121: Jason Malouin – Creating a Transformational Experience & Communicating With Integrity

This shift wasn’t driven by fear but served as a catalyst, pushing me towards where I wanted to be. I heard a long time ago that people pay $97 for information but will pay $9,000 for transformation, and that really resonated with me. For a long time, I questioned what I could offer, what transformation I could provide. This required a lot of soul-searching.

Along the way, I’ve experimented with my audience, testing different content to see what resonates. One topic I love is body language, and I even run workshops on it. One workshop, “The Anatomy of Trust,” focuses on building trust through body language and nonverbal communication. However, this still felt like a commodity, not a true transformation.

To differentiate our work from becoming a commodity, it’s essential to dive into the business side of our craft. I initially thought I would be a photographer in business, but I realized I needed to be a business person who does photography. This meant focusing on aspects that weren’t the most exciting but were crucial for sustainability—like building relationships, networking, and creating a community.

When it comes to creating an experience, it boils down to solving a problem for your audience. First, you need to identify your audience clearly. If you think you work for everybody, reconsider. Niching, or niching as it’s called in Australia, is essential. Properly identifying your audience and deeply understanding who they are, what they need, and what they aim to accomplish with your work is crucial.

The second one is the actual fuller response where I talk. So any information they give me about their wedding, I’m like, “This sounds great.” If I’ve been to the venue before, I will send them a previous gallery, make sure that they’ve seen something that’s relevant. If I haven’t been to the venue before I pick out a similar-ish kind of wedding, make sure that they’ve definitely seen a full gallery at that point. I again refer back to the pricing page so that they’ve got that again and that’s super, super clear.

And then it finishes up with sending them a link to do this, to chat on Zoom where I go into a full sales, scripted call. So everything I’m trying to funnel them into is that Zoom call. The third email in the sequence only comes into play if they haven’t booked that Zoom call with you and it’s a wedding that you really want to shoot.

So I’ve got some ideas that I break down in my workshop about ways to make that email stand out because what most photographers will do at that stage is just send an email saying, “Hey, just making sure that you got my brochure or my prices. If you’ve got any questions let me know. I’ve currently got your date free and I’d love to work with you.” It’s always the same. It’s the same.

Yes, which is fine and it’s nice and it’s polite, but it’s not doing anything. If we were all in a race of horses, this is how I like to picture it, what’s the thing that’s going to nudge your nose across the finish line? What is it when they’re in that period of maybe two weeks of considering photographers to book, what’s going to pull you to the front of the queue?

So that third email can be really vital in that process if they’re not horrified by your price, however you’ve structured it, they like your website, they like your images, but they feel like that about a few other people as well. What can you put in that email? And it’s about bringing it back around to whatever information that they’ve given you that you can expand upon in terms of connection with that potential.