How can you go above and beyond for your clients to create a referral-generating business? Today’s episode is the third in a series that aims to explore that exact question. Inspired by Alex Hormozi’s book $100M Offers: How To Make Offers So Good People Feel Stupid Saying No, I’m sharing key concepts that I’ve implemented in my own business to create meaningful client connections and cash flow. 

The Focused Photographers Podcast was created based on the idea that the most incredible tool for learning is a deep dive into any given topic from multiple perspectives. Join us every other week as we explore important topics, with host Daniel Moyer and a variety of guests offering different perspectives! Make sure you’ve hit that follow or subscribe button on your favorite podcast player to get notified each week as we air new episodes!

Subscribe on Your Favorite Podcast Player

Apple Podcast App | Spotify

REVIEW THE SHOW NOTES

I built my business on referrals (2:41)

Be along for the journey (4:57)

Putting it into practice (8:19)

One of the most powerful conversations (11:30)

I am the lowest person on the list (16:35)

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Chip Heath, Dan Heath: The Power of Moments

Alex Hormozi: $100M Offers: How To Make Offers So Good People Feel Stupid Saying No

CONNECT WITH DANIEL MOYER​

Website: https://danielmoyercoaching.com/

Wedding Instagram: @DANIELMOYERPHOTO

Business Instagram: @GETFOCUSEDPHOTOGRAPHERS

REVIEW IN APPLE PODCASTS​

This podcast is about giving to others in knowledge, joy, insight, and (*hopefully*) humor. You can help too! The more reviews and ratings in Apple Podcasts, the higher the Focused Photographers Podcast will rank and ultimately the more people will listen to it. So if you’re getting value from this podcast, will you consider leaving a rating on Apple Podcasts? Just click below!

LEAVE A RATING IN APPLE PODCASTS!

Thank you!

-Dan

Review the Transcript:

Hey, photographer friends, welcome to the focus photographers podcast episode 82. I’m your host, Dan Moyer, and I’m grateful you’re here with me. This is the third installment in a series on creating a referral generating business. What does that mean? It means that there are many different ways to bring people into your business, many different ways to get eyes on your business.

And I think that the foundation of that should be people telling other people, uh, people telling their friends about you and about your service. And I think that is the most powerful way social media changes, whole platforms become obsolete, but there is nothing that goes out of style or, or becomes dated about someone’s opinion of you, unless you wrong them.

So that’s what this whole series is about, is about. Creating a business that brings people to you through referrals. And so this is the third episode in that series. I’m really excited about this. Uh, if you have not, if this is the first episode you’re hearing in this series, then welcome, uh, I’ll catch you up really quick.

I highly suggest going back to episode 80 and episode 81 and listening to them both, but I’ll give you a little quick summarization of each one, a very quick one. Episode 80 was about how knowledge is power. And the more, you know, your couples on a deep level and know them, not just about them, not just like the questionnaire answers, the more you actually know them, the better you can serve them.

And the more they’re going to tell people about you. Uh, the second one, uh, is, is episode 81. That would be how to specifically differentiate yourself from everybody else. And this is a, A really powerful idea I got from a book called The Power of Moments. It was by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. And it’s like this idea of like the script that is in people’s minds, how we can read that script and then insert moments of surprise and delight by totally breaking the script or flipping the script.

Uh, so in each of these episodes, I try to share a concept that I think is really important and foundational and not just stop there, but actually we’ll go a little bit further and try to get deeper and say this is how I have implemented it in my business and how it actually looks in in practice. I think there’s lots of inspiration.

There’s lots of different, you know, things that say like, hey, this is what to do, but not how people have actually implemented it in their business. So that’s what I try to do in this episode as well. Hang on. This is going to be the third installment in the series on creating a referral generating business.

Let’s do it.

Okay, so third episode in this installment. This is, um, I’m gonna start this off with a story. And I’ve sort of told this story a little bit before, but I’m gonna tell it from a different perspective. I built my business because I got passed around and referred in a lot of friend groups, I would get, you know, somebody would hire me, and then I would get three or four, five, six of the couples in that same group, because one person’s getting married, and they automatically know a whole bunch of other people are getting married.

And so I’m very fortunate to have that. And I think there’s this one story that I’m reminded of where, you I, I would regularly, I regularly go and meet with my clients. And this is something I’ll talk about in the in practice section. I try to meet with my clients. A lot of people do like an in person or like they add a complimentary engagement session or something like that.

I just automatically think that I’m going to meet with my couples in person to do our, our meeting, uh, our, our timeline meeting or something like that. And a lot of times it’s over dinner. So there’s one couple, they live about an hour away. They live in Delaware. And we were, um, we were trying to come up with ideas about like, maybe we could just get together.

And so they were like, can you just come down here? The groom lived or the groom and the bride work together or live together, but the groom worked at this bike shop. And he’s like, we’ll bring up, I’ll bring a bike home for you from the shop. And maybe we can just ride around Wilmington. We’ll show you some of the spots that we want to get pictures taken.

Maybe we can go to this place and have something to eat. We can just like sit on a porch and just talk and catch up and plan for the wedding. I said, great, that sounds awesome. And so I did this, we went down there, it was awesome. And it got around in the friend group that, um, I had done this. And, um, uh, Two of the couples who had already photographed, they weren’t surprised at all.

But another person in this friend group was sort of surprised about this because they had hired somebody else, not me. And before I say anything else, let me just say that that couple was their, their pictures were great. They, you know, they love their photographer and all that kind of stuff. But there’s a reason why I got passed around that friend group.

And I photographed more friends in that friend group and that other photographer didn’t. And I’m going to say that it’s because because I was along for that journey, not just the wedding day. This other couple who hired somebody else, they were like, well, why is, why is Dan going down to coming down to Wilmington to like hang out with you guys?

And you’re like, oh, that’s just like something he does to get to know us like outside the context of the engagement session or outside the context of like a photo session, just like get together and do the planning meeting. And they’re verbatim. I heard this through one of the friends who texted it to me and was like, yeah, she was really upset because Herf Tarver just said, oh, we’ll just talk to you the week of the wedding when we send over the questionnaire.

And so that leads me to this concept, which is be along for the journey, not just the wedding day. And if I can maybe even just simplify that a little tiny bit more, it’s don’t wait for your clients to find out how amazing you are. So many photographers, they do all this work to get the client to, to sign right to get the, to get the money and the down to paint the down payment.

That’s what I’m looking for the deposit. And then they fall off the face of the earth for a while. Maybe they’re just super busy. Maybe, you know, they don’t have any, anything to, they don’t know what to do in those months in there. It’s just like, they just get that money and then they fall off the face of the earth.

And then it’s like, okay, my next wedding on the calendar is this date. Well, I guess I better get the information for that wedding. We have to build the trust along the way we have to come alongside our couples and our clients and really get to know them and and build that trust and comfort on my worst day.

And I’m willing to bet on your worst day. Also, you can cover a wedding. You could cover a family session. You could show up and do your thing. Take some great pictures. Um, and and that’d be fine. But what takes the longest is building trust and comfort. Surely people can build trust and comfort because there are these amazing, super high end photographers.

They’ve got hundreds of thousands of followers. They’ve got photographers as clients, right? Like their social media presence is huge. I think for the average, you know, entrepreneur or solopreneur who’s in business for a while. This is their thing. They like what they do. They’re good at it. They don’t have aspirations of being, you know, super high, uh, follower count and all that stuff.

They’re just like, like what they do. I think you’re, if you’re listening to this, you’re probably just a normal photographer. Like me, you just want to do good for your clients. do a great job and hope that they tell some other people, um, about you. And that’s what this is about. It’s about giving them specific tools to tell other people about you.

And it’s about getting in front of them before they hire before the wedding day happens. And the more that like you can, you know, Come alongside them and share in their experiences leading up to the wedding and all that stuff. It just gives people these like glowing reviews. They don’t have to wait for the wedding day to all of a sudden be like, wow, my photographers pictures were amazing.

It gives your clients another reason to say, yeah, he was awesome. He sent us this handwritten card right after we got We hired him. Um, he’s always like in touch. He sends us this like once in a while random out of the blue emails that say 86 days to your wedding. Can’t wait, whatever. Um, you know, we got together for dinner.

He was just very personable. And so, you know, this is one of the things that, you know, I talk with my coaching clients. If you read my reviews, it’s, It’s for the, the photo session is like, is great. That is something that you’re working towards, but there’s so much more to you that the couple or that your clients need to find out about.

And most of us are so much better in person. We’re so much better at, um, selling ourselves. We’re so much better at building rapport when we’re in person. So why not build that? into your experience. Why not build that time to get together and talk on the phone or or whatever it is in person. So if that’s the concept of being along for the journey or not waiting for your clients to find out how amazing you are, then what does that look like in practice?

In my business, that means that I’ve become the trusted advisor. There’s a, I feel like there’s a debate about like, what is, uh, what a photographer doesn’t and doesn’t do. And I’ve seen people say, you know, I don’t, I’ve seen photographers say, I don’t want to deal with the, the timeline or any of that kind of stuff, or why is the hair and makeup person reaching out super far in advance.

It is what it is. I don’t know. A past business mentor of mine said, blessed are the flexible for they never get bent out of shape. And I, that rings true in my mind. Like none of this stuff really bothers me that much. Like people are just trying to do their job. They’re trying to just like get their ducks in a row.

And if I can help them, awesome. I think me being available. for my clients, uh, whether it’s going to meet with them, um, whether it’s in the very first, uh, note that I write to them, you know, I tell them how excited I am for the wedding, blah, blah, blah. Uh, but then I also say like, I’d love to get together, you know, let me know when you’re in town.

If you have anything, if I can make your wedding planning process easier, more convenient, more fun, that’s what I’m here for. You’ll never be interrupting me or bothering me. And a lot of my clients take me up on that. I think that’s just like, I want to blur that line between what the typical photographer client relationship looks like.

You’ve heard me say that if you’ve been listening to the last two episodes, I’ve said that a bunch, but blurring that line of like, what exactly is my job? I photographed hundreds of weddings. If you’ve been doing this for awhile, you’ve probably photographed more weddings than your couple has been at.

And you know, some things. So there are lots of people send out guides and things like that. Again, I think so many people are very busy and don’t even read guides. Maybe they do. Maybe they don’t. Um, I, I know that my clients don’t read guides. My clients are super busy. A lot of them are nurses and teachers and doctors and things like that.

And they’re just super busy. So I figure the more that I can give direct feedback to them or things that come right from my mouth and we’re having conversations or text message or whatever, then they will, they will actually read that and they’ll implement that. One of the things that I really like that I have not implemented, but I, I really love this idea is instead of creating, you know, a mass email blast to go out on certain times, which I definitely think that that’s a great idea.

Um, I’ve done that. I have a couple of emails that go out throughout the experience. And they will, they’ll share specific things. They’ll talk about, you know, wedding day stuff. We’ll talk about getting together and they’re automated emails. But I love this idea of maybe recording a handful of different videos that are 30 seconds to a minute and a half and sending them to your clients.

And, and just being like, you could, I mean, this could be something that so many of us create content for social media. Maybe once every like couple of months, you send them literally a personal message, send them to through their text message to him or whatever it is instead of an email. Like there’s these little things to like keep you on top of their mind.

And I think the more that you can give advice regularly and, um, and really think about what they need to know and then give it to them, that’s going to be so helpful to them. Again, You have photographed how many weddings? I know there are some things that if you think back that you’d be able to say, Oh, this is actually going to be really helpful.

One of the most powerful conversations I have with my clients, and I’m going to try to go through it verbatim here is things that I have learned both as a groom and as a photographer. And if there’s one thing you take away from this whole entire conversation, um, it is this one little thing that I go over at the end of my client, uh, timeline meeting, usually right before the wedding.

So it’s usually about two months out. I send, uh, we, we have this conversation about the timeline and family pictures. And then at the end, I pretty much go into this. I’ll say, Hey, you know, how many people have told you that the wedding day is going to fly by? And they’re always like, uh, everybody, everybody has said that.

And so say, well, has anybody told you how to make it not fly by or to slow it down? And 98 percent of them say, no, nobody said that, but we’ve heard that a bunch. And so I’ll say, Hey. I’m going to give you guys advice from the, my, from two perspective. One is, you know, the group or the photographer has photographed hundreds of weddings.

And then two as the groom, you know, who I have both sides of the equation. I said from the groom’s perspective, right? The wedding day flies by because you’re constantly looking forward to the next thing, right? Like very few days ever. Do we have as scheduled, like every 15 minutes for, you know, for 24 hours, right?

And so I’ll say the wedding day flies by because you’re constantly looking forward to the next thing. It’s like when you’re popping bottles in the morning with your boys, or, you know, if you’re popping bottles, having some mimosas or something in the morning, um, you’re thinking like, Oh, I wonder what Colin’s doing this morning.

I can’t wait to see a suit. And she’s like, Oh, you know, I can’t wait to, you know, dance together. I can’t wait to like, you know, hold hands. I can’t wait to walk down the aisle together. I can’t wait to do all these things. And it’s like, you know, after that, It’s your ceremony, or maybe it’s a first look, and then it’s family pictures, and then it’s the, um, you know, your first dance, and, you know, before that it’s cocktail hour, and then all of a sudden you’re sitting there at your sweetheart table, and then after that it’s, you know, you’re dancing, and all of a sudden, boom, before you know it, it’s over.

And my favorite analogy is, if you’re outdoorsy at all, what do people do when they get to the top of a mountain, or like, after just like a long, big hike, right, they get to a vista, what do they do? They stand there, they, they like, they soak it in, right? The wedding day is the top of the mountain, right?

Like right now it’s two, three months out and you guys are like walking through the foothills. It’s a nice journey. You’re looking at the top of the mountain. It’s beautiful. It’s super exciting. You can’t wait to be up there, but soon you’re in the summit and it’s like the death zone and you’re clawing your way up to the summit.

And there’s so much stuff you have to do and things are piling on. And you have so many questions to answer. When you get to the top of the mountain, it’s all worth it though. But it’s really easy to get distracted by all the other stuff, all the things that are just trying to distract you away from the whole point of the wedding, which is joy of having all your friends and family under one roof for a happy reason.

So here’s what you do at each point of the day. You take a deep breath and you survey your land. So when you’re in the morning popping bottles with your ladies or your guys or whatever you like, take a little mental snapshot when everybody’s laughing or whatever you like. Take that little mental snapshot and survey your land when you are, you know, you guys have held hands how many times you’ve, you’ve walked down the street holding hands.

Today you’re gonna hold hands in front of, you know, a hundred people, or 25 people, or 200 people. However many people are on that guest list, right? You’re going to hold hands in front of them and you’re going to say you promise your lives to each other. You’re going to feel each other’s hands. You’re going to take a little peek over your shoulder and you’re going to take that little mental snapshot of all those people who are there to gather you to survey your land.

One of the most under talked about moments that nobody ever talks about. I’m talking about photographers as well. I, this is also verbatim what I told my clients, nobody talks about this. If you’re sitting behind a sweetheart table and you’re this newly married couple, this is one of the first and only moments that where nobody cares about you.

The rest of the day, everybody’s like, Oh, that’s here. Are you excited? I can’t, I can’t believe it’s here. Are you nervous? You like, right. Everybody’s asking all these questions of you. And it’s this moment where, where maybe the wedding party, their significant others are there, but they’ve been doing wedding party duties.

Uh, so they’ve, you know, They haven’t seen their significant others or spouses or kids. So finally, like they’re catching up with their people around the table because it’s dinnertime. Parents are talking at their table because it’s dinnertime. Grandparents, like all the friends, they’re all talking and catching up at the table.

And for this moment. It might as well just be the two of you anywhere in the world having dinner together. But today happens to be your wedding day. So when you see me in the corner, and I say this to them, when you see me in the corner, I’m going to make a peak with my hands. I’m going to point to the top and say, you’re on top of your mountain.

And when you see that, I just want you to take a deep breath, put your hand on each other’s smooch, look around for literally two seconds and survey your land. The more that you can get out of that stream, that flow of things and take these little mental snapshots. The more you’re going to remember it all and it’s all going to be crystallized in your mind.

That’s the first part. That’s the long winded part. That’s the part from the groom’s perspective. The second part that I go over is how many people are coming to your wedding and everybody says 100, 150, whatever I say on that list, I am super low on that list. The lowest person on that list, super important job that it, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to be spending the most time with me on your wedding day.

I’ve been doing this for a really long time. And one of the things that I have noticed is in the beginning, I knew what couples loved a year after the wedding, two years, three years, five years. And it was always like these cutesy pictures where they were smiling. Like, you know, this is our wedding picture.

We got married, whatever. But the further away I get from the wedding, the more pictures that come up are the, the real ones where they are. Lost in their own little world loving on each other or when they were laughing, crying, cheering, toasting, drinking, dancing with all the people there to support them.

So the best thing you can do outside of the photo scheduled time, right? Like we’re scheduling this photo time for your couple portraits, for your family pictures, for your wedding party pictures outside of that. Just ignore me because the more that you focus on the people who love and support you and who are there to support you.

Cheer you on and spread joy and all that kind of stuff. The more you’re going to remember it and the more you’re going to love your wedding collection because it’s real. That’s the conversation I have with my couples. And at the end of every single one, at the beginning of that meeting, every single one of my couples comes into it really anxious, excited, but anxious.

And like, like trying to put the details together and just all that stuff. And at the end, every single one of them is like, Oh, let’s do it. Right? Like they all get hyped up. And I think The more you have to find your niche, you have to find these ways of like seeing what people, what your clients really need and speaking to it.

Another one of the things that I do is, um, and I’ve sort of spoken about this before is the, the date night box, where I remember when Rachel and I, my wife and I got married, it was, We got married, uh, end of June. And I had a wedding like a couple weeks before that. And we had said that, you know what, after my last wedding, before our wedding, we’re going to go away to the beach and we’re just going to like head out.

We’re going to go down there. We’re going to like reconnect. And here’s the thing. I remember how crazy it was. Leading up to our wedding. It was like in the beginning you get like you get engaged and then you pick the date and it’s like, Oh, you like do the big things, get the venue, the church, the ceremony site, the officiant, the photographer, right?

Like those are some of the big things. Some of the other things you have to get to, but like, and there’s this huge law and it’s like the three month mark, things get really, really crazy. And it’s like, because the minutia starts to pile on and you can’t get ahead because you can’t tell the venue how many.

People are coming until you’ve got the response cards back. You can’t get the response cards back until you send them out. You can’t send them out until you get them designed. You can’t get them designed and send them out until you’ve got all the addresses, blah, blah, blah. Thank goodness for electronic RSVPs now.

But it’s like, I remember how heavy that time was and how distracting it was to have all this stuff to do. And I realized that that’s something that my clients. don’t know to anticipate that the three month mark is when things get really crazy. And I’m willing to bet if you are in touch with your couples that like, you know, three months, two months out and that client meeting or whatever, if you do these, you know that people are getting stressed and anxious and all that stuff.

And so it’s from that, that my own experience of that leading up to the wedding, those three months, that two things were born out of it. One, the in person meeting that I just talked about and that, that sort of spiel I did about trying to reign them back in. Um, two is the date night box where I just send them something at like the, the two, two and a half month mark, um, just to encourage them to have a night to reconnect, to not do any wedding planning or anything like that.

And the third thing is, um, some kind of like a reconnection weekend or something like that. Like Find a date, put it on your calendar. We’re six months out. We’re three months out. Whatever it is, put a date on your calendar and, and have this like weekend where you can go away or do something together. No wedding planning allowed.

And it’s those kinds of things that I have made the biggest impact because it’s more than just, here’s the wedding pictures. I, I truly deeply care about my clients. So. You have to find ways that make sense for you to show that you care and you’re along for this process. You’re not just in it for the money.

You’re not just in it for the wedding day. You are along for the journey, not just the wedding day. You know, I can hear you. Maybe you say that you’ve got a lot of clients who travel in, or maybe you’re a destination photographer. I have lots of clients who have traveled in. I’ve also traveled for a lot of weddings.

You know, last year in June, 2023, I went out to New Mexico and did this literally my favorite wedding I’ve ever photographed in New Mexico. It was absolutely amazing. Um, and I’d never met the couple prior to that. We just did Skype happy Skype, man. That really, uh, I feel like dates me zoom. Happy hours. We did FaceTime, happy hours.

We’re just like, would, would catch up and talk about some, uh, wedding planning things. We talk about some details. We talk about what’s going on in each other’s lives, half hour, right? Like easy peasy. And by the time the second photographer I had with me, it was like, he was sort of amazed at the relationship that I had had.

And I truly believe that. You can get to know a lot of people through email. You can like, you know, build a personal brand through Instagram and all that kind of stuff. And they know a lot about you, but it’s this weird thing where like, they know a lot about you, but you don’t know much about them because you’ve put so much out there and you’ve put so much of yourself out there, but they don’t know a lot about, uh, or you don’t know a lot about them because it’s been so one sided.

That’s why I think having more conversations or phone calls or whatever are really so helpful at, at being along for this journey. So. You know, creating resources for them, video chats, happy hours, like whatever it is, get together for a bite to eat. I’ve already sort of mentioned this about, you know, many photographers have a engagement session that they give complimenting their packages.

I just expect that whether it’s an engagement session they hire me for. Or I have to plan it on my own with them that we’re going to go to dinner or we’re going to get together at some point outside of the context of a photo session. Just to, to talk and meet each other and, and be comfortable in the amount of comfort that that brings to me on the wedding day is, is really amazing.

Now, if you’re a volume photographer, This is going to be a little tricky, but what are other ways that you can build rapport or find ways to come alongside your couples, uh, throughout that planning process that makes it feel less transactional and like you’re sending guides and more like they’re your only client.

The more you can do that and the more you can like blur that line of like, Oh, I’ve taken the money. Um, I’ll show up on your wedding date. I think the more that you’ll be seen as a, be seen as something more than a photographer. So. This is, um, literally went into this thinking like, I’m just going to bust this out.

This is going to be like a 10, 15 minute episode in here. I think we’re coming up on like 25 minutes. So I really hope that this was an impactful episode for you. I hope that this whole series is, I think it’s just another way of doing business. Uh, this, this episode in particular, um, you know, I really hope that, uh, you’re inspired in some way by that, that little spiel that I do sort of at the end of my planning call.

I’ve been doing that for a couple of years now. It’s had some different variations, but. Just find ways to like be along for that journey, not just the wedding day and be along and really speak to your clients and make them feel seen, heard and understood. That’s my whole goal for this, um, for this series.

So I’m glad you’re here. I’m hoping, I’m glad you’re along for this journey. Take a look at the other episodes. If you, uh, are in this place where like you’re liking what I’m saying, or you’re unsure about how to build this business in the context of a family or whatever it is, um, you can go to danielmoyercoaching.

com. This is what I teach my clients. I’m telling you how I do this in practice. My clients are all very different. Um, I’m gregarious. I talk a lot. Uh, I have other clients who are the, they are the calming presence, right? They are the rock for the wedding day. Um, I’ve got, you know, a client who’s a family photographer that, um, she just cares so much about her clients and that has become her like North star.

She just wants to be alongside her clients and. Uh, have them feel like she’s, you know, not just there for, um, to shoot and burn and that kind of stuff. I’ve got, you know, another client who’s really, uh, amazing, uh, in his business generation ideas, but how to take those ideas, simplify them. And get them implemented on a already very strained schedule.

Like this is all the stuff that, um, that I work with clients on that. If you’re just like in this same space of like, I don’t know how to implement this or I’m too scattered or whatever. That is literally what I do. I’m more of a life coach disguised as a business coach, uh, to, to borrow and, uh, an ism from my friend, Dave Moss.

But this is what I’m here for. So if this is resonating with you, just go to danielmorecoaching. com. Send me an email. We’ll set up a time to, uh, to catch up and see if we’re a good fit and see if coaching would be good for you. All right, friends. Thank you so much for tuning in today. Make it a great day.

All the best to you. Talk to you soon.