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Maximizing Profit

You know, we talked about being very efficient and we talked about trying to put systems in the place so that you're not chasing your tail around in circles and with the world that we live in simple things. The world that we live in, an email to your clients. How many of you guys email clients, you know, Just say Yeah, almost everyone. Would you just say you wanted to remind them three days before their appointment and you send them an email? How many times did they take the moment to respond back to that email? Normally, not because they say, Well, they were just looking for confirmation. So there's no need to email or how many times did you email a client and it takes them four days to give you a response? And that's because folks like Lorenzo, he's got 13 kids you know he's got I mean, we know what he's doing in his spare time, and I doubt it's photography. But you know, Lorenzo Lorenzo is very busy. You know, you're a busy fellow. You know you're busy. You're busy, Randy. You're bu...

sy with what you do. So imagine how a family that has 34 Children. They're trying to run their business. They may be working on the side and they're not going to respond to emails. And this used to drive me crazy And where something gives me an absolute frustration instead of continuing to go through that frustration for months upon end, I look for a solution, and what we did was we said, Look, why don't we get what we text our clients? Texting clients to me is like, Well, I don't know. That might be a little informal or, you know, a little It just might be not very personal because I get these messages all the time from, like my people that check my eyes that my optometrist, the dentist office and it's just a generic. You know, this is a reminder of your appointment at 10:30 a.m. On Thursday, and you can tell us generic because up underneath the bus got all these codes and things like that. To me, that is weak. That is not the way to go. You want everything to be very personal Now. Everyone always has their phone. Everyone, they always have the phone. Even moms, moms air during my sessions. Moms over there texting like wildfire like, What are you doing? And they're normally they either playing that new game, candy crush or whatever. Yeah, yeah, I've never downloaded and I don't know what I'm doing, but Mom's wherever they're texting. So if they're texting, obviously they have their phone with, Um um, the biggest thing that texting is allowing us to do is it's allowing us to break down the barriers of communication. Ah, lot of times an email. You can't put emotion in the email, so you type this long email. No one is reading it, and it's kind of sad because our society is becoming shorter and shorter and shorter. And I don't mean, you know, like like this. I mean in our communication. Think about the way the kids speak these L o l. Blah, blah, blah what All these little things that they say and it it rings true with this. So we are not necessarily looking for a long breakdown of Hey, this is blood of a blob of a bit of a shortened sweet Straight to the point. Now what we do, I'm gonna share with you how we use this and why we use it. But one thing. Let's say that if I'm calling, I'm gonna call a client to remind them of their session on Wednesday. And this is Friday. I don't want Wednesday to roll around and them not show up. So if I just call him and leave a message or if I just email and wait and never hear anything, I don't know if they receive that. What if they don't check their email, But once every six weeks, then I'm sitting there twiddling my thumbs at 10 o'clock when they're supposed to be there. That is not helping me maximize my profits from losing money. So we decided we we do three forms of communication. We're gonna email them, we're gonna call them. And most importantly, we're gonna text them. And every time that we send a text, it is a near immediate response. Like right here. This is an order pickup says good afternoon. This is Shannon. I hope you are enjoying your wink. I want to let you know that your order it's just personal, is sweet. It's easy is short, concise. Straight to the point. It leaves no where else to go. You can't misconstrue that in anyway. So to me, this is a great way of ways that we're maximize on profit. And these thing people say, Well, Blair, I don't want people to have my my phone number, my personal number. We'll go to your phone provider and add another line. You can add another line for normally, like 9 99 course, you can get a phone for free. This was the last years. IPhone don't give you that for free. I think it was or it might have been $ have that dedicated studio phone that stays at the studio all the time and that that's the one that I mentioned. Whenever we got an email response or an email inquiry, I'll just swing by and scoop it up. Hey, what's up on Blair? Blah, blah, blah connect with Um, so to me, that is a huge way that we're maximizing our profits because we're able to communicate with communicate with our clients on every little detail, even if it's if you're just feeling good one day and you're like, Hey, I just wanted to say thank you again, those little things that we can do makes a wealth of difference right now. Another way. I talked about some gear and things like that yesterday. I want to give you some specifics here, and I want to talk about why you do this right here. Why are you going to change lenses so many times throughout a session? It's a personal goal for me to change my lenses four separate times or to use four separate lenses for every single session that I do now Y on Earth wanted to bring four set on four separate lenses. It's very simple. A lot of times, if you're a 72 200 shooter, you shoot with that 72 200 all the time. That's my go to lens, and that's what I'm going to use. Well, every one of your images are gonna somewhat have a similar characteristic. A similar perspective, if you will. So for me, I'll start out with a 24 to 70 that allows me to never disengage with my client. It's a 24 to 70. I'm not running across the room without 200. Okay, turn your head down to the right a little bit and I'll go fix something and then run back over here disengaging with them. So I start off with the 24 to 70 that allows me to be very close up front, personal with them, because I shoot with a 24 to 70 differently than I would within 85 85 millimeters gonna force me to shoot in a different way, which is going to maximize my profits because I'm gonna be able to sell more images because now I have more variety. Once I get more comfortable with my client, then I will pull out the 72 200. And that is when I'm really trying to compress the background shooting at 2.8 and I was zoom all the way out of 200 back up and use manual zoom of that time. Either move forward or move backwards, love shooting at but not for every image. And then when I pull out the X Century lighting with the light card and I want to get that scenic, that wide open look right there, that's when we go with the 14 to 24. I want to create something really wide, something unique, but think if I had my 14 to 24 my camera for the whole thing. Every one of my image is gonna be a shot from a similar perspective, and it's gonna have a similar look. So to maximize your profits, I'm going to I guarantee you that they will rise if you force yourself to use different lenses. Maybe you don't have four lenses. Maybe you have to make sure that you co mingle the two together. Just think of a measure, Children. And don't leave one of your kids at home when you head out. Don't leave him. Don't leave them behind And the use of the light card. Now, I've got all my stuff right there, so I don't have to carry it. Pick it up, change it. That's another thing that I've found. You know, if you simplify things and you make things easier, you'll do them more right. Like I said yesterday with the backdrops, if you have to hang them up every time you want to use one, you find yourself just saying you know what? Forget it. I'm not doing that. So definitely don't do that. You have a quick question? Yeah, I have to seem settled lands whose great one question is dead. We have to send it to 200. You could practically just set it to 85 just should with though changing in Ellen's when you kind of do it deliberately, because then I would just be shooting 85 only. And when I put the 24 to 70 I'll use it at 24 40 50 60 70. I use it all different ways. So if I said it on 85 then to me, my 85 1.4, it honestly gives me a tremendously different look than setting my 70 arm a 72 200 at 85 shooting that at 2.8. So it just it's one of those things. If you get in, the habit of changing it will force you to change is a photographer. I promise you that is a good point, cause you could, theoretically shooting 85 achieve the same thing. But it's still gonna look different. But for me putting that different lens own, it's like, OK, I gotta get my feet moving here makes my feet move because even if I'm at 85 with that 72 200. I find that I stay in the same spot all the time. You know, I just stay right there in that same spot, So switch him up and it will force you to literally move your feet and get the dancing a little bit. Good question. Good question. But that does make sense again. There's several different ways to do the same thing. But for me, it just gets me moving a little bit. Gets the blood flowing. And it looks good to my clients to because I can tell them. Hey, listen, I want you to look at this. Look in this camera bag right here. You see all this equipment? We're getting ready to. Where? All this stuff out with your young lady and I let him know that. You know what? I have 7200. Did a really use all of them again? It's validating my pricing a little bit, too. Another thing to maximize your profits. You have to do this. You don't have to. But one of my things that I do that makes it work. Mixing up that lighting when you go out on set When you go out on a location, when you go any client, when they come in your door, go home and force yourself into using a certain type of lighting that you just do not like. You're like I'm scared of it Montana. But I'm intimidated by it. I don't want to do it. Make yourself got into the bright sun and use a gobo use subtracted lighting and then have to add lighting back. Put yourself in that uncomfortable situation and that's what I've done. And by now I'm really comfortable with all realms of lighting. And by putting yourself in those uncomfortable situations, you will figure out a way to make it work. Let me say this when you're going out and you want to put yourself in an uncomfortable situation. Don't just jump into the most uncomfortable situation you confined and start there. That's not a good look. So what I've done is in every session. I'll go ahead and hit my sleep spots. I'll do what I normally do what I feel is comfortable and then just say, if I'm photographing right here and my best light is coming from right here straight ahead, I will say You know what? Now, on this last one, let's flip around this way. I'm gonna have you go over there and face office away. Terrible lighting. But I'm gonna force myself to create a completely different look. By doing that, the background may go darker. It may go lighter. It may go a shade, whatever. But you never know until you try it and you're gonna go over there. And if you don't like it, don't take one shot and like, Oh, yeah, that doesn't look any That's terrible. Take your shot and say All right, sweet. Let's move right over here. So even if you don't like it, don't Don't ever tell a client that doesn't look good. You want them to think you are pro level right now? On average, I'm not sure what the averages of what people deliver as finished images. Now people look at this in different ways, they say, Well, I want my clients to have a lot to choose from, because if I don't have enough, it looks like maybe they didn't know the money is not justified. What? I spent $ on this session, and I've only got 25 images. Well, my clients don't think that because I give him images to choose from. Well, for me, that's not a good idea, either. I deliver 40 to 60 finished images, and there's a reason that I do that because too many images and trust me, I know this from experience in my own studio. If you give them too many images, it's an immediate shutdown. They already have a lot on their minds, and they're saying, I just can't quite decide. I want to show you later in the sales presentation of how you kind of guide their hand, but you pull them in the direction you want them to go. So 40 to 60 images is a plenty for an average senior session, even a well above average senior session, because with 40 to 60 I'm shooting for one of the album's I'm Shooting for an album. Now, if I have 80 images in an album on the album, I have to add more pages, which is gonna cost me more money. So I don't want to put 40 pages in there, and you know, it's been a really thick book with one page on each. You know, our one image on each page. I want to mix it up and have several images on the page, so I don't have a least 40 to 60 images. It's going to really thin book. So the more pages, the more justified it feels, which is crazy in our society. We want mawr. Look at our plates of food versus, you know, someone in England. You know, they have a little portions and you do that. You do that here, we're going to We're gonna be mad to go to a restaurant, and we've got this little tiny portion of food so on while I'm shooting those 40 to 60 images, the reason I shoot 40 to 60 is I'm shooting for additional products. I wanna have enough in my image bank to take advantage of all of the awesome products I'm going to share with you guys today from agent each color lab. But don't have the images to fulfill that. Then what am I doing? What? I'm not capitalizing on that now. Another thing that's gonna help us maximize our profit because time is money. And one of the biggest mistakes we make his photographers is not valuing our time. We just look at the cost of goods and we say All right, it costs me X amount of dollars to produce this. That's what the lab Bill says. So I'm charging this, so I'm making money. Well, that's not the case. You have to create a shooting system. When you walk out, there's nothing better think about going out on a wedding or a senior shoot, and you walk out the door and you say, man, I have no clue what I'm gonna do here, and you're just trying to stall. And you're wasting time. You're like, OK, and you're talking your client, but you're looking at the corner of your eye and seeing what's over here like Okay, eso like your outfit. We're gonna go, um, we're gonna go right over here. Yeah, I do this all the time, so no big deal and you'll struggle. And all the sudden you're 1.5 hour session turns into three hours because you're struggling. So do this. If you have to take, go through. This is a very good thing that I love doing this every once in a long go through some of your favorite images your most favorite images that you've ever shot. And I don't care if you have to take a picture of him with your IPhone. Take a picture of all the favorite images you shot. Just say they just say there's 10 of them. Make those 10 your core poses. Remember those? Remember how in Malmo posing guys, there is a name recognition, you know, even if it's the young girl's name or the young guys name, you know, Say, hey, this is the Lorenzo. This is that, Randy, this is the Lee. This is put a name with it. So you can remember. And then when you walk out, you've got your handful of go to poses and you're just right there working Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam! And you're sitting there scratching your head when and where to go again. Time is absolute money. So pick that handful of go to poses. And then once you have those you build from there. You know, if you pose someone with his table and you've got your go to pose, turn it into form or before you leave, force yourself, even if you don't even like the pose. You're like, I'm running out of ideas here. This is probably gonna look, don't. But I'm gonna try it anyways. I want you to do this and twist up, and that's gonna look great. It may look crazy. It may turn into something. And you may look at it when you get back and you may learn from it and say, Oh, that would look so better if I would have turned it this way Or put this hand up or move this down. So learn from what you're doing. Make a few mistakes every once in a while. Trust me, I make a ton of mistakes every single day, so but what I'm doing is I try to learn from him now. It's taken me 35 years to do that. So now I'm learning from my mistakes. Now there's another thing you can do that I really feel like helps maximize my profits. And it is showing my clients that I've done a little bit of homework and I educated myself, delved into their personal life just a little bit because I'm genuinely interested and I want to know things about them. So what I rely on is job forms. Job form dot com. It's a free form service. You can go there and they have all sorts of forms, and you can create a form that fits your needs and it's absolutely free. So who wouldn't want that wearing? We not using stuff like this? What job form? What a form allows me to do is it allows me to collect information about a senior, and it sent one week before the session. So it's a basic question air, you know? Hey, what kind of music you listen to? What what high school do you go to? Where do you work, what you want to do when you get older? No, not every time. Do I don't rely on that. And when they come in and I have to say, Okay, so it says here that you love new kids on the block because that's still accurate. Or it says here your favorite food is pizza. No, that's the wrong way to communicate. I looked through it. I'll pick it up a few days before they come in, or let me not lie the minute before they come in and look at it and I read through it, Read through over. There may be something kind of funny or quirky in there that I'm like. That's pretty interesting. Wow. Who knew? So she plays guitar, and, you know, she got fired from the last job from for stealing a stake. Whenever I know something about the client, I have the gift of Gabai can normally talk to anybody. And But if you don't, this is a good way to open up some Berries of communication for you. And you can read through the questions that you so choose. You know, it could be something trivial. Where you from? Um, you know, are your grand. Are you close with your parents or whatever? And it allows you toe have a little ammunition when you walk into that camera room and it's like, Hey, there, Randi. How are you? Says here that you are Not that it says here that reindeer. You a big music guy? Yeah, sure, man. But I already know on here that he loves Garth Brooks for some reason, and I can say, Yeah, me too, you man. And I'm kind of kind of grooving on some country music here lately, man. Uh, And you Who do you like any Garth Brooks are? No, he likes Garth Brooks because I've already read it, but it gives me something to go buy something to lead into. So if you're not really good with communication with your clients, job forms is the way to go. This is kind of an idea of what it is, you know, down here. Favorite things to do. Favorite music artists describe your style. Who referred you? It's something generic. Don't make it a 17 page essay short and sweet and make it simple because teenagers, unfortunately, our school systems are letting us down. So they are not very good feelings stuff out, or at least in my area anyways, so make it simple, make it clean, make it easy, and they will fill it out. And they can email that right back to you. And you've got some memo. I have a question ready. You're backdrops. Were the background user What, Right now, it doesn't really help me with the backdrops quite as much. It does kind of help me with the style a little bit, you know? I mean, if I know that that describe your style and she says, I really love playing the piano and I've played piano in my whole life and I love to read and I love going to the movies, and obviously I already know that I'm going to approach her a little bit differently than I would. My tone is going to change. I'm not gonna walk in and approach her the same way I would with a girl that says, I love death, Metal, rock And you know, I have a pet snake. I'm gonna approach her way different than I would the piano girl, The piano girl. I'm gonna walk in because I already know. I must say, Hey, Kathy, it's so nice to meet you. How are you today? The girl? That's rock. I'm a coming in like What's up, girl? How you doing? I don't know. I may even have a guitar and walk up and, you know, be playing the guitar, just something funny, even though I can't play the good teller. But I can act like I can, and I'll hand it to her and say here, Do you think? And then she'll get awkward and like, I can't really play the guitar. I just wrote that, and then it's something to talk about. But I think it definitely gives you a one of the things that I love is all my schedule in success where there's a section for notes and each session is coming in for that day. One of the things that helps him maximize my profit is there are notes, or at least they're supposed to be notes. And it says, You know, Lorenzo nine o'clock AM He's a senior from Westbrook High School, and I click on notes and has a lot of this information is already logged in. Their Lorenzo has five kids and he's in high school. That's been a busy. Do you know Lorenzo lives on the east side of town. He loves whatever. Well, that allows me to already get a preconceived idea of kind of what I think he's gonna be like. So it just helps me in my mind, prepare. I like to be mentally prepared, just like coming in here. I would never come into creative live when we're supposed to be on air and nine. I would never show up at 50 and be unprepared. You can't. You have to treat it as a serious game. I've been here almost up and I've been here every day. I've been outside waiting for the door to unlock. Like this might let me in before the employees are here because I want to be prepared. I want to own it. Don't want to be really good at it. I want to be really good at it. Another thing to maximize your profits is you have to be consistent. You have to be. There is no way that we're ever gonna make more money if we're not doing things on a consistent basis because it goes back to that whole time management. You're not managing your time exactly right. And these are things that I've learned from H and H Color lab. My family there, they change couple. They said, Listen, we can help you maximize your time. We can help you with all this. That's what I love about partnering with companies that have your best interests at heart. Have those sort of resource. Is that help me maximize my time? If I feel like I'm struggling in an area I can call him. So hey, help me with this and they have systems in place that said, Well, this is kind of what we do. This is what we do. And I'm like, you're a genius. Why don't I think of that? And if you're not being consistent, what do you think that does to clients? If you're all over the place and you're not consistent the way you handle things, it's What do you think? I would think that it would make me kind of question your ability to right. Be a good photographer, and I would lack trust in you. Exactly. Know. And that's a great point. See, I should have said that, Mikey. No, you guys are awesome. The third segment, I think I'm gonna have you come up this today and do this one. Don't even joke like that. I got you. But yeah, that's great. That you have to have your clients have to have a certain amount of confidence that that you and still into them. Because if they're leery about any part of the whole session your dollar signs, we're going down. So the more you can build that up, the more you can be consistent, the more your profits are going to rise right. So you're sending a mixed signals? Just what she said. I don't I don't know. This guy seems to be all over the place. Like, one minute he's doing this. And then he forgot this, and he took us out of this location and he forgot to put a media card in the car are in the camera. But remember yesterday what you gonna do? What you gonna do about media card? From now, we did pick up something that a lot of exactly carrying an extra media card in the car as a backup way talked about that and, you know, and that Yeah. Good point. Yeah, I got you. And we appreciate that, but one of my favorite things, and I know you've got it, but being being consistent, I've said this before, but part of being consistent is showing what you want to sell. It goes right back to the same thing of Hey, if you want to sell this, you have to put it in front of them or they can't buy it. Think about the check out counter. You know, when you go to a grocery store, they do this stuff own purpose for us people that have Children, do they not? And you roll up there and you're like, OK, this is it gonna be a quick line. It's not gonna take long. And then for some reason, the register runs out of register tape and you're like, Man, I've got a two year old and I got to get her out of here because any minute now, and she's going to start showing out, she wants out of this bug here. And then she looks over in my In my daughter's case, she sees Elmo, and she's like, I m o l o l o Daddy, I almost all right, Well, I'm buying an Elmo because now we're sitting there for 10 minutes waiting on customer service. I'll four. Great. So if you're not showing what you want to sell their number, you're never able to sell it. So they put all those little trinkets and on the gum and candy because you get up there and you're not thinking, Hey, I need a U S A U. S. A. Today magazine. But oh, hey, look, I'll get that. Hey, while I'm just standing here doing nothing, let me get one of these two and one of these. So they're doing that on a very much a purpose. Now, this is a a section that I really, really love. It took me almost about seven years to figure out how in the world toe handle clothing changes. Now, the way you stay on time and the way you can lose a lot of time is your client's changing seniors, especially they get in there with me. I've got that forefoot mirror that's huge. And they get in there and they look at the sales and they cramp and they do their thing. And they may put something on there like this, my rear look big and asking me that another dressing room with him? Or do you like these shoes with this? No, that doesn't work with me because what happens is then that's gonna met pro alone your session. Remember? I said two hours. We've got to be done. I've got him on the hour every two hours. So if I run over, I messed myself up for the rest of the day. So you can't do that now. Tell them to bring way more than they need, because again, they're going to show up with three or four tank tops and it's gonna make your work not enjoyable, not enjoy what at all. You know, some people send home a style guide. You know, bring this. This this and this Personally, I don't do that because, you know, I was a child that didn't really have a lot of close growing up. I remember. I remember one year I wore some red jogging pants and pink Converse tennis shoes. Don't ask why, but, man, I wore those red jogging pants like all year. And it was one of those things. It's like, Can I get some new shoes? These here? These are starting to come apart. Well, son, when they completely fall apart, we'll see about getting you some. But in the meantime, just keep working on what you got. Just make sure you high step with that right foot so you don't trip. It wasn't that bad. I'm just kidding. But I don't want to make someone that doesn't have a certain brand of clothing or a certain style of clothing. I don't want to make them feel bad. If I say give them images, bring this something like this something like this they may not have. They may not have that. And I don't want to make them feel any less important than someone that does have it. So I just tell them to bring a lot of variety that way. It's noncontroversial, and you don't ever feel bad about it. Express a two hour window when they walk in. Of course, this is all done before the session. You've already told him this story, a text and email of verbal everything. When I come in, I say, Listen, right, regime. And listen, you know the deal. We've got two hours. Okay to ours is yours. So if you want a daily dalli around in a dressing room and take 35 minutes to change clothes, you're really gonna mess yourself up here. Now I want a photograph of many of these outfits as we possibly can. So when you come back in the dressing room, I want you to be like a speed changer. Get it done knocking out so we can go photograph some more. So the two hours is yours, so don't waste it. Okay? I'll be ready for in a minute. And then I leave a state. I make my statement and then I'll be quiet. I don't say anything else about it. If they want to change their hair or something like that, you can do it. But it has to be. Has to be quick. Quick question. Now that's for the studio. That's that's awesome. But what if your are actually out on location? I mean, they are you in a bigger vehicle in which they can change or right, you know? Yeah, he was. He missed us yesterday. I have, ah, little portable changing room. It's like one of the pop up things that just folds up like a like a reflector would. And that that makes it really, really nice. And it takes the liability away from you know what? If she's in her car and, you know, you turn around somewhere and it's like, Oh, gosh, I didn't I'm sorry. I forgot you were there, and she's you know, I just don't really like that. I don't like that. Yeah, when they get there, do you pick the cold for them all? Yes. I pick the clothes now. Actually, I I'll share what? I've got another segment in here little talk about that. But I, in a sense, pick the clothes I can say, Lay it all out and I'll come in and say OK, you know, I've got something to go perfect with this. This is gonna be great. You're gonna love it. I'm really enthused about it. So when they're putting it on there, like already, like Okay, he's already got something going to be great for this. I'm ready to go see what it is. So, yes, I am picking that the outfits. To a certain degree, I leave a little bit of leeway. I'm getting to that in just a little bit. Um, and actually, the next slide talks about that. Ask Mom for her favorites, so I choose the ones I want. But before I even get started to say, Mom, listen, which one? Which one of these outfits is your absolute favorite? Which one of these are you? Just gonna die if you don't see her? A picture and mom, she feels important, and she's like, Oh, let me just show you and are in the senior will know me do this right here. She's like Mom, I don't like that. And then I'll say, Look, I don't know who's paying for these. Look, you can give your mom one outfit. It's not gonna kill you. Just do it. So I know that that's one outfit we're definitely gonna use. Definitely. And then I asked my senior say, All right, now tell me if there's one outfit in here that you're just gonna kick and scream and you just don't know what you're gonna do. If we do not photograph in that particular outfit, I want you to point it out to me. I'm covering Mom and I'm covering the senior and the rest of its fair game. Now we'll ask them to say, Listen, is there any of these that you just don't like that she brought? And you're just like an early like this, But he told me to bring a lot. If they point those out, I will throw them back over in the suitcase. Not we don't wanna mess with those, so I do control it. But I still give them a little bit of control as well. So hopefully that helps with how do you handle outfits? How are you shooting your sessions in two hours and being done hope that that's a big health there now for maximizing profits just like you guys are here. Okay, you are. You have a question about the outfits? It's kind of related, you know? How about makeup? Like, Do you have higher artist to do? The make novel did a time with the makeup high. Great question about makeup. I don't hire an artist, and I'll tell you what. I've done that in the past where I'll have a girl come in and she wants makeup. We hire an artist to come in and do the makeup. Well, that artist doesn't necessarily know this girl, and she doesn't know how she normally wears her makeup. But a high school senior is, too is too uncomfortable to say that she's putting it on. She's like, Do you like that? The senior is not going to say now. I don't really like that. She's gonna say, Yeah, that looks good. And then her whole session, she's not gonna like because she doesn't like the way this girl did her makeup. Same thing with hair. She may not like the way the girl fixes her hair, but she's too immature to say I don't really like the direction we're going into that. So for me, I tell them if you won't make up, bring your makeup, have someone that can come with you to do your makeup or you do your own makeup that way, just context that liability off of me a little bit. Another way to maximize your profit is exactly what you're doing. Right now, you are here with Creativelive. You are here to educate yourself, pig. Maybe two or three things throughout the year that you may want to travel to that. You're going to say, You know what? I have researched this convention and I'm telling you, this looks like the place for me. This looks like a place for May 1 of those that really helped me the most is obviously creativelive, and then right behind them is sink and that senior or us actually senior and Youth National Convention, and it is dedicated specifically to seniors. So I know when I go to Florida for this event, it is jam packed with nothing but the latest greatest senior information on the planet. Every single session is dedicated towards teaching seniors, so I know that that is a place for me to go. So every year look, that just gave me chill bumps, right? And it's not because it's cold in here. Is that true? I learned so much from there. The people that put it on or so genuine. They own a senior business. So they know what we need as students. So they scour the earth, find the best of the best, and they bring them every year. And one thing that I've asked him to do is help us out this. You know, I said, Look, can you help these people get there? And they said, for Creative Live and you guys will do whatever Another one. Find a forum. Find some sort of an online forum that you can belong to. Post images, get critiques, look at other people's work, ask them questions. It allows you access to thousands of photographers all over the world all over Another one. Keep Mom involved. If you want your profits to go up now, I kind of joked earlier, You know, when I gave him the mother buffer, you know, I keep Mom involved, but from a distance, so I keep mom involved, but from a distance. Don't let Mom come in there and mess with your senior that you just tell her straight up like mom. That is just unacceptable behavior and B will be real with your clients and joke with him. Don't be afraid to, you know, to rip him a little bit and tell them exactly how you feel. Make a joke about it, you know? Say, look, your daughter, she's probably gonna scratch your eyes out if you do that again. So I want you to get over here, and I want you to sit your little self down, and I want you to chill out. Okay? Don't get up again unless you are getting ready to have a have a accident in your pants. All right? And then they get a sense for this guy's really serious, but he's kind of joking around, too. But okay, I will another thing. Allow yourself time to chit chat when I'm photographed. It's not like Okay, stand here. Stand here. Stand here, Stand here. I've allowed myself enough time to be profitable, but I've allowed myself enough time that when we get our first set, I can stand here for a few minutes and I can chitchat. I can talk about whatever. You know, I can talk about a concert this coming in town and talk about her shoes. I could talk about her friends or you know, where he goes to school. I can do that. That's my business. I don't want it to be so commercialized that everything is OK. We're gonna do this. This this and this is transparent. I'm organic. I'm riel. So take a few minutes before you get started on each set. Just chit chat with the people. Sit down with him for a minute. It will go a long, long way. No one else is doing that. You go get a cup of coffee from a local coffee place you walk in is help you show you 3 Uh, what's your name? Okay. Next. How better does it feel when you walk in and they say, Hey, how are you doing today, man? I'm fine. How are you? I'm doing pretty good. I'm just glad that glad that sun's out here looking forward to a good day. Got got big plans this weekend. We're going out to the game. What about you, man? You got big plans for the weekend talking to me or Ziona like a Bluetooth or what? You know, it feels better. So even if people don't do that for you, try to do it for them. Some people don't like the chit chat. Some people don't like it, but if they don't like it, do it anyways because it will make it less awkward for you. Let's talk a little bit about some short term goals to raise your profits, and this is what I do. All right down. Just say for the next month, out, right down, maybe three. Just short term goals, three short term goals. Things that I know I can achieve really short in a short short period of time. And it may be something as simple is alright, my short term go. I wanna learn to put my stuff back where it goes after every session. It's probably not gonna happen every time for me, and but that's a short term goal I want to work on. That's something I can fix right now. And then I may think in the beginning, the month I may throw out one long term goal. What's a long term goal that I want to achieve over the next 12 months. So I try and pick 12 per month that are attainable. And it may be something as simple as I want to put a put aside. You know, whatever extra money I have, because I really want to get a whole new set of lights for this side of the studio. That's a long term goal. But unless I write it down and unless I see it, I don't remember it.