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Anna Mi Tonkin
Hey my friends.
Dana
Happy August. Hard to believe that we are already here. Every year just gets faster and faster and it's hard to believe that we are, as we are, on the cusp of the busy season. It is sweltering where I am. And no matter where you are right now, I'm sure that everything from the weather to the clothes that people are wearing to what you're talking about and thinking about the activities that you're doing on a day to day basis, they are more or less giving you all of the signals that are opposite of the holiday season. Right? So we're not thinking about Black Friday, we're not thinking about holiday cards, we're not thinking about gifts. However, we probably should be because before we know it, that season is going to kick into high gear. And if you are not prepared as a photographer and a business owner, it may sneak up on you like something scary and awful like, oh no, my calendar is empty and I'm already behind. The thing is, photographers who handle this well are generally not the ones who are working particularly hard on their marketing in October. They have got the proactive marketing thing happening now in August, maybe even in July. But this month has always been for me the month where I fill or start to prepare to fill my calendar for the rest of the year. And so this month on the podcast, Dana and I, my marketing director and I decided that we would run something we are calling the Back to School Marketing Challenge. It doesn't have anything to do with school, but it is intended to help you get yourself organized and ready to proactively fill your calendar for the rest of 2026. This week, Dana is joining me on the podcast to discuss kind of step one in that process, which is identifying, organizing and sorting all of the leads that you are going to be hopefully attracting to book with you this fall. And we are diving into kind of a little bit of mindset, a little bit of technique, a little bit of inspiration for where you can look and find these leads. And I think it's a really great episode. So with that, let's go ahead and dive in.
Anna Mi Tonkin
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.
Dana
Dana. Dana, I would say welcome to this can't be that hard. But of course it feels like you are here on a regular basis, so hopefully everybody out there knows who you are. How are you today? Pretty good. It's.
It's monsoon season here in Phoenix, which means it's like thunderstorming every day. And I kind of live for it.
I like it. Love does that here all summer long, so. But it gets real hot. Yeah. And it's always funny to me this time of year to be thinking about, like, okay, time to get ready for busy season in my photography business. Time to like, start thinking about holiday promotions and everything else. Because of course it doesn't feel that way outside. But yeah, we all know it's coming and. And this year I am, you know, every year in the consistency club. You and I do a lot of work with our members to help them prep for the busy season and sort of get things going. This year we figured we would kind of take that to the, to the broader audience of that this can't be that hard community and go through this month of preparation for marketing to the busy season to everybody. Because I feel like what happens is, you know, people are still on their summer breaks, they're in sweat, sweat mode, whatever, and they're not really thinking. And then when back to school season happens and like the Starbucks starts advertising pumpkin spice lattes and whatever, then all of a sudden people get panicky and they do that reactive marketing thing. And we want to help you be more proactive. So that's what this month on the podcast is all about.
Yeah, all about being proactive in your marketing so that it is more successful so that you can fill your calendar.
And I also just want to talk
a little bit about that feeling you said, which is like, people are in summer mode and then, you know, pumpkin spice latte season hits and you're like, panic. And so I just want to say that this is one of those things in life that feels like the monster under the bed is bigger than it really is. Like, you haven't, you know, opened your linen closet. You're afraid you're going to open it and everything's going to like fall out all over you. And like, it's just really not that bad. But you do have to get ahead of it. What makes it bad is the procrastinating, right? And what makes it bad is the reacting instead of being productive, proactive. So what do we mean by being proactive about your marketing versus being reactive? Like, what have you seen over the last, however, 15 plus years in the photography industry?
Well, let's actually take it out of the photography industry and talk exactly about pumpkin spice lattes. Like, for anyone living under a rock out there, this is Starbucks's, like, famous campaign that they launched however many years ago for their fall, turned out to be a cult classic latte, which is a pumpkin spice. And every year it seems to kind of hit the market earlier and earlier and everybody rolls their eyes and they're like, it's the middle of August. Why are you trying to sell me pumpkin anything? It's too hot. But obviously Starbucks knows what they're talking about when it comes to marketing, right? And what they are doing by starting to market that pumpkin spice latte way in advance is getting people thinking about this product that they know that a lot of people are going to want. I happen not to be one of them, but that's okay. Not every marketing message is intended for every person. And so they start to sort of see that. So even if they don't sell a lot of them in, let's say, August, by the time that, you know, mid September and October roll around, which is probably like, peak. Yes. ESL season, that's when people are like, it has been on their mind for a month at that point. Yes.
So I would love. Man, we should have looked up those stats. I would love to look that up. I bet they launch it in mid August and like, you know, maybe they sell some, but like, not very many. But to your point, it's like you're getting it in people's brains and like, I'm sure you guys are seeing if you're listening to the podcast in real time. I'm sure you're already seeing stuff about fall. And that is how it goes is because again, I feel like a broken record every time I come on here. But it is just true. People need to see something. Seven to now, it's saying upwards of 20 times before they are like, oh, yeah, it's pumpkin spice latte season. So the same is true for your photography business. People need to be reminded about it many, many times before they're like, right, I need to book whatever that session is. I am actually aware that, like, it's photo season. Right? So that is what I have experienced seeing over the last however many years I've been working in the photography industry is like, I see two different types of photographers. I see the ones who are like, here are my photos now. I sit back and wait for people to reach out to me and it's sort of like, I don't know, I was Going to be like. It's like, it feels like school. Like, you're like, waiting to be picked for the kickball team versus the other photographers that I see who are more proactive in their marketing. And they're. And I don't want you to think that I'm saying, like, being aggressive. They're just like, doors are open. My books are open. Now is the time to book. They're just a little more forward in their messaging. And those are the people that are always like, booked out, wait list, like, and it's a. It's a slight shift, but it's a really important one because if you're just sitting back and waiting for people to come to you. And so then that feeling starts to compound on itself when people aren't reaching out to you versus the other way, when you just make that slight shift in your language and you start reaching out or saying, you know, my books are opening on this day. It's open. Like, then you start to feel like, I'm in the one in control. I'm actually picking people to be on my team. And that that little shift feels really good.
Yeah. And I think that all year long, this year, more than honestly, I think any other year in my career as first a photographer and then as an educator, I feel like this year people have just been like, it's quiet. My calendar is quiet. My inquiries are down. Things like that. And I just want to start by saying, be that as it may, like, we do not have control over everything in the world or our even, you know, our businesses, certainly not things like the economy, whatever, but we do have control over certain elements of our business. And what you're describing, these people who sort of are proactive versus reactive, the. We're all kind of swimming in that same soup. How you handle that is the part that you do have control over. And yes, like, sticking your head in the sand and being like, well, especially now if the economy isn't the best it's ever been, I don't want to push people to book is a recipe for your business to not do very well this season. And marketing is always a little bit of a crapshoot. You're always, you know, planting seeds in soil that you don't have full control over, but you still have to keep planting and nurturing those seeds if you want any hope of having, like, a successful crop. Marketing metaphors galore over here. Yes.
And we want everybody to have a really successful season. So that's why we wanted to bring this here, because we were like, this deserves to go to the whole audience. We want you all to sort of get your, you know, get ready and start being more proactive now, now in the middle of the summer, even though it doesn't feel like pumpkin spice latte.
Right, right. And so this month we're going to kind of step by step, week by week, get you ready for this. And we have our semi annual marketing summit for the Consistency Club is happening so September 1st, so the beginning of September. So if you're listening to this series, when it drops and you are part of the Consistency Club or you want to join the Consistency Club, then you'll be able to be part of the summit where we actually put all of this into practice. But we are giving you really practical information each week here that you can take and sort of do with what you will. So let's start by talking about
the
importance of organization when it comes to running a successful marketing campaign. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?
Yeah. I think this is one of the lessons that I learned early on in my career that really helped me understand that this is it, like gamified it for me a little bit and helped me be like, okay, this is not really super emotional and I can lean into organization and just let that sort of lead where all of my leads are coming.
Okay. Oh, they more.
What I mean by that is, so this is the way that it was taught to me is like your ecosystem. You guys have heard me talk about this, you know, in the past. Like your, your in sphere, sphere of influence is like, you know, everybody in the world who knows you. Right. Those people are not all the same. There are some, you know, people who are very huge fans of your work. They book with you every single year. They are like your best clients. And then there are people who you honestly don't even know who have just like, you know, maybe liked a photo or a couple and follow you on social media and you're not even aware of them yet. Those are very different people. Right. And so from your perspective as the business owner, it is really helpful and beneficial for you to learn how to sort of all of your different leads into buckets. So now we're going to talk a little bit about sales because you can't really talk about just marketing without sales. And so when you're talking about sales, it's. It's a funnel, it's a pipeline. Right. So people come into your world and they don't know you that well and those are going to be like your cold leads. These are People who are, you know, aware, maybe like very slightly aware of you. Maybe you've talked to them one or two times. Maybe they've commented or liked on a photo. Maybe they're a friend of a friend, but they're, you know, they've had very few interactions with you. They probably haven't worked with you in the past. Although I will get into like, some scenarios in the end where like, I don't know, maybe somebody might, you know, go from being a hot lead back to a cold lead. But that's who your cold leads are. Right. Is there anybody else that you would kind of put into that cold lead bucket?
Yeah, I mean, I feel like cold leads, you can find them in a lot of different places. These could be people who are on your email list but have never booked with you. They could be people who follow you or have maybe like DM'd you once or twice, like on social media. They're also, to your point, the people who you don't even know exist. They are your clients friends who know who you are, but maybe have never interacted with you. But because of that sort of mutual connection, they know who you are. So if you can figure out a way to get in touch with them, you could potentially move them from being that cold lead to a warmer lead. So, yeah, I mean, I think you've covered it pretty well. And I think everybody's probably pretty familiar with the concept of hot versus warm versus cold leads. I think we just don't. I like the organization piece of it and like getting everybody put out in front of you. Because when we talk about funnels, when we, you know, I think everybody uses the word sales funnel or marketing funnel, but you don't necessarily think about where that term came from. The term came from the fact that if you have to book, let's say, 20 clients to fill your books this holiday season, that's the bottom of the funnel. Right. So that's just 20 people. You need to start with a few hundred people or, you know, a couple hundred people that you are marketing to that you have some potential chance of booking with in order to get it down. Because the majority of people are. It's not going to be the right time for them for whatever reason. And that's not our place to decide. We don't know when it's going to be the right time for somebody. What we need to do is make sure that we get the right message to those right people so that we ultimately get to that number at the bottom of the funnel that we need to get to.
Yeah, And I think to build on that. Like, I think what you're saying is, like, the more people that you have in your funnel, right, the less pressure any one individual person holds. Because if you only have 30 people in your funnel and you need 20 of them to book, there's a lot of pressure. But to Anami's point, If you have 300 people in your funnel and you only need 20 to book, then every time you get a no, it's not a big deal, or a not right now. And so, again, like, you know, yes, you're right. Cold, warm, hot. I'm sure everybody knows as we're talking about these, just. I want you guys to be thinking, though, as we're saying this out loud, think of some people that you know who might be cold. Leads or ideas of people that you know. So like you said, oh, you know what? That one client of mine, she's always talking about her sister. That's a cold lead, right? Then you're warm. So, like, think about these people. These might be people who have worked with you. Maybe they haven't worked with you in a year or two. You know, these might be people who have like. Like all your, like, like your photos often, or comment on them. They, you know, they're like, in your world, but not your hottest, bestest clients, right? So those, like, those warm people are sort of in between. I think it's honestly easier to think about who's cold and who's hot. And then there's, like, people that are, like, right in the middle, right? The idea of the cold, warm, hot, that really made it like an aha for me was like the idea that, you know, it's like water going through a pipeline, right? So your water starts cold, and then obviously, the more it goes through your system, the faster. And then, like, the. It gets hotter, and then the hot. The hot leads are the ones that eventually boil and they become your clients, right? But it's like this idea that the water can actually go both directions, right? So, like, people can be a hot lead, and for a reason that has nothing to do with you, they could become warm again or even cold at a certain point. So just keep this idea that your leads can kind of be fluid between these buckets. But what we want you to get out of today is this idea of actually sitting down. And most people have never done this. Sit down and sort out your leads into these three buckets, like, quite actually write them out, hot, warm, cold, and see how many you can, like, you know, Write in each, in each bucket there and like it should be the least. Should be in your, you know, in your hot. And then like probably a chunk in your warm and then like, you know, ideal. Ideally you have like a bunch of cold ones because this might be every follower you have on Instagram or every sister of, you know, whatever your cold leads are. The are this huge bucket. You might not write every single name down there.
So my feeling about, yes, in theory, everyone who follows you on Instagram is a cold lead of some or a lead of some sort potentially. But we all know that there are like people who live halfway across the world who follow us or bots who follow us or other photographers who follow us who probably are not booking with us unless they happen to live locally and be our ideal client. Your Aunt Betty is maybe not going to hire you. She just follows you because she loves you. But again, Aunt Betty may know somebody who, who could hire you. So I think that this process that we are encouraging you to go through this week, like how scrappy you want to get, really has to do with how far you are from your goal for the fall or for the busy season right now. So if you are like mostly booked, perhaps this is something that you don't have to put a ton of time and effort and energy into. But if you are looking at an empty calendar and you're thinking, I feel a lot of pressure on this season, then this is a great opportunity before it's, you know, the very end of the window for booking, whatever. This is where you want to get organized and start thinking about how you can be a little more creative in warming those leads up. So I would recommend that you open a spreadsheet. You know, Google Sheet works great, sheets works great for this. So what you're going to do is you're going to put like name contact method so it doesn't have to be an email address. I think email is the easiest and most reliable one. But it could be a phone number if that's all you have. Or it could be a, certainly like somebody's handle if you only have a social media relationship with them. And so you have your name, your, your contact method and then like a notes field and then your drop down. Is it hot, warm or cold? So you're going to put everybody in there and this is where you get as creative as you want. If you have that client who has constantly told you that her sister would love to book with you, but you don't know her sister's name, you don't have her sister's email or any sort of contact information. Then you're going to put, you know, Jennifer's sister as the name. And for notes, you're going to say, I need to reach out to Jennifer to say, hey, you keep talking about your sister. Let's make it happen. And then get that contact information. Right? So you're going to go through. And if you have. It's basic math. If you've got 20 spots to fill this fall, I want you to take that number, multiply it by 5 to 10, and aim to get that many people in your spreadsheet that you are going to come up with an active campaign to reach out to. Some of them are going to require a little more like, of a creative approach. Other people, you know, if you've got an email address, then you can create an email sequence that pitches them and sort of follows up with them, whatever. And we're going to get more into the weeds of, like, how to actually do that over the course of this month. Um, but does that all follow sort of track what you're talking about?
Yeah, I was gonna say this is the fun part. I think this feels like the scavenger hunt part. So, like, you were saying how scrappy you wanna get. Okay, obviously you're gonna start with your client list, right? So, like, get your client list in there. Okay, now let's get, like, creative about where there might be leads hiding in your world. You mentioned one which is like, referrals. That's kind of usually one that's like, in your brain. Now go to your Instagram and search. Go into your DMs and search the word session or inquire or book availability or. Yeah, availability is a great one. Yeah. Words that people tend to DM you like if they're writing you a message, Right?
Oh, how much is another good one?
Ooh, that's a good one. Yes. So good. Yeah. Availability. How much? You guys know, like, what people tend to send you, right? So have fun with this. It is like a little bit of a scavenger hunt. And then it might bring up, like, messages from, who knows, like, even a couple of years ago, I would just encourage you write those people down, right? And you can put them in your cold list. That's fine. Because the whole fun of this is that, like, you know, maybe you have like this big, long cold list and then you do reach out to somebody and boop, boop, they quick, quickly hop
over to your hot list.
It really does feel, maybe just to me, but does feel like A game.
Like you're like, oh, I, I like
went back and found so in your DMs. Another place to look for more recent. And I would say these are probably even warmer leads would be like, this is going to be, this is going to feel like a little high schooly. But like, look at who likes all of your posts, right? Like, look at your most recent month of posts and like look at who is liking or even better commenting, but certainly who's liking your posts. And like it's going to be like a lot of the usual suspects. The usual suspect.
And then you're going to be like,
oh, I forgot that person. They are always saying. Or like they've been sort of like watching and stalking for a long time. Right. Like your page. That's a great place to also find, I would say maybe like some warmer leads on social media. What else? What other ideas do you have for like where, where we could find people?
Yeah, well, there's, you know, there's the potential connections that you know about, referrals that you know about, and then there's always referrals that you don't know about. And we've talked about this plenty of times before, but referrals are. Every once in a while you stumble across that amazing unicorn client who just without any requests or anything else, they just go singing your praises to everyone that they know. They're constantly talking about you, they're constantly tagging you. That's great. But those people are kind of few and far between. I think it's a, it's like a personality thing. Just like most of us don't love selling all the time, most other people don't either. It's great when you have those. If you've never had one, you will one day. But the other people in your world are just as happy to refer you. They just often need to be reminded or asked or kind of nudged in that direction. So another thing that you can do early in the game, if you've got some clients that you love working with, you know they love working with you, is craft a personal message. Whether it's, I mean, you know them best, like text them DM them, call them, send them an email, whatever works best. And say, hey, I am a little, you know, I'm in the process of preparing for the upcoming season and I am really, I've got big goals. You can, you don't have to say like, I'm nervous about this year, but you can say, I have big goals and I am looking for any leads, friends Family. I love working with you. I would love you to send anybody my way. You can incentivize this. You don't have to. I will say that I have talked to a lot of people about incentivizing referrals and it doesn't seem to increase the number of referrals that you send. What does. Hey, okay.
Yeah, go ahead.
I was gonna say what does.
What, what? I have feelings about this too.
What does incentivize people is giving them specific help, thinking of who they should reach out to and get, making it as easy as possible for them to do that. So you can like pre write an email for them that they could then tweak and send. You can tell them, like, I want you to think of people in your, you know, group of friends who have kids between the ages of X and Y. Like, be really specific because that's going to help them think of actual people instead of just being like, oh, I should.
Do you know anybody?
Yeah, that is. It's too broad.
I do think that's really good advice. Very specific. Like you said, people who have kids between this age or dogs that like to, you know, hike or, you know, like kind of as specific as you can get. I actually do feel really strongly that incentivizing, but not. You're not incentivizing the person you're asking. You give the person you're asking something that they can give their friend.
That is true.
Because what is awkward is me going to my friend and saying, hey, do you need a photographer? Like, that's a really random conversation starter versus me saying, hey, my photographer that I love gave me this hundred dollar off coupon. 300 off coupons. Do you want one of them? That's a way better opener because then it's like, if you don't want one, I'll just give it to somebody else and I'm coming to you with something, right? And it already bridges that gap between these two people who don't know each other, the photographer and the person that you're referring them to. So I feel very strongly that you should be specific in who you're asking about and give them something to. What is that called when you like, give some sweet in the pot, give,
I don't know, lead with the carrot. I don't know, give them the carrot. Give them the carrot.
We'll say that. I think that tends to work really well.
Yeah, no, that's a reasonable point. I just feel like a lot of photographers do this whole song and dance where they're like, if you bring me a referral then you get a hundred dollar print credit and blah blah, blah. You can do that stuff. I just don't think that it has as much of an effect. I think I agree. You are better served to focus on how you can make it as easy as possible. And you're right. One of the easy, the ways that you can make it easy is by giving them something like a hook. Like I have these coupons for coupons.
Yeah. So I think that's a great thing. I also was, you know, just thinking while you were talking, another place that you should go back and look for lost leads is your email.
Oh definitely.
You should go back and look for again same. Remember when we were saying the dm, all those same words except in your email.
Right. And CRMs, a lot of CRMs track this as well where if you mark a lead as lost, if you've got notes on people, I mean some lost leads are lost for a reason and you don't necessarily need to add them to this list. I do want you to focus on everybody could probably find a thousand people in their contacts somewhere that they could add to this list. Like let's try and be reasonable about like if somebody doesn't have at least a 10% chance of booking with you, you know, they need to fit certain criteria but don't get hung up on them fitting every one of your ideal client criteria. Especially if you're feeling more like you've got a bigger hill to climb to fill your books this season.
Yeah, that's really good advice. You don't want to like set yourself up to fail. But don't filter people out before. Don't you filter people out? Let them filter themselves.
Yeah, give them, give them that opportunity. So I know that we're going to get much more into the specifics of what like how to kind of speak to your hot leads versus warm leads versus cold leads in the summit. But any kind of higher level advice about how to kind of approach those different buckets differently.
Yeah, for sure. I think that when you are talking to your hot leads, the more personalized you can be. Text messages, this is an, an email just to them like from your Gmail or whatever. DMS just to them. That is how you want to be talking to your hot leads. Those are your closest friends, like friends quote, I'm saying like, you know, these are the people that you want to feel really special. Your, your vip, they deserve to be talked to that way they you because they are the most likely to spend money with You. Right. So it is worth. This is one of those times we talk a lot about like systems and aut. This is one of those times where you do not want to automate talking to your hot leads. You can talk to each one of those individually because they are worth your time because they are the most likely to work with you. On the flip side, it's actually a little bit weird if you reach out to each one of your cold leads that way. Right.
So that's. You DMed me three years ago and I just wanted to follow up.
To follow up personally with you. Like, that's weird and awkward. So that's exactly where you want to use more automation and actually let them hide in the. And what I'm. What's. What's the word I'm looking for? Like, being anonymous in your, in your world. Right. Of they know they're getting an email that's going out to a bunch of people that actually feels safe to them and feels like the right amount of contact with you. So those are the people that you want to be sending. Like your, your bigger, you know, group emails do. Right.
But you also want to make sure when you're emailing those colder leads or dropping them a dm, even if you are dropping them and like an individual personalized DM on your end, you can anonymize it and make it seem more like they're getting some sort of group message. Yeah. But you want to think about, like, I need to remind this person of who I am and give them something juicy enough that they get a little bit hooked and they go back to my, you know, let's say we're in dms. Like, they go back to my page and they're like scrolling through my more recent posts and they get kind of hooked. And we have all done this, like, where you're, you go down some sort of social media rabbit hole and then the next thing you know, you are paying for, you know, a new pair of shoes or whatever because, like, you, like, went down that. I mean, am I the only one? I hope I'm not the only one. I've definitely done it. No, it happens to me all the time. So you want to be that person. And in order to do that, you are sort of, you're, you're improving your odds of that by, by kind of reaching out to them. But you don't want to make it weird where you're like, hello, do you remember me? You're. You're trying to walk that line. Yeah, definitely.
And like you said we're going to, you know, get into the nitty gritty of like, okay, so what exactly do you say or you know, what don't you say to each of these different groups in the summit? But for today we want you guys to walk away with this idea of like, okay, it's time to sit down, get organized, go on a scavenger hunt, go find all of your leads that you can think about. Right now off the top of your head, a bunch of lost leads that you, you know, might be more like your warm lead. And then a bunch of like brainstorm essentially like a bunch of cold lead ideas. One thing that I just want to say that we hadn't said for cold leads is like, you know, if you have some kind of in person event that you did or something like that you have a connection somewhere. Like again like a boutique that like it's a baby boutique and you're a
newborn photographer you can market to sort of more in person. Yeah.
You don't even know them yet, but you could just say I should talk to such and such boutique because there's a whole bunch of cold leads there that could be waiting for me.
Yep.
Right.
This could also be, I mean think outside the box. It could be any sort of group that you're part of. Whether it's like your kids school, it could be your like church or synagogue or you know, whatever a volunteer group that you're part of. If there is an opportunity and you do have to kind of suss out where you're allowed to do some soft marketing. But if there's an opportunity to get in front of that group, now is the time to reach out to the people that you need to reach out to figure out what the plan is. So it, I know again it's August, it seems like the end of the year is far away. But, but that Q4 will be here kind of before we know it. And by getting prepared now, you will put yourself in a much, much more kind of level headed place to face this in, which always makes your marketing better.
Yeah. I want to say this is also a great activity to set a timer for. Like if this feels really intimidating, set a timer for like 15 minutes and just see how many people you can like brainstorm or find in those 15 minutes. Yeah. So get your like just you know, sit down little, little bit of time and get your list organized. You're going to feel so much better for it. And then you know, if you're in the consistency club, I'll see you guys at the summit. If you're not yet in the consistency club, we would love to to have you over there join us for that Summit. It's on September 1st. Again, we're going to be really drilling down into like, our whole goal for this summit is we want you to leave with an exact marketing plan for filling your calendar this fall. Like, that's what we're here for. That is what we are trying to do is make a living as photographers. So we want to help you guys actually get that done at the summit.
Anna Mi Tonkin
Amazing. Great.
Dana
Well, Dana, thank you for joining me for the kickoff podcast episode for the month. Next week, I am going to be back talking about getting your offers prepared and kind of making sure that everything is just as juicy as can possibly be so that you can send these leads really great, compelling offers and get them to take action. So I'll be back then.
Anna Mi Tonkin
Well, that's it for this week's episode of this Can't Be that Hard. I'll be back same time, same place next week. In the meantime, you can find more information about this episode along with all the relevant links, notes and downloads@thiscantbethard.com learn. If you like the podcast, be sure
Dana
to hit the subscribe button.
Anna Mi Tonkin
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.
Episode 380 – The Back-to-School Marketing Challenge: Organizing Your Leads with Dayna Schaaf
Host: Annemie Tonken
Guest: Dayna Schaaf (Marketing Director)
Date: August 4, 2026
In this episode, Annemie Tonken and her marketing director, Dayna Schaaf, launch their "Back-to-School Marketing Challenge" for photographers. They dive into the importance of organizing and proactively nurturing leads early in the season, rather than waiting for the hectic fall rush. The conversation is packed with actionable steps, real-world examples, and motivational advice specifically aimed at helping photographers fill their calendars for the upcoming busy season—well before the pumpkin spice and holiday buzz hits.
Seasonal Mindset Shift
Pumpkin Spice Latte Metaphor
Controlling What You Can
The Three Lead Buckets
The Water Metaphor
Why Organize?
Action Step:
Scavenger Hunt for Leads
Beyond Social: Referrals & Networks
Unconventional Lead Sources
On Overcoming Procrastination:
“What makes it bad is the procrastinating, right? And what makes it bad is the reacting instead of being productive, proactive.”
— Dayna, 05:04
On the Pressure of Small Lead Pools:
“If you only have 30 people in your funnel and you need 20 of them to book, there’s a lot of pressure. But... if you have 300 people in your funnel and you only need 20 to book, then every time you get a no, it’s not a big deal...”
— Dayna, 15:38
On Asking for Referrals Effectively:
“What is awkward is me going to my friend and saying, hey, do you need a photographer? ...versus me saying, hey, my photographer that I love gave me this hundred dollar off coupon. Do you want one of them? That’s a way better opener.”
— Dayna, 26:25
On Lead List Building:
“Set a timer for like 15 minutes and just see how many people you can like brainstorm or find in those 15 minutes... You’re going to feel so much better for it.”
— Dayna, 34:19
Annemie will be back next week to talk about preparing irresistible offers, ensuring photographers can convert organized leads into booked clients during the busy season.
Find episode notes and downloads at: thiscantbethard.com/learn
Consistency Club Summit for members: September 1, 2026
This podcast empowers photographers to adopt a proactive, organized system to fill their calendars—turning lead chaos into booked-out success.