Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:11):
You're listening to
the Bop the business of
photography podcast with RobGreen, a photographer to
contagiously positive clientsand fierce believer in building
people-focused businesses thatleave a lasting impact.
If you're an entrepreneur withdreams in your head, ideas in
your heart and passions burningdeep down in your soul, this is
the perfect place to be, becausethis is where dreams come to
(00:33):
thrive.
So are you ready to build yourbusiness, wow your clients and
make photo magic?
Here's your host, rob Green.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Aw, coming at you
from DFW, texas.
You are listening to the Bop.
Hope everyone had an amazingChristmas.
I am currently wrapping up sometime with family down in Cocoa
Beach, florida, and I am justalways amazed at how much warmer
it is down here than mostplaces I have been and spent
(01:05):
Christmas, but I guess that'swhy my parents and the rest of
the world likes to retire andmove to Florida.
Like I said, hope you guys hadan amazing Christmas celebrating
with friends and family.
Today, as we are now marchingreally fast towards the start of
2024, I wanted to jump back inwith part two of Lessons from a
(01:28):
Day Job.
If you haven't listened to partone, we released it a few days
ago, back before Christmas, andnow we're coming back with part
two.
This is basically taking myusual Bop episode that runs more
like 45 minutes to an hour, 10hour 15, and breaking it down
into three smaller, littlebite-sized nuggets, a little
more like our Bop bites that wedo to give you guys something a
(01:49):
little more bite-sized andactionable that you can work off
of as you're working through.
What I know for manyphotographers is a slower season
in our businesses and peopleare going what do I do Like
things are slowing down.
Nobody's booking sessions rightnow.
How do I survive this time?
And so what happened for me wasI started thinking back through
(02:10):
when I was in the early phasesof my business, before I even
had a full-time job doingphotography, certainly long
before I had gotten intoeducation, but when I was
working a nine to five.
What did it feel like for methis time of year and what was
going through my mind, and whatwere some of the lessons that I
learned in this season of workwhere I was working a nine to
(02:34):
five but had the dream of doingsomething else full-time.
How did I put that season touse?
Because what I have found inretrospect is that there are
tons of lessons that each of uscan take away from our current
circumstances that are going tocome in so handy when you are
running your business full-timedown the road.
(02:54):
And so these are just a few ofthe lessons that I have taken
away from my nine to five job,my day job that I believe are
universally transferable acrosseveryone's business, and so I
wanted to share them with youduring this season so that you
could start putting them intoaction for your business as well
.
So in the first part of thisseries, we talked about planning
(03:15):
out your calendar.
You can go back and check thatout.
One of the big reasons I'm abig proponent of planning out
your calendar every December isbecause planning out your
calendar allows you to do whatwe're going to talk about in a
day's episode, which is to planyour marketing.
And so the big idea of today'sepisode, the bop bite for
today's episode, is that you cando more than you think, and you
(03:39):
can do it more easily than youthink.
You just have to do it earlierthan you think.
I'll say that again you can domore than you think and you can
do it more easily than you think.
You just have to start earlierthan you think.
See a lot of times.
Maybe you don't do this.
I know for me, when I wasgetting started, I would look at
(03:59):
these people running thesewildly successful businesses and
going.
It seems like they haveunlimited time.
I'm looking at my life and Idon't feel like I have unlimited
time like they do.
They somehow have time to doall their social media.
They make all this money.
They're still having time tohave picnics with their kids in
the backyard.
(04:20):
How, how, how do they do it?
I don't understand.
What I've come to realize isthat everybody has the same 168
hours in a seven-day week.
It's all a matter of how youuse it.
If you will start planning yourmarketing and planning the
things that you want to dothroughout the year further in
(04:40):
advance, you can accomplish somuch more and it's going to be
so much less stressful.
I know for me, one of the ways Ilearned this in my day job came
when I took a job in a youthministry out in Texas.
When I arrived, it was twoweeks before the start of the
school year and this particularchurch kicked off their year
(05:00):
with what they had told meduring the interview process was
this massive event that thewhole community came out for,
that there would be thousands ofstudents showing up.
I think the largest numbersomebody told me was between
5,000 and 10,000 students comingto this thing.
I'm like, wow, this is a reallybig deal.
You guys are really putting alot into this.
When I came on staff two weeksbefore this event, my boss came
(05:24):
to me and said hey, so whatwould you like your role in the
event to be?
And a moment of rare couragefor me in that season of life
said, I think I would like myrole to just be to watch and
observe what's going on.
Just, you guys have alreadydone all the planning for this.
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I just want to watch andobserve.
And in the meantime, what Iwould like to focus the majority
of my time on is I would liketo start mapping out a plan for
the upcoming year.
I had already had a number ofconversations with my boss
leading up to my start date.
I knew the direction they werelooking to go with things and I
knew how.
From the calendaring work thatI had done with my previous job,
(06:08):
I knew how to make a schedulecome together really easy.
Because here's part one of thestory.
So at my Atlanta job the one Itold you about last episode one
year, one of our interns came in.
His name was Eugene.
He came in and he said guys, Igot it and he whips out on
Atlanta Braves baseball calendar.
(06:29):
Now, if you haven't seen these,they fold up, they fit in your
pocket.
All the home games are coloredone way, all the road games are
colored another way.
It's an easy way for anybaseball fan to have a really
clear picture of the wholeseason right out of the gate and
it fits in your pocket.
It folds up like and fits inyour wallet, even just like a
credit card.
(06:49):
And, based off our interns idea,what we did was we created a
calendar for the entire studentministry year.
It started in August of everyyear, it ran through May of
every year and we put all of ourevents on this calendar that we
passed out to families rightout of the gate.
So what did I do?
I started building a calendarof events.
(07:11):
I started thinking about okay,we know we meet on Wednesday
nights and Sunday mornings,let's start there with the big
blocks.
And then what are some of thespecial events, seasonal things
that we might do aroundChristmas time or Valentine's
Day or Easter?
When are students going to begone for things like spring
break or Christmas break?
I put all of this, I took twoweeks and put all of this into a
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calendar and then I startedmapping out.
Once I had this calendar, Istarted mapping out teaching
ideas.
What are some of the topics wecould teach on that would be
appropriate for that time ofyear to teach on.
From there I took another stepand I said, okay, if we're gonna
do an event like we had anevent we called it Muckfest.
It was a big food fight.
We had a blast with it.
(07:56):
Another year we did a thingcalled Color Wars full of
colored powder and kids just hada good time getting really
messy and having a blast withtheir friends.
So I put all of this on acalendar and then I started
asking the question if I alreadyknow when all these things are
gonna take place, when would weneed to start marketing these
things?
So I spent two solid weeks atthe end of August one year my
(08:19):
first two weeks on staffcreating this calendar.
So for the rest of my team, bythe time they got finished
putting on this major event, Ihad already put together the
entire plan of action for theupcoming school year, which
meant all they had to do thenwas look over it and give me
feedback and let me know whichparts they thought would work
(08:39):
great for their context andwhich parts they thought we
ought to continue tweaking andrevising.
But we had a whole plan inplace so that when we called a
parent meeting a few weeks later, we were able to roll out for
them an action plan for theentire year.
And y'all families loved itbecause they knew how to plan,
as a family, around the eventsthat we had going on, that their
(09:01):
kids wanted to be a part of,which made it easier for them to
say yes to being apart.
And wouldn't you know it, bythe end of the year, attendance
had skyrocketed.
I think we had gone up to fouror five times the attendance
just in the first year.
Because families knew how toplan around the things we had
going on.
Why?
Because we communicated them inadvance.
(09:24):
That is the power of planningyour marketing.
You can do more than you think.
Whatever you think your currentcapacity is for doing things in
your business, it's way greaterthan you realize, and you can
do it easier than you think.
All the stresses that you'refacing right now guess what?
A lot of that stress comes fromworking at the 11th hour on
(09:44):
everything you do.
But if you start planning itout in advance, it's so much
easier.
So the only thing you have toknow is that you just have to
start planning it earlier thanyou think.
How do you do that?
Well, let's think back to lastweek.
I was telling you, when I planout my annual calendar, what I
do is I set a big win for eachmonth and three to four sub
(10:05):
goals under each month with thatbig win.
Once you've established thosebig wins and set those three to
four goals under each win, askyourself this question in a
perfect world where I hadunlimited time, when would be
the ideal time for my audienceto hear about blank, for my
(10:25):
audience to hear about thewedding special that I'm running
, for my audience to hear thatwe're doing red truck minis or
fall family minis or springmommy and me minis for Mother's
Day, whatever it is that you'reputting on?
In a perfect world where youhad unlimited time, when would
be the ideal time for youraudience to hear about it?
Ask yourself, how far inadvance would you connect with
(10:48):
them?
Cause gosh y'all.
How often do we think of thisgreat idea and we're like, oh
man, I wish I had thought ofthat sooner.
There's no time to do that thisyear.
How far in advance would youconnect with your audience
around this perfect, ideal event?
How often would you want toconnect with them and through
what mediums would you want toconnect with them?
Would you do this throughFacebook?
Would you do this throughInstagram?
(11:08):
Would you do this throughTikTok or email?
What would be your method ofcommunication for this.
Go ahead and plan out the idealscenario and then, when you're
in this December January window,where things are running a
little slower, go ahead andcreate it all.
Create if you're doingInstagram, create the square
content for your feed and thevertical content for your story.
(11:31):
If you're doing it on Facebook,create things that are going to
fit that audience.
If you're doing it via email,create your email drafts and
start getting things scheduledin your email hosting platform.
You can do all of this duringyour slower seasons and in your
first year.
Y'all because some of you aregoing.
That sounds great, but I've gotstuff coming up already that
(11:52):
I've got to be working on.
Here's what I want to encourageyou to do is do exactly what I
did when I started at that job.
I want you to start with yourbig win months from now.
So let's just say, since we'rein December, january, let's just
say June and July is when youwant to focus on start there.
Give yourself the margin tostart planning in advance.
You already know you can dowhat you're doing right now and
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kind of get by at the lastminute on things.
So let that keep rolling.
It's gotten you this far.
Let that keep rolling forJanuary through May, start with
the summer and ask yourself inJune and July, what do I want to
do?
And if I had unlimited time nowto do it, what are the things
that I would want to create?
You may find this sparks allkind of creative ideas for you.
You may go into a studio orplan out a style shoot that
(12:36):
illustrates for your sessions,your mini sessions, that you're
doing, what kind of resultspeople can expect from working
with you.
But start in June or July withyour planning and work out from
there why?
Because these dates are alreadytoo close.
You're going to be stressed,you're going to wind up stuck in
the same old rat race If youkeep doing things the same way
you've always done them.
(12:56):
When I walked into that job, Icould have easily jumped in on
the planning for this majorevent.
It was a huge event.
It had a big budget behind it,which I'm going to tell you
about in the third part of thisseries Some crazy findings that
we discovered as we went throughthe budget.
It would have been easy andobvious for me to focus all of
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my energy on that event, butinstead I looked to the future
and I said let's not get caughtin the rat race, let's focus on
an ideal plan for an idealoutcome.
And wouldn't you know it, I hadmore time than I thought and it
was easier than I thought.
All I had to do was startearlier than I thought, and the
(13:38):
same can be true for you andyour business.
So that's it for today'sepisode.
I hope this has been encouragingfor you.
I hope this gives you some easy, actionable next steps.
If you're looking to use thecalendar system that I use for
all of my planning, I've got itavailable on my website,
square8studiocom slash calendar,and all you have to do when you
(13:58):
go to checkout is use promocode BOP and I'll give you 90%
off the price.
Normally, I charge 10 bucks forthis thing.
I'll give it to you for 99cents at square8studiocom slash
calendar using promo code BOP.
That's good through January15th.
Take me up on it and setyourself up for success in the
year ahead.
We'll be back in a few dayswith the final installment of
(14:19):
this three part series onlessons from a day job.
I cannot wait to share with youhow I plan my budget.
Until next time, friends, keeplearning, keep loving and keep
chasing those dreams you weremade for.
You know what no photographerever asks how can I make less
(14:58):
money?
As small business owners, we'realways looking to make just a
little bit more, and most of usjust need someone to show us how
.
What if I told you college andsorority photography could give
you not one, not two, but 17different ways to make more
money in the months ahead.
To download my free guide,visit square8studiocom.
(15:19):
Slash 17ways today.