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Tips, Tricks and Thoughts Part 1

Hello. Good morning. Air. We caffeinated? I'm caffeinated. Ok, good. So basically what I'm here to talk to you about today are 50 tips, tricks and thoughts to get you through 2014 and be ready for 2015. And if your wedding shooters or portrait shooters are whatever you're doing, usually this is the time of year where you sort of start to lose your mind, right? Like we've had summer, Our brains are all bleached by the heat. And now we're going into fall wedding season, which rapidly turns into everyone wants things right now for the holidays season. You know, you set your due dates. You set your You must order this by this day date. Nobody pays any attention to it. Everybody wants it at the last minute. I find that this is the time of year where my brain sort of breaks. All right, Like where? I can't think about anything but work where I'm sort of spinning in circles where anything that I have done that is inefficient throughout the year has sort of set me up to be a total and complete ...

failure at this time of the year. So I spend fall wedding season just trying to keep my head above water. I spend the winter frantically sleeping because I'm so exhausted and then wedding season starts up for the next year, and I think, Oh my God, there are all of these things that I should have done when I had a little downtime or that I should have started putting into place when I was super busy. That would have enabled me to start the year with a breath of fresh air instead of here we go again and I'm still behind and I haven't even started. So I compiled, you know, in no particular order, a list of 50 things that I do to save myself at this time of year and then also to dio in your down time to ensure that when you do start 2015 whatever it is that you're shooting, that you won't feel overwhelmed before you even get started. So in no particular order, my very first piece of advice is to just breathe. And I see this a lot from photographers, mostly on Facebook, mostly at four o'clock in the morning is I'm so busy I have so many things to dio on spinning in so many circles. I'm not getting any sleep at all. I'm super stressed out, and then the voices in your head get super super loud and you're not gonna get anywhere. The rest of these 49 tips and tricks and helpful things are not going to do anything for you if you don't give yourself a mental slap across the face and just take a deep breath and calm down like if any of you have kids and you have toddlers who are completely losing their mind. If you can get them to just sit down and get in a breath, then you can talk to them rationally, so I know it seems very simplistic, but sit down, take 10 deep breaths, get your heart to get back to a regular beating pattern, and then you'll be able to move forward. The next thing that I recommend you do some of these at the beginning might seem again, Daw, But if you're not doing these, you're not gonna get anywhere. Get some sleep. I find that the crazies in my head get really loud at about one o'clock to two o'clock in the morning, right? You're laying in bed. You've done all the smart things to go to sleep and to get a good night's sleep and you're laying there with your eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling in the dark, thinking I've got to do this. I've got to do this in the morning. I need to remember to do this and let me check Facebook one more time. And Okay, what if I let me just answer that one more email in the next thing? You know, it's four in the morning and you're still not asleep. You have got to get sleep. I at risk of sounding like, you know, the health channel here. If you're not getting sleep, your brain isn't working correctly, and I can definitely tell my productivity and my ability to think through my problems when I've had three hours of sleep versus when I've had eight hours of sleep, and I know that it's really easy to say. We'll just forget all of it and go to bed. But if you do the other 48 things that I tell you to dio at the end of the night, you will be able to shut off your brain and go to bed. You will be able to wake up in the morning and get going. Another thing that's a little bit important, which a lot of people forget, especially at this time of year, is you need to take care of your own body. And I promise you that I'm not. You know, I know I'm kind of the queen of spreadsheets over here. Is im terrorizing the people in my mentor class right now with spreadsheets? But you have to take care of yourself. And I don't just mean staying productive with business. I don't just mean making sure you're answering your emails every day. You actually have to take care of your body, because if you don't is going to betray you. I taught the 30 days of wedding photography class earlier this year, and I was literally living on a diet of coffee and Greek yogurt and more coffee and avocados on toast, which at the end of the 30 days I went home, probably got super sick because I wasn't taking care of myself and a lot of my wedding photographer friends at this time of year. This is when they start dropping like flies because they're so busy they're not sleeping and not eating well, they're not taking care of themselves. So I know that it sounds really counterproductive, right? Like you're super busy and you have no time at all in your day. And I'm telling you to go get exercise. But what I try to dio and these air just what I try to dio If I seem a little crabby today or a little extra exhausted, it's because I'm in the middle of a month long no eating sugar challenge. Now part of me is doing it because I know that it's good for me. Part of me is doing it because I said I wouldn't. I'm too stubborn to admit defeat. This is literally killing me right now. No sugar at all, not in my bread, not in my coffee, not in anything. Yeah, I know. Everyone in the audience is like, What are you doing on day? For about two weeks, I was basically evil, so I'd like to apologize to my family for the past two weeks. But if it's eating less sugar means that I am healthier and means that I can get through my year and be a better wife in a matter mother in a better business person. I'll never eat sugar again. Um, I take classes right? Like I take a pure bar class, which sounds like it's fun and it sounds like it's dance, but it's 55 minutes of absolute horribleness that makes me feel fantastic. And if I can car 55 minutes out of my day to go and go to another place entirely, I know a lot of people do yoga. A lot of people run. If I can just center my brain and do something that's good for my body. At the same time, I'm in a better place. So again, I'm telling you, get some sleep and go exercise at your busiest time of the year. But if you don't take care of yourself, you're gonna fall apart before you have time to fall apart. There's a lot of other things you can do is get out, go inside and take a walk. Get some fresh air, right like you're in your studio all day long. There you're in your spare bedroom or wherever you edit and you're on the computer. All day you stand up. At the end of the day, your back hurts. You haven't gone outside all day. You haven't spoken to another grown up all day because you've been inside and your little hermit bat cave editing. Go out and take a walk. I try to take a walk after I take my youngest daughter to school. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I don't. But I find that I'm more productive and a better problem solver when I get out and exercise. If you can't, if you don't even want to get out of your house, there are tons of Beachbody programs. There are programs on YouTube we have. You know, there are tons of fitness instructors that come on creative life. Just do something that moves your body. You'll be in a better place. And then I signed up my friend carry forward out of Atlanta run something called Ignite Girls, which is basically an online trainer. But you don't have to actually go to the trainer. You check in with her online. There's a website that you go to. She's got workouts. You download. She tracks your food like I sent her. What I eat every single week. She tells me when I make really bad decisions on something like this, when I'm sitting there thinking I don't have time to go see a trainer or go do this or go meet with somebody to help me because I'm too busy. Well, carries right in my computer. Any time I need her, she's right there. She's in my phone. I will go to a restaurant and text her the menu and be like, Hey, what should I eat? And she'll be like, Don't eat this, Eat that And it's just helpful to have that little voice in the back of my head reminding myself that if I don't take care of myself, I'm not going to be productive. So now that you've gotten a good night's sleep and gone out and taking a walk and eating a nice, healthy breakfast, the thing that helps me cut through all the noise in my head is to write it down. I have a notebook that sits next to my bed every single night, and when I'm laying in bed and I have 300 things going through my head, I don't reach for my phone. I reach for my notebook Because the second I reached for my phone, I'm not just gonna jot these things down in notes. I'm gonna go. Then go check Facebook and then I'm gonna go look on Instagram and then I'm gonna watch a cat video on YouTube and check my email again, and then I'm gonna text a friend who's up super late, and the next thing I know, I've fallen down this minute rabbit hole of my phone and now I'm wired because I've been staring at a screen. So when I have those things in my head that I know that I need to remember tomorrow and this always happens at night, I write it down, I just turn on the light. I get my notebook, I write down all the things that I need to remember. And then I know that I can go to sleep because I've gotten it out of my head and I've gotten it on paper. Now that said, I don't use a pen and paper for every single thing that I dio. I do actually use a program to help me with everything that I need to remember. Now. If any of you have ever heard me speak before? You know that I you shoot que, which is an online studio management software. It helps me track my leads. It helps me book weddings. I send out contracts. I take payments through shoot you. It has a workflow function in it that I used to stay on top of every single piece of my wedding workflow. That's great. But I'm talking about the little things I'm talking about, you know? Oh, my gosh, I'm in the middle of a grocery store and a coordinator calls me and I need to send her images from that last wedding that we did. I guess I'll put it in maybe reminders or all text myself. If I'm sending myself reminders in a 1,000,000 different ways, I'm not going to do any of them, right? Like if I'm emailing myself and I'm texting myself and I'm writing it down in my notes and I'm putting it on a notebook that I have in my purse, that's too many ways for me to remember things. It's like Facebook messages, right? Like I've disabled my Facebook messages because that's just another portal for me to have to remember to check every single day for possible communications. So I want things coming in and his few streams as possible and going out in his few streams as possible. So when I'm out and about my little day to day, remember this stuff? I use a program called things, and it is super cheap. You can put it on your phone. You can put it on your Mac. I'm not certain about PC. You would probably have to google that and check it out. But you can look at things here and you can see that it's it's really basic. You have your stuff you need to do today. You need your stuff that you've scheduled to do another day. You have a little box there that says someday. So we're gonna talk about prioritizing in the next slide. But when I'm out and about when I'm here, I was actually doing this this morning. All the things that I need to remember to do, I put in this program called things. I do it first thing when I wake up in the morning, when I go and sit down at my computer and I check my email at the very start of the day. I take that notebook that I wrote stuff on last night and I take my email and I compile things into things right, and it's literally as easy as clicking new, typing it in and hitting enter and automatically stores it in your today box. Now that's something that you want to do on another day. If you don't want to do it now and again, we're gonna talk about prioritizing. You can give it a do day for another day so it will pop up in your today box on whatever day it to do. And it's little things. So I first put in everything that I'm thinking about the night before that I've written down. Then I go through my email and because I'm a super freak who likes my email inbox to be completely empty, I'll start at the very bottom and I'll work my way up and I'll find which one of my emails are emails that require me to take action and you can look on the screen here and see like number one is Rose Clarke contract. That's a client that I was interfacing with. You know, we were talking. She was an inquiry. She emailed me and said, Please send me the contract. Well, if it's all jumped up together in my in box, that's another thing that I have to check. So I want to get out of my in box and put it into my one portal that I'm looking at, which is things. So while type in Rows Clark contract and then I'll get that email out of my inbox and archive it. And some of it is like pay. Randy, my regular assistant, couldn't help me at a wedding that I was shooting and someone else helped me, and I needed to remember to pay her. So at the end of the night after the wedding, I typed in her name. I typed in her address. I put it in things so that it popped up Monday morning. Oh, my God. I need to remember to pay that girl. I would have completely for gotten if I hadn't written it down. So the way that I say organized my regular workflow of download these cards back up these cards get these things to clients in wedding workflow is in. Shoot you. My day today. Oh, my God, I'm totally gonna forget to do this if I don't write it down. Stuff is in things, and it sinks from my Mac to my phone and back again. So I have three different computers that I work on regularly. One in Brooklyn, one of my husband's studio in Philadelphia Have my laptop and I have my phone and it sinks toe all of those devices. So I am always remembered off all of the things that I need to do. Tragically, I'm pretty sure all of these things, except for sending rose her contract and paying Randy, are still on my to do list. There's just about 30 underneath them as I keep adding to them while I'm here in Seattle. But for me, I get great satisfaction ticking that little box next to the things that I need to do right. It's like crossing things off on a list, and I know that when my brain gets completely scrambled, all I have to do is down at my computer, pull up my shoot que workflow for the day, pull up things and say, Okay, I just need to do these things. I don't need to look ahead I don't need to look at what's happening tomorrow. I just need to get through what's in front of me today. And then I know I'm good because I've prioritised, right? And I know that I'm telling you to take time out and set up a system when you are at your busiest. But if you don't do it now, you're never going to do it. And if you spend a day since setting up a system, then all of your days after that day will be more productive. So, yes, take some time away from all of the insane things you have to do right now and get set up so that you can move on and stay productive. So for me, prioritizing is a huge thing. In my first couple of years of being in business, I thought that everything that needed to be done needed to be done right now and then if I ever told anybody that they needed toe weight or that I couldn't do it right now or that it was going to be tomorrow, that that was bad customer service. But then I realized that bad customer service is promising that I'm going to do something today for somebody and not being able to do it. I would rather promise something to somebody in a week and get it to them in three days. Then I have done a better job. But it took me a very long time to learn how to prioritize. And I know that that's something that a lot of creatives struggle with is the actual doing side of things. We can all go out and take pictures like where we all love doing that. It's when you get home and you have to sift through everything else. That's when a lot of people start to fall apart. So when I'm looking at prioritizing things just in general, I have three separate levels. I have my main priorities, which are things that need to be done right now. They're time sensitive, their urgent, and over 13 years I've started to figure out what those are like getting a coordinator. Images from the wedding is not a main priority. I don't need to do that right now. They're not my client. They haven't paid me. Yes, I need to get it to them, but I need to get this other clients album edited before I get the coordinator, Their images so in your head as the years go by in the months go by, you'll start to realize what can wait, what can legitimately weight. And when I say what can wait I don't mean you back. Burner it and don't do it. I'm saying what can wait logically you know, who do you need to take care of before other people? So I have three sets of priorities main secondary and everybody else. So my main priorities. As I said already, those were the things that I need to do right now. You know, they need to get out the door today. They need to get out the door tomorrow vs Secondary Priorities. They can wait a bit and you have to figure out in your own head how long these things can wait back to the coordinator with images thing. Sometimes I make them wait a week. Sometimes they have to wait until the season is quieter, depending on what they want from me. If all they want is access to the images to take a look at them, I can send them a link like that that super easy. But if they want me to pick and choose and pull things for editorial, I'm gonna back burner them before I'm going to back corner a client who needs something from me more urgently. So in my head, I have my main priorities, and in my head I have my secondary priorities, and I've been doing this for a while. But if you haven't taken the time to categorize things, it will all seem like a main priority right away. And then the rest of my list, it can wait. I have, ah, folder on my email of its called Important, and it's emails that come in that I'm like, You know what? I really need to do this. They don't need to do this now. I need to do this sometime. So I put them in my important folder, and when I can see the season starting to wind down, then I can go back to my important folder and be like, Oh, yeah, there's this whole link building thing that I need to do for my new website that I haven't done that I was going to do in the down time. So now it's kind of downtime. Let's pull it out. Let's put it on the calendar. I know I could do that in January, so don't be afraid to look at a big project in front of yourself and say, You know what? I actually can't do that right now. I have to do that later. Um, then you need to set a schedule for what needs to be done right now. The urgent stuff, the stuff that keeps you awake at night. So I always have a schedule for a multitude of different reasons. First of all, it gives me a plan of attack. I know what I'm doing. When I as I mentioned before, when I sit down and I look at that list of things that need to be done just that day, it feels much more doable than looking at my entire to do list in front of me. So I have a plan of attack. I'm only doing what needs to be done on that day in that day on Lee, and it helps me avoid looking too far ahead because of my to do list. Fills up an entire notebook and I'm trying to look at the whole notebook. I'm going to be stuck in quicksand and be incapable of even taking the first step. But if I have things set out on a day to day or a week to week, if that's how you want to work basis, then it is achievable. Then it is surmountable at a time of year when things seem very insurmountable because it could easily become very overwhelming. And then you're back looking at the ceiling at four o'clock in the morning, not knowing what to do with yourself, you need to learn how to say no, especially at this time of year, especially when you're super busy. When you've got all of these things, you need to dio. So you need to learn how to say no. And this isn't for me, just a When I'm busy thing. This is a just in general thing because I see this as a problem with that. A lot of creatives have being in business. You take pictures because you love pictures and because you want to make people happy and you want to share your art with the world, and it's really hard to say no to people because you are in such a giving industry, saying no feels like terrible customer service. But sometimes saying no is actually excellent customer service. And it sets parameters for not only this time of year, but for your business in general. So I have a list of things that I'm going to say no to on a regular basis. Do you want me to do your engagement session on a weekend? Absolutely not. And I have come to realize over 13 years of doing this, that doing an engagement session on the weekend. It's first of all, not profitable for me. Second of all, it takes time away from my husband and my Children, of which I have so little in the first place. It's always more crowded in the locations that I'm shooting on the weekends, and I find that clients value my time less when I'm willing to work for them on the weekend for something other than a wedding. Now that's just me. Some people might shoot engagement sessions on Sundays and do a great job with it. That's obviously not your area that you need to say no about, but it is for me and that something I'm never going to bend on ever, and it's something that I It's a sword that I'm actually willing to fall on. I will let somebody not book me if they say, you know, we'll book you, But if you could do our engagement session on a Sunday, I say I'm sorry. I do not have availability for engagement sessions on Sundays. I don't tell them I'm not gonna shoot your engagement session on a Sunday because I want to hang out with my husband and my kids because, frankly, that's none of their business. And it sounds like an excuse. I just say, because a very high wedding, very high volume of weddings. I do not have availability for engagement sessions on Sundays. They don't need to know why, but saying no to this has taken a level of stress off of my business. That really bothered me for a very long time. You want me to call you at seven o'clock at night to go over your wedding schedule or to have a meeting on the phone? Well, I can't do that because in my own world between five and nine a. Tonight is the only time I know for sure that I have my very busy Children in the house with me and I can force them to interact with me. I don't want to walk away from that to take client phone call. It's on the clock at night. So if you want to talk to me during the business hours, awesome, we will do this all day long. But if you want to talk to me at night, it needs to wait until later. So I will say I won't say because this period of time in my day is meant for my kids. I'll say You know what? I know that you can't talk during your work day. I have appointments in the evening and my appointments are my Children. I have scheduled them in every day for the next you know, 18 years. But if you want to talk later at night, you know, if you're a night owl, why don't we talk at nine o'clock or 9 30 or even 10? I don't mind talking to you late. That is that I get to spend time with my Children. That means that I get to interface with clients on my time and I'm not telling them. I can't talk to you. I'm just telling them when I can talk to you. I'm setting boundaries because otherwise, especially if you work from home, you run a very strong risk of having your business run your life. 24 7 And I have been doing this for long enough. I have been divorced, and I know that my inability to walk away from my business did not cause my divorce, But it did not help my situation. And I never want to see myself in that place where I cannot separate myself from my business ever again ever. And saying, setting these levels at which I am saying no have really helped that. Help me with that. Yes, sir. With a quick question. No, Susan, did you find early on your current that it was more difficult to find time for the family? And can you offer a little bit of advice to those who are just trying to get started? I mean, absolutely, It goes back to what? I was just saying that I mean, at all levels of business, you feel like you have to be in a 24 7 And because it is you like. Your name is on the business. You feel like you are your business all the time. And when you can see that computer like out of the corner of your eye, it's like a big blinking red light that says down and work on me. The only way that you're going to not fall into that trap is to set hard parameters and to not bend on them. And maybe it's just a simple is from 5 to every single night. I'm not gonna touch the computer or when my kids go to bed. I'm not going back to the computer. I'm gonna close the door. And if you find yourself at a point where you are working 14 hours a day on your business, then you need to look inside your business and see what needs to be changed. Maybe you've got too much work and you need some help. Maybe you are being very inefficient in certain areas, and if you pump up the efficiency, you won't find yourself in that trap. I mean, I shoot 46 weddings a year, I but this year, for me, this is a light year, which is crazy last year, I shot like, 53 I thought I was going to die on dime, not exaggerating. I actually thought I was going to die. I shots a few three weddings and then I did 30 days of wedding photography and there was a lot of weeping happening. Some of it was on air. Some of it was not, but I realized myself with the 30 days of wedding photography. When I was putting that together, I was working while my kids were at school, and then my kids went to bed and I got back to the computer until three o'clock in the morning. I would sleep for four hours and I would get up, and I would roll it all again. I actually developed a facial twitch, multiple facial twitches. My cheeks were twitching, my under eyes were twitching, and it was all from stress. And I said, I can't do it that way. Now that was a project. That was something that I saw a finite due date on. But there is no finite due date on running your business, so if you don't set parameters from the very beginning, it's easier to set them now and follow them than it is to fall all the way into the trap of being busy all the time and clawing. Excuse me, clawing your way out of it. So if you are brand new in business, first of all, I would suggest looking hard at your workflow and finding where you can be more efficient. Maybe something that takes you two hours would really only take you 30 minutes if you got faster at it. Um, maybe you're doing too much. Maybe you are trying to do too many things in one day. But if you don't walk away, the shelf life of your business also will be nothing because you'll start to hate it. So figure out some way to close the door or turn off the computer and walk away. Or else, you know, it's just gonna all the south. But other things that I sort of tell people know you want me to go to your venue into a walk through on a Sunday with, you knew? Not even if you pay me because it's not. First of all, I don't need to go to a venue, walk through with you. I'm good, but a lot of people when they're new and business, they don't know what to tell your clients. Know when your clients are like, Hey, I want you to come walk through the venue with me. You know, in your head, you don't need to do it. Um, but you don't want to tell them? No, because you feel like it's gonna be super bad customer service. But I spent it around my very smart friend Allegra once told me, Never tell them No, just tell them how and how much. So I'll say, you know what? We don't do Site visits. You know, I've been doing this for a long time. I will show up early on your wedding day. I'll take a look around. Everything is gonna be great. But if you do want to schedule a time for me to actually come walk through your venue with you, it's $400 an hour for something like that. And this is when I'm available. So if they want it, they can pay for it and they can have it. They just can't have it for free on a Sunday afternoon. You can tell your clients know, and if you do set parameters. They're not gonna hate you. They're going to respect you free retouching on your whole wedding gallery. No, you can't have that again. And it's not. This isn't necessarily a new photographer thing. This isn't all photographers. Thing is, when a client comes back to you and is like, um I mean, can you just just do this thing for us? Because we're kind of unhappy and our skin looks really bad. And the first thing you're gonna feel is Oh, God, of course, I don't want you to be unhappy within the business person inside of you need to stand up and say We can absolutely do that for you. It's going to take several weeks on git is going to be X amount of dollars because that is custom retouching. How would you like to pay for that? And they're either gonna say OK, and they're gonna pay for it. Then you're gonna get compensated for your time, which I would hope you would outsource that or they're going to say, you know what? No, it's actually okay. Everything's fine. We'll just retouch the ones that go in the album and you say of course. That's great. You know, the old saying of the customer is always right. No, they're not always right. But you do. What do they say? The customer is not always right. But they are always the customer. So they're not right. You don't have to cave on everything that they want. But you do have to be respectful and polite and give them good customer service even when they go around the crazy bend, as they do sometimes. So on top of learning to say no, Sometimes you learn, you need to learn to say not now, like, Yes, I can do this for you. But I can't do this right now. The example that I keep bringing up vendors who need images do they can't do this for you right now. You want it on a Saturday in October like there is no way that I could get this to you right now? Yes. I can absolutely do this. Let me know which images you want me to pull for you and I can get to that. I can get to that within the next 3 to 4 weeks. You have a manageable expectation of when you need to do it. You've got it on your calendar so that you know that you'll have the time on that day to do it. And they know when to expect it from you. If they are a wedding vendor, they should know that asking you for images at this time of year is not a good idea. And if you tell them they're super busy that you're super busy, they should understand, You know, new marketing efforts. I'm working on a website for photographers, right? When you go to Susan stripling dot com, there's a page you can click on that, says photographers. And it's all of the books that I write all of the educate educational materials that I have. But I realize that I want to do more and better to educate photographers. So I'm working on getting that paid off of my sight and having it into a whole new site that is dedicated towards education. I can't do that right now. I'm doing it kind of low level right now. I'm trying to think of what in God's name do I want to name this thing? I have no idea what to name the site, but I can't spend all of my time thinking about that right now. I have clients who need things. So it is back, Bernard. It actually has a due date on my calendar of when I'm gonna sit down and really work on this. I can't do this right now. You know, maybe you want Teoh put an ad in a magazine, But you don't have time to do the creative on it right now. Don't tell your clients know so that you're making a creative for a magazine. Hit it up with the next issue. Some things you can't do right now for me parties and social events, right? Like I know, I know that I would be doing better in the New York wedding market. I would be on a higher level than I am right now If I schmoozed. If I went to networking get togethers. If I went to isis meetings, if I went to Nate meetings, if I went to not parties, I don't have time to go to those right now because going to those parties and social events right now would mean that I spend less time with my family, and I'm not willing to spend less time with my family. Because if I spend less time with my family for work, there has to be a balance for me where I just have to say, this just doesn't matter that much right now. You know, I one day my kids won't be living at home with me anymore. They'll be off at college, and I could go to parties all day long and schmooze all I want. If that sets my business back eight years, cause that's about where I'm at before my youngest daughter goes to college. I'm OK with that, because there I have made priorities that I am kind of unflinching about. So maybe I could be climbing the social ladder in New York a little bit better, but I'm sure the latter will still be there in eight years. I'm certain will be and building new relationships. You go to a wedding, you work with the vendor, the super super love. You would love to collaborate with them, love to do a style, shoot or take him out to dinner or make them an album or things like that. Maybe you can't start that right now. Maybe that has to wait a few weeks. Maybe that has to wait until January. But I would rather that wait until January, Then concentrate my efforts on this new relationship and ignore our relationship from a paying client. And then my client is mad at me. But the vendor loves me. Which do you think is gonna benefit anymore? It's gonna benefit me more to have a happy client than to have a wedding coordinator who likes me that I worked with one time. So we're talking about prioritizing. And one thing that definitely helps me with prioritising is figuring out what I can outsource. And my very wise friend Melanie Duncan, who's actually taught here on Creative Live in the business and marketing side several times, posted a really smart kind of infographic on instagram not too long ago. And it was a little chart to help you figure out whether you were spending your time wisely. Okay, so let's say I have this task. I just did my new website, which we'll talk about in a little bit, but I just did my new website and I needed to re update Pinterest with the images in my portfolio to have 250 images in my portfolio and they have to go on Pinterest now. How long will it take me to sit and click pin 10 pin on all of these images? I figured out to pin them the way that I wanted into the different galleries that I wanted. And if Sandra is watching today, she is pending my portfolio into specialty boards. Sandra, I'm sure he's having so much fun. I figured out it would take me about 2.5 to 3 hours. Depend everything that I wanted. So then I sit down and I say, OK, what would I pay somebody for 2.5 to 3 hours to do this? Let's say I'm paying them $ an hour, and that's kind of a high estimate. So let's say it's gonna take me three hours estimating on the high side. I'm gonna pay somebody $20 an hour to do that for me, it would cost $60 to pay someone to pin everything on my website in three hours. Can I make $60? Can I make more than $60? Yes, right, Like I could use those three hours to write on my new book. Or I could use those three hours to up sell a client on their album. I will outsource Win. I know that the money that I spend outsource. I can take that time and make more of that money. So for me, I outsource my post processing. I use a company called Sidecar Post. They are sidecar post dot com. I call my images down, and then I send them off to sidecar and they edit them for me and send me back finished J pegs. We spent about two or three weddings, you know, really getting our rhythm in. And now it's been about three years that I've been working with them. I barely have to look at the galleries when I get them back, because I just know I know that they're going to be correct. So I out towards my post processing. In the past couple of months, I started outsourcing my album design. Sandra, the woman who works with me, she assist me at weddings. I've taught her how to use funding album builder, and now I pay her per album to see the album all the way through from the day we get the image selections to the clients to the day the album actually shipped out from Madeira. She is the one who handles all of that because I am paying her for her time, and I'm paying her well for her time. But that frees me up to either live my life, for which there is a dollar amount on that I'm willing to pay somebody money to live my life. That's super helpful. When I started out working with Sidecar Post and I ran the numbers because I'm big numbers person and the people who are in my creative life mentorship right now know that I'm obsessed with spreadsheets. I wanted to know how much of my life when I get back if I outsourced and I realized that if I outsourced 45 weddings a year, I got back an entire month of 9 to 5 work days a month. And then when I realized what I would be paying to outsource those weddings in that month, I could make more than that doing other things so outsource. Let's do it Outsourcing. The album design has all of a sudden freed up a ton of my time and with funding album builder Aiken design an album in 10 minutes. That's not what takes the time. It's e mailing the client, saying, Here's your album design. It's getting there changes back and going in and making the NIT picky little changes. It's getting the files out. It's making sure their color, you know, making sure their extra retouched, getting them off to the album company. Those are the little things that take up my time. So I outsource those to free me up to do other things. You don't have to just outsource processing. You can outsource your bookkeeping. You could outsource your social media. You can outsource your marketing if you have someone that you trust to do social media in your voice. Maybe have some. Having somebody come in part time and working on marketing for you frees you up to do other things and make money and other arenas. And outsourcing doesn't just have to be business. You can outsource your laundry. You can outsource your cleaning. You can outsource your house, work right. You can get people to come in and do things for you. For example, I don't go to the grocery store anymore, And it's not because I'm too good to go to the grocery store has nothing to do with that. There's a company in New York called FreshDirect, and every week I go in and I place my grocery order and for, you know, an extra couple bucks a week. They bring my groceries to me on Monday. Okay, maybe it costs me a little bit more to buy my groceries online, but it means that I didn't have to do the soul sucking task of going to a Brooklyn grocery store with all of Brooklyn and fighting through there for a couple hours to get my groceries for the week. I have somebody come in and clean my house. I mean, I just do because I ran the numbers and it makes financial sense for me. They come in every other week into a full clean. They come in every other week and then do a partial clean, which basically just means I washed the dishes and I'm not fast at housework and I hate it. I can dio they can do in an hour what it would take me four hours of listlessly hatefully doing to do And so in that hour that they're there, What? I pay them. I'm at work trying to make more than that. So again, all of these things that I'm outsourcing, I'm making sure that it is a smart financial decision for me to do so. I don't outsource my laundry. I'm not quite there yet. But if I did reach the point where I couldn't handle something like that, I would outsource something like that. So outsourcing isn't just for work. Create your due date calendar for next year, right? So before my year even get started, I look at all of the weddings that are on my on my roster for the year, and I work with sidecar to create a due date calendar, which looks a little bit like this. This is my duty calendar for this month, right? Like this isn't my whole calendar. My whole calendar is like a vomited mess of colors and stripes and things. But this tell we have a naming system so that they know what wedding needs to be back to me. On what day? So that I can deliver it to my clients. And if you do your own work you need your own calendar, and I also put other things in here. Like by this date. I want to have done X, y and Z for a marketing endeavor for a teaching thing. I don't release the books that I write at random. I have due dates like I know full well that I wanted to get this business and marketing workbook that I just wrote done. By the eighth of September, I'm writing another case studies book that I want done by the first of January. I'm not just making up these things in my head. I'm on a very tight schedule. That's how I can do all of the things that I do. So we have a naming convention, right? 14 16. That's the day of the wedding. It's wed because she does other outsourcing. Things will do. Engagement sessions for other people should do portrait sessions for other people, says Wed, so that it knows it's a wedding and then has the clients last name. So all she has to do is look at her calendar for the month for me and be like OK, like I have some time over here. But this week's gonna be super busy, she knows, and then I know when I'm getting weddings back from them. And like I said, I put other things on here that I'm doing myself because I work better. And I am more creative when I don't have to think about all of these things when it's all listed out in front of me. So when you're looking at next year, don't just put things that you're doing on your calendar. Put the time that you want them done on your calendar and then you'll start the year and you'll be like, Wow, I know when I'm working and I know when I need to have these things done and I can visually see it. And then you can also see holes in your year, right? Like months when you're not as busy. You're like, Oh, that big project that I wanted to work on. I wanted to do a new website. I have almost no weddings in like February. Let's put the website project here, so it just gives you an overview of your whole year. Creative live in here has a whole whiteboard of things written out, and you can see holes where Oh, we could put a class here because there there are classes over here. It's just keeping yourself moving smoothly. So now, as we're starting toe wind down 2014 starting to look towards 2000 and 15 these air some more things that I recommend that you dio so that you kind of stay fresh. Do we have any questions so far about eating healthy food, getting sleep, writing things down and figuring out your priorities? Well, 100. They're kind of no brainers, right? But there's people don't do hard to do when you're in the middle of it. It makes a really, really difficult, you know, especially they're so much stuff coming down. So I didn't get an outsourcing question. Seems like a really good time. So when you're outside outsourcing post processing, is this strictly editing blemishes or flaws in the photo? Or is it creative editing being outsourced as well? It is taking the raw files that I have selected from the wedding. So if I go out and shoot a wedding and I come back after I've downloaded obsessively backed everything up, I choose my keepers and those keepers or what I send off to side carpet. So they're getting the raw files, their color, correcting them for me. They're fixing any exposure mistakes that I've made. We don't go to the point of editing blemishes. That's a part where I find that a lot of photographers really get tripped up in their workflow. They get the images out of light room, and then they feel the urge to take them in the photo shop to get every blemish off the face to remove all of the exit signs toe like getting picky with it. But we get them to a certain point in light room where they are lovely. And then that's what I delivered to the client. So any additional blemish, retouching or heavy editing that's either at the album stage or that's an additional fee for outsourcing. Now, if I do have a client who has really rough skin or had kind of a bad makeup job, and it could just go with an overall smoother, all run portraiture, I'll just do a quick batch of light portraiture on it, and it just gives the skin a little softness. But we're not getting into blemishing and editing. I have someone that I outsourced to four heavy edits. Her name is Marsha Gold. If you need her info, you can tweet at me or Facebook. Me. But she's kind of my custom editor, and she can literally make magical things happened. She's done composites for me that look completely riel. It's completely insane. Like, you know, sometimes you have a client who was like, Oh my God, my brother was not here for the family formals and we didn't even put him in the picture. Can you take him from this other family formal and put them in this other family formal? I say, Marcia, can you do that for me? Because I do it. It's literally gonna look like that scene from Talladega Nights, where cowl crudely cuts the space out and posted on posted over Ricky Bobby's face in the family picture like literally cut, cut, cut. It would look like that. So you don't want me to get in a photo shop like that is just not gonna end well, and it's gonna take me, like, three days to do it badly. So yes, so, as you know, you've got you're getting some sleep you're exercising your eating well, you've prioritised. You've got everything written down. You're going on full steam. You can see the end in sight. These are the things that I start to do, sort of towards the end of the year. First of all, I rethink my gear bag. I take a look at everything that's in my gear bag, and if you want to know everything that's in my gear bag, I have a YouTube channel. Have a video on my YouTube channel that's literally called. What's in my bag? Go to town on it. It's about eight minutes long. I unpack and repack the bag and show you everything. So once a year, usually twice a year, I go through my bag and I re evaluate if I have everything I need like this. Last year I added on a 16 to 35 because I realized that I kept getting stuck in the super tight horrors where my 24 to 70 just wasn't wide enough or I was shooting in some rooms where every once in a while I needed a super wide angle shot of the room. The 24 wasn't wide enough, so I said there's a need in my bag for something that is wider. So I went out and I shop for it, and that's when I added it in. But if I wasn't constantly taking stock of my gear bag, I wouldn't have known that I was missing something. Then here's the kicker. Do you have more than you need? I looked at my gear bag earlier this year and I was like home psychotic. So when he cameras, I had, like two D for us is I had 84 had a D three at s I. D d 700. I'm like, I don't even even shoot all these cameras like I'm like, digitally hoarding all of these cameras cause I'm upgrading. But I'm not getting rid of the old one, some holding along for backup when you realize you have four cameras for backup, that sort of goofy. So I will look through the bag and I'll start figuring out what I don't need, and it's kind of a two step process. I have a backup bag, so I'll take out things that I don't think I need anymore. I'll put them in the back up bag and if I realize that six months have gone by and I haven't taken anything out of the back up bag, I'm selling what's in the backup bag because I clearly don't need it. And by backup bag, I don't mean like if my cameras go down at a wedding and I need backup, that's not what that is, my backups for the wedding or in the actual camera bags I carry. This is the modern equivalent of like taking clothes out of your closet that you don't really wear anymore and then boxing them up for six months. And then if you don't wear them, you take them to Goodwill. That's what I'm doing. So earlier this year, I all floated like three camera bodies in two lenses that I just They were just catching dust in my camera bag. You're gonna figure out what you need to figure out what you don't need any more and getting rid of the stuff you don't need any more sure does help fund that stuff you do need. So I traded in my stuff at Adirama. I almost went the sell it myself route. But then I decided that I would make more if I sold it myself. But it would take about 10 times longer than if I took it to Adirama. And I was OK taking a lesser trade in price because I traded it into a company because I didn't want to spend all that time to make a little bit more money because it wouldn't have been enough money to make that time worthwhile. On adirama is incredibly reputable. Their use department is fantastic. So I just walked into the store and said, Take and they took. It was nice. Sell your old gear or traded in. If you don't want to use adirama, there's a company out of Atlanta called K H dot com. Go to town, you can send it in. We'll take a look at it will give you a good estimate on. You'll decide whether you feel comfortable trading it in for that amount or whether you want to sell it yourself. And then if you do have things that you want, you need to make a plan to purchase it. I didn't just say I want a wide angle lens, so I'm just gonna go out and buy one. I actually went and looked. I looked at the 14 to 24 Nikon Lens, which is a glorious, terrifying piece of glass because the curvature of the lens is just I'm worried I'm gonna bust it all over everything. But I looked at the price tag on that versus the price tag of the 16 to 35. And I said, you know, for a Linds and I'm only going to use a handful of times during a wedding day Do I really need that 14 to 24? I don't I don't need to spend that kind of money on that type of lens. I'm going to do the 16 to 35. Then I'm gonna go back and look at all of my budgetary line items for the year, and I'm gonna make sure that I can afford to buy it. And if I can't afford to buy it, I'm not gonna buy it until I've saved money for it. So I make sure that everything that I buy I buy with cash or I put it on my Amex to pay it off at the end of the month to get the points. So I'm not just looking at due I have everything I need and then whipping out the credit card and going and buying a kid of year. That's insanity. But trading in your gear sometimes trading and something will set you down the road for something new. Like, for example, I have to 72 8th in my bag. One of them is the old 11 of them is the new one. Now I have a back up 72 200 because that lends is indispensable to me. That 200 millimeters is kind of a hallmark of the way I shoot a lot of things. So if something happens to that lens for me, it's smart. Have a backup Now. My husband has been playing with the 7200 F four for a while, which is lighter. It's littler. It would kill my arms a whole lot less. And because I'm never shooting family formals or pictures of the bride and groom it to eight, I always start those F four. I'm gonna try to sell my 72 200 to 8 to purchase a 72 204 so I should be able to get enough from the first Lynn sale to buy the second lens. So I'm always thinking of all of those things as I'm both trading up and kind of beefing up my gear bag. Clean your gear. How many of you have cleaned your one person's nodding at me? Everyone else's like you clean your gear to most people, don't you? Go the entire year and you're like, Wow, my sensor looks horrible, But a lot of times, if you go to conventions, Cannon will have somebody there. Nikon will have somebody there. You can go take your camera bodies in and have them cleaned. You can ship them in and have them cleaned. Once a year, I do a huge clean of my gear. There's a camera shop near where my assistant lives. I'll just give her pieces of gear here and there, and she'll take it in and we'll pay them to do a professional cleaning on it. Because I'm super hard on my stuff. I'm like I said, I'm shooting a zillion weddings a year. It's Cleaning My gear is just another thing that I put in the calendar, and every couple of months I'm like 72 200 needs to go in and be cleaned. Do for us. Needs time for that to go in and be clean. So again, if you're gonna take care of your body to get through weddings, Asian should probably take care of your gear to rethink your insurance. Right? We all re up our business insurance once a year. And how many of us just blindly re up it Because it was the company that you worked with last year? And they just send you a renewal. And you're like, OK, cool. And you sign it and send it in. Well, this year, for the first time in five years, I actually said, You know what? I've been with this company forever. Let me look around and see if there's something better. Maybe better. Customer service may be a better rate, and I realized that if I switched over to Hill and Usher, not only was it their process of getting a certificate of insurance is super easy, you just log in and do it online. Their prices were more competitive. I was getting what I wanted for a lesser price, so not saying you should shop your insurance every year. But It's not a bad idea to have a couple of people that you get quotes from regularly so that you don't find out that a couple of years down the road, it's like your credit card processing. If you don't every once in a while, look around and see if somebody's doing something better. I was locked into my credit card processing company for like, six years before I realized that. Oh my God, all of a sudden, everybody else's charging less for non present cards. I need to switch to a company that does that better. So I put these things on my calendar like, Okay, my insurance is up at the end of May every single year at the start of May. Let's just get a couple more quotes, see what's going on out there because it's really easy to just not pay attention to these things, and all of a sudden tons of time have gone by. So I talked about this a little bit. We're working on this in my mentor ship class right now. The things that you need to do to obtain an insurance quote if you don't have it yet or to get a new quote. You need to maintain a constant list of your gear. And it's serial numbers, right? I actually have this in the Google drive on my computer, and every time I buy something new, I go in, I write the I write down the piece of gear, I pull the serial number off of it, part of its for insurance, part of its in case it ever gets lost or stolen list the price to replace each piece. And some people in my mentor ship right now are a little stuck on that. What this means is, if you lost everything in your camera bag right now, what would it cost to replace it? And I don't mean what would it cost to replace it with a more current version? What would it cost to replace it? So if you have an old d 700 it has 500,000 actuacion on it, what would it cost to buy a D 700 with 500,000 actuacion on it? Because the insurance company wants to know the exact placement costs of what you have. So if I've had my Defour for a couple of years, and I've got a 1,000,000 actuacion on it. It's not going to be the same. Price is a brand new t four. Request new quotes from insurance companies and compare them. And don't be afraid to ask for referrals. You know, you can ask your photographer friends who they're using, right, like there's nothing wrong with that. That's what Facebook is for. That's why we're all in Facebook groups. There's absolutely nothing wrong with saying Hey, guys who were using for insurance these days, you know, ask on Twitter. Ask in your local photographers group. There might be a local company that's doing a great job for people that you wouldn't have known about if you didn't ask. Or maybe a lot of people are going with Hill and Usher. I'm currently, like, deeply in love with them because their customer service is fantastic. You ask for referrals with all different types of vendors. Why not ask The people are using for their insurance company as well, Then this is a kicker. Make sure everything is insured so sometimes a year will go by and I'll go to renew my insurance and I'll be like, OK, give me your current list of gear and I'll look at it and be like Oh, my God, because I sold some cameras and I bought some new cameras and I forgot to let the insurance company know that I bought new cameras. So I'm wandering around with a D four s that's been uninsured for six months just because I forgot to tell them so at the end of the year, and I usually try to do it twice a year, is go back through my Google drive of gear, make sure that its current make sure that anything that I've sold, I've deleted, make sure anything new has been recorded. And make sure that the insurance company knows, you know, I was I was reading this out to a friend that was like, Let me tell you my 50 tips and tricks for creativelive. Tell me if I'm missing anything. Tell me if you know something needs to be put in there and I said this one to her and she's like just a second. I was like, OK, it goes like kind of type story on her computer, and she's like, I don't know, call my insurance company. I'll be right back, right, Like these are just the things that you forget to do when you get super busy. And then the next thing you know, you're carrying around a bag of gear that is half uninsured, so please don't Please don't do that. Another thing I would recommend doing is reflecting on your price list when you're starting to slow down. When you're starting to ramp up for the next year, take a look at your price list and see what selling you know. If you're a wedding photographer and you have multiple collections, are you selling a lot of collection one and two, but not a lot of collection three or vice versa. Take a look at the beginning of the year and realized maybe you need to remove something for your price list or add something new on their or reconfigure your packages in some form. I usually take a look at my price list about three times a year, and I'm comparing it with data that I'm getting off of Shoot que because shoot Cute tells me what people are booking, also looking quickbooks, just to see where my averages air highest and because I am a super or super anal retentive freak, and I will admit it. I do have a spreadsheet for this. So every time a client books may Yes, I have the influence you Q. Yes, I have the info in QuickBooks, but I also want to see it in a very simplified form in front of me. For every single year, I will list out the client's name, what type of package, what package number they booked and at what amount. So if someone took a package that was $5500 added on an hour of overtime, I would say that they book collection three plus, which means they book collection three and added onto it. And then I'll put the $5900 price tag next to their name. That way, at the end of the year, I have a very concise list of Okay, this is what most people these air, the packages that most people were booking, and this is the average that most people were booking at. And I will see holes in my price list and things that are not popular, which means that I will go back and I will look and say Wow, nobody's booking collection to Should I drop it entirely or is keeping it in there, pushing people up the collection one right, like you want to constantly be looking at your data and seeing what's popular and what's not. Otherwise, you might have things on your priceless that nobody wants or you might not have things on your price list that people do want on. I want to know where I'm the most profitable right? Right now I am the most profitable at selling collection three, which is my time plus their digital files, because I don't have any sort of cost of goods on top of it other than myself, my assistant, my post processing and I sell a lot of overtime on that one because it's the least number of hours that I have in any of my collections. So there's a very low cost of goods, and there's a very high cost of over time after the fact. I am least profitable on my album collections because I'm very bad at up selling them. I will admit I'm very bad it up selling albums. I'm actually going to see Jerry Jones talk in a couple of weeks. Who is the album up selling master? And I'm hoping I can pick up a few tips and tricks to, you know, tips and tricks from him to help me. So we're all always learning after you've gone through your price list and you've taken a look at it and you have sort of figured out what's profitable, what's not profitable, what's what you're selling the most of what changes you need to make. Then you need to run all of your numbers again to make sure that your packages are actually profitable, because the worst thing you can do is get halfway through a year and realize that you've been selling a package that isn't making you money. So I have a spreadsheet for that. Of course, Ideo I actually wrote for those of you who are wanting to know where you can find my spreadsheets because everyone wants spreadsheets right at, like nine in the morning on a Monday, I actually wrote a book. It's called The Business and Marketing Workbook. If you go to my website and click on four photographers, every spreadsheet that I have talked about is in that book, and then some it's on sale today. Enjoy. But one thing that I want to know first and foremost, is what are my cost of goods. So I need to know what I'm paying my assistant when I'm paying for for post processing what every single bit of my album costs from putting a picture on the cover to engraving their names on it to shipping it to them. You know, how much will it cost me to produce this album on its most expensive side, right? Like if they go for every bell and whistle and they max out the number of pages, what's this gonna cost me? So I run that on every single package that I do every single time I consider making a tweak to it come a button. Are you figuring in all of the elements, right? Like, are you figuring in when you're coming up with the price of your album? Are you remembering that you're gonna have to pay to ship it to your client, right. Like if you're gonna pay for shipping 30 bucks to ship an album and you do a handful of those a year, that's a decent chunk of change that you haven't accounted for. Every time that you go to a wedding, you have to pay to park. I dio you know, in in New York and Philadelphia, it's usually somewhere between 30 and $100 to park for the day. So I've actually budgeted in money for every single wedding. The average of what I know that I pay for parking every single year because I'm not going to eat that myself. I'm gonna have that built in. And are you considering your talent, right? Like on a very base level. When I'm looking at my collection three, which is just time and files. I come out toe what? It costs me to produce that wedding, and I figured that it I think it's somewhere around 1000 $30 just to get that wedding out the door after paying my assistant paying for post processing parking, all of that good stuff I came out to. It's like $31 somewhere in there. And then I, in my own head, have a base Times five model that I work off of to come up with the price of the collection. Now I know that common retail cost is based times three. I'm not retail. I'm really good at what I dio. And I feel like I should be compensated a little bit more than just a retail three times mark up. I also know I gotta pay taxes. So if I do it three times, mark up a lot of that, go to the government. I have my quarterly tax checks in my bag today, ready to mail. Now we're crying again. But so for every time I come up with the prices of a package, I multiply that price times five. So my markup is cost times five. That way, I know that I'm being paid accurately, semi accurately for the skills that I'm bringing to the table. And then are you being consistent, right? Like, are you? Whenever you're coming up with your package costs, are you always coming at it from the same mindset or you just scattering all over the place? And if you're scattering all over the place, then it's going to reflect when clients look at your price list cause it's gonna be a disaster. Compare this fiscal year toe. Last year on, I do this all the time when I'm stressed at three in the morning, I wake up and I look at spreadsheets and I run numbers because when I know that all of my numbers are in the place that they should be, then I can sleep easily. But for a long time I would realize that my numbers were going in a different direction and then I couldn't sleep. So I had to work hard on all of these things to make sure that everything that I did was profitable so that I was, you know, as I like to tell my daughter, making good choices, I like to scream that at her as she walks down the street for school. The power to embarrass your Children is the greatest power that you have as a so I do a lot of comparing one year to the other, and I mostly do this at this terrible time of year, which is called Quarterly tax due date time. So I've got to go in there and I've got everybody's like, Yes, I have to go in and write these massive checks. Anyhow, I may as well take a look and see how I'm being profitable and I will not only compare this fiscal year the last year, but I'll compare it to the year before and the year before that because I want to know trends I try to not compared to 2008 because that was just a sad here. So I want to know again when we're looking at our packages, where are my most profitable and not just now, but historically, what am I selling the most off? What am I selling the least of? You know, something that I look at for just a couple month period might seem good, but if I look at it over a long trajectory of time, maybe it's not as good as I think it ISS. Where are my spending Too much money? That's a big one. I'm not just looking at the money that's coming in. I'm also looking at the money that's going out. So I'm looking at that on QuickBooks because I use QuickBooks to balance all of my all of my books, and I do have an accountant. We do work together throughout the year. We do work together at tax time, but he doesn't tell me where I'm spending too much because only I know that because I'm the one that wrote my budget. And then I'm the one that's looking at my profit and loss sheet. I run that profit and loss sheet four times a year, if not more, cause I want to see where I'm lining up on my budgetary line items. Now, some years I spend Maurin areas and less in other areas. I know that if I want to buy that other d 10 that I want because that camera is sick and I want another one. If I'm gonna buy that, either needs to be in my budgetary line item or I need to take it from another source. So I'm constantly looking at this profit and loss sheet. And then where are you spending too little, Like all of a sudden, Do you realize that a lot of time has gone by and you're literally putting no money out toe advertising at all? And when I say putting no money out toe advertising, I don't mean Matt like magazine ads, But are you spending no money schmoozing coordinators? When was the last time you made an album for a venue like maybe you're ignoring a part of good expenses that you shouldn't be, and then you need to be planning for your financial future. And yes, I know that now you guys are all looking at me like I just want to learn about pictures, but this is incredibly important. You know, a lot of creatives are paycheck to paycheck, or they just think I'm just going to weddings forever and ever and ever, and it's gonna be awesome and other shoot weddings until I'm done shooting weddings. I'm not shooting weddings for the rest of my life. You gotta be kidding me like I cannot do this. I mean, I look at what it's doing to me now. At 36 years old, I'm in pretty good shape and they're so hard, and my husband's been doing weddings for 20 something years. I mean, this takes a toll on your body. After a while, it also takes a toll on your mind. I have to have an exit strategy at some point in time. So what's your one? Your plan? You know what? What do you want to make this year after you've run all of your spreadsheets and run all of your numbers and talked with your spouse or your partner or whoever you live with, our your roommate or whatever. What's your one? Your plan and then beyond that. What's your five year plan and your 10 year plan? Your year plan on. I'm talking financially, right? Like I say for my kids to go to college and I'm saving for my retirement. I'm putting money away for the future. But those aren't just numbers that I made up myself, their numbers that my husband and I have talked about together. And there are numbers that we've talked about with our accountant and their numbers. We've talked about with our the financial planner that we work with, and you don't have to have millions of dollars to work with. A financial planner. I walked into a financial planner for the first time with, I think $5000 and said, This is all I have. But where do I start planning for the future? And I was starting off by saving $50 a month here and there and just over the years, putting more and more money away, and now every month it pulls a certain amount for my bank account and puts it away for the future. And if I had not set that up when I had almost nothing to put together, You know, even if you have $100. dollars in the savings account and put $15 a month in there, if that's all you can do, you've got to get started somewhere. But beyond that, how are you going to retire? Right? Like these were the things that I think about in January. How am I doing on my financial plan? But also, you know, what's my exit strategy? When am I getting out of this game? How long can I keep shooting 45 to 50 weddings a year? How long do I want to? Right? Like And when I'm not shooting that many weddings, what am I gonna do for money? You need to plan both financially and professionally to get yourself out of here, right? Like the last thing in the world I want to do is die at 90 years old at somebody's wedding, right? Like the is so depressing. I probably die during family formals to write like the worst part of the day, but That's not what I want. Like I want this to be like any other job we're in at some point in time. I'm not going full steam like this. Don't worry, it's not any time soon. Um, another thing that you should do kind of in your down time to start looking for new vendors. And I'm not saying that you need to be replacing the people that you're working with. But I realize that sometimes a lot of time will go by and I haven't found a new company toe work with it all. And then it's very easy to go from being cutting edge with who you're working with to being stagnant and even being a little dated if you don't keep your eyes open as to how the industry is changing. So I'll look for new album Cos I work with Madeira Books in a D. E. R. A. B 00 K s Madeira Books is my album company, but that does not mean that I'm not open to finding a specialty album right. Like Jonathan Penny makes these incredible handmade leather albums. That would be a huge premium up charge for my clients. No, maybe I'm not gonna put them in my album lineup, but it sure would be nice to have in my back pocket for that occasional client who might really want that type of book. So whenever I go to trade, chose, I'm always walking around and I'm like, Listen, I'm thrilled with who I'm working with. Maybe there's somebody else out here that I could add to my roster looking for new labs. I work with Prodi P I. I love them. I have no plans on leaving them. But maybe there's some cool new lab out there that does some different type of friend or amounts on something different, that I could not change my lineup. But add to my lineup constantly comparing prices and quality. You know, I want to take a look at the companies that I'm working with. Are they still competitively priced? Are they still making the top notch product that drew me to them in the first place? And maybe there's somebody else out there who is doing it better is doing it better and cheaper because it's really easy to get super stock where you're at. So I just wanted to take like a take two seconds and show you some of the new stuff that I found in the last couple of months that I wouldn't have found it hadn't been looking around, but the first thing I found alien skin I had heard of them before, but I never really looked at them and then humorously enough on another channel right now, coincidentally, supervises teaching alien skin and she's retouching. But they came out with something called Exposure Six, and it has a couple of really kind of kick butt features in it, and I had never used it before, so I got a copy of it and I started playing with it, and it didn't replace anything in my arsenal, but it just gave me another tool to work with, basically. So while I do outsource my images to sidecar post, I do everything that goes on my blawg myself and picking up exposure. Six goes along with everything else. I haven't light room. It goes along with replica replica crone. God, I'm losing my words from get totally rad dot com. I use them Ah lot. Um, I use different actions that I've cobbled together myself. And now, to quote my dear, wise husband. There is no unstuck filter in photo shop. So if the image stinks, I'm not looking at all of these things to help save me. They're just another kind of fun tool to play with. On top of talking about new vendors, I'm always looking for new add ons, and I was talking about album cos I was talking about labs, those air new suppliers. But I'm also always looking for something else that I can add on to my priceless to help me make money. Because let's be really at the end of the day, I'm not a wedding photographer because I love weddings, although Ideo and I'm not a wedding photographer because I think it's fun to take pictures. Although it is, I'm a wedding photographer because it's a very smart business move for myself that will help me provide for my family and provide for my future. Now, do I love my job? I absolutely do. But I'm very conscious 100% of the time that it is my job, right? This is not a hobby to me. This would be a super expensive hobby if it were so. I'm always looking for something new that I can add to my arsenal That will keep me current. That will give clients another reason to give me money instead of somebody else. And this pastor actually bought a new photo booth. Now, I've been using a photo booth for another company for a very long time. That no longer exists because the cost of producing the booths just became prohibitive for them, and they sort of shuttered their doors. And then I found Brandon and Katrina with photo booth supply company, and humorously enough, I found them. When I was at a photo convention in Canada. I was super, super, super sick, like crazy, sick. And then I stumbled across him in the hallway, Let them take pictures of me, which is a really bad idea. And then the next thing I know, I was working over my credit card for a photo booth. Now these things aren't cheap, right? I mean, tracing pictures of in a little bit, the one that I bought it is close to $8000. Maybe a little bit more, but because I am a numbers person, I immediately went back to my room and my thought process went like this. Oh, my God. It shiny I wanted, right. Like as we all do. I was like, Oh, my God, It's so pretty. I want I want it so bad. I want it right now, right? Partly cause I'm a girl and a magpie and everything that shiny unlike Oh, my God, I have to own it. But then I saw the price tag, and I was like, OK, I'm gonna go do some spreadsheets, right? Like I want it so bad. But number one can I afford it right now. And number two, if I do buy it, is it gonna make me any money, right? Is it just going to be this big, shiny thing that I have in my studio that never actually earns me anything? So I went back and I took a look, and I took the price of the photo booth and I figured out how I could make my money back off of it. What am I gonna price it at? I have four tiers of pricing for the photo booth, and I have an attendant that runs the booth for me. So after I pay the attendant and you know what is my profit Every time I take out the photo booth, how many times what I have to sell it to make my money back? I realized that all I would have to do would be to get it out the door nine times, and all of a sudden the booth is paid for itself. And then after that, once it's paid for itself, it's pure profit. And photo booths are super big right now, like they're they're a really big thing right now. And I was noticing that I was going to weddings and people were having photo booth there, and I thought, But if I If I have one, then they could buy it from me, not somebody else. So it's easy to sell in the off season. You know, I've got a lot of interest from people who want me to take it to a commercial event or a birthday party or a networking event. You don't just have to sell it along with your wedding coverage of my friends Davina and Daniel in Canada. They own several of them, and they practically have a side business renting it out to just different things. It prints and it does social media. So this is something that my other booth didn't do. It didn't have the capability to print. And this one, If I've got a wireless connection, people can actually upload things to social media. So when I'm figuring out if I'm going to make my money back this social media aspect, the fact that people can put it right up on their Facebook page with my information on it from the event that's marketing right there for me, that's amazing. So it looks like this. If anybody wants to know what it looks like, see, it's shiny. I wanted it. It all fits into to pelican cases. It takes about 10 minutes to set up tops. Got the printer that goes in the bottom, and it comes with everything you need. You get the light, you the umbrella to get the camera, you get the tablet like everything that goes in it. You get instructions, you get access into Facebook group. They have not given me a single dime to tell you about this today. I'm just telling you about it, some kind of psychic. So if you are considering an add on, if you are looking for something to put into your priceless to help you make more money. Take a look at what's going on at weddings around you. The photo booth thing came to me because I was seeing that other people were hiring other companies for it. And that was something that I could provide. Is there something that your clients are hiring other people for? That you can provide and build into your price list? Maybe it is helping them do invitations. Maybe it is custom. Thank you. Cards. Maybe it is. I don't even know what. Maybe it's something that I haven't even thought about before. But there could be a 1,000,000 things out there like this photo booth that could make you money that you haven't even thought about yet. Yeah, One more thing. We're gonna talk about going to take questions. Please don't cry about slide shows, slices, spreadsheets this early in the morning. I was actually running a spreadsheet myself last night at midnight, so apparently I am no fun. So after you've thought about, I am literally no fun at all after you thought about your price list and after you've made sure your profitable. And after you've checked your vendors and after you have, you know, come up with new things to put on your price list and settle in. It's gonna be awesome in a A, Then you kind of need to look inward. And we were talking about this with the question that we took earlier, which is, you know, spending too much time on your business. One thing that helps me save time on my business, and it's something that I mainly do in the offseason is. I set up things that I can automate things that you do over and over and over again that you can do in a quicker way. Like for example, client email saved the signatures. I use Mac mail for my mail on my Mac on guy. Have signature saved, right? Like, you know, you type an email and you can click a drop down of signatures. I've got about 20 One of them is an inquiry response, so I don't have to type it out every single time someone enquires. One of them is instructions on how to do your albums so I don't have to type it out every time or go find the last email that I sent and Copy Paste. One of them is called WTF, and it is when someone enquires without giving me a date or a venue location. It's a very nice email that just says, You know, Hey, guys, I'd love to be able to send you the correct information if you can let me know your wedding date on your wedding City and state Aiken first, ensure that I'm available and then send you over everything that you need. It's those emails that you sent over and over and over again. I just saved them so that I can auto send them presets and actions and workflow tools. Those things you know, re Maybe it's a brush that you use over and over again in light room. Maybe it's a black and white setting that you use over and over again in light room. If you automate these things, if you set up presets, they will save you time in the long run, and even if it's just five seconds, those multiple five seconds really add up. And then it's things like album software, right? I use funding album builder for when I design albums and now my assistant uses it to design albums. For me, this is massive. It saves us so much time. We use it not only because it's wonderful, but we also use it because it is virtually automated. Aiken do an album in 10 minutes. So I look at my work flow and I look at everything that's going on in my business. And I think, what can I build? What can automate? What can I set up so that these things that I do over and over again go faster. And I do a lot of this in the off season so that when the season gets going, I'm just able to knock these things out. Super quickly. Questions from our our friends on the Internet. Are they awake? You know us. We always have questions. Anything in here personally, Any quick questions? Nodding at me? Kind of. I've either lost you. Are you like me? I'm making sense. Awesome. All right, so we have a few please reiterate questions. I'm just gonna pop on those Who was the name? That photo booth that looks Oh, my gosh. It's photos. Food supply company. Okay, cool. Yeah. And their their customer service is just beyond like it is so, so, so good. They're really fast on email there. I get him through email first. It's the easiest thing, but if you literally just Google Photo Booth supply company, they also have other options, right? Like they have one that doesn't have a printer or they have one that has a printer. But you put it on a table instead of putting it in the encasement, and they're all in different price points and, like I'm not here to sell their photo booths for them. I'm just here to show it to you, but I think it's awesome. I just thought it was really clear, right? It looks really when you set it up in a client event, whether it's a low end event or a high end event, it's not obnoxious looking right, like it doesn't look like this big, hulking eyesore in the corner of their venue. It's bright and it's shiny and you can move it around, which is also kind of brilliant. And while we're on the reiterating, I Love reiterated your system software for sorry, the for the tracking, you're shoot cute. Oh, yes, just literally the word shoot and the letter q dot com Okay, um, I'm planning on launching my business this fall, so I am brand new. What do you think about renting equipment? I have no problems with renting equipment. I just want you to run the money like, run the finances on it. At some point in time, it would make more sense to buy it, then rent it. But I would rather see you rent it, Then pull out the credit card to buy it. Just make sure that you rent it with enough time in advance to give yourself an extra day so that you can really just make sure the lenses air good. The cameras good. Like all of your settings or what they want them to be. You need to rent, man, rent away town, love renting. And we have a lot of, ah, a lot of companies here that we work with. I I rented some stuff from them when I went on my honeymoon and wanted to take something fancy on there. I mean, they ship it to you in the Pelican cases with custom cut outs, and it's so easy and funny and they're here this week. Yeah, they're here this week. There will be on our gear channel, so I look forward to that. Um, Susan, what are your boundaries in regards to travel? I don't have boundaries in regards to travel. I'll go basically anywhere. I will charge more. I have three different price lists. I have local. I have anything that I can drive to, And then I have things that I need to fly to. They're in different tiers of expensive nous. Because if I'm gonna fly somewhere for ah, wedding weekend, I need to be compensated for the fact that I could have probably booked two weddings if I'd stayed at home. And there are months that I will not get on a plane like I won't fly in May. June, September, October. Those air kind of know goes because I know it's super busy at home and I need to be there if I'm going to shoot a double, sometimes even a triple. Um, but any other month, we'll go anywhere. I won't go out of the country, though, unless I can do it legally. Unless I can get a visa unless I can get a permit. That's just not something I want to mess with. Okay? Perfect. And this is from Ricky Rear Rivera. Ricky River. That's a tough one. What sort of changes do you make in your packages when you notice they aren't being booked at all? Sometimes I dumped them entirely. Sometimes I just simply reconfigure them. Maybe it's maybe people don't book it because they need more hours. Maybe they need less hours. Maybe the album just isn't working for them. I usedto have kind of like a mid range type of a parent album in my second collection, and nobody wanted it. So I ended up beefing up the album in my second collection, and then it became more popular. So I and I ask people, you know, I want to know why they picked the collection that they did or why they didn't pick another collection. So if you're not sure you know nothing wrong with asking your clients right