276: Michael Hauge – The storytelling formula to book more photography clients

276: Michael Hauge – The storytelling formula to book more photography clients

Andrew Hellmich: Michael Hague works with people who want to change lives and make more money by telling compelling stories. He is one of Hollywood's top coaches and story experts, and he's worked on projects starring, among many others, Morgan Freeman, Julia Roberts, Tom Cruise and Reese Witherspoon. If you go to Michael's website, on his home page, you'll see a recent video of him and Will Smith chatting about what makes a story Great. Will Smith. Michael also coaches entrepreneurs and business owners on using story to transform the lives of their audiences, clients and customers. Now imagine if every time you blogged or created copy for your website and marketing, you could instantly motivate and inspire your audience and potential clients and customers to take action. You can with Michael's simple 6-Steps Success Formula, which I discovered after recently purchasing his book, Storytelling Made Easy. And Michael says, if we follow his simple storytelling formula, you'll be able to attract more clients by giving them their own emotional experience. I am rapt to have you here with us now. Michael, welcome.

Michael Hague: Thank you. It's great to be here. I'm really looking forward to this.

Andrew Hellmich: Well, me too, like I said, I've just recently finished reading your book. I've applied it to a project immediately afterwards. But I guess the first thing the listener is wondering, when would a photographer possibly use storytelling, and how can it matter to them in their blog posts, on their websites? Can they even use stories?

Michael Hague: Well, I'm bigoted in this way, so I think anybody can use story to their benefit. It is a little bit different, because the very thing that photographers are marketing, well, I think my understanding, you have to correct me, because it's not my world, it's yours. But I think most photographers are offering one or both of two things. One is photographs if you're actually selling your product. The other is services, if you're a photographer for hire, so you're going to do weddings or parties or portraits or whatever that might be. So there's a slightly different answer for each one. Let's say you're a photographer trying to market your photographs, the photograph is going to stand on its own, so people like it or they won't, but I think there are ways you can enhance its appeal, and with story, one of those that comes to mind, and I've actually worked with clients, or a photographer client who has done this, and that is when you have a website, let's say, with your photographs, or speaking, I think a story about how that photograph came into being could be really valuable, in the same way, somewhat that a making of video, when you get a DVD of a movie, or something like that could be helpful. In other words, if you can take a potential buyer and connect them or psychologically or subconsciously, put them in the position you were in when you took that photograph, and the things that happened and the obstacles you had to overcome and so on. It's going to do a couple things. One is it's going to create a much closer connection to you as the photographer, because now they're not just looking at a picture of a photograph of a person or a seascape or landscape or whatever it might be. They're looking at a photograph taken by someone they feel an affinity for. They feel they know somewhat so that psychological connection can only enhance their willingness or their desire or their happiness at getting the photograph. Because you can say, "Oh, yeah, I know how this photograph came into being", when they're talking or showing it off, or something like that. But the other thing they can actually have the emotional experience of taking the photograph, if you tell the story properly. And I would think just getting a potential buyer of your photograph to have that feeling, to feel like it's them taking it subconsciously, like they were there, that could only increase their desire to have the photograph. Because now, not just the emotion of the experience of looking at the photograph, but the emotion of bringing it to life, is something they've experienced, and that's an experience they're going to want to have permanently, and that, to me, would encourage them to get the photograph and get it on their wall, and they can always have or remember that sort of emotional experience of taking it. So I'll stop there, and then we can go on to the other option when you're trying to get hired. But I think that could be a really valuable way to approach story if you're actually marketing your own work.

Andrew Hellmich: Awesome. Okay, I do want to definitely go into the other side, because most of the listeners have their own photography business, and they're trying to sell their services, and they're competing in one of the most competitive markets you'll ever know about, which is wedding and portrait photography. But the way you described, the way that you said that we could tell a story around a photograph that, to me, sounds like a blog post rather than a speech that a listener would have so they would have this photo that they love or a series of photos that they took at a wedding or a portrait session, and are you saying that we could then describe or talk about that session in a story format to have readers connect with it?

Michael Hague: Absolutely, absolutely because my client, Laura Pope, is her name, and she's a fine art photographer, and she does landscapes and skiing shots too, seascapes, landscapes. She has a series of pictures of horses. She's not a portrait photographer, so she's selling her photographs as fine art, not offering her services. So I interviewed her about my favorite of her photographs, and she told me the details of what she had to go through to get to that place and be in position and be at a certain time of day and slug through mud and so on. So I was thinking of that kind of emotional involvement, or that kind of situation that would elicit emotion, assuming that some of your listeners are in that category. If your listeners are in the category of wedding photographer or photographer for hire, then we'll go to the second way, because I think the way, you still want to talk about how the photograph came into being, but you want to do it a slightly different way. And that is what you want to ask yourself, is, what are all the things that my potential client, whether it's a bride and groom to be, or the father of the bride, or whoever's paying for the photographer at the wedding, let's say, what do they want? Okay, so they want good pictures, and you can show other pictures of yours, and they could see that. But what else do they really want? They want, I would assume, and you would know this better than I, they want a photographer who's in unobtrusive they want a photographer who can take candid shots. Sometimes they want a photographer who can get people to pose well or so on. So now what you're doing is you are telling the story of how of some situation you were in as the photographer at a wedding. You might even tell that story, not with you as the main character of the story, but as the bride. So you could say so and so is a bride. And what she was desperate to get was, as much as she wanted a picture of her, I'm making this up, so I have no idea, but you guys will have your own stories, okay, but as much as she wanted the traditional shot of her and her groom and saying their vows or the racked up. She really wanted to commemorate this with candid shots, including her with her parents, because it was such a big moment to them. But what she realized, and was readily apparent, was her parents were stiff as a board, and they were sort of nervous about the whole thing, and they weren't photogenic at all. So she didn't know how she would get everybody to get this to happen. But when I was there, I started asking her these questions, or I started thinking, well, where are they going to be most relaxed? So she suggested, well, they're going to be having the most fun when they're dancing. So we especially took that picture, and she now has that photograph on her mantle, right beneath the big portrait of the two of them saying their vows, or whatever it might be, and that's her favorite picture from the wedding. Now, that was kind of a lame story, because I don't know the details, but you do. I mean everyone listening, who's the photographer you've been in all of these situations. So you want to think about a situation you're in, where from the point of view of your client, things were going haywire, or they were very nervous, or they were having a difficult time, or it might even be that you're telling the story about how difficult it was for you when you were in this situation, because you didn't know how you're going to take pictures, because they had a big wedding plan. It was going to be outdoors. They had it rained. They had to go inside, and you had 100 people squeezed in a rec room that was designed for 50, how you're going to get good pictures? And then you talk about in story form. So I started thinking, well, what is it I could do here? What do the bride and groom really want? And then you tell the story about how the steps you took to overcome those obstacles in order to get the pictures that you got. And then, along with that story for, let's say, posting it on your website, you show the pictures you're talking about. Now, what you're doing there is a couple of things similar to what I said with the other situation. It's a lot more fun to read. To get this story along with the pictures, because pretty soon, you look at enough photographs, they're just going to get, you know, sort of cross eyed, and they all start to look the same if they're comparing yours to other people's.

Andrew Hellmich: Yes

Michael Hague: So it's more attractive, it's more involving. It hooks people in, but also you're giving them, again, the emotion of a character who desperately wants to accomplish a goal and has to overcome obstacles to do that, because the emotional involvement is going to come from that conflict. So now they're emotionally involved in the story and thereby in the photographs themselves, but you're doing one more. Not that subtle, but the subtext of it all is, look at what a good photographer I am. And the reason I'm a good photographer is because I can come into any situation, anything can go sideways, and I'll be able to figure out a way that you're still going to get photographs that you look back on lovingly, fondly, you're happy, you don't feel like you missed out on anything, even if it rained or whatever might have happened. And so think about that as a way of selling yourself, versus saying on your website in one form or another, "I'm a good photographer." Or, I mean, you're going to say I've taken photographs at more than 100 weddings, and I've done everything from this to this to this, or I've been a photographer for this many years, or even you might have testimonials. Testimonials are like stories in miniature, so they're a little stronger, but if someone you want to hire you, yeah, they're going to be impressed that you've been doing this for years, or that you've done it 100 times. But I bet there's a lot of crap photographers out there who've been photographers for 30 years and have done a lot of weddings. It doesn't make them anything special. But if you tell the story about how you overcame the obstacles that appeared, or how you were able to take great photographs in this particular kind of situation that might match your prospective client, that's going to convince them much more strongly that you're the person for the job.

Andrew Hellmich: Is it possible to do that, to tell those stories about how you overcame all these different obstacles at all these different shoots without coming across as boasting and, you know, showing off.

Michael Hague: Here's why that doesn't seem like boasting. What sounds more to like boasting is, you know, "I've made six figure years a photographer, and I've done it this many, and I've taken pictures of the queen or whatever it might be", that's more likely to sound like boasting than the story. Here's why the story won't sound like boasting. Let's take the second version I said, where you're telling the story and you're the hero of the story, the protagonist, so to speak. Number one, you're going to get the person reading that story or hearing it, if you're saying out loud in a presentation or something, the person reading the story is going to start by empathizing with you, and the reason they empathize with you is because we empathize. We feel a connection to people who, in some way, are suffering, who are in jeopardy, or who have suffered some undeserved misfortune. Your undeserved misfortune is you're there at the wedding, and all at once, it starts to rain and you're going to get crammed into this small room. That was just my example, but I bet that's happened to somebody.

Andrew Hellmich: Absolutely, yes, that's me.

Michael Hague: Okay, sure. Okay, so you don't start by saying, "Guess what I was able to do. I bet nobody else could do. I succeeded where everyone else.." No, you don't start that at all. You start in the moment of the story, and you talk about, "I was looking forward to this, or this was going to be good. I thought this was going to be an easy one, because everybody was very photogenic. It was a nice group. I got to know them ahead of time, but then I started noticing, uh oh, those clouds are getting darker and darker, and the wedding's getting closer and closer, and about 10 minutes ahead, lightning strikes". Okay, you're giving vivid detail to put us into that situation. You haven't done anything to praise yourself at all. You're getting us to identify with you. So pretty soon, it's we're the ones who are trying to take the picture. "We" meaning the person reading your story, the person who's looking for a photographer. But all of a sudden, subconsciously, we've become you, the photographer. So now we are facing this obstacle, and now you have to take some steps to overcome that. And finally, when you get to the point that you talk about, "And the bride has told me since that of all the photographs, her favorite one is this one when she's dripping wet from the rain." Or whatever that great shot was that you're showing, okay, so at that point you are actually saying, the subtext is, look how great I am. I got this great shot, and the bride was really happy because I did that. But you end the story with that. And here's the difference, if you're telling a story where you get your reader or your audience to empathize with you and become you as the hero at the beginning, or become the hero of the story, whoever it is, and then take them on the journey where they have to overcome the obstacles to achieve success. Then we will go along, we, meaning the reader, will go along on that journey with you, and your success becomes ours, and then it has no shade of bragging at all, because we're happy, because, again, subconsciously, we're the ones who got this great shot, and so we're not thinking, well, aren't you full of yourself? Because you've taken us on the whole journey and not just advertise the results.

Andrew Hellmich: Got it. Got it. Okay, this makes sense. I want to stick with that example you're using with the photographer, photographing the bride's parents. That was a difficult shot, because now I'm confused, because you mentioned the words hero and protagonist. Who is the hero? Because it sounds like the photographer is the hero, but it sounds like the bride is the protagonist, or the bride's I guess the bride. Is that right? Or am I misunderstanding that?

Michael Hague: Well, it's yes and no, both of them. I told two different stories there. One was a story about the photographer being the hero. So in the story about the rain and cramming into the room, the hero was the photographer.

Andrew Hellmich: Absolutely.

Michael Hague: So let's say that was your story, you'd be the hero.

Andrew Hellmich: Yes

Michael Hague: But I said all I mean by hero is the main character. It's the character who wants, who is striving for the goal in the story. So the bride wants great photographs from her wedding. Okay, so that's her goal in that story. But the photographer is the hero. His goal is to take good photographs that will make the bride happy. So he's the hero. It's whoever is the character that your reader identifies with. It's the character who is taking the steps to achieve the goal. The reason I said you could sometimes tell stories about the bride is because it's going to be even easier for a bride to be looking for a photographer, perhaps, to identify with that person. And if they're thinking, "Wow, you know, that's right, my parents, you know, are ugly as mud posts or whatever you'd say", you know, I don't know how I'm going to do that. So if you're telling a story about a bride or a groom or a father, the bride, or whoever it is, a wedding planner who had a goal and was really worried about it, or had these obstacles, and you help them overcome the obstacles, what you're still conveying is, "I'm the guy for you, because if I was able to help that hero that you have become subconsciously. Obviously I can help you with whatever you're worried about in your wedding. So you have that choice to make. It's a choice every storyteller has to make, especially story for business, one of the key initial questions you've got asked is, is this going to be a story where I'm the hero, or is this a story where someone else is the hero and I'm in the background, but I'm the one who comes and helps them save the day, helps them achieve their goal. Because I want somebody else to hire me to help them the way I am helping the hero of this story I just told. And

Andrew Hellmich: that approach there sounds like it would be a popular one amongst listeners, because we're doing so many sessions, doing so many photo shoots, I think it would feel strange or egotistical to keep making ourselves a hero in every single blog post that we do, because photographers want to blog.

Michael Hague: Yeah, that is a good point. Because if you're on your website, if you're going to say, show various photographs and have a story to go with each one. I think you definitely want some of them to be about the client and what they desperately wanted and what they had to deal with, and what their obstacles were, and then you're the person who is coming along or in the background to help them solve that problem, but the story, you're not the hero, you're there. You're like the sidekick. You're like Mr. Miyagi. You're not Daniel, or in the more recent one, you know, you're not Dre you're Mr. Han, the one, the coach, the trainer, the helper, the Obi Wan. You're not Luke Skywalker stories, because you're in the background, but it's your help, your guidance, your actions, that are going to help the hero achieve their goal.

Andrew Hellmich: Got it. I love this. Okay, so if we're writing those kinds of stories, are these fictional? Do we make these up? Or do we interview the bride, or do we learn this just from our relationship with the bride, and then elaborate on that?, or maybe make it brighter than what it really was.

Michael Hague: Yeah, you're going to do all those things. Here's my philosophy, and I'm sticking with it now. I've rationalized this. It may be not something all of you accept, but my belief about stories for businesses, stories you use to build your business must be true, but they don't have to be factual.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, it sounds like you're trading a fine line.

Michael Hague: Okay, yeah, but here's the distinctions. I'll make an extreme one if you say I'm one of the best photographers you can find. I was hired by NASA to take photographs from the space station, and you never did. That's not being true, okay? That's false.

Andrew Hellmich: Yes

Michael Hague: Okay. But a more typical thing when you said, That's me, I get the feeling that what you were saying is, how many weddings do you think you've taken photographs at?

Andrew Hellmich: Almost a thousand.

Michael Hague: Okay. A thousand. Okay, so let's say you want to tell a story that's going to try and convince people, seduce people into hiring you to decide that you're the right one for the job. So you think to yourself, well, let me just ask you. So tell me before the wedding, when it comes to the photographs, tell me something that, or a couple of things that prospective clients, or clients are most worried about when it comes to the photographs.

Andrew Hellmich: They don't want to pose but they want to look natural, but they want help if it doesn't look natural. So they say they don't want to be posed, but if they don't look good, they want help to look better in their photos.

Michael Hague: Okay, so can you think of a situation or two where it was very difficult to get somebody to look natural and not pose or to look natural but still look good?

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, definitely. I've had lots of cases where, particularly the bride and they're just trying too hard and it doesn't look natural.

Michael Hague: Okay, so that's happened more than once. Okay, so let's say you have two or three techniques you use to try and get them to feel natural. Yes, and you're telling a story. It's not going to be as involving a story if you say, "Well, in one wedding, I held up a puppet." I'm thinking of baby photography, I suppose. But in one situation, I held up, when I paired them with their best friend when I did this. That's not a story. That's just a list of techniques. So what you do is you take those two different situations and you combine them into one wedding. And so you take, or, let's twist that a little bit, let's say besides looking natural, what's the second thing that they're worried about

Andrew Hellmich: Looking slim for women, particularly for brides, they want to look their best.

Michael Hague: Okay, so you might say in this story, there was this bride, and she was so fretting, because first of all, she was desperate to look thin, and she felt like she'd gotten chunky and she tested too much wedding cake, whatever it was. And even more than that, she says, "I don't like having my picture taken, so I don't want to have to pose. I'm terrible at it, but I'm afraid I'm just going to look stiff." Okay, so let's say you had two different brides who expressed two different concerns. Now you tell the story about one bride who has both, and you deal with both in one story. Okay, so now it stopped being factual, because you never had one bride that wanted to, well, I bet you've had one bride that worried about both those things, but you might be coming up with different or it may be. Here's another way you could look at the factual versus true thing. Let's say you were taking photographs in a wedding in a cathedral, so dark and the light is hard or whatever, if you're actually taking them in there. Okay, let's say you had another bride or client who was, one who was concerned about looking good and natural and so on, completely different weddings. But for the sake of the story, the setting of the cathedral could be much more compelling, because you can describe what it was, and you can talk about the spire, and you can talk about the stained glass and how difficult it was in that light, but how beautiful it was, and how there was backlighting and all that. So it creates a vivid scene and situation and a compelling story and adds to the conflict. But then you talk about a bride that was actually married at a justice of peace who was worried about looking too stiff. So you combine those two things, and you consolidate two or more different experiences into one good story. Now, the reason I regard it as still true is because you're not claiming you did anything that you never did, but it's not factual because for the say it's like a movie. I mean, when you see a movie that's based on a true story, I guarantee you some of the things didn't happen as they are portrayed, because it needs to work as a movie. In the same way that your story needs to work as a good story, so that, I think is kosher. I think it's okay to combine things, adjust things, just don't pretend you did something that you never did.

Andrew Hellmich: Got it that makes perfect sense. Now, Michael, you said something interesting earlier. You said, when you start to tell these stories, I think you said something along the line of hooking people in. Is there a strategy or a technique or something we can do to hook people in, to keep them reading or even start reading?

Michael Hague: Well, if, are you anticipating that the story would accompany the photograph itself?

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, yeah. I'm thinking say a blog post. Well, I want to paint myself as the hero for this particular bride, this potential client that I know would be interested in this story. But how do I get her to actually read and not just skim?

Michael Hague: The way you draw people in is two things. One is vivid detail, because you want to transport the reader, the listener of the story, so to speak, from the world they occupy into the world you've created. The world you've created is the world of the wedding itself, or you as the photographer and those characters and so on. And the way you do that is the more vivid the picture you create, even when I was just off the top of my head talking about a cathedral, I immediately went to details. I said, the spire is really from outside, but I forget what they call the tall, pointy part of the ceiling in a cathedral, or the stained glass windows, and the way the light was playing in the backlight. I would assume that, as you all were listening to this, when you were starting to get some sort of image of what it would look like inside a cathedral, or you remember in cathedrals where you'd taken photographs yourself before. So that's what I mean by entering the world I'm creating. And had I really worked on that story, I would have purposely worded it in such a way that it was vivid and it was alluring, and it did draw us into that environment. And then the other way, just like the way throughout the story, you're going to create more emotion, is with conflict. And so what you might do is you might create this beautiful image of a cathedral, and you describe it all, and then you describe it over in the corner was a door. Inside that door was a small room, and inside that room, I was face to face with a bride to be that was, whose eyes were filled with tears.

Andrew Hellmich: Beautiful. I want to read now.

Michael Hague: That wasn't bad for just making that up.

Andrew Hellmich: Yes

Michael Hague: But I think in terms of movies, I generally like movies better than I like real life. Real life, you know, never has a happy ending and it's not well structured. So I was trying to draw you sort of psychologically, through that door and in that room. But then the punchline, you know, the button of that was 'her eyes were filled with tears.' Now, if I had just changed that slightly and said, and "I was face to face with a bride who had a big smile on her face, because everything was going great, and, you know, she was very excited. And it turned out it was right. Every photograph was great, and everything went smooth. And I've never seen such a well-oiled machine of a wedding", that's boring and it's just a boring story. You keep waiting for something fun to happen, fun meaning crisis. So I went right to make it vivid, draw us in, then encounter some obstacle, because whether you're the hero of the story. If you're facing a bride who is crying right before her wedding, then that's undeserved misfortune for you. That's conflict for you. That's awful. If she's the hero, of course, and she's in tears, that's certainly going to create empathy, because she's definitely a victim of some sort of undeserved misfortune here.

Andrew Hellmich: All right, okay, you're saying so many things that are triggering memories from your book, but I only read a little while ago, because earlier on, you said you have to tell a story properly, and now you've mentioned obstacle and conflict. To tell a story properly, do we need to have conflict?

Michael Hague: Yes

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, so what? How?

Michael Hague: Well, okay, let me start, that was too terse.

Andrew Hellmich: Well, that was fine, because they're going to say, well, how do we how do we introduce conflict? I mean, I guess the tears in your story just now was that the conflict or the obstacle?

Michael Hague: Well, it was the hook. You wanted to know how somebody would keep reading.

Andrew Hellmich: Yes.

Michael Hague: If anyone going to read the sentence whose eyes were filled with tears and not at least read one more sentence to find out why? What was she really so upset about?

Andrew Hellmich: True

Michael Hague: But you said that your worry was that somebody was just going to skim. Well, they've got to slow down so they can find out the answer to the question, "Well, why was she crying?" Now, sometimes, you know, it's still you don't know. Some people are going to skim, or some people aren't going to be, you know, interested. You also have the photograph there to support it. But yes, that's conflict. The reason I said it was too terse is because you can certainly tell a story about a series of good things that happened, but it's not as involving because it doesn't create emotion enough. It's emotion grows almost entirely out of conflict. Now, you might say, "Well, isn't it emotional when the bride kisses the groom and everybody's in love and happy and they applaud?" Yeah, but the reason that's emotional is because we know everything that led up to that moment, all the anticipation, all the obstacles, all the brouhaha of a wedding. And so because we know the conflict that was overcome to get there, we're going to feel a positive emotion about that moment. But if I just said to you in passing, "Oh, by the way, I saw a bride kiss a groom the other day", you might be curious why I said it, but it's not going to be that hooking. But if you say "I saw a bride running away from a groom in a church." You're going to want to know more.

Andrew Hellmich: Absolutely.

Michael Hague: Okay, so for the purposes of the story you're telling, to try and draw clients or to try and get somebody involved in your photograph, even if somebody wants to use it in the first way I talked about, to tell the story of how you took a picture, you want conflict. Now, conflict is really a pretty simple concept. All conflict means is something that stands in the way of a character who wants something, that's it. So I should probably point out is conflict isn't the only thing you need. You need a character, but you also need desire. A desire is going to move that story forward. You got to go from point A to point B. This isn't, I was going to say snapshots of a wedding, which may be a good or bad thing to say to a audience of photographers, but you know what I'm saying? It's just, you're telling a story. It's not just random shots of different things that happen.

Andrew Hellmich: Absolutely, yes.

Michael Hague: I mean, even when I've seen when you look at photographs of weddings, when they're laid out or presented, usually they're presented in such a way that you experience the flow of the wedding. They may not be chronological, they may be united in some other form, but there is forward movement to it of some kind. So you need a character, you need desire, and you need conflict. That's those are the three foundational elements of all story. Okay. So you have a desire. Now, the general desire in almost all the stories anyone's going to be telling, if you're looking for wedding clients, would be the story of the wedding, and the desire is to have a good wedding, or to get good photographs of the wedding. If you're a baby photographer, a portrait photographer, there's a different desire. They want to look a certain way. You want them to bring out the truth of who they are. You want to bring out their inner light and their inner nature as well as their external, so those are desires. Then conflict is what makes that hard to do. What stands between you and that goal? If it was just a matter of everybody say cheese, and then you took one picture, I don't think it's that easy. I don't think it works quite that way. Even if you're a great photographer, it's going to take a little more than that. So what makes what you do hard, not in the way that you're going to complain about it, but what makes it hard so you introduce conflict into your story. What are the obstacles you have to overcome? What are the new ideas you got to come up with? What are the unexpected events that nobody was planning for. Who knew that a baby was going to start crying or the bride was going to throw up right during the portrait, or whatever it is that might happen? I'm stuck on brides now, wouldn't have to be a bride, so I don't think adding conflict is going to be that difficult if you really get down to 'what about this situation that I'm telling the story about made it difficult to accomplish my goal'. And if you've done a thousand weddings, you got a lot to choose from, and you want to be thinking about what were the hard ones. That's where you mine the good stories, is what were the tough job? That's what you want to tell the stories about, because not only does it show your skill at overcoming obstacles, it makes your story more emotional.

Andrew Hellmich: This is so good because now you've actually sent me down a different thought track, and I'm thinking about photographing families, and if I actually sat down with the parents before a family shoot and got their story about their kids, and then I photographed in a way that captured what they saw or felt about their kids. I'm going to have an easier job selling those photos to that family too. So that story would play into actually sales, as well as booking more clients, it would actually affect the sales with that particular family.

Michael Hague: Yeah. Are you talking about sitting down with them to pitch them the pictures before they hire you?

Andrew Hellmich: No. Not so much. Yeah, I'm thinking that they've booked me, but now, before I go to the photoshoot, if I got the story from them about their kids, and learn about but they see in their kids, and I try and capture that, that's going to make the sales process so much easier as well. And then I've got a blog post to write afterwards as well.

 
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Andrew Hellmich: I love that quote. A great movie he's never going to be too long, is it, and a bad movie is never going to be short enough. Michael, you have been so generous. I want to say massive thanks from me and the listener, and that's been a real pleasure. So thank you so much.

Michael Hague: Yeah, I hope it's been helpful. I'll be very eager. I would love it, because when you go to my website or download this, you'll get my newsletter. I'd love to hear from you and see if this was helpful, and how you were able to apply this to your photography business. Because I'm just very curious. I almost can guarantee it's going to help, but I'll be very eager to hear what the response was and how it worked for you. So I would appreciate it if I could hear back from everyone. Otherwise, thanks. This has been great fun talking about this and thinking about it through this particular tunnel. So thanks for having me. It was just a joy.