Lessons

Lesson Info

Class Introduction

I'm going to share with you guys everything that we do to plan and create this event system and um talk to you about kind of how it started why it started and we're going to get through a lot in the next couple days they gave you this information but you can find me um nordstrom photo on twitter and I'm laurie nordstrom on facebook click the little subscribe button on there and I also have my photo talk forum which we have a facebook presence for that as well so you can find me there too so I love being connected with you guys and um really staying involved in what's going on for you and what you need as well so um you know, first question is why a portrait event you know and I know for a lot of you guys you are you know you're in business and maybe needing to niche a little bit more or you know, janice you have a busy life and you want to concentrate on one thing that you can do you know, part of the time and we all have kids we've got families we've got other things and and so that's...

one of the things with a portrait event that I found is with my busy studio that I have it's something that I can really concentrate on even a segment of the market that may be I don't reach in my studio I have a high end portrait studio and there was a segment of the market place that I wasn't reaching and about excuse me hopefully my sick ease don't come out but about two thousand nine and for those of you have been in business for a while about two thousand nine was when all of a sudden you know, the media said we're in a bad economy and all of a sudden everybody and their mother and father were photographers and you know and the world changed a little bit for us as photographers and in our industry and so it was I actually came to a day in my studio and typically in my business I am very, very focused I know what I need to be bringing in monthly you know, year lead quarterly and really watch my number's pretty well and in two thousand nine I had a month where my phone wasn't ringing and all of a sudden I you know was looking around saying I got to make money and I've got to make it tomorrow I'm a single mom like a lot of you and um it's it's not an option for me to not take care of my family that's you know period that's what I got to do and so I decided I need to make money tomorrow and what's you know, what can I do? And so I decided to create this portrait event and it was based on really the charity fundraising events that I had done in the past those work it's a full busy day, it's a profitable day both for the charity and for my business, and so I knew that I could kind of shift that a little bit and make it about the business and make it a product line. And so over the years, what I found is that, you know, we continue to do these real kids events, even though the economy shifted back a little bit and I'll tell you about what I'm doing in my business to really kind of stand out in the marketplace from all the every photographer that's out there, but it's allowed me to have once a month, we can host a portrait event and have a very busy, very profitable day that doesn't include a lot of work flow, which makes it even more profitable then what we do on a day to day basis and and so it really works well is a product line, and I found that it works very well for you, someone like me who wants to add an additional product line to what they already do in their business, and it works for the stay at home mom who wants to work one day a month you know wants to do an event and see a lot of people maybe on a saturday that's only do you have to work cause you're with your kids the rest of the week um you know there's there's just lots of different ways that you can incorporate this into what your needs are in what works for you and so we're going to we're going to go through how you can incorporate this and and I'm gonna just go through what we're going to cover over the next three days but it's going to be a lot of information and we're going to talk about um you know not just the portrait events but how you can incorporate a portrait event and that this system into other product lines if you don't want to photograph kids like idea but also just you know, really growing other areas of your businesses well how you can market and target your client target clientele go through some of this but defining your niche in your style we're going to spend a good amount of time on that this morning I really feel that that it's important that no matter what product line you're selling your adding um if whether it's ah you know whole different events system or it's uh you know you're citing to add seniors to your product line whatever it is you can't do that without defining your niche and your style first, because we have to know that before we know what we're what we're marketing, who were marketing too, so we've got to do that, so we're going to go through that we're gonna, um, talk about how to make your portrait events different from anything else you're doing currently, but also how to make it different than all the other photographers that air around you so howto talk about it and communicate the differences to your client. We're gonna talk about networking and building that client database that's something that's very important to keep your business going. Um, marketing, we're going to spend a good bit of time on marketing and we, you know, definitely will talk about how to market the portrait event system, but I'm gonna talk to you guys about marketing in general, and I know all of us, you know, we all have we all have businesses that's why we're here? And so whether you're wanting to make a portrait event system, you're you're full business or not we all we're all marketing all the time, that's a huge part of being in business and being a business owner, so we're going to spend some time on marketing, we're going to talk about finding and working with your very first host mom and I have a lot of people that you know that's what they're nervous about you know what? I don't know anybody that would be right for this or um you know, I'm brand new to my area how do I find the right person so we're gonna talk about that and how to find that person and then howto work with them and coach them and walk through that whole process we're gonna share the studio pieces that you're gonna want to incorporate for your events that's one of the big things for me any time I'm creating a new product line or um anything that we're doing in the studio I always want to base it around a campaign and so we want to look at all the different pieces that are needed to build this campaign and on and I will tell you two I've got everything printed so you can see it all we do use some printed pieces but a lot of what I do is is a digital pdf and so we'll talk about that too you don't have to invest a ton of money to get started doing this you can do things digitally especially these days you know use the excuse that you're going green if you want teo you know it's a great way to communicate to your client's a very positive twist on the fact that you don't have a bunch of printed pieces around so um you'll be able to see everything that we do but like I said, you don't have to invest in all all the things that I have printed here uh we'll go through an actual phone script and coaching calls and you'll be able to hear a live call that I did with one of the moms that we're gonna be photographing her kids so you will see all that and um and then we're going to go through consultations that I do after setting up the event we do consultations with both the whole host mom and with every single guest that's one thing that makes this different than any other portrait event or portrait party or anything like that out there that I know of is that we are actually working with the client through the process every single client not just the host mom but I'm taking that extra step to make sure I'm communicating with each one of the guests so that they're prepared for the session and for the sale so we'll go through all of that and then we'll talk about planning for the actual sale and that's all today so we're going to get there all that today tomorrow we're goingto go through preparing for the actual event um I'm going to share my checklist with you guys that I go through before each event I'm just getting ready at what we're packing and you know all that good stuff um so there that is packing for the event and the checklist uh I'm gonna talk to you about finding the light and we're going to shoot um while we're here we are going to shoot inside tomorrow because we're in seattle and um but honestly, if I were here and this was my climate to work with, I would do exactly what I do in iowa and iowa it's cold, you know, for five months of the year and three months of the year it's nasty cold but I choose to photograph outside almost all the time when I'm doing these events and what we do is you know, they're short sessions that they're about twenty minutes and so I just tell moms, you know, bring those their sweaters and their coats and hats and mittens and we're going to do a fun snow day picture of fun winter day picture of fun, rainy day picture and especially, you know, in a climate like seattle, I would say, you know, celebrate the area you live in and if that's what you're given photograph it, you know that's a fun that's a great way to you know, have the memory of your child being your child is if you see them in snow or you see them in the rain or that's how you live and, you know, photograph that so but we'll talk about shooting both indoors and out and I'll let you guys check out my lighting set up we are going to shoot an indoor session or ah studio session on sunday I got my days mixed up kind of um so we'll talk about both ways natural light and studio we're gonna talk about looks that cell and as you've probably seen if you've seen any my work or even just looked at the images around here I am not about opposed perfect portrait looking at the camera I want um and again we'll go through this when we're talking about style everybody's got a different style and that's why we can all be in business but my style is israel life that's what the real kids thing is all about is that with those riel life moments and that's what I want to photograph and that's what I want to communicate to the parent what I saw in their child and so the looks that I'm looking for are the natural moments that happened and I might get him into the right position for the light with that I'm gonna let them do their thing and you know that you know, leaning into giggle or looking off the clouds or whatever they're doing at the moment and so we'll talk about those looks and how to communicate the right things to mom so that she sees what you're seeing we'll talk about shooting for what we've planned for with each and every client, so as I'm working with, um, the mom's thank you, as I'm working with the moms doing those consultations, I'm going to be planning the actual session around what we've discussed, so we'll talk about how all that goes and what happens and what's really exciting is that after as we plan a session, mom starts buying because we're talking about I'm having them, taking images of their their walls at home, so I'm making clothing suggestions, I'm making two core suggestions right from the very beginning, and I'm gonna shoot for those things I'm going to tell them that's what I'm shooting for. So they started investing in this whole process from the very beginning and that's the way that we sell high end, even during these, you know, short portrait events, so we'll go through all of that, um, working with kids and working with moms, and I know you know, lots of you out there have have kids and love working with kids. Um, so I'm just going to share a few little tips and tricks that I, you know, that I enjoy working with kids, and some things that I do and then and then working with the moms is just is important. And we know that um and then in the afternoon of tomorrow we're going teo do an actual event we have three sessions normally during event I do ten sessions but we're going to do three tomorrow many event and we'll be doing it exactly like we d'oh on a regular event we're going to shoot and they were going to sell so they're going to actually see their images immediately following their session and we'll go through the quickie sales process so you'll get to see all that happened and then on day three we're coming a lot you guys um on and on and back today tio you're going to see it happen on day two you'll see the session the sale on on day three I'm actually gonna go through the process with you so you'll um we'll talk a lot more about sales on day three um in the morning we're gonna do a family portrait session and then we'll uh we're just gonna talk through the family portrait sale I do things um some the same some of the different some little bit different in our regular studio sessions so you're going to see a regular studio family portrait session and it's actually our host mom that set up the other three kids the other three families for the event and then we'll talk through sales were also going to talk about pricing and pricing philosophy so not just that's just the pricing that I have set up for these events will go through all that and why but I'm also going to talk to a little bit about setting up pricing for different product lines and the different philosophies but behind packages and all a car and build a collection and all those things that are out there and why certain things work for certain things um we'll talk about building a product line and like I said this works for you know whether you're photographing high school seniors are brides or you know whatever it is you could make a system like this work so we'll talk about building a product line based on what your niche is and what your style is I said that the sales process like I said we'll go through that whole thing we'll talk about objections and um you know, working with with moms and using the right language to lead them to that final order appointment and then we'll talk about putting this whole thing in place so how to make it all happen once you get home and then applying it to other product lines no matter what you want to shoot we'll talk about how to apply this to charitable marketing event so that you can do fundraising with it and finally we're going to talk about setting goals and a business plan and I've got this on here last I definitely hope to get to uh the business plan portion and the setting goals portion we're going to use it wherever we need it in the next three days were kind of gonna go loose there so we might put it in and so I want you all to go to photo talk form dot com slash blogged and when you go there on the right, you're going to see this little, uh, emblem icon whatever um and it's going it says free gift it's a thirty page business, plain workbook and goals she worksheet and this is a business plan workbook that I put together, um for forum members but it's free for all of you while I'm here download that, and when we get to that portion of the event, we're going to go through that together as much as we can, but it'll be something that you can get and download and have ready and waiting when we get to that part. So all right, we're ready. Here we go, I just want to say, laurie, wow, that wasn't incredible how much information we're going teo and learning we're going to do in the next three days so I am pumped we'll pack it all in alright, internet is pumped as well, all right uh oh, I got to go back before I get this and say first, um uh before I get going I just I want to thank my whole team back at the studio I've only been home one day this month and I was in ecuador and I was in d c before that and um the one day that I was home was the day before I came here and my my right hand in the studio I can not run my studio without stacy she's been with me for about five years and she's amazing she does all of our digital stuff she's my second shooter and tuesday I was home this one day and she is in labor at her desk so laurie the slave driver does not let her leave I'm only hope one day we have stuff we've got to get done this is such a busy month and you know, holiday orders and all these things and I'm not I'm not there and so I'm so so you're going to see a little video stacey and then she did have her baby uh just uh yesterday two days ago whatever whatever I left to come here remember you're gonna say that so I want to thank her and thank katie who does all my graphic design stuff in my and kim who spend with me for ten years my office manager my whole group of people are just they have really supported me getting here so I wanted to give a shout out to them so here, stacey, are you having a contraction right now? Don't be mad at me, but I think this is pretty funny. What are you working on while you're contracting? Free free. Free. Okay, stacy, when she's not pregnant with her hubby and stacy's desk and stacy with her first born. This is number three. So stay by next time we see her, she'll be having her third. And she did that's, baby auto so I can't wait to get home and photographed him. Um, and and these are my kids. And I wanted to throw them out there just because we all like talking about our kids, right? And and it just thanks to everybody who supported me getting here. This is josh. Would jae seon jackson and josh just turned twenty six last week. Um, lives out in l a. And as a musician, j c is twenty three and just got engaged. And jackson is fourteen. So those are my buddies. And this is my soon to be grandchild. Jaycee's fiancee has a two year old. This is my buddy preston. And as you can see, he's already used to camera so that's my that's, my family.