If you haven't figured this out by now, I really like technology that can streamline my workflow..... but I really L-O-V-E me some technology that can also make me stand out in the crowd and add a little wow to my client experience. Which is why I'm dedicating an entire episode to one of my favorite pieces of software: Loom. (#NotAnAd, just a huge fan!) Today I'm outlining 4 specific strategies for incorporating Loom into your photography business that will not only help you save time, but also ...
Oct 24, 2023•17 min•Ep. 235
Whenever I poll photographers about what they need the most help with, the answer I get (by a factor of 10) is marketing. It seems everyone is always on the lookout for ways to stand out and get themselves in front of a bigger audience. But what if I told you marketing isn't the only way to do that? My guest today is Christina Lenkowski, a PR expert who specifically focuses on helping entrepreneurs and small business owners get featured on podcasts their ideal audience is listening to. And befor...
Oct 17, 2023•40 min•Ep. 234
How many times have you heard, "The customer is always right?" But that's not always true (and can get downright toxic in the photography business). Today I want to challenge some of the business advice we've all heard that I think may actually be harming your business. We all know how easy it is to get swayed by advice - especially when we're new or feeling unsure of ourselves - but I'm a big believer in listening to that inner voice when it's telling you something's off. My goal with this epis...
Oct 10, 2023•18 min•Ep. 233
Unless you've been actively avoiding the internet, you've probably heard of ChatGPT and other AI tools that are (at time, controversially) becoming more mainstream. Since AI is probably here to stay, I wanted to bring on SEO expert Sarah Landa to talk about how photographers can utilize AI tools like ChatGPT to improve their SEO and content creation strategies. Sarah shares her experience warming up to AI after initially being skeptical and outlines some responsible ways photographers can levera...
Oct 03, 2023•33 min•Ep. 232
I often hear from photographers that they feel awkward asking for a sale. It's a common struggle but one we have to work through in order to be successful business owners. Today's episode is short and sweet - but it's super important. When you're done listening, I hope you'll be reminded and feel reassured that you ARE delivering real value through your work... and you should feel comfortable making offers to clients openly and honestly without apologizing! Cameo by Allison Patel - thank you All...
Sep 26, 2023•12 min•Ep. 231
You know that feeling when you get crickets after delivering a gallery? Or even worse, when you get the "we need to talk" email from a client? GULP. Moments like those (while hopefully infrequent) can feel like a 10-alarm fire scenario... and knowing how to handle them can make or break your future relationship with that client. So I brought in an emergency expert to help us. With over 20 years as a 911 dispatcher, photographer Melody MacDonald is sharing some invaluable insights into effective ...
Sep 19, 2023•43 min•Ep. 230
One incredibly effective way to promote your photography business is through charitable marketing. Not only can you get connected with potential bluebird clients, but you get to give back to causes you care about at the same time. However, if you don’t have a solid, well-thought-out plan for your charitable marketing, it can be an enormous effort with little to no payoff. My guest today is Nicole Begley from Hair of the Dog Academy, who has been successfully leveraging charitable marketing to gr...
Sep 12, 2023•35 min•Ep. 229
Today’s show is like that first crisp fall day - cozy, nostalgic and full of inspiration. Jude Charles is an author and filmmaker who has produced stories for companies like Google and Steve Harvey... but Jude started out like a lot of us do: with a camera, a passion, and a desire to succeed. As visual artists and storytellers, Jude reminds us about the importance of what he calls “roadmapping” for clients - understanding their needs, creating a vision, and learning how to quickly and authentica...
Sep 05, 2023•35 min•Ep. 228
Most photographers I know have had a tough year so far… I’m not sure whether it’s the post-covid bounce or the economy or something else, but inquiries and bookings have been down… pretty much across the board. The good news is that things look like they’re finally turning a corner, but if you are one of the people who have been feeling the strain in 2023, today’s conversation with Briana Tresko is going to hit home. Briana bravely said yes to coming on the show to talk about some ideas for what...
Aug 29, 2023•31 min•Ep. 227
If you are at a place in your photography business where the busy season means you're fully booked, you know how crushing it is when you have to turn people away. This week my guest is the brilliant Jaye McLaughlin, a family photographer in the New York metro area sharing her GENIUS strategy for managing the high client demand during the busy season - without having to turn anyone away! Jaye's been using this strategy for nine seasons straight, so she takes us through the core principles behind ...
Aug 22, 2023•38 min•Ep. 226
Your website is arguably the most valuable marketing tool you have as a photographer. From the moment a potential client lands on your site until they click the button to connect with you, your website is doing all the work of attracting and connecting you to that client. That’s a pretty big job, so in this episode, I want to walk you through a quick audit of your home page to make sure it’s in tip-top shape. I’ll dive into 6 key feelings your website homepage needs to evoke that will help lead ...
Aug 15, 2023•19 min•Ep. 225
Last year my friend Erin Brown brought the term “purposely part-time” to the podcast, and the response was absolutely overwhelming. It turns out that many photographers are intentionally part-time in their businesses - for reasons ranging from other careers they don't want to give up to being home with their families after school - so that phrase has caught fire! Today I’m speaking with Lydia Fine - another purposely part-time photographer - about how she balances everything from mom life, to co...
Aug 08, 2023•27 min•Ep. 224
If you’ve ever considered a photography mastermind group, you know that once you dip your toe in that water it can get overwhelming pretty quickly. How do you know which group is the right fit? What questions should you ask? What goals should you set? What results can you expect? The list goes on... Today I am talking with Elena S. Blair who has been a leader in the group coaching space for quite some time now. Tune in to hear the reasons she believes mastermind groups can be so transformative f...
Aug 01, 2023•34 min•Ep. 223
Talking about the importance of pricing and sustainability is my jam, but I typically approach it from the "this is why it's important for YOU" perspective. The fact of the matter is that when enough photographers aren’t charging sustainable prices, it has major implications for the industry as a whole. Today's guest is Bonnie Sindelar. She’s a newborn and family photographer in Nebraska and the founder of Happily Ever Photo, a photographer directory where prospective clients can go to find thei...
Jul 25, 2023•45 min•Ep. 222
Ever wish you could peek inside your clients' heads and hear what they're thinking? Yeah, me too. Which is why I (finally!) decided to interview one of my own long-time photography clients about her experience as a client, and specifically her thoughts about my membership program. We (necessarily) spend so much time thinking about photography from our own perspective that it can be hard to put ourselves in our client's shoes. But if we want to be great at providing services our clients want , we...
Jul 18, 2023•26 min•Ep. 221
Mind: blown... there are now a thousand Simple Sales Blueprint students out there in the world! When I first launched the Blueprint back in January 2020, I had no idea whether anyone would be interested in my system, but in just three short years, Simple Sales has taken root and spread like wildfire in the photography world. As my education business has grown, I've gotten more and more questions about how I made that leap. Today felt like a good time to pull back to the curtain on that journey, ...
Jul 11, 2023•26 min•Ep. 220
I started my photography business when my two kids were young, and in many ways, the business felt like having a third child. Just like having young kids, having a young business can feel pretty chaotic, and in both scenarios, when you're in it, it can be hard to believe you'll ever escape the chaos. But the chaos can and does end. Today I want to talk about a major but un-talked-about milestone in the "life" of a young business: achieving stability. I'm covering what it takes to get there, and ...
Jul 04, 2023•18 min•Ep. 219
Typically on this podcast, I deep dive on one topic per episode, sometimes with a guest and sometimes solo. But as we head into road trip season, I wanted to shake it up and give you something exciting and different to enjoy the next time you've got some extra time in the car (or on a walk or wherever else you listen to your podcasts)! For today's show, I reached out to a handful of my favorite photography podcasters and asked them to share their #1 business tips - and the response was amazing! ...
Jun 27, 2023•1 hr 16 min
Want to increase your booking rate? Consider making it easier for your clients to say YES. I know that seems like a simple answer to a big problem, but the truth is that far too often, we overcomplicate the sales process, and when customers experience too many speed bumps in that process, we lose clients. Today I want to dive into what those speed bumps look like, because they can be sneaky! We'll talk about the small but significant issues that might be creating friction for your potential clie...
Jun 20, 2023•11 min•Ep. 217
Raise your hand if you'd like more publicity. I don’t know a single photographer who wouldn’t like a feature in a magazine or local news outlet to give them credibility and visibility. The million-dollar question is, how do you get yourself there? PR coach Gloria Chou is back on the show today to give you some simple but effective ideas for pitching yourself to publications in your area that are actually desperately looking for quality stories to share about real people. Get your thinking cap on...
Jun 13, 2023•25 min•Ep. 216
They say that time is money, but too many photographers take that far too literally, justifying their prices by pointing to how much time it requires (not to mention how much time it's taken them to learn their craft). I'm not saying time has no relationship with price, but the truth is that pricing art is much more complicated than - say - charging an hourly rate to clean someone's house or help them move. Today we're talking about the nuances of pricing psychology as it relates to time: How sh...
Jun 06, 2023•18 min•Ep. 215
Marketing your photography business can feel a lot like dating - you put yourself out there, write some cute content, and hope that the people you want to attract swipe right. On top of that, between algorithms, 3-second attention spans, and AI technology, it can feel darn near impossible to connect authentically with potential clients online. Brooke Jefferson is an expert at cutting through the noise and helping photographers connect with more of their ideal clients. Today she joins me to share...
May 30, 2023•35 min•Ep. 214
I'm sure you’ve heard the saying "perfection is the enemy of progress," and today I'm sharing a story about how that can play out in real life. Sometimes we get so stuck in our ways - or so attached to doing things a certain way - that we end up with blinders on, stifling our creativity and limiting ourselves in business. Today's story illustrates how freeing ourselves up to be less than perfect can actually make us better - at art, and in business. If you need a little nudge to try out that ide...
May 23, 2023•13 min•Ep. 213
I spend a lot of time on this show highlighting other photographers' greatest successes, brilliant ideas, and ah-ha moments, but we all know that with the ups come the downs. But the downs don’t usually get a lot of audio time, right? Mostly because we’d all like to forget our worst moments... but when we're IN our worst moments, sometimes it's nice to know we're not alone! This week, I've got a misery-loves-company-fueled show where I'm sharing one of my own horror stories, along with the bigge...
May 16, 2023•54 min•Ep. 212
When I stumbled across Alison Amick Brett's Little Llamas Portrait concept earlier this year, I immediately wanted to share it on the podcast. Alison is a Florida-based family photographer who wanted to reinvent mini-sessions in a way that combined them with playdates …. and Little Llamas Portraits was born! Little Llamas has been so successful that Alison is now fielding requests from other photographers around the country who want to essentially franchise her concept to put this system into pl...
May 09, 2023•30 min•Ep. 211
Last week we covered the three systems that every photographer needs in their business. (If you haven’t listened to last week's episode, I recommend you go back and start there first!) Today I’m diving into the 3 biggest mistakes that photographers make when they set up those systems, how you can avoid them, and - most importantly - how you can optimize your system setups to help your business and customer experience run more effectively. Want to see my systems map? It lives inside the “Streamli...
May 02, 2023•18 min•Ep. 210
If someone asked you to quickly and clearly sketch out how your business works on the back of a napkin, could you do it? As soloprenuers, we wear so many hats that it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture. But stepping back periodically is critical to make sure all that effort is serving you. Today, I’m kicking off this two-part episode by sharing the three systems every photographer needs for a functional business, then next week, we’ll dive into the most common mistakes and issues I see in t...
Apr 25, 2023•21 min•Ep. 209
If you're a family photographer struggling to fill your calendar with ideal clients, you're going to want a notebook for this one. (No, seriously. I’ll wait. Go get one.) Daisy Zimmer is my guest today, and she's sharing a genius idea she came up with to reach new clients at a higher price point when she redesigned her business and switched to Simple Sales. Wanting to avoid the common pitfalls of model calls and inspired by the ambassador programs a lot of senior photographers run, Daisy launche...
Apr 18, 2023•38 min•Ep. 208
Even though I meet so many different types of people working in photography, one thing I think we all have in common is our artistic souls. That little part of us that gets excited and inspired by many different things all the time. Right? On one hand, following every little idea you have can be problematic. You can spread yourself too thin, or become a jack of all trades (and a master of none). But on the other hand, following some of your different passions and ideas can be a really excellent ...
Apr 11, 2023•41 min•Ep. 207
Tell me if this sounds familiar: you write a to-do list for the day with the best intentions to make big strides on the project you are working on, only to blink and find that it's dinner time and you've only really accomplished a few menial tasks. Sigh. As the queen of procrasta-working (trademark pending), I've developed a strategy for myself that helps me focus my energy, accomplish the most important tasks each day and stay on track with my goals. If you struggle with this too, then today's ...
Apr 04, 2023•14 min•Ep. 206
