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Welcome back to our three-part luxury positioning series In this episode,

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we're gonna dive into the positioning shift from 3 to 5 to 7K weddings to 10K and beyond the three main gaps that are holding you back from just showing up tomorrow and charging 10K for a wedding is your visibility, your positioning, and your confidence. So let's start with visibility. Visibility is just being seen. It's just being seen. It is the way you show up. It is how consistent you show up. It's if you show up at all. Visibility just comes down to one problem: marketing. And If you are marketing, then you're getting inquiries. If you're not then you're not. And so I get questions in my DMs, I get students coming on calls, and they're like what do I do if I'm not getting inquiries?" And I always say, "Are you marketing?" yeah, sometimes. It's hard." And I'm like why is it hard?" and so we get to the root of the problem, and the visibility problem is always positioning. So positioning is actually the answer to a visibility problem. Now, here's why. Because when you are completely aligned with your message, then you're gonna shout it from the rooftops, it's essentially gonna be in your bones, engraved inside of you. If you're obsessed with your couples, if you're obsessed with the weddings that you're shooting, you're gonna talk about it, and you're gonna talk about it constantly. You're never gonna run out of things to talk about. You're never gonna run out of creativity. You're never gonna run out of things to post. But if you don't know the answer to any of those questions, then you overthink or you don't show up, and then life happens and you really don't show up. And so guess what happens? Your inbox just dries up like the desert, and no inquiries means no bookings. No bookings means no business. It means side hustle. It means, what am I doing this for? And then it comes down to the question of, do I still want to have this business? But a visibility problem is fixed when you understand why you're not marketing, it's your website, it's social media, it's your SEO, it's your Google search presence. networking in the industry, collabing with other vendors, reaching out to past clients, talking to your loyal clients. All of these things are your visibility and I'm not coming from a high horse, because I struggled with this exact thing, except my issue was, is I just copied what everybody was doing. And then it got me bookings, and then I kind of got bored, and then changed my identity again. I shifted my identity so many times, I didn't even know what I was shooting, and I didn't even know why. But when I figured out why I do this, and my messaging was clear, I just talked about it every day. I shared things to my stories that was relevant to that couple. I would post two to three times a week, and it was always aligned with my messaging. And then, when I knew what my messaging was, that's how I curated my portfolio. My portfolio only spoke to people that wanted those pictures. I put out what I wanted to receive. We say that all the time in the industry. Put out what you want to get. That holds true, but do you like what you're getting? If not, it's time to adjust all of these things. I've been there. I am a recovering serial rebrander. But after I locked in my messaging, I never shifted my brand again. You don't have to, because ultimately it's what you're passionate about. You're going to figure out who your version of a luxury client is. And spoiler alert, it's probably just the wealthy version of you, like I say all the time And so some of the questions that I get is, "I need to be in a bigger city. I'm from a small town. How can I get bookings if I live in the middle of nowhere?" then you pick a city, right? You pick a city there where you want to establish your marketing, and then go crazy. So we had a student, Meg, who moved to a brand-new state and joined Wedding Atelier because she's "I'm actually starting from scratch. I have zero leads, zero connections. I don't know anybody here. I don't know how I'm gonna get bookings. I'm actually terrified." And so what we did was we worked on her messaging first, and then we decided where she wanted to market and how often. We made her marketing plan, she executed, and she made 127K in her first year in a new state because of her visibility. Because her visibility and her messaging helped her book six figures in a year it doesn't matter where you live or where you come from. Can you market? That's the question. Can you market? Can you talk about your business every single day can you pick where you wanna show up consistently? Then you can get bookings no matter where you are. You just have to decide. Make the decision, put a plan in place, and execute And now she's booking weddings anywhere from 6 to 8K. After moving again, she decided, "I think I wanna do destination." I said, "Let's go. Let's do it. I'm all in." she did an aligned, gorgeous rebrand. We looked through the website, the photos, her brand words, everything, to make sure everything was aligned with exactly what it is she wanted to put out. She knows herself so well now that she didn't even need help with her artist story. She was just like, "Hey, this is what I know I want. Do my photos align with that?" And the answer was yes. I only gave her three-minute feedback. She's off and away, living her best dream, and I have to say, her rebrand is probably the most aligned thing to her personality that I've ever seen, and it's unlike anything else. Because the photographers that are steadily booked are not blending in with anyone else. They are just unapologetically themselves, and that's what keeps you incomparable. We know the illustrious clients are gonna have a bunch of websites open into different tabs, but if you're presenting something completely different, it piques their interest. And high-end couples want exclusivity, that's why every time the regular people come on a trend, they do something different, because they want exclusivity. Exclusivity is luxury Another question I hear is, "I don't wanna serve luxury clients. I don't know if I'll ever be able to break into the industry, because I need to have planners. I need to have vendors." Yes, that's great make those connections as you go along, your brand has to show up and communicate premium before they ever reach out. You can't just wait for people to find you. You can't just wait for the right answer. You just have to take action The photographer's waiting to be introduced to the right planner before they raise their prices, before they update everything. You have it backwards. Raise your positioning first, and then the network will follow. Just like one of my students, Michaela, who really wanted to have a partnership with a wedding planner, and she was at the 6K pricing, and she's "Nobody wants to work with me. I'm so scared to DM people. I don't know what to say." And we came up with a plan, and I said, "You know what? Just keep showing up. And don't be afraid to reach out because you're confident. You're confident in this rebrand. You're confident in your client experience and what you have to offer. Your clients are obsessed with you. You've made all these investments. They would love to work with you. It's just a mindset shift. Luxury vendors want to work with me." And since doubling, tripling her prices, now she's charging 10K starting. She has partnered with a wedding planner, and she's living her best dream with her gorgeous, elevated rebrand that is completely aligned. You gotta take that first step and the positioning if you just take the first step, everything else will follow Another thing I hear is, "Oh, my portfolio isn't luxury yet." I can't raise my prices because my portfolio isn't luxury yet. I haven't gone to this shootout, this retreat, this workshop that I had planned in Como, Italy. The portfolio problem is actually rooted in a curation problem. It's not always a quality problem. Half the time, you guys are all incredible photographers. You know how to capture weddings. You know what lighting to be in, you know what lens to use. That's not the problem. Most photographers have luxury-level images already buried in your galleries that you probably just don't wanna shift through right now, 'cause you know it's gonna take time. But they haven't curated them intentionally. And so inside inside Wedding Atelier, we have a specific best-of-imagery curation process that actually solves this in 30 minutes or less, not hours, not weeks, and definitely not years Another question I get, "I've raised my prices, and then nobody booked, so I just lowered them." Listen, you can't just raise your prices. Yes, I talk about raising them, but there's a whole process that comes after that. You're not just raising them because, "Oh, I think it would be really nice to charge 6,500 I'm gonna do that. Oh, that booking said I was too expensive. I'm going back to 5K." No. Stop doing that Raising your prices without changing the positioning of your business is why it didn't stick in the first place. Price isn't the first thing you need to change, okay? Your high-end pricing is a number you need to keep in the back of your mind. But just remember, your artist story, your website, your marketing, they're all working together so that when you raise your prices, you can confidently stand behind them. It's not risky. It's not, "Oh, I hope somebody books." No, I put in the work. I put in the messaging, the curation, the portfolio. Everything is lined up ready to go. I'm marketing all the time. Everything is aligned. Everything works together, and now it feels like a reflection of what's already true. Now I feel like I can stand behind these prices And the last thing I hear is I'm not getting inquiries, so why would I raise my prices if I'm not getting inquiries?" Because, my dearest friend, if you're anywhere from that 6 to 8K range and you're trying to make it work, stop trying to make fetch happen. It's not going to happen That means there are some tiny tweaks, whether it's in your sales process, your customer process, your confident process, maybe the way you're presenting your prices isn't even elevated. Maybe your portfolio's outdated. Maybe your messaging isn't saying anything and they're just looking for a good deal, but you know that your work is worth well beyond 5K, but you keep sticking around the 5K 'cause it feels safe A quiet inbox isn't a dead inbox. Your audience is receiving the wrong message or no particular message at all. Be clear. Be specific. When the message shifts to speak directly to one specific person's situation, people come out of the woodwork, and the photographers inside of Wedding Atelier are booking premium weddings from audiences of just a few thousand followers on Instagram Every single hesitation, every single question you have is always a positioning problem in disguise. Not, the market is saturated problem," not, "I'm not talented enough problem." It's a positioning problem. But good news, because this is the one thing that's actually within your control to fix right now with what you already have In the last episode, I'm actually gonna walk you through exactly what that shift looks like in practice and what the gap actually is between a 3K portfolio and a 10K portfolio, what luxury clients are actually evaluating when they find you, And what Wedding Atelier does to help you close that gap faster than anything you could ever do alone. But you already know, the link is in the show notes and also the link to DM me. I can't wait to hear from you, and I'll see you in the next episode