Wedding Business Solutions

Jeffrey Shaw - Selling to the Luxury Buyer

• Alan Berg, CSP, Global Speaking Fellow

Share episode

Jeffrey Shaw - Selling to the Luxury Buyer

Are you truly embodying the world your high-end clients live in, or are you just hoping for big sales without understanding their mindset? What’s the difference between offering luxury and simply chasing money?  Tune in for real strategies to upgrade your approach, understand your unique perspective, and see why embodying your client’s world—rather than just observing—can transform your wedding business.

Listen to this new episode for insights on why mindset matters, what luxury clients value, and how leveling up your business starts by leveling up yourself.

About Jeffrey:
Jeffrey Shaw is a globally recognized expert on selling to the affluent, renowned for transforming how luxury businesses attract and retain high-end clients. With over four decades of experience working with the world’s wealthiest individuals, he combines deep insight into the luxury buyer mindset with proven strategies for success. A celebrated portrait photographer whose work has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, CBS News, People, and O Magazine, and hangs at Harvard University, Jeffrey brings a rare understanding of affluent clients’ behaviors and needs. He is the author of Sell to the Rich, LINGO, and The Self-Employed Life, a sought-after speaker at top industry events including ASID, NKBA, and the Luxury Home Design Summit, a TEDx presenter featured on TED.com, and the founder of National Self-Employed Day (May 4).


Contact Jeffrey:
https://jeffreyshaw.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreyshawauthor/

https://www.instagram.com/jeffreyshaw/

https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyShawAuthor


If you have any questions about anything in this, or any of my podcasts, or have a suggestion for a topic or guest, please reach out directly to me at Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com or visit my website Podcast.AlanBerg.com 

Please be sure to subscribe to this podcast and leave a review (thanks, it really does make a difference). If y

Have you ever wondered... "What would Alan say or do about this?" - well, now you can ask my AI Alter-Ego "Ask Alan Anything" the things you'd ask the real Alan, any time of the day or night. And as a listener of this podcast, you'll save 50%, so starting at only $10 per month you can "Ask Alan Anything"!

Go to www.WhatWouldAlanSay.com and use the 50% off coupon code - podcast - to start asking Alan anything today.

I'm Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you'd like to suggest other topics for "The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast" please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.

Listen to this and all episodes on Apple Podcast, YouTube or your favorite app/site:

©2025 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com

Selling to the rich. Ooh, this is something you're going to want to hear. Hi, it's Alan Berg. Welcome back to another episode of the Wedding Business Solutions podcast. I am so happy to have a fellow speaker on Jeffrey Shaw to talk about his book, Sell to the Rich. Jeffrey, thanks for coming on, Alan.

I'm excited to be here with you and to talk about the topic.

Yeah, you were introduced by someone who's been on the podcast before, Rob Ferre, mutual friend of ours, another speaker. And Rob's like, you gotta meet Jeffrey because he's done weddings. He's a photographer, but his clientele is the clientele that everybody wishes they had. This clientele. And we know, be careful what you ask for in life, because you might get it. But I had the pleasure of reading your book and I told Jeffrey I do audiobooks, but I actually read his book because, as some of you know, I was on a cruise recently and I was like, wow, I actually can sit and read and enjoy this. And I really did. I really enjoyed the stories that you had in there because you talked personal stories and you wrote it from the first person.

This is me talking to you. So tell us just a little bit about the book.

Sure. Well, you know, it's a journey, right? This whole journey of being a business owner, which is my entire journey. My second book is called The Self Employed Life. And I wrote that because I don't know anything else. I've never had a traditional job. I've been self-employed my entire life. More than 40 years of that as a photographer, primarily portrait photographer for very affluent families and, you know, did some weddings as well.

But it's funny, I've always felt much more involved in the wedding industry than my work might have demonstrated because, you know, especially in later years of my career as a photographer, I didn't actually want to photograph weddings and I chose not to. But I kind of became the consultant for my clients who were offering me ridiculous amounts of money to do their wedding, but it just wasn't my forte. I kind of became their consultant, helping them choose photographers. And my son—we were talking about our kids getting married—my son's getting married next June in Lake Como, and I seem to have taken on the job of finding their photographer. So, you know, I feel very involved in the photo industry. So this book, Sell to the Rich, is such a combination of my experience serving this very unique clientele. And realize when you've been a photographer for affluent families for 40 years, as I like to say, I don't just know this clientele.

I was in their closets, right. I was in their closets in the most intimate way—like literally in their closets—but also metaphorically, like hearing what's really going on for them and realizing, wow, luxury marketing, people in business, even if you're not a traditional luxury business, are missing the mark. They're not understanding what's real in people's lives. So this book to me is probably my most personal journey. You feel when you're writing a book that every book you write is personal and genuine. But this one really required I unpack 40 years of experience that I just lived.

I lived it. I was figuring out. You know, one unique thing about being a photographer is I think the truest definition of being a photographer is that we see what the rest of the world doesn't see. Right. We’re observers. And that, to me, is my core essence as a person. Even though I retired from photography, coming on two years—just shy of two years—I retired from photography. But I'm a coach, I'm a speaker, an author. But it all comes down to observation. What I write about, what I talk about, comes from observing the way the world works and particularly the psychology of buyers. And my forte is affluent buyers. But I just am fascinated by what makes people tick.

Yeah. Now what I found really interesting in the book is you didn't come from this background. It's not like these were your neighbors, right? Like you just shooting pictures of your neighbors’ families. No. You came from completely opposite this, right?

Very much. And I appreciate you bringing that up because it's actually something I do right away in my keynotes—to make sure people understand what you see today was a growth journey. But I didn't come from that. My childhood was closer to trailer park than Tiffany's. Nothing wrong with trailer park if that's your upbringing.

But for me, and it's one of the most—as a coach, I find this incredibly powerful, and I'll toss this question out, too—which is: if you're truly honest with yourself, did you always know that there was something different in you? If you're truly honest with yourself and put aside any socialized ideas of humbleness and humility, did you always think you were special? And most people will say yes if they are honest with themselves. It's a hard thing to admit to. But you're like, yeah, I kind of always knew. I kind of always knew there was more for me. And that was my feeling as a kid growing up in a small country town.

Everybody's way of thinking around me was different than me. I'm like, how is it everybody's so shortsighted? Why doesn't anybody have dreams? Why isn't anybody—even my guidance counselor—guiding me as to what choices I have in life? And I just decided the only way to figure that out—thankfully, I recognized I had a talent as a photographer. So I figured, well, this might be my leverage to get out of this way of living and into a way of living that matches my own thoughts, my own values. That's how I ended up being very clear I was meant to serve an affluent clientele. I didn't know about their lifestyle. I didn't know what their lives looked like.

I didn't know what mattered to them. But I figured if I could figure that out, I felt very emotionally aligned with their values. And I realized discretionary income makes people think differently. When you have discretionary income, you can embrace beyond needs in life. So then if you have the ability to make choices beyond needs, first of all, the choices are overwhelming because you have so many choices.

Right. And then in business, what's important about this is to understand if you're marketing, if you're selling to people with a lot of choices, you have to work five times as hard to stand out. Because they're not comparing this wedding photographer to this wedding photographer. They're comparing, do we want to put more money into wedding photography or do we want to put the money into the flowers?

So when you're working with a client with discretionary income, you have to strive beyond being the best choice in your field. You have to be the best choice amongst all their choices.

Let's roll back a little bit to what you said, because I think it's really important. It's what skill, what talent, what makes you special. I think if a lot of us look back, there were clues that other people saw things. So I don't know if you know Clint Pulver, but I've just had—and Clint's book, again, a great book, I love it—about people who love working there. And about how he started as a drummer because he was tapping his feet and tapping his fingers in class, and one teacher sent him to the principal, another teacher gave him a set of drumsticks. Saw that. I remember when I was in elementary school, if they lined us up alphabetically, I was second. If they lined us up by size, I was second. It didn't matter—was always second. But when I was in sixth grade, and I'm second in height of all the boys in the class, I'm captain of the crossing guards because Mr. Siegel made me captain of the crossing guards. And I didn't think anything of it. It's like, sure, okay, I'll do that.

And when the schoolyard mom didn't want to do it anymore and she said, I don't want to do it, he didn't give it to somebody else. He gave that to me as well. He saw something in leadership in me at 12 years old, you know, this little short kid, prepubescent—here you go. And I think forward. My accounting professor in college told me I should be a lawyer because I would challenge him because I wanted to know why. And you think about choices again from where you came from. I was going to be an accountant. Why? Because my dad was an accountant.

My dad loved accounting. I was going to be an accountant. I knew I had choices, but that seemed like the right choice. And when I had to tell him I didn't want to be an accountant, I thought I'd break his heart. And he's like, you don't have to do what I do. Find something you love. Then fast forward.

When I'm at The Knot, and we were at some event, and there was one of the people that worked—kind of with her, but not really in my department—and we're at some event, and she goes, you know, Alan, you know the problem with my generation? She was probably 10 years younger than me, 15 years younger. I said, please tell me, what is the problem with your generation? She goes, we've been told our entire life we can do anything. And that's too many choices.

Interesting.

Too many choices, because how do you choose from anything? Right. Well, Amazon is trying to prove that to us, but that's another story.

So, first of all, you're speaking to the exact same theme of my TEDx talk. So if anybody wants to dive into this—literally the title of my TEDx talk is “Validation Paradox.” And the whole idea is that the paradox of that is that we are often trying to find so much in ourselves. But the reality is, more often than not, other people can see more on us than we can see in ourselves. And how that relates to business: a phrase I use in my business coaching a lot is why it's so challenging to market ourselves, run our own businesses.

Because you can't read the label from inside the jar. So that's why you hire coaches, consultants, get outside of yourself and embrace that. Now, what I'll offer is, I think the most important thing to figure out to market your business, to stand out different, is what I refer to as your unique perspective. People try—and I found this to be very common in the photography industry—where people try too hard to be better skilled. And there's a breaking point to that.

There's a point where you're going to continue to grow, but your growth is really marginal because you're good enough. You're really good. So maybe it's time to put aside incremental growth and look for exponential growth. The exponential growth comes from figuring out your unique perspective. How is it that—what is it about how you see what you do—that's different than everybody else? What's the story of your life that affords you a different perspective on what you do or why it's important to you? It's a connection of dots. I'll give an example. One of my clients now, one of my coaching clients who's part of my highest level coaching group—called High Achievers.

I started working with him one to one. Eventually he joined my group because he came to me knowing that he was working on a book; it would be out in the next year. And the book was about flow state, which the world's been talking about for a very long time. So why him? What makes it different? I have to dive in. It turns out he's a race car driver and that's when the light bulb goes off. Who do you want to learn the flow state from? Do you want to learn it from somebody who's researched it in a lab, in a focus group? Or do you want to learn about flow from somebody who's driving 160 miles an hour down a track, and if you're not in flow, you're dead. Exactly.

That's his unique perspective. So he brings something entirely different to the conversation about flow state, where it's not even about performance. It is literally a state. And what's really interesting—what I've learned most from him—is what knocks us out of that state, and his philosophy—what you learn from his book—is that it's ego. What knocks us out of the… He tells a great story where he was cruising down a track, set up to win, and his coach said to him in his earpiece, you keep up at this pace, you're going to win. What happens? He hit a wall.

Literally drove into a wall. Because you just introduced the ego. Suddenly it was like, I have to win this race. A moment ago, he was just in flow. So no one else can teach this from that perspective. So the value of everyone thinking: what's your unique perspective? Why is what you do so… In my keynotes, I refer to your diamond edge. More than purpose. I call it your diamond edge because it cuts through. It's a gem. Your diamond edge is why you do what you do that's more important than the money.

And you really have to get clear on that. This is obvious to me serving an affluent clientele, because when they smell that you're in it for the money, they back up. If you don't know that, you're not going to succeed in luxury market. So this, to me, has always been the challenge. How do we show up in business demonstrating such depth of integrity and honesty and connection to our unique perspective that we're putting something different into the world? How do we show up that way so that it is apparent that that meaning is more important to us than the money—and trusting the money will follow? And it will. Because if you're that good and clear, the money follows.

And I've always found that as well. If I put the money first, it's disingenuous.

Yeah.

I was a guest on another podcast and somebody said, Alan, why do you do what you do?

And I said, it's very easy. It brings value to the other person or the group, and it brings me joy. It has to do both of those. If it does both, I will cash the check.

And it does bring you joy and brings them value. It's back and forth.

Right. And if it does both of those, I am happy to cash the check and I'm happy for it to be a big check. If it doesn't do both, I don't want the check because one of us is getting cheated here. If I'm not getting joy I'm getting cheated. If you're not getting value, you're getting cheated. And it goes to that. So—

All right, I want to say something about this. I think it's important, particularly for wedding photographers. For much of my career being based in a very affluent town, it was known in the photo industry that I didn't really photograph weddings—or certainly not often. So I was inundated with wedding photographers wanting to come visit me.

Right.

And I would try to remain open. But I will tell you, 99.9% of them presented themselves as believing the roads were paved with gold. And that's why they wanted to get business from my referrals. And that was a problem. They weren't showing up truly wanting to understand the clientele—to understand that showing up, photographing the wedding, and all the reasons why is more important than thinking the roads are paved with gold. So I saw it firsthand in the wedding photography industry often.

Yeah, well, I see that throughout the wedding industry. We probably see it through everything.

Right?

So one of the things I really hoped you were going to say in the book—and you absolutely did—was to understand this clientele, you have to live as much as you can like them. And when you didn't have money and you were sleeping in your car, you went to the high-end shops and you went to those places. So talk about that. And what's the importance of that? How does that change you?

Oh, it's what I refer to as embodying. I refer to it as embodying because motivational speakers will tell you to visualize and all that's well and good. But you know what? You can visualize—it may or may not actually have an impact. So I am always looking to up-level. And this is one of the things I love about—

There's a correlation here between this idea of leveling up and serving the affluent client. When you're a service provider for affluent people, you don't want to just create customer relationships, you want to create bonds. There's an up-level to that. You're not just creating good customer experience and service. You need to create for them a lasting experience because it's less about the transactional experience and more about what they're going to talk about afterwards. So everything's up-leveled.

And this is one of them. This is like the up-leveling version of motivation and visualization: it's embodying. It started for me because I didn't come from that world at all. At 23 years old is when I really made the decision that's the clientele that I was meant to serve. So I started making these trips into New York City to hang out at upscale brands. Ralph Lauren was just kind of coming into their own after opening their flagship store. Bergdorf Goodman was a favorite brand of mine. So I would go to these brands to somewhat observe what they were doing. But more importantly, I was pretending I was going to be my ideal client, at least in my own experience. I realized in hindsight I was wearing a Members Only jacket and contractor pants or something.

I wasn't kidding anybody. I didn't realize it then; looking back, I’m like, I didn't fit the part. So obviously they didn't believe it. Maybe they thought I was a rich heir, I don't know. But I pretended I was my buyer and I would just put myself in their shoes in an extreme way and say, what am I seeing, hearing and feeling? Because my idea was if I could replicate that in photography version—if I became the Bergdorfs of the photography world, or today I refer to my business all the time as I want to be the Hermès of the coaching world.

So it's embodying that.

That brand.

So it started out for me as embodying: if I were the client, what do I need to see, hear and feel? And then I also realized as my career started taking off to some degree—and I mean some degree, because in the beginning years, it was literally whatever dollar I made was reinvested into experiencing these things myself. So I wasn't just visiting Bergdorf's or a nice restaurant. I was investing in the purchase at Bergdorf's or fine dining. And that to me is—till today still—a magical experience. Now I'm fortunate I can afford these luxuries with relative ease, but to me, it's the biggest proof of what I'm talking about. Because I went from being a Bergdorf observer to being a Bergdorf customer.

I have a personal shopper at Bergdorf's because I'm consistent enough with my purchases. That's not a snobbish thing to say; that's an expression of the journey. Because to me, what's so important about this is that—and something I say in the book that I knew was going to irritate people, and it has, and I realized how judgmental it was—

But I wanted to be blunt and say: you can't shop at the dollar store and expect people to invest high dollar into what you do.

Amen.

What I'm trying to demonstrate is: look at what you're doing to your mind. How are you asking your mind to hold two pieces? “I'm not worthy of anything luxurious, so I need to cut corners and go to the dollar store,” but you're going to expect other people to spend top dollar on you. You're splitting your mind in a way that won't be productive. Now I want to say we all go through hard times, we all go through lean years when we're starting out. So if that's the best you can do, that's fine.

But just hold it as temporary. Hold it as something you have to do now. But you can still embody where you're headed.

And it doesn't mean that you never walk into a dollar store. It means that your mindset is, I am looking for the quality, the best that I can for something. I'm not looking to get everything cheap. And I made this comment just the other day because I was talking about AI. I went from being an AI resistor to an AI evangelist, okay? And I said I pay Perplexity $20 a month and I pay ChatGPT $20 a month and I pay ChatBase $40 a month. I pay all these things for that exact reason. I don't want the free version. First of all, the free version is the light version—doesn't have all the better features. But mostly because I'm getting value. And if I'm getting value, they should get value.

Just like if I'm giving value, I should get value. And it's that same mentality. And yet I'll go to conferences and I'll see people who are saying, hey, how come he can get, or she can get, or they can get twice as much as me or whatever. And then you go look at the self-made website and you go look and—or they'll come to your, if you have a table back in the room, they'll come over and they'll pick up your book. They'll look at my book and say $30. $30. I have actually had somebody say to me, I've never paid $30 for a book. Well, you just told me an awful lot, right?

Just 100%. You won't—

You won't pay $30 investing in yourself. Because what's their mentality? They're giving me $30.

Yeah. I mean, to this day—I'm glancing to the right of the screen because I have a Post-it note; I want to be with you—more than 40 years in, happy and comfortable in life, and I still to this day have a Post-it note that sits in front of me. It says, “I embody luxury and I am able to enjoy luxury.” I still, to this day, know it to be true. And I still remind myself every day that I embody luxury. I buy it myself, I surround myself with it, and I'm able to enjoy luxury, because—

And I truly think the results—I can flat out say I believe the results I've seen in my life are a consequence of that one action: choosing to embody the experience of what my clients experienced and what I was striving for. Knowing full well that I worked with a clientele with a level of wealth that I was never going to achieve. Quite honestly, didn't really want to because at a point it's like, okay, that's just way too much responsibility. But, you know, again, I was a photographer. That wasn't going to happen. But my version of it—my version of luxury. And it's a different mindset. And again, one of my keynotes at the request of one of the world's top luxury brands—they asked me to put together a keynote because they were quite honest with me.

They said, look, we love your book Sell to the Rich, but our sales associates, our people don't really need sales training. They get that internally. But what we would love to know from you is how did you change your mindset going from where you came from to where you are? Because that our salespeople need. Because anybody serving this clientele didn't come from that world. So many have not made the mindset shifts that are required.

They act like they're catering to the luxury buyer, but then they're snickering about them behind the back. They're talking negatively. They're making assumptions and judgments. And for a luxury brand, you can—most leaders of luxury brands know this because they know the clientele well—you can think you're hiding that all you want, but energetically it's coming across to this clientele. Somebody asked me before the book came out what was the biggest surprise of the book. I said, I believe the biggest surprise will be when people realize this clientele that people assume to be materialistic or maybe even unkind—maybe all the negative things people hear about rich people—what they'll realize is it's the most highly perceptive, energetic-reading clientele you ever work with.

They've had to become that. Whether their wealth was self-made or inherited, at some point in their life they realized they were targeted by people who want their money. They became suspicious of anybody that wasn't showing up in full honesty, integrity. They are more highly perceptive to the woo-woo energy than anybody wants to admit. Which is why if you're serving them, you have to be clean. You have to know your diamond edge, work in 100% integrity and authenticity, and present yourself real. That's how you'll resonate with them. Because anything less than that, they are reading it. And that's the problem: many providers, service providers, haven't made those mindset shifts.

They're not just putting on the act, but actually embodying—with deep empathy and understanding—what their experience is.

Right. Again, if you're jealous, it's going to come through—all of those things. I remember there was a hotel, I believe it was in Detroit. We had a conversation; he said, you know, we bring in people to train our people how to give five-star service. He said it's just sometimes not quite there. And what he realized is they've never experienced five-star service, they've never eaten in a five-star restaurant, they've never stayed at a five-star hotel. And I can remember the first time at the Waldorf or the first time at a Ritz-Carlton or Four Seasons. And again, if you're being perceptive, you're like, okay, on paper this is a hotel.

They have rooms and beds and people, right? But it's different. Or the first time somebody walked around a counter to hand me the keys with two hands. Or where you and I used to live up in the Hudson Valley in New York—Woodbury Common—when they started getting all these high-end stores, they had to teach the people who work there how to deal with different people from different countries, not just affluent people from different countries. You don't hand money to somebody from Asia. You put it on a tray; they put the money on a tray. You put the change on a tray; they put the credit card on a tray; you put the credit card back on the tray.

Right.

Just things like that. Just because you're respecting them. And again, respect, not jealousy. And people who look at the world—again, we come from National Speakers Association—you know Cabot Roberts said, we're not trying to get a bigger piece of the pie. We're trying to make a bigger pie for everyone. There's always—what you said—there's always going to be somebody with more money. The people that you worked with, there were people with more money.

You know, can we say Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Warren Buffett, whatever. There's always somebody with more.

Right.

But that doesn't mean that them having more means you have less or have the opportunity to have less. And you being comfortable with, if I get more, it didn't mean somebody else got less. It's not a finite thing.

No. And they're hanging out with people that have more than them. Because that's their growth journey. So they—you know, I was always—it was fascinating to me that people I would work with, with just phenomenal wealth, who didn't feel like they were there yet, because they're smart enough to know, like the old adage, play tennis with a better player is what gets you better. So they're hanging out with people they're aspiring to be.

And many of my clients were financial folks. So there's always a partner, there's always somebody that's higher up than you are. And that's who they're hanging out with so that they can become better. So their psychology is far more striving than those of us that might not even realize when we're not in it. You think that they got there, but no—their mindset is they're looking to become better.

I would say one of the biggest surprises on a personal level I experienced with this clientele—again, so much of my experience not coming from that world were this constant series of “I did not see that coming,” because I heard all the stereotypes growing up, like ridiculous things people said about wealthy people. Thankfully, I didn't believe them. One of the things that stood out to me is how into personal development this clientele was. I'm there to photograph their family or what have you, and next thing I know I'm sitting in the father's library talking about the philosophy—Think and Grow Rich and mindsets and philosophies—and I'm like, you already have all that. So that really took me by surprise. But they're beautifully such a growth-minded clientele.

You've heard, I'm sure, Carol Dweck's work between growth mindset and fixed mindset. You can't be a fixed mindset and exist in that world. So it's a beautiful opportunity to talk growth philosophy: where the world is going, where you're bringing your own world. And that was unexpected. That was probably for me personally one of the biggest surprises when I started working with the clientele.

Yeah, I mean I love the curious mindset. I know I have that. I've accepted that throughout all. Today was 1,710 days of French lessons.

Good for you.

Still haven't been to France because COVID stopped that and for some reason we just haven't made it to that part of the world yet.

I spend five months a year in Paris and I'm terrible at the language but I'm learning.

But it's my audiobooks. Audible said I listened to 70 books last year. I don't think I finished them all but one of them this year was Snoop Dogg. And then I read your book and then I just had Clint Pulver's book and I'm listening to the final edition of Nudge—Richard Thaler—final edition now. They called it final so that they wouldn't have to do this again.

But there's just so much to know and so much to do. If you're curious—or if you want to stay inside your box, you can stay inside your box. But I remember one day when I was at The Knot, VP of Sales, and we had a holiday party and I go to the bar to get some water after dancing and one of the founders said, Alan, you're always in the middle of whatever's going on. I said, yeah, I used to be the wallflower but I realized the people doing are having more fun than the people watching. And it's okay not to be good at it if you're having fun doing it. And we all know that person on the dance floor who thinks they are just killing it and we're watching them going, I don't know. But you know what? We're watching them and they're dancing and having fun, 100%.

And it could be reading Greek philosophy is your idea of fun and that's okay. So I just want to get to—because I try to keep these to a half an hour and I have great conversations and I can't do that—what would you recommend to people besides what we already said, which is if you want to know what it's like for a higher-end clientele, whatever that means to you, wherever you are in the world, whatever that means to level up—go live their world. Shop at their shops, eat at their restaurants, stay at their hotels. Anything else?

Yeah, it's actually exactly what I was going to add to what you were saying previously. And for me it's the culmination of learning this from so many other people. I just stopped my previous podcast after 11 years of running and a thousand episodes. So 1000th episode, we decided to bring that one to a close, but launched a new one. At the time of this recording, it's next week. So September 16th I launched my new podcast which is called Excelling Luxury. And it's a podcast of conversations just like this, but specific to understanding the luxury market. The culmination of conversations over a thousand episodes in 11 years—

I have one conclusion that I think is probably the most—I believe in what we were talking about: embodiment first. My number one advice is embody the people you serve, embody the life you want. Second most significant piece of advice is to cross-innovate. And I know it's a term people know, but I don't think people do it. They don't step in. What I mean by that—to your point about being curious—what can you learn from one segment of life or business that you can creatively adapt into a way that serves you and your people?

This is my conclusion after 11 years and a thousand episodes. The people that are able to do that are ahead. It's an ability. Thankfully, the most successful things and opportunities I saw in my career very much came from that. In my photography business, the most impactful, financially beneficial thing I ever did in my business was an idea I got from Starbucks Coffee. Has nothing to do with high-end portrait photography. But I saw something. Same thing now when I consult luxury brands, I will ask them, I'll challenge them: what do you think you can learn from Amazon? And they do not like that question because luxury brands don't like to be brought down to that level. They don't like to be taken out of their very closed world of luxury. Eventually some will realize where I'm going with it.

I'll point out: time. Amazon has retrained the world how time moves. You can be the best at what you do. You could be the most luxurious product or service out there and your consumers today want it quicker. Hermès is literally the only brand I think that's going to continue to get away with people waiting years for their Birkin bag. But they're special, they're unique, they have a whole… they've created a thing.

But again, will that last forever? I don't know. By and large, whatever your service is, you better figure out how to produce the same quality or better, but quicker. Because consumers have less patience. They have more—again, less patience but probably even more choices. They have more choices because there's somebody else out there doing comparable quality, or damn close, but doing it quicker. If speed didn't matter, FedEx wouldn't exist.

And here's the thing, Alan. People will pay for that speed. When I started as a photographer, because I was starting out so high end, I stressed how significant the sessions were, how the whole experience was. I came to the house, I did an hour consultation on clothing and getting to know them. The sessions were three hours long. I promoted the bigness of the experience because that's what justified the high price in the 80s, maybe the early 90s. And then it became literally people were saying to me, I will pay you twice as much if you can get in and out in 45 minutes.

Right.

And then I had to drop the advanced clothing consultations. It was burdensome, it wasn't helpful. I eventually even dropped—like, I started way before anybody else was doing it or Zoom existed—I was doing remote sales. I figured out an online system to meet with my clients online because asking them to come into my studio to choose their portraits was burdensome. I've been picking up the speed of my business.

I had all the frames for my business hand-carved, 22-karat gold. Most years people had to wait 8 to 12 weeks to get their frames. That became problematic. They were like, well, I don't want to wait eight weeks before this gets on my wall. I'll go to someone else.

Okay.

I had to work hard with my frame vendors to say, you know—and they were resistant, with great Italian accents, “but we produce quality”—and I said, it doesn't matter. They want the quality and the speed. That's what I mean about cross-innovation. I also learn a lot from nature, honestly, particularly as a coach. If you observe how nature behaves—

One of my favorite quotes from a landscape designer is, “Nature abhors a straight line.” Nothing in nature grows in a straight line. I live in Florida, where every freaking town lines up palm trees down the streets—it couldn't look more fake. Because in nature, things do not grow like that. Nor do we. Nor do our businesses. Nothing in our lives is linear.

So there's a lot you can learn from nature that can help support you as a person. And there's much that you can learn from looking at other businesses, other industries that have nothing to do with the wedding industry. You can pick up ideas that make your business unique. The ability to cross-innovate, I think, is probably the number one solution to making you unique and moving your business forward.

Yeah, I have that in one of my books: where the best ideas come from—just observing when you're a customer and saying what was so good or bad about this experience?

Bad is even better. I love taking a horrible experience I had—usually at the cable company—and thinking, this is not how to do business. Oh, and where is it looking similar in my business?

Right, exactly. Exactly. Because it's hard to see ourselves that way. We could talk forever. So thank you so much for joining. So again, this book is Sell to the Rich. But this is your third—

Third book.

And we're going to have in the show notes how to get a hold of you, how to follow you, how to get a hold of your books. The new podcast is called again—

Excelling Luxury.

Yep. The other free resource is my LinkedIn newsletter. So if you follow me on LinkedIn, my newsletter is called Diamond Edge and I write about this stuff every week. I'm also on Substack—that's Selling to the Affluent. Similarity there, but you'll find me in all the places. And I put out a lot of free content because I really like to have this conversation.

Fantastic. So thanks for joining me. Thanks for sharing this with my audience. Thanks, everybody, for listening. If you want to find out more, look into the show notes and tune in to the next episode.

Thank you, Alan.


I’m Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you’d like to suggest other topics for “The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast” please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com or you can  text, use the short form on this page, or call +1.732.422.6362, international 001 732 422 6362. I look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.

Listen to this and all episodes on Apple Podcast, YouTube or your favorite app/site:

©2025 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com


Head Shot

Alan Berg, CSP, Global Speaking Fellow

Host