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Elise Campbell Photography Brand

Create a Brand Your Ideal Clients Love with The Pumpkin Plan

When you know something has to change

It was the middle of the night and photographer Elise Campbell of Elise Campbell Photography was pouring her heart and soul into editing her client’s family photos. This particular client had begged Elise to lower her prices because she really wanted to hire her but couldn’t afford her rates. Elise had agreed.

Feeling like she needed a break from editing, Elise jumped on Facebook for a few minutes. She was shocked to see posts of her client, who claimed she couldn’t afford Elise’s photography rates, on a clearly expensive family vacation. In that moment, everything changed.

When Elise first started out as a photographer, she saw herself as a mom with a camera who could maybe turn her photography into a business. She would take photos and sell a bunch of digitals on a disc for a very low price to anyone who acted like they liked her. This unintentionally became her brand. Over time, she started to feel like she was over-giving, over-serving, and being taken advantage of.

Elise knew that something had to change. She started googling for help and she found The Pumpkin Plan book. As she read through the Pumpkin Plan, she had an “aha” moment. The clients who were hiring her, were hiring her for the wrong reasons. They were all looking for family photos as cheap as possible. They saw her as a commodity. The deciding factor had nothing to do with her skills and talents, her ability to beautifully capture the essence of her subjects, her ability to turn a photograph into a work of fine art. For those clients, it was all about her pricing. It was time to re-create her brand.

The Pumpkin Plan to the rescue

Elise decided in that moment that she would no longer compete on price. She knew how much of her love and attention she devoted to her clients’ photographs and producing art quality prints. She would only work with clients who valued her work enough to pay for it.

The first step in making this change to her brand was to find her special seed, her business Sweet Spot. Once Elise identified her Top Clients, those clients who truly appreciated her artistry, she was able to charge what she knew her services were worth. She could continue to devote her time, energy and love into creating truly special portraits for her clients without feeling resentful or having to reduce the quality of her work and the level of service to match their budgets. Elise wanted clients who wanted to work with HER, not clients who wanted cheap snapshots.

As she drilled down on who her Top Clients really were, she was able to determine what was truly important to them. Not surprisingly, they were not people who were looking for a bunch of digital photos that they could reproduce somewhere for a low price.

Create a brand that is aligned with your Top Clients

Elise’s Top Clients are busy women who want to be served well. They want a final piece hanging above the fireplace that features all the people they love, that is as beautiful as a painting. They don’t want to have to make decisions about what size the final piece should be or what kind of frame. They want Elise, the artist, to make those decisions for them.

Based on what she now knew about her very best clients, Elise developed a Unique Offering and put systems in place to deliver on that offering. She knew that her best clients didn’t want to have to make a million decisions or worry about how their children or grandchildren would behave during the photoshoot.

Elise’s solution: when she’s doing a shoot with toddlers, she brings in “child wranglers,” extra hands to help deal with the little ones. She takes care of all of the details, so the parents don’t have to stress.

Since Elise implemented The Pumpkin Plan into her business, her revenues have quadrupled. And even more importantly to her, she is known for what she does, for her artistry, for her level of service.

The impact on Elise personally has been huge. She has three children, and she is proud that they get to see their mom owning her worth. She now feels a strong sense of empowerment and freedom.

Through her own sense of empowerment, she has also started a project called “She is Love(d)™,” which is a combination of a photo shoot and words that help girls rely on their own inner knowing of themselves, as opposed to getting their self-worth from social media. According to Elise, “it’s like turning selfies into a soulful kind of thing.”

Today, after Pumpkin Planning her business, Elise Campbell has a business that she loves, that both rewards her financially and fulfills her artistic passion.

Would you like support and guidance using The Pumpkin Plan method to create YOUR client attracting brand? Go here to Hire a Certified Pumpkin Plan Strategist

Are you passionate about supporting small businesses to experience extraordinary success? Get certified as a Pumpkin Plan Strategist.

Download our FREE Pumpkin Plan Booster Pack for more business building resources!

Pumpkin Plan

The Business Strategy that Changes Lives

Successful but Miserable

Christeen Era was a successful business owner with a thriving business. And she was miserable. She had built her business from scratch. But there were elements of the business that she just hated. She had clients that made her life miserable on a regular basis. Sometimes she didn’t even want to answer the phones. She had employee headaches. She had no control over her time. Eventually, she realized that this was not how she wanted to live her life and something had to change. So she took that business apart and started over with a new business strategy.

As Christeen was building her new business and trying to stay on course, she discovered The Pumpkin Plan: A Simple Strategy to Grow a Remarkable Business in Any Field, by Mike Michalowicz, and the light bulb went on for her.

The Pumpkin Plan is based on the idea that when you are operating in your Business Sweet Spot, business growth stops being hard.

The Sweet Spot is the place where 3 key elements of your business align: your Top Clients, your Unique Offering and your Systems and Processes.

Pumpkin Plan

When you have an identifiable Top Client Niche, a Unique Offering that your Top Clients want and need, and the Systems and Processes to deliver your Unique Offering to your Top Clients efficiently, effectively and profitably, you are in your Sweet Spot.

As Christeen read the book, she was able to identify the reasons why she so was unhappy in her first business, and make sure that she didn’t make the same mistakes again. The last time she was not operating in her Sweet Spot. This time would be different.

Life Changing Transformation

Christeen was so impressed with the power of the The Pumpkin Plan method, that she decided to become a Certified Pumpkin Plan Strategist so that she could help her clients undergo the life changing transformation that she was experiencing.

(Go HERE to watch a video of Christeen talking about the impact that becoming a Pumpkin Plan Strategist has had on her business).

For Christeen, that transformation started with the Mission, Vision,  and Purpose exercises from the Pumpkin Plan Program. Getting really clear on her long term vision and her business mission, as well as her core values, made a huge difference to the direction of the business. Putting these thoughts on paper enabled her to see how her business vision could enable her vision for her life.

She saw that she could have a profitable company, she could buy the house of her dreams, she could go on vacations with her family, and give herself space to not have to work around the clock to achieve her financial goals. According to Christeen: “I don’t think we would even be here where we’re at now, if we hadn’t applied the mission, vision and purpose exercises the way that we did.”

The Power of Niching

Christeen’s business, Core Growth Strategies, is a high end accounting and business growth consulting company. Initially they were serving a diverse group of small businesses. After doing the Top Client Assessment from the Pumpkin Plan, Christeen identified a niche client base – the Lawn Care and Landscape Industry. She recognized that she had a found a group of business owners that really needed her help, and she felt uniquely qualified to serve.

As she slowly started getting rid of the clients who were not ideal for her company, everything started operating more smoothly, efficiently and profitably.

Christeen saw such a big opportunity to go all-in serving her client niche that she started a separate business with a partner, Green Profit Academy, specifically focused on delivering profitable growth strategies to the Lawn Care industry. Because she knows the industry so well, and she knows their issues and challenges so well, she has been able to take a deep dive into finding solutions that are specific to their industry. She has created tools and processes, and customized the Pumpkin Plan and Profit First tools to meet the specific needs of her client niche.

Specialization has had many benefits for Christeen’s two businesses. Because they are serving a specific niche, she has been able to streamline her operations, making it easier to run her businesses.

Christeen’s team members know exactly what her clients need, and they have the systems to support that. Her employees don’t have to learn about or ask questions about many different types of businesses, because they are focused on serving one type of business.

Christeen and her companies have become known as the experts, the go-to accounting and coaching firms in the Lawn Care industry. The word has gotten out, and prospective clients are finding her. Her marketing has become highly streamlined and effective, as she can speak to the specific needs of her clients’ industry. The return on her marketing investment is high, creating higher profits in her business.

The Biggest Transformation

The biggest transformation for Christeen, however, has been how she feels about her business. She and her team members are really passionate about what they do. They know that they are making a real difference in the lives of their clients and that is very rewarding for them. Thanks to The Pumpkin Plan strategy, Christeen is bringing in the income that supports her lifestyle, she has control of her time, she is doing work she is passionate about, and she has fallen back in love with her business!

Are you passionate about supporting small businesses to grow and thrive? Become a Certified Pumpkin Plan Strategist

Would you like help and guidance to reach your business goals? Hire a Pumpkin Plan Strategist

5 Keys to Magnetize Your Marketing and Attract Your Best Clients

Does this sound familiar? You’re doing all the right things. You’re on all the social media sites, you blog, you have a stunning website, you get great customer reviews, and your product or service is top notch. You’re exhausting yourself and your bank account trying to be everywhere, in front of everyone. And yet, you have very little to show for it.

How to Anticipate and Ride the Wave of Consumer Demand

You have heard the rallying cry before: find your market niche, create a unique offering, target your efforts to grow your business. As a matter of fact, you’ve heard it from me! This is a proven strategy for extraordinary business growth, but is it enough?