Episode 35 - Stop Saying You Capture Memories

Episode 35 - Stop Saying You Capture Memories

Adam: I wanna start today by, uh, painting of a picture, and I'm warning you now for a huge chunk of our listeners, especially the creative professionals of photographers.
Sarah: Hmm.
Adam: This is gonna feel, well, let's just call it visceral.
Sarah: Visceral is definitely the right word. We're going right for the nerve ending today.
Adam: Okay? So a picture of this, you've just finished editing a gallery. You've been at the computer for hours, maybe even days. You've got your coffee, you're scrolling through and you look at the screen with this, just this swelling sense of pride. Because objectively the work is undeniable.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Adam: The lighting is cinematic.
Adam: The composition's perfect. The emotion is raw. You look at it and you think, okay. This is it. This is the level where the calendar should be full.
Sarah: It's that moment of creative peak. You feel like you've finally cracked the code on the art itself. You've mastered the craft.
Adam: Exactly. You feel invincible.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Adam: But then you tab over to your inbox uhoh and it's quiet. Or you know, maybe there are a few inquiries, but they're lukewarm. You get the classic, Hey, how much you charge, you reply. Heart pounding a little and then ghosted
Sarah: Danish. Yeah,
Adam: and that is the most frustrating disconnect in the entire industry.
Adam: It's the silence that follows all that effort.
Sarah: And it triggers the spiral, doesn't it? You sit there and start thinking, is the market saturated? Is it the economy? Do I need to buy that new mirrorless body to compete?
Adam: Oh, totally. Maybe if I had better bo of a book,
Sarah: we immediately look for external excuses or we blame the gear.
Sarah: It's a classic defense mechanism. You know, if we can blame the economy, we don't have to look at our own business strategy,
Adam: but today we are diving into a stack of resources that suggests the problem isn't your camera, it isn't the economy, and here is the kicker. It isn't even your photography.
Sarah: The problem is your language.
Adam: It's your language.
Sarah: It's a fascinating premise and honestly, a bit of a relief once you get it. We're unpacking insights from Matthew Jordan Smith today. He's a heavy hitter, world renowned celebrity photographer, Nikon ambassador and host of the Photography Breakthrough Podcast.
Adam: And his core argument is that we're basically talking ourselves out of a sale.
Sarah: We are accidental experts at it because of the words on our website, in our emails, in our captions, Smith calls this whole process a verbal audit, and I have to warn everyone up front. He warns us too. This is probably gonna sting a little.
Adam: Oh, I definitely felt that sting reading through this. It's uncomfortable because he's basically saying, your work is great, but your mouth is losing you money.
Sarah: That's a blunt way to put it. Yeah. But yeah, the central idea here is that uncertainty kills bookings. A potential client lands on your page and feels even, uh, like a microsecond of confusion about what they're getting or why it matters. They don't click book.
Adam: They click back.
Sarah: Yeah.
Adam: And they're gone.
Sarah: They're gone.
Adam: So let's diagnose this. What are we actually doing wrong? Because I look at a lot of photography websites and they all seem. I don't know. Nice. They seem friendly.
Sarah: That's exactly the problem. They're nice, they're safe. Smith identifies a whole category of phrases that he says are basically business poison, precisely because they are so common.
Sarah: He calls it fluff.
Adam: Give us the greatest hits. What are the main offenders?
Sarah: Okay, you've got capturing memories. I love working with families. Let's create magic. Timeless images.
Adam: Wait, hold on a second. Capturing memories. That's literally the job description. Why is that? Poison.
Sarah: It is what they do, but it's a commodity phrase.
Sarah: Oh. I mean, if you and a photographer down the street and a college student with an iPhone are all capturing memories, how does the client distinguish between you
Adam: Price? That's the only variable left.
Sarah: Bingo. You force them to price shop. When the language is identical, the only thing that's different is the dollar sign.
Sarah: Smith argues that capturing memories is just vague. It could mean in a blurry selfie, it could mean a vanity fair, spread it. It doesn't convey any real value,
Adam: so it's filler. It's what you write when you don't know what else to say. It's like a chef saying, I cook food.
Sarah: Yes. That's a great analogy.
Adam: Well, I hope so.
Sarah: Yeah.
Adam: But are you making a grilled cheese or are you making a five course tasting menu?
Sarah: Exactly. If a chef says, I cook food, you expect to pay five bucks. If they say, I curate a culinary experience, you expect to pay 200. Language sets the expectation,
Adam: and right now most photographers are signaling that they're just service providers,
Sarah: like a plumber fixing a leak.
Sarah: You do a task, you get paid. But high-end clients, the ones everyone wants to book, they aren't looking for a service provider. They're looking for a guide.
Adam: That distinction feels really important. Service provider versus guide, how does that actually play out in the text on a website?
Sarah: It comes down to logistics, speak versus transformation Speak.
Sarah: Most photographers are fluent in logistics speak. You get a 45 minute session, 20 edited JPEGs, and an online gallery.
Adam: I see that everywhere. It's the standard package description. It feels necessary though.
Sarah: It is necessary eventually, but it's not what sells the session. It treats photos like groceries. You get 20 apples, but Smith poses this question and it really stops you.
Sarah: What are people actually buying? Because they're not buying JPEGs. They don't care about file formats.
Adam: They're buying what the photos represent. The feeling.
Sarah: He goes deeper. He says they're buying relief from regret.
Adam: Oof. Relief from regret. That hits heavy. That sounds. Almost existential.
Sarah: It is profound, right?
Sarah: But think about the psychology of a parent booking a family session. They aren't thinking, oh, I have some empty wall space. No, they are looking at their toddler, realizing that in six months. That little face will be different. They feel time passing.
Adam: They're terrified of forgetting who their child is right now.
Sarah: So they're buying an insurance policy against their own memory, failing precisely. They're buying proof that this time mattered. Now, if that is the emotional storm inside your client. That fear of loss, and you meet them with, you get 20 JPEGs.
Adam: It's a massive disconnect. You're speaking a different language.
Sarah: You're talking specs, they're feeling existential dread. You're bringing a spreadsheet to a therapy session,
Adam: right? You're answering an emotional need with a logical product list, and that just creates hesitation. The client thinks this person doesn't get it.
Sarah: They don't understand how important this is.
Adam: Okay? So we know the problem. We're boring people with logistics and fluff. But Smith doesn't just critique. He offers a fix. He calls it the delete and replace exercise.
Sarah: This is the practical part. If you're listening and you can pull up your website right now, do it. Just, you know, visualize your homepage.
Sarah: This is where it gets real.
Adam: The assignment is to hunt down those vague phrases, capturing memories, has to die, timeless images gone. What do we replace it with?
Sarah: We replace it with the truth of the transformation. Smith says to shift the focus from the process, taking photos to the stakes. What happens if you don't?
Adam: Gimme a concrete example instead of capturing memories,
Sarah: okay, try this. Preserving the season of life you'll never get back.
Adam: Wow. Okay. That lands differently.
Sarah: Why? What do you feel when you hear that
Adam: urgency? Season you'll never get back implies that if I don't do this now, I've lost something forever.
Adam: Capturing memories. Sounds optional. I could do that next year. But preserving a season sounds necessary right now.
Sarah: Exactly. You've moved from Nice to have to must have. He has another one for family photographers that I loved. Instead of book your fall family session, which just sounds like another chore on my to-do list.
Adam: Right. It feels like an obligation. Like get oil changed.
Sarah: Totally. Instead, he suggests because childhood doesn't wait, or even better, one day this will be the photo your children hold onto.
Adam: Oh, that's the one. One day. This will be the photo your children hold onto. That shifts the whole perspective. It's not about me looking good for a Christmas card anymore.
Adam: It's about creating an heirloom for my kids.
Sarah: It casts the client as the hero of their own story. And it moves the conversation from, is this worth $400 to, is my family's legacy worth preserving?
Adam: And for most people, the answer to that second question is an automatic yes. You can't put a price tag on that.
Sarah: You're anchoring the price to something invaluable, not to a piece of photo paper. And speaking of price, this is where photographers get the most defensive.
Adam: Well, I've seen this a million times. Investment starts at. Yeah, where packages begin at, usually in a smaller font, like tucked away at the bottom of the page.
Sarah: It's so timid. We're signaling, I know this is expensive. Please don't be mad at me.
Adam: Smith says, stop being defensive. You need to frame the price as the vehicle for the result. So instead of, my pricing starts at $500, what's the better way? How do you say that with your chest out?
Sarah: He offers this script. My clients invest between 400 and $900 to make sure this season of life is never forgotten.
Adam: My clients invest. That's clever. It's social proof. It implies other people do this. It's normal.
Sarah: And notice the word choice. Invest not cost. Cost is money Lost investment is money that gives a return. The return is the memory saved. It changes the whole psychology of the transaction.
Adam: It's subtle, but it completely changes the posture of the photographer.
Adam: You aren't asking for money. You're stating the standard.
Sarah: Correct. And I know we have listeners who don't do families. Maybe you do branding headshots that feels, you know, drier, right? Harder to get emotional about a LinkedIn photo.
Adam: Yeah. It's hard to get existential about a headshot. Relief from regret feels like a stretch there,
Sarah: but the stakes are still there.
Sarah: They're just different. Smith says, stop saying I offer branding photography. Instead say, I help business owners look like the authority they already are. So clients stop questioning their prices.
Adam: Oh, that is sharp. So clients stop questioning their prices. You're connecting the photo directly to the client, making more money.
Sarah: You're solving their problem. Their problem isn't that they don't have a picture of their face. Their problem is they wanna stop hagglers. If you can articulate that, you're not a photographer anymore, you're a strategic partner. An asset, not an expense,
Adam: which leads to what Smith says is the real root cause because we can change the words today.
Adam: We can copy paste these scripts. Mm-hmm. But he argues if you don't actually believe them, it won't stick.
Sarah: And this is the sting coming back. He says, this ist really a marketing problem. It's a self-trust problem.
Adam: Go deeper on that. Why a trust issue.
Sarah: He says, the reason photographers use vague, fluffy language is that deep down they don't fully trust that their work actually changes people.
Sarah: They're afraid to claim the magnitude of what they really do, so they soften it. They make it small to be safe.
Adam: There was a quote in the notes that just, it really stood out to me. When you don't trust your value, your language gets smaller and small language creates small bookings.
Sarah: It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, isn't it?
Sarah: If you speak timidly, you attract clients who treat you small. They haggle. They micromanage. They treat you like the hired help because you haven't established your authority.
Adam: So the goal isn't to sound affordable or available.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Adam: What is the goal then?
Sarah: The goal is to sound inevitable.
Adam: Inevitable. I love that word.
Adam: In this context.
Sarah: You wanna be the only logical choice. You want the client to think, I have to hire you because nobody else understands my need the way you do. If you can articulate their problem better than they can, they automatically trust you with the solution.
Adam: It's like when you go to a doctor, if the doctor says, well, I guess we could try this.
Adam: I don't know. It's kind of expensive. What do you think?
Sarah: Yeah,
Adam: you run.
Sarah: You run. Exactly. You want the doctor who walks in and says, I know exactly what this is. It's serious, and here's how we're gonna fix it. Photographers need to have that same doctor energy,
Adam: doctor energy. I'm writing that down.
Sarah: You are the expert on legacy.
Sarah: You have to act like it.
Adam: Now, Smith makes a prediction about the future of the industry looking toward 2026, and it's not about AI or new gear.
Sarah: No. Although those things matter. He predicts that the photographers who will thrive won't necessarily be the ones with the most raw talent. It'll be the ones who are the clearest
Adam: clarity wins.
Sarah: In a noisy world, clarity is currency. Everyone's a photographer. The person who cuts through the noise isn't the one shouting louder. It's the one making the most sense.
Adam: I wanna pivot slightly because there's a really interesting connection in the source material to a book he released called Aretha.
Adam: Cool. And at first I thought, okay, is this just a product plug? Mm. But it fits perfectly into this conversation.
Sarah: It's not a plug, it's a totem. The book is photos of Aretha Franklin, but in this context, Smith uses it as a physical representation of embodied boldness,
Adam: embodied boldness. 'cause Aretha, I mean, she didn't ask for permission to be in the room.
Sarah: She owns the room. She owned her voice. She never used small language. Smith talks about having this book on his desk, not just as decoration, but as a reminder. When you're writing that email, when you're setting that price, you look at that book and remind yourself, don't shrink. Be bold. What would Aretha do?
Adam: It's a physical anchor for that mindset shift because it's hard to stay in that doctor energy when you haven't had a booking in three weeks and the rent is due.
Sarah: It is so hard. Doubt creeps in. Imposter syndrome is real. You need physical reminders in your environment that tell you that you're allowed to take up space.
Adam: So let's paint the final picture. Let's say a listener takes this to heart. They do the verbal audit, they rewrite the bio, they stop apologizing for their price. What does their business look like in a year?
Sarah: The vision Smith paints is really compelling. He says, imagine waking up to inquiries from people who already trust you before you've even spoken to them.
Adam: That's the dream, the pre-sold client,
Sarah: it means you stop negotiating, you stop overexplaining your process. You stop panic posting on Instagram because you're desperate. You speak clearly. You price calmly. You attract people who respect that.
Adam: It sounds like moving from a frantic hustle to just a calm authority,
Sarah: that's the shift.
Sarah: And Smith emphasizes this. Clarity spreads. It's not just about you making more money. When photographers start using better language, it elevates the whole industry. It teaches the public that photography isn't just a commodity. It teaches the world that this work matters. If we keep calling it snapping picks, they'll treat it as cheap.
Sarah: If we call it preserving legacy, they learn to value it as such.
Adam: So we're actually training our clients on how to treat us
Sarah: 100%. Your photography was never the problem. Your language was. That's the mantra.
Adam: It's actually really liberating when you think about it.
Sarah: Yeah,
Adam: because you can't control the economy.
Adam: You can't control the algorithm, you can't control the weather on a shoot day,
Sarah: but you can control the words. You type on your homepage today. Right now, you don't need a loan, you don't need a degree, you just need a notepad and some radical honesty about what you actually provide.
Adam: I wanna leave everyone with a thought that really stuck with me.
Adam: We talked about how clients are buying proof that their life mattered. That's a massive responsibility.
Sarah: It is. It's a sacred trust. You are the historian for that family. You are deciding what gets remembered.
Adam: So here's the question for you to mull over today. Does your current bio or your homepage convince a stranger that you are capable of handling the weight of their legacy?
Adam: Or does it just say that you own a nice camera?
Sarah: That is the question. If you can answer that with confidence, the bookings will follow.
Adam: Huge. Thanks to the insights from Matthew Jordan Smith for this deep dive. It's definitely made me rethink how I introduce myself, and I'm not even a photographer.
Sarah: Same here.
Sarah: It applies to everything. Time to go edit some bios.
Adam: Go check your words, everyone. We'll see on the next one. ✍️📸