557: Brendan Taylor – Photography business success all comes down to the follow up

557: Brendan Taylor – Photography business success all comes down to the follow up

 
Andrew Hellmich: Today's guest was first interviewed on the podcast for Episode 502 which was last year, and in that interview, we focus heavily on a Facebook Live marketing strategy that I can say he is still running today and very successfully. Now, the reason I asked him back onto the podcast was following a series of messages I received early in January this year, he wrote to me and said, "Happy New Year, Andrew, how would you feel about a new interview with me for your podcast? The haters and the heat have died down a lot, and I've got some great advice and tips for photographers after we at Baby Art Studios, had a record breaking year in 2023 despite there being a world economic crisis. We had studios in our group making the most money they have ever made, had more bookings than they could deal with and are having to hire more staff and larger premises, not to mention coaching other photographers in your neck of the woods who have seen huge results." Then he shared a screenshot of a message thread with an Aussie based newborn photographer who I know, like and trust, and she wrote, "I just finished out 2023, a whole 73% up on last year. Thank you for everything. My two final sales of the year were today, three and a half thousand dollars and $1,600, I needed that after a $200 sale yesterday." Now I am super excited to have him back and to learn more about his business. I'm talking about Brendan Taylor of Baby Art Studios, and I am rapt to have him back with us now. Brendan, welcome back, mate.

Brendan Taylor: Hey buddy. How you doing?

Andrew Hellmich: I am doing well, but it sounds like you guys are just killing it over there, like what's changed, If anything?

Brendan Taylor: We have been literally head down and ass up for the last year. Like, really, we have just been so focused on our goal and our vision. You know, last year there were some ripples and stuff that kind of took our eye off the off the ball a little bit. But, yeah, we just got back to being fully focused, head down, working extremely hard, understanding what we're here to do, ultimately, is to be able to make sure that the parents that we work with have the best experience and the best memories to take away from their time with us. And that's what we did. We focused solely on customer experience and customer journey, even more so than ever over the last 12 months.

Andrew Hellmich: Amazing. For the listener that hasn't heard that initial interview with you, give us an idea about your business model, because you're not like a traditional, standalone, you know, single owner photography studio, are you?

Brendan Taylor: No, yeah. So I was, so yeah, we just had a goal to just grow our business base. So we're Baby Art Studios, as you mentioned, we specialize in maternity, newborn baby photography. It was actually, unfortunately, off the back of a loss of a baby between myself and my other half, where we decided that we wanted to put a package together where we got to document somebody's journey from maternity through to baby's first birthday. Because unfortunately, we didn't get to create those memories for our little one that unfortunately, who passed, and it was off the back of that we decided that everyone had the opportunity to create those memories that we didn't. And we want to spread the joy of these memories, potentially worldwide, but obviously to begin with, around the UK. So we've rebranded ourselves from tailor made portraits, which was the family portrait photography company I used to run to Baby Art UK, and then went on to have two more children after the little one we lost, one to which was deaf and another one was autistic. And it was off the back of having to work with the children and to spend a lot of time with them, it slowed our growth of our business, because obviously we had to dedicate our time and energy to our children, but we still wanted to give the memories and the experience to the families, which was in our original goal. So we franchised the company to which where we could still give our special message and memories to people around the country, but just not by us. So we'd allow our photographers to do it. So that's when we grew into a franchise model, and then it just went from there. We ended up having one franchisee, then another, and then we, and we've got 10 studios around the UK right now, but then we rebranded from Baby Art UK, after a couple of years in, a franchise into Baby Art Studios, because we had interest abroad as well, so we potentially, we didn't want to limit ourselves to the UK market, and rebranded from, yeah, Baby Art UK to Baby Art Studios. So now we've got 10, 11, in fact, we've got a new one assigned just now. Can't mention where it is just yet, but contracts have all been done, and they launch in April, so yeah, next month.

Andrew Hellmich: So that'll be 11 Baby Art Studios in the UK or in other countries?

Brendan Taylor: UK currently, yeah.

Andrew Hellmich: Right. Okay, when I recorded with you last year, the original goal I heard, I can't remember if this was from you, was to have 100 studios worldwide, and then there was a lot of drama last year. And people can get back and listen to that episode if they want to, but it sounded like then you were going to bring everything closer to home and you weren't looking at expanding. So it sounds like you're back into the expansion mode.

Brendan Taylor: Yeah. So, rightfully so. So yeah, there was lots that went on last year to where we redefined our goal and our vision and stuff. But it was just kind of dampened for a while. But the goal and vision is the same, like we have to create these memories for families in the UK, around Europe, around the world, because we don't just take pictures. Sounds very corny, if you like, but we're not just photographers, we're experience givers, like if you read our reviews and stuff, very rarely do they speak about our pictures. And I'm not ashamed by that either. Our pictures are lovely. They're multi award winning, like a lot of other photographers, but we're not just there to take a lovely picture. We are there to create an experience for us, our clients, and that's what they talk about in their reviews. And that goes way beyond just taking some nice photos.

Andrew Hellmich: Right. I mean, when I'm listening to you now and talking to you, you sound like Brendan, the experience giver, the feel good guy, the memory maker, but there's got to be, there's some serious business ideas going on behind all that. I mean, this is all about making money too, isn't it for you and for your studio owners?

Brendan Taylor: For sure, for sure. But the best way to make money isn't to try and make money, in my opinion. And it sounds really silly, right? But I think about all my own personal experiences. So we sat back down, and we looked at our model, we were doing okay, and it's, "How do we make it better?" And it isn't about thinking about ourselves, it's about thinking about our client and our client's journey and our customer experience. And I think about all the experiences I've had, if I've gone to a restaurant, if the food has been amazing, but the service has been terrible, the waitress or waiter was really rude. They just didn't give a shit. Like, you don't go back. But if I go to a restaurant and the food's okay, but the service is amazing every time I go in. "Hi Brendan, hi Kayleigh, Hi kids. Like, are you having a steak as usual? Are you having a normal drink?" Like you go back over and over and over again, even if the food is just okay, and that's the service goes way beyond the final product, and that's what we wanted. So we call our experience the Disneyland effect. I don't know, if I'm allowed to publicly say that without Disney coming after me, but we call it a Disneyland effect, because I've been to Disneyland in Paris five times now. And there is no brochure, there is no video. There's no YouTube channel. There is nothing that sells Disney, like being at Disney. There is nothing that sells it. And I'll take, we just went to Disney for Christmas this year just gone. My children all grown up now, 17, 12, and 10, and it was still just magical being there. You still wave at the characters like the, you know, they're like, they are real, of course. But I mean, it's just magic, and that's what we want to create for our clients. We just want to create that magical experience. So when they look at the pictures up on the wall, they're taken back to the day in the studio and the laughs that they had and the fun that they had, and if Dad got wee’ed on, or if Mum got pooed on, like, all of those memories come flooding back into that image. And that's what we're trying to create.

Andrew Hellmich: So with the Disneyland reference, are you saying that the only, well, that the best way for people to hear about you and your business is to have other clients talk about you and their experience?

Brendan Taylor: Yes and no, the best way to find out about our business is to come and experience it for yourself.

Andrew Hellmich: Oh, okay, that's the Disneyland reference.

Brendan Taylor: Yeah, come in and experience of yourself. Because, yes, it's lovely for people to shout about us. Yes, it's lovely to read reviews. It's lovely to see other pictures posted on Facebook and stuff. But until you've experienced it with your own baby and seeing your own baby posed and positioned and worked with our baby whisperers the way we, you know, we work with their babies, there's nothing actually like being there and experiencing it for yourself, then coming back and viewing your images via, you know, the animated slideshow and the cinematic experience that we give. You know, it's just amazing. And that itself is worth more than any money in the bank. And the fact that we get paid to do that is like a footballer. So here in the UK, obviously, all over the world, but footballers get paid to do what they love to do. Like I don't go to work, you know, I coach the people that we spoke about in Australia, and I'm up at 12, 1,2,3, o'clock in the morning. And yes, I get paid to do it, but I do it for that text message that you read out at the beginning. I do it for that. That's what gives me the fire in the belly, is like that same photographer measures me, she said. So when I spoke to her, when I started working for a year ago, she said, "I don't really want to hire staff. That's not my plan. I don't, don't really know how I want to grow, but I know I want to grow, but I don't think I want to hire staff. Wouldn't even know where to start." This same person now has three members of staff. "I'm not doing expos. I don't want to do any expos. Don't know where to start." She's done free expos. She messaged me and she said the member of staff's name. I won't mention names, but the staff members name, "I'm sat in a nail salon having my nails done while staff members name has just done a four and a half thousand dollar sale. What the fuck is?" was what she put and I was like, "Show me the nails." And she sent me a picture of her nails, and she was just like, "I don't know what to do with my time. I just don't know what to do." And that's what gives me the fire, is the fact that this person who's working extremely incredible woman, incredible lady, workhorse, absolute workhorse. But now she's getting her nails done while her staff are making her money, and it's incredible. And you know her, right? So feel free to have a chat with her. You know, outside of this, she's now got the best problem in the world. She's got way too many bookings to deal with. She doesn't know what to do with them. She's literally herself is considering having to get a bigger premises to deal with the amount of booking she's got. She is overrun. She doesn't know what to do.

Andrew Hellmich: Unreal.

Brendan Taylor: She's stuck.

Andrew Hellmich: Unreal. I'm going to bring you back and reference some of the things you just said, but I know the listener is sitting here listening, thinking, "Okay, Brendan, yeah, sure. It's about the client journey. It's about the client experience. I can deliver the best experience what just wait till they get in and see how I treat them, and then the photos I create and how I'm going to spoil them. But how do I get those bookings in the first place for them to come and experience you know me and what I do?", and I've referenced your Facebook lines. I don't want to go too deep into those, because we covered them deeply last time. "But surely there must be, I don't want to call them tricks, but because parents need a reason to book a photographer, you must be enticing them somehow to come into the studio, to pick up the phone or to send you a message and initiate that initial meeting for you to be able to bring them in and have that experience."

Brendan Taylor: Yeah, so excuse my French again, and I use this in our training, and I say it to people on socials when we're doing it. But one thing that I would say more than anything is, "Don't expect the fuck on a first date. All right? Don't expect to get married on the first date, because so many photographers are putting their post out on social media. It's a mummy and me post, or it's a Valentine's post or Christmas mini post, whatever it is, they're putting posts out and expecting bookings instantly because the offer is great or the pictures are great, the best thing that I would say doing is create conversations and relationships with people before you're asking them to commit to purchase. One thing that we teach heavily in our business is 90% of what we do is selling, 10% of what we do is closing. And when I say 'selling,' I don't mean pressured sales and hard sales. I mean from the ad going out to the amount of times we touch them via emails, text messages, retargeted ads, phone calls, lumpy mail. So like, you know, stuff out in the actual post that there's something in there for them to feel once it comes through a letter. "But oh, what's in here?" Like multiple touch points before we even consider booking them as a client. Now, what most photographers do is they do 10% of selling and 90% of closing, so anything to get a bum on a seat, and then they try the hard sell, and I don't mean necessarily, really hard, pressured sale, but then they do everything they can just to get a sale. Once they've got them through the door. We do the opposite. We do the hard work at the beginning so that the sale becomes super easy, because we've educated them all the way through the customer experience and journey through answering questions, asking questions for them to make sure that they get the right information. So that they start asking questions about prices, they start asking questions about products and how much this is and how much that is, we force them to ask those questions by the type of questions that we ask them. And there was something that you had somebody on your podcast recently about they said about some photographers, "Don't put their prices on the website." They hide some information back off their website. That's me, by the way, I hide information off my website, not because I don't want them to see it. I want them to talk to me. I don't want them to be able to download a PDF or go on to the price page and see everything. I need them to start a conversation with me. I've looked on your website. I know your package for the bump to baby is 199, but how much your extra pictures? Then I can start dialog. Then I can start conversation. "How do you want to display them? What size you think and what room in the house you might thinking about putting them in?" "Oh, we just want all the digitals." Like, that's what they think they want, until we start further conversation. And then actually, they want prints for grandparents. They want something on the fireplace. Like they don't realize what they want until that conversation starts. And then when you're having a really good conversation with these people, we call it the trust timer. The more time you spend with these people asking questions, the more questions you ask, the deeper the questions you ask, you start asking some painful questions, as in, like, "Why now? What made you book us? What's so important that you create these memories." Then you start finding out that this is actually a rainbow baby or an IVF baby or a miracle baby. Now all of a sudden, you know, pricing, products and stuff are not really that important to the client, when they actually tell themselves, really "Why I actually want to book this in the first place?" Does that make sense?

Andrew Hellmich: Absolutely, it does. When you're saying conversations, are you talking about, physically you or one of your team talking on the phone, or is this via text messages, email, like, what is it?

Brendan Taylor: 95% of it is text. Text and WhatsApp.

Andrew Hellmich: So, you'll go that deep. You'll go that deep with your questions on text, backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards.

Brendan Taylor: Yeah, it's the most comfortable way our clients find them to talk with the way of the world right now, Instagram, DM, Snapchat and WhatsApp and texting, people don't want to talk on the phone like they just don't like if you ask to get them on the phone, "Oh, can you just send me an email? Or can you do like", they don't want to speak, and I don't know if that's because they're worried about being sold to or if it's just because it's so natural now just to text backwards and forwards. I want to do whatever the client wants to do. If the client's comfortable in texting me, then I'm comfortable texting back. If they want to get on the phone, I'll get on the phone. Ideally, I don't want to email. The reason I don't want to email is because it takes too long for a reply, if they're not there and then on their emails, it's quite easy for it just to be lost. Like 98% of people open and read a text message.

Andrew Hellmich: Right. So let's say someone responds to or like, you know, they DM you through Instagram..

Brendan Taylor: Yeah

Andrew Hellmich: Do you then want to take them into WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger? Or will you stay inside?

Brendan Taylor: Stay, yeah, yeah stay on. I'll get their telephone number, but wherever they contact me is where I will continue the communication with them, just because that's where they're comfortable. But the art for me is to reply within seconds, not minutes, not hours, within seconds, and we do that through automation. So automation to interact with them instantly, and then once that interaction is they've answered a couple of questions via the automation, it's then pinged over to a human, and that human has to reply instantly and carry on that automation as in as if it was always a human and then it carries that we can start asking human questions.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, so are you doing that with ManyChat?

Brendan Taylor: No, so we're doing that with our own CRM system that we've built. There's lots of CRM systems out there that does text messages and stuff. There's Studio Ninja, there's Light Blue, there's HubSpot, there's so many different things out there, but we were lucky enough to have ours custom built last year, and yeah, we, something that we're potentially going to be releasing to the public later on this year, if everything goes well.

Andrew Hellmich: So someone DMs you in Instagram or on Instagram, your CRM will pick that up and then send some automated messages and then gets passed on to a human. So what happens if that is that like right now? I mean, I'm surprised that we're talking at this time. For you, you said it's midnight and you're just coming on now. I can't believe that. So if you get a DM now and the client, the prospective client, responds to a couple of automated messages, then it gets pinged over to you or your team. Yeah, someone's got to be awake.

Brendan Taylor: No. So we've got a lot of AI and stuff built into our CRM as well. So we've built some really clever systems. So if somebody DMs us now, likelihood is it will just say "Hi", you know, give a couple of seconds and just say "Hi. Thanks ever so much for messaging and sorry to reply so late. Just want to let you know that received your message, and we'll pick it up in the morning and carry on" type thing. It's just like, you know, I'm about to hit the sack, but I'll message you again in the morning. Is just like that, but instantly reply so that they feel Jesus Christ. That was quick." But yes, it's very, very cleverly done. It's something I can't remember where I picked that up. Might mean Grant Cardone, the American you know, the real estate guru. I was part of the Grant Cardone university program for 12 months. And one thing I learned from there more than anything else, anything else, it was the art of follow up. And it's the speed of follow up, which is so so important. And since doing the Grant Cardone University Program couple of years ago, our follow up game is just nuts. Our follow up game is incredible, and that's what has allowed us to literally cat about our business over the last 24 months or so is follow up. And we don't do it nuts. We do not do it this industry, especially in the UK. We don't want to follow up because we're worried we might offend somebody or that maybe we're messaging them too much. I messaged somebody. I don't know if I'll show you on here. You obviously the people were listening to this won't see it right, but I had somebody on here says "I'll have the Watch Me Grow package. I've just purchased it now. Thanks." I said, "Okay, amazing. Once booked, your chosen Studio will be in touch within 72 hours to arrange dates and times", they've put "Hello, apologies, all booked and sorted out, been one of those days. Thank you so much for sending the reminders. Appreciate your help." I'll put, "You're so welcome." They had free text messages and an email sent in one day, and it was off those free text messages in an email that triggered them to go, "Shit, I've got to get this done", and they got it done. If I wouldn't have sent them so many reminders that one would have slipped through the net. That's worth 1600 pounds to me, which is about, I don't know, $3,000 to you.

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, absolutely.

Brendan Taylor: How much does it cost?

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, what a great example. So let's say you're in a texting conversation with a prospective client, you're going backwards and forwards, and all of a sudden, you know, they've got to pick up their kids, or whatever that they're going to go or they just go silent for an hour, two hours, a day. Do you ping them back and say, "Hey, where have you gone?" Or do you wait for them to reply if you've asked the last question?

Brendan Taylor: Yeah. So if I've asked last question and it's gone completely quiet, then two minutes later, they'll get a smiley face and a question mark, just to find out, like if anything's going on. And then another 5, 10 minutes go by, and I'll go that "I think you might have stepped away from your phone, just let me know when you're back and we can pick this back up." And then in our CRM pipeline, it just basically, we've got a waiting on them and waiting on us. So it just goes waiting on them, and all the ones that are sat in that pipeline of waiting on them, we just check that a few times. You know, throughout the day, every other hour or so, we're checking that pipeline, and we just keep messaging people that are in there. And if it takes three or four messages in an email to get a response, then so be it, the worst thing they're going to say is, "Will you just leave me alone like I'm clearly not interested?" Okay, so then I put them in the ghosted folder, and they're gone, and that's okay, but what I don't want is a clogged up pipeline. I need my pipeline to be empty. They're either qualified in or qualified out, but not a maybe, no a 100 maybes in there, because they're no use to the client or me. I'd rather them say, "Look, thanks, but no thanks." Then I just move them into the ghosted, if they are interested, then we carry on the conversation, and then they book, or they don't, as simple as that.

Andrew Hellmich: Unreal. Let's say you're coaching me and I'm implementing this pipeline, and I'm getting, you know, the odd, or maybe frequently these replies like, "Hey, I'm not interested", and I'm adding them to the ghost list. But every time I do that, it hurts me. I feel like, "Wow, I've offended someone in my local area." Like I don't want to be that guy. What do you say to me?

Brendan Taylor: Yeah, so if, just by the way, I don't offer my coaching services to anybody, the fact that I do coach a couple of people is just through making friends, you can't find me as a coach anyway. I don't sell my services. I'm not a trainer. I'm not a coach. So there's no upset on this call or anything like that at all. It's not what this is about. But yeah, if I was coaching you, she said, "I really don't want to offend anybody", I would say, then I don't think you're serving the people correctly, in my opinion, unless they tell you they're interested or they're not, because if you've left them hanging, or you feel they've left you hanging, if they've ignored you and you're thinking, well, they've left me hanging, I don't really know what to do. My opinion is you've left them hanging, like you've left, if you think they've gone quiet on you, I think you've gone quiet on them. You're the business. You're the one with the products or service. Yes, they've reached out to you, but it's your job now to qualify them in or out, and until they tell you they're interested or they're not, then they're interested because they haven't told you they're not interested."

Andrew Hellmich: So that's what you mean by keeping your pipeline clean and moving.

Brendan Taylor: Correct.

Andrew Hellmich: You need an answer from every single person in that pipeline.

Brendan Taylor: Yes, but not instantly, like you know they're waiting on them. That conversation piece is going to happen for days or weeks. I've got no problem with that part. But obviously, if the conversation goes completely cold, then the conversation has to start again until we can kind of keep moving you down the pathway to either qualified in or out. You know, we teach a thing called the LNS, which is the "logical next step". Each time a conversation happens, there has to be a logical next step at the end of it. I'm not just saying, "Hi, Andrew, how's your day?" And then you go, "Yeah, it's good." And I go, "Brilliant", then just like, there's no point. Like, you know, when I reached out to you in January, how would you feel about me coming back on your show? First of all, I asked you a question that you didn't say yes or no to. We have to have a conversation. How would you feel about, remember, last year I taught you, talking about the 5W and a H. So the questions that we asked that generate conversation. I'm always going to ask a question that generates a conversation, not just what we call a binip question, which is a "bring a no into play" question. I don't want to ask a question that you can just say 'yes' or 'no', because the conversation just goes dead. So I'll ask a question that will generate conversation. If I said to you, "Andrew, how would you feel about having me back on the show?" You can't go' yes', just doesn't make sense. So like I asked, all of the dialog that we have on text message will always be a question that generates a conversational answer, not just a yes or no answer. And then I lead them down a path for them to be able to make a decision on what happens next. There's always the client's choice. What we teach is, when a prospect is in choice, you're in full control of the conversation. The moment the client has no choice, we lose the control of the conversation. We don't know how to take it.

Andrew Hellmich: Right. And the beauty of doing this all via text messages. You can keep updating those scripts. You can modify them. You can see what the replies are, and just gets better and better all the time.

Brendan Taylor: So in this CRM that we've built, it has a unified inbox, so TikTok, Instagram, WhatsApp, text messages, email, website, messenger, any messenger you like all comes into one inbox, so you don't have to keep going different things to find them. They all come into one and you can either send pre-recorded voice notes. You can text it as well, so you can have, all, automatic so in your workflow, in your automated workflow, when a message, when an inquiry comes in, two minutes after an inquiry comes in, you can automatically send a voice note that just says, "Hey, thanks ever so much for just inquiry. I'm just out, you know, on a kids run at the moment, but I'll send you a text in just a few minutes when I get back in the car." And then two minutes go by and a text goes out and just says, "Hi, I just got back in the car. I'm just going to get home, sort the kids out, and then I'll message you a bit later on." That's all automated, and then obviously that goes to a human. And now the humans got, like, half an hour, an hour or so, to be able to, like, respond to this as a human. But obviously, as it comes in, you can just make this really humanized, if that's a word, to be able to instantly touch them the moment they message, so that they feel like "Shit. Somebody's at the end, like somebody's there, even though they're out on the school run, or even though they're out in the car, or they're in shopping, they've got back to me, like, within seconds of me sending, you know, an inquiry over. But that's so powerful.

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, I can see that. So when you talked about the trust timer and keeping the client, you know, engaged and going backwards and forwards, what is the end goal? Is it to get the booking or not? Is it to have them schedule a face to face meeting? Like, what are you trying to where are you trying to get to first?

 
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Andrew Hellmich: So, Brendan, how many times have you been told that you are missing out on sales by not doing a sales session for the pregnant mum?

Brendan Taylor: So many times. I don't care.

Andrew Hellmich: So have you proved them wrong, you know, with your method or in your own mind, or you're just using it as a loss leader?

Brendan Taylor: Yeah, a bit of a lost lead. I don't sound, I'm a businessman. I think I'm quite a clever businessman, but I have learned to stop worrying about the money. I live comfortably off the money that we make, our studios do as well. A lot of our studios have gone on to invest in property and stuff of the profits they've made from Baby Art. Like, as much as people think, I'm just all about money, and money, money, money, or whatever it is, I'm really not, like I am so content with what we've got. I don't live in a mansion, you know? I don't, you know, I live in a nice house. Me and my other half drive a car each. We go on holiday. Two or three times a year. I get to take my mum on holiday, which is amazing, because we didn't have that growing up. Like, I take my mum on holiday every year with us. And I'm just, I'm just in a good place. I'm happy. So it's not all about the money. Like it used to be. I used to be like, fake it till you make it. I used to be like, very much, I've got everything when I didn't really have everything. I still don't have everything. I don't drive a Rolls Royce, but I'm just good now, like, we make a good living off our business. I don't have to sell training courses. I don't, you know, I'm not one of those. Forgive me for the word, you know, you alienating people. But I'm not a photographer that's now a trainer, because I can't get business through the door, you know? I mean, I'm not, and going on to that, just because, obviously I know for time wise, we're doing six training sessions a year now, two days. So day one is newborn photography, safety, lighting, posing, workflow. My other half is going to run that with couple of our photography team on day one. Day two is business. Day two is understanding your numbers, setting plans, setting goals. Two days completely free, six times a year, every other month. We're planning on doing this at our HQ studio in Ipswich in the UK. There is no upsell, 100% nothing to buy, nothing to sign up for. No training courses, no coaching, no franchise sales, nothing at all. Two days, completely free. We're going to take everybody out for dinner on the first night as well, all paid for by us. And with no hidden agenda. There is nothing for you to buy. 100% no upsell. There's no, I don't need your email address. I don't need nothing, right? We just want to do it because there's so much out there. There's so much. "Oh, I can teach you everything. Come and buy my training course", but I don't do it myself. I can teach you it. I don't do it, like, we're not selling a training course. We're giving it because we don't need to.

Andrew Hellmich: Why? Why do you even care? Like, why would you do that?

Brendan Taylor: For two reasons, I'll be honest with you, and I'm glad you asked that question, right? And I don't know if I'm kind of lowering my guard a little bit by sharing this, but number one is just to prove people wrong, like that, and I'll be honest with you, it's just to prove people wrong like they're not so much now, but there was so much mud on my name last year. So many people have got an opinion on me because of other people, and that's died down a lot. Don't get me wrong, my name's not been mentioned for a long time, but there's still people out there that has an opinion on me because of what was said. So make your own opinion. Now, when I've shared this that we're going to be doing this training, already, people are "There's a hidden catch. Oh, what's the catch? Oh, he's trying to do. He's trying to sell franchises again", or whatever. I said, "Look, there's two things you can do here. Number one is, you can come along and find out for yourself. And number two, you can wait for somebody else who comes along to tell you that what they're for, simple as that. But that's all I'm going to say about the matter. As into them like, you know, I don't need to explain myself. I'm giving this training away. It's free. The second reason I want to do it is because the industry needs something. The industry's dying over here. And if it dies, my industry dies. That's where I make my living, right? I want to help raise the industry back, and I'll be honest with you, if I train. So we're doing this to 10 to 15 people every other month. So let's say 10 people every two months come to us. That's 60 a year. If I train 60 people in a year and give them all the knowledge that I'm going to give them, I can bet you 55 of those 60 won't even use it, and I'm not really going to cause myself any problems, because they're not ever going to use it anyway.

Andrew Hellmich: Why is that? Why? Why do you think that is?

Brendan Taylor: Because there's too much effort involved. You've got to do, like, even with the coaching that I do, the first thing I say to people is, "There's no magic wand here, so, like, you can pay me to go do coaching with you, but I'm your coach. I'm not your bitch. I'm not doing everything for you", right? As in, like, "I'm going to give you keys to unlock different doors, but you've got to walk through them, like this, like to a business, you look at your podcast, for example, right? It didn't happen overnight. You're growing it. You're putting a graft in. Like, it takes effort, so does running a business and building a business. You can't just put a post out on Facebook and expect to be like, fully booked photographer. It doesn't work that way. Like, I've been in the industry 16 years. 16 years of spending hundreds of thousands of pounds, hundreds of thousands of hours getting it wrong. I now have some knowledge to be able to pass back to people where they can kind of fast forward through some of those bits that I got wrong. And I want to do that just because I can, because I'm in a position to be able to do that, and I know what it's like to be in early stages of business and struggled for real. So, yeah.

Andrew Hellmich: Amazing. It does, it sounds incredible. Brendan, how do we find out about it? Do you have to be in the UK? Can I fly to the UK to come and do this?

Brendan Taylor: Yeah, feel free to fly over. Like I said, there's two. So we haven't released the first date yet. We're just waiting to get some dates sorted, but it'll be over two days. We asked you to invest in one thing. There is no upsell. There is no selling. There's nothing. We ask you to invest in one thing, and that's in yourself. We ask you to invest two days of your life to come along for training with an open mind, and we ask you to invest in the cost of a hotel stay and a train ticket or whatever it is for you to stay over in a hotel because it's over two days. You can't just come for the newborn part. You've got to come for both, and come with an open mind and come and just learn. And if you can take a golden nugget away, great, if you can take loads away, great. If take nothing away, then it costs you a hotel in two days. You got a free meal out of it. Free lunch out of it. You got to network with other photographers like, but that's it. Like, we don't ask for anything and just tuck it in as well. We've got loads of de-stash stuff that we have like that we don't use anymore. We're giving that away to people that come as well, not selling it, not, but you know, anyone that comes for that training, there will just be a pile of stuff that we don't use anymore to help yourself, simple as that. And like I said, I can't stress it enough, when the dates get released, we release them, probably on our page, and also, I manage what used to be the newborn photography show page, which is now called The Newborn and Portrait Company. So the TNPC, I manage that page. Feel free to come in, into that group. You can advertise yourself, you can share anything that you, as long as this doesn't cause any disrespect to anybody. If you've got a course you want to share in there, share it. If you've got something you want to sell in there, sell it. I'm not one of these groups that goes, you can't advertise yourself in here, because I do it, like it's a group for photographers. If somebody's got something to share or sell, do it. We have Marketing Mondays every Monday at seven o'clock where we talk market. And it's free. I give away hints and tips and stuff that we're doing that works well for us. We go on for about an hour. We talk live. It's all free. And we also have Winning Wednesdays. So on Wednesday, you come in and you just shout about something that is, that has been a win this week, is smaller, as big as you like, shout about it. There's no discrimination for somebody bigging themselves up. We promote you, promoting yourself like, feel good about, your taking your best ever picture, or your biggest ever sale, or that you just bought a new camera, or whatever it is. Like, shout about it. Like you see that in some groups again, and it's frowned upon. When you've done your biggest month in sales and you post that in a group, it gets one like. You post, oh, you know, some other fluffy bullshit, and it gets armed with likes, just pick yourself up.

Andrew Hellmich: Right. What I'll do is I'll add links to the group, and obviously, if you let me know when the dates are for your training, I'll shout out about those as well, because I'd love to share that with listeners. I've got two quick questions I want to finish with, really quickly. And honestly, I don't want to gloss over what you just share, because it sounds incredible. And once I know the dates, if I can be there, I'll come along to one of these.

Brendan Taylor: Get in there. Come on.

Andrew Hellmich: I don't want to photograph newborn kids, but I want to come and see you train that'd be awesome.

Brendan Taylor: Love that.

Andrew Hellmich: Two quick questions, in the intro, I said about that photographer that we've been referencing through the podcast episode that she made two sales on her final day, three and a half thousand, and one and a half thousand, and the day before, she said, I really needed that, because I made a $200 sale yesterday. What would you say to me, if that was my sales?

Brendan Taylor: What? Three and a half thousand? And one and a half and 200?

Andrew Hellmich: Yep

Brendan Taylor: Yeah, I would ask you, "How do you feel?"

Andrew Hellmich: Well, I feel good today. I felt shit yesterday.

Brendan Taylor: Okay, so how do you feel for the month?

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, it's awesome. Best ever. I'm up 70%.

Brendan Taylor: So what's the problem?

Andrew Hellmich: I love that. So you're just purely looking at the averages.

Brendan Taylor: Yeah, I don't look at sale by sale. Used to, and it scares the shit out of you. If you have a day of a 200 sale, it scares the living crap out of you. Look, like, I've been through a massive weight loss journey as well, right? Huge. I've lost six..

Andrew Hellmich: That's my last question. So you can't go into that. I'm going to ask you about that.

Brendan Taylor: Okay, all right. So, yeah. So what I'm saying is, so my journey, you can't look at day by day on the scales. You can't look at sale by sale on your figures. For me, I look at things like quarterly, half yearly. I don't even look at things monthly anymore, because, you know, it doesn't make a difference. Again, step two of our nine steps is understanding your numbers. If you understand your numbers, one shitty sale or one shitty week isn't going to make a difference to your month or quarter. It's just part of your numbers. And if you understand them well enough, you don't even batter an eyelid of that low sale that happened, because it's just, it's just part of your numbers. It just, it's just part of your averages. Yeah, no, no problem.

Andrew Hellmich: Love it. Love it. Mate, last question for you, you look freaking amazing.

Brendan Taylor: Thank you so much.

Andrew Hellmich: I know that you have been on a weight loss journey, you looked incredible, mate, you must feel amazing.

Brendan Taylor: Honestly, like I get quite emotional and talk about it like I've got my life back. My children have their dad back. My partner has, you know, partner back. Are, my business people that are, you know, bought into me over the years, have their mentor back and have me, you know, no foggy brain. I'm fully focused. I'm there, you know, I couldn't go to a restaurant without ringing ahead and asking if they had arms on their chairs. I couldn't fit in them. I couldn't, you know, couldn't go to the cinema without making sure that the sofas available, because I couldn't fit in one of the normal chairs. I had no quality of life. I've lost 16 and a half stone in weight and in kilos, because I know that's how you work in Australia, I have lost 104 kilos.

Andrew Hellmich: That's over 200 pounds for the Americans.

Brendan Taylor: Yeah, 104 kilos in 18 months.

Andrew Hellmich: Unbelievable

Brendan Taylor: I lost it, majority of it, and just under 18 months. But it's been two years now since my operation. But yeah, I'm now literally half the man I used to be, yeah.

Andrew Hellmich: Did you do like a gastric band type thing?

Brendan Taylor: Gastric bypass, full bypass. So yeah, for brand new stomach made basically, so yeah.

Andrew Hellmich: Does that mean, then, does that mean it takes away your appetite, or you just physically can't eat as much?

Brendan Taylor: Both. So yeah, appetite is still there, but I can eat. So I'm lucky enough, so some people can't eat, like, certain things afterwards. I can eat anything and everything still, but just tiny portions, so like, a kid's Happy Meal from McDonald's, for example, I can't finish one.

Andrew Hellmich: Right. You physically can't even though you feel like you might want to.

Brendan Taylor: No, I don't feel I want to. Like I said, after I've had like, half of kid's burger, it's like I've had a full Sunday lunch. I am full, so I don't want anymore. So, and that's the fear what a lot of big people have, if I have this operation, I'm going to be really hungry, but just can't eat. No, once you've eaten, you don't want anymore, like you're full up. So, yeah, incredible amount of weight loss. And I'm just so happy to have my life back, and for people around me to have me back. Because, you know, I'm as big head as it sounds, I'm a good person to have around. I lift the room. I do lift the room in places I am. And I was in a bad place. When I got to my biggest I was not happy, I mean I had no quality of life. I was shit. And now I'm like, me 2.0 like I'm back, and I'm just, yeah, I'm loving life, and I'm just loving just being around people and just doing what I'm doing.

Andrew Hellmich: But you don't only look lighter, you look fitter, like you must be doing exercise as well, like you look great.

Brendan Taylor: Yeah, I play, so I play football every Monday. Now I go swimming two or three times a week. I help coach my son's football team. Like this is stuff I could only even dream of. A couple of years ago, I wouldn't get off the sofa. I had social anxiety where I wouldn't go to the supermarket. I would not leave the house. I'd leave the house to the car, to the office, from the office into the car, back home on the sofa. The kids would say, "Can we go to the park?" And I'll be like, "I'm busy. I've got work to do", really. I just was so uncomfortable walking and moving. I would make any excuse not to leave the house. Now, wherever we go, it's like, "Should we get a taxi, or should we get a bus or whatever?" "No, let's walk. I can walk." Now, did I mean, like, I can walk? I wouldn't be able to walk from like, you know, 50 meters without stopping for breath. Now I can just, I'm like Forrest Gump, I just keep running. Just, I don't stop, like, I'm just got so much energy, which is amazing.

Andrew Hellmich: So good. Brandon, again mate it's been amazing to talk to you. Congratulations on your success. I love what you're doing with the business. I love what you share. And can't wait to hear about these training programs you got coming up, the Bi-monthly ones. Massive thanks for coming on again. Thank you for reaching out and for positioning yourself and the messages the way you do, mate, you're amazing. So thank you.

Brendan Taylor: Honestly, thank you so much. And I hope the listeners managed to, I don't like just rabbit on and talking about myself and our successes. I don't mind it. I hope people give some people inspiration, but I hope some of your listeners been able to take something away from today. So yeah, and I appreciate you, Andrew for allowing me back on after last year as well. I know you got a bit of stick, put your ratings up a little bit, got some listeners on there as well, I know, but no, yeah, thank you so much for allowing me back. I appreciate you so much, and I love listening to your podcast and your different guests. You're great for the industry. So honestly, thank you so much.