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Community Marketing

And if you ever look at tri coast you look a try coast I don't do that on and used to hurt my feelings a little bit I mean, but it's stale types are real out there I mean, I'm no different than mike and long and my hair's longer I've got sideburns, but people expect to see somebody that's very professional looking and since I don't want change but look at him I was a cop for years so you know, when I get out of law enforcement, I was like, well, I mean, I don't have to cut my hair every week and so then it just got to a point where I didn't really want long hair I just didn't really want to go get a haircut and then it starts growing and I don't have this beautiful locks of love like cody, I have the nice high hairline, so I'll look like a a white guy with a comb over when my hair grow out long just look really bad and so I just kept it shorter. This is actually long for me and then if you looked at our latest images, I got a nice suit in thailand and that's the image that I use even t...

hough I don't like wearing suits and ties that's the image I use for my portrait head shot when it comes to this now we dress like this when we go in and we photograph the kids, we dress very ourselves we're down to earth as much as we can because we want those kids to relate to us and I promise you I can't tell you how many times those kids have said that we've heard from it like last year was on the same day that they it was nerd day they got to dress up like nerds in school so cody and susie dressed up like a nerd as well for photographing we had tons of kids coming in and jumping and being photographed with this the year before cody and I were going out our facial hair in our hair for a friend of ours that had cancer shave it off and had this huge beard and I looked like allan from the hangover kids were skipping school coming in, taking photos with alan and I wore the allen the baby share from the and the whole bit that we played it up. The funny thing about the nerd, eh? Wass susan I did dress up, but I heard a kid in the hallway say, hey did you see those strikers guys, everyone from just a like a nerd, so I'd just like a nerd anyway, I didn't dress up, but those are the kind of things that you enjoyed because it makes it fun I mean you just things you don't expect and again, like well, said, we're all of seventeen and eighteen year olds we all thought we were going, but we're really idiots every single one of us was idiots and now you're smart enough to realize that being a tease and you make fun of it in a polite political correct because most of time, if you give him a hard time, they love you, they enjoy that's what you're supposed to do so it's really a fun time. We have very, very casual music playing again we used triple scoop, so we have casual music playing that's modern and it's fun and it's good to listen to and all this other good stuff. So instead of coming into a dark room with has state has light, you make this whole environment. We make this whole selling the experience just like you do in your portrait world and your weddings you sell the experience every step of the way we sell the experience and so that's another is while we make it personal, we made it personal as much as we can with rises would can I have a question? All right, so t j g in the chat rooms saying the few school directors I do have contact with, I'll tell me that their photographer that photography is their number one solicitation at their schools they get a photographer at their door every day. Most schools literally don't even let me in the door once they know I'm offering photography, any idea on how to get past that? Absolutely, and we'll hit on it and I forgot his name, but we're gonna go over really in detail again in the third segment of the business plan, so don't go anywhere, but I don't want to disappoint. I don't want to leave you alone right now, and that is the hard part and that's, what we goes back to being as personal as you can, you have to be humble, you have to expect rejection, and then you have to handle it very professionally, because I promise you again, just because if you have photographers, I guarantee, and I don't how long you've been in business, but there's already people in business that are younger than you, you know, they're just constantly new ones coming in, and many of them are here for a year to year, and they go on to something else because he realized there's a lot more to photography than just pushing the shutter and that's what the schools are failing to, they're getting tons of people coming in that think they have the attitude that think they have the knowledge to be able to photograph their kids. And reality most don't, but they don't know that they just know all these people that are coming in coming in coming in and so the better presentation that you have, which we're going to go over the better way you make it personal, we sent handwritten thank you cards when we get turned down, we sent handwritten thank you cards for their time and that makes a huge difference. We want them to know that we're here, that we're not going anywhere. We're always polite. We never say anything derogatory about the other photographers because there's no need to there's absolutely no need to say anything negative another photographer because we're all in this together, we need to help each other out and for years I don't go after any of our local photographers that like it's, a local tyrant has a local job I'm not gonna touch it that school comes to me, I'm gonna aggressively go after it. But out of respect for local talk over subtle touch now it's, a national company I'm all after I'm all after it, but I want to keep her money local because it's the local photographers, the other ones do better it's going to make me better too, and so on there's plenty of volume out there so again without going into detail, which will do the third segment but you just have to keep going back and you have to have tohave a better presentation and a better workflow and have your have it together and slowly but surely we're getting those walls of breakdown and we're going to actually get in right now we're actually lead into how those wall broke down for this main school for us your very next line. Yeah, so what? We did wass talk to our seniors, talk to kids, talk to teachers they were in that school. Well, what one of one of the big things that we did don't underestimate the context that you already have with your school if you like for us way had a decent high school senior business and so one of the models that we used as we use what we call senior rips or senior representatives so these air students that we pick out, we actually have an interview process and pick out the's a couple students per school and they represent us so they get they get a little bigger photography session with us, they get more portrait and in turn they say they go forced to their school until her friends what a great photographer company we are black look how great my photos are go use these guys and they get like rep cards type things where they can offer discounts if they're friends come to us and don't underestimate the knowledge that these kids have about their school because these kids go to that school every day and they basically have a working relationship with the teachers with the principal with people who are in charge of different aspects of photography and these kids know that I mean they'll know that the student council teacher is in charge of planning prom or the yearbook teacher is in charge of school photos and maybe the building that the dance teachers in charge of the another school dance and even though that he said and even that does orchestra take photos yeah because I mean even the smaller groups you don't even see they really will tell you all these things so you can interview your rips and find out the photographer needs if the school has it needs are being met infinite who's in the school already which he who who did you lose your in basket ball did a professional come take it is that the national change who who did these photos so you can get a lot of information from them and one thing that we did with ours is one of our reps was actually a student council member and like this slide here demonstrates well they had a red ribbon week coming up which was basically a anti drug program and most schools have the walls are covered posters made by cheerleaders saying go team and then the student council makes pollsters, we don't do drugs and little little fun things, but sometimes they're not it's effective. Well, we actually got together with our representative and said she she was telling us how she had this. This drug we coming up on their project was to come up with some posters, and so we told him, hey, we we'd love to help you with that. Why don't you bring in the other fellow student council members? And we can photograph you in these different basically costumes this week, they're allowed to dress up in different themes for each day the representative different type of staying off of drugs. And so we volunteered all this way talk to them and they got the basically got the student council's teacher. The teacher charged, who was in charge of student council, got her contact information. I went and had appointment talked to him today. We'd like to volunteer our time, and our efforts help you out with here. Upcoming red ribbon week and all you need to do is you can send over some of the student council kids to our studio. We can photograph from in the different outfits that they're allowed to wear. We'll print up some posters for you, free of charge. You can put him around your school just to kind of help you out with red woman that's that's. Why we wear what school is going to say, really? No, I don't want you to help me keep my kids off drugs and yeah, I mean, think about it logically think about it, and the great thing about it is this we're not we're not selling this to him for not selling me any photographer. We're not violating any of their current contracts, they may have the other companies of letting of douglas and it's purely purely a donation that's caring about our community and they're going to put these posters on the walls kids are going to notice um, hey, I know this thing with my friends like school ways, they're gonna take notice they're going maybe look at him a little more than they would just glitter posters to say no to drugs, and then in the corner there you see our logo well, that's marketing there because, hey who's, the strikers, people, maybe I'll look him up on my smartphone, but not only that, but we just sent over all the kids from student council that may or may not have already been our clients. Well, these kids came over and they met us. You have that interaction which they may or may not have had, and now if if you've already had some dealings with one photographer, they're kind of cool hey maybes get along here just like me he's kind of hip and fun. Are you more likely to pick that photographer? Are one that maybe you've never met before? Well, you're going to pick the one you thought he meant if you got a relationship with. So for us, this was a great way to market to the school in kind of a sneaky marketing way, but I mean, it's volunteering, it's, it's a minimal amount of time for us in a minimal cost, but it was it was a fairly large return, and it worked well because a lot of those kids they're in this photos did come to us for their senior photos a year later, two years later, because most of our sophomores or juniors in these photos and so and not only that if they didn't come to us, we got to know we got that we really got to love when we got toe joy watching them be successful because that's part of our community as well and that's part of you enjoying your community is other people in your community, you're successful well, it also won the largest things was it softened up the teacher who's actually in charge of the prom because the student council teacher I was in charge of the problem and we had hit her up a couple years before we were loved putting up prom on off got something out that does that the national company she didn't take a chance on us. She doesn't know I shouldn't have a relation with us we'll also now that we start working with them or not there's a face involved with our name and so she's a little softer next time we say hey, would you like us to prom? Yeah doctor probably take care of prom but it took three years four years for us to get problems but again our business was growing on the high inside, so I mean we were helping out the community it was a weak point they had we help them out and then also the positive was we were also being able to grow our other end, our business to us that was a win win and so we continue this process. So then we looked at what other weak points does this hat what other points is the school really needs some help in marketing and one of the big ones from these same kids and again the student council members their whole job is to help the school to grow that school tohave that year in a positive manner. And so we said, we asked them flat out, what can we do for the school? That's? You know, one of the big problems we have is homecoming is one getting people there, if people don't want to go home coming slowly with a job too it's gotten so casual, they don't know what casual is. I don't know where to dress in the casual zone, so you have some people there in suits and talk, so they rent and some people are in jeans and a t shirt and they really wanted to have kind of a dress code. And so they went back to the student council advisor, which is a teacher, and told them their problems. And she said, let's, come up with a dress code that came with the dress code, and then we brought him back and we made it more posters very, very simple, easy posters, not a lot of designed them to be done. We shot him a pure white just literally cut him out really quick and drop them in there, and it just basically had information on how to get people in the homecoming how to dress we weren't photographed in this state were helping this other company, the national company, make money. But our point was we want to support our community we want to support these kids and so they came to us we went to them we're asking for a problem they gave it to us we became part of the solution so we started solving the problem for the school and in return they made more money and return the kids enjoyed it because again if you look at this poster to the other poster that's a lot of the same kids staying student council so now's cody said that we have another chance to interact with another chance to get them to get to know us another chance for them to see our studio are other work our volume stuff so it was really, really valuable valuable point for us to bring home and again mohr mohr those bricks came down because it's like I keep saying we truly cared about our community we truly care about the people in it but when you go in and say yes I truly care about my school how does a teacher know that is the old saying action speaks louder than words these air our actions these are what slowly breaking it down and this is what takes some time because again, as we said, when you have those big company area local company or whoever and the the ball's running smoothly it might not be the best but it's run smoothly it takes time for them to take a chance on someone else because they really don't want to mess up it's running smoothly is not the best, but they mess up their going to steps backwards and they don't want that. The little things like this really, really helped the other thing that helps is your friends. Friends get a question, we'll stop. Do you guys pre sell your packages for your prints before prom? Great selling them at problem themselves for prom for school dances we actually sell on location, we will send out flyers with pricing information, but we'll sell on location you can do if you're going to do any pre sales are highly suggest she was set up for an online set up and in the flyers we would send out you would actually give information where they view and purchase packages online because some kids it's going to do two things. Some kids I don't know how to write a check at all. Writing a check is a lost art in today's modern society. For the most part, two parents who don't trust a lot of kids with cash or they shouldn't trust their kids with cash because we have a lot of kids that get cash, the mother says they ordered a photo, I gave him fifty dollars. Well that kid's been a problem with his girlfriend and we never got a pitcher order so that so pre sales would really help in that area and but selling a location that being the only spot you get hooked up in the in the the moment the spur of the moment the kids do and even the parents if they're there the helpers and your sales are usually hire so there's a there's a pro con to it we choose to do it all on location at this point because we can and I think it's better it's easier for our workflow we have a person to just taking the order forms and we're going to talk about all that we really get to the to the workflow later on today and then definite tomorrow when we actually do a workflow in person for everybody conceit but as a general just on that pre sales for most type events are better than post cells and proof sheets but for school dances selling on location for us for our experience has been better than uh than presales and then we had an orchestra mr mr doug rick away he is ah super good guy love the death he just wrote an amazing book that's on amazon but we knew nothing about it and we had a friend who was the secretary of the estelle and she said, hey orchestras are looking for a photographer and so then I called up the orchestra teacher and said, I'd like to make appointment, and I went in and gave my presentation, and we got the job not only that we're super good friends now, and so we knew nothing about him. And so this was our first minus the big. So this is our first, like, branching out into little things, and the reason why I want to bring this up is not only how we get the job through your friends, but little jobs like this very simplistic images make very good money, very good money, and you pass him over every day, every day. Hardly anyone thinks about the orchestra. Hardly anyone thinks about the drama. Hardly anyone thinks about choir, you know, they just don't think about all these little groups, and this is where your friends or those students student council can tell you. So we literally went down and I said, okay, of these schools, do they take cheerleader photos? There's the junior high take cheerleader photos? You know? We don't know, I don't know. So we started researching every body that we possibly good on what was all captured, and we made a list, and then we started expanding. Our goals so now we have brasses would so now what we want to go after and then we started re doing our goal selection just like to find our territory like we just talked about so I'm now redefining my territory and now I'm going after other things and you start the whole process over by making it personal and everything else the great thing is we know nothing about doug doug knowing nothing about us and like set about making it personal and really cared about these kids and him being such a laid back guy and understanding we were learning and understanding that you know, it's help process we have a great relationship and when we mess up and we do mess up he's a lot more forgiving you're watching doug thank you um but it's it it's a great foundation these little jobs like this are a great foundation into the school it's a great waits for you to get in so you can't do the full school maybe the school didn't have a all inclusive contract start doing the little jobs start doing the little ones and get your foot in the door for you start that community building they start seeing not only the quality of work but also the workflow and you're turning the photos around and do they want a proof sheet? Yes you offer proof you know all the little things that we're gonna talk about so this is a huge way to get into that break down more those barriers kind of all answered that one guy's question, but I just want to make sure way answered it completely then the other thing that way looked at wass when I was in school I was a jock I was your classic probably jerk kid arrogant where you still are just not a kid, I'm just and so I looked at sports, sports, sports, sports, sports guy that was in mama rain, but the reality is those are probably the worst profit wise of anything to photograph even in texas with texas football are big ones with so called nerdy kids. The drama students requires all that stuff that's what was so big and it blew me away. So this is one of our little seniors and they had a high school that year put on high school musical the disney play and they paid the rights for disney and they had it all done and everything else. And so we brought her in and she she won the part of gabriella leave lee parton. And so we brought her in and we took some simple snapshots and we kind of made some high school musical themed designed to whatever else and then her parents and grand parents and rails bought ads in the program for high school musical when the kids came and so we had, so we photographed her we designed the ads had a logo that they pay the four five hundred dollars per hat or whatever wass and our images were all in this program just for donating your time in a sense she was already one of our seniors so was like, no, we're helping around this just came after your session absolutely bringing back in short in a relationship with us and we bathed this great basically match made in heaven so basically and in all those photos and ads with into the program and so now tons of people I know we got like five or six high and jobs that you're from that ad because people ask, we always ask, where did you get hurt from us? Where'd you hear from us, they brought up that at and little things like that you'd overlook all the time that happened in your community that you could easily for defend. The other thing we did was make a very simple ads for a tux hats and reynolds for tuxedos, rental for dresses anything where kids will go into we made deals with them where we market for them for free when she she would build on the tux is in the dresses that come to our studio we'd photograph make simple ads and she would buy ad space everywhere with their ad and our logo so again now people starting now their marketing now you're basically starting put your logo your name everywhere in the community people not might not even know who try coast is but they see us everywhere so when photographs come up and for some reason I'm going to go we'll go the strike those people they're everywhere and that's basically what we started doing but again it's volume it's a whole concept the volume just another concept it's not that straight school's not that straight sports but it's still volume there's so much of this and then finally we got us a really big job was in hurricane I came through hurricane ike came through and devastated our area there was basically seventeen twenty foot swell everything that was seventeen feet or below are basically above sea level was underwater right on the coast and so it destroyed us and they had the national companies coming into a lot of schools at that time it was right when they needed him and that they couldn't do in a week or two weeks that the kids were out of school that was when the national cos we're gonna be there to photograph and they couldn't get him back into like january this is in september well, a lot of these yearbooks have a spring delivery this is other things you need to research they have yearbooks when it get delivered because if it's spring delivery you're gonna have a due date right around thanksgiving right around the end of november and so they don't come in until january now well, now everything is pushed back everything has to be redone, everything is messed up and you can come in and you can use that weakness is your your advantage? And I basically said look everybody's eating mosquitoes if if you went on this everybody's eating mosquitoes everybody living on generation power everybody is just trying to keep you know, little water we all get it we're all driving two hours to get gasoline because it's the only thing it's open everybody gets this this local and if you wouldn't have this problem if you want local cause someone will be here too and they're like, well, no one can do local no one here locally, khun do it, we're like we can absolutely we can so we stepped up so unfortunately this catastrophe actual turned in our favor it allowed us to jump in when they had had enough whoever was doing it because the customer service wasn't there, so I'm not saying I hope you have a hurricane I'm just saying I hope when you find a weakness like this you need to take advantage of it you need to have your ducks in a row, you need to have your presentation which we're going to go over to go over and detail the second altogether when these things happen get away from the computer and go talk to these people don't email don't call go say hello in person and that's the hardest thing because we want to do the easy route we want to do that e mail we want to do the phone call maybe I mean we get nervous now doing a phone call over a text and you want to get up and go up there and see them every time when I came through there's where we were I mean it devastated everything and this is what our beaches look like after I those were full of homes and so everybody like I said, everybody was going through this and it was very difficult but like I said it was a weakness. It was a point that we should attack because you constantly have to know this is my community and we go through it another reason we've had several people who's had their houses have been on fire they lose everything what we give them their children's photos that happens so people like you should make him pay for well no, this is my community my house burned down what's the most important thing is your family are they alive? Yes, well now can have photos of them again think about all the photos you have of your family that will be gone if you had a fire and if we can replace some of those was that dude, what is that small gift of gratitude do for your you and your business it's not worth the hundred dollars you're gonna make back off it's not worth it already paid for it once, so we do little things like that. So when catastrophes happened we definitely definitely happened help and then the other weaknesses we looked at was friday night lights everyone in united states probably heard about texas and their high school football it's crazy anyone around the world it's crazy we have stadiums and hold eight to ten thousand people on their full at least a five thousand people on the weekends and so we're looking at how to expand how to grow what's that plan of attack what is that area we want to attack and we want to expand into the high school market even more so we looked at what's one thing that everybody loves in our community and that was high school football and so we looked at the football programs and we open him up. Is that what you think this is a football program for high school? Believe it or not it's crazy most of our black and white fold over flies or whatever else exactly there everybody's going holy cow you're not gonna have this in every community, but you're gonna have something like this and that's what I want you to understand you're going to have something that pulls the commune together no matter where you live there's always something and you do your research on it for us it was high school football, but I got the football program and I opened it up and the photos were horrible horrible of these boys and the girls chillers everybody they were horrible they're still using the same live oak tree that they photograph me in front of for the baseball team when I was in high school twenty years before I mean they're just bad lighting to snapshots I mean they didn't care about the color scheme that I care what out that they were wearing some are blue summer white they were just really, really bad so then I go okay who publishes this? Who makes this programme looked him up went down there said hey here's the deal I want to make with you I want to give you quality photographs I want to make sure these boys look good because based on the way it works in our community we have a company that sells all the ads in the back there's lots of ads and that's how they make money so they have these ads this company that produces all this no only principal also sells the ax so I said all right I'm gonna do a great job for you we're going to basically marketing team I'm gonna photograph all these photographs for you with the boys cheerleaders whatever that goes in there making look great so your product is going to look so much better than I did before and in return you're going to give me a full page ad which is usually around a lot eleven hundred of fifteen hundred dollars and so here we are so now we photographed these kids pure why very simple nothing fancy about it photograph the cheerleaders everything is nice and clear because I promise you these kids this is their life and this is their parents like they're taking a cheer practice to dance school to football practice since they were little bitty kids and this is just a cz important to the kids is it is to their parents and for the vast majority as you know, this is the last time they ever going to play any kind of sport whatsoever and so I knew how important this was to our community because I was from there and so we made these photos look great, very simple and by doing that it expanded us now we're in seven or eight maybe nine different high schools doing this and we have a full page ad for our trash go seniors and every one of them so look at it from eleven hundred even a thousand that's eight to nine thousand dollars a year were saving just by taking photographs of these kids as cody says, we're selling experience soon that who are you? You're having fun? I had a great time with this and they start coming to us for our senior business as well it opens up a huge thing not only does it solve the problem how to break down those walls it helps us lower the lower the the negativity they're gonna have four because now we're caring about our kids every step of the way we do full I mean there's just so much goes on into this from their ads everything that we do and it opened up so many doors so again I don't think you'll have high school football probably your community cause most people aren't freaks like about it like we are in texas but you're gonna have something it doesn't matter if you're here in seattle doesn't matter if you're in england it doesn't matter where you are there's something because humans are humans we all want the same we want to have a beautiful family want something better for our family that what we had growing up that I don't care where you live in the world that's the foundation there's going to be something for your local sport? So if it's american football if it's football soccer if it's run b if it's whatever there's going to be something like this for sports was going to something for like the high school musical that brought all the kids together in our community there's going to be something like that so research it find that weakness find out how you can be a part of their solution to make it better and then show them how you could be that part of the solution but went for land is and if he's watching he's an idiot but I loving he's the one who took a chance on us for this and we've grown both our businesses have grown because of it, so we rely on each other so when he has a marketing piece that he knows he's good photos, he calls us up when he knows we're going to take care of it and vice versa. We have some banners that will show you that he helps us print I mean there's just it's za partnership for sure, but we're both there to help each other out because we're both local and we both care about our community and so little partnership like that are huge breaking down walls and getting you in the door so now when you go to that school and you get keep turning away now, other companies like landis, another one's come in and say, oh no I love these guys I love track out man you got a usual so again mohr those wall starts slowly coming down this is not just coming from one direction's coming from multiple directions and then again this is our high school football stadium show the photo but that is our actual stadium that's a that's a senior photo but that's just one side holds five thousand on each side and you will have every friday at least this side of the field that you're seeing will be completely full the other side is just for the visitors and for the junior high and some other local schools so it's it's pretty amazing and it's it's horrible shoot action shots because it's so bad lighting but I mean it's just it's an amazing amazing experience in our community everybody revolves around it everybody rolls around it we even have a coach down in freeport I mean he just comes in which is this is the little town of freeport and he's doing exactly what we want to do in our business he is bring the community into the football with local businesses with tailgating before the football games with hot dogs and hamburgers bringing in just america bringing in good community fund and you want to be part of that because it's fun and it's positive so anything fun and positive that you want to try to be a part of and make it better and so these are the things that we looked at and that's kind of a bad photo. But those were some of the all the all the programmes that we do. And it's it's really great to be a part of it. I know cody goes he's. Been the main guy that does this in august. Come august and september, we're gonna photograph probably fifteen thousand kids the end of august into the month of september. And it starts off in august with our football programs and so will literally go to all those schools. Mainly cody that's been kind of his job and photograph all the head shots process and get him to home. So I mean, it's a huge program into huge process, but it pays off very well, then we do cheerleaders. This is another thing. Simple stuff. So now we're even expanded this farther, and we said, okay, so we got all these ads. What are we going to do with it? Well, we found out by one thing, if they designed these ads, they were simple. They weren't fancy. They were simple but effective. But what we could do is that they come to us as a senior client heist. We've seen your client, we would design their ad for him for free. And so now they're getting quality professional design if you don't have a graphic designer I guarantee you could find one to design these for a little bit of money you designed it for free you paid the graphic designer thirty, forty, fifty dollars to design it you put your logo on it and so now we have ads all through these books that have our photos on that has our logo's on and so and they stand out like a sore thumb in a good way in these programs. So now you have a captive audience not only senior high school senior but now you're seeing all the volumes stuff too and so it slowly grows your business and everything again your name is out everywhere very simple stuff there's nothing fancy about this there's nothing that's gonna make you artistically from the photograph. Just who and all over that's not what it's about it's about the marketing's about getting your name out there's our high school senior day I mean high school dance team for one of our dance teams so we shot them all. Why? We just made this poster up and then they basically by an ad in the program which is a thousand dollars and then they were in there and so basically they have, like there's that one and then we also do just the seniors and there's that one and so way show to the team and the seniors. And then also from a bomb standpoint, we photograph each of these girls, and then we sell them those photos as well as proof sheets. So we're getting great marketing, but we're also getting cells from the individual images as well. It was the home run for everybody, and I guarantee there's something like this and everyone in your communities that you can actually attack cheerleaders. I mean, that is just about a simple of setup is you can get there's. Nothing fancy about it. We could do so much mohr on our high inside, but that's not the point. You want nice, clean, clear photos, simple shots that are focused with decent light cheerleader pose. They chose the background. They wanted this location. We didn't want it. But you know what? That's a given tape. So as a professional that's the artist side, you just give me a location. I'm going to make it happen. We were doing our creative like tio class are off camera lighting class to say, what is it all right to shoot here? And they used to tell us where to shoot. We're gonna shoot and that's the way we do, we trust our our artistic ability in the towns we have any location they give us is gonna be is going to work and this is the kind of stuff that the national companies can't do. They're not gonna have that artistic flair that you will, so this is that's why I'm saying there's art in it all the time it just doesn't come up right away so very simple there's one of her ads that we made there's nothing fancy about that what's a nice clean photo it shows up really bold in the program because that's what they want to see, they want to see the baby's face, we put the warning on it they want and then there's our website really nice and big and they pay for that in a sense we pay for the graphic design, but we're getting so much more back from all the market and all this is lime and then again we can sell those photos to the clients as well. So it's a double whammy in a good way makes sense. We also do lots of posters, posters they're huge they're very basic, very simple there's nothing fancy about this. Susie does most of these she's great at it and you can tell over the years this this one from a couple years ago they've got more advanced and more advanced and more advanced more vance there's some amazing people out there like been shirt out of iowa that sells templates as well for from these posters that are so much more complex than I could ever do because he's an artist he's not just a photography's an artist so there's people out there that have templates you combined you incorporate into your business and so we make posters and we sell these in most your laugh will do like a twelve by eighteen poster and so we put it in it's an extra twenty twenty five dollars for the post or something and for our senior team are for our high school teams we really respect poster for the senior kids because this their senior year you want oh you want to honor these kids? Is it again? Is there last time probably ever play sport of any kind? And so we have banners which again will show that are on the field of our softball field of the senior girls are on the field of the football on the the offense of the football stadium of our senior boys or whatever I volleyball girls so we show that on and then we make simple posters little dance pose there's nothing fancy I mean they one of the kids climbing up the side we don't want that they wanted, so we talkto here's some other ones I mean they're just very basic stuff from a couple years ago that is very, very effective and then we take the three biggest players from the team the three biggest players from from the senior team whatever and we just make simple stuff nothing nothing fancy this is their logo this is their high school I do it all the time and this is the other team we use that same photo and just stuck the coach in there with some of this players that's not the greatest graphics but you know what I don't care we'll make a banner it cost us forty bucks and they put it up in the locker room and it has their motor motto whatever it is and so now you don't eat forty dollars and that coach looks that band and kids hit that banner every time they go out to build him up for the football game of the hockey game or whatever it is but they know they got it from you and so you're your security deeper and deeper into the school on the things that you could do that the big companies can't do and it's slowly but surely getting you deeper and deeper into the volume jobs with them you get to pick and choose you can't just jump into it and just pick anything because you don't wanna go broke you will go broke doing this and you have to pick and choose what you do so you again so you you pick and choose your battles and you go into it so this is kind of some of our our order forms and pricing and we're going to go over a lot more of this and other stuff but I wanted to kind of go into it I said in r t l class and I'll say it in this the mohr you offer the worst you're going to do in many ways because when you offer a lot you open up the human mind to regret you open up the human mind to doubt and when you're looking at a volume package this is what we started off with having all these elections and if you look a lot of these packages don't really look that much different there's really not that much difference between them and so you as a customer going look at this and go I don't know what packages to get and when you start well should I get d should I get sea there so closely both have eight by tens that little got five by sevens it just got a little bit of wallets I really don't need those wallets but then maybe I do need is well, I don't know let me just get g and that's what people do when you have too much they freak out and they're just gonna get the lowest or they don't get anything so over the years we were moved on we removed packages and only offered fewer products in a sense for these for the foundation packages now I'm the ad on king I have tons of packages of adams I want to add on everything but to get an add on, you gotta buy one basic packages because I don't want to just give a cd out just like in a portrait business. If you come to us just want to shoot and burn it's a lot of money because I don't want to see the out, they can get a city, I'm gonna offer it, but I want a portrait I want them to have that print in their hand because you know what a cd is great, but they're gonna put it right in the drawer. They're not gonna do anything with it because most people going one hundred dollars for a ct and I still have to print him out, and sometimes it leaves a negative taste in their mouth, but if you get them a simple package, they have to buy that seventeen dollars package or ten dollars twelve dollars entry package, then you blink, you can purchase the cd, they have prints a little johnny or jenny that they're happy with. It'll go on the refrigerator that'll make them smile every time they know you took it, and then they'll have that disk that goes in the drawer they want that no one will ever see so we make them by general foundation package because our whole goal is for them to have prince we want them just on a whole goal in our high end business to have wall portrait because that's, what makes a family feel good that that photograph over the couch that they spent two thousand dollars for that couch, that photograph is going to see three or four, maybe five of those couches in this lifetime. That's a more important in the furniture. And so we want we want you to have prints when you deliver the images, you deliver them to the school and in a high volume package. Or do you mail them to the client's? Individually? We do both. It really depends on what the school wants and what the league wants like for our main school. Well, actually set up in the cafeteria, one of us one day and we'll hand out, especially if we go to the school. If that's the location we took him out it's always easier to return home to that location instead of taking him somewhere, and then have him people come back to our studio if the whole team thereby came to our studio, them come back soon isn't as we could deal, but we try to make it as convenience possible to get that to them out there at their location. So this is most of those local since we took it there, but if it's like a college graduation, which we also do in our in our area and you have people from our two hours away, they can't really come to you. And then we'll waken mel it. But we will add a mailing fee again. It's a business you can't lose money on melon now you don't want to do like your instant commercials where just pay, shipping, handling and handling the shipping. The handling is forty dollars. We don't want to do that. So we had a flat fee of five dollars, eight dollars? Whatever you just kind of what we did is we put in a package which would be our general package. Put it in the packaging we want. We took into post office. How much would this cost? We found out a flat fee and then we were just kind of made sure way didn't lose money on it. Okay. And also a question from kim si. Do you set a time limit on how long they have to purchase the package? That is a great question, kim si and absolutely everything you do you want to put a time limit on you, look right here due date november seven everything you do you put a time limit and that's, not just a voyeur that's in business, you want to put a call to order on every single thing? If not, we're lazy and I'm I'm just saying we isn't try clothes because we are lazy, but we isn't human beings are electrical procrastinators. If it doesn't have to be done today, I got enough stuff to deal with. I'll do that tomorrow, tomorrow turns in the next week. Next week. Turns out next month we'll look it's past due date and I need order. It's been two years? Let me just go back online. I'll look a little job. I think I see my son. I don't really need to order it, but if you put online and say you got two weeks to order after that, they're going, we're throwing them away, you're gonna get orders. It also helps you in your business, because now you don't have to keep up with stuff for year after year you because you promised to keep him up forever in your place. Burns down. Guess what? Your open yourselves up for lawsuits and all other kinds of negative aspect. You promise you're gonna keep it for a year, six months, whatever, and it's after that point sure, you can still have him. And they want to come to you then you can say, you know I had to pull him up, get him out of, you know, recovery or back up or whatever else but then you're doing them a favor and they know you're doing them a favor instead of so it's turned positive in your nature and seven negative so we try teo put a due date on every single thing we do because without that it just doesn't you're gonna lose money and having said we have we have kids are parents bring us order forms they're two years old all the time brings up hey, can I still can still get this at a senior this year the daughter was graduating this her son was graduating from college and she just found his senior high school senior graduation product and the key to dealing with those his first you first need to take your from from home and you look at it inside get your head looked really puzzled, you know, bigger believe this it's this old goat look what you just brought and the bigger and longer the sigh then you say ok, yeah way we took out a lot of regret by taking out packages, so don't over analyze it really if you want to start off your really developing, if you have a bunch, remove some it ends up better, and then I want to point out if you noticed we have the best value and we have the most popular that's pure psychology. It is the best value, and it is the most popular in many ways. You know why that's the most popular? Because either people want to be popular and they choose it because those little words are on their way. And if they don't go, that was it all, some of poplar. But I'll go one shot down delobel right here to this package. Just like in your studio. You always heard whatever you show, you show big, you'll sell it and usually sell one size smaller than what you show in your studio. I usually sell one size smaller than my most popular, so these two will be the most popular package just by the simple psychology. So you figure out what your basic price your average you want to be, and then make it a little more popular. It'll be there and then take out wallets out your packages. Try not to put wallets. We do sometimes a lot to tell if we don't. Because we found a lot of people want wallets, and we put it as a separate package all by itself, and we found that we did better. So that was something else that a lot of people didn't know about and we make nice clear graphics and we'll talk about that nice clear hand out that's truly truly helped ourselves go up when you make spend a little money and get some nice professional printed products instead of just a little fly by night sheet and then here several posters and colors to choose from I don't like to do jail's their pain but if that school demands it I'm gonna know how to do it either be green screen or I prefer lee don't like green screen I'd like to get away from it possible even though it's gotten a lot better lately but this all these colors come from this one gray backdrop and then we just gel it and so we have a workflow that was our solution problem let's figure out how to solve it so this is kind of the national company fight they wanted a lot of posing that won a lot of different colors and if you have someone that really cares about a year but they're not gonna want this because it makes your butt look worse because they're all over the place so you can fight it that way so this multiple ways you can fight it but if they need it will offer it and we're going to learn how to do it in that three months we have to figure it out and then finally here again too many packages to choose from that we have a few ad on products as well. So we have we always put an ad on products on the order form it kind of gives him a little taste and you can even sell the adult products at that point or you can actually include a flyer when you give them their portrait when they get him back with a lot of adults because money spent is money for gotten they've already spent their money on the original photo package now that khun ad money next pay scale mixed a cycle that can buy a bunch of adults because they got the photos that love little genius got to get a key chain now graham on his key chain so only order teaching grandma needs a blanket with baby's photo on it I don't want my daughter's photo on it, but you know what my mom and she's watching she got she got a blanket with both her grandbabies, so if that happens you get you do it and make him fun and I know about done but make these order forms fun if you want to make it part of the art that's part of your art make it personal put the kid's name on it, put the photo on put your logo on it, put the school's logo on but the school's colors on it make those personal if you're going to prove sheets so again, personal colors, all that good stuff make it all full of colors. Make the proof sheets nice and big but the big problem is this is our proof sheets for our seniors. A few years ago, the images were smaller. We had all the packages that's just overwhelm this way too much information. So then we went to a very simplistic proof. She right in the front babies photos are nice and big. You flip it over, it has all the order forms on the back and nice full color. We still have a little marketing for a high school senior business. We put a cover letter on there. It was really pretty. So the men on the back we had this flier that not only has all the adult packages but also has more pushing people right to our product. We start off in eighty five dollars, so we're not too expensive. It has a huge market impact. And then my sister, who was an english teacher she wrote this amazing letter that made you want to cry when you read it because it's your last babies photographed for school and you want to just hit on all that and that was the package we gave it, our sales went up because everything was more visual just like when you go to a restaurant. Most yellow. Oh, my god, look at that steak, that's. What I want. Whatever pictures in the menu, he will buy you don't buy a meal. It's not got a photograph of it and that's what we started doing. So we started making their meals a nice, beautiful photograph, and ourselves went up.