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- [00:00]
Host
I grew up with a cookbook that was sort of a staple in our kitchen that was so ubiquitous in my household that I didn't even really think about it. You know, those aspects of your childhood that just seem like, oh, this is what everybody has. This is what everybody does. For me, one of those things is this cookbook that was called More with Less. And I was thinking about it ahead of recording this podcast episode, and I looked it up just out of pure curiosity. Sure enough, this thing has been around since the mid-70s. It is still in print today. And maybe you grew up with it. I mean, I feel like at during that period of time, there were many fewer options in terms of cookbooks. So it was right up there with the Joy of Cooking on my mom's shelf, except that this was the one that she pulled down all the time. We didn't have a lot when I was growing up. And this. The concept of this cookbook really was sort of baked hard into the lessons that I learned growing up. As the title says, it's called More With Less. Apparently, it is based on the Mennonite community, or it was largely sourced from the Mennonite community, where we're talking about relatively simple people who are using ingredients that they have access to. So the concept of the cookbook is we are going to create these big, delicious meals with meager ingredients. Very little meat, very little dairy, a lot of beans and lentils and grains and things like that. So I don't need to go too far down the road of this particular cookbook, except that I wanted to introduce it as kind of the philosophical underpinnings of what I want to talk to you about today, which is just the concept of. In a business where there are times of abundance and times of scarcity, or, you know, what may feel like scarcity, certainly relative to a time of abundance, it is important to know how to scale up and scale back without having to change everything about your business from the outside, if that makes sense. So let's take it back to this kitchen analogy. If you are a cook at home and you love making all kinds of fancy dishes with expensive cuts of meat, requiring lots of fancy tools and instruments and things like that, and then you come upon harder times, it may not be possible to get the ingredients that you're used to working with, but a good cook is able to create delicious products with perhaps less fancy ingredients, right? And maybe with a little more elbow grease and a little less in terms of special technology. And that is what I want you to start thinking about. In your business. The way that you have set your business up, no matter how your business is set up, inevitably is going to have some wiggle room when it comes to how you operate your business and how you deliver the service that you deliver. Now, there are certain non negotiable expenses in anyone's business, but there are a whole lot more that we can probably run our businesses without if we need to. It doesn't mean it's easier, it doesn't mean it's better, but it might be preferable to shutting down or lowering your prices or changing everything up in such a way that really affects your ability to continue providing the service that you got into this business to provide. So today I'm going to talk about four strategies. And I don't think any of these are brand new. So if you've been around the podcast for any period of time, if you've heard me talk, you may very well have heard me mention these strategies before, but I've never put them together in, let's call it a recipe book for you to show you that these are my top four ways to kind of stretch your business dollar as far as possible. So that's what we're going to get into today and I hope that this is helpful for you whether or not this is a season of scarcity in your business.
- [04:25]
Annemie Tonkin
Welcome to this Can't Be that Hard. My name is Annemi Tonkin 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.
- [04:52]
Host
So before we dive into the strategies that I want to cover, I want to talk about the number one stretchiest ingredient that any of us have in our businesses, and that is your past clients who love you. The clients who we have worked with in the past, who already know us, already like us, already trust us, and already are sort of inclined to want to help us, work with us again, share our information with their friends, all of the above. Those people are the most valuable resource that you have in your business. And if you haven't done this in the past, I want you to sit down and make a list of those people. I don't care how far back you have to dig in your sort of, you know, book of clients, I want you to make a list of those people who at the end of your time working together Just couldn't stop raving. We're so happy, we're so thrilled with everything from the photos that you delivered to the service to whatever else the case may be. Those people are your number one resource in your business and they are going to form the foundation of all four of these strategies that I'm going to present today. The first strategy that I have is just bringing those people back around. Now, depending on how long ago it was that you most recently worked with someone, you may be able to just invite them back for kind of more of the same, right? So if somebody hires you to photograph, let's say, their family, and that was two years ago, it's time to send them an email. Hey, like write them a handwritten note if that feels like a better alternative. Reach out to them on social media, whatever the case may be, but get in touch with them and invite them back for another session. It's time, right? Ask how their kids are doing. Say it feels like it's, you know, I stumbled across this photo of your family and it occurred to me that we need to book again. Go ahead and start that conversation to get the ball rolling again. There is no reason that you have to passively wait for someone to reach back out to you. But if it hasn't been a year or two, right? If, let's say someone hired you six months ago and you had a great experience working with them, then maybe you can reach back out to them with some sort of other offer, a smaller offer, a different offer. If you're doing family photos and that's what they hired you for six months ago, maybe this spring, you've got headshots that you're offering for parents so you can change up the offer and bring those people back. Because even though they got what you had before, now you're giving them some sort of other offer. And then proactively, when you've got a, an existing client, especially one who's already worked with you, but even a new client who has said yes to working with you, I also want you to think about how you can upsell that client. So let's say that again, you're offering family photos. The package includes xyz, whatever. There's no reason that at the, during that booking process, when they are signing on the dotted line, they can't be given the opportunity to book more with you. And I'm going to stick with the same example where it's, you know, you're booking a family session. Do either, you know, of the two parents who are going to Be at the session, need updated headshots. We can add those on for X number of dollars per headshot. And when you roll that together, what you're doing is taking advantage of the fact that somebody is already in the frame of mind of, yes, I like this person. I've decided that they're trustworthy. I want to work with this person. And you're just making sure that you're not leaving money on the table. If someone needs a headshot, they may not be thinking about that as they're booking a family session, but if you raise it and make it really easy for them to just sort of tack that on, that can be a service that they need that you're taking care of, and it's extra money in your pocket. So the first suggestion is really, really basic. It's just mining your list of ideal clients that you've already worked with and creating new offers, whether they're full service offers, partial service offers, or upsells on the current offer, and getting them to spend more with you. But that's not the only way that we can kind of get as much mileage as possible out of these ideal clients. The second strategy that I have for you is to invite those clients into some sort of interview scenario. And you can do this in a whole bunch of different ways. I've been talking to a handful of people recently about blogging. I just feel like blogging, even though it's a perennial subject in our industry, it seems it feels like it's coming up a lot for me recently. And I was reminded of a brilliant strategy that someone shared with me several years ago and that I turned around and used in my photography business with great success. Doesn't cost a dime. Makes your, you know, clients, your existing clients, those favorite clients, feel really special. And it's a great marketing strategy, and that is to invite your client to write a blog post for your website. Now, you're probably going to want to reward them in some way, shape or form, and I can leave that up to you. I believe that I offered my clients a framed print from their most recent session in exchange for a blog post. And I was very specific about, you know, X number of words, and I gave them prompts. Now, I chose clients whose photos I liked. I chose clients who I knew felt good about the experience of working with me. And I gave them these very specific prompts saying, remember how when you reached out to me, you were worried about xyz? I would love to hear you, you know, write a blog post about that concern. And Then how it turned out, or in one case, I had a client who I had worked with several times, but her, you know, baby, who had turned into a toddler, had become a pretty difficult toddler and was very difficult during our session. And she was super stressed about it during the session, even though she trusted me. And, you know, I remember by the time that they left that session, she was almost in tears saying, you know, I'm sure, you know, it's not your fault if you didn't get anything. Don't worry about it. She's so difficult, whatever. And then, you know, surprise, surprise, we were able to get some great photos. She was thrilled. And so I had her write about that experience of having a difficult toddler in what she thought was going to be a session with no good photos. And of course, that blog post, she wrote it and then I interspersed it with a whole bunch of images from their session, underlining the fact that, like, it was great and it worked out just fine. So if you have clients with whom you have had great sessions, consider how you might incentivize them to do the work for you. We can all spend all day, every day talking about what a great client experience we offer. And, you know, don't worry about this. I can handle it.
- [12:25]
Annemie Tonkin
Hang on, guys, I have a quick message for you.
- [12:27]
Unknown
Hey, friends. Just a quick interruption. I wanted to take a minute to thank you as always, for listening. If you're a new listener, I have a special welcome basket that I've put together just for you that includes three of my most popular, actionable resources to help you build a more profitable, sustainable photography business. You can grab that@thiscantbethard.com welcome. But if you've been a long time listener, if you've been here for a while, I would really appreciate it if you could take a second to leave a review on Spotify or Apple or wherever it is that you're tuning in. Your support helps the show grow, reach more photographers like you, and elevates the industry as a whole, no matter who you are or how long you've been listening. Thank you so much. And now back to the show.
- [13:20]
Host
It is a much more believable, much more sort of much stronger argument if that story comes from someone who actually lived through that experience. And the fact that that person is then willing to turn around and write for you on your blog is a huge feather in your cap, right? That is social proof through the roof, and that is what we want. So that is one option. You could always make this easier on your Clients and interview them on zoom. Record the interview, ask them to share about their session in their words, and then you could turn that into a blog post and have them approve it before you publish it. If you don't want to ask someone to do the writing or if you would prefer, you know, to, to have kind of the copy editing reigns in your hand for that. People love telling their stories. When they are happy with the service you have provided to them, they are usually really happy to help you back. It feels like sort of an exchange. And that ability to do, to share the story through their words is a powerful piece of marketing that you can sort of chop up and use in not just your blog, but on social media, in your emails, all kinds of different places. It's a bigger project and it is a bit of an ask for from your clients, but if you find a few people who are willing to help you out, it's huge. The third strategy I have for you, rather than getting these past clients to hire you again, is to actually partner with these past clients to get their friends to hire you. So people ask me all the time about referral programs and referral networks and what works. And the answer is I have never really come across a photography referral program that has worked super well on a regular basis. I think there are always those people out there who are happy to refer you, but trying to incentivize people to refer you is actually a lot harder than it seems like it should be. So what this is is kind of an alternative to that where you propose to a client that you believe, for whatever reason may have a good network of people that would also be qualified to hire you. So if you are a family photographer, you have, you know, clients who are parents and they have friends who are also parents. If you are a pet photographer and you know you've got a client who is really into hanging out with other dog owners and might be really networked in that, in that world, in the rescue world or with a particular breed or something like that. You want to tap them and say, I would love to co host an event with you or have you host an event and I'm happy to, you know, pay for the incidentals, whatever, and here's how it's going to work. And then you want to propose something where you are adding value to their group of people. I've talked before about this class that I taught called Cameras and Cocktails, which was like a two and a half hour presentation that I would give that was designed to show parents, typically moms who owned nicer cameras, how to take those off of program mode and be able to take better pictures. Because as we all know, plenty of people have decent cameras. They have no idea how to use them. And so their photos just look like any other photo and they may as well use their phones so their cameras collect dust. My goal in two hours was not to make anyone a professional photographer, but to show them how to use aperture mode, how to get interesting angles, different things to capture in their kids lives, whatever, and go from, you know, total amateur to something a little bit better over the course of a couple of hours. But I called it Cameras and cocktails because it was intended to be fun, it was intended to be relaxed. It was like a book club kind of a situation where again, typically it was women. A group of women would get together at somebody's house, I would bring wine and they would all sit around drinking and I would teach them how to use their cameras and they'd pull their cameras out and I'd show them which buttons they needed to press and all that sort of thing. During the course of that two and a half hours, I was not selling, I was not telling anybody, you know, please sign here to, to work with me. But I had almost a 75% booking rate with those people over the course of a year. And I ran that same thing for years because over the course of that two and a half hours, not only was the person hosting, who was a, you know, client of mine, talking about what a great time they had working with me, but those people were getting to know me, they were getting to see lots of my photos because I was using my photos to illustrate the principles that I was teaching. And it felt like a no pressure situation. So the next time they needed to hire a family photographer, you better believe that my name was the first one that came up in their minds. You don't have to necessarily teach a class. This could be any kind of event that adds value to the guests who are coming. The important thing is that you're partnering with someone who knows, likes and trusts you and therefore is sort of there to speak for you. Maybe they do a little introduction at the beginning and you are making sure that over the course of that, every guest who comes to that event, you're getting their email address, maybe you're following up with some sort of offer, but first and foremost you are showing up to deliver value. So again, this partnership, it's kind of a long game marketing strategy, but it can be a really wonderful way to network through your best clients. And that's where you're going to find those additional best clients. And then my final strategy that I want to remind you of, because again, if you've been around here for any period of time, you have definitely heard me talk about creating a portrait membership. But this is the number one way that my business has brought my best clients back again and again and again, year after year, stabilizing my revenue and stabilizing my schedule. So a portrait membership is exactly what it sounds like. It is a situation where my clients, once I have worked with someone and determined that this is a good fit, I like them, I trust them to pay me, they're not terribly difficult to work with, any of that sort of thing. I invite them into my membership where in exchange for a small discount and some benefits, they get invited into a once a year portrait session that they pay over the course of the year with monthly credit card payments. And then there are some other perks and little benefits built in. They get early access to my calendar, they get some discounts on products and things like that. And more than anything, it's just a really easy way for them to commit to getting annual family photos without having to really think about it too much. So once they're in that membership, that payment is just sort of happening on autopilot. They, I reach out to them and say, hey, it's time for you to schedule. Here's the dates. And it just becomes this very easy. Yes, I paint this picture for them where, you know, they come to me and they say, oh, we're so excited to work with you. It's been three years since we had family photos done and we missed all this stuff. And at the end of that, I'm able to say, great, you never want to miss that stuff again. Let's just make this really easy. And I sort of again, paint this picture for them where 10 or 15 years in the future, as their kids are moving out of the house, they've got this shelf on the wall that is lined with an album from every year. And you know, they did that for their kids and for their family's legacy. If you photograph anyone or anything that can come back again and again and again. So probably not wedding clients and probably not somebody who just wants a headshot and nothing else, but just about anything else. Brand photographers do really well with memberships. Pet photographers can set up great memberships and certainly any manner of family photography works great for this. But what you're doing is you're just inviting them into this membership. It makes it so that every member that you have is one less client that you need to book per year and you know ahead of time that that is actually going to happen. So it is a wonderful way to leverage the power of your existing client base and make that into a more predictable future for your business. If you are interested in this topic, I do have a course on this. It's called Revenue on Repeat. You can find it@thiscantbethard.com Revenue if you just go to my website and look under the Learn tab, you'll see it there. You probably don't need a course to teach you how to create a membership because memberships are everywhere, but it certainly will help you get past any of the tech hurdles and figuring out how to offer it and how to run it and all that sort of thing. If you are looking for that to review, we have four different ways that you can stretch your existing business as far as possible and sort of squeeze every last drop of goodness out of what you already have. The first is just to make sure that you are inviting clients back who haven't been back with you for a while, or anyone who has been to see you recently gets some sort of different offer or an upsell. The second was to ask clients to share their experience of working with you, whether in a blog post or in an interview, and take those stories and use those as your marketing material. The third strategy is to ask your best clients to host some sort of an event where you are showing up as the expert and providing value to their friends and family because your best clients typically know other people who would be ideal clients for you. And then the final strategy is to create and invite your best clients into a membership where they are signing up to work with you again and again. I would encourage you, if you are in a season or feeling nervous about a season of some amount of scarcity to think about these strategies. Pick one and plan to implement it over the course of a month. Just dive in. These are not overly complicated. Many of them just really involve sketching out your idea on a piece of paper and then sending an email or two. Invite your best clients to share their experience, partner with you, hire you again, or join your membership and then when you do, I would love for you to reach out to me and share that story with me. I would love to hear how you were able to make more with less in your business.
- [24:40]
Annemie Tonkin
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 if you like the show, be sure to check out thiscan'tbethard.com to.
- [24:49]
Host
Explore all the resources we have for photographers.
- [24:52]
Annemie Tonkin
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.