Peter: Alright, what's going on, guys? Peter here, and today we're joined by another incredible client of ours, Danielle Don of Abby Rain. Danielle is an awesome photographer based in Canada, and she has an incredible story. Before we dig into all the fun business stuff, give us a quick rundown. How long have you been in business, Danielle?

Danielle: I've been in business for five years. Unfortunately, I started in 2019, which wasn't the best start, but I told myself that if we made it through the pandemic, it was a sign it was meant to be. We made it through and were still operating, so I said, "Great, we're going to keep going." I've mostly run my business on referrals. I didn't know much about marketing, and I was doing my best with what I had. Then I started having babies, and there wasn't much time to invest in that side of the business. The business kept running, but it was very hit and miss, and there wasn't much stability. If I got a referral, great. I didn't really know where to invest my time with marketing. It's gotten substantially better since then.

Peter: I didn't realize you started right before the pandemic. That was a rough time in the wedding industry. When did we first meet?

Danielle: We met shortly after COVID. I ran a lot off referrals, which was okay. I wouldn't say my business was a failure, but it was so hit and miss. Some months would be great, and then there'd be two or three months with nothing. When you have kids and you're trying to build some sense of normalcy and stability, it was hard with work coming in like that.

Danielle: I saw an ad and started researching. But I'd taken a few courses before, and they were basically, "Here's your info, now you do all of it." I couldn't figure it out, and by the time I did, my course access had run out. So I was very skeptical of courses. Some people in the industry told me SEO was the way to go, and that you didn't need ads if you invested enough in SEO. But that was not working.

So I saw your ad and got really curious, and then it took me about two years. My friend Paul, who I've taken photo courses with, had a lot of success. I trust Paul, so I talked to him, and he said, "You need to sign up. I'm gatekeeping this and don't tell anybody, but you really need to do it." That was my final push, and I really shouldn't have waited so long.

Peter: So you'd taken courses. Were they mentorships with other photographers, or marketing-specific programs?

Danielle: Mostly marketing. I paid a lot of money for an SEO course. I wouldn't say it was bad. The information was exceptional. But there was an overwhelming amount of it, and I had to figure it all out while being a busy mom and running the business. That alone takes a lot of time and energy, so learning and implementing all of it took forever. I think I bought it five years ago, and I still only have about four blog posts.

Peter: We were talking before we went live about how skeptical you were.

Danielle: I took one course with a couple of friends, and when we compared notes, each of us had gotten the same paragraph about how wonderful our photography was. Looking back, maybe it wasn't that wonderful. We'd each paid $750. That's not a lot now, but five years ago it was a big investment for me, and we all got the same copy-and-paste feedback. I've gotten a lot of fluff from things I've invested in. None of it was going to move the needle. You could find the same thing on an inspirational YouTube channel. It was all "know your worth," and I thought, "I don't need to know my worth. I need to know how to make money."

In photography, so many people become business masterminds selling courses, but they don't have the financials or the sales to back it up. You invest blindly because they've done four really pretty styled shoots. A lot of photographers fall into that trap. Our industry seems ripe for it: someone has two good years and thinks, "I can teach everybody." No, not quite yet. So I didn't want to invest all this money only to have it fail again and then admit I'd burned it all.

Peter: We live in a strange time, where people become mentors, educators, course creators, and coaches in a way that's never happened before. The problem is that they don't start by asking what problem they're solving and how they'll solve it. Has it been validated? Does it get results? Is it repeatable? Instead, it's, "I'm a photographer, I wear flat-brim hats, I have a cute Instagram, so now I'm a mentor." You're not the first person who's told me a course was just general info with nothing that would make an impact.

Danielle: I don't even think the people running these mentorships know it's wrong. They think, "If you do exactly what I did, you'll get the same results." But their success didn't come from what they're teaching. They worked really hard and did a lot of different things, maybe in a different market with different clientele. Your program is very scientific: this is step one, this is step two, this is step three. If a text message isn't working, try a different one. No other course sells that data-driven part. Every other course is woo-woo "know your worth." This is "track your numbers," because that's what tells you whether you're doing well. If you don't track them, how would you know?

Peter: When you started with us, how many weddings did you have for next year?

Danielle: Only two for 2025. One came through my husband's work. He's a salesman at heart. That man could sell a popsicle to a woman wearing white pants, and she wouldn't blink twice. He's always telling people, "You need a photographer? My wife will do that." The other couple found me on Google, since I've done some SEO. But that's all I had. Nothing was coming in, not even a cricket, and I thought, "This is not good."

Peter: And you do phenomenal work. It wasn't a lack of skill. You just weren't getting in front of enough people, or the right people, consistently.

Peter: So where are you at now? What's happened since we started?

Danielle: 2025 is essentially full, partly because we're having a surprise baby, so it looks a little different than it did when I started. We're okay with that. I have 10 weddings on the board for 2025, which is amazing. Now I'm focusing on booking out 2026, and hopefully I'll bring on an associate, because I physically can't take all the inquiries I'm getting. That's a good problem to have.

Peter: For people listening, you booked nine weddings in about 30 days after we turned your ads on. You went from two weddings in 2025 to 10, and you booked some for 2026 as well, all in one month.

Danielle: In one month. Yes.

Peter: So how did you do it? Some people watching have little or nothing booked, and you turned on Instagram ads and booked nine weddings in 30 days. What are you doing that's working so well?

Danielle: I think I'm extremely passionate. I contribute to our household finances, but I'm fortunate to have a partner, so people can feel that my passion comes from much more than a job. I pour every ounce of who I am into my clients. What do you need? I'm there. My communication is very on point. You text me, and you get an answer, whatever time it is. I have a lot of kids, so I'm usually awake.

My brother passed away five years ago, and my wedding photographer has some of the last photos of him. His passing was a big turning point for me. You can go through the motions in life, or you can take a risk, do what you love, and make an impact on people's lives with it. I've always loved photography, so I decided to go all in. Every time I look at those photos of my brother, I'm reminded that they're all that's left of him. I think people can feel how much I genuinely care about them, their moments, and their memories.

Two of the weddings I booked came straight from a discovery call. We didn't even do the Zoom call. After a 10-minute phone call, they said, "You're incredible. We love you. You're so into this and so into us, we'll pay you right now." I was thrilled. People are looking for genuine connection now.

Peter: You say your husband's good at sales, but I can hear that you know what you're doing too, with both the communication and the passion. Nobody wants to be sleazy, and that's not what you're doing. You're connecting heart to heart and working the process: getting people on calls and doing those calls.

Peter: How many kids do you have?

Danielle: Three, and one on the way.

Peter: And what does your husband do?

Danielle: He's a long-haul truck supervisor for oversized loads, so he's often gone for two or three months at a time. This summer he was gone from May through August. Last year, he spent 267 of 365 days out of town.

Peter: That's hard. I'd never know it talking to you, because you're always laughing and cheerful. You've got three kids, another on the way, and your husband gone for two months at a time, and you're still selling nine weddings in a month. If you're watching with a full-time job or a couple of kids, wondering whether this could be you, Danielle is making it happen. So how do you manage it tactically?

Danielle: You learn to let things go. I'm a pretty good scheduler, but sometimes a task just isn't important today, and that's okay. If I want to do two sales calls, the laundry won't get done today, so I'll do it in the morning. I'm not hung up on everything being perfect. Right now I'm grinding and getting set up. Everything runs in seasons. Not everything will always be hard, and your kids won't always be young. I'm doing a lot of sales calls now so that 2025 and 2026 are set up. You choose your hard.

I put my kids to bed at seven and do sales calls until about 10 p.m. Then I'm up at 5 a.m. to do my editing, because I also have shoots and everything else. I shift things around so I can still get it all done. This is hustle season. Next year won't be like that, and that's okay. Life ebbs and flows, and learning to take things as they come releases a lot of pressure.

Peter: Do you have any practical things that work really well for you on calls?

Danielle: Getting to know them in the first five minutes, and asking the right questions to figure out where you can connect.

With the last couple I booked, I learned quickly that she loves fall and her husband works in the oil field. So I leaned into that. I told her I'd seen her fall posts on Instagram. And I pulled her husband in, because the husband is usually the dead weight in the process. Being in Alberta gives me a leg up, since there are a lot of oil field workers here, and I used to work in the oil fields myself. When they said it would be hard to book because of his schedule, I said, "Yeah, you get a call and you have to go. You can never plan anything."

I lean hard into that connection in the first five minutes, before we get to "Okay, you want eight hours on your wedding day." It's never cold or calculated. It's a conversation, and people feel that I genuinely care. The call is never longer than 10 or 15 minutes, but it doesn't feel like a sales call. It's, "How can I help? You want this kind of vibe? I know something awesome. Let me send it to you." Then they're excited for the Zoom call, because they know I'll have genuinely useful information for them, not just another sales pitch. That sets up the sale.

Peter: I've reviewed a lot of sales calls in this space, and I see the same patterns. Photographers who struggle to book are often only talking to the bride. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The guy isn't interested because he's never brought in, and to save face he acts too cool for school, when really he just doesn't know why he's there. He's often the biggest deal killer. If he's not sold and she is, they get off the call and she comes back and says they can't do it, usually blaming the budget, because it lets everyone off the hook. In a lot of cases, he just wasn't sold because no one brought him into the conversation. That kills more sales in this space than maybe anything else.

The other thing is active listening. A lot of people talk too much on calls, and you can see the bride check her watch or the husband yawn. People don't want to hear you talk. They want to talk. When you actively listen and notice little things like fall or the oil field, they start to trust you in a way they won't trust other photographers, and booking you just makes sense. The people who are crushing it do these things at a really high level. It's not whether you do it, it's how well you do it.

Danielle: It makes a big difference. One client told me they booked me because talking to the other photographer felt like an interview: "How much are you willing to spend, and how long do you want me there?" They said I seemed excited about their wedding and about them. They wanted to feel special to the person they were investing all this money in. It's a lot of money to ask people to invest in you, and they felt that level of trust after a quick 30-minute Zoom call. You get better work that way, too, because they trust you on the wedding day and at the engagement session.

Peter: What would you say has been the most transformational thing since we started working together?

Danielle: My mindset, and the way you teach sales without it being salesy. I was skeptical. I thought, "I don't want to be a salesperson. I'm never going to be one. I can't do that." But the mindset shift was that this isn't really selling. I'm here to help, to put myself in front of people and say, "I'd love to work with you because I genuinely love what I do." If you book with me, awesome. I didn't know how to go from referrals to anything else. I didn't want to be a salesperson, but you kind of have to be one to do this job, and I didn't know what that looked like. Learning that you don't have to sell in a sleazy way, that it's about genuinely helping and being passionate, was a huge shift for me.

Peter: I like to joke that we're a sales training company masquerading as a marketing agency. People come to us for help with marketing, and you have to solve that first. If you're not getting 30, 40, or 50 new leads a month, you have to fix that. But behind it is another problem people don't think about: selling to cold traffic, to people who don't know you. Sales is relationships. You find out what people want, and if you can help them and you're confident, you ask them to work with you. That's it. And now you know how to take people from cold to sold. No one can take that from you.

Danielle: Those first few phone calls, I was not feeling great. It felt terrifying and unnatural. I didn't even know what to do with my hands. Now it's, "No worries, I can get you on a Zoom call in 10 minutes." We're friends, ideas are flowing, I've sent you some things, and you're excited for your Zoom call. It doesn't feel weird anymore. And now that the funnels are set up and leads are coming in, it doesn't feel frantic. It's not drought, abundance, drought, abundance anymore. I can focus on the venues and couples I really want to work with.

Peter: Last question. What would your number one piece of advice be for someone who isn't a client yet? Maybe they've been following us for two years, just like you, and they're on the fence.

Danielle: Just do it, so you don't waste two years like I did. I could have had a lot more bookings and been a lot more profitable over those two years. I understand the skepticism about courses, but this is set up so differently. If there's a problem, your team steps in, so you never feel like you handed over money and were left on your own. And it's digestible. It's not a huge number of modules you have to somehow figure out. It's, "A, B, and C, this is what I need to get going on." I started with the calls and how to run them, and now that I have bookings, I'm working on setting up my Instagram better. So just jump in and do it. It feels scary, but the level of help you get and the return on investment are unlike any course I've ever seen. I'm a very skeptical person, and this has been the best thing I've ever done for my business.