With Laura Esmond

Speaker: Welcome back to the podcast. You are with Laura Esmond. So I took a few weeks off, guys. You may have noticed, you may not have, but I don't think I've had a podcast go up for about, well, I think by the time this one goes live, which will actually be tomorrow, uh, I think it's been about a month, and that was.

Not entirely intentional, but once I felt that I was in that rhythm of the holidays and then getting ready for the Peace and Profit Bootcamp, which we hosted January 6th, and then getting all of, um, my Get Rooted students onboarded, I, I realized, you know, I'm just going to have to let this one thing go for a little bit longer with no explanation and with no announcement knowing I will be back.

And so here we are. We are back. I. I wanna talk about that for just a minute. I think sometimes we feel so guilty when we take a break from something in our business. Something that, uh, you know, takes some of our attention, takes a lot of our attention to accomplish. I know we all feel that way about blogging and social media, and even sometimes events that we, that we put on as photographers that we feel sort of beholden to.

We feel like. Gosh, but I don't do this for a little while. Is my entire business gonna fall out from underneath me? Are people gonna notice? Are they gonna talk about it? Are they gonna think I'm bad at what I do if I don't show up often enough? I am here as, uh, I guess I don't know, a friend, uh, maybe a coach, maybe a mentor to just say No.

That's not true. We are not running large multi-billion dollar businesses that need to show up day in and day out with the same intensity. We are running businesses that should allow us to move with the flow of our life, move with the flow of our family, take a real rest. Even if it goes totally unannounced, it's okay.

And I don't even think that generally, you know, let's, let's say you take a break from social media. For, I don't know, a few weeks, let's say it takes you, you post something and you're excited about it, and you think, all right, I'm gonna get better at this again. And then three weeks goes by and you're like, oh my gosh, I still haven't posted.

Now I feel the need to make an apology post. You know? Sorry, I haven't shown up here in a while. Let me tell you why. I don't even think you need to do that. I think you should show up with the rhythm that works for you. Let's take maybe the 80 20 rule. 80% of the year you, you show up, you're on point, you plan, you schedule posts, you schedule podcasts and blogs and emails to go out and all of those things.

And then I would say 20, or, I don't know, maybe we should go with 70, 30, 20 to 30% of the time you are. More in tune with the other parts of your life that also deserve a lot of your undivided attention for a while. And that's really what the holidays became for me. We didn't do much. We didn't travel. I just had all three kids home.

My husband took off a lot of time from work and we just enjoyed being together and it was not only just being together and cooking and I made way too many loaves of sourdough bread. We're actually taking a break from bread. The entire family, if you can believe it, even my kids actually said, mom, no more bread.

We can't eat anymore, but we baked and we. Spent time outdoors 'cause it was way warmer this year than it, than we thought it would be. And we watched movies and we binged watched shows and we went shopping together and decorated and, and you know, met up with friends. I mean, we just did. So many things, and the best part about it was I actually allowed myself, I said, you know what?

I don't have anything planned. Maybe I should have, maybe I'll smack myself on the hand a little bit for that. I might. Maybe I should have had a few more things planned, social posts, a podcast scheduled, ready to go. But where I ended up was really enjoying that time with my family and finally just saying, you know what, I'm, I'm just going to fully unplug.

I'm not gonna feel guilty about this. I'm just going to unplug and enjoy this real, true. Rest. Then starting the week of January 6th, we got into the Peace and Profit Bootcamp. It was a wonderful, wonderful week. I think we had about 40 women show up for it. We had a handful of women, I think we have seven women in Get Rooted and I am so excited to, to walk out all those plans with them over the next four months.

While it was such a wonderful week, I thought I wanna share. Uh, just a little bit of what we talked about one day. So this is day two of the Peace and P, peace and Profit Bootcamp. I should have made that an easier name, but it doesn't roll off the tongue for me very easily. The Peace and Profit Bootcamp, and this was the day that we talked about money.

After this talk, we really dove into some pricing, pricing strategies. I had given everybody in the bootcamp, the pricing workshop spreadsheet and the whole course for them to work through and then show up with what their numbers really needed to be for 2026. And a lot of times you can, when you see that number, that can cause a lot of fear and.

Or, or I will say, if it's not fear, sometimes we run to that number and we say, we're gonna do this. I believe in it. I am so excited to make that number happen for me in 2026. But then with the first setback, we pull back the second setback, we pull back in E even more. And before we know it, we are no longer working towards the goal that we set at the beginning of the year.

And we're working from a place of fear. So. We did a lot of talk about pricing and numbers and strategy and how to put together packages and tips for how to, you know, utilize digitals with your sessions and, and with your packages and that sort of thing. We talked a lot about that, but the first part of the talk was about money mindset how can we see the value that we are providing so that we can stand by the price

Speaker: So I just wanted to share that with you today and, please enjoy. Here's another question for you in the chat. Where do you notice yourself pulling back when things don't work right away? Is it marketing? Do you stop posting? Is it pricing? Have you tried IPS? But then you were like, Ugh, I just hate bringing this up. It feels awkward. So instead of pushing through it, you just pull back and go, I'll just send a gallery.

Do you even stop believing in your offers and feel like maybe they're not that valuable?

Marketing going small on IPS, all of it. Mark pricing and marketing. Yeah, because those are the things that feel like we can control, right? Waiting and patience is really, really hard. Uh, if you guys have your sticky notes from yesterday, I want you to grab it and I want everyone to write down somewhere that you can look at a hundred times every single time you start to get worried.

Every time you wanna pull back, I want you to write this down and read it Next time. I'm worried, instead of pulling back, I will double down.

I want you to have that sticky note somewhere so that if you're getting ghosted, if you, um, aren't getting traction on your website, if people are telling you you're too expensive, when you're getting nervous about saying to the client in front of you who you have walked through a process of, we're going to meet, we're going to meet, we're going to meet you, built your whole process on it, and then when the time comes, you go, do you wanna just.

Want me to just send you this as a gallery, you know, because you get scared to actually ask them to meet with you. I want you to look at that sticky note, double down, double down on your marketing that week, engage with people more. Go create a couple blog posts, stay in the game while you were working on your money mindset, while you were waiting for a few of these things to click.

So if you find yourself pulling back on marketing because you're worried things aren't working, that note is your reminder to just double down. So I wanna shift us into money more directly. And I, I'm talking a lot about belief, which can sound very intangible. It sounds very kind of fluffy. Like what does it even mean for you and for your business?

So I wanna make this more concrete and how it directly relates to money and how you decide what you'll charge for your services and what you're going to include. You have to believe that your offer. and by your offer, I mean, what I have on the screen here, it's everything. It's not just, is my photography good enough?

It's your service that you're providing, the time that you invest in your clients, the time that you give to them, the products that you are creating, and the time that you spend on those products, which means your client isn't spending time on those products, the quality, researching, having great vendors to work with, being willing to go back and forth with the vendor who screwed up a product, and the images that you're creating, okay?

That is, that is your offer. And you have to believe that your offer creates a return on investment that's worthy of the price that your client is going to is going to trade with you. The trade you are proposing is equal their money for your time, your care, your expertise, your artistry, your leadership.

If you're doing IPS.

So before I move on, I just have a question in the chat, or you can just answer this to yourself. When you think about your prices, which part feels harder? The math. Just figuring out the math and the strategy behind it. Or believing you're worth it for a lot of people. Both. Um, for a lot of people the math is hard and hopefully that pricing workshop helped that.

I sent you guys last night if you had a chance to dive into it, believing in worth it by far. Belief strategy. for a lot of people, it is a matter of believing people will pay it, which is a direct reflection of you seeing the value of your offer. If you don't believe, what did I say yesterday will happen.

If you don't believe in what you're moving towards, you'll sabotage it. You will sabotage your efforts. So for those of you who are like, no, the, I actually do believe in what I'm offering. I just wanna make sure it's strategic. There could be other ways in your business that you might be sabotaging your effort, uh, uh, efforts.

Maybe it's not, maybe it's in marketing, maybe it's not in pricing. Maybe it's not in selling. So let's say your goal is people spend them. Again, I'm just throwing out random numbers here. Let's say your goal is that people spend $2,000 or more per session, but right now you're charging 800. So that $1,200 gap can feel difficult.

That, that feels impossible. That's a lot of money. And when something feels impossible, we probably aren't going to stretch into it, right? That's where we will start to self-sabotage. Like, how can I make. How can I create, I'm already working so hard at $800, how am I gonna make this an even more valuable offer and get somebody to spend $1,200 more?

And the biggest thing staying in the way is that money mindset. You not believing that your offer equals their money. The trade feels off. This is also why I always warn people off just copying someone else's prices. Because without context for that price, you can't back it up. You won't stand by it. You don't know why you're charging that for your business.

You don't even know why they're charging it for their business. So stay with me here. $2,000 or more per client is your goal. Here's a gut check, especially for those of you who are like that belief part is hard. First question, do you believe your photography is worth $2,000? Second question. Do you believe any photography is ever.

Worth $2,000 no matter who's shooting it. So those are two very different questions. The first is about how you value you and your service and product, right? And is there a gap between the amount of money and what you're providing? The second is about your personal money mindset. This is when photographers start setting prices from their pocketbook versus the true value of their work and the true value of their, uh, offer, and all of those things that I encompass them to offer.

Right? That's your money mindset. We don't wanna bring that to the table in our business just because you have a hard time believing that photography could ever be worth that.

And then, then there's also just, do you even, do you have the discretionary income to spend $2,000 on photography?

And if you don't, you're, you might be bringing that to the table. I want you to imagine your clients that you are, are looking for.

They're just ready to spend with you. They have an overabundance of money. They're ready to spend. They have no problems with spending it on you. Let them have their own money. Mindset issues.

Don't, don't bring yours to the table and then sacrifice for your clients who may not even have that issue.

If deep down you don't believe in what you're selling, and we're going to, we're gonna get further here in just a minute. If you don't believe in what you're selling and that offer, you'll never allow yourself to charge that much for it. The discomfort will just keep standing in, in your way. So here's where the actual problem is that I see often, not with everybody, but I see often it's not the actual price, it's the gap between the price and your offer.

So a photographer who charges $800 is very likely, not everybody, but is very likely in volume mode or 500 or whatever, right? There's a lot more marketing that goes into it. There are a lot more clients they have to work with.

There's a lot more editing. Their time is full. They don't have the space to slow down and create an experience that is actually worth $2,000. When you serve fewer people, you do have the time to create the experience that supports the higher pricing. You also have that space inside the session where you've actually slowed down and you have started creating more beautiful work.

Your work improves because you have slowed down. So because clients aren't just paying for photos when you're charging a higher rate, They're, they're paying for the experience, your time, the care, the way you listen, the questions that you're asking, the way you help them decide what matters and like what's gonna work best for their home.

When you slow down, you're, you're, you're working with fewer people and you slow down and you're able to do that. That's the investment. And that can be done through IPS. That can be done through all inclusive packages. You don't have to do IPS to create that experience, by the way.

there are a lot of beautiful ways to create that experience and. Ensure that the offer you are creating is worthy of the price that you're saying. So, but if you're stuck in that volume mode, then, then yeah, what you are offering is a lower ticket service. That's the point of it

this is how I, I price my offers as a coach. You know, the art of selling that is a lower price course, which gives you information, but it doesn't give you my time and a higher touch course like Get rooted. It costs more because you're asking for my attention and my care and my leadership.

So I have to charge more for that. Photography works the exact same way. When you spend more time with your clients, when you go deeper, it becomes way easier to say, this is a $2,000 experience and here's the return. So it all starts with you creating an equal trade and and believing that you're worthy of receiving it.

I dunno how that lands on you. somebody said that to me a long time ago, something about being worthy of actually receiving something and I was like, oh, I do struggle with that sometimes. Sometimes it's hard to actually receive. that sort of gets tied back into love language too.

Like, how do you like to receive love? If, if you're not, if you're not somebody who likes to receive love through gifts, like that's not your love language, it might be hard for you to receive money for what you do for people. So let's move forward here.

a lot of the emotional charge that we feel around money. Comes from what we think money means. So we think money means importance and Status from the negative point of view. It can be selfish, it can be greedy, it can be power. I think a lot of photographers struggle with being seen as wanting money or needing money.

We all, we like, kind of wanna avoid it.

I do think this applies more to women very, uh, more often than it does to men. And there's so much research around that. we can feel greedy when, when we're saying that we want something, but

Money is just a tool, right? We use it to make exchange possible. And if you can start seeing money is just a tool and somebody, actually, somebody said that in the, in the chat, um, oh, thank you Rochelle. Um, if you can start to see it, money as a tool, and we're gonna work on that in just a minute.

Pricing suddenly goes from, from feeling like, who do I think I am charging this? Or, gosh, I'm so uncomfortable talking about this. More to, to a question more along the lines of, is this a fair exchange? Right? let's go into like real quick where money actually came from, because it's something that we don't really think about.

There was a time when money didn't exist, You traded what you had. You've got a cow, I've got a horse, I need milk. You need transportation. So we trade, my horse is my currency, but that system only works if you need what I have and I need what you have at the exact same time. And that's a pretty limited system.

So eventually people figured out it was a lot easier to carry coins than a whole horse. You can't put a horse in your wallet, right? So money became, coins became that in-between tool that provided more flexibility. I give you money, I'll give you gold coins for your cow. You take those gold coins and buy chickens from Farmer Bob.

Farmer Bob uses that money to buy tools and the cycle just keeps moving. So that's all money is. It's not a reward, it's not a measure of worth, it's not proof that you're good or bad, it's just the tool that allows value to move around the world. That's all it is.

Once your basic needs are, needs are met though, right? There's that hierarchy of needs. Once those basic needs are met, money becomes the way you experience life. It's how you create memories and travel, how you give your kids opportunities. But money itself is still just this neutral thing. It's just a thing.

It doesn't mean anything until we assign meaning to it, and we are the ones who decided that money must mean something more important, Or that wanting money must mean something ugly about you. Who doesn't want money when you realize it's money that allows us to enjoy a full life, to buy the food.

We prepare for our closest family and friends when we invite them over for a nice dinner to buy the plane ticket to show my kids the Eiffel Tower. Did that a few years ago. I was happy to spend that money and I'm glad I had it to be able to do it, to pay for my kids' tutor, to allow us to donate to our favorite charity.

And yes, even sometimes I've got this ring that keeps popping up on Instagram. Sometimes money is for that just to, to buy something that just makes me feel good. So I get to choose spending money on things that bring me joy, that make me feel pretty, that create a beautiful home, that give back, on things that provide me with rich memories.

And your clients get to do the same thing. So we don't wanna bring our bad energy around money to your conversations with them because they walked in maybe wanting to create those rich memories and those beautiful things for their home. They are ready and primed to spend on that. And it, you are just the gateway to do that.

You are the person that is going to allow it. When, when I rewrite my money story from wanting money makes me greedy and uncomfortable to wanting money, enable enables all those really beautiful things to happen in my life. I am all in. Because money doesn't change who I am. It's just giving me more ability to be who I already am, right?

So if you're generous, more money makes you more generous. If you love being stylish, money allows you that freedom of expression and getting to like buy cute things and just feel beautifully stylish. If you care about helping people, money gives you more reach. Money itself is not the problem,

We're not gonna let it define our worth using it to build a life to support your family, to serve others well, that's not wrong. That is just, that is responsibly using money, and that's what generally women do with it, Women are most often stewards of money and always trying to do right by it.

It's probably also what creates our guilt around money. So when you start to see money that way as a tool for exchange and a tool for impact as something that just flows as a neutral participant around the world, charging for your work should stop feeling so heavy because you're not, this is actually really important.

you are not taking from anyone. You are trading with them. You are not taking from your clients, you are just trading with them. You are offering something of value. All your hours of education, mastering your camera, mastering your ability to work with a newborn and a crazy toddler.

Sourcing the best products to make sure you are creating a real legacy for them versus just more junk in their home. The time and care that you put into every single session and your clients are choosing to participate, the trade is equal. That is the shift. And once that clicks, everything else we're going to do with pricing starts to feel possible.

So I wanna ask you a question, and I want you to actually sit with it for a second. If you had more money, what would you do with it? And I'm not talking about like a fantasy amount. You won the lottery. You never have to work again. Just the right amount. Just enough that you didn't really have to think about it anymore.

You know enough so that you're not constantly calculating in your head. What would your life look like? How would you use this tool? Vacations. Same

if money wasn't a daily, daily stressor, Where would you put it? And it's okay. You can be like, I, I, okay. So for me it would be, I would have every dime for college co uh, for my kids college. I'd go on a few trips every single year, like three with the whole family.

I would probably treat my parents, especially my mom, I would wanna just like spoil her a little bit. I would tithe more. I'd probably own a few more pairs of shoes and that ring on Instagram that keeps popping up a cute Parisian cottage.

I like that. Lisa, invest in training vacations with family college. Pay off all the debt travel. Yeah, these are, none of, these are e are evil things, and these are all things that your clients want too, right? These are all really good things. Mostly I would honestly, I would feel just really grateful that it was something I didn't have to think about so much anymore.

The ability to say yes more easily when you strip away all that guilt and the stories and thinking that it's greedy.

Most of what we want money for is actually really grounded. It's not greedy. because money at that point isn't even the goal. It's not the goal. The goal are all the things that you guys just listed. It's, it's having more freedom in life to be able to do things. It's just the tool that makes all of that stuff possible.

And that's true for your clients also. And one of the things they're craving is something beautiful in their homes of their loves, So don't hold back, don't hold back from them. And, and because you have access to be able to give that to them, they wanna trade their money with you so that then you can go trade your money with a vacation and on and on it goes.

So if money is a

tool and you can clearly see how you want to use it in your life, the next honest question is, is your business currently designed to support that?

Thank you so much for joining me today and listening to that snippet from the Peace and Profit Bootcamp. I hope that just gave you a little inspiration to think about, you know, how are you thinking about money? Are you bringing some sort of story or mindset block to your business? And if so, open that door and walk through it and see if something different happens for you this year.

Thank you again for joining me, and I will see you next week.