← This Can't Be That Hard
This Can't Be That Hard
356 - Internal Organization: Building Your Business Brain with Stacey Rolfe
00:51:25
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- [00:00]
A
You know, that sort of mental image of the duck on the surface of the water and everything above the surface looks perfectly calm, but then when you go underneath, the duck's paddling like crazy just to keep things afloat. That is exactly what today's episode is about. As we continue our series on organization, I invited back one of my very favorite business brains, Stacey Ralph of Tidy Tog and Tog Hub, to talk about the below the surface systems in our businesses that nobody sees but everyone feels. Not just your clients, but your family, your friends, and, you know, your soul. So maybe you don't see yourself as a particularly organized person. That's fine. A lot of artists don't. But I think Stacy does an amazing job in our conversation today, laying out an an argument for taking the time to create and stick to a behind the scenes structure. Because truly that structure is key to longevity and success in any business and it unlocks the mental space that we as creatives need to do our job. I loved this conversation so, so much. And I know that you're going to as well. So I am going to cue the music and get right in.
- [01:26]
B
Welcome to this Can't Be that Hard. My name is Anna Mi 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.
- [02:01]
A
Stacy Ralph, welcome back to this Can't Be that Hard. It is lovely to see your face. How are you?
- [02:07]
C
Hi Anami. I'm so good. It is so nice to see you again.
- [02:11]
A
Indeed. And of course, I don't even think. It hasn't been even a year since you were on the show last, right?
- [02:18]
C
I can't remember. I've got no idea.
- [02:21]
A
It hasn't been long, but it also feels like it's been too long. I always really appreciate getting to chat with you. I feel like our business minds are so in sync about how to think about this stuff. And so anyway, as we were planning out the systems theme and we were talking, or excuse me, the organization theme and we were talking about the different parts of organizing your business. Of course, Tidy Tog is such a great name and you know, for your business and that just jumped into my mind and I was like, Stacy would be a perfect person to bring on to chat about today's topic, which is, it's kind of funny. I Split in. When I was thinking about organization in general, in my mind, I sort of have these two sides of the same coin with organization where it's like your internal organization, which is the stuff that nobody necessarily. It doesn't directly impact people outside of you, but your. It improves your ability to serve your people. And then there's the external piece, which is the organization that even though somebody may not understand how the organization works, being organized or not directly impacts your clients. So I feel like a lot of photographers start there, right. Because it's probably more important to, you know, you, you. We've all heard about the duck swimming on the surface of the pond and the duck looks all serene and then underneath it's like paddle, paddle, paddle. So if we can make our, our business feel like above water in that way for our clients, that's probably step number one. But I'm excited to dive into internal organization because I think this is something that a lot of photographers leave until it's. I don't want to say too late. It's not too late. But it's. But it is. It really starts to have a negative, take a negative toll on their business and probably just their kind of mental well being because they haven't taken this. It's like they've been so busy doing for others that the internal piece of it kind of gets left to last. Would you say that?
- [04:33]
C
Yeah, yeah. It's like everything we take, we put everybody else's life jacket on first and we take care of our kids before we take care of ourselves. And yeah, in my experience, that is bang on. It's just you burn out and then you fix this stuff. And wouldn't it be nice if we could learn from those who went before and have burnt out many times? Hi, that's me. Wouldn't it be nice if we could learn not to do that? Because burnout is, is not fun.
- [05:01]
A
Yeah, amazing. Well, before we dive in, I feel like I just sort of like jumped right in because I know you and you've been on the show before. But why don't you take a minute to tell everybody who you are, what you do professionally. Because I think it's a really fun sort of turn that your business has taken and. And then we'll go from there.
- [05:20]
C
Sure. Well, hello everybody. My name is Stacy Rolf. I am originally from the UK, but I landed here in Sydney, Australia almost 12 years ago, which is with my now husband. We met backpacking and I came here for a year and never left. I was a lawyer way back then. I Trained at big, big firms in London and then I came over here and I re qualified. I did all of those exams, I put all of that work in and then I decided, nah, I hate this. I can't believe I've spent so much of my life doing it. So I had my kids, picked up a camera and the ball just started rolling. And so in gosh, I think I quit my job in 2020 when I had my second baby and then went full time with the photography business. And then here in Sydney we got locked down for our big lockdown came a year after the rest of the world. So we got locked down in the middle of 2021. So by that point I had a really thriving photography business. I was loving it. I couldn't believe how well it was going. You know, I was earning as much as I don't as a lawyer. Everything was wonderful. And then overnight we got shut down and we got shut down for four months. So during that time, because I'm a person that can't sit still and I was still full of that new business energy, I was looking around for things I could do. The first thing I did was tidy up all of my systems which had been pretty good but of course, you know, you're gifted the time and it's like I could make these so much better. Then I did my best friends, then I did another friends and then that eventually became Tog Hub and the tidy tog. Tog being short for photographer. Yeah, I often have to explain that and so for the last, gosh, I've lost track maybe five years now, I've been setting up CRMs and pick time systems for photographers and yeah, that has, that has become the bigger business. So I am still a photographer, I do still spend half of my week photographing families and I still have a six figure photography business. But Tog Hub is now the business that I'm kind of mostly in and growing.
- [07:36]
A
Amazing. Yeah. I think as creatives it's so important and I love, you know, I also had a career, a fully established career before photography and, and that was the first leap that I made where I was like, I don't, everyone expects me to stay on this path and I don't feel like it's right anymore. And that felt like the biggest leap but it led to all these sort of subsequent situations where I allowed myself to kind of think outside the box or take a different turn and, and it's, you know, there's always risk involved in that and it can feel, it certainly feels risky even if it's not, you know, capital R risk, but it's. As creatives, I think it is just one of the best gifts that we can give ourselves is that ability or that license to kind of dream or try different things. And I feel like that's always where it's like you're always iterating toward your true, like, zone of genius. And. And I love how you've brought all those things together.
- [08:40]
C
Yeah, I think. I think that's so right. And it's one of the things, I think a lot of photographers. It's one of the great benefits of doing the job that we do and running our own businesses is the flexibility to make decisions, to chase opportunities, to choose not to chase opportunities, and, you know, choose a slower pace, choose a smaller business. These are all choices that are open to us. When we worked in corporate or in government or in healthcare, we don't. We can't change things. We can't change anything. We just have to do what we're told all the time. And I think a lot of photographers forget, maybe, or they just don't exercise the ability, they don't exercise that flexibility and the right that we have to change our minds. So when you feel the resentment growing around your pricing, I just change it. I just go in and I change it. Or when you decide I don't want to work Fridays anymore, I go on and I change it. And you can make a decision that day if you want to. And I think a lot of people live with that resentment. They let it build. They let it feel. They feel it building up in their body and their brain, and they don't make the change that they know they have to make because change is always scary.
- [09:53]
A
Change is hard.
- [09:54]
C
Yeah, it's hard, but it's always in our power. We are the only person that we're answering to. And that is such a wonderful thing that we have.
- [10:02]
A
Amazing. Okay, can we totally change topics and just talk about this? No. That is. I mean, it's so spot on and so true. And inertia is. It creeps, right? I mean, that's. That is a thing. But. But it is exciting. And I, if nothing else, take away from this that Stacy is a wonderful person to watch someone living that exact dream. So amazing.
- [10:28]
C
Sometimes I don't. I don't get it right all the time.
- [10:32]
A
Nobody does. Nobody does. And that's another good thing to remember. We're all just back here paddling beneath the surface. Yeah, but let's talk about that beneath the surface. Let's talk about Tidying up our underwater realm where we are, like, working furiously in the back end of our business, trying to make sure that our clients are being taken care of and our, you know, profitability is in check and, you know, marketing's getting done and all these different things that are required to, to run a business that continues to run. But, but that moment when you come to the realization that, like, you're just bleeding time, money, effort, energy, will to live, all the things because of the mess that you have sort of created and forced yourself to be in.
- [11:26]
C
Yes. So in my experience, the main, the main thing that holds photographers back is never talent. It's rarely drive or, you know, laziness. It's capacity. Time and time again, it's just capacity. And it's like your business the way you build it. And again, it's a choice. We are all building businesses supposedly that we want. We're all chasing this dream and we're all building from scratch and we can do whatever we want, but we usually don't do whatever we want. We do whatever we've seen Stacy down the road do. And so we tend to build our businesses based on somebody else's, Somebody else's pricing, somebody else's capacity, somebody else's availability. We shoot where they shoot. We follow the trends that they follow. And what happens when we do that is that it just makes everything super shaky. And you're trying to scale a business based on something that is not scalable for you, and you don't even know if it's scalable for them either. They are also on Instagram pretending everything's fine and quite possibly it's not.
- [12:38]
A
Right. That is always the trick about imitating other people. It's like make sure that you understand exactly how that's working for them before you go. Try and make it work for you.
- [12:47]
C
Exactly. And I mean, I get, I get asked a fair bit. You know, I'm sure we all do. It's this, like, we ask all women this, how do you do it all? How do you manage all of this? And the truth is, there's a very complicated, very complicated schedule that happens here. I am married, My partner has a normal person job where he works normal hours. He's very helpful. Our household is very 50, 50. Not all households are that way. Not all, you know, income, breadwinning is that way. And so the fact that I'm going from a level playing field at home allows me to do more in my business than some women, specifically women, are able to do. And so trying to mimic my Business or somebody else's business is not the way to build it, because we're not all starting from the same jumping off point. I think that's. That's the main thing that I need people to understand before they start building a business at all. Because everything you build is. Is by design. And if you're designing for the wrong client, essentially, then it's not going to be. It's not going to be no good. I'm trying to do analogies like you, but you're much better at them like me.
- [13:56]
A
Oh, well. And I mean, I'm just going to go back to the duck pond, which I didn't make up, obviously, but because it is. I mean, when we're doing that, we really are. All we're seeing is what's above and all the, you know, all the stuff underneath. Sometimes, I mean, obviously with an educator, with somebody who's out there talking about the underneath stuff, that's helpful. Um, but hopefully most of those people are not these days trying to sell you this bill of like, just do it exactly the way I do it, and then everything will line up perfectly. Like, that's. There's a. There's a pretty big red flag coming with that kind of advice that hopefully everybody knows.
- [14:37]
C
Absolutely. And then, and then what happens when you build this business that's somebody else's perfect structure is that it drains you. It drains you all the way around, so it doesn't make you money because you're not in your zone of genius and you're not operating the way that you should. Your clients aren't attracted to it because they can sense that it's not right. Somehow it drains your confidence then. And that's when we, you know, so it's confidence, it's money. It drains your time because you're spending more time than you should trying to make something work for you, and it just isn't going to work. So you have to fix it, the real core foundation, and work out exactly what you should be trying to build before you try and scale anything.
- [15:22]
A
Amazing. Okay. I love that as a jumping off point for this conversation, because I really do think that the. Why there, you know, to your point, we're all busy putting other people's face masks on before our own. But that is. It's a really kind of unique, talked about part of how business can. How people who look successful on the outside can end up quitting kind of on what seems like a dime from the outside because they've just let it consume them. And so in the, in the interest of hopefully making it so that everyone out there listening today avoids that fate. Yeah. Let's dive in. Talk to me about the, the organizational kind of pillars of a business that you feel like are non negotiable.
- [16:16]
C
Yeah. Okay. So the first one is you, your home life, your boundaries. So quite early on in my business following, you know, I did it wrong in the first place. Like everybody does. We all do. We all do. Like it's a rite of passage. But hi, if you've done the right of passage and you're ready to change it, here's, here's how I did it. I just approached my work like I would a normal job. So I gave myself working days, I gave myself working times. I have little kids, so there are drop offs and pickups to be done. I have a partner, so there is his routines to work around and he does some and I do some and we have our designated days and all of this. So I really tried. I really put in place some firm boundaries about what my week looked like. And then with those hours that I had to work and just on that, it can look like anything you want it to look like. So my background is I was a lawyer for a long, long time. I'm a bit of a night owl. So actually I don't mind sitting here at my desk into the late hours. I know that that's not what you're supposed to do.
- [17:29]
A
Right.
- [17:29]
C
Personally, I would rather. And this is how I organize my days. My kids are in long care. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, those are my shoot days and those are my working days. So I get to my desk, I drop them off, I get to my desk and I work really hard all day Monday, all day Tuesday, all day Wednesday. After they go to bed, I'll come back and I'll do my editing. But Thursday, Friday, those are like, I have a call with my team. I go to Pilates, I pick my kids up early from school, I take them to wherever they need to go. So. So those are my days where I don't work so hard. Saturday is an absolute non negotiable. There's no work that happens that day. And then Sunday I do shoot in the evening, but I don't work in the day. So Sunday sunset is like my Monday morning. That has worked really well for me. Now that won't work for everybody. Maybe your idea of perfect is, you know, you work only the school hours or whatever it is. But I think I got really extremely clear on what would work best for me and my family and what suits My working patterns and my rhythms and when I'm most productive and what my husband's schedule is and all that kind of thing. Like, even to the point where we just know now, because we've been doing this for so many years, if you want to book something on a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, a dinner, a thing with friends, go to the movies, whatever, like, you have to check. You really have to check in and make sure that there isn't a shoe or something. And whereas if you want to go on a Thursday, Friday, you just have to check that the other person isn't out. So it just. It's made our lives so much easier to manage. And again, I appreciate that not everybody is so routine driven as us, but for us, that really works.
- [19:11]
A
But that's the. That's the key to what you're saying. Right? Like, you have to understand your own situation. I have a very. I mean, I feel like, I guess we do have some routine. And obviously my kids are older now, so there's very. The. The parenting duties, such as they are, are much less these in this season of life and business. But I have never had a super organized, structured system with my kids, with my partner, you know, with any of it. It's always felt like every week is a little bit different. And so I have that kind of built in to mine. I'm a little jealous of the. Of the fact that, like, there are people out there who have such predictable hours. So the challenge for me is more like holding boundaries that are. That are flexing all the time by their very nature. But, you know, and I do. I mean, I will be the first to admit that, like, I don't. I. This is something I do very imperfectly. Like, I will often overwork one week and then, like, struggle to focus the next week and that sort of thing. So, you know, and I think.
- [20:23]
C
And I think in many ways that's probably more relatable than what I just said. Like, I have a lot of clients that I work with. Like photography. Yeah. Photographer clients, as in I mentor them and coach them. And they have FIFO spouses, so partners who work on the rigs out here in Australia. So they fly in and out for like five days at a time.
- [20:42]
A
Or.
- [20:43]
C
Or their partners might be doctors and they work shifts or firefighters and they work shifts. Or maybe they're married to a lawyer and he never comes home, you know.
- [20:52]
A
Right.
- [20:53]
C
And so I have a lot of clients that work in this way. And so for them, maybe it's like, well, I. I just have Saturdays And I just have Saturdays, but ideally, I'd like to do three shoots. So you know what? I'm going to do a sunrise, a newborn, and a sunset every Saturday. And that's just how that boundary works for me.
- [21:11]
A
Right.
- [21:11]
C
It doesn't matter what it is. It just matters that you understand what it is and that you hold that boundary firm. So I use my Google, my Google Calendar, whenever anybody spots it. Like, if I'm organizing a play date and I put it in my calendar, I get the same reaction every time, which is horror. But to me, I think it's great. Like, it's color coordinated. Yeah, I have my Google Calendar, which I just. If it's not in there, it doesn't exist in my life. And I also use calendly, but you could use acuity or use session or any one of those. And that has been a game changer for me too, because once I put my availability in, my clients don't really push. Some do, but most of them don't push me for other availability because they can see what it is. And it. It builds this. This layer, this boundary layer. It's like having a VA who will tell them no, they just can't push past the calendar.
- [22:07]
A
Right.
- [22:07]
C
And, yeah, sometimes they do. And then it's up to me whether I allow that flex or not. But having something outward that you can kind of lean on and say, sorry, I don't have that availability. And it lends credence to that, I think is so helpful in holding your own boundary.
- [22:26]
A
Yeah. And at the risk of repeating myself for the 20 millionth time, those demonstrating boundaries only scares bad clients away.
- [22:37]
C
Agreed.
- [22:37]
A
Um, most people. Most good people. Good clients, when they see that you have, you know, this is how it works. Here's the boundaries. Da, da, da. Not only do they respect those boundaries, but they also respect you more as a photographer, as a business owner. And it. It ends up leading to things like higher sales averages and more like ease in the cooperation during a session and all those kinds of things, because they start to trust that you know what you're talking about. So if you are. If you have a hard time creating and holding boundaries, do it for the sake of your bottom line.
- [23:16]
C
Yes, exactly.
- [23:18]
A
Amazing. Okay, so I love that the foundation is really like, you're having to build a business around your real life because that's what you're living. Um, what are your. What else, what next?
- [23:33]
C
Okay, so the next one is that I do a quarterly planning. So again, if you've ever worked in any kind of office Corporate job, any job really. They will have weekly team meetings, they will have monthly check ins, they will have one to ones with you. Like all of that is so established as the way we have to manage humans, but it just goes without question. And I think when you work on your own, this is the first thing to go. You don't have a performance review, you don't have a business plan most of the time and you certainly don't check in with it. And I saw this analogy once about a plane taking off from JFK and it's bound for London, but the captain gets it one degree wrong and they end up in like Dubai or something, right? And it's one degree but flying over that period of time, you end up in completely the wrong place and your business is exactly the same as that. So once a quarter I have my CEO morning and I have like a structure now that I go through, which I got from my business coach, I have a structure that I go through and I think about what worked in the last quarter or the last year, what didn't work, things that I want to stop or change or get rid of and things that I'm just going to allow to continue maybe for this quarter or flag them for the next quarter. And then I chunk that down into 12 weeks. So every single week there is a to do item. So it might be decide on my pricing one week, update my website the next week, update my CRM the next week, you know, literally chunking it down into the smallest, clearest tasks. And then one of my students, because I also do this in my membership, in my coaching, she sent a picture on our group the other day where she'd bought a whiteboard and she had all these sticky notes, these post its every single week. And the group went off. Everyone was so excited about it and people are now using that, you know, so it's the 12 week plan but it's like visual for them, whereas I just kind of scribble it down and that's enough for me. But for a lot of photographers, they need it to be on their wall and they need to rip that sticky note off the wall. So I break them down into 12 tasks that are actually going to move the needle for me. And then every single Monday I just check my list. And even when a week goes off the rails or a curveball is thrown at you or the kids are sick or you're sick, whatever happens, it's about just going, okay, well now I've got to do two of them this week. But it was Always manageable from the beginning. So two should be just fine if you have to make up some hours because it's just about sticking to that, putting one foot in front of the other. And then when you do knock your plane off course, you just have to knock it right back on as soon as you can. So that's the next part of keeping everything growing and feeling like without having decision fatigue as well. I don't have to change, I don't have to work it out every Monday morning. I just have to follow the plan.
- [26:33]
A
Yep. Which is so the, the, the JFK to London idea is so relatable because it is. I mean it's funny how the. There are so many urgent tasks in our business. Right. Emails that come in and automations that break or whatever might happen that require. You know, feels like I have to fix this right this minute. And maybe you do but when you are busy doing that it's so easy to lose the thread of like. But that's not this, this isn't taking me anywhere right now. I'm not even heading to Dubai. I'm like treading water. Um, so yeah, just to have that lifeline to re. So that you can reset your course and keep going. Because when you think about it from that like you know, further out view or that bigger CEO planning day view, that's where you can really decide like these are the things that are going to get me where I need to go. So that's great.
- [27:34]
C
Yeah. So next is sort of an external one but it's important but it keep. Because it keeps your internal brain working, which is that I just have one source of truth. So when I was early in my business I did what everybody else did, which is I would get a client on my Facebook messenger, I would get a client in my Instagram DMs. I'd have a client texting me, I'd have someone whatsapping me. I'd get a carrier pigeon once in a while and it's a nightmare because you get a lead in and you cannot remember where it was. You can't remember whether you replied. DMs disappear from Instagram sometimes. Like I just can't find them. I don't remember people's names. Like whatever it is.
- [28:15]
A
Sure.
- [28:17]
C
So I have one source of truth. It's my CRM. If you're not in there, a bit like my Google Calendar, you don't exist in my world. And all of my shoots, all of my invoices, contracts, questionnaires, emails, it's all in one place, nothing happens anywhere else. And that consistency is so important, it removes all the uncertainty in my business. I never wonder if clients have the right information. I never have to wonder if something's been paid or something's been missed, ever. So what, what it creates is a great client experience. But the most important part of that is it allows me to come into my business knowing every single day. I know what I'm doing, where I'm supposed to be, I know everything's been taken care of. And that breeds so much confidence and certainty. And it's a two way thing. So I turn up and I show up with my clients completely confident. I'm never worried that I didn't send them a style guide. I'm never worried that they're going to go to the wrong place. I'm not worried about any of that. It's a well oiled machine at this point and for them, they're never chasing me for a location pin or a guide or anything like that. They know where everything is. And then what you get is a client that turns up really confident, really sure that you are a professional. They turn up, they find this person there who's like comfortable and calm and with like a regulated nervous system and all of those good things. And that's when you get your best sessions happening. So I realized that once the back end of my business was up and running and I really felt like I could rely on that, like I really felt that I could lean on it. And I'd tested it by, I don't know, having a week where everybody was sick or whatever. Once you do that and you have that confidence, it plays through into everything else that you do. It plays through into how you show up in your marketing, how you shop at your session. And then just as you said, those clients, they relax quicker, they perform better. Perform is not the right word, but they kind of, they show up better in your session. You create a bit of pictures, then you've got more upgrades, then you've got more sales, then you've got happier clients that refer you, then you've got clients that come back every year. It just like it is a non negotiable for me to be able to trust the back end of my business because if I can't do that, I really can't grow or show up properly. Yeah.
- [30:46]
A
And once you get to a place where that is up and running and it's not as if that is not where your business is right now. If you're listening to this and you're like that sounds like a dream. It's not as far off as it may seem. It really is just a handful of, you know, like, let's put these things in place and actually stick to them. And you know, you pick software. You can get help doing these things once you're there. The thought of trying to run a business without it, it's like, you know, it would be like somebody running a race, like a marathon or something. And there's like the happy person just like running and then there's somebody who's carrying a boulder while they're running. Like it's just so much more work to do to accomplish the same thing.
- [31:34]
C
Yeah, it really is. And, and the other thing about setting up these systems is it doesn't have to be all or nothing. You can outsource it. There are people like me who do that for you in like a week. But if you don't have the resources to outsource that right now, it doesn't have to be an all or nothing thing. You can start just by doing your email templates. Then you can start by creating your packages. Then you can start by linking your job types. Then you can, you know, you can take it. What do they say about eating an elephant? It's one bite at a time, at a time. You just have to keep going. And you have to add that to your 12 week list and do one job a week so that it doesn't overwhelm you. And once you've done that job, you throw the sticky note away and you don't have to go to the next week. You just keep it all like manageable. Yeah. And then by the end of your 12 weeks, you've probably got a fully set up system and you're feeling so much calmer at that point. Yeah.
- [32:31]
A
And if you're listening to this in February, you know, in real time, there's, you know, this is typically a good time for people to, to get work done on their business. And so, you know, 12 weeks from now, it's like that old saying about you'll either be there and organized or you'll just be 12 weeks older. I mean, it's, you know, we're all these weeks go by as it is, so that's a, it's a good reminder.
- [32:57]
C
Yeah.
- [32:59]
A
Any other systems that are important for backend organization?
- [33:05]
C
Yeah. So the final thing is just to have templates for absolutely everything. So I, I mean, I know I'm speak preaching to the converted here, but I don't write anything in my business. Right. And you know, I get a lead in and I'll add a sentence or two where they've come from, or something we have in common or something they've said in their form. But I don't write anything else. Everything else is templated. All of my workflows are templated. When I deliver a gallery, the entire process is already done for me. So I load up a template that I already have in pic time. I do not think about inclusions, permissions, coupons, downloads. I just know that it's correct. And that is actually the part. I mean, I've been setting up the CRM for years. PIC time is new. I've only been doing that for a couple of years now. But that is the part that blows people's minds because, right, actually delivering a gallery can be like an hour of your time by the time you uploaded things. Check the permissions, attach the right price list, blah, blah, blah, and then usually something's gone wrong. I also changed my pricing last January, so just over a year ago. I always used to allow people to buy any of my packages upfront, which I know cash flow wise is a really positive thing to do, but I changed it so they could only buy package one upfront. A lot of that is the simple sales psychology that you teach on me, but it also just systemizes so beautifully because then I, I don't even have to check their invoice. Everybody comes in on the same package. Yeah, like there's nothing for me to check. Everyone is the same, every system is the same. And it just allows me, I upload, I hit publish, and then I'm completely done. So templates for absolutely everything buys back all of your time and again builds all of that trust in yourself. And as somebody who carries an awful lot of mental load in my life outside of work, I don't want to have to carry this unnecessary load inside of work. It's not necessary. So a lot of us, you know, as well, we, we have to spend so much time marketing, we spend so much time showing up in our businesses. And to do that, you have to be fresh, you have to feel good about yourself, about what you're saying. You have to feel rested, you have to feel energized, and you can't do that if you're constantly behind the eight ball. So for me, it's knowing where the source of truth is and making sure everything is kept there and everything is directed there, and then making sure that within those platforms, I just don't have to think it's just somewhere I shouldn't have to carry any extra mental load in my life.
- [35:51]
A
I love that. And that, you know, obviously in reality, businesses change. You are going to have to update your systems, you're going to have to update your templates, all those kinds of things. But once they are built, you will never start from scratch again. Even if you completely change your niche, even if you completely change your audience or your location or anything else, all of that can be, you know, adjusted, tweaked a little bit rather than starting from scratch. So it is, you know, it feels like a big job and it's not a small job to, to get all this stuff set up, but it is one bite at a time. It is doable.
- [36:33]
C
Especially if you, especially if you pick a pricing structure either like simple sales or like mine, which is simple sales adjacent. If you pick a structure like that, it stays. The structure doesn't change. So when I change my pricing, I just kind of shift them upwards. I don't, I just get rid of bottom package. I move that bottom package up to middle package. I don't really change my inclusions, I don't change my structure. And so at that point, it's just numbers. All you have to do is change numbers in a couple of places. That's it. If you're somebody who, and I see this a lot with the photographers I work with, when they change their pricing, it's, it's like it becomes this big circus because they feel, they always feel bad about changing their pricing. They always have this idea that it's not fair on their clients somehow that they're increasing their pricing. So instead of just your 10 image package going from 500 to 600, they're like, okay, well it'll go to 600. But they're also going to get, they're going to get.
- [37:37]
A
Right, right, right, right.
- [37:38]
C
They're going to get one print or they're going to get 12 images instead of 10 and they'll get a slideshow and they'll. And it's like, well, now we have to change the entire system.
- [37:47]
A
Yeah.
- [37:48]
C
And also that's not the vibe. That's not the vibe when you're changing your pricing. That shouldn't be how, when, by the time you change your pricing, you should be like, I'm, I'm. Or at least this is generally what people do. They're over delivering on their old pricing to the point they're getting resentful of it. So why they feel the need to throw value in when they know they're already over delivering on the old Prices is, is beyond me. This is something that baffles me constantly. So having again, having the structure and having the boundary, it's like when I increase my prices, all I'm doing is shifting upwards. So there's only two decisions I need to make. What's. What does package two cost and what does package three cost? There is no other decision. I already know what package one is going to cost because it's just shifting up to my middle. That's it. And once again, it's like having the structure takes away the mental load and allows you to just run this business as a business. Yep.
- [38:47]
A
I love that. And like, for all of the reasons, I love that that is, it's such great advice and I feel like a third podcast topic that we could have spent the entire time on. Okay, so speaking of like lightening one's mental load, as we sort of close out today's episode, there's so much in here. What would you say are some things that somebody can do, you know, this week taking action on this podcast episode to help start the process of lightening their mental load, Cleaning the below the surface area so that it is a little calmer.
- [39:27]
C
Yeah. So number one, I would love everybody to get a piece of paper, map out a week, Monday through to Sunday, and color code like, what am I doing on each day, what am I doing at each period of time? So when am I working? What am I working on? When would I like the shoots to be? And even if you're not in a position where you, your business can kind of dictate that yet, even if you still have to have a high degree of flexibility, knowing what you would like your ideal week to look like, and then funneling your clients towards that availability, advertising your Monday night and your Tuesday night instead of your Saturday afternoon, for example, that is a huge piece. So I want you to sit down and actually work out what life looks like for you, for your family, for whoever else is impacted by this business of yours, and kind of create for yourself an ideal week. Again, when I work with people, it's not just an ideal week. It could be an ideal month or it could be an ideal year. So a lot of my clients are mothers. A lot of them have school age children. So for them they'll go hard in school time, but they want holidays off, for example. Right. So it doesn't matter how you want to do it, but work out the routine that works for your family and then set up your online scheduler. And I will say, I don't know if that's something you can do this week. It's a bit of a job depending on how complex your scheduling is. If you're someone that just does newborns and they're 10 o', clock, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, that'll be very easy. You do that this week. If you're a sunset person and you're in a place that has varying sunsets, it can be a bit more of a task. But I think it's one of the biggest life upgrades you can make in terms of your own boundaries and respect from your clients for those boundaries.
- [41:27]
A
Can I ask you a question about your calendar for clients?
- [41:33]
C
Yeah.
- [41:34]
A
So a session calendar, I'm assuming that you sync that with your Google Calendar so that it's reading and saying, oh, she's busy on this day, whatever. Yes, but what do you, what kind of window do you give people in which to book? I mean, because I find that one of the hardest things. And I use schedulers all the time and I swear by them as well. But it's always a little tricky when you get much past, I don't know, a month or, you know, two months out and then I'm like, I don't know what's going to be happening. Then I've got, you know, my kids, sports schedules change and maybe I'm going to want to go out of town that weekend and that sort of thing. How do you manage that?
- [42:14]
C
Well, again, I'm a planner through and through. So I do, I release my calendar six months ahead so there'll be a date when I decide I'm going to release for six months. And I kind of do all of the work in that I book off. So Thursday through to Sunday afternoon, there are no shoots. I typically, well, I book off one full week every month and that week is in the worst case to make up for rained off shoots or sickness shoots or whatever. So there's always one week a month that I have kind of in my back pocket, I suppose. So one week a month is blocked out. Three days a week is always blocked out. I only offer every other weekend, so I don't work every weekend. I block out the school holidays. I sound like I never work. I block out the school holidays. And then closer to the time, once we know what we're doing with the school holidays, I will release some, but I kind of start from that sort of highest. I start from my most ideal scheduler. And then if I'm nearing the time, like say, for example, I was desperate for bookings in February, I'd have a Look at my calendar and I'd pop in a Saturday or something if I was. If I really needed to work and I really needed to get that in, I'd do a big flashy, I'm going to release some Saturdays. I never do that and I will manually override at that point or change in my calendar. But when I'm looking long term, I very much take an idealistic view of what I would like my life to be like in those six months and this year because I mean like most years one of my New Year's resolutions was earn the same work less. So this year, this year I've blocked out a lot of time. So. So all the school holidays, every Friday, every other Friday is completely off because I don't shoot that day. But I do usually do tidy tog work that day. What else have I done? I've done three weeks off to do solo trips or weeks with my girlfriend. So away from my kids. And yeah, all the ones I just described, they're the ones I normally do anyway, like the non shoot days. And so yeah, does that answer your question?
- [44:29]
A
Totally. I, I was just asking because I think that that's one of the hang ups for a lot of people when I talk to them about using calendar software. They're just like, I just don't know, it's all over the place. And it was interesting to hear you say six months at a time. My membership was always a six month calendar and I would open it but that was like I sat down the week before that was going to be released and I very specifically mapped out like these are dates that if someone chooses them, you know, if my members book that date I can work around that. But I was never, yeah, it was just a more challenging thing for like when I would get a random inquiry and somebody, it's like, you know, do they want to book now? Do they want to book four months from now? And you know, just trying to do that stuff. So anyway, was just curious to hear what your insights were on that.
- [45:22]
C
I also heavily lean on the out of office function in Google Calendar because that just completely blocks things. So, so I'm quite, and like I said, I'm quite reactive with my calendar. So say my husband books a golf trip like he did this weekend, he's like oh by the way, I've put it in the calendar. I'm like but did you put it in the calendar though? And he never has. So I, so I then go in and I put out of office for those three days because even though the kids might be at school. School. I just don't want to be doing that extra juggle. So any. And if there was something already in the calendar, then I have to, you know, I have to work around that. But as soon as I know something's going to kind of disrupt, I go and put an out of office. I also do it because I will typically offer up. So I probably have. I probably have 14 dates a month that are available for shoots on my calendar. So that's Monday to Wednesday for three weeks and then two Sundays. Hold on. I've done the maths wrong on that. About 11 dates each month.
- [46:24]
A
Nice.
- [46:25]
C
That are available on my calendar. But you could book that for sunsets, minis, daytime stuff. So potentially I could be doing three shoots a day. And I do sometimes I prefer to stack my sheets, actually. I like to either be on with my clients or hair in my pajamas. Editing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [46:43]
A
And again, that comes back to what we were talking about at the beginning, where it's like you really first have to get clear on what it is that how you want to build your business and how you want to spend your time and how you know what works best for you.
- [46:57]
C
Yeah.
- [46:58]
A
And I, I think that the mistake that so many people make is assuming that until they feel busy enough, they don't want to put any restrictions on it because they want to be flexible and be available for their clients schedules what works best for them. But a little scarcity goes a long way. And again, it's that whole I have these boundaries, I have whatever. And it's amazing how people will just like, oh, yeah, I've got that Tuesday evening free. Yeah, it'll work if that's what they're. If, you know, um, but it does require that sort of confidence and that belief in yourself. Um, yeah, all of it. I hope what you're hearing when you're listening out there is that all of this is related. The more sort of organized and thoughtful your own process is, the more confident you are when you're delivering that to other people, which then increases their confidence and trust in you. And it all is a positive cycle.
- [47:57]
C
Yeah.
- [47:58]
A
Okay, last question. Just because I know you do such amazing things with tidy tog and helping people get these systems like set up and running. What is sort of the number one thing when someone hires you of all the stuff that we've been talking about today, what's the thing that you immediately go to and you're like, this is what we work on first.
- [48:22]
C
The first thing we work on is what they want their client journey to look like. So I start most of my clients with the same base workflow. So we do do custom, but I've now done like hundreds of these things and people don't really want custom is what I've noticed on me. They want something that they know works. And so I essentially come to them and I say, look, this is a really simple workflow that always works. It's easy to run, it's perfect for your clients. It doesn't overwhelm them, yada yada. So the most important thing I need from people is their pricing when they come to me, because the pricing structure really dictates how we build out that whole pick time end and how much we can automate for them. So again, when they come to me and they want to adopt our pricing structure because we know that that works so well with the simple sales app in pick time. That's the holy grail, really. So the first thing we do is we get them to complete an onboarding form and it just tells us all about their business, what guides they've got, what brand voice they've got, what attributes they've or assets they've got and things like that. And then we kind of put that into our plan and I walk them through how that would feel. And so I suppose the first, the most important thing to me is that it always feels like them. So although we're starting from a base that is tried and tested, I always want this to feel like them and their business. So everything we do is customized to their brand voice. Everything we do is customized to their business, their pricing, their inclusions, their touch points, you know, whatever it is. So it's really understanding how they want their clients to feel through the process.
- [50:11]
A
Amazing. So good. Well, it is always a pleasure chatting with you. Let everybody know where they can find you and connect with you. And of course, we will have all of your links and all the things in our show notes and in the new darkroom app where we dive extra deep and do like action taking stuff on our on all of these amazing episodes.
- [50:35]
C
Amazing. Well, you can find me on instagram. It's @toghub t o g h u v and it's www.toghub.com. love it.
- [50:45]
A
Stacy, so lovely chatting with you. Thank you so much for joining me today.
- [50:50]
C
Always a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.
- [50:53]
A
All right, have a good one. Well, that's it for this week's episode.
- [50:57]
B
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@thiscantbethard.com learn. If you like the podcast, be sure.
- [51:13]
A
To hit the subscribe button.
- [51:15]
B
Even better, share the love by leaving a review in itunes. And as always, thanks so much for joining me. I hope you have a fantastic week.