037: Ben Hartley – Maximise Your Profits, Break Through Limiting Beliefs & Cut The BS.

August 10, 2021

“Keep showing up, consistency is everything.”

BEN HARTLEY

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

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

How do you approach Limiting Beliefs?

Yeah. Gratitude’s a hell of a drug. I feel that’s all I want to say about that. It’s like just getting really curious about the way that our mind works. Getting curious about the thoughts that we have and even getting curious about the limiting beliefs that might pop up. I feel even the idea of limiting beliefs, we just want to crush them and shut them down. And again, I think when we do that, when we resist them, they just keep showing up and they keep showing up bigger and bigger, and then we feel worse and worse about ourselves, and it’s like this perpetual cycle. I think if we can just get really curious about these beliefs and how they may have helped us at some point, where they came from, what results they’re working to get us, because here’s the thing, we’re going on a tangent here, it’s working, the system is working, the thoughts and the beliefs that you have, it’s perfect, meaning it’s working perfectly to get you a result.

And so it’s really getting curious about, well, what is the results that I’m getting? I wonder what I’m getting out of these results, because I’m getting something, right? Or maybe I should say this, what if you were getting something out of the results? What if you were getting something out of these limiting beliefs? Getting really curious about, I wonder what I’m getting out of this. I wonder how this is keeping me safe and protected and beneficial. And if I can start to understand how I’m contributing in some way to keeping these beliefs around, I can take ownership over it. If I can take ownership, I’m no longer a victim to them. They’re no longer controlling my life. I can be like, I’ve been bringing this about, because it’s helped me in this way, in this way, in this way, in this way. But how is it hurting me? What’s the cost that I’m paying?

If I can take ownership over how it’s helped me, but then I can start to look at the other side of the coin, of the cost and I can weigh that and be like, I think I’m ready to set up a new system to get some new results. And gratitude is a great way to start that. It’s a great way to just get curious about things without judgment. It’s like, looks like I had that thought today.

Our brain it only moves towards things. And so even the language that we use and the language that we think it’s all drawing us closer to things. Here’s a great way actually to explain it. I’ll never forget this. It makes me so mad to this day. I was in the fifth grade and I was in home economics class. That’s where they teach you how to keep a house. Right? They teach you how to sew and cook hot pockets in the microwave. It was new year’s resolutions, we went around the room and everyone in the class shared their new year’s resolution. And there was one little kid in the class, don’t remember who it was, but they said my new year’s resolution and listen closely to the words, is to stop cracking my knuckles. Okay?

What I was saying really about the way that our brain, it only moves towards things. It’s a proactive thing. Whatever language we use, we’re going to get more of that thing. And so to stop cracking your knuckles, where’s the focus? The focus is on cracking your knuckles. It’s like I can’t stop thinking about cracking my knuckles now. I’ll never forget to that day, he said, I’m going to stop cracking my knuckles. And I went, and I cracked my knuckles for the first time in my life. And now it’s become a habit of mine. All because someone committed to stop doing it. It’s like my brain, stop thinking about those cute little animals that swing on trees and eat bananas. Stop thinking about those little guys, those little monkeys, right? Stop thinking about them. Don’t think about it right now. It’s like all we can do, it’s like whatever we resist, it just keeps showing up.

And so instead it’s to be actively moving towards things, rather than I’m going to stop doing this, I’m going to move towards gratitude. Right? I’m going to move towards curiosity. I’m going to move towards acceptance. Damn that cow, I want to know who set me on my path for my knuckle cracking habit.

How can photographers maximise their profits?

Yeah. Well, I think there’s a big conversation. If you look at the number one problem that photographers want in this industry, it’s always, I need more leads. I need more inquiries. I need more bookings. Right? I think typically that’s common. The issue is it’s actually not hard to get inquiries per se. I don’t want to belittle it, but there’s all of places that you could essentially go on. I could get inquiries on Fiverr. I could get them on Craigslist. I get them on Bark, or oh man, what is the other bidding war one? Thumbtack. I could get inquiries from all these places. The trick is, I don’t just want any inquiry, I want people who actually see the value in what I do and are willing to actually pay in a way that allows me to have a profitable business.

And so it’s this idea of, how do we get really great inquiries that allow us to maximize our profits? And so one of the ways that we can maximize our profits, I think a lot of times we get really scared about this, because it’s like, you want me to raise my prices, Ben? You don’t know the small town I’m in. You don’t know the competition, the saturation, you don’t know I’ve been in business for six months, I can’t raise my prices, bro. And so while raising prices is a part of the equation, one of the simplest ways to go about raising your prices, or increasing your profits rather, it doesn’t have to be raising your prices. You can increase your profits simply by restructuring the way that you’re even packaging your offerings. For example, so many photographers are just giving away the whole damn ship.

They have three collections and the first one’s whatever. And then the middle one just is like every possible thing ever in the whole world. There’s just some simple things that you can do to restructure these things. You can still start at whatever your number is, right? You can be okay for a little bit. You can still start there, but by removing certain items and instead of just giving them away in or giving the expectation that they’re in the collections, you could offer them as gifts. Right? I think that a lot of people they’ll push back and say, but Ben, I want every single person to have an engagement session. Right? That’s a common one for wedding photographers at least, all good. But what if it wasn’t in your very first collection?

What if it wasn’t in your second collection? What if it was only in your top one? When you were meeting with someone and they couldn’t afford your top one, but they were maybe considering your second or they were hemming and hawing between your first and your second. You could say, listen, I would love to give you an engagement session just to make it a no-brainer. What if we were actually just using these, here’s a gift, I’d love to give this to you. That’s a very basic explanation. But actually if there’s, I don’t know if it’d be all right, there’s a whole free workshop on this, if it’d be okay for me to share.

How to Earn More Money Without Raising Your Prices – benhartley.com/free-workshop-1

If you could start your career all over again, is there anything you would do differently?

Yeah, of course. I like the way you asked the question, because it’s not a regret. It’s just, hey, if you could go back and do something. I think I would just land grab more often. When I say land grab that’s just when new platforms come out, there is an opportunity to excel very quickly on those, to scale rapidly. Right? We’ve seen this with Clubhouse. Saw this with TikTok.

We’ve seen this with Reels. I feel like, here’s the interesting thing, I didn’t do anything with Instagram. I did not grow my business one ounce on Instagram’s back. In an era where everybody did. Right? I just skipped it. I was like, I don’t know, I don’t really want to do that, and I did all the other things. But I think I would have land grabbed far more than I did. That’s what I would have done.

Thank you!

Thanks again to you all for joining us and a huge thanks to Ben 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