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Lesson Info

The 90/10 Model for Efficient Photography

we're going tow dive in with erin for pretty good money time hopefully yeah on the branded section on wrapping up a lot of the a green rolls the green rolls stick with that instead of yeah I called deliciously exciting on and then I'm gonna go and spend some time and bring back everything that we've talked about and try to really some made it so nobody can walk away understanding the next steps they need to take all right without further delay let's get let's get let's get going all right so we've been talking about the yellow rolls of the business but ninety ten rolls is what I like to call them and those are the roles that you need tohave ten percent of your brand applied to those roles were moving on now to the roles that you need to be heavily heavily invested in these air the branded rolls this is where you get to invest in the delightfully unexpected right yeah deliciously inspired I don't know I was pretty good actually yeah you're better um so there you can you can systematize ...

these roles as well where you can at least make life much easier on yourself there's a lot of ways you can save time to free yourself up to do what you really love to do which is shooting which is really connecting with clients and building a really great marketing strategy so the difference between the previous rolls the ninety ten yellow rolls and the green branded rolls is that you're just going to be doing a lot more you're going to be working a lot more on that ninety percent but you convey you all of this as a ninety ten model and figure out how to do is much that ninety percent work up front or minimize that ninety percent work so that you're just doing ten percent along the way okay so there's different ways you can do this and just make it much easier on yourself on not so overwhelming and not so time consuming so that you can be efficient at it so that you can give yourself flexibility and when something happens you know it's okay it's not going to be a big deal because you've you've helped yourself do a lot of work up front to save your time are save yourself time on the back end you're putting together is much but it's possible that with with the brandon worlds put together as much as possible ahead of time so that the the burden of the work that goes into this something you have to do yes something this brand essential the burden of that work is not all dependent at the time crunch at the time point that you're you're delivering it or intercepting it yes definitely so we want to do as much work or do little things on the front end that's going to save us a lot of time on the back and that's what we're going to be focusing on so this is there's going to be a lot of tips and tricks that I'm going to share there's going to be some different systems and different tools you can implement but there's also just big things you could do big concepts as well that you can implement and different roles so it can be really applicable to any business not just weddings all photography and other small businesses as well so we have these three roles that I've identified our you're branded rolls at least for a wedding photography business or really any photography business here a photographer you're a marketer and you're also a sales person so let's let's unpack a few ways teo help yourself out with these different roles the first one is you know ways to help yourself out is a photographer I need to mention that I don't think that you should systematize your photography I think that that is the point where you should have the most fun you know all of this is meant to free you up to be creative to be inspired to create a really great product to interact with your clients I don't think you should go into it saying okay here's how ominous systematize how I shoot what I shoot and how I do it because that can really take the life out of your bed so I don't think you should do that but there's things you can dio while you're shooting or in preparation for shooting that will make it much easier on yourself and free yourself up a little bit so little things like location scouting there's behaviours that we already do is photographers that if you see them as a system or if you see them as a time to arab time saving then you can learn how to make them more efficient so it's location scouting I think all of us probably do this we like to go check out new locations or at least see the locations that we're going to shoot at upcoming shoots and jeff and I took that and we just started going on look like scouting days where we took days to go around find out you know all these different places take pictures of them catalog them and just build a list of all these different places that we want to shoot in the future I think a lot of us do this already it's a common behavior among photographers but if you see it as a way to save yourself time you can figure out little things you can do to make it more efficient how exactly we're going to catalog those images do you like to use ever know a lot of photographers like to use ever note I don't personally but a lot of photographers find it really nice do you want to put him on a specific folder in your iphone do you want to put him in a different place so that you can access them easily how do you want to make that process easy on yourself and then later on in the communication when you do have an engagement session coming up for a portrait session coming up and you need to figure out where it's gonna happen you've already done all of that pre work and you can say you know what you would put really good with this spot and already had that figured out let's do this that email takes ten minutes instead of an hour because you haven't spent time on google images trying to figure things out you know where do we go what do I do how do I do this um so instead you're spending ten minutes and then that fifty minutes guess what you get to spend it writing your next guide you get to spend it building your next e mail campaign filling out your content calendar you know all that kind of stuff so figuring out ways to do little things for the front end to save you time later on so view things like location scouting as a system is a small way to make life easier on yourself and make it more efficient it's interesting that you talk about this in what is primarily a seasonal business for professional photographer so you're taking this ninety ten model that we just spent the last segment going through breaking down hey and the semi brandon rules the rules like photo editing the roles like album designed these kind of things that that during you have to do these things during the process of craziness you know during the busy season how do we set it up so ninety percent of the work is done by so what else but you're now taking is a brandon rule and applying ninety percent of work and trying to do it maybe in your off season yet trying to do when you're not busy increase your action offline why that work and we've talked hall the whole course of hot well this all sounds like a lot to do in the middle of having I think barbara brought up two or three shoots in a weekend or we have double a double header wedding weekend so um is this fast because it's really great toe try to look at your model and try to find the stuff that you can do when you're not busy not a stressed out and make that a model definitely I mean you don't want to be location scouting when you have two to three senior portrait today right that is the wrong time to be doing it you do want to go out before every single portrait session and say where am I going to do this one this time that's that's a wrong way to look at it so if you can think of ways to free up your time early on time when you can just set aside a little bit of energy and just do this work up front it saves so much time on the back end so that you don't fall behind in marketing or in your blogging or your instagramming or anything like that so s so that's that's all we're talking about here when it comes to being a photographer things like setting up a wedding day schedule in making it really complete I think a lot of us do this you know we build a photography scheduled for a wedding day when I started seeing that schedule as a system then I figured out how to maximize it and make the day easier and myself make the day easier on my couple so including a lot more phone numbers than I would in the past bride groom maid of honor best man coordinator anyone I need to contact having every address on there dialing the address into my gps ahead of time so that I didn't have to do that on the day of and get lost having a list of family portrait with everybody's names verifying that with a couple having that done a month before the wedding not stressing people out the week was saying hey we're family portrait do you want to do when on saturday on but on the day you're just free you know you freed yourself up because you've done all that pre work ahead of time you know what's gonna happen when everyone's prepared bridesmaids no they need to be dressed family knows where they need to be when you know and when it comes to family porch it's just checking off the list super easy calling out names and it's really nice really friendly really stress free so doing that kind of pre work ahead of time on something as simple as a wedding day schedule well for you up to be a better photographer the day of be less stressed be more inspired and be able to do more do really wonderful work so that's why I have family portrait is listed down as well I talked to photographers who don't put together a list of family portrait before the day and they don't ask their couples do you want a picture with your mom and dad or do you want a picture with your siblings are with these people are so doing that ahead of time asking them sending the list out verifying it making sure you have first names on the list you khun like a dress people by their name is huge I tell you what the first time I realized before that was your going out okay we need the cousins of the bride and it makes sense when you're called it out but if you're staying there I've been at weddings where the photographer called out because it's the right about what is my relation to this mikey I'm not today and my cousin and I don't know what I am today yeah I mean you're like okay sibling sibling number one sibling number two cousin number three it's just it's really awkward like well who you talking about you say I don't know I just no cousin that's it so having first names was really important so I advocate first names for sure you know it is interesting russ we've been talking back and forth the whole course about how this course has been focused at the wedding pro meaning that all the examples that I've used have been based on what I have the most experience with the wedding photographer but you know something that we haven't pointed out that I think it's a least worth mentioning part of the reason why creating examples in a business oriented class like this one and part of the benefit of building the examples off from the wedding photographer is that really when you look at the amount of systems that have to be set up it's probably one of the most sensitive system heavy business models of the photography industry you have to set up and so you're out there watching your porter for talking to you got a lot of landscape photographers watching I guess I'm not sure how this why that is but they seem to really come up talked a lot about the senior portrait model about the baby porter model but all these things that were talking about not only in this segment but throughout the entire course can be applied because it's really about building a business that identifies unique authentic brand about doing business that uses content to market the business but most importantly has a business it's focused on profiting on on shooting that which is where profit producing tasks are and on marketing thing you could only do is an authentic as the authentic business brand message and so this stuff could be applied no matter what business you have I mean family portrait family portrait for family portrait photographer same with a baby photographer same across the board yeah definitely and it is funny I mean we have one of our studios does do family portrait and I built that workflow and I said oh my gosh this is so much easier than it is for weddings because there's just so much that goes into a wedding workflow on dso as portrait you're doing it a lot more often than you are with weddings and you're doing it over and over and over again and so it's very important to have them dialed in and the communication very clear on guy learned that with portrait's the frequency is affects your workflow but it is a lot smaller anyway a lot more concise than it is for a wedding's he can learn a lot from weddings with you know building a portrait workflow so there's a lot you can do before the wedding day there's a lot you can do pre shoot that will set you up for success during the shoot and allow you to be a better photographer and then these were just some little tips that I started thinking of in terms of systems when I was shooting and they helped me a lot so we all say we want to nail the photo in camera this is this is just something that we want to do it's photographers a lot of people teach on it how to do it why we should do it and there's a lot of reasons and something we hear but think about getting your images right in the camera is a way to save yourself time on the back end and a way to free up some marketing time later on so that that's a new perspective on it saying you know what I can be a better marketer I could be better business person if I get my images right in camera I don't have to spend time cropping and straightening later on you know I don't have to spend money on that spend time on that I don't have to spend money color correcting as much I might have some images that are so good right at a camera that I could instagram them right away you know and I don't have to worry about editing them so you could be a better marketer and a better business person if you're able to nail that so that's very important as a photographer um our cameras we shoot on cannon five d mark threes we have the ability to set star ratings are cameras and there's a lot of cameras out there that allow you to do something similar just tagged a photo and in some ways you consort later but we started doing this so that after the wedding when we get home and we want to post that image to facebook and make sure it gets there that you know posted that night very early the next morning and the first one there the star rating started helping us do that because we download sort by the star ratings and the ones that we shot throughout the day that we said I just shot the image that I want to share an instagram tonight that was the one or jeff might say I just shot the image that I want erin to share an instagram tonight how in the world is going to let me know without saying well it was the one with the bride was standing like this and then the group was you know so that I don't love the images sort everything to the top and I say wow jeff got like these awesome images and I can pull from those directly for me a big time sync and a big hurdle to doing that teo getting images up right away wass the finding the image that took me along time and it made me not do that as often so we figured out you know what let's just use those star ratings on our camera so if you can think of ways to do that throughout your chutes you know if you're doing in bordeaux our session and you want teo you know tag certain images that you want to share you want a highlight for your client you know different things like that inspiration images this is something that I found it really helpful to me when I'm shooting boudoir when I'm shooting maternity or newborn for my past my past couples I don't shoot those very often I only shoot them for my past brides and so I have I keep a catalogue specifically for those chutes of inspiration images because I don't have a reservoir of poses I haven't learned them yet on dh it's not my specialty so I keep that for myself to pull out during those sections and allows me to get better images better posing better lighting weeks I can see that's how we need to light that shot that's right I remember now for a specific boudoir pose or something like that so help yourself out in those ways to get really great images on shoot on location so that you save time later so like I said those are just some quick and easy tips of how to help yourself with the photography portion of it but I do not advocate for systematize ing your photography I think that you should free yourself up to do a really good job and there's a lot you can do to help yourself with that and really be really be creative while you're on issue so one of the next thing we can jump tio when we're talking about the delightfully unexpected let's jump to some of that kind of stuff so one of the easiest ways tio send a little delightfully unexpected experience to your client is by sending gifts I know quite a few photographers love to do this sending gifts to their clients throughout the process and this is not specific toe wedding photography oh our photography in general there's a lot of businesses out there that just send gifts and hand written notes you know you don't have to be a photographer to send a hand written note to a client so different things like that you can implement so that you can do it on a regular basis without spending so much time on it that you're just overwhelmed by it so I when it came to client gifts I I learned my road blocks with client gifts it was I would file the gifts and get them all at once but then they would sit there and every time that a client booked us and I had to send one I'd walk downstairs pull it out package it up get it in there right the note put it in then rapid and kraft paper and then get the ribbon measured the ribbon okay that's right now that's not right redo it okay got it and then put it in the packaging box and ship it it took forever and pretty soon you know someone would book and I'd say you know I have an email I need to get to I'm gonna do that instead and I'm all due in next week and then another client with book and I'll say oh well I'll just do those together and then pretty soon I have five looking gives to send and I was like why is this happening why may not able to send something as simple as a booking get this is so easy I did so much work already already bought everything but I realized that I had to package it all and get it to a point that made it that much easier for myself I had to make it more efficient than I thought originally so now they're all package there in craft paper I have a packaging closet it's my favorite thing ever building it was like the best weekend of my life I'm organizing my packaging closet and I have ah jeff built me a ribbons school so I have all these ribbons and I can pull it out and then I measured out how long each ribbon needs to be for every single shipping box that we have every size of album that we ever sent out so I grabs ribbon measured up to that specific box put it on right my hand written notes stick it on in ship it so I made the process that much easier on myself I learned how to make it better and better and better and so we need to do that with these little things what are they hang ups in your business that are preventing you from providing this experience figure that out so uh the ninety percent is that buying in that pre packaging what is the ninety percent for you and then the ten percent is that hand written note that's what makes us special that's what makes it personalized to them and I do include a really beautiful message car that's printed very nicely with a wonderful message that says enjoy a date night on the young grins you can't wait to share in this journey with you and then I have a hand written note as well so it's very personal experience and here again a system that doesn't diminish your brand it actually elevates your brand presence yes you don't get that feel like this was part of a system you get that gift but you've managed offload the majority of the task teo a time period when you're maximizing your efficiency and too when you're not slammed busy uh you know have some other things you can't control when you book someone it could all come at once it could come in the flood but you've moved that to a time period where it's something that especially with a seasonal business is really easy to do oh yeah I do all the buying and packaging in the off season I know that's what I'm gonna do it and I don't think about it the rest of the year I just buy what I expect to need throughout the rest of the year if there's some left over then I can you know they can feed into the next year but I do all of that in the off season when I have time and I know that I'm not gonna worry about it when I'm busy because I'm just not going to get to it so why do the ninety percent up front and that ten percent down the road and that frees up so much time to do things like marketing in the busy season you have to make sure you're doing all this stuff to free yourself up to be able to get all of that wonderful marketing when things get busy we talked about the very beginning it funny we have brought up since that market or disappear and you can't take the six months off in the busy season and just go dark then and then start market again we hit the off season because there is and we're gonna talk about it at the very end there's a bit of a moment that you get going and when you lose that momentum and marketing you know you can't take that time off during the busy season and stop doing the things that allow your business to grow which the market is one of most important is you have to have time in your system to do it all year round it can't wait for the off season like something like this can exactly exactly and I'm I'm guilty of not letting mo mentum die getting it going and being like a momentum and they're not doing anything and then it just slowly stops and then having to rebuild it again it's a struggle and so I'm guilty of that too and I know mo mentum you have to keep rolling it you have to keep pushing at that that giant boulder that you've gotten moving and goes faster and faster and faster but it still takes effort to keep it moving or else it's going to slow down