049: Spencer Lum – Photography Business Branding for True Success

049: Spencer Lum – Photography Business Branding for True Success

Andrew Hellmich: I've been waiting to get today's guest on the show for quite a while. His name is Spencer Lum. He's a Brooklyn based photographer, designer, blogger and business thinker/ teacher. He's been running his own studio for almost 10 years, and he ran a design and brand agency for eight years prior to that. Now, he teaches photographers how to build a brand like an agency with the real world confines of a small business owner. And I love this quote that I found on his blog, and I hope to explore this a little bit further in today's interview, and it says "The top reason people fail isn't a lack of desire or effort, it's finding a course of action that specifically fits their business." I love that. Spencer, welcome to the podcast.

Spencer Lum: Well, thank you for having me here.

Andrew Hellmich: It's an absolute pleasure. Maybe we can start with you telling the listener a little bit about yourself. Maybe you can go a little bit deeper into that, that intro that I gave you, and maybe let us know a little bit about what you're doing these days.

Spencer Lum: Absolutely. Well, I've started, I started doing this about, well, actually, I guess I just finished up my 11th season. I can't believe how quickly the times gone. And I am a full time wedding photographer. That is my primary source of income. So running the business is definitely what I do. As you mentioned, I'm a blogger, and I run the blog Ground Glass, which is sort of a passion project of mine, and something that I just thoroughly enjoy, and really, I mean, what I see is, I see right now that we are at this juncture in time where there's so much struggle and challenge in running a business and finding a work-life balance and getting everything to work. And the thing about having a business for 11 years is not so much that you learn at all, because you most certainly do not. In fact, you find new ways to screw up every single day. But, I think one of the things you do find along the way is you find a lot of ways to make mistakes and there and you find a lot of ways to avoid making mistakes. And, and you start to see that path between the actions you do and actually getting results off of them, or the opposite misconceptions you had, and starting to discover that they really don't play out the way you had hoped. And so that's, that's probably my main motivation behind my blog, but it's also probably the thing I enjoy sharing the most. I love seeing people who are just excited and really diving into running their businesses. And there's nothing more fun to me than kind of going, digging right into that, and talking with people about that, and playing off that energy.

Andrew Hellmich: Looking back at your journey, are you as passionate today about your photography as you were when you started?

Spencer Lum: That is a great question. And I told you earlier that you asked fantastic questions. And this is, and it's also a tough one. I mean, the easy answer is, well, yes, but it's also, at the very same time, very different. I think, and I think most photographers probably experience something of this. But I think your relationship to the activity changes, and it changes in two different ways. I mean, the first is that when you're running a business, and that's your form of sustenance. You start to understand that the business itself is its own activity, and it's very different from the photography itself, even though the photography plays a very large part of that. So for example, part of, a large part of my interests over the years have become not just the photography side, when I talk about running a photography business, but learning to enjoy the business processes and finding interest in that and seeing ways you could kind of really make those things work. So, so that's one part of it. Another part is going more to the pure photography itself. I think you start to become much clearer about who you want to be and what you'd like to do and where you'd like to go with it. But I think you're always fighting this battle where the first time you start and pick up a camera and you see the results. If there's just something really magical about that, and there's this excitement about being a beginner and having no restrictions at all, because you don't know any rules about what you're supposed to do, and you're not running a business, and your livelihood isn't depending on it. And that's incredibly thrilling. And so I feel like you're always running this balance where I get more and more an idea of who I am, and when I get a great shot, it's infinitely more rewarding to me now than it used to be. But at the very same time, you're always trying to draw and get back to that place of the original energy. And so I feel like it's like the goal is to kind of bring in that excitement that you've had at first, and yet kind of mix it in with all the things you figured out along the way, and get both to kind of come into play. So it definitely changes. But I think kind of, if you were to ask me about, like, the amount of time I spent looking at photography books, thinking about photography and actually finding meaning for it, and it giving me comfort in my life, that one's a no, no brainer. It is, it gives me infinitely more value now than when I started.

Andrew Hellmich: So from what you just said then, do you spend more time thinking about the business of photography now than the actual photography?

Spencer Lum: I think I see their roles as different in my life. I definitely would not say I spend more time thinking about business. But what I would say is that I spend a lot more time thinking about business now than I did when I began. I think I used to see the business as something being driven by, you create a product, and you create a great product, and you keep working on your photography, and if it's good enough, people are going to hire you. And I've come to realize that that's not really how things play out. So the business part has really become it's, in a way it's like its own hobby. And so I almost see those two things as entirely different activities. So the photography, I mean, I'm constantly thinking about new ways to take pictures and trying to think about photography's role as a whole, kind of in the world, and not just in my own life. And so, no, I mean, I probably would not say that I think about business more, but what I would say is each has really kind of acquired a life of its own.

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah. Okay, so can you, can you give the listener and myself an idea of the market that you're existing in, in Brooklyn? Is it, is it competitive? Is there lots of photographers? Is it, is it easy to make a living as a wedding photographer where you are?

Spencer Lum: I would say that it is possible. I actually, one thing that I've noticed in the past several years, is I really don't hear anyone any longer say that it's easy to make a make a business out of wedding photography. I hear that, what I hear is that the people who put it in the work and, and really put, really kind of make a concerted effort at it, that they can do very well, and which I think is great. I mean, because I think kind of the hope and the thought of knowing that there's a way is, is kind of the essence of what powers the business. But certainly, I think the landscape has changed over the years. So specific to Brooklyn, I would say that it is, it's a very large market. Obviously, it's not just Brooklyn. Of course, you wind up with the entire New York City area, and possibly you can expand that even into the tri-state area, where you're looking at Connecticut, New Jersey, and all of New York. So it's a very large market. And so in that sense, I think there are a lot of thing, opportunities out there. But at the very same time, there are lots and lots of photographers out here. There is, there's no lack of, and I don't really like the word competition, in the sense that I don't like to think of my friends who are out there shooting as competition, because I think really your main competitor when you're running a business is yourself. So when I use the word competition, I really just mean it as other people offering services similar to yourself, but there is certainly a lot of competition. And so I would say, like what I hear from most people in most places, places where that, I would say that it is, it is difficult and it requires a lot of dedication, but it is also absolutely and eminently doable.

Andrew Hellmich: You've been doing this for 11 seasons now, so I mean, it's obviously doable, and you're doing it, which is fantastic. So maybe you can give us a little bit of an idea about the numbers. Can you tell me how many weddings you're shooting per year your studio, and maybe, maybe the average spend, or the average package price that sort of people outlay for wedding photography with your studio?

Spencer Lum: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So, I've tried to tailor it down. Actually, you asked about whether how much photography I do and I, or kind of how much I think about photography. And one of the things I, I found that was really important to my work-life balance is actually spending more time doing photography and less time kind of stressing and worrying every day, kind of about the day to day stuff. So I've now, currently my target is 30, although I usually wind up like more around 35, 36 weddings a year, which I personally consider to be a little bit too much. But, but I always find it really hard to say no, kind of as you get to that last part of the season where with the bookings, and you think, "Oh, this sounds really fun, or this sounds really cool." And so I always tend to go a little over, but that's, that's a little bit. But that's definitely down from my original. I used to try to target 50, and it just buried me. It caused all sorts of business troubles that literally plagued me for years on end, and so I found, at least for the way I was doing things, that wasn't really a sustainable number. So I tend to divide things up into two different types of clients. And when I say types of clients, I'm not so much talking in terms of personality, but two different sets of needs. And that's really important, because there's kind of this higher tier one, where the typical packages are going to run between 6500- 8500 and those are going to be much more full-fledged. You'll have an album, for example, you'll have two photographers. It'll have a longer time span. And then I have a series of efficiency-based packages where my objective is to land somewhere between 4000- $5,000, and those are actually my favorites. And those, well, the way I do those is I shoot them locally. And usually the amount of time that I'm there is much shorter. So I use associates, for example, to help me finish them out. And those are actually, those are really my favorites, because it's, it lets me kind of be there for the really fun parts of the day. It lets me, it's actually because I keep them local, which has really helped build up a lot of business in the Brooklyn area for me. It actually takes away a lot of the buffering that I used to have to put in for things like timing and driving and everything else. And so, so those, those two different tiers kind of are both equal objectives. I don't necessarily favor getting one over the other. What's more important to me is that the numbers have to add up. I used to have very low kind of entry level packages, and what I found was that when I started adding up the time commitment necessary in terms of the image processing, in terms of what I just mentioned, like the padding you have to put in, if it's you have to drive a little bit, in terms of the shooting time, in terms of the cost for a second shooter. I used to have these entry level packages, and I found that they were just terribly damaging. The, the per hour profit was horrible. The, in fact, and they would kind of gum up the works, because you see an account for that, you actually did, it didn't sound like it would be that amount of work at that time. So it would actually turn out to require a lot more post work and client management than I would expect. And so, so that was a pretty bad proposition. So now, I try to focus more clearly on making sure that I don't really have a high package and low package per se, as far as my business end goes and as far as the numbers go. In fact, actually, I would probably say the efficiency packages probably actually, on a per hour basis, work a little bit better for me, but, but kind of having both has proven really effective.

Andrew Hellmich: From all accounts, I mean, it sounds like you're doing great and, you know, business is good. I love the way that you were shooting too much and had to bring it back. So that tells me that you're doing something good, and it's obviously working. So what is it? Why, why do you think clients come and book you? How do they find you? Why do they book you?

Spencer Lum: Oh, that's a great question. I mean, I would say probably not too different from most people. Referral, the referral chain is a huge part of it. Referral chain in terms of past clients, in terms of venues, I've worked with. A little bit with planners, although I don't think compared with most people I know, I de-emphasized planners pretty substantially, because I find it creates a very different sort of relationship with my client than when, when I actually find them independently. A little bit is just through various placements. For example, there's an editorial listing in one of the magazines around here, and that definitely brings in a handful of weddings every year as well. But I would say the referral chain, by far is the largest part of it.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay. Let me be, let me be more specific, because I was actually trying to lead you somewhere there that you didn't go. I think, I think, let me, so that was great. We got a great, true answer. So let's say someone that's coming to book you has also seen four or five other photographers, or two or three other photographers. Why then do you think they book you?

Spencer Lum: Got it, got it, got it. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, a large part, and I don't mean to diminish the value of my own pictures. I mean, I certainly try to put something in there and find some way to differentiate them and, and I think there is some sort of aspect, just like anyone else, there's a certain way you have of shooting. But the reality is, I think a larger part of it really is the way I have of communicating. It's too frequent that I'll see it, for example, where kind of you go to a site and the first thing you see is it looks like everyone else's. Or, when you go to a meeting, people will talk a lot about themselves in the context, in the context of why they like to do what they do, but not how they benefit the clients. One of those classic focus on the benefits versus the features sort situations, but also on the branding side. It's making sure that I don't build a brand by, by kind of making sure that I look really professional. And I talk a lot about myself and say that I love to read this type of book, or this is fun to me, or what have you. I mean, all the things I use in my brand along the way are meant to kind of attach themselves to a very specific type of person. It's meant to be a little bit wry. It's meant to, I mean, there's a little bit of an attack on the wedding industry with the tagline that I use. There are parts of it that are, that are fairly impassioned, depending on what content you read. And these things actually because they're written in a way that makes clients react. In other words, they look at something, they look at the tagline, and they say, "Oh, that's funny." And if you haven't seen my tagline, what it says is, it's been so long since I've seen it, I actually, I'm suddenly blanking out.

Andrew Hellmich: I'm looking at it right now on your homepage. Is that the one you're talking about?

Spencer Lum: Yes, about the shoes.

Andrew Hellmich: "Weddings, schmeddings, we like you for you, not your wedding shoes." I love it.

Spencer Lum: And you know that does a few different things. I mean, automatically, I've taken a very irreverent tone, so that captures that, that will automatically start to filter out people who are, let's say, too traditional and, or too classic, or who think of things in kind of this very functional sense. For example, one of the problems I ran into during that period when I was shooting, God knows, you know, on the highest years, 50 plus weddings a year, is that, and this was, this has nothing to do with the numerical side. But one of the things that also happened during that period was I wasn't finding specific clients who fit what I thought I did well. And one of the reasons was I'd focused on looking very professional and, and very much kind of very reliable, and that was probably my core focus. And so that attracted, I had lots of lawyers, I had lots of business people, very hard line get down to the basic sorts of people. But I found that the pictures I took, my pictures tend to be, they tend to be fairly emotional. They tend to be fairly atmospheric. They tend to have, I tend to have a lot of focus on just kind of things being very fluid and of the moment. And so the pictures that I tended to be looking for not that, that has no value to someone who's kind of very hard-nosed and just thinking about things that straight business, but kind of.. I found that when people were more going into the wedding, and it was all about kind of having fun and just hanging out with their buddies, and it was much more low key, my pictures actually got better. And that kind of created one of those virtuous circles where your pictures, they better fit your clients, and then other people see that. And it looks and it pulls them in, and they're more of the type of people who you, who you do good work for, so that enhances your pictures further. And when they talk to other people about it, their friends are much more likely to be kind of part of the same social circles as them, and the similar types of people, etc., etc. And so, so by having this line that's really irreverent, right? "Wedding schmedding", and then I talk about the shoes. And, you know, it's a funny thing, but I have had so many brides over the years, and this came out of pure market research. This was not something I picked, because I kind of just felt like saying it. I actually spent a little time looking into this and thinking back to my meetings and talking with some people. But there are a lot of brides who go out there who see the most incredible shots of shoes on every bridal blog, and they are really confused. And so.. because until you've kind of experienced the whole wedding, kind of you've been pulled into the entire wedding industry, the idea of representing a wedding by the shoes alone is actually a fairly odd idea when you think about it. And so talking about that line, it addressed a natural reaction that a lot of people were having, and especially a lot of people who kind of fit what I said, very low key, very, not very fussy. They weren't about having, like, the super nice shoes. They're about people in the party and the enjoyment and the ceremony and the vows and stuff like that. And so automatically, they hear, they see something like that, and that's what they're thinking already, and they're like, "Yes, this person gets me." And so it's, it's always, I think, one of the hardest concepts to explain that when you, when you create a brand, you have to create it in a way that your client reacts to. You don't create a brand in the way you want to show like it's not about what you want to show to your client. It's about showing what you want to show in the language and the look that makes sense to them.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, okay. I love, I love the direction that you've gone. I love that explanation that's makes total sense. So what, I want to take you back to when you found that you're shooting the relaxed weddings that, and the brides that didn't care so much about the shoes, and your photography was getting better, so at that stage, then you probably didn't have this wedding schmedding line. So how did you then develop the brand? When you realize that that's the people that you want to target and you want them to come to you? What's the process of building a brand?

Spencer Lum: Well, it's a funny thing about that. It was really a wholesale redesign. So I started out my career as a web designer, and truth be told, I really, my first iteration of my website, the one that I'd used up to that redesign, I did almost purely on look. I had not put that much strategic thought into it, and so I just went and created a site 100% designed to pull in the type of person that I thought I wanted to work with. Now, the thing about pictures, that's great, and this is something I see a lot, is that when you look at blogs and, and blogs is probably the thing I tend to focus on the most because I think that's the exposure most people have. But you could include things like Pinterest, of course, which I see as kind of an extension of the entire thing. But when you look at how the wedding pictures that people see, there's a very distinct pattern, there's a very distinct look and a flavor and a pattern and a certain set of shots they're going to show. And a lot of times, as photographers, when we go and edit, we think to ourselves, "Well, that's how you should edit a set of shots. That's what defines what it is to be a wedding photographer", because I'm seeing that every single person out there is doing it. But I have seen so many times, for example, and this is one where I have personal experience with where I'll work with a second shooter, and it's my job to edit it. They're not my pictures. I don't have a personal attachment in the sense that I would if I had, if I had shot it myself. And I feel like, "Wow, let me show you this cool picture that I shot, and it shows how great I am, or something." And so this is something where it's purely objective, because I don't have that stake in it. It's just I want to represent the studio as best as I can. But I've played around with this before, and I've with the, and I've looked at the footage, and what I find that's so striking is very often, just by editing a different set of 40 or 50 pictures, you can make a photographer look like a completely different type of person. And you can pull out a set of shots that will appeal to a very different type of person. So for example, if someone shows kind of all the classic moments you expect, let's say the back of the dress being put on, or someone walking down the aisle, or we can now throw in things like first looks, first dances, first kisses and so on. You're implicitly sending out a message that you're a certain type of photographer, that those are the moments you value. Those are the moments that define you. You're also sending out a message that you fit this mold, and you fit this pattern. If you choose simply to show none of these, automatically you break, you break that perception, and you announce that you're about something completely different. And so the files and the pictures, I had the catalog of pictures and files over the years, and maybe I didn't always have the weddings that were the best matches. But I find very often it's really about picking the pictures that you believe in the most and that resonate with your clients the most.

Andrew Hellmich: Are you suggesting that if I'm trying to target, if I'm putting photos of the kiss up in every single blog post that I put up, I'm going to be attracting a certain kind of client. And if I want to move away from that, am I taking a risk by not putting those images on my blog?

Spencer Lum: I've never had a person who ever walked up to me and said, "I have to see a first kiss shot." So I would say, probably not. I was actually terrified of that. So you would ask the question like, "What things did I do?" So I did a wholesale redesign of my site. The language was different, the look was different, the logo was different, the picture curation was different, everything was different. And I was terrified, because I thought I'm going to lose all my business. Well, I will tell you, you do actually, you can actually lose a certain amount of business.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay.

Spencer Lum: And in fact, I guess it is both proof of the point and kind of an example of how you can kind of overcompensate for something. I hadn't tended to, intended quite that drastically to kind of cut-off my chain of pre-existing clients, and I didn't. But I could definitely see that it had a very distinct effect on who, because the pictures, I think were, some of the pictures I'd chosen, were a little hard for some people to grasp. And so, so I may have been getting, I would get the referrals, but I could see that it didn't go anywhere because it no longer fit what they were looking for. On the other hand, of course, I suppose, in a sense, that means it worked. If you ever wonder whether the pictures and your brand make a difference, absolutely.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, that's great they actually know that, that's fantastic.

Spencer Lum: But going back with what you said, I have never had anyone or I've never had it where anyone asked me, for example, "Can you show me a kiss shot." Or, can you show me a shot with, like the back of the dress was one I used to think of as a must have. Every shot I would have to have the back of the dress being tied or zipped or what have you. And I have found that no one really seemed to care. Now that doesn't mean that, like, for example, eight, nine years ago, no one would have cared. The market was a little different, and the expectations for what you defined as a good set of shots may have been a little different. So I can't attest to that, because I did always shoot it back then and so I wouldn't, I can't say that no one ever asked back then. But I can tell you that ever since I just continued a lot of, showing a lot of the shots that I used to, it had in terms of proving that you capture those things, no one has had any questions whatsoever.

Andrew Hellmich: So let me just clarify then. So you stopped showing those images. Let's take the back of the dress being done up shot, so you stopped showing it, and then I'm guessing that you still shot it in at the wedding for the client. And now have you moved to a stage where you don't even shoot it?

Spencer Lum: Yeah, basically, it's not that I don't shoot it. Now I will pick the shot that I think is best. And it's not that I'll never, ever show it. It's just that I only show if I think it fits some particular purpose. Or for some reason, there's some indication to someone like, for example, if I'm designing their album, there was an indication along the way that that was a particularly important shot to them. I mean, of course, I factor things like that in. But Iike, yeah, there was a period where I would kind of double up, I would always shoot it, and I just stopped showing it. And after I saw that kind of, I started to gather in my meetings and my experiences that it didn't seem to matter that much. I just started to go on shooting what I thought was the best shot for that moment. And, and having a new brand kind of enabled me to do that. Because whereas my previous brand was focused on how professional and reliable I was, the new brand was much more focused on a certain type of wedding and a certain way of capturing photography. So I built up a lot more trust with my clients and a lot more willingness to say, "Well, what he does, I've got to believe that's the best thing for the situation." So, but it's one of those, it's one of those circles, right? You kind of have to try it and move in that direction before it starts to fulfill itself. It's certainly, at first I was terrified that if I didn't shoot it, that I would, people would be really upset. But I have absolutely observed times where people put on the back of the just dress so quickly, where I would run to get that shot, I would run back to get that shot, and I would just lose everything else I thought was good about that scene. And that kind of, at a certain point, I kind of decided I just couldn't take it anymore. I couldn't take giving up what I thought was really the emotional core of what's going on just to get something that I had lodged in my head as some sort of mandatory shot that may or may not have been. It's not like I actually ever asked anyone, anytime, a long way, "Well, do you need a back of the dress shot?" And so I just started experimenting and trying it and, and you know, I am not a person who, it's always hard for me to take huge risks. So I tended to initially, I tended to do it more with couples who I thought really would not care. But as things progressed, I came to realize that if you give someone a beautiful shot of that moment that kind of captures what's going on and frames the context of it right, it's not showing that it's the back of the dress or showing kind of the exact back of the dress. It's showing the context of the moment and, and how people are feeling and what's what the story is about. And they can tell that the dress is being put on, and people were completely happy with that.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, I love this. It sounds to me that once you have a brand in your head or a direction that you want to take your business and your brand, you can shoot less for the client and more the way that you want to shoot.

Spencer Lum: I think it's incredibly liberating. You know, people, they hire you, they, I always say people kind of hire you in one of two ways. They hire you to either be a shooter or they hire you as a consult. And those are two really, really different things. I mean, a consultant is someone brought in for their expertise, and there has to be a measure of trust with a consultant. You have to seed over your thoughts and say, "Well, I believe you're going to do the best thing for me." And the funny thing is, as you cede over that control, you actually value consultants more. But the other model is that you hire someone who's kind of a hired gun. Their job is to come in and shoot exactly what you would shoot if you had the technical skills to use camera yourself. In other words, they're not really hiring you so much for your vision, but your ability to use the camera and light it and manipulate and adjust lighting and everything else. And so when you're positioned as a shooter, it becomes really hard to feel free to take liberties, because invariably, what you're kind of trying to do psychologically is, guess what you think your client would want in that any given situation, which is just a horrible exercise to go through because no one ever knows what anyone truly wants. And nothing feels less rewarding than doing things, like never doing things your way and always doing things the way you think someone else might want it, even if you don't feel like if, even if you don't agree.

Andrew Hellmich: But I think that's exactly how a lot of photographers operate, because we, let's take the shoe shot, we show the shoes in our blog post, in our sample albums, so then we expect that the new client that we get wants the same shot. So we shoot the same shot and then show it again in the next blog post. And it's a vicious circle.

Spencer Lum: It is absolutely a vicious circle and, and it absolutely, I think that is how I spent probably the first, I don't know, maybe my first five years doing everything. And it was all about, I saw it kind of very clinically. You do a good job, you get the pictures they want, you get the pictures you showed them that you would get, and you're all set. But it's kind of a disaster, because pretty soon, about five years later, what I found is like I was shooting basically the same set of shots I did five years earlier, maybe in a little more polished fashion and maybe a little bit better, but they were fundamentally the same shots. Meanwhile, everyone else was coming into the industry who's new it was shooting this fresh set of shots that looks nothing like the way I'm shooting, and I'm starting to look really dated. And I think, you know, we've all seen those businesses where you wonder, like, 'How are you still in business?" Because, like, every picture they show looks like it came from 1980 and I think that's, that's one of those. That's, that's kind of like the long term result when you really get stuck in this vicious cycle of never being willing to change. But I think it was Steve Jobs, I think, right? Who said "You, you have to be willing to cannibalize your own business." And I think kind of the underlying point there is that you have to be willing to take certain risks, you have to change, because otherwise you never. If you get better and you limit yourself, then what you're providing is actually an inferior quality product instead of a better quality product, when, of course, any business is going to going to improve by the combination of higher quality products and better communication of what the value of those products is. And so taking the opposite approach kind of, it restrains you on both levels.

Andrew Hellmich: Let's put the listener, sort of back in, back into the picture. And they're listening, "Oh man, this is me. I'm Spencer in his first five years, and I'm going, I can see myself heading down this rut." What's, what do you suggest they do to start getting things on track the way they want it to go, the way that you are now? What's, what's the first thing they need to do?

Spencer Lum: This is such a hard answer. I know exactly, I say, is so hard to explain. But I'll start off, I always start off everything with finding your purpose. I think one of the reasons that people wind up in a vicious cycle is that they don't have a particular objective that anchors either their business or their photography or their brand or every other part of what they're doing. So they kind of just go with the flow. And they're always constantly in this position of running to try to keep up, and it's just this mad dash where you never really get the time to kind of focus and communicate and be strategic. And you know, we all know about the 80/20 rule, right? Where kind of 20% of the time, 20% of the time of what you put into something is going to get 80% of the returns. And so the point is that business, successful business, successful, branding, successful all of it has to be about spear fishing, as opposed to kind of casting a wide net. So, because, until you make specific messages, send out specific messages to people, they, it won't really resonate with them. No one, like, my cardinal rule of value is people, people will spend more for things that feel like they're meant for them, and that's been kind of a guide my whole life. People, anytime you want to up your value, if you make people feel like whatever it is you're doing is just for them, they will pay for it. If you think of every luxury product, there's incredible, there's incredible brand value there, because people see that as reflective of their beliefs and their lifestyle and who they are. It's not just that you chose a Louis Vuitton purse, even though I hate Louis Vuitton purses, but it's not just that, that represents a certain type of person, a certain type of lifestyle, a certain level of status. It doesn't feel like anyone else could have it. It's a very elite sort of product. But that can go, like it can go in the opposite end too, there are products that are very inexpensive, but that are just well-made, designed for a particular type of person, where kind of, you know, one person that it grant a certain group of people. Let's say a bunch of hipsters, or whoever you want to pick, they gravitate towards that product and it defines them. And they will overpay for those things because it reflects their identity. So the first thing I would say is, for anyone trying to get out of that rut, is they have to, they have to do two things. The first is, they have to break free of kind of that limitation where, I think everyone's afraid that if they don't do everything 100% all across the board, and if they get focused and only take a certain type of pictures, or only use certain types of words in the way they talk that are only going to appeal to a certain type of person. Or, they start filtering people out, like in their phone calls, where, when someone is truly a bad match, they're willing to let go of them, because they know it could be damaging. That until people are willing to kind of break with that, it creates so much psychological resistance that you can't, you become paralyzed. And so that's the first, that's the psychological hurdle. The functional part is having, is finding a purpose. And I think that's one of the things that really helps you break free of it, but it's also what anchors your entire business. For example, like Nike is one of the examples I would always choose to use. Nike, if you look at Nike, what a lot of people might think is, let's say they make great sports stuff, gear, clothing, whatever else. But if you look at their real purpose as, as a brand person, and you think well, what is their, what is the value that they give the people? The real purpose is to let everyone find their inner athlete. That is why they exist. That is what they focus on. And the thing is, once you know that, it becomes incredibly easy to decide, well, is this ad campaign we're running good or bad, because you just run it across that, you run it across that purpose and that function, you say, "Well, this is about a glossy superstar, but it doesn't in any way have anything relatable or doesn't make a normal person feel like they can achieve that. That's not letting people find their inner athletes." On the other hand if they're running an ad, and it's kind of, let's say, very like down home, and it's just like a home shot video, but it's all about inspiration. They can say, "Yeah, a campaign like that would really work, because that does reflect letting people find their inner athlete." And you can see, like that purpose becomes a decision maker and a guide in every action you do. So I can say, "Well, what picture do I want to show?" And I tend to focus on honest images that capture the everyday, like I love everyday activities. I love things that show the plainness of life and not kind of it's the extravagance of life. To me, the most beautiful moments are when someone has, does something that they would do every single day of their life, and that shows how true the wedding is to them, because they're on their wedding day there. There's that bit of them, that constant that exists on their wedding day, that exists outside of their wedding day as well. And so by having, by having that, I can look at a picture and I could say, "Well, does this fit the idea of something that, that feels honest and reflects characteristics of the everyday or not?" And of course, the thing is, you can have 10 people with that basic statement, and the beauty of this is all 10 of them can have a slightly different interpretation of what honest and every day is, and that's absolutely fine. But the key is getting so defined about it that you know exactly what your definition is, and start applying that across the board to all the things you do. Once you do that, you create this huge resonance effect. Because people say, "Well, your website does that, and every time you talk about it, you're always talking about these things when you explain the pictures or the language you choose to use." I knew one person, she started cursing in her meetings because that's how she normally is, and it helped attract a certain type of client. But she, for a long time she thought, "I shouldn't do that because it's not professional." I'm not saying cursing should be someone's purpose. But it was the kind of the rawness of her, her brain was kind of like raw, very Brooklyn person completely fit with the idea. So it's a similar sort of thing. When you, when you develop a purpose, now you have a measuring stick to evaluate all your actions, and you can start to say, "Do these things align with it?" Now, that doesn't guarantee that you're going to pick the right purpose, and it's going to work incredibly well. That's the process of refinement and seeing how people react to your purpose, and, and that's kind of the other part of it. Which is that, if you've done these things like you're from your side, what you need to do is you need to find your purpose. You need to get rid of the psychological barriers that are limiting you, which is usually it tends to be a fear of specificity and kind of a tendency to want to be too general. And then you want to flip it around. You take your purpose. You say, "What do I leave it in my photos?" And then you take it and look at it from the other person's side, "What does that give to my clients?" Because at the end of the day, until you can answer that question, them, they will not care. If you say, "My purpose in life is to, I don't know, take the most mind blowing pictures ever." That's that, in and of itself, like as a statement would be just kind of well, that would be a very go center. There's nothing offered to the client, so there's no reason that would resonate and mean something to anyone. If, that were your purpose, and you were to make it successful, you'd, you'd have to find some way to take the flip side of that and say, "Well, how does mind-blowingness mean something to my clients?" Maybe they'll be dazzled by it, or maybe you'll offer a such a fresh view of the world that they'll never have thought of it. So it's, I'm actually kind of giving them an insight that no normal person has or, or whatever. I'm kind of making this up as I go along.

Andrew Hellmich: No, I'll get the, I get the gist. Because I can see that if I come to see you to book my wedding, I can see, I can hear your sense of purpose. I can hear the way that you're passionate about, the way you're going to shoot or cover my wedding. And I know if it's going to be a good fit or not, just by the by the way you're describing, the way you shoot.

Spencer Lum: Well, that's an interesting point. You know, I've heard a lot of people say over the years that the pictures don't matter. I mean, and I don't think anyone means that in the sense that they truly think the pictures don't matter at all. I think when most people say that, they, what they're kind of saying is, "Well, the pictures don't matter nearly as much as we think, after all." And in a sense, I don't disagree with that. Like I think a lot of times, if you have a certain group of people within a certain style, especially, or certain way of doing things, there's a good chance that there are three or four or 10 or 20 people out there in the market who could easily all fulfill some clients' hopes and needs and desires. And so the fact that you mentioned that, that you're talking about being able to hear the passion, which, thank you, super excited to hear that. But I think there's a really good point there, which is a lot of people think that it's kind of like, well, the way it goes is this very rational process with the brand, with the sales, with every part of it. They think clients kind of come in, they evaluate the photos and they compare everything like it's on a spreadsheet, which can happen, but if it does, that's the exact opposite of what you want. I mean, your goal is to steer people away from doing that, and what people don't see is that, in general, the decision making process is incredibly irrational. When I think of the products I'm most excited about, there, I really, a lot of times I can't think of any reason why I'm so excited about them. Like, have you ever had it? For example, you're at a store and you're looking at someone, something, and then you find out that someone else comes in and they're about to buy the last one in stock, and all of a sudden you have to have it? Even though, right before that you were thinking, "Well, I don't know if I really want that or not." And then as soon as you see that, you know, you grab it, and you start making, you literally start making up reasons in your mind, telling yourself why you need to have this thing, how good you're going to look in it. Let's say if it's a piece of clothing or something like that, or if it's a tool, all the things it's going to do. I mean, you basically attach it to your future for no reason other than the emotion that you feel. "That, oh no, this thing might disappear and I won't have a chance to have it anymore." And so, I think a lot of people, they feel like, well, you know, someone's going to look at all the pictures and evaluate all the pictures. And they talk a lot about, like what exactly what the pictures do, and the specifications of everything, and kind of exactly how well they're going to execute every little thing. And largely, what really happens is that if you want people to buy you need to move them past kind of a logical hurdle, the logic hurdle, and into a realm where they're just feeling it, like they hear someone get excited. And you tell them how they can get that too. And you show them a picture, and you say, and you see, you see they like that picture, so you pick, choose to show a few more like that. You can see they're getting really excited about it. Once that happens, people kind of sell themselves. They just make up reasons why they want to work with you. And so those little things, enthusiasm, or showing the right pictures, and all that type of stuff is very often that's enough to make people completely willing to hire you and stop thinking about it in this very hard, logical fashion.

Andrew Hellmich: That's so true, so true. Let me ask, in a practical sense, again, on the side of the listener. If they're, if they've, if everything you've said has resonated with them, and they want to take that this new direction and, but that they're still scared? Would you say design or build a new website, you know, totally separate to what you've got now, and sort of push people there, or just start changing the photos that you're showing on your existing blog, or rewrite the text? How would you start, start taking this new direction?

Spencer Lum: Okay, that's a, that's another one of my multi- part answers. It's so hard for me to contain myself, because, like, 20 thoughts hit my head.

Andrew Hellmich: What did you do first?

Spencer Lum: Well, I think I did it backwards. I changed my design.

Andrew Hellmich: And you think that's backwards?

Spencer Lum: I do. I think a lot of people look to the, the design process instead of the sales process. Like, what, how you talk with people once they're in the door, how you talk with them when you're on the phone. Or even in the sales process, let's extend that to the networking process. How you talk with other people who, where you are trying to position yourself with them, and the types of people you talk to. Because it's completely possible to have a great relationship with, for example, a planner who passes you lots of business, except that planner fits so poorly with the way, with what you do. That you're miserable, or you, or even worse, they send people your way because they like you, but no one ever actually books you because they get, they attract one type of person, and you don't. And so a lot of times, the communication is just not clear. When people meet with their clients in person, they're not actually getting their values across, and they're not getting all these little things. Because I think the struggle that people have, is usually the point at which I see most people struggle with this, and struggle with the brand issue is the time you should struggle with it is once you're 2, 3, 4 years into it. Once you have a certain amount of market established, that's when you should really put the big investments into things like the website. I'm not saying you shouldn't be thinking about it along the way, and I want to differentiate that. But I'm saying like in terms of the investment. If you were to tell me, well, if you were to put 40 hours into branding versus 40 hours learning to sell to people in the very beginning. Let's say the first year doing this, or if you were to spend 40 hours on the branding and plowing through the website, instead of 40 hours getting on the phone and talking with the reception halls that you shot at and getting them samples or whatever. At that point, you're kind of, it's like a feast or famine thing, you're just trying to survive. And you're not actually, at a point. A brand, a great brand, is an amplifier. It takes whatever you do and it makes it that much more effective. And so in the beginning, the most important part is understanding your purpose. That part of the brand, I think, is something you have to establish. You should, you want to establish from the very beginning. But you can see the, you can see kind of the chicken or the egg effect here, because if you've just started out, how much do you know about what your purpose actually is? And so at that point, I think the best time investment, people, you know, people love to go and build a website, but and try to pull people in. And it's, of course, you need a sufficiently professional website, but that's not very hard to get any longer. Because there's so many templates and so many, there are blog templates, there are online templates. There's so many places you can get a sufficiently decent website that I would say, actually, which is ironic, I know, given our direction we've talked about. But I would say at that point, "Yes, curation is a huge part." So that part of the brand development very big. I think curation is something from the very start, because that is a low time investment, high kind of self-comprehension activity that communicates directly to your clients, because you're showing them exactly what they're going to get. So curation, I'd spend lots of effort making sure I pick the right pictures and, and constantly refining that. In terms of understanding purpose, and maybe letting that flow into the way I talked about things in my sales or my copy. That, I would also spend a decent amount of time on. What I would not do, though, is blow two months working on this massive website redesign if I'm only, if I'm only pulling in, let's say, five clients a year, because having a great brand doesn't, it doesn't really actively pull in people. You still need to get a way to get people to the sites. So if you're going to focus your time, you'll be want to, wanting to look at all these. You don't want to put it, put the brand in place of all these other activities, including things like submitting your images to the blogs that show the exact same images that I was just talking about, including the networking, including the talking with the places, talking with reception halls, including even referral activities among the people for whom you've shot, and anyone you can find who will help spread the word. I mean those things I think, in the initial stage have a higher return. And so, if you're, if you're talking about kind of, if you're in a stage where you're struggling, if you're in a stage where your photography is great and you've been shooting for a while and things aren't coming together, I would say, and but your reputations out there, and you're just struggling with the pictures, but your volume is not bad, I would say, "Brand change." Look at your brand, reevaluate, realign things. There's probably there could well be a big benefit and a big problem, a big problem going on. But if you're just starting out and you're struggling, you're trying to figure things out. A lot of people, I think they jump to brand too early, because they're kind of afraid to go out and pick up the phone and call somebody. Or they are, it makes them uncomfortable to have to sell because they feel like they're being pushy, but it makes a huge difference. I've seen people who close like 20%, I've seen people who close 90% and it's true that brand, on its own can help you close. But frankly, I've seen people with the worst websites and the worst pictures, who can, you know, almost always manage to get people to book because they're just so darn good at communicating with people. And so, and, you know, brand plays in effect there, but sales, as you know, it's kind of a much, much more specific activity than just branding alone.

Andrew Hellmich: Well, you know, you just basically said, I've got to have you back on to talk about sales in the future.

Spencer Lum: Well, that's another favorite topic of mine, cause I, I'm, It took me, I mean, I was horrible in sales. I actually, I came, you know, it's to a man with a hammer. It's like every, every problems a nail, and I was the guy. I mean, I knew branding, so I always figured I'm going to solve everything by branding. And that was what blew me away, is that when I started really working on sales, and that only happened after I did my rebrand. I realized how many clients I had lost along the way, and I also realized how much better my connection was with the clients I was having now. Because I, I suddenly figured out how to communicate, not just like my values, but I just figured how to communicate, in general, like we were having genuine talks and we were actually being real people. And it was not only beneficial in a business sense, but it's actually just a lot more fun when you're talking to people and this like, "Oh, this is a real person I'm talking to, not just the sale."

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah. Well, they've told me. We're having you back on in six months’ time in case you back up. Look, I normally have 10 quick questions towards the end of these interviews, but look, time has flown, and it's been an absolute pleasure. I'm so glad that I've got you on the show, and I know that listeners are going to want to check out your blog for sure, because they want to know what this branding thing is all about that you've been talking about. So where can they find you online, and where can they find both your website and your blog?

Spencer Lum: So you can find my blog at www.ground-glass.com, and you'll hear me talk about all of it. And then you can see, if you want to take a look at my photography, you can go to www.5weststudios.com, and that's the number five.

Andrew Hellmich: I'll add links to both of those places as well. I think you're on Facebook as well, Spencer?

Spencer Lum: Yes, yeah, I am, although I probably don't use Facebook nearly as much as most people, so I actually don't remember my Facebook.

Andrew Hellmich: No way. I, I'll definitely direct the listener through links to, to both your website and also to, to your blog, which is fantastic. And I really, really encourage the listener to subscribe to your blog, because it's full of amazing stuff. I look forward to each post you put out. I love it.

Spencer Lum: Oh, thank you so much. It was great being here.

 
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