Lessons

Lesson Info

The 90/10 Model Q&A

orange fields heightened tin and about ten other people all wanted to know what kind of gifts are good looking gifts that's a great question so well and we're talking weddings are portrait generic okay so booking gifts need to attract and be appropriate for your target audience so that's where you need to start what kinds of things what they like what kinds of things would they enjoy they don't have to be super expensive they don't have to be crazy they just have to be thoughtful that's the biggest that's the biggest part of it they have to be thoughtful for weddings one thing that I want to mention is it I really think you need to make sure that the booking gift applies to both the bride and the groom so the challenge with weddings is that you can there's a lot of things you could do for bride you khun center yummy candles or you know spa treatments massages you know you could do all these different wonderful things for a bride but then the groom has completely left out and I know for...

us and our brand the groom is very important he's definitely we never say younger and brides we say young goring couples that's really important to us so way always try to make sure to include the groom are booking gifts is a set of italian spices from dean and deluca which is a really nice store up in napa and new york and they're just really wonderful high end spices that they can then incorporate into their kitchen is a married couple it goes along with the rest of the sunday post I use those spices and some of my recipes and it involves both of them and give them an experience I know that we're building gifts for senior portrait's right now and we're looking on collaborating with the salons that we're going to send our seniors too and build some really great gifts that maybe the salon can contribute a few gifts and then you know we'll get them a discount for that and then we'll include little fun things like you know a fun clutch or some nail polish different different items were brainstorming that right now and it's really fun but something that's meaningful something that's thoughtful and it has to be relevant to your target audience um make sure that it's packaged well the packaging is a big deal make sure you invest in knife packaging for any of your booking gifts he doesn't want to show up like amazon does know his greatest amazon is yes we love amazon but appearance has to be there so packaging is also a very big deal with any booking gifts so make sure to invest in that and not let that fall by the side uh casey lin similar what are some average time frames you a lot to these systems for example how many hours a day would you spend on client communication you put time frames on coffee with clients or sales sessions what advice do you have for managing the actual minutes managing the minutes that's great I think it is important to manage how much time you spend an email I know that I could spend entire days on email and all the sudden I haven't done anything else besides respond to email so I think it's good to put limits on yourself spending an hour in the morning an hour in the afternoon responding to emails and that frees you up to take care of marketing the rest of the morning and then in the afternoon go and have relationships have coffee way I don't put time limits on having coffee with clients I think you need to just build a relationship but I generally a lot about an hour you know people are busy they don't have all the time in the world so I think an hour is a good time frame to have coffee with a vendor or with a past client and I think that um you need to approach the day what works best for your personality if you're a morning person and your most productive in the morning use that as your marketing time because that's what's most important right if you're most productive in the afternoon have that be when you're going to do your marketing and make sure that you're spending your energies there so don't put something during your most productive hours but in the end is not going to be most profitable for your business where do you keep couple don't you want to know this where do you keep the master list of your systems you have a checklist for the systems that you created yes so the master list for our systems is in taavi that's our customer relations management software it's where we keep all over email templates all of our work flows over automation is where we handle our leads are in marie's our bookings are contracts it's a very intense software and it handles a lot for us there's a number of different companies that have software similar to taavi that you can check out depending on the level of your business and what you need but if you're at a point where you can afford something like that and investing in a studio management software I highly recommend it because it will be a place where you have checklists for your work flows and it consolidates a lot of information that has reporting for you so you know how you're doing on your profit margins so you mentioned close the same things like un asana but it's been kind of someone's already done all the work of tailoring it for your specific industry and so I think that that's the value of studio management software you get to a point where yes you could set up a system of google docks a system of email templates through tents expander system through through asana but there's value in someone who's done all that work for you and updating the systems in real time that's their job is to keep it updated and current so you know you don't work on that do it yourself yes and depending on the software they're tailored towards certain types of businesses so there's some that air taylor toward any small business you know and they will handle bookings were close and basic functions for you bookkeeping accounting that kind of stuff on dh then there's others that are more extensive and more tailored to a portrait photography or toward wedding photography so depending on your needs and what you want to dio you know you can pick a solution that's gonna work best for you and for us the best one is topping that's great and just for people out there who may not know how to but t a v like table but it's pronounced tough much more elegant and then maybe just two more questions it's kind of like going forward wayto look photography by the pool and other people what is the most efficient way to get started in building these systems you sit down and write out your whole workflow yes that's what I would recommend write it down first before investing in a system our software write it down map it out you know if you need to use multiple sheets of paper and just write it out for me to use a google doc that's how we started we wrote it down before spending time building it in a software and then having the changes that could be really time consuming but that allows you it almost takes less pressure to just write it out and just play with it and brainstorm and mess with it and figure it out so don't put too much pressure on yourself just write it down just take an afternoon with some tea and you write it out in a notebook and figure it out there might take more than an afternoon maybe yes you'll have to refine it may be really have overtime all right last question for you erin before you finish up here susan suzanne and two others wanted to know that says erin is obviously really organized person which is great it's too risky true gift to be both creative and organized now for those of us who are creative but lacking the organizational skills because aaron have any advice yes so I definitely believe that if you truly just not organized I think that you're one you're doing the right thing by taking a class on it and learning steps to do it and if there are people in your life you can partner with maybe of a sister a friend or an acquaintance that can come in and help you think through these things and help you organize I think that's awesome you know someone you can partner with can help you they don't have to be an employee they don't have to be anything that could just be a friend that says you know what what if you did it this way that might be more organized or help you out with those things so I know plenty of friends there photographers that have done that and it helps a lot having an outside person that does think the way that I think which is very systematic thank you for being a part of this and I want to give you an opportunity right before you leave here why don't you tell people I know that you do have some there were people who were asking casey photo mamba lena and others are asking they say how many of the younger and email templates do we get when we purchased the class we're including five of them with purchase of this class but you have more available for sale on your web site is that correct yes we do tell people about those yes we have more emails templates available in our photographer store it's the young grins dot com flash photographers you'll find it there and we basically taken all of the templates email templates abuse throughout our business and we've come up with some different sets you khun by are full set of email templates which includes enquiries engagements weddings and albums on that I believe it's something like thirty six email templates and then you can also buy different sets we've built one that is for boutique studios and so all the languages very friendly very personal it's built for a boutique photographer and then we have another set that's actually built towards large studios so we have a lot of associates we you know need to come across more professional more refined so if you are a large studio and are wanting to build that voice we also have a set of templates for that and you can get all of those in that one full collection said as well and mama lena was wondering whether they those could be modified for other product areas like boudoir something yes definitely all of them are meant to be customized so we've built them in the voice that we built them in what we think is best but they definitely take them and add your ten percent to them we don't want you to use them right on the box you want to look through them putting your branding we have areas where we have I told you here's what you need to put in your personal note here's what you need to put in your information and your brand and so you need to customize them all to your specific voice and your specific brand