If you’re a photographer looking to streamline and boost your print sales, using the right tools can be a game-changer. Efficiently managing your client galleries and automating the post-session sales process not only saves time but also has the ability to significantly increase your revenue. I’ve seen it first-hand in my own business!

Today on Keeping It Candid, I’m diving into the benefits of using innovative gallery platforms – specifically Pic-Time. The right gallery service will not only simplify your operations but also offer features designed to maximize your earnings and elevate your client experience. Whether you’re frustrated with your current system or just curious about improving your business efficiency, this episode is for you!

Keep reading for show notes and a full episode transcript.

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Show Notes

Template Shop: https://simplysandrayvonne.ca/shop

Get one free month of Pic-Time: https://lifeisbeautifullondon.pic-time.com/referral (affiliate link)

Save 50% on your first year of HoneyBook: https://share.honeybook.com/Sandra

One free month of Showit: https://showit.com/referral/?referralCode=sandralibp

My favourite photography business resources: https://simplysandrayvonne.ca/resources

Takeaways

• Pic-Time is a platform that allows photographers to automate sales after a session, leading to increased revenue.
• Switching to Pic-Time can result in a significant increase in sales revenue, as experienced by host Sandra Henderson.
• Pic-Time offers pre-made automations, email templates, and seasonal campaigns to make the sales process easier and more efficient.
• The integration of Pic-Time with HoneyBook provides a seamless experience for managing client galleries and bookings.
• Affiliate links are available for a free month of Pic-Time and a discount on HoneyBook.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Background
01:21 Frustration with Previous Gallery Platform
03:15 Passive Income and Automation with Pic-Time
04:05 Positive Sales Experience with Pic-Time
05:01 Automation Features of Pic-Time
07:13 Integration of Pic-Time with HoneyBook
09:02 Affiliate Links and Conclusion

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Take my quiz to find out what your taco preferences reveal about your wedding photography business!

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TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Sandra Henderson: Over the last month on the podcast, I have been talking a lot about pick time because now that I am back behind my camera more regularly, it’s a platform that I am spending a fair amount of time in, and I am regularly reminded about why I love it so much. The biggest reason by far is how easy it is to automate sales after a session.

[00:00:18] Since switching to pick time. I have been able to achieve a 90 percent increase in sales revenue from digital photos and printed products in just 13 months. And today on the podcast, I’m going to tell you how I was able to make that happen.

Welcome to keeping it candid. I’m your host, Sandra Henderson, an international wedding and family photographer and business coach.

[00:00:40] 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 3 wing 2 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.

[00:01:02] 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.

[00:01:21] Back in 2022, I was beyond frustrated with my old gallery platform because there were so many features that they were releasing that weren’t available to users living outside the U. S. If you wanted to use these features, you had to go with U. S. printers and charge U. S. currency, which for anybody living in Canada or outside the U.

[00:01:41] S., that can really start to add up when you’re factoring in the exchange rate and shipping and things like that. I talked to the company multiple times. They kept reassuring me that Canadian options were coming soon. And they said that for a couple of years before I finally just got fed up and knew I needed to start looking elsewhere.

[00:02:01] So, after doing a little bit of research into the different options and talking to friends, I tried out PipTime and I have truly never regretted that decision. I made the switch in November of 2022, which is arguably my busiest time of year because I knew that it would be worth it, even with all that extra work on my plate.

[00:02:20] My total sales from digital photos and prints in 2022 was a whopping 250. It’s great. I’m not, I shouldn’t say I’m not complaining. It was great. I like it. Everybody can use an extra 250, but I knew that there was a lot more room to grow there. I actually had a few clients tell me that they weren’t placing orders because they didn’t want to pay the exchange rate and I don’t blame them for that.

[00:02:45] I would have done the exact same thing if I were in their position, so I needed to find a new way to do things. After making the switch to PickTime, my sales increased by 90 percent to 2, 500 within 13 months of switching to the platform. Upselling is so important, especially if you have a chronic illness because more often than not, we have fewer working hours than someone who doesn’t have health issues, but we still have the same bills to pay, sometimes even more, and we still have a life that we want to live.

[00:03:15] When you use a platform like Pic-Time, it becomes passive income to sell digital photos in print. Of course, there is a bit of work that you have to do on your part, in the beginning, to get your storefront set up, but after that, you can literally sit back and let your clients self-guide themselves through the ordering process, having their order sent directly to the printer, and even shipped directly to the client, all without you ever having to get involved.

[00:03:40] I hate it so, so much when you’re online and you see people talking about making money in their sleep because nine times out of ten, it’s absolutely bullshit. But I literally woke up last Thursday to a 110 sale. And since that client is having it shipped to their home, all I had to do was click approve the order and then it was done.

[00:03:59] And clicking the approve order button is even an option that you can turn off if you want to be completely hands-off, but I have a little bit of a trust issue with technology. And so I just want to make sure that everything looks okay before I send it to the printer. No matter which option you want to go with, Picktime makes it so, so easy.

[00:04:19] Y’all know how much I love systems, automations, workflows, and getting things just working in a streamlined and simple manner. And Picktime has so much that’s already built into it to help make that happen. There are automations that are already existing and made ready for you to just apply to any gallery that you’re sending out for things like celebrating someone’s wedding anniversary, giving them a discount as a thank you after they’ve made a purchase, for something like giving an abandoned cart discount, which you may have seen on other e-commerce sites where if they put something into their shopping cart and then they don’t purchase, you can automatically send out a discount for them.

[00:04:55] All of these are already made and live inside everybody’s Pic-time account as soon as you sign up. Hey friends, I’m interrupting this episode because I wanted to remind you that the waitlist for my brand new template shop is now open. This template shop is going to be filled with everything you need to simplify and streamline your business behind the scenes.

[00:05:14] Including things like HoneyBook smart file templates, email swipe files, Workflow processes and tutorials to help you get them built inside your CRM. So many good things are coming. So head over to simplysandrayvonne.ca/shop to get on the waitlist. You’ll also have a chance to enter to win a free bundle, as well as get a little special something to say thank you for being here.

[00:05:39] That’s simplySandraYvonne.ca/shop. 

So it literally is as simple as just applying it to a gallery. The email templates are ready to go. You can change the colour and make them on brand if you’d like to, but otherwise, you don’t need to do any work at all. They also release seasonal campaigns for things like Mother’s Day, Christmas, and things like that throughout the year.

[00:06:02] So you can constantly be sending out Automated sales campaigns with just the click of a few buttons. Another thing that I do in my business is that I gift every client a 30 percent discount that’s good for 30 days when I deliver their gallery. And that discount can also be shared with their friends and family.

[00:06:19] So that gives them the opportunity once they receive their gallery and they’re getting their digital downloads to take advantage of that excitement, all the emotions that they’re feeling when they look at their photos and go and order some prints for their walls or gifts for family members and things like that.

[00:06:33] It has been really, really beneficial for my business. And outside of ordering prints and products, one of my favourite features is one that I actually use for my mini-session clients. So they are able to log into their gallery and they can choose the photos that they want included. They can have instant access to downloading those photos, and they can purchase more if they would like to upgrade their gallery.

[00:06:57] So if they want to order one extra photo, three extra photos, get the whole gallery, They’re able to do that and do the selection process, the purchasing, and the downloading, all automatically without me having to be involved. Before I switched to Picktime with the old gallery service I was using, I sent my clients their gallery.

[00:07:15] They went through and picked their favourite photos. Then they had to send me an email to let me know they were done making their selections. After that, I would have to go back into their gallery. I would have to activate downloads specifically for the photos that they selected. Then I would have to send them another email to let them know the downloads were available.

[00:07:32] There was a lot of back and forth and I really hate anything that involves a lot of back and forth emailing the clients. So switching to pick time made it so that I don’t have to do that. I have automatic emails set up to remind people that their gallery is expiring. There’s truly no shortage of options when it comes to being able to customize this for your business to serve your clients and help you make some more money.

[00:07:56] And if I haven’t sold you on using PickTime yet, one other thing that I am absolutely obsessed with is the fact that PickTime integrates with HoneyBook. I was already using both of these platforms separately before this announcement was made, so I was truly jumping for joy because they are able to be integrated.

[00:08:13] When a client books with me through HoneyBook, a new gallery is automatically created. created for them inside pick time. And once I upload all of their photos into their gallery, I’m able to see those inside their HoneyBook account as well. So it’s super cool how everything is able to be integrated and you’re able to get a more comprehensive picture and idea of everything that is going on within one specific client.

[00:08:36] I don’t know about you, but I hate having things in all the places, trying to keep track of what lives where. So having one spot where I can just go into their honey book account and I can see all the things there are quick links and access to the gallery from there. It just makes things so much easier.

[00:08:52] If you want to give pick time or honey book a try, head over to simplysandrayvonne.ca/resources, or as always check the show notes for this episode there. There you are going to find affiliate links to get a free month of pick time in addition to the free month trial that you already receive when you sign up. And you can find an affiliate link for 50 percent off your first year of HoneyBook.

[00:09:14] Next week, I am going to be back with another interview, this time joined by Kara Duncan from the Kara Report talking all about consistency in marketing. Until next time, friends, have a great rest of your Wednesday. I am off to go spend the weekend feeling really, really old because my stepson is turning 17.

[00:09:34] And I really just don’t understand how we got here so fast. So I hope that your weekend comes with nice weather, amazing weddings, great clients, and not feeling as old as I do. Are you looking for a simple, easy-to-use website platform that will help you incorporate your brand voice after you’re done listening to this episode?

[00:09:54] ShowIt is exactly what you need. It is truly the best website platform for photographers, hands down. Trust me, because I have tried a lot of them, and I’m pretty sure at least half of the gray hair on my head came from trying to navigate the horrible platforms I was using before. With ShowIt there are so many templates available that you can choose from that are geared towards the photography industry.

[00:10:17] All you need to do is implement your photos, your own brand colours, and your own copywriting. Everything else is designed for you, so instead of having to put together an entire website from start to finish, from the ground up, laying every single piece along the way, you can just pop in the information and you are good to go.

[00:10:35] The SEO strategy that you can build into every page is incomparable and the customer support is amazing. So if you’ve been feeling like your website could really use a new facelift, or if you just want to get started with your very first website, I want you to head over to my website, simplysandrayvonne.ca/resources

[00:10:52] or check out the show notes for today’s episode to get my affiliate link, which will give you one free month of show it. I promise you will not regret it. Again, that is simplySandraYvonne.ca/resources, or you can find the link in today’s show notes as well.

[00:11:11] 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 simply Sandra Yvonne. And if you’re loving this podcast, I’d be so honoured if you go ahead and hit that subscribe button and leave a review until next time.

Building a successful photography business isn’t just about technical skills and stunning photos; it’s about creating a brand that truly resonates with your clients on a personal level. This week on Keeping It Candid, I’m diving into the transformative power of storytelling and authenticity in your brand with Yasamin Salavatian. We talk about how showcasing your personality, sharing your unique process, and connecting on a deeper level can not only set you apart in a competitive market but also attract clients who genuinely appreciate your work. Get ready to rethink branding, embrace your individuality, and learn how to make every client interaction memorable and engaging! Keep scrolling to listen and read the transcript.

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Show Notes

Template Shop: https://simplysandrayvonne.ca/shop

Freebie from Yasamin Salavatian: 5 Ways to Build Your Personal Brand From Scratch

Takeaways

• Photographers should showcase their personality and build relationships with clients to set themselves apart.
• Luxury brands can still have a personality and connect with clients on a personal level.
• Photographers should incorporate their process and expertise into their brand messaging.
• Believe in the value of your stories and use affirmations to shift your mindset.
• Utilize the contact page and footer of your website to provide valuable information and connect with potential clients. Infuse personality and authenticity into social media captions and websites to create a memorable and engaging experience for potential clients.
• Share personal stories and experiences to establish a deeper connection with clients.
• Be specific and unique in your messaging to attract the right clients rather than trying to appeal to everyone.
• Embrace community over competition and refer clients to other professionals who may be a better fit.

Chapters

02:01 Introducing Yasamin and the Importance of Storytelling in Photography
03:04 The Changing Definition of Luxury in the Wedding Industry
05:32 Incorporating Personality and Connection in Brand Messaging
07:49 The Importance of Process and Expertise in Branding
09:31 Believing in the Value of Your Stories and Shifting Your Mindset
11:45 The Power of the Contact Page and Footer in Building Connections
25:10 Infusing Personal Stories for Client Connections
26:07 Specific and Unique Messaging for Attracting the Right Clients
27:41 Embracing Community Over Competition and Referrals

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About Yasamin

Yasamin Salavatian is a Storytelling Strategist and Positioning Coach who partners with transformational coaches, educators, and creative entrepreneurs to bring words to their vision. She willfully challenges traditional marketing rhetoric, personalizing brand communications to fit like a glove. Her raison d’être? Differentiating brands from the sea of well, let’s face it – DRAB!

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Click here to get instant access to my brand-new free masterclass!

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TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Sandra Henderson: Before I get started with today’s episode, I am going to just quickly take a minute to give some space to something that I think is really important. 

[00:00:08] Today I am holding space for the humanitarian crisis happening in Gaza. I’m not here to speak on anything that I don’t know, thousands of innocent people are being caught up in this mix, losing their lives exponentially, and it should not be happening. If you are able and interested in doing more, please visit www. pcrf. net to make a donation to the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund and write a letter to your representatives to insist on their support and action in calling for a ceasefire.

[00:00:43] Welcome back to another episode of Keeping It Candid, and for all of my friends who are in the northern U. S. and in Canada, happy official start to spring! I know the first day of spring is back in March, but like, it’s still snowing here usually then, and Especially where I live, spring really doesn’t start until May.

[00:01:01] So happy official spring. 

[00:01:03] It’s finally here and it’s warmer than usual, but I am not complaining one bit. Listen, I know that global warming is horrible. I get it. I do. I do what I can to lessen my carbon footprint and make environmentally friendly decisions however I can. But hear me out. I hate the cold. I hate it so, so much, so much.

[00:01:24] So I have a hard time being mad about the shift in weather patterns. I honestly, I just can’t help it. I was meant to be in a warmer climate, so I am just going to take what I can get. I’m not going to contribute to the problem by any means, but I am going to enjoy it.

[00:01:38] It has been a busy month for me because it is officially my spring busy season in my photography business. So I had a full day of mini sessions, plus a few other family sessions over the last few weeks, which by some miracle have actually all already been edited and delivered. Thank you so much Aftershoot for making that possible.

[00:01:57] and now I’m prepping for my weddings over the summer. I’m meeting with my clients, finalizing timelines and doing all the things that go along with that.

[00:02:04] And then outside my photography business, I’ve also been fully booked with my VIP clients, getting their honey book account set up and streamlined with workflows that will take some of the work off their plate while they’re juggling all the things that go on during wedding season.

[00:02:18] If you’ve never heard about my VIP days before, these are days where I dedicate my time to getting things done in your business. Whether that be getting a HoneyBook workflow set up for you, getting an email funnel set up for you, or creating smart files and email templates to go along with your workflows.

[00:02:36] Think of it almost like a one-day virtual assistant service where you don’t have to sign a contract for long-term work.

[00:02:43] As much as I love systems, workflows and automations, and I think that they are so great and can be so easy once they’re set up, getting them set up requires time. And I totally understand that not everybody has that, but I love organizing. I love piecing the puzzle together. And so it’s absolutely amazing to get a chance to work with photographers and wedding pros and dive into their businesses and help them figure out how to make things simpler so they can get back to spending their time and energy doing what they love the most.

[00:03:14] With a VIP day service, I’m the one that’s actually implementing all these things for you. If you have preexisting email templates, I go in and I make sure that they are all consistent and on brand and utilizing automation features. If you have any templates that are missing, I create those for you.

[00:03:32] And at the end of the day, we check in over a video call so I can teach you how to use everything that I built, and you don’t have to worry about trying to Figure out what the hell is going on all on your own from there.

[00:03:43] If you want more information, just head over to my website, simplysandrayvonne.ca/vip-days. 

[00:03:52] Sandra Henderson: I mentioned a few weeks ago that I have a huge backlog of incredible guests that I recorded interviews with back in 2023 that I couldn’t let just go by the wayside.

[00:04:00] So if you’re listening to today’s interview and the dates seem a little bit off, that’s why! Today I am joined by Yasamin Salavatian. Yasi is a storytelling strategist and positioning coach who partners with transformational coaches, educators, and creative entrepreneurs to bring their words to vision.

[00:04:17] She willfully challenges traditional branding rhetoric, personalizing brand communications to fit like a glove. She and I first met back in 2023 at the creative educator conference when we were in the same breakaway group, and she did the most incredible job talking about embracing your authentic self.

[00:04:34] After her five-minute lightning presentation, I knew that we were like kindred spirits. During this super fun interview, we talk about showcasing your personality to help build stronger relationships and to set you apart from the competition, how to incorporate what you do into your brand messaging through storytelling and all the places where you should really leap into your brand voice and messaging.

[00:04:55] Whether you’re a photographer or a wedding pro, this episode is going to be so helpful for you. So make sure you have a notebook and pen ready, or can come back to listen to this episode later because you are not going to want to miss a thing. 

[00:05:07] Welcome to keeping it candid. I’m your host, Sandra Henderson, an international wedding and family photographer and business coach.

[00:05:15] 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.

[00:05:37] 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.

[00:05:55] Thank you so much for joining me. I’m so excited for this interview. when I saw you speak at the creative educator conference back in January. I honestly felt like I had a kindred spirit up on that stage. So I am so excited for everybody to get to know you a little better.

[00:06:11] So before we dive in, if you could just introduce yourself and tell everybody a little bit about you, that would be awesome. 

[00:06:16] Yasamin Salavatian: Yeah, totally. So my name is Yasamin Salavatian, but I go by Yasi and I am a messaging and positioning strategist and I partner with you to bring words to your vision. So what that means is.

[00:06:30] I’m there to help you make sense of what you do and what you’re saying so your client will understand because it’s a two-way conversation and it is the joy of my existence. It is My happiness. It is, it is what I was sent to this earth to do. So… 

[00:06:48] Sandra Henderson: I love that so much. And I, I’ve been talking about this a lot in the interviews that I’ve been doing for the podcast this season, in talking about the fact that as a wedding photographer, it’s not enough To just take beautiful photos, so many people can take beautiful photos.

[00:07:04] And so there has to be some other things that you’re putting forward out there and out into the world that are going to set you apart from all those other people that are also taking beautiful photos. And so I think that a way that. I mean, maybe I’m speaking from personal experience just because I love to write, but it’s just such a great way to be able to express yourself creatively and make those connections with people. 

[00:07:28] Yasamin Salavatian: So I did a nasty, I did a nasty a few years ago and it was just because I had to prove a point. Cause I had a lot of photographer clients at one point and I, and they were all telling me, you know, like, well, this person’s style, like, Celebrity photographer A, like theirs is the best.

[00:07:44] Celebrity photographer B, like their, their work is so different than mine. Like I couldn’t, you could never tell whose work it is. And I was like, okay, bet let’s play this game. Let’s, let’s play this game. So I took all of these photos from like really well known photographers, like photos that we’ve seen in, in publications.

[00:08:03] And I took photos of people who we haven’t seen. And I was like, tell me which one’s whose. There were like 30 on there and they could, I mean, it was like both of us just staring at each other and me being like, it takes more than photos. Right. 

[00:08:16] Sandra Henderson: Yeah.

[00:08:17] Yasamin Salavatian: Like, I think at the end of the day, we forget that this is a service and like providing beautiful photos is a bare minimum. Like you are being

[00:08:25] Sandra Henderson: so true!

[00:08:26] Yasamin Salavatian: Right? Like you were being hired for your talent. Like we know you’re good, but it’s like. We want to see who you are.

[00:08:33] And I think a lot of that depends on the couple that you’re serving. And we can talk about that too. But I think a lot of people when they’re in the industry, they get really caught up about, you know, this is this person’s name, this is their aesthetic. And it’s like, that’s all great. But at the end of the day, when you look at all of these photos, can, if you can’t tell.

[00:08:52] If you can’t, your client will not be able to tell bro, like if you can’t tell and I can’t tell and I’ve been like gathering these photos for five hours, then your client cannot tell. So then what is the next differentiating point? 

[00:09:07] Sandra Henderson: For sure. And I think that is where people that I see they jump to that next stage of the brand, but they’re kind of just dipping their toe in the water.

[00:09:18] Like a couple of headshots, a quick little bio, the same catchphrases they use in their captions, which is all good. That all goes along with it. But what are some other things that photographers should be focusing on when it comes to passing that messaging along in their brand? 

[00:09:32] Yasamin Salavatian: Yeah, so I think, so I have a, I have a bone to pick with the, the wedding slash photography industry, because I think that, sorry, 

[00:09:40] Sandra Henderson: no, that’s okay. I love it. I’m here for it. 

[00:09:42] Yasamin Salavatian: Okay. I think that there’s this whole concept that if like, if you want to be high-end and luxury and sell this experience, then you need to remove yourself from the equation. You need to be talking in the third person and pretend that you have, you know, accolades and elevate yourself to a place that nobody can read your copy because it’s meant for You know, right?

[00:10:05] Like you have to have a PhD to be able to read this. And the truth is that other than, other than luxury, you can think of luxury, how, how you want, but luxury is being redefined. On a daily level, like your new generation is coming in. We think about money differently. We think about luxury differently and no offense, but like most of the people that I know that are luxury, like, yes, there’s a subset of people that are luxury that like, just want you to show up and do your job.

[00:10:32] Right. Like they just want you to show up, and take beautiful photos. Don’t say hi to them. Maybe say hi maybe once and then leave. But there’s like a whole bunch of other people who want to like know you and like have a relationship with you and like want you to be a part of their wedding day and want you know you to be a part of the experience and like I feel like we just ignore that.

[00:10:54] Huge subset for the sake of being luxury. And so I think my biggest thing is, is like, you can have a personality and be luxury. They are not two separate things. Like, and I think that just really bothers me because it takes away from the identity of the photographer. It takes away from like, it just makes us fully, solely focus on skillset, but owning a business is so much more than that.

[00:11:20] And I like. I like it when people put their personalities out there because, at the end of the day, this is the person that’s going to be staring at you on your wedding day. Like, right. Like, it’s like for a lot of us, that person is important. We want that person to have a vibe with us. We want them to have a vibe with us during our engagement photos.

[00:11:42] And when they’re talking to our families, like it’s so much more than, you know, I came out of the womb with a camera and I’m really good at shooting now. And I think In the wedding industry, a lot of times we try to condense that narrative for the sake of being luxury, and that just, like, pains me.

[00:12:01] Respectfully.

[00:12:03] Sandra Henderson: I am here for all the hot takes, but I love that. You said that the definition of luxury is changing. That’s something that I’ve kind of thought a lot about just on my own. This year is just changing what it means to be professional and what it means to be like a luxury brand and all these things.

[00:12:19] things. There was a point in time where to be professional, you had to write like essay quality letters and dear sir and madam and yada, yada, yada. But we don’t have to do those things anymore. It can be totally different. And that’s one thing that was a huge hesitation for me for wanting to get into the luxury market was wanting, not wanting to be treated like I wasn’t a person.

[00:12:42] And so I love that you brought up the fact that you can, it’s, they are not two separate things. You can still have a personality and be yourself and work in the luxury market. There’s not like a dividing line that says at this point, if you use your name instead of the third person or use me instead of the third person, that you’re no longer professional.

[00:12:59] Yasamin Salavatian: Right. And I think, you know, I was on Clubhouse once and I was listening to one of the top wedding planners and one of the top photographers and they were talking about how they were doing this wedding and everybody, all the service providers had to show up wearing the same outfits and the same shade of outfit and how they didn’t want to see the service providers before the time of the wedding and how they were just, you know, they were just there.

[00:13:24] They were there to be seen and not heard. And that to me, I like really took that to heart. Cause I was like, is that actually your ideal client? Like, is that actually who you want to work with? Like, if it is great, like you do you queen, but like, if it’s not, I don’t want you to feel forced into that because that is such a subset, you know?

[00:13:43] And it’s like to brace your base, your whole brand on that for the sake of luxury aesthetic is just like, You’re not going to like your job anymore. 

[00:13:52] Sandra Henderson: I could not agree more. I will never ever forget. I always wanted to do Disney weddings. Like it sounded like a dream ideal, like I will have made it if I shoot Disney weddings.

[00:14:04] And then I did a Disney wedding with a friend of mine and we ate our dinner on our laps on chairs in a back room away from all of the guests because we were not allowed to be seen eating food and we were sitting Where the catering staff was pulling plates and getting all that set up to be served.

[00:14:24] And I know there are so many venues that operate that way, but in my area, they don’t, we, like, I am always sitting with the guests and having a conversation and building relationships that way. And so it was such an eye-opener for me. What, like the different levels of like. The way vendors and other staff are treated can like how that can vary too.

[00:14:45] So I love that you brought that up because it definitely does not have to be that way. 

[00:14:49] Yasamin Salavatian: I just think it’s important to be honest. Like there are so many people who take such beautiful photographs and I feel, and I meet with them and they tell me, like, they tell me about a club they’re in or a community they’re in that teaches them how to be luxury.

[00:15:03] And it’s like, there’s so much more to luxury than this. This to me is not luxury. This to me is rude. Like, you know, like this, this is, this is rude. Like there’s a different, and it’s a lot of these people have those bubbly personalities, or maybe they’re a little bit more introverted and they want to develop that connection.

[00:15:21] And it’s like, you need to trust yourself when it comes to that. Like, you know, who your ideal client is better than. Any expert because it’s your business and you have to find a way to fall in love with your business again and again and again, right? Cause owning a business is not easy, right? 

[00:15:38] So it’s like, how do you fall in love with it again by working with people you love? How do you work with people you love by putting material out there that will attract them? Right? It feels like A to B to C, but I do, there’s a lot of, there’s like a lot of wording out there and narrative out there about how you really need to distance yourself from your brand.

[00:15:57] If you’re trying to be, Luxury and it just it makes my blood boil. 

[00:16:02] Sandra Henderson: understandably. I totally agree with you. So do you have any pointers for listeners and wedding photographers out there who are wanting to start incorporating more of who they are personally into their brand and the messaging that they’re putting out there?

[00:16:17] Yasamin Salavatian: Totally. So I think the most important part is like, so let’s say we’ve covered skill set, right? Like you obviously need a good skill set and that’s, that’s not what I’m here for, right? Like you need to, you need to go on that personal journey, develop your photography skills and like, like that is, that is your journey, right?

[00:16:35] But when you’re done with that, what, the first thing I ask people is what’s your process like? What do you want to do throughout your contract? What’s the type of relationship that you want to build, right? I want to see that on your website. Because guess what? You may be the person who just wants to show up, not talk to anyone, take photos and leave.

[00:16:54] But then I want to see, I want to know that. Right. If you’re not that person, I want to know that and that’s something that you can put on your website and you can make it an infographic. You can make it cute. You can make it a joke. You can, I don’t care how you do it, but there needs to be somewhere there because I need to understand how you work and how you prefer to work.

[00:17:13] And when you show that, that. Command of your process and that command of your expertise. It lets it not only lets me know how you do what you do, but it makes me feel a lot more comfortable. I’m like, this person knows what they’re doing and I am, I’m going to be safe and I’m going to be good. 

[00:17:30] Sandra Henderson: Things like that are so important in so many industries, but especially in the wedding industry, where it is, there is a lot of emotion that goes into a wedding day.

[00:17:38] And so we feel that emotion. when we are dealing with our clients. And you were talking about how, like, if you’re going to be the photographer that just shows up and takes your photos and leaves for the day, that’s awesome. There are definitely couples who are looking for photographers like that. But make sure you are making that known.

[00:17:53] And the first thing I thought of was, this was actually something that I saw on threads the other day, where someone had requested a quiet Uber ride and their Uber driver at 5 a.m. On the way to the airport would not stop talking. And I think that’s something that’s such like paints, such a great picture of like what our clients are going to be experiencing on the receiving end if our messaging doesn’t align with what we are doing and what we’re putting out there, because if they’re expecting someone who’s really bubbly and take charge and going to handle all the posing and everything, but you’re someone who does documentary style and you’re just going to be a fly on the wall, then there’s going to be a major disconnect.

[00:18:31] And you mentioned this already, like, not only are you going to end up hating your job, but people are not going to be happy with their experience and they’re not going to be referring you. So in the end, nobody ends up being happy because you simply just didn’t let people know what you were all about.

[00:18:45] Yasamin Salavatian: Totally. And I think that. You know exactly what you said, there is a person. It’s not like there’s no person for that. There are so many different types of people. There are people who want to take that quiet Uber ride. If I was sitting in personally, if I was sitting in a car with someone for an hour and they didn’t talk, it might make me really uncomfortable.

[00:19:03] Like at least a hello or something. I’d be like, I am not, you know, Like a Bridgerton here. Like this is really uncomfortable, you know, but that’s just me, but I think putting it out, it’s, it’s better to put it out there and I’m not saying drown them with information. You need to, you know, find a way to put it out there.

[00:19:20] That’s informative but concise and easy to digest, right? And I think that’s how you find the people that you’re going to, and exactly what you said. Referrals, referrals are so important in this, in this business, not just from your client, but from your vendors, you know, there’s so much cross-collateral marketing opportunity.

[00:19:40] And it’s like, you want to work with people that have the same vision of a successful wedding of a successful experience that you do, because then you’re working with your best friends all the time too. Like what’s better than that? So, and I think another, another thing that I thought of when you were talking about the documentary style is like, you know, not to, not to be weird, but like grandmas, right?

[00:20:03] Like when we take those family photos, is your photographer, the person who’s going to help grandma walk up the stairs and, you know, fix her hair? Or is she just going to be standing behind and being like, yo, that’s a you problem. Again, there are two different types of families. There are two different types of people.

[00:20:20] Sandra Henderson: Hey friends, I’m interrupting this episode because I wanted to remind you that the waitlist for my brand new template shop is now open. This template shop is going to be filled with everything you need to simplify and streamline your business behind the scenes. Including things like honey book, smart file templates, email, swipe files, and workflow processes with tutorials to help you get them built inside your CRM So many good things are coming so head over to simplysandrayvonne.ca/shop to get on the waitlist and you’ll also have a chance to enter to win a Free bundle as well as getting a little special something to say thank you for being here. That’s simplysandrayvonne.ca/shop.

[00:21:03] Yasamin Salavatian: I come from a very. Big, loud Persian family. Right. And it’s a lot like my big fat Greek wedding. Right. Like that’s, that’s us. Right. And it’s like, that’s what we want. Like, we want someone who’s going to be nice to grandma. You know, we want someone that’s going to make grandma feel beautiful. Like that’s important to me.

[00:21:24] So I just think you never know. And by guesstimating or by kind of not discussing what luxury it means to you and your brand. You’re really doing yourself and your clients a disservice. 

[00:21:38] Sandra Henderson: Yeah, absolutely. for everybody who is listening, that is a gold takeaway. So I hope that you are writing these takeaways down because that was so, so good.

[00:21:47] So we’ve talked a lot about, how Utilizing different aspects of our story can help set us apart and help even just set the tone of what our brand is going to be. What are some bits of encouragement you might have for photographers who are still hesitant, even though they know how important it is?

[00:22:06] Because something that I see in photography groups a lot is people are like my life’s not that interesting. I don’t have anything to talk about. I don’t have any stories to tell. I’m sure you hear that all the time. So I would love to hear your takeaway on something like that.

[00:22:19] And any encouragement you have to help get people out of that mindset. 

[00:22:23] Yasamin Salavatian: Okay, I will give you a really great example. I was in corporate, I had no clue what being a photographer was about, what the creative industry was about. Like, it was foreign to me. The whole concept was foreign to me.

[00:22:35] And this idea that your life isn’t interesting blows my mind. Because when I joined the creative industry, I was like, I cannot believe people like this exist. Like, I, I was. And I’m from the Bay Area, you know, there’s like definitely a stigma of the type of person that lives here. Like, right? And I was just like, shocked.

[00:22:55] And not just like for a month, for like three years, I was like, I cannot believe this. There’s this other type of person out there living their life so intentionally, so beautifully, so aesthetically, like it was, it was bonkers. And, I think what comes off to you as not being interesting or as being every day is so not what your client is experiencing.

[00:23:20] For them, it’s a window into a new world. And you’re never going to get, you know, you have to believe that you are worth it and that you are special. You know, there’s this whole thing going around on TikTok about being Delulu, but there’s like a kind of a component of a significant component of self-confidence and self-belief that goes into it.

[00:23:41] So I, if you’re having that problem where you’re thinking, you know, I’m not interesting or my stories aren’t cool or my life is boring. Let’s reframe that. Like what a part of today was cool. What part of today are you texting your best friend who lives 10 hours away from you, right? There’s always gold in there and sometimes you have to search for it and that’s absolutely okay.

[00:24:02] Like, yes, I get it. None of us are Kardashians, but That’s fine. You don’t need to be, you know, on the front page of Vogue to have an interesting life. There are levels to it. And it’s just about finding that point that you intersect with your client. And the first part of that is believing that you have something to say and that you have something to share.

[00:24:23] And I always recommend my clients, cause it is a mindset shift. It is a, it is definitely, especially if you were in, you know, in an environment before you started your business where they value. Um, like, what is it, like a homogeneous, like, presentation, you, they don’t really want you to be an individual or have an identity.

[00:24:45] It is a total mindset shift. And what I recommend, it’s going to sound bonkers, but I really like those affirmations, waking up every morning and telling. And like five, limit it to five. It doesn’t need to be a novel, but like telling yourself that what you have to say matters that what you’re writing on your website, someone’s going to connect with, like, I’ve had so many photographer clients come to me after we’ve worked together and say, my bride or my client or my groom has specifically picked this line of copy from my about page and said, this is what resonated with me.

[00:25:20] And it’s like, how, how beautiful is that? Right? That it’s like, you’re literally talking to, you are literally talking to them. Like this is not, this is so much more than like a marketing thing. This is about you having the opportunity to have a one-on-one conversation on a public page. 

[00:25:37] Sandra Henderson: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:25:38] And it really just helps people feel seen like we all share memes all the time and there’s the best part about sharing memes is how relatable they are. And like, they’re all, I’ll be scrolling on Instagram meme and I’m like, Oh my God, I thought I was the only one who felt that way. And there are 350,000 likes on this post.

[00:25:56] And so those little things, it might seem mundane and it might seem silly, but those are the things that we love to connect with. 

[00:26:04] Yasamin Salavatian: Totally. And I just, you know, I am a sucker for, I always call this out. I am a sucker for a footer and I’m a sucker for a contact page that doesn’t suck. They’re like the parts that nobody cares about.

[00:26:15] And it’s like, dude, you can put so much gold in there. Like your contact page can be bopping. That is the last chance you have to say something to your client before they end up in your email box. Please make it a non-excruciating experience. 

[00:26:30] Sandra Henderson: Oh, I love that. It’s like you said, it’s the last point of contact before they reach out to you. So I love the idea of filling that with personality and different takeaways that aren’t just, you know, your information. 

[00:26:43] Yasamin Salavatian: Right. And it’s like, If I was a client and I just literally had to post my entire life, right?

[00:26:48] Because they ask that, I mean, understandably, right? The questionnaire is usually quite extensive, but it’s like, give me a gift after that. Give me, give me a smiley face. Give me something. Like I just like, give me just something, just something for a reward for going through this experience. Right. Cause it’s like, I’ve probably done this.

[00:27:10] Like how many people do you reach out to you when you’re interested in a service? Like at least three. Mm hmm. At the most, I mean, I guess, like, three to fifteen, I would say, if you’re really thorough. Three to five, if you’ve narrowed it down. Right? Yeah. Like, that’s a lot of contact forms. You know, and it’s like, what would it take for yours to stand out just a little bit?

[00:27:29] Not a lot. 

[00:27:30] Sandra Henderson: Um, that was amazing. You’ve already got my wheels turning. It’s really my favourite part about being a podcast host is kind of like getting all the juice myself first and getting the wheels going. so do you have any like, fun stories? Final tips or takeaways that you want to leave listeners with to encourage them to go out and hit their social media captions and their websites with that authentic personality that they all have, that uniqueness that they all have inside them.

[00:27:59] Yasamin Salavatian: Yeah, totally. I think get specific, right? Like even a meme, super specific, right? Or, you know, like if you’re like, if I’m a, okay, I’m just going to use my name, but I know that I’m not a wedding photographer. I wish, I wish. Um, but it’s like, You’re Yasi bride if you might have like 10 varieties of sprinkles in your cabinet, right?

[00:28:22] You’re a Yasi bride if every salt shaker and pepper shaker in your house is filled with salt. These are things that are unique to me that are weird, but I know the people that I connect with Also have this weirdness and it might not be the same weirdness, but they’ll see a piece of themselves and be like, Oh my gosh, that’s my person.

[00:28:42] Right. And that’s all you want on your wedding day. You want people who can reflect back to you the experience that you’re trying to create for your guests. So don’t be afraid to say your favourite flower is a Dahlia, but Oh, you know, I also know it’s poisonous to dogs. Because your client’s probably thinking the same thing.

[00:29:00] Sandra Henderson: Right. Exactly. 

[00:29:02] Yasamin Salavatian: So I don’t, I don’t think there’s any harm in talking about what you like and what your experience is like. I think I encourage you to, what you think is oversharing is not oversharing. Someone needs to hear something. A hundred times, at least seven times, I think, according to like the marketing statistics for it to even go across the membrane, right?

[00:29:22] And it’s like, you’re not boring. Like, you are your own I mean, I literally just talked about a salt and pepper shaker. Like you want to talk about boring? That’s right. Like, it’s like, you know, you, you can make anything fun. You can make, and it’s, you know, I think another misconception is like, Oh, well, if I’m going to have a personal brand that I need to be extrovert and I need to be this bubbly person.

[00:29:44] I want to tell you that like 99 percent of my clients are introverted. And I think I just, you know, there’s that, speaking of memes, there’s that, that thing they send you that, that they’re like, um, raise your hand if you’re an introvert. An extrovert found you and became friends with you. And like, yeah, that’s me.

[00:30:00] Sandra Henderson: Took you in. 

[00:30:01] Yasamin Salavatian: Yeah. Took you, that’s me. Right. So it’s like. It’s not even that your client will be the same person as you, but they will have the same values as you. They will have the same thought process as you and being able to show that in your social media captions and your graphics and your podcast and your, on your website, the depth is another level.

[00:30:22] It’s another level of depth that you just don’t see out there. And I think, especially if you’ve been in the game for a while, like. This is the time to differentiate. This is the time to really hone in on what makes your brand yours. Like, is it the experience? Is it that weird thing you hide for them under the table when they’re getting married?

[00:30:43] I don’t know. Like, I, I don’t know. That’s the thing. It’s like, and I won’t know unless you tell me. So, you know, there’s an argument to be made that if you’re newer in the industry and you don’t really know what your process is and stuff, yeah, it’s going to take some figuring out. It’s going to take some exploration to find out what you want.

[00:31:02] Little Goldilocks. Activity as you would say, right? Like a little like, Oh, this is, this is not fun. This is as with any industry, but if you’ve done that work, you owe it to yourself to narrow in. And I’m not just saying like wedding photography. People think that wedding photography is a niche. It’s like, is it?

[00:31:20] We just talked about like 30 different types of wedding photographers, right? 

[00:31:23] Sandra Henderson: Yeah. 

[00:31:24] Yasamin Salavatian: Yeah. It’s like, that is not enough. That’s like telling me that like, Oh, I want to buy a cracker. It’s like, okay, great. Like what type of cracker? What kind of cracker? Yeah.

[00:31:31] Like there’s a million different types of crackers. And if I pick up like a garlic onion cracker, I’m going to, that’s going to hurt my stomach, you know? So I just feel like there’s such an opportunity to dive in. And the first thing you have to tell yourself is that it’s going to be scary until it’s not.

[00:31:46] And then when you start, like, and there’s that trajectory, you know, like, I don’t want to, I don’t want to like freak people out, but it’s like, usually when people work with me, there’s this, there’s this curve. It’s like, they’re getting all these inquiries, they’re getting inquiries with people they don’t really want to work with or aesthetics that they don’t really like.

[00:32:03] And then we work together and we come up with a super specific message, right? And the first thing that happens is that their inquiries tank. 

[00:32:10] And they freak out. And I tell them, I like, I have a graphic at this point. I’m like, I’m like, yeah, this is what’s going to happen. So just brace yourself. Okay. Just everything is going to be okay.

[00:32:21] Yeah. But what’s happening is you’re telling people who are not a good fit for you to stop inquiring. So you really, you’re saving yourself some sanity and some time and some paperwork and some email work. So after that happens, after that they get super specific and they start leaning into it and leaning into it and sharing more and sharing more, then we get the inquiries coming back up.

[00:32:44] The difference now is that it’s the right inquiries. It’s the people that you’ve been wanting to work with. It’s the people that you, as soon as they tell you their wedding story on their inquiry page, you’re like, like so excited to meet with them on Zoom. Like, And that whole watching someone’s, someone’s entire demeanour and their, their kind of relationship with their business shift over that, I just got goosebumps.

[00:33:10] But it’s like, it’s such a beautiful, it’s such a beautiful transformation because it’s like, you can really, you can see in them that it’s like, there is a place for me. And now, because there’s a place for me, there’s a place for my client. 

[00:33:23] Sandra Henderson: And I think it’s important to remember not to assume that people are just going to know things about you and that they’re just going to know about your business.

[00:33:30] Like you were saying before, like, your potential clients are not going to know this is something that you do differently from anybody else if you don’t tell them that. So that’s super, super important. 

[00:33:40] Yasamin Salavatian: And also, like, how do we even, I mean, specifically with wedding photography, I mean, maybe with other types of photography, we can argue, like, oh, well, I’ve done 35 boudoir shoots, right?

[00:33:51] How many people have had 35 weddings? Like, I don’t even know what industry standard is at this point, or what industry behavior standard is. Like, I can’t tell if yours is different if I don’t even know what the baseline is. So, and I’m not telling you to educate your client, that’s not your responsibility, but it’s certainly helpful.

[00:34:08] Sandra Henderson: I actually have a salt and pepper story that I’m going to throw out here so that you don’t feel so alone. I don’t have a weird, like, salt and pepper thing in my house, but I don’t know if you remember, we’re roughly the same age, but like, way back when we were little, there was the Ikea commercial that had the little salt and pepper shakers and the pepper started crying and I literally used to cry at this one.

[00:34:31] And also the Ikea commercial with the lamp that got left on the side of the road out in the rain. That one really did it for me too. So Ikea commercials used to make me cry as well. Inanimate objects, but like, especially the salt and pepper. 

[00:34:43] Yasamin Salavatian: But like that, that story, like immediately what I’m hearing for that is like, you’re an empath.

[00:34:48] You’re someone who really really cares. You’re someone who’s gonna go above and beyond. And I know that this is, but this is just what I’m like, this is, this is the vibes that I’m getting. Like you’re someone who’s going to go above and beyond and you’re going to cop a vibe, right?

[00:35:01] And these are just things that I know from you talking about an ikea commercial from like what the 90s like, right. It’s just like, there’s so many different, you know, people are like, this story isn’t relevant. The story is. And it’s like, it’s not about the story. It’s not just about the story. It’s about the emotion.

[00:35:18] It’s about what we’re learning about you. And it’s like, Even the most randomest, weirdest things that you think are like, weird, right? And like, same. Fair. Same. Like, we’re all, we all have that, that initial like, Huh! Like, do I want this to be out there? But it’s like, It just opens a window into a new depth.

[00:35:39] So yeah, that’s so true. I have goosebumps now too. That was amazing. I love that so much. well that, wraps up all the questions and everything I had for you except for one final one. so I have a little, would you rather question for you? So let me find where I wrote yours down. Okay. So if you had to pick someone from Vanderpump rules to be your next client, to help them out, fix their brand and get their messaging right. Are you going to go with Ariana or Tom? 

[00:36:12] Oh my God. I can’t work with Tom. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. 

[00:36:16] Sandra Henderson: Right. I feel like his brand is a lost cause. 

[00:36:19] Yasamin Salavatian: I just feel like for me that this is, and this, and I say this, like, I say this on the call, like when people inquire, it’s like, I can’t build you something fake. Like, that’s against my code.

[00:36:30] Right? And that’s my right. As someone who works with personal branding, like, you will meet people, and it’s wild, dude. You will meet people on Instagram and then meet them in real life, and you’re like, Who created this person? Fictional character that is on Instagram, because this is not what I’m seeing IRL.

[00:36:46] And like, you, you’ve seen me now, you know, me, I’m the same person across everywhere. And it’s like, that’s the vibe that I want for my clients. I don’t want some of my clients to show up somewhere and be like, Oh my God, is that really her? Cause I really her like, Oh, right. Like, no. And I’m sorry, Tom. I just like from a personal person, like, just like our vibes are different.

[00:37:07] I can’t. Totally off. I just, honestly, like, yeah, like there’s no way there’s, I, I would fire him before I hired him. There’s no way. I’m sorry. 

[00:37:18] Sandra Henderson: I love that. 19-year-old Sandra would have fallen for his bullshit, but thankfully 36-year-old Sandra has learned a thing or two. And so I am right there with you. I could not deal with it.

[00:37:27] I would absolutely be firing him as a client. 

[00:37:30] Yasamin Salavatian: And listen, I want to say, like, there’s someone out there for Tom, right? 

[00:37:33] Sandra Henderson: Oh, for sure. 

[00:37:34] Yasamin Salavatian: Someone is dying to get on this personal branding journey, right? Like someone is dying for this project. It’s just not me. This is a project that would make me gain 15 pounds, question my sanity, and really reevaluate my feminine energy.

[00:37:48] Like it’s just like, I don’t need that. And you know what? He doesn’t need that either. 

[00:37:52] Sandra Henderson: No. And if I’m going to put on 15 pounds, I would like it to be because I’ve been eating sandwiches from Ariana and Katie’s shop. 

[00:37:59] Yasamin Salavatian: Like not even comparable, like not even like a different universe, right? Like happy weight.

[00:38:05] Sandra Henderson: Yeah, exactly. 

[00:38:07] Yasamin Salavatian: Not like I’m questioning my values weight. Yeah. So, and, and you know what? And at the end of the day, we can even take it a step further and say that he doesn’t deserve to have someone on his team that doesn’t wholeheartedly believe in him. You know.

[00:38:20] Sandra Henderson: yeah, that’s so fair. I love that. I think that’s something that a lot of small business owners, we get into a mindset of, like, we just want to bring in more money.

[00:38:29] And so we’re willing to make all these allowances and accommodations for people. And we end up being miserable about it. And so, when we don’t put that money factor forward, and we work with people whose values align and make sure that they are going to get the same experience that somebody who you really click with will get, then that’s when you’re really going to start seeing and even finding comfort in saying, no, you’re not the right client for me, but also like, I’m not the right photographer for you or whatever the case may be. 

[00:38:56] Yasamin Salavatian: Totally. And I, you know, I think there’s a, there’s almost like a,, a liberation in that.

[00:39:01] Like, I’ve come to the point in my business where it’s like, I’m really, really open about whether we’re not a fit. And I’ll, I mean, it’s not that it’s right or wrong. Like, I think assigning it a right or wrong brings a lot of judgment into it. It’s just like, does it fit or doesn’t it fit? And if it doesn’t fit, like, I actually have like a roster of other people that I’m obsessed with that I’m like, you should look at this, this, and this person, because they might be a fit for you.

[00:39:24] Yeah. And guess what? You just made another industry friend by sending over someone that you actually think is a good fit, right? Right. 

[00:39:33] Sandra Henderson: Yeah. It brings back that whole community over competition thing to like, some of my best friends are where I send all of my referrals to. Some of them are because I’m not available.

[00:39:42] Some of them are because I just don’t want to do it and it’s not the right fit, but there’s nothing wrong with them as a person. We are just not. the right vibe to work together. And so here are some amazing people that you’re going to have a great experience with that are going to offer you the service that you’re looking for.

[00:39:56] So we have to kind of take a step back from wanting to work with every person to fill our bank account and take a look at the bigger picture. 

[00:40:04] Yasamin Salavatian: Yeah. And it’s like, not only am I not the right person, but like, I can tell you a hundred percent that you’re going to laugh with this person. You’re going to, you’re going to vibe with this person.

[00:40:12] Y’all are going to be friends. Like. I know this person and I know that you guys are going to have a vibe and I don’t want to rob you of that vibe and I don’t want to rob me of a perfect fit client who is that vibe for me either. So like, why are we doing this? Like we shouldn’t be doing this and it’s okay.

[00:40:27] It’s okay. It’s just about, again, the self-belief and the confidence that there is someone. It’s like finding your romantic partner, right? It’s like there is someone for you. You don’t have to settle. Right? Like, keep going. I promise you, you’ll find the clients that are right for you.

[00:40:45] Sandra Henderson: This was the best conversation. I know listeners are going to have so many takeaways. Before we jump off this call, I would love it if you could just let everybody know where to find you on social media and online so they can give you a follow. 

[00:40:57] Yasamin Salavatian: Totally. And thanks for having me.

[00:40:58] So, my name, my business name, and my full name is Yasamin Salavatian. And I have an Instagram @yasaminsalavatian, and I also have a website. YasaminSalavatian. com. And, I also have a LinkedIn. I’m not really sure where I’m going to be in the future, but those are my, those, those are my most probable places.

[00:41:16] Sandra Henderson: I love that. Well, everybody that’s listening, definitely go and give her a follow. You will not be disappointed with all the amazing things that she has to offer when it comes to figuring out your brand and your messaging and everything like that. Thank you so much again, Yasi. Enjoy the rest of your day and I can’t wait to chat more soon.

[00:41:32] Yasamin Salavatian: You too.

[00:41:33] Sandra Henderson: I really do believe what I said during this interview. It’s not enough to take beautiful photos anymore. There are too many photographers who take beautiful photos for that to be the differentiating factor on why someone should hire you. Show people who you truly are and give them the opportunity to connect with you on a deeper level.

[00:41:51] Not only is it going to set you apart in business, but you’re also going to like working so much more because you’re going to love the people that you’re working with. When I started sharing more about my personal story with endometriosis and chronic illness, I was really worried that people were going to hear it and they weren’t going to want to work with me. That they were going to be worried that I was going to be flaky and all the negative things that swirled around in my head, right?

[00:42:15] But I’ve actually been able to make so many incredible connections and talk to so many amazing people since I started sharing my story that it really just gave me some validation and made it easier to keep going with it. I also make sure that everything that I am putting out online in captions or in the copywriting on my website, I make sure that it all sounds how I speak in real life.

[00:42:38] Now the way that I do that, and I highly recommend everybody do this, especially if you feel like you’re really struggling to write in a way that sounds natural to you, is once you’ve written something, speak it out loud. And if it feels weird as you’re saying it, that’s because that’s not how you’re normally used to talking.

[00:42:55] If you’ve written in a way that you normally speak, it is going to flow off your tongue, and there won’t be any sort of issue feeling like it’s not really you, and that’s going to help you lean into your brand voice as well.

[00:43:06] Since most of you listening to this episode are getting into the thick of your busiest season, start with places that you can control on the go, like the way you approach your reels or the things you’re writing in your captions on social media. But the big projects like changing your website copywriting and things like that, save that for the off-season when you’ve gotten a little bit more comfortable and a little more practice under your belt using social media for this. And when you just have more time to be leaning into something like redoing your website.

[00:43:32] All right another episode done friends. Thank you so much as always for being here Enjoy the last of your may and I will be back with our first June episode next week. 

[00:43:43] 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.

Ever get bogged down with clients asking for photography location ideas? I did, until I created a “locations gallery” in my PicTime account. It’s a lifesaver for keeping my sessions fresh. And I get to avoid the overused default spots that get so boring after a while. Listen to this week’s episode of the podcast to hear all about it! And keep scrolling to read the transcript.

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Show Notes

Template Shop: https://simplysandrayvonne.ca/shop

Get A Free Month Of Pic-Time: https://lifeisbeautifullondon.pic-time.com/referral

Takeaways

• Creating a photography locations gallery can save time and streamline the process of suggesting photo shoot locations to clients.
• Including important details about each location in the gallery helps clients make informed decisions.
• Curating a portfolio through the photography locations gallery allows clients to visualize the look and feel of their own photos.
• Using a gallery service like PicTime is essential for preserving and delivering client photos.
• Technology advancements, such as cloud storage, are crucial for safeguarding clients’ memories.
• Utilizing templates and automation tools like HoneyBook can enhance efficiency in business workflows.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Announcement
02:33 Streamlining Photo Shoot Location Suggestions
05:22 Curating Your Portfolio Through a Photography Locations Gallery
06:40 The Importance of Using a Gallery Service
07:08 Preserving Memories with Technology
07:36 Conclusion and Promotions

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About Sandra

Sandra Henderson is a photographer, systems strategist, and podcast host based in Ontario, Canada. She specializes in helping 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 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, all things Bravo, 90’s music, travelling, and spending time at home with her husband, stepson, and two cats!

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Click here to get instant access to my brand-new free masterclass!

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TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Sandra Henderson: Welcome back to the podcast, friends. Now, before I get started with everything that I have in store today, I just wanted to share some really exciting news. I am going to be launching a template shop. I’ve been working so hard on this behind the scenes. 

[00:00:15] Over the course of this year, I am going to be launching things like HoneyBook smart file templates, email swipe files, and workflow processes that you can copy over into your CRM with a tutorial video on how to get it all set up. 

[00:00:28] Anything and everything that you can use to get your business more simplified and streamlined behind the scenes. If you head over to simplysandrayvonne.ca/shop, you can get on the waitlist. And while I’m putting the finishing touches on everything, you are going to have the chance to win a free inquiry workflow template bundle when the shop launches.

[00:00:46] And you’ll also get a special little something as a thank you for being on the waitlist and for sharing this excitement with me.

[00:00:54] So I want you to head over to simplysandrayvonne.ca/shop, get on the waitlist, and I will be sharing all the details soon, as soon as everything is ready to launch.

[00:01:05] Now we’re going to get to the intro in just a second, and then I’m going to be diving into one of my absolute favourite systems in my business that you can easily build on the go throughout the year, no matter how busy you are.

[00:01:21] 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 too 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.

[00:01:47] 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 favourite notebook and pen and let’s dive into this week’s episode.

[00:02:07] Okay, honest question. How often do you get emails from your clients asking if you have any ideas of where to go for photos? If you’re anything like me, you probably get asked this question by about 90 percent of the clients that you work with.

[00:02:21] The back and forth of that conversation was taking up so much of my time, which I was happy to do because I want people to have that perfect spot for their photos. But I knew that I needed to find a more efficient way to keep serving my clients without having to spend all of that time emailing back and forth.

[00:02:39] That’s when I decided to create what I call my locations gallery. Inside my PicTime account, I have a gallery that includes folders within it for all of my favourite photo locations in and around my area. And then inside each of those folders, you’re going to find a variety of photos from each location at different times of the year and different times of day, as well as a graphic that outlines important details of what to expect.

[00:03:02] So for example, when this location is best to use, whether that’s a specific time of day or specific time of year, if the location is accessible or not, if there are any travel or entrance fees that are associated with using it, and any other important details that I want someone to know before they make this location their selection.

[00:03:20] I love doing this so much because it gives my clients the chance to explore some locations that they may have never even heard of before. I’m sure every person listening to this episode can think of one specific location that’s a default go-to in your area. Whether that’s like a park or a certain monument, this is the spot that every photographer in your area goes to.

[00:03:40] It’s the default one that people who don’t know where to go for photos, they’re going to choose this spot. In my area, it’s a place called Springbank Park. It is a beautiful spot. Don’t get me wrong, but after going there 20 times in one year, it can get really old and I’m sure that you all feel that way.

[00:03:56] It just gets really boring, really creatively unfulfilling, and you just don’t want to go there anymore. So with this locations gallery, I’m able to keep things fresh by suggesting my favourite locations and honestly, I don’t even include those default locations because everybody already knows that they exist and they do not need me to remind them that it’s an option.

[00:04:17] For any listeners who are my chronic illness and disabled friends, this is also a chance for you to not include any locations that you’re not comfortable working in. So that way, you never have to deal with the extra anxiety of knowing what to expect in terms of accessibility. Another great thing about creating a locations gallery like this that you can share with your clients is that it’s a great way to help you curate your portfolio in a certain way, with a certain look or feel, while still giving your clients the option to choose their own spot.

[00:04:47] It really helps them visualize what their own photos are going to look like if they make the choice to go there. And it’s something that you can create on the go throughout busy season. Whenever you go into your gallery to upload photos to deliver to a client, select a few favourites and drop them into your location’s gallery at the same time.

[00:05:05] There are no extra expenses because you are already paying for this gallery service for your clients anyway. If you’re not using a gallery service in your photography business yet, I highly recommend that you do. I got married in 2016, so not that long ago. We are just coming up on eight years, and two years ago, I went to go and pull some wedding photos off of our USB for our anniversary, and I realized that the USB was dying.

[00:05:28] Thankfully, I was able to pull all of those photos off. It took over a day for me to transfer those photos onto my computer, and I kid you not, Once it was done, I was never able to get my computer to read that USB again. So I am so, so thankful that I was able to get those photos uploaded onto a cloud server.

[00:05:47] And it just reminded me of why it’s so important to progress with technology sometimes when it comes to preserving people’s memories. A lot of times, new computers and new laptops don’t even have USB ports anymore. Some people just use iPads, which don’t have USB ports. So it’s more important than ever to just make sure that your business is set up with a gallery service just to save your ass if anything goes wrong and make sure that nothing ever happens with your client’s photos.

[00:06:14] I highly recommend Picktime. I made the switch to using Picktime back in the fall of 2022, and I have had no regrets ever since. I have a whole episode coming up as to why it’s so amazing and how I have been able to increase my print and product sales by 90 percent since I started using it. That episode is coming out in a couple of weeks, so make sure you check back for that.

[00:06:38] If you head over to my website or the show notes for today’s episode, you can get my affiliate link. And that is going to get you one free month of pick time in addition to the one-month trial that pick time already gives you when you sign up. So you will get two free months to go and check it out and get it all set up and running.

[00:06:55] Anyways, friends have a great rest of your week and I will be back again soon.

(Outro music) Thank you so much for listening. You can find full show notes from today’s episode at simplysandryvonne.ca/keepingitcandid. In the meantime, let’s connect. You can find me on Instagram and TikTok, just search @SimplySandraYvonne. And if you love this podcast, I’d be so honoured if you’d go ahead and hit that subscribe button and leave a review. Until next time. (Music fades out)

Have you ever found yourself drowning in editing, but wanting to do just about anything else? I’ve been there, glued to my computer for what feels like forever. Dealing with headaches and eye strain that even my blue light filter glasses couldn’t avoid. It’s the not-so-glamorous side of being a photographer. After a few failed attempts at outsourcing my editing, I finally found the perfect match when I connected with Janelle Henningson of Janelle Joy Private Editing. Janelle and her team offer personalized editing services. They are so good they literally feel like a breath of fresh air, and saved me from hours upon hours of editing.

That’s why I know I had to have Janelle on the podcast to spill the tea on how to find the perfect editor. Plus, how outsourcing can help you beat burnout, reclaim your hours, and elevate those client experiences.

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Transcript of my interview with Janelle Joy Private Editing

[00:03:36] Sandra Henderson: (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 backend 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 too who’s 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 favourite notebook and pen and let’s dive into this week’s episode.

(Music Fades Out)

[00:04:17] Hi, Janelle. And thank you so much for joining me today from all the way across the seas. Before we dive into all the goodness I know you have for this episode, I would love it if you could just take a quick second to introduce yourself and let listeners know a little bit about what you’re all about.

[00:04:32] Janelle Henningson: Sure. I would love to. So I am Janelle of Janelle Joy Private Editing. My team and I are private photo editors for mainly wedding photographers from all over the world. And we edit one-on-one for them so that they can free up such a huge chunk of their time and not have to have that bog them down. So that’s just me, as the business side.

[00:04:56] And then as. That’s my personal side. I am a mom to three amazing girls. , we are over here in France for a year. So that’s why you said overseas and it’s quite the adventure that we’re taking. So I’m glad we could get together and do this.

[00:05:10] Sandra Henderson: Yeah, me too. And I would love to ask kind of a little bit off topic, but how are your kids loving the transition moving over to France?

[00:05:16] I’m sure like as adults, we’re a little bit more used to it. To kind of changes like that. But I would love to hear about how your kids are dealing with it all. 

[00:05:23] Janelle Henningson: Oh, that’s such a great question. Honestly, they’re handling it really well. So I have three girls. My oldest one is already like, she’s almost 19.

[00:05:32] So she’s actually still back in the States, doing her adult thing, which is so weird to me. , the other two, so I have a 12-year-old and an eight-year-old and they’re adapting so well. , I think it helps too, that we’re homeschooling. I think they’re not. They’re not put into the French schools here because we weren’t here long enough.

[00:05:49] So I think that’s a huge help. I think if they had been put in the schools, it would have been a very different story. 

[00:05:54] Sandra Henderson: I remember listening to a podcast back in 2020, and I honestly don’t even remember what podcast it was or what interview it was. But the person who was being interviewed, , had just moved his family to Italy for a year because it was like, Like his oldest last year in high school.

[00:06:08] And he was like, we want to have this life experience with a fam, with our family and my stepson is 16 now. And so I keep kind of like pressing at my husband. I’m like, you know, it’d be really cool, was if we all lived abroad for a year. 

[00:06:21] Janelle Henningson: Well, I’m a huge advocate of it for sure. I think we hit that perfect window and both my husband are like, all right, let’s do it.

[00:06:28] We’d been wanting to do it for 15 years. So we jumped in with both feet and crazy enough. We had never been to France. Before coming here. So it really was just a, Hey, big dream. Hope it works out. 

[00:06:39] Sandra Henderson: Oh, I love that. I love talking to people who have made these crazy ideas of mine work because then I take it back to my husband and I’m like, see, it is possible.

[00:06:47] So today we’re going to be talking all about outsourcing, your editing, some hesitations that photographers might have and things like that. , I know that you have experience in the photography industry as well. So I’m so you’re. I’m sure you’re very familiar with all of those feelings that come along with it.

07:02 Hesitations About Outsourcing

[00:07:02] And as the past Janelle Joy Private Editing client, I can say I’ve, I’ve experienced the good working with you. I’ve experienced some of the bad along the way, so I am very excited to kind of dive into this because I think outsourcing your editing in some capacity is super important. This is so important when it comes to growing your business as a wedding photographer.

[00:07:20] So why don’t we dive into talking a little bit more about those hesitations? Do you hear common responses from people that you work with on what their hesitations are? 

[00:07:29] Janelle Henningson: I do. And in fact, not just people who I work with, but I’m pretty tapped into the photography community. And I feel like the top three consistent things that I feel that wedding photographers or photographers, in general, have hesitation with is number one, their fear is just can someone actually edit my photos?

[00:07:49] It’s the fear of can they match this? Can I do my editing style? You know, all of that kind of like control issue of just, hey, I do this and it’s like your babies, right? You take these pictures and you want them to be a certain way when you hand them off to your clients. And so that first fear of, hey, can they actually do this?

[00:08:08] And it looked like I edited them. , the second one I would say is cost because cost is always a big issue when we’re business owners. And so if you’ve never outsourced before, especially to a private photo editor, that can sound like it’s going to be very expensive. And so cost is a really big, which is a very important topic, right?

[00:08:29] So the cost is another one. And, you know, just so you guys know, I won’t go into the big details, but it’s actually not as expensive as I think a lot of people think it is. , and then three is just they have maybe tried it before and they didn’t get the right editor or maybe they didn’t go to the right.

[00:08:48] It’s really just, did you use a private photo editor? Maybe you didn’t get the right one. The second one is, did you use more of a bigger box company? It could be a variety of reasons, variety of reasons. And so it didn’t work for them and they’re convinced that outsourcing just won’t work for them for whatever that reason might be.

[00:09:05] And so they’ve kind of gotten themselves a little stuck.

[00:09:08] Sandra Henderson: Yeah, and as you were saying that I was just kind of like checking off the check boxes because I have been through all three of those myself. I think if I had taken my first experience working with an editor as a sign of what it was going to be, I would still be manually editing all of my photos myself right now.

09:17 Tips for Finding the Right Editor

[00:09:25] But that’s such a great point that you have to just kind of keep going and like, work through it until you find that right person because everybody has different skills and abilities just like any other career in this world. Right? 

[00:09:37] Janelle Henningson: Absolutely. And I think to go along with that, I think it’s important to understand that, you know, not every person.

[00:09:44] That does editing, unfortunately, has that vision. They are not able to see the colours and the contrasts and everything that goes into that particular photographer’s style. I’ve had the fortunate ability to interview a lot of different potential editors through building my team. And I have had

[00:10:02] Eye-opening moments where I can see that people just cannot match what we’d call an anchor image as hard as they try, they just can’t and it’s just not a skill set that they have and that’s okay because I don’t have a skill set as a painter or a different kind of artist. I try as hard as I can. I’m never going to be a good painter or any of that kind of thing.

[00:10:23] And so I just know that. If you’re looking for someone and you didn’t get the right person, they just might not have that skill set. And you just need to keep looking., 

[00:10:34] Sandra Henderson: and you were saying earlier, one of the hesitations, and this is something that I come across talking to photographers all the time is that they’re worried that someone else can’t do this the way that they can, that they’re the only ones who can edit their image.

[00:10:48] And what I always. So what I would say to them is that the right, sorry, the right editor can actually edit your photos better than you can. And it’s a better use of your time. Like you find the majority of photographers I know want to be behind their camera. If we don’t want to be sitting in our office editing all day, every day.

[00:11:08] I think that that hesitation is a lot more mindset than financial and things like that. But do you have any encouragement that you like to give photographers who think that no one else can do with my photos what I can? 

[00:11:20] Janelle Henningson: , yes. So I, I feel like that comes down to this like sense of, I have this specific creative look.

[00:11:27] How are you going to match this? And they feel like if they hand over their images, they have no say anymore. Once they’ve given these image over images over to their editor, it’s like the editor’s take on it or whatever that might be. But the way we personally do it, and I know we’re not the only ones, but we make it so that our, Photographers essentially give us, , anchor images is what we call them.

[00:11:51] And these are edited images that have their creative vision, their, like everything that they want their images to look like, and then it is our job to make sure the rest of the catalogue matches this style and it’s consistent and completely through from start to finish. So you’re not losing creative control.

[00:12:08] You absolutely still have your touch to it. We’re not coming in with our own creative ideas. We’re mimicking what you want. And so that’s where I think a lot of photographers who have not outsourced before don’t understand that they have full control over their creative editing of their images. 

12:27 Maintaining Creative Control

[00:12:27] Sandra Henderson: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:12:28] That’s such an important differentiator. And another thing too is like, you can always go and put your final tweaks on the photos. And that was something that I always did. It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with the photos. I loved the editing. I was getting back and like, my favourite thing is opening that catalogue and watching all the edits load.

[00:12:45] And you can just kind of like sit back and watch your photos edit themselves. And then I go through and I just like, you know, add an extra mask here, whatever the case may be. And so I like to think of outsourcing your editing is just kind of another tool. It’s not something to take your place. It’s just something to help you get your job done faster.

[00:13:02] Janelle Henningson: Yep, absolutely. And then I would say a majority of our photographers do what you just described when they get back their images, they’re going to pick their select ones that maybe are going into albums, maybe going into a blog post or whatever that might be. And they’re going to put those extra things like the masking, maybe some Photoshop work that you might want to do.

[00:13:22] But the great thing is you just don’t have to do that for your entire catalogue. In fact, that’s a whole nother topic for a whole nother day. 

[00:13:29] Sandra Henderson: So do you have any tips for photographers who are diving into outsourcing for the first time, or maybe they’ve had a bad experience with their first foray into it, some tips that they could use to find the right fit for an editor? 

[00:13:43] Janelle Henningson: Yes. So I think let’s back up for just a second. So the first tip that I have before you even start looking for an editor is I have a question I want you to ask yourself, do you have a solid understanding of your editing style?

[00:13:58] So do you know, I mean, it’s, it’s beyond just saying like I’m light and airy or clean and classic. It’s going in deeper and saying like, this is how I like my clean and classic. This is how I like my light and airy, and this is what I do to achieve it. And if you understand that, then you are ready to bring on an editor.

[00:14:16] And I say that because if you don’t know what that is, you’re not going to be able to describe what you need to your editor. And you’re both going to just be struggling and it’s going to be frustrating and you’re going to walk away just feeling so defeated. 

[00:14:33] Sandra Henderson: Yeah, that’s such a good point. 

[00:14:35] Janelle Henningson: And so if you’re good in that area, then yes, you are ready for an editor.

[00:14:39] And then the next thing really is just kind of, I think personally, I think the best way to find an editor is asking some of your photographer friends or within a photography community and getting some recommendations and knowing how it’s maybe worked for someone else.

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[00:14:57] Sandra Henderson: Today’s episode of the podcast is sponsored by PicTime.

[00:15:00] This is the gallery service that I use in my photography business that literally doesn’t compare to anything else I’ve tried. First and foremost, it’s fully accessible to Canadians. All the other platforms I’ve tried have been open to Canadians, but they limit the features that we can access because of having to work with American printers or tax limitations and things like that.

[00:15:21] But with PicTime, it is free. Fully accessible. All features can be used up here in Canada. You can set it to Canadian pricing. You can set it to Canadian printers. If you are a US listener, of course, you have lots of options, but as a Canadian photographer, those Canadian features made me very, very happy.

[00:15:39] Pictime also has pre-made and custom automations to help you boost your sales year-round. There’s optional AI facial recognition, AI watermark protection, and custom storefronts with international pricing options. It even integrates with HoneyBook so you can keep all of your client files organized and linked together and even view the photos from the gallery inside your HoneyBook account.

[00:16:02] I could truly go on for hours about how much I love this platform. If you’re looking for something new for your photography business this busy season, I want you to head over to my website or the show notes for today’s episode to get my affiliate link that will get you one free month in addition to the free months that pick time already gives you for a trial.

[00:16:20] So that means two free months for you to get a feel for the platform and get everything set up and running to make your clients happier and hopefully boost your sales in the process.

[00:16:30] Janelle Henningson: I think that’s a great way to find someone. Instagram, we get a lot of our, like a lot of our clients who have found us on Instagram too.

[00:16:39] So that’s a great, great tool. And I think going like, just like we do with anything like researching, so going to their website, getting the testimonials, like all of that really helps you to know like, okay, this person is worth looking into setting up a consult call, whatever that might be. , I think that really is kind of the first, I don’t know, what’s the word, like doing your homework, right?

[00:17:03] Doing your homework before you go into that. And then just interviewing. And then I think just kind of making sure you jive with the editor too. So you feel comfortable giving back your feedback. Cause if you feel uncomfortable giving feedback, again, this whole thing is just going to crumble because we want feedback.

[00:17:21] We want you to tell us, Hey, you’re exposing these a little too much or it’s. Our white balance is a little too warm, or whatever that might be, because if you don’t tell us, we don’t know, we’re going to continue doing the same thing, and you’re going to think, man, they stink. Right. You want to feel comfortable with that person that you know feedback is wanted, and in fact, very encouraged.

[00:17:42] Sandra Henderson: I remember when I first started working with Jade, she was like, don’t worry, any feedback you give me, I’m not going to take it personally. This is how I’m able to do my job and edit your photos the way they need to be edited. So yeah, that’s definitely a very It’s a really important part of the process.

[00:17:55] I agree. 

[00:17:56] Janelle Henningson: Yep. And then I would just say again, I can’t reiterate this enough. If you’ve outsourced before and it didn’t work out, please don’t give up. Like your editor is out there. I promise that there’s someone there that can help you. , and you’re just going to be like, where were you all of my life?

[00:18:11] Like I needed you like three years ago. Where were you? So don’t give up on that. , the other thing I think is important to talk about too is. It can be difficult to outsource if you are still stuck on a high level of pickiness. And I, let me describe what I mean by that is if you are making minor, minor adjustments like you hit your exposure at plus one or your tint at plus two or negative two, these really, really minor adjustments that really no one’s going to see, then I would argue that you are not ready for an editor because that control is just not there.

[00:18:47] So, I’m not saying that you won’t have a great experience with your editor down the road. But if you’re so caught in these little teeny, teeny, teeny, tiny details, it’s going to be frustrating for you. So I think Kind of understanding where your control is knowing that if you hire an experienced editor, for us personally, our job is to make sure we’re matching your anchor images and then all of it’s very consistent all the way throughout that catalogue.

[00:19:17] And another way I like to describe that is if you’re taking images side by side, sticking them in albums for your wedding albums, and they look cohesive all the way through, then I would call that a 100 percent win in that catalogue. Mark. 

[00:19:32] Sandra Henderson: In that consistency, maybe it’s just because I’m a wedding photographer, but it’s just so like calming to scroll through and see everything look so consistent, regardless if you were outside at two o’clock in the afternoon or inside at 10 p.m.

[00:19:46] Yes, 

[00:19:46] Janelle Henningson: Absolutely. 

19:47 Impact of Outsourcing on Style and Workflow

[00:19:47] Sandra Henderson: Yeah, your style is going all the way through your catalogue. So speaking of style, what are some ways that you think that outsourcing can really make an impact on the work that photographers are putting out there, aside from just, you know, taking that editing off their plate? 

[00:20:03] Janelle Henningson: Well, that’s actually a great question.

[00:20:05] So, I feel like with your style, especially in an editor, we’re slightly removed. From it in the sense of how many times have we been guilty as photographers to go in, look at it, think we’re good, and then we go back in and look at it, make adjustments because we didn’t like it the second time. I know it sounds crazy.

[00:20:23] Sandra Henderson: I’m so bad for that. So bad for that. 

[00:20:26] Janelle Henningson: Yes, and we’ve all been guilty. All of us are guilty. I would even say like three or four times you go in and you’re like, okay, no, I didn’t like how that set turned out. We’ve removed enough and we’ve done this enough times that we know, Hey, this was the anchor image.

[00:20:41] I know that they know their style. I’m going to make sure that this is again, consistent all the way through so that you don’t have to sit there. Second guessing, triple guessing and all of these different things. And I think it just. It’s a time sucker for sure, if we’re doing that. 

[00:20:57] Sandra Henderson: Yeah, absolutely. I am definitely, I go through phases where I’m guilty of bumping the magenta up by two and things like that.

[00:21:04] So I actually have a sticky note on my editing computer that says “done is better than perfect” because I actually took these photos and put them side by side and I asked my husband who again is like completely removed and does not have an artist name. So I called and I asked him, like, if he could see any noticeable differences between the two.

[00:21:20] And he couldn’t. To him, they were absolutely identical in every single way. And so that was kind of my reminder that like the majority of people cannot tell the difference between these two and the people that can are probably your photographer friends and not your clients. So, 

[00:21:34] Janelle Henningson: yeah, absolutely. Or an editor friend.

[00:21:37] Sandra Henderson: Yeah, exactly. Right. , and I found that when I really started working with an editor, it helped me with my workflow and with my overall style consistency too, because I had someone else that I was accountable to, to get those photos to them by a certain time. And it really helped me just kind of like keep things moving a little bit faster than I ever had previously, which was really nice.

[00:22:01] Janelle Henningson: Oh, that’s really good to hear. Yeah. , we really like to play a crucial part in the workflow to keep things moving smoothly, keep things going, and allow your clients to deliver things before they expected it. All of these things help when you’re able to outsource and you don’t feel so stressed with time.

[00:22:21] Sandra Henderson: That’s so true. And so when it comes to serving your clients, do you think that outsourcing takes away from that personal hands-on experience that wedding photographers are so known for giving their clients? 

22:33 Enhancing the Client Experience

[00:22:33] Janelle Henningson: No, I think it’s absolutely the opposite. So when we think about serving our clients, what does that really look like for you?

[00:22:41] Is it you sitting behind a computer for hours on end and getting behind and stressed and all of these things, it’s. It’s not. The client really just wants to feel like, Hey, you’re on top of this. You’re emailing me, you’re answering my questions. You have time to really take care of this client. And it’s hard to do that when you’re in the middle of your busiest season and you’ve got your four weddings behind and you know, you’ve got all of these different little tasks piling up, including your editing.

[00:23:12] It’s hard to serve those clients the way that you should. And another way to think about this too is, you know, at the beginning of wedding season, which let’s just say that’s like around May or June, we’re fresh, like we’re ready to go. We’re excited, you know, all of the things that go into a new season.

[00:23:28] Well, are you serving that client the exact same as if the client towards the middle to end of that season, you know, is that client who is in October when I feel like everything is so slammed and so busy. Are you able to give the same amount of attention that you gave to your October client as you did to your May client?

[00:23:47] I’d argue you probably don’t unless you have something like your outsourcing and better workflows to make that a possibility. So back to your question, do I think outsourcing takes away from the personal experience? No, I think it adds to your, your ability to give a much more personal experience to your clients.

[00:24:07] Sandra Henderson: That was so good. I love that we ended on that question because if there’s anything that I want everybody to take away from this episode, that is definitely, it’s, it’s just like, I think it’s so easy for us to just think like, I’m outsourcing my editing so I don’t have to do editing anymore. And that’s great.

[00:24:24] I can get the photos out faster. But when you take it like a step back and look at the whole picture, it’s just like, It is so impactful to take that work off your plate. And even if you’re like spending an hour as opposed to six hours editing, like that’s five hours that you could be doing something else to serve your clients.

[00:24:41] So that’s such a good point. 

[00:24:43] Janelle Henningson: Yay. I’m so glad. I know I’m a big advocate of being really wise with your time. It’s probably why I became an editor after being a photographer. So yeah, it’s a passion. 

[00:24:55] Sandra Henderson: Yeah, me as well. , I, it’s something that I talk about a lot on the podcast because I have, I lived chronic illness life.

[00:25:01] And so like my time is very valuable and it’s very unpredictable. And so anything that I can take off my plate and have somebody do it better than me and make it easier for me, then I am all about it. Yeah, it’s perfect. , so I just have one last question for you, a little like fun. Would you rather question that I’ve been ending this season with, so use your current adventure in France as a little bit of an inspiration.

[00:25:26] So if you were to get ready to choose your next adventure after you are done your year in France, would you rather live in England or Italy next? 

[00:25:37] Janelle Henningson: Oh, gosh. Okay. So this question makes me laugh because we’re totally doing both already. 

[00:25:44] Sandra Henderson: Amazing. I love that. 

25:46 Choosing the Next Adventure

[00:25:46] Janelle Henningson: These questions make me just laugh. My kids love with you either, but their questions, I’m like, I want neither of those, but yeah, there’s just horrible questions.

[00:25:55] I don’t know yet. Cause I’ve actually been to England, but it was like 18 years ago, but Italy just, I am such a fan of Italian food, so I’m so excited to see what that’s like. So I would probably pick Italy to pick. Yeah, 

[00:26:09] Sandra Henderson: Absolutely. I’m a big foodie too. , so food is always like, it’s like, I want a nice place to sleep and then I need really good food.

[00:26:17] And then whatever happens after that, I’m not picky. 

[00:26:21] Janelle Henningson: Yeah, I know. And all the pasta and gelato. Yes. You’ve got me, I’ll sign up right away. 

[00:26:27] Sandra Henderson: Right? Yeah, for sure. Well, thank you so much, Janelle, this is such an amazing conversation. And I hope that all of the listeners are now super inspired to go out and find their perfect match for an editor.

[00:26:40] And before we jump off, could you just let everybody know where to find you on social media and all the places online? 

[00:26:45] Janelle Henningson: Sure. Okay. So the best place on social media would be Instagram. And so if you look up @JanelleJoy_photo_editor,  you can find me pretty easily. And then of course our website at JanelleJoy.com

[00:26:59] So both of those are great ways to get through to me. I can answer DMs or emails. I’m pretty easy to get ahold of. 

[00:27:07] Sandra Henderson: Perfect. Well, thank you so much again. This was absolutely amazing. I love chatting with you and hopefully, our paths will cross again one day soon.

[00:27:14] Janelle Henningson: I agree. I hope so too. Thank you so much.

[00:27:16] Sandra Henderson: You’re so welcome. 

If you ended last year feeling burnt out and overwhelmed, take this episode as your sign to start outsourcing your editing. Remember that with anything, there is always going to be a learning curve. It’s going to take a few weeks for everything to get into that seamless flow. But when you go into it with realistic expectations like that, you’re setting yourself up for success. As far as pricing goes, factor it into your pricing for all bookings going forward and eat the cost for the weddings that you have now. I promise you it will be worth every penny because you’re going to be getting those photos out so much faster. Your clients are going to be happier and you’re going to have more time to rest.

[00:27:56] Whether you’re dealing with another chronic illness flare or even just writing out your wedding hangover, which we all experienced the day after a wedding, you’re really not resting. If you’re editing, we’re worrying about all the editing that you have to get done. Outsourcing and creating simple streamline systems to help support you are the keys to scaling your business to bring in double or even triple the bookings that you have now.

[00:28:19] When it comes to running a business, it really is about working smarter, not harder. That’s all for me this week, friends. I hope you enjoy the rest of your week, and I will be back next Wednesday with a new episode.

Thank you so much for listening. You can find full show notes from today’s episode at simplysandryvonne.ca/keepingitcandid. In the meantime, let’s connect. You can find me on Instagram and TikTok, just search @SimplySandraYvonne. And if you love this podcast, I’d be so honoured if you’d go ahead and hit that subscribe button and leave a review. Until next time.

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About Janelle

Janelle is the founder and owner of Janelle Joy Private Editing. After being a photographer for 14 years she saw a huge need for personal photo editing and decided to launch Janelle Joy Private Editing back in 2016. She now runs a thriving and successful editing business helping wedding photographers from all over the world take back their time, enabling them to upscale their business, create better client experiences, and have a personal life in the process.

In-fact, the high-demand for Janelle’s personal and unique approach to private editing ended up growing from a one woman show to a team of 6 editors in a period of just 1 year! Janelle is in all the details and definitely delivers a premium experience and service to all of her clients. Janelle and her team work with extraordinary high-end luxury photographers all the way down to the every day wedding photographer. She thrives by the motto, “Time is a luxury we can’t afford to waste. So use it wisely and purposefully.”

Instagram | Website

May is Mental Health Awareness Month and you may have already been able to tell this by the title of this post, but we are going to be talking all about things like depression and anxiety and struggling with mental health as an entrepreneur. If this topic is going to be triggering for you, please take what you need and feel free to skip this and the corresponding episode (#47) of Keeping It Candid. I completely understand that this might not be a topic that everybody is in the space to hear right now and I want you to make sure that you’re putting yourself first!

If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health, please consider calling star 988. This is a mental health crisis line that’s available 24 -7 and it’s open to both US and Canadian residents.

Let’s be real, being an entrepreneur is hard. Depression is hard. Anxiety is hard. And when all three of these coincide at the same time, it is really, really hard. Today, I’m sharing a little bit of a vulnerable podcast that I’ve honestly hesitated to share.

Even though I am so passionate about advocating for mental health and chronic illnesses, I still have a lot of internalized ableism like a lot of us do and opening up about topics like this can also be really hard. But I know that I can do hard things. That’s what I keep telling myself. So I hope you’ll join me as I share a little bit of an update on what life has been like for me over the last month.

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[00:00:36] (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 too who’s obsessed with I’m obsessed with tacos. 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 favourite notebook and pen and let’s dive into this week’s episode. (music fades out)

02:05 Personal Experience with Depression and Anxiety

Sandra Henderson (02:05.966)
Back in the beginning of April, I really just wasn’t feeling like myself. I had just come back from vacation, so those post-vacation blues were hitting hard, especially because I was coming from Florida, where there was nothing but sun, and I came back to dreary Canada, where we had snow and rain and lots of clouds and all the things. So that lack of vitamin D definitely hit me. And it was also just perfect timing with my cycle for things to be a little bit rough.

And so I really just, I wasn’t feeling like myself. And after about 10 days or so, I started to feel it pass. I started to feel better. I was taking advantage of feeling more energetic at work and mentally clear. And then about a week later, it all started going downhill again. There were just these feelings that I couldn’t shake. Like I was anxious. There was this deep, really heavy weight on my chest.

If you’ve ever experienced depression before, you might know what I’m talking about. It felt like there were these dark hands kind of gripping me and trying to pull me down. Almost like when you’re about to get a cold or get the flu, you feel it starting and you know what’s happening and you try to do things to stop it. But a lot of times that sickness that you’re fighting off is going to take over, whether that’s a cold or a flu or depression. They really kind of work the same way.

Now I am very, very thankful that I was able to connect with a doctor last year and get prescribed medication for my anxiety and depression. So I had that in my court already helping me get through this. And it gave me this perspective that I’d never had before where I could feel what was happening. I could recognize what was happening, but it wasn’t fully taking over to a point where I felt like I was completely out of control or didn’t know what was going on.

And so I am very thankful to have taken that time to boost my confidence to actually go and ask my doctor for this help. If that’s something that you’ve been struggling with, I highly recommend it. Getting back onto an SSRI medication was hands down one of the best decisions that I have made for myself over the last year. And of course, I don’t want to give out any medical advice by any means.

04:26 Seeking Medication and Managing Symptoms

Sandra Henderson (04:26.222)
This might not be the perfect solution for you, but it’s definitely worth talking to your doctor about if you’ve been struggling with anxiety and depression as well and have been wondering if there’s something that can help you get through it. So I had that in my court like I said, and then because it was able to just give me that little bit of separation and that little bit of clarity, I was able to focus on doing things that were going to make me feel better, whether it was things that I just enjoy doing or things that, you know, quote-unquote, people have said are the things that you should be doing to make yourself feel better.

05:19 Self-Care and Grace as an Entrepreneur

So here is a little bit of a look at what I did during that time when I was really feeling off. First and foremost, I gave myself the grace that I needed to just feel it out, to let it ride and not fight against the negative feelings because when we do that and we bottle them up, they have a special way of eventually exploding out in a way worse way. So I wanted to give myself the grace to ride that out. I was also able to give myself some time off, which I know is not possible for everybody, especially if you are in the thick of busy season, but I highly, highly encourage you to just find some time to take to yourself because when you’re feeling that way and you’re running on high and you are just filling all of your time with all the things.

You’re really not making yourself a priority. It’s like bottling up those emotions to not feel them. Eventually filling up your time and go, go, go, go, go all the time is going to catch up with you as well. I took some time to reprioritize my projects. So I put things that were really time-consuming and mentally draining. Those got pushed off and I worked on things that I could do kind of on the go instead. I’m used to making these kinds of adjustments when I have flare days for endometriosis.

So I did a lot of designing in Canva and just refreshing my marketing plan, getting a better idea of what I wanted to be working on for the rest of the year and things like that. So I still felt productive in my business without having to take on the mental load of some really big projects. I also got outside. Thankfully we started to have a little bit of nicer weather around here. So on days that we had some warm weather and sunshine, I went for a walk or I would just sit out in my backyard in the sun for a few minutes.

Sandra Henderson (06:46.766)
I ate a lot of protein. So I was eating peanut butter and crackers. I was eating nuts. I was eating Greek yogurt. I was eating chicken and spinach. Basically, anything that I could get protein from. I was really trying to pack that into my diet because my stomach was also off. So eating wasn’t super easy for me. I was making sure to pack in lots of vitamins, especially vitamin C because there’s colds going around in my area, and vitamin D as well because I was trying to adjust back to being in cloudy Canada. I did some face masks and took a shower, put on some comfy clothes and did all those things so that I could just feel physically more comfortable.

One night when I was really having a hard time falling asleep, I put my noise-cancelling headphones on and put on my favourite playlist and just enjoyed some music therapy, which I love that it still works for me at 37 years old the same way that it did when I was 17. The perfect Playlist can just be so healing sometimes. And I gave myself a lot of patience because anybody who has gone through this before knows that healing is not linear. So I had to be patient with the days that I was feeling better and then waking up the next day and feeling worse. It wasn’t a progression of slowly going uphill every day.

So, I had to have a lot of patience for myself with that. And then just leaning on my support system. I am very, very lucky to have a husband who knows exactly the right things to do when I’m having times like this. It took us a long time to get there. It takes a lot of learning to know what your partner needs and doesn’t need without them saying it and respecting their boundaries and autonomy when they’re not feeling well.

I was very lucky to be able to lean on him and message friends who are a part of my chronic illness support system and things like that. So that was everything that I did over a couple of weeks. And when I finally started to feel better again, thankfully it happened, then I was left with this other piece of the puzzle. And again, if you’ve been through anything like this, you’re going to know exactly what I’m talking about.

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08:59 Facing Overwhelm and Anxiety as an Entrepeneur

Sandra Henderson (08:59.886)
But I started feeling better again and then I was left to face everything that had been piling up and that kickstarted my anxiety all over again. My body and mind’s natural instinct when it gets overwhelmed is to go into freeze mode and that’s exactly what I did. I had systems in place that help with a lot of things but of course, it can’t help with everything. No matter how much I wish they could, they can’t help with everything. I replied to three emails just this past Monday that had been there for a week.

My podcast, as I’m sure you have already noticed, has been completely all over the place this season with no consistency in when these episodes are being posted. My email newsletter and blog went radio silent in the process. And so now that I’m feeling better and back to feeling a little bit more like myself, what’s really important is that I need to give myself a fresh perspective to start getting things done in a way that’s not overwhelming.

This week I’m so thankful I was able to take the whole week off. I didn’t have any meetings or sessions or anything on the calendar, so I blocked the time off to specifically focus on batch-working my podcast. As of the time of recording, which actually is May 3rd, so just a little bit before this episode actually aired, my goal by the end of today is to have two months’ worth of podcast episodes ready to go because not only do I want to be more consistent, but I also want to be more prepared if and honestly likely when this happens again.

Anxiety and depression are something that I’ve been dealing with my whole life. So I know that it can come and go, but it’s also very, very much directly related to my hormones for me. I’m in the process of finding out if I have something called PMDD, which would explain a lot. I’m not going to go into a whole other gynecological side note on this because ya’ll know I could talk about all those kinds of things forever. But if that is the case, this is something that I can expect to be feeling more and more each month directly related to my cycles. So I want to be prepared if that happens again.

11:38 Upcoming Guests on the Podcast

I’m so thankful that I have a huge backlog of absolutely amazing guests that I’ve had the opportunity to interview so far this season. And I seriously can’t wait to share everything that’s been recorded. Just to do a little bit of name-dropping, we have Janelle Henningsen talking about hiring an editor, Angie MacPherson is talking about branding, Yasi Salavatian is talking about using your brand voice, Laura Murphy joined me to talk about systems and so did Diana Wei Fong, Kara Duncan joined me to talk about consistent marketing, and Dolly DeLong joined me to talk about systems again.

These women are seriously entrepreneur powerhouses. So make sure you check back for their interviews over the next few months because I know you are going to love them. Now on that note, thank you so much for being here today, for always listening to the podcast, even when it takes a few unexpected weeks off, and for allowing me the space to be vulnerable and share a bit more of my story with you. I hope you all have a great rest of your week and I will be back next Wednesday. Thank you so much for listening.

(Outro music) Thank you so much for listening. You can find full show notes from today’s episode at simplysandryvonne.ca/keepingitcandid. In the meantime, let’s connect. You can find me on Instagram and TikTok, just search @SimplySandraYvonne. And if you love this podcast, I’d be so honoured if you’d go ahead and hit that subscribe button and leave a review. Until next time. (Music fades out)

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About Sandra

Sandra Henderson is a photographer, systems strategist, and podcast host based in Ontario, Canada. She specializes in helping 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 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, all things Bravo, 90’s music, travelling, and spending time at home with her husband, stepson, and two cats!

[00:00:00] Sandra Henderson: Welcome back to the very last episode of my special March series, all about endometriosis awareness month. If you missed the last couple of episodes, I shared what my story has been first leading up to getting my diagnosis and then an update of what my life has been like over the last couple of years.

[00:00:17] So if that is at all of interest to you, make sure you go back and give those a listen. And today is just going to be a short and sweet episode where I am talking all about my endometriosis toolkit. These are things that I have with me on the go and at home at all times to just make my life a little bit easier.

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[00:00:36] (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 too who’s obsessed with I’m obsessed with tacos. 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 favourite notebook and pen and let’s dive into this week’s episode. (music fades out)

02:13 Endometriosis Surgery Details

[00:01:25] Quickly, before I get into that, I had quite a few people pop into my DMs after last week’s episode to ask me about what my surgery is that’s coming up next year. And I realized that I completely forgot to talk about that in my last episode. I’m going to blame it on the fact that it was day one of my cycle.

[00:01:43] And Honestly, I thought it was a great idea to record on that day given that it’s Endometriosis Awareness Month, but in hindsight, it was a terrible idea. I felt horrible. I feel like you could hear it in my voice and the brain fog was so, so bad. So. I will probably never do that again, but just to give a quick little update on what my surgery is going to be, I don’t have a date for it.

[00:02:08] It’s going to be sometime in 2025, but I am going in for a hysterectomy. Now, it’s really important to note that a hysterectomy is not a cure for endometriosis. There is a similar disease, it’s kind of like endometriosis-sister disease called adenomyosis, and that is when the tissues start to embed themselves into your uterus.

[00:02:29] Whereas for me, those tissues are going elsewhere in my body. So when you have adenomyosis, removing your uterus is absolutely a cure for that because there’s no more uterus for the tissues to embed in. But with endometriosis, removing my uterus is essentially just going to stop my periods. It is not going to do anything for any tissues that are elsewhere in my body, but I’m not mad at the idea of not having periods anymore.

[00:02:54] I gave up my fertility a long time ago, and so if this surgery means that I have a couple of days less pain a month, then I am totally okay with that. I am having the hysterectomy performed by a surgeon who is an endometriosis specialist. And so while he’s performing that surgery, he’s also going to be looking elsewhere for any tissues that may have grown on my diaphragm is a big area that we’re going to be looking at.

[00:03:17] Also looking at my ovaries, the ligaments over top of my uterus, um, Where else? We’re going to be looking inside my bladder and looking at my bowels. They’re also going to be taking a look at my appendix and removing it if there are any issues with it. So it is going to be a very invasive surgery. they’re going to be doing a lot of looking around.

03:26 Invasive Endometriosis Surgery and Remission Period

[00:03:39] If they do find any tissues while they’re in there, they are going to remove them. So that’s kind of what that looks like. Hopefully having this surgery performed by a specialist is going to mean that I get a little bit of relief afterwards, almost like a remission period. After my last surgery in 2019, I was told to expect about five years minimum of remission and I had not.

[00:04:04] So I’m a little hesitant to get my hopes up. up about what life is going to look like after this surgery, but I do know it’s a necessary next step and it’s one that I’ve been pushing for. When the day comes, I am looking forward to it and I’m just going to have to take those unknowns as they come along.

[00:04:21] So I hope that clears everything up for you. If you were wondering what that was all about, and if you have any other questions at all, by all means, please feel free to pop into my DMs. You can find me on Instagram at SimplySandraYvonne, and I am totally an open book when it comes to talking about endometriosis.

04:40 Heating Pads and Robax Heat Wraps

[00:04:40] Okay, so now that we have that out of the way, let’s get to my endometriosis toolkit. First, heating pads of any capacity, but specifically some Robax heat wraps. I wish I was a Robax affiliate. I swear the number of people that I’ve had go buy these, they should be paying me a cut at this point for all the referrals.

[00:04:58] But these wraps are pretty much like those hand warmers that you can put in your pocket. So they come in a package and as soon as you open it up the air will activate the crystals inside and it has up to 16 hours of heat I believe. I’ve never worn it for the full 16 hours but let me tell you on a wedding day these are absolutely amazing.

[00:05:18] They are really thin and sleek so they hide under your clothes. The material is almost like a stretchy diaper tab but Giant size. They’re one size fits most. I don’t want to say one size fits all, even though that’s what the box says. Because we all know that there is no such thing as one size fits all.

[00:05:36] So one size fits most. It does have adjustable self adhering velcro type material to hold it on you. And I just put it under my clothing. They do have ones that are specifically marketed towards being put on your uterus. But anybody who’s familiar with the pink tacks knows that those are actually more expensive than the ones that I use, which are just for your back.

[00:05:59] And all you need to do is just spin it around so that it’s sitting on your front. save yourself some unnecessary money. So those are something that I have in my camera bag for every wedding day, every session. I bring them with me when I’m travelling. And then of course I have my heating pads that I can plug in for when I’m going to be inside.

06:18 Ergonomic Seat Cushions

[00:06:18] Next is my ergonomic seat cushion. I have ergonomic seat cushions in my office, in my car, and one to travel with. Sitting on hard surfaces is really, really painful for me because of the tension I have in my pelvis and the damage that’s been done to my pelvic floor because of having endometriosis. So I was finding that I couldn’t even sit in my office to edit without being in pain.

[00:06:44] If I was driving for a long time, I was having a hard time walking when I was getting out of the car. And so getting these ergonomic seat cushions has been absolutely amazing. They just make sure that my hips are positioned properly. If you have any sort of back pain, regardless of what the cause is, this is going to be really helpful.

[00:07:03] This is going to be really helpful for you as well. and yeah, I just bring them on the go. So I have one with me on a wedding day so that I have that to sit on during a reception. I also have a pop up stool that I bring with me so that I can always sit if I need to and I can just put my cushion down on that.

[00:07:18] I bring it on airplanes because airplane seats are so comfortable. So uncomfortable. So yeah, I absolutely love these cushions. Highly recommend. I’m also going to be putting together an Amazon list for almost everything that I talk about in this episode. So make sure you pop over into the show notes to check that out if you’re interested in grabbing any of these.

07:37 Proper Shoes for Support

[00:07:37] Third is shoes. I’m officially in my sensible shoe era. I’m not gonna lie, I hate it, but I finally got some cute runners that have really great arch support, and that’s been making my life a little bit easier, making me feel a little bit less like my mom. , but, Wearing proper shoes has been so necessary for the pressure it puts on my joints, for the pressure it puts on my pelvis and my back.

[00:08:03] As much as I love wearing cute shoes, something had to give and I am already in enough pain without adding to it. So sensible shoe era it is. I just ordered some cute arch-support sandals from Amazon. So I’m hoping that those can replace my runners in the summer, but make sure that you have shoes that support you regardless of what kind of shoe that is.

08:23 E-Reader for Reading Comfort

[00:08:26] That is going to be super important for your toolkit as well. Next on the list is my e-reader. Now, this could be a Kindle, a Kobo, an iPad, whatever that may look like for you, but I made the switch to using an e-reader rather than reading books because of the pressure it was putting on my hands, especially on days that I was recovering from a wedding or was dealing with a flare.

[00:08:51] I love reading. I love the feeling of turning pages and the smell of books, but it was really discouraging for me that on days when I was in pain, I wasn’t able to read when reading is something that I do to be able to take my mind off of how I’m feeling. So I officially made the switch to using an e-reader and it has been so nice to be able to just pop my screen up and have it there and not have to worry about holding the book.

[00:09:15] And I’ve gotten so much more reading done since then. My goal for 2024 is to read 20 books. I am on book number five right now. So fingers crossed that I can keep up with it, but that would definitely not be able to happen if I was still reading paperback books, sorry. Even worse, hardcover books.

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09:43 Water Cooler and Water Bottle

[00:09:43] The second last thing on my toolkit is, strangely enough, my water cooler and my water bottle. These are, I know, two things, but we’re going to combine them into one. Getting a water cooler was one of the best purchases I ever made for my house. I know that we have water coming out of the tap, I get it, but I just don’t like it.

[00:10:00] If you drink water all the time, you know that water has a taste. and I will die on this hill. Water has a taste and every kind of bottled water tastes different. Every tap water tastes different. And I just really don’t like the tap water at home. So we got this water cooler and now that’s all I drink. I drink water all day long.

[00:10:19] Like, I have probably increased my water intake by about a thousand percent since we got this. I also always have an insulated water bottle with me so I can bring cold water on the go, but I actually call it my emotional support water bottle because I literally have it with me everywhere. At this point, it doesn’t even stand up straight anymore because I’ve dropped it so many times and the bottom is so dented, but I love this water bottle.

[00:10:43] And having it with me at all times means that I’m always able to stay hydrated, which is really important for keeping down my inflammation levels.

11:43 Cannabis Products for Nausea and Endometriosis Pain

Now, the last thing in my toolkit, this is one that I will say being able to include it is going to depend on where you live, what laws are like in your area, and what your comfort level is.

[00:11:04] But for me, I am a 420-friendly person. This is a 420-friendly household and living in Canada, cannabis products are legal here. So using cannabis products, I use a vape currently, and this is something that I use every day to help with my chronic nausea and pain levels. I know a lot of people may hear this and just be like, no, that is not for me.

[00:11:29] But if it’s something that you partake in, no, I fully support that decision. If it’s something that you’re curious about and want to ask questions in a safe space, by all means, slide into my DM. I am here to help support you through this. but yeah, it’s something that has been prescribed medicinally for a long time.

[00:11:48] I think that there are a lot of benefits for it and how it can impact my body. And of course, yes, there is the argument about the damage that it’s doing to my lungs and I understand that, but it’s just another one of those conversations about the juice being worth the squeeze. The amount of damage that I would be doing to my body if I was allowing my chronic nausea to run rampant all day long if I was not able to eat properly, if I was in extreme levels of pain.

[00:12:16] And having to use narcotic pain medication, all of those things would be doing so much more damage to my body than consuming cannabis. And I think it really goes to show how important it is to get rid of the stigma around using cannabis products because not only can they really help people with chronic illnesses, but it doesn’t mean that you’re not capable of doing other things.

[00:12:37] I’m running two businesses and being there for my stepson and a part of my household and part of my relationship and my marriage, all while still consuming cannabis, the idea that it’s going to turn you into this stoner who is not capable of doing anything and just wants to sit around and eat all day.

[00:12:58] You know, maybe that happens every now and then, but it’s definitely not true a hundred percent of the time. So if there is one thing that we take away from this part of the episode, I hope that it’s just to let’s end the stigma around a lot of things, but especially around using cannabis products.

13:25 Recap and Conclusion

So as a quick little recap of what is inside my toolkit, we have heating pads, but especially Robax heat wraps for your back that you can either use on your back if you have back pain or spin them around to the front to help with cramps.

[00:13:28] An ergonomic seat cushion that I bring everywhere and have in my office, in my car, comfy shoes with lots of arch support. A water cooler and a water bottle so that I’m always staying hydrated. An e-reader so that I don’t have to worry about the pressure that books are putting on my hands on bad pain days.

[00:13:46] And my cannabis vape. I hope that these are helpful to you. If you have anything that you include in your toolkit that you want to recommend, by all means let me know. I love having endometriosis friends in my community. I always say that it sucks that we have to bond over something so shitty, but at least we have each other and there is so much comfort in just knowing that someone else gets it.

[00:14:10] So pop into my DMs if you have any recommendations, and next week we are going to be back to our regularly scheduled programming. My friend Alex from Alex Collier Design is joining me for an interview to talk all about your website homepage, things that are important to have on it, things that you want to avoid, and hopefully give you some ideas on how to spruce up your homepage without feeling like you have to completely redo your entire website.

[00:14:35] And for me, I’m actually heading to Florida on Monday for a couple of weeks. It is going to be a working vacation, but I am going with my husband, my best friends, and their family, and I cannot wait. I am daydreaming nonstop about the endless hours of sun that I’m going to be getting. Hopefully, by the time I am back in my office, I will be a bronze goddess with a tan that is going to last me through the end of this Canadian winter.

[00:15:00] Anyways, friends, have a great rest of your Wednesday and I will be back next week.

(Outro music) Thank you so much for listening. You can find full show notes from today’s episode at simplysandryvonne.ca/keepingitcandid. In the meantime, let’s connect. You can find me on Instagram and TikTok, just search @SimplySandraYvonne. And if you love this podcast, I’d be so honoured if you’d go ahead and hit that subscribe button and leave a review. Until next time. (Music fades out)

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About Sandra

Sandra Henderson is a photographer, systems strategist, and podcast host based in Ontario, Canada. She specializes in helping 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 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, all things Bravo, 90’s music, travelling, and spending time at home with her husband, stepson, and two cats!

Today I am joined by Candice Coppola, author, podcast host, business coach, and entrepreneur have to do business or happy hour alone. Call me biased, but I can confidently say that she is the best business coach out there. I’ve been working with her since 2021 and it’s easily one of the best decisions that I have ever made.

I absolutely adore this woman. I could sing her praises a million times over. I’m a little bit of a fangirl, but it’s okay.

As a successful entrepreneur who grew a business from the spare bedroom of her home into a multi country multi six. figure company. It’s safe to say that Candace has navigated the bumpy road of entrepreneurship.

She started her first company Jubilee Events during the great recession in 2008 with no experience and no contacts. She grew it into a recognizable brand and team over 12 years. She worked with clients from all around the world and produced events in excess of a million dollars. [00:01:00] She launched the Power In Purpose podcast in 2008, a show that explores how to build a profitable business with purpose and the stories behind the successful entrepreneurs who have Candace and her audience have meaningful conversations about business and life as they explore the strategies and techniques that build profitable businesses. Her podcast is rated five stars and sits on the Apple podcast charts as one of the top 100 podcasts in the entrepreneur category.

Her work and voice can be seen in many publications, but most recently, and most notably in her two books, The White Dress & Color Inspiration for the Modern Bride and The White Dress Destinations, The definitive guide to planning the new destination wedding. Candace joined me for an interview to talk all about email marketing and how wedding photographers can utilize it to generate sales in their businesses and take some of the pressure off themselves to always be showing up on social media. Everything that Candace has to teach is absolute gold and she has no bullshit approach just like me. So I know you’re going to love it.

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Transcript of my interview with Candice Coppola

[00:02:00] Sandra Henderson: (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 backend 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 too who’s 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 favourite notebook and pen and let’s dive into this week’s episode.

(Music Fades Out)

Well, thank you so much for joining me for an interview. I’m so excited for the shoe or like our roles to be reversed and to be on the other side of this. But anybody who has been following me online for any amount of time over the last couple of years knows all about you because I talk about you all the time and how much I love being a part of your mastermind.

But for any listeners who are maybe new around here, why don’t you take a quick second to introduce yourself and let everybody know what you’re all

[00:03:12] Candice Coppola: about. Well, Sandra, thank you for having me on your show. It’s a great honour to be here. I’m so flattered that you wanted to have this conversation and the feeling is mutual in terms of love and respect and admiration.

What you’re doing here is amazing. And I just think the world of you. So thank you so much for having me on this show. For those of you guys who don’t know me, I’m Candace Coppola. I’m a business coach for wedding pros, and I help you build a profitable business with purpose in a former life though. I was a wedding planner, so I understand all the weird things about the industry firsthand because I lived it myself growing a business over 12 years.

Uh, I help clients all over the world celebrate moments that matter in their lives. And in 2019 I [00:04:00] decided to sell my business and to go all in on helping wedding pros build their business. And that was like a long time coming. I had slowly started to not love my job as much as I used to when I started and in those growth years, my lifestyle had changed pretty dramatically, which definitely played a role.

And I just loved doing stuff like this, talking to Sandra, talking to you guys and just exchanging ideas and helping people build a business that really supports their life.

[00:04:32] Sandra Henderson: Well, I, for one, am very grateful that you’ve made that change because it brought us together. So sorry for everybody who’s missing out on you planning their weddings, but we love having you over here.

[00:04:43] Candice Coppola: And I’m happy to be here. Trust me.

[00:04:45] Sandra Henderson: So I wanted to connect for this interview to talk a little bit about email marketing. I would love to kick things off by just hearing your thoughts on why you think that email marketing is so overlooked in the wedding industry as a whole, especially for wedding photographers.

[00:05:01] Candice Coppola: You know, I think wedding pros are just getting by with the marketing that they can muster. You know, we’re really focused on Instagram. That’s kind of like our place where we focus and network. I like to call marketing for wedding pros this holy trinity of Instagram, networking and blogging/SEO.

I think those are the three things that work best for wedding pros, but I feel like email marketing is one of those things that wedding photographers might find to be scary. Maybe you tried it before and it didn’t work and I can understand why because it is something that you have to be very strategic about and you can’t just, you know, throw something on your website, ask people to sign up for your newsletter and then expect to be Making thousands of dollars from your email list. It requires that you understand how email marketing works, but once you get the gist of it, then you can see the opportunities and the possibilities. But it needs to be better described for wedding pros because my email marketing is a lot different than what a wedding photographer would do, right?

Email marketing is like the backbone of my business, to be honest. Email marketing is one of the oldest forms of marketing. Before there was email marketing, there was direct mail marketing, which everybody remembers getting catalogues in the mail as a kid, you know, and like just getting direct mail, which still happens.

I don’t get a lot of it, but I know a lot of people’s mailboxes are full of bullshit. Well, email marketing is the new generation of direct mail marketing. It’s one of the oldest forms of marketing and it works for a wedding photographer. You need to think about it differently than what I would do as a coach and maybe what a store would do that’s selling products or something like that.

[00:06:51] Sandra Henderson: Yeah, I totally agree. And it’s so true. That was kind of like the, the key that flipped everything for me was just kind of thinking about how it’s different than the average businesses, email marketing. And something triggered my thought process to go this way. But my husband actually the other day was like, could you please stop spamming our family email address with all of your email marketing?

And I was like, no, how am I supposed to test it out? I need it.

[00:07:16] Candice Coppola: And also PS, you should be encouraging me to send it so that you can see what I’m doing.

[00:07:23] Sandra Henderson: I’m going to bring that back to him. It’s his birthday, so I’ll wait until. tomorrow.

[00:07:26] Candice Coppola: That sounds like, that sounds like a fair thing.

[00:07:28] Sandra Henderson: He gets a day off from me giving him a hard time.

So why do you think that email marketing is so important when it comes to making sure that your business is sustainable long term? Like I know a lot of people start to feel so burnt out when it comes to social media, and especially Instagram. I feel like I’m saying this all the time more and more as the years go on. But it’s never been harder for businesses to get their info out there on Instagram.

[00:07:54] Candice Coppola: Yeah, it’s true. Instagram has become more difficult to stand out because everything kind of looks the same over there. And Instagram has moved in the direction of serving creators. And let’s be honest, we didn’t open our businesses to become creators.

It’s sort of a byproduct of having a business these days; you need to create content, but what you really want to do is photograph weddings. You want that connection with your client. That’s where you want to spend your time. And so Instagram has evolved into this almost unsustainable channel for marketing. We have to be there. It’s sort of a necessary evil. And I think that if you can diversify your marketing channels and really make that top of funnel broader where you’re bringing people in…

So think of your marketing – and just for somebody who’s like, what the heck is she talking about? I want you to think of business sales like a funnel and you have your top of the funnel and that’s what’s feeding in all of these potential leads.

And for most photographers, the top of their funnel is going to be word of mouth. Okay. So you’ve got that networking vibe, you’ve got Instagram and then hopefully you’re blogging. If you’re not blogging and doing SEO, that’s a separate conversation that I’m sure Sandra will have with you, but those are the top of your funnel.

We’re looking for interesting ways to add to that, that don’t take too much of your time or don’t require you to be front and center like Instagram does daily, multiple times a day. So email marketing is great for wedding pros in the sense that it’s something that you can, you can kind of set and forget. You can’t set and forget anything. You have to pay attention to all areas of your business, but you don’t have to pay attention to it. Even closely though, even what you do with blogging, you don’t have to pay attention to email marketing the same way you could essentially set up a funnel, an email funnel that you create and that automatically.

It helps to bring in leads, helps to nurture those leads to help them go through that know, like, and trust and that leads to bookings. But you can also use it for the very same purpose on your existing clients. Here’s it’s something that wedding photographers really mess up – product sales. You guys, like I’ve coached so many of you and we go through your pricing and we go through your revenue streams and I’m like, okay, so how much are you making on products? And everybody’s like, Oh, I don’t make anything.

[00:10:27] Sandra Henderson: I remember when I was first starting my business, word for word, I was like, I literally don’t care where people print their photos. I’m just giving them their digitals and be on their way. And Oh, do I regret saying that.

[00:10:42] Candice Coppola: it’s a missed opportunity, right? It is one of the fundamentals of sales, is it’s easier to sell to an existing customer than it is to acquire a new one.

And so if you take anything out of our interview today, out of our conversation, aside from email marketing, I want you to really get serious about how you can increase the value of every customer you already have. And you might be doing this by having shoots beyond weddings after the wedding. So offering yourself up for family or portrait sessions, things like that.

That’s great. But product is something that a lot of photographers fall short on, and you can easily sell products and even add-ons to your services using email marketing in an automated way. So email marketing adds a layer of sustainability to your photography business marketing and when used well and when used strategically can really help to increase your revenue.

[00:11:40] Sandra Henderson: Yeah, that’s so true. Now, what are some ways that you think that photographers can actually grow that list and gain inspiration for those top-of-funnel steps? One thing that I see a lot of photographers doing that are in my little network, is doing like tips for engagement sessions and things like that. So is that the right kind of like path that photographers should be thinking along?

[00:12:02] Candice Coppola: Right. This is a great question. And this is where I think email marketing gets, it’s a make-or-break situation because how you bring people on your list really matters. And we need to be very strategic about this. Think about it like this.

You have this funnel. You want people entering the top of your funnel at or around the point where they’re ready to buy and if they’re entering your funnel with, you know, 10 things to have on your wedding day to get ready or how to prep for your engagement session, they may be entering your funnel with a photographer already.

It’s guaranteed, right? Somebody is Googling engagement session ideas. They’re looking for ideas to use with their photographer who P. S. is not you. So, it’s kind of like you want to think strategically about getting somebody on your list at or around the point where they’re going to be ready to buy a certain product from you.

And for this instance, we’re going to talk weddings, but we can also think through a variety of other shoots that you may do during the week or to diversify your income. We also want the opt-in or the way that we’re bringing them into the funnel to be location-based. The locations in which you serve if you’re a destination wedding photographer, cool. There’s a lot you can work with on that. Speaking to the destinations that you are known for want to be known for, but if we just throw out an opt-in, like how to get ready for your engagement session and you’re based in Connecticut, anybody can download that across the world and then what you’re doing is you’re bringing in leads who are in your area.

It just doesn’t make sense to support them. Right? So when you’re thinking about your opt-in, I want you to think, okay, first, what are some topics that somebody might be searching for using Google that I can rank for? The questions that they have or things that they’re looking for that are around the time that they are going to buy from me.

And what do I want them to buy? Is it wedding photography or is it something else? And then how can I tie that to my location that acts as a filter and makes it very location-specific, which honestly is fantastic for people who are searching in that location. That information is like insider information based on where you’re located.

[00:14:20] Sandra Henderson: Oh, that’s such a good point about being insider information. Do you think that it matters if photographers create something that other photographers in their area have already done? That’s the one hindrance that I hear a lot of people say, ‘Well, I don’t have a unique idea and this person and this person have already done this.’ What are your thoughts on that?

[00:14:40] Candice Coppola: It is absolutely not a problem to create something that somebody else has already created because first of all, if you see a lot of people using a certain type of opt-in the likelihood that they’re using it is because it works. And so that’s validation. It shouldn’t be something that, you know, that you feel restricted by like, Oh, I can’t do that because she’s doing it.

See it as validation, but what you’re going to do is you’re going to put your brand on it, your approach on it, your thought process process on it. You know, maybe you see another photographer doing like the 10 best wedding locations in insert your area and you do the same. You may not mention the same locations.

I wouldn’t even download the opt-in. I would just be like, okay, I’m seeing that a few people are doing this. That must mean it works. Let me just take that concept and then do it with a fresh set of eyes and not see what anybody else is doing inside their offer. But no, that, that to me says, ‘Hey, this is viable. This means like, it’s been vetted.’

[00:15:38] Sandra Henderson: So when wedding photographers are creating these opt-ins and thinking about how they’re going to lead people through their funnels, what are some ways that they can make sure that that exchange is profitable for both sides, like both for the client and for them?

[00:15:52] Candice Coppola: I think one of the biggest hang-ups around email marketing is that we don’t want to bother people, right? This is what detracts people from getting into email marketing because, and even I, sometimes I’m like, ugh, hitting send on this. I’m like, I hope I’m not bothering anybody. This is kind of ridiculous because it takes this mindset shift to say, you know what? Maybe I’m helping someone. Maybe sending this email and whatever I’m saying in it or whatever I’m telling them in it or sharing or giving them information about is actually being of help and of service to them rather than being a nuisance.

So I think first before we go any further, you need to recognize that when people opt-in to hear from you when they download a freebie; when they say, ‘Hey, I’m actually searching for this information. I’m interested in it,’ that’s them telling you that they want to hear from you and they’re interested in this subject. So you have permission to speak to them.

There’s also an unsubscribe button. So at any time, people can tag out, they can be like, you know what? I don’t need this anymore. And then you don’t have to pay to have them on their list. So it’s a benefit for everybody. They can self-filter themselves.

When we think about email marketing though, I want you to think of it like this, and this is something that I heard somewhere, maybe in some Clubhouse room or maybe, I don’t know. I heard it somewhere, maybe on a podcast. It was from a copywriter and they were like, ‘Write emails that people want to read.’

And when you think about the best emails that have come across your inbox, they tend to do a bit of storytelling. They have humanity behind them, probably a bit of humour, the personality of the writer. It doesn’t feel formulaic. It doesn’t feel like, you know, some of those emails. I don’t need to describe them, but you know what I mean? Emails that just feel detached. And they’re speaking to the crowd as well. They’re like, Hey guys, or Hey everybody. But. The best emails are ones that tell stories, they show your personality, they’re relaxed, they’re not too professional or corporate in any way, and they speak to the one person reading.

[00:18:00] If you’re not on Sandra’s email list, you should be because she writes great emails. And I’m not just saying that. Sandra understands how to write and she also understands how to write an email that people want to read. They’re engaging with their storytelling. They offer support and knowledge. There’s a point to it. You kind of get lost in the story she’s telling. It makes sense to what she’s sharing with you. And it’s just a pleasure to read. If you want your email marketing to be successful, you need to do it with strategy. And I want you to feel comfortable writing. In a tone and in a way that connects people to you.

[00:18:41] Sandra Henderson: I think that’s so, so important. And thank you for those kind words about my email marketing. It’s one of my favourite things to do now that I’ve kind of learned some of the things that you’ve been talking about in this episode. And the one person that I was thinking of that I know you love getting these emails to is Jen from Tonic Site Shop. That’s another email list, if you guys aren’t on it, you definitely want to go and sign up because even just her subject lines are so funny. They’re a major inspiration for me, for sure. Now, we’ve talked a lot about opting in and things that people can do to get people to opt in comes next. What are some things that wedding photographers should be keeping in mind in those other steps of the funnel?

[00:19:25] Candice Coppola: Right. So I also want to say, do not put up a form on your website and say, subscribe to my newsletter. Nobody wants to subscribe to you. Literally nobody, unless your newsletter is about gossip or something juicy, you know, nobody’s interested in your newsletter.

And also you’re never going to send the fucking newsletter. People are going to be opting in for this newsletter that never gets sent. I’ve been there too. And I’ve also been on the other end of opting in for something from somebody and never hearing from them, and then suddenly they email me a year later and I’m like, who is this?!

[00:20:03] Sandra Henderson: Right?! Oh, that happens to me all the time. I’m like, why are you in my inbox? I don’t even know your name and unsubscribe.

[00:20:09] Candice Coppola: I know. I know. So when somebody opts in to hear from you, what I want you to do is think, how can that opt-in be connected to a product or service that I offer?

So let’s just take the 10 best wedding venues to get married in Connecticut as an opt-in, right? The person is looking for a wedding venue, which means they definitely haven’t hired a photographer yet. So they’re like in the right moment to know about your services.

They download this guide and you’re sharing with them your favourite venues from a photography perspective. Why they’re so great, images of your work that are throughout this guide are fantastic. You deliver it to them and then through a series of automated emails over several days and even weeks, you’re going to email them related to the opt-in and then related to your services. So you’re going to think first, okay, this person downloads this opt-in. Maybe I check in with them three or four days later and ask them if they had a chance to review it, or if they have any questions about the venues that are in the guide, and just be of service, right?

So you’re going to serve them. And then a few days later, you might be like, Hey, I have some cool blog posts that I want to send this person in case they want to kind of check out some other options. Maybe let me serve them again in another email, direct them to some of my work and maybe say like, Hey, you should really check out Candice and Jason’s wedding at this venue.

Or, check out my work there, just check out how they designed it. Blah, blah, blah. So you’re serving, you’re serving, and then the next email you send, you might say, Hey, why don’t you schedule a consultation with me? We can talk more about my photography services, and I can maybe answer some of your questions about the venues you’re looking at.

So do you see how we are serving them information? We’re guiding them. We’re guiding them to more resources. Maybe we’re even answering some frequently asked questions that your couples have before they book a venue or before they find a photographer. We’re trying to raise brand awareness. We’re trying to kind of leave an imprint on them, and we’re trying to help them get to that date so then they can get to us and book our services. So we talk, I talk about this model of serve, serve, sell. And so in your emails, just think about how can I serve, serve and then sell. How can I serve, serve and then sell? How can I offer support and value and feel really good about doing that?

But then also give them an option of something that may help them it. Get to where they want to go faster, right? Which is booking a photographer, and maybe shouting out some of your favourite planners that can help. Like all of that is just goodness for the client. So to me, that is what email marketing is not sitting down on every Tuesday and having to think about like, what the fuck am I going to send these people-

[00:22:56] Sandra Henderson: – talking about the weather at the beginning of the email, which is what my go-to was.

[00:23:02] Candice Coppola: hope you’re doing well. You know, these automated emails, everybody who downloads it goes through the funnel and then you can start to get feedback from people and you can maybe even get on a call or two with people and you can feel out some things and then add to your nurture sequence. And that’s what this is called. It’s called a nurture sequence.

Now in your nurture sequence, you should definitely introduce yourself. You should share more about yourself and invite them to come follow you on Instagram or wherever it is that you would like to draw their attention to. Instagram is probably going to be one of those places.

And don’t be afraid to share with them about you. Why you do what you do, your photography style, and then information on how they can book a consultation with you. Information on how they can connect with you multiple times throughout your nurture sequence. And you can have many nurture sequences, so you can have different nurture sequences for different opt-ins.

And that kind of makes sense because if somebody is opting in for the 10 best venues in Connecticut and another person’s opting in for a checklist for hiring your Connecticut wedding photographer, they’re in two different stages. So it makes sense to have two different nurture sequences that speak to the problem they’re experiencing that led them to your opt-in.

[00:24:24] Sandra Henderson: Yeah, that is such a good point. And I love what you were saying about serve, serve and sell. That was really the key thing that flipped my approach to email marketing and helped it feel a lot more authentic was just removing that. And I think that whether you’re in the education space or in the wedding industry, in the photography space, there are ways that you can help your clients out or help potential clients out without just constantly selling to them over and over again.

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Sandra Henderson: Friends, I am interrupting this interview because I am so excited to tell you that I just launched a brand new quiz called Let’s Talk About It, What Your Taco Preferences Reveal About Your Wedding Photography Business.

When I was growing up, I loved nothing more than taking quizzes in the back of teen magazines. If any of you listening were born in the 90s, you know exactly what I’m talking about. They were in the back of teen magazines, they were in the back of Cosmo magazines. And now if I’m being totally honest at 36 years old. When I see a quiz pop up on my Buzzfeed, there is no better way to waste a few minutes of my day than to take that quiz. I just love them.

So if you are like me and you love taking quizzes or you’re just interested in finding out what your taco preferences reveal about your wedding photography business and what the hell the two of them have anything to do with each other at all, I want you to head over to my website, simplysandrayvonne.ca/quiz and you can find out, and then don’t forget to pop over to my Instagram – @SimplySandraYvonne – and let me know what your results

[00:26:01] Candice Coppola: Yeah. I mean, listen, it’s about the human connection, the experience, so make it authentic to you. But what I want you to know is there’s nothing wrong with asking for a sale and you have to recognize that you’re in business to solve problems for people. It’s why you opened your business with folks who are getting married and who want a photographer. That’s a problem that you solve. And maybe you even have more of a niche. So maybe you serve the LGBTQIA+ Community. And that’s you so you are friendly to that community. Or maybe you understand a certain culture or background for certain types of clients, and so you serve them at understanding that nuance. Either way, you’re in business to solve your customers’ problems. People are coming to you with this problem and you’re in business to solve it. Don’t feel bad about saying, ‘Hey, I can solve this problem for you. It’s why I opened up my business.’

I feel like we have to be more comfortable and confident in our sales. You know, we need to feel more empowered that we’re here to help people. And we do that by having a transaction, which is when money gets deposited in your account and then you help the people, right? But you can also help people by just being supportive in your email nurture sequence. You write it, you might test it and pay attention to it, and then you can kind of forget it.

Another thing that I want you to think about too, and this goes back to the product sales. You can create nurture sequences that trigger for your clients at certain stages of their wedding planning or post-wedding where you are gently trying to get them to purchase albums and prints and other things that you might sell.

And they might even bring awareness to the fact that maybe you only shoot things outside of weddings for your past wedding clients So if they buy a new home or they maybe they decide to start a family; those are things that you can come in and photograph for them. But this nurture sequence raises that awareness

The problem is, we’re all so busy and this is what I hear from photographers all the time. I’m too busy to worry about the products. I’m just trying to edit and get things out in a timely fashion. Well set up an automated email sequence at certain stages of the client journey that helps them buy additional hours for their wedding. Add an album on before the wedding, give them a print credit. I don’t know. There are so many fun things you can do that help to increase that value per customer with email marketing, too. And you don’t have to sit at your computer every Tuesday and type out some email. It’s already banked, it’s there, and you schedule when you want it to go out.

[00:28:47] Sandra Henderson: Yeah, that’s such a good point. And I think it’s important for photographers to remember, and this is something that I was so guilty of, is that you can’t just expect people to know. So if you’re offering other services outside of wedding photography that are exclusive just to your clients, or even if they’re not exclusive just to your clients, you can’t assume that people are going to know. I get emails from past clients all the time asking me, do you do family photos or do you do maternity photos?

And like, even with me posting that and having done it the entire time I’ve been in business, they still don’t know. So there’s so much opportunity to just continue using your email in a way that can increase your revenue without you having to do all that extra work. I know I am all about more money.

[00:29:29] Candice Coppola: Yeah, and sustainability, right? So I mean, that’s something that I know is really important to you, Sandra, for a variety of personal reasons and also professional reasons, you know, we need to be looking at how we can safeguard our business for life circumstances that may arise that are outside of our control.

And when it comes to marketing, if for some reason you couldn’t get on Instagram or you couldn’t blog; if you couldn’t continue doing the same thing you’re doing right now, wouldn’t you like to know that there’s something working for you behind the scenes to help your funnels still gather leads? I think that’s really important to consider when we think about sustainability for our business and what life has in store for us, you know, because it’s, there are some years where things are really rocking and rolling and things are great and we’re able to keep all of our commitments and we feel good about the work we’re doing.

And then something happens in life. You no longer are able to keep that frequency, but with something like email marketing, SEO, and blogging, those things live on despite you not tending to them like you would have to with Instagram.

[00:30:39] Sandra Henderson: And I think everybody, regardless of what your life was like in 2019, like we’ve all learned that lesson in 2020 and 2021, like having those backup plans for when we just physically and mentally don’t have the capacity to be posting on Instagram and things like that. Those are key for sustaining your business through those rocky times. So I’m so glad that you brought that up.

Do you have any final takeaways that you would love to share or that you hope that like, if there’s one thing that you take from this episode, this is what I hope you walk away with?

[00:31:14] Candice Coppola: Oh, wow. I hope you walk away with a few things. Don’t be scared to sell. I want you to know that the easiest way to make more money is to sell to the people who already have bought from you.

And I also hope that you consider email marketing and you consider it doing it strategically. And trying to come up with an opt-in or more than one that helps to bring the right customers to you. The opt-in needs to be something that people are searching for or a problem they have, a question they have that you can then answer.

And then all you need to do is create a nurture sequence that shares with them more resources and more support, answers more of their questions and leads them to book a consultation with you or leads them to learn more about your brand. So when they’re ready to buy, you’re one of the people on their list.

[00:32:03] Sandra Henderson: One thing that I have loved since I implemented an opt-in funnel sequence for my business is the amount of people that actually reply to these emails. So I wrote these emails, I think the end of 2020 or spring 2021.

Basically, whenever you released The Client Cocktail, a little slight plug guys, if you have not checked out Candice’s Client Cocktail, and you want to get into opt-ins, a hundred percent go and check that out because it was such a game changer for me. But when people are going through that sequence, I actually get emails from them as they’re going through it, where they’re emailing me and thanking me for answering questions that they had not even asked me yet, or telling me how helpful the information was and they’re excited to book a consultation. So that’s been a really interesting after effect that I’ve noticed from implementing my business.

[00:32:54] Candice Coppola: And I love a good chance for conversation. I get so many people responding to my origin story email. It feels weird saying origin story. But you guys know what I mean? That’s like a business term of this how I started my business, being on the couch with appendicitis. It’s a very relatable story, you know?

And people respond to that all the time; telling me their story of why they might be getting into wedding planning or wedding photography. Like what was the catalyst? It’s so great to read those stories and you actually glean a lot of information and insights that you can leverage in your marketing and in understanding your ideal client sort of frame of mind.

So here’s a bonus thing to think about. I’m actually speaking about this at the Book More Weddings Summit coming up probably after this airs. But anyway, maybe I’ll make this presentation available in some form or fashion, but It’s data mining. It’s looking at information and allowing that information to help you make better decisions in your business.

And those emails that you get back with people responding, saying, ‘Thank you so much for answering this question. Here are some other questions I have,’ that gives you information that you can then use to sell, to serve, to post on Instagram for the next email you write. We don’t just take it at face value. Take it as information that you can use to get inside your client’s head to better understand what they’re thinking and the challenges they’re facing.

Boy, wouldn’t we love to know more about why it’s been so quiet this year directly from the source, not from gurus? You know, I see people talking about the wedding gap and all this stuff. And like, okay, but you’re not economists. Like, you don’t really know what’s going on here. I don’t know what’s going on. I just know a lot of people aren’t getting married right now. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could talk to some people and really understand why. We have our theories, but we don’t know. When people respond to your emails, you’re getting in their head and you’re starting to kind of unravel things that maybe you hadn’t considered.

So when people respond to your emails and really with any interaction you have with an ideal client, see it, not just at face value, but also ask yourself, what are they trying to tell me in their questions? What are they trying to tell me about the conversation that we’re having? But that’s a whole other podcast episode.

[00:35:22] Sandra Henderson: Yeah, we could dive in forever, but that was so amazing. Thank you! I know that everybody listening is going to have some amazing takeaways. I do have one last question in store, something that I am doing for season two of the podcast, a little fun ‘Would you rather?’ question, and I’ve been especially excited for yours.

So if you were to go out for dinner with one TV star, would you go out with Jax from Vanderpump rules or The Situation from Jersey Shore?

[00:35:57] Candice Coppola: Why are you making this so hard?

[00:35:59] Sandra Henderson: Which train wreck would you rather go out for dinner?

[00:36:05] Candice Coppola: Well, first of all, listen, I’m leaning towards The Situation, ’cause The Situation loves foods, right? Right. You know that you are going to order the whole menu, right? But Jax, he’s like, an absolute prick and I would, I actually kind of like him in some weird ways.

Like I can actually relate to him on some stuff.

Sandra Henderson: Honestly, me too.

Candice Coppola: And I would want all the Vanderpump Rules tea. Like I would want the real lowdown tea.

[00:36:34] Sandra Henderson: Yeah, and you know he’s gonna spill it like without any hesitation.

[00:36:36] Candice Coppola: He is. I mean, what do I want more? Food or tea? I want tea. So I’d probably… Surprisingly, I would probably pick Jax from Vanderpump Rules.

[00:36:48] Sandra Henderson: I have to agree. I would go the same. No matter which you chose, like you’d be in for a good time, but with The Situation, it’s like the food and the life quotes, and then with Jax, it’s all the tea, but yeah, I got to go with the tea. I love some good tea.

[00:37:03] Candice Coppola: I don’t know if I need the T-shirt quotes, you know, like, I’m good on all of that, even though I love Mike The Situation, but I definitely think Jax. Like I don’t even need to eat, to be honest. Like we can have a couple of drinks. Like I don’t even need to eat. Skip over the food. Yeah.

[00:37:25] Sandra Henderson: Yeah

Candice Coppola: Oh my God. What a fun question. I love that.

Sandra Henderson: Well, thank you so much again for joining me. I absolutely loved this interview and I’m sure we will talk more soon.

[00:37:34] Candice Coppola: Well, thanks for having me.

[00:37:35] Sandra Henderson: I cannot believe that I had THE Candice Coppola on for an interview. I know I’ve known her for a few years. We’ve had the chance to work together, but she is still is just like on a pedestal for me. Candice, if you’re listening, I love you. Thank you for everything!!!

Okay. Okay. I will get back on track. I’ve been using email marketing in my business for as long as I can remember, but I really started to lean into it in the fall of last year, and when I did, I honestly was mind-blown. More than 80 percent of my bookings for my fall mini sessions, and 90 percent of my bookings for both my tree farm and holiday studio mini sessions, came through my email list.

I sent out four emails. The initial open for booking, Some encouragement on why family photos are important because I want to build a know, like, and trust relationship with them outside of just selling. I sent a reminder just over halfway through, and then one last email with a last chance to book. And from those four emails, I was able to generate $5000 in sales.

Social media just doesn’t have that kind of return on investment. And in this scenario, your investment is your time. The time you’re using to create and post online versus the time you’re using to write and send a few emails.

For all my chronic illness friends, this is the secret ingredient you need in your business this year. It’s so hard to show up on all the socials when you’re dealing with another flare and trying to juggle so many things that are so much more important. So now that we’re in off-season, it’s the perfect time to set aside a day or two and draft up some emails for 2024 and schedule them throughout the year.

I use Flodesk for this and I have ever since it launched. It’s the perfect platform to easily create aesthetically pleasing and on-brand emails that won’t land you in people’s spam folders. If you head over to simplysandrayvonne.ca/resources, you’ll find my Flodesk affiliate link there to save 50 percent on your first-year subscription!

Thank you so much for listening. You can find full show notes from today’s episode at simplysandryvonne.ca/keepingitcandid. In the meantime, let’s connect. You can find me on Instagram and TikTok, just search @SimplySandraYvonne. And if you love this podcast, I’d be so honoured if you’d go ahead and hit that subscribe button and leave a review. Until next time.

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About Candice

Candice Coppola is an author, podcast host, business coach and entrepreneur who believes that you shouldn’t have to do business (or happy hour!) alone.

As a successful entrepreneur who grew a business from the spare bedroom of her home into a multi-country, multi-six figure company – it’s safe to say she’s navigated the bumpy road of entrepreneurship.

She started her first company, Jubilee Events, during the great recession in 2008. With NO experience and NO contacts, she grew it into a recognizable brand and team. Over 12 years, she worked with clients from all over the world and produced events in excess of 1M.

She launched The Power in Purpose Podcast in 2018, a show that explores how to build a profitable business with purpose—and the stories behind successful entrepreneurs who have. Candice and her audience dig in and have meaningful conversations about business and life, as they explore the strategies and techniques that build profitable businesses. Her podcast, rated 5 stars, sits on the Apple Podcasts charts as one of the top 100 podcasts in the entrepreneur category.

Candice’s work and voice can be seen in many publications, but most recently and most notably in her two books The White Dress in Color: Inspirations for the Modern Bride, and The White Dress Destinations: The Definitive Guide to Planning the New Destination Wedding.

Her favorite color is pink, she’s obsessed with all things skincare + bravo TV, she’s always overdressed, and now lives in beautiful Barbados with her husband and two pups. Catch her on Instagram for business advice and tips–but stay for the island life and house plants.

Instagram | Website | Power In Purpose Podcast

Sandra Henderson (00:00.126)
AI blew up in 2023. And I think it’s pretty safe to say that it was the most talked about topic in the entire photography industry. I know there are a lot of people who love it, there are a lot of people who hate it, and I completely understand and respect everybody’s opinions, and everybody’s hesitations, but personally, I am embracing the shit out of it because it truly makes my life so much easier.

My friends Cameron and Tia feel the exact same way, so I wanted to have them on the podcast to talk all about different ways that you can use AI for things like content creation, editing, how it can improve your client experience, where to start, and so much more. If you’ve never heard of Cameron and Tia before, they are wedding photographers and photography business coaches based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. They met in second grade at Jonathan Elementary School, and 16 years later, Cameron proposed to Tia at the same elementary school.

Can we please pause for a second and talk about how freaking cute that is? That is the most adorable story. Cameron is an ex-attorney and Tia is a past dance teacher who transformed their passions into a career that allows them to have a life together filled with independence and tons of travel. Now they teach others to create the same flexibility and freedom in their own businesses. This was such a fun interview and Tia’s energy is contagious. I know you’re going to love it.

So sit back and enjoy after the intro.

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Transcript of my interview with Cameron & Tia

(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 backend 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 too who’s 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 favourite notebook and pen and let’s dive into this week’s episode.

02:15 Introduction of Cameron and Tia

Sandra Henderson (02:15.702)
Before I dive in, Cameron and Tia, I would love it if you guys would quickly just introduce yourselves and let everybody know a little bit about what you’re all about.

Tia
Yay. Yes, Sandra. We are so excited to be here. It has been long overdue. We are pumped. It’s going to be so freaking fun. So to introduce ourselves, it’s complicated because we’re husband and wife, so our story actually starts in the personal realm, but it’s very intertwined throughout there. So Cam and I actually met in second grade. We went to school all growing up together. It’s insanity.

We started dating at the end of our senior year of high school. So we’re barely high school sweethearts, but we rep it. We make it a freaking thing. You know the deal. And so post-college was when photography started coming into play. Cam had been photographing here and there, high school, college, but like elective kind of vibes. And all of a sudden I was like, what if you made this a business? How freaking fun would it be to make like a logo or like an email address? We had no clue. We thought that would be the highlight of our existence.

But we really did not make it side-hustling. We were photographing high school seniors for almost three years, so part-time. We do not even call it a side hustle. It was like we would photograph a senior and it would fund our date night afterwards. That was the vibes until we got married. We got into the wedding industry and we’re like, wait, this is freaking fun. Why have we literally not been considering this?

And it was just because we were doing our own careers. Cam was actually in law school at the time. He was going to become an attorney and I was a dance teacher, a dance coach. And we were just on our own pathways until we were like, hey, let’s try to book like three to five weddings for the following year. Let’s see what’s up. We quickly found out we are not “dip our toes in the water” kind of people. We are like “dive head freaking first.” And so we ended up booking 18 weddings. It just kind of snowballed. That was literally Cam’s first year as an attorney. So it was like burning the candle on both ends.

And we really quickly figured out that, hey, we do not get time together. We were working two different careers where Cam had something very standard, typical work hours, nine to five, but it was also like first-year attorney. So like, let’s get after it. And if you’re not getting after it, you’re not going to do well. Whereas I worked with a school schedule. And so I was starting 2pm and I worked till 10.30 and we did not see each other as this first year married when we were building our lives.

And I think we didn’t know it then, but photography became something where it wasn’t out for us. It wasn’t out of careers where we didn’t get to spend time together and it became something where it was full of freedom and flexibility. And so that’s why we latched onto it. We dove headfirst and we haven’t looked back. So we’ve been working from home together since 2017. We’ve both been full-time since then and it’s so fun doing it together.

Sandra Henderson
That is so amazing. I am a dive headfirst in the water kind of person too. I mean, unless we’re talking about actual water, I don’t like anything cold. And so like to get into actual, I am a very slow and steady kind of person. But for everything else in life, I like to dive in head first. But I always love hearing stories about couples who work together because my husband and I, we’re on the same page that we were never going to work together like to keep our marriage healthy and keep us sane. We’re never going to work together. And we both are in agreement on that.

Tia
So it’s always so interesting to me to hear just like how other people have come together and made it work. And in full transparency, day to day, like working from home, Cam and I do not work together. We are fully CEOs of our own things and all the divisions within the business and we really only go to each other when there are like anomalies in the protocol of like, oh, what would we do for this? Or how do we want to restructure this? Then we’re working together. Obviously, we’re in shoots together. But the rest of the time I’m like, no, no. We could not be sane if we were constantly…

Well, actually… In 2017, I tried to get us a long desk where we sat right next to each other. It didn’t go well. It’s not my long desk. Now it’s just Cam’s long desk.

That’s so funny. But yeah, it doesn’t matter how much you love a person. Every second of every day together is too much. You need some time. So I totally relate to that. I thought about getting a long desk once to like, my husband’s like, maybe I can help you out. Or like every now and then he talks about getting involved with video. I’m like, go for it. I want nothing to do with that. I have no issues admitting that videography is way harder and I want no part of it.

And so, yeah, there’s been times that I’m like, we could just work side by side. And then I’m like, no, that’s not a good idea. The dream is okay, but then the reality sinks in. I’m like, no, that would make for some really uncomfortable work days.

Tia
Yes. I was like, oh, we’re going to sit next to each other and chat. And then I’d want to dance and sing along to the music. And Cam would be like, I cannot focus. I cannot get a single thing done.

Sandra Henderson
That’s so funny. My husband is just like you, Tia. He would be singing and like doing all the things. And I just feel like, can you stop while I try to work, please?

Tia
Yes, and you need that balance.

Sandra Henderson
Yeah, exactly. There’s times that I’m trying to like get one last email done and I just kind of like side-eye him if I’m trying to do it from the couch. And I’m like, I love you, but how do I politely tell you I need you to go away just for 10 minutes and then you can come back but like while you’re here, I’m never gonna get this email done.

Tia
Oh, hilarious.

07:42 The Excitement and Hesitations of AI

Sandra Henderson
Oh, it’s so funny. Well, today we are talking all about AI, which I am so excited about. I think it’s been like the number one talked about topic in the photography industry this year. And so I am excited to hear what your take on it is, and how do you feel about it, about this new wave of AI coming into the industry?

Tia
Freaking exciting. I think we’re at a really cool point because, so listeners, if you’re listening to this later at the time of recording, we’re in the fall. And I think we’ve hit this wave where in the spring, so many people were chatting about AI and it was like, if you’re not talking about it, I don’t know what you’re talking about. And now there was like a lag of like a lot of people going through a busy season and maybe just like resting on their laurels. Is that what the phrase is?

I tried to pull that out and I was like, I’ve never said that in my life. But just like their standard workflows that they’ve been using for years upon years and maybe AI fell by the wayside or maybe they couldn’t quite figure out how it worked into the workflows. And so we’re going to be able to chat about that today as people start heading into maybe an off-season for them, a lot of people seasonally and how that could kind of look. And so, so excited. I will say in retrospect, I was the person who was very not into AI. I was just… Okay, pretty close. Spill the tea cam. What was the vibe?

Cameron
Yeah. I mean, so our personalities in this respect are very different. I am very techy, very much wanting to be on the leading edge and test out new products and new software and all this stuff. Tia very much is not. When obviously this huge wave is coming and Tia’s like, I don’t think AI is something we should be using or I don’t know. I was like, why? Yeah, it’s too much work to do something like Tia. In our daily life, you use AI all the time. You just don’t realize it or you’ve come to accept it and the role it’s playing in your life.

You like that in our car, every time we navigate somewhere, you’re using AI to help do that. Our car itself has some AI driving features. It will self-drive.

Tia
Cam and I literally have a Tesla that self-drives and I self-drive 90% of the time.

Cameron
We have tools in our house that will automatically close the lights at certain times or when certain things like these different automations, various AI tools. Like, I love that all of our shades are automated to automatically close a half hour after sunset. Like, it’s a vibe and like the laziness in me is living for that. And every time you’re asking Siri to do something for you, you’re using AI. So just like all these things in your daily life, over and over again, you’re using AI to help improve your life, make it a little easier, make it a little better. This is a bigger scale, granted, but it is the same.

Tia
So any listeners that are sitting on the fence feeling like, I’m still not sure, or I don’t even know how this actually integrates into my business with my clients. That was me. That was 100% me. And now you’ll hear me throughout this. Like, I am the number one cheerleader of AI tools. I am a proponent. Like, let’s freaking go. So anyone who’s feeling like that, let’s get you off that fence.

Sandra Henderson
Yes, I love that. I was so excited about getting involved in AI in my own business. But I’m kind of like a combination of the two of you where I like I was super excited for that tech side of things because I hate culling, I hate editing. So I was like – anything that’s gonna take this off my plate, I’m so here for it! I hate saying anti-mirrorless camera, but I was just like, if it’s not broken don’t fix it. I can use my camera perfectly. Well, why am I gonna run out and buy a new mirrorless camera? Just because it’s the newest tech on the market.

And then last year, a local camera store had an unbelievable deal where I could trade in equipment and then get an extra 30% on top of that if I spent in-store. So I got like a whole mirrorless kit for like $1,300 Canadian, which would be under $1,000 American. It was just unreal. And now I use my mirrorless and I just even yesterday I was editing photos and I was like, what was I thinking? Why did I not do this sooner? And like, I’m totally the person who doesn’t think the camera makes the photographer. But photographers who’ve been in this a while, you know, like, sometimes that one little change in your gear can be the missing piece of the puzzle. And so that was totally what happened when I switched over to mirrorless and leaning into AI this year to get all the rest of the work done has really just been like the icing on the cake for sure.

Tia
Yeah, Sandra. Okay, the mirrorless is a really good example because when we first got mirrorless and started using eye tracking, I felt, and I think this is going to lead into our conversation later, I felt like it was kind of cheating. I was like, this is so easy. Like I’m not refocusing. I’m not recomposing. Like, wow, this is just like, I’m cheating. I’m chilling. But you know what it allowed? So much more time for everything else on a shoot.

So much more time to actually have composition nailed, have picking out locations, posing, all of our attention to clients. It allows so much more capacity for that because of something, a little tiny part of the puzzle that became so much easier. And so I think AI and a lot of tools that we’ll talk about today, they don’t need to be revolutionary. They don’t need to take a huge part of the weight off of you, but I think some will.

But some of these little ones can take little pieces of the puzzle out of there so that you have more time and energy to allocate to everything else that is in your wheelhouse.

Sandra Henderson
Yeah, absolutely. I think what you just said is the biggest takeaway that I hope people get in terms of overcoming any hesitations they have about giving up control when it comes to using AI is that AI is just another tool in our toolkit. It’s just like Photoshop, just like our flashes. It’s not meant to just completely take over for you. And I know a lot of people that I’ve talked to have had that hesitation. So I’m so glad that you brought that up.

Tia
Losing the personal touch element to it, losing the, hey, how is this going to be customized for my clients? And if I don’t have this hand in it or if I don’t have this personalization to it, is it going to feel like something that they don’t necessarily want? But two concerns that are two like arguments to that. I think number one, I was really resistant to using a scheduling tool for a long time, especially for our client-facing things. This business-to-business like scheduling for a podcast interview, I was like, oh, 100% because I know that client or whoever I’m interacting with is used to that. But I was really resistant for our engagement sessions using a scheduling tool.

And that was so counterproductive because I was just thinking, oh, they need this personalization. What if they really need a Sunday? And I know we have limits on our Sundays and we don’t want to shoot on Sundays, but what if they really need it? Then somehow we switched over to a scheduling tool and never scheduled a Sunday ever again. And it’s because I was making assumptions about what clients wanted.

And clients are really living in an Amazon era. They’re living in this era where people know that they need answers and they want answers immediately and they want to be able to book things immediately. They want to be able to buy things immediately. And I was making these assumptions for them just, I don’t know, resting on my laurels of what I thought they wanted. And so I think that it’s really important that we really assess, is this just something that I’m used to and that I want to make assumptions about them? Versus what do they really need, what do they really want? And then there’s also what’s gonna save me time.

Cameron
Yeah, I also think there’s a mindset shift that needs to happen with AI tools in accepting that these are tools to help you rather than like people replacements. I mean, I think so often, especially early on, it became, okay, well, this is going to entirely replace human editors or it’s gonna entirely replace human copywriters. But if we step back and treat this as a tool that can help us get more done or help us focus on other things on our shoots or focus on other things while we’re driving, let’s say. Like all these little things, AI is a tool to help you refocus or put your focus somewhere else that you would rather have or that is more money-making for you, to be honest.

Sandra Henderson
Such a great point. So what are some of your favorite AI tools that you’ve been using throughout this last year?

10:31 Favorite AI Tools for Content Creation with Cameron and Tia

Tia
So here’s where I fear that we’re going to get deep and we’re going to get meaty in here. And I don’t want to… because I want to give listeners not just the tools, I want to give them a little bit about what you can do with them because otherwise, the reality is no one’s going to spend time investigating them, doing trials, anything like that. So please interrupt, Sandra, at any point because we want to hear your experience too, especially you already mentioned some culling, some editing. We want to chat through things like that.

And I want people to be able to leave here thinking, “oh, hey, this tool could be a good fit for XYZ in my business, so I actually want to explore it.” So I think there’s three big categories that Cam and I categorize AI tools in. Content creation, photo video, and then home, like Cam already mentioned a little bit. So content creation, let’s start there.

Chat GPT. I think everybody knows it now. We don’t need to run down what are the basics of it, but let’s talk a little bit about what you can use it for. Email subjects, email copy, putting together… literally when you’re like, hey, I’m in my off season. I actually don’t have a workflow. I don’t have a whole bunch of email templates for this new type of session that needs something. Start at ChatGPT. Start with your first draft and then probe it and probe it and prod it so that you can get a third draft and a fourth draft that really is speaking in your voice, that really has a tone so that you are getting something meaty there with ChatGPT.

So I think that’s a basic one that I just wanted to highlight. If people are not using it yet, get in there, and start exploring. I know it’s hard and it feels like, “oh, this is something extra that I need to explore.” But off-season, oh, what a time for it. What a time to just spend some time here and there. Hey, let me try it for writing my blog post. Hey, let me try it for writing my meta descriptions. These little minute tasks might not take a lot of time, but compound, right?

If you’re doing a blog post for every single family session or every single wedding recap, writing a meta description in ChatGPT where I literally don’t need to tweak the meta description, I can tell it what my keyword is, I can tell it how many characters it needs… Boom, it’s done. That time is going to compound and that time could be spent, for me reading a spicy novel, for Cam watching Netflix, like whatever that is, spending time with your spouse, spending time with your children. That can be really important in the end game. So content creation, that’s a big one.

17:53 Favorite AI Tools for Photo and Video Editing

Tia
Let’s get deep into photo video since a lot of your audience are photographers.

Cameron
Let’s get into it.

Tia
So let’s talk editing, let’s talk culling. Cam and I use AfterShoot. What are you using, Sandra?

Sandra Henderson
I’m using Imagen.AI right now. I did play around with AfterShoot and I loved it. I had no complaints, but there was just, at the time there were features that Imagen.AI had that AfterShoot didn’t. And I know, I keep tabs on both of them and they are pretty neck and neck in terms of what they offer, but it was just kind of, I was saying earlier, talking about mirrorless cameras, it’s kind of like, it’s not broken, so I’m not going to fix it. I absolutely love Imagen.AI, but I’ve heard incredible things about the changes that Aftershoot has been making too.

Tia
Totally, which is so valid. And I think it is shocking the amount of time that you save. You can speak a little to this too, Sandra. What do you think, Cam? How has it been this busy season?

Cameron
Hours and hours of editing work. So specifically to Aftershoot versus Imagen.AI, we’re using both. We’re training both because obviously, we want to keep up with this and like make sure that we’re on the right track, but at the same time for us specifically, we love to do same-day slideshows at weddings and a lot of times we’re at venues that either don’t have wifi, that hasn’t given us access to their wifi, but we don’t want to try to use our hotspot randomly because we don’t have cell service either. Like all these random things, Aftershoot works offline. And so that’s a big reason that we absolutely love it. And we push it hard.

But as far as time-saving, it’s incredible. I mean, it’s like all these topics or this conversation we are just having about saving time and energy. It’s definitely not perfect. Like every single time we edit a gallery, there are photos that are just wrong that I wouldn’t want to deliver as is, but it is saving me 80, 90% of my work. It’s putting me at this amazing starting point that I’m just going through and individually tweaking photos and that’s it, and then it’s ready to send.

Tia
And I think a testament of growth from the time saving that we’ve seen with editing, culling tools is that Cam and I had put off having… So Cam and I primarily photograph weddings and we had put off having an associate team for years upon years for myriad of reasons. Myriad of reasons. Sandra, I’m like pulling out crazy words, things I have never said in my life. I love it. I love it. I’m saying. Whole bunch of reasons. One of them being is that editing isn’t necessarily something that we’re passionate about. Cam does all of our editing and that isn’t something that he’s like, oh, I’m so pumped about so let me take on a lot more work with an associate team where I can just edit and crank out those edits. Aftershoot has made that possible for us.

And so this past year, we started booking up with a team. We started booking next year with a team and our income, it is crazy the difference. People talk about teams all the time and how that looks and we’re still in the baby stages of it, seeing how it’s going to look and how it’s going to flesh out for us.

But because of the time-saving power of AI tools with editing, is a big reason why that made it possible for us to now three times our income, just not doing anything extra, anything extra with our time. So kind of crazy. Are you doing culling in an AI tool as well right now?

Sandra Henderson
Yeah, so Imagen.AI has had a beta of their culling, which has been great. That’s actually what kind of started me in the whole world of AI for photo and video was I was an Aftershoot user for culling for absolutely ever like, I think within the first year of it launching, and just it’s unreal the amount of time it can save. One thing that you guys have mentioned, and I think is really important for listeners to remember about AI is a lot of it does take some drafts like you mentioned with ChatGPT, you go in and like make some tweaks and make sure that tone matches what you’re looking for. And these AI programs like Aftershoot, Imagen.AI, they have a learning process with them as well.

And I know that’s another hurdle that I’ve spoken to some photographers about where they were like, it’s just adding more work onto my plate, which, it can happen, but thankfully I know Imagen.AI and I think AfterShoot have added the ability to tweak your profiles. So I think that will help with that learning curve. But yeah, it’s important to remember that it’s a tool that has to learn your process. And so I’ve been using Imagen.AI long enough now that it’s had a chance to kind of like refresh my profile a few times. And like you were saying, Cam, it’s like it takes my photos to about 90 percent. I go through, I add in some masks if I need to do spot removal and things like that.

Sandra Henderson (22:09.49)
But I did like 35 photos in a mini session in half an hour this morning because all of the work was already done for me. Crazy.

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Tia
Yeah. So I think that the first draft, second draft, and third draft are really important. We need to have the mindset shift that not only are we going through how can we learn to use this tool better, but the tools are continually getting better. So getting in like Sandra, at the ground floor of like, hey, I’ve been this Aftershoot user. I am an OG. Like, let’s get after it. She’s seen it evolve, she’s learned how to utilize it as it evolves and gets to reap the benefits of it evolving.

Cameron
Yeah. And having the mindset of, yes, you do have to put in maybe a few hours of work to get these programs up and running, even a bit like what you want. And that is daunting, especially during busy season. The idea of like putting in another five hours of uploading all my past galleries to this to make sure that I can learn how I like to edit is very hard and daunting. But I have to say also that next wedding, instead of spending 8 to 12 hours editing the whole wedding, I’m spending two to three now. And every single wedding moving forward is going to be that same thing, which is incredible. We always like to say it’s like a step to the side. Don’t consider it a step backwards. It’s like a step to the side in your progress, but it’s going to catapult you forward 10 steps. You’re merging into the fast lane.

Tia
Yeah, it’s nuts. And so holler at that off-season again. What a perfect time to spend this time right now when you have a little bit more white space. If you can dig in and like, hey, I’m going to train my editing profile and let’s get after this. That is the perfect time.

Sandra Henderson
You guys already mentioned a little bit about how this has helped you kind of triple the income that you’re bringing in and start building out your associate team. What are some other ways that photographers can use AI to help them better, like grow their businesses, thrive in their businesses, and even better the impact that it’s having on their lives?

Tia
Yeah, 100%. Okay, the lives, all of these are going to circle back to the impact it can have on your lives. I mentioned spicy novels that I love to read.

Sandra Henderson (24:10.346)
Me too.

24:10 Using AI to Increase Productivity and Improve Client Experience with Cameron and Tia

Tia
How much more time (are you going to have)? So increase productivity. You’re going to be able to increase your productivity. We already heard Sandra and Cam talking about just editing. Let’s talk about, I love a tool called Descript.

Descript is what we use for kind of making any of our reels. We do weekly content that is YouTube, which is education for other photographers. So there’s a lot of behind-the-scenes. There’s a lot of business tips there for repurposing that content to reels, what I can do is pop it in a tool called Descript. And at the base level, Descript does an entire text transcript of whatever you’re talking about. It auto-populates that. And it is scary good. It is crazy. I’m going to be honest.

In the past, I saw people making videos like this and I thought that they were hand typing out their script. I was like, huh? How did they have time for that? I was so concerned. Descript automatically will do that entire text script. And then you can, if I was going to repurpose something, so maybe you have a behind-the-scenes video from your family session that you want to repurpose and you want to make it a reel and it was recorded landscape, you can take it into Descript. It can make it vertical for you and it can make that ratio and then it can do what’s called dynamic text. And so it will pop up the text on the screen following along.

So here’s the deal with that. I love to use it. We use it for all of our reels now, and anything that we’re repurposing. In the past, I would have tried to do anything like that, so let’s say I was trying to change the ratio just in Final Cut Pro, that takes time. Let’s say I was typing out the script. I did not make a script for this. That takes time. Let’s say I was making dynamic text popping up on the screen while I was saying these… Holy cow, the time there. So I think not only are these tools allowing you to do things that you might not have ever had the capacity to do, or it’s taking things off of your plate that are allowing you productivity in your zone of genius.

It’s getting the mundane, repeatable tasks off of your plate and it’s allowing you to just focus on the things that need your human touch or that need your specialty, your special sauce. It’s allowing you to get those out of there and then you to just focus on those. So increased productivity allows you to focus on your zone of genius. And I would argue 10 out of 10, it’s allowing for a better client experience.

I get it. I get the hesitation like we already talked about that you don’t have these tiny sentences of personalization that you might have elsewhere without an automation. But I think in this age of Amazon and this age of instant gratification, having a seamless client workflow, that is fast, that gives them immediate responses trumps everything.

And so all of those three categories then circle back to allowing you more time for life. It’s allowing you more time for your hobbies, more time with your significant others, more time with children, all of those things. And that is freeing. And that’s what we’re all chasing as entrepreneurs. We’re trying to take off all those mini hats and put a hat instead on ChatGPT and now allow me more time to read.

Cameron
Yeah, and in addition to that too, like for those of you who maybe really enjoy working, like in addition to that time savings, you can use that time savings to deliver better product also. I mean, you’re talking, Sandra, about using Imagen.AI, getting 90% of the way and then now you’re going and adding masks or spot removing. There are some times when I’m editing a full wedding and it’s taking a long time. It’s a weird day for some reason. It’s taking an extra long time. I don’t want to go through and do that extra work. But now if AfterShoot or Imagen.AI is doing 90% of that work for me is getting me there, all of a sudden it’s like, oh, okay, I’m a little freed up to actually put in a little bit of extra work to make these photos incredible versus just deliverable.

Sandra Henderson
Yeah, absolutely. The possibilities like I know it sounds so lame, but the possibilities are endless of what you can do with all of this extra time. Like it, I wish I had my Imagen.AI open right now. But the love that it keeps track of the number of hours that you’ve saved. Because it’s just – every time I open it, it’s just like this calming wave washes over me. Like that’s 35 hours of editing that I didn’t have to do.

Tia
Yeah, so fun. So exciting.

28:48 Advice for Photographers Hesitant to Use AI

Sandra Henderson
Do you have any words of advice for wedding photographers who are hesitating to get on board with AI in their business?

Tia
Yeah. Okay, we’ve hit this a little bit, but as we enter off-season, I think there’s going to be like three camps of people. Like one, the people who have literally not touched AI. Two, the people who hit it hard in the spring and they’re like, I’m trying to ChatGPT for everything. And then they got into their busy season and it just fell by the wayside. They didn’t have it integrated into workflows or the people who are using it regularly but it’s not in their workflows at all. You know what I mean?

Like it’s like, hey, I have to circle back to this. Oh, I forgot that I should be using this for this. Let me go over here and like use it for that meta description but I don’t necessarily have that in my Asana workflow, like my project management tool where I check it off. Busy season is the opportunity for this. For all three of those camps, you can just take one step forward to move to the next camp or heck, get after it and put it in your workflows. I think that there’s power to getting into a tool. So let’s just use ChatGPT. Getting in a tool, exploring it, and then saying, oh, I do really like it for putting together my email subject lines or for putting together just like my slugs at the end of my blog post. That feels really good to me and it feels like a really easy way to use it that makes sense and I’m seeing success in it.

Okay. So now I go back to my workflow that already exists and every time I do a family blog post, I am now going to have a line item where I head over to ChatGPT, it’s bookmarked up top there, and I put together a slug, and it puts together a really great slug that’s hitting my keywords for me. And now it’s integrated into my workflow so that I am armoured up when I go back into a busy season, I am already integrated into using these AI tools.

And so I just want to encourage you to take whatever that step to the side is for a hot second to then take those steps forward so that you can go into a busy season armoured up, ready to use it, taking dedicated time to just be curious. Take time to see what new is out there, and what tools could help you influence your business or improve your business in some meaningful way.

Cameron
And sometimes it’s a flop too. I know that too. I spend every Friday, I have an hour set aside that I just research. Sometimes that’s just an hour that wasn’t super productive this time, but it was fun and it was enjoyable. Other times I’ll find a tool like Aftershoot or Imagen.AI or something else that improves our lives in some way that saves countless hours in the future or literally thousands of dollars because we found this tool in beta and now we’re getting it for free for life because we invested time in them. All these little things, just taking a little bit of time to get curious and see what’s out there can pay you back tenfold in the future.

Tia
Yes. So we call it a curiosity hour. Cam just said it was an hour on Friday in busy season, and off-season, it’s like a day. That’s like in his batch working schedule is curiosity hour. But we encourage your listeners to set aside time to get curious. I think it’s really hard because it doesn’t feel like there’s an ROI on that initially. It feels like, why would I just kind of like search around for new tools or like search around for solutions to problems I’ve been having when it’s not immediate? It doesn’t feel like, oh, this is on fire. I need to solve it right now.

But we would encourage you to just hop on and start searching around, start exploring, start looking into things that maybe you’ve screenshotted but never spent the time to dig into the tool or dig into what people are using for this. Because there can be a lot of power and the ROI can be what Cam says. It can be that you find something early on and that you’re paying a founder’s rate forever or you paid $200 and now you use this CRM for life for free. Those things are huge ROI.

So off-season is a great time to start a little curiosity hour. Start it, allocate it in your schedule, block it off and use that time for it. And I know that can be challenging, so we actually have a link that we’d love to share with your audience, Sandra. It’s cameronandtia.com/keepingitcandid. On there, it’s a page full of AI tools. So right now, like we talked about, I don’t know, like four today, it is full of it. It has probably like 30 tools on there that if you set aside a curiosity hour and your listeners want to dig into that page, you can click on them, you can explore them, you can see, oh, is this something I need? Is this something I want? Does this make sense in my life? And it can be a really great starting place for curiosity hour.

Cameron
Yeah, and also use that to test out tools too. Like, spend that hour uploading photos to Imagen.AI to see, hey, maybe this tool can save you time and money moving forward too.

Sandra Henderson
Yeah, absolutely. That is amazing. I will definitely make sure to include the link in the show notes for that so everybody can go and check it out. And I definitely will be as well because there’s nothing that I love more than digging through new apps. It’s become a new love of mine over the last year. I’m sure Cameron, you’ve probably heard of AppSumo. But I just switched to a new online calendar for like booking my clients, like mini sessions and stuff like that. I paid $30 US for a lifetime deal and like that’s replacing $144 US a year for my calendar. So I’m like, it’s so addicting. I’m like, bring me more startup companies.

Cameron
Yes, that’s so fun.

33:06 Dream Weddings vs. Automated Weddings with Cameron and Tia

Sandra Henderson
Oh, it was awesome. Well, I have one last question for you guys. This one is a fun little would you rather question… So, would you rather have 10 absolute dream weddings where you cannot use AI to do any of the work that goes along with them? Or would you rather have 10 just-okay weddings but you can fully automate every part with AI imaginable?

Tia
Ha ha ha. That’s hard. 10 is a lot. 10 is what got me, Sandra. I’m looking so hard now to go back and have to almost relearn certain things. I’m thinking about eye tracking, and how much we rely on that just every day. And then we just had an issue with a camera at one wedding, so one of our backups doesn’t have eye tracking. And so I was shooting, literally moving the focus point again. I’m like, oh my God, this is so hard. And it’s just so much more work. And so to have to do that for an entire wedding, like that alone, on top of the editing… Wait. Is eye tracking AI?

Cameron
Yeah.

Tia
I’m choosing the 10 average. But the eye tracking would get me. I also think I would not want to start with a blank screen to type up a blog post. I would also have to relearn that behaviour. That’s not a huge time suck, but I just dread waking up in the morning and looking at a blank screen for a blog post. I’d be like, oh, this feels like the bane of my existence. I choose the 10 average. What do you choose?

Cameron
I might still have a dream. I might put in the extra work, but… For only 10 and never again. 10 is the best. We never have another dream client.

Sandra Henderson
That’s like when you see things online that’s like, you know, you have to live on this remote island with no cell phone service or laptop for a year, but you get a million dollars. I’m like, guys, it’s only a year. Like, I’ll be fine. Give me the million dollars, please, and then give me my cell phone back when the year’s over.

Tia
There you go. Yeah. So you would choose that?

Cameron
I would definitely have to, I think I would do the 10 dream weddings and have to fully automate it and then like just suck it up for the 10 and then I’ll be done with it and go back to AI from there. And I can catapult your business moving forward too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wait, but you would choose to live on an island with no laptop, cell phone for a year for a million?

Sandra Henderson
Oh, I mean, in 2023 standards, we might have to up that up. Like that million better go up with inflation a little bit. But yeah, I could totally do a finite amount of time with all of my luxuries. I think I could do that. But if it’s just like you have to give them up forever. I’m like, no, there’s not enough money in the world for me to give all that up forever.

Tia
No, no, no. A year. I don’t know if I could do a year. So I was going to mention this earlier when you were talking about diving into water. Are you a Survivor fan at all? Survivor the TV show?

Sandra Henderson
I haven’t watched it in forever, but it used to be like way back in the day. My photography teacher when I was in high school had a Survivor, almost like a fantasy football type thing where we had to pick who we thought was gonna win and like rank them and things like that. And I ended up winning. I had a good guess.

Tia
Okay, Cam and I are diehard Survivor fans. Our friend group has watched together for years and we watch it every single Wednesday. We do a draft… actually do multiple different versions of drafts. We bet every episode. We’re very into it. It’s very fun. I’ve currently decided that I am auditioning for Survivor. I am going to audition this off-season. That is my off-season task. So obviously you go without a laptop, computer or anything like that, but it’s only 29 days, so it’s no big deal.

Cameron
Yeah, I’m a little worried about that, to be honest, but I’ll get after it.

Tia
For a million dollars, that’s the grand prize. And we still have other people. So I mean, like that’s something that we all learned back in 2020. Like having just people around can really fix a lot of things. As long as there are people that you like, you get your little like alliance and then everybody else.

Sandra Henderson (37:24.962)
Well, that’s awesome. I am so excited for you. I hope that it all goes well, and I can’t wait to say that I know somebody on Survivor.

Tia
Okay. Hold your horses. People apply for like 10 years, or 20 years, and then they finally get selected. So I’m starting at 32. We’ll see what’s up.

Cameron
But you’re still expecting to be selected.

Tia
Oh, I will be selected. I should be selected.

Sandra Henderson
I love that.

Tia
Okay. We’ll report back.

Sandra Henderson
Amazing guys. Well, thank you so much again for joining me. This conversation was so much fun and I know listeners are going to have a million takeaways to dive into AI in the off-season. It was great connecting with you and I hope our paths cross again one day soon!

Tia
Yes, cannot wait.

38:18 Closing Remarks and Encouragement

Sandra Henderson
Okay, how fun was that interview? I absolutely loved talking to Cameron and Tia and the interview went so well that I honestly didn’t have to edit it. I had to trim off some at the very beginning and very end where we were just talking about random things, but the conversation flowed perfectly and you were literally hearing an unedited version of that from start to finish.

For all my chronic illness friends who are listening, I really want to encourage you to lean into AI this year. It’s important to remember that AI is not meant to replace you. These services and apps are tools for your toolkit to help you work more efficiently and when you have a chronic illness, working more efficiently means you have more time to rest.

Remember, it’s entirely possible to run a thriving business within your limitations. So here’s your permission this year to lean into whatever tools you need to make that happen.

Sandra Henderson
Thank you so much for listening. You can find full show notes from today’s episode at simplysandryvonne.ca/keepingitcandid. In the meantime, let’s connect. You can find me on Instagram and TikTok, just search @SimplySandraYvonne. And if you love this podcast, I’d be so honoured if you’d go ahead and hit that subscribe button and leave a review. Until next time.

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About Cameron & Tia

Cameron & Tia are wedding photographers and photography business coaches based in Minneapolis, MN. They met in second grade at Jonathan Elementary School. Sixteen years later, Cameron proposed to Tia at that same elementary school. Cameron is an ex-attorney and Tia is a past dance teacher who transformed their passions into a career that allows them to have a life together filled with independence and tons of travel. Now, they teach others to others to create the same flexibility and freedom in their own businesses.

Instagram | Website

00:00 Introduction and Importance of Accessibility

Accessibility should be a top priority for all business owners, but let’s be honest, it is something that is overlooked more often than not. It’s something that I really hope we start to see changing in 2024, and that is why I knew I had to have my friend Erin on the podcast.

Erin is a deafblind accessibility educator and the owner of Mabely Q. Her mission is to make the world a more accessible place one business at a time. She loves getting to teach businesses how to do just that by leaning on her life experiences that she shares with others to foster true inclusion at all levels. This is a do-not-miss episode. So absolutely make sure that you grab your notebook and pen or if you’re busy and listening to this on the go make sure you come back to it because there are some really, really important takeaways for you in this episode that you’re gonna be able to apply to your business and start delivering an even more incredible client experience every step of the way.

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Transcript of my interview with Erin from Mabely Q

(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 backend 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 too who’s 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 favourite notebook and pen and let’s dive into this week’s episode.

Sandra Henderson
Erin, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. I am so excited for this conversation. But before we dive right in, I would love it if you would give listeners, just introduce yourself and give them an idea of who you are and what you’re all about.

Erin Perkins from Mabely Q
Sandra, thank you for having me. I really like genuinely appreciate you inviting me on this podcast. I am Erin Perkins and I am the CEO of Mabely Q. Mabely Q is all about creating accessibility education for small business owners because unlike in the corporate world, which is where I came from, like a lot of these things, they already have the budget, they already have all these things built out for them, so they’re able to do that. But when you’re a small business owner, you don’t have access to these resources, you don’t necessarily understand…

And to be honest, accessibility is very dry. It’s very misunderstood. It’s vague. Like all those things that you can think of that I found that I ended up teaching people because I, myself, am deafblind. And I’ve always had resources given to me growing up. You know, my parents had to make sure that their kids had access.

But not everyone goes to have that fortune. So I just ended up doing it and I really enjoy it. And it makes me very excited to just be able to help people really lean into the values of their business.

03:08 Challenges for Small Business Owners

Sandra Henderson
Yeah, absolutely. I love that so much. And I think that is so, so important. And you brought up a really good point that bigger companies and corporations have so many resources at their fingertips to be able to approach different aspects of incorporating accessibility into their companies. But for small business owners, we don’t have those same resources. And I think when it’s just us, it’s such a complex and nuanced subject as well because there are so many different groups of people that need accessibility. It’s not just about one group of people and I think that is something that I know from conversations I’ve had with other people. It’s something that kind of hinders them from going forward because they’re worried that they’re gonna do something wrong.

Erin Perkins from Mabely Q
I want people not to be scared of… We’re all gonna make mistakes. I’ve made so many mistakes. I mean, my first branding was completely not accessible with the script font. And I kind of had to learn because it’s not something that is taught in school. And it’s just like, and here’s the thing. Corporates grew up big time as well. I would like to use Meta and Instagram as the most recent example, they launched Threads. And it was completely inaccessible to screen readers, people who use alt text and all of that. They could not use it at all. And if a company that had this system set up in Instagram and Facebook screws up on Threads, you as an independent business owner, are allowed to screw up.

Sandra Henderson
Yeah, I totally agree. I think we all need to just get more comfortable with making mistakes because we are imperfect people and the important thing is not to be perfect right now and never make a mistake going forward. It’s to be open to like owning up to those mistakes and correcting whatever that mistake was and learning from it going forward.

Erin Perkins
Yeah, and that’s like really all I teach is like, you know, you make a mistake, okay, how do you correct? However, I will 100% say if you do it over and over and over again, that means you don’t really care. And okay, I don’t want to be part of your world then.

06:16 Improving Accessibility Online for Wedding Photographers

Sandra Henderson
Yeah, I completely agree with that. So what are some ways that you think that wedding photographers can improve their accessibility online when it comes to their websites, their social media presence and things like that?

Erin Perkins from Mabely Q
I think this is like really tricky because a lot of disabled people… (Missing transcript)

One, they already don’t see themselves in the wedding arena. They don’t see themselves represented. However, it’s also like, they don’t want to be the token of that wedding photographer. So it’s very hard trying to find that fine line of being able to showcase that you do welcome them, you do want them to be represented. But at the same time don’t make them feel like it has to be a part of their story. Like for me, I got married 13 years ago, so Pinterest was still brand new at that time. So it was interesting because I do not want my hearing aids to be shown in the wedding pictures and stuff like that, just because I don’t think it’s aesthetically pleasing.

But it didn’t mean that my being deaf is not part of my story. So it was like tricky, like trying to find that fine line. I think a lot of photographers could, they can change their language a little bit and like make sure that people feel like, oh, you know, I feel included in this. It doesn’t matter if I have any sort of disability, but the reality is most disabilities are invisible. So, it’s like, how do you represent that? And I think it’s by language and representation on your website.

Sandra Henderson
Yeah, that is so, so important. One thing that I started doing, I think in 2021, that… (Missing transcript)

08:05 Using Questionnaires to Understand Accessibility Needs

Sandra Henderson
It unfortunately doesn’t make an impact on the outward presentation because it’s for the clients that I’ve already brought in. So I’m working on making some changes to not tokenize people for my social media presence and things like that. But for people who have hired me and want to work with me, I send out what I call a welcome questionnaire and I ask them things if they need any accessibility, if they have any limitations that they don’t want stairs or lifting people or sitting on the ground or anything like that. And I think that is so important, just making sure that every person that you’re working with is comfortable and not being put into a situation where they don’t feel safe or don’t feel comfortable going forward.

Erin Perkins from Mabely Q
Yeah, I mean, I think a questionnaire is a great place to start because it allows them to disclose things that they want to disclose. They’ll be like, if they ask that question, it will be comfortable. If a photographer had asked me like, what are some things that I can do to create more access for you during the photo shoot? I would say one of the things like use a little bit more hand gestures because I’m not seeing your face when you are counting three, two, one or something, or if you’re like telling me something…

It’s funny because I did a brand photo shoot and the photographer was great, but there were certain things that I was like, this is interesting because they will be talking to me behind the camera and I would have no clue what they’re saying. So sometimes it’s like, all right, we need to kind of set up the scene before we take pictures so that I’m kind of aware of what I need to do. So I think communication is really essential.

Sandra Henderson
Yeah, that’s a really good point that you brought up about requiring things like gestures and things like that. I personally am terrible at verbalizing my posing instructions. So I always like to do hand gestures. But that’s something that I’ve never thought of is that some people when they can’t hear and things like that, that those are going to go a really long way.

And I love that you said that the questionnaire allows them to disclose things that they want to disclose. I think that is a really important takeaway because we shouldn’t be putting our clients into a position where they feel like they have to give us this information. But if they want to give us that information and they’re comfortable, then it’s really important to use that.

09:46 Effective Communication and Adaptability

Erin Perkins of Mabely Q
Yeah, like especially nowadays, I feel like more and more people are saying, you know, have ADHD or stuff like that. And like that’s cool. Maybe their partner has ADHD, but their partner doesn’t necessarily want to disclose that. The other one is like, I just want them to be aware of like, they will lose their patience if you don’t keep it moving. Yeah, they get distracted very easily. I think it will help the photographer be able to adapt pretty quickly.

Sandra Henderson
If there’s one thing that you hope that wedding photographers start doing the minute they finish listening to this episode, what would that be?

Erin Perkins
Update your questionnaire for sure. And then the other thing is giving multiple ways for people to contact you.

Sandra Henderson
Oh, good point.

Erin Perkins from Mabely Q
Because a lot of people have their preferred method of communicating. I hate it when people just call me and say, oh my god. I have like serious anxiety about that. So you need to set up some sort of workflow that allows them to contact you the way they want to originally, but then funnel them into like your questionnaire and stuff like that.

But like, if they say they would rather just talk to you on the phone, like the client, like you do have to adapt for that. If they prefer to communicate through email, adapt to that. Or if they want video chat, you do have to adapt to that. So it’s like, flexible. I know in this day and age where people are like, oh god, I gotta go on video? I prefer video more than anything. Video gives me that human connection. But if someone wants to talk on the phone, I will do it. Not my favorite though.

Sandra Henderson (12:26.214)
Yeah, completely understandable. And such a great point about being flexible. I think that business owners as a whole, but being in the wedding photography industry, I see it so much with wedding photographers is they get set in their way of doing things, which I think is important to have your boundaries and the way that you like to do things because that’s your zone of genius and you can excel that way.

But you do have to have flexibility. There needs to be a little bit of wiggle room. It can’t just be all about you. And if people aren’t willing to meet me where I am, then we’re not gonna work together. Like you need to be more open and welcoming to the different types of people that you’re gonna be working with.

Erin Perkins from Mabely Q
Yeah, like I know so many people, they just generally have like so much anxiety about being on the phone. And like my husband, he’s different. He would much rather call than write an email. (Missing transcript)… an hour to an hour and a half typing an email on my dude did not need to be that long. Yeah. He would rather talk on the phone, though we have different things there. But it’s very interesting how people are.

(Missing transcript) … everything on the phone and it pushed me so far out of my comfort zone, but it’s just one of those things that you got to step up and do sometimes, unfortunately.

Sandra Henderson
Yeah, for sure. So I’d love to jump back to some of the things that we were talking about at the beginning of the episode when we were talking more about websites and social media and things like that and the accessibility that wedding photographers are putting forward online.

You brought up a really good point about your first website and branding with script fonts. This is something that I see so much in the wedding photography or wedding industry as a whole – everybody wants to make everything look pretty… and I wear glasses, but my vision isn’t that bad I can see without my glasses on but I really struggle to read a lot of fonts that are scripted on people’s websites.

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14:01 Considerations for Website Design and Color Contrast

Erin Perkins from Mabely Q
Oh Yeah. I mean, it’s almost stereotypical. For weddings, like anybody in the wedding industry, it’s almost mandatory to be very light, very scripty, and very pretty in the stereotypical way. And I’m not saying you can’t use script fonts at all, but keep those to like the headers.

Like maybe only two headers, like header one and header two, that’s it. Um, but like, I know a lot of people are guilty. I was guilty of this when I built my website. I’m not a web designer by any means, but I have a background in graphic design. I wanted my script font to be kind of like represented on the website, but it wasn’t like what it wasn’t part of the font choices.

So I would create a graphic and put it on the website, but then I would forget the alt text because I was still learning at that point. At that point, I was more focused on graphic design and working for other people as opposed to creating accessibility. And I realized that those images are not readable when you have your script font that is embedded in the image. It’s not readable. So you have to make sure you have alt text for that.

And then the other thing is the colour contrast. Oh my God. So many people like pink and gray or pink and white. Don’t get me wrong. Pink is one of my favourite colours. (Missing transcript) … when it’s like low contrast like go to cooler.co and check your colour contrast you will find that your colour contrast is not good at all. Like I’m questioning if people can read some of that I’m like can you read your own stuff? I know you’re trying to keep that aesthetic but shouldn’t we like kind of like throw that aesthetic out the window and create something that really feels like you?

Sandra Henderson
I completely agree. And going forward, or going off of what you were saying about if people can even read what they’re putting up there, I think the same thing when I see people’s Instagram stories and they have their text so teeny tiny that I’m like, with my phone here, I cannot even read what they’ve written.

Erin Perkins
I’m like, I understand you’re trying to condense things into one screen, but like, that’s just not realistic. You need to spread that story out over several pages and I will read it. I promise you I will read it. But if it’s all crammed into one, like, nope, I’m skipping ahead. There’s nothing wrong with having multiple screens to share a story.

18:05 Proper Use of Alt Text

Sandra Henderson
You were talking about alt text and it kind of gave me a light bulb moment. Something that I see a lot in the wedding photography community when they’re talking about blogging and things like that to help with their SEO. A lot of people have the idea that alt text is just an SEO tool where they put in keywords. So I would love it if you could take a second to just kind of explain the proper way to use alt text.

Erin Perkins from Mabely Q
(Missing transcript)… actually designed for people who have vision limitations or maybe even they would rather consume things through the screen reader audio but they’re still looking at the image and if you just say wedding couple um something I don’t know what photographers do for their blog. But if you just like basically keyword stuff, you are hurting your SEO, because Google knows. Google knows what you’re doing. And then you’re hurting yourself because the people who are on your website, they’re listening to it through the screen reader, they’re automatically leaving. 85% of the people leave their website when it’s not accessible to them.

So the minute they hear something and they get this frustration, I feel like we all do it. Doesn’t matter if we have a disability or not. If there’s a problem with the website, we automatically leave it and we’re like, nope, not going back to that. It’s just like we do not have the patience. So imagine what it’s like for a person with a disability. You’re adding layers of problems to that. Like, sorry, I’m going to leave.

So when it comes to curating your blog, yes, you do have to write a brief sentence. I’m not saying it has to be a million sentences long, but one of the things I learned from somebody else who has a line, he said that we were doing alt text wrong. And he had a point. He said, I don’t care why… let me just use myself as an example. I would describe myself, I’m a white woman with a short haircut, Bob on one side, and I’m wearing a blue, dark navy blue and pink top. He’s like, I literally do not care what you look like or what you wear. I wanna know why you’re wearing that blue dress.

So he’s like, he actually pointed out he wants us to be more intentional about how we write out our alt text and why we’re doing it in a sense. So I think we have to find that fine line of being descriptive enough so that people feel like they can envision the image. But at the same time, not just throwing images in just for the hell of it. Like I think we want to, when you’re putting together a blog, you want to be intentional about what images you’re putting in there, like why you show that image.

21:42 Alt Text vs. Image Descriptions on Social Media

Sandra Henderson
Yeah, that makes so much sense. And when it comes to using alt text on social media, some people put it in like the alt text feature that’s in behind the photos the same way it would be on a blog. And then some people do an image description at the bottom. Do you think that there’s one that’s more beneficial than the other when it comes to people using screen readers and things like that?

Erin Perkins from Mabely Q
I mean, alt text is definitely designed for screen readers. Image description is more so for people who might not. I would never use a screen reader. But sometimes an image description kind of helps me get a better idea, especially if I can’t read the font text or something, and the image description kind of explains it for me. So there’s no wrong way of doing something, but I think one of the most missed opportunities that people have is that when you are posting something on Instagram, you need to be very…

I want people to think more about what they’re posting. You’re not just posting at random, and a lot of people, they’ll post some kind of graphic, and then not even say what that graphic is saying. That is such a missed opportunity because you know that graphic cannot be read by screen readers. So, and I guarantee you, most people aren’t putting stuff in alt text.

So like, make sure what you put in the graphic is also being written in the caption. Like, it’s just such a missed opportunity for so many people.

23:02 Inclusivity and Accessibility without Limitations

Sandra Henderson
Yeah, that’s such a good point. And it kind of leads to one last question that I wanted to ask you. This is something that I think came up a lot during the pandemic because we saw that Clubhouse was a really popular platform. I’m sure that was a topic of conversation that you had a lot. Um, but the thing with Clubhouse for anybody who doesn’t know is almost like a social media platform, but only audio. So it heavily excluded a huge community of people who can’t hear.

And I know there was a lot of like blowback from that with the company and things like that. We’ll save that for another day. But one thing that I noticed when all those conversations were happening, there were a lot of people that were saying, we’re inclusive, but, or we have accessibility, but, where like there would just be this group of people has to be left out, but that’s really not inclusivity and accessibility if there are buts that go along with it. So I would love to hear your thoughts on something like that.

Erin Perkins from Mabely Q
Yeah, because the word but, actually, I remember somebody explaining this to you, if you’re apologizing to someone and then you add the but. It almost eliminates the first sentence, to begin with.

Sandra Henderson
Yeah, I say that my husband and I say that all the time.

25:21 The Impact of Inaccessible Platforms

Erin Perkins from Mabely Q
Yeah, it’s like you have to be like really thoughtful in how you’re saying it. It’s like yeah but I’m like everything you just said you just negated it with that word but. And that’s like really hard for people because we’re used to that. I am that person that is very much like a grey area about everything. And it drives people in that. I’m the middle child in my family. So like, I see my older sister’s point. I also see my younger sister’s point. I’m like, you’re both right, but you’re also both wrong. So figure it out.

And I think that’s like the issue is like, we’re never going to get it… We’re never going to get it right. You are going to eliminate somebody unintentionally and you need to be okay with that. However, when you think about a platform like Clubhouse, they knew what they were doing in the first place. They are 100% knew what they were doing. The reason why I say that is because the founder, one of the founders, I know for a fact, had a child with a disability. And yet they knew what they were doing with the setting up Clubhouse. They knew exactly. It’s like for me, like with podcasts, like I still have this extreme frustration is like, I know how much stuff I’m missing out on.

But yet anybody who is not deaf, I challenge you to actually go to your favourite podcast and tell me how many clicks it takes for you to find that transcript. I bet you it was gonna take you a minimum of four or five clicks. Which is why, like, you know, I want that access. Like, I want it to be one or two clicks to get to the transcript or have it captioned and I don’t like it when I watch videos. I don’t have a problem with turning on the caption, but I have no problem with that because that’s just one click. But when you ask me to do four or five clicks, and it doesn’t even guarantee that I can find that transcript, I’m just not going to do it.

Sandra Henderson
Yeah. And you mentioned a lot of people with ADHD earlier, and that is something that comes into play when you are kind of giving people the runaround, and they have to click five, six, seven times. People who are neurodivergent are going to get distracted along the way or they’re not going to be able to find their way around. So it’s super important to just make sure that we’re making things as easy as possible for everybody that we’re working with.

27:44 Moving Towards Genuine Inclusion

Erin Perkins from Mabely Q
So I just launched a campaign called Hello Genuine Inclusion. And the thing is, I’m trying to get us away from this whole superficial accessibility because we need to get away from that. It’s so easy to do so many things I’ve taught. But like, I’m asking people to really take a look at what you’re doing in your business. And like, let’s figure out how to make it much more inclusive without you feeling, you as a business owner, feeling like you’re doing 10 times more work.

Because to be honest, when I have to transcribe my video, my video takes me three, to four times longer for me to edit, than it does for a hearing person. So like, you don’t have the right to complain in a sense. I’m just asking you to genuinely, truthfully include people with disability, because we are a huge infrastructure of people in this world. We are 25% of the US population. If you get rid of that 25%, you’re going to see how much support we have provided for everybody else. You’re going to notice that we are missing.

Sandra Henderson
Yeah, that’s so true. You brought up a good point earlier too, that most people who have disabilities, it is invisible. And so I think that a lot of people kind of overlook the fact that the disabled community is a solid foundation for everything that happens in our world. And I completely agree with you. If we were to eliminate that 25%, I think it would be a real eye-opener for people.

Erin Perkins from Mabely Q
Yeah. And I think that happened during the pandemic too. Like noticing people who are actually such a strong support, not able to be that support anymore. People with disabilities, like we are so strong. But man, we are tired. Yeah. So tired.

Sandra Henderson
Yeah, understandably for sure. Well, I hope that this episode starts taking some of that workload off your plate and inspires everybody to go out and make some changes to their website, their social media, how they’re approaching their clients in person. And do you have any final takeaways you would love to leave the listeners with?

29:39 Starting from Where You Are

Erin Perkins from Mabely Q
My biggest thing is just start from where you’re at now. Don’t feel like you have to go back, backtrack and like redo everything. Start from where you’re at now, once you are aware, start trying to incorporate accessibility throughout your business from this point on.

Sandra Henderson
Oh, I love that. That’s huge because I think a lot of people get… They keep pushing it off because it’s like, oh, it’s so much work for me to go redo my entire website, but just start where you are. And then when you have time, you can go back and do little things here and there, but it’s more important to start doing it now and make it a habit for going forward.

Erin Perkins
Yep. That’s true.

30:28 Fun Question: Snowboarding vs. Stand Up Paddling

Sandra Henderson
Awesome. Well, this has been an amazing conversation. I have one last question for you. Just something fun that I’m doing for this season of the podcast, a little would you rather-question.

And so since we have connected earlier this year and I’ve had a chance to kind of get to know you through social media a little bit, I wanted to ask, would you rather snowboard a mountain or go stand-up paddling in the ocean?

Erin Perkins from Mabely Q
Snowboarding a mountain.

Sandra Henderson
Snowboarding in the mountains?

Erin Perkins
Yeah, when I’m paddling boarding in the ocean now. There’s too many unknowns in that ocean. No.

Sandra Henderson
It’s so true. I went kayaking for the first time last summer and it was in a very shallow lake. And then I was in Florida and I was looking at kayaking and I was like, I don’t know, there’s bigger things in this water. The water’s a lot bigger.

Erin Perkins
I know. With the mountains, I feel like I have a little bit more control. While with the ocean, it’s like, I don’t know what’s under there. It’s humongous and things that live in it that like, I have zero desire to go, well, I can’t anyway, scuba diving, snorkeling is already like pushing it for me.

Sandra Henderson
Yeah, I’m the same way. I am not like, I don’t mind being on a boat for a short period of time or like in water where I can touch. But I like I went parasailing one year and I had so much fun being up in the air. But then I was just in shallow water on the beach and a little fish touched my foot and I screamed. I was terrified from this tiny little fish, but being up in the air was no big deal.

Erin Perkins from Mabely Q
Yeah, it’s just like that, like, oh God, what just touched me? And you can’t see it and it’s just like, no, no.

Sandra Henderson
Yeah, I totally agree. Awesome. Well, thank you so much again, Erin. It was so great chatting with you. And I hope that our paths get to cross again soon.

Erin Perkins
Yes, for sure. Thank you for having me.

Sandra Henderson
Thank you so much for listening. You can find full show notes from today’s episode at simplysandryvonne.ca/keepingitcandid. In the meantime, let’s connect. You can find me on Instagram and TikTok, just search @SimplySandraYvonne. And if you love this podcast, I’d be so honoured if you’d go ahead and hit that subscribe button and leave a review. Until next time.

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About Erin from Mabely Q

Erin is deafblind, though she can still hear with the help of her hearing aid & cochlear implant (without them, she’s profoundly deaf). She can see only 50 degrees (most people see 180 degrees)… if you’re waving to her, and she doesn’t wave back…the chances are pretty high that she didn’t see or hear you!

She started Mabely Q under the guise of being an operations manager and graphic designer. It wasn’t until she worked with business owners and mentors that she realized how few actually understood what accessibility was. She pivoted right into accessibility education.

She loves that she gets to teach businesses how to be accessible by leaning on her life experiences which she shares with others to foster true inclusion at all levels, and also teaching in a way that feels good. Her mission is to make the world more accessible one business at a time.

Instagram | Website

This week’s episode of Keeping It Candid is a fun recap of some of my favourite things from 2023. I hope you enjoy it!

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Sandra Henderson (00:00.174)
Welcome back to the podcast, friends. Happy 2024. Happy New Year. I am so excited to finally be back after an unexpected hiatus in Q4 of last year. I started November going to San Diego for a retreat with my business coach and some of the amazing ladies that I’m in a mastermind with. And it quickly turned into me catching the flu when I got home. Then my husband and stepson both got COVID.

I got a sinus infection, I lost my voice, I got bronchitis. It was just one thing after another and after about a month and a half of being sick and losing my voice, I knew that I just had to throw in the towel on the podcast for the rest of the year and take some time off to rest and finally feel better. So.

I am finally back recording this episode for the beginning of January and it is going to be one to start the year off with some easy listening. Normally I encourage you to go and grab a notebook and pen so that you can take notes, but today I’m going to be diving into my top threes of 2023 so you can just sit back and enjoy. 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 too 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 (01:57.046)
Alright, let’s get started with some of my top three photography related things. The top three things that I had in my camera bag in 2023. First is my mirrorless camera. I bought a Nikon Z6 II in November of 2022. Yes, I said Zed because I’m a Canadian and that’s just how you roll. And I will be totally honest, I was really hesitant to get on board with mirrorless cameras.

When it comes to most things, especially technology, I’m an if it’s not broken, don’t fix it kind of girl. And so I just had no reason to replace my camera. I also think it’s so much more important to know how to use your gear really well than it is to always have the newest camera bodies and lenses on the market. But I had a chance to do a trade in deal that I could not pass up and got this mirrorless camera and I am obsessed.

The capabilities that it has for low light conditions, the quality of the photo that is coming directly out of camera, it is incomparable to the camera that I had before when I was using the D750. It was a great camera, but this one is, it just blows it out of the water. So I’m super happy that I made this switch. Next, number two in my camera bag for 2023 is my 70 to 200 lens.

It’s a beast. I literally have to go to Cairo and massage therapy regularly to get my wrist adjusted because the weight of this lens is just unreal after a really long day, like after eight hours of carrying this around at a wedding, my wrist is pretty much done. But it’s worth the trade off for me because I absolutely love the depth of field that you get with this lens. The bokeh on it is absolutely beautiful.

and I just haven’t found another lens that compares and gives me that same quality that I’m looking for. I used to use an 85 all the time, like I’ve tried all the different lenses, but I’m willing to take the weight of the 7200 because it is just my favorite. And then number three is the color -coded memory card cases that I have. So I have three different cases that I keep in my camera bag. One’s yellow, one’s blue, and one is red.

Sandra Henderson (04:09.294)
The yellow and blue are used for my 32 and 64 gig memory cards. I do use smaller cards because I try to change them out throughout a wedding day. That way, if worst case scenario, anything were to happen to one of my cards, then it would only be the getting ready photos or a small section of the day rather than the whole day being lost. So I just have never had a reason to upgrade to like 128 gig cards or larger. The 32 and 64 work perfectly for what I need them for.

And then the red case is for any cards that I have just finished using that need to be uploaded. Once they bring them into my office, I do actually have a fourth case that stays in here.

And that’s where I put all of my cards after they’ve been uploaded, but before they’ve been delivered to the client. So I never reuse them until long after my client has downloaded their photos and we have finished our time working together. And I thankfully have enough cards that I just used one at the end of 2023 that had photos on it from fall of 2022. So having enough cards is how I make that possible, but that’s a little side tangent.

Anyway, let’s keep going with some of my favorite extras in my camera bag. I’ve had a Buzz Patch stickers for quite a while to use on myself and on my clients because they’re really small citronella stickers that are easy to hide in people’s clothes. But I did some sessions in September that were in a park and we had more mosquitoes than I have ever dealt with on any given day, but especially in this park.

So my first client of the day actually said that she had citronella wristbands in her car and she ran to get them and it was a lifesaver. So I’ve actually bought more to put in my camera bag because I was able to just wear it around my wrist and with the time of year that it was, my clients were all wearing long sleeves in their photos and so I was able to actually tuck them up inside the sleeves for the kids and things like that to help protect them from the mosquitoes during their session.

Sandra Henderson (06:07.182)
I don’t know if anyone else out there feels the way I do about mosquitoes, but mosquito bites are one of my least favourite things in the entire world. There are not enough expletives in the English language to really appropriately describe how much I hate mosquito bites. I’m not allergic to them, I am just hyper sensitive to the itching and I won’t sleep for days until they go away and it’s just…

I hate it so much. So anything that will save me from the mosquitoes and save my clients from the mosquitoes, I’m going to take it. Now, number two in my camera bag is the shower curtain that I always have. Seems pretty random, but I use this because it is really easy to wrap around a few people or a big wedding dress when you’re needing to move from one location to another on a wedding day.

I always have umbrellas too, but as we all know when we’re using umbrellas, it’s really only doing a great job of protecting our heads, our shoulders, and then some of our torso. But our legs are pretty much at the hands of nature. And so I want to do what I can to try and keep my clients dry in between photos. And the shower curtain is just a great way to do that, especially with big ball gowns and things like that are a little bit more difficult to move quickly in. Okay, my top three systems for 2023.

First should be absolutely no surprise to anybody who listens to the podcast, but that would be HoneyBook. HoneyBook is the CRM system that I use for my business. I’ve been using it for more than six years now, and I truly don’t know how I would manage day to day without it. I’m not gonna go on a huge tangent about all the features or anything like that. There’s lots of other episodes on it, and I just wanna keep things nice and quick and easy today, but if you’re looking for a new CRM or new management for…

or new management for your client files, then you definitely want to go and check it out. Next is PickTime, which if you go back a couple episodes on the podcast, I actually did a whole episode on PickTime’s integration with HoneyBook. So now you can easily get all of the information for your client galleries inside your client’s HoneyBook file. And you can do things like automate when someone makes a payment in HoneyBook, it’s automatically creating a gallery for them in PickTime.

Sandra Henderson (08:22.414)
Little things like that are going to be such a game changer and I’m super excited to start playing around with those automations and see what kinds of things I can do for 2024. Then last but not least, we have Imagine AI, which I may or may not have been fangirling about all year because it has been the biggest game changer for my post -session and post -wedding workflow. I’m able to get things done so much faster and especially after a wedding when my body really needs a lot of time to rest and recover.

It gives me so much peace of mind knowing that my photos are being edited while I’m resting on the couch taking a nap. One thing that I think is always important to remember about AI is that it’s meant to be a tool to help you work more efficiently, not replace you all together. So I am able to get through a wedding in a fraction of the time, but I’m just going through and making little tweaks.

The base editing for my tones and white balance and things like that is all being done by Imagine and it’s honestly like having my own in -house private editor. Speaking of editing tools, let’s talk about my top three of those for 2023. First is AI Select in Lightroom. This came out at the end of 2022 and it has been so much fun to play around with. It saves so much time from having to like zoom in with a brush and try and get all those individual little pixels.

If you haven’t played around with the AI select people yet, definitely check that out because you can literally get as specific as just selecting their lips, just selecting someone’s white of their eyes, just selecting their shirt, and it really will make your life so much easier for making those fine tune adjustments in Lightroom and not having to pull those photos into Photoshop. Next, we’re still in Lightroom for the number two spot, and that is the denoise feature.

I did some holiday mini sessions in studio at the beginning of December and I intentionally decided not to use a flash because I really wanted the lights on the trees to glow. And I know that I could have done that with flash but I was just in the studio for a short amount of time. It’s a rental studio so I didn’t have a lot of time to really play around with my lighting and so I just decided to make the best of it with my manual camera settings and the natural window light and worry about the rest.

Sandra Henderson (10:36.182)
When I tell you that these photos were so fucking grainy like they were almost unusable but I ran them through Lightroom Denoise overnight because my computer is slow as shit and They you never would have known that there was a single bit of grain in them when I looked at them the next morning They were still sharp. They were smooth and they were everything that I needed them to be When it comes to things like low light wedding receptions nighttime weddings and things like that. I

This feature is going to be a game changer for so many different scenarios. And then last, in the third spot, we have Topaz Sharpen AI or possibly Topaz AI Sharpen. Either way, you get the idea. I forgot to look up and double check what order those words went in before I started recording. But what this does, I use it as a last step after I’ve exported my photos.

after I’ve exported my photos out of Lightroom, but before I upload them into a gallery to send to my client. If there are any photos that I have missed focus on or somebody has moved, I’m able to run those through Topaz to have them sharpened so that you would never know that there was any issue with them. It’s different than the sharpen feature that you’ll find in Lightroom with the slider because the slider is just sort of trying to make the best of what you already have.

When you put it into Topaz, the AI feature is actually able to modify the pixels of your photo to make them more sharp. It’s really kind of hard to explain, especially because I’m not a super technical person, but if that’s something that you think would be helpful to you in your business, I highly recommend going to check it out. If your photos are completely out of focus or have huge motion blur, it’s not going to be able to save those. But for anything that is just subtly off or if you zoom in, you can notice the difference, maybe,

you focus on a tree behind a couple or something like that, those types of photos are definitely going to be saveable with Topaz. All right, that’s all I’ve got for…

Sandra Henderson (12:37.548)
All right, that’s all I’ve got for the… All right, that’s all I’ve got for photography related top threes. Next, I wanna talk about my chronic illness toolkit and what my top three for 2023 were in there. First is the Moody app. If you’ve seen me in person anytime over the last few months, there’s a good chance that I’ve talked your ear off about this. I’m not affiliated with the company in any way. I am just genuinely obsessed with this app and the information that it can give you.

when you’re tracking your menstrual cycle. There’s free and paid versions. I just use the free version, but I use it to track my cycle and my symptoms. And it has features like graphs to show you how your symptoms are fluctuating with your hormones. It gives you tips on things that you can eat during your cycle to support your body and your hormones. It also gives you things like suggestions on different foods and nutrients you can provide your body at different parts of your cycle. And…

It gives you tips on exercise. It gives you tips on getting a better sleep. There’s so much information in this app. And for someone like me who has endometriosis, tracking my cycle is the only way that I can feel like I have some sort of control over my life. So being able to get that in depth in the information around my hormones has been a total game changer in planning how my work week goes.

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Sandra Henderson (14:55.598)
Number two is my ergonomic seat cushion. And again, if you have seen me in person at any point over the last few years, you have definitely seen me walking around with a cushion clipped to my back and I bring this with me everywhere. I actually have a few different ones. I have one in my office, I have one in my car, and I have one that I bring with me on the go. These seat cushions are because I have a lot of pelvic pain from endometriosis and I can’t really sit.

on regular chairs or hard surfaces for more than about five, 10 minutes before I start getting really uncomfortable. And the longer that I’m having to sit there for, the worse the pain starts to get. And it does get to the point where I start having trouble walking and it takes me days to start feeling better again. So using these seat cushions has been a game changer in managing that pain and just helping me stay comfortable when I’m out and enjoying my life.

I used to be in agony after a long editing session in my office. So if that is something that you struggle with, even if it’s not endometriosis related, if you’re having back problems or anything like that, definitely pop on Amazon and get an ergonomic seat cushion because you will definitely notice the difference. And then number three is my running shoes. And I really hated putting this at number three. I’m not gonna lie to you. I’m not really ready to be in this sensible shoe era of my life.

I’ve always been a cute flats kind of girl and runners were something that I only ever wore if I was going to the gym. But here we are. I’m 36 now. I have chronic illnesses. My joints and my body is not what it used to be. And so I’m trying to embrace this running shoe life. It doesn’t help that my running shoes are so ugly and they don’t match anything that I own.

They were cheap $20 runners that I bought at Walmart one day just because I needed them. And they are like gray and purple. Not only do like they’re not tones that match one another, but purple is my least favorite color. They were just the only ones that Walmart had in my size that day and I was in a jam. So I bought them and they’re comfortable. Give them that. But they’re just so ugly. So I definitely need to buy some new runners.

Sandra Henderson (17:16.174)
If you have some recommendations for cute ones, I want you to slide over to Instagram, hop into my DMs and give me some recommendations because it kills my soul a little bit every time I have to wear these shoes. That being said, my joints feel better, my limbs feel better, my body overall just feels so much better after I’m working. So I’m gonna have to make peace with it. And any tips you guys wanna give me, I’m here for it. Next, let’s talk about some…

Top Culture Favorites. My top three favorite shows for 2023. Two of the three are Bravo shows and I easily could have made all three Bravo shows because that’s pretty much all I watched last year. Nobody really warned me that it quickly becomes your entire personality when you watch Bravo. But here we are learning that lesson and having no regrets about it because it’s just the kind of entertainment that I need in my life right now.

I started watching Real Housewives here and there in 2022, but it wasn’t until a scandal broke in early last year that I really just needed to know what all the hype was about. And so I started watching Vanderpump Rules and I’m obsessed. I can’t help it. I know there are definitely going to be some listeners who feel the same way. And it really just spiraled me into watching more and more and more Bravo shows. So number two, also a Bravo show is Below Deck Sailing Yacht.

And then number three was the summer I turned pretty. That was the show on in Canada. Anyway, it was on Amazon Prime. I’m not sure if it’s the same for any of our US listeners, but it was just a super cute show. I really liked the storyline. I liked the actors. I loved the soundtrack so much T Swift and it was just really fun to watch. I tried to read the books and just a couple of days ago decided that it was going to be the first in my didn’t finish trial of 2024.

The show I just enjoy more. So this year I’m not forcing myself to read books that I’m not into and I got about halfway through and just decided I’m gonna hold it and find out what happens when the next season comes out. For my top three favorite movies, Barbie obviously gets the number one spot. I was so excited for this movie to come out long before they released a trailer or anything. I had no idea what to expect.

Sandra Henderson (19:40.75)
but I just knew that it was going to be fun. So I was super pumped for it. And then when it came out, I was blown away by the storyline. I was blown away by how well it was put together. America Ferrera’s speech at the end makes me cry every time I watch it. It was just such a well done movie. And I’m so, so glad that it turned out to be better than I was expecting it to be. It would not have surprised me even a little bit if it turned out to be a super ridiculous and something that turned into a cult classic.

I would have been really happy with that too. But as a feminist, I’m just loving all the messages behind Barbie and I can’t wait to see what happens if we get more Barbie or if people take this as inspiration for new storylines. But we need more of it. Now, my next choice is a movie called After and some of the subsequent movies that came in the series After it, not the very last one because it is so far from the original storyline.

makes no sense at all. But anyway, these movies and I’m going to talk about them again in books, I just really enjoyed the way they depicted the relationship between the main characters. In full honesty, one word that you could describe it is toxic. It is not a relationship that people want to model theirs after whatsoever. But the reason why I really liked it is because I appreciated that it showed

dynamics of a relationship for both the main characters and some of the sub characters that weren’t all sunshine and rainbows. And I’m always a really big fan of things that are realistic and relatable. We all know it doesn’t matter if it’s your relationship with your partner, if it’s a relationship with friends, if it’s a relationship with family, even a relationship with your kids. Relationships aren’t easy. They all have ebbs and flows and ups and downs.

And so it’s just really refreshing to see things that are not all sunshine and rainbows all the time. And then last but not least, this movie called Love at First Sight that came out on Netflix at the end of last year. Again, thought it was super cute. 2023 was definitely a year of romances for me. I really liked that the storyline for a romance movie was different. It wasn’t the same thing that has been done over and over and over again.

Sandra Henderson (22:02.232)
I would like if you watch a Hallmark Christmas movie over the winter, you know it’s the same framework for the storyline for every single movie. And so it was really nice to have one that had its own flow. Jamila Jamila’s in it and she’s always fantastic. So if you haven’t seen it, definitely go and check that one out. Just a couple more to go. So let’s talk about my top three favorite books for 2023.

These are actually book series because I couldn’t narrow it down to just one book. So first we have the after series, which I was just talking about that movie. There are books and movies. Normally if I watch the movie or TV show something first and then I read the book, I won’t get through the book. Just like I was saying with the summer, I turned pretty. And a lot of times if I read the book first, it ends up the movie just can’t hold up to it. So it’s…

It’s usually a toss up, but with the after series, I definitely equally loved the books and the movies. One didn’t take away from the other. And even though they are fairly different, they’re still consistent enough that it doesn’t throw you off across the whole story. Next for number two is the Things We Left Behind series by Lucy Skor. There were three books in this series, each one about the first two were about brothers and then the third one was about their friend.

These books as well as the after series books are a little spicy so if that’s not your jam you may want to take a pass on these. But these Lucy score books were really really well written and I couldn’t put them down. I got through them so quickly because all I wanted to do was keep turning pages. I can’t tell you how many nights I stayed up way past when I normally go to sleep because I just couldn’t put it down. Number three is the Brown Sisters series by Talia Hibbert.

These books were so funny and so enjoyable to read. And I really loved that there was a culturally diverse cast of characters, plus storylines that revolved around things like chronic illness, neurodivergency, and navigating both family and personal relationships. They were so incredibly relatable. Like, Get a Life, Chloe Brown, which is the first book in the series, is about a woman with a chronic illness who adopts a cat named Smudge. And I have…

Sandra Henderson (24:21.102)
chronic illnesses and a cat named Smudge, so definitely, definitely relatable for me. But just really enjoyable read and I’ve been recommending these books to everybody. Now to wrap up my top threes, I want to talk about the top three trips that I took for 2023. And first, I’m going to start with my trip to San Diego that I took in November.

This was a retreat with my business coach, Candice Coppola, and a bunch of incredible women from the mastermind that I have been working in for the last few years. These women are all so amazing, so inspiring, and being able to spend a few days with them brainstorming about our businesses and coming up with goals and supporting each other on how we’re going to get there was just the most amazing experience.

If you have any opportunities this year to participate in any sort of group coaching or retreats or anything like that, I highly, highly recommend you do it because there isn’t really a proper way to explain how incredible it is until you experience it yourself. Number two, speaking of going to conferences and things like that, last January I went to Dallas for the Creative Educator Conference.

I’m unfortunately not going to the 2024 conference and I have major FOMO about that, but it was just such a great opportunity to get together with other creative educators to better our businesses and the offers that we’re creating for people like you listening. And then number three was a trip to Niagara Falls that I took with my husband last March. It was my 10 year anniversary for my business in…

It was my 10 year anniversary of my photography business on the same day that Niagara Falls was turning yellow for Endometriosis Awareness Month. So we got a hotel and we went down for the weekend. I’m obsessed with Niagara Falls. It’s one of my favorite places in all of Ontario to go to. And we got dressed up. We went out for a nice dinner. We got some.

Sandra Henderson (26:21.952)
amazing cake boss cake from a vending machine which sounds sketchy but oh my god it was so good and i’m still talking about it almost a year later and then we watched the falls change from the comfort of our hotel room so we didn’t have to go down and freeze over by the water it was just such a nice relaxing weekend and still kind of surreal to think that we were celebrating 10 years since i had started my photography business back in 2013 i had to give myself a few moments

while we were there to just kind of take it all in and let myself celebrate such a huge milestone that I don’t know if I ever actually thought would happen. Like it was something that I hoped would happen, that I dreamed of it happening, but I don’t know if Sandra back in 2013 really thought that it was possible. So that was an awesome experience for sure. Now, as we head into 2024,

I’ve decided that I’m going to be tackling my goals quarterly this year rather than trying to come up with a full forecasting game plan for the entire year. There are some things that I want to do in Q3 and Q4 that are really dependent on some factors happening in Q1 and Q2. So it just doesn’t make sense for me to try and plan things out that I know are very likely going to have to change. So I’ve come up with some sales goals for Q1. I’ve come up with some personal goals and some fun goals.

but I also took some time to really think about the kind of impact that I want my businesses to make this year. So here’s what that looks like for Q1. I want to focus on creating content that will help photographers, especially my chronic illness friends, simplify the way they do things behind the scenes. I want to continue to build and foster communities where everyone feels safe, seen and heard. And I want to have fun because running a business shouldn’t always be stressful.

Having these impact goals in mind has really given me perspective to filter everything that I’m doing over the next few months. It’s helped me think about how I wanna show up for my clients and how I wanna show up in online spaces. It’s given me so much clarity. So if you’ve never taken the time to think about the kind of impact you want your business to make, here’s the perfect time to do it. We’re now in off season. You’ll have a little bit extra time compared to what you do in the summer. So take some time and really think about not just,

Sandra Henderson (28:41.742)
what kind of money you want to make this year or how many weddings you want to book, but how you want your couples to feel and what kind of impact you want to make on them in the time that you’re going to be working with them. And that wraps up everything I have for this episode, friends. Thank you so much for listening and thank you for coming back after this unexpected hiatus. I’m going to be back next week with our very first interview of 2024, where my friend Erin from Maybelline Q &I are chatting all about accessibility in your business.

Thank you so much for listening. You can find full show notes from today’s episode at simplysandryvonne.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.

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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!

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