Peter: I'm joined by Asha King of Love Asha Photography, and she has an awesome story. Asha, how did you get into the wedding industry?

Asha: I've been a wedding photographer for 16 years. I got married the first time at 21, and my mom hired the photographer from her own wedding in the '80s. The photos turned out exactly as you'd expect, very '80s. I'd always loved art, and I thought, "I could do a better job than this." So I bought a camera, and the rest is history.

Peter: What are some of the big changes you've seen in the industry over the last 10 years?

Asha: Everything went super stylized for a while, and I think COVID changed that. People got tired of the fakeness and wanted to reconnect. I just spoke at WPPI in Vegas and attended another conference, and the two words I heard over and over at both were "intention" and "authenticity." People want things to feel real, not performative. With AI, it's so easy to make everything perfect now, but people don't want perfect. They want real connection.

Asha: After I moved back to Florida from the D.C. area, I worked at GEICO for a bit. I absolutely hated it, and it pushed me back into doing what I was meant to do. I went full-time around 2015 as a single mom, but I was mostly second shooting and associate shooting rather than booking my own clients. By the end of 2019, I realized I'd gotten really good at photography, but the business side hadn't caught up. Everyone thinks that if you get really good at your craft, the work will find you, and I don't think it works that way for most of us. So I invested in a business workshop and started booking more of my own clients.

Peter: And 10 years ago, digital marketing wasn't nearly as big. It was mostly word of mouth and referrals, maybe SEO, but nothing like the paid ads we see now.

Asha: In 2022, I got married. We planned the whole wedding in six weeks because my mom had cancer, and I wasn't going to do it without her. I'd started learning the business side in 2019 and was gaining real traction and hitting six figures, but then I took about a year off to take care of my mom. After we lost her, it took me a long time to feel normal again. I knew I should be working on SEO and networking, but I couldn't bring myself to do it.

For about two and a half years, I wasn't on Instagram, I wasn't networking, so no referrals came in, and I wasn't blogging. Every avenue for leads dried up at the same time. I was back to second shooting and associate shooting, sometimes for people who'd been shooting for two years. Then, in August of last year, my Instagram got hacked, and I had to start over from zero followers. It came down to: Do I want this business to keep going, or are we letting it go?

My friend Heidi was working with you and said wonderful things, and so did my friends Sabrina and Ryan and Shannon. So I messaged you and asked, "Do ads work if you have zero followers?" You said, "Yeah, let's chat," and it's been wonderful ever since.

Peter: It surprises me how many people who've been in the wedding industry a long time and are really good still don't run ads.

Asha: A lot of us are artists, so we think if we just get really good, the work will find us. It doesn't work that way. No one knows you exist. As artists, we often think, "If I have to pay to get people to see my work, am I doing something wrong?" I think the opposite is true. You're doing yourself, your clients, and your work a disservice if you're not telling people about you. There are couples out there looking for exactly what I offer, and if I don't do my best to make sure they can find me, I'm doing them a disservice.

Peter: And if you don't put yourself out there, they'll probably end up with a huge wedding factory, because that's who's getting the ad space. In a way, you almost have an obligation to put yourself out there.

Asha: Something you said early on stuck with me: the first part of your day needs to be focused on bringing in work, like responding to leads and doing consultations. If you're not doing that, the rest is just a hobby. You're picking your website colors and spending hours on Pinterest, but none of that matters if you don't have clients coming in the door.

Asha: I love the coaching calls, three times a week. They really get into the weeds, like reviewing people's conversations to help them improve. One of the coaches, Joe, told me to trust the process, and I followed the scripts almost word for word. Leads were coming in, but it took me about a month and a half to two months to start booking. Then it was a domino effect.

I realized I needed to follow the scripts but also infuse my own personality and play up my strengths. For me, that's always emotion. Instead of focusing on logistics like date, venue, and budget, I ask, "What's your story?" I get paragraphs, almost novels, because people are so excited to share their story. I've even fine-tuned my own copywriting, because couples keep telling me the same things about what they see in my work.

Peter: You need a framework, or people are flying blind. But the real magic is bringing your own style and personality into the process, because that's where the authenticity is.

Asha: One bride and I chatted for a long time before she even had a location. We talked about Christmas traditions and recipes. Halfway through our consultation call, her fiancé walked in, and she said, "Hey, come meet our photographer," before we'd ever discussed pricing. It's one of my biggest bookings to date: about $9,000 for photo only, at the Four Seasons in Athens, Greece. They knew they were booking me before we even got to the consultation.

Peter: She felt so connected to you that you weren't a commodity. She wasn't paying for something she could get anywhere. She was paying for Asha.

Asha: A lot of it is the influx of leads. It's much easier not to discount yourself when you know more leads are coming every day.

A year and a half ago, I was sitting at breakfast with friends in England, literally crying with imposter syndrome. I'd been doing this so long, I trusted my skill, and I cared so deeply about my couples, but no one was knocking on the door. I had all these goals and no road map. Now I'm hitting those goals almost without trying.

My average booking last year was about $4,000 to $5,000. For next year, it's around $7,000 to $9,000, so almost double. I kept joking that I'd just double my prices and see what happened, and the joke became reality. In January, I booked $30,000 worth of work, and within two months, I'd booked $50,000. When I worked at GEICO, I made about $32,000 a year.

Peter: A year and a half ago, 16 years in, you were wondering whether to hang it up. Now you've done $50K in two months, and you know exactly what to do to book your dream clients.

Asha: It's been life-changing. It's a lot of work responding to all these leads, but this is the work we signed up for. I wanted to be busy booking dream clients, and here I am.

Asha: First, just do it. I have friends who say they'll do it once they catch up on editing or hit some milestone. Do it now, and the other pieces will fall into place. Second, be prepared to do the work. It takes work to chat with couples and find the ones who are right for you. Not everyone is the right fit, and that's fine. Third, show up and really care. Couples send me photos of the dresses they're trying on. I'm not asking about their story to trick them into hiring me. I genuinely care, and it shows.

Peter: First, you probably need more leads, because most people listening only get a handful a month. Then take your time getting to know people and building that connection.

Asha: People hire who they're comfortable with. They decide based on emotion and back it up with logic afterward. My consultations often run an hour and a half or two hours, and even when couples can't afford me, they thank me for taking the time to listen and get to know them instead of just sending a price list.

Peter: What would you say to someone who's where you were a year and a half ago, discouraged and lost, who was successful once but whose business is down now?

Asha: The problem is not you. You're good at what you do, and you love it. So many of us internalize this and think we're the problem. You just have to get better at marketing and business. It doesn't mean you're not talented or that nobody wants to work with you. It means no one's finding you, and that's the number one problem to solve. SEO and networking take time to develop. Ads aren't quite overnight, but they're about as close as you'll ever get.