00:00 - Dan Lam (Guest)

just saving on the time and the money, and we definitely get customers too that come to us. They switch to Profoto for that very reason. Hey, I had somebody before but, like you said, it takes forever to hear back or it's costing an arm and a leg. And I'd like to do this myself and we're just trying to iterate on that build the Profoto tool so that you've got everything you need to make the changes you want and hopefully make it easier and easier to see it and to do it.

00:34 - Natalie Jennings (Host)

This is the Photo Business Help podcast, a resource for photographers of all levels, from brand new to burnt out, who believe that business growth starts with personal growth. I'm your host, natalie Jennings. I created Jennings Photo back in 2010 and have been happily full time since, but not without some mistakes along the way. Those lessons, plus what's really helped me thrive financially and personally, are what I want to share with you so you can grow with your photo business, too. You'll also hear stories from other photographers and industry folks, as well as my favorite ways to be more mindful and happier on this journey.

01:15

You know that I love my Profoto website and I've been using Profoto since gosh a long time now for most of my career. Today, I am talking with Dan Lam, the man behind Profoto, one of them. They are a small team, but one of the things that I love so much about what they offer is that their support is some of the best customer support I've ever had. So if you're busy like most people are running a business and doing all sorts of stuff one of the last things you probably want to deal with is trying to figure out a problem with your server and your host and your domain and your site and your widgets and your plugins and all that kind of stuff. Profoto started a few years ago when I had Dan on the show. They had just started rolling in hosting services with their already awesome plugin for WordPress, so it's all rolled together. It's an amazing, amazing option if you're trying to figure out how to make your website better, faster, nicer and particularly something that is geared for people in this industry. So if you want to learn all about some of the stuff that they're rolling out and that they've updated recently, and just learn about Profoto in general directly from Dan, this interview is for you. But first, a few words from folks that support this show, a good sort of lead into whatever we're talking about.

02:51

But yeah, no, very busy. I was just working on the site, actually just before we jumped on and an adding. So this is a weird development in my career, but I had this woman contact me. I think she's in, I don't know. She's somewhere south like Atlanta or something, and she runs a dating website and she had a client up here that liked my photos and wondered if we could collaborate. So she essentially has listed my stuff on her site and vice versa, and I've just been doing a whole bunch of dating profile photos that. I just didn't expect to be doing that, but it's been kind of fun. I mean, it's essentially just headshots, but you know, just a little bit of a different vibe.

03:39 - Dan Lam (Guest)

That's interesting. I was just helping someone a couple weeks ago out in, I think, la area and that's one of their new marketed things was headshots for yeah, for dating sites and things like that.

03:51 - Natalie Jennings (Host)

So it wouldn't surprise me if it becomes a much bigger thing, because it just seems like that's the direction you know the dating world is going. But yeah. Yeah, so I was adjusting the pro photo site and adding more galleries and stuff that you know. I was trying to highlight some of the most recent Dating sessions I had done and just kind of put them on the front page and see what happens. I truly enjoy just kind of like 30 minute sessions, our sessions with people like that.

04:18 - Dan Lam (Guest)

So we'll see very cool yeah neat to see how things change and evolve.

04:23 - Natalie Jennings (Host)

Yeah, all that to say, I'm still loving my pro photo site all these years later. Yay, yeah. How are you guys doing with everything?

04:32 - Dan Lam (Guest)

We are doing well. So, yeah, I don't remember where we were in our journey. Last time you and I chatted in terms of switching To our new subscription model it was fairly new, I think well, actually.

04:46 - Natalie Jennings (Host)

So that does refresh my memory a little bit, because I remember it was during the COVID times, for sure, okay yeah and I had just decided to switch my hosting over To because you guys were offering the whole thing because I had been using pro photo forever. I've been a pro photo fan since I don't know what version, but it's been probably ten years, and Then I had started the photo business help site and I was using pro photo and then you guys came out with a thing where you could also host with you as well as having the pro photo stuff For site design and stuff. So then you and I did that whole switchover thing.

05:24 - Dan Lam (Guest)

Yeah, and you were one of our original awesome Adoptees, which was fantastic. So, yeah, and we learned a lot together too, I remember, because there was stuff with email and domains and that was all put to good use because we're we've gotten pretty good with all that stuff.

05:42 - Natalie Jennings (Host)

Oh, right, that's awesome. No, I mean it's always a challenge to kind of switch your site over, but, like you guys were so helpful and made it really easy and you always do your support is top-notch.

05:55 - Dan Lam (Guest)

Thank you, yeah, so, yeah, we've since then. Then, yeah, just the number of subscribers is just continued to grow and kind of blow us away, which is is awesome. And so there's pros and cons with that right the. The pros is that we're busy and we're getting a lot of folks on. The cons is that sometimes it's, you know, it's a lot to to manage or you know, maybe we're not. I'm getting to some Other things that we want, at least in there.

06:21

But we made some good strides our development team with building tooling to help Onboard and get people moved over even faster, which then helps us up and free us up, you know, and so it's kind of that snowball effect then once it takes time to build those things, but once they're built then everything just goes faster, which then freed has freed him up to Just release or build a bunch of new features. So we're pretty excited because we just pushed a new update for pro photo itself. Here Is that last, I think it was last week and that's got our biggest set of new features in quite some time. So that's fun to do, to be doing that stuff again.

07:01 - Natalie Jennings (Host)

I've been messing around with it a little bit and I love the. I mean anytime something you've been using for a while changes, it takes like a second. But I love when, I love it. You know, when I'm like, oh, this is a good improvement in terms of Just being able to move the windows and stuff around and things like that. When you're working on something, it's just the functionality has always been great, but it's just I really enjoy it. You guys rolled this out. This. It's, as you said, like a bigger one in a while. But yeah, do you want to talk about some of the features just for photographers that you know specifically like what, what's new and what's cool?

07:38 - Dan Lam (Guest)

Yeah. So I will say kind of we've gone through some different iterations and different steps from when we last talked and, like you said, we had introduced hosting, so kind of a big Area for us. That first part was just getting into hosting and understanding and getting that all dialed in. And then a big pass with pro photo. That we initially took was for speed and performance and optimization, and then then it's been features and so that's. You know, people don't necessarily see those first two things, the hosting and the speed and performance. They care about them but they don't see about it.

08:12

So it's nice to finally have something that people can see, like you said, like oh, this is different a bit. And so what we really tried to focus with this recent pass of features was Just to really improve the usability of the interface. Like you said, being able to move windows around, doc, the, the settings area on the side, so you can then be able to open and collapse things Doesn't sound like much, but we've just noticed even in our workflow it makes things just go way faster To to get things out of the way or to get things where you want. And and just even visual yeah, just little visual cues of things. This is Silly. But even in the font styles area we've made some changes there so that even like the font size is just shown, kind of always the number, and that's just like really helpful for folks to be like.

09:05 - Natalie Jennings (Host)

To see the size.

09:07 - Dan Lam (Guest)

Oh yeah.

09:07 - Natalie Jennings (Host)

Yeah, yeah, I agree with that too.

09:10 - Dan Lam (Guest)

So it's Hasn't been. I wouldn't say there were. I mean, I like a lot of the new stuff. There was maybe nothing gigantic, but in all it feels like a lot of Smaller wins for like an overall big win. If that makes sense, so yeah.

09:24 - Natalie Jennings (Host)

Yeah, well, I I'd love to back up for people that have no idea what we're talking about in terms of. In terms of what you guys do and who you are and why Profoto. I mean again, I've been such a fan for pretty much my whole photo career. But what is the advantage of, I guess, first of all, pro photo for photographers and what is the advantage of the ability to have the hosting all wrapped in?

09:49 - Dan Lam (Guest)

Yeah, absolutely so. Yeah, we Originally got our start years ago on, when the original owner and developer just built a WordPress theme for his wife, who was a professional photographer at the time and needed something, and so it's kind of born out of necessity, I guess you could say, and, and then at the time, digital photography, the web was exploding and so there was just a real Need for what we were selling and we really leaned into to that market and we've we've kind of always stuck with that. We've had people say, oh, why you should market this to other Businesses, and honestly, I'd say probably 10 to 20 percent of our customer base isn't Photographers. They've just kind of heard about us, found it and they've used it for all other kinds of websites, but our core customer base is photographers and that's something we've always We've liked and we've always liked working with photographers.

10:44

It's in many ways, you know, they're all small businesses too. We are too, so there's just kind of that connection. I feel like we get each other a little bit and, you know, we're always trying to hear what it is that they want and what's important to them, and so it's kind of nice to serve as a real specific group of people rather than just you know. Try to build some generic website builder for tons of people as fast as we can.

11:10 - Natalie Jennings (Host)

So well, that's I mean just on a personal note. That's what really excited me about pro photo way back in the beginning was that you guys seem to understand us because you know back in, let's see. So I started, oh, nine, 2010 ish was when I was getting my website going, and then I think I got I don't know when I got my First pro photo, maybe a couple few years after that, but okay, yeah it was so nice to when this was all starting for folks that don't remember the before times.

11:39

It wasn't it wasn't that easy to have a beautiful, functional Website to showcase your photos and have them load quickly and not just like take a million hours for the person on the other end To load your site, to have clickable galleries and rollover grids and all these kinds of things that you guys have that are actually really specific to what our needs are. And I think having an Organization or a company or business rather understand their customer base and at least in the beginning I know you guys have expanded it has been just so helpful, you know, kind of growing with you guys, because I think that was a big need in the industry that you guys filled for sure.

12:20 - Dan Lam (Guest)

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, and I would say too, just to go off of that over the years, I know, like, as we have looked into features, you know we always Lean into what it is our customers are asking, even if they're not asking directly. Can you add this? It's like we feel those pain points, we see it and then you know we want to respond to that directly rather than just let's build what we think is cool.

12:44 - Natalie Jennings (Host)

Yeah, yeah, totally, that's great. So you guys, I just want to dig in just a little bit more, just because I Imagine someone listening being like, okay, yeah, maybe I want to try this, but what does it look like for someone that is currently just doing like a blue host WordPress thing or whatever? What does it look like if they're like you know what I want to do this, what's kind of what can they expect if they, you know, jump over to Profoto.

13:09 - Dan Lam (Guest)

Yeah, great question. So, yeah, the good news is, if someone is on WordPress already, and especially if they're on an older version of Profoto already, we can, we will. Once they sign up, we migrate everything over to our servers for them for free. And the other nice thing is, when we do all that, everything on our end is on a temporary domain at first, so no one ever has to worry about downtime. That's always a common concern. Like I want to make the switch to you guys, but I, you know I don't want my site to be down. We can always do this very seamlessly, so we move everything over. It's on a temporary Space at first. That way we can look at it, they can look at it, and then that way too, if they are new to Profoto and they're planning on doing a new design, then they can just work on that custom design in the temporary location and then, when they're ready to go live, then all we need to do is point the domain over and everything's good and ready to go and then they can cancel with their old web host.

14:06

So and I know you'd mentioned before, natalie, about like the benefits of us hosting sites ourselves, and we just found over time that with so many different hosts, especially over the years, several things.

14:22

One is a lot of the hosts started to tweak their server setups for their own specific needs, and so that can create a lot of problems. And then, second was that we just noticed the quality of most hosting support was declining and not as good and people weren't getting the help that they needed, and so we felt we could provide a much better just honestly overall web experience for the site owner and ourselves, not having to figure out why is Profoto having an issue on this one unique server? Or oh, and oftentimes there'd be a problem where it was actually a web hosting server problem and the host had introduced it and then we had to fix it and that sort of thing. So we're like, hey, let's create an environment where our customers are way more happy and there's less downtime and everybody knows everything's always compatible and up to date, and when we get new features for Profoto, you just get them and we're always here to answer your questions.

15:20 - Natalie Jennings (Host)

So yeah, yeah, well, and that's totally true. I keep saying this, but you guys have awesome support, response and I feel like I'm talking to real people but wanna help me, which has always been great. But because they're tied together, it's even better because I think recently I had to reach out because something was going on with one of my sites and it was like it's just like you guys can figure it out on your end because you have access to all of it. It's not like you have to ask me who I'm hosting with and go down this rabbit hole of like, well, we're not really sure what's wrong on their end, and that kind of thing.

15:52 - Dan Lam (Guest)

That's a great point that it cuts out two or three just like yeah, back and forth of like random stuff. It's like oh, you got a problem, let me know I'm in there and we'll figure it out for you right away. Yeah.

16:05 - Natalie Jennings (Host)

Yeah, and it is faster. It's faster. I just feel like I noticed, just feels like everything definitely loads faster than it used to, and I don't know if that was just something whatever, but I mean I love it and I'm happy that I'm doing it and I would say you're not alone.

16:23 - Dan Lam (Guest)

Yeah, but most everybody that switches over. Oftentimes one of their first responses when we're like, all right, your new site, or we got you moved over, or your new site's ready, is one of their comments usually is wow, this is a lot faster than what I'm used to.

16:40 - Natalie Jennings (Host)

Yeah, and you want that too. And again, with photos, it's like we're doing loads of photos, big blog posts, all sorts of stuff. My homepage just by itself has tons of photos and photo slider galleries and stuff on it, and that stuff can be really tricky. One of the other things I wanted to mention too that I think is really great about the whole interface is just the ability, when you're designing stuff, to switch between or toggle between, like a desktop, laptop, phone view. I run into this fairly regularly with my coaching clients when we're doing my coaching program and we do changes and I do website audits and stuff. So there's a point in that program where changing stuff on their site and so often there's changes that are made on like a laptop or a desktop and then I'm checking it for them on my phone and it's like a totally different thing, you know.

17:32 - Dan Lam (Guest)

Yeah.

17:33 - Natalie Jennings (Host)

I just got a brand new MacBook Pro with all the bells and whistles.

17:36 - Dan Lam (Guest)

Oh, okay.

17:37 - Natalie Jennings (Host)

And I'm very excited about it. Speaking of speed, it's like a bajillion million times faster than my we get fast nice, it's great it's great.

17:44

But they have this new feature where if your camera's on like right now, video is on, you can toggle like to make it blurry and to make it like look so kind of like in Zoom. But we're not in Zoom right now. So you know all those, some of those features that they have in Zoom they have here. But I just saw like a weird graphic pop up on the screen and I was like what it looked like? A cartoon bubble or something Totally distracted me. So if anyone knows what that is, send me a note. I would like to know what's going on with the new video feature in the MacBook Pro.

18:15

But back to the iPhone thing. Like it's so nice when you're designing to be able to like see exactly what it's gonna look like on a phone, because there are parts of my site that certainly look really great in all the views. And then I get to the phone and I'm like, oh, I should move the text up there because it's being blocked by a photo or whatever and it's just so easy to make it look nice everywhere. So that's a huge one for me that I think if folks are like, hmm, that's a great, great feature.

18:42 - Dan Lam (Guest)

And, speaking of that, that actually was in the new feature set. Some of the things we did were related to those different device setting overrides. So, like in general, yeah, we try and built, have built Profoto so that your site does look good on all devices. But, as you said, sometimes there's just certain design elements that it looks great on desktop or laptop but not on Mullen. You gotta make changes, and so we've always kind of had those options available for folks to make changes. But in this go-around we've tried to make, make those overrides and the settings easier to understand and as well as even just some newer features, including like fonts, the ability to just like, adjust fonts easier, especially on, like you know, mobile people are like, hey, I want the text just looks way too big, can we scale it down a bit on mobile one. So, yeah, things like that we've built in.

19:35 - Natalie Jennings (Host)

It's easy to just do it right there. You have like the mobile view open and now you can just do the. I love that you can adjust the text sort of just like right in the page that you're working on so much more easily, rather than opening up like the text thing and finding which font you had and stuff. It's the features, you guys. I mean it's just getting better and better. So for you know, one of the reasons I'm so pumped up about- this all the time like profile.

19:57

It's amazing is because if it's not in your wheelhouse and you want to outsource it to someone, great. But I've always found that, as you know, a small business owner being able to understand how to make like changes myself has been so. It saved me so much time and money over the years because that, back and forth, I one time years ago I had someone that I was working on a project with and they were doing the website, but I was the one kind of running the project and it was crazy to me, knowing what I already knew, to run my photo business sending emails back and forth Like could you make that a like a little bigger and could you current it a little closer to the paragraph that we're looking at and could you maybe move that photo like up just a little to the right? You know, I mean you're sending these emails and then they send back what they've changed like two days later and then you might not like it still.

20:50 - Dan Lam (Guest)

Yeah, exactly.

20:52 - Natalie Jennings (Host)

It's just so valuable to be able to take the little bit of time actually it's not a huge learning curve to learn how to get your site moving yourself and then just stay on top of it, you know.

21:05 - Dan Lam (Guest)

Yeah, you know you make a great point about just saving on the time and the money and we definitely get customers too that come to us that are they switched to Profoto for you know that very reason? Hey, I was, I had somebody before, but it, like you said, it takes forever to hear back or it's costing an arm and a leg, and I'd like to do this myself and we're just trying to iterate on that build. You know the Profoto tools, so that you've got everything you need to make the changes you want and hopefully make it easier and easier to see it and to do it.

21:37 - Natalie Jennings (Host)

Yeah, well, to bring the conversation full circle, it was great. Before we jumped on today, I was adding all that dating stuff and it was like I just did a gallery and a little block and, like you know, 25 minutes, which would have taken a long time if I was going back and forth with someone.

21:53 - Dan Lam (Guest)

Yeah, yeah.

21:53 - Natalie Jennings (Host)

It's really nice to be able to do that and, again, everything that you guys have available allows people, I think, to make just like, gorgeous websites, and that's what photographers want, but it's very simple. So is there anything else that's new or anything else that you know?

22:09 - Dan Lam (Guest)

someone that might not really know much about you guys maybe you wanna share before we jump off, I think we've covered a lot of the basic stuff, but yeah, I mean I would just say like we really do pride ourselves you mentioned it but just the support that we provide, not to toot our own horn, but like I mean I will do calls with people to help them do things, and so many times that ends with like Kind of like you, I've been with you guys a long time, or even new people, but like this is great. I don't get this very often, you know, and you know it's kind of an old treat others how you want to be treated thing, but we really pride ourselves. So I would say, if there's anyone listening who's maybe kind of on the fence, like Send us a message, asked to talk to Dan, and I will actually talk to you. We'll answer your questions. We want you to to enjoy your website and to feel comfortable.

23:04

Like we know, a lot of times there's a lot of print, preliminary stuff before making a switch. It can seem daunting or scary, but I mean we've done this a lot and we've got a lot of experience and you know we're gonna take good care of your website and make sure nothing crazy or bad happens and make sure you feel good and confident Before you you start with. We don't want just somebody to sign up and feel like you know they're. Messages get set off and they don't know. If you've got questions, contact us ahead of time and we'll go through everything and make sure you feel good and comfortable before you get started.

23:37 - Natalie Jennings (Host)

Yeah, I can second that and it is. It can be daunting when you're moving like blogs and entire migrating entire websites, and you guys were Really great about explaining everything and making sure that you answered all my questions, but I think kind of, I guess the bottom line for me is just I don't have time to worry about like what's going on with stuff that I don't understand when it comes to hosting and like like I said the other day, I think I wrote in you guys and something was up and you guys fixed it and figured it out and it's like I could have spent Days or hours trying to figure that out, but it's just so nice to have Support. I mean, I did try like the sort of things that most people do, like updating plugins and stuff, but yeah, it's just great to feel like you guys are.

24:21 - Dan Lam (Guest)

You guys are on it and that's really good point, natalie, that to just that old model too of like, well, I got to get my web host and I got to get this or that. Like you're responsible, then, right for managing all that and you already have too much to manage, and so like, if you can, you know, we'll take that Hosting piece over for you and you don't have to worry about it anymore. So it's a good thing.

24:42 - Natalie Jennings (Host)

It's a great pairing. It's like to have the plugin and the hosting is just great. So Well, it's been great to have you on again, and I hope more folks take the leap over to Profoto after hearing this, because I think it's been totally worth it for me, and you guys are doing good stuff.

24:59 - Dan Lam (Guest)

Well, thank you, natalie, and I appreciate you just kind of advocating for us and Putting our name out there. And yeah, we'd love to help anybody out who wants a pro photo site.

25:09 - Natalie Jennings (Host)

Great. So where should people go if they want to find you?

25:12 - Dan Lam (Guest)

Just go right to pro dot photo there. You should that see everything you need on our site and you can sign up right there. We run a deal for all new folks on your first year, or the first year is discounted for your signups. So it's just $25 a month for the first year and then after that it goes to the regular price. But yeah, that deals for everybody, new and existing folks.

25:37 - Natalie Jennings (Host)

So yeah, cool, that's great, and we'll have all the links in the show notes. I love that dot photo. I have the dot photo as well, which.

25:46 - Dan Lam (Guest)

It's slick yeah.

25:48 - Natalie Jennings (Host)

Especially if you're a photographer. People like oh dot photo dot com. I'm like no, just dot photo.

25:53 - Dan Lam (Guest)

Just a photo. That's funny. I eat the same thing people. They want that calm. No, it's just that photo I enjoy it.

26:00 - Natalie Jennings (Host)

Actually it's made it easier. I've stopped using business cards for the most part because I just tell people to like, do you have a phone like Type in Jennings dot photo? And then I just see there, you go, take them right there. Yeah, there's another reason. Yeah cool domains, yeah, great. Well, thank you, dan, and Hopefully we'll we'll do this again next time you guys roll out a bunch of new features. We'll have you back on.

26:25 - Dan Lam (Guest)

All right, sounds great, natalie. Thank you so much.

26:27 - Natalie Jennings (Host)

Yeah, you're welcome.