Episode 17
Teri Fode – Episode 017 – A Photographer Podcast Interview
You don’t want to miss this podcast when Kia and Matt interview Teri Fode (@terifode)! Teri has been a professional photographer for 15 years. She also owns and operates Voice Your Brand. Teri specializes in photographing seniors and their families. What’s working great for Teri now is telling the story of her brand on her Instagram stories and going deeper than just sharing behind the scenes. Teri believes our industry is missing the fact we need to market like influencers. We are the face of our brand. But be intentional about it. What is it in your life that people can connect with? Listen in to see what Teri recommends you purchase to help move your business forward. You also don’t want to miss the best advice Teri ever received and uses to this day. Learn about Teri’s personal habits of focusing on the top 3 things she wants to get done and spending 60 minutes a day moving the needle forward/working “ON” her business.
Teri’s Online Recommendations:
Book Recommendations:
Building a Storybrand by Donald Miller (https://amzn.to/2VXZwg6)
Why Simple Wins – Lisa Bodell (https://amzn.to/2Mfqs6C)
Teri’s Free Branding Resource:
http://voiceyourbrandgifts.com/brandstatementguide/
Transcription was done by Temi.com which means it’s an AI generated transcript. The transcript may contain spelling, grammar and other errors, and is not a substitute for watching the video.
This is Teri Fode
and you are listening to from nothing to profit.
Welcome to from nothing to profit, a photographer’s podcast with Matt and Kia where each week they talk to photographers about what is working in their business now so you can swipe those ideas and grow your business faster. Hi everyone.
We are so excited to have terry on the podcast today. Terry, he is someone that I really look up to. She is like one step ahead of me in life and so I’m always watching what she’s doing next. She just had a kid get married and how she approaches everything with wisdom and grace. I love seeing what she does in her personal life, but we have her on here today to also talk about a not she can talk about her personal life if she wants to, but also to talk about photography and the business of photography and Terry has been a professional photographer for 15 years with a really strong consistent marketing strategy and authentic storytelling and she photographs stylized seniors families and personal branding. She’s also the creative, the creator of voice, your brand, which is a brand that teaches photographers how to engage authentically, connect consistently and voice their brand message to the world with style, typically black and white and gold style, I think. Right Terry?
Well that’s my style, but that may not be yours to all about color, which I love.
That’s fun. So Terry, we’re really excited to have you on here and we’re excited to hear about the different things that you’re doing. And uh, Matt, did you have a one to start off and asked Terry a little bit about herself or do we want her to just do it an intro of what she’s, what she’s about.
Terry, just kind of share with us whatever else you know you’re up to or anything else you want to add above what [inaudible] just said about you?
Well, uh, I, like she said, I’m, I’m known for photographing seniors and their families, uh, and I’ve been in business for 15 years. I started a, seems like a coon’s age. Now I’m dating myself, but back then we didn’t even have facebook. So that’s been, you know, for those of us who’ve been around a while, we’ve had to learn how to navigate our businesses and grow our businesses on a whole new platform, which personally I can tell you I have loved, although I have had to really roll my sleeves up and learn it. So, um, I, I loved that part of it. I left Corporate America. I love sharing that story with photographers because they know there are so many of them out there that have the dream of being full time in. They’re currently part time. And I’m here to tell you it is possible because I literally, nobody knew this at the time because I was so embarrassed of it.
I was so ashamed. I thought this is not a legit photographer, but I was selling out of the trunk of my car. Whatever I can fit my car is what I was selling. And I would go to people’s homes for the initial console, for the presentation, for the sale. I’ve always done in person sales from day one that way. And then all of my sessions were either in their homes, in their backyards. We have a lot of clients that have beautiful homes or on location, so that really has been the story of my business and from there we, we grew it into a beautiful boutique studio and uh, I really had to build that business, what I would say very quickly because I had to replace that income. I was the only income earner and I had to know how to make money with my camera. So in a nutshell, that’s, that’s my story. And from there I’ve just really learned how to grow it in the ever changing world of both photography and marketing.
Yeah, that’s really awesome. I think what always drew me to you, Terry, besides, after I got to know you and how amazing of a mom you are and how amazing of a person you are, but that you had, that you did come from corporate America and so like you always kind of had a different spin on stuff. You know, when I was in conversations with you, you would, you would say like, oh, well what about this? Or have you thought about this? And it was like, yeah, that’s really smart. So I always really appreciated that about you. For sure.
Yeah, that is I, I will say, um, I, I love the marketing, the business side of photography. I’m one of those photographers that I will tell you I even love that sometimes more than picking up my camera and everyone out there is going. Why? Because we have this vision of, you know, we would do this no matter what. I, I can tell you I am not the photographer that says I would do this even if I wasn’t paid for it because as much as I love creating a beautiful image, if I couldn’t make money doing it, I wouldn’t be doing this. I have to make money doing it. So I am just blessed and I’m fortunate that I found something that I love that I can also make money, but that, that’s been very important. So that really does flow from that business background and marketing background.
That’s awesome. All right, well let’s jump right in. So the first question we always ask everybody is like, what’s working now? So if you could tell us a story about what’s working in your business or what you think is working in the industry right now, just to kind of give us a perspective of what is current for you.
Absolutely. Well, I will tell you the number one thing for me that is working is, is telling the story of my brands now. I know that that’s kind of a buzzing that’s going on out there, but one of the things that I did kind of you mentioned that you saw my daughter knew that she got married and one of the reasons that you that people know that is because I was literally crafting that message as part of my brand and putting it out there on I believe is the number one platform for photographers or anyone in business. It has an online business to grow their business and that is instagram stories. And I connected with my audience by sharing that story of my daughter’s wedding. And I noticed something really, really intriguing to me and that is that my viewers, when I would share anything about my wedding, the wedding that was happening for my 24 year old daughter, the views out of, I mean they were just, they were out of this world.
They were consistent. You can always tell him what you are sharing on instagram stories is engaging with your audience because they’re not falling off. They’re not watching the first story, meaning the first little clip at the end. They are staying engaged through the entire story. And what I noticed with that is everyone was watching the and it was likely couldn’t get enough. And I am. I researched, I was looking at my analytics. It was not just my high school seniors and it was graduated seniors. It was girls. And this is really weird. Guys that had graduated and were following me from three, four, five years ago. Now these are people in their twenties in addition to the moms and many other people that follow me. We’re watching, we’re engaged in a story from beginning to end. And I started testing my thought, you know, why I just started with a little bit and you know, we, I, I think one of the number one things that photographers have I’m wrong right now is that they think that all we need to share the behind the scenes and what our businesses and we don’t. We’re really sharing the story by saying, okay, well let me show you on my computer and Oh, let me show you I’m a packaging this product and we think that we’re sharing what people want to know. But what I have learned in the past year is that we aren’t going deep enough and we can go deeper and that’s what I’ve been doing. That is what’s working for me right now.
Yeah. So this is really interesting. I’m trying, I’m scrambling to pull up this article that I downloaded the other day about social media engagement and of course I’m not gonna be able to find it fast enough. But hang on, Matt, you can just say that in just a second. I think what’s interesting when you were saying that, Terry, first of all I did, I watched it all and I’m your friend, but I still was like, I just wanted to know what you were doing and there was a sweetness about it that I think was very engaging to people. Um, you know, just the story itself. But, you know about boys. My daughters are, like I said, they’re a little bit behind your kids and so my daughters are in college and upper high school and the boys that are in their lives are very, like, they’re sweet.
They want, they, they want to have that, um, that sweet life, you know, they’re, they’re thinking picket fence and happiness and I feel like this, uh, these young people, right? Really just want to create a, um, memories. It’s really important to them. I, my daughter’s friends and college freshmen in college, they all, boys and girls all gave each other Christmas gifts and I never received Christmas gifts from any of my guy friends in college unless they were dating me. And so, um, I think they’re, they do want to just, you know, see that sweet life experiences and share those with you.
He hears something, I think that is more something that we can really say, Oh wow, that’s it. I think it even goes one step deeper and it’s the fact where are these people? My audience are high school seniors and, and I’ve always said we, we market to one person that turns into a family and then professional brand makeover, what I call head shots, what I call professional brand make-over shot. So I market to one person which is the senior, I don’t want to get too far off a tangent here, but to support this story. So her family, so the senior, her family, her siblings and then mom and dad, one of them or both of them have a business and, and more likely than not, they’re also are online. So every scene that walks through my doors with 10 k to me, because we know this, we have, we know that if I market and get one girl in the door or one guy in the door, that’s $10,000.
If we treat our clients and what I call create a client for life, so now I have this audience in front of me and that story resonates that this sharing my life and my, my daughter getting married and on my son’s engaged because the girl I have always said my ideal client is girl who has been, you know, imagining and dreaming of her senior portraits, you know, since she was 14, but since she was nine, she’s been dreaming of her wedding and she probably has a secret pinterest board where she’s spending all of her wedding ideas and I know this
secret. My 16 year old was like, mom, I’m planning my wedding. And so I was like, okay, I’ll send you instagram post. Yeah, we’re, we’re planning it.
No, you know, I speak directly to the moms who were, where I am now at this. Also interest younger moms who have younger kids, but she knows that she is. She is on the cusp of empty nesting and she’s on the cusp of planning this wedding. Now, here’s something that this evolved into is when I realized that my audience was eating this up, I stepped back and said, this is blowing my mind. I will tell you guys, and I mean I get so bored watching my own behind the scenes, it’s like, okay, we’re going through makeup. Okay, we’re going to do the outfits. Okay, we’re going to do this. Now. I am not saying that that is not something that we asked for target for. She continued to show, but what I am saying is that we are dealing with an audience who is being heavily influenced by multibillion dollar industry with a new term and that is called influencer marketing.
So we are trying to appeal is already been conditioned. They have been set up for this influencer marketing. So I believe what we’re missing in our industry right now, there’s so many people, a lot of you know, many people are getting this, but most of our industry is missing it and that is we need to act like we are influencers by marketing like influence. Does that mean you have to have 50,000 followers? No, because I made $5,000 in December just with an instagram story desk with an srm straight. Let me repeat that again. I made $5,000 just with an instagram story overnight, but revenue. So is this working? Yes. Are we missing it as an industry? Yes, but I am finding that it’s because we are afraid. We’re gonna lose people by saying, Hey, guess what? My daughter’s getting married. He gets what I just decorated modern living room for Christmas and guess what?
My, my living room or it’s going to blow your mind, but I have black and white in my living room just like I do in my brand. So I must have an authentic brand. And then I invite these people into my living room. I decorated my living room. I’m not losing them. What’s happening is they are becoming deeper and deeper connected to me. And you know, most of us can say that we are the face of our brand, right? I mean photographers are, we are the face of our brand in this day and age. And so it’s just blowing my mind that it has to be. You don’t get me wrong, I believe it has to be intentional. You can’t just. Nobody wants to see me making scrambled eggs. We’re going to say, you know, I’m not going to show you. Everything I put out there is just as intentional and just a strategic as when I was just doing my photography business in sharing that with the world. So there is some.
Oh, you’re so lucky. So I’ve found what I was looking for. Oh wait, wait, wait. Let’s respond to what Terry to said. I don’t know. I feel like raising my hands and swinging them around or something. Terry, it’s so fun. What I really enjoy about it is I was like, okay, Terry is putting a lot of time and effort into this. Like she must be really excited about her daughter’s wedding. It never crossed my mind and certainly should have never crossed my mind that, uh, that you were doing that as a business reason.
I was really new in and you didn’t even know.
I know. I’m so. I’m so impressed with a little embarrassed. I’m like, well of course the but
magic. The magic is that it can’t be something this robotic, like I believe if you look in your life and you find because every part of our lives influence our, our brand, whether we want to admit that or not, and that is what really the brands out there that really are working right now or the ones that are multifaceted and that’s what people want to see and that’s what you’re choosing. Brands like I am not just picking up a camera, taking a picture and selling you an image. You know, we’ve all said for years that we’re selling an experience, but what this influential, this influencer marketing has done to everyone out there that is, you know, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling through instagram feed and watching. Now I believe more stories and the stats are proving it is. They are wanting, they’re getting hooked. It’s why reality TV works so well and now it’s transferred over to social media.
I want to know really what you’re all about, Kaya. I want to know if you’re into cooking, like why I recently lost weight, gave for me a goal that I had for a long time and I really didn’t share too much about the journey until after I got to a certain point and I put it out there once and my dsms blew up, blew up. Now these were moms, a lot of, you know, I have a lot of and we all have photographers that follow us and other people and we always want to connect with everyone. And so I was painting these dmzs direct messages that were directly like having to do it, what are you doing? And now I’ve got like this little culture of people that are drinking cutter now these are future clients, past clients. And because you know, those of us who are educators, every photographer is a very, very valued client as well. I mean, you know, we’re peers and, and so I’m connecting deeper with people because I’m drinking water because I’m telling him how I drink a gallon a day. I mean, it’s just my mind, you know. So I asked people, my question is what is it in your life that people really can connect with that you can systematically be putting out there in the format of storytelling on line?
And that’s what’s working for me right now. Really. It’s just kind of incredible that you have to save. Got Me totally curious what you found there.
There was some data that came out, there was some data that came out that I saw it through some marketing stuff and it was talking about the what marketers post and what consumers actually want to consume on social media, you know, and so it’s a breakdown and it was like this huge report and if I can find the link to it, I’ll link to it in the show notes but I only screen captured like one part of it just to kind of prove my point to my staff. And so it’s interesting that about, and I’m just going to say they do have like 10 categories, but to prove your point, terry, that were not necessarily posting what we should be posting for our clients is about 18 percent of brands post a discount or a sale, you know, so not very much, you know, one, one in five posts a discount or sale, but 72 percent of consumers want brands to post a discount or a sale and they know it goes into like, I know you weren’t...
