S14E07 | This is what a million dollar studio looks like
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You are in for a real treat with today's episode- John runs not one, but two studios, and over the last couple of years has focused his marketing to become known as an expert pet photographer, despite offering other genres and today, 70% of his million dollar revenue comes from pet photography!
It is a not-to-be-missed, long interview so pop your headphones in, take your dog for a stroll and be prepared to stop to jot down notes.
We covered:
Working with a team
Can you be a specialist and a generalist
Incorporating humans w dogs
Where John’s clients come from
The importance of education
And in the members-only half
Having employees- is the headache worth it?
Can you learn to be a manger
How much the business needs to make to pay the bills
The number of leads it takes to run a studio with these overheads
Conversation rates and average sales
John’s booking funnel
MENTIONED LINKS:
https://johnglaserphotography.com/
https://www.facebook.com/johnglaserphotography
https://www.instagram.com/johnglaserphotography/
John Glaser
I am the owner and creative director for John Glaser Photography. We have studios located in Houston, Texas and New York City. We specialize in studio dog and family portrait photography along with headshot photography.
Transcript
You guys are in for an actual treat today. I have just hung up from chatting with John for an entire hour. Actually, I think it was more than that. We covered so much. John's business is two studios split into two different cities across the us. He's gonna tell you more about that. He has to. Revenue over 60 grand per month just to pay the bills of the studio, pay himself, pay his his second shooters or, or assistant shooters and his entire team, 60 grand a month.
And so you can imagine that he needs lots of. Lots of bookings and a pretty high average sale too. We got into all of that, mostly in the second half, about having employees, being a manager, how much the business needs to make his booking funnel where those leads come from. This kind of stuff we spoke about in the second half, but in the first half, which is for everybody here right now is.
A bit of, you know a bit about John's studio that he's working with a team. We spoke about being a specialist and a generalist, and if you can be both incorporating humans with dogs, where John's clients come from, the importance of education, which was actually the topic of today's interview, but we got a bit distracted and covered absolutely everything as well.
So Basical. Tune in. Listen up. There's some great lessons to be learned and I can't wait for you guys to hear this interview today.
Welcome to the Pet Photographer's Club. Tune in as experts share their insights to help grow your business with higher sales, creative marketing, and kick ours business Strateg. Now onto
the show.
Hello and welcome back to the Pet Photographers Club. I'm your host, Kirsty McConnell, and today I'm chatting with John Glazer of John Glazer Photography in the us. I'm actually gonna pass it over to you for a moment, John, and I'm gonna get you to introduce yourself to the audience where your base, where your multiple studios are in the US and then we'll kick it off from.
Sounds good. Well, thanks for having me. I'm really glad to be a part of this, and thanks for inviting me to be on your podcast. I have a studio in Houston, Texas in the us and then this last year we actually opened one in New York City. I tested it out and it's. Been working out really well.
And so we actually moved our associate photographer from Houston up to New York to run that studio. And then I run the studio down here, but I go up to New York every now and then throughout the year we do mostly dogs and families but we also do like head shots and stuff like that. But the majority of our work is in studio dog portrait photography.
Nice. Okay. So already, I'm sure the listeners' ears are perked. Only do you have one studio, like an actual studio space, but two, and not exactly nearby to each other. I mean, you have to fly between those two cities, don't you? Yes. Okay. So you've got these two studios an associate shooter at least. Are you still shooting?
Yes, so I, I shoot some here in Houston. I have another associate photographer that we hired and trained up before Ricky, who is my photographer in New York. We got Alex is our new guy and he does the majority of the work down here. I do all the weekday work like Monday through Friday, and then a couple of weekends a month.
Most of our, our portrait stuff happens on the weekends Friday, Saturdays and Sundays. Because that's when families are available with kids in school and everything. We don't do evening shoots in the weekdays cause we found that just to be a pain. And then I do all like the business headshot, corporate headshot type of stuff throughout the week and And like I said, a couple of weekends a month or a weekend a month or something like that.
I'll do the weekend portrait sessions. Just, I like to stay in the mix. I like to still photograph people and dogs and be with my clients and everything. But I have two kids and a wife and I wanted to have a little bit of a life and they're growing up and doing a lot more activities, so I needed to set up my business in a way.
That I could not have to be here every single weekend, but still be running a business and making money. And so it's worked out really well for us. Our photographers are amazing. We all do the same thing. They're trained by me, so we keep the same style. So John Photography is, Turned into kind of a brand and not just a person.
And, and, and then I fly, when I started New York, I went up there two times a month, so every other week basically. And did weekend sessions. We rented a shared studio space. And then when we found out that it was a viable thing, I just happened to be the, I was on the fourth floor of the building that I was in and the fifth floor came available for a full-time studio.
And it's amazing space. I'm jealous of it cause it's not like our Houston studio is nice, but our New York studio is amazing and and, and, and it's huge. It's like 500 square feet and it's just very open and there's so much we can do with it. Fifth floor opened up and they offered it to me to rent it full-time.
And so we rent it full-time and do a similar model up there where we do Friday, Saturday, Sunday shoots, and then the weekend weekdays, at least for now. Cause we're not doing as much head shots up there yet because Ricky is not as versed in headshot yet as as I want to be. To be doing it on his own. But we rent out the space to other photographers and stuff that want to use it so that we can make some money back from the rent.
Cause as you can imagine, in New York City, if you dunno anything about New York, it's a lot more expensive than it's here in Houston. And so if I can make money back off of renting the studio a couple, few times a week, And that helps with the bottom line and everything. So
anyway. Mm-hmm. Ok, that makes sense.
Alright, so just gimme a rundown then. Sorry. What percentage of your client bookings are in terms of num numbers not money, are headshot? What percentage are families, what percentage of pets these days?
I don't have those serious breakdowns, but if I were to venture to say, like, when it comes to the family versus dogs and families, like, cause we always, we like to wrap families with dogs.
Yeah. Ok. I, I find a lot of dog photographers, at least in our area, when you go to their websites, it's just dog, dog, dog, dog, dog. And there's no humans that are related to the dogs. And we treat our, our sessions kinda like the dog is like a. It's part of the family. So we still incorporate the family, but if, if you talk about like dog and family together I would say that's about 70% of what we do.
Family. And other things that like, so we do some athlete stuff like. High school athletes and, you know, little kid athletes and stuff, and do some real dramatic stuff with that. So I would wrap that into the family stuff. And so that's about the, the 20%. And right now the head shots is only about 10%.
We're building on that. But it's, it's still really low and it's growing this year. It's already. A lot from last year. And honestly, I didn't focus on it a whole lot until this year. And this year I'm really trying to grow it. One because I like doing that kinda work. And two, a lot of my corporate headshot clients that come in and do corporate head shots, they see the beautiful artwork that's on the wall for family and dogs and go, I have a family, I have a dog, and they come back and become a, a client in that realm as.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I was actually gonna ask you if that, if that happens, because doing the headshot, you're getting them, you know, exposed to your other work, and so you would hope that that organically leads to, to future booking. So obviously you are making your clients happy if they're then booking a additional sessions, or you and your team are, yes.
Okay, so you're doing 70. With pets. Yeah. And then another 30% that are focused people only. Yeah. And what I'm interested in about that, John, is that a lot of people kind of do the reverse. A lot of photographers, they're maybe primarily people, but they want to be pets, and then they slowly build up pets, more people less.
And then often, eventually we see people that just specialize. Only doing pets, they won't do anything else. Or if they do, they don't advertise it. They didn't put it anywhere. Because we're so focused, myself included, we're so focused on building this identity as being a dog photographer or a pet photographer and becoming kind of known as the expert in that field, which is one business model, and it certainly works well, but I'm really in.
To hear that you are focusing on a totally different growth model, I suppose you would say. And it sounds like it's working for you because you've just opened a second video. So what is your thought around that, around this? Can you still be the expert and also the generalist?
So, I, I mean, I've had a lot of conversations with photographers about this, and I know there's a wide gamut of.
Opinions about this. I know there's people that say you should only focus on what you do really well. And, and I don't just, like, I would never do weddings. Like that's not my thing. But I think that's a completely different realm mm-hmm. Than doing dog and family photography. Right. And, and I think somebody doing weddings would struggle doing dog and family photography.
Cause there's, it's just different, especially in its studio based where. You know, weddings and stuff is more natural light and you know, on location strobes if you're using them and stuff like that. So but I think that, you know, to me light is light and I use a lot of strobes and we also have some constant lights for those dogs that are little ski skittish, but they're cabled, strobbe, or.
Constant light. So we try not to use them unless we have to. But light is light to me. And as long as you can harness the light and learn how to use the light, it's the subject that you have to work with. And if you can figure out how to best work with the subject, I think you can do a variety of.
Things. So like I said earlier, I do athlete sessions and I used to be a coach like coached football and girls basketball at a high school. So I love working with athletes and I know how to talk to them. And so that's what kinda me into that realm we've gotten known for like, wow, he creates some really cool stuff that they're not your, your, your, your team photos.
It's not something you're gonna get on photo day with your team. And then the family stuff is actually how we started the studio. We, we did a lot of family sessions and then we got our own dog in our own house and, and I took some photos of my kids with our dog when we got her and I started promoting it just to try it out and see what it would be like.
And it blew up like, I mean, immediately we were starting to get anybody and everybody wanted to come in and do dog sessions. Cause one, we do a lot of black and white photography. And I think that's, That's a genre that we don't see very often. We still offer color, but we really specialize in the black and white look.
And, and then I think that differentiates us. But then too, like I said before, I find when I do my market research in my area, that dog photographers in my area, In, in a lot of areas, I feel don't incorporate the human as much within their photography. And it's just all about the dog. And, and I, like I said earlier, like I feel like the dog is part of the family.
It's like your kids, it's like having mom and dad come to a session and you're just gonna take pictures of the kids and no pictures of mom and dad and the kids and not create those memories. And so, By doing that, it kind of makes it a natural bond of doing dog photography and family photography. Cause you're doing one in the same, only your dogs or kids, you know.
And then when you go session and there's no dogs, it's the same thing. You're just doing it with kids and no dogs. So the posing doesn't change a whole lot. Obviously, you're gonna. Be with dogs different than you are with kids. But I make the joke when people say, Hey, I wanna do dog photography. What, what should I expect?
And I ask them, you know, have you ever done sessions with multiple, like two and three year olds in a session at the same time? And if they say yes, and I said, I'll say, well, then you probably could. If you were able to handle that and not lose your mind, you might be able to do dog sessions because it's not much different in the chaos that comes with doing a dog session.
Then you have two and three year olds that are losing their mind, and you have an attention span of like 20 minutes. And so so I, I, that's the kind of the mentality of what I have with that is just like, to me they're one and the same. So it's not like it's two different genres and, and I just meld them together.
It's, and it's about working with people, like posing is posing, but what I find, I'm a big Peter Hurley fan and what I love and I learned a lot about with Peter Hurley is how you interact with clients. And that interaction creates the images that we. Right, and it's not about like, Hey, put your head here and move here, do this, or whatever.
It's about like, hey, like do this and get a reaction, or get that connection. Or you say things and you, you know, you tell 'em to do things or you make them laugh or you make them get serious or something like that. And, and it's the same kind of thing with dogs, obviously. Can't tell the dog, be serious, gimme a laugh, gimme a smile, or whatever.
So that part is a little bit. You're going with the flow. The other thing too is, and I didn't say this, I used to do photojournalism with sports. I used to photograph sports when it comes to like football, basketball, and college pro stuff like that. I used to be a freelance photographer for USA Today sports images.
And I think that helps me, especially in the dog world because. When they're in a studio, it's like you have to put on your photojournalist hat in a way, because everything that they do in a studio is a potential for photograph. You know? Cause you're not gonna pose a dog in a lot. Sometimes you're not gonna pose, all won't.
And sometimes you pose, they're. Commands and all that stuff, but you always have to be at the ready and have your camera ready to take that photo. Cause like, you never know what a dog's gonna do, just like you're not gonna know what a two or three year old's gonna do. And that's a photo.
Okay. So, yeah, that makes total sense, John, because I was picturing that like myself, for example, as a primarily dog photographer, but definitely specialist.
Pet photographer offering nothing else. I can plaster that all over my website and I really used that to set myself apart. Right. So I was wondering like how you go about the same thing because you can't really do that, but all of your, or most of your leads are coming through. Facebook anyway, then it makes sense that that particular ad can really speak to dog people.
And that's what's showing you already kind of automatically kind of shows you as the expert anyway because you're appealing especially to them. So yeah, that does, that does make sense.
Well, and then, and then on our website too, we have like, you know, we have the different genres and stuff and so people can go and.
Like, does he do, like, does he really do dogs and then he, they can see like there's a body of work that we can show you. Like, oh, okay, wow, that's outstanding work and I wanna work with him. But the other side too, real quick on that is I think another thing that kinda differentiates myself as a, as a dog photographer, that's very different in, in a lot of areas, I find, at least in my observation, I do studio dog photo.
Where most dog photographers I find, go out on location and they don't do a lot of studio work. We don't do any location work. It's all in studio. So we have people come and say, Hey, can you do on locations dog photography? I'm like, we don't do that. You know, and, and we've lost some clients because of that.
But that's making that differentiator of like, I'm not a on location dog photographer. I can do great work if you wanna bring them into the studio, but we're not gonna go. Go to you.
Yeah, yeah. I see exactly what you mean. So you're almost saying instead like, our specialty, our niche is here with this particular backdrop and this particular environment like vibe, et cetera, et cetera.
Mm-hmm. John. I got you on the show today because I wanted to talk about the importance of education. We're 20 minutes in and we haven't even touched on it. That's alright. So no that's, we've, I mean, you've shared tons of gold already and I've already got a bunch of notes to cover in the extended half of the episode as well, which is of course, for members only.
But before we get, like before, Pause from the free listeners and get into the that for the members only. I do want to touch on education a little bit because I was, I'll say like quite surprised the other week for the listener, I was hosting a online live training for Andrew Helmich of PhotoBiz X, another podcast, which if you guys aren't listeners, I highly recommend.
Of course, I was hosting a live training for, for Andrew and his audience, which was about transitioning into pet photography. And I'm, I'm on the zoom call. It was about to start and pop and onto the screen pops John. And I was like, what the hell are you doing, Keith, dollar studio owner and you're coming to learn this you already specialized in.
I was quite surprised. And then, well, I was quite also humbled and when you, when you wrote me some beautiful feedback, I was very proud as well, but I was really intrigued that. What were you doing there? I mean, first of all, I mean, I know you don't just come to mind. I, I've then realized that you, you know, you do spend a lot of time, you know, expanding your knowledge and, and continuing to stay up to date through education.
But what is it that makes you, you know, let's take the training the other week. What made you want to do that training? One that you. You don't really need, you know? Why did you jump that?
Well, I, I, I think, like you said, I, you said, I don't really need, I don't think there's ever, you can never learn enough, you know, I used to, like I said, I used to be a coach and we would go to coaching conferences and stuff, and you would hear the same old stuff over and over and over, over again.
But then there was always that nugget of information. I was like, Ooh, that's gold. I could use that. You know, or whatever. And I think I took that kinda into my photography business. It's like I can always learn from somebody else, you know? I mean, I learned from people that I'm working with, that I'm helping them with their business because I'm like, oh, I didn't even think about that.
You know, or type of thing, but mm-hmm. You, you're a, you're a pet photographer, you know, what am I doing? Like, I learned a lot of stuff from you in that podcast that I'm just like, okay. I never thought about doing it that way, or I never thought, like, one of the things you said about with the, the treats, you know, like we've always said, bring the treats, you know, bring a treat.
Cuz I like, I've always been worried. Dog food allergies or something like that. I don't wanna have a treat, and then the dog has a reaction to it or something. Like that. And we have some treats in the studio in case they don't bring stuff. But I loved what you said about that, and I was just like, okay, we're gonna change a little bit of how we're gonna treat that and have these, these nicer, higher end treats that are like, Different that the dog's probably not gonna have experienced in their life.
And, and it makes it different. So I, I learned stuff there. I learned some stuff that you were doing with marketing that I thought was really cool and your partnerships with different people and stuff. But all that to be said is just like, I felt like I could get something out of it. You know? You're, you're doing the same thing that I'm doing and you have an expertise in this.
Obviously when it came to you, like, I know it came up a little bit about like how to work with people. And, and the actual session itself. And you do a lot of outdoor stuff and, and you've covered a lot of that, but I like, I, I'll be honest, I kinda checked out during that time, but but, but, but that's cause I don't do that kinda thing.
Right? We don't have, like, our dogs can't run and play and get photos in our studio. It's more posed and with the interaction with their, their humans and stuff like that. But anyway. That's just me. I like to learn. I mean, I'm very active in PhotoBiz X. It's one of my favorite places to learn. I'm listening to like, I love Andrew's podcasts of things and genres and stuff.
Now I will listener. That you have to be careful with that too because, cause I used to be one of these people, you would learn something new from somebody and you'd get this little gold nugget of information that you thought, oh, this is gonna revolutionize my business. And then you end up going all different directions and you're not staying on your path.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's a really point. So when you go through something like that and you're learning from somebody else, if it's a different genre or somebody that's doing the same thing as you I have to, I've had to learn to stay the course with what makes sense for my business, you know? So it's just like I, and in my past I could have listened to your course with Andrew and, and you say, we do on location and we go out to the beach and we do that.
And I, and I would. Oh, that sounds like a good idea. Let's change course and let's do all that instead of what we're already doing and be successful with, you know? And now it makes it all scattered, right? Where I'm like, no, I like, I can implement the trait thing just in my own studio, or I can implement some of these marketing ideas to get more people into the studio.
So that's the thing. I mean, I've learned stuff from. From photographer. Like I said, I mentioned Peter earlier. He's a headshot photographer, but I use stuff that he talks about all the time in my family sessions all the time, just because he is a headshot photographer, like he teaches how to pose and how to interact with people.
Like that's a big part of what he does and, and. I learned a ton from him from that, along with the lighting and everything else that goes with that, you know? So I just think that education is a really important thing, but I think you have to be careful and cautious that it's one thing I think I see with photographers a lot.
They're always chasing, especially ones that are trying to build their business and and get their business going. They're trying to chase that. What's that niche or what's that thing that's gonna make me successful and make my business successful? And it's just like you still have to stick with. Your thing, but how do you implement those little nuggets of information that you get to, to meld with whatever you're already doing?
Mm-hmm. And I think actually, yeah, you just made two very good points, right? Number one, that people are often, and I see this a lot, people are looking for a shortcut and. Okay. Yeah, there are some, you know, by attending different trainings and listening to podcasts, these kind of things, yes. You are going to shortcut your, because you, you are not having to do the The failures yourself a lot of the time, you know, you can hear that, oh, you know, somebody else has already made that mistake, and you can learn from them rather than doing it yourself a lot of the time.
Sometimes you're also gonna make the mistakes too, and that's okay, but people are often looking for that like golden, like that wand, you know, magic wand that takes you from. Zero to six figures or, or or seven figures, you know, like overnight. And it doesn't really work like that. At least not from one particular piece of advice.
Right. As you and I both Nora and most of the listeners too, I'm sure. So that's definitely one part of it that you have to kind of be going in just. Trying to take the little snippets and then putting all the little snippets together to, to form your own business, like you were saying. And then this one key word that you used then, which is one of my favorite words, that listeners like gonna roll their eyes.
Oh, kirsty's at it again, was implement, implementing it. You said like, you know, I can implement, you know, little bits and pieces, et cetera. And that's the main thing, isn't it? I mean, there's no point in you giving up. I mean, that training was what, two hours? You gave up two hours of your time. There's no PO plus the $98 or however much it was.
There's no point in you doing that if you're not gonna implement what you've just learned, you know
so well and. And I will say that the implementation thing, and this is something as you as a business owner that's been successful, like can understand and, and, and audience members that like would listen to this podcast that have, are still trying to build their business and understand their business is when you listen to a podcast or you listen to that one thing.
Whatever that one thing is is there's 900 other things that are going on in the background. And so just because you've heard this one little snippet of information, that doesn't mean that like if you implement that one little thing that all of a sudden magically everything's going to fall in place.
Cause there's so many other things that go into it. And so you have to learn those along the way. And that's the hard thing. I have a really good friend of mine, he's a photographer up in Canada, and he and I talk about it all the time. It's like if being a business owner was easy, we would all be. You know, and it's not, and, and.
And like, I, like, I, I like what you said. It's just like everybody's looking for that shortcut or that get rich quicker, that like build my business fast type of thing. And, and I was, I was lucky that my business kinda shot off and took off really fast, but there was so much that went into that that. Can't be addressed in an hour long podcast, you know, and and like my background, I used to have a project manager background.
I used to be a, a coach and work with kids and work with adults and teach them and all that kinda stuff. And so all these little snippets of what happened in my life to lead me to this point. Were those educational things that got me to this point, you know, and helped me to be successful. Mm-hmm. But there's been a lot of failures along the way.
Like, you know, people I think look at you and like people like you and me and stuff, and they go, wow, they're so awesome. But they don't see all the non awesome things that happened with us before we got to that part. You know, I wanna be like John. And I'm like, okay, well if you would've known the things that happened before John became the person that you know, Then you wouldn't wanna beat me because you would've had to go through some of that heartache, you know what I'm saying?
But, but like all those heartache things got me to be successful and those lessons learned. And then like I, like we were talking about before. Learning along the way and always be learning along the way, you know? And try and find those things that are gonna help you refine and do better in what you're already doing.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, definitely. You know, John, I think that's the perfect note to wrap up the first part of the episode because that was some really nice. Nice advice that you, that you closed off with there. I do have tons more that I wanna chat with you about. There was a couple of questions absolutely in the Facebook group because we always ask the members like, Hey, we've got this person coming on the show.
What kind of questions do you have for them? So I've got a few questions from them to ask you, mostly around your, your marketing. Also, I wanna go a bit more deep, a bit deeper into the importance of including humans with the dogs as you were mentioning, is important to you. And maybe if we get time also about studio.
Opening a studio as well. So let's see how we go for time with that one. But for now, we're gonna wrap up part one.
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