310 - Building a Business That Lasts with Stacey Rolfe

conversation. Stacey is a friend of mine who I met in Australia in I think it was 2022, when I was invited to speak for her community in Sydney and give a talk about portrait memberships, and I was so taken by this woman who was just a powerhouse community builder, people connector, idea spreader, sort of energetic person who had all the same feelings and beliefs that I did about helping photographers run profitable businesses that are organized, sustainable, all that sort of

thing. But was really pretty new in the industry at that point, not just in the education part of the world, but in photography in general. You're going to hear more of her backstory from her

in this conversation. So I won't spoil all the surprises there, but I just want you to go into this thinking about listening not only to what Stacy is saying, but to the what her story is telling us about what it takes to be successful, And what success means when you define it based on sort of your overarching goals, strengths, things you enjoy, all of those kinds of things, as opposed to some sort of you know metric that is locked in with finances or locked in with somebody

else's definition of success. Anyway. Stacy is such a breath of fresh air. I really enjoyed our conversation. I know you will too, and I hope that at the end of this, whether or not you have any need of her services, you start to follow her, because her online presence is really just as inspirational as what she has to share today. 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 Stacy Rolf, welcome to this. Can't be that hard. This is way, way overdue. I am so excited to chat with you today. How are you?

scary firms. And when I had my daughter, I decided that, hilariously, newborn photographers were far too expensive. And I'm sure I could just buy a camera and do that myself. I mean, how arrogant is that? And of course, I work. Out pretty quickly that I couldn't but it was a lot harder than it looked. This can't be that hard. It can't be that hard. Oh my gosh, the naivety of you.

Anyway, I obviously have no good pictures of my daughter as a newborn, but that is fine, because over the years, I just developed this love for photography and built this gorgeous little side hustle. But the reason I met you, Annemie, is because I also have a business called the toghub. And in that, I kind of put all of the corporate skills that I have to use, and I help photographers to make their business easier.

So you'll find me both at Stacey roll photography, but you'll also find me over at toghub.

which was really fun. And seeing what you were doing in Sydney was really inspirational, really exciting. The people there were so enthusiastic about this community that you were creating, and I was frankly, just inspired by how you had, sort of, even as a relatively new I mean, at that point, I guess you had been in photography for four ish years, yeah, like, as a relatively new photographer, just being like, Yeah, this is a missing piece of

the puzzle. This is, you know, I see something that I want in this industry that doesn't exist, so I'm going to create it. And I love that kind of energy, honestly, it's, it requires a lot of energy to do that sort of thing. So, so it was a, it was a big inspiration

to me. Oh, thank you. But I think that that's kind of, the more I get to know you that's really a through line in your career, and I don't know much, actually, anything, I guess, about your law career, but it seems like from the get go in photography, you took a more flexible approach than I think a lot of photographers do. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?

know, it was cool. I was young, and it was cool, and it was London, and it was the heyday, sure. But I think as you get older, certainly when you have kids, the all encompassing nature of that is just frankly impossible to manage. It was completely impossible for me to manage, and my priorities had shifted to such a degree that the job wasn't the most important thing in my life anymore, and I could feel that that was becoming a real problem. So when I shifted into my photography business, it was

largely for that flexibility. I really wanted to create a life that would flex around me, my kids, my priorities, and just allow me some breathing room, really. Now I cannot say that I've always done that really successfully, because I think Old habits die hard, and lawyers are Type A they're very driven. They're driven by deadlines. I, as I said, I was really used to working quite horrific hours, in all honesty, and I have found that habit very hard to unlearn.

As soon as you come into a business where there is no boundary, you love it so much that you want to do it all the time. Certainly in the beginning, it is really, really hard to switch off. And so the workaholic side of me has not died, but she is certainly quieter than she used to be, and I'm very focused on building businesses that flex around us and not the other way around.

alone in that. But I also think that your approach to filling your time has not just been spent doing the thing that sometimes we all tend to do, which is like banging our head against one wall. Yeah, like, I'm, you know, I want to. Get as many photography clients as possible and serve them. So I'm just going to spend and actually, when I talk to a lot of students, and I would love to hear if this is true for you too, a lot of other photographers will say like, I'm so busy, I'm so busy, I'm so

busy. But if we start to do some kind of time audit, the things that they are actually filling their time with, are not moving any needles like it's, you know, there's a lot of perusing other people's websites or other people's social media or looking into, you know, going down these deep rabbit holes about things that they could be doing or should be doing, but they're not actually taking action on any or many of them versus I feel like, from what I know of your story,

you kind of set to work and very quickly filled your time getting things done. Yeah,

just, it just doesn't do it. I mean, unless you are really taking an aggressive approach to that marketing strategy, which takes an enormous amount of time, you know, if you really do want to go viral or whatever, but for most of us, it just doesn't have the payoff. I think of it much more like a shop window. It's just where I show off my best stuff, where people can kind of check if they like the vibe and decide if they want to come inside. That's how I

view my Instagram. But yeah, I I have always spent a really long time getting the back end of my business working well and investing in places that I think the return on investment is much higher. So, you know, obviously I'm a lawyer. Was a lawyer, so the first thing I really did was get things like contracts and insurances in place. I was really a stickler for things like that. I was essentially trained to look out for all the disasters coming down the road.

To me, I remember my husband telling me he thought I was a pessimist, and I was furious about that the time. I was like, I'm just a realist. But over the years, I've come to realize I really was such a pessimist, and it was because we were trained to be looking for all the

problems all the time. So I spent a lot of time getting all that ready, and then I put a lot of time into client experience systems, which I know is your jam, and I put a lot of time into that because returning clients are your easiest source of anything in every business. And I think this is one of the things I've realized over the years, is that when I came into this business and started working for myself, I moved from this very, very ultra corporate world to a very, incredibly

creative world. And on the surface, people are like, Oh my God, what a huge career change, like it's complete 180 and you know, the thing is, the longer I'm in it, the more I realize how much I was taught in that service industry, which people who are just photographer, who've just been photographers for a long time, or they've had a regular office job or whatever, they're just not

taught that. And the amount that it was drilled into us about client experience, about maintaining relationships, about bringing clients back, about retainers and flexible pricing and innovative quoting and pricing theory, these things, which is part of my day to day. And I think when that's your world. You assume that everybody knows that stuff. And over a year working with more and more photographers, I've really

realized that people don't. So yeah, I've taken a very flexible approach to what I do in my business, and I've taken a very holistic approach to what where I should be spending my time in my business, for sure.

becoming a photographer. So I knew I hated the job, and I knew I wouldn't go back to that exact job after maternity leave, but I did not expect to do what I ended up doing. Thing. I thought that I would go and be an in house counsel or an HR director or something like that. So COVID threw us the curve ball. And it really, just like everybody really made me reassess what I wanted from my life and what was important. And it also gave me I was lucky, I think with that timing, because it gave me,

like, carte blanche. I was on maternity leave here in Australia. You are allowed to take two years off if you want to. Not all of it paid, but up to two years off. And I had this crazy unprecedented circumstances, and I just thought no one's going to ask any questions if I take longer, no one is going to take ask anything if I decide not to go back to work after nine months, as I originally planned to do, so it was this quite risk free

break in my life. So I decided to go full time in january 2021, as you say, things picked up really fast that post COVID World was a very easy time actually, to build your photography business. There was a lot of work around and of course, people had really recognized the value of what we do. But then in I think it was June or end of May here in Sydney, that's when we went down into our biggest lockdown. So we actually were locked down for

four months. So that was the lockdown that changed my business completely, because I'd gone really hard in the January, and I'd filled my books and I had a lot of bookings, and things were going really, really well, and I was earning more than I was earning as a lawyer already, and then, boom, overnight, it all stopped. And so the first thing I did, it was a weird lockdown. They basically said, oh, we'll just lock you down for a week. Oh, it's two weeks. And boom, suddenly it was

four months, right? So the first week, I was just like, This is a gift. I can catch up. I'm gonna go back and revisit my systems and make sure they're all ticking along nicely, and they're all, you know, top notch. And then we went into a second week. So I did my my mates, I did my friends one, and then I did another friend's one, and then I did another friend's one. And then I was like, oh, you know what? Maybe I could just do this and charge something for it to get me

through COVID. So that's kind of where the tidy tog came from, and the tidy tog was the first thing. It predated toghub. It predated all of this other education and community stuff that I've been doing over the last couple of years, three years now, and it was just setting up people's CRMs for them. That's what it was. And it got me all the way through COVID. I did that. I did some virtual shooting for new newborn clients. I did some doorstep

shooting for family clients. And I did a lot of system setups, amazing.

know how to do. But I don't worry about whether I'm the best in the world at it, or whether I've got all of the qualifications you need for it. I'm quite happy to just get scrappy and get started, and I think that that has really stood me in good stead in both of my businesses.

These are things that are sort of baseline, but beyond that, when it comes to trying something out in your marketing, or signing up for a course, or putting together an offer that you're not really sure how it's going to land, or trying a new niche. I think that I come across a lot, and I think it's probably baked into many artists

personalities. There is this sort of need to make something perfect before, you know, like, have it delivered whole, as opposed to kind of saying, Well, I don't know, let's just take the first few steps and see where they lead. But I agree with you. I think that that if I had to point to one personality trait or thing that I'm willing to do that has. Helped me

succeed. It's just sort of this willingness to try with the understanding that, like it may not go well at all, yeah, it certainly won't go perfectly, but it'll probably take me somewhere different than where I am right now, and hopefully somewhere in the right direction exactly

resources. It's it's a much better service now, of course, but I don't feel bad for the people that did it in the beginning. They had a really great service at a really great price, and I spent a lot of time and effort and energy on it, and I think that the the perfectionism and what I what I see in a lot of my clients, is

the fear of judgment as well. So it's both self judgment, which my goodness, I'm very guilty of doing, but self judgment, if you fail, is a huge one, but also the fear of what other people will think. The people pleaser in you, like all of these traits that we hear about, they're not bad. They serve a purpose, but we have to be aware of what they're doing to our businesses, and 99% of the time, they're holding us back. And if we can see that happening, we just need to make you have to make a

decision. Am I going to move past it anyway? Feel the fear and do it anyway, or am I going to let this stop me? And those are the only two choices that I'm aware of. I don't see really a middle ground. And for me, I mentor a lot of photographers. I have a lot of photographers going through my courses. And the one factor that differentiates the people that succeed and the people that stay still is the action that they

take time and time again. If you do the thing, whether you do it perfectly or not, if you do the thing, you move forward and you see results. And I just see our businesses in every way, shape and form. Our businesses are just like this pyramid. There is a foundational level. There are things that you have to have. You need a camera, you're going

to need a computer. You're going to need some kind of system, however experience that is, or however, however develop that system is you're going to need certain things. You need Lightroom, you need pick time or whatever. But ultimately, there is a foundational level of what you need. And then when you've got the foundation right, you just move up to the next level, and that's when you refine, refine, refine, and when you've refined that you just go right back to the beginning. Again.

What I'm learning the longer I'm in business, both of my businesses is that it's, it's a never ending optimization loop, yeah. And I think those are the people that really succeed. Are the people that are willing to do the foundations right and then go back and optimize, and then go back and optimize, rather than trying to get to the top of the pyramid from the get go,

repetitive. They're so like, similar to what is happening now, but it's just different versions of the same. It's different iterations on the

same. But I think that what I see in those is like, the commitment to action constantly, just like, Well, this year I'm going to try this, or this month or this week, this is how I'm going to chip away at this particular Yeah, the problems don't really change, and neither do you know, it's like, we always have to market our businesses and we always have to create good client experiences and all those kinds of things. And there's the repetition is

not a bad thing. I mean, not we have to be somewhat repetitive in what we're doing, but at the end of the day, we also have to keep showing up, like there's, I think for a long time, I thought, Okay, once I figure this out, once I crack the code, then I'll just be able to set that on, you know, Evergreen repeat to like it can just do its own thing in the background. And this was just not that sort of business.

whatever. But for most of us, the rest of us, it really is just about persistence. You. Have to stick with it. You have to, as you say, do the same things on repeat over and over and over. And that is just a business. That is just a business where you have to churn out your marketing and get a steady stream of clients. And yeah, we refine and we optimize, we get better, we get more efficient, but we still have to do the same fundamental stuff.

It's why I'm so incredibly like, I never stopped talking about the foundational level, because I if you skip that, if you just try and optimize one part of the pyramid, it's all going to fall over. You have to have all, all of the bits in place all four parts of your pyramid. And you just have to have those

foundations strong. And if you have those, you can iterate and optimize as fast as you want, over and over and over you build this as high as you like, but without those, without understanding the basics, you really can't go anywhere. You are completely stuck,

right. So, you know, obviously, in all this repetition, as creatives, we have to do something to keep ourselves entertained, we have to, you know, that's why I feel like doing the same thing on repeat, but changing it all the time is the way that I have been able to

maintain my focus. The other way that I think that you and I should spend at least a few minutes talking about is by getting rid of the things that are necessary but that I don't like doing it, that each individual one of us has certain strengths and certain weaknesses, but I think no one gets into photography to, for instance, write the same emails or answer the same questions, or, you know, like, send out contracts by hand Every single time, which is where those kind

of foundational systems really do come into play. Tell me a little bit about I mean, now that you are well into doing system setups, you've done hundreds of CRM setups, and now you're doing pic time as well. Talk to me about how the photographers who come to you, are they new? Are they experienced? Where are they on that kind of arc of their business? And what are the like? What are the major pain points that they're coming to you with?

incredibly talented. A lot of them have some kind of neurodivergence that makes it really hard to stay on task. They often have really established businesses and really established ideas of how they want to service their clients, how they want to say certain things, the copy they want to give. But they're doing things in the most inefficient way that they possibly could. Like, it just feels to me that

there's there's repetition. The clients are getting the same stuff over and over, and they're missing certain things all the time. They are having to go back and forth about upgrades and invoicing and which images you're going to choose and what prints you want. And for me, I'm like, This is literally all at your fingertips. Like, you can outsource this for cents on the dollar, like, right? You can get a program that will literally do this for you. I think a lot of them are like, right, I need a

VA. And you think, Well, sure, like, maybe you need a VA, but first you need a system that's going to take on 90% of that work. Because really, if you program it right, you don't have to do anything at all. You can just let this run. You deal with your leads, and you you sell to your leads, you make sure that you convert those and then between the lead and the session, there's nothing to do like all of that can be automated. And then, then obviously, the hard work starts.

We start editing and culling, and we're, you know, doing all of those things. But then again, you can systemize all of that through pick time. You can have the whole system sell for you. The client can upgrade on their own. They can download the right images on their own. There's nothing left. You don't have to do these tasks. And so to go back to your question, the people that come to me typically either they are very self aware beginners, so people who already know they're going to struggle

with this. So there is, like this small subset of people who recognize how important the client experience is. They recognize how admin overwhelms them, and they're just like, You know what? I have to get this right, because this is going to be a disaster if I try and do this on my own. So that, I would say, is a small number of people that have enough self awareness and enough understanding of the importance of that to come to me, kind of right now, to start

their business. Much more commonly, I'm talking to people who are totally in the weeds, completely overwhelmed. Their business has taken off. They are booked for months and months, and they just do not know how to claw back time. They do not know how to stay on top of things. And they come to me in this quite chaotic panic. And so what we do is we kind of teach them how to develop a workflow. I sit with them one to one, and we literally nut out exactly what

they want. We will design all of their copy and every single step of their workflow together, and we'll create them like a bespoke plan, and we send that to them so they can just read through it, give us the green light, and then we go off and build it. And then we also have, like, a small, very short, very quick Academy for them to watch that teaches them how to use it. So what it does for those people is it's just it feels like it's this never ending pressure of I should sort that I should do

that. I'm writing this email again. I should probably do something about this. And eventually they just get to a breaking point where they think I'm going to have to get someone else to do this for me. And my goal is to take all of that off them, like as much as I possibly can take away from them. So those are the people. Typically, it's anyone who really recognizes that this is crushing them or is going to crush them.

Anyone who recognizes that admin is not their strong suit and they need to get rid of it somehow. And usually people who are just so busy doing the thing they're brilliant at that they feel incredibly stressed and overwhelmed about the rest of it. Yeah,

moment. It happened for me when I first got my CRM set up. It happened for me again when I built the simple sales system in my business, and all of a sudden it was like, I'm doing a fraction of the work and getting the same results. It was like, how did, how did that happen? And and so I love I'm I'm almost jealous I don't do like done for you services, but I'm almost jealous of what it must feel like to be the one handing that over to someone, because it is such a gift.

it does. It feels really nice to be able to take something really so simple off the plate of somebody so overwhelmed. And, you know, the other thing is our team, we're all photographers, so we totally speak the language of the people that we're working for. And I am a working photographer. I still have, like, I don't work full time in it anymore, I suppose. What does full time even mean? But, you know, I split my time between my photography business and toghub, so I'm still doing 10 or 12

sessions every month. So I understand what's going on in the industry. I understand what you need. I understand what the trends are like. I'm still very much there and working in it and so on my team. So yeah, it's just, it's a really nice it's the easiest thing. This is what I say to my clients. I'm like, This is the easiest thing to outsource, because I just, I can do it all for you. Like, you don't really have to do anything. You just have to sit on a call with me for an hour

and a half. That's

Tell me all the things I love, everything that you've said today, and I love sort of the the frame story here about that really, is about flexibility. It's about, you know, approaching your business with a curious mind, keeping your eyes open to what's available, what's needed. You know where your strengths lie, what kind of lights you up and gets you going. And I love your example in the industry of someone who has taken action again and again and iterated over and over in a

relatively short. Period of time, and had such incredible success doing it. And so to that end, tell everybody how they can connect with you online and potentially sign up for your services.

photographers. And of course, it would mean the world to me if you would leave a review of the show on iTunes or Spotify as always. Thanks so much for joining me. I hope you have a fantastic week. You.