I know there's a lot of bad news in the world right now,
but the good news is Arby's is still open. That's not good news.
Taylor Jackson shooting 67 weddings last year. Jackson,
you are well known in this community are an amazing photographer.
Okay,
so as I'm sure you're experiencing it is a bit of a hard time right now in the
wedding photography industry.
I'm here today to talk to you about something that's actually positive and
specifically positive and maybe the most once in a lifetime moment.
If you're just trying to get into wedding photography right now or if you really
want to up your weddings from something like maybe one or two or three or five
weddings a year to something like 40 50 60 80 120 Ryan Brenizer is the only guy
that I know that shoots like 120 weddings a year cause he shoots in New York
city and you can shoot weddings Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday,
Saturday, Sunday. And I say to that,
Ryan Brenizer, you're wild and crazy
being some pretty exciting news actually that Arby's is still open.
Nobody's excited about that except I guess there's,
there's like five cars in line for the drivers.
Sure.
Arby's, nifty, awesome. Arby's,
great camper. Great job, Taylor. Thank you.
I dunno. It's a bit weird. I can't turn cause my wheel is my tripod.
You know what? Let's not drive anywhere today. We'll just, we'll just,
we'll just talk to in the car off, just just,
just my steering wheel moves when you turn the ignition off.
I guess if you are a wedding photographer right now,
it might seem like the absolute worst season of all seasons in the history of
wedding photography and quite honestly, you're probably right.
2008 was not nearly this bad.
2008 and I guess nine 11 if you were a wedding photographer way back then and
that was still would've been in the film days,
which is a whole level of stress that I would never want to submit myself to
2008 well there were a lot of people that were unable to have the weddings that
they wanted. I was building my business in 2008 and I just, it was,
it was kind of fine. I had no real problems.
I guess I also didn't really know any better, so maybe I don't,
I don't know if that's officially advice. Anyways,
this time is a heck of a lot different because events are physically unable to
happen.
It's not just the few effected that are not able to have the weddings that they
wanted to hire, the wedding photographers that they wanted,
but it is essentially that all events everywhere in the world are canceled and I
was having a conversation with Marsha last night and he is in the rental,
I guess the staging business.
He makes concerts happen and he says that realistically they're looking for kind
of an October relaunch into business and um,
right now the concert business as you can imagine is also equally as impacted as
the wedding industry and for them planning in October start is really,
because it's currently April right now it's April, may, June, July, October.
That's not how months ago.
It's many months away and it makes me feel a little bit nervous as a wedding
photographer with a lot of weddings. What I see happening already.
I've already had I think 18 weddings move.
I'll do the math and I'll make that maybe the title.
I feel like that's an important thing to understand that everyone in the wedding
photography industry,
regardless of where you're at in your career is being very impacted by this
situation.
What is happening specifically to me and the way that somebody that might not
have as many weddings I have,
I think I had 50 weddings ish booked for this year and realistically over half
of them are probably going to move into 2021 and then some of them are probably
going to move later into 2020 and some of them might even just decided to elope
and have an entirely different wedding from what they ever planned on doing and
basically here's the situation. All of my weddings are,
a significant number of my weddings are now postponing to 2021 I already had a
lot of 2021 dates booked,
which means a lot of them are selecting dates based on venue availability that
I'm not currently available for, which means they're,
they have to go to other photographers and we have a small group set up and
we're kind of trying to work with our couples and make it as best as we possibly
can on them.
We're transferring their deposits and we're trying to do the right thing.
If you're in the business right now and you are not letting people transfer and
you're keeping their deposits,
you're going to have a hard time moving forward in the future when word gets out
about how rough you were during this situation.
So I think it's important to be nice to people and understand that they're quite
impacted by the fact that they had to restructure and replan their entire
wedding day into a month or a year that they had not planned on or anticipated.
And it is crazy stressful.
This is the biggest event that probably all of your couples have ever actually
planned.
And for it to just all go awry this year for us it's like kind of a big deal
cause it's our business,
but for them it's the thing that they've been looking forward to and the thing
that they've been,
they've been putting all their money and resources and time into and now it's
just not going to happen as they wanted. So, so be nice to people overall.
But because of all these dates moving,
it means that there's going to be more weddings happening in 2021 then there
have ever been happening in any other calendar wedding year with the exception
of maybe the date of Oh eight Oh eight Oh eight or Oh seven Oh seven Oh seven
those days were absolutely wild,
but moving into 2021 there is essentially going to be double the volume of
weddings that would normally happen in a year happening.
And what this means for you if you're just getting into the industry is that
there are so many opportunities because every other photographer in your city is
going to be booked.
So maybe those opportunities aren't going to be rolling in right this minute.
But by January of next year,
people are going to be pretty desperate to find a photographer.
And if they find you and you're available and you take good photos,
they're going to be very happy to hire you.
So I think this year it is critically important.
One to really just make your web presence as great as it can possibly be to,
to really just create a web presence.
And that means all of your social media and every point of contact that anyone
could ever come in contact with to really attract your ideal couples and your
ideal clients.
So that when people find you that they know that you're the photographer,
that they're not going to be interviewing 20 other people or they're not going
to email you and they're going to ghost out because they were just looking for
pricing.
But they're going to know you're the photographer and when you are available
they're going to be over the moon excited. And now the second part of the,
of the good news is that every other photographer is going to run out of people
to refer to. So if you are in their friend circle, if you are able to say, Hey,
still got availability,
there's a pretty good chance that they're going to start referring work to you
and fill up your schedule.
So if you're a wedding photographer and you're just like [inaudible],
you just got laid off and you're upset,
you don't want ever want to work for anyone ever again,
this is going to be your year and it might be a bit of kind of a time delay to
actually making money and to making it full time. Uh,
it is a challenging time and there's going to be a lot of, uh,
things that we can all learn together going forward.
So subscribe to this channel if you're not subscribed.
So I'll be talking about at least all of my take on everything moving forward
though there is going to be a massive volume of weddings happening,
2021 and what that means is that there's going to be even more competition in
2022 so you gotta knock 2021 out of the ballpark as far as just creating your
own marketing materials and creating all the video content that you want and
creating all the social content that you want to really kind of amplify what you
do in that time to be the photographer, the,
the number one photographer in your local area moving into 2022, uh,
when everything's going to become increasingly more oversaturated and really,
really difficult to actually be successful in. So if you're looking at 2021 is,
has your first year being full time,
I think that you are in the correct mindset right now.
If you're looking at maybe 2020 is your first year full time, it's gonna be,
it's gonna be a rough year. And I'm not gonna lie to you,
it's gonna be a rough year for all of us myself. Lindsey, my wife, uh,
all of our friends that are in the wedding industry, it's,
it's really something that we've never experienced before and we've never had to
deal with before. So, uh, know that you're not alone in this.
If you are an established professional, uh,
if you are an established professional,
know that there's going to be a lot of people coming up on you in 2021 when
there's just so many weddings happening. So be aware of that.
Be be ahead of that and really know that you're gonna have to make 20,
21 your best year ever in order to be successful and to continue to be
successful in 2022. So 2021 golden opportunity, 2020,
building your portfolio as soon as it's safe to do so.
Get out there and build your own dream portfolio.
Don't wait for it to come to you. If you're trying to get second shooting jobs,
that's going to be a slow and annoying process to do.
But if you're just going to go out there and you're just gonna build your own
dream portfolio and you're going to start doing work for free for the clients
that you want to be working for. And that means finding your friends as couples.
So I feel like most of our ideal clients should probably be our friends.
I find it the easiest to just market specifically to,
to myself as an individual. Um,
I don't really know how to market to somebody that makes like $8 million a year
somewhere out in California.
But I do know how to market to somebody that is exactly like me.
So market to your own best friends and to market to yourself.
Write copy that connects with you and connects with your significant other and
you'll be on the correct road. We're in the parking lot like we are today.
Thanks. Joining me in the car today, we're going to, uh, head home now.
Had some things that I had to pick up around town and uh,
going from the car quarantine back to the home quarantine.
And that's all for today. If you, uh, have not heard yet.
I've announced it 100 million times by now and you're probably sick of hearing
about it but April 11th is the last day that you can actually get all of my
courses, all of my wedding photography courses, book more weddings,
2020 introvert's guide to posing pricing documents, my contract, everything,
everything that I've ever made on the internet,
it's in front of you right now is available for only $30.
So if you sign up for patron for one month,
you can cancel after that month or I guess within that month you'll never be
charged again if you want.
I hope you stick around though cause there's going to be so much to come over
20,
20 cause this is a wild year and really just kind of figuring it all out now and
trying to process everything in a way that makes sense for anyone that's in the
mindset of growing their business or just upset that they got fired or laid off
because of the situation.
And you never want to be at the mercy of someone else again.
So if you're interested in making wedding photography,
your full time jobs specifically in 2021, there is a ton of content over there,
the hundreds of hours of stuff probably. Um,
I haven't really counted but I'm going to ballpark that. It's probably,
I should do that. I'm going to say it's like 400, 500 hours of content,
maybe more. I don't know. It's a lot. You don't have to go through it all.
You can search for what you're actually interested in learning.
But I would recommend that you start with book more weddings 2020 cause it is.
Um, it is a guide and overarching guide to absolutely everything.
And I think when it kinda comes down to it,
even though we're in a little bit of a pause right now in 2020 that even if you
Mark it hard, you're probably not going to be booking a lot.
If you have all of the tools ready to go in the summer,
maybe September one things really kind of start to turn around a little bit.
You really will make 20, 21 the best year of your life.
And the cool thing with wedding photography is that the time that you invest now
and the money that you invest now in growing your business over time,
it actually pays off for the rest of your life rather than if you work really
hard for somebody else right now and they make a bunch of more money.
Like if you're working in an office job and you hit your sales quota and your
boss makes an extra a hundred K next year,
you're not going to see a whole lot of that.
But if you put the time in right now,
you can quite easily make $100,000 in wedding photography next year.
And I know that might sound a little crazy,
but it really is a thing and so many people on Patriot have taken their
businesses really from absolute zero to six figures pretty quickly.
Like within one to like three years is kind of the ballpark that I'm usually
seeing.
But if you put everything in play and you really kind of focus and stay in your
lane, you really can get a lot done in a couple of years,
or even just one year if you're just actively in control of everything you're
doing. So thanks for watching today.
Don't forget to subscribe and I will see you again on another time on this
channel. Again, my tripod is my steering wheel,
so I can't really drive, but uh, thanks for watching.
We're not going to go to Arby's, I promise. I promise. No, Arby's.
We went camping one time and I brought Nick Arby's and he wasn't happy with
that.
Arby's. Nick, do you want some Arby's?