Sandra Henderson 0:00
Breaking into a new market in the photography industry is no easy task, but it’s something that I really think every wedding photographer is going to experience at one point or another during their career. Whether you’re looking to break into a market at a higher price point like working at luxury weddings or if you’re trying to break into like the destination market or elopement markets, or if you’re relocating, there are so many instances where you’re going to be faced with the need to attract clients in a totally different areas and the one that you have been working in, it almost makes it feel like you’re starting your business all over again. But there are some ways that you can make the transition a little bit easier.
Sandra Henderson 0:36
This week on the podcast, John from All Heart Photo joined me for an interview. He’s a wedding photographer and educator based in Houston, Texas, and is also the host of the Wisdom In The Tangents podcast, which I had the absolute pleasure of being a guest on recently!
Sandra Henderson 0:51
John and I chatted all about what it’s like breaking into a new market reasons why wedding photographers might get to a point in their careers where that’s becoming a reality for them. And how did make the transition easier along the way.
Sandra Henderson 1:03
You’re listening to Episode 30 of Keeping It Candid.
Sandra Henderson 1:07
Welcome to keeping it candid. I’m your host, Sandra Henderson, an international wedding and family photographer and business coach. I help wedding photographers use systems to build out the back end of their businesses to gain control and continue to thrive no matter what life throws their way. And on a more personal note, I’m a strong Enneagram three weighing two who is obsessed with tacos and my love for traveling combined with navigating chronic illness life are just two of the many things that drive my passion for all things systems, workflows, and beating burnout as a business owner. Join me every week for a candid behind the scenes look at what it’s really like working as a wedding photographer, where I’ll give you actionable steps to take your business to the next level. Absolutely no fluff here friends. So go grab your favorite notebook and pen and let’s dive into this week’s episode.
Sandra Henderson 1:55
Welcome, John to the podcast. I’m so excited to have you here. I’m so excited for us to have a chance to switch roles after I had a chance to be on your podcast for an interview recently. Before we dive in, I would love if you would just take a second to introduce yourself and let everybody know a little bit about what you do.
John Mansfield 2:12
Absolutely, yeah, I’m excited to be here as well and get to chat again. This is gonna be it’s gonna be fun. I’ve been looking forward to this. Yeah, I’m John Mansfield. I’m a wedding portrait branding photographer, based in the Houston Texas area. And I am also photography educator. I have a podcast that wisdom in the tangents podcast, which you were on recently. We had a fun conversation there. And yeah, I just I really have a desire for for just empowering people through photography by empowering them to see themselves I recently did this is a tangent already. But But I recently did some headshots for a corporate event and the amount of people who came up and just like there was this one lady in particular who just like grabbed my arm. And she was like, I have never liked a photo of myself before. And I love this photo, you actually captured like my real smile. And I was like, oh, that’s that’s thing. That’s what I’m here for. This is what, like drives me.
Sandra Henderson 3:19
Oh, that’s awesome. And tangents are always welcomed here. If you like are having a conversation with me for an hour, and we can like stick on one topic for an hour, that’s a miracle. That’s pretty much unheard of. So yeah, love, love a good tangent. But today we’re gonna be diving into talking about photographers wanting to break into a new market. And so I thought we would start at just like the very, very basics very beginning and say, just I wanted to ask you, what does it actually mean to break into a new market?
John Mansfield 3:50
Yeah, I mean, that can mean a lot of different things. Kind of like to boil it down to one major thing, it’s, it’s when you’re when you have a major difference between the target clients that you’re currently serving, and your desired target client of the next market, whether that’s geographically if you’re moving, or you just want to be like, you know, I live in the middle of nowhere, I just want to fly out to you know, like California or bamboo or something have fun of just like, I’m going to make this a new market and you want to start talking to them and marketing to new geographical area or if you’re moving up from you know, like the the budget couples to kind of that mid range area to the high end area to luxury and moving into a different market in that way too. Or just changing photography genres completely. So it’s all whenever there’s a major difference between who you’re currently speaking to through your marketing and branding to who you You’re wanting to connect with.
Sandra Henderson 5:01
I love that that’s such a good way of explaining it and breaking it down and a plus for the Canadian named drop there when he brought up bass, I appreciate it.
John Mansfield 5:09
I feel like that’s like a very generic like, every every American knows bam. And I was like, Okay, I’m just gonna go with that one.
Sandra Henderson 5:17
That works. It works. I love it. Um, so do you think that photographers ever approach any milestones in their career where this is like, where you would say, if you’ve hit this point, it’s time to consider breaking into a new market? Or do you think that it’s something that’s kind of just like personal preference, and however you’re feeling?
John Mansfield 5:36
Yeah, I think a lot of it is personal preference. I know that there are some photographers that, you know, they’ve been photographing for, you know, 510 years, but they’re still serving the same clients that they served in their first couple of years. But I think some of the major milestones that really kind of, maybe awaken us to thinking of branching into a new market are like elevating your skill set. You know, whenever you have photographed 10 weddings or 10, photoshoots, you have a specific skill set that you’re you’re growing in. And that’s going to be very different than 150 Weddings down the road. And the target client that you have at that, you know, the first year or two of your business is going to be most likely different than in year 10. So yeah, that kind of like once you’re hitting those milestones of like, Oh, I remember whenever I hit 25 weddings, and I was just like, This is crazy. I’m a professional photographer now. And, and now I’m, like, nearing 300. And I’m like that, like I do more than 25 in a year now. And that took like three years to get to 25
Sandra Henderson 6:54
so amazing that you’re getting close to 300 weddings, congrats on that.
John Mansfield 6:58
Thank you, it is a lot. My body is feeling the 300 weddings, I’m like, I need to I need to scale this down a little bit. But yeah, like your your skill set, that’s a milestone. And also like elevating your clients experience. Because that’s, that’s a different market, whenever you’re talking to like the I’m just hiring you to show up and take pictures kind of couple, versus the more guided experience of providing value and guides and articles meeting with them about timelines, and really being more involved. I remember my first few weddings where I didn’t, I didn’t know what they look like, I would show up and be like, okay, so you’re wearing white, are you the bride? And and that’s just like, I cringe about that. No, like, That is so weird. But yeah, that and, and I would I would show up without a timeline. And I would just know, this is the time of the ceremony. And this is the time that they told me to show up. And that was it. And and that’s just that stresses me out. Just thinking about that now. So yeah, yeah, those are, those are some different milestones of kinda like changing your, the way that you do your business and the way that you serve your clients.
Sandra Henderson 8:24
One thing that I thought of, as you were talking about that is like how it applies to my business. And for me, kind of, I don’t know if I would consider it a milestone, but kind of a point that I hit in my own business was just kind of feeling creatively unfulfilled. And hopefully, none of my clients listen to this, because they’re all amazing. I love all their weddings, and they absolutely mean no like shade or judgment to them at all. But we have a huge market for barn weddings in my area. And all too. Yeah, it’s brutal and like I want more than to get out of doing barn weddings. And I really I can’t fully get out of it. It’s just like I have to embrace it to a certain extent. But I needed to just kind of shift myself into a new market where I was booking higher end barn weddings, because like if I had another wooden frame from the dollar store painted and drawn on with like, just scribbled with a table number. And like plastic dinosaurs on the table that I was going to lose my mind creatively. So that was something that I encountered in my own business where I was like, Okay, it’s time for a shift here.
John Mansfield 9:33
That’s funny that you said the plastic dinosaurs because I recently had a say recently, it was probably two years ago now. But it was a much more high end wedding. It was at a very nice hotel in downtown Houston and they had ceramic dinosaurs on their centerpieces. So like things don’t really change all that much. But it’s the it’s the feel, and it’s the aesthetics. But yeah, I feel you with those barn weddings, we have so many barn venues out here. And, and there are some that are like the the lower budget. And you know, literally hay on the floor, kind of barn wedding. And then there are others. There’s one. It’s like 16,000 square feet. And it’s gigantic with, you know, two storey crystal chandeliers coming down from the middle. And it looks like a barn from the outside. But the inside is very elegant. And I’m like, I’m going to market more toward that one with the giant chandeliers than I am this one that I you know, may step in something that I don’t want to track through the venue, the other weddings? So yeah, I think that’s a good point of kind of assessing where you are and and who you’ve been serving. And do you want to keep serving those people if you’re continuing to get those leads for barn weddings, or continuing to get the leads for, for even, you know, like ballroom weddings, if you’re not a ballroom type person, if you’re wanting to do more of elopements and travel and adventure, but you’re continuing to get those leads for traditional weddings, then, then yeah, assessing that and seeing how you can change the way that you’re speaking to your target clients to attract more of the elopement style or whatever you’re going for.
Sandra Henderson 11:31
Yeah, the way that you’re speaking to them, that’s such a good point to bring up. And also, we hear a lot in the photography industry that you need to show what you want to book. So do you have any advice for someone that’s wanting to break into the new market, but doesn’t necessarily have like any photos that will cater to that in their portfolio?
John Mansfield 11:50
Oh, yeah, I know, some people don’t love styled shoots. And that’s okay. But styled shoots are great. Because it is a really great way one to build vendor relationships, because you can reach out to like some I did one with this amazing florist. And had really just asked for a couple of bouquets, maybe a little bit of something to put on the wall, just to make it look really nice. And she went above and beyond like probably spent $1,000 of her own money on this crazy floral arch. And that really moved it from more of a just this is we’re just getting together as vendors and doing this styled shoot to this is a luxury styled shoot now. And this is something that my regular clients that hire me aren’t doing. So that’s something that you can do is reaching out to vendors. And it may cost a little bit of money, especially for florists because they’re spinning their money to buy these flowers that they’re most likely not going to reuse. But, but yeah, setting up styled shoots. Also talking to your current clients about what they have dreams of, because maybe they don’t have a budget to get. I don’t know if you’ll have these up there. But we have, like beer borrows little donkeys that hold cases or like little satchels of beer and they just walk around. It’s really cool. I’ve only had that at a few weddings, but like that is that more high end, you’re not going to see that at least not the way that these donkeys are dressed up at, you know, a lower budget wedding. But if you’re talking to one of your couples, and they’re just like, oh, we really want to do these bureaus, or we really wanted to get such and such florist but it’s just out of our budget, even just working with them or talking to the bureau people and saying, hey, they’re really interested in hiring you could we make a deal where I pay you like half or something, and then we’ll do a photo shoot together, you get all these photos or I’ll do something special for you and, and elevating that client experience for your clients to where they’re getting something new. That is kind of elevating them more to that next level that high in that luxury look. And then you have that for your portfolio and they have an amazing time at their wedding and they’re like, my photographer got us beer burrows. This is insane. But yeah-
Sandra Henderson 14:33
That’s such a great suggestion. Like we hear about style sessions a lot is a great way to do a lot of things but that’s something like totally unique that I’ve never heard someone suggest before it’s like, you know, either cutting a deal with the vendor or maybe putting up a little bit out of pocket if that’s something that you have the ability to do with your budget. That’s such a great idea and a great way to bid not just build a relationship with the vendors but just like show up for your couples and go above and beyond.
John Mansfield 14:59
Yes, and I I’d love to take credit for that idea. But I heard that from my friend Tyler Spire, who’s a luxury wedding coordinator out in Santa Barbara, California and just like doing six and seven figure weddings. And he does that with his clients, where, which being a planner, it’s you have that conversation a little bit more to where, you know, like, oh, they really wanted peonies flowers, but they can’t afford that. And then you can split the difference, by kind of taking that money that you might spend doing a styled shoot, and then spending it on your clients and, and elevating that for them elevating the portfolio for you.
Sandra Henderson 15:40
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Sandra Henderson 16:34
That’s so good. I love that so much. Now my next question for you really kind of only applies to someone who is looking to break into a market that is different from the one that they’re already in, in the respect of like, if they’re a wedding photographer, and they want to start offering family sessions or something along those lines, a family photographer who wants to start breaking into the newborns, side of the industry. We hear a lot about people talking about the importance of niching down and I would love to hear your thoughts on how that kind of impacts what we’re doing in our business. If we do want to move into a different market. Do you think that it hinders wedding photographers to be branching out into something completely unrelated?
John Mansfield 17:19
I don’t think that it has to hinder them. I think that a lot of times it does. But a lot of times that is because you’re taking what you’ve learned and how to market to your current clients, whether it be you know, wedding clients, and you’re taking that into newborns, and you’re speaking to these parents, as you would speak to engaged couples. And the point, it’s yeah, it’s just not hitting the same way. And you might get a few leads, but you’re really not connecting with them, and the way that you need to. So really learning about your target client is especially when you’re switching complete genres like that, because weddings and newborns, very different. I have tried my hand at newborns, not for me.
Sandra Henderson 18:14
So when I was first starting out, I was like, I’m totally gonna be a newborn photographer. I brought by all the props and did all the things and then I just Yeah, we don’t do newborn photos over here anymore.
John Mansfield 18:25
No, no. And the my newborn photographer friends, like they are the best they love it. It is it’s their pride and joy they have all of the things I’ve seen a warehouse is full of just props and setups, and like warming beanbag chair, things to prop the baby on and like, Okay, y’all, this is for you.
Sandra Henderson 18:50
We’ll send them to the people who like that’s their specialty,
John Mansfield 18:53
right? Yeah. And occasionally I’ll get past clients that, you know, photograph their wedding two or three years ago, and they’re like, Hey, we’re expecting a baby. You know, can we hire you, we want you to do our photos. I’m like, I would love to do your family photos. That’s something that I like to do. However, I am not good at newborns. But my friend Michelle, she’s amazing. And she’s right here in town. So yeah, sending them and that, you know, builds those, those referral relationships as well, because she doesn’t do weddings, and she can send weddings my way.
Sandra Henderson 19:25
Exactly, you shouldn’t have newborn photographers doing weddings and vice versa. And like, I think there’s a whole conversation that’s for a totally different podcast, but there’s a lot of safety issues when you’re working with newborns. And so that’s one thing that always like I just can’t shake from the back of my mind. You’re a parent so you totally understand this. But having someone who has absolutely no experience just winging it and sticking a baby in a bucket, there’s a lot of issues with that. So I definitely I am an I’d have training and experience but not enough experience that I want to put anybody in that position especially this adorable newborn little babies Though I want to send those clients over to someone who is experienced and trained in those safety procedures,
John Mansfield 20:06
yes, I think like, everyone saw that Anne Geddies photos of like the baby and the watermelon. They’re like, I want to do that. And then they see all these beautiful photoshopped pictures on Pinterest, because a lot of times you do like to get the baby with the both hands holding up the chin. They can’t do that at two weeks. So you’re having to do one side and then the other and Photoshop and blend those together, stack images, all that, that a photographer, not a newborn photographer coming into that space, myself included, I tried to do that the baby’s head just like, fell to the side. I was like, yeah, we’re just gonna move on. We’re not gonna do this. But yeah, there’s a safety issue for sure. So if you’re thinking about doing that reach out to some newborn photographers in in get trained?
Sandra Henderson 20:56
Yeah. Second, that advice, For sure.
John Mansfield 20:58
Yeah, yeah. But overall, I would say if you’re moving to a completely different genre, a completely different market of clients, you want to learn who that that new client is going to be, instead of speaking to them the way that you have spoken to your past clients, they may not connect as well, with with the way that you’re speaking. So definitely learn them and learn how to speak to them now.
Sandra Henderson 21:25
That’s so true. Such a great point. And that perfectly leads into my next question for you is what are some do’s or don’ts that wedding photographers should keep in mind as they’re breaking into a new market, whether that be a market that’s totally different, or one in the same? Like within the wedding industry, they’re looking to, you know, reach destinations or a higher price point or anything like that? What are some do’s and don’ts?
John Mansfield 21:46
Well, first Don’t, don’t, don’t talk to them, like you talk to your your previous clients. Unless that still matches, you know, most of the time moving to a new market, it’s not going to match even moving from like, like more of a budget or mid range coupled to a high end and luxury couple, you’re going to speak to them differently. Because a lot of times with like the, the, the lower in the budget couples, you’re like, alright, if you anyone who books, eight plus hours, you get a free album. And it’s like those kind of like almost Walmart or you know, some sort of like superstore type deal of buy this and get this free, or I want to know everything, you’re constantly running discounts. And in the luxury market, it’s much more about the experience that they’re going to have and the connection that you have together. So-
Sandra Henderson 22:41
At a certain point, people, when you’re like trying to reach the luxury market, people will look negatively on a lot of sales and a lot of discounts and things being thrown in for free. They’re like, Okay, well, what’s wrong with it? Why is this happening? So that’s totally an important point to bring up for sure.
John Mansfield 22:57
Yeah, how can I trust you? If, if you’re constantly offering discounts, like how do I know that I’m getting a good, a good experience. So that’s one Don’t, don’t do that. Do network with, with vendors with other photographers, network with your potential clients in different client group, you know, Facebook groups, and, and all that kind of thing, local meetups and stuff like that. But a quick note on that, don’t go in there trying to sell yourself in these groups, it’s really easy way to get booted out of them, and not invited back. But go in and provide value. And it may take a while for them to really see you and see the value that you give. But if you’re going in and you’re providing value, and you’re helping, like in a lot of these couples, Facebook groups where they’re looking for vendors, instead of just coming in and be like, Hey, I’m a photographer, this is my prices hire me. It’s like, oh, you’re also looking for a DJ, here’s three DJs that I love working with and they they crowd work really really well. And also I’m a photographer, here’s my here’s my stuff. But yeah, that’s a do a don’t is don’t start off on level one. So what that means is like if you’re if you’ve been a let’s say you’re you’ve been a wedding or family photographer for five years and you have that experience behind the camera, you know your your camera like the back of your hand, you know all of that you know how to work with people, but you’re wanting to get into wedding photography. Don’t start off at level one wedding photography because you still have all that experience with your camera with working with people. So you you have that experience to start off a few levels higher. So you don’t have to go and be like okay, well I will. This is my first wedding. So I guess I need to try charge like $500 you actually have that experience, maybe not in a wedding setting, but you have experience working with people and working with your camera that you don’t have to start off as a fresh person who just bought a camera three weeks ago.
Sandra Henderson 25:14
Oh, that is such a good point. I love that.
John Mansfield 25:17
Yeah. Yeah, there’s a lot of experience that you can move over from your previous market to whichever market you’re going to. Yeah, absolutely.
Sandra Henderson 25:26
That was so helpful. Thank you for all of those. I hope everybody that was listening was taking notes. And if you’re not, that’s the great thing about podcasts is you can just go back and you can listen to it. Because those were some amazing takeaways. And then speaking of takeaways, if there is one key thing that you hope that everyone who is listening could like take and apply to their business, if they’re considering breaking into a new market right after they’re done listening to this episode. What would that one thing be?
John Mansfield 25:54
Yes. Okay. No, you asked for one thing. I have a couple of things, but they’re quite like set multiple, okay. Also, I love all your segues. In this episode, we’re just like, speaking of takeaways, what’s the takeaway? Like I love it. I’m like, I’m constantly just like segwaying in real life all the time. But Okay, so first takeaway, I would say, assess where you are. Look at what you’re doing. Are you happy with your business? Are you happy with the clients that you have? Are you constantly working with bride and groom’s villas and mother in law’s villas, and just like, Okay, I don’t know, if weddings are, for me, this is high stress, high stakes, I want to go with something more like newborns where I can have a four hour session. And as long as we get like, 15, great photos, that’s probably although they’re going to print. And like where it’s less stressful. At least I think it is, I don’t know. But like, assess where you are, and, and really see if this is where you want to keep going. Because a lot of times I feel like we get kind of stuck into, well, this is what I’m doing. So I’m gonna keep doing this, I am a wedding photographer. So I’m going to keep being a wedding photographer. Even though branding photography looks interesting. I’m just gonna keep doing this, because this is what I’ve been doing. And this is who I am, this is what people know me as. So as just take a look at where you are and what you’re doing. And if you want to keep doing that, or if you want to branch out and start doing some stuff on the side. And then second, if you do decide to move to a new market, I know I’ve kind of talked about this a few different times. But it’s really important how you speak to your target client. So learn who your target client is going to be in this new market, learn their desires, learn their pain points, speak to those desires and pain points in a way that will draw them in to wanting to work with you. Even if you’re new to the market, even if you’ve hardly done any weddings, and you’re wanting to get into wedding photography, but you’re able to speak to them about their desires of wanting these moments captured to where, you know, they’re, it’s, it’s one time that is probably going to be the only time that both of their families are there and all of their friend groups and childhood friends in college friends and co workers and like everyone is melting together. And you’re getting these moments of everyone meeting each other and having fun. And that kind of stuff, which is going to be so valuable for them for a lifetime. Learning how to speak to those desires and learning how to speak to the pain points of Well, I’m not a model, and I don’t know what to do with my hands and how do I pose myself and showing them that you know, how to pose them. And that’s going to that’s going to kind of tamper down the stress and the anxiety of hiring a photographer and getting in front of a camera, if you can speak to their pain points. So really, if you’re moving into a new market, learn who your new target client is and speak to their desires and their pain points. I know those were I said there wasn’t going to be quick and then I just went on for both.
Sandra Henderson 29:19
Okay, we are we are very similar in that way. So I loved it that was also good. And I was thinking as well like speaking to their pain points. It’s such a great way to help them feel seen. And it’s going to just level up that client experience as well as pushing you into that new market that you’re wanting to get into. So it’s just it’s one of those like, kind of like foundational things that are so important to do in your business regardless of if you’re just starting out if you’ve been doing this for 10 years, like I just redid all of my ICA A’s and like my core values, my mission statement everything over Christmas holidays. That’s what I did during my time off
John Mansfield 29:58
workaholic entrepreneurs just like we’re, oh, I have time off. Cool. I can work on this.
Sandra Henderson 30:05
Right? I just like did it on my couch while I was watching a movie. And so I just felt like I was still taking time. But yeah, just setting that foundation, it’s going to give you so much clarity in the direction that you’re heading with your marketing, whether that be in the market that you’re already working in, or branching out into a new one. Like there’s so many benefits to figuring out your why who your ideal clients are and who it is that you’re speaking to.
John Mansfield 30:29
Yes, yes. Yeah. And even if it is that you look at that, and you’re like, No, I’m good. Like, I’m speaking to them exactly how I need to I my target clients are exactly who I want to be working with. I love all of my, my clients and these leads that are coming in. I’m at a good place. Like that assessment could take five minutes, and then you just be like, Alright, cool. I’m good. Like, we’ll, we’ll go another year, and then we can assess again. Yeah, absolutely.
Sandra Henderson 30:57
Well, this has been amazing. Thank you so much for all of this that you’ve brought to the table today. But before we wrap things up, if you could just let everybody know where to find you on social media, so they can go and give you a follow.
John Mansfield 31:09
Sure. Yeah, I have. I loved this, Sandra, this has been so much fun. Thank you for having me on. You can find me on Instagram and TikTok I’m at @allheartphoto on both of those. And you can check out my podcast, it’s Wisdom In The Tangents. I don’t know off the top of my head what, what episode number yours was Sandra, but just scroll back a little bit. It was a couple months ago. And yeah, that’s that’s mainly where I hang out is Instagram and TikTok. I probably do too much consuming on TikTok than actually creating stuff. But it’s more of a fun account anyway.
Sandra Henderson 31:47
Yeah, that’s what I like my approach with my TikTok as well, though I am not I’m not a consumer. And so it was really hard for me to get on to the platform, just because I was like, I can spend about two minutes on tick tock before I’m like tired of having to scroll like, if those videos autoplay, they’d have me forever, but like, having to, like swipe through, it loses me really quickly. But I use my profile. That’s the word I was looking for my profile just for fun as well. Like I have no strategy behind it. I’m trying to like start doing things more like native to the TikTok platform. But for right now, I’ve literally just been like, I saved my Instagram real after I’m done. And then I posted on our on TikTok.
John Mansfield 32:32
Yep, yeah, I’m about the same. Like I have no strategy, like half of mine are just playing with weird filters. And then the other half are me actually giving advice for photographers and creatives. And like, this is not cohesive, but it’s me. So
Sandra Henderson 32:51
exactly. I actually, I did my very first, like lip thinking audio reels after I wrapped up the podcast with you. I was like, I already had my hair and makeup done and everything. So I was like, You know what, this is a perfect time. Yeah, so yeah, it’s been a couple hours doing that, and batch recorded a bunch of them. I’ve only posted one. But that’s the great thing about that drafts folder. It’d be like the day that I don’t feel like doing anything. I’ll just throw one of those on there.
John Mansfield 33:18
That is the best thing that you can just batch, you know, five or six of those. And then you don’t have to think about it for a while. Like oh, yeah, I should probably post a reel. I already have one. Let me just throw a caption on there.
Sandra Henderson 33:30
Yeah, it’s perfect. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. Again, it was great chatting with you. And I will definitely be sure to include the links to your social media, your Tiktok, your podcast and everything in the show notes so that everybody can come and check it out.
John Mansfield 33:43
Awesome. Sandra, thank you so much for having me on the show. Oh, you’re so welcome.
Sandra Henderson 33:48
Thank you so much for listening. You can find full show notes from today’s episode at simplysandrayvonne.ca/keepingitcandid. In the meantime, let’s connect. You can find me on Instagram and TikTok just search @simplysandrayvonne. And if you’re loving this podcast, I’d be so honoured if you’d go ahead and hit that subscribe button and leave a review. Until next time!
About John
Sandra Henderson 0:00
As wedding photographers, I know it’s no secret to you that a huge part of what we do is create content. Whether you’re posting on Facebook or showing up in your Instagram Stories, creating videos for Tik Tok writing on your blog, the list is endless and it can get really overwhelming really quickly. If you’ve ever thought where do I find the time to do it all friend know that you are not alone. I have been there myself. And that’s why I knew that I had to get my friend Amanda Warfield on the podcast for an interview!
Sandra Henderson 0:31
Amanda is a simplicity-focused content marketing strategist and the host of Chasing Simple, a podcast to help creative entrepreneurs uncomplicate their life and their business. As the past teacher she treated in her classroom lesson plans for speaking to creative entrepreneurs on sustainably fitting content marketing into their business without it taking over their business. Now she’s a two-time business owner and she spends her time helping clients create content marketing strategies, and teaching her students to batch their content so they can have time to move the needle in their business and find work-life balance. If her nose isn’t in a book, you can find Amanda annoying her husband by slipping Disney into every conversation or forcing her cats to snuggle. And so you can see why she and I get along so well!
Sandra Henderson 1:18
During our interview, Amanda and I dove into the differences between content strategy and content planning, and how you can utilize each to get the most of the work you’re putting into your marketing. If you want to stop feeling like you’re wasting time when it comes to creating content. This is a must hear interview and I know that you’re gonna get so much out of it. You’re listening to Episode 29 of Keeping It Candid.
Sandra Henderson 1:41
Welcome to Keeping It Candid. I’m your host, Sandra Henderson, an international wedding and family photographer and business coach. I help wedding photographers use systems to build out the back end of their businesses to gain control and continue to thrive no matter what life throws their way. And on a more personal note, I’m a strong Enneagram three wing two who is obsessed with tacos, and my love for travelling combined with navigating chronic illness life are just two of the many things that drive my passion for all things systems, workflows, and beating burnout as a business owner. Join me every week for a candid behind-the-scenes look at what it’s really like working as a wedding photographer, where I’ll give you actionable steps to take your business to the next level. Absolutely no fluff here, friends. So go grab your favorite notebook and pen and let’s dive into this week’s episode.
Sandra Henderson 2:29
I’m so excited to have you here, Amanda, thank you so much for joining me! I cannot wait to dive into everything that we have planned for today. But before we do that, I would love to just hand things over to you and give you a chance to introduce yourself and let everybody know a little bit about what you do.
Amanda Warfield 2:44
Well, first, thank you so much for having me. I’ve been really looking forward to this conversation since we started talking about doing this question back in December maybe?! So I’m super pumped just to be here today and to get to chat all things content plans and strategy with you. But for those that haven’t met me yet, I’m Amanda Warfield. I’m a simplicity-focused content marketing and launch strategist. And I help creative entrepreneurs, simplify their marketing, so that they can fit their marketing into their business without it taking over their business because we want to run sustainable businesses. And I know, this is something that you and I have talked about a lot, just the idea of like, our health changes from day to day, and we don’t always have the capacity that we would love to have, maybe and I think a lot of entrepreneurs, the more I get into the entrepreneurial space, I think most entrepreneurs are neurotypical, or they have some kind of chronic illness or whatever the case may be. A lot of us choose this path because we don’t have that sustainable energy, where we just have peak energy all the time. And so I really am passionate about making sure that entrepreneurs can continue to market their business without it overwhelming them, so that it’s sustainable, and their business can continue to run for them.
Sandra Henderson 3:59
I love that so much. And I love what you said about making it simplicity-focused. I think if we took that perspective and approach to more things in our lives, that would make things so much easier.
Speaker 2 4:10
Yeah, absolutely. And most of my clients, most of my students are solopreneurs. And in an ideal world, we could all work to best practices, right, but it’s just not realistic or possible as a solopreneur. I have some clients that have mega teams, and they’re like, you know, they’re making seven figures in revenue in the year. And that’s great. And they have tons and tons of team members. And I look at the content that they’re putting out. And it’s great. But it’s so much and the idea that solopreneurs are trying to live up to that just makes my heart hurt because it’s just not realistic. These people have teams of eight 920 people, right? It’s not possible for one single person to put out as much content as a team of 10 to 15 to 20.
Sandra Henderson 4:58
Yeah, that is so so true, which is kind of the perfect lead into the topic that we’re going to be chatting about today. Speaking of content, we talked a little bit before jumping on about the difference between a content plan and a content strategy. And I think, before we get into anything else, it’s super important to clarify what these two are and what the difference is. So since you’re the content expert, I’m going to hand that over to you and let you tell the listeners a little bit more about that.
Amanda Warfield 5:27
Yeah, absolutely. So a lot of times content planning and content strategy can be used as synonyms of each other, but they’re actually not in they’re very, very different. A content plan is just one tiny piece of a content strategy. So the plan itself is simply saying, I’m going to post about this thing to this platform on this day in time, the the mapping out of what you’re going to say and when and where that’s the plan. But in order to create that plan, and to come up with those topics, you have to craft a strategy that’s based on so much more than just where am I posting? And when?
Sandra Henderson 6:08
Oh, yes, that is so so true. And I can see even in my own business, how those lines get a little bit blurred as I’m going through every month, like figuring out what I want to say, on the different platforms and things like that. I’ve totally been guilty of blurring the lines between the two for sure.
Amanda Warfield 6:24
And they are I mean, they are a bit blurry, because the plan is part of a strategy. If you’re gonna have a strategy, you need to have a plan. But you can have a plan without a strategy. And that’s what we don’t want. We want to make sure that you’re crafting a strategy, and then you’re taking that strategy and implementing it into your plan.
Sandra Henderson 6:43
Oh, yeah, absolutely. That’s so so true. So where does someone even begin when they’re starting to map out their content strategy?
Amanda Warfield 6:51
The very first thing that you’ve got to look at is your goals. You want to make sure- because here’s the thing, marketing for the sake of marketing is fine, when that’s all the capacity that you have. So hear me say that! If you’re like, I am just doing the best I can to like keep things moving right now. If that’s all you have the capacity for, throw that spaghetti at the wall with your marketing, see what sticks. I’m all for it. We want to keep it simple. But once you’re ready to move past that, you want to ensure that your content is actually moving the needle in your business that is actually getting you leads that it’s actually making you money, because if it’s not, is it doing a whole lot for your business, is it worth the time that you’re spending on it? Right? So we want to make sure that our content is connected to our business goals in order to move the needle on those goals? And the way that you do that? Is you hone in again, what are those goals? What’s your yearly goal? What’s your quarterly goal? What is your monthly goal? And what is your weekly goal for your marketing and for your sales? Breaking it down into those different avenues? And again, that sounds so simple, but how do you expect to get to that goal revenue wise? And why? What are you selling? So let’s say that you, I’m going to try to do some really simple math because it’s going to be off the top of my head, and I am not a math major.
Sandra Henderson 8:11
Me neither, so it’s all good!
Amanda Warfield 8:13
Yeah, I don’t have that capacity. Okay, so let’s say that your, your goal is $20,000. Again, for simple math $20,000 in revenue for the year. And for Q1, because that’s when we’re recording this, your goal is $5000 of that $20,000. Okay, well, how do you plan to get to that $5000? Where’s that coming in? And this is where we stop a lot of times, a lot of times we say this is my revenue goal for the year, and I’m gonna split it between each quarter. But how are you getting there?
Sandra Henderson 8:41
Yeah, that was always something I really struggled on when I was first getting started with like setting financial goals and sales goals and things like that. It was like, I set that number, but then it was like, Cool. But now what?!
Amanda Warfield 8:51
Right? And that’s where the disconnect comes in. And that’s why our marketing doesn’t lead back. So what you want to do is you want to say, okay, in q1, my goal is 5000, what are my different streams of revenue that I’m actually going to be attempting to make money from. So a lot of times we have 10 courses and four things in our shop. And also we’ve got three different services. You can’t make money from every single revenue stream, each quarter, you have to really nail down and focus in on maybe three max, right? What can you actually move the needle on in this quarter? And so let’s say though, for the sake of simplicity, there are two things you’ve got a one to one service and you’ve got a course. And in q1, you’re going to try to make $5,000 between the two of them. Okay, well, how much and you’re going to want to look back at last year’s numbers for this have those pulled out, but how much did you make in each of those last year? How much did you make in each of those per quarter last year and use that number to roughly estimate how many sales you’ll get for q1? And some things you want to look at are okay well in q1 I didn’t have a ton of one to one happening for whatever reason. Maybe it’s too cold outside to do sessions. And we’re just it’s very low key I really pick up in q2. So maybe I’m just planning on having one session. That’s my goal is just one single full session for q1, whatever that number is, let’s say $2,000. For full session on average, I don’t know I’m literally making up numbers. I know nothing about photography, pricing, but let’s say $2,000. Okay, well, that means in order to hit that $5000, you have to hit $4000 with that course, if you sell the course for $200 each. Oh, I don’t, that math’s hard. Is it 20?
Sandra Henderson 10:43
I think so haha
Amanda Warfield 10:44
20 of your students, okay, I thought I was doing simple math. But let’s say it’s a $200 course. And you know, in q1, you’ve got to bring in 20 students. So you have to break down that big number. And it’s a guesstimate, it’s always a guesstimate, there’s no way to like 100% perfectly predict what you’re going to make, but use the numbers from last year. Use the patterns that you see in your business of your slow in your busy seasons for different revenue streams, and guesstimate what that number is going to look like and then figure out how you’re going to get there. So again, if you your number is $4000 for the course and you know, okay, well, I sell it at $200. How many students you need, you need 20. Okay, so that’s your focus for q1, you have to your sales goal for q1 is 20 course sales and one full session, knowing that you can then take that and go, okay, well, my marketing has to be geared towards the course, everything that I’m doing with my content, and my marketing, and q1 has to be geared towards the topic the course is on and leading people to the course, to the freebie that leads to the course, whatever your back-end systems look like.
Sandra Henderson 11:51
That makes so much sense! My wheels are turning like thinking about wedding photographers and how they can apply it even if they don’t offer courses and things like that, which we’re seeing photographers do more and more. But for anyone who doesn’t, like, you can easily just replace the word course with like albums or prints and start like incorporating product sales in that same way, using that same mentality that you would then want to focus your marketing strategy around selling those albums and prints and not necessarily around booking sessions or weddings.
Amanda Warfield 12:20
Right! Exactly, whatever your different revenue streams are, you’re going to try to figure out how do I make this happen? So if it’s albums and you know, okay, well, I need to sell X albums. And this is actually a great segue into conversions, which is a very long conversation, but we can kind of dive into it a little bit. So if you know that you, let’s say your average conversion rate from wedding clients to the number of clients. Basically, I worded that really weird. But if you know that 5% We’ll do 20%. Again, easy if 20% of your full session, your wedding clients buy an album and you want to sell four albums. That means that you need 20 clients because 20% of 20 is four. And so you can work backwards to know how many you need in order to sell the number of albums, upgrades, whatever, different packages that you need to sell. And this can also work if you know okay, well, I’m maxed out, I can only take on this many wedding clients a quarter. And currently 20% will actually upgrade to an album. But I don’t have time like or the ability to take on more wedding clients. Okay, well, how how can you increase that conversion rate? What can you do to focus on bringing that number up instead of trying to bring in more people?
Sandra Henderson 13:47
Yeah, absolutely. You’re speaking right to my soul with that, because that’s definitely where I’m at in my business right now is not having the capacity to take on more weddings, but still needing to grow my bottom line. It’s more expensive to live and I have lots of big goals, and so I need to focus on print sales and things like that to bring that bottom line up. So yeah, that definitely directly applies to me. And my favorite thing about hosting this podcast is when I get to edit, edit it, I get to like go back and re-listen and like take all of my own notes. So that’s like a fun little highlight!
Amanda Warfield 14:18
That’s the best part of hosting a podcast is I just choose people that I want to learn from, right. And then I get to ask them all the questions I want to ask and then we audience benefits.
Sandra Henderson 14:27
It’s so true. I love it. So what do you think makes for a successful content strategy?
Amanda Warfield 14:34
I think at a bare bones level, it’s making sure that you know what your goals are, and that you’re connecting back to them, like we just talked about, if you are not connecting your content with your goals, or if you don’t even have a goal in mind with your content because again, maybe you’re like I don’t have the capacity to sit down and do the whole strategy thing by myself. I just like putting content out as all I can handle right now. Well, your goal is getting content out and making sure that your business is being seen your goal is consistency, right. So if that’s the case, your goal is consistency. But having some sort of goal in mind, whether it is simply being consistent, or it’s, I want to make sure that my content is moving the needle in my business, having that goal in mind, because if you have no goal, the content is just spaghetti at the wall. It’s literally just, I’m putting stuff out here. And frankly, it’s a waste of time if you don’t have some sort of overarching goal in mind, because if you’re not leading them anywhere, or your goal isn’t to just see growth, well, what are you doing and why
Sandra Henderson 15:37
I used to be the queen of the like, set it and forget it, post it once and put it into the world. And then that was that and like, I just made the assumption that everybody was gonna see it, everybody was going to know it existed because they set it the one time and that was good enough. And, oh, I’ve learned many things.
Amanda Warfield 15:56
Yeah, we have to really be broken records with our content. And I know that so many people hate that. They don’t they, they feel like they’re bothering their audience. But your audience is such a small portion of what you actually put out there, especially on social media that if you’re not saying it over and over and over and over again, you’re actually doing them a disservice. Because then they don’t get that education. They don’t get that information from you.
Sandra Henderson 16:21
We’re gearing up for wedding season over here and I wanted to quickly interrupt this incredible interview to tell you about my wedding day questionnaire template. I send this questionnaire to my clients three months before their wedding day to collect details about things like their ceremony, what time dinner is going to be served at which family members they want to take photos with, and also to educate them on things like how long different sections of photos typically take and the benefit of doing a first look. Using a questionnaire like this is such a great way to avoid unnecessary headaches on the day of because you’ll have all the details that you need to keep serving your couple no matter what comes your way. Because let’s be real, we all know that anything can happen on a wedding day, but it becomes a hell of a lot easier to roll with the punches when you’re thoroughly prepared. The wedding day questionnaire template includes nine pages of questions broken down into each section of the day, day of contact information getting ready first look ceremony, family formals wedding party photos, newlywed portraits, the reception, additional details and vendor info. The questions within each section cover every bit of information you could possibly need to make sure that you have a successful wedding day and create a photography timeline with ease. You’ll walk into every wedding with a new sense of confidence because you know, all of your bases are covered to keep things stress free no matter what. And the best part. It’s only $17! Yes, friends, just $17! Head over to simplysandrayvonne.ca/resources to get your copy.
Take your client experience to new levels this year with the Wedding Day Questionnaire Template – CLICK HERE for all the details!
Sandra Henderson 17:58
Yeah, I was just actually talking to someone on another episode where they were talking about how you need to, if you want to have a business, you need to talk about your business or something like that. I’m totally like getting the paraphrasing wrong. But it made so much sense like we… We are the only ones who regularly get tired of talking about the same thing over and over again. But the majority of people are maybe only hearing once every five times that we talk about it. So it’s super important to have that in mind as you’re putting together that strategy too.
Amanda Warfield 18:28
Absolutely. And not only do they only hear about something maybe once every five times, but it takes seven to 10 times of hearing about something before someone will take action. So if they’re only hearing about it once every five times and they need to hear about it 10 times, that means you need to talk about it 50 times before one person is going to take action on it.
Sandra Henderson 18:49
Right? I hope everybody’s writing that down because it’s so so important. It’s something that I wish I had figured out much sooner in my business for sure. You actually have a planner to help people with their content, that content strategy, right?
Amanda Warfield 19:02
Yes, I do. And you know, it’s funny, because for years, people would ask me, Well, what do you use to plan your content? And I was like, I don’t know, I just print off a random calendar page online, like, I don’t have anything. And then this last year, I got to the new year. And I was like, You know what? I really wish there was something that yes, has the calendar page for me to create that plan. But I wish there was something that would really make me sit down and focus on the strategy side of things because I’m great at doing that for my clients. And of course, when we’re great at doing it for our clients, it’s the last thing we do for ourselves, right? And so my strategy was falling off and I was just throwing spaghetti at the wall essentially, which was fine, but I knew that if I had something that would walk me through step by step what I needed to do to craft that strategy for myself, I’d be more likely to do it until I actually created the planer for myself. And then you know, talked about it and other people were like I need that too. And so I started selling it in my shop
Sandra Henderson 20:00
Oh, that’s awesome. And I’ve seen everything that you’ve posted about it as you were building the new one for this year. And it looks so thorough, I have used a lot of content planners. And I mean, it goes with courses, it goes with things that you buy from shops, sometimes you get things that are very simple, and they’re promising a lot more than they’re delivering. Your planner is the exact opposite of that it definitely walks everybody right through the entire process. And I think that’s so valuable when it comes to just the way that photographers are spending their money. It’s very hard earned, we’re very protective of it, like most business owners, which I can totally support and respect in every way. So it’s nice to know that there are things out there that are delivering more than what they’re promising, and actually, like out there to help people.
Amanda Warfield 20:48
Oh, thank you. That’s very kind.
Check out the Chasing Simple Content Planner – click here!
Sandra Henderson 20:51
So speaking of I mean, we’ve been speaking of Content Strategy this whole time, but where is one area that you think is super important for wedding photographers to focus on in 2023 as they’re planning out their content marketing strategies?
Amanda Warfield 21:05
Do you mean as far as where they’re showing up? What topics are talking about? Where-
Sandra Henderson 21:10
let’s say where they’re showing up.
Amanda Warfield 21:13
Okay, so right now, the, the new giant in our industry in the online space is TikTok, right. If you’re looking for organic growth, meaning that you don’t want to pay to play, you don’t want to bother with Facebook ads, and all of that right now. Or if you are, you want to just be a small part of your strategy. If you want to see growth, you’ve got to be on TikTok. There are plenty of reasons that people don’t want to be on TikTok, and I get it. But that’s kind of the way things are at this moment in time. Instagram, and Facebook are great for nurturing a community that you already have. But we’re not seeing growth in either of those apps, for the most part, there are always going to be anomalies, right, there are always going to be people that have really found a way to make it work for them. But overall, for the most part, we’re not seeing growth on Facebook, or Instagram, it’s more so here’s a place a community that I’ve created already. And these are people that I have connections with, I want to invite people into this space, because this is a great way to nurture them. But it’s not growing things for me. So my suggestion, honestly, is to get on TikTok, grow, TikTok as much as you can get that organic reach. Be aware that people are really mean on TikTok, I really mean. So the whole, post controversial things, and you’ll see growth is still true. But be prepared that you’re gonna need thick skin if you’re going to use that strategy. But get on TikTok, grow that audience and then send that audience to your email list to your Instagram to your Facebook groups. So that you’re you’re getting that growth still, but you’re sending them to these other places where you can really nurture them, because that is something that I’m seeing on TikTok, the nurture aspect is not there so much. You know, they’ve tried implementing stories and they’re implementing the, the be real kind of, you know, where TikTok now is what it’s called and implementing these other things. But what it sees what I’m finding with myself and my clients is that TikTok, TikTok, Instagram stories are still a really great way to nurture your people. Facebook groups are a really great way to nurture people, email lists will never go away. It will always be a great way to nurture people. TikTok, not so much to an extent, but it gets harder and harder as more and more people get on there, but it’s a great way to see growth.
Sandra Henderson 23:46
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and paints a really good picture about the difference between specifically like Instagram reels versus TikTok because I know a lot of photographers were just like, do I have to get on TikTok? It’s not for me like XYZ reasons why they don’t want to be over there. And then Instagram Reels came out and they’re like, Okay, perfect. Now I can still show up on video but I’m just gonna stay on Instagram. So talking about how one is really like better suited for nurturing the following and the community that you already have versus one being better for growth. I think it’s a super important differentiation to make.
Amanda Warfield 24:22
Well, so TikTok, the biggest difference between Reels and TikTok is that TikTok really values authenticity a bit more than reels does reels that are more polished, tend to do better. Versus the like, I look like a bum but I’m getting on here to like share something I thought about does a lot better on TikTok. So TikTok is actually a lot easier to create content because you can look terrible and nobody cares. That’s not the point. They want to hear what you have to say and they want to hear the education that you’re going to share. But you The other thing to note with reels is how often and I with every social media platform, every tactic within a social media platform is looking at how you’re utilizing them. How often are you looking at reels versus stories versus the feed? Right? We all know the feed is dying. Instagram has said they’re going to prioritize pictures again more this year, we’ll see what happens with that. But the feed is dying. And my take on social media is that right now, they’re all trying to compete against each other and add these new, different tactics in. But what tends to work best is utilizing the parts of the platform that are I don’t want to say necessarily more native, but the ones that you see more people using, and that you’re interacting with yourself, because stories on Instagram aren’t native. But that does seem to be the one that most people are utilizing. Versus tiktoks People aren’t utilizing stories on tiktoks. Some are, but for the most part, they’re not. It’s more of a four year pay for you page, like, we want to scroll, I don’t even look at my friends tiktoks. Like if they come up with my for you page, great. But what I when you get on the app, the first thing that shows up top of your screen for you page, when you first get on Instagram, first thing at the top of your page is the stories. And so that’s going to naturally be what we go towards more, because it’s going to be the first thing that catches our attention. And so utilize if you only have so much capacity, which we all do utilize the things that are unique, and that are doing well on each individual platform.
Sandra Henderson 26:42
And you actually just started doing that over on your Instagram, I remember seeing in the last couple of weeks that you have decided to take the pressure off of yourself and stop focusing on posting, and doing things that are not getting any sort of return on your investment and focus on stories as well. So has that been going for you in the first little bit,
Amanda Warfield 26:58
It’s so much nicer, there’s just so much less to worry about. So for everyone listening, I have decided to move towards a semi-static grid, where basically I am hopefully every quarter, we’ll see. But every quarter, I’m creating just three images. And they can either be the cover for real or for carousel or whatever. But three images that I’m going to pinned to the top my Instagram feed. And if that’s the only content that I put on my feed that quarter, I am okay with that because my feed content is not moving the needle in my business. And I have tried strategy after strategy after strategy for months now. And I just decided, You know what, I’ve tried it. I’ve tried almost everything. And it’s not working, which means that the hours I’m spending each month working on Instagram feed posts, not worth my time. And so I’m just done doing it. And you know, I posted this week for Valentine’s Day, some of my husband, it was just like a spur of the moment, like, Oh, I feel like posting this. And I got all kinds of likes, but you know what, it’s not getting comments or anything like that, because people who are scrolling the feed there, it’s back to the pretty pictures. Oh, that’s a pretty picture. Oh, that’s a pretty picture brand photos, not getting a ton of love. Photos from my husband, like traveling get all kinds of likes. And so it’s almost like we’ve reverted back on the feed to Oh, I like this picture. I’m not going to read the caption, but I’m gonna like the picture. And so it’s just been so nice to just remove that pressure, and just show up on stories based on the strategy that I’ve created for stories and allow that to move the needle for me.
Sandra Henderson 28:33
Oh, yeah, I’m sure that’s been so nice. I’ve seen a few people doing it here and there. And it’s very, very tempting. It’s something that I’m going to be heavily considering in the future of where I’m taking both my photography and coaching businesses, that’s for sure.
Amanda Warfield 28:47
The beauty of it is there’s so many different ways that you can do it too. You know, I’ve seen some people who created a nine square grid, and that’s going to be there and tired. They’re not posting anything else. They deleted all of their old or archived all of their old fi posts, and they just have the nine square grid, and it’s got everything from contact information to services to about these freebies, all of it. There’s a different post for each one. And that way when you find their page, it’s like, Hey, this is everything you need. For me, you don’t need any of this other stuff. And they’ve archived it. I’ve seen people that are doing a quarterly six grid, I actually got the idea from Nicole Yang. And she’s doing a quarterly like magazine cover, which I think is so stinking cute and smart. And of course, she’s a brilliant graphic designer. So but she’s doing that’s all she’s posting is every month she’s doing a new magazine spread and they’re just stacking on top of each other. I went with the three because I wanted that ability to post if I felt inspired, so that way I could pin them at the top and anything else would stick underneath it. But for my other business, I’m going to do a six square per minute grid. And I’m just not I’m not going to do a quarterly one. You know at some point I’m sure information will change and I want to To change up my strategy, but for now, that’s just going to be that because that business I don’t it’s more of a side hustle, I don’t spend as much time on it. And so I’m not going to worry about, oh, I need to do this every quarter or I need to update this each month, it’s just, I’m gonna create at once, make it great. When my strategy changes, we’ll make a new one.
Sandra Henderson 30:16
Yeah, that’s so great, like kind of going full circle to what you were saying at the very beginning of the episode is that you need to like our energy is limited, our lives can be very unpredictable. And so it’s so important to focus the energy that we do have in areas that is actually paying off and worth our time to spend it on. Yeah,
Amanda Warfield 30:33
Exactly. And marketing is important. I wouldn’t have a job if I didn’t believe that, right. But it’s not the most important. It’s, it’s up there. You don’t want to completely stop your marketing, right? Or you will have no business but it can’t take up all your time. And so what can we do to simplify while still being strategic? And not spend all of our time so that we have those sustainable businesses?
Sandra Henderson 30:57
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I’m gonna just take one last question over to you if there is one thing that listeners that you hope that they walk away from, or one thing that they could implement, right, as soon as they finished listening to this episode, what would that one thing be?
Amanda Warfield 31:13
Oh man. You know, I always ask people this question on my podcast, and I never think about what I want to say when other people ask it to me. Um, I would say, if there’s only one thing that you walk away from this from, is the idea that you do not have to follow best practices. For any platform for any type of marketing, you don’t have to follow best practices, to see results and to run a really successful business.
Sandra Henderson 31:40
I love that so much. That’s one thing that I always think when I see educators and experts, or social media experts on Instagram, and they’re saying like, you should be posting X number of reels per day and this number of stories per day, and they’re not wrong, but that’s what you need to be doing if your job is to grow your Instagram following. But to get photography clients, you don’t have to be posting on Instagram 15 times a day, because they really do not translate to one another. And I think that that message gets lost a lot. So everybody, if you haven’t already written down that little takeaway that manda just said, it’s super important. Definitely go and set that mindset and apply that to your business as you’re going forward.
Amanda Warfield 32:23
Yeah, absolutely. Keep it as simple as possible. When and if you decide to add on a VA or other team members to your team, then you can worry about best practices for now. Keep it as simple as possible so that you can be consistent, not constant.
Sandra Henderson 32:38
Oh, love it. And I’m going to have a link to your content planner in the show notes so everybody can go and grab themselves a copy of that and make the content and marketing plan and strategy side of their business so much easier this year. And before we wrap things up, uh, where can everybody find you on social media and on Tik Tok?
Amanda Warfield 32:56
So for both Instagram and Tiktok my ad is @mrsamandawarfield. And I also have my own podcast called Chasing Simple that you should definitely check out.
Sandra Henderson 33:05
Yes, absolutely. You should definitely check that out. Amazing. Well, thank you so much again, Amanda. This was so so great. I love chatting with you. And we will definitely have to do it again soon!
Amanda Warfield 33:15
Thank you so much for having me.
Sandra Henderson 33:18
Thank you so much for listening. You can find full show notes from today’s episode at simplysandrayvonne.ca/keepingitcandid in the meantime, let’s connect. You can find me on Instagram and TikTok just search @simplysandrayvonne. And if you’re loving this podcast, I’d be so honored if you’d go ahead and hit that subscribe button and leave a review. Until next time!
About Amanda
Amanda is a simplicity-focused content marketing strategist, and host of Chasing Simple – a podcast to help creative entrepreneurs uncomplicate their life and biz.
She traded in her classroom lesson plans for speaking and educating creative entrepreneurs on sustainably fitting content marketing into their business without it taking over their business.
Now a two-time business owner, she spends her time helping 1:1 clients creating content marketing strategy and teaching her students to batch their content so that they have time to move the needle in their business and find work/life balance.
If her nose isn’t in a book, you can find Amanda annoying her husband by slipping Disney into every conversation, or forcing her cats to snuggle.
Sandra Henderson 0:00
Hey friends, and welcome back for another episode of the podcast!
Sandra Henderson 0:03
Before we dive into today’s episode, I wanted to take a quick second to give you a little bit of real talk:
Sandra Henderson 0:10
Your old way of doing things in your wedding photography business just doesn’t work anymore. Even if it’s gotten you this far things are changing in 2023. Standing out in a highly competitive wedding photography market these days take so much more than talent behind your camera. What’s gonna set you apart from your competition is delivering an incredible client experience going above and beyond so that your clients never have a single doubt about their decision to hire you.
Sandra Henderson 0:37
So you never say no, you start promising faster turnaround times you over-deliver quantities of photos, you send gifts, you give your clients 24/7 access to you and your text, emails and DMS.
Sandra Henderson 0:50
So what’s the problem? Well, it all takes mental and physical energy. And while it might be sustainable to do all the things when you have five or maybe even 10 clients, what about when you have 30 or more clients at one time? What happens if you’re sick or dealing with yet another chronic illness flare up? Because all my friends in the chronic illness club know that there is always another flare up!
Sandra Henderson 1:13
Or stick with me here on this one… What happens if you take a vacation? Yes, friend a vacation!
Sandra Henderson 1:20
All of a sudden you’re scrambling, right? You’re overwhelmed by all the things that you didn’t get done while you were taking time off. And you’re missing deadlines and feeling like you’re never gonna get caught up. You feel like you’re constantly apologizing to your clients, and you know that you’re not delivering the experience that you wanted to. And that’s when impostor syndrome always seems to find a way to creep in.
Sandra Henderson 1:42
You start thinking to yourself, everyone else seems to be able to do this, why can’t I?
Sandra Henderson 1:48
And that, friends, is exactly where I was in my business five years ago. It was the beginning of my chronic illness journey and I kept unexpectedly having to take time off. All of a sudden, every gallery I sent it was late. I would ignore my inbox for days, sometimes even weeks, because I just didn’t want to apologize to yet another client for dropping the ball. And I wasn’t taking care of myself in the slightest because I was living at my computer for 16 plus hours a day, I was skipping meals, and the only time I was taking off to rest was when my body forced me to.
Sandra Henderson 2:20
Does that resonate with anybody that’s listening? Raise your hand if that applies to you!
Sandra Henderson 2:25
Maybe you felt like you’re just not cut out to be a wedding photographer. Maybe you’ve tried implementing systems before, and it ended up just creating more work for you instead of taking some off your plate. After trying out so many different systems in my business, I almost gave up for those exact same reasons. Until one day it finally clicked.
Sandra Henderson 2:44
These systems weren’t working for me because I was just doing what everyone else was doing. As someone with a chronic illness, I have unique needs that I need to respect and set boundaries around in order for me and my business and my systems to work their best. So I tuned out all the noise. I used the basic foundations to building systems, and I found ways to simplify and streamline every aspect of my business behind the scenes. And that’s when everything changed.
Sandra Henderson 3:11
I stopped missing deadlines and I started getting rave reviews from clients again, I was delivering photos that I couldn’t be more proud of. But honestly, what was most surprising to me was that I was able to bring in more money while working significantly less.
Sandra Henderson 3:26
Four years ago, I was convinced that my time as a photographer had come to an end. But now I’m working a four-day workweek while running two different businesses. Imagine if your wedding photography business looked the same. Imagine beating every deadline and never having to apologize to your clients again. Imagine the freedom of taking time off no matter the reason without the stress and guilt that always seems to come along with it.
Sandra Henderson 3:53
Would eight weeks be worth it to make that happen? I see so many photographers going through the same struggles year after year. And so many of those same photographers tell me the exact same things. Things like “I don’t have systems in place because I just don’t need them,” or “I don’t even know where to start. It’s so overwhelming,” or “I’m already so busy. I do not have the time to learn anything new right now.”
Sandra Henderson 4:17
So when I started hearing all these things, that’s when I knew I needed to build a program that would help other wedding photographers get the same results that I’d had. And so that is why I’m so excited to be introducing Unfiltered + Simplified!
Sandra Henderson 4:30
A boot camp for wedding photographers who are ready to simplify the way they do things. You’ll learn how to fix five of the most common areas that every wedding photographer fall short: weekly planning workflows, client experience, post production and offboarding. You’ll be able to avoid past mistakes so that you and your business can continue to thrive. You’ll create simple, streamlined systems that work for your unique needs and no one else is you’ll boost your productivity no matter what life throws your way. And you’ll save time so that you can get back to doing the things that you love the most.
Sandra Henderson 5:05
Inside the boot camp, you’ll get eight weeks of live coaching calls, in-depth CRM, workflow reviews, co working sessions, weekly Voxer support, a Facebook community, replays and lifetime access to all upgrades to the program, the Simple System Mindmap, and so many bonuses like a questionnaire template bundle, an Asana weekly planner, email swipe files, and a one hour one on one coaching call with me!
Sandra Henderson 5:31
The total value of everything included is more than $8,500, but you can get it all in the beta round for just $697.
Sandra Henderson 5:41
8 weeks could be the difference between ending 2023 feeling like this was the best year you’ve ever had in business, or ending 2023 burnt out… yet again.
Sandra Henderson 5:52
I know you’re tired of having to constantly put out fires behind the scenes in your business. You’re tired of feeling guilty when you’re not working. You keep thinking that there has to be a better way and you are right. The most successful wedding photographers in the industry are utilizing systems because when they’re used strategically they work.
Sandra Henderson 6:11
I’m pulling back the curtain and giving you all of my system secrets that you can bring some freedom back into your life while delivering an incredible client experience no matter what life throws your way. If you want to get started, head over to simplysandrayvonne.ca/unfiltered and submit your application before March 31st!
Sandra Henderson 6:31
Okay, now let’s get on to today’s topic! There’s a little bit of a shift happening in the wedding photography industry right now. For the longest time – like, I think probably the majority, if not the full extent of my career, there have been two primary styles that the majority of wedding photographers have fallen into. There’s either light and airy or dark and moody. But recently there’s been a third category that’s been making its way to the forefront and that is editorial.
Sandra Henderson 6:58
It’s almost documentary inspired and photographers are utilizing flash to create strong shadows that contributes to a uniquely artistic style that I for one absolutely love. My guest on the podcast today is Alora Rachelle and she does a much better job of explaining exactly what editorial is. Alora is a Detroit based editorial wedding photographer and marketing coach who believes that mindset marketing and sales are the key foundations to growing a profitable business. We chatted about her decision to shift her style of photography into a new category and how wedding photographers can really embrace imperfection to not just capture memories, but create beautiful works of art for their clients.
Sandra Henderson 7:38
You’re listening to Episode 28 of Keeping It Candid!
Sandra Henderson 7:42
Welcome to Keeping It Candid. I’m your host, Sandra Henderson, an international wedding and family photographer and business coach. I help wedding photographers use systems to build out the back end of their businesses to gain control and continue to thrive no matter what life throws their way. And on a more personal note, I’m a strong Enneagram three wing two who is obsessed with tacos, and my love for traveling combined with navigating chronic illness life are just two of the many things that drive my passion for all things systems, workflows, and beating burnout as a business owner. Join me every week for a candid behind the scenes look at what it’s really like working as a wedding photographer, where I’ll give you actionable steps to take your business to the next level. Absolutely no fluff here, friends. So go grab your favorite notebook and pen and let’s dive into this week’s episode.
Sandra Henderson 8:30
Hey, and thanks so much for joining me! I’m so excited to have you on the podcast today to talk about something that’s a little bit different than the business side of things. This is the first time that we have a more like a creative topic, and so thank you so much for joining me and for suggesting it! I’m super excited to dive in, but before we do, why don’t we have a quick little intro, if you want to let everybody know who you are and a little bit about your business?
Alora Rachelle 8:53
Yeah, so my name is Alora Rachelle. I am a wedding photographer based here in Detroit. And I’m not just a, I guess your average wedding photographer. I like to call myself more of like an editorial wedding photographer. I feel like it’s like a mixture of all the different styles meshed together probably besides dark and moody. But I’d love to just definitely dive into this today. I have been in the industry for almost 12 years, and it’s been a long time coming. It’s been super fun though. I’ve shot well over 200 weddings. I have two kids, like, I mean, where do you want me to start? Where do you want me to end? You know?
Sandra Henderson 9:31
I love that. Well, everybody, you are hearing from a seasoned pro today! I love that you have done over 200 weddings. That’s absolutely amazing. What a career milestone to hit.
Alora Rachelle 9:41
Yeah, it’s it. You know, it feels like it flies by because the wedding season at least here in the Midwest, like everything’s pretty steady, like during the spring and then like summer fall hits and everything is like a tornado. And we’re like, oh my gosh, should I shoot 40 Weddings this year? Oh my gosh, that’s insane. And so doing that for years years and years, I don’t know, I feel like I hit burnout really, really bad. And I had to look at my business model, look at my pricing model and be like, I’ve been the same for the past like four years. And so I took a long look at everything. And maybe this was like after COVID, too, because I feel like before COVID I was just going, going going, I was so busy that I did not realize that I wasn’t shooting the weddings that I liked. I wasn’t even doing the style that I liked. I was just kind of going along with whatever niche box I was supposed to fit in. I don’t know if anyone else can relate to this. But it’s like, Oh, if you shoot, you know, regular exposure overexposed the near light and airy photographer, right, and you just stay there like you shoot like them. You fit in like them, you pose like them. But like I never, I never fit into any of those. Like, I wanted to be dark and moody. But I wanted people to see like details. And I didn’t want things to be so dark that it was like grungy. And so for years, I was just like, going back and forth, going back and forth, tweaking my edit and just trying to figure out like, where I belonged, what my niche was. And then I noticed because I’m a trend watcher, and I’m always like, analyzing marketing and stuff that LA was adapting this like Hollywood editorial, like, harsh flash, but like just true to life images. It was clean, it was crisp, but the images were documentary. They were fun. They weren’t super stuffy. And Posey, because I’m not even that kind of person, when I was going to like higher on weddings, because I like positioned my portfolio for that. I didn’t even know how to act. I was like, ah, what should I say like, I’m not even super proper. I’m just like, very no nonsense and like down to earth and real. And I mean, I loved fashion, I loved higher end things. But also like I was just a very laid back individual. So anyway, it’s goes to show that like you can really brand yourself anywhere and like switch around and all these different niches. But for me, I feel like when I finally figured out what it was, and I was like, This is who I was all along. And I was like trying to fit into all these different things. So yeah, that is like my story of like, how I got into editorial weddings.
Sandra Henderson 12:12
As you were figuring these things out which during COVID, I can totally relate. I think that timeframe gave a lot of people a lot of perspective and just wanting to like let go of the things that were not serving them and making them happy anymore. But what were some of the like, more creative changes that you made, you mentioned that that LA style has a lot of like harsh, harsh flash. But what were some of the other things that you did creatively to make yourself your work more of an editorial style.
Alora Rachelle 12:38
So basically, editorial weddings is like, it’s really interesting, because honestly, I think it’s what everybody has always wanted, honestly, it’s like you get the documentary style, you get the moments, you also get to feel like a celebrity, you get really good lighting really high end look. And it looks like it could belong in a magazine. Like who doesn’t want a wedding that looks like in a magazine. I mean, I mean, at least for me, that was like, always my dream who wouldn’t want a wedding in vogue, you know. And so the primary focus basically for editorial weddings is like to tell a story. And it’s like an elevated story in the best light possible. So what I had to do and what I was always gearing away from because for some reason, I don’t know why. But when the natural light photographer movement was around, like we never used Flash, I don’t know, I don’t know, if you like remember, but it was like just bump your ISO or, you know, bring a light reflector, or, you know, make sure that you position your clients by Windows only. And I used to think, like, what can I do? What would I do when the sun went down? You know? And so like, yeah, we would bounce flash, but it would be like really just blast. It wasn’t nothing special. And so our clients didn’t really get like super fun. I don’t know, editorial images, I guess. But so I did a deep dive and I really did study lighting I played with lighting, I played with off camera flash on camera flash. I just had fun. I wasn’t making it like super hard. I wasn’t overthinking it. And so I kind of built a formula overall. And I definitely do like the same, probably five to six things every single time now that I come to a wedding, I set up my lights, I play around with them, I position them I make changes, I take something away, add something else. And that was really just the biggest shift. Clients want to know that you know how to shoot, no matter what happens. Like if it rains, and all of a sudden it’s a tornado weather storm. They want to know that you’re going to be able to still take good photos and like, oh, the light is gone. And my bounce lashes not that strong. So I guess you know, like, and then they get their photos and they’re not gonna rave about them. You know what I mean? And honestly, like my reception photos are my favorite photos of the whole day. Because they’re so fun. And it’s just I don’t know, it’s it’s my own formula. It’s something that I came up with and it’s something that I feel like it’s just in the moment. It’s not extra. It’s I know, it’s Hollywood. It’s celebrity. It’s studio 54 is It’s all the things so yeah, that’s basically what it was. It’s just teaching myself like in any situation. And I think that it and when you able to do that you can really charge anything that you want. Because your clients will be like, Oh, well, have you done this? Have you done that and be like, Yep, I know how to do this, I know how to do that I have all the equipment, no matter what you know, and they’re just like, okay, this person is a professional, that just a photographer with a certain style, they can, you know, they can handle whatever comes their way.
Unfiltered + Simplified – A brand new eight-week boot camp for wedding photographers who are ready to simplify the way they do things. CLICK HERE for all the details!
Sandra Henderson 15:26
That’s so important. As someone who is a light and airy photographer, I usually say like, like natural, but also comfortable using Flash, I always advocate for, like, it’s still possible to do both. And in certain situations, you can use your flash, to get that light and natural and airy look, I just did branding photos for a client who she has a Massage Studio that’s in her basement with just some small windows. And when she got her photos, she was like, oh my god, it looks like there’s windows everywhere. Because we used a flash to fill it in. It doesn’t look doesn’t have to look harsh, unless you want it to look harsh. And I love how you had described the editorial style as like studio 54 That just painted the clearest picture in my head of exactly like, what editorial style looks like?
Alora Rachelle 16:10
Yes, it’s just like one big party fully lit. And I don’t know, it’s just it’s a vibe. And I just did a wedding last Saturday where they had a horror. And I was able to there was like 250 people there. And I had to stand on like a bunch of rocks to be able to get like the entire scene. But my two OCS are going off. And they were like creating this huge, bright light. And it looked like Studio 54. And I was just like, This is the coolest thing in the world. Like, maybe three years ago, I would have had no idea how to do this, it would have just been like a bunch of photos of people close up, but like not the full picture, you know. So I don’t know, like you can pretty much make artificial light your own. You know what I mean? Like you can use it for light and airy. I’ve seen it done where like you can use it as fill light. You know what I mean? And I think that’s the thing that people, like a lot of people don’t know about artificial light is you can literally use it to expose for the shadows expose for the highlights, like just like you do in camera, you know?
Sandra Henderson 17:05
Yeah, absolutely. And you had talked about how you’re not overthinking things anymore. I think that’s so important. I think a lot of times we get so hung up on the technical side of things that we hold ourselves back from really just fully embracing our creativity and being worried that we’re going to do something wrong, but sometimes doing something wrong. I’m doing air quotes right now for everybody who won’t be able to see us when they listen to this. But like when you’re doing something wrong. So often like that’s when the magic happens. Like we’re seeing this blurry photo trend that’s happening right now that’s super popular. When I was in college studying photography, if I had handed in an assignment that looked like this, it like I would have failed for sure. But now like the things that people are doing, the creativity that they’re using, and incorporating blur into their photos is absolutely beautiful. Mm hmm.
Alora Rachelle 17:53
Yeah, I think it’s to kind of give off like a more of a filmy like, look, we’re kind of going back to the 90s in a way and like a lot of the style and I kind of like John Dolan, like John Dolan is he shot Gwyneth Paltrow his wedding and I was like listening to him explain it, but Gwyneth Paltrow was like, I don’t even want to pose for one single photo on my wedding day. Like that’s what I do for a living. I just want you to capture how it felt, capture everything. And he did it in the most beautiful way blurry photos, sideways photos, photos of people crying, maybe photos of like super dark filmy things with a lot of grain, but it captured a motion. And so like, what people have to realize is, we obsess so much over logistical things. And our clients just want a picture. Like sometimes clients just want the moment, they want the emotion. And however we decide to photograph that is up to us. Like, for some reason, there was a point where we kind of took the creativity out of photography, we took the fun out of photography, and I’ve learned that by like messing around with film, I had a pen tech 645 And two, but I never used it, it was just too heavy. So I became a 35 millimeter girl. I’ve been playing around with my Holga and those pictures are not perfect, but they capture the vibe, they capture the moment they’re so fun. You never know what you’re gonna get, you’re probably gonna get like leaks, but it’s just about the moment. And like my client, you know, when I if I ever give them like film scans and stuff, and I’m like, Mmm, this was a really grainy photo. Can you just like no, they love the imperfection. They appreciate it. They liked that they weren’t getting the same exact image. You know what I mean? In 50 frames. There was variety there. There was fun. There was like texture, I don’t know. So that’s definitely something that I had been leaning into more and what I’ve learned, it’s like as I have raised my price is substantially like my clients don’t even care how I do it as long as it’s captured, as long as it’s done. It’s really just me obsessing over logistics.
Sandra Henderson 19:57
Yeah, that’s so true. And like I I have actually a sticky note on my monitor when I’m editing this as Done is better than perfect because I used to waste so much time getting hung up on like dropping the magenta down by one in Lightroom. And like my husband’s watching me do this. And he’s like I have, there’s no difference from what you just had to now, the average viewer is not going to notice one notch down in your Magento has or you know, a tiny little bit of blur added into the photo, things like that, or a little bit of grain more often than not, they don’t know, they’re looking at the whole photo, they’re seeing the emotion, they’re seeing the people that they love in these photos, and they’re not noticing all those little technical imperfections that we harp over as photographers.
Alora Rachelle 20:43
Mm hmm. Yeah. And so that’s why I think this, this blurry trend is really, I guess trendy, I did a couple of them. And it’s super fun to play with. But what I think the message is that clients don’t necessarily care so much about perfection. And I feel like it’s allowing us as photographers to shoot our own, what I call this, like the money shot, like the shot that we like, that we’re just like playing around with and ends up being like one of their favorites on their profile picture. And it could have been a crop, it could have been a black and white image that was like done in really bad lighting or whatever. But sometimes they they love the creative stuff, too. Don’t like create a portfolio that’s like so stoic and like. So copy and paste, rinse and repeat what you give everyone else like, their story is different, their wedding is different, they are different people. So like, tailor their story and their wedding day to them. And that was something I’ve been doing for years. But I didn’t do it in this way. I just kind of shot the must have shot. And then I had like, very little room for creativity, because I felt like I have to get these must have shots, I had to get this shot less, I have to get this, or I’m not a good photographer, or didn’t capture the full story. And while we still do get those things, I still leave a little room to like, and a lot of flexibility to shoot them differently and not exactly the same every single time. Because then you start operating a machine and the creativity is gone. And there’s just a business. And it’s not it’s not fun anymore, I don’t know. So I’m learning to put the fun back into like my weddings and the way that I shoot and it has been a game changer. I have been very fulfilled in my work. And my clients love the work that I’ve been producing. And I start thinking to myself, like, this is probably why I got into this in the first place. Like I was making art, I turned it into a business, and I kind of was running it as a business. But now I want to bring the art back into the business.
Sandra Henderson 22:30
I love that. So so much. So as you were making the shift in your business, did you do anything to prepare your clients, you had mentioned that you started tailoring your portfolio to appeal to that sort of style of wedding a little bit more? But did you have any sort of interaction with your clients to set their expectations for what their photos would look like in the end?
Alora Rachelle 22:52
No, actually, not. I, um, something that comes naturally to me is like brand strategy and attraction marketing. So like, I use those two things and every facet of my business. So I’m like, Okay, if I want to track this client, what kind of images will let this client know that I’m the professional in this thing. And so I would go through my favorite galleries, tons of galleries, and I would curate the best images and the strongest images that were telling the story for me, but also showcasing a motion, the vibe, the moment, the OCF all the things that they’re probably gonna get anyway, but like an elevated way, so they don’t even have to ask me like, Oh, am I gonna get a photo like this, like, you’ve seen this same photo, duplicate different ways with the same sort of lighting, so you probably know you’re gonna get it, you know. And so I just pretty much do like every year. I do like a soft, rebrand launch. So like every year, you know, I take a look at my work my pricing, and think to myself, do I want to stay here? Do I want to elevate something? Do I want to reach a different market, you know, and so that’s pretty much what we all do, like November, December, January are right to like appeal to like a newer client. And so once I have curated and I talked to my dessert with my designer about what I wanted, and I had all my images curated for the people I wanted to attract, which was myself, ultimately, I kept thinking, I love this image. And I know that if I was a bride since I was a bride that this this image would definitely attract. You know, I’m the kind of person basically that I am. And so like putting yourself in your clients shoes, but your ideal client in a way, which I don’t like saying, but like I guess in terms like an ideal client could be somebody that values the same work that you create, I don’t mean what kind of purse they buy, what kind of colors they wear, what kind of coffee they drink. I mean, what does this person value that you can provide? What service what experience? What I don’t know, everything their portfolio, your whole business Like, and the people are out there. I used to think that like, there’s probably not enough clients that want this style, it seems a little specific in some ways, like its editorial. Like, it’s not really that trendy here in the Midwest, you know what I mean? Like, it’s taking a minute to come over here, even though I was so sure. Like, this is who I am like, what if people don’t want it? You know, and after I launched my new site, I mean, immediately, I was getting inquiries, and I was getting high end inquiries, kind of like, oh, my gosh, I’ve been looking for your work. I can’t believe they have somebody like this in Detroit. And I’m just like, so you know, it was like, you just sometimes got to trust yourself, trust your gut. And I definitely believe in having like, a USP that sets you apart from everybody else. And so that was like, my unique, you know, service my you my unique experience my unique brand proposition. Yeah, editorial wedding.
Sandra Henderson 25:53
Oh, that’s so awesome. It’s always nice when you can kind of start to make those shifts and changes and really see the payoff. I know sometimes, like when it comes to marketing, especially if you’re a photographer who is using social media, as you’re, like, wow, tripping over my words are hard. Yeah, they really are. For photographers who are using social media as their main marketing channel, a lot of times, it feels like you’re doing so much work, and you’re not reaping the benefits from it. So it’s nice when you are able to make those changes on your website and things like that, and really start attracting the kind of clients that bring life back into your business.
Alora Rachelle 26:31
Yeah, and it’s definitely not like a silver bullet. It’s not gonna, like propel you instantly. I’ve been building this brand for a long time. So like, I was already getting, you know, client inquiries constantly and all these other things. But this strategy is what got me future to the Metro times, like this strategy is what got me my first six figure year, like, it’s a little slow. In the beginning, it took me two years to finally take off, I was setting everything up, I was showcasing my best on my portfolio, I was like, using tons of brand messaging, saying the kind of things that I like, loved shooting the things that I loved about this particular couple, the wedding day. And eventually, I mean, now probably wouldn’t take two years for someone to do this. But, um, you can definitely attract the client that is like, I guess your dream client, whatever. And, um, and you’d be so surprised, like, once the slow burn is finally gone, and everything just kind of explodes. It feels like confetti, it feels like the neverending content machine, but it’s not gonna happen overnight. And that’s fine. You know, I mean, you just you got to everybody’s got to put in their hours. I feel. I totally
Sandra Henderson 27:43
Agreed. That’s so true. I love that you brought up brand new messaging, because that’s so important across the board, regardless of if you are going for an editorial style or not. But I think if you’re looking to make a shift, it becomes even more important because you have to change the way that you’re doing things to start attracting a different kind of client.
Alora Rachelle 28:03
Yeah, I feel like what you put out there and the way that you talk about it, and the way that you make that connection with your future client, ideal client or whatever. I just, I don’t know, I definitely have studied, like commercial marketing. I’ve studied everything. I mean, I mostly study like really good brands like Apple and like watching their marketing campaigns, or like when they first launched like air pods when they were like unheard of, which is hard to believe, because I feel like they’re everywhere now. Would have been a third or fourth version. Yeah, but I remember when they first launched them. No, I thought they launched them with noise cancellation. Because I was like, Why do I need noise cancellation? Like I already have air pods. It’s fine. And they would show this commercial this girl you know, and she’s in New York and you everybody knows if you’ve been to New York, it is so freaking loud. You can’t even hear yourself think you’re bumping butts against everybody. Like it’s awful. I don’t know, personally, New York gives me anxiety. I guess I’m a Chicago girl. But then it’s too windy. And then I get Winburn whatever tangent. So anyway, she turned on the noise cancellation. And she’s like, in a different world. Like the colors change. It went from drab to like super cinematic, like all these different hues of colors like purple, blue and green. And she’s dancing everywhere. Go figure. Now she’s a professional dancer. And all you hear is the music in her head. And it’s like, you know, they had a tagline. I forgot it now, because it’s been a while. But it basically the message that they were showing you was that when you have noise cancellation, you transcend into a different location, you know what I mean? And so it’s like, stuff like that, like the brand messaging is like, selling you how you would feel if you had XYZ. So we have to do the same thing with our wedding photography, portfolios, you know, and you can’t just like post something that you don’t like and then wonder why you keep getting clients and weddings like the one you don’t like it’s like you literally what you put out is what you’re gonna get. Okay, people like your portfolio. As the standard like, Okay, what kind of work does this person have? What kind of people does this person work with? You know? And so and usually what’s your Instagram do that with everything, you know, whatever platform that you have, and you’re building a portfolio for. So yeah, brand messaging, attraction, marketing, all that stuff is important.
Sandra Henderson 30:16
Yes, it really, really is. And I love that you said it’s about like, how you want them to feel that is really like, if anybody is taking one specific takeaway from this episode. I hope that that is it. Because applying that kind of perspective to your brand messaging really just makes it so much easier.
Alora Rachelle 30:34
Yeah, you just you have to know like, and so this is like, why I have like, inside my program, we have like this deep dive guide. And it’s like, 10 pages long, like, honestly, kudos to anybody that finishes it. Like maybe they should like play a movie in the background so they can focus. But once you figure out like, all the answers to the questions like why did you do this? Why did you get started? What are you drawn to? Like, what styles you like? What’s your favorite part of the wedding day? Like all of these things, right? And then you read over your answers. And, you know, hopefully you answered them, you know, completely honest. But when you answer these, you’re like, oh, my gosh, this is what I like, this is my favorite part of the wedding day, maybe I should only showcase that, you know what I mean? Of course, they’re gonna get like, the must have images and stuff. But if this is the kind of thing that I want to create, this is the kind of client that I’m wanting to attract whatever it is, then you need to put all of that out there and figure out what makes you different. So that the whole market is saturated. State statement doesn’t apply to you. And it won’t, because there’s nobody else like you, you know?
Sandra Henderson 31:36
Yes. That’s so so true. So we’ve kind of touched on this a little bit with the last couple of answers. But if someone was wanting to make a shift in their work, and in their business to having a more editorial look to their photos, and attracting more of an editorial, or attracting more clients who are drawn to the editorial style, what would you say is the best place to get started?
Alora Rachelle 31:59
Oh, wow, that’s a lot. That’s like a heavy answer. Yeah, so well, one, figure out if, like, you’re doing it, because you love the style, and not because it’s like on the go trending. But also be prepared to level up everything, like, I have been giving a six star if you will client experience for like, so cheap for so long. Because it’s a non negotiable. For me, that’s like my marketing. It’s like client experiences everything. And it’s easiest like word of mouth. So I mean, if you’re willing to level up everything that you do, and level up your work, you know, figure out how to compose a really like eye catching image, learning how to direct your clients, and not just capture them, like documentary is great, but you’re gonna have to learn some more skills. And I have a free class actually, that teaches all these things. Actually, I don’t know why I mentioned that. But I can give you that link. But all these things will set you apart. And then it will really propel you into like the editorial weddings market. Like once you make just a couple of shifts and a little bit of like up levels and yeah, be prepared. I mean, also they pay really well. So it’s not like, haha it’s not too bad!
Sandra Henderson 33:16
That’s always nice. Yeah, of course. And yeah, definitely send me that link and I will be sure to include it in the show notes for everyone. And you mentioned earlier as well that you have a course I know that that’s something that’s open all the time for photographers are correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure that when we last talked you said that it was opening around um, so I would love to hear a little bit more about that.
Check out Alora’s masterclass, The 3 Steps You Need To Book Editorial Weddings – click here!
Alora Rachelle 33:41
Yeah, so I do have an editorial weddings course and it’s pretty much like the three modules of what I basically talked about so the first thing would be like being inspired being inspired by like cinema being inspired by light being inspired by it’s not like your average shoot better wedding photography course it’s kind of like bringing back the creativity into things looking for inspiration elsewhere looking I believe in like creating cinematic wedding photography so I actually probably didn’t mention that so much but I have been inspired by movies, cinema directors, Wes Anderson for like years and I never knew why. And but I did bring that into like my work I love like shooting you know, symmetrical and all these other things. But that was like that’s basically module one right composition, inspiration, all that other stuff. And then learning how to direct your clients universally with ease and not just giving them like three prompts like jump on this person’s back or do this and that like it’s a lot more of things that work for everyone. I remember one time like I had a higher end client and I was like oh my gosh, jump on. Go ahead and like jump on his bag and she was wearing like this like silk Luxe gown and she was like no I was like, that’s fair. That’s fair. You can’t really do that. Yeah, I know what I was thinking, I apologize. But being able to use, like the universal prompts that I use for every single wedding for every single engaged session, they work for everything all the time, anytime. And then the last thing is documenting. And yes, like documenting is like, you know, shooting the moment, but I think the difference between like documenting, and adding that editorial touch is telling a story, like don’t just shoot a photo, and make it blurry and be like, Yep, that was the vibe that was a moment, like being very intentional. And just like telling the story in a way that no one else could, you know, unique to you, of course, but also maybe in a cinematic way, as well. So those are kind of like the three modules. It’s a really easy binge, and it’ll teach you everything you need to know about cinematic editorial weddings.
Sandra Henderson 35:49
Oh, my gosh, that course sounds absolutely amazing. You may be seeing some registrations for me coming your way. Because that’s definitely something that I’ve been playing around with a lot more this year and wanting to incorporate more into my style. So that’s another reason why I was super excited to chat with you today. So anyone else who can relate if you’re listening, definitely make sure you go and check out Laura’s course. And where can everybody find you on social media?
Alora Rachelle 36:13
Yeah, so I am @alora.rachelle on Instagram. And my website for now is alorarachelle.com. I’m actually going to be moving over like my wedding stuff onto like Alora Rachelle Weddings because I am splitting businesses, and I’m going to be a full time educator and I cannot wait.
Sandra Henderson 36:32
Oh, that’s so exciting. Congrats.
Alora Rachelle 36:34
Oh my gosh, thank you! Yeah, I’m really excited. It’s been it’s such a long time. Like in the works. I feel like I’ve been planning as since August. I mean, I know it’s only November. But still it feels like a long Yeah. Oh, for sure. And they also have a podcast called The Hello CEO podcast, you can binge it every single Monday, I’ll be giving out tips on brand strategy, marketing, and of course sales. So yeah, check me out.
Sandra Henderson 36:58
I absolutely love your podcast. So I will second that. Definitely go and check it out.
Alora Rachelle 37:02
Thank you so much. Yeah, it was such an honor to be here.
Sandra Henderson 37:05
Oh, well, thank you so much for joining me. Do you have any final thoughts before we wrap up our chat?
Alora Rachelle 37:10
Um, honestly, I feel like if you are really intimidated by getting into like this, I don’t want to say is it a niche, I don’t know, like this, I guess this niche of photography, it’s not overwhelming, it’s just a little more intentional. So just think about being more intentional, a little less sloppy, also being able to handle any light situation that comes your way it’s and also don’t forget to like have fun. Like, at the end of the day, you know, the wedding day is so special. And it’s honestly an honor every single time when a client books me to capture their story, the vows that I listened to, and I get to know so much about them. It’s such an intimate part of the day, whether it’s eight hours or 12 hours. So it’s always an honor and a privilege. Don’t take it for granted. Don’t abuse your clients and treat them just like a paycheck. It’s a wedding day. So yeah, that was amazing.
Sandra Henderson 38:03
Thank you so much again for being here. I absolutely love this conversation. And I’m so glad that you were able to join me.
Alora Rachelle 38:09
Yes, thank you so much for having me.
Sandra Henderson 38:11
Thank you so much for listening. You can find full show notes from today’s episode at simplysandrayvonne.ca/keepingitcandid in the meantime, let’s connect. You can find me on Instagram and Tiktok just search @simplysandrayvonne. And if you’re loving this podcast, I’d be so honored if you’d go ahead and hit that subscribe button and leave a review. Until next time!
About Alora
Alora Rachelle is a wedding photographer turned marketing coach who believes that mindset, marketing, and sales are the key foundations to to growing a profitable business. She is passionate about helping others scale a profitable business that also keeps you the CEO your business (without the hustle & the burnout).
When she started she took her business from $10,000 to $100,000 in two years. Alora’s work has been published in over 20 publications such as ELLE, The Knot, Channel 7 ABC News, Popsugar, etc. Alora is the creator of The Wedding CEO, a group coaching program that will take your business from $10k to six figures teaching the same methods that propelled her business forward.
0:00
Oh wedding show season. I have such a love-hate for wedding shows. hundreds if not 1000s of engaged couples and their friends and family all walking through a convention center getting overwhelmed by all the options available to them at every single turn. They are an extrovert’s dream and an introvert’s worst nightmare. Let’s be real. There are a great option for getting your name out in front of as many people as possible in a short amount of time. But are they really worth it?
0:29
The vendors in my area are in the midst of wedding show season right now and applications for the next round of shows in the fall are already starting to circulate. So, I thought it would be the perfect time to talk about why I decided to stop doing wedding shows! This is episode 27 of Keeping It Candid!
0:46
(Intro music) Welcome to Keeping It Candid. I’m your host, Sandra Henderson, an international wedding and family photographer and business coach. I help wedding photographers use systems to build out the back end of their businesses to gain control and continue to thrive no matter what life throws their way. And on a more personal note, I’m a strong Enneagram 3w2 (three-wing-two) who is obsessed with tacos, and my love for traveling combined with navigating chronic illness life are just two of the many things that drive my passion for all things systems, workflows, and beating burnout as a business owner. Join me every week for a candid behind the scenes look at what it’s really like working as a wedding photographer, where I’ll give you actionable steps to take your business to the next level. Absolutely no fluff here, friends. So go grab your favorite notebook and pen and let’s dive into this week’s episode. (Intro music fades out)
1:34
I started renting booths at wedding shows in 2014. And for the next six years, it was a major part of my marketing strategy. I did two to three shows a year and it was a key factor in growing my business from 2 to 12 to 27 wedding bookings within three years,
1:51
I laugh at myself every single time I think back to my very first booth. I was so nervous. I wanted everything to be perfect. So being the type-A person that I am, I use tape to measure out the exact dimensions of my booth in my backyard. I bought all of my furniture and decor outside and I set it all up exactly how I wanted it to look. And I’m pretty sure that I did this multiple times over. I’m a recovering perfectionist, what can I say? I had my pricing cards, business cards, sample albums, I was so sure that I was ready.
2:26
And it wasn’t until partway through the first day of the show that I realized that people kept asking me what it was that I did. And that’s when it hit me. I forgot to make any sort of sign to display my business name. Unless someone stopped to talk to me, they actually had no idea what kind of service I was offering. It was such a major learning experience. But truly, I loved every second of it, and I couldn’t wait to do it again.
2:52
Over time, the shows eventually really became more about hanging out with my vendor friends, and it was about connecting with potential customers though, if I’m being totally honest, I noticed that as my prices went up the people that I talked to seem less and less interested in what I was offering. But the thing is, I wasn’t too extensive. I was just using a method in marketing that was putting me in front of the wrong type of client. I was still fully booking out my calendar every year, but my clients were coming from other avenues like Google and through referrals.
3:22
One day, I decided to finally sit down and take a look at my numbers. I keep track of all of the inquiries that I get throughout the year in a Google spreadsheet, noting things like when the couple first reached out and how they heard about me. And it didn’t take long for me to see that the last three wedding shows I had rented a booth that over the last year and a half, I had booked exactly one wedding. That means I was about $6,000 out of pocket for these shows. I was so far from getting any sort of return on my investment.
Unfiltered + Simplified – An eight-week boot camp for wedding photographers who are ready to simplify the way they do things. CLICK HERE to join the waitlist!
3:54
Now, when I first started doing these shows the expense more than paid for itself. But now instead of spending money on the show to book weddings, I was actually booking weddings to spend money on the show. And that really defeated the entire purpose. I couldn’t justify the expense anymore. So in the fall of 2019, I did my very last show. And in hindsight, I made the decision at the perfect time because it was right before my diagnosis with endometriosis. And the fast onset of my daily symptoms that I have now would have forced me to stop doing the shows anyway. Now I don’t know about you, but I feel so much better about coming to a decision on my own than having one forced on me. So I think that everything played out exactly as it should have to make sure that I committed to it. I actually sold some of the decor from my booth to other vendors and I threw my backdrops in a dumpster at the end of the weekend and damn did it feel so good. Since then, I haven’t regretted not doing wedding shows for a second. Well, okay, I mean, they haven’t been running for the last couple of years anyway, thanks to the pandemic but I’m also I’m thankful that I had already started reframing my marketing strategies before I would have been forced to do it in the spring of 2020.
5:07
I started focusing my efforts on blogging and SEO instead, and I’ll be doing a whole episode on that topic later this season. As you start getting all of your records and finances in order for tax season this year, I want to encourage you to take an honest look at your numbers and see if your marketing methods are still giving you the same return on investment that they used to. If they are perfect, keep going. But if not, here’s your permission to shake things up a bit for 2023 and start spending your time and money on things that are actually going to help you out in the long run.
5:38
(Outro Music) Thank you so much for listening. You can find full show notes from today’s episode at simplysandrayvonne.ca/keepingitcandid in the meantime, let’s connect. You can find me on Instagram and Tiktok just search @simplysandrayvonne. And if you’re loving this podcast, I’d be so honored if you’d go ahead and hit that subscribe button and leave a review. Until next time! (Music fades out)
About Sandra
Sandra Henderson is a wedding photographer, business coach, and podcast host based in Ontario, Canada. She specializes in helping wedding photographers create strategic systems for their businesses to help them get their time back so they can spend it doing the things they love most. As an entrepreneur who also navigates chronic illness life, Sandra also takes a unique approach to using systems that will help businesses thrive no matter what life throws your way.
On a personal note, she loves tacos, 90’s music, travelling, and spending time at home with her husband, step-son, and two cats!
Sandra Henderson 0:01
We’re back with another interview today and this one is full of the most amazing takeaways. My friend Rob from Square 8 Studio joined me to talk about senior photography and how you can utilize this market to gain clients as a wedding photographer. And when I say senior photography, I think that most people are automatically going to think of high school seniors, especially if you’re a US based photographer, because that is a huge market there. But we’re not talking about high school senior photography today! Rob has cornered the market in working with college seniors, especially those in fraternities and sororities. And by delivering an incredible client experience to these students during their senior sessions, he’s able to create return clients who in the not too distant future are going to be taking their own walk down the aisle. That, combined with his mindset around pricing, and his approach to creating a simple pricing structure, helps him book out his calendar year after year in both his portrait and wedding photography businesses. No matter where you’re located in the world. I know you’re gonna get so much out of this episode. So let’s just get right to it, shall we? You’re listening to Episode 26 of Keeping It Candid!
Sandra Henderson 1:09
(Intro music) Welcome to Keeping It Candid. I’m your host, Sandra Henderson, an international wedding and family photographer and business coach. I help wedding photographers use systems to build out the back end of their businesses to gain control and continue to thrive no matter what life throws their way. And on a more personal note, I’m a strong Enneagram three wing two who is obsessed with tacos, and my love for traveling combined with navigating chronic illness life are just two of the many things that drive my passion for all things systems, workflows, and beating burnout as a business owner. Join me every week for a candid behind the scenes look at what it’s really like working as a wedding photographer, where I’ll give you actionable steps to take your business to the next level. Absolutely no fluff here, friends. So go grab your favorite notebook and pen and let’s dive into this week’s episode. (Intro music fades out)
Sandra Henderson 1:57
Well, welcome, Rob, and thank you so much for joining me! I’m so excited to have you here today! Before we get started, if you could just take a quick second to introduce yourself and tell everybody a little bit about you.
Rob Greene 2:08
Yeah, thanks for having me! I am a photographer and educator based out of Fort Worth, Texas. So very opposite end of the accent spectrum from your neck of the woods, I would imagine. Hopefully I come through relatively neutral. But yeah, I have been doing this now for six going on seven years and have loved every bit of it. It’s been been a wild ride.
Sandra Henderson 2:33
It’s so funny that you bring that up about accents, because you and I first met at the Showit United Conference in November 2021. And so many people- I was like one of two or three Canadians, and there were so many people were like, ‘Wait, it doesn’t sound like you have an accent.’ But then I said the word ‘out’ and then all of a sudden, like I had people cheering for me. So yeah, it was so funny that you brought that up.
Rob Greene 2:54
Oh, yes, for sure.
Sandra Henderson 2:55
So I’m super excited to dive into this topic, because a lot of people as they’re building their businesses in the wedding photography industry, or just the photography industry in general, we hear a lot of people telling us that we need to niche down and we need to offer, you know, just one or two things. I don’t necessarily agree with that. I think that you know, as someone who primarily focuses on like weddings and families on my own website, I still get inquiries for all kinds of things from there. So I’m really excited to talk to you about how senior photography has impacted your business as a whole and how it’s impacted you as a wedding photographer as well.
Rob Greene 3:31
Yeah, well, and just to hit on what you’re talking about there with, like, niching down and, you know, do I focus on just one or two things? You know, I get inquiries for a lot of things, too. I only show the things on my site I want to book lots of, but I do think yeah, like, you know, in like this, we’re just talking about before I jumped on here how the, you know, I did a couple of headshot sessions this morning. I don’t advertise publicly that I do headshots, but you know you if opportunities for them to present themselves. I’ve got the stuff in place to do that for people. And I’ve built this quiet little side thing with that as well. But yeah, as far as seniors, I think it’s really important to distinguish because for most people when they think senior photography, they think high school seniors. And I have found that that for me is not where I want to be for a number of reasons, not the least of which is, you know, you have those like helicopter parents that want to jump in and control how the session goes and those sorts of things. And for somebody that started in wedding photography, I’m used to being able to work more directly with the client and have that kind of interaction. And so for me when I think of senior photography, I’m not thinking about high school seniors at all, I’m actually thinking about college grads, and that for us has been an unbelievable source of revenue and quite honestly just joy in running my business that has opened up a ton of doors for possibilities and become like the number one source of how we get our weddings as well, which has been really cool.
Sandra Henderson 5:05
Oh, that’s so awesome. And how has it been like it becomes your number one source is there like one or two specific things that make these ideal clients that transfer them over into weddings?
Rob Greene 5:16
Well, think of it like this. Imagine because you know, you said you do weddings and families imagine let’s start with the family aspect of this. Imagine your perfect family that you love working with. And imagine they lived in a massive neighborhood, full of only perfect families, for you that love your services, right. And they all and they all hang out at the pool on the weekends, or they all go out and eat dinner together. Like they’re always having parties at somebody’s house. Or take the wedding scenario. Imagine your perfect bride. And she lives in a neighborhood with all people that just got engaged in every year, a few people get married and move out of the neighborhood. But every year a few people move into the neighborhood. And they’re also like the perfect client for you. And they’re all telling everybody Oh, you got to shoot with Sandra. That’s what college is like. It is a demographic unlike any other because you have 1000s. And in some cases here in the States, 10s of 1000s of ideal clients that all live on a college campus, that’s just a few blocks, you know, in radius. So you’re talking about 1000s of ideal clients all living within a few blocks of each other, all hanging out in class, on the weekends, at games at parties going to dinner together. And they’re all when they get together, what are they doing, they’re talking about the things that they love. And all you have to do as a photographer, is build the kind of brand that people love. And they’re going to be talking about you when they go to all of these places. So for me, it’s been the most rich and like dense word of mouth market that I could have ever imagined. I’ve never seen anything like it in photography. And yet for so many photographers, they have no idea it even exists.
Sandra Henderson 6:59
Yeah, absolutely. That’s such a good point. I love how you brought up that like, these are all people that are regularly hanging out together going out for dinner and things like that. There’s that saying that like birds of a feather flock together. And I think it’s so true, you’re not very likely going to come across a group of 10 friends where every single one of those 10 people is completely different with absolutely nothing in common. Like they all enjoy watching the same shows and listening to the same music going to the same restaurant. So they will likely have the same tastes and ideas as they go into wedding planning as well.
Rob Greene 7:32
Well, and here, here’s another unique thing about this market Sandra that I think just really has made it a perfect fit for me with all the work we do with our weddings is when I think of high school seniors, I think of an individual. And I think of them and probably their mom coming on the session with them. And that’s pretty much it. You know, maybe you’ll have them like bring a friend that jumps in a picture to at the end. But with college, it’s all about friendships. It’s all about relationships. And so when I’m doing the senior sessions, yes, sometimes it’s just one person. But more often than not, who I’m photographing is a group of five or seven or 10. Or we actually just booked one for a group of 15 friends that I’m just like, man, bring it on. It’s so fun. Because then for me as a photographer, I don’t even have to worry about like, how do I make sure this is fun for them. They’re already hanging out with their, you know, 14 other best friends, they’re gonna have fun, all I have to do is just like ride the wave of energy that they bring to the session. But here’s what happened Sandra is they have an amazing time with me. They get back a bunch of photos with them, and they’re besties. And then a few months later, Jojo the boyfriend goes and puts a ring on it. And that all those besties that were in those pictures with them are now getting invites to become bridesmaids. And so this bride to be is sitting there thinking hmm, who should I reach out to about my wedding photography? And then they realize oh wait, here’s this guy Rob. He just took a bunch of pictures of me and all these girls that are gonna be my bridesmaids. We loved the way we looked in our photos. We love the way the photos turned out. We love how much fun we had with him. Why would I go searching for somebody else that I may or may not have that kind of connection with when this guy shoots weddings to and he’s made us look amazing. And so we wind up skipping the line it’s like a Fastpass at Disney or something you know we we just skip the line to of the inquiry process because we get these people that have already worked with us and already know us already. Trust us already love our work. And it just makes the whole experience so stinking rich.
Sandra Henderson 9:43
It’s like a total no brainer decision at that point. And it just makes I’m sure it takes a lot of the stress off their plate when they’re planning their wedding and just gets them often to just such like exciting foot because a lot of people that I connect with are like, you know, getting through that initial stages of the wedding Planning process can be really daunting and overwhelming. But when you already have that connection, it’s just kind of like a breath of fresh air as you keep going forward.
Rob Greene 10:07
100% I remember last year, there was this gal Sydney. She was one of my campus reps. So we also have this team of campus reps that are people on TCU campus. I’m near TCU. That’s the college here in Fort Worth, and which we just got to go to the playoffs for college football this year and we are stoked about it. I’m so pumped. Sidney was one of my campus reps her senior year. So we did a bunch of shoots together as a part of that. And then we did her senior photos with her best friends. Then we also she told her boyfriend Josiah, hey, you got to do your senior photos. So this guy so Josiah rounds up like 10 of his best buds. And we did all their senior photos. Well, all her girls were bridesmaids. Most of his guys were groomsmen. When we I shot their proposal, all their engagement photos show up at their wedding last December. And all the bridesmaids were people I’d photographed all the groomsmen or people I photographed half of the college aged wedding guests were people that I’d done their senior photos. It was the most fun I’d ever had shooting a wedding because you just felt like you were part of the family at that point. And there was so much trust built up. There was so much just like shared understanding of how this needed to go what needed to happen, that it made things a breeze like the least stressful wedding I’d ever photographed.
Sandra Henderson 11:25
Yeah, oh, I can imagine and that kind of thing… It makes the day really enjoyable for the couple and the experience enjoyable for them. But it really makes it enjoyable for us.
Rob Greene 11:34
Absolutely.
Sandra Henderson 11:36
When you get home from that wedding day, doesn’t matter if it was 10-12 hours. It’s feeling like you were working for a fraction of that time. So why do you think that this is such an untapped market when it comes to wedding photographers, using seniors and college students as a lead in to getting new inquiries,
Rob Greene 11:51
I think comes down to a couple of things, Sandra, I think number one, I think most people assume college students don’t have money and can’t afford photos. And so for photographers, so many of us were struggling with this idea of like trying to establish our value and establish that people should pay us what we’re worth, and we’re trying to raise those prices. And we’re feeling like, ah, you know, like, I feel bad. Even charging, what I’m charging now is supposed to go to this audience where you know, they’re eating ramen noodles for three meals a day or something, you know, and there’s just this assumption that college students don’t have money. But when you go and look, especially at schools that have Greek life, where people are used to paying dues for sororities, and they’re paying astronomical tuition to go to school, and they’re doing all these different things that have large expenses attached to it, really your expense for these memories is a drop in the bucket of all of their overall when you look at the scope of their college experience, it’s a small fraction of the overall expense that they incur along the way. Not only that, but you also have the ability to set up your pricing in a way that can make you both the most expensive and the least expensive photographer on campus, all at the same time. And so what I’ve been able to do is position ourselves to where we are, we make on average around $1,000 A session. So we’re doing 1012 $100 A session right now, for a one hour session. And yet, we are affordable for everybody because of how we’ve structured our pricing. And so it’s one of these things where, man again, once people hear about you and get on camp and your your name is on campus, if they know that their friends shot with you, they want to shoot with you too. And so it just makes it much easier to get into them people realize.
Sandra Henderson 13:37
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Sandra Henderson 13:37
Hey, friends, I’m interrupting this amazing interview for a quick second to let you know about a brand new freebie that I just released. If you want to give your wedding workflow a refresh this year, or if you’ve never had a workflow at all, run, don’t walk over to my website, simply Sandri vaughn.ca forward slash freebies and steal my wedding workflow. This is the exact 16 Step workflow that I use in my own wedding photography business. And it’s ready to help you take your clients from the time they book with you right through until you’re finished your time together and are asking for reviews. All you need to do is input these steps into your favorite CRM system, add in your email templates, and voila, you’ve got a complete wedding workflow and can start delivering an incredible client experience while getting some of your freedom back at the same time, head to simply Sandri vaughn.ca forward slash freebies to get your copy.
Rob Greene 14:31
That would lead me to the second thing is college and sorority photography. I think what holds people back from jumping into it is they don’t know how to start. And so what I have been able to do over these past couple years is take everything that I spent six years learning how to do with no roadmap and basically creating a roadmap for photographers on how to break into this market that nobody knows how to do Break into, because there’s a lot of people out there that will say, I wasn’t in a sorority, guess what me either. I’m a dude. You don’t have that, you know, we they do for attorneys, I don’t even do fraternities, I knew nothing about Greek life going in, I learned all this stuff as I went. But so I’ve been able to build a roadmap for people that we’re now seeing photographers at big schools, small schools, schools in the north, south, east, west, all over the country. I actually just had one sign up, that’s in Canada. So I’m excited to experiment with this. She’s over near Vancouver. So we’re going to be testing this out with her as well, in the coming weeks. But we’re seeing photographers around the United States experienced incredible success. They’re doing things in months, and sometimes weeks, that took me years to do, just because for the first time, there’s a roadmap on how to do it. That’s amazing.
Sandra Henderson 15:47
For everybody that’s listening, definitely make sure that you check it out. I have not checked out this specific course, or roadmap. But I have had the chance to see some of the work that Rob does with teaching flash and hear him speak at a conference as well. And your education is amazing. I love the way that you explain things. And the way that you break everything down makes it so easy to understand. And for someone who has been in the industry, like I’ve been using Flash for a good like 1415 years now. And I still learned, like so much just from the way that you phrase certain things that was like a light bulb went off in my brain that I was like, Oh, like that makes so much more sense to look at it that way. So yeah, everybody, make sure you run over to Rob’s website and check out some of his education offerings, especially if you are interested in diving into senior photography.
Rob Greene 16:31
Absolutely. Well, and we’ve got a thing coming up here in a couple of weeks, Sandra, where I’m actually gonna be doing a free five day mini course on college and sorority photography, that is- we call it College 101. And it’s going to walk you through all the basics to get on campus and get started booking your first sessions with college students. So if anybody’s interested in figuring out how the heck do I crack the code on this market, it sounds awesome. But I don’t know where to start. And I definitely wasn’t in Greek Life myself. It said You know, it sounds weird. Sounds scary. Let me help break that down for you the way we’ve broken down flasher, Sandra, and we’ll get you on campus and get you rolling with your business for the next year.
Sandra Henderson 17:11
I love that! I will definitely be signing up. I live in a what would be the equivalent of a college town in the US is where I live in Canada, we have a college and a university here and a couple other colleges like just outside the city. But we do have a lot of fraternities and sororities here, so I am definitely excited to check that out.
Rob Greene 17:31
You’re- you’re in a prime location, then, and I will keep you posted on how this goes with our friend in Vancouver as well to find out what we learned. Because I have a feeling this is gonna- I feel like there’s just there’s so much correlation geographically, even for our two countries that, you know, the similarities between college students I think around the world are largely similar, but especially US and Canada have a thin there’s going to be a ton of overlap and how those experiences go and what that can do for wedding photographers in the Canada area as well.
Sandra Henderson 18:00
Yeah, I agree, I definitely have had some reservations in terms of senior photography, when it comes to high schools, I think that that will be a lot larger of a task to break into with it not really being a thing that happens here. But I totally agree with you about the overlap between how colleges and universities work between the US and Canada. And I can definitely see how that can be really successful. So I hope that that goes really well for that photographer in Vancouver. And I’m definitely excited to see how that plays out. But that actually leads me into my next question is for any photographers who are living, whether it be in the US where they’re not, there’s not a huge market for senior campus photography or other countries where they may have different schooling systems. Do you have any tips for them about how they can tap into that kind of market without doing photos of seniors annually?
Rob Greene 18:51
Yeah, I think the biggest thing is to start tapping into any existing connections you might have, maybe you’re not on campus yourself. But if you have a friend who has a friend that goes to that college, or if you have a friend whose daughter goes to that college, or if you have a co worker who has a daughter that’s in a sorority at that college, or if you go to church with somebody who you know is going to that college, wherever you have, I have found that man, a little bit of generosity goes a long way and starting with one free session for that one person or that one person and therefore friends, because again, college is all about the friend groups. And so if you can, you know, insert that one strategic free session for a few friends, you’re going to wind up getting your your brand and your name inserted into that social pipeline, that rich social structure we talked about of just 1000s of students all living within a few blocks of each other. And I guess my other thing would be Yeah, come sign up for College 101. We’re going to be starting out here in a couple of weeks. And we’d love to have you in there because we’re going to unpack exactly how to do that how to make those ads asks, and how to several other avenues that you can pursue that will like showing up at tailgate parties before football games, and just walking up and taking pictures of photo, taking pictures of people and swapping Instagrams while you’re there. So many different strategies that you can use to just insert your name and your brand into the conversation. And once you’re in those conversations just spread like wildfire.
College 101 – CLICK HERE to get more info!
Sandra Henderson 20:25
Yeah, I can totally see how like, well, one can lead into the other and how beneficial this is going to be for wedding photographers. And earlier you mentioned that you position yourself in such a way that you are able to be the most expensive and least expensive photographer offering services on campus. I would love to know a little bit more about what that means.
Rob Greene 20:45
Yeah, great question Sandra. So I’m a big believer that your pricing needs to make sense to people. And one of the biggest mistakes I see photographers making when they book out portrait sessions is charging by the person. I think this is a huge mistake. Because most often we wind up spending the same amount of time shooting the session and delivering a very similarly sized gallery if not a little smaller, because a lot of us get nervous working with larger groups. And yet for each individual buying in, they’re getting fewer photos of themselves that feature them. And so I don’t believe it makes sense to the average client to have to pay just as much for the session if there are more people involved. And so and we teach this in the college and sorority course, but we I’m a huge believer in pricing in blocks of time, because I think everybody understands that your time has value. And so because we price by the hour, I’m able to say hey, when somebody comes to me and says, Hey, I would love to work with you. But do you have anything less expensive, I say, absolutely bring a friend with you. And you’ll both pay half as much. It’s still an hour of my time, I’m still doing the same amount of shooting editing. But for these two friends, they have now been able to cut their costs in half. But they’ve also been able to have a better experience because they got to do this with somebody, it’s it can be so awkward when you’re not used to taking photos. And now you’re one on one with this photographer, you’ve maybe met him once or twice. And now you’re having to stand and pose and do all these things like what do I do with my hands? Well, once you have your best friend there by your side, you’re laughing, having fun, you’re enjoying them, you’re thinking about them not thinking about what do I do with my hands. So I’m able to create a better experience for these friend groups. And they’re able to spend less per person on the session because we charge by the hour and not by the person.
Sandra Henderson 22:42
I love that perspective, I totally agree with you. I know there are lots of photographers who are, using the family portraits as an example, where we get a lot of times extended family sessions where three, four family units are all coming together. And a lot of photographers will charge a premium or add ons per family. But I totally agree with you, you can still essentially get the same number of photos done in that hour. But each individual family is going to be getting less photos of themselves, because you’re adding in those large family photos as well, and photos of just the kids and things like that. So that’s such a great perspective for portrait sessions across the board.
Rob Greene 23:19
And I find those families thinking about the extended family think those families tend to wind up all buying prints at the end there, you’re going to be making more naturally on those sessions. And yet they’re going to understand it. What I would say to those people is like if that’s you, if you’re that extended family photographer, and you’re you’re wrestling with like, oh, but how can I make that switch? People understand that it takes more time to shoot more families. So add on time? Well, we have we have college students to do it all the time with us. They’re like, hey, we have a larger friend group. Can we add more session time? Absolutely. Here’s what that cost. Now, that’s an easy decision for them, because they understand more of my time is more valuable to me, and therefore they would spend extra for that that makes perfect sense to them to do that with.
Sandra Henderson 24:02
Yeah, absolutely. And making things as easy as possible for the clients to understand means that it makes it easier for us to get paid. And that is ultimately like an end goal that I think everybody should make a priority
Rob Greene 24:14
100%. I am a big believer in a no brainer booking process. The less brain cells people have to burn through, you know, trying to think through how do I get this thing booked and get my date picked and get my money put down? The less they have to think about that. And the easier we can make for him. That’s just an extra way to serve them before they’ve even officially become a client just by making this easy for them.
Sandra Henderson 24:35
Yeah, absolutely. Before we wrap things up, this has been the most amazing conversation. Do you have any final takeaways that you hope that wedding photographers or campus photographers take from this episode or anything that they can apply to their businesses going forward?
Rob Greene 24:50
Yeah, I would say if you think college photography as a wedding photographer is going to be just like high school photography. You are sorely mistaken they couldn’t. College photography has so much more in common with what you do as a wedding photographer than it has with high school photography. So do yourself a favor do your business a favor if you like working with clients who already love you already trust you already are obsessed with your work before they even reach out to you. If that’s the kind of client you look forward to having inquire about you shooting their wedding, college and sorority photography is where you need to be spending some time in this coming year, not building out Google ads and paying for Google ads and Facebook ads. Go get connected on your local college campus because it is going to become the best source of weddings for you this coming year.
Sandra Henderson 25:41
And who doesn’t love clients like that? And wedding days like that? Really?
Rob Greene 25:44
Right? That’s what I’m saying. They’re just the best!
Sandra Henderson 25:49
Where can everybody find you online if they want to check in with your courses or just follow you on social media and things like that?
Rob Greene 25:56
Yeah, great question. I have a few different places number one, jump on Instagram. That’s the main like social media place to find me. You’ll find me at @square8studio. And then I also have a podcast, The BOP, that I do. So it’s a fun actually to be on a this end of the conversation Sandra, I’m really enjoying this aspect of it a lot. But I do monthly episodes with people around the photography industry. And then I also have an education page square8studio.com/education where you’ll find all of our courses and free classes, like that College 101 that’s coming up here in a couple weeks.
Sandra Henderson 26:36
Amazing! Well, thank you so much again for joining me. It was really great talking to you! I loved this conversation, and I hope that our paths crossed again soon!
Rob Greene 26:45
Absolutely. Let’s make it happen!
Sandra Henderson 26:47
(Outro Music) Thank you so much for listening. You can find full show notes from today’s episode at simplysandrayvonne.ca/keepingitcandid in the meantime, let’s connect. You can find me on Instagram and Tiktok just search @simplysandrayvonne. And if you’re loving this podcast, I’d be so honored if you’d go ahead and hit that subscribe button and leave a review. Until next time! (Music fades out)
About Rob
Rob Greene is the owner of Square 8 Studio, a photography and education brand based out of Fort Worth, Texas. Through both his online courses and his podcast, The BOP, Rob and his mini Goldendoodle, Snoopy, are on a mission to help photographers build their business, wow their clients, and make photo magic. Rob is a firm believer that you’re always ahead of someone and always behind someone, therefore you should always be teaching and always be learning. When he’s not taking photos or teaching photographers, you’ll find Rob obsessing over his latest Apple devices, or watching his favorite soccer team, Atlanta United.
Sandra Henderson 0:00
If you’ve been a wedding photographer for any length of time, I can almost guarantee you you’ve heard someone talk about figuring out your why. The reason why you’re a wedding photographer and why you started this business on this career path to begin with. I’ve even talked about it more than a few times on the podcast. It’s so important for so many reasons. And I talked about all of them and more with Jasmin from JC Photography, who was our guest on today’s episode, she and I chatted about how your why can help you do things like set boundaries, how it coincides with your values as a business owner, and how becoming a mom shaped Jasmin’s perspective about the mark she wants to leave on the world.
Sandra Henderson 0:39
You’re listening to Episode 25 of keeping it candid.
Sandra Henderson 0:43
(Intro Music) Welcome to Keeping It Candid. I’m your host, Sandra Henderson, an international wedding and family photographer and business coach. I help wedding photographers use systems to build out the back end of their businesses to gain control and continue to thrive no matter what life throws their way. And on a more personal note, I’m a strong Enneagram three weighing two who’s obsessed with tacos and my love for traveling combined with navigating chronic illness life are just two of the many things that drive my passion for all things systems, workflows, and beating burnout as a business owner. Join me every week for a candid behind the scenes look at what it’s really like working as a wedding photographer, where I’ll give you actionable steps to take your business to the next level. Absolutely no fluff here friends. So go grab your favorite notebook and pen and let’s dive into this week’s episode. (Music fades out)
Sandra Henderson 1:31
I am so excited to have you here! For everybody who is listening, they’re not going to know but we tried to do this interview once before, and then after my internet cut out on Jasmin three times I decided it was probably best to reschedule it so I could be more respectful of her time. So thank you so much for bearing with me, Jasmin, and I’m so excited to finally have you here for an interview.
Jasmin Blais 1:51
Yeah, me too. I’m so excited. I’m ready. I’m ready for it.
Sandra Henderson 1:55
Good. Oh, I’m so glad. And thank you for being the first official Canadian guests that we’ve had. I do have a local vendor series that by the time this episode comes out, local vendor series will have been out but this is my first official like non London Ontario interview with another Canadian. So super excited.
Jasmin Blais 2:14
Yeah, I’m so excited.
Sandra Henderson 2:16
Okay, well, before we dive in and start chatting, I would love it. If you could just take a second to let everybody know who you are what you do and something about you.
Jasmin Blais 2:25
Yeah, sure. So I’m based in Saskatchewan, Canada, Prince Albert, if anybody knows who that is, but yeah, I started photography back in 2012. And kind of really dove into it. And 2014 I primarily do wedding photography, as well as for education, and mentor other photographers. I’m a teacher by trade. So just Yeah, I just love it. And I really love the community, your competition. I really love connection and helping other people. And yeah, that’s kind of kind of the gist of me and why I’m so excited to be on your podcast today.
Sandra Henderson 3:08
I love that. Well, we started our businesses roughly around the same time. So I launched in 2013. And so I’m curious with having a love for our community over competition and just believing in that mindset, which I do as well. Don’t you find that things are so different now in that aspect than they were back when we were first starting out?
Jasmin Blais 3:28
Yeah, like and I think, yeah. Like, from my experience was, there wasn’t any community, like, you know, right. And it was a lot of trial and error. And I do think back to the time, I’m like, Okay, well, the benefit of that was it put me in situations where I really, really had to dig. And I really, really had to make some mistakes to learn. And that was great. I did eventually have a really great mentor, she was amazing. And we’re friends, dear friends today, but that kind of drove me into, into flipping that, you know, flipping that script and just kind of being like, why why is there such a scarcity mindset? You know, like, what, why are people so afraid to, to share what they do? You know, like, we’re gonna deliver a different experience because we’re two different people. So you know, why, why is sharing where the location that I shoot, or the preset that I use gonna make any difference to, to my services or losing any services? Right. I think there’s a client. There’s clients out there for everybody. And I think just changing that mindset is going to make everybody’s photography journey so much better.
Sandra Henderson 4:46
I could not agree more. You took those words right out of my head. I totally agree with you in every aspect. It’s not taking away from you at all to help other people out at the end of the day. What is going to set us apart is who we are and the service that we offer, not the photos that we’re creating. So I’m totally not all about keeping things secret. Like, if you want to know where I took this photo, then I’m going to tell you and go have fun. I can’t wait to see what what you do when you get there. Yeah, and
Jasmin Blais 5:14
I also believe it’s like, good karma. You know, like, I feel like, I feel like if you’re gonna withhold anything, and you know what, and to be fair, I used to be like that, because I was afraid of, of losing clients and stuff like that, for sure.
Sandra Henderson 5:27
And it’s all that we knew.
Jasmin Blais 5:29
Yeah. And it kind of, to say that I always was in this community mindset is not true. It just, it came, it came to a point where it was like, this is like, it’s silly to not share and stuff. And I think being a teacher, you know, for for like, seven years. It’s, that’s what we did. And that’s, that’s how we grew. And so I think it was just natural for me to kind of dive into that, you know, way of doing things in photography.
Sandra Henderson 5:59
Yeah, absolutely. Well, speaking of how things that happen in your personal life, have shaped who you are as a business owner, and as a photographer, how did becoming a mom change your mindset as a business owner?
Jasmin Blais 6:11
Yeah, it’s, it’s funny, for me anyways, when I had when I had children that I got under this, I became very, I don’t wanna say emotional, but I’m kind of like, for it. And not not just like, obviously, you know, the postpartum and everything from it, but just kind of my journey with it, and just kind of being like, what kind of world do I want my kids to grow up in? What kind of things do I want to model to my children, just to see them that, you know, trying and failing, and, and learning and treating others with respect that, you know, that’s important. And I felt like I, you know, I need to completely practice what I preach and really, you know, put that forth within my business and within my life. And that, I think, is probably the biggest thing that changed since I have had kids and also setting boundaries. That was one of the biggest things time was a big thing. You know, it passes so quickly, even though some days feel like years, but it passes so quickly. And I just wanted to make sure that where I was putting my time was where I felt, I could be away from my kids and not feel guilty about it, you know. So there were certain things I let go of, that I just felt didn’t really serve my time anymore. And then there was things that I just really, really took on, like wedding photography, I just really felt like, I loved that energy. And I loved being around it. And that was worth, you know, being away from my kids. Not all the time. But when I when I booked wedding, I felt okay about it.
Sandra Henderson 7:45
Yeah, absolutely. And I’m sure making those changes helped to your mindset and the time that you were taking to spend with your kids as well. I know from my side of things, I sometimes feel guilt in both directions. If I’m spending too much time working and overworking myself not sticking with those boundaries, I feel guilty for what it’s taking away from my family. And then if I am taking, you know, an extra few days off, taking a vacation taking a week off, then I start to feel guilty about it taking away from my business. So I’m sure that making those adjustments and feeling really happy and confident about the work that you were booking just left you in a mentally better place during that time that you were with your family.
Jasmin Blais 8:26
Yeah, totally. And it kind of makes you a little bit more present, you know, appreciating those moments that you do have with him. And you know, running a business is kind of one of those tricky things where setting boundaries, this is a big thing. I’m not an expert it by any means. But knowing you know, when when’s a good time to put that away, you know, doing things like putting time limits on your phone, and you know, just things like that not not having notifications pop up, unless you actually go physically into that app and, and check it out or whatever, you know, things like that. And one thing, one thing that I really think Sandra that is really important, whether you have kids or not is figuring out your values and understanding your why. And that is just one of the things that I recommend, honestly, and whether you run a business or you know, you set a goal or anything, I mean, everybody set sets goals, and I think understanding why you’re doing something, and the values that are behind it are really going to help you stay focused when you know obstacles come your way because it’s inevitable, like and I think, you know if there’s anybody that’s starting wedding photography, or maybe maybe early 20s, or just graduated or whatnot, you know, and they’re just diving into all those great and crazy life experiences, that there will be obstacles, whether that’s big or small, every single day you will have an obstacle you will have I don’t like to say to failures, but I’ll just say it for the lack of just kind of making not dragging this on again. But there will be times where you feel like you failed. And you need to have a reason why that you’re gonna keep going. You know, and that’s the first thing I think that everybody absolutely needs to do. Because it’s times are gonna get tough. And you got to figure out why why you need to keep going.
Sandra Henderson 10:19
Yeah, for sure that is so so important. I know I went through is such a huge part of my business where I didn’t really have a why it was just like, I always love photography. And I knew I wanted to start a business. But taking the time to just really like go back to the very beginning, no matter how long you’ve been in business for, I think it’s good to revisit. But just going back to like the very beginning, the very, like, base bricks that you’ve put together to build up your business, and just figure out why you’re doing this, why they’re there, what is driving you to keep going because like you said, that’s going to be what keeps you going during those times that are hard. And it’s inevitable, just like regular life running a business is the same way there are going to be days that are absolutely amazing. And then there are also going to be days that you will question Why the hell am I doing this? And so yeah, getting that mindset. And that mindset based around your Y is a game changer for sure.
Jasmin Blais 11:13
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think, and it’s okay, if that wide changes, and it’s okay, if your value changes, you know, my values now aren’t the same that they were 10 years ago, you know, and that’s good. And I think that’s great, because that shows growth, you know, and I think it starts with like self awareness and getting to understand yourself. And, and I actually did this activity recently, where you ask yourself kind of like, first date questions, and you just kind of just just kind of like, understand yourself more, and then you look back at them, and you’re like, oh, yeah, like, you know, that is my favorite color. Or, you know, I am a morning person, I’m not a night person. And, and it’s just funny, because it’s just, you know, for me, like I’ve been married to my husband, or sorry, we’ve been together since we’ve been 18. And I’m, I’m 32. And so like, the idea of first dates is just for me. So asking myself all these questions was just very interesting. And I think once you understand yourself, you’re able to identify those values. And you’re able to understand where your Y is coming from, and digging deeper into what your y is not just the surface. And that is one of the biggest things. In any season of life, I would recommend whether you have kids or not. So
Sandra Henderson 12:27
I am a huge like, lover of all things self discovery, I like know my Enneagram I know my Myers Briggs and like all the things and so I really totally agree with you that there’s so much value in self discovery, I love the idea of asking yourself first aid questions, my husband and I have been together for like 15 years, we did not have a first date either. So it totally seems foreign to me too. But just like that level of self discovery, it really opens up so much when you’re just trying to get through day to day as a business owner. And another thing that you said that really jumped out at me when it comes to boundaries, and like you were saying, like when you’re 20, your priorities are different. And that’s totally fine. Your values are going to change as you get older, they could change year by year, it could be you know, 10 years from now, but it’s going to happen as you get older, and setting those boundaries. And doing that self discovery helps you kind of differentiate what matters to you during those really busy seasons. And those really slow seasons and being able to embrace what both of those bring to the table so that you can adjust your boundaries a little bit more like you and I being in Canada, we have our spring and the summer are super busy and follows super busy. And then it’s really quiet over the winter. And so we have to, to a certain extent embrace the busyness that comes along with those periods, and kind of adjust our boundaries to accommodate that because, you know, we have to bring in a little bit more income during those seasons in comparison to a photographer who has beautiful weather 365 days a year. So yeah, that really stuck out to me as you were talking as well.
Jasmin Blais 14:01
Yeah, totally. It needs funding because I still like I get super restless during slow season. And I guess like just looking at, you know, first Why are you you know, where is this restless coming restlessness coming from. And that usually stems from something from, you know, childhood or whatever, whatever you remodeled, things like that, you know, and then from there, just understanding your season of life and, and understanding that there’s other ways to feel that you can contribute that’s not financial, and look at it as a time to learn a time to, you know, expand like a like invest in education. And I think that’s a huge, huge thing. Like there’s a lot of free educational there, which is wonderful. And there is there is a lot of wonderful coaches out there that you can invest into, you know, in this time to to, to really take advantage of of the of the time that you have and I think If that’s what people find hard is restless. I know for me, like, when slow season hits right now, it’s you Yeah, you feel like, okay, I need, I’m losing kind of the sense of purpose a little bit because I’m not as busy as I was, or I don’t feel like I’m a you know, as needed, but then, you know, rewiring that to mean like, how can I improve? Or how can I grow? How can I help others? How could not, you know, and, and I think, again, going back to that, why and those values, and it’s really going to make a big difference for you to just focus.
Sandra Henderson 15:37
Yeah, absolutely. And you were saying, losing that sense of purpose. I think so many, if not all, wedding photographers struggled with that over the last couple of years, especially in 2020, when weddings just couldn’t legally happen. And we were dealing with so much. So many photographers kind of had to take a step back. And they realize how much of their self worth was based out of like, what they were putting out in their business. And I totally get it, we’re so emotionally connected to the art and the work that we’re creating, we build these relationships with our clients. So it’s totally valid. But there’s definitely what you also mentioned, like part of it from childhood and in the society that we grew up in, where we were led to believe that our value was based on the contribution that we were making. So I think it’s so important to like, again, going back to that, why figuring out why you’re doing this so that you can make those differentiations throughout your life in those times that you’re not able to be at the camera as much as you want to and things like that.
Jasmin Blais 16:35
Yeah, totally. Totally. And yeah, like I like my anagram is three with it. So the achiever with a wing of a helper-
Sandra Henderson 16:45
three wing two – me, too!
Jasmin Blais 16:47
Is it really?! funny, right? This is what like, kind of photographers are like, you know, and it’s funny, because one of the things on there as one of your biggest fears is disappointing people. And so if you feel like, you know, you’re not in that, you know, quote, unquote, you’re getting that praise, right or not to praise but you know, that feedback of not, Oh, I love my photos, or you were like, so great to work with, or, you know, whatever, you Yeah, you you kind of even subconsciously lose a sense of purpose. And so, I think that you just really need to kind of dig deep into where that all is coming from in and understanding that, like, all your emotions are valid, and that’s okay, like, you know, emotions come from thoughts and situations that happen. And so just kind of digging into why why you’re having these, these kind of thoughts that kind of maybe come out of nowhere, and identifying them and naming them and, and just just embracing the season of slow I think that our society is so go go go that just just be a little bit more present. And it’s gonna make, it’s gonna make slow season a lot better.
Sandra Henderson 17:58
For sure. I was talking to a friend of mine last year, and she actually shared with me something that her therapist told her and that was that your feelings are valid, no matter what it is that you’re going through. But the important thing is to like, just stop there for a quick vacation. Acknowledge how you’re feeling, validate how you’re feeling, but don’t unpack your suitcase there, because you’re not staying there. It’s time to move on afterwards and keep focusing on things that are a little bit more uplifting and fulfilling your soul a little bit more, but still giving yourself the respect to acknowledge those hard times that you’re going through.
Jasmin Blais 18:32
Yeah, exactly. And I think that comes to self awareness. Like what brings you joy, what drains you, you know, if we’re going to talk about you know, photography, for me, cake smashes, drain the living crap out of me, because I don’t, I don’t like doing them. I will do them for like my family. Because it’s family and I love them so dearly. And not to say I don’t love my clients, but it’s just, it’s just something that just takes away so much energy from me. So that’s something I let go. You know, it doesn’t give me energy boudoir photography. I love it so much. But it’s just something that I just don’t feel like I have the time to do to give it justice, what it deserves. And there’s so many other photographers out there that do such a wonderful job and have the energy for it. That it’s just like, I think that’s great for you. It’s just something that I just feel like I don’t have the energy to give for it, you know? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Like I think just figuring out what drains you what gives you energy and going towards what gives you energy of course, you know, and, I mean, we only have so much to spare and you know, if we have to take care of ourselves plus other people, it’s like, why are you going to do things that drain you or you feel like you’re supposed to do you know, for, you know, even things like outsourcing for photography, if you feel like you know, you have this giant editing, hell and you just get so overwhelmed. You just kind of put your head under your covers and just hope that it solves itself. Um, but you know, why don’t you outsource it? You know, why don’t you spend a couple $100 to somebody that actually wants to do it and, and then you gain more time and, you know, just things like that, again, I think that it goes to the scarcity mindset of not having, you know, money to do it or not having, you know, yeah, basically the finances to do things like that. But it’s like, you know what, but you’re, but you’re given more time, you know, like, time doesn’t change, you always have the same 24 hours in a day, Money comes and goes. And it’s just it ebbs and flows. And that’s just what it is. And, you know, and so why don’t you give yourself more time to do the things that you love?
Sandra Henderson 20:39
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Sandra Henderson 21:32
And you were saying earlier about like, wanting to know confidently that when you you’re booking a wedding, and you’re really excited to be going and it’s worth the time that you’re taking away from your kids, when you’re doing sessions that you don’t love and that you are not able to put your heart into you’re not serving your clients, but you’re also not serving your family or yourself and you end up with so much more guilt for the time that you’re spending away instead.
Jasmin Blais 21:56
Yeah, totally. Like, you know, just the amount of time of booking, shooting, delivering, you know, a session that really doesn’t serve you it’s it just takes away from why you started in the first place. You know, and, and I think when you are starting yours, you’re just kind of figuring out what you like to do. And for me, like, oh my gosh, like Sandra, I the things that I shot i i shot everything from livestock to do newborn to style newborn I do new remember lifestyle, yeah, to to, you know, product, to branding, to do anything, anything and everything. And I think that part was good, because I figured out like what I like what I don’t like, but it’s just it’s funny. It’s funny when I think back to actually to watch everything that I shot like, like I edited cows before. Like, it’s funny. Like, it’s funny to me, like just thinking about that. But I know that I that’s not what I want to do. And because I experienced it, so
Sandra Henderson 22:59
yeah, absolutely. There’s definitely value in trying a little bit of everything to see what you love and what you don’t love. When I first started out, I worked with a photographer while I was still in college, doing some Co Op hours with her. She was a newborn photographer. And I was like, I love this, this is totally what I’m going to be doing. No, that’s no longer a service that I offer. It was very similar to what you were saying with boudoir photos. I did love doing them. I loved the memories that I was capturing. Sometimes it wasn’t worth the stress of dealing with a newborn baby. But overall, it ended up just being that I didn’t have the capacity to pour into newborn photography in the same way that I was doing with families and weddings and things like that. And so the sessions weren’t really serving me. But they also weren’t serving my clients because I didn’t feel like I was giving them my best. And I don’t know about you, but when it’s a session that I didn’t love, editing becomes infinitely harder.
Jasmin Blais 23:59
Yeah, totally. And then in you kind of just have this idea of like, I just want to get done, send it off and never think about it again.
Sandra Henderson 24:06
Yeah, exactly. And I want to be excited to send off the gallery.
Jasmin Blais 24:09
Yeah, totally. And one thing that I want to revisit that you had said just about, just about oh my god, I’m having a brain fart now of paraphrasing what you said, but basically serving your client and I think that’s what we need to set. Yes, we have as business owners, we have our boundaries, and we have our values and everything like that. When it comes to client experience. We need to understand that like it is about our client, you know, you’re you’re solving your client’s problems, you’re being their highest person, you’re you’re there, you’re excited. I see sometimes too, that people are sometimes photographers and I’m guilty of it to kind of dig for red flags or they dig for you know, this person doesn’t appreciate me or this person did it and I think he just Gotta like step back and look at it from their perspective of, you know, they’ve never done photos before, or maybe they had a bad experience, or they’re making assumptions. Because they just don’t know, you know, it’s your job to educate it’s your job to, to solve the problems. And maybe at the end of the day, after you did all that, they just aren’t that great fit. And that’s okay. But yeah, it’s really about serving your client. And that’s why it’s important to shoot things that you love, because you know, you’re just naturally excited about it.
Sandra Henderson 25:31
Yeah, absolutely. And those boundaries really do come first come full circle. Because, like, I have pretty strict boundaries around my inbox, I don’t tend to unless it’s like an absolute emergency, I won’t reply to an email after seven, because my brain goes to mush, I’ll probably call you the wrong name. Like I do all these crazy things. After seven o’clock, I should not be replying to emails that late. And so because I do that, yes, I’m not available to my clients. 24/7, which I don’t think any business owner should be. But I’m then able to make up for it in a way by being a better version of myself and serving my clients in a better capacity because of those boundaries.
Jasmin Blais 26:14
Yeah, totally. Like, I totally agree, like my phone, you know, starts going into sleep mode at 930. And it is hard because, again, like as a business owner, and and for now, today’s day and age, like everything is so accessible, that, you know, you feel like if you’re not available in 20 minutes, after they send you a message, you’re going to disappoint them or, you know, whatever, but I think, you know, yeah, just, again, those boundaries are just so important to put up. And, and I think with kids, it actually is a little, you know, maybe a little bit easier. Because, you know, you just sometimes you’re forced not even to look at your phone, because you’re so busy, you know, trying to raise little humans, I just, you know, really, really urge, especially for people that maybe have a little bit more time to themselves, maybe they don’t have kids, maybe they’re not at that season yet, you know, to set those boundaries, because like it can get blurred, so easy. And then that leads to burnout. You know, and that’s never fun.
Sandra Henderson 27:23
Yeah, it’s so true. So for any listeners who are wanting to get started in implementing boundaries and getting a healthier mindset around running their business, do you have any, like tips or tricks that they can implement as they’re heading into 2023?
Jasmin Blais 27:35
Yeah, I love that. And like, what a perfect time to have this question. So the first thing that I would say, is when you’re setting your goals, and I think it’s super important to set goals in your business, you can set 12 month goals, I would chunk it down to 90 day goals after that. Because otherwise, it’s just, it’s super overwhelming. Set some big goals don’t minimize something you know, you’re capable of achieving, You’re just afraid to write it down. So we’re setting those goals, again, revisiting your values, revisiting your why’s, and just kind of writing those down making those visible, whether that’s like a wallpaper on your phone, or that is, you know, on a whiteboard, in your office, wherever. So somewhere where you can kind of just be reminded of it every day. Mindset is, yeah, it’s one of the biggest things because the biggest obstacle that you will ever face is yourself. And that is because you know, you’re going to you’re going to come up in situations, whether that’s business related or personal, or, you know, whatnot, where you you can’t control the situation, but you can control how you react to it. And really, really working on yourself and giving yourself grace and understanding that when obstacles come up, because they will ask yourself, what did I learn from this in any situation positive or not, you can always ask yourself that question. And it’s really, really going to make a huge difference for you in your growth. And this is something I wish that I did in my early 20s. You know, I always think, you know, what if I had this mindset, my early 20s than I feel like Where would my business be today, you know, if I just took risks, like I wanted to, and you know, stuff like that, but I also feel like it led up to this point to where I am today. And I’m really proud of of where I am and the work that I do and an understanding that like, hey, life will happen. Everything is not going to be happy all the time. And I’m going to have to deal with it and that’s okay. So those are like the biggest tips for mindset and then off I’m answering your question.
Sandra Henderson 29:50
Oh, totally. That was amazing. That was like total gold. I was even sitting here like jotting a few things down as the listener, just getting like a sneak preview at the episode as it was happening. Yeah, no, that was absolutely amazing. I especially loved how you said the biggest obstacle that you’ll ever face is yourself. Because Wow, so, so true. There’s so many times I have a business coach, and there’s been a few times this year she’s like, okay, so like, what is the actual problem? And I was like me, like, it’s literally just me. There’s no other obstacle in my way other than myself at this point. So yeah, I think a lot of people are gonna resonate with that.
Jasmin Blais 30:23
Yeah. On the business coach side, I was, kind of like a little bit of a left turn here. But don’t you think that having a business coach is amazing?
Sandra Henderson 30:32
Oh, my gosh, like absolute game changer! Yeah, I joined a mastermind and started working with my business coach at the beginning of 2021. And I’ve told her that she stuck with me for life, like, I don’t know. And so many people in the mastermind as well are like, it’s scary out there. The idea of going through this alone and not having a coach and other people who just understand it’s terrifying.
Jasmin Blais 30:55
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that is one of the biggest things of community and, and again, it’s that investment that people are afraid of, like, why do I need a business coach, like, that’s not going to teach me anything about taking a pretty picture. It’s just like, that’s, you know, taking beautiful photos, or you know, that’s your storefront. Everything else behind there is what that business coach is for, and you need you need in order to have something sustainable. You need to have somebody that understands what they’re doing. And yeah, so that was, that was like a little, that’s a little side thing that I you know, I always I always love to ask people that have business coaches, I’m like, Isn’t it the best? Like,
Sandra Henderson 31:33
yeah, oh, absolutely. And I think that when it comes to learning, the more creative aspects of photography, like we can all learn how to take better photos, but we became photographers, because there’s something in us that is an inherent ability to take photos. But like, more often than not, we were not also born with that inherent ability to run the business. Some people can do both. But like, for me, the learning aspect has come how to learn how to take better photos, and learn how to run a business.
Jasmin Blais 32:07
Yeah, totally, totally nuts when it comes to that outsourcing piece, right. It’s like, I don’t want to get so bogged down with trying to understand the business part of it, that I would rather have a coach that helps me out with it. So then I don’t need to spread myself so thin in trying to understand both aspects, you know, where, when everybody else just sees the the beautiful photo part of my business. And that is, you know, what, again, you know, brings in an audience and your ideal clients and things like that. And that’s something that I love doing that, you know, one of the big reasons why I got into this not to understand taxes, and bla bla bla, so I’d rather like, you know, have somebody help me with that. So
Sandra Henderson 32:46
yeah, absolutely. Well, speaking of making investments in your business, I know that you at the time of recording this anyway, have just recently released a course. And I would love for you to share with listeners a little bit more about that. Yeah, I’m
Jasmin Blais 33:01
so excited. So yeah, thanks for letting me share about it. This course is called Keeping wedding photography, simple how to book shoot and deliver weddings, it’s the course that I wish that I had, when I started digging into wedding photography, it really simplifies it, like how to get your clients, you know, gear to have a wedding day, problems that you’ll be solving how to location scout, things like that. It’s it’s all based on my experience of shooting weddings since 2014. And just simplifying something that is labeled as, you know, one of the big beasts of the photography, business as wedding, you know, wedding photography, and I just, I really wanted to create a course that was that wasn’t, you know, a 20 hour course because I think that, you know, nobody has time for that. I wanted something that was easy to follow. I wanted some tangible things to take out of that. So there’s a PDF with that with email templates and timelines and stuff like that. I really wanted to to make it as accessible to people. So it is, you know, it’s a digital online course. And yeah, it’s 90 minutes, six modules. It’s super easy to follow. It’s just something that I wish that I had when I started because everything, you know, if somebody told me something was great for wedding photography, I wouldn’t have bought it, you know, or if somebody said, you know, you know, I tried this, okay, I’m gonna try, I’m gonna try because it must be great. You know, it was there was just so much noise in my head. And I just didn’t, I really needed something to focus me and just a roadmap and that’s what this course is. And it’s super affordable too, because it’s, I just want to help people.
Keep Wedding Photography Simple: How To Book, Shoot, and Deliver Weddings – CLICK HERE to get more info!
Sandra Henderson 34:48
I love that. Well, everybody makes sure you pop over onto my website and check out the show notes for this episode because I will definitely have the links there. Before we wrap things up. I would love if you could just tell the listeners were to follow you on social media so that they can continue checking out everything that you have to offer from here. Yeah, totally.
Jasmin Blais 35:07
Okay, so my Instagram is JC like the letter J-C. JC photography SK. I kind of shot myself in the footer with the SK but yeah, so @jcphotographysk and then my website is JC photographysk.com
Sandra Henderson 35:26
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining me for an interview today. This was absolutely amazing.
Jasmin Blais 35:32
Yes, thank you so much. I loved our chat.
Sandra Henderson 35:35
(Outro Music) Thank you so much for listening. You can find full show notes from today’s episode at simply simplysandrayvonne.ca/keepingitcandid in the meantime, let’s connect. You can find me on Instagram and Tiktok just search @simplysandrayvonne. And if you’re loving this podcast, I’d be so honored if you’d go ahead and hit that subscribe button and leave a review. Until next time! (Music fades out)
About Jasmin
Jasmin is a Saskatchewan-based photographer, that captures love stories and helps photographers reach their goals!
JC Photography
Sandra Henderson 0:00
There are two things you should know about me if you don’t already: one, I believe nothing makes a wedding day more perfect than working with a dream team of wedding vendors. And two, I’m a huge advocate for making sure that we’re doing the work to create a safe and welcoming space for every person that we cross paths with. So I was so excited to connect with my friend Kim from Curated by Kim Weddings to talk about how wedding vendors can work together to create that safe and welcoming space, not just for one another, but for the guests on a wedding day too, and how important it is to have open lines of communication with one another on the vendor team but especially with the planner and venue, so they can ensure that everyone is able to do their jobs to the best of their abilities. As we get ready to head into another wedding season, I think this is such an important conversation to have. The world is made up of all kinds of people and the wedding industry is no different. If we can take just five minutes of time to make sure that our colleagues the vendor team and the guests are able to enjoy the day and serve and celebrate the couple fully, then that five minutes was more than worth it. So let’s dive in and talk more about how we can do just that. This is episode 24 of Keeping It Candid.
Sandra Henderson 1:10
(Intro Music) Welcome to Keeping It Candid. I’m your host Sandra Henderson, an international wedding and family photographer and business coach. I help wedding photographers use systems to build out the back end of their businesses to gain control and continue to thrive no matter what life throws their way. And on a more personal note, I’m a strong Enneagram three weighing two who is obsessed with tacos and my love for traveling combined with navigating chronic illness life are just two of the many things that drive my passion for all things systems, workflows, and beating burnout as a business owner. Join me every week for a candid behind the scenes look at what it’s really like working as a wedding photographer, where I’ll give you actionable steps to take your business to the next level. Absolutely no fluff here friends! So go grab your favorite notebook and pen and let’s dive into this week’s episode. (Music fades out)
Sandra Henderson 1:58
Thank you so much for joining me Kim! I am so excited for our conversation today and for the topic that we have planned! But before we get started, if you could introduce yourself, let everybody know a little bit about you, that would be great!
Kim DeBose 2:11
Of course! Hi, everyone! My name is Kimberly DeBose. I am the owner and principal planner at Curated by Kim Weddings and Events. We are located in the beautiful state of Connecticut, and we plan weddings up and down the eastern seaboard. Our primary focus – our primary focus, in terms of wedding planning is really multicultural intercultural and interfaith weddings and events.
Sandra Henderson 2:41
I love that! I will never forget the day that I did- I was still working for another photographer at the time, but we did a Scottish-Filipino wedding. And both extended families flew in, they were, like, were like born and raised in their own countries and just their kids had come here and it was very early on in my time in the wedding industry, and I immediately became obsessed with any sort of fusion wedding. Seeing cultures blended together in such a special way is such a great way to… I shouldn’t say put a spin on the wedding day. But you know what I mean? Like it’s just- it’s so different than just you know, when your average Americans and Canadians – because we’re in two different countries – like just your regular wedding. You know what I mean?
Kim DeBose 3:25
Right. It’s just gives so much more depth and context and texture to the day and when you fuse cultures religions is just you know, is extra special for sure.
Sandra Henderson 3:38
Yeah, absolutely. I loved one moment during the reception where all of the Filipino family members were teaching cultural dances to the Irish family members, or sorry, it was Scottish, the Scottish family members that were there. And it was such a beautiful moment.
Kim DeBose 3:53
Absolutely. And it’s so colourful. And it’s just you know, just just just great. I love planning inter-cultural weddings, it’s just gives me, I love logistics. So there are tons of logistics attached to, to fusing those things. So I love it. And at the end of the day, each side embraces you because they’re all about family, embraces you so much and it’s just wonderful.
Sandra Henderson 4:18
Yeah. Oh, I totally agree. Never, I’ve never felt like so welcomed by a group of people than with my Arabic clients. Like, they open up their arms and welcome you into their home in such a special way. So, I can totally relate to all of that for sure. We are talking about a very, very important topic today. I think we are both in agreeance about that, about how wedding vendors can continue to show up for each other in the best way possible, especially vendors who have chronic illnesses that they’re navigating in their lives, especially on a wedding day. And the importance of communicating those things to one another and I think you have a really unique perspective as a wedding planner because with your couples, and then your vendors, you’re kind of like a middle point between the two. And so if people aren’t communicating with you, then it makes the whole day so much more difficult. I’m sure you can relate to that.
Kim DeBose 5:12
Definitely, and specifically when I’m one of my vendor friends, because most of the time my vendors become my vendor, friends and family, especially when we are all on the same page, it does get a little hairy. So we definitely can can talk about that. I am a full service planner, most of my clients come to me at the top of planning, maybe they have a venue, maybe they have a photographer, but for the most part, I am at the top of that food chain. And in that, I then go out and match them up with the best vendors that I can find that fit into their style, their budget. And just, you know, ones that I vibe with too, because we’re going to have to work together for an extended period of time. So so in that, I tried to develop a level of communication and trust, especially when I am throwing like, I don’t even have another term for it. But I’m saying, you know, hey, Sandra I have the perfect client for you, you don’t have to do anything but send me a contract. So especially when I’m kinda like throwing the business that way, I definitely hope to stay on the same page with all of my vendors. And if there’s something going on, I definitely want to be the first to know, because I can usually triage that for our mutual client.
Sandra Henderson 6:29
Yeah, that makes so much sense. And I think that there is a lot that goes into, from speaking to other planners, the recommendations that you do give, if you had a wedding that was going to be like, extremely, like a very, very long day, very physically demanding, there may be some photographers that you know personally and have that relationship with that just physically, not to any fault of their own and not in any sort of negative way, but physically just cannot meet the challenges and the demand of what that job will entail. And so I think being on that same page is super, super important. Because as a wedding planner, I’m sure you don’t want to recommend a couple that work with a wedding photographer, and then have them come and not only feel bad for the couple, but also feel bad for what the photographer is having to go through and things like that.
Kim DeBose 7:14
of course, in in terms of how I plan in the couples that I planned for most of their days are 18 hour days, we have Hindu or Muslim ceremonies at the top of the morning, 9:30- 10:00 in the morning, followed by a lunch, followed by a little two hour break, then we’re into more of the traditional American reception of you know, if it’s, you know, another culture in there, they may have a church service, followed by the reception. So we’re now talking about 17-18 hours. And if you’re a vendor, if I know that there is something that will prevent you from being able to stand on your feet, because we have taxing jobs, you know, physically taxing jobs on that day. But if there’s something that’s going to hinder your performance, I don’t want to match you up with a couple where you’re going to feel bad, and I’m going to feel bad and they don’t get their you know, shots or they don’t get you know, the right makeup applied. We all want to be satisfied when we were performing in our zone of genius. And we want the couples to be satisfied as well. So I may still, you know, recommend you, it may just be to a couple of us having an elopement and it’s not as physically taxing, or a couple that is more laid back and they don’t, they’re, they aren’t going to 17 different locations throughout this, you know, 18-19 hour day. It’s really about knowing my vendors and their preferences and and like we’re talking about their their health issues in order to be able to match them up with a couple.
Sandra Henderson 8:42
Yeah, absolutely. That’s so important. And I really… one of the like key takeaways that I hope people get from this episode is realizing that it’s not, it’s not a bad thing to say that someone is not capable of doing something when you’re having open and honest conversations and communication with that. It’s not that you’re looking at them in a negative light and saying, Well, you can’t do this because you have a chronic illness, it’s being on the same page and communicating with one another, recognizing what your abilities are. Because at the end of the day, we all want to serve the couple we all want them to have the best wedding day possible, the wedding day that they’ve been dreaming of. And creating that dream team of vendors is something that I talk about a lot on the podcast as well because we’re- nobody is there to do a disservice to another vendor. We’re not… we… there’s a lot of competing mentality or competition mentality that is in the industry. And I don’t think that it should be like I think we’re all there to serve the same goal. And so that open communication is so important from like, speaking for myself as someone with a chronic illness, it’s something that I would want to know because I know that the planner or whatever other vendors that I’m working with, they want the same thing, is that they want the couple to have the dream day and I don’t want to show up knowing that I’m going to be pushing myself outside of my limitations because that will also start To take away from other clients that I have as well, after that wedding day. So yeah, I love that you said that. And I think that’s so important.
Kim DeBose 10:07
And and just to piggyback off of what you said, it doesn’t take, it doesn’t mean that you can’t do something, it just means that that’s not your specific lane or zone, you may take gorgeous pictures, and I may say, You know what, Sandra, or Sarah or whomever? I do 20-hour wedding days, but I love your photography style, how about we set up a branding shoot for you and I, you know, I want- I need branding photos, or I need some behind the scenes stuff. So maybe you come on the job for two or three hours and capture that stuff for me. So there are different pockets that we can fulfill in order to be able to be in this financial ecosystem without feeling like I have to totally take you out of consideration for any jobs.
Sandra Henderson 10:50
Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s so so important. I love that, that’s actually something that I just started dipping my toe into a little bit this year, is doing what I’ve called detail sessions for planners and vendors where I come out to the wedding venue before the actual, like, hired photographers are there so that we’re respecting each other’s boundaries and things like that. And just getting those photos that these companies are not often able to get to on or get sorry, on the wedding day for whatever reason that may be, and it’s still a way for us to be able to work together and to collaborate and network without having any like, you know, awkward, like we’ve been saying, like awkward situations or situations where people feel like they’re letting others down and things like that.
Kim DeBose 11:35
For sure, and that’s great to be open to that it’s a it’s an additional revenue stream, you know, sometimes getting a client with a with a nice big five figure budget for photography is amazing. But sometimes it’s not worth the headache. So if you can’t do it, and you don’t want to do it, coming in and doing a smaller job may you know be enough to satisfy your palate and produce the work for you as well to be able to then market to other planners or other you know, florists or whatever the case is and open up another lane for you. And I am always going to recommend people that I vibe with, people that I know their work has their- they have integrity, and their work speaks for itself. So there may be another planner that doesn’t do multicultural weddings, but does a different type of wedding and their weddings are eight hours And that may just be it, and the photographer’s hi- hired for six hours, I’d still be able to recommend you and be able to stand by your work and let them know that you’re a great fit and do that in good conscience.
Sandra Henderson 12:40
Is there anything that you do throughout the planning process or on a wedding day to accommodate for the needs of guests and vendors that you, especially with guests, like you’re having these huge guest lists, you might not necessarily know all the needs and accommodations that everybody is looking for. So is there anything that you do to just kind of like do a base level of anything?
Kim DeBose 13:02
So I definitely ask my couples throughout the process, if there’s- in my questionnaire is when we drill down to like logistics, you know, is there anyone with some special needs? And it’s just not in terms of special needs. Is there anyone that we have to worry about when it comes to the alcohol? Or is there anyone that we have to come, come we come into this a little handsy? You know, we we ask a bunch of you’d be surprised.
Sandra Henderson 13:29
Very important question.
Kim DeBose 13:31
Like who is going to touch my butt? Like I want to know. So I can tell Uncle John that you know, I can.. you know.. I just need to know! So…
Sandra Henderson 13:41
Yeah, totally! I know exactly what you mean!
Kim DeBose 13:44
it keep my staff on high alert and so that I’m not uncomfortable at Uncle John isn’t uncomfortable, even though he’s the one doing the touching. So there’s a broad spectrum of questions we ask. And in that I ask, I specifically ask if there are any guests or anyone in the wedding party or parents whatever the case is that need any special accommodations. I have a bride who was getting married September 10. She just had a baby July 12. And I know just in our conversations, as you know, her new moms and I’m not a new mom, but just moms. I know that she’s breastfeeding. So in our first timeline meeting yesterday, I asked her you know, where do you plan on pumping? Do you plan on nursing? Do you plan on doing any of those things so I can have a space for you that’s quiet. So you have some reprieve, that’s sanitary. I need to build that into my timeline. And I need to know that can happen so I can whisk you away. So I want everyone it’s my primary responsibility for things that go off without a hitch. And I need to be aware of all of the things that involve all of the people including vendors in order to be able to do that. If you are a vendor with a chronic illness, and you need to take an hour break, let’s build that in around speeches or when people are going through the buffet line, if they have a buffet, let’s build in, you know, a longer time maybe I put an hour in there for eating time and you you take your break, then you’re not capturing anyone when they’re eating, you know, and then maybe we build speeches out a little later in the evening. I have to know all of these things in order to make decisions that are beneficial for every party involved.
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Sandra Henderson 15:25
Yeah, absolutely. I love that you brought that up. And I love that you mentioned questionnaires. Because in getting ready for this episode, I actually posted to a different- a couple of different communities that I’m in and asked them like, what is something if you’ve ever been in at a wedding, or if you are in the wedding industry, and you’ve ever needed an accommodation at a wedding, what’s something that someone could have done proactively to make the situation a little more comfortable for you, because something that happens a lot, and something that I’ve even faced myself, is not feeling comfortable asking for those sorts of accommodations, we want to try and fit ourselves into the box of an abled person who doesn’t have any chronic illnesses or anything else on their plate that they’re having to juggle as well as doing their job. And so one of the responses that I got was actually a questionnaire. And I thought that this was such a great idea, even from like, as a wedding photographer, I still like to build those connections with different vendors. And the responses to me like from a florist or someone like that is not necessarily as important on the photography side as it would be to the planner side of things because you are having to juggle so many different pieces of the puzzle for the wedding day. But I also send out a questionnaire to my own couples, whether it be for the wedding day, or my family clients or anything like that asking them similar questions, like you were saying like is during family photos is there anybody who has mobility limitations, it’s going to need flat ground that can’t, you know, go down a grassy hill to do photos, for example, is there anybody that needs photos to be done in a sensory friendly area, because one of my very first weddings actually, I was not given any of this information. I was still in college, I didn’t even know to ask any of these questions. And we had all the lights off in a fairly small hall, because dancing was happening, the DJ had some lights, we were taking photos with our flashes. And nobody told us that one of the guests had epilepsy. And so because of all the lights flashing between us and the DJ, it ended up triggering a seizure and we had to call an ambulance and one of the guests had to be rushed out. And so it really kind of early on painted a picture for me of like, why this sort of information is so important as a photographer, and then I think like 10 times more important for you as a wedding… Sorry, wedding planner.
Kim DeBose 17:43
The worst, the worst thing that can happen is that the police are called in, or an ambulance is called on your wedding day, because no matter what happens, that overshadows all of the things, you know, you could have had a perfect day, and at the end of the day, if your cousin needs to be rushed to the hospital, it’s just always going to stick out whenever you think about your wedding. So and that can be fairly traumatic, especially after the 1000s of dollars you’ve spent. Um, so knowing and having that information upfront, just kind of mitigates that. I have found and like you, I’ve started to ask these questions with experience. And I find that when I send out a questionnaire and I asked you, you know, who’s handsy? Or who can consume too much alcohol or all of those things, you know, I’m open to getting that feedback. So you, the transparency is there, I’ve asked you, now it’s up to you to be able to give me that information. And that opens the door to be more comfortable in person to continue to have that conversation. But if I don’t ask, you know, you might not even think to tell me. So I’ve discovered throughout my business journey, that it’s important to ask questions, and all you can do is write n/a if it’s not applicable to you in the questionnaire.
Sandra Henderson 18:58
Yeah, absolutely.
Kim DeBose 18:59
When you do when we do that, and it becomes a three step process, you know, questionnaire, conversation and implementation if need be. It just makes it easier, more discreet for that person, because you need to still have some discretion in that. And it makes them feel loved. And it makes them feel seen. And it makes me feel good too.
Sandra Henderson 19:22
That’s such a good point that you brought up that it makes people feel seen. I love that. And so I know a lot of people who are listening to this and are struggling with things like chronic illness, or struggling with, you know, being open and communicating their needs to others to make those accommodations, I would love to put their minds at ease and just ask you is, Has there ever been a situation where someone has asked for an accommodation and there has been negative feedback from another vendor or venue or the couple or anything like that?
Kim DeBose 19:57
not in my experience. I haven’t you know I don’t come across that personally. And if someone asked me personally to, you know, make some accommodations for them, I wouldn’t, you know, write them off, I would try my best to be able to do what I can do in that space and time, especially if I know, before, I’m sure I’m positive if people have felt like they haven’t been seen or heard, I just haven’t crossed paths with someone that I’ve, you know, had that experience with. And I hope that I don’t, I hope we can, we can stop for five or 10 minutes if need be, to be able to give whomever that is a space and time to regroup. Or to make changes. Like I say, timelines aren’t flexible, but they’re the most flexible and disregarded thing in the entire world. So I can build some time in anywhere and get it I have people in my my personal life that have some, you know, chronic illnesses, and we just have to make those accommodations. So I have personal experience. So I just happened to be a little, I happen to be sensitive, but I’m sure there are other planners or venues that aren’t necessarily as sensitive.
Sandra Henderson 21:10
Yeah, I totally agree. I’m sure they’re like the world takes all kinds. And I’m sure there are people out there who are not as welcoming or as accommodating. But I think overall, the majority of people that we will come across are gonna have absolutely no issues with making any sort of accommodation. And like you said, like building an extra five minutes in here and there won’t be an issue. I think that a lot of us are just worried about the what ifs and the fact that we aren’t fitting into the same box as another photographer. And so I love hearing perspectives from other vendor- Other vendors who are coming across these situations who can say like, Yeah, I’m sure it exists, but it hasn’t happened, for me, and in my experience, because I think that’s gonna give people a little bit more confidence as they’re going forward to be able to openly speak about these things.
Kim DeBose 21:59
Absolutely. And I want you, I would want the listeners to feel comfortable. And being able to give out that information and know that sometimes things come off so harsh, especially when we’re in the decision making process of the day. Every one is kind of like cut and dry for the most part. So for me, I try to take more care with my vendors, because I need something in return, like what’s on your photos to be perfect. So I tried to definitely take my tone down a little bit, and, and really have personal conversations, look them in the eye and get a little closer Well, not all the times, but they’re a little closer. So that we all feel more comfortable. And we know we can rely on each other to be able to give each other whatever we need to make the day go off without a hitch. So I haven’t personally had that experience because I tried to be personable, I tried to be funny, I tried to leave with love, in order for my vendor team to feel comfortable. Because we have to work together.
Sandra Henderson 23:05
I love that. So so true. Well, do you have any final words of encouragement or final thoughts about the communication process with your vendors and things like that,
Kim DeBose 23:16
of course, I My tip would be to cultivate relationships across all wedding professional communities. Because if Island talks to planners, and you only talk to photographers and makeup artists only talk to makeup artists, and so on and so on. And we have conversations about what’s actually happening in our real lives. But we don’t have overlapping conversations. And we do not, you know, develop relationships with people and other lanes, we never get to what’s really happening in our personal lives. And I can’t get that out of you or I don’t know, if we haven’t made that connection. And you don’t you may not feel comfortable with telling me. And it’s important to develop those relationships so that we can you know, work, we can be friends and we can work together. Well, that will be the first thing. And the next thing to me in terms of being a planner is if you have something going on, and maybe my couples didn’t book you through me or you weren’t one of my recommendations. If you know I’m a planner on the team, because I always reach out to you know, my couples, other vendors as soon as they you know, sign up for me sign up with me if they are like a wedding management package. Let me know don’t go smoke couple you know, and I know you’re not intentionally ghosting my couple, but they’re now emailing me 50 times to be able to find you and they’re emailing you 100 times and it just maybe you need a second you need a break. But if I know that and you even tell me to the side that you need a second, I can pacify them for lack of a better word I can you know say well, you know, Sandra and I have connected we’re working on your timeline. She’s inundated with weddings. She’s given me the green light on what she needs to execute your day. She will be there she’ll be ready to work we’ve we’ve done all of these things, you know, behind the scenes to map things out. If you just tell me I can cover your cover your ass and cover buying two?
Sandra Henderson 25:14
For sure. Yes, lots of ass covering is needed from a dream team of vendors on a wedding day. We are all human. We’re all imperfect. We all need breaks, things happen, especially on the bigger crazier wedding day. So yeah, that whole thing is so so important. And that actually inspired me for one last little thought that I would love to throw at you. Do you have any encouragement or thoughts to share with other vendors on the importance of reaching out and making those connections with the vendors that they’re going to be working with? Whether that be other planners who are just starting out, or photographers or anyone like that? What has your experience been like?
Kim DeBose 25:48
So I am oftentimes in a unique position, because I am the planner. And in that, I find that every every couple that I work with has a planner, because I’m there. But not every couple you work with, or the DJ works with other makeup artists works with have a planner, so you have a different set of experiences that I don’t have, because if I’m there, I’m there. So I find that DJ, my photographer, my videographer, they all morph into planners, but you have to when you don’t have boots on the ground. So I love to kind of ease into that relationship, because I know that if you have 15 Weddings this year, statistically, only five of them have planners. And so you do have to have that hat on. But when it’s my day, you don’t have to have that one, you can, you know, kind of let that go. Let me do my job and we don’t have to fight, we can just you know, you can just be relieved that today’s the day you don’t have to be a planner. So I find that if we can collaborate and get to know each other outside of wedding days and wedding weeks. I find that photographers once they really get to know their favorite planners sing their praises, because they’re like, listen, I can get all the shots that I want. And for a planner, it’s staying in my lane to like I shouldn’t be posing people like what do I do? Like, I should be telling people get your behind right there and let the photographer do his or her job. And then go on and put on another fire. So and we communicate and we network and we have fun and we have drinks or we have coffee or whatever the case is outside of outside of a wedding week or wedding day we can really get to you know, let people work in their zones of genius.
Sandra Henderson 27:34
For sure. So important on a wedding day to let people work in their zones of genius. I love that you said that. Well, that was amazing. Thank you so much before we officially wrap things up, if you could just let everybody know where to find you online so they can go and give you a follow.
Kim DeBose 27:49
Of course, thank you for having me. I truly appreciate it. It was so nice connecting with you and your audience, and really speaking to the other sides of the wedding professional world. I am @curatedbykimweddings on Instagram. I am @curatedbykimweddings on Facebook. And you can also catch me on the World Wide Web because I’m older than 37 Insanely – Curated By Kim Weddings And Events. So that’s where I am. That’s where I hang out. Of course, we plan up and down the East Coast, then you know we will get on a plane if you buy the ticket.
Sandra Henderson 28:27
Yes, I love that. Hopefully I’ve got some Canadian listeners that will fly you over to the side of the border because I would love a chance to work together one day.
Kim DeBose 28:35
Absolutely, absolutely for sure.
Sandra Henderson 28:37
Awesome. Well, I’m so grateful for you and this conversation. Thank you so much again and I cannot wait to talk more soon.
Kim DeBose 28:44
Thank you.
Sandra Henderson 28:45
(Outro Music) Thank you so much for listening. You can find full show notes from today’s episode at simplysandrayvonne.ca/keepingitcandid. In the meantime, let’s connect! You can find me on Instagram and Tiktok just search @simplysandrayvonne. And if you’re loving this podcast, I’d be so honored if you’d go ahead and hit that subscribe button and leave a review. Until next time! (Music fades out)
About Kim
Kimberly DeBose is the principal planner at Curated by Kim, Weddings, and Events. Kimberly has over 5 years of experience with planning weddings and social events in Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey + beyond. Kim’s love for events runs deep! She watched her mother and aunt put together some of the most fabulous events, which piqued her interest at an early age. The elegant courses, the design, and of course the gathering of family and friends was always the highlight. Planning was just a natural fit. After working for a boutique wedding planning and design company as an assistant, Kim decided to strike out on her own. CBK serves multicultural couples whose wedding day honors their deep love and affinity for their culture while fusing in elements that are reflective of their modern love story. Outside of stalking beautifully executed events all over Instagram, Kim spends her time loving on her family. Wife to Andre, mom to Andrew, Axel & Alaina, and new puppy Bingo, Kim’s hands are full!
Sandra Henderson 0:02
It’s our first interview for 2023 and we are kicking things off with a good one! Today I’m chatting with my friend Nova from Nova Markina Photography. She is an amazingly talented wedding photographer and educator, and all around just one of the loveliest people that I have you ever met in this industry.
Sandra Henderson 0:20
We did used to be neighbours here in London, so I have the honour of calling her a friend in real life, but over the last couple of years, she and her family have spent some time living abroad. So when we connected for this interview, we talked about things like the steps she took to create a remote business that can thrive no matter where she’s living in the world, and all about the importance of creating a work life balance as a business owner.
Sandra Henderson 0:41
You’re listening to Episode 23 of Keeping It Candid.
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Sandra Henderson 0:44
(Intro music) Welcome to Keeping It Candid. I’m your host, Sandra Henderson, an international wedding and family photographer and business coach. I help wedding photographers use systems to build out the back end of their businesses to gain control and continue to thrive no matter what life throws their way. And on a more personal note, I’m a strong Enneagram three weighing two who is obsessed with tacos and my love for traveling combined with navigating chronic illness life are just two of the many things that drive my passion for all things systems, workflows, and beating burnout as a business owner. Join me every week for a candid behind the scenes look at what it’s really like working as a wedding photographer, where I’ll give you actionable steps to take your business to the next level. Absolutely no fluff here friends! So go grab your favorite notebook and pen and let’s dive into this week’s episode. (Music fades out)
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Sandra Henderson 1:33
All right, well, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. I’m so excited to have you!
Nova Markina 1:39
Thank you, Sandra. I’m excited to be here. I’m actually so excited, I showed up 30 minutes early.
Sandra Henderson 1:44
It happens! I did that, when I saw you for spring minis on the weekend, I went and parked and I looked at my phone and I was like ‘my session doesn’t start for 40 minutes…’
Nova Markina 1:57
It’s good to be excited.
Sandra Henderson 1:58
Right? Awesome. Well tell us a little bit about yourself and where we can find you on social media and all that kind of fun stuff.
Nova Markina 2:05
Alright, so my name is Nova Markina, I am a wedding photographer, based in London, Ontario, Canada, but I do shoot you know, across the country and internationally. My Instagram and all of my social media handles are just my name. So @novamarkina, so be sure to check that out. And then my website is super simple, it’s novamarkina.ca.
Sandra Henderson 2:27
Awesome. Yes, super easy to remember across the board. And so you mentioned that you do international wedding photography, and that was kind of the inspiration behind me wanting to bring you on the podcast for today’s episode, because I have known you for so long and I’ve seen how your business has transitioned from being local to the London area and then going abroad from there, what has that experience been like for you?
Nova Markina 2:57
It has been a whirlwind. And it’s been wonderful. So you know, pre- we’ll say, March 2020, my business was, you know, taking off in terms of destination weddings and all of that. And then you know, things kind of changed. So we weren’t shooting as much even at home. And then basically once we got the go-ahead that like travel was okay and whatnot, we jumped right back in. My husband and I have always been travelers, you know, that was always the big picture goal for us to do something crazy in our lives and spend time elsewhere. So this past winter, we had the luxury of being able to uproot our family, we took our daughter, she’s 18 months now. So the three of us went to Mexico, and we worked abroad for six months. So during that time, I wasn’t necessarily shooting, I was just kind of getting back into, you know, being away and building those relationships for being away. I was diving a lot into my mentorship and teaching programs. Yeah, and then at the end of our trip, you know, I did my first destination wedding of the year, and it’s just gonna go from there, it’s gonna get really busy. From there, we’ve got our weddings at home and our shoots at home and then next winter, we’re gonna dive back into shooting abroad.
Sandra Henderson 4:11
I love that! I will admittedly tell you that I was like, stalking your stories the whole time you were in Mexico, because Mexico is my favorite place in the whole world. And so yeah, I was just living vicariously through your Instagram the whole time you’re away!
Nova Markina 4:24
Next time, you’ll just have to come visit!
Sandra Henderson 4:26
Exactly! You definitely don’t have to ask me twice to go to Mexico! I love it. Um, so what kinds of things do you think you had to structure in your business to be able to take that time off? I know it did coincide with our off-season here in Canada, but was there anything that you had to do in advance to be able to give yourself that freedom to be able to work abroad?
Nova Markina 4:49
Yeah, I think there was a lot leading up to it in terms of how I structured my business that did make things easier once we made the decision. Having said that, there were you know, Oh, that last minute tweaks that we had to make as well. But in terms of how I run my business and how, you know, it’s sort of evolved, I put a lot of emphasis on systems and workflows, and setting client expectations and setting personal expectations, to know sort of where the line between personal time and work time comes into play. I know a lot of us can get like, overwhelmed with working all the time, and oh, I’ve got a spot in my calendar open, so I won’t take time for myself at all, you know, I’ll be working as much as possible. So just setting up systems that would allow me to make sure that I was always delivering a good client experience for, you know, my clients, my photography clients, and my students, especially being away, you don’t know… I always look at a at a trip as ‘I don’t know if I’ll be back’, or ‘I don’t know if I’ll have the opportunity to be back.’ So it’s easier to set those boundaries and set those time those times in your calendar, because you can work really hard and really smart. And then you can take a couple hours off so that you can enjoy where you are. I find being at home, it’s really easy to just be like, ‘You know what, I’ll just keep working.’ So, you know, being really strict on my time and my schedules and my workflows, so that I could be efficient.
Sandra Henderson 6:18
I love that – you are totally speaking my language, 100%.
Nova Markina 6:22
Yes, we love the workflows!
Sandra Henderson 6:23
Right?! And just like you were saying, instead of like prioritizing that time to yourself, because if you are, typically, when you’re at home, and you leave that block open on your calendar, a lot of times, it’s so easy to just be like, ‘Oh, well, I’ll just work, I’ll just fill in another session.’ But I always am telling people, like, not every day is meant to be a day behind your camera. There’s a whole business to run outside of the creative side. There’s also having time off which you need. And I don’t think a lot of people, or enough people, put priority on taking time off.
Nova Markina 6:55
Oh my gosh, I couldn’t agree more. And I think what, a couple of things have really like changed my mindset around work. One of them being that we don’t become self employed individuals, the dream of becoming a self employed individual is not to work 24/7, right, the dream is to do what we love, and then have the life that we love. And I think that gets lost really quickly when we’re trying to hustle and build and gain that momentum. So it’s kind of taking a step back to realize like, ‘Okay, I want to build the business with my dreams, but it’s so that I can also have the life of my dreams,’ – to be able to set those boundaries and, you know, having a baby during, you know, a very tumultuous time, that also kind of changed my priorities a bit. And that’s not to say that photography is less important to me, but it’s, it’s – I figured out a way to, when I’m in that, be very focused with that and dedicated to that. And then when I move out of that, you know, you know if it’s time off or evenings off, I’m dedicated and present when I’m not in it. So I’m dedicated to what I’m doing in that moment.
Sandra Henderson 8:03
Yeah, absolutely. That’s so important. I think like, when it comes to taking time off, it’s not necessarily just like not working, like actually removing yourself from the headspace and allowing yourself be present in the things that you have outside of work contributes to how relaxed and refreshed you are, and refilling your own cups that you can keep serving other people.
Nova Markina 8:23
Yes. Oh, I love that filling your own cup.
Sandra Henderson 8:25
I love those little, like, visuals! And all of my visuals and comparisons always relate to like food or drink in some way. Just how I roll.
Nova Markina 8:33
I can relate. I do like that.
Sandra Henderson 8:36
So you talked a little bit about like balancing the two while you were in Mexico and while you’re at home. Do you think that work/life balance is something that is achievable? Is it like an end goal? Do you think it’s a catchphrase? Do you think it’s something that you have to always be working on? What are your thoughts on work/life balance?
Nova Markina 8:54
Um, so I’ve got a few answers to a few of those questions. So I do think it is attainable. I think it is very necessary. But I do think it’s a work in progress. Because all businesses and all parts of your life are going to have peaks and valleys. And there are going to be times where, you know, wedding season for us where we might only be working six or eight months out of the year. We don’t live in California, we have to really nose to the- nose to the ground, and be working and we might have two or three wedding weekends. So sometimes I think in our business, it’s not completely possible. But I think to be reminding yourself that when you can be doing it you should be.
Sandra Henderson 9:35
Yeah, absolutely. That makes so much sense especially for like you were saying those of us that have the six to eight month wedding season. It kind of… There are times where you really have to just kind of have some looseness on your boundaries. Give them a little bit of wiggle room. Don’t completely get rid of them, because then you end up getting to October and you’re exhausted and miserable and totally burnt out. But yeah, at least having a little bit of flexibility so that you can make the best of both situations.
Nova Markina 10:03
Absolutely.
Sandra Henderson 10:04
So what was your inspiration in going to either like, just abroad in general or specifically Mexico? I know, you said that you and your husband have always loved to travel. But what was kind of like the deciding factor, like, it’s time, and we’re gonna go, and we’re gonna make this work.
Nova Markina 10:23
So we did a little trial run trip in November. So you know, traveling, your first trip after what’s been going on, you know, with travel restrictions and whatnot, is kind of a nerve wracking one, you know, we have a baby, and is it responsible and safe and possible and doable to be traveling abroad. So we picked somewhere where if something were to happen, we could be home quickly, a short flight, and we picked somewhere that we were familiar with. So I have been to that coast, like the Cancun coast of Mexico, nearly 20 times. So I was like, you know, it’s familiar. I know what to expect when I get there. So that was sort of why we chose that location. We did a trial ride, you know, flights with the baby and what to pack and over packing and unpacking certain things. So we did that in November, we realized it was doable. And then we booked a trip in for December. So we left December 27. And we were going to say for one month, you know, one month abroad is, like, kind of crazy! And the whole idea being ‘we’re not vacationing.’ Everyone’s like ‘oh my gosh, you’re going on a month vacation. That’s so nice!’ And I had to kind of reframe it where it’s. we’re – no, we’re uprooting. So we’re yes, we’re going to be able to enjoy sun and palm trees and sand and ocean, but also seeing what it is like to work somewhere else. So having the work/life balance in a different country, just the two of us there to parent, no outside help, no nannies or daycares or anything like that. So figuring out what that meant for work. And then it came, you know, the end of January, and a couple of crazy things started happening here in Canada. So we decided to extend our trip. And before you know it, we were looking at another Airbnb, we had, I think, successfully figured out a good work/life balance in January. And so we did, we extended our trip. It was a little nerve wracking because you know, you had to cross some T’s and dot some I’s for back home, and to make sure everything was taken care of. But I have no regrets about doing it. We got on the plane to come back home when our trip was over and Matt was already talking about, you know, ‘so next year when we do this, and are we going to do it a bit longer?’ and thinking about all of these possibilities, are we going to stay in this a place or adventure elsewhere? So I have no regrets. And I really think that if people are able to do something like that, that they absolutely should. It’s terrifying and exciting all at the same time.
Sandra Henderson 12:46
Totally. I love traveling. And the idea of doing that – it definitely, like, gives me a little bit of anxiety, but also like excites me so much. Yeah, you guys were definitely some inspiration for me in my life. I was like ‘we’re gonna make this happened one day, and we’ll just be neighbors with Nova and Matt like we used to be neighbors in real life.
Nova Markina 13:05
Yes, totally!
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Sandra Henderson 13:07
Um, so what was it like with the actual work aspect? I know you said that you didn’t have a destination wedding until the very end because you were focusing on just like, trying to figure out the structure and that end of things. So how did it work out with everything that you had put into place in advance once you got there? What was the actual work side of things like for you?
Nova Markina 13:30
Um, the work side was very, very similar to had I been home because it was the mentoring side of my business. So it was, you know, Zoom calls and chats and correspondence with students. So it was more working from home… Home, our home in Mexico, and not going out and shooting, which kind of made it easier, in a sense, because I was able to stack my day in terms of have- having, you know, calls at certain times and then being able to go out at other times. But yeah, I would say because we moved things over, we… I basically did what I would have been doing at home, except when I looked outside there was a palm tree and not rain or snow!
Sandra Henderson 14:10
Right. That’s the dream right there! I love Canada but I’m also not built for these cold temperatures even a little bit.
Nova Markina 14:20
Plus you love tacos, so you would have loved it there.
Sandra Henderson 14:23
Honestly, like there’s a million things I absolutely love about Mexico! We- I’ve been to the east coast a couple of times, but my heart lives over on the West Coast. Matt and I are planning a trip over there.
Nova Markina 14:34
West side is the best side?
Sandra Henderson 14:35
Right! But yeah, there’s this tiny little cape town called Sayultia and it has- it holds a world record for, like, the most colourful flags that they’ve strung up above the streets. You can just like walk down, like, colourful rainbow streets. And while we were there, like, we were on the beach, and my husband watched a fisherman get off a boat and like walk into the back of a restaurant. He’s like “we’re going for fish tacos!”
Nova Markina 15:00
Oh my gosh, that’s amazing.
Sandra Henderson 15:02
I can’t wait to go and stay there. So if you could give photographers who are just starting to like dip their toes in the water of, like, wanting to explore doing destination weddings, what would you- what advice would you give to them?
Nova Markina 15:16
Ooh, destination weddings and how to jump into that… I would start by like a super, it sounds super easy, but if you want to do destination weddings, you have to let everybody know that you want to do destination weddings. Because one, they’re going to be very popular. You know, they’re, they’re gaining momentum again, and so everybody knows somebody who knows somebody who’s going to be getting married down south. So there is, it… There is a really nice advantage to bringing a photographer from home. So just getting the word out there that that’s something that you want to be doing, you know, chatting about it, I saw a Reel once and it was like ‘you have to talk about your business to have a business.’ So talking about it as much as possible, be it in person and people that you know, mentioning it on socials, all of that, but also remembering that while it is luxurious and adventurous and fun, and you might just want to, you know, ‘will shoot for sun!’ and do it for free, I would highly recommend against that. Because you have to take into consideration that going away has a lot of things that you have to- a lot of things to check off, a lot of things to keep track of. You are leaving probably for a week, so you know, a week of worth is work is gone. You have to make sure you have proper insurances and all of this. And there’s a lot that goes into it. So pricing yourself and valuing- valuing yourself accordingly so that you can do it, so that it’s advantageous for yourself and the couple that’s bringing you, not doing it for free. But also maybe you know, not… You might not be able to charge an exorbitant amount to begin with. So yeah, so talking about your business to have a business in terms of letting people know that that’s something that you want to do. I think that’s the short of that one.
Sandra Henderson 17:06
Yeah, for sure. I love that – you have to talk about your business to have a business. I want to, like, one of my big goals this year was reminding myself that… Actually, I’ll just like steal the way a friend of mine said it yesterday, it’s that we’re the only ones who get tired of hearing our own marketing. Like, not everybody is hearing or seeing every single thing that we do. So we have to remind ourselves that like, consistency, and fre- or I should say, frequency, is key and just continuing to always talk about your business.
Nova Markina 17:34
Yes. And we, I totally, totally feel that because, you know, we’re talking about our business every day. And there was a percentage I saw somewhere, and it’s like, only, and I’ll have to check this number, but like 2% of your followers are seeing it. So if you have 100 followers and two people are seeing it, like, it will feel old for you to be able to reach the other 98% of them.
Sandra Henderson 17:58
Right.
Nova Markina 17:58
So yeah, reminding yourself about that. Because some days, I’m like, Oh, I would rather talk about anything else. But then the people who want to hear it stick around the people who don’t we attract we repel. But that’s a whole other conversation.
Sandra Henderson 18:10
Right? Yeah, that that can go into a whole entire podcast on its own, which I’ll probably add that to my list and then just get in touch again. So we can do this again!
Nova Markina 18:17
Sounds good! I love that topic!
Sandra Henderson 18:20
All right. And so stealing one more piece of advice from you, if you could give photographers who are wanting to get their freedom back in their lives and start working towards having a more balanced work and home life, what piece of advice would you give them for that?
Nova Markina 18:36
I love this. I love this because it took me longer than I would like to admit to figure it out, to figure it out.
Sandra Henderson 18:42
Same here.
Nova Markina 18:42
Now… Yes, it took me too long! But now that I’ve gained momentum in it, I feel like everybody should know how to do it. And it’s, it’s a tough thing to have this, this balance. But I think a lot of us are unaware with how we spend our time, like a lot of us don’t even realize what are the time- what’s taking our time, and where we’re spending our time. So I would first and foremost, start with tracking your time. Like, without thinking about it too much, go about a day or a week, and do what you do and track your time, and how- like, I know my week, I know how much time I’m going to spend in the car. I know what how much time I’m going to spend, you know, on meals and personal time and work and emails. And it’s really advantageous. And at first, it might feel constricting, but it is quite liberating when you can figure out exactly where your time is going, and then you realize, oh, this was a really inefficient use of time. So starting with tracking it, and there’s tracking apps to do that. Pen and paper always works too. And to know that there’s always room for improvement. And then I would say another huge thing, and this also took me longer to do than I would like to admit… And I don’t know if you’re in the same boat, you’ll have to let me know, but is eliminating things that I don’t love doing.
Nova Markina 18:43
Yes, absolutely, that is a huge one! That’s like second to getting your systems in order and then stop doing the things that you don’t like, whether it be a type of session that you offer – no offense to all of my newborn clients, I love you, but I can’t do newborns anymore! My heart is just not in it, and I don’t enjoy doing it. And then the little things like editing, and you know, your bookkeeping and all those kinds of things, even housework, like, you don’t have to do all of it, we can’t do all of it. And I know like, as I’m sure you can relate to this, as women, we feel like we have to do all of it. And it’s just, it’s impossible. So starting with the things that you don’t enjoy doing that you don’t have to do yourself is so important.
Nova Markina 20:45
So important. And I know that myself, I had trouble letting go of that control. But it was quite liberating once I took things off the list, and then it gives your mind more opportunity and resources to spend on the things that you do like doing. And then like you said, with the systems. So I now spend more time with my clients. Like not personally, we’re not hanging out and having coffee, but I’m able to, I mean, sometimes we do, I’m able to invest more time into, you know, I think the client experience is really important. So I can spend more time on that. And I can have systems and workflows and emails that allow my couples to to know that I am on the same page with them, that I’m in touch with them, that I’m available, that I’m a resource for them regarding their photography experience. For some people, this is one of the first photo shoots that they might be having, and they’re nervous about it. So you know, being a resource for them in that regard, or helping them with days of their, or aspects of, their wedding day that they might not even think about, you know. We’re not wedding planners, but I can help a couple with like, how to make sure you have beautiful wedding, bridal detail photos, and letting them know things like that. So that’s where I’ve sort of shifted, because I really have been enjoying letting people know how to make the best of their experience. And that, again, could be a whole other topic, you know, the client, is exceeding client expectations and how that will move the needle in your business. But yeah, so basically, in short, the time tracking, take things that you don’t love doing out and then build systems that are sustainable and helpful.
Sandra Henderson 22:24
I love all of that. So, so much. You talked a little bit throughout the podcast about the mentoring side of your business and the students that you work with. And I know you just launched a brand new Facebook group! So why don’t you tell us a little bit about that?
Nova Markina 22:38
Yes. Oh, my gosh, okay, so I launched the Facebook group, you are part of my inspiration, I know that you’ve had that going on for a while. We actually, it’s so neat to see, because we started our businesses at such a similar time. And we’ve evolved so similarly, you know, and we both have our mentorship programs. And I think that’s so exciting! But yeah, in terms of the Facebook group, specifically, I’ll tell you a little bit about that. So on my Instagram, you know, Instagram and social media is like one of the best things and worst things to have happened to my business. It is how I started my business, and now I admittedly, I find it a little bit overwhelming. And then you know, you have your profile, and people are following you because they love seeing maybe the behind the scenes with the travel part or the photography part. And it kind of became a little bit murky in my head, and I wanted to show all of the aspects of my life, and then I realized that the photographers who follow me would be better served if I could have a place where I could deep dive into things. And I do have my mentorship program, but I really liked the idea of this where there could be a community and we could start conversations and they could feed off of each other and ask each other and answer each other questions so that it’s not just me all of the time. And I’ve just been sharing tidbits of like tips and tricks, and while it’s not a deep dive into the actual entire program, because that is a- that is a like one on one, we’re gonna dive into your business, we’re gonna make it awesome situation if you’re a photographer who just needs a little bit of guidance here and there. I thought it would be a neat way to build a community.
Sandra Henderson 24:13
Yeah, absolutely. I think Facebook groups, even though like there’s millions of them, and one of the things that kind of like had me hesitating before I started mine was like, ‘Do we really need more Facebook groups?’ but I think it’s the community aspect, it’s so great, other photographers being able to share their expertise, because even as educators and business coaches, we don’t know all the things. There’s definitely, like, our expertise and like systems and workflows and things like that. But you know, for me, like if someone wants, you know, contract advice about their clauses, they should probably go talk to a lawyer. And so it’s just like, being able to have a community where people can share their experiences, I think is so beneficial on, like, and for every photographer to just continue learning how other people do things.
Nova Markina 24:56
No, I love what you were saying because I noticed that, at you know, in terms of other people having expertise in other areas, I, I’ve noticed that I like sign off every post with ‘…but share how you do it!’ because I was sharing, you know my backup systems. But that’s not the only way to do it, it might not be the best way to do it. And I’m always here to learn too. So if somebody can give me some tips on like, this is their strategy and this is how they do it, and everybody’s mind works differently. So maybe if somebody were to contribute with a comment, and you were to or somebody else were to see it, and they liked the other contributors version of it more, you know, it’s helpful. It’s not just what I have to say. So it builds that conversation, which is really, really nice. The other thing I was really nervous about starting a Facebook group, while I have you know, an email list, I have a good amount of people and a Face(book) and Instagram, I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I’m going to start this Facebook group, and nobody’s going to join.’ And it’s so funny that like 14 years into my business, you can still have glimpses of imposter syndrome, and whatever. So it’s really this work in progress as a self employed person. I think that, you know, we always want to make things better do better but we we can be nervous too.
Sandra Henderson 26:09
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we pour so much of ourselves, even with having boundaries and things like that, like our emotions, and our lives are tied to what we do. So I, I don’t… I’m not hopeful that impostor syndrome will ever go away completely, but I think we learn better techniques to cope with it and deal with it when it does pop up. And I’m so flattered that you said I was inspiration for your Facebook group, because I actually, I have a business coach as well. And when I first started working with her was like, kind of like brainstorming and doing research on the industry and things like that. And like, it’s so easy to also get caught up in like… I’m a total believer of the community over competition mindset, but it’s so easy to kind of flip that when you get lost in your own little bubble, and you’re scrolling on Instagram, and like, even when you’re trying not to, you’re still comparing yourself as you’re scrolling. And so like, when I was looking at my competition in the area, you were the number one person that I had on my list, because I love your photos and I knew that you were also getting an education. And so then like when we started connecting again and talking more, and it just like instantly reminded me of why like it’s easy to get lost in there, but why it’s so important to focus on like the community side of things. So I’m so glad that we’ve been able to connect, and I look forward to being in your Facebook group. And I love like, all the photographers that are in there seems so awesome, and like totally all about that community side of things, too, which I think is so great.
Nova Markina 27:37
I could – I could not agree more.
Sandra Henderson 27:38
Well, is there anything else that you wanted to add in or chat about before we wrap things up?
Nova Markina 27:43
No, I-I, I really love this conversation we had and I think that we are so similar in the way we choose to run our businesses that I think it was a nice easy conversation. But yes, if you want to talk about any more of the topics that we touched on, I am totally here for it.
Sandra Henderson 28:02
Awesome. I will absolutely be in touch and then hopefully we’ll be able to maybe do a podcast episode from the beaches of Mexico one day, that would be lovely!
Nova Markina 28:11
Ooh okay! Yes, let’s put that, let’s put that on the vision board. We’ll just we’ll be sipping maybe margaritas, maybe some…
Sandra Henderson 28:18
Some green juice! From your stories today, green juice.
Nova Markina 28:24
Yes! That’s saved in my highlights, so once people listen to the podcast, are like “what are you talking about with the green juice?!” We’ll set some green juice in Mexico and do another podcast.
Sandra Henderson 28:33
Yeah, absolutely. That sounds great. Well, thank you so much again. Oh, actually, wait, before I say that, um, where do we find your Facebook group on Facebook?
Nova Markina 28:41
Oh, yes. So I am new to this. But I did create a URL for the Facebook group. So it is facebook.com/groups/NovaMarkinaMentoring. So if you’re a photographer, I would love to see you there. We can just build that community like you said, and yeah!
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Sandra Henderson 28:59
Yes! Awesome! Definitely come and join us in the group! All right. Well, thank you so so much again. It was so great chatting with you. I loved this conversation too, and yeah, we’ll definitely we’ll make Mexico top of our to do list for next time!
Nova Markina 29:11
Love it. Thanks, Sandra! Thanks for having me!
–
Sandra Henderson 29:14
(Outro music) Thank you so much for listening. You can find full show notes from today’s episode at https://simplysandrayvonne.ca/keepingitcandid. In the meantime, let’s connect! You can find me on Instagram and Tiktok just search @simplysandrayvonne. And if you’re loving this podcast, I’d be so honored if you’d go ahead and hit that subscribe button and leave a review. Until next time! (Music fades out)
About Nova
Nova is a six-figure wedding photographer who spends her summers photographing the most luxurious weddings for her dream clients and the winters soaking up the sun while traveling and exploring the world with her family.
She’s an expert at helping other photographers reach their full potential, fill their calendars with the dreamiest clients, and charge the premium prices their worth!
For tips and updates follow me on Insta @simplysandrayvonne
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