Maryland Professional Photographers Association proudly presents

Todd and Jamie Reichman

Jamie and Todd established their business in November of 2005, after a few months of part-time work they opened their commercial location in Dunlap, IL and went full-time with their business. Within their first year they achieved top-performing studio numbers according to PPA's benchmark survey. In 2008 they were featured by PPA in the SMS Financial Success Stories webinar for their continued growth and increased revenue in 2007 while reducing hours worked and completing the transformation from a generalist photography studio to a fully-specialized wedding boutique.

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Building the Remarkable Business

Too often we talk to studios that are struggling to achieve profitability, much less a livable salary. Oftentimes these studios are also struggling to fulfill their creative needs - typically not creating or selling work that they feel very passionate about. PPA and SMS benchmarks show an alarming number of studios spending their time struggling to get by instead of spending time on continuous improvement and constant growth. Out business methodology will describe concrete steps for developing a studio that allow you to create the work that you want at the price point that you want. We'll outline the steps that you can take to separate yourself from the competition and how to know where each dollar is coming from.

In this all-day seminar we'll be discussing success - both business and creative success as the two are necessarily linked. We'll be sharing strategies for achieving your potential as rapidly as possible. We'll cover methods for structuring a business that stands out from the rest and functional steps to accomplish true remarkability. We'll discuss turning your competition into colleagues and avoiding the pitfalls of an increasingly overcrowded market. Also, we'll cover long-term planning as well as the necessary steps to plan for rapid growth and success and method to track and achieve that success.

A successful studio needs a solid long-term plan for growth and sustainability, and also a short term strategy for achieving those longs terms goals. Beyond that, the crux of that short term strategy is a consistently effective sales process. We'll be presenting a concrete, easy to understand and implement sales strategy. We will discuss the benefit of becoming a product-driven studio and how to implement that strategy. Effective segmentation of decisions and preparation for the sale is necessary, and we'll present several strategies for accomplishing those goals. If you are tired of clients loving what you do but not investing in the work we will outline a process that anyone can adapt and implement the very next day to increase sales AND customer satisfaction. We'll talk about what sales is and what it isn't, and present actual workflow and verbiage that you can use to facilitate decisions, solve client problems and close sales.

In the evening session we'll be covering weddings in particular. We will cover multiple models for offering your services and products and discuss where exactly you can plan to profit (time, albums, products, prints, additional service, etc.). We'll discuss the idea of service as the primary motivator in client bookings and strategies for effectively marketing your service and presenting a compelling brand that clients will seek out and be happy to refer.


This seminar will be beneficial for you if:

- you are worried about standing out in your market, or being overwhelmed with the increased competition
- you are struggling to make ends meet
- you spend your time worrying and hoping for the best rather than executing a plan and growing with confidence
- you love the wedding market but are disappointed in the earnings
- you feel confident with your ability to provide excellent wedding service but aren't booking the exactly perfect clients.

While we're more than happy to share what we do, this isn't just a seminar about presenting our methods. We've worked to distill what we do down to the underlying objectives that apply to every photography business. Even if your business doesn't resemble ours, even if you don't photograph weddings or have a similar approach we believe that this seminar will provide the framework to take control of your business.