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Tips, Tricks and Thoughts Part 2

So if you have been with me this entire time, thank you. What we were talking about for this master class segment is 50 tips and tricks to get you through the end of 2014 with Grace and to get you to the start of 2000 and 15 without wanting to quit the business. Right. And the whole premise of this is is that at this time of the year, every year we all start to lose our minds. We all get a little crazy. It's fall wedding season. You know, the holiday season is upon us both personally and professionally, which is super stressful and a lot of us. This is when we start to spin out of control. And in the beginning of the year is when we should be preparing ourselves to get started for the wedding season or portrait season or whatever it is you do for that year. But most of us were just taking all of that time to sleep because we're so tired from the marathon that we've just run. So we've been talking about certain things that you can do to get yourself back on track to get yourself through...

the end of the year. And now what I'm really focusing on is things that you should really be doing in your off time so that you are set up well for the calendar year that you are about to enter and so that you don't have to do these things in the middle of the year. If you look on the screen, what I'm talking about next is re evaluating your storage situation. The last you know, the last thing you want to do when you're super busy and all of your storage is maxed is to have to sit down and re evaluated these air problems you need to solve before they actually become problems. So let's just jump kind of right back in there to where we were. We've been talking about things that you can automate things that you can add your price list. One thing that I always do when the season is sort of winding down, when I'm a little bit less busy as I re evaluate my storage situation and I'm talking about backing up my raw files after a wedding, I'm talking about backing up files as I go along and then I'm talking about backing up my entire computer system. So first things first is sometimes we just need to evaluate whether there's a better method for us than what we're using right now. For a very long time, I used a drove Oh is my backup system, and it never worked for me. I had some technical problems with it, but above and beyond that, I just couldn't wrap my head around using this. Drove Oh, it was kind of clunky. It didn't feel natural to me. And so at a certain point in time, I had to realize this method that works for everybody else doesn't work for me. I don't like this. This isn't this isn't doing it for me. Luckily, my drove boats would have made that decision for me when it died, a horrific, horrifying squeezing death on my desktop, which was sweet, forcing me then into another storage solution. And that's not something that you want to happen. You don't want to have to make a snap decision in the middle of wedding season because something broke and you need to find a way to fix that. You need to know these things well enough in advance that you can implement a new system before it's an emergency. So I had always just been using external hard drives to back up all of my data, thought that this drove o would be a helpful thing. It wasn't. And then when it died, I had to frantically run out by a bunch of external hard drives and start backing up again. So at the beginning of every single year, I take a look at my hard drives that I've got going on for backup. I have excessive backups. I will admit I like, I'm telling you right now, it's excessive, but I work out of actually four different locations. I work from home. Sometimes I have an I Mac at home. I have a studio in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, with a thunderbolt display that I hooked to my Mac book. That's how I work there. I have a complete, um, workflow set up at my husband's studio in Haddonfield, New Jersey, and then I work from wherever I'm at, like I've been working in Seattle for the past week. So I've got my Mac book. I've got my thunderbolt drive. I've got to IMAX in two different locations and I back up all over the place. So in Brooklyn I have to external hard drives in Haddonfield, New Jersey. I have to external hard drives. And then I have my Mac book. So after I shoot a wedding, no matter where I download I, then back it up to all of those other places. That is the system that works for me. So at the beginning of the year, I take a look at my hard drives. I look at their capacity, I see how full they are, and I buy some more so that when I find myself downloading and backing up a wedding and I go, Whoa, I've hit my space in this hard drive. I don't have to go unde backed up until I get a new drive from Amazon or B NH, I just pull out the backup drive from the cabinet, plug it in, keep on moving and immediately go online and buy another one. So I never find myself in a storage disaster. How much storage do you need? I run two terabyte drives for literally no reason other than those are the ones I like. I used G Tec G technology. Those were the drives that I use. I really, really, really like them. And I have two terabyte drives at home at my husband studio and also in the closet for when they inevitably fill up. I also have a one terabyte little drive, a little g tec drive that I take with me everywhere I go, just in case I need to pull something from one and take to another. It sort of always in my purse. What are you storing and where you need a backup? A process of sorts, right? Like for me? I usually download to my laptop now because I because I do have a studio, it has sort of tweaked my work flow a little bit. I used to just go straight home and download to my computer, but now I don't like to my laptop first. And then I put it on my little traveling drive, and then I take it to my other computers and back it up. That's what works for me. If that does not work for you, find what works for you and be consistent with it. I had a horrible moment a few months back where I downloaded a wedding to my laptop and forgot to move it to my other computers. Now I was fine because I had it on my laptop, but I had it on one external drive. But it wasn't on my other two computers. And if I hadn't caught myself with my shoot with my shoe que workflow where it literally says back up in Brooklyn backup in Haddonfield, I could have very easily lost a wedding. So you have to have a very bulletproof method of where do you download? Where do you back up? How do you back up? And you have to do it exactly the same every single time. So if you're struggling with that at all, the downtime your January is your February's. That's when you need to make these decisions. Now I realize that January and February is not everybody's downtime. When I lived in Florida, my down time was July, August in September because it was so hot. So I'm not saying that every January you should be doing this. If January is your busy season, you need to figure out what your downtime is and set it for you. So I also really reevaluate my backup plan after I figured out my stories needs after I've made sure I have enough hard drives in enough places and I have backups for them. I also want to take another look at my backup plan and make sure that it is the most efficient that it can be. So, for example, all of my computers, no matter where they are, they all have a tiny external drive that I use a program called Super Duper to back Up to. Now, Mac has something called Time Machine. That's fine, but I started using super duper a long time ago, and it has been fail safe for me. I've actually needed it on occasion when a computer went down, but once a week I plug in an external hard drive. I run super duper, and it backs up everything on that computer. The operating system and everything backs it up to an external hard drive. So if I ever have a computer crash and take it into the Apple store and they say we need to wipe this, I don't dissolve into tears on the floor of the Apple Store, I say, Okay, go ahead. No, big deal. I've got a backup, so I'm always backing it up. Like I said before, I back up in three locations and I also used back Blaze and Dropbox because I am not obsessive enough by backing everything up to external hard drives and super duper I. Also, you use a program called Back Blaze. It's on each of my Macs and my Mac book pro. Basically, any time I'm connected to the Internet, it is just automatically uploading in the background every single thing on my computer to the cloud. Now mine is always working because I'm always taking things off. I'm always putting things on, but then I think the first backup that I ever did took three months because I was backing up this massive computer. But now I can access my computer back up from anywhere like I could long into one of the creative live computers right now and get into my back plays and find something on all of my devices. This isn't on my little thing here, but I just remember that I use it, and it might be very helpful to you. I use a program called Log Me in Logmein dot com. Basically, what it does is you install it on your computer and it's there in the background. And if you need to do one of two things, you can do it at any point in time. Number one, you can actually access and manipulate your computer from an external source so I could grab one of these come creativelive computers. Goto, log me and pick my computer in Brooklyn. My desktop would pop up right in front of me, and I could actually work on my Brooklyn computer if I had to. I've done that. Sometimes when I have something on one of my computers that I need to pull over and I want it on my Dropbox, I log me in. I grab that computer, I take the file that I need and I dump it in my Dropbox. And then there it is. It's in Dropbox. I also use Dropbox, as I just mentioned for a variety of different things. Like I'm coming here to teach for creative live. I write my keynote. I put it on my laptop. I put it on an external drive. I also toss it in my Dropbox if I need to send it to somebody a creative live. I just send it to them through Dropbox. So with the combination of Super duper ring for backups back blazing for backups, log me in for being able to access my computer at any point in time and Dropbox there is no need like there's no, there's no situations. I confined myself in that I do not have access to my data, which is very helpful in the down time in the January's and February's of my year, I also pull images for competitions. I am first and foremost, super, super freaking competitive, mostly with myself. But I also find that healthy competition keeps me very fresh as a photographer. So I used to interfere list photographers, I say used to, because this is something that I let slide because they have competitions multiple times throughout the year. I just kind of stopped doing them because I got really busy and I didn't put them in my due date calendar, and all of a sudden, the next thing I know, I went from being one of the top 20 fearless photographers of the year to being almost all the way at the bottom of the New York listings because I haven't stayed current and they're pretty brilliant in that you Onley stay on top in your listing area if you're continually entering the competitions, so every certain number of months, they drop your awards, right? Like after? I can't remember how long it is, but they just kind of go away. So you have to keep entering and I haven't. I've sort of fallen towards the bottom, So I need to get out and and do this. I also enter the WPP I 16 by 20 print competition. I love this because you actually have to make a physical print. That's the first thing that I find very helpful because I feel like printmaking is a lost art. So you actually have to make a 16 by 20 print and send it in and you can attend the live judging. And that is where in the formative years of my business, I learned the most about image making with sitting into these live critiques and watching judges say this picture works because and this picture does not work because I learned a lot from that. It was it was massive. So what do print competitions and entering these things do for your business. And who are you trying to impress? Right. I find that, you know, I have a whole press, an accolade section on my website, and I find that clients look at it, but it doesn't really mean that much to them. They don't know what fearless is. They don't know that winning the grand awarded WPP I is a really big deal, you know, they know that I teach for creativelive. They don't really know what that is. I feel like the press and accolades section of my my website is just like a resume, right. It's giving a little more credibility to me like if they're looking at me and they're saying we really like her work, but it's kind of expensive. I don't know. I tell them to go take a look at press and accolades, and I tell them to Google me. I said, You'll get a sense of of where I am in the industry, you know, when you'll be able to read a lot about me. That is my version of promoting myself without promoting myself. I don't want to tell you all the cool things I've done. I want to just instruct you to go find them, and they'll either matter to you or they won't. But at the very least, it will make me look more credible. So that's what these air for. Yes, I do enter competitions to impress other photographers. Of course, Ideo. I would never get up in front of you guys and tell you that I write books and teach workshops out of the goodness of my heart. And that's the only reason I do it off course. I get up here and I educate because I want to help you because so many people helped me. But I also have products that I sell people, and they're not gonna find those products if they don't find me. So entering these competitions for me is twofold. It's to keep me where I am in the industry, and it's also to impress future clients by where I am in the industry. So I find that they are actually very helpful. I try every single time I shoot a wedding to pull my favorite images and put them into a big folder for the year. Like I have a folder on my desktop. That's like 2014 favorites, and I keep the raw files and I keep the J pegs in case I want to go back to the raw files and re tweak them. But sometimes I forget like I'll get really, really, really busy, and time will just sort of get away from me and January and February, when competition season is ramping up. That's when I go through and I pull images again. It also helps you because then you'll have your images in one place to update your website. Or, if you know something happens like I'm teaching on Creativelive and they say, I need you to send me eight of your favorite images for your course page. I know where they are because I've been pulling them together throughout the year. So that's actually one of the stages of my workflow is pull images for competitions and stuff, but it's one that I also sometimes I'm like. I don't have time for that right now. Click. I did it. Whatever. And then I realized that when I look at my 2014 favorites, there are like 10 weddings were the favorites in there and abruptly drops off somewhere in June when I get really busy and just never go back to it. So I actually have it on my calendar to go pull images towards the end of the year. I actually usually pull mine in December because WPP I is usually in February or March and I need to get them printed. Earlier. Another thing that I dio in my copious amounts of free time eyes. I update my website. So it'll be really easy to look at your website and be like Oh my God, the last time put a new picture or a new gallery. Somebody out here is already like yeah was like three years ago. So I just redid my website and when I redid my website, I realized that I had not put a new picture on my website in literally 18 months, other than to Blawg. And that's one of the things that were always like, I'll do that later. We'll do that later. Put it on your calendar now to do it in your down time. This is what my new website looks like for those of you who were watching on day one of the mentor ship last week I showed it to you, but I actually had so many questions about it that I wanted to show it again. It is really, really very pretty. Um, what is really pretty? I put it up and then I never wanted to look at it again because I had worked on it so much. The company is called Good Gallery. They are who they host me and it's where I actually built my website. It is really easy to remember. It's good gallery dot com and the reasons why I left my former website company for this company. It was really hard for me. I've been with the other company for a very long time. I've been very happy with them, but I started to need things that I couldn't get from them. So when I was going out and I was researching my vendors, I found that my friend Robb was starting up a new website company and I research them and I went with them and if I hadn't done that step of researching new vendors, I might still be sitting around with my old website. So the reasons why I like this company. The websites are blazing fast. We have done speed tests on my website now versus my website then and it loads tons faster than it used to load. It has the best mobile interface I've ever seen. So if you want to look at my website, just go to Susan stripling dot com on your IPad or on your phone. And it is not only lightning fast, but it looks really, really cool, which was really important to me, and they're even ready for the IPhone six is like, Rob is such a ridiculous go getter that they're actually retina display Ready? Right now, The big one for me was switching because I needed a Theo. So this was because I did my research and I realized where I was lacking. I was lacking in S e o. I had no S e o none. People were just kind of finding me, which is a horrible, horrible marketing strategy of I just sort of hope they find me that's not smart on. I wasn't able toe use sdo optimization on my other website because of how it was built in the platform it was built on. This one is literally built around giving you, Ah, Brazilian FBO tools to use also image, security and watermarks. You actually can't, right? Click and save the images on my website. And if you go to my website and you try to copy the text off of it, you actually can't copy it. You can't copy it and paste it. And if you do take the image off of the Web site, it has my watermark on it. So it is. It was very much built around keeping you secure, which was very important to me because I had a lot of people stealing stuff off of my website. I am looking at you, everyone who took my f A Q and then you actually upload full thought full size files because what used to take me a lot of time before is I would go pick images for my website. I would have to resize them down. I would have to optimize them. Your you just upload your full size your full size file and you can do crazy things like you can go in and you can you know you're the square on my home page, like you can actually figure out what goes in the square, and then you can set safe areas so that no matter what, what browser or size screen they're looking at, you can choose what will always be in the screen bigger or smaller, like it's just completely crazy. So I had analyzed what I needed. I had gone out in research vendors. I probably put four months into putting this thing together. There are over there about 100, words of S e O In my Web site. It was a nightmare because it just took so long because I wanted to do it right. But now it's done, and anything else that I do to it is just enhancing it further. So you need to make sure that if you do want to update your website, you do your research on finding the right company to work with. And you also carve out the time in your schedule so that you do it right. Don't try to do any website right now or get it started. Get it up there and then go back and do your Ethio when you have time to do it. Like I said, work on your S E O. And that's part of why the website that I was working with before the block was built on a proprietary software and I needed to be on WordPress. I needed the advantages that WordPress was going to give me, and my blog's through Good gallery. It's a wordpress blawg, and there are very helpful in giving us Theo tools. But I realize that literally SDO is the thing that I knew the least about. So I actually asked Rob Greer, the gentleman who owns Good Gallery. If you don't know Rob Greer, you should know Rob Greer, Rob Greer weddings dot com g R E r He is an extraordinary photographer out of the L A area he makes the best engagement albums I have ever seen. He is an extraordinary photographer who, in his spare time, just decided to make a website company, right. Like none of us sleep right ever. So, Rob, Actually, this is the book that I just wrote the business and marketing workbook he actually wrote a whole chapter on, eh, Theo in it, which is brilliant. So, like I said, the things that I'm here showing you the other companies I'm here showing you are because I use them and love them. I did write a book. If you want to buy it, you can buy it. I'm not here to sell it to you. I'm not that kind of educator. The next thing that you needed selling my own stuff just makes me feel sick. Like I just feel kind of dirty because I showed you my book. I hope you buy it because it's sweet, but I can't. I have to go back to teaching now that makes me feel skeevy. So the other thing that I do in my downtime is not only do I work on updating my website, I also work on cleaning out my blawg right. When I came over to my new WordPress Blawg from the block that I had been using before because it was on a proprietary software, I couldn't export it. So I had to laboriously rebuild my entire blawg by hand. Everybody in the audience was just like Oh, no, and it basically went exactly like that. But I realized that I had work on my block that was eight years old. Nobody wants to see that what he needs to see that that's not good stuff. So why I go through now? I've got on my calendar to go through once a year and clean out my blawg. Take down old work that I don't want people to see anymore. You know, take, I take down time sensitive things like, Hey, I'm having a sale on X Y Z. We don't need that up anymore. If the sale was done 18 months ago, I'll take that down. So every once in a while, I I will go through and I'll prune down my blawg. There's nothing wrong with that. But if you don't put it on your calendar of things to do in your down time, these are things that you'll forget to dio, right? Like you'll just never do this. So the reason why I do that is because, first and foremost, I only want to show my best work. I do have a lot of blawg posts on my blawg, but I want to make sure that the ones that continue to stay there year after year after year are the best of the best. I also save post that will help with my ex CEO, so let's say I shot a wedding at the Bowery Hotel five years ago. If the work is still good and I'm still super hard trying to target the Bowery Hotel, that post is going to stay up there. Have a question. You were looking super questioning like that. Yeah. And this year's stands for search engine optimization. Thank you. It's a cool talk. It also stands for stuff. I don't understand stuff that seems to change every single day. Yeah, and s e Oh, like the rules of S e o change all the time. Um, and it infuriates me, Which is why I call Rob of Good Gallery and say, Can you just tell me what we should be doing right now? Which is why I had him write like, this big, huge thing for the book because I thought he's a good resource. We should do that. So I'm saving posts, especially what venues that I want to work at vendors that I want to work at again. Post that I know people are finding on Google over and over and over again because I'm tracking my analytics because I know why people are coming to my site and what page they're coming in on. If there is a block post that's getting a ton of traffic, I'm not gonna dump it. I'm gonna keep it. I like I said, I drop old news and time sensitive posts. It's just clutter. After a while, some of it just becomes clutter. So another thing that I will dio and we're talking about updating things online. I will update my online listing galleries, right? So I advertise with style. Me pretty and I advertise with June Bug, and I realized the other day that the pictures that I have up in my galleries for them her like four years old. So this is another thing that I put on my calendar to do in January is to go back and look at anywhere that I'm listed and reevaluate the gallery that I have up online there. Even if it's four or five pictures, I want them to continue to be the top four or five pictures that I have, if that makes sense, So another thing that I dio in my copious amounts of downtime. I evaluate my current paid advertising because I want to know what's what I want to know that what I am paying for is still working for me. So the first thing that I'm doing is I'm tracking all of my enquiries. Always like I am always tracking my enquiries. I want to know how far in advance of their wedding did they contact me, Why they did or didn't hire me how they found me. All of these things are very important. Shoot que lets me track them. That's one of the kind of benefits of working with shoot que if you're not using a studio management software And I'm not telling you that you have to make a spreadsheet, right? And every time you write an inquiry right in Bob Jones wedding, his wedding date is X. It is six months before his wedding day. He didn't hire me because it was too expensive. He found me on the not and over time you'll start to see data clusters. And I know by tracking all of my data that most clients contact me somewhere between seven and 16 months before their wedding. That's kind of my average. Most people that do not hire me do not hire me because it's out of their budget range. I also have a subset of people who do not hire me because they decided they wanted a different style. Like if someone looking at me and someone's looking at Jose via and they choose him over me, we're not even the same type of photographer. That's a very it's a style choice. So I know that there are some photographers when they end up hiring them in the New York area. It's because of a style choice were fairly similar in pricing. But if they have chosen, you know, X Y Z photographer instead of me, it's because they wanted something dreamy and more romantic. There's nothing I could do with that data. I'm not changing my style. I'm not gonna be everything for everybody. But if I start finding that all of a sudden I'm losing a lot of weddings to another photographer whose price similar to me, who has work similar to mine, I want to find out why. But this also tracking these enquiries, you'll find out common places where your clients are finding you from, so you want to know where my clients finding me from Google, are they finding me from previous clients are they finding me on Facebook? If you're paying for a listing online somewhere and nobody's ever finding you off of that listing over time, you'll realize that if you're tracking your enquiries and you'll know that that's not necessarily a good source for you to spend your money on. The other thing is you need to evaluate if the cost is worth it. If I'm paying for style, me pretty just for example on I only booked one wedding a year from style. Me pretty. Is it really worth all that money for that one wedding that I booked? And another thing is, are some of the things that you're paying on really meant to correspond to actual bookings? What I mean by that is some of my online listings are for clients, and some of them are for vendors. I stay on style, me pretty not because it actually books me weddings, but because I know other vendors see my name on there because I know people are seeing me there because it's kind of like being at the top of the game and being listed with the rest of the top of the game. It's more of a name recognition thing than it is. I need Teoh not looking at it, saying I need to book weddings from style. Me pretty But people will come to me and they'll say, Well, you shot my coworkers wedding on I really love what they did. Personal referral. That's the biggest. And then I mean, I think we saw your stuff on the blog's somewhere. And then I was doing a listing on style. Me, but looked on Stanley pretty and I saw you there, too. And then we found you found you in New York Weddings magazine. Some of it is just reinforcing what you're already doing. It's another way for clients to be like, Oh my God, that person again on some of it is to just put myself in front of vendors. So some of this paid advertising is so other vendors will see. My name's another thing to do in the down time because I've only given you one or two things to do in your down time. Exploring new blog's four submission possibilities. This one is pretty easy. Do a search, see what's new. You know what is popular this year might not be popular next year. What are people reading now? And how can you become involved with what people are reading now in a way that will drive traffic to your site? Creative inter spreadsheet. This one is a big one for me because I like data and I like seeing it all in front of me. I actually have a spreadsheet of vendors. This is something that they're working on in the mentor ship right now, too. Well, you're not working on it this week, guys. You're working on it like two weeks. Who do you want relationships with? What vendors do you want to actually build relationships with? And how are you going to pursue it? Okay, I worked with this coordinator a couple of weeks ago when she was awesome, and I want to work with her again. So how do I go about working with her again? What are my steps to building a relationship with her and steps to building a relationship are not email the vendor and ask to be put on their preferred vendors list? That's not building a relationship that's going to them with your hand out before telling them what you can do to help them. So you have to provide. You have to provide value to these people. If they're going to provide value back to you, it actually has to be a relationship. So who do you want to build these relationships with? What steps are you going to use to pursue them? Are you going offer to take them to dinner? Are you going to make them an album? Are you just going to start slow by occasionally commenting on their Facebook pages schedule in reminders to reach out to them so that a lot of time does not elapse without you doing something about it? You know, it's really easy to look up and be like, Oh my God, that vendor that I worked with six months ago, I literally haven't done anything to follow up. And now I sort of lost my window schedule in your windows. And then you also always remember your point of last contact like X Y Z coordinator. I took her to lunch. Oh, but I took her to lunch three months ago. Maybe I should reach out with an email or I e mailed her three months ago. Maybe I should reach out with an invitation to go to lunch. When you're working with a lot of different vendors, when you're trying to build a lot of different relationships, you need to keep them all in the forefront of your head so that you remember who you're talking with. When the last time you talked to them waas and what you're gonna do, then to reach out to them next, schedule ways to contact these enders. How are you going to reach out to them? You know, sometimes it's email. Sometimes it's going to their Facebook page and seeing what they're doing and commenting on it and not just cool. But oh my God, that was so beautiful. Like I love the details that you did for that wedding at Pelican Hill. They were really gorgeous. The table scapes looked wonderful. Engage Don't just click like following them on instagram and doing the same thing. Engaging with them, not just clicking like and then you have your old school, your phone calls your in person meetings. There's so many ways to interface with people now that I literally have to schedule how I'm going to interface with them or I'm going to forget another thing that you should be doing in the off season that nobody wants to dio ever. But it's super important is to protect your own work and after a certain point you lose the ability to critique your own work. For example, I think that everything that I do is terrible, and I'm not saying that so that the Internet will rally around me and say, No, you're good. No, you are good. It's because I literally think that my work is boring. I'm tired of looking at it. It all looks exactly the same to me. You lose focus on what you're doing after a while because it's yours. It's like evaluating your Children like it's impossible. It's too close to your heart. So I have people that I actually work with on critiquing my work. Jen from Sidecar Post, who edits my images for me. We have a feedback loop where she will tell me when I start phoning it in on something, or when I start relying on saving it in post too much or mistakes that I start making. She'll tell me she's like you're getting a little sloppy with your off camera flash and I'm like, Oh God, you're right, I am or you're getting a little stagnant with your posing or all of us and you're being sloppy with your light using These are things that I need to know, and they're not always things that I can tell myself. My husband and I critique each other's work, but that's actually less effective to me than having Gen critique my work because he's my husband. And if he looks at a picture of mine, he says, I don't like it. It hurts my feelings. It makes me feel pretty bad. But Jen, who is my friend, can look at it and you go, That's say, that's not good and I'm like, Yeah, you're right But if Cliff says that's not good, I say, What do you mean? It's so pretty? And I'll be like, Well, that's not good of yours. So you just You just have to be careful asking your photographer husband took her take your work. But when you're protecting your work, you should make a list of your strengths, right? And I'm not just talking about critiquing your work as in your photography work. I'm talking about critiquing your business work as well. You know, these are my strength. So when I make a list of strength, it looks a little bit like this. I can do good work for my clients in any situation, whether it's raining, whether it's knowing whether it's dark, whether it's noon, I know that I will be able to deliver. That is one of my strengths. I have impeccable turnaround times. Nothing is ever late. Ever. I had one wedding be late one time. I think it was because someone was sick, like I was sicker, generous, sick or somebody was sick. And I e mailed. The client said, It's gonna be two days late, do you mind? And they were like, Oh my God, it was fine. But I I'm not late because I have it all built in. I have my due dates built in. Everything is built in. Therefore, there's no reason to be like the products that I offer to. My clients are very high quality. That's very, very, very important to me. And I actually truly do care like I legitimately do care. Yes, this is first and foremost a business to me. I am not the feel your feelings kind of photographer. I'm not gonna be up here talking about OMG Marketing myself is my brand, and I am my brand and I love my clients. Like like Taylor Swift. Like with my whole heart. No, I'm a little more cut and dried than that. A little more business oriented did not. But I actually truly do care about the business. Are run and the customers that I work for a while. You're doing that for some people. It's easier to make a list of strengths. For me. It's way easier for me to make a list of my weaknesses than it is for me to make a list of my strength. So it's important for me to do both. What am I doing really well, and what am I doing really badly? Talking on the phone is the worst ever. Now to clarify that I'm not afraid to talk on the phone. I don't get nervous talking on the phone. I just don't like doing it. It's hilarious because my husband loves talking on the phone to clients but doesn't really like personal phone calls. I love personal phone calls. I don't like talking on the phone my clients. I just don't. There is literally no reason for it. Other than I am chemically hardwired to hate talking on the phone clients. I don't like it, so I struggle at not getting better attics. I'm good at it. But liking it, I have trouble feigning enthusiasm. When I am on my third time line phone call of the day and I am four hours into talking to people without a break. And the client says, You know what? I think we're gonna dio. I think we're gonna see each other before the ceremony so that we can do Portrait's before the ceremony. Now, listen, I know that this is exciting to them, and I know that this is the first time they've had this conversation. I have had this conversation 700 times and I'm not exaggerating. I have shot hundreds of weddings and in my head, my knee jerk kind of obnoxious reaction is okay. Of course you are right. Like, is okay. We're gonna do a first look. And you're not really gonna do a first look at your hair. And makeup's gonna run 90 minutes late on your first looked at Supposed be an hour's gonna 20 minutes and who's gonna lose? I'm gonna lose. It's like a massive spiral that goes really quickly in my head, and I have trouble being like Oh yeah, that's great because it at this time it starts to wear on you after a while and I do care. But I struggle really hard with matching the enthusiasm of my clients because I come at it with a more business like approach. My response is always like that sounds like a great idea, but it's kind of cold. I have to work on on matching the enthusiasm that they're coming to the conversation with. I wear my feelings right on my face. If I'm frustrated on a wedding day, I have a really hard time keeping it off of my face. If I am hurting cat family formals and this person to the bathroom, that person went to smoke and that kid won't look at me. And there were six people taking pictures behind my behind. I can't not look like I'm annoyed by it like I am horrible at that. That's partly why my assistant is there. She pokes me and she's like like you're doing the thing and I'm just like, Oh, yeah, yeah, okay, it's hard, and it's not that I don't care. It's that I care so much that I'm frustrated, you know? I want it to go well for them. I wanted to be perfect for them in the idiot, the bathroom in the idiot having a smoke are ruining this for the bride and groom who need to just go have a good time and I look frustrated. So that is something that I'm continually working on, and I do not suffer fools lightly. I have a hard time with people who are just I told. I mean, I, uh, I'm in a long string of weddings where the timelines have all fallen apart. And it's not my fault where hair and makeup, God bless you. Hair and makeup have run so late that everything has turned into a huge cluster, and now everybody is running around. Nobody's paying attention. Nobody is listening to the coordinator, and I just want to go outside and kicked the wall like it just makes me so angry. But I am continually working on my patients and my finally face always and again. It's not because I'm mad at these people. It's because I care so much about the day. And I wanted to be so good for my clients that I get very angry when things happen that don't make it so. So set up goals for the following year after you have figured out where you're good and where you suck. Now let's set some goals. These are my goals for the next year. These will obviously not be your goals for the next year. But I figured if we're all doing it, maybe I should share with you. So my goals for the next year I want to continue writing my books and educating photographers. That's important to me. I want to finish developing the new websites that I'm working on. I want to ramp up my portrait marketing because I have a studio now and I'm starting to branch out into glamour and boudoir, and I have been shooting for the studio. I've been shooting for my samples. I've been getting my samples in. I've been finding my vendors. I've been doing all of the things that I've been telling you to dio, but now I need to really ramp up the marketing. So that's my goal and then I need to stay the course with my current pricing. I just jump to my wedding pricing up bit and I'm nervous about it and I want to go find a computer right now and put them back where they were. That's not a very smart idea. I need to stay the course with it for a while to see if it has stuck or not. So those are my goals for the next year and if you don't have goals, what are you working towards your just kind of going along day to day goals keep me focused and spread cheese. Another thing that you should be doing as you're looking towards the next year is planning on how to educate yourself. There is literally no point in my career is a wedding photographer that I plan to stop educating myself. I think it's incredibly important. There is always something that I could be doing better. There is always something that I could be learning more of, so I have creative life classes on my calendar. I've got some classes that I have that I haven't watched yet, so I time out when we're gonna watch these, you know, whether you buy it. Whether you watch it for free, it's out there. Why would you not take advantage of it? Our research conventions and tours? Who's coming to my city? You know, Jerry, bonuses coming to Philly. I'm gonna go see if he's a good friend of mine is a super nice guy. He's also maybe a genius. So I want to go hear what he has to say. I go to conventions. I'm always learning something. Look at local groups in your area. You know, you might have a photo club that you don't know about. There might be a P p. A group in your area. There might be these get together is in these meet ups where you can not only learn things that make friends. You know, I want to see what my competition is doing. Is my competition going to a certain conference every single year that I can tell is making them better. Did my competition just goto a workshop in person that jumped up their work to another level? Well, maybe I should take a look at that. Keep an eye on social media where are people going? What are they talking about? I would have never heard about this. Click away click in Mom's conference thing in Utah That happened this past week. If I hadn't read about it on Twitter, and then you have to determine what's gonna work for you. For some people watching Creativelive works for them. For some people, they need something in person, but they don't need hands on help, right? Like so you go to a convention and you'll take a class there. Some people need hands on help, and that's the one area that I don't teach anything. I don't have any in person workshops. I can teach them well. My strength does not lie in an in person group of 20 people. I That's just not my preferred method of learning. However, I have taken in person workshops that completely changed the way I do my business. I took Zac's one light workshop, which was one day one speed light on. All of a sudden I was using a light in a way that I never had before. My husband teaches workshops out of his studio and hadn't field His name is Cliff Mountain, er m au tne RCM photography, and he teaches a course called the Lighting and Skill Set Boot Camp, and it is a three day like very immersive course where he teaches. He literally take you to a hotel room and you'll shoot. Getting ready in a hotel room, he takes you to a hotel ballroom so that you can learn flashy takes you into the park so that you can learn natural light. I don't do this. So when people come to me and they want this, I refer them to him because where did I learn 90% of what I know. It's his workshop, like humorously enough. I then went on to marry the workshop teacher, so I don't really recommend that as like a career path. For most people, it just kind of ended up being a good bonus for me. And I talk about his workshop not just because I love him, which I dio, but because it is the single best in person workshop that I have ever taken, and he taught me how to use light in a way that I had never even considered before. So there are things for you on all levels there's things that you can watch just sitting in your pajamas on the computer. There are things that you can do if you go to a convention, and then there are in person workshops when you need that riel immersive experience. Any questions so far has the Internet feel while I drink some water? The Internet is like just giving you a lots of applause for all this work because one of the things it's like that special about this master class is that these are things that you don't think about, right. It's like a nice your like that little, you know, reminder on her shoulder. That spreadsheet, because you make a lot of sense, is a lot of things that we don't think about in our day to day. And now is definitely the time of year when they're slowing down. Yeah, sort of like, you know, just do it in pieces. Yeah, like I'm saying, put it on your calendar now so that when January rolls around and you see Oh, my gosh, that whole SDO thing that I was gonna work on Oh, I've actually carved out time to do it. So the other thing that I recommend you do is to set up a social media calendar. And when I was here launching the mentor ship last Monday, I did a whole 90 minute segment on social media and it was something that I had never really talked before on I actually had so many people emailing me and tweeting me and facebooking me asking about this thing that I thought it actually bore mentioning in what I'm doing here, because in your down time is when you should be setting up something like a social media calendar. So when I'm setting this up, this is what I'm looking to dio, How often in my posting to all of my different social media channels on I'm looking at Facebook. I'm looking at Twitter. I'm looking at Instagram and I'm looking at Google plus sort of as an afterthought, but those are my four biggies is awake. No Facebook, Twitter, instagram, Pinteresque. So I got really excited and Google plus Google Plus is like kind of down there somewhere. But I have a scheme for how often I'm posting to each of these things so that I make sure that I'm not posting too much to one thing and not enough to another thing or I'm tweeting six times a day. But I haven't Facebooked in two weeks. I want to make sure that I know what I'm doing. Like my goal is to educational Facebook posts a week, one post per week of images. Things like that, and you need to find out in your own arena of social media what works for you. You need to know where you're posting. Which social media channels are you going to utilize? How often are you following and liking other people? Right? And one thing that I don't dio on Facebook is I don't like other people's photography pages on Pinterest. I don't pin other people's photography work because I don't want to give any perspective client a reason to come to my site and leave it for someone else's. I don't want you to come to Facebook and realize that I liked some other photographers page and then go higher them instead. That's not kind of where I'm going with that. So I follow other photographers on Twitter and Instagram, and that's how I engage with them. And when I'm talking about following and liking, I also in talking about engaging. So every time I go out and shoot a wedding, I look at all of the vendors from the wedding that I've worked with, and I go and find them on all of the social media channels Facebook, instagram, Pinteresque, all of those, and I follow them. That then gives me my end to start engaging with them. So on my social media calendar, I actually have written in Go Engage with two businesses on Facebook this week, which means go find their page and do something other than click like on a picture. Go post something for them. Go given end up compliment on something. But what makes social media so amazing is your ability to engage while sitting in your pajamas at three o'clock in the morning. So get out there and talk to people. Don't just go click like start up dialogue. So starting our way through the social media channels, let's talk about Facebook so Facebook. The more you interact with someone's business page, the more you stay at the top of the news feed, right? So if I like creative Live on, all I ever did was go to creative lives page and click like and then I walk away. They're not gonna pop up in my news feed all that often. But if I'm in there and I'm liking things and I'm commenting on their posts and I'm engaging with them, then they're gonna pop up in my newsfeed more often. That's kind of important. So you want to do things on your Facebook page that will encourage people to engage with you, not just come and click, like on your pretty pictures. I Post tips tricks and hence I post things for photographers. I post things for clients. I want a reason for people to be commenting and engaging right. Part of the reason for that is because I want to become a valuable resource. I want we need his time for someone to buy an educational thing from a photographer or to take a class on Creative Live from a photographer or to hire a photographer for their wedding. I want them to remember me because I have proven myself to be an educational resource first and foremost right, And another thing is that fans aren't dumped. We all know that we all have business pages, not out of the goodness of our hearts, but two promoter freaking businesses. That's the point of it. I'm not a volunteer service here, like I want to sell wedding photography to people, for which I want them to give me money for it. However, I don't just want to start up Susan's Facebook page and give me money because that's a little in your face. Although honest, I want to be a valuable resource for people so that when it is time for them to buy, they remember me. So top five Great getting ready locations in my area. Tell me how your wedding plans are going this week. Think of posts that you can make on your Facebook page that will encourage people to engage with you and then know what you plan to post. So I want to make sure that if I'm going to do a top five list, I don't want to three of them this week and then nothing else for another six weeks. So I have sort of a scheme, and if you actually look at my business Facebook page, you'll see you'll be like, OK, about once a week, she post images and then once a week, she posts kind of something just chatty. Like, What are you up to today? What are you working on today? And then once a week, she tries to sell me something. But then once a week, she gives me a tip that super helpful. So there is a reason for people to keep coming back and not just to be sold to in their face all the time. Twitter, I don't I thought I mean, I apparently I'm getting old right thing. About five years ago, I thought that Twitter was awesome. And now I just think that twitter kind of new shut up. But it's important, and you can't ignore it. So whether I do or do not like a certain type of social media, that doesn't mean that I can ignore it, because it is all important. So, Twitter, I do not use my twitter and a potent post directly to my Facebook page. Why do I do that? Well, if I'm posting the same things on Twitter that I'm posting on my Facebook page, why would you follow both of them? That wouldn't make any sense. I used Twitter to engage in interact and start dialogue just like I do on Facebook. But with only 140 characters, Twitter's more random right, like Twitter is the place that I'm gonna go post about. The shoes I bought are not posting that on my business. Facebook page. If I'm looking at ways for people to get to know me a little bit better, Facebook is a little more business oriented. Twitter is Maura, blah, blah, blah, blah, chit chat and Instagram is Here is my cat and my kids. I mean, I don't have a cat, but if I did like, it's goofy personal pictures of my life. We're talking about instagram in a little bit, but Twitter is more random stream of consciousness, you know, a little bit more inside my head. It's a lot of business, but it's a little bit more of getting to know the person behind the actual business. So that's why I use Twitter for now. My new baby, which is Pinterest. And when we're talking about Pinterest, we're not talking about Pinterest in the way that our clients violently abused, Interested where they go, pin bridal portrait's and send them all to you and say that they want you to shoot all of them just like those in five minutes on their wedding day. That's not the Pinterest I'm talking about. I don't even look at that part of Pinteresque. I use Pinterest for my business. When I go to Pinterest, I'm not trolling around through Pinterest to find other people stuff to pen. I actually only pin my work on Pinteresque, tell you how I do it. Let me tell you what it's done for me. So again, I'm using Pinterest to educate, to inform and to share, which is a lot of how I'm using Facebook. And it's a lot of how I'm using Twitter. It's the same over our king thing that I'm using for all different social media challenges. Media challenges, which they are social media platforms, educate, inform, share the subliminal subtext. All of that is cell because we are all trying to sell our businesses whatever they are. But you can't just come out and tweet every single day. L o l hire me for your wedding photography that people are gonna follow you. If that's all you tweet. So for Pinterest, I'm looking to educate, Inform and share. I've been speaking engagements right, Like you can pin other things other than your pictures. So I went to creative lives. Page and I pinned my teaching course. I penned my blawg post about my teaching course. Why not? Right? I penned by YouTube channel so that when I put eventual other videos up on my YouTube channel, people will be able to see that from Pinterest and lead them right over there. The next thing I need to do is depend my press page. Every single picture on my press page will get pinned. I pin outfit ideas and I pin portrait locations, and I try to be a helpful resource. So this helps me in about 30,000 different ways, right? First of all, if a client says, you know, we're trying to figure out what to wear for our engagement session, we're not really sure. Well, might I suggest you come take a look at my engagement session pin board, and it is a place where I've got, you know, a couple dozen pictures of what people wore at their engagement sessions. It's a great resource. We can't really figure out where we should take our pictures in Philly for our portrait on our wedding day. Well, might you come over and take a look at my Philadelphia Weddings Portrait location? Pin board, Right. Like different things that I find that clients need. I've created boards for that. What this does for me, Number one. I'm a helpful resource, which is something that I'm always striving to be. Number two, every single image in my portfolio and every single image on my blog's pinned to Pinterest. What does that do? That means that out there on the Internet, there is one link back, every single page on my website. If we're talking about helping with S E O, you want sites that link to you, right? That's a very important thing. You need multiple different sites that are pushing traffic back to your site. I've got 249 links posting pushing you back to my portfolio. That's just on Pinterest. So this is how I use it. I create specialty boards. This is my Pinterest. I actually put this slide up here. A week ago, I had 13,000 followers. I now have 18,000 followers. I have done nothing to promote it other than what I'm doing here. So, first of all, I have my portfolio. This was mid pinning, so there's only 179 pins in there. And then every single venue that I work out a lot has a specialty board weddings at the Bowery Hotel every time I shoot there and I blawg ah, wedding that was shot. There we go pin every single picture from that vlog post to that board. Over time, as you work at the venue over and over and over again, you'll see that there are 71 pins there. What I'm hoping is that a perspective client who's looking for info on their wedding at the Bowery Hotel will go type in Bowery Hotel Wedding in Pinterest and Boom. They'll find my board and therefore they'll find me, and I'm noticing that more and more over the past couple of months, this is driving a lot of traffic to my site, and it's turning into enquiries. So above and beyond these specialty boards, I also have ones that you can't see here, where I have a board that's called wedding moments. Wedding cakes, wedding rings, wedding shoes, what have I done there? I am now an amazing resource off lots of pictures of wedding rings that all point back to my site. Right. So when we blawg, we go through the blawg, weep in every single picture to whatever venue it is. And then we go back through the blawg post and we pin the pictures one at a time, to specialty boards. So if I start off with a ring shot, the ring shot first goes under weddings at the Bowery Hotel, then it goes under wedding rings. Right? So now I have to ling's back to that exact thing, and I'm not pinning other photographers works. I want you to see what other people have done at the Bowery Hotel. I want only see mine. So I literally go to pinteresque dot com. I click on my name in the corner, and this is where I use Pinterest. I don't actually use it to search for stuff, because when I do, it starts making me feel like a really bad mom because everybody on Pinterest has a better life than Ideo. So I just try. I just try to not look at it. So that is how I use Pinterest for business. It is pushing Aton of traffic to my site. It also legitimises me to clients when they go look and they see that I have 18,000 followers on Pinterest. I look cool, right? Clients like that. And now it is another way that I could be resourceful and helpful to my clients working our way through social media. Instagram will take some social media questions when I'm done with this Now I use Instagram. I only post IPhone pictures. I don't post my professional work. I feel like the strength of Instagram is to show people what I could do with my phone, Not what I can do with my camera. Upload to my computer, put on my phone and then put on Instagram. Do you want to see what I could do with my camera? You go to my website. If you want to see that I am a good enough photographer that I can continue to make amazing pictures with my freaking IPhone. Come see my instagram. I tag other vendors and professionals. I try to make sure it almost every wedding I shoot to take a picture of something right like the cake, the flowers, the ring shot, the whatever. And then I tag every other vendor that I'm working with. I also use it to let people get to know me a little bit. You want to know what my kids look like? Go to town. We had a hashtag for our wedding when we got married 18 months ago. It's still out there hashtag Susan loves Cliff. You can see all of the pictures that my friends uploaded on Instagram that day of our wedding. It lets clients get to know you a little bit more. Let's see a little bit into your life. It puts a person behind the business name, and I think that's kind of important. And I also have started recently using it for contests and promotions. Right When this business and marketing workbook came out last week, I had a, um, repost to win it contest. So everybody else who reposted that picture and then Hashtags Susan Stripling workbook had a chance to win it. Well, what did that do for me that put my my instagram post out to everyone who followed those people? And then a couple of people got a free book. So next week I'm gonna do a pin it to win it right. I'm gonna make something that I pinned on Pinterest. And if you repent it, you have a chance to win the book that's gonna put my pen on a whole bunch Pinterest pages. No, I'm not saying you have to do this to sort of photographers and saying you could do this to Celtic clients, right? Repost to win a free mini engagement session. Well, when your clients repost to repent, they've sent it to every single person that they have following them. And if they post their instagram to Facebook, that just sent it to all of their Facebook friends too. So any questions about any of the social media things that I have talked about? A couple things Haynes video would like to know. Do you personally do all the social media work yourself or do you have an assistant? I do all of my blogging facebooking and tweeting myself. I do all of my own Instagram. My assistant does my Pinterest terrific And ah, Judy Jackson would like to know if you did use Pinterest for personal use. Do you suggest having two separate accounts. One for personal and professional. I do. I don't have to separate accounts, cause I just don't use Pinterest for personal That I have, like, three hidden boards. One is called Your house is better than my house, which is for in, like, interior design stuff. One is for it. Stuff I found on the Internet, which is just random stuff, and one is called recipes I'll never cook, so you can see how often I actually used the so yeah, I don't My clients don't need to see that level of my life in it. Sadly, is just not that interesting. So I keep them a secret boards. But if I penned more, I would have a business board. Might have a personal board. Thank you. Smile. And it may. So I'm guessing you're good. All right, Another thing that you should be doing as you are looking at social media and you're working on your website. You should be reading your analytics. Okay. I use Google Analytics. This tells me a lot of things. It tells me how long people are staying on my website. It tells me what pages they're coming in on and what pages they're leaving on. It tells me where they're finding me. Are they coming from Facebook? But I know that I'm getting tons of traffic from Pinter rest because it's telling me, right? Like, I want to know where people are finding me from and once they find me, how long are they staying on my site? Right, These are important things to know. And I was able to retract my, uh, analytics within the first couple of weeks of my new website being live, and we realized that people were actually staying on my site somewhere between 25 30% longer than before. And that's a major thing, right? Like it's a big deal to retain somebody for an extra 90 seconds on your site. This is a big deal, So I want to know these things. If you didn't know your Pinterest have analytics, right? You go to your Pinterest pages, got the little gear kind of under your information. If you click on that, there's a drop down for your analytics. You can see how many new people are following you this week. What are people repainting the most? What are people looking at The most, so you can see what people are engaging with on your website or on your Pinterest page. Facebook also has analytics. Does anybody look at your Facebook insights? Anybody good, good, good people? Not not. Not again. If you look underneath kind of your header on Facebook, you've got those three little dots. If you click on those three little dots, one of your drop downs is in sight on what the insights are going to tell you is how many new people are liking you this week. And how are people engaging with you on Facebook this week? Right. For example, I can tell you right now that when I posted about my new website ah, lot of people looked at it like a ton of people looked at it, but not a lot of people engaged with it. Now, when I posted a picture of my kids at the beach, not a lot of people looked at it, but more people engaged with it. So this is helpful for me to know what are people engaging with what are people responding to? What are people looking at and walking away from having all of that knowledge in front of me just helps me understand where I need to continue going as I develop my social media kind of strategies, right. Another thing that I recommend you dio is keep an eye on your competition. Now, I am not telling you to go create a fake email address and secret shop your competition because that is sleazy and that's not cool. But when I'm talking about keeping an eye on your competition, I want to know how I'm sizing up with them and you know, you know who you're losing weddings to. You know who your competition is, even if it's friendly. Like I know that my husband is my competition. We don't run the thing business. We will never run the same business. I would like to stay married to him. I love him very much, and I love him so much that we will never go in business together because we will kill each other. I don't want to do that, so I know that my husband's my competition. I know what he does better than I dio. I'm not an idiot. I know that there are things that I do better than him and I know that there are things that he does better than Ideo. I know that people that I lose weddings to in New York do things better than I do. Some of them dio. But then they lose weddings to me, too, right? Sometimes the client will be looking at Cliff I. And then we'll hire me because they're like, We really like your whatever, whatever, Whatever. And usually it's something like We like your detail worker. We think you're more artistic, but then people will hire a cliff and they'll be like, We think you're more artistic. Well, there's not a whole lot that I could do with that information. That's personal preference. But if I realized that I'm constantly losing weddings to somebody who does outdoor who do outdoor portrait's better than Ideo. I know that I need to ramp up my outdoor portrait efforts, or I need to know that I am better than other people. It off camera flash, which means that I just need to continue developing that because I need to stay on top. I want to know where my competition is advertising, and I want to know where they're working, and it's not that hard get on the Internet and start Googling. You know, if I know that every year I lose, you know, a handful of weddings to Marcus Studios in New York. Brian and Andy Marcus, they work. Ah, lot of the high end weddings and I lose weddings to them. I do. I have no problems admitting that. And I know what they're doing. This better than I am. I know where they're working. You know what I mean? Like I I am very eyes on with my competition. That doesn't mean that we're in like some, you know, battle royal blood bath to the end. We're all friends here. We really are. But I want to know if I'm falling down in some area or if I'm ignoring a place that I should be interfacing with or an advertising channel that's working really well for them. I want to know what they're doing. If you think that I don't buy Wedding New York Wedding magazine every single year to see who now downgraded their full page ad to 1/2 page ad. I know I know who's been in there for five years and who suddenly isn't in there anymore. you know what I mean? I'm keeping an eye on all of these things. It's like if you do bridal fairs, if there's someone who has been doing a bridal fair for 10 years and all of a sudden there, not there anymore, are they there because they don't need it anymore? They there because they kind of having a hard year and can't afford it. I want to know these things, right? Yes, we are all friends out there, but I want your weddings right, Like the only person that I am not actively trying to get on top of in the wedding booking arena right now is my husband. Like when it comes down to he or I do this, whoever you pick, you're in good hands. Either way, it's We're keeping it all in the family. It's fine. But somebody else, man, I want to know how I can take every single one of those weddings that hired market studios instead of me and get them to hire me instead of them. So I'm trying to put them out of business. I think they're great guys who do great work, who service a market that I do not, but is there something that I could leverage to help me out a little bit? I want to know these things. We talked about this a little bit before I alluded to it, but I want to circle back around to it again, tracking your enquiries. You know, this is so important to me that bears repeating twice Who or what is referring each inquiry to me. How are these people finding me? Why aren't they booking me? How far out from the wedding are they enquiring with me. And what else did you track? I can't tell you that. You know, maybe you were tracking certain types of success for your own business. Maybe you're trying to figure out if bridal fairs air working for you. Maybe you're trying to figure out how many enquiries did I get this month versus last month Because you're trying to evaluate whether you're CEO is actually bringing in more people to your site or not. Some of these are things that you need to know. And some of these are things that you need to determine yourself based on your own business, your own demographics, your own geographical area and the data points that you're trying to study. Review all historical data again. I alluded to this briefly when I talked about looking at your fiscal year last year, year before year before that to see how you're doing. But I want to review my historical data for things. Just a simple is how many weddings do I have booked? For example, I told you I have spreadsheets. I did not make this up. So I want to know how many weddings I have booked at every point in time during the year and how they correspond to last year. So after a client books, may I immediately go dump their information into this spreadsheet that's in my Google drive. So I can tell you that right now. On January 17th of this year, I had 31 weddings for this year and nothing for the next year. Cool, I also, if you school all the way down the bottom, there are tabs. That's a 13 12 6011. So I could go back and I could be like, Man, I really didn't start booking for next year until, like towards the end of January and it did. It was really slow, but March was really busy. Was that what it was like last year? Well, I can click over there and look. Last year I had a terrible, terrible period of eight weeks, right and book a single wedding. Not one what it was like Apocalypse time in my house. I was like, It's all over. This is it. The run is over. No one's ever gonna hire me again. And then I went back and looked at years prior, and I'm like, Oh, it's always kind of slow at this time of year, like August is always slow. Everyone's out of town. Everyone's gearing up for the holidays. Everyone is vacationing. It's too hot to think straight. Um, so every year I've had a bad booking year in August. This last year was just a little bit longer than normal. This year in Find, this year is back to normal, so I want to see trends right and analyzing this historical data from year after year. I know that when I am dead slow in January and in January, I'm mostly still booking for this year, not next year. I know not to freak out about next year. I know not to freak out about next year until September 1st, I need to book 20 Weddings by September 1st. That's what I know. My husband has basically the same data points because we track our data in the same way I'm a little more obsessive about it. I'm a little more obsessive in general about it. My office is full of spreadsheets and calculators. It's sort of depressing, but I want to know. I want to know when it's freak out time when it's quiet time how things historically go. So it's important for me to track this type of information. Another thing that I'm doing These are all things I'm doing in my down time at the beginning of the year is review your contract, right? Your wedding contract, the one that you send out to everyone when they book you. Every year I take a look at it and I see if there's something that I need to add to that contract. Like in the past year, I put in a clause, and it has this next bullet point. What are new issues that you're facing? How many of you have D J. Is that now all of a sudden there showing up with what my assistant and I like to call Rupert flights? Yep, I got one eye roll immediately. Someone looks really traumatised. It's where they show up, and they think that you were in a Miami nightclub on New Year's Eve and they've got strobe lights and they have got flashing lights and they've got smoke machines and they've got their entertainment package, right. I hate their entertainment package. I hate it with every fiber of my being, because how do you expose for something like that? You can either overpower it with your flash, and then you have no ambient light or you have ambient light. And then when the light hits you, you're like 16 stops wrong. It's just a nightmare out there. It's tough, and weddings are hard enough without having to supersede the Woop Woop party about slight. So I actually put a clause in my contract that my husband suggested on I adopted it, which basically says I am not responsible for missed moments during your reception due to any entertainment lighting any of your other vendors provide. Now, I don't just invent this and write it into my contract. I mean, I invented I write it into my contract, and I have a lawyer. Look at it because I want to make sure that I did not just invent something that I put in my contract that is not actually legally enforceable, right? Like I could put in my contract that my clients have to pay me in tiny jumping baby goats. And my attorney will be like, Wow, that's really dumb, right? Like so you want to make sure that anything that you do legally, you have checked over by somebody legally smarter than you are? I actually got my contracts, and I get all of my contracts boudoir assistant, stuff like that. Anything The night in a contract from the law talk dot com. Rachel bring Key. She's actually taught a course here on creative lives. She is an incredibly brilliant woman because she is a photographer. She is also a Bard attorney. She is actually a lawyer. She doesn't just make this stuff up. So I buy my contract from Rachel. I tweak them to fit my needs, and then I have my attorney Look at them on. I look at my contracts every single year. Always Because I want to make sure that if I wasn't traveling the year before and now all of a sudden I'm traveling. Do I have a clause in my contract that protects me in case something happens to you when I'm traveling? What if my flight is cancelled? What if there's a hurricane? You get these things every single year that you decide you want to build into your contract. You can't just invent them. You need to have an attorney. Actually, look at it and make sure that you can do it. Review your whole workflow, the whole thing from start to finish. Where are you? The slowest, right, if you are going to. Honestly, if I could tell you to do one thing before starting next year, it would be to review your workflow, because if you can determine what you are, slowest at and fix those things before the year begins, you're gonna be faster when you actually start working. What are you doing? This archaic. Maybe if you haven't reviewed your workflow and you're doing the same work flow year after a year, maybe you've gotta step in there that's redundant or a little old school or can be done now about 300 times faster. By keeping your eyes out for what's happening right now, how can you be faster and more important to me? How can you work more efficiently? Maybe it is buying a set of X keys and programming them so that you can tap tap, tap your way through your actions. May be it is taking the time to build more presets and more brushes and light room so that you're using the things we talked about it before. Things you can automate. Take a hard look at your workflow and figure out where you can speed things up and your downtime is when you can actually learn how to do the things that will speed you up. Maybe you determine that what you really need to do during your downtime is go take a workflow workshop, do it and then when you really get busy, then when busy season really kicks in, then you're ready for it. Another thing you should do is review your employees. I love my assistant Spin with me for six years. I hope that she worked with me for the remainder of the time that I'm in business. For those of you who watched the 30 days of wedding photography, you got to meet her because I brought her here and forced her on air in front of all of you. She is a wonderful human being, but that doesn't mean that every year she and I don't sit down together and review her. And now that we've been doing it for six years, it's a dialogue. It's not just me having an employee review, but we figure out like, Hey, Sandra, what's working right? Like, what is working with what we're doing? Is there anything that I could do to make your job easier? Is there anything you could do to make my job easier? Is there anything we're not as efficient at that. I thought we were efficient at, but maybe we're kind of stinking at, and now our review process is back and forth. She'll tell me, Hey, Susan, listen, if you do these things, it will make my job easier and I say OK, and if you do these things, that will make my job easier. It's a very collaborative thing, but if you have other employees working for you and by employees. I also mean anybody that you outsource to take a hard look at them, just like you would review employees for any other type of job who's working and who isn't. You know, maybe it's time to let somebody go and find somebody new. That's a hard thing to determine. And if you aren't doing these employee reviews, you're not going to know. Can you give your employees more responsibility? Over the years, the thing that's things that Sandra has done for me at weddings, her responsibility has increased. She also now has studio responsibilities. She's doing Pinterest for me. She's doing advertising for me. Uh, when she doing albums for me. When anybody buys a printed think book or a printed case, studies or pre orders the the marketing workbook in printed form, she's the one that ships them, so she's taking on more and more responsibilities as she proves herself more invaluable. And should you consider a change, maybe you don't have an employee, and maybe now it's time you need one. You know, maybe An and Jen and I from sidecar talk about this a lot. There will be a tipping point for me without sourcing, there will be a point where and I am paying Maurin outsourcing that I would pay a pull to full time employees for the year and on Lee. You know where that point ISS, right? Like if I sit down and I look at what it would cost me to hire a full time employees for the year and then I look at what I'm paying sidecar post for the year, if it would make more sense for me to hire an employee to teach to do all of these things, then that's what I'm going to do in your downtime. Also, look for ways to diversify. I'm very afraid of putting all of my eggs in one basket if all I do is make money off of wedding photography. If I have a bad year with wedding photography, I'm in trouble. But if I have multiple sources of income, then I'm going to be fine because I know that if I have a badger with weddings, maybe I have an OK year with Portrait's. So what I dio I do. I'm starting to ramp up portrait. I'm thinking about maybe commercial work. I don't necessarily know if that's the direction I want to go, but it's out there. If I want to explore it on, I also teach, right. I consider passive income ideas. I write books, and when I write these books, they are first delivered in digital form. That is passive income for me, because when I'm done writing the book and I uploaded to the platform that I sell from when someone buys the book, they get an automatic link to download it. So I put the book up and I stepped back. And I know that it is out there automating itself for me with a system that I trust. I have Sandra who ships the books for me so I don't have to worry about Oh, my God. I'm in Seattle for a whole week. Somebody bought a book. How am I going to ship it? I have someone who is doing it for me. So this is passive income that you can put out there, and it will continue to generate funds for you. Maybe you right. Maybe you're a portrait photographer and you write a guide for you know when you're not gonna hire a photographer. How do you take better pictures of your kids with your IPhone and you sell it for $9 and you put it on your site and you automate the download Every time anybody buys that from you, you don't have to do anything. It's passive income. So I think that's a very important thing to look at it when I'm also looking towards the future when I'm looking towards retirement when I'm looking towards slowing down. What are things that I can put out there that will provide value in my community that I don't have to be actively in packaging up and handing out every single time? Right and I don't write books. Teoh get a quick cash grab from photographers. All write books because I see a niche in the educational market that is not being met by something else. And if it's not being met by somebody else and I can meet it, why wouldn't I do that? That would be foolish. And how can your current customers help you? So let's say what I mean by that is let's say that you're a wedding photographer. The next thing you know, all of your wedding clients are having babies. Maybe you start doing maternity. Maybe you started in babies. Maybe starting families. You know, look at what your customers do and see if there is something else that you can do to serve them. Maybe realize that a lot of your customers are CEOs your own businesses. Well, if you do head shots, certainly don't they need pictures for their business websites? How can you continue to meet the needs of the customers that you have started serving in a different arena? That's very important to me. I have started transitioning into a little boudoir and a little glamour, partly because I started watching soup rice on Creativelive. And she's brilliant and her 28 days is genius, and it has taught me so much that I did not know. Partly because I see that some of my clients are showing up in gifting their husbands with boudoir albums, and I didn't take them well, why don't I offer that right? It's partly why I bought a photo booth is because they were showing up with photo booths from different companies, and I'm like I could do that. So look at what your other client. Look at what your clients are doing both personally and professionally. Look at what they have needs for photographically and see if there's anything that you can diversify within your business to meet those needs. And then the last and foremost, most important tip that I can give you after you've done all of these things is to get off the computer and go live your life, your friends or not on Facebook. Your friends are out in the actual breathing living world. And if you have automated things, if you have gotten your workflow down, if you have done all of these things, then at the end of the day you can successfully put your computer to sleep. Close the door, go out and hug your partner, spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend, cat, dog, child, whatever and actually have a life that doesn't have anything to do with your work. I do things in my personal life that have nothing to do with photography. Actually, when I'm not shooting weddings, the last thing in the world I want to do is take pictures. I'm not the photographer that takes a camera. Everywhere I go, I like to read and I like to spend time with my husband. He's awesome, and I like to hang out with my kids and I like to walk around my neighborhood and I like to badly try to figure out how to cook things. And if I couldn't walk away from my business, you know, I wanted to be like the 9 to 5 that at the end of the day, I leave it and I don't think about it. And all of these other 49 tips and tricks are just things to enable me to do that. So, for God's sakes, I say Go get a life And I mean it in the absolute sweetest kind of way possible, because I don't want to see you guys in six months with tears in your eyes because you're miserable and you haven't left the house and you're wearing the same yoga pants that you born for the past 22 days. You know you do it. I do it too. So please, please, you know, get a life and I mean that lovingly. If you need to find me, I'm on the Internet all over the place. Susan stripling dot com Literally, anything that you need to find me on is listed as Susan Stripling twitter dot com slash Susan Stripling instagram Susan Stripling There's a consistent pattern here, and there is if I said anything that has resonated with you and you want more, I've got books you can go by. You don't have to, but they're there if you need them. And if you want more of me shoving spreadsheets at you and then critiquing your images and what not, we have the mentorship program, which is still going on. So it's all creativelive all the time around here. So questions, you know we've got we've got a few more minutes. If there's anything that I can help you with or help the Internet at large with you all have been smiling so sweetly at me for two segments, So I enjoy this mostly nodding. Nobody's fallen asleep, which is good. Any questions about anything or Yes, ma'am, with your Facebook posts are using the automated posting where you can actually set the timing for as to when it posts. I'm not, but that doesn't mean that I won't write like I kind of use hoot suite for some of that just to sort of look at all of it. And with whom sweet, you can schedule posts. I don't because I'm able to stay on top of it. But if I reach a point where and I can't stay on top of it, that will be my next step, which will be still doing it myself, but automating it so that they go out at certain times. My next step after that would be to just have somebody else do it for me. But I just don't I don't I don't want somebody else to do it for me, right? Like I want to talk in my own voice all the time, so I don't automate it. But I know a lot of people who do, and it works great. But if that's how you if that's how you come about it yeah, My second question has to do with posting photos through Facebook. Um, do you always post him as a status with a photo attached or you posting them as a photo? Because I've found that, um, the visibility is less if you post as a photo. And when you go as a status that the numbers go up So what you said Okay, Yeah. I mean, I usually do a status with a photo attached or I'll do an album, but I'm actually about to transition away from doing albums because people are going and finding these albums on Facebook and never going to my page. So what I'm gonna do now is just post a status with a picture attached and then push people over to the blawg post to Seymour to try to get people onto my site and off of my Facebook. So But you are right that if you posted as a photo, it is definitely seen less than if you posted as a status with photo attached. It makes no sense. Facebook's ridiculous, but that is how it is. Sophia, I see what you see. Yes, ma'am, I have a question about contracts. A friend of mine just went to a wedding and he said, and he's a photographer as well, and he said that he wasn't even gonna bring his camera because the photographer had a contract. No photos at all. No IPhone, no nothing. And that seems that seems almost it unfair to the guests. That awful right, like that's awful I mean, I could never imagine doing anything like that to anybody. If the clients choose to have an unplugged wedding, that's great. But what am I gonna do? Even if I have a contract like that with clients, sign it. They can't sign away what their guests are going to do. And then what am I gonna do during the ceremony? Go like smacks, muddies IPad out of their hand and be like, You can't do that. That's crazy down like I could never imagine. Would you consider asking that the deejay not have the strobe blood? I absolutely can't do that because my clients pay for it. A lot of times it's an engagement. It's an entertainment package upgrade, and they've paid for it. The only thing that I can do is continue to try to educate the clients as to what's gonna happen if they do that right. But that's a really hard one. I don't want to take pictures from other people's weddings and be like Ella. Well, it looks like crab, because that's super rude. So I'm constantly in my head trying to craft a blawg post that's like, you know, the missive entertainment lighting you know the myth versus the reality, but figure out in a way to do it. That doesn't hurt any clients feelings about their wedding and doesn't hurt anybody's feelings about like doesn't make any deejay really mad at me. There are two entertainment companies out of New York that I have a very hard time working with because they're so aggressive and hostile and nasty about it and not helpful. But what am I gonna do? You know, tell the client I'm not gonna do your wedding anymore because you hired this guy who's kind of a jerk kiss. You just have to work back on that weakness thing about the emotions on the face thing and just, huh? And just keep on going. So, you know, there are some I would love to have lots of things in my contract that I can't have in my contract. Like thou shalt always be on time and D I would love to have a contract that says, you know, your makeup artist will always be 90 minutes late. Like please, seriously, listen to me when I say that they will. But there, you know, there's only so much that you can dio. So, yes, there are guests with IPhones and there's the deed is got the fog machine on. All I can do is rise above and try Cuba happy face, which I think that