Master -servant Relationship Master -servant Relationship. You need to work as a team. You're not beneath taking the rubbish out and neither are they. Right. They're not your servant. You're working as a team. That could be part of their responsibility, but that doesn't mean they do it every time. 

Right. The one thing my staff loved about me was that we're busy with clients all the time. If the bins are full, I take them out because I'm the one that's free right now. Yeah. Right. Yeah. 

I don't do it for them. I do it for my clients because my clients don't want to see a bin that's overflowing with, you know, wipes and shit. Yeah. No, it makes sense. It makes sense. I have a friend who owns two hugely popular bakeries in LA. They're called Jones on Third. 

They're insanely popular. Joan is kind of a celebrity and she washes the dishes once a month, which in the busy cafes, really shitty job. And she does it because she didn't do it for a year. She did it one time and she discovered that the way the dish thing was set up was so inefficient. It was shocking. 

So she had the whole thing renovated. And then she said, now I'm going to wash the dishes once a month to make sure that this always stays efficient. And it made a huge difference in her business. 

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You're hiring personality first. So always you're looking at personality, which means that your interview questions need to be behavioural. Interview questions. Can you give an example of some questions you yeah. 

So what sort of role are you trying to fill? So I actually definitely feel like I don't want a photographer at all, because it's actually the one part of a business where I feel like I don't need any help. 

I'm all set there. That's bullshit. It no wind machine for you. Because you're an owner, you shouldn't be doing any part of your business. But I want to keep doing the photography. That's the part that I like different. 

That's different. Wanting to and having to is different because if you get sick or if something happens or if you want to take a holiday, your business stops. Wanting to and having to are very different things. 

And okay, you're not at that stage yet, okay? But looking into the future, if the right person is sitting there slapping you in the face and because you're so close to it, you don't take up that opportunity, I don't want that to be the case for you because that is fucking bullshit. 

That you don't need a photographer because that's part of your business. That potentially if, as an owner, you're building your brand and you're building people's desire for. Then are you really going to be doing every shoot? 

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I heard somebody. Yay! No, she's gone. She's gone. What happened? Good. She booked like everybody she talked to and the sales have been great, but I haven't even gotten the payer commission because she heard therapist and heard disgusted and she didn't 

have enough structure because she was working. Yeah. Right. She was working from home because we're in a pandemic, right? And she wasn't actually living here at the time. She was going to move here and then she would have been working with me, but she... 

I think that's... I think this is part of planning when you are hiring somebody that most people need guidelines and most people need set hours that they're expected to turn up. It's great to give people flexibility, but they need a minimum requirement. 

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Okay. So that leads me to my next question. Can I kind of ask two questions in one? Yeah, go. So, along those lines, one of the things I've kind of been obsessing over and I kind of landed on one side of it, but I'm still questioning it, is bringing in someone who I would call revenue generating. 

In other words, someone who could do lead calls or do discovery calls, versus bringing in someone who would take a host of the admin off of my plate, which would free up more of my time to get better at discovery calls and get more leads, et cetera, et cetera. 

I've kind of landed on the side of the admin, but it makes me question myself because there's no direct revenue generating that they're bringing in. And then the other piece, well, freeing. Up your time is allowing you to generate more revenue. 

Right. So the fact that they're going to be freeing up some of your time so you're right. There's two ways of looking at it. The more time that they free up for you to do the revenue to generate more revenue, the more revenue you're going to make. 

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All right, so you're about to employ your first employee. That's very exciting. But look at your face, girl. Like, what is all this rubbish anxiety about? Like, really terrified. I am fucking terrified. 

Do you want oh, it is recording. I wanted to remind you to record. If it wasn't yeah, we're recording and we're capturing every swear word that comes out of your mouth. And the deal is you're not allowed to swear more than me because I'm the king of swearing. 

Well, I was going to say I think Anita should keep track of both of our swear words, and whichever one of us swears more gets a prize. Right? I don't know what it is. Sounds good. All right. Where is this anxiety coming from? 

What are you most afraid of? Okay, so I'll start with the Good super, like, just Brief Story, which is that new amazing studio that I'm in is also in this beautiful neighborhood, which my old studio was not. 

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Episode 5:- Time Management

So one of the things that seemed to be important to you when we were speaking earlier was that you felt that you were so tied to your business that you weren't giving enough time to your family. Your family is growing and you want to spend more weekends at home, more weekends being present for your family without those thoughts of shit. 

There's so much work to do. Yeah. And you're gone. Physically gone. So I think that the trap that we fall into when we become photographers is that we believe we have to do everything. And what we seem to do is create work and create busyness. 

And we become what we've really done is created a job for ourselves. But very few of us have really become business owners. So rather than you being a worker, you need to start to think of yourself as a leader, somebody that is there to empower people. 

And I know this is going to be scary, so brace yourself for this. Brace to be better than you. You because if you only hire people like you, then they also can come with your faults. True. Yeah, that's true. 

Right. So what we tend to do is hire people like us. But people like us have the same fears, the same fears about money, the same fears about talking to people to get on the phone to do all those sort of things. 

What we have to do is hire in the talent that we don't have. So there's got to be things that you could outsource and you got to look at. And the other thing you need to do is look at where is a person's value? 

So when you think about Jen, where is her value? What's her strengths? Like connecting with the. Pete people and taking their picture with a camera hands and not sitting behind a computer screen. So she may be good at retouching and sitting behind a computer screen and editing, but if you're saying to me her true value is the way that she connects to people, and if she does get in front of somebody, is she really good at connecting? 

And does she convert bookings? Oh, for sure. Because that's where the money is 100%. That's where she's more valuable, 100%. So can we make a decision now? That part of her job, where she's sitting behind a screen, where she's not being valuable. 

I mean, there's value in doing it, but we can outsource that quite easily, right? So the fear that I've always had is that that's how I supplement part of her income. That's how her income is determined, is how much editing she's doing. 

So by outsourcing it, the money that I was paying for her to do it is going somewhere else. So she wants to make more money. So I didn't want to take that away. So you were sacrificing your time and everything to do edit for us so that you could make that money to justify your salary, but you're thinking of. 

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Episode 4:-Referrals

Okay, so in this section, what I'd like, you asked me about the fact that you've built this huge asset over the years, which has been all of your weddings for the past how many years? Seven. Seven years. 

There are three ways to build a business, okay? The first one is to get more clients, which is what you're doing. You're always looking for more clients. It happens to be the most expensive way to grow a business, because you have to market for them. 

You have to find new people. It takes a lot of energy to educate them and bring them in. And you've got to think about, well, how many emails do I need to answer before I get one? How many interviews do I do before I convert one? 

It's the most expensive way to grow a business. Unfortunately, it seems to be the only way. Photographers the only thing photographers tend to focus on, the next one is getting your clients to use you more often, which is a much cheaper way and a less stress free way, a less stress free, stressful way of doing it. 

Okay? So what needs to happen is that the clients need to be educated, that you do family portraits or that you're going to offer it. So there needs to be somewhere in your meeting area that you meet them, a representation of that. 

So you've got to think about, okay, I've got a couple coming in, and they're getting married. What is the next life cycle that they will be going through? So having something with a newborn, okay? And my advice to people is to get a half decent looking guy holding a baby, because nothing makes a woman melt more than seeing a guy with a baby. 

Okay? So. But what I see a lot of photographers do is they find these hot mums holding a baby. So a woman looking at a really hot mum and I made this mistake at an expo once. This is why I know this. 

We had this rock star looking mum with a perfect body. She was slender with this beautiful belly. And we had this awesome display and I'm like, why is nobody stopping? And then I walked away from my stand and went to stands up and I was listening to the people as I were looking and they were like as they're going by bitch. 

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Episode 3:- Forever Sessions 

Okay, so the next part is you mentioned that you're giving away the engagement shoot, and you are wanting to work out how we can go about making some money out of that. Yeah. So, to me, our industry has put such a heavy label on the word engagement shoot that if you call it an engagement shoot, people's perception is exactly what the industry is giving them. 

It's complimentary, it's free, and it's for a save the date card. Okay. So what we need to do first is change our perception about what that's all about. So right now, why do you do an engagement session? 

It's time to connect with clients. It's a good time. We get to know you. It's like test driving a car. You already bought it. You're with us. It's a nice like to see what they're like. They're a connection in front of the camera, make them comfortable. 

So it's definitely about that. It's about making them feel comfortable. It's about getting them to learn hand signals and how to work with you. But how much do you really learn about the client before you take those photos, before they engage? 

Not much. We learn while we're shooting. Yeah. I mean, it's essentially a discovery, and even then, we're not like we're just we're still locked in our art and doing what we're doing, and it's not like a proper we have 90 minutes. 

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Episode 2 :- Wedding Album After-sales


Okay, so for this next section, we're going to be talking about how to get sales after the wedding for the wedding album. So it's the on sale afterward an album and the after sales of an album does not happen by accident. 

Okay. So you've got to understand that when a client first comes and sees you, how long is it before a client? But from the time that the client first comes in and sees you and books their wedding, how much lead time is there between that and the wedding? 

It varies from it can be a year and a half. I'd say the average is about a year, nine months to a year. Okay. You honestly believe at that point they have any comprehension of the scope, of all of the little details that they have planned, all of those little details, and have now become important enough for them to pay a ton of money for for the wedding? 

No, they have no idea. So at this point in time, they think they only want this much photographed. So do you believe that it's fair for you to assume that after they've put so much money and so much time and so much effort into all the details that you would restrict them to their initial decision? 

No, it's not fair at all. So what needs to happen is that there needs to be this communication between you and the client. How much communication currently do you have from the time that you book them until the time that you wedding day. 

Or fulfill the product so they book. You, when is the next time you contact them? There's an automated email that sends out a questionnaire three months of the wedding to gather information so we know and then we may or may not suggest a meeting if they need one. 

But usually we just show up where they tell us to show up. Zero. Okay. What would happen if you were to call the father of the bride a month in and say something like, hey, it's Jeff. I'm going to be photographing your daughter's wedding. 

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Episode 1 the Right Focus for Wedding Albums

I'm here with Jeff and Jen, and we're going to talk a little bit about their business and what they would love to bring to their business. So, Jeff, tell me a little bit about your business and when you're at, where you're at. 

So we're cook photography and we're associate model studio, I guess, if you will, of there's five, four photographers, and we're wedding. Including yourself? Including myself. And we're our wedding studio. 

We shoot weddings. So last year, this is the first year evolution, where we have two new associates that have just joined us, but for the past six years, six or seven years, it's been Jen and I, and Jen's grown into an associate. 

And like last year, we shot 50 weddings together, and the year before it was 54. So we brought in two new associates to help with the overflow of saying no. And that's where we're at right now. So you have to say no right now. 

Oh, yeah. Which is really hard, right? Yeah. Okay, so where do you think you have the potential? Where are you leaving money? On the table, basically. Oh, it's definitely weddings. Our model right now is we book the client, we go to the wedding, we shoot it, edit it, give them the files, digital files, and then move on to the next one. 

And so we've been shooting for seven years together, and we have an average, let's say an average of 40 weddings a year up this point. And if I was going to combine our total post wedding sales into a profit or how many albums, it would be not even a full year's worth of album. 

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This segment, we're going to talk about one of your fears, which is that you don't want to come across as a sleazy salesperson. It's a big fear. Yes, huge. So as long as you're not sleazy, you're okay. 

I think any type of any like, for me, personally, I'm really sensitive to being to feeling like I'm somebody's trying to sell something to me. Yeah. That disingen with interaction, where they're just trying to come get my money. 
So that's just a huge concern. We don't want to ever have our clients feel that that's what we're doing, that we're taking advantage or using them. So given what we've done today in the setup and the layout and the changes we've suggested, can you feel a difference in the way that you will be presenting to make it easier for a client to make a decision already? 

Because right now, how you've set the room up is going to create exactly what you want to try to avoid. You can't not think about what you're not supposed to think about without thinking about it. Okay? 

So I don't want you to think of a blue tree. Whatever you do, please don't think of a blue tree. I don't want you to think of a blue tree. So the more you think about being a salesperson, the more you will be one. 

So what you avoid, what you resist, persists. Okay. So the more you try to avoid something, the more you become that person. So the whole purpose of what we did today was to free you of that. Okay. We're making it easy for clients to make decisions, and we be making it we're subliminally drawing their attention to things that they may want. 

Your job is to help clients make decisions and to not judge people. By that, I mean, we should always offer them something rather than judging them. As though they can't afford something and feel as though we can't offer it, because that's even worse, right? 

So the whole process from the beginning to end is geared at when you're asking somebody, what is it about this person that when was that moment when you first knew she was the one you wanted to spend the rest of your life with? 

Where were you? What was happening? What was it about that moment? What was it about that moment that you knew she was the one? You suddenly become the person they want to hire because you saw them. The three things that most people want the most is to feel seen and to be heard and to feel loved. 

And if we can give people this, you become so delicious, they just want whatever you have to give them. And we have to be genuine about this. The whole point of a wedding interview is to work out, are we the right fit? 

It's not about selling everybody into a package, right? It's about finding out, interviewing them, are we the right fit for each other? And then serving them with the intention of creating an experience that's going to make them fall in love again. 
If you do this properly and you follow the system, those that couple, when they come to their wedding, what you've done is you've created the best version of that couple that they're ever going to be, because you've given them the support. 
You've called their parents, you've called the father and asked him, what is it about finally. Handing your daughter over to another man, what is that going to feel like? And then he's going to go through that. 

And then what you're doing is you're bringing people together and you're opening communication. So the end result is going to be when you photograph them, they're a completely different couple because of the experience you've given them. 
At that point, it doesn't matter what you take, what photographs you take, they're going to love it mor

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