Hello and welcome back to the podcast, and this is the last of the 10 K wedding series, and I saved the best for last because obviously this is my favorite one. Drum roll please. The three pricing strategies you need to charge 10 K for weddings. Yes, I've saved the best for last. But before we dive into it, I wanted to announce that if you are on my email list and the wait list, you already seen some glimpses of the rebrand, my new logos, my new program names, everything that I have been working on since the last week of December. It is here and it is out in the open and it feels so good to finally talk about it. But I will just actually make that its own episode where I talk about just everything about the new program, what it's gonna look like, all that other great stuff. But I just wanna say it feels so, so good to talk about it. If you see the Instagram name, it has changed from the wedding, CEO to wedding atelier, and. Yeah, my new profile picture, because I could not resist. It was film, it was full sun. I felt like I had a moment, even though we got kicked outta the people mover, we still pressed on and made really good images. So shout out to my girl Paloma.'cause she really did slay that photo shoot. And she gave it her all, with all eight cameras that she had on her. Oh God bless her. Today is the day it's the 21st. So actually you'll be listening to this tomorrow, but the 21st feels so so good. If you are on the email list and you got the sneak peek and my whole rundown of everything, I'm a, I'm gonna be doing a shout out to every single person that contributed to this rebrand, probably towards the end of this launch. It's'cause we have so much content coming out, so many amazing alumni stories and just so many things. Happening at all at the same time. I was getting overwhelmed about it, and my husband's like, why do you do this to yourself? I always like to blame other people. And then you look in the mirror and you realize, oh, it's me. I'm the problem. I'm the one who came up with the strategy. I'm the one who gave it a crazy deadline and hired so many people and had so many turnarounds for multiple things, but. In the end, although it felt like a beautiful, strategic, chaotic mess, it has come together so beautifully. Me and Sarah Kli are running through this website. She's giving me. Updates every few hours. We're DMing each other, we're sending voice messages, and it's just beautiful. It's just really beautiful to have amazing, ambitious women that I have worked with that have helped me just come up with everything from the strategy to this new brand world that I have created and. I don't know. I just, I'm feeling very thankful. Very thankful. So let's dive into the three pricing strategies you need to charge 10 K weddings. So without further ado, I have to go ahead and mention the number one non-negotiable. And if you haven't even gotten here yet, you better say you better reserve time for this masterclass. It's gonna change your life when you understand just the pricing psychology of everything. But you need to know your bare minimum number. That you have to make in order to stay in business, pay your bills, pay your mortgage, whatever it is that you are paying for, because I know everybody has different lifestyles and different experiences. Maybe some people are married, maybe some people aren't. Maybe some people are about to be married. Maybe living with somebody. But either way, you still need to know your bottom line number. What is that bottom line number? Stop copying off of other people's prices in your area in the industry, and actually look to the data. Look to your own profit versus expenses so that you actually know Hey, even though I feel like, I don't know, this is a big thing, but a lot of photographers say that I cannot charge X because I just don't feel like it's worth it yet. And I'm like, when? When will it be worth it? I have to ask you this question. When will it be worth it to raise your prices? What does feeling worth it really mean? What does that mean? I really wanna know. I wanna know when do you think you have finally arrived to where you can consistently. Be able to compete with inflation. I'm not even talking about your competitor, I'm talking about inflation. Your willingness to survive, your willingness to pay your bills, and contribute to, I don't know, owning your own place, splitting rent with somebody. What does that look like and how much does that cost? I could talk about this forever. Clearly, and that's just like the number one thing. Like before I even wanna talk about your prices, I wanna know, okay, how much do you actually need to make in order to survive a year? How much does this business actually have to bring in every single year? And then we can figure out how many weddings you need to book at what price, but I can't even get there if I don't even know what you need. You know what I mean? It's help me to help you, to help the business. And then the next part about it is gonna be your pricing, obviously. And we're gonna come up with a couple of things together and figure out what that looks like and what price range are you looking to achieve. Because some people will say I'm charging 5K, but I really wanna charge seven K. I know I can do that. Some people have no pricing drama. They're just like, I just need the strategy. I just need to know how to do it without. Just tripling it and losing my mind and granted I get it. I do. So really understanding about, okay, I wanna raise my prices to this price. I wanna raise my packages to this price. I. Why I need to do that. Now, the part about it is how, and I'm going to say through your positioning, the way that you position your packages is telling people exactly how they need to buy from you, or that they don't need to buy from you. Did you know if your price is too cheap, but yet you've been in the business for five to seven years longer than two to three years, and your prices are still at three K, or you're charging below that? People are going to think you started yesterday. Okay high-end couples are not gonna deal with the competitive average market pricing. They want the best, they want somebody who knows how to use their flash. They want someone who knows how to photograph in any lighting scenario in any situation, has at least a hundred plus weddings under their belt. And you don't want them getting on a call drilling you because they don't trust that you are professional enough or you're capable enough to capture their wedding day. And that's a lot of the times like this is, I'm just gonna go on a tangent, but that's a lot of the times that I'll have my students be like they came on the call and they were just asking me a bunch of questions. And I'm like, because you didn't answer their questions before you got on the call. Every single thing that you do in this business is going to be intentional the way you position your images, the way your messaging talks about those images and talks about your experience, like every single thing builds on each other. It's those tiny little details that compound together to build a business that says she is an expert wedding photographer and worth the X amount of price that she charges. And I'm just gonna say seven k plus minimum. Like I wanna get to a point where we're not all in the C of three to 5K. And trying to outdo each other. I think it's time to rise above and a lot of things that people don't know about, just in general in the market, in society, in business, anything to do with like purchasing goods and services is that there is no competition at the top. Really, the competition is all at the bottom where everybody's scared to raise their prices, where everybody is the average. So when they're booking a call with you, they have 20 photographers in their wedding tabs. Going through and trying to see the difference about why they should choose you. I don't want you to be in the average market anymore. I'm sure there are photographer coaches and mentors that teach you how to do that. That's not me. Like I, no, I feel like. We only have so much time in this world, so much time with our family and our friends, and if you've ever experienced something as deep as grief and loss, then you will know that once that loss happens, the way that you spend your time is going to be different the way you think about life. Is gonna be different and you're gonna be thinking to yourself, I wish I had more time with this person. I wish I traveled more. I wish I saw the world more. Or maybe like you're getting to like your mid to late twenties and you feel like, whoa, wait a minute. Life is passing me by. All I do is work and I'm not living at all. What is the point in making six figures with 30 plus weddings and being mentally destroyed and burned out all the time? What is the point? What is the point? Always staying in hustle mode. I can speak to this because I lived this and I wouldn't wish it on anybody, but as wedding photographers, we do this because we get stuck staying in the same prices thinking we can't raise them thinking that we'll break our business because nobody's gonna pay that they will. There's people in every single pricing market. I guarantee you, let's talk about somebody who's like super famous, but I think HOSA V now is charging at least 20 to 30 K for weddings. So there is a market at every price point, but are you willing to get over yourself? Are you willing to listen to all these mindset episodes? I have been trickling about to get you ready to raise your prices? Are you willing to put that aside and just jump and not knowing what's gonna happen? Because worst case scenario, you get back to the drawing board and you make tweaks. That's the worst thing that's gonna happen. The best thing that's gonna happen is that you actually book weddings at this higher pricing, and for the price of one wedding would've been two weddings for you last year, maybe three weddings for you last year. And you're gonna be able to look back and be like, oh my gosh, I'm so glad I made those changes today. Because maybe you're booking 2026 weddings and you already know they're too cheap, and you're like, oh my gosh. Like I already know that I'm gonna regret driving to these weddings next year. Why are you building a business like that? We should be striving for more. We should get uncomfortable. Fear is a sign that you're doing something new. That's really it. Fear is just your mind, protecting yourself from getting hurt. But what if you're not gonna get hurt? And I'm just challenging you here. In terms of mindset, what if everything is not gonna fall apart? What if your business doesn't fail as somebody who tripled their prices in a year? It can be done. It really can be done with something as simple as pricing. Now, of course there's gonna be pricing psychology, the way that you do your numbers, the way that you include everything in those packages, but also the positioning, the way that you're able to talk about it, the way you present it, the way you're telling them to buy from you, and you don't have to have multiple packages. I hear so many people saying I don't want packages. I just want a flat rate, because my non-negotiable is a 10 hour day. Okay you can do that. You can do whatever you want, right? You don't have to have packages if you don't want to. If you don't want three, you can just have two. I have tons of students who book with two packages. I have students who made their a la carte one package and they can add on everything as they see. And because they're able to communicate the value, the couples trust them. They said, yeah, we want you and this is what we want. They're adding on more. Than what they thought they were going to invest because they saw the value, because of the way the positioning was set, maybe because of the way that everything was included or not included. All of these things play a huge role in you being able to raise your prices confidently. Though I think the confident part comes and just knowing what to do and knowing that not everything is gonna work out, but it's okay. You can try something new. I challenge you to think about new ways of doing something new that maybe you haven't heard of before, maybe something you haven't tried. And I always say if you get this gut feeling that you're like, I don't wanna do things that way. I wanna do it this way. Maybe you're playing to your strengths. Maybe it's I'm really good at this, or maybe I want all of my couples to have an album. Okay. We need to position your prices to accommodate that and make sure that you're not losing money. So many times I have students losing money in their middle package because their first package is the most profitable. I don't want that. I want every single package, if you have multiple packages to play upon each other, and the profit should also be increasing, not decreasing because you have everything in the kitchen sink for three K, 4K. No, it shows me that you have a little bit of a scarcity mindset, and so you're charging, so like the packages are so close in price range because you don't know what you're doing, and that's what it says to me. Now. Maybe I have been in this long enough to where I can spot it a mile away. Maybe your couples don't notice. But as somebody who shops quite frequently you notice the price positioning and the price will tell you how to think about all the other prices in the store, right? And maybe you're comparing the two, but being like, no, I like this jacket'cause it has gold buttons. Instead of brown buttons, I'm willing to pay extra for the gold, right? That is how people think about pricing. And so the same thing goes for your wedding packages. And I'm just gonna say it, 90% of the pricing audits I reviewed we're either too cheap, too expensive, and not even creating value in their packages. I would look and say to myself, the lowest package actually looks better to me. The lowest package has everything I need. Why in the world would I get the middle? I don't have to. I'm good. Everything I need is for three K. Why do I need the middle package? I'm paying an extra 1500 for another hour or two. Like I'm good. I have everything. And so when you understand how to position your pricing in a way that is appealing to couples and appealing to buyers, in a sense, you will position them in a way that causes them to invest higher, because when you see the value in something, when you feel like, okay, this actually makes sense, I'm willing to pay for that. I'm already invested. She already has all of this going for her. I know that I'm gonna get this result from her work. I know I'm gonna get this. She has this much experience, like she, they're already invested. Up to this point in you specifically and what you presented to them. But now that they're not going anywhere, yeah, they're willing to invest more.'cause now they see the value in you as the photographer. And this will change absolutely everything that you do inside of your business. Once you figure out your bare minimum pricing, once you gain the confidence to talk about it on the call, to talk about it in email. Once you're able to position it in a way of being like, no, you, this is what you're getting. This is not a market. Okay? We're not comparing peaches and oranges. I dunno, that's a thing, but it's gonna change everything. It's like going from artist to CEO and I am doing a training about that actually in our new program, wedding Atelier, I love saying it, now, I can say it, but inside of Wedding Atelier, we're gonna be having a series of. Act like an artist. Think like a CEO plan, like a millionaire, because why not? Why not just go for the million? But really just building those steps of being like, okay, I am a business owner. I am an artist, I am a photographer. I'm incredible. Whatever you need to tell yourself, okay, whatever your mom is telling you, your grandma, listen, I support you, but now it's time to get to work. Now it's time to build this business. So this isn't a hobby, so this isn't a side hustle anymore. Like you wanna make big girl money, so let's do it. But here's the thing, if you can't position your prices in a way that actually appeals to their couples, they're gonna book someone else. Every time I had somebody send me a message saying it's not my pricing. I already know that's not it. I just need to market more. And so they were explaining to me this recent inquiry they had, and she was like, yeah they were looking at me and they were looking at someone else. They ended up booking with somebody else at a higher price point. And I'm like, that is your pricing. Because for some reason they saw the value in somebody else. But they said with you it was budget, but it wasn't actually budget because they spent more than their budget on somebody else. Something was not clicking, or maybe they thought you were an amateur and they weren't willing to invest high ticket in an amateur. So all of the things that go in with buyer types. Pricing, sales, psychology, all of these things come together to really curate this one of a kind high end experience. But you have to make sure you're hitting every single point, like everything you present to the website, to the pictures that you post, that represent what you want to shoot more of to your messaging to your personal brand. All of these pieces fit together like a perfect puzzle to create the most successful and profitable wedding photography business in the world. Let's just say that. Okay, so do you really need more inquiries or do you need to position your packages in a way that appeals to high end clients? I had this client join recently who had an amazing, incredible brand. Everything looks beautiful and high end, but for some reason she just could not book weddings. She couldn't book the weddings, but everything looked so good like on paper, right? If you go on her website, you're like, oh my gosh, she's a luxury photographer, but she was charging six k. Starting. And she said, I couldn't even book that. She's it was hard just to get them to even think that it was worth the six K. And I was like, we gotta get on a call. So she enrolled within 48 hours. And when you enroll in 48 hours, our bonus is that you get a one-on-one call with me and I rip apart anything you want me to. And so we worked on that and her pricing and then figuring out what she wants to include, what she doesn't wanna include. And I said, okay, we're just gonna do this. Just try it if it doesn't work. Then we'll change it again. You can always message me inside of the program and we'll work on it. And she immediately had another inquiry at 12 K and booked it. And that's why it's so important to have this under your belt because you wanna be in a place where you know you can make small tweaks here and there, and book your next wedding. Just from repositioning your prices alone, and I think this is something actually a lot of people don't talk about, but I've never really had too much pricing, drama, and I felt like I was always in a good place when I was getting tons of inquiries and I was booking tons of weddings. That's when I was like, okay, I can raise my prices. So I would always act on that while I was still in that mood. But when there's no inquiries, I get it. It's so hard. You're like if there's crickets in my inbox, and then everybody who does get on a call with me says, you're too expensive. That doesn't even make sense to raise your prices. But then I look at them and I'm like, okay, but your prices are ranged. I, your prices are ranged from 5K to 15 k. I don't even know where to begin. And also you're speaking to four different. Clientele at once. At once, and so that's so overwhelming. People don't even know where to start. And I'm just giving you experience from all the pricing audits I have done in the past few months. It is either people undercharging, overcharging, or having too many options to where they had pricing fatigue and they were like, I don't know what to do. I don't even know what I want anymore. I just want my wedding captured. And so you have to be able to guide your couples in this experience. And don't just give them a pricing guide that's 15 pages long with five different packages and be like, pick your favorite one. That's just not, that's just not how it goes. And like when you think about a high-end experience, when you go to any, like any nice. Maybe a luxury store from the beginning. They're gonna greet you. They're gonna say, is there anything you need help with? And maybe they'll tell you something that they have that's new or maybe they won't, and they'll leave you to your own shopping. So if you're listening to this episode. You still have a little bit of time to RSVP for my live masterclass, and how to book 10 K weddings this year, because I'm gonna be going over the three tools that you need to make sure that this happens and I'm gonna show you how easy it is and how I've also helped my students do the same thing. Because once you have these three tools perfectly in place, the last part is selling. And when you're able to serve your couples on the call, it's gonna be the easiest part because you can stand confidently behind what you've built, you know that your worth is invaluable, so you're not tied to your work and worth. In the same way you know how much you need to make to stay in business. You know how much you need to make to pay your bills, and you know how you're gonna build the most iconic brand in the industry when you are confident. That's when selling becomes easy. And if you are nervous about talking about your package, if you're nervous to sell on a call, if you are just nervous, that means your confidence is lacking somewhere, which means one of these tools are lacking in terms of your brand positioning. Your marketing positioning and your pricing, right? And so something is missing in those three and being able to be so for real with yourself and be like, what is the problem? I need to figure out the solution so I can book this next wedding, because time is of the essence my dear. That's what I'm gonna ask you and I'm gonna leave you with on this episode today is what tools are you missing that you know you need to work on? Go ahead and feel free to write it out. Write out what's working, what's not working. Are you getting inquiries? Are you getting dream couples? If not, why not? Right inside of the wedding Atelier, we give you our sales tools that are gonna help you not only book your next wedding, but at your highest package, or with them adding on extras, which is a goal. And this tool alone is what a wedding atelier is known for. My art of yes sales script, and they scream it from the rooftops, but it's also helped over 50 plus alumni make 2.5 million inside of this program using this one tool. So if you're ready to join us before it's too late, you can either enroll now, if you're listening after the masterclass, or you can RSVP for the masterclass. There will be a replay. But if you don't come live. You're not getting the pricing audits replay. I'm gonna actually clip those out at their own discretion because whoever comes live gets a pricing audit. If you're not coming live, the replay will have that part cut out. But you will get to listen to everything that's included. And of course, my marketing campaign update, I'm gonna do Barbie versus Wicked. You know me, I love a masterclass. I love to Yap. Yap. And that's why I have a podcast. All right, I will see you in the next episode, and I cannot wait to see you if you're gonna come live on my masterclass. Have an amazing week and we'll chat soon. Bye.