Welcome back to the Passion with Purpose podcast, everybody. I'm your host, Nathan Chansky. So happy to have you guys back here with me today. And I want to start off this entire episode just with a story because I think this story, actually I have two stories for you. I think this is going to really help you understand where I'm headed with this

episode. So in my first couple years of photography, as, especially when I was first, like, even

before I was full time, when I was just kind of starting to get into wanting to shoot weddings and wanting to shoot

couples. So these were my first couple years as a photographer. I had no idea how to price myself,

right? Like this was just an absolutely open-ended question for me that I had I had no idea how to price myself.

So what I started doing was I did kind of like the only reasonable thing that someone

who had never priced themselves would do is I went to other photographers in my area

and I started Googling their names or I started looking up people like, you know,

I'm in Michigan, so I started looking at Michigan photographer or a Michigan wedding photographer

or Michigan couples photographer. And I just checked out. I just scoured their websites to see

if their pricing was anywhere. And if I could find their pricing anywhere, I don't think I went as far as like

inquiring with people. Like I don't think I was that sneaky. But I do think I just went through

people's websites. But I know like many people out there, they'll inquire with somebody else to

try to figure out what their pricing is. And I don't think that's like the

worst thing ever. I know people have done that for me. It's actually kind of annoying to be in the

receiving end of that. But anyways, people do it in many different ways. And so then what I did once I

finally got a handle on, okay, these are these people's prices. These are these people's prices.

I just plunked mine somewhere in the middle of what I thought was a reasonable range of pricing given my

competitor's pricing that I went and did some research on. Or maybe I'd make it like exactly

the same as a photographer who was comparable

to me. So I thought. And that's just how I priced myself. Like truly, that's that's how I

price myself for the first couple years. And I would keep like checking other people's prices.

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