PODCAST TRANSCRIPT - EPISODE 283

MY CLIENT PRIVACY UPDATE

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Annemie Tonken  00:00

Back in episode 54 of the podcast, I shared my somewhat controversial policy of putting a price on privacy, while, obviously episode 54 was probably three or maybe even four years ago, so I figured maybe you could use a refresher if you happen to do the part that one. If not, I'll just sort of recap it for you. Basically, in 2012, two years into my business, but right around the time that I was switching to full time, I had put my nursing job. I was hired by new clients. And of course, you know, especially in that phase of business, every single new client is just gold. But I showed up for our first session. They hired me for a baby plan. So I'm trying to be newborn six months and one year. So I was gonna be four sessions, and I hadn't met them when, you know, it was time for our first session, and I roll up and their house is spectacularly beautiful. They are beautiful. This was, you know, their first baby, and they made it seem like this was just, you know, beginning. And I was just thrilled, like I could not have been with a new client. And then it just got better, because when we then did our sales session, this was back when I was doing in person sales, just for that maternity prints and albums and all this. So this was like big fish that I had been, you know, dreaming of landing all this time that I had run a business. Then a couple of weeks go by, and of course, you know, first thing I want to do after I get their photos delivered to them, is blog about this session. This was when I was actively blogging every single a bunch of things in between. I was logging at least once a week. And so, of course, I blogged their maternity session. And shortly after I had published on that, I got a very angrily worded email from the husband who, like in no uncertain terms, demanded that I take the blog down. And I agreed to do that. But the way that he was talking to me like it was very clear that he was on the brink of firing, and can't find everything forward. I should point out they had signed my contract, which included a very clear model release, and I do anything, you know, I wasn't like I was sharing photos that included nudity or anything like that. I certainly didn't do anything that I was trying to speak about, or, do, you know, do anything to various but I felt pretty cornered, right? Like this was a situation where I definitely wanted to meet his business, and I felt terrible that he was as upset as he was, and felt like I did betray his trust. And you know these days you may hear me talk about the fact that no matter how clear your contract is, if someone doesn't read the contract and understand the contract, or, you know, get that information in multiple ways, if they have that case in their mouth, it's not going to really do anything legally protected. You're not going to do anything about that field. So, you know, some of that lesson comes from the same story. So anyway, without really thinking too much about why, you know, was going to do what was necessary to establish the situation. And I promised this family that I never shared their images again. I went on to work with them, not just for that 2012 cycle. But for several years, they would hire me multiple times a year. They did go and have another baby, and over the course of those years, they just moved away. But I made a lot of money family, but there was always this sort of edge where I felt frustrated, and that's because once the dust had settled and I knew that they were going to fire me, and we had this very nice working relationship, I started to feel kind of taken advantage of. You know, here, the father had been very aggressive and threatening with me, and, you know, years later, the his wife, the mom, my photos all the time on social media, on, you know, like anywhere and everywhere. Typically, she did not tag me or credible. But it wasn't like those photos weren't out there. You know, I never felt like I was in a given way that I didn't present to me. I never felt like I was in a position where I could go back to them and be like, hey, so you're posting these photos. So I think I should be able to do as well. I just kind of let go and chalk it up to a lesson learned. But, you know, it always kind of sat there. And I have this entire portfolio photos from this client, beautiful house, beautiful family, would be absolute portfolio worthy pieces, each and every one of them, and they've never seen one day they never will. Like most frustrating situations in my business, that situation, there has privacy policy that I used for a full decade, which basically boiled down to, when you hire me, you sign my model release. And my model release is pretty broad, and if you are uncomfortable with that model release, it totally kind of have three options for privacy that sort of go in a staged fashion. And if you want all details of this before, but each of those incurs an increasing fee. So basically, you pay for increasing levels of pricing. That's how I ran against, like I said, from 2012 all the way till last year, last time, back to this policy. And I can't actually remember what it was that spurred me to sit down and be like, Okay, I need to visit this but basically, you know, over the course of those 11 years, the world has changed a lot. Technology has changed. My own perspective on privacy has changed. My business has matured and stabilized. I'm not in the same situation that I was in 2012 where I don't have a huge roster of past clients and referrals and things. Like that. I mean, that sort of thing takes time to build, and I've just sort of started to feel a lot more people are requesting privacy. And in the initial phase of, you know, I get an inquiry and we're having a conversation about it, and I sent over my contract, and other thing, I was getting more and more pushback. And of course, because I had a fee for that, there were several people who would say, Well, you know, I don't want to pay a fee for that. I do want privacy, so I'm gonna go elsewhere. And I was willing to give to those clients. Up and, you know, that's part of having policy and holding a memory. But I'm starting to notice it being kind of a pattern, and more than just missing out on clients and feeling like, you know, it was, uh, it was caused out with honestly, that privacy policy felt increasingly outlined and people are asking questions about it, I found myself questioning my own policy. So I did what we should all do when something is, you know, saying right and sparking joy, and I reevaluated. So that was a long preamble, but today I want to share that update with you here on podcast. Welcome to discount be that hard. My name is Mommy pumpkin, and I help photographers run profitable, sustainable businesses that they love each week on this simple, fashionable strategies and systems that photographers at every level of experience can use to earn more money in a more sustainable bank. Running a photography business doesn't have to be that hard. You can do it, and I can show you how. First, let's talk about how the world has 12 to know. My client in 2012 was mad specifically because his name was in the blog post. So if someone, you know, Google searched his name, in theory, my photos for that blog post could appear. And fair enough. You know, the other policy that I changed at that time in my business was that I stopped using last names at any, you know, in any context, so I only ever used first names. And that was the baseline policy that I had when someone would ask about privacy. I can use your photos, but only ever going to use first names, and I don't tag people. So, you know, it felt pretty anonymous. You know, better. We do better. I learned that tagging someone's full name was an issue, but these days, names aren't needed to identify someone in photo. Right facial net recognition and female extreme values of the internet, and those technologies are expanding by the minute. So whereas in 2012 I could reasonably argue that an untagged photo provided some amount of anonymity, that's a much harder argument. In 24 as governments and courts try to keep up with technology, laws and regulations are being enacted respective societal shift toward privacy as a fundamental right, because I have never questioned that fundamental right to privacy, and we've made privacy an option. But last just felt like I needed to take the next step and make privacy the default option. So privacy is now built into my business. When someone hires me a photograph family and they sign a model release, and my model release now reads something along the lines of, you know, the photographer agrees that no photographs taken during session will be shared, publish away in any digital format, including but not limited to website, social media platforms, blah, blah, without the prior written consent of the client. Photographer will seek and obtain express permission from the client before using any images or marketing purposes. Do not take that as legal gospel. If you are looking to write a clause in your contract without review by aware. I'm not aware, but you know, so there's worrying in there that basically says I'm not going to share your photos in any digital format period without your express written permission. But not like I wait for them to sign a contract to tell them about this. You know, well, before they're signing my model release, they are hearing about it. So when I put this into place, I figured, if I'm trying to potentially lose it all to use in all of my New York line images from my portfolio, I may as well compensate, from a marketing perspective, by being very upfront about this privacy guarantee. And look, I am sure that there are photographers in my area who have our privacy even as the default, but I don't know of anyone else locally who's making that a front and center part of their unique value proposition, which I would encourage you to consider, because I think in this day and age, it is a pretty big issue for a lot of people. But that's not yet. It's not like I was like, Well, I'm just excited and give up all the rights to photos forever and ever. Right? You guys know better than that. I am always keeping an eye on the sustainability of my business, my ability to market myself, et cetera, et cetera. So a couple of other things changed. Number one, I raised my prices for the first time since 2017 in any significant way. My product prices have changed over the years, you know, with fluctuations in cost. But for the most part I'm happy to sign, has stayed pretty stable. But anyway, so I raised my prices. It's not a big jump. It was like percentage wise, about 15% but what that means is, if I do feel the need to update my portfolio, I can hire models with that extra money, right? I've got sort of the extra budget built in to pay for portfolio building. The other part that I think you should know, and I think this part, is kind of the genius of holding you like we know, if you've been listening for any period of time, I use the simple sales system to work with my clients, and part of that, the part that comes down to the way people pay for my services, is that first they pay a session fee, and then they purchase a collection. So the session fee is paid, collection is chosen and paid for. Once they've had a chance to preview their images. What I do now is, if I have a session where I love the images and I feel like they may, you know, be portfolio worthy, something that I want to share in there, that is the case. And if it's not, then, like I just send the everything goes as normal, but if I do want to use the photos, then when I send back slideshow preview. I send them an author they're willing to pre authorize my use of the images, then they can percent off whichever collection they want to purchase. Benefits to doing this at the time of collection purchase, rather than before we when we're doing a pre session. First of all, I think this is a little confusing. So as you all know, I'm a big believer that when you confuse someone, you lose that like you don't want to give someone too many options or too much information to consider when they are especially when they are at the booking phase, really, at any stage of the process. You want to make the decision making process as straightforward as possible, to give them the information that they need when they need it, so by not complicating the booking process with this other thing to consider that's sort of out of the ordinary. You know you're doing your paper, and then there's the trust factor. Right at the point of them purchasing a collection, they know me. Hopefully they felt comfortable with me. We did a session together, and I got into their house, basically. Hopefully they know I'm not some sort of or like disrespectful person who's going to go, like, splashing their photos somewhere, or in some way that they feel uncomfortable. There's a fact that they've also had the chance to actually see their photos right, assuming that they feel the way that I do, they may feel more willing to have this photo share public and even found in association with a searcher name, especially when I'm working with like newborns and people who might be breastfeeding. I feel like, if I were too lazy, I would like to give me permission to use their photos before they had a chance to see their photos. They may feel weird about giving that permission. And finally, if I would have promised that ahead of booking this session, then we would water down my promise of privacy. Would also basically lock me into offering this discount to everyone when, in fact, I have where I'm like, Yeah, none of these photos are the photos that I want to like put on my website. So holding that information back, not only do I make the process easier and present that information at another time, but I do myself the opportunity to choose not to give that to our particular client. So there's a whole bunch of reasons why I think that that should be held till after you've worked with them, after you have a session incentive. You know, obviously there are people out there who are like, I don't discount, discounting it after my brand, I feel like I'm pretty comfortable with my brand. Where it is my price point is part of the brand. And if they are willing to pay these higher prices to begin without the promise of discount, then giving them a surprise financial incentive. You know, it's just a positive and it's doable for me, because I've had my general prices. But on your hand, I will say I would not make if you're considering doing something like this. I wouldn't make the financial incentive so big that it feels like undue pressure, right? You don't want prices if they're willing to let you use them, because back if it's someone in a position where they're kind of coerced into allowing you to use their photos, that, you know, 20 ish percent range is a pretty good one so far, you know, and it's only been, it's been less than a year. The sample size isn't huge at this point, but I've had about a 50% acceptable offer, and honestly, it has seemed pretty well received, even by the people who have chosen not to take me up on it. It's felt really good. I didn't want to. Share it right away, because I always like to see how something goes before I recommend it, but it has been, to me, it has felt like the right solution to kind of sticky. So whether this policy or something like that is right for you, I wanted to share my thought process here, because I really do think that in our line of work, the issue of privacy is only going to become bigger. It's only going to become shorter, and we need to be thinking ahead about how we plan to respond in the face of certainly legislation that could limit our ability to mark ourselves in the same way that we always have, but really even beyond legislation and the rule of law and all that sort of thing, we have to be thoughtful about both our clients feelings and our own. So if you haven't already considered this subject of privacy or reconsider this subject and ensure that your current policies and practices are in alignment with both your business plan and your personal values, have a great week. Well, that's it for this week's episode of this campaign, heart. I'll be back Same time, same place next week. In the meantime, you can find more information about this episode along all the relevant links, notes and downloads at this can be done, heart.com/learn if you like the podcast, be sure to hit the subscribe button. Even better, share the love by the interviews. And as always, thanks so much for Joining me. I hope that you have a fantastic week