their photos and everything.

With families, it’s much more, I feel they’re choosing me for my style. It’s more about me finding out about their children, but that’s just about me photographing the family and capturing that connection. Yeah, branding photography there tends to be a bit more preparation, a bit more hand-holding beforehand as well.

What is your advice for our listeners that are looking to position themselves in the right place, price-wise?

So, pricing. Whoa, that’s a big topic as well, we’ll do all the big topics, I’m trying to condense them into teeny few minutes. You know on our podcast we’ve had loads of episodes just about pricing. I think it comes down to two things if I’m going to try and make it really simple, which is mindset and maths. We all love maths, don’t we, as photographers? So, firstly, maths. You’ve got to do your sums. So many photographers when they come to me for mentoring I’m like, “What did you base your pricing on?” They’re like, “Well, I looked at a few in my area, so-and-so is this, so-and-so… so I’ve slotted myself right in the middle,” or worse, they’re like, “I’ve just gone cheaper because I’m less experienced.” I’m like… the worst thing you can do is base your pricing on a competitor because you have no idea if they’re making a profit, if they’re about to go out of business, if it’s just a hobby, you have no idea. You shouldn’t even really look… I mean, look at their pricing just to get a gauge, but then ignore it.

You’ve got to do your cost of doing business, which isn’t the most, it’s not the sexiest thing for a photographer to do, I know, but you’ve got to sit down and do it. Write everything down and also work out how much you want to earn a month and how many hours you can work a month. There’s so many spreadsheets online if you just Google cost… CODB for photographers. It will give you a magic figure of how much you need to be earning per shoot. Which is quite scary, and whenever I get photographers to do this, they’re like “Ahh! I’ve been charging X and it’s telling me I need to charge triple. I’m never going to be able to do that.” I’m like, “Well, you do, otherwise you haven’t got a sustainable business.” That’s why people end up going out of a business in a few years because they suddenly do their tax return and go, “I would have been better working in a supermarket, what was the point of all that work.” You’ve got to do that to figure out exactly how much you should be charging.

Then, I think the next step is, if that makes you feel comfortable and you feel okay about it, fantastic. Work out how you’re going to get to that figure and go with it. For most people it’s going to make them feel a little bit uncomfortable and they’re going to go, “I just don’t think I can charge that and friends of mine have said it’s too expensive, and I wouldn’t pay that…” and la-la-la, and all these excuses we tell ourselves. That means you’ve got a money mindset issue. Sometimes I say to people, “There’s no point us going through all your pricing and trying to work out packages because you need to figure stuff out here.” Because if you don’t believe it in your heart, if you can’t comfortably say to someone, “My prices are X,” and feel comfortable in that, you got to do some work. You could do a whole six-week course on this, I can’t cover it just in this chat but I would recommend, there’s a couple of books, can I say a couple of books, that would be okay?

It’s called, Get Rich Lucky Bitch by Denise Duffield-Thomas. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it. That’s really good for dealing with money blocks and everything else. Then there’s another one which I think is out fairly recently. I’ve read it on Blinkist but I’ve got the book I need to read, I’ve just read the recap version of it which is called, You’re a… this has got slightly, slight swear word in it, You Are a Badass at Making Money by Jen Sincero. I hope I pronounced the name right.

Which is really good, again goes back to all the money blocks that we have which can stem from childhood and so many different things. I would read one of those books first and then get stuck into doing your pricing if you feel… We all have that, we all have those money blocks, when we go to put our pricing up I don’t think anyone’s like, “Yes!” Everyone’s like, “Ooh, will I get booked again?” I think anyone… I feel like I’m okay with money but I still read these books, just to help myself and to help photographers I work with as well.

How can photographers be aware of their mindset? How can they improve it when it comes to business and personal life?

I honestly think mindset is everything. I mean, it is everything. I would say, and this is just a stab in the dark, I would say that running a thriving photography business is 95% mindset and 5% talent. And I know some people will probably be like, “What? I’m very talented!” But it is. Because if you have the right mindset, you can learn anything. If you have the right mindset, you can improve at anything. If you have the right mindset, you can outsource anything, as we were just talking about.

With that right mindset, you could do anything. And it’s such a small amount that’s actually down to talent. I think a lot… not a lot of photographers, that’s a bit unfair, some photographers have what is known as a fixed mindset. Don’t know if you’ve heard the terms like fixed and growth mindset, and a fixed mindset is the sort of stuff sometimes you see in Facebook groups where they’ll be like, “No one will pay those prices in my area,” or, “Everyone’s better than me, I’m never going to be as good as them.” Things like, “I just had three inquiries, they all ghosted me, aah! What am I going to do?” That’s a fixed mindset where it’s like, “Nothing’s going to get better.” It’s about switching that up so that you make it into a growth mindset.

Say, for example, taking that last one, someone comes to me and they’re like, “I’ve had three inquiries, they all ghosted me, aah! What am I doing wrong?” I’m like, “Well, let’s look at this first. That’s amazing that you had three inquiries this week. Your marketing, you are rocking it, that is fantastic. What’s brilliant now is all we need to work on is the conversion, so we can learn that, right?” That’s a growth mindset, just going, “I’m not so…” Also another thing photographers say is, “I’m crap at marketing. I can’t market myself, I’m rubbish at business.” I’m like, “Well, if you keep saying that, you’re not going go to get better.” What you need to say is, “Do you know what, I’m brilliant at photography and I’m a really creative person, which means I’m sure I can learn marketing. There’s so much information out there.”

If people switched that in their heads and make everything about growth and learning, then you can learn anything. When I see photographers that have succeeded, they’re always the ones with that growth and that positive, optimistic mindset. And I know it’s not easy. We all have down days and times when you’ve got that inner voice going, “You can’t do it, you can’t do it,” we all have that. I have to work on it constantly, I’m naturally quite a positive person but I still have to, I really work at it. You have to work at it. I say to a lot of photographers when they’re talking about all the technical parts, “How am I going to get this right? And should I be doing back button focus?” I’m like, “Actually, if I was going to give you some advice, I would pick up a personal development book rather than a book just about the technicalities of photography,” because that’s going to get you so much further.

Thank you!

Thanks again to you all for joining us and a huge thanks to Vicki for joining us on the show!

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That’s it for me this week, I hope you all enjoyed this episode.

See you soon,

Sally