Lessons

Lesson Info

Model Programs That Work

I'm gonna share where I live. Model programs are very successful, and a model program is basically just a program that you can put into place in your studio that can work for you, that you give seniors certain little perks that don't cost you a lot of money. And they won't go out in the community and bring you like minded individuals such as themselves. And then you can photograph them and make money, and then they'll go and bring their friends and now going bring their friends. So the idea is to start a friend share where I photograph you. You go tell three of your friends and then they'll tell three their friends and through their friends. And before you know it, that's how you can build an awesome business. Now, as I mentioned before the competition part, you know, when I got started the tire, if he wasn't really popular where I live and now obviously a sleeper popular, it's saturated and you know, you guys have been asking great questions. You know about how diverse, how do I make ...

myself stand out amongst the crowd? And this is one of the ways that we're going to do it is by putting together successful programs on The good thing about these programs is even if you already have a successful business, these programs are able to work for you. If you don't have any business at all, then these programs are gonna work for you. And let me say this just because all this stuff that I share with you guys, just because I do it a certain way doesn't mean it's the right way. You're the wrong way. I want you to take a little portion from each one of these programs and say, Oh, you know what? I like that idea and you can mix and match all three of them together, and it doesn't have to be a certain way that I'm doing it. But let me tell you about our new competition. The newest competition, in my opinion, that we have is instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, manly, instagram and Pinterest. How many of you guys on Instagram? Yeah, well, I love Instagram, I I'm 35 years old and I don't even get on Facebook anymore. So if I'm 35 I'm not even on Facebook and I know kids that are 18. They probably have been on Facebook in, like, two years, and I'm way behind. So Instagram seems to be like the newest sensation, especially amongst my seniors. And if you never you guys out there want to follow me on Instagram is Blair underscore Phillips, Blair underscore Phillips. That's just the way that I put a lot of my personal life on their. You know, some people really get to know who I am, and I connect with all my seniors on there as well as Facebook. But yeah, Instagram is is the newest thing. There's good and bad with it. With Pinterest as a photographer, we can all get a lot of ideas. But with Pinterest now, all of your seniors are gonna come to you with much higher expectations because they can get on Pinterest in, see this stuff that is just over the top and they bring you in these items and say, Hey, I want something like this and I said, OK, first of all, Elleray. This was shot in Sweden on the back of a camel inside of a factory that had burned to the ground and been bombed by someone like I can't do this here, So it's good that we get visually pleased. But then again, it's bad because some of these ideas, they're just not feasible where we are. So I don't think it's not still a good thing, but we have to keep up with the times If you're not on Instagram and Facebook and all these social media Twitter, if you're working with seniors, you have to you have to be there. It's just like that old, you know, the old get the old days when everybody shot film and then digital came out and I was like, I'm not gonna see me mess with digital camera. I'm a film guy, buddy. Well, right now, a lot of those guys air probably, you know, fishing somewhere today or something. They're probably not doing photography because they were not willing to conform. So therefore, they just said, Forget it. I'm not gonna do it. So keep an open mind for sure. But the thing about our seniors these days is they are so much harder to visually please the days of just doing the regular old work just to get something recorded. Not gonna work anymore. We gotta We gotta always continue to raise that bar. So do any of you guys have it like a model program at all? Have you ever the model program? Okay, this is perfect. Then it makes it a lot easier to talk about it whenever people aren't really familiar with it. The model program, Like I said, it's basically taking a potential senior. One of your seniors you're gonna photograph it's giving her a few perks that no one else is going to get. And then she is gonna go out into the into her school, and she is gonna become a workhorse for you to get more business and I'll show you how So If you want more models, I'm gonna give you today. I'm gonna give you four years of model programs, so it's gonna be a good bit to take in. But as a viewer of creative live when I've watched episodes before, I never found myself sitting there saying, This is just too much information. I would much rather give you mawr than not enough. So I'm going to be a lot. So if it any time we're going to fasters is too much, jot down little key things that you can think of that interest. You just jot them down. Then when you get home, recollect on everything or like I said, I'll see you all after and we'll make We'll make sense of it. So let's start off. When I first started a model program was in 2009. That's when I said, All right, I'm gonna give this a shot. We'll see what happens now What we did was we contacted. At this point, I didn't really have a whole lot of senior models. Anyways. I didn't have any Excuse me. So I contacted all the seniors that I had shot or that I photographed the previous year, all right, of contact them and I said I asked them for any junior they could think of. I asked him for their name. If you don't have any seniors right now, you've got to know somebody that has a senior somebody, one of your friends, a coworker of anybody. You've gotta know someone. You can start it with one person, that one person. Ask her or him for any juniors. They can think of any names. They'll give you those names, and then we sent them this is back in the day. So we sent them a message through Facebook. We gave it to that senior and said, Hey, send this to your friends and it looks like it's coming from. Then they said okay. And in that message, if they were interested, then way asked for their parents phone number so we could get in touch with him then from there. One thing we did different back then was anyone could be a senior model. So I was like, Oh, you want to see your model? Okay. You wanna be one. You wanna be one. You wanna be one. We didn't really have that following that sense of a follower. Sense of an elite group like anybody could be a model. But at that point, I was just trying to build a following, so anybody I could find You wanna be a senior model? Randy, You want to see your model? Anybody Bring him on, bring anybody you want to. So biggest thing if you're gonna do a model program is make sure they understand what a model program means. Being a senior model means it's not. Oh, I get to come in and be a model and he's gonna take my pictures. No, no, Make no mistake about it. Model program. You're gonna come in and pay for your pictures like you normally would. But I'm gonna give you things that I'm not gonna give to everyone else for being part of our group. This is what we did the first year. And this is these are things that worked really well for me. But we've just changed. Over the years we put together this thing. Cash is obviously the best way to get to the heart. I mean, there's no other way than cash. They have everything they won't. So I figured, Hey, cash that work. So it's very simple. You get cash, will referrals. So I say, if Randy, if you're a senior model, if you go out, if you send me one person, I'll give you 20 bucks cash. Just shell it out to, you know, like, Well, that's easy. I know all kinds of people so I could get money for sending people here. Absolutely. You send me six people, I'll start giving you $40 for everyone you send me So $ for 10 seniors. I say if you can send me 10 of your friends that go through and do the ordering process may make the minimum order. Then I'll give you bucks. Easy. Is that they're like, Are you serious? Well, what? I don't mind giving that because the senior could potentially make about 800 you're guaranteed. Probably just say 10,000 if you can shoot that many. If you just say if 10,010 people $ your numbers may be higher. Your numbers may be lower depending on where you are. You know what economy, what state? Things like that. I don't like to talk about averages because you know your average, maybe a lot higher than my average. And you know it's relative to your area. I believe somewhat so I don't really get involved in that. We're not gonna go into all that stuff now. What we did is we gave model cards. We gave each senior model. We gave her a model card and what we did differently this year way use an actual gift card. It's like a hard gift card, almost like a room key at a hotel. But it's hard card and we gave them those. And that's what they passed out to their friends. And that's how their friend, that's how they got credit for sending their friends, their friends had to bring that card in for me to see. Okay, Amanda, since you will give her credit for it. If you're ever interested in one of these goto our store site, go to Blair Phillips workshops dot com. We're gonna give you a free download of a model cord that you can just drag and drop. Put your information in there. You don't have to worry about designed. Make sure if you do go to that page, though, make sure that you look through there's several pages and it may be only 1/3 or fourth or fifth page. You kind of have to scroll through all the pages in there. Make sure that you should give each one of them a chance. There now happened. Where do you keep up with all this stuff? If you got models coming from this school and you got this one from this school and their schools like Oh, man, how do you keep up with it? Simple. Just like this, right? We had an Excel spreadsheet. So this is showing you bare bones how to get started with a model program we kept track of. Okay. L Brown High School album. Orel. Obviously, album oral was not my target market because we didn't get anyone from there s so it looks like here we go. Carson High School in a brown. Those are my two money makers right there. So I started working these kids, working these kids, working these kids, working these kids, and that worked well, the money programme worked really well. The cash referral. So what that started doing was I created somewhat of a following and next year going into it, I'm like, Hey, wait a minute. I've already got a footprint of all those girls and guys from last year that were kind of familiar with it. Now let's move to the next year and see what happens. We move in the 2010. This is a separate program, and I'm telling you that these all work because I've done him. So it's not like, Oh, well, try this and try this and this should work. I've done these, and I'm going to share with you some of the things I've done within each of these programs that may not have been the best suited thing. And what I did to change it to make it better. So going back to 2010 program, same type of thing. We contacted all of our people that we had worked with in the past this past year. We asked for those names. We did the same thing just just like the previous year. Send the message. They send us a message that Oh, yeah, I want to be a model. This is awesome. Then we laid down the groundwork. So let me talk to your parents first. Thought their parents let him know what itwas we're trying to build a following and that we don't want to use your Children as workhorses to go out. You know, like just hand him a bunch of business card and said, Hey, go get these all your friends We explain it to the parents that Hey, we're giving your kids a lot of stuff that they wouldn't get any other any other place, and we're making them a senior model of representative for our studio so you can call it something called a senior representative of Senior Rip. Back then we called it a senior model. And what we did for model cards then, which actually chose it, was a little cheaper to do it this way, just like before the little the little square minis that went on the water bottles. That's what we did. And we put each kid's picture on the bag. That way they were personalized to them. That worked out really, really well. Part of the perks that we did were different this year. As we said, Well, hey, how cool would it be if I said All right For every senior that you send being a senior model, you send me someone. Your name goes into the drawing three times, So if raining, you send me someone. But just because you're senior model, your name is going to go into the hat three times. If you send me someone and you're not a senior model, your name goes in once, so I'm still giving you the opportunity. But I'm starting to make my models feel like they're really up on a pedestal. I want to make it seem like if you're a Blair Phillips retired model. You are really on a pedestal. I got to create a diversion, a little bit of a separation, but doing in a nice way. So chance. Chance to win a trip for three to New York City. That means a senior and her mother and father or a senior. And her see her relative guardian and a friend. Three people. And that was awesome. People said we can go there and I said, You know what? When we go there, I'll do a whole another session for you in New York just to have fun, Not be great marketing images anyway. So I was like, Let's go. I've got relatives that live in New York. I can go there virtually for free. It doesn't cost me much airlines. You could go to New York really, really cheap. So that worked out great. It ended up costing me about $1200. We give him three nights accommodations. You have to give something pretty big or you're not gonna get these kids attention. Like whenever I got a water part. A big deal. He wants to do that anyways, So you got to kind of go big and you know, put limitations on it. This worked out really, really well. It didn't really work that well for a lot of the guys. Guys were like care. Anything about going in New York City? Like I would rather go shoot a deer or something. Most of the guys in my area did not care about it. So if you have more of a girl market, this is a good program. The guys maybe figure out an alternative for the guys. That's where one thing that I wish we would tweet a little bit. Find an alternate. Here, you guys, we've got this option for you as well. So create that little bit of a diversion. A bit of a difference. But I will say, on average, I don't know how how you know everyone's market is we don't average I would say 94. 94% of the seniors of that photograph are girls, women guys, just mostly guys that sure they're like, Yeah, Mom, uh, she made me come up here. These pictures made, uh, how long is this gonna take? And I'm like, Oh, Grasshopper, come here. And I slowly start coaching them and let them know you know? Hey, man, cool man. Don't worry about it. And before you know what he's getting into and he likes it and then he'll tell his body's, he won't say, Oh, it was fabulous. It was always something like, Yeah, what that bad In Southern terms, that means it was also it was awesome. So we moved forward 2011 and we said, Let's let's tweak it a little bit. One thing that I did then was I made the model chords a little more generic instead of having designed model cards for every single model, because this time I was. By this time, I was starting to get a lot of models. In your case, if you're just joining out, you could do specific model cards. Like if this was a model card one model card, you can put her images on it designed it for her. But if you've got 40 of them, you don't want to sit and do that for 40 people. It's just too much to keep up with. So here we wanted with a generic model card, meaning it was very similar to this year, had a bunch of different images on it talked about the talked about studio should have two different props showed our style. That's what we did. There was generic. I could buy them in bulk, and it costs me less money. I'm starting to save money there. Now. We got away from the trip thing because of I got to thinking into it a little bit. And I was like, Well, my insurance, you know, I'm good with insurance. I've got a blanket policy, take care of everything, but I don't know. I gotta think about liability. And, uh, maybe this year let's don't wanna trip. Let's don't wanna trip. So I said, Well, this this time, what about a chance to 1000 books every kid would love to $1000? Right? So this time I just kept in Morgan, New York and I said, Listen, for every senior that you send me, your name goes into a hat at the end of the season. I didn't say into this summer. I said the end of the season reaching out. Pull the name out and it will probably be yours because you're going to send me the most people, right? And you're gonna win $1000. If your name is drawn right, I could really win $1000 like, Yeah, it's, I mean $1000 cash is right here. You can have it and they love that idea. They jumped on it. By this time, people really didn't even care about the perks anymore because I had built this program up and they said, Man, Blair Phillips is awesome. Matter of fact, we went to the football game this past week, and it was kind of good and kind of weird all at the same time. I told them, photographing a lot in the high schools and the sports leagues and stuff like that and this poor girl, she was selling raffle tickets. When I walk up and how my girl, she's like, I'm not sure you play Phillips. Yeah, she said, and her friend was over here, and as I was reaching in my pocket, she didn't know that I was listening. But of course I was. I was listening. She's like, Oh my God, really, that's clear. And I was like, Look, calm down. I'm like, what is? What's the big deal? She's like my friend Hayley met you A few weeks ago at school and she came to class and she was all messed up because you told you didn't even know her. But you told her how beautiful her shoes were that you really liked her new shoes that she handled. And she said she will not start talking about you because of that. So it's just I just told a stranger that her shoes were nice and I guess I made that big of an impression. So the little things you can do online go a long way. So I kind of like it because I felt like a superstar and my brother said he was with me. He said, One other job. Can you get that? You feel that way about people saying that? He said, Could you imagine that if you met that girl years later and she said, Oh my gosh, that's the guy that put the one shoot on my car. Probably not gonna get that, probably gonna get that so honestly, I feel like a superstore going to these high schools because the kids look up to me because I respect them and I care about what they get involved in. I'm involved in their sports. I care about him. I communicate with them on Facebook and Instagram and they know what I'm doing. They'll stop me. And hey, Blair, you're going this weekend? True story had a guy you're going this weekend. I was like, OK, first of all, take me 99. Hey, Yeah, Yeah. What's up, man? One. Where are you on hunting? Have you? Oh, instagram he is God knows everything that I put out there. He retains it so they know what's going on. So by this point, I don't really have to give him much of a pert. Everybody's just like, Oh, yeah, I want to do I don't want to do what I want to do it. And it's also but what you have to do with a model programs. You have to make sure that you communicate that it's not just a model program that make no bones about it. This will be your senior session. This is your senior session where you're gonna come in, you're gonna pay, just like you would go into any other studio. But I'm just gonna give you some perks that no one else is going to get. So you have to lay that foundation that this is a paying job. But you're gonna pay for it. But I'm just gonna give you things. Now, this is where everything starts to change. One of our perp are perfect for this year. Was we said, Hey, what about a senior? A senior model video are seeing senior video session for every one of our senior models. You're gonna get a video session. Well, okay, that sounds cool. What's a video session? It's none other than having someone with me while I'm doing the session taking small little video clips. We put it together using an emoto and they have a great keepsake. When I show the moms this and the consultations, they love it. They don't even know this girl. But they're like, OK, I haven't booked an appointment yet, but I want that I want that. So take a look at what we're what we did this year. This is called a video session and this was a senior model perk. So let's watch this video here. That was one of those things you know, that that costs me a little more to produce than given them a $ bill in theory, because I have to have someone else help me with it at the time of editing some. It's a lot to do. But if you're just starting and you want to do something that really will catch their eye, maybe you even get a little flip Mino cam a little Kodak hand this year. And you give that to the mom and you say, Hey, while working, I just had that record body button and just kind of walk around and just take some little video clips as she does that for 2030 minutes, you're gonna have some some clips you can use. But the girls love the they love seeing themselves. And those are the girls that I wanted for my models anyways, you know, as I wanted girls that were really into pictures. When I say this about a model program to when you're creating a model program, don't leave out regular people. You don't just go for the only girl like the cheerleader are the most popular. Get a couple of people from the band, you know, let them have an opportunity to feel like they're special as well get the people that maybe not may not be the most attractive in the world, you know, Don't just go for that blonde hair blue. Odd. Perfect. You know, everything is just absolutely perfect. Give other people a chance to because they have friends and they have feelings. And sometimes they can be some of your best clients, so don't leave them out. Um, we did give them a chance that year to win an IPad. So I said, Hey, you have to have or more referrals and then same thing into the year. Draw the name. Whoever wins, give the IPad. And this was at the time when ipads were, like, really, really a big deal. Now they're not so much of a big deal, but still, IPads could be a good, good incentive as well. This has been one of my most favorite that I've done. We started to really incorporate a lot of differences here. Lots and lots of differences here. Now the 2012. What I noticed different between that year are the year before in 2012 was a huge fall off Facebook. Huge fall off, and it's weird because it seems like it goes and patterns. The kids get ahold of it first. And then as parents, we're kind of like, Oh, she got there. Wants that face space Facebook. Oh, I'm gonna check out on that, too. Get me one bit. Cool. Yeah, I'm gonna see what's going on. And they're like, Dad, stop. Get off Facebook. I'm not your friend on Facebook because we're thinking, all right, we can see what's going on with you. And they're like, OK, yeah. I'll show you there, hotshot. Much delete done done with Facebook. I'll move over here to something else that you don't know about you because you're old. That's probably what they're saying about me. I was like, Yeah, who's old dude with the instagram account here. Good job, Grandpa. Don't break your leg there. Um, so there again, Facebook is still very popular in a lot of areas. Well, Facebook be around forever. It's just like MySpace watch. You know, that was the thing. And now, if you use MySpace, you're not the cool kid, I guess. Um, let me go on record for saying I do not have a my space account. Okay. Uh, but you have to have someone visual You know, the days off, if I had this right here with no pictures Do you think a high school senior is gonna pick that up and read through it? No way. Even with pictures, they're probably not going to pick it up and read it. And I don't even know why we send him to school. They were buying books and they they tear off the cover and eat the pages. I don't know what they're doing, but anyways, you have to have something that is very visual. These kids and I say kids, I mean high school seniors as well as us adults. We're not reading anymore. It's kind of sad. We're not taking the time to read a lot of stuff. We are such a visual society. We want to see it. Can you show me? Don't tell me about Just show me. Let me just see a video and I'll make it. I'll make it work. And I know this is true because I have recently started falling victim to it myself. It's kind of sad. I'll tell you how sad it is. I waas I was watching something a while back I was looking for some shoes. And this isn't that These aren't the shoes I was looking for. But I put this up just to give you a visual here. I'm from the South. In case you haven't recognized that from the small bit of accident that I do have. I'm from the south, and I thought to myself, I'm not a real country guy. I'm not a very country guy. But I said, You know what? I need to get me a pair of cowboy boots like that. Be kind of cool, square toed cowboy boots I can wear with some nice jeans. When I got a nice shirt, diversify myself a little bit, you know, Not like two crazy, you know, Not like ride a horse, but I can diversify myself some online. I'm looking through Zappos, and I'm looking at different shoes, and I click on this one, and it's a long bit of text over here. And then over the Ryan went Oh, there's this little, sweet, little sexy looking thing just like this right here. It says click here to learn all you want to know about this boot. Well, what are you gonna do? You think I'm going to sit there and read through all this stuff? No. So I went OK, click on it. And it's a young man standing there. He is talking about this shoe like it is his father and this booties like And what we have here is a double stitched saddle soul with extra vibrant rolls. Holes here. And what this boot is gonna do is it's gonna allow you maximum comfort for all of your photography need, not photography. But that's hard days on the ranch. It's gonna provide you maximum support. And I sat there for four minutes and I kept getting closer. I was like, What are you doing? I'm not even interested in this. I wasn't even interested in this pair of boots. It wasn't even one that I wanted, but I sat there for four minutes and because it was so captivating and it was lazy that I could just sit there and watch it. Uh, and I remember to this day everything about it versus reading about it. I would have never read about it. So when we moved, I moved from there that night and said, Wait a minute, video marketing. Why can't I use that in my in my own business, maybe I could eat them more seniors. And then when I use it for every aspect newborns families on my goodness, I can use and I can use video marketing for everything, that's gonna be the best way, because instead of just telling people playful photography is great National award winning. Nobody wants to read that. But if I can put my face in front of them and say, Hey, guys, what's up? This is Blair. You know, what you see is what you get. I can start being more heartfelt and text. I can tell you guys how much I like you in the text. But if I'm here, can look you face to face and say I really, really, really enjoyed you guys. And from the bottom of my heart, I thank you for being has a lot more meaning, right? So what we did is we started with video marketing and I said, You know what? In true fashion, if I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna try to be the best at it. I'm not a video guy. Have a zero background in video whatsoever. Nothing. I didn't know anything about nothing pretending to video. But I didn't know lighting. And I said, I know enough to look at a video and noticed bad lighting and a video versus good lighting in the video. So I started looking at behind the scenes for movies and I started looking at all these various things and I said, Well, I'm not studying on this and see where is there, right coming from, You know, like in here There's tons of lights in here where they coming from there in a key position to make me look good. But they are not working, are they? Um, but they're in a key position because they need to be there. So with video marketing, it covers a few things that are very, very important. One of those being is it explains who you are. It leads. People know exactly who you are. And also it lets them know personally about the products that you offer. But it doesn't one thing that is even more important in that it plants that seed and tells them exactly what they need. I'm not suggesting, you know. Yeah, we do great work. If you guys want to come in and I'm like, No, look, this is the deal. You have to have this. This is the most amazing thing in the world. And you have tohave it. It's like a car salesman. Basically, I am a car salesman when I'm felt selling my photography. But I'm a salesman in my own way. If a car salesman at a lot stood outside and when you walked out, he's like, Hey, man, you let me know if you need. If you need anything, I'll be in here waiting. I don't want to bother you. Do you think they would hardly ever sell cars? Probably not. But they know if they want to make a sale, they got to get out there and aggravate you. So I'm a car salesman. But, I mean, I'm a car salesman in a nice way. So if I have the opportunity to sell to someone, I'm gonna use that platform to sell it. I have to. So you tell them what they need. But what you're doing is you're making it very, very personal, very personal. You're making it now. Seemed like just directed right towards them. You know, Lorenzo could pull up this video and I never I've never met him, but all of a sudden we now have a connection because he feels as though I am directing it straight towards him. So we started doing with our seniors, and then I had an idea, and I said, Well, wait a minute. What funded this for everything? That's exactly what we did. Think about creative love. Would it have been as easy to understand anything about this program if you wouldn't watch that short little two minute video, maybe based coming here upon, you know? Hey, that guy seems really nice. He seems like someone we could get along with. I doubt it was 100% because of the text that we put in there. So if we didn't have a video to accompany it, you know, you probably won't even be here, just like with you guys with your submission videos. The reason Creativelive loves those is because it lets creative lab know who you are and like, Hey, you know what? This would be a very good fit for us. Not that all of you aren't a good fit. But there's only six chairs, so you have to pick the very best fit. So this was the very, very first video that we ever did. Now, don't laugh at it. You can shoot all of these videos with you can shoot it with an IPhone if you have to. You can edit it in my movie if you have to. So there again, you guys know I'm not a man of excuses, right? So I don't want to hear what we don't have production equipment and all that. We shoot hours with a DSLR and we use them. We use lighting, but you don't have to do that. But I'm just going to show you This was one of our first videos that we ever did. Now why? If I'm going to shoot a video, why would I want to go to an old, dilapidated house and shoot it in a dilapidated house with textures everywhere and just looks like you shouldn't be in there. Why would I want to do that? Exactly? It's work, and he's getting it. Yes, one of you. I'm kidding. Yeah. If it's my brand, I didnt want to stand on a white background and say, Blair fellows photography. We do all some work, and I can't wait to see you. So come on down. The price is right. Can't do that. I've gotta be myself, or it doesn't come off his original. So let's make what Checker Audio. Make sure this is good. And here we go. Right now. Watch this. What? Blair with your name. And they think that you a great candidate for were only hand taking three ambassadors. So only three people get pissed based schools being chosen as ambassador. You are representing old school, everybody. You know, we're trusting you guys to be on the forefront of our whole. Okay, so you're you're where you're sharing what we're dealing. You kind of get friends pumped up about their session. So, what do you get for all for doing this? Well, there is. Okay, Facebook and bass recession. You're gonna get a video step, you're gonna get ambassador car, you're gonna get a chance to win a knowledge, and you're gonna also have a chance to win. Everybody could use a way. Go from here. I think one of the biggest things with your mom and dad on board, maybe maybe something to the website. The website. Check out what we're doing I don't see how different is. And then probably from there must call waken go in detail. A lot of evidence program kicks off January. We don't have a whole lot of time, so please, please, you gotta get Mom and Dad to the website. Get them aboard. Call us. Booking appointment. You guys swing by, talk a little bit about it, and we'll go from there so way. Can't wait for this year bigger and better than ever. Give calls talking. Of course. You ever go through life and look back on like some old photos of yourself And you're like, What in the world was thinking? I just had one of those moments, right, then, uh, yeah. Wow. Some of the things we do with our hair, but it's really not a lot different today, but I used to wear the bangs all swooped down because I was scared of my forehead. But I face my fear since then I'm, like, you know, a forehead. I don't care. I'm gonna show you off today. Actually, it's more of a five head instead of the foreheads I used to get picked on. So now I just embrace it and I had a little girl Saturday. Tell me she's like you're going bald because your air doesn't grow right there. And I'm like, Yeah, thanks to point that out, sweetie, you know, that was my first attempted video. It wasn't the best in the world, but we put a lot of texture over it to kind of mass that a little bit. The lighting wasn't that great, but it still served a point. Now you're going to see they're going to get a little bit better a little bit better. So there are a lot of questions come in from the Internet right now, and I was wondering if you it was a good time to break into question. All right, cool. So let's see. The 1st 1 I'm going to say is from C J B. Who says, Have you ever run into an issue with the school's not allowing your models to pass out the rep cards or limiting what they can share with the other students we implemented this year, and we got a letter from the school board's saying it violates the school district laws. So how do you get around those rules? That's a good question. And I think we've been very fortunate up to this point. But the way I see it is that's arguable, because what you what the kids do on their own time is up to them. Um, you know, maybe you would talk to your to your students and say, Hey, look, don't necessarily, like, take these into your home room and just start giving them out. You know, pass them out to your friends. Maybe after school is out, you know? But they're free to do whatever they want to do, and they're gonna do it anyway, So the school board could argue that all they won't. But let me just tell you, it's a lot easier just to say OK, my bad. Sorry about that. And trying to figure out what? Another way to get to him. So my answer to that would be communicate with your seniors and say, Look, don't pull all this stuff out of school, but maybe write a school is out. That's your chance to talk with him about it because the school board understand where they're coming from. You are kind of in a sense, taking money from the school sort of But, you know, you're giving the kids what they won't. So it's arguable. But don't argue with them. Just a bod and figure out a way to go around and do it a different way. Great suggestion. All right, Another one from Kobe. 12345 asked, Are you okay with a senior being an ambassador for another photographer? And maybe they didn't tell you? Yeah, I'm absolutely not okay with that. No, that is a complete breach of my contract. Now, I'm not a big fan of that because, you know, they either want my style or, you know, they want someone else's. So I am not a fan of that at all. And if that's the case, it seems like that student would be more interested in the perks versus truly interested in getting good images. So it's either my way or the highway. We are 100% monogamous. We don't get into that crazy stuff these kids are getting into these days. Good question. Good question. All right. Another question from Kobe and also and Dido from Sleepless in Vancouver. A clever name there. How do you handle the taxes for handing out cash to seniors. That is such a great question. What we do is we buy prepaid gift cards instead of cash and his tax that way versus giving them cash. So a prepaid buying gift cards is definitely the way to go. Definitely. For tax purposes, that is way easier. So your account, it can help you with that. But buy gift cards that are taxed versus giving them straight up cash. Definitely good. Great question. There is a good question, all right. And then what months do you initiate and conclude your senior model program? Yeah, and it's funny because our area I don't know. I say this phone. It's not funny at all. It's just well, leading something that's funny. Not funny at all. Um, in our area, school gets out, obviously, in June. By June, a lot of our a lot of our seniors have already had their pictures made. And then a lot of people wait until some people wait until July because I wanna have a tan. I wanna look right. So with may I start literally whenever, right around Christmas, that's kind of when I get started. Right around Christmas, I start hammering it pretty hard at Christmas because I want to catch him leading up to summer because when school is out and they're gone, it's so hard to get contact because they're going on vacations there, here, there, everywhere. They don't have photography on their mind. But if you can catch him throughout the school year, when this type of stuff looks really exciting, then they will be all about it. So I would say Christmas right around Christmas time is a good time to start one of those. Okay, great question from in studio. What's up? Yes, you say that you you go through your account for the gift cards when you like doing it for, like, a cash gift card or you doing it like their favorite stores. That's a cash gift card. Yes, definitely cash gift card. And we're using those cash gift cords actually to our advantage as a write off, because we're giving those as a gift. So we're gifting our clients with those items, so we're actually using it for our benefit for a right all because it is a business expanses legitimate business expense. So is helping us, really, in two ways. Helping us in two ways. Have you ever encountered any problems with your with your model program? Only problems I've encountered with my model program is when I didn't lay out the groundwork and tell them up front, You know? Hey, this for your referrals. That has to be a client that's gonna come in and place a minimum order of $500. What happened early on is this girl said, Well, hey, I need 10 people, and I can get X amount of dollars, so Hey, you go get your senior pictures made you go get all you. How did you just get your seeing pictures? May You don't even have to buying. Well, I just figured common sense would tell him they needed to buy something. Well, common sense got in the way and fogged up my glasses, so I did like 30 sessions for nothing. So you have to express to get your referral. Those clients come in and have to spend X amount of dollars with our program. So definitely establish a minimum order. You know, say for every session I do. I want to make it least this. Tell clients on the phone. We do have a minimum order requirements. It's $500. Something for the client doesn't want to spend three or 4 $ at that. Shocks them right away. May not be your target client. You know may not be cool now that we're getting into the video part of the model program. MGs Kyi's wondering in what format do provide the video that you give your clients to give them a DVD or a download? Or is it just shared on YouTube and shared through social media or these that we asked them that we asked them to share. That's on video and we provide them with just the video link and now the ones that the ones that they get for their personal use, we will actually put that on the DIS Forum and actually have them come to the studio and pick it up because we want to put it in the theater room like their parents. See, it's like a debut type thing. Instead of just going through all that work and throw it to him and going back seat of a car. We want to get every but we want to get that recognition from doing. It begins So we almost have, like, a little mini viewing type thing only takes a few minutes. And seeing all your beautiful marketing materials that you have behind the scenes here that you're gonna be showing that is sharing the next few days, I'm assuming that DVD that you provide to the seniors is pretty cool looking like you are making a custom DVD cover and everything is it's a tri fold five by five from H and H Color lab. Got to make it look good. Remember, I've got a Ferrari. Oh, I don't want to put cloth seats in it, Right, So, yeah, we'll get to that for sure.