What Your Photos Are Really Saying About Your Brand

Welcome to Life Changing Money, a podcast all about one of the most taboo topics in the world, money. I'm your host, Barbara Shrehan, and we're going behind the scenes on business owners journeys to money, success and wealth. Let's get started. Hello and welcome to another episode of Life Changing Money.

We have a repeat guest here, Miss Kamla Kay. Welcome again to the podcast. Thank you. What an honor.

I was just like, wow, this is so amazing coming back and speaking with you a second time. Like, let's go. But this time we're in New York City. Yes, it's the vibe.

I love being in the city. This is just so different from being in Miami. Probably as a professional model, you've been to New York a few times. I have.

I've been to New York. I haven't been here in a little while, but this This was perfect timing. And I had just gotten back from Jamaica the day before coming here. So it's just been a little hectic, but it's amazing.

Why do you think so many models do come to New York City? New York is the place I feel like, I'm going to say everyone, but obviously, grain of salt. Everyone wants to be in New York City just because it's so vibrant. There's just so much opportunity here.

I feel like when you think of the American dream, a lot of people think of coming to New York. and the top brands in the world are in New York City. So if you're getting started in your career or just want to advance your career, beauty, fashion, everything is in New York. So this is just the Mecca for where you want to be if you want to get discovered or get the campaigns.

It's exactly what I told the ladies at the welcome reception. I was like, New York's known as like the city of dreams and everyone sees it as like the city of possibilities. Exactly. But it's also like the city of visibility, I think, too, which is why we host our Be Seen Retreat in New York City.

I didn't know that that's why you chose New York. So learn something new. Because I'm like, it's the marketing mecca of the world. Like what better place than to have a retreat all about being seen and being visible than New York City?

I used to think actually that I was going to work in New York when I was in corporate and I was in marketing and advertising. And New York was also the place to come to for marketing and advertising. And I remember I did an internship in Seattle at one of the largest media agencies there. And I was like, okay, this is nice.

I kind of like this. But plans ended up leading me somewhere else. And then after that, anyways, I ended up quitting my full-time job to pursue modeling. So never made it to New York for the marketing dreams to be like Devil Wears Prada.

But yeah, that's good. All good. But now you get to be in New York and teach dozens of women how to pose and like be like a model themselves. Exactly.

And I think also being in New York, I was saying to someone in the group, I was saying that or actually I think I posted on my stories, my Instagram stories, that in the various pods that we had at your BCN event. There was one pod in particular that there was a group of people walking by and we ended up having a collection of people watching me as I posed the ladies. And I didn't even notice because I was just so into, I was locked into what I was doing. And then afterwards, someone said, did you notice that you had a crowd of people watching you?

And I was just tuned into the ladies. So I didn't even notice, but I think maybe some of the other ladies figured that figured out. Hopefully we have that on. I know, that would be great.

And then there was a group also, So at one point, I did notice a group of men, they walked by and they're like, can we be part of your shoot? I'm like, we're not doing a shoot right now. Oh, wow. Yeah, it was fun.

But New York, yeah, definitely the place for all of that. So for those of you listening, you might be like, what is this event or retreat that we're talking about? But we host an event called Be Seen Retreat in New York City every year. And it's all things just becoming visible.

And it's a little bit different every year that we do it. But this year I was like, we have to have Kamala as one of the pod leaders because I had you at my big photo shoot and loved the poses and how the photos turned out. And so we had you lead pods. And so how the pods worked is like we broke everyone up into groups of like five, six, seven women.

And you got to just show them how to pose for an hour. and I'm wondering like what are the common insecurities that you see oh my gosh so common would be at number one people always say what do I do with my hands yeah so that's a big one and then also they feel like even if they're they're moving their body they feel their shoulders get stiff quite a bit and I before the before the conference I confessed to them I was like I stalked many of your Instagram pages because I wanted to see I wanted to see what what you what they typically were doing on camera right.

And I noticed that a lot of the photos, they had the tight shoulders. So their, their arms were stuck to their body, and lifted up, which tends to happen when you're posing, and you're not sure what to do. It's very unconscious. And so one of the tips that I gave them was Shoulders need to be back and down.

And then also a lot of the ladies, one of their concerns was under here, like when they raise their arm under here and it look looking wider, right? So when you are so tense and tight on camera and you, your shoulder raises up, your arm tends to press against your body. That's going to make it look wider just by doing that. So you want to always be mindful of having a little bit of separation in the arm.

So it doesn't have to be dramatic depending on the angle, the pose, all that, but you never want it stuck against your, your, your body. If you're worried about how the arm is going to look, give a little separation. It's going to make it look more flattering. So that was one of the things that they're like, please show me how to fix this arm and my shoulders.

But I'm doing it as you're saying it, it feels very active. Is it for you too? Or you're just so used to it? Like, I'm like, oh, I need muscle there to do that.

Right. So in, in a lot of ways, things have gotten more natural for me, but also I do have to sometimes remind myself. So I think that's the big misconception with posing is people are like, they'll come to me or they'll make comments. They're like, oh, it's easy for you because you're a model.

And I'm like, no, I actually spend time still perfecting my craft. Like I sometimes still go in the mirror and I adjust my shoulders and I adjust my face and all of these things, because also just naturally, as we age, our bodies slightly change. Like we may not love something that we loved before for anyone. Right.

And so it's still one of those things that yes, it sometimes feels awkward and sometimes it doesn't, right? Depending on the actual pose. And a lot of, a lot of women will say too, it feels awkward, but like sometimes the poses that feel the most awkward look the most amazing on camera. So go for it and see what happens.

And then you can make the micro tweaks as you go. Okay. So shoulders, hands. Yeah.

I would say that those are the biggest two. People also talk about their stomach area. So I would say actually, those would be the top three from the pods like yesterday. So hands, shoulders and tummy area.

So it's so one of the one of the ladies in particular, she was like, okay, so I'm fuller, she's fuller in the hips. And she's like, how can I make my stomach area seem like it's a little bit more curved in and and flatter, right? So we walked through that. So there are a few different ladies that had that concern.

And so so one of the awkward tricks, It's a little bit harder to do it when we're sitting. But it's really when you're standing to make sure that you push your butt backwards and you're tightening your stomach. So it is a workout. Ladies, it's going to be a workout.

But it makes it look so much better if that is a concern of yours. Doesn't mean some women are like, I don't care. Like my body's my body and I'm going to love it either way. But if that is something that you want to minimize, make sure stomach is tight, push back, and then always think of your body as a string.

When you're posing, when we tend to get uncomfortable, we tend to get uncomfortable, or even when we settle in, we naturally start to slouch a little bit, right? And in photos, especially if you're unsure, shoulders may tighten a little bit, right? So we're thinking shoulders back and down and a string that's pulling you up. So elongation.

It's always about how to elongate your body. I heard you say something that probably would make a lot of women so uncomfortable. And that's you look in the mirror and you look at yourself posing and like tweak it. But some women won't even look in the mirror.

Right. They're like uncomfortable doing that. You know, one, I love that you brought that up. So it wasn't that specific topic or thought that came up yesterday.

yesterday. But one of the ladies was saying that when she was growing up, her mom would tell her that she had a really big forehead and that something about her smile. And all of us looked at her quite honestly, we're like, most of us have bigger foreheads than you do. Like it was very actually surprising that that was one of the things.

And so just talking her through that of why also she doesn't love being on camera. But it made me think about in acting classes, I tell a lot of my clients to take a few acting classes even if you don't want to be an actress if you don't want to be a model still take acting classes because it forces you to push yourself beyond those boundaries of what's uncomfortable right so in our acting classes before we start our session so I take acting classes for professional reasons but I also initially signed up for acting even though I was a model I was like I don want to be an actress Like I do TV commercials I know enough about the acting to book the TV commercials I booked print work, I don't necessarily need my acting skills.

But I took acting classes initially, because I wanted to be more confident in myself. That was actually why I signed up, because I was a little bit self conscious about how other people perceive me or like being judged. And so I knew that acting was going to force me, even though I was an extrovert, I knew it was going to still force me to be okay with being uncomfortable. Right.

So I tell my clients, take some acting classes because those things like not wanting to see yourself in the mirror, it's uncomfortable. But guess what? Anything that's uncomfortable, you have to do the work to push past it if you have a goal of getting to the other side of that. If you're comfortable with the mediocre and baseline, then don't make the change.

So in acting classes, they film it and you have to rewatch it. Yeah. So in actually in my particular class, obviously a lot of them are different, but a lot of them, yes. So they'll film it.

And sometimes as a class, we watch the replay back. Our coach will send us the videos and yeah, we have to sit there and think, oh my gosh, I don't like how my voice sounds. I don't like how this looked. And that was one of my things.

I was like, I don't like how my voice sounds on. I don't want to hear the replay back. So I had to move through that as well. So do the work.

Such a good point, though, on like going back and watching. And I said this to a couple of the ladies during the retreat as well. They'll host like masterclasses or they have a course just like you do. And I'm like, have you ever gone back and rewatched it?

And it's I will say it was one of the most uncomfortable things I've ever done. But now we can go back to masterclasses and see, like, when did people start buying? When did people drop off? Yeah.

When did sales spike? Like, what did I say in that moment? But not just like what I said, what's so important to is like what comes through on the camera. And so I know it's not necessarily posing, but in photos, do you have recommendations for like emotions coming through?

Because I think a lot of times two people can look flat or like one of the ladies yesterday, I was like, you're so sexy, but you look like a bitch right now. Like fix your face. Right. Well, the thing is, this was actually a question someone asked that she said that her eyes always felt dead or that she looked unhappy in her photos.

So when you're posing, you always want to think about smiling with your eyes if or obviously you could be naturally smiling with your teeth and then it just comes out. Right. But if you're not, you're going to make sure that you are smile smizing like Tyra Banks. The smize.

So in order to do that, if you don't naturally do it, you have to mentally be thinking about what is something that really brings me some joy. Something that the example that I gave, for instance, was pretend that you have a girlfriend that is across the room from you or something. And you know those moments. I'm sure you've had them.

We've all had them where you want to say something, but the situation doesn't allow you to actually verbally say what you want. But you give your girlfriend that eye and you're like, yeah, you know, you know that look, right? And it's like thinking about those emotions of I have something to say. I can't say it right now.

But the energy is coming through your eyes. And we both know something's going on, but we don't know what it is yet. Yeah. And so thinking about little things like that, I think Tyra Banks, if I recall, one of the things that she said was sometimes she'd be on her shoes and she'd just be thinking about her boyfriend or what she was going to eat, like something that made her happy.

and that was how she started to be able to communicate something like more through her eyes as well the sexy looks I'm always like I think about sex I don't know listen whatever works for your brain whatever works it could be it could be what you're going to do afterwards just the joy of some people with their nine to five right you know how at nine to five sometimes you're so well we don't know we're at nine to five somewhere we we knew at one point at nine to five, you're like, oh my gosh, I'm so tired.

And as soon as that clock hits and you're walking out the door, all of a sudden you have all of this energy, right? So it's like, how can you, because you're thinking about what's after, like the part of your life you actually want to do. So think about those things in the moment of you feeling super uncomfortable or think about what are those brand images going to do for you? Like when you show up on social media with better images, how is it going to elevate your brand, right?

Like I had a client that she told me that she was making $500,000 a month. And she told me that after she did my course and she did VIP day. And she said, these are the images that are gonna bring me to $1 million months after working with me. And months later, she started making a million dollars a month in her business.

Like she was clear on the vision and but she did the work right So I think if you even if it uncomfortable think about what the long vision which we talked about in the scene right It like yeah, for instance, learning about AI or quad or whatever, it may be challenging, but what's the long-term vision and posing is the same way. Think about posing just like you would with any other business goal or life goal. I say that to our clients that say, you know, I want a million dollar business.

And I'm like, your photos do not reflect that. Like if someone went to your page, they would not be like, oh, this is a luxury brand. I need to be paying luxury prices. But people sometimes just want to cheap out on their photos.

And it's not just a photographer. It's like having the team around you to help you elevate. Exactly. Which is why I'm there.

Which is why you love your photographer, but you still had me there to just elevate that experience. So exactly investing in that. When people will be like, I love your photos. I want to do that.

And I'm like, well, I had three people on my team. I had a photographer. I had a B-roll photographer. I had a videographer.

I had a posing coach, stylist, hair, and makeup. So unless you're willing to invest in all of those, you just won't have the same level of photography. And the thing is also, you can have a successful business already by not doing those things. But imagine though, to your point, if you started implementing more of those visual elevations to your brand, how much more you can grow.

So some people are like, oh, okay, but I'm already at a million dollars a month. Well, could you be at 2 million? Because now people are taking you even more seriously. I mean, designer brands, they're designer brands for a reason.

They're marketing budgets and the ads that they continuously do, like they're shooting every quarter, they're doing all of these things. So constantly have the fresh vision, the fresh ideas so that people are constantly thinking, oh, I need that next thing from them. I want more from them. and you were in the room at BC and something I love is when like speakers also stay in for for the vibes and hanging out what is like one big takeaway you had from the retreat oh my goodness there are so many you had amazing speakers as expected so I would say probably Callan with just really diving into how to implement Claude into our business and it was interesting because at first I wasn't going to ask a question because sometimes, you know, as the speaker, you're like, well, let me let like everyone that's attending ask questions.

And when no one raised their hand, I was like, well, I'm going to ask a question after the other ladies did ask. And so just her speaking life into my business and just like seeing the value of what I do, because one of my things, even though, yes, I'm confident, I know I have this great brand. We all have our own things of limiting beliefs. Right.

And I, and I like to put that out there because people see me as a model and they're like, oh, you have it all figured out. Like you're always confident. Like your life is beautiful. You're beautiful.

Like all these things. Right. And I'm like, yes, great. Thank you.

I like, I love all those things and I have those things, but there are moments as well where I'm like, oh, is this going to happen? Or is this going to get to the next level? Right. And Callan was like, your business of fricking genius.

Like even when I was coaching the pods, like some of the ladies actually gave me testimonial videos there because they're just like, I am blown away by how much I learned from you in just an hour. And yeah, so just all of those things of just the ladies that you bring together, how they speak life into each other and just encourage our businesses and brands, I think sometimes it's more valuable than maybe a monetary thing that you get in that moment. So of course, yes, we want the income, but we also want to be surrounded by the right people in the right circles.

this group of women was just like so amazing and to your point like they all poured life into each other so much so i thank you for being a part of thank you for this year's retreat and a second pod i'm so excited that's what an honor so where can people find you yes so kamala k.com and i always spell my name because everyone butchers it so it's k-a-m-l-a-k-a-y kamala k.com you can get my courses. You can check out my VIP days.

And one thing I'll say is do not wait for your brand shoot to do a VIP day. Because when we do a coaching session prior, you come into your brand shoot already having at least some foundational things. So at least when we're on the brand shoot, yes, I'm going to still be posing you and doing all of these things. But it just really helps to elevate the process for the client.

And then for the entire team for things to just be more streamlined. So of course, you and I like when we met, we just met and it was just in time for your brand shoot, right? Yeah. But I encourage people to do the VIP day and then the brand shoot.

Amazing. Highly recommend. Yes. Thank you.

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