This week on the Creative Genius Podcast, Gail Doby welcomes master photographer and luxury sales consultant Jeffrey Shaw to share the insider knowledge he gained from spending over 40 years serving the most affluent families in the US. Jeffrey shares that everything he teaches comes from intimate conversations with this clientele, where he noticed a division between what luxury brands market and what clients actually say.

Listen in as Jeffrey reveals what truly prevents designers from stepping into the high-end market: their own fear of being uncomfortable or feeling like an imposter. He shares his personal journey of transitioning from an outsider studying high-end stores like Bergdorf Goodman to becoming a customer there. Jeffrey emphasizes that the worst mistake you can make is trying to be a fake version of yourself because affluent buyers will “smell that a million miles away”.

Jeffrey offers a masterclass on the psychology of luxury buying: he explains why they are not only looking for skill and integrity but are also highly intuitive and perceptive—a trait necessary for their success. He reveals the one thing they expect but will never ask for: that you stay a few steps ahead of them, doing their thinking on their behalf. Finally, Jeffrey provides practical advice on up-leveling your ideal client profile, removing friction from your process, and motivating clients in turbulent economic times.

Listen to the full episode to hear more about:

The Power of Belonging: Jeffrey’s personal mantra that belonging in any room is your individual choice, regardless of your background or socioeconomic status.
The Silver Lining Audience: Why you must never fall into the mindset that nobody is spending money, and how to tap into the segment that is always doing well .
Understanding Their Lingo: Why you must understand the language, visuals, and messaging of the clientele you want to attract before you build or change your brand.
The Fear of Disappointment: How heightened emotions in uncertain times create an increased fear of disappointment, motivating clients to seek assuredness and consistency in their service providers.
The Duality of the Affluent: Why the misconception that they are formal and stiff is wrong; they are often much more “real” and casual than expected.
Why Referrals Stop: The surprising reasons affluent clients stop referring, including the fear that you will make a mistake for their friend or the reluctance to share their trusted resource.
Removing Friction: Jeffrey shares his trick for using technology to make life easy for busy clients—even tracking client payment times to understand their lifestyle (the most common time they paid may surprise you!).
Your Diamond Edge: The mistake of not being clear on why you chose this clientele beyond the money, and how finding your “diamond edge” provides the conviction needed to endure.

If you’re listening on your favorite podcast platform, view the full show notes here: https://thepearlcollective.com/s14e5-shownotes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBjCCXdSuno

Episode Transcript

Note: Transcript is created automatically and may contain errors.

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Well, welcome to the Creative Genius podcast, Jeffrey. I’m so glad to have you here and spend time with you again. And by the way, I have to share you are one of our favorite speakers that are one of our recent boardroom retreats. And I just really valued that time that you shared with our people and they loved, loved, loved what you had to say. So we’re going to talk about your book and it’s Sell to the Rich, which is so appropriate for our industry.

Thank you.

It is, is. Thank you. I had such a great time with your group too and honestly I said probably that day and I’ve said many times since, hanging out with designers is such a complete joy to me because who doesn’t love hanging out with hardworking people who have good taste?

Well, you have good taste. Yes, and you are in very much the visual business anyway, or at least you were serving people as a photographer. But I want to talk about how you started with this and how you learned so much about the luxury market.

Sure.

Yeah, a really crazy journey, right? I mean, the fact that I had the opportunity as a family portrait photographer for many of the most affluent families in the US for more than 40 years, just crazy. I didn’t come from that background at all, but I was very, very clear after a few years of struggle, it was very clear to me that these are the people I was meant to serve. And that’s such an inner feeling, right? I mean, how you get to that point of realizing that, you know, who you’re meant to serve and…

to realize it wasn’t a world I knew. So, I mean, I am forever grateful for the fact I was able to break into this very challenging market and then spend 40 years literally hanging out in their closets, right? So everything I teach today, talk about, write about, is always going back to those intimate conversations with an affluent clientele that I often found.

how luxury brands were marketing, how they were speaking, how they were showing up in the lives of these clients was very different than what I was hearing from the clients. And that was, that’s the valuable contrast because I was getting, felt the real them, which really on their mind and realizing the division between when you’re affluent, you’re such a target of marketing and your experience, those moments in the closet, their real lives were very different.

And so everything I know today about luxury came from those moments of intimacy and getting to hear, you know, really being embedded and nothing is more personal to people than their children. So, you the lives I had in photographing their kids and their families really opened up very intimate conversations. And I felt like I got to see an inside perspective that quite frankly, most people in the luxury business do not.

That’s amazing. What do you think keeps people from approaching and serving the luxury market and maybe feeling like they are not imposters, that they should be able to serve these people?

And what I love about that question, Gail, is that actually I really woke up to that at your event at Pearl Collective because I doubt you recall, but there were a number of questions from the audience right in the moment, as well as people that came up to me afterwards and a very common question, so much so that I ended up writing a newsletter about it. And the question was to me, how did you get comfortable working with a clientele in a world you didn’t grow up in?

Mm-hmm.

So I realized what’s keeping most people from stepping into the world of self-serving a high-end client is probably their own fear of being comfortable. Their belief that they won’t be comfortable because they didn’t come from that world. But here’s a newsflash. 99.9 % of people serving luxury buyers didn’t come up and grow up in that world, right? If you did, you’re probably not a sales associate at Dior, right? I mean, it’s just the reality of it.

who are serving this clientele. And that’s not to say that, and hopefully it’s true, that in the years of serving this clientele that we actually step into that market. You one of my favorite stories to tell, which is very foundational to my work, is that as a startup photographer in my 20s, and not knowing this clientele before, in the process of rebranding who I would become to serve this clientele.

I spent a lot of time at high end stores in New York City and my favorite one was Bergdorf Goodman. I felt like a fish out of water going to Bergdorf Goodman. I knew it wasn’t the world I was from, but I went there to understand the world of the people I was going to serve. I can say today, I mean, without, you know, just to make the point and not to brag at all, but you know, to see your life transition from being an outsider going to Bergdorf Goodman to learn.

to years later and not that many years later becoming a customer of Bergdorf Goodman and now decades later I’m an ongoing customer of Bergdorf Goodman and have a personal shopper there. So that transition to me is not to brag but it’s to represent the journey. So no, wasn’t, I think what holds most people back is they believe they’re not comfortable or going to be comfortable serving this clientele. You just have to be yourself.

Mm-hmm.

The worst thing you can do is being an imposter. The worst thing you can do is put on a facade, because they will smell that a million miles away. They’re not interested in a fake version of you. I never tried to hide where I came from. It was irrelevant. I was there to do a job, and I was there to do it well. And to me, comfortable is about belonging. And belonging is your individual choice.

Mm.

I believe we all should decide that we belong by birth by birthright we belong in any room we choose to be with re...

Selling Luxury with Empathy (Jeffrey Shaw)