Wedding Photography Summit: Big Goals Mean Big Action. Going in 100%

The next Wedding Photography Summit will take place on 22-23 November 2022. Join the waitlist.

Hey guys and welcome to another episode of Make Your Break! I wanted to do something a little different this week. Because the year’s been so tough on a lot of people, I noticed that no one’s really stepping up and helping their communities. I wanted to change that. Today, I’m going to talk about five reasons why we launched our wedding photography summit as well as give a little bit of inside scoop on it.

I’m always trying to step up my game and I like to push myself into uncomfortable spaces. The same was true for this wedding summit. I had to push myself; I think that’s really important.

Our Goals with the Summit

So what exactly is a wedding summit? Basically right now, live events are not an option. There are practically no workshops or conferences. But people still want to be entertained, be inspired and learn. A summit is an online conference, a really big workshop that brings together a lot of top industry speakers.

Our primary goal is to create the biggest online wedding photography workshop in the world. We’re aiming to get 10,000 people signed up and sell the tickets for $7 each. People are often scared about telling people their unrealistic goals. But you need to put those things out there. If you set realistic goals, you won’t push yourself and if you don’t make those goals, you won’t feel good about yourself. I want to overpromise and then overdeliver on that promise. The summit is only $7 and I’m packing so much value into the two day summit for that small cost.

Putting yourself out there is hard. You’re going to get a lot of hate for doing even the smallest thing. But it’s worth it in the long run to put yourself in that mentality.

1 – I Want to Take a Chance on Myself

The first reason I’m doing this is to take a chance on myself. I’m going to invest around $75,000 into this summit. When I do something I want to be 100% in it, no half measures. There are so many reasons why this won’t come together in five weeks, but I know that will make me work harder towards my goal. When I teach wedding photographers I tell them to dream big and invest in themselves. This advice is only worthwhile if I’m also doing that for myself. Take the advice from people who practise what they preach. I’m all in 100%.

2 – Helping the Community

When Morgan and I sat down we realised that there was nothing out there that helped people who were really struggling. Our original idea was to make it free, but we decided we needed a small barrier for entry so we attracted the right people. 2020 has been hard for a lot of people. But me and the speakers believe we have a lot of value to give back to the community.

3 – Changing Workshop Culture

This is specifically around getting paid. I’ve talked at so many workshops all over the world, and I don’t think I’ve ever once been paid. But the fact that the organisers think they can’t pay their speakers is just laziness. I’m paying each one of my speakers, but I’m only charging $7. If you’re charging $500, like some of the workshops I’ve spoken at, there’s no reason at all why you can’t pay someone. You’re selling speakers’ knowledge but you’re not paying them for it.

I really want this to change. I always pay my speakers at my workshops, even though people often tell me not to. I know I don’t have to pay, but if someone’s going to show up to learn something from someone, I want the speaker to be invested. To be able to make this work, I obviously need a different business model; recently I signed up to a business coach to help specifically with this summit. That was a great help in coming up with a way to make sure all the speakers got paid while maximising exposure and revenue.

I genuinely believe that transparency around payment at these events is important. This kind of shady stuff has happened my whole life. I encourage people to ask questions around these workshops. I was immediately transparent with the speakers I invited to the summit, from the first email. Everyone was paid the same.

4 – The Challenge of Becoming the Biggest Summit on the Planet

I’ve been filling knowledge gaps every day in the lead up to the summit. My marketing and advertising skills are being taken to a brand new level. I’ve got to sell the summit out in four weeks; there needs to be tickets being sold every single day. 10,000 is my goal; I know there are 10,000 eager wedding photographers out there, we just need to find them.

I need to be the best that I can be at all times. I want agencies to reach out to me and ask me to sell out their conferences. That’s the level I need to be on. I want to be transparent with this too, so that I can inspire my community all the time. Again, it doesn’t make sense for me to be preaching this stuff at my students and not following through on my side. When you set yourself the challenge, you start thinking differently too. I’m coming up with new, inventive ways to make that investment back every single day.

5 – A Stepping Stone to my Long Term Goal

My long term goal is to become one of the most prolific wedding photography business coaches in the world. That’s my own unrealistic goal; I know it’s impossible, but I’m still going to shoot for it and I know I’ll be happy with where I end up.

This workshop is a way for me to get that plan into action. Until I get people results, they won’t trust me. I need to provide value at every opportunity. If someone gets a good tip from my podcast for free, there’s a good chance they’ll get even more value from my paid content. In fact, I know they will. The summit is a way for me to get in front of people and show them my teaching style. I’m here and available to help people propel their business to the next level. They just need to know I’m ready.

If you have big goals, put them out into the world. Aim bigger. Make such a huge goal that you’ll start thinking differently. If this has resonated with you, hop on to Instagram and let me know!

Thank you so much for listening guys, as always I really appreciate it.

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