“I know the work is good”, I was starting to whine a bit here.
(Not proud, just truthful.)
It was the early 80’s. Big hair, wide belts, and mullets.
I was nearly at my wits end. When I heard a famous consultant from San Francisco was going to be in Flagstaff to meet with some photographers, I knew I had to get a meeting.
I called and she said no.
I called again, this time begging. She said maybe.
I called once more and she said, “OK, I can meet with you for one hour before I have to head to the airport – so don’t be late.
I arrived 11 hours early to make sure nothing got in my way.
Now we were sitting in this tiny parlor, my work scattered all over the floor and me beginning to pace.
I needed to get traction, and I needed to get more clients.
Yeah. I was closing in on desperation and despair and assholedness.
“Why do you think it isn’t working”, she asked quietly?
Probably an effort to stifle my impending meltdown in the small meeting room in Flagstaff.
“I don’t know. I just don’t know”!
Yeah, I was melting down pretty quick.
I’ll blame it on being really tired. Yeah… that must have been it.
Well, and also the fact that while my work was lauded in NYC and Chicago, I was getting no traction on it in Phoenix.
“Yes, you do”, she said. “Yes. You do. You just don’t want to say it out loud.”
OK, I was really confused at this point.
What the hell was she talking about?
“Let’s go through it again”, she said slowly. “Where do they like your work”?
I repeated that in NYC I had agents loving what I was doing, and in Chicago, it was the same.
They were impressed. They sent me models to shoot and I got paid for it.
I had a mini fan club, dammit.
But I wasn’t getting the gigs in Phoenix.
She sat patiently and repeated it back to me.
I was still confused. I was thinking about going cross-eyed and jumping on the sofa.
Then it hit me…
“Phoenix is NOT NYC or Chicago, right”?
Her smile told me that was what she was thinking as well.
I was expecting the clients in Phoenix to have the same aesthetics and needs as my clients in NYC, and that – folks – was ain’t gonna never happen, baby. Never. Not then, not today.
I had missed the fundamental basis for my business… was I making what the clients I was seeking needed?
No. I was not.
Phoenix is not NYC. Local magazines are not Vogue or Vanity Fair. Local editorial editors were not working in an environment that was anywhere near the pressure of NYC or even Chicago.
I was sitting at a poker table playing a different game than the rest of the players and I was blaming them.
Amazingly stupid, but then… I was young.
Can we just go with that?
My highly stylized editorial had no place in the Southwest.
I had been buying French and Italian and British Vogues and working to the styles I saw in them. Fashion with a capital F.
There was no fashion in Phoenix.
There were off the rack clothes to be photographed for the newspaper Wednesday editions. White backgrounds, boring poses.
Mainstream AF.
Oh, some boutiques would run an ad now and then, and the models looked stiff and ‘posey’ and plastic and uninteresting and…
Sorry – that wasn’t fair.
It was what the client wanted.
And I had missed that.
“You want to be a fashion photographer, right”? She was staring me down.
“Yes”, I said clearly.
“Then you have to move. Move to Brooklyn. Move to Manhattan. Move to Queens.”
I knew at that moment that I probably was not going to be a fashion photographer this time around.
Not fashion with a capital F, that is.
I had to understand my market… ALL of my market.
And I needed to stop fighting the windmills and go with the flow or find a way around them.
I found that way in Los Angeles. While it wasn’t a fashion with a capital F, it was close enough to keep me happy.
I will always remember that meeting with the great consultant in a tiny meeting room in a very old hotel in Flagstaff, Arizona.
I was able to turn my business around once I began to understand the market from the market’s perspective.
(While it is never a good idea to let your ‘client’s aesthetics’ drive your own, there is some necessary knowledge needed to at least understand the ins and outs. It may keep you from melting down in an old hotel meeting room. Just sayin’…)
Do you understand YOUR market?
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Are you having problems reaching your market, or is it not as clear to you as you think it should be? I can help. Check out my various consulting and mentorship programs.