The Dead Pixels Society podcast
News, information and interviews about the photo/imaging business. This is a weekly audio podcast hosted by Gary Pageau, editor of the Dead Pixels Society news site and community.
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The Dead Pixels Society podcast
From Scuba Diver to Portrait Photographer: Heather Crowder's Business Success
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What if you could turn a passion into a thriving business? Join us as we chat with Heather Crowder, founder of Heather Crowder Modern Portraits, about her extraordinary journey from the depths of the ocean as a professional scuba diver to capturing life's precious moments through her lens. Crowder reveals how her early experiences teaching scuba diving and managing a high-end scuba retail business uniquely equipped her with the skills needed for a successful career in portrait photography. Learn how her challenges and technical expertise underwater allow her to excel in her current field while maintaining a blend of creativity and business savvy.
Crowder's story is a testament to the power of adaptability and leveraging one's past experiences. Discover how early exposure to DSLR photography and a fascination with natural light portraiture in the mid-2000s helped shape her artistic vision. Crowder emphasizes the parallels between the high-end service delivery in luxury scuba excursions and premium portrait sessions, sharing critical lessons from mentors on pricing strategies and self-value. Hear how she overcame the challenges of establishing credibility in a new market and used her existing netwo
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Hosted and produced by Gary Pageau
Edited by Olivia Pageau
Announcer: Erin Manning
Welcome to the Dead Pixel Society podcast, the photo imaging industry's leading news source. Here's your host, gary Pegeau. The Dead Pixel Society podcast is brought to you by Medialip, advertag Printing and Independent Photo Imagers.
Gary Pageau:Hello again and welcome to the Dead Pixels Society podcast. I'm your Gary Pageau and today we're joined by Heather Crowder of Heather Crowder Modern Portraits in Annapolis, maryland. That was a mouthful. Hi, Heather, how are you today?
Heather Crowder:I am great. Thank you so much for the opportunity to spend part of my day with you.
Gary Pageau:So, Heather, you are a entrepreneur/ entrepreneur photographer. How long have you actually been on the photographer side, or were you doing something else before you got into it?
Heather Crowder:I was. So I've been on the photographer side for 17 years, but my entrepreneurial journey actually started and I can't believe I'm going to say this number 30 years ago, Wow.
Gary Pageau:So was this like a lemonade stand when you were like four.
Heather Crowder:Actually, no, it was a big girl business. I'm older maybe than I look. This was post-college and my path is not that of many photographers. I started as a professional scuba diver in my entrepreneurial journey. So I had a retail scuba and snorkeling company and in addition to selling equipment, we also taught lessons, we repaired and rented equipment and most of the best part of my job was traveling the world and teaching people to dive in some of the most beautiful waters literally around the world.
Heather Crowder:So I used to joke with my friends in my twenties I don't have a job, I have a lifestyle. And it was pretty amazing. I taught thousands of people to scuba dive, including at the Naval Academy here in Annapolis, so that was just a really fun part of that world. And then, when I got married and had my first child, I realized, okay, now I don't have a lifestyle anymore, I do have a job and a big staff. It was about 30 people.
Heather Crowder:If you've ever been in the world of retail, you know that retail is is no joke and it's more than full-time. It's not quite the restaurant business, but the retail world is around the clock. And I realized, okay, this, this isn't fitting with the family anymore and I sold that company and stumbled my way into photography, the way many people do when they have children. But I actually had a bridge from that scuba world into the photography world in that on the trips that we led, a big part of what we did was capture the people on the trip, both topside and underwater, and that served as a great marketing opportunity.
Heather Crowder:This was way pre-social media. Blogs were brand new. We would blog about you know, we're going to Fiji and then people would show their friends their photos of standing in front of the Sphinx and doing some of the amazing things that we were doing on our trips. And that marketing piece is how we sold future adventures. So I got pretty handy with the camera, Trial by fire. I learned underwater photography well before learning topside photography from some pretty incredible people. So when I sold the scuba business and realized that the entrepreneurial bug was very much a part of who I was, I really stumbled my way into the world of photography.
Gary Pageau:And that was 17 years ago. So the deal with the whole Nik set up with the lights and the whole deal, or I mean, this is not an equipment podcast.
Heather Crowder:But yes and remember, that was also in.
Gary Pageau:That was 20 years ago too, because that was a weird time for for photography, because for especially underwater, because people were used to using film but there really weren't any dedicated underwater no-transcript. There were a few but not a lot, and you had a lot of housings and different things.
Heather Crowder:Yes. So my my first foray was an Iconus five, which was slide film, and you know you had 36 images. You'd go down, you'd take what you thought were great and come up and then you know, on island slide development, you drop your film on your slides off, go have lunch and come back and find out how much money you just spent on mediocre images. You know the way that we're spoiled with the back of the camera now, like we didn't. We didn't have that you know. And with underwater, that you know, not to go too far down the path of underwater photography. But if you, if you've ever done it, you know that. You know the light down there is very different than it is up here and it's all controlled with flash. And you know there are a lot of moving parts.
Gary Pageau:So not to mention the fish moving and the fish moving right.
Heather Crowder:So fish portraits. Maybe my love of photographing toddlers came from uncooperative fish back in the day, but but yeah so. So I moved from, you know, the Nikonos system and then into a house camera, and then the world of digital started to evolve. But I really loved video more than I loved still photography, so I loved the video side, underwater, and then the still photography top sides. So you know, as I mentioned, I led a group to Egypt and Jordan. We were there for five weeks, so capturing all of the people in the places and then at the end, culminating into, you know, a slideshow of our adventure. You can imagine people were signing up for the next trip before we ever got off that road, so so it was really just kind of a great combination of doing something I loved. It kept me busy on the trip and and engaged with the clients and then also taught me a skill that I'm now putting to use, 17 years later.
Gary Pageau:And you know and plus you had, you know, a bunch of employees and all that. I mean that was a lot of management stuff you had to learn.
Heather Crowder:Yes, yes, for sure. And ironically, when I sold, we sold that business. My husband and I got married about two years before that. He was employed in a different industry. But I still say we, because if you're in retail it's a we, very much a we. And we sold that business and I said I will never, ever have an open sign again, I will never have employees again. I, you know all these nevers. And now I have two studios in Annapolis and you know, a small team, and so my never didn't last very long, but it's still not retail and it's still not an open sign. I control the hours. The hours on the door don't control me. So I found a compromise there.
Gary Pageau:So how did you use your way into the portrait market? Because, like you said, you know you had your child and you're probably taking pictures of your child and then all of a sudden, it's like I had these skills from underwater photography. I kind of understand composition, I know how a camera works, I know how light works. Is that how that happened?
Heather Crowder:Yes and no. So it really I was really sparked by seeing so we're talking 2007. This was a point in time where portraiture was really shifting to that on location natural light, beautiful blurry backgrounds, right. That was really at the forefront of that and I remember the first time I saw that, in that that type of imagery, it just stopped me in my tracks and I, like so many people, said I'm going to learn how to do that.
Heather Crowder:So, coupled with the fact that I knew my way around the camera to some extent, it it, I think, made me less intimidated by the idea of picking up a manual camera for the first time, you know, as I think so many people do. And that was really relatively early in the DSLR timeline. So it wasn't due to roll a film and spend how much to find out that I only got two pictures of that angelfish and the other 34 were, you know, of my buddy's fin or whatever. So I think the experience I had photographing things in the scuba world really gave me the confidence to realize like, okay, I can do this too, but I was really inspired by that look of portraiture back in that mid 2000s.
Gary Pageau:And so what was your next step? Because you know it's, you were kind of running a very high end customer service business, right. You knew that customer satisfaction was going to lead to more business later it was going to. You know, repeat business is going to be super important. So I can see in a lot of ways where you know kind of the marketing mindset would be transferable from running scuba excursions to portraiture, right, because I imagine it's the same sort of not necessarily clientele, but certainly that same sort of business model.
Heather Crowder:Yes, for sure, and it definitely is like it was sort of business model. Yes, for sure, and it definitely is like it was a luxury business model. So I think one of the lessons that I learned from the scuba world that I translated immediately into the portrait side of things is that you don't have to be the cheapest and there is an audience who is willing to pay for high-end delivery high-end delivery of service and experience, as you say, as well as high-end delivery of product. And at the time in my area there were a few other scuba shops, as we called them, and they were catering to a three-day trip to the Florida Keys and maybe something to the Bahamas for a long weekend.
Heather Crowder:But I was fortunate to have some really great mentors in that business, not necessarily local to me, but around the country, and they encouraged me. Yeah, okay, that's great, you can do that, but what you need to do is take a group of people to Fiji, you need to go to Egypt, you need to go to Indonesia. And it was really scary, because I was in my twenties, so the idea of you're telling me people are going to pay thousands of dollars for me to take them on vacation, absolutely. So I naively, in some ways jumped into that model and realized okay, when you take people to the Four Seasons in an amazing country abroad and show them an incredible experience, they are willing to pay for it. So I think that was one of the things that translated for me very early on. And then the photography mentors that I had early on, one in particular, her name is Cheryl Muir.
Heather Crowder:She encouraged me look, you're just starting, but you need to be priced where you want to be priced right not where you think you should be priced now price where you want to be priced, because you can always offer a promotion. You can discount off of that. But at least people are seeing that pricing. You're seeing that pricing and I know that's a similar model to Sue Bryce and so many of the other amazing mentors in in the world of photography really encouraging you to be at that price point where you need to be, even if it takes you a little while for your mind and your mindset and even your ability and what you can deliver to catch up to that.
Gary Pageau:Right.
Heather Crowder:So so that that was definitely a lesson that carried over for sure.
Gary Pageau:Yeah, you don't want to. You know, just because you're new, devalue your offering because it's very difficult to move up.
Heather Crowder:Absolutely You're starting over. If you do that, Each time you try to make a jump, you're starting over and having to reestablish essentially a brand new business. When you make those jumps and it's hard enough to start the business, the mindset and you know, self-value and belief in what you're doing, and that pricing piece and having to start over I think can also really do a number on your confidence.
Gary Pageau:Oh yeah.
Heather Crowder:You go from.
Heather Crowder:I'm busy and everybody loves me and okay, I can and should charge more. And then it's crickets, right, because you have to reestablish yourself and what you're doing I mean you.
Gary Pageau:I'm sure you had relevance in the, you know, underwater excursion market, right, people knew who you were. Whatever, you had no credibility in the portraiture market. So how, so how, did you acquire clients in those early days?
Heather Crowder:did you call up your, your scuba clients and say, hey, my skipper clients, yeah, I actually know, so I think this, this part of the story, you know, remember this was 2007. So this is, you know, not like trying to enter the portrait photography market in 2024. So it was still relatively new um you know barrier to entry because of the higher barrier to entry.
Heather Crowder:You had what I feel like you saw in the market were the old school portrait artists with the you know ornate frames and that kind of painterly canvas in studio, that very specific look. We had a guy here that everybody went to um, and then you had, you know, the handful of folks that were that were photographing this outdoor on location beautiful creamy background, style and then some things in between. So so I started photographing my own child, couple of friends, children, and initially it was not with a business mind, it was. I've got some time on my hands. I have a daughter who's now a year old. I'm going to learn how to do that. I want those images of her.
Heather Crowder:And then, once those images started to filter out a little bit good friends and you know social media, although it's not what it is now then I started getting the calls oh, oh, do you, do you do this?
Heather Crowder:Well, I guess I do. And then I took a, took a stab at a $200 blue domain website to infuse into what I had captured myself of friends, family and locals, and then just put the word out and said who needs family portraits? And it really just kind of blew up from there and I I still, I should say I was still dabbling a little bit in the scuba world, entertaining the idea of maybe being a consultant. I still, I should say I was still dabbling a little bit in the scuba world, entertaining the idea of maybe being a consultant, and I had talked to a couple of people about doing some mentoring, because I did it for such a long time it was 15 years so that really was what I knew. I think I couldn't believe that this other thing I love so much in photography could produce the same results for me. And then I found out really quickly that, you know, demand was high and I just ran with it.
Gary Pageau:So you have what's. You know it's all over your website. You know modern, right, modern is the word. What does that mean? When you, when you're saying that, what does that mean? What do you want the customer to take away from the word modern?
Heather Crowder:That's such a great question. I like the idea. It's modern, timeless, classic all melded into one. But if you put too many words out there it gets confusing. But I would like to think that when a client looks at my work they can't tell if I took it yesterday or 15 years ago. Now. Granted, quality right, we're always getting better and improving. But that style of capturing the person, who they are in the moment, it's not trendy, it's not, you know, without knocking some of the portrait trends over the years, it's not everybody wearing matching polo shirts and you know where you can look at an image and say I know that's from 1985. I know that's from you know, and we had the whole trash, the dress thing, the trash the dress and the really heavy.
Heather Crowder:At the time they were action. Now the young people would know them as presets or filters, but you know that heavy over edited, look. So it really is a grunge, right.
Heather Crowder:I mean, you know you've been at this for a really long time, so so you can timestamp all these trends that I'm talking about. And so modern for me means like in this moment, right now, but not on trend, not to create a specific look Right, but really capturing the person and subject as they are. And I will also say the word modern really came into play when I started the school picture side of what I'm doing for sure?
Gary Pageau:Yeah, I want to make sure we said segwayed into that. But you know cause? I was kind of trying to connect the sort of on location, dreamy look with school pictures.
Heather Crowder:Yes.
Gary Pageau:So how long did it take you, from one time you started your studio or your your business, to actually get to a physical in my guest room, by the way. Yes, that's what I'm saying. You started, you did the typical thing back then and you know, in the spare room couldn't hear. Since you're doing location photography, it didn't really matter. But now you have a physical location, yes. What was that decision based on?
Heather Crowder:yeah. So the catalyst for that was the boxes on my front steps and losing our sunroom and dining table and family entertainment zones to all of my stuff, right? So, um, so you start out and you think, oh, I can't just do this on a laptop. Okay, I really need a desktop, I need something larger. So now you're in a room at a desk. Now you've got boxes of albums and wall art and prints and all the things are coming.
Heather Crowder:So the boxes are coming and then, of course, I hit a point where I couldn't do all the photography and all the editing, all the unboxing and the shipping and the delivery of clients. So now there's a person in our life, she's coming to our house. So I think again, going back to my roots in that scuba world and understanding like, okay, part of the cost of doing business and part of building a business is making sure that you're doing it efficiently. Sometimes that costs, sometimes you have to spend. So I got my first studio space out of my home, much to the delight of my entire family in the spring of 2010.
Heather Crowder:okay so I was a couple of years and it's actually pretty fast actually yeah, I felt like forever, but I hear you, I'll buy that.
Gary Pageau:Yeah and then so. So you have this space now. It's a space that you do, you rent out to or well, I'm actually in my one, two, fourth space.
Heather Crowder:That's 2010. So I moved in to the original space in 2010 in the spring. Shortly thereafter, like a few weeks after found out, I was pregnant with my second child. So there was a moment of oh boy, I hope this was the right decision, right. And um, I knew the, the gentleman who had the space. They weren't exactly sure what they were going to do with it, so it was okay, let's try this out and see how this goes right. And then I'm about a month before my daughter was born. My second daughter was born and I, with my husband, decide okay, this is great, this is working, I can afford it, the business can afford it. We need to keep this out of the house. And the fellows come to me and they say so, we love having you, except we're going to turn the space back into a restaurant. So you've got about a month. So now I'm about to give birth and now I've got furniture and wall art and displays and all the things. You know, the universe is good to us.
Heather Crowder:I drove around, I see another space that I was always kind of in the back of my mind. I move into that one that served me for about six years and then fast forward into space number three, which we'll call downstairs. Right now I'm upstairs and, to answer your question in a very roundabout way, downstairs is a 2000 square foot big white box, natural light, beautiful windows. I'm in a historic building. It's a hundred and something years old. I'm in a historic building, it's a hundred and something years old, and that space I use myself and we also rent it to other photographers, for events, for corporate meetings, so it really is a multi-use venue. And then when downstairs started to get busy guess who? Didn't have a place to shoot anymore. So that brought me upstairs, and where I am now is really my space, for the most part right.
Gary Pageau:We'll rent it on occasion to kind of, for you know, right person, right time overflow kind of thing but that's overflow, but that's, that's the journey to studio number four now most people would say you've got a lot there, you've got a great little thing going. It sounds like it's whatever. And then at some point you say you know what I'm going to add to my plate. I'm going to put school pictures on there, which is a different logistical thing. Right, it's. In some ways it's completely different than what you're doing. What was that decision like? To say, what was it? Was it one of those things where you saw your kids' pictures and you said I could do better than that? Was it one of those things?
Heather Crowder:where you saw your kids' pictures and you said I could do better than that, Actually no.
Heather Crowder:So this was a decision made over cocktails at a holiday party, and I know that you interviewed my friend Cheryl Beshor. Undoubtedly at some point she talked about wine, cocktails or a holiday party. But yeah, this decision was made over cocktails at a holiday party. A colleague of my husband was chatting with me. This was in 2009. So this was early in. This is pre-studio, this is pre-growth. This is entirely the time where I'm doing children and family portraits. Right, there are no headshots yet. It really is child and family. It's very seasonal. I'm in Annapolis, which is near Washington DC, so climate wise, you know, we've got a winter here. We've got kind of a dreary spring, so everyone wants a portrait during the.
Heather Crowder:October, right, or spring, yeah, it's either May or October. So I'm having a conversation with this, with this colleague of my husband who's telling me about his wife's private preschool that is 90 minutes away from me, and he's telling me about the problems that they had had with photography and he said, oh you, you should totally come and take their pictures. So you know, I joke about the myths about school photography. Myth Number one I'm not a school photographer, I'm a portrait photographer, right, because many of us, I think, have a very traditional view of what school pictures are. Certainly, you know, 15 years ago that was the case and I just try not to be snobby said like, oh yeah, no, I don't, I don't do, I wouldn't, right, and I'm thinking laser beam backdrops, and you know that blue, whatever that look is, and you know hand on the chin with the ring.
Heather Crowder:And then I was of an era at one point in school where there was the primary image and then the background sort of shadowed was you like looking off in the distance, right? And you remember when they were kind of put together. So this is what I'm thinking, cause my daughter at this point is young, she's like two years old, so you haven't seen anything yet.
Heather Crowder:So my daughter at this point doesn't have school pictures, so in my mind it's my 11th grade picture is what I see. So we chatted and then he started to tell me more about the school and he said, oh my gosh, these kids are so cute, and the parents. And then when I made the connection demographically about where the school was, I thought, wait a second, I need to be in front of those clients.
Gary Pageau:Right.
Heather Crowder:I want to photograph these clients at their home. How can I get in front of these clients? So it was through their children. So I ultimately set up a meeting with this gal, who I adore I still photograph at this school, love her dearly and because they had had like a pretty rotten experience with a photographer they had previously used, with lost checks and you know I mean you've heard a million of those stories right when it all goes south. So I said, okay, if I'm going to do it, these are the parameters. I needed to be outside, because at the time I didn't know anything about lighting backdrops or any of that. Um, I need to shoot outside. I want the kids to be, uh, I want to be able to photograph them with their siblings.
Heather Crowder:And really what I wanted to do was create my look and my work at school. And the school is precious. It had these great little niches where I knew I could create like the looks that you see on my website. And we talked through it and she agreed. And then in the car on the way home, I had this overwhelming anxious feeling of oh my gosh, I just said yes to something. I have no idea what I'm doing. I've got a lot to figure out here. It was 200 children, it was a lot and I immediately went into panic but I'm going to figure it out. Panic, but I'm going to figure it out and obviously I figured it out. I've come a long way since then and you know with the tools I'm using and my efficiency and so many things, but it really my start in school photography was 100% based in getting in front of the right client and then the fact that the school photography was profitable really was a bonus.
Gary Pageau:So yeah, I mean, I mean looking at the site. Is you know I like the fact that you've got you take the time to do, you know, the buddy pictures, the sibling pictures, those kinds of things. Was that always part of your formula, and did you not consider the time it would take to do that?
Heather Crowder:I did not consider the time it would take to do all of it. I'll answer you honestly because, remember you know way back when, like now, obviously, I'm a got photo user and it's an amazing platform for volume, but this is pre all of that. So I did not take the time to account for how long it was going to photograph each of the children, because I wanted to create variety and do my thing with these children, the sibling piece, the keeping track of the children, editing and retouching and post-production of the children, loading the children into a platform so that their parents could order, ordering in rows, delivering digital files by Dropbox, and so you can imagine. There were a lot of tears and a lot of hours spent.
Gary Pageau:That was just your husband.
Heather Crowder:That was right, that's exactly right. So and I joke whenever I speak at, you know, imaging PPI on stage, I always joke like, okay, who's with me and has been under their desk crying before? Okay, then you're my people. So the time to answer your question. I was dog on a bone. I wanted to get in front of those families. It's probably good that I didn't consider all the things, because if I had, I might've talked myself out of it and it would have completely changed the trajectory of my whole business, because school pictures and those families are a big part of the foundation that my child and family portrait growth was built on. So I was busy before and then that just added this whole extra dimension to what I was doing.
Gary Pageau:I mean, I've talked to volume photographers who say, you know, I've got 35 to 40 seconds per kid, you know, in a typical shoot, and then I maybe have two or three people doing that. That was an adaptation you had to make, because clearly you don't have I mean you, it sounds to me like you're probably taking a little more time than that, but still you didn't have.
Heather Crowder:It's still quick. It's still quick and I think the um and this is something I speak to when I'm presenting mentoring etc something that I speak to, whether we're talking about school pictures or headshots, corporate headshots and volume headshots you have to connect and engage in this much time, like you have a fraction of a moment to engage, because once you engage, you don't need a lot of time for the images. The images unfold if you're connected to the subject. So you're absolutely right. I don't, you know it's more than 30 seconds, but it's pretty fast. And it's because I'm engaging with that child or person. I'm not asking, I'm not telling them smile, I'm not asking them or telling them to do anything. I'm engaging with them and then they naturally do the things that you see them do in my images. So that's really. There's my trick. I've just told everybody what the secret sauce is.
Gary Pageau:And you've done it Go go, go.
Heather Crowder:Yes, Good luck.
Gary Pageau:Workshop on a podcast.
Heather Crowder:Workshop on a podcast. There you go. That's the secret sauce.
Gary Pageau:So let's talk a little bit about the process, because I'm sure you started out like the people, especially at the time, the era you were in, there wasn't a lot of digital order platforms, right. There wasn't a lot of digital order platforms, right. You were doing the sheets and the checks and you lose checks and you lose orders and you've got them all out of order and you've got to resort them and you've got to key this stuff into an Excel file and all that. So when the digital platforms came on board and you said mentioned, you're a got photo user and I probably ambassador, I think too. Is that correct? Yes, that's right. So what was your decision process on that? Was this something you saw early on and he said I got to be a part of that, or are you more of a wait and see person?
Heather Crowder:No, and it's because I was cheap, and this is something that lots of portrait photographers so I think my niche, I should just say in and kind of follow my path all start in portrait. We have oodles of platforms on the portrait side now and they've been around for a while. I'm not going to mention them by name. I use a lot of them for the portrait side of what I'm doing, right. So there are gallery software you can order, you can even deliver digital files, and they are a little bit less expensive. I mean, I don't think I don't tell Benedict, but, like, whatever got photo costs, it's worth every penny to me because of all that it does. It's an employee that I don't have to pay for. But what happens, I think, is we think okay, I need to do all this myself, I can do it myself. So I'll just use this portrait platform to accomplish this volume job and it worked for a while. But it was at the expense of a whole lot of time, a whole lot of aggravation, mistakes, and not only was that not serving me, but it also delayed the client getting their images, getting their orders, Like that service that we talked about at the beginning of our call was really failing. So I was very resistant to pay for something that I could do myself because I had done it myself Right. And this I hear this all the time.
Heather Crowder:I think I got a call from somebody on the got photo team early on and they said, hey, we've got this platform and I didn't really fully understand what it did. But you know, would you like to do a trial? So it just so happened that one of my schools I was getting ready to start a school and I said you know what? I got? Nothing to lose. I'll do this one time. It costs what it costs, which frankly is nominal um, and I'll see how it goes and my mind was so blown with that first job that I didn't even really do correctly, like some of it I was kind of doing after the fact, because I started too late.
Heather Crowder:That's a long story and you know I'll get off on a tangent if you let me, so I won't, but I didn't even do it correctly and it was the greatest thing ever. So once I got that, that taste of oh wow not only is this amazing for me and getting my life back to either go do more jobs or actually see my family, look at what this is doing for my client. You know my client has individual, password protected, coded galleries. Right At one point I would put all the images into one gallery. Good luck, Go find Jimmy. Go find your daughter.
Erin Manning:And look at every other kid too.
Heather Crowder:Yes, Then go find the siblings. They're in there. I promise Good luck. So that was really complex and in today's world, with security and and privacy and all those issues, like you could, you could never do that. So then that little portrait side of me, the you know portrait gallery software, says oh, I can do password protected galleries too. Yes, you can. You can make them all individually. And then you can send individual emails to all of those clients with their children's images, where, with a volume platform, I press one button and say job launched and then the emails go out individually to all the families and they can start ordering the images and orders go directly to the lab. And all these things are magically happening, automated, while I'm at dinner with my family, not at my desk with one of us in tears, right yeah, in the wee hours of the night.
Gary Pageau:One of the conversations I have with people who are still on the borderline about going to a platform right is oh you know, I'm going to lose sales, I'm not going to make as much because I get the check up front and that's awesome. What has been your experience with order rates and with, actually you know, buy rates and and dollars per order, cause you have access to all that, I'm sure?
Heather Crowder:Yes, yes, and that's such a great question, and I too hear people say what, what you said. It has been an incredible increase for me. So not only do I have the ability to just go right into my thought photo backside and see my job stats on every single job I've ever done what percentage of people order, how much do they spend, what's the average order? So my favorite number to measure, just for those of you that are out there in the volume world or dabbling or thinking about it I want to know what my average sale per enrolled student is, because all those other numbers you can kind of manipulate, right, you can. Oh well, my average invoice is whatever it is, well, but if only 25% of the people are purchasing, then those numbers can get skewed. So I want to see, for each job, what is my average sale per enrolled student, because then I can measure that across all the jobs, so I can see all these stats and across the board.
Heather Crowder:When I went to this model every single school, my sales were higher, my percentage of orders were higher, because one of the things that we have the ability to do, very simply, is market to the people who haven't yet ordered. Right, so I have all my folks that ordered on time. Good for you, you're compliant. And then I have all the parents like me who need to be bonked over the head time and time again and reminded like your deadline is coming, sister, you need to order. No, we really mean it now. Right, and it's, and you're hammering them over the head. You have the ability to continue to market those folks even well past the deadline, so the sales continue to come in. It's not like this one shot, one and done, got what we got and then-.
Gary Pageau:Picture of day becomes picture of months.
Heather Crowder:Picture of months right. And then Stephanie McCauley did a great Got Photo webinar about how to capitalize on Black Friday and the holidays and I put her plans into action right away. It was great. So, oh, it's Mother's Day, it's Father's day. You can then market directly from the platform to all of those clients, both those who have not yet ordered and also those who have. Oh hey, great, you ordered, but now it's holiday time and look, we're doing this fun holiday gift stuff. We know you don't have anything for grandma because nobody ever knows what to get for her. What about doing something like?
Gary Pageau:one of our gift items. It's the picture that's right here that you love. It's right here, and how we can put it on an ornament.
Heather Crowder:Exactly and, if I can tie back to part of our earlier conversation, because my work looks like it looks whether it's in the park, in somebody's backyard or at school. My clients are very often using their children's school pictures for holiday cards, for ornaments, because they don't look like a traditional school picture. So they're going on the wall. They are gift prints. You know, it's not just the requisite. I'm going to order a few wallets and we'll send one to, you know, all the aunts and uncles, so that for me that sales piece coming out of the platform is is just yet another revenue stream, because I have. I have another, another stab at getting those images in front of them.
Gary Pageau:So it surprised you how well it's worked.
Heather Crowder:Yes, yes, and not only has it surprised me how well it's worked every single job over the years. I've become a little bit more efficient. I learn a few tricks, as we all do, right, packing up our gear in our car, whatever, like. We're always learning, and the process becomes more and more efficient. I now have admin folks that are doing some of the admin stuff so that again I can spend more time either shooting or or just having some downtime, and that then makes it more profitable, right, and the cycle just continues to get better and better. So there's time savings on top of added revenue. So it's just a win-win all the way around.
Heather Crowder:And you do offer some resources for people to learn how to run their business, similar to how you do yours, right? Yes, yes, and I love to teach, as you may have noticed from our time together and I like to think I'm an open book. That's one of the things that mentees and others who I've spoken in front of be it imaging, wppi, got Photo, summer Camp, some of the different places where I've spoken. I really love to share it all. I love for people to learn what not to do, because I think we learn so much from what not to do, and if I can save somebody five minutes, five hours, a headache to help them build their ship and move it faster, that is something that I absolutely enjoy and love to do.
Gary Pageau:So where would people go for more information on this stuff or learning more about your business?
Heather Crowder:Yes, thank you for asking. I think the best thing is to just email me. You can email me at school picks, which is school P, I, c, s at Heather Crowdercom and let me know what you might like to know more about and I can point you in the right direction. I also have a Facebook group for boutique school photography people who are either wanting to get started with that Maybe they're already dabbling in it or maybe they're doing all the things and they'd love to come in and share with others, so you can find that on Facebook. I think it's called Modern School Photographers with Heather Crowder, so you can ask that on Facebook. I think it's called Modern School Photographers with Heather Crowder, so you can ask for an invite there. Make sure that you fill out there two or three questions. Fill out the questions so that we know you're not a robot and we'll welcome you into the group, and there are a lot of resources in that Facebook group as well.
Gary Pageau:Awesome. Well, thanks, Heather, for your time. I before we connected, I had no idea you were a scuba person. Before we connected, I had no idea you were a scuba person. So this is awesome. Do you still dive, or are those days past?
Heather Crowder:So I have not been diving since I was pregnant with my now 18-year-old believe it or not. But we do talk about it and I think we'll get back to it. We've become skiers. We love to ski as a family. We started that when our girls were young because they could do it when they were young and then they could go ski and then we could sit and, you know, have a quiet breakfast and a beverage and watch the fireplace. And now we all ski as a family. But we'll get back to the skipper world undoubtedly at some point.
Gary Pageau:Awesome. Well, look forward to catching up with you sometime in a later date, and thank you so much.
Heather Crowder:Thank you so much, Gary.
Erin Manning:Thank you for listening to the Dead Pixels Society podcast. Read more great stories and sign up for the newsletter at wwwthedeadpixelssocietycom.
