If you have been listening to the show for basically any period of time, you have probably heard me talk about how we have to align our businesses kind of build our business models around our preferences, right? Like the things that we want and sort of have this vision of for our
business. And then also around our parameters, things like the amount of time that we can dedicate to our business, the amount of money that we can invest in our business, the amount of money that we need to make in our business, the resources that we have around, you know, the equipment that we have, or the ability that we may have to like, we're really great at building websites, or
whatever the case may be. We all have a unique thumbprint of sorts around the the kind of business that we should build. And the best way to build a business that works is to build something that is truly in alignment with that particular thumbprint. So my conversation today is with Paula Brennan, who is an amazing personal brand photographer based on the Sunshine Coast of Australia. And she is joining me today to talk about something that is
brilliant. It is this concept of personal brand mini sessions. And she's going to explain that these mini sessions are not exactly what you would think of if you are used to the standard definition of mini sessions. But what I really love about this idea beyond the fact that it's super creative, beyond the fact that honestly, I want to go sign up and have this done for me, the thing that I love about this business is that this is a woman
who liked me for a long time. It she is a single mom, she has a lot of different demands on her time, and she has a certain amount of money that she needs to make whatever she instead of looking at that situation and feeling defeated, or feeling like well, you know, how am I going to make a business work, she took that and ran with it. And she has leaned into it by creating this sort of economical if we're speaking of the economy of time, it's economical way to present amazing value to her
clients. Create an offer that is super attractive and interesting. And also make it really lucrative make it so that that floats her business and she is hitting all of her goals. I feel like you're going to get so much inspiration from this topic, even if you know, this isn't exactly what you want to
do in your business. She's an amazing example of someone who has thought very thoughtfully thought very carefully about how her business can and should run, and then done exactly what she needed to do without worrying about what everyone around her was doing. And so I'm excited to share this conversation with you. So I'm gonna go ahead and Cue the music. Welcome to this can't be that hard. My name is Annemie Tonken. And I help photographers run profitable, sustainable businesses that they
love. Each week on the podcast, I cover simple, actionable strategies and systems that photographers at every level of experience can use to earn more money in a more sustainable way. Running a photography business doesn't have to be that hard. You can do it. And I can show you how. Paul Brennan, welcome to this can't be that hard. I'm so excited to have you on the show today. How are you?
I'm very good. And I feel so honored to be invited. So thank you so much for having me.
I feel honored you are it is 6am where you are right?
Yes it is. But I've already taught a live class by now.
So you are you you I mean I consider myself to be a morning person but you look like bright and fresh and the fact that you've already been teaching this morning I'm just my hat's off to you. So I appreciate you us working to make the timezone thing work and I'm very excited to chat about this topic. I have so many listeners who are if they're not 100% focused on brand photography, they are trying to incorporate more brand
photography into their work. And I know that that's sort of your bread and butter so I'm I'm excited to dive in. So before we started talking about that, why don't you give everyone a little bit of an intro to who you are and and what you teach.
Well, okay, so I am a now personal brand photographer in Australia and but I didn't always start it that way. So I actually grew up in a photography household. I was very lucky to have a photography studio underneath my house. My dad was a wedding photographer, and my mom was the one cutting all of the negs and doing all that stuff. And then eventually I graduated at the age of like six or seven to like stamping copyright on the back of the
photos. So I grew up kind of seeing photos and I was putting together The Wedding albums and all of that kind of thing. But I didn't necessarily want to be a photographer, I ran hard in another direction doing acting of all things. And then I was resigned to the fact that I was going to be an out of work actor, but I needed to work. So I sort of picked up the camera and started doing some weddings
with my dad. And then it just took off from there, I was around the advent of the digital photography kind of taking over. And I've always been a natural creative, I loved the Photoshop side of things. But pretty quickly, I was up to speed doing a lot of weddings, I was doing like up to 80 weddings a year,
which was crazy times, yeah. And then, you know, hit that point of burnout after having my daughter, like a lot of wedding photographers do and looked like I was looking around for something else, and was lucky enough to discover the beautiful super ice. And so I went knee deep into that world started a portrait studio in a completely new city. So had to learn marketing from the ground up.
And as I was, as I was operating that business, I sort of really started to become aware of my own personal brand, and how much I needed to put myself forward. In my previous business, it was sort of like this, you know, there was a name on the business, that wasn't my into, you know, when I made the move to start my portrait studio in a new place, I was like, oh, gosh, I'm gonna have to put myself out the front here. So I started networking, I started meeting a lot of other people in
businesses. And then personal branding just sort of came about, it was just one of those things that people started asking for. And I was like, Oh, my gosh, this is so much fun. Like, I totally geek out on marketing, I totally love seeing the marketing potential in the marketing golden other people. And I can like really help to bring their vision of who they want to be and what they want, how they want to be seen to life. And so yeah, I just kind
of went knee deep into that. And I don't even think personal branding was necessarily a phrase, you know, in a lot of that early days, it's sort of only become really, really big in the last sort of decade or so. But I was definitely doing it all the way through. But now it's just become this sort of behemoth. And like, we're literally in the age of the personal brand, right? Everybody is in the business of building
their own personal brand. And so it's just really nice to be able to be part of other people's businesses and helping them to do that. And being part of their marketing team almost is pretty cool. So yeah, and then so I decided to close my portrait studio in 2019. And go all in on personal branding in December of 2019. Can you believe it? What? Like universal timing? That was? Yeah, absolutely. So I was lucky that I've done that in a lot of
ways. And that also afforded me the opportunity with the lockdown and everything to then go into the education space and build out some courses and things. So yeah, it's been a pretty cool journey ever since then. Very quick, short question.
No, no. And I and I appreciate sort of the context there. Because I am right there with you. I remember when I started my business, I don't think that anyone was doing brand photography. I mean, obviously, there was like commercial photography, right, where people would work for big
brands. But the personal brand concept, I feel like was sort of born along with social media and sort of the the way that I mean, I think about when I started my photography, business, Instagram, I think was already around, but it was brand new. And it was back when you couldn't put a photo from your real camera onto Instagram, it was just like your phone photos for this amazing filters. And so like I wasn't even in the beginning, using that at all to
market my business. And so just thinking about how all of that has sort of changed, and how rapidly it has exploded? is it's kind of wild to think about. But if I and I've said this multiple times, if I were starting over today, I think that branding would be like, if not the front thing that I did in my business, certainly like one of the main offers, it just seems like there's such good, there's such a good strong market for it.
It's year round, it can be you know, so flexible in terms of midweek and people have a budget for it. Like there's just so many things going for it. And I
think that's something that's really one of the things that I kind of like really identified quickly is that the marketing, the bet the budget, and the spend actually comes from a different place. So it's actually coming from a much more intellectual decision. That's about a marketing spent right. It's an investment in my business. And it's investment in
my future. It's an investment in the growth of my business as opposed to being an emotional purchase, which is what a lot of the domestic market relies on. Right, which is fantastic. I think there's just two different methodologies here. So what I kind of like really liked about personal branding from a security point of view was that I could sell high end price packages up front and I wasn't sort of sitting in the sales room with my portraits waiting for that emotional kind of
purchase. Now I was really good on my sales game. Don't get me wrong, my portrait averages were really healthiest, I'm sure they are for your listeners as well. But it just sort of became a kind of a point with me where I was like, I don't want to kind of I like the fact that there's a guaranteed kind of spend here. And then I can make more from there. But that was that just sort of, I guess I'm a single
mom, right. So the security of being able to know that every single time I went to work, I knew I was paid well in advance upfront, and there was that sort of, I don't know, I guess that peace of mind when I was packing my bag and going and jumping in my car going to a shoot, you know? Yeah,
absolutely. And I feel like that is something where and you and I have that shared experience of being the sole breadwinner and the you know, like, this rests on my business's shoulders. It's not just for fun, it's not you know. And as much as I don't necessarily wish that on people, like if you've got a multi income household, great, that is wonderful. There is a lot of security in that. But like, I also think that my experience, and I imagine yours, as well, has taught me that take nothing
for granted. Yeah, like some build your business such that it could withstand something major, because even if it's nothing in your within your control, right, like, and not that a relationship is necessarily in your control. But injuries, certainly like we all experienced the pandemic, like all these different things can affect your livelihood. And when you build a business that nothing is bulletproof
completely. But certainly, you know, we can put certain things into place to protect ourselves. And I think it's smart to do it. When you're not in a crisis. That's the hardest time to kind of bounce back. Yeah,
absolutely. 100% agree with you. And I know you've put sort of fail safes into your business similar to what I have instead of like, and this market definitely allows you to do things like subscription style packages with your clients where you get that sort of like ongoing retainer style payments
coming through the business. And again, it's just that extra layer of security where I can future proof because once upon a time when I was doing weddings, I was booked out to three years in advance, and I could sort of predict the income. But when you come into this space, you'll literally the clients are like, you know, ringing tomorrow and wanting a photoshoot next week or the week after. So you're only ever booked two to three
months in advance. So being able to kind of go okay, well, I've got a roster of 15 clients, they're all paying this amount of money. And I know that I've got a guaranteed number of shoots coming through that kind of level of security, again, is like you're saying it's just like I think like future proofing your business against potential things that could go wrong. And all of my clients are great, because they will. They're all similar to me. So we're all at similar stages in
our life in our business. And we're equally as passionate our as our businesses each other. And so I think that if something was to happen, perhaps I couldn't perform this month, they would all go oh, that's fine. We can wait till next month, it's not you know, they've got that I've got that kind of level of relationship with them now as well. Like, I'm not just a hired contractor, I'm actually part of their team, which is just really beautiful. So yeah, it's nice yeah, to be.
And what we do, I do think that kind of regardless of the space you're in, in photography, it's such a personal thing, that I think that we get the benefit of exactly what you're describing that sort of relationship, but it's so important to bear that relationship in mind, as you are building every piece of your business, certainly your marketing is included.
Absolutely. I mean, I was talking to another photographer and educator about this a couple of weeks ago, it was saying like, you know, with all of the fancy marketing that's going on, and all of the things that people think that you could or should be doing out
there. Ultimately, it's the relationship building, that's the thing that stood the test of time for me, whether it be back in my wedding days, when I was, you know, you we had all the service providers and the wedding providers, we were all really tight, and we all kind of looked after each other, even with the other photographers, I was always giving them work and the work, the work was coming
back. And I think that kind of relationship building, no matter what sector of the industry that you're in, it's so important. Like, there's no like, I hear a lot from people, they go, Oh, they can't afford me, and I go here, but I'll still honor them with my time to you know, like, I love nothing more than having a conversation with an entrepreneur or business owner who comes to me for a
photoshoot. And though we get to that point in the conversation, where obviously we might be talking about money and that kind of thing, and they might go, look, it's a bit more than what I can afford to spend. And I love nothing more than go, Hey, look, let me give you some tips and some tools on how I see the direction that could go in to be able to get to a point and I can't wait to get to that day when you can afford to come and work with me. Because I know your business will be doing
really well. We're not probably for each other right now. I think there's other areas that you could focus in on your business. I don't think having a fancy photoshoot right now isn't necessarily where you need to be. But then that person in 12 months time when they come back to me and they say that conversation meant so much to me. I'm like yeah, how beautiful like how lovely that you You remember that I remember that. And now we're at that stage where we can work together.
That's like special. It
is, it's so good. And I also think that it validates that aspiration for somebody. And I see that in family stuff, too, right? I think it's really important to do what you're describing, which is validating, like, you're right, this does not sound like the right decision for you at this time, or if that's how you feel whatever. But planting the seed that like, just because it's not happening today doesn't mean that it can't happen in the
future. I do. I mean, I've had so many people over the years, come back after some period of time and say, I've been saving for this. And those are, you know, they turn out to be just the very best clients. And it's always, it's always my favorite. And
I have this sort of difficulty, I guess, when I and I know you've probably come across this the same. And I want to say this to anyone that's listening, marketing, and relationship building is a long game in your business. And just because you try something today, and it doesn't give you immediate results, it doesn't mean necessarily that it didn't work, because I literally can
track in my database. And some people I can see have interacted with me for three or four years before they become an actual paying client. But when they come into my world, then they've had so many touch points, they've literally been sitting
on the edge. And even if we haven't like actually conversed yet, the hope the overall mechanism and machine around my marketing means that we can go straight in and have a hug, because there's that familiarity there, by way of you know, and that's I guess that's, you know, cutting back to that whole personal branding aspect, too,
right? It's all those layers of us kind of sharing and not necessarily always putting your handout in your marketing and asking for something but generously giving and sharing a little bits and pieces of yourself so that people can get to know you that personal brand of yours. That's that the power of that, that when when people come there's that sort of like relationship parasocial relationship that they may have had with you that you're not
even aware of. And then suddenly, suddenly, they're like, oh, my gosh, we're finally meeting and I'm like, here's a big hard. Welcome to my world.
Yeah, man, I know, no, waiting for you. Right? I've been dreaming of you, even though I didn't have a face to or anything necessarily to put with that. That's so funny.
I love that aspect that you say that to that dreaming of you. Because we always talk about your dream client client, right? Of course, it's the when you can come into your world all the time, it's wonderful. It is.
And you have to, you have to believe in that dream. At the times when you're feeling like, you know, why isn't anything working? Why isn't my marketing, getting traction, all of those, I do think that it's important to like, hold it in your heart that those dream clients are out there, they may even already, like you may already be on their radar. It's just, you know, it hasn't yet been the right time, or they haven't gotten the right call to action, or whatever the
case may be. And then actually, I feel like leads really nicely into what we, you know, got on the call today to talk about which is this idea of personal brand mini sessions. So before I go, trying to interpret that, I'm just going to let you kind of jump in and describe your process and kind of what led to this and how it's working. Interesting
story of what led to it. I guess, when I had a studio, I was always trying to like maximize my space. But I was also actually going down to Sydney to photograph weddings at the same time. So now I live in Queensland, Sydney is an hour and a half flight away. And my business was still running down there. So I needed to find ways and and I had become a single mum, right? So I needed to find ways of batching my energy
output. So that I made sure that I was kind of like maximizing every time I was flying down to Sydney or every time I was going into my studio space. And funnily enough, I actually I one day, I saw that I was shooting a wedding on the front steps of this big huge cathedral in Sydney. And I saw this van jump out with there was like for brides and for grooms tucked into the back of this fan, right. And they were taking photos at different Sydney
landmarks. And it was so funny, they got out with like cheeseburgers in their hands and and then the bride would get rid of the cheeseburger, a dress would go out and she'd get photos here. And I started noticing these little vans. So basically what they were doing was bringing multiple shoots together, right, and just maximizing their shoot time and getting lots of people doing the same thing at once. So I was like, Okay, how can I sort of like apply this to my business?
How can I kind of like maximize things. So when I decided to close down my studio, I actually needed to, you know, have shoot venues to go to and that kind of thing. And I found myself that like just like eyeing off these beautiful properties and I was like, Oh my gosh, I really want to be able to get access to those. But I couldn't put the cost of like, you know, $1,000 house could for a day I couldn't put that back on to an individual client. So I was
like, okay, cool. I can bring like multiple clients together on one shoot day and I can sort of share the cost of doing it across them and I can give them this epic experience at a location that perhaps they dream of getting photographed up, but it's not accessible to them, I can bring a hair and makeup artists fraction, the cost of that for them as well. I can do things like bringing in video and do all sorts of other
aspects as well. So it just became like a no brainer for me when I like looked at the business model, I actually had started doing this just before I closed my studio so that it works so that it was taking off. So I want to kind of like reprogram the way that we talk about this because I know I have to use the word minis, for articulating it to people, but I want to say that this is actually a maxi experience for
my clients. So I'm really making sure that they've getting maximum value out of the day, because I can like, you know, obviously crunch the costs for them of bringing all the elements together as well. But what you need to know as well, I guess, animes that the business clients, they like networking, so they actually like hanging out with other people and meeting other church business. So I can bring, you know, six clients back to back in one shoot day, they can sort of like
meet and hang out. They also actually get to be each other's dummy clients in the photoshoot so they can step in for each other. A lot of the time, they'll actually just end up becoming each other's clients as well if they sort of sitting down. And it's kind of like going to a hairdressers and having a photoshoot all in one day, right? Yeah, hairdressers networking and thing, you know, when you go to a hairdressers, all the girls are all having a
bit of a chat with. And so it's a really good day out for my clients. But it's also just a really, really obviously lucrative day for me now. So instead of servicing one person, I'm servicing six, maybe eight, depending on the kind of shoot day that I've put together. And it means that for me creatively, I can kind of concept, the locations and the ideas and the themes that I want to do. And then I can mark it to that as an event. Nice. So okay, comes the
thing. So it's, it's kind of like a, a one off a scarcity kind of thing. Do you know, like, it's got all the marketing things that we kind of like, and it also then means that I can sort of go, I often will get on sales calls with clients, and they'll be like, I'm like, Oh, my God, I, I would love to shoot you in this concrete sort of house. And I think this is amazing. They go. Okay, so when's that happening? I haven't organized it yet. But now that I've got you, I'm gonna go and
make that happen. And so then I can actually go and create and bring together a bunch of other clients that might want that experience as well. So pretty cool thing to not only be able to keep my clients consistently having a bit of a different kind of vibe. But it also for me creatively fills my cup and of course, financially fills my cup even more. Yeah,
perfect. That's the that's like the trifecta. Right? I have so many questions. Okay. So, talk to me about what this looks like in practice, you know, when I think mini sessions for family clients or something like that, it's like you're coming in, I'm doing a 15 minute session for your family, you show up, you take 15 minutes worth of photos, and then you leave. It doesn't sound like that's what you're describing here? No,
it's definitely not. And that's why I kind of want to get around the term minis. But I guess it's what we're used to talking about. Sure, no, it's for me, usually what it looks like is for most of my clients, I'll get them to get hair and makeup done. So that takes about 45 minutes to an hour to get hair and makeup done. And then depending on the experience, so I do have different sort of modalities of this and obviously
inclusions and things. But it's either usually about a 20 minute session, or it's a 45 minute session. And so they can either get like an hour and a half slot from you know, in the calendar booking. So now for the hair and makeup half an hour each for the shoot, or else, it's the two hour slot. And then that allows me obviously, it gives me a little bit of time to go through their clothes and sort of have a look at what they've brought along and things like that as
well. But I find a lot of the time on my shoots that my clients are getting changed for half of the time, right? Because the nature of personal branding is that you don't necessarily want it to look like it's all taken in one day. And so they're going in and getting changes and that kind of thing. So there was a lot of downtime that was getting wasted. So I tend to kind of like, you know, I'll have a client come in at 831 come in at 931 come in at 1030.
And I just sort of like move between where I need to be when one person is getting changed, I might be chatting to someone else about their hair and makeup or their clothing. And as I said I'm so fluid with this kind of thing. I'm so Okay, with people bumping into each other, the properties that I shoot at tend to be a little bit larger. So it accommodates this kind of thing, where we can sort of just all be
around the space together. And yeah, that's sort of, I guess what it looks like from the operational point of view on the day, I have a hair and makeup artist, I have a videographer who also doubles as my assistant. And then I have me so it's a team of the three of us. And between six to eight people is pretty much what we can handle. And of course if there's a few guys that come in that don't require makeup, I usually stick them in at the start of
the day. So that while someone's getting hair and makeup done, I can fit a couple more in at the start. So it's Yeah, yeah. It's a pretty cool and smooth day from that point of view. Yeah.
And then what are the deliverables like? Like, what are you promising that they're going to get from this short, shorter session?
Yes. So depending on the option, there's just like an image pack that comes with it. And then sometimes, you know, obviously, I'm always shooting for an upsell, as well. So if they come in with the understanding of the expectation, this is how much I'm going to spend. And this is what I get anywhere between sort of, like maybe a couple of images up to maybe like 15 images was what I kind of recommend is a good promise for
these sorts of things. And usually, like, you know, most people come in, they go, oh, I want a LinkedIn profile. Sure, I want to shop for my book cover. And so you know, you can, that's the sort of the lower end ticket ones, and then you can go the other ones that go, I'm building a new website. So that's the people that typically would want, you know, a dozen to 15 images. Instead of, you know, high resolution images, they're all kind of like, you know, copyright protected. So they
can't unseal the images. But they do have that commercial use to be able to use them for marketing. So that's part of the that's obviously part of the deal. But as I said, like, I'm always looking for the upsell, you know, that's where it becomes, you know, the power of being able to upsell to six or eight people on a shoot date is obviously where we start to compact the profitability of these sorts of days. And so then I'm obviously telling them upfront, this is, this is the
process. And I always say to people, when I'm shooting them, I'm like, I might be like, played with a hair, and I'm like, Oh, my God, you're gonna want all of these photos. Play the same for the upsell, right? We
my version of that same line is Oh, I do not envy you having to pick between these. So say, I'm
genuinely saying this, right? This is a thing, like I often say to people, when I'm shooting them, I'm like, Oh, my gosh, I wish I had these photos of me, like, sure. Legit. And it's not me doing a sales tag tickets, like be being very real. Yeah. So then obviously, there's the possibility of upselling, sometimes video, or the images as well. So that's kind of like what the whole thing looks like, from their
perspective. And then, you know, a lot of my clients are, as we said, like on that subscription style, so they'll just come time and again, to those sorts of experiences and just get there top ups, speakers, entrepreneurs typically need lots of new content. Yeah, the social media, she is a hungry beast. So you
know, we need to feed her. So if you know, my clients can come back, some of them come back three or four times a year, some of them will come back twice a year, and some people will just come like yearly, but it's always Yeah, it's always a good little thing to go, Hey, this is what I've got coming up. Now, do you want to jump on board one of these, you know, so that makes it super easy for me to squeeze those subscription style clients
in? As well as bringing new clients into my larger packages as well. So it's a good little system?
That's yeah, it sounds fantastic. It's it's a very smart system for sure. Okay, a couple a couple of additional questions video, arm, do any of these packages include video upfront? Is your videographer shooting primarily for the client? Are they doing B roll for you? Like how, what's the, what's their task for the
day? Okay, so I have a very clear boundaries around this that my shoot days are for my clients, unless otherwise specified. So my videographer is there just to shoot B roll for the clients. And if she happens to whip out her iPhone in between to be able to get some behind the scenes fair, or well and good. But that is not her purpose. She is totally there to be able to capture the clients video, you know, fiero, for the clients. So sometimes we dangle the video as a bonus to be able
to get bookings. You know, like, if you've got a dry month or something like that. I might just go free video this month, you know, but most of the time, it's there as a product to sell. Yeah,
nice. Yeah. And for these, if you've got six to eight people booked, is that like a half day kind of a thing for you? Is that the full day? How does that
so full day? Yeah, it's a full day. So I've tried running. I got so excited. A couple of years ago, I was like, well, we can have two people coming in on the hour. And we can, you know, you know, we can have 12 people in a shoot day coming through to on every hour coming through. Yeah. And I hired double makeup artists, and I had an assistant and a videographer. And I loved it. Okay, so I was like, Yeah, this is fantastic. This is great. And I did the math and the
calculations. At the end of the day, I was like, this is going to be a 20 Fatso. 20 something $1,000 day. And at the end of the day, my whole team went never again. Oh, no. So as much as I could cope with that pace, I couldn't, you know, so I was like, okay, cool. Let's just make life a little bit easier. Let's let's chaotic. So we usually do on the hour. So you know, 830-930-1030 give everybody a little bit of a break. And then we'll start
again at 12. One and two, and then we're clearing out so we're bumping into a house at eight. We're finishing at four in the house. Nice.
Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And how frequently are you scheduling these these days? about once every
two months? Yeah, these sorts of days. I also have a different day, which week The last social sessions day where we actually shoot for people at the same time for a whole day. So we take them to multiple locations, you know. So that's a little bit like that. That's a little bit like that wedding scenario that I told you.
I have only heard of that one other time. And it was for a similar thing like brand photos. And it was, you know, everybody gets on the bus and they go to, you know, fun location. Number one, everybody gets a quick issue, then they go to the next place. With those, I feel like there are so many fun, creative ways that you directions that you could take this in and
yeah, look, the thing is, is I like so a lot of people, a lot of my students that are learning this, they worry about the fact that the clients will all walk out with the same set of photos. But like I did, I do deep dives, deep dives with all of my clients, I learned their business. And sometimes like, we'll pull up to somewhere and I go, you're not getting out here. This is just for this person. So do you know like, it's really easy to sort of tailor make these these to
each person. But those sorts of days are super fun. And they're super, like, everybody loves it, like all of the clients absolutely, like love that experience, like because they get to make friends for life. And I have groups of women that do these shoots meet each other on the shoot. So like, Can we do this again? In another year? Like, sure. Let's keep you connected.
Such a good idea. Everyone get your pens out, write this down, you have to you have to combine these two ideas with like the the membership idea and the and these sort of event day ideas. So good. Yeah, it's
okay. So from a marketing perspective, it makes complete sense, right? Because there's sort of like a cutoff point, there's scarcity, there's only so many places, this designed experience is only going to happen once you know I I try not to go back to the same properties. I'm always trying to kind of move around, obviously, you get your favorites, and you get relationships with owners, and you can negotiate better
rates and things like that. But I try to make sure that it's between six to 12 months before I'm revisiting a property. So and the great thing is, is that I can drop into any city with this. Right? Right. So do you know so literally, it's so easy for me to just migrate this center? And I have done? I've done I do it across the east coast of Australia. So it's just
yeah, it's lots of fun. So if I get, you know, if I get the travel bug, it allows me to kind of roll with that, which is Yeah, I can't do it the moment because you probably attest this, I've got a teenage daughter that's doing big exams and things were at that stage, you know, driving lessons and all of that kind of thing. So I'm a little bit more grounded this year than I have been in the last couple of years. But again, it's just that being able to have that flexibility with
this as a product too. Right? Yeah. So Greg, what I've never had with weddings? Oh, absolutely.
And not being able to dictate the timing or the terms or any of that it's a major, it's a totally different thing. So let's switch gears and talk a little bit about the marketing for this. So clearly, you have people who are coming to you again and again. But I assume that you are also bringing new clients in on these shoot days. Talk to me, are you using an email list primarily to sell those? Is it social media? Word of mouth? How are you? How are you getting the word out?
Okay, so I think you and I might have a very similar relationship to social media. I love the connection point that I find that it's an exhausting cycle that, you know, I feel like a performing monkey on there sometimes. So I have actually got a much better relationship with my email list. Funny enough, I just find there's an intimacy there that I feel really comfortable just
writing to my email list. And I don't know, it's it's bigger than my social media following but I still feel like it's more intimate somehow. Lucky enough. Back in the day when I was talking about that early parts of building that portrait studio. I started following a lot of the early online celebs, you know, like the Marie Forleo shows and all of those kinds of
people back then. And so everyone was screaming email lists, when a lot of the photography world was screaming social media and Instagram, they were screaming email lists, and I'm so glad that I listened to them. Because I've seen so many small businesses and clients, Facebook and Instagram accounts get shut down. Yeah, and I've got my email list. You know, I back it up on my hard drives, as well as obviously living in my CRM and that kind of thing. But that, that I've consistently no
rain, hail or shine. I've been building building building that. And so funny enough, like I'm quite lucky now at this stage in my business where I can send an email and get fairly good responses from that. So I feel very pleased, but I've also invested heavily in that too, right? Sure.
And it's the thing is and I'm Yes, you're right, we are of the same mind
on this. I fully believe that your email, when you send an email, it's just more likely to be seen, consumed considered, you know, even if a whole bunch of people We'll see your Instagram posts, it can be as you know, like a fraction of a second in front of their face, whether they're willing to pause and read your caption or anything like that is such a such a crapshoot, you get so much better data with email and everything else, you can see what's working so much more
clearly. And you have control over the pacing and the timing and all of the different pieces of it. Yeah,
you actually know that it actually lands like I mean, when we think about it, like on social media, we're sort of like conditioned to scroll right? Like that's, that's what we sort of are habitually doing is flicking and scrolling and clicking and scrolling. Whereas with email, You're conditioned to stop looking Lissa like, yeah, you have to pay attention
to everyone. Now you might consider you might see the name, and you might sort of put it into Sunday May maybe read basket, but you still are, you know, and if you don't want to hear from that person, you just unsubscribe. And so if the transaction is just so much more honest, I think, do you know? Yeah, yeah, so I have invested a lot of time, and I have learned that consistency pays off. I mean, I must admit, and I'm going to be really fully
transparent about that. For the first quarter of this year, I was very fully focused on my teaching that I sort of like neglected my own email list. And it showed up in my bookings, right. So I was like, oh, okay, cool. Like, I better get back on the horse polo lesson learned.
Lesson learned. Exactly. And so then I sort of just, you know, started kind of writing No, I've been very, I'm gonna say this, I've been very cognizant that you can get very good copywriting out of the chat GPT right now, so you can get very good sales copy. So I've actually sort of bended back again, a stretch, and I've gone, how can I be a lot more plain spoken and a lot more brutally
honest. Like, I sent out an email this week that said, Hey, I'm going to be really honest, I've got a few spots that I want to fill in my calendar this month. So I went to my daughter and asked her, What should I do? And my daughter gave me an idea. And I ran with it. And I told them the exact story of that, and I got three bookings. Yeah.
Right. And that that storytelling element to email that gives you I mean, I just, yeah, we could go off in a whole separate episode all about this. Yeah. I said that to
you before I was like you and I could talk for hours, I think we could both geek out about this stuff. Because I think we're both as passionate about this stuff. Because we've seen what works, do you know, like, I know, for me, the more I was able to strip away and this is, this is a real lesson, I think, for newbies to learn. Because when I started my business, I bought my family business back in 2004. It came with a name. So it had a business name, it wasn't my name. And I felt back then I had
to be corporate. And I had to look professional, and everything had to be written absolutely perfectly and structured wonderfully. And the more I've learned to let go of that and become more of me, and just kind of go accept and embrace all of the odd bits, you know, like I put a post up the other day with my triple chins, not a post, but I sent an email saying, Don't let this happen to you. Let me take care of it for
you. I got I got so much beautiful responsive people going, oh my god, you're so gorgeous. You don't need you know, blah, blah, blah. And it's just like, that's how much intimacy I've been able to create with my email list. Don't get me wrong. I've got some like lovely feedback on social media. But it's just a different thing. For me. It's just feels different. Yeah, yeah. So it's an interesting one, isn't it? That one? It's funny that it does feel like you've got this intimate relationship with
people that you don't know. But as we talked about those people then become my hugging friends today. Yeah.
Whether you know them or not? Exactly. Okay. So one more question. Before I let you get on with your morning, I imagine it's time for a cup of coffee, or probably a second cup of coffee, the question that is sort of bouncing around in my head, as you're talking about this email list that's really engaged in your selling all these sessions off of that? Do you have one favorite or like one lead magnet or email list builder that has worked really well for you in this particular
sector? Or is there a recommendation that you have for people about how they can start building personal brand focused that collection of their email list? Yeah,
yeah. Okay, so I actually have a course about this. But yeah, to build lead magnets, I think is one of those sort of, like foundational building blocks that I think is really important. The one thing I would say, and like, I think you really need to take it in any direction, the topic of the lead magnet, I think needs to be something that you can take to every networking event you're ever gonna go to and do a
presentation on it. So I think it just needs to be something that you feel really passionate about talking about. And everybody comes at this from a different point of view. So I think that a lot of my students in my programs, they might have a business or a marketing background, they might have a love of fashion. Do you know so I think it's really combining your lead magnet with something that is something that you
enjoy. And I think it's really important to just keep in mind that you can assume that somebody's already in the interest or interested in booking a photo shoot. It's meet them meet them before they think that they need a photo shoot. So what is that what's ruminating around in their head before they think they need it? Because so many people will just go to the five things you should wear for your next next personal brand photoshoot, right? They've probably already booked somebody
if they're in right now. They're
just trying to figure out what to wear. Yeah. Right.
So that's not where they're at. So it's just about trying to think about the small business owner and what's their struggle today. And you have to think about the business owner that you want to work with. So you can like this is this is why this is such an amazing market because everybody needs us, you know, even us photographers need to be photographed by each other. Right? Right. So doctors, accountants, lawyers, realtors, right down to you know, we're we're help petitioners and yoga
studios and Pilates studios. And then you've got your local car garages and industrial businesses. And then you've got like all of these like, online businesses. And you know, if you like photographing products, there's space there for owners and their products. It's insane how many different people that you can service in this in this in this space. So it's find your people speak to them, deliver them a lead magnet before they think that they need a photoshoot? That would be my advice. Perfect.
So good. And then go take Paul's class if you need more information. Okay, speaking of which, tell everyone where they can find you. And I believe you've got an invitation for everybody, right?
Yeah, look, I mean, if you're interested in jumping into minis Maxi sessions, and you would like to learn more, you can go to my website, Paul Brennan. education.com, forward slash Mini. And you can actually just watch a free masterclass, which is going to help you to have the building blocks of everything that you need to know about how to organize and capture a day like this. And that's going to be the best way I think to get you kind of like
get your leg in the door. And of course, kind of follow me on on Instagram, if you want to pull up Brennan, Instagram, but I would recommend that you if you're going to jump on there is go and grab one of my lead magnets, because that's going to actually walk you through the process, right. So see firsthand what it feels like. Right,
exactly. You can do a little behind the scenes snooping
while you're doing it, right. Oh, absolutely. So
Oh, man. Well, Paul, this has been such a blast. I am so full of inspiration. I know everybody out there is as well. I will look forward to bringing you back on the show again in the future. And in the meantime, I hope you have a great morning. Great
stuff. Thank you so much for having me. Well,
that's it for this week's episode of This can't be that hard. I'll be back Same time, same place next week. In the meantime, you can find more information about this episode, along with all the relevant links, notes and downloads at this can't be that hard.com/learn If you liked the podcast, be sure to hit the subscribe button. Even better, share the love by leaving a review on iTunes. And as always, thanks so much for joining me. I hope you have a fantastic week.