Vicki Taufer – Episode 008 – A Photographer Podcast Interview

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Vicki: [00:00] Hey, this is Vicki Taufer and you are listening to from nothing to profit.

Speaker 2: [00:05] 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. Good morning everyone.

Kia: [00:22] We are so excited that you are here. It may not be morning where you are, but it is where we are and we are interviewing one of my favorite people in the world today. Her name is Vicky topher and she has been involved in the photography industry for almost 20 years now. She focuses on artistic portraiture and loves to photograph people, pets and she does a lot of commercial shoots as well. She is located in Morton, Illinois right now, although she shoots all over the country and she has a passion for people. Her camera journey has taken her all over the world and if you follow her you’ll see that she’s taught internationally, traveled internationally, and her goal right now is a healthy work life balance and I bet you that that’s something that we’re going to talk quite a bit about.

Matt: [01:14] Well, awesome. Welcome Vicky. So tell me a little bit more. So where do you live in Illinois is like more like central Illinois. It’s a suburb of Chicago.

Vicki: [01:21] Tell me more. Yeah, yeah, we are in central Illinois and the small or smaller town that both my husband and I grew up in. You know, we’ve moved around a little bit but have ended up back here. It’s about 17,000 people a couple of hours south of Chicago, a couple of hours north of St Louis.

Matt: [01:39] Awesome. Yeah, I, when I was in college, my buddy, his parents moved to decatur and so we every break we have, we would drive out to the cater like and like 16 hours on had all the way out there. It was, it was actually a lot of fun, but I probably wouldn’t move to decatur, but it was, it was a cool experience to have in common.

Vicki: [01:57] Right. And that’s about an hour from us, but yeah, I mean the communities all in central Illinois there, it’s similar in that it’s a lot of smaller, you know, industry farming communities and then we have the bigger towns have um, like Peoria, Bloomington that I guess you would call us a suburb of. Awesome.

Kia: [02:14] Yeah. And you, uh, I think about you during this time of year with Thanksgiving and Halloween with your pumpkin festival too.

Vicki: [02:21] Oh yes. We are the, we claim to be the pumpkin capital of the world, so yeah, in September or whole town Kinda gets turned upside down with the festival and parades and pumpkin patches and all kinds of fun stuff.

Matt: [02:35] That’s really awesome. Yeah, I think every small town has like a little festival in Durango where I am, we have like a, like a cabin fever festival that’s like in February after it’s been snowing all winter and it’s like this wild week that nobody ever works and it’s just, it’s actually way too much fun.

Kia: [02:50] Mardi gras.

Matt: [02:51] Alright. Alright. So yeah, let’s, let’s talk, let’s talk about photography. We don’t need to go down too many tangents because we’re, we will be talking about like high memories before we know it.

Vicki: [03:00] Oh No, I will not be.

Matt: [03:02] Okay. So, um, so I’m just going to jump right into it. So Vicky, one of our main questions we always ask on our podcast is like what’s working now or what’s the story of working? What’s working right now in the industry or for you personally that you could share with our audience?

Vicki: [03:16] Yeah, um, I would say, you know, you kind of need to know a little bit of our journey for this to probably make sense, but um, our business being 20 years old, we have run the gamut of, you know, studio in the house, studio in a building, renting a space, buying a building. Um, we’re currently in our studio that we originally rented and bought. Um, we’ve moved back into which is an old bowling alley that we renovated years ago and we’ve had nine employees at times and now we’re down to very scaled back where I’m the only full time employee photographer and then we have a couple part time and contract employees. Um, and the thing that we’re finding that super interesting now is that I am way more hands on with the clients. So before I was more of a volume shooter, maybe I was shooting 300 sessions in a year, but I would shoot.

Vicki: [04:11] But then I had employees selling, you know, a lot more overhead, a lot more employees doing a lot of the work, selling and doing everything else. Whereas now the business is smaller, which actually is purposeful. And fits where we are in our life and with our little kids, um, and where I want to be, but I’m way more hands on with the clients start to finish in the consultations in the session, in the ordering appointment. And what I’ve implemented this year is I’m actually going into the client’s homes, maybe not a new concept but not really something I had done a lot of myself. So, um, you know, taking pictures and measurements and giving them suggestions and doing design work of being able to actually digitally show them what wall groupings would look like in their house. And we have actually to date had multiple of our largest sales to date this year, which is really exciting to me because I’m honestly since the adoption of our daughter eight years ago, I really had gone down pretty part time and I feel like put the business we were doing the business, but it was more kind of on hold that kind of just stayed stable.

Vicki: [05:14] Did the work that came in. Whereas this year we’ve really tried to amp it up again, um, with our move back from Minnesota to Illinois. Both kids are in school full time, so I have a little more time. So, you know, we, we tried to go about it this way and it’s been really interesting just because I didn’t know, I honestly, I feel like I hadn’t been involved as involved in the industry and I wondered like, man, there’s so many more photographers are people going to value, you know, this extra time I’m spending with them, you know, are we going to have the big sales that we used to have? And like I said, we’ve had multiple sales that have actually surpassed our biggest sales to date in the last 20 years. So that was really exciting for me. That gave me a lot of hope for the industry and where the industry’s headed.

Vicki: [05:54] Um, so for me it was more about quality, not quantity. So it’s not that I’m working harder doing more sessions, but I am spending more time giving an experience to those clients that they’re not going to get from most other photographers. You know, like that’s not the same as someone shooting and burning and giving them a disk, you know, like there’s a place for that, but that’s not what I’m offering, so they’re going to spend a lot more money, but they’re also, I’m going to kind of hold their hand throughout that whole process and give them a full experience and guarantee and make sure that the finished product on their wall is exactly what they wanted. You know, when you, when you say that Vicky, it makes me think about you saying other times, like, you know what, what I would do if I wasn’t a photographer I would love to work with like interiors and design.

Vicki: [06:39] Do you feel like it’s kind of scratching that itch where you’re kind of doing both for people? Absolutely. I mean it’s funny. I can think back 15 years ago and all the clients who would say to me, just because we put so much effort into redoing our studio, I do have a passion and a love for, you know, decorating and that I’m sort of a thing. So it just naturally happened that my clients even 15 years ago would say, can you just come to my house and tell me what to get or Redo my walls while I was not in a place for that back then? I actually would have loved to, but it’s like, holy cow, no, I’m shooting 300 sessions. I know, have time to go into every client’s home and help them do all these things. And so it is funny to think back now, you know, 15, 20 years later that I’m, I’m actually doing that and it, it is something that I’ve always loved.

Vicki: [07:26] I’ve had a passion for not trained in or anything, but I’ve just always, you know, whatever house we’ve lived in and whatever we’ve done, I just, I have a knack for that and, and, and I love it. So it’s fun to be able to do that for my clients. Yeah, you’re so good at creating a space that feels homey but also has like an artistic design to it. Well, ambulant, it’s been funny. I mean, this year what’s happened is, you know, I’m implementing things that aren’t my photography in the work I’m doing with them as well. So I go into their home and honestly by the time I get home, I usually I’m getting texts from clients, hey, you know what? I already got online and ordered those ledges from pottery barn that you told me about this from Ikea or I ran to hobby lobby and picked up this cool sign that we’re going to incorporate with this wall grouping.

Vicki: [08:13] Uh, so it’s pretty cool to see, you know, like people just really need that help for me to be able to show them, hey, this is what it would look like. Or giving them that suggestion or making them feel confident in those decisions. You know, people get kind of stuck and worried and not sure what it’s gonna look like or is this the right choice? And so to have somebody that, you know, they’ve hired me as a professional, they want, you know, you get the professional’s opinion and then you just feel more confident making those decisions.

Matt: [08:38] And I feel like, you know, a lot of people just don’t know how to shop photography, so that’s really what you’re helping them with. You know, I tell a lot of people like, you know, photography is equivalent of buying a car, but the auto industry spends billions of dollars a year to educate you on how to buy a car. But it’s the same for photography, but they just don’t really have helped. So to have somebody actually hold their hand and give them confidence in their decision I think is huge. A one on one other question. Do you feel like you’ve, you’ve downsized a little bit and obviously I’ve lost overhead. I mean, do you feel like you’re making as much money now? Because I hear a lot of people say, oh, I’m making as much money now as I was when I had nine employees. Or do you know, do you feel like you’re making less money but it’s better choices for you and your family?

Vicki: [09:18] I would say right now, I mean you’re, you’re catching me at a time where we haven’t even finished our first season being back home. So. So it’s hard to say, I even honestly, my husband, he’s not as involved in the business anymore. He’ll even ask me that question. I’m like asked me in December, I still have so many, so many clients that we’re still working on their orders that it’s such a big swing between now and the next two months where we’ll end up. But um, for the amount of time being spent and I making more, I’m working smarter, not harder. Does that make sense? So shirt? No, it’s not the same as when I was shooting know 300 sessions because even in those days I was high dollar high volume. It wasn’t low dollar, high volume, but I wasn’t having typically as high, um, of orders as I’m having some of them now, but it’s way less, you know, I might do this year, I’m thinking, you know, I might be on track of shooting 60, 70 sessions now next year. You know, maybe that’ll double. I mean we just moved back last Christmas and spent basically the first half of the year redoing this space and we actually moved into the studio space. We rezoned it and it’s about a 7,000 square foot building. We live in half of it as our home and then we have a couple of renters and then we have the studio has about 2,500 square feet. So we had major things. We were redoing that. We weren’t even really like up and running and shooting again until almost summer.

Matt: [10:50] Are you guys going to put a bowling lane back in? What you live there?

Vicki: [10:53] No, I’m p. everybody asks what would be so awesome? Wouldn’t be. We do have the lanes and a couple of the pins and stuff that we use as tables, but I’m not actually functioning. No, you guys do a lot of fun things. I don’t know if you have to. You could put in like a bocce ball court or something like that. Uh, we’ve played, we’ve played bags inside my kids roller blade throughout the space. Hey, you know, their friends come up and they do like gymnastics and flips and I mean it’s, you know, the main living space has really tall ceilings. So if they’re having fun with their kids are five and nine and they think it’s great. I’m living here. I mean at some point we might outgrow it a little bit, but it’s working really well right now. So Vicki, our next question for you is, now that you’re really back in with both feet and the photography industry, what are you most fired up or excited about with the photography industry?

Vicki: [11:47] Because you said just, uh, you know, recently you said you feel a lot more hope for the industry. So what makes you have that hope? You know, I mean, I think that’s multifaceted. Um, you know, because there are some things that I feel like the industry has definitely changed and it’s shifted. We all know that, you know, there’s a lot more people shooting and burning, which definitely, um, we do sell digital files actually, but they’re at a high dollar price after the clients have placed an order for portraits. So, um, you know, I feel like that’s one of the things that I was nervous about, you know, that made me like, Oh, do I have hope? You know, where this industry’s going, but it’s been cool because I’ve actually feel like what I’ve experienced and coming back, I shot more seniors this year without even trying.

Vicki: [12:34] Then I’ve shot in years and it was very shocking to me because I would have always put myself out there as definitely more like children and family photographer and I didn’t see. I’m really a ton of children’s photography, but I definitely it to you and I had a conversation a couple weeks back that this really like a light bulb went off for me. You know, this really came from you confirming what I was seeing, which is, um, I’ve seen tons of value and great orders with my family sessions and I’ve an actual increase with my senior sessions and what I think is interesting about that. And that gives me a lot of hope. Now I need to, I would like to figure out a way to kind of up my game with children sessions because I really do love to do that. But I’ve found that, you know, per our conversation, Kai, and I think you’re correct, is that, you know, it’s a lot easier for people to daily capture images of their children on their phone.

Vicki: [13:27] Um, you know, it’s not a replacement of what we do, but that is something that people definitely have lots of images of their kids, but there’s still this like big thing when you’re in high school, senior and like that whole experience that we do with them and all the outfits and going on location that you can’t really duplicate on your phone, um, that people are still willing to come in and do that and do albums, all these things. And then of course we all know what the families, that’s just a whole nother ballgame, you know, like there’s a whole experience on posing and how you’re interacting with people and bringing them together that you cannot just duplicate that with a snapshot on your phone. So I think that embracing the things that you see that you enjoy, but that also you see the industry can still support and there’s a need for and people are willing to pay for.

Vicki: [14:13] That’s what I feel like kind of gives me that hope as well as what I mentioned with just being more hands on, like I think that it’s become more important than ever to improve and give an amazing experience to your...