Lessons

Lesson Info

Automated Functions

I didn't want to touch on a few things from yesterday, and actually, jim just reminded me, I just want to know what you guys know, that we're not you know, I'm teaching how to do these things, but doesn't mean that I do it all at once. I didn't learn how to do it all at once has taken me years, so don't feel overwhelmed start one bite at a time, we're going to go over how to do that, and just because you implement all this doesn't mean you're not still have hard times and trying to find out balanced life happens, I think that's the most important part, I didn't want to go over for yesterday stuff just a little bit here in one second, but just as a reminder for the online audience, these are the ways that you can get contact with me all my social media, I am everywhere, it's a pretty much racial bronchi across the board. I don't think there are any others with that name out there and, as always, legal disclaimer, because I'm gonna throw it a little bit more of legal stuff when we start ...

talk about outsourcing and networking and what you can dio but to make sure everything's college it always check with your local state laws because there may be specific things, but I could still try answer general questions and the informational provide will really give you a good foundation so if you are going to move forward to talk to someone locally you're not going to go in completely overwhelms and confused but before we head into today I just kind of wanted to go over a few things that just emphasize aa few things I did when we're talking about the office hours and scheduling yesterday I failed to mention that a lot of when I schedule everything we looked at that we put it started with the family stuff when we moved to the business for the clients that I have in the door as soon as I book them is when I start scheduling out everything and those are pretty much the tools that were going to do today so the second that I have the retainer and I have their contract and gone through that checklist that we're gonna expand on a little bit more the client checklist to get booked right then is when I go ahead and carve the time off the schedule because if it's not on they're probably not gonna remember it when I get someone else that comes in the door calls me on the phone and I pull it up so right then I go ahead and put it on immediately because if it's not there it's not going to get done my husband my kids don't know it not to plan something there well, um, and I already said, balance, it's, always a consistent thing, depends on what's going on in life, and I think that's pretty much it. I just want to clarify that today wouldn't talk a little bit more about automating the functions. This is more of the efficiency aspects that you need to tools to put into the business in order to lead us into the client management section that's next. So this is the more of the gaining the information, how to get it, and then we're gonna move in, how actually use it so that it maximizes your time and money, accomplishments, the automation set up, they only come. In the end, you're not may not necessarily see a benefit right away, but it's putting this all out front so that in the end, you're going tohave saved time and consistent. See, the very first thing that I want to start with is the having automatic payments. I think that now the day and age we have so many automated functions on our hands and there's, many things that don't require us to be hands on taking payment is relatively emotionless. We'll know. Hey, I got an emotion of happy is someone's paying me? And they may not be that, you know, they may be emotionally connected to their money, but it's not a key emotional aspect of the client relationship, so if I can automate the contracts and the payments and everything, this is what I need to d'oh, um, and the same goes for women sharing and backups, and we're going to go through email filtering as well. This is rounding out that one page client checklist that they have to go through to get booked and have all the processes right there in front of them and states me times I don't have to reiterate it and remember what they have to dio so the retainers is remitted at booking. This is when I have the client checklist, that page hidden on my website, and I have my little note at the top. Yeah, yeah, why did you want to book their only getting that leak when they really expressed that they actually want to book? This is not initial inquiry because they're going to get scared at the payment in the contract stuff. Off the top. So we have my little personal note there, and it tells them they need to go through the checklist one, two, three just like that. And one of the first things is that they have to pay. Well, how do I want to do this? I could go the czech method, but I'm gonna have to wait for the check to come in the mail. I'm going tio even deposit by phone now, but if you do, if your bank doesn't have that option, you're going to drive down their deposit it wait for it to clear potential of the balance check, then you have to go back to the client. I don't have time for all that and personally, I think for me as a client, I don't want to have to write a check sent it out to you probably don't even have checks to do it s o four payments and another reason for that. It also help to keep everything all payments in one place for me. So I try to stick with one payment processor as much as possible. There's papal stripe authorized dot net that you can embed right into the page and or have a button toe linked to the external I want to try to keep it. In as much as possible into that one checklist page they don't have to leave I'm tryingto avoid like what the contracts I don't want them to go out to sign now or somewhere else I want to keep them in that one corner of much of the web my little corner and so the very first thing for the payments is to have that button or the processor embedded I personally have been using paypal and paint all payments pro that allows the credit card information to be right there or they can use their paypal account so they don't require to have one on the other. The other options are striped I don't not for sure that in beds but has a really cool for the iphone into swipes it sends the receipt to them right away that's if you're mostly doing weddings and you're in person and that's when you're doing the bookings that's fabulous saying you even still you could use an embedded processor because you could take your laptop or your tablet and passed it to them in your own person consultation flick, weddings and stuff but overall the majority of my clients will be on the phone with me feeling this out and they're all gonna be able to do it right there from there then I am notified a payment they're notified a payment the invoices taken care of and they can move on to check klis too where is that? They had to sit there in range payment asked me how to make payment then we have to wait for the check and then go back and see how they do in the contract and have they done all this? They can do all of this in a matter of seconds. We have the payment and they were going to have the contract are the client guy because we want them to look at everything and ask the questions, what collection do you want to look at? And then we also want to have the contract they could literally do all this and about three minutes in their booked and I can just go boom, boom, boom! It all notifies that comes directly to me in my in box, because not until I have all that then do I put them on the calendar and more likely we're going to do it all in one sitting, and if they haven't, I knows that comes to the inbox I could say, hey, you didn't let me know which collection one I'm really interested. I want to make sure we're on the same page and it's really easy because I set the notifications to come directly to me, we're going to talk about e mails so that it doesn't all get lost in the shuffle here in a minute. Another thing, too, to keep in mind though if they are not submitting their payment information. If you're taking credit cards and you're doing an authorization form, you don't just want to take the credit card information I mean I'm not going to randomly right my credit card information I slip of paper and give it to you professionals we need toe have that actual agreement that they're giving the authorization to charge the card and this is really important also when it comes to weddings or payment plans, which is the next one, if you're going to do a set amount of a certain amount of time, a lot of credit card processors will also require that you have this form you may not have to submit it right away. Police have it on file because if there's any dispute you so you need the name, the credit card information, the agreement of the terms of how often you're going to take the payment when you're going to do it, how much is going to be their signature and the date we really self explanatory, we pretty much have all done this but it's amazing how many clients well are tie here photographers who request clients credit card information through email on and I don't like it on phone either I will say I'm going to send them this and you can do all this with digital forms plug in gravity forms or whatever as well, so it can be a separate document that I could just send them and they can quickly do, and I have it all digital, and that refers back to the privacy policy that we're talking about before any information that they submit to me on the slight I'm keeping confidential, and it just adds a little bit more legitimacy because I want to know that my credit card information is not being put out there and then payment plan set up, I always try to have, even if I just have the credit card authorization form, I want to have a seven payment plan agreement I don't advertise up front that I have payment plans is kind of one of those ace in the sleeves type of thing that if I see that the sale of starting, they're starting to go because they're adding stuff on on I don't necessary want them to take stuff off, then I can offer the payment plan. I have heard of him doing a certain incentive of a marathon or something that's coming up for a typical client, I will keep this with me, like for weddings, I keep the payment plan agreement on dh for any other big type of sessions in my bag, or have it digitally as well for them to look at and that's using of the gravity forms into about on the site and that's listed on the resource list. So, yeah, you have to have the permission to withdraw payment you concluded in the portrait contract, the payment plan agreement or the credit card authorization form. I use all three just because it is broken up, but I don't necessarily need to include the payment plan stuff and regular portrait agreement if someone's not doing a payment plan and I don't really want to advertise payment plans because it's, that monkey money is kind of a monkey on my back. I'd rather have my money up front rather having a wait six months because that's been extending that client workflow file, and I had to keep haven't oversight of thinking all that still open because I haven't been paying in full because I don't order anything and it's in the agreement on order, anything until it's paid in full, you can change it up is whatever choices freedom of choice is you could say until it's a certain amount that they've paid, then you'll order I do in full it's just more clear cut that way, I know, and I have to figure out the percent engine and it's standard for everyone across the board eliminates the oversight, I get my money, they're happy and it's very professional, presented across ok, so the next thing is back up and image sharing and one and for those of you in person sells, this is just a cz important I like we talked about before I want have one action that I hit multiple benefits as much as possible. I have the recommendation of the company that I used shoot proof for this that gives me all these benefits I'm gonna walk through and show you, but if you can find a company that works with your a steady ache and works with your budget, you are able to get all these benefits you're going to be able to back up image, share use of patel's presentation tool all in one you're really set because I'm only having to do one action of up loading, not having to resize not to this log into multiple things caused by by the time I go from one window finish something going another window to log in, one of the kid's gonna be crying or maybe the end of my office block and I have to go do something it's family time at that time I mean, forget to come back on and then that's one less thing I can check off the local list that needed to get done it gets bumped that everything the next day gets bumped, so as long as I can log into one place and I love them because they're free and they take no commissions like money. I like to keep it a cz much as possible. Oh, can I back up on the payment plans stuff or the payment stuff real quick? I was just going to say there are fees that are associated with payment processors on I always hear people say they don't want to pay it's a fact of business. There are the laws did recently change about whether you can charge or clients that processing amount, and so I think it's state specific, and I'm not really sure what it well, I was I can't go through all the states here, but me personally as a client, out a rather you wrap that into the amount and may not see it than have a separate fee, and I'm that way about shipping I'm not, except for sales tax that's the exception, but for all the other fees, like shipping in that kind of stuff, I would prefer one set him out because when you start breaking out that's, when he started getting the nickel and dime mers and like, why should I pay that processing fee? That's your cost of business and that's the way I look at things? Two s oh, sorry. I just wanted a kind of the same way with this kind of stuff you wouldn't tack on and say, oh, your gallery is going to take, you know, ten percent of the amount that I pay per month, so I'm gonna give you that you're just gonna put that in your cost of doing business when you figure out your pricing. If you guys check out that for your pricing e book, it talks about all this stuff from joy vert sits on the resource page, but that but it just eliminates it's one of those things where we want to focus on the value and pad it with all the fun stuff and then just let price maybe one part of it. Okay, so the system that I utilized when I done with the session, I'm going to upload I wanted tio everything for me at once. I need to have a gallery that I can utilize for direct sales, whether in person either it's on the phone or I just send it to them. So I like to help send these kind like with the client guide. I like to send it on, I offer my clients the option for us too. Seven o'clock kids got a baguette wine out, we'll call each other, we'll skype, they can look on there and I can look on my in and we could still have a cell session there's a lot of times I hear from people say they can't do it in person sales because they don't have the time to do it. They don't know how to do it. Andi, I literally have my client guys sit down on my end of the phone or skype in my hand, I'm looking at it, I have this on the screen as I'm talking. The client makes me a lot more confident too, especially if I've made any changes recently, but you can also utilize the couple over direct sales for in person I'm going to show you that here in a second I want to be able to upload for residual cells, so say the client is done and they've paid, but they want aunt sally in new york to also buy some images I don't have to worry about e mailing her, figuring out our email, getting in touch with her, we could just send her the link if she could do everything is welcome, I'm gonna walk in through that at the same time that it's uploaded into my presentation tool and our online gallery function, I also have one backed out for me that's one place we're going talk about multiple backups here, which a lot of us are pretty common sense on this. I'm going to share a story here in a little bit. Digital delivery is another big one, even though I do provide my clients of physical in person item when they do digital files, I don't sell them alone, they always come with product, but they are that's the carrot that people want. They want the digital files now, so while I still may provide a usb with the digital files while they're waiting for that, I want to get designed and to come in as a perk. I don't tell him, but as a perk double digital delivery, the files ahead of time choices, I can do that and also kind of gives me a little bit more lead time in order to be able to turn stuff around, and then extra benefits were going to go through these one by one. This is exactly how it looks one of the functions you can set up for when the clients are going to go log in to look at the gallery, so when I upload, I'm able to write their, be able to use it for in person sales, I can do it on the ipad, I could do it on my mac. Studio or they come to your home or in laptop on dyken scroll through the images and show them one by one and weaken favorite the ones that they want and I'm able to have it in here done for me I don't necessarily have to go on a piece of paper because by time I leave that cell session that newspaper man I get lost and he never get translated into mike computer as much as I think it's going tio somewhere between this cell session and home I'm probably not forget about the extra ones they didn't buy well then I want to lose those potential cells opportunities and we talked about a later upsell email that we should include on our local and global list of clients I'm gonna forget what to even include on by having this in front of me and being able to favorite thie images I can then go back say hey you were you had told me you know that the cell session we had loved thirty two images out of the gallery was only about twenty five now here's the other seven I can utilize that later is this sales opportunity christmas is coming up it gives me a reason to reach out to them keeps my name in front of them, reminds them to talk about me and gets an opportunity to buy more maximizing as much as I can out of my client and it was because of one action right there. I was able to upload it and get the information when I'm in front of them. There's also print fulfillment or self fulfillment. I'm very controlled break. I still do self fulfillment. So while they could submit it through jim's laughing like no away. So I still do self fulfillment. But they do have multiple needs, large name labs that they can use and most gallery cos I think now pretty much or hooked up with some large lab. So you confined that I still reserve the right choices to go with a cell, fulfill it, but I have it all hey, quick question. I'd like to know a ce faras packaging and maybe I miss this. Do they put your logo's like, do they, like, package it up when they send it? Who is this? Yeah. When you when the fulfillment goes out to your client, I think it depends on the lab of choice that you choose from and that's one reason why I'd prefer even though they can I typically have it come to me. So even if you did them to do print fulfillment, you could have a directed to you so you could still be the one to deliver. Because I don't ever want it to go to the client directly, because there may have been an error on the print side, they didn't catch I didn't catch and whose names will be mine, not the print lab, right? You know, so eso, you know, when I say print fulfillment, if you could still have it, I'm pretty sure I've always had it sent to me. Great, yeah, I've never had a sent directly to the clients they re freeze of herself a film it, too, is that I may know that they're doing an album sail in a week or something, and I can wait, and actually you can. I don't think you do albums, it's only print straight on there, but by doing that, I can kind of give myself some more lead time, or if there's going to print cell can hold off a little bit to cut, increase my profit a little bit as well. Great, yeah, good. All right, so I have done one action of uploading that all these benefits already that three one benefit ratio, we've already blown the three out of the water just for direct sales. Um, and then there's also a payment processor in here, so you don't have to have a separate one, sara lee, and they utilize a it's a same papal amount fee and it's paid directly the amount they take the money they pay you directly into your bank, then you don't have to worry about going after not going trick clients don't follow with their clients for money, but I have it the exact same way since I do self fulfillment now when we do complete the order we can do I just pull up the on payment page and we're able to do put it all in the amount and we're good to go because I've already spent the time of embedding that and having that in the site ok? So for residual sells, this is really big for wedding photographers on maybe for newborn photographers as well. So you upload the gallery whether you do it in person too pseudo in person or you're just sending the gallery link off, which I really don't recommend that because then you're leaving your clients their own devices at that point and I want to have a guy I don't want you to kind of help me it's personal end of visualized portraiture so I really want to have that little hand but that's what you do for now at least go there and make that on your list on your local list of things to get more comfortable with talking one on one but then for residual cells have done the upload have done with the bride and groom. We've done our presentation, we picked the deal that we picked all the or stuff they're going to order and the albums and then it's time to allow all the family members want order something same thing goes really newborns. Many grand parents want to get in on it. And a lot of times, this request has always done about digital's and you if you don't provide your client the tool to be able to sell the digitals or to other prints, what do you think your clients were going to? D'oh? They're going to copy the this disk that you gave them. They're gonna copy the usb. They're going to try to scan the prince. Where is that? You give them the tool? The availability. It also has that kind of subtle. Hey, you can't do this, you know it's in your contract and the copyright provision it's, another it's. A tool to be able to catch those residual is a residual because they're not the direct client that you have. The important thing with this is to make sure you always have permission from client to see sell their images to somebody that's not on the contract. I think a lot of wedding photographers omit this and the contracts have seen come across my desk and it really a lot of bridegrooms don't really have a problem with, especially when it's family, but you never know what kind of issues their underlying the surface family issues and that family issues, maybe a big warner there, maybe safety issues there sorts of things on that you can't you can't sell, um images to somebody else, it allows me to store the client favorites manny, when they wanted to buy a gift. Also, I'm able to put in there a listing of what the client favorites were, so that if mom wanted to gift her daughter and new husband something she could pick from the images there and she knows doesn't have email me, I can tell her I can guider and put all of that in there has social media links so it can be shared on that is to keep them in my little corner of the web again because for here, it's easy the rhythm to a target and look at something rather than just facebook because my grandmother she's actually on facebook, I'm quite impressed, but I still think if I was telling her go to such a sports page do this do that should probably get kind of lost hope graham was not watching I love you, but I just think that many times you have family members that may not be up on the social media like we are all the time photographers are always on it, so you want to give them the availability didn't being able to reach into the link, but have the option is to share on social media that also has fulfillment, like do set sometimes for extra sales on for them do self fulfillment so they could do all the payment right there, but it still comes to me, and then I can ship it out this's a great tool as well to use if you're going to do like an event pictures I've used it for events, I've set it up ahead of time, I can capture the emails ahead of time instead of having to get everyone to write it down a piece of paper, go put it into my system and then email everyone when the head shots or the event pictures are ready on been trying to figure out what someone's handwriting is at the event I can have on an ipad or a computer, and they can type all their stuff in its stores. All the e mails for me, I could also have all those emails and excel file that I'm going to put into my client out of a system we're going talk about next segment, um, that I can contact, that people use this for school portrait team pictures and all sorts. And you could do for weddings to you could have it on your ipad on a wedding table to capture all the guests, so when you're ready to do residual sells, you could send one email out here is the link obviously, after you have permission from the bride and groom here's the one link and you can buy and you can gather your maximizing amount of money out of one transaction so sort of having I think there's a misconception you have to have five hundred clients, you can get a lot of money out of a certain on a client's just if you're creative about it too many captures the visitor information, okay? And then an exact same action that I've done this at that time I have been backed up and archived all of my files, I have multiple backups going, I always have a cloud back up my recommendations in a second I also do a weekly external time machine backup so that's too, but I like to work and rolls of three this is my third one, I didn't have to do anything extra it's automatically backed up for me I had an issue once can't seem to show this issue once that I'm routine about the backups, I do it, I do it, I do it and then my computer was having issues I had format it all and for whatever reason, I had this client, she they're having family issues and they waited a bit. I waved the gallery deadline, you know, customer service and all of that, but when she came back to finally order, I'm looking for the images could not find them on the cloud, I could not find them. They were edited process, but all the ross and all the editor were gone and they're off. They were not on the external hard drive, they were not on the cloud freaking out. My husband's like what wrong with you? I think you probably thought someone died like, oh my god! And then I was like, wait, I had my work flow the second I was done with a gallery uploaded it, I went in read, alan immel boom hammel, yes, very scary and I'm still very methodical of doing everything else, so the images, maybe then I made it just overlooked them, but s o I'm actually had it backed up, so have all these benefits so far by one and then you can also archive it, so doesn't take up your actual plan space. If you move into the paid plans, when you start getting a lot more, you can archive it for lower so that it a lower rate so that you can keep filling up you're galleries and then that I'd already talked about the digital delivery I like to allow my clients to have this digital delivery option. I don't have to have an external program that does this it's all done, I've got stored, I've got presentation tool, and then I can deliver high resolution files I can pin protected or not on and that's especially important because if they haven't signed them all release should not be public or if they're not have given permission for anybody else to see to sell it tio then, and I can also deliver the model release with I'm sorry print really sessions a model a second to deliver the print release to them that is telling I'm giving them the guidelines of what they can do with the images. What are my restrictions on that and it's all in one place all in one download? So they can't say, well, I didn't know it was in the contract before, but we already know they don't read the contract, but now they can't say it because now here's another time that I had told them I've given them the print release in the file excuse me that it's been downloaded and they have it, they can't say they don't know where it is and it saves me time is I don't have to send it and so then the extra benefits for this is they have a mobile app. I've been utilizing this, you can add it has value to collections or just the client gift. Another thing that I could do it all when it's uploaded, I can send it to them while they're waiting for the album's, especially when it's long lead times and I know that I'm backed up. Maybe the kids like everybody in the house got sick and I have like, a week of nothing good done, I can make sure I can push out a mobile out another ace and this leave a customer service thing I could do, and it doesn't cost me anything more. Their slide show with music from triple ski music, I think, is who they used on dh you're able to have that presentation tool right there without having to have an external one you can set your own price is if you do that print of the self fulfillment. I'm sorry the princess element if they order online there's also a light and publishing service if you process everything a light room and automatically upload for you without having to say that, go over, open another window. Upload and no commissions. And so this is how I utilize in one action of once I'm done with the gallery high process at all, before I even email the client asked them when they want to do their cell session, how they want to do it. I uploaded it right then and I said of upload, I'm going to have all of these available for me, um at my fingertips any time that I need it and so the backups that I mentioned always have the cloud backup going I always back blaze but there's also crashed planet tze, just constantly running on a computer. It's kind of like how dropbox can always could be set to be sinking same way on I actually utilize dropbox sometimes if I have something really critical session, all copy and pasted to draw about center had like, four back it is because especially since that one time and the client was none the wiser she had no idea she may know now she's watching, but they had they had no idea what was going on and I got to say face and because I was methodical in my process is an external hard drive. I do it on a schedule. A lot of times people will sit down and work and have the hard drive all the way in I work on laptop a lot, so I'm all over the place I just try to make it it's on my regular list kind of I should have put that on the list yesterday things that I do every sunday or money when I sit down whatever the first block of that week is while I'm going over my local globalist for the week I start the backups for me I once I need a process that right then and get slower but for the most part that's the first thing I d'oh probably well on his own now trying to drink my coffee and then the online service for gallery with backup systems so those are all the different backups um for me to not have to have any issues because if I have to re shoot cause I lose images, then that is one less client I can take and I'm not just losing that client of losing their residual sells their networking and all the money that comes out of that and it's completely inefficient. Okay, I want nothing I do want to say and that too is to say you have a client that wants to reshoot, they're unhappy I don't if we do re shoot I don't want to have any images from the session that we already had it's either we re shooting you on ly choose from the new ones and I don't really offer issues open in my contract. I reserve that is a right because if I put it in there, I don't like the double chin. I want to have it no, no, no that's, not why I'm re shooting like I mean, unless I'm the one who, like, zoomed up on your double chin like that's, not my responsibility, so I reserve that right, but then I can also have this. I have separate galleries, and I can lock down the gallery but still have the old images on and open up a new gallery for them to use and all the exact same functions. But I still have all these other files still available to me from the old session that I may have not allowed them to choose from customer service. You can pick and choose the method that you want to d'oh with that, but I don't want to incentivize them. If you were going to reshoot, you're only getting the new stuff, but I'm not shooting two sessions for you to make one regular collection purchase.