EP 67: Q3 Check In: The Good, The Bad, & The Chaotic

Alison: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome back. We took the summer off from recording while our children were home. Um, I was traveling. I took the whole month of July off, so we will talk more about that later. Um, but today Melissa and I are doing our quarterly review. So this is something we’ve done every quarter where we write down our goals.

What we have coming up on the business wise, sometimes personal. We reflect on the previous quarter and we kind of share our wins and celebrations of what’s happened or didn’t happen. Um, so we also recommend doing this. This has been highly helpful just to, you have a business butt buddy or by yourself, grab a glass of wine or a seltzer and just start a Google document. Start reflecting on what’s working, what’s not working, what’s worked since, you know, in the last three months, and then what are some of your goals for the next three months? Um, and then do this every quarter. Uh, 

Melissa Arlena: Yeah, and this, it can be great to look back on a, you know, a previous year before you’re about to start, like, like Black Friday, like how did it do last year? What lessons did I learn to implement this [00:01:00] year? Because you’re not gonna remember come October like so. 

Alison: yeah, I’ve tried 

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: like about sun and what the seasons looked like. Yeah,

I didn’t look at it. Uh, it’s a great idea, but I didn’t remember either. I didn’t remember that I wrote those things down. Um, so yeah, so we, it’s a great, great write exercise. Um, so. to get to it?

We’re gonna start with

Melissa Arlena: Yeah,

Alison: from quarter two, go into some wins and celebrations, and then we’re gonna get into our, um, goals for the upcoming Q3. So take

Melissa Arlena: well technically we’re in Q3, so keep that in mind. We are,

Alison: what I was,

Melissa Arlena: yeah, we’re behind on recording this. I.

Alison: Redo. Caroline, thank you so much. I was gonna say, this is such a good exercise. This is such a good exercise, especially coming out of the summer, having taken so much time off. Like my head is just a soup, a sea of to-dos, coulda dos. And looking at this document of all of my goals for Q3 [00:02:00] really is putting me on the right track of like, where have I been? What do I need to do? Where, where are my weaknesses and what do I need to focus on?

And just kind of getting me out of my own. Ramblings of what’s right in front of me. So it’s been really helpful just even in the last 10 minutes, prepping for this episode

Melissa Arlena: Yeah, so, and it was funny for me to look back on my Q2 goals ’cause it feels like so long ago. I think we last recorded probably, I don’t know, in the spring. Um. Yeah, in May and

Alison: school.

Melissa Arlena: Right. Yeah. And so Q3 we’re already six weeks into it. Um, and so it’s just like, oh, wait, what am I doing? Kind of thing. Um, so yeah, so my goals were, uh, we, I was working on putting some AI tools in the blogging club, which we did, and I’ve gotten like.

Amazing feedback. People are like, it’s so cool. I had one girl, she was like, I was able to like, use Claude, use the voice app and um, create a blog. I think she said she had a blog post, like written in like five minutes or something from it. So I was like, holy cow. [00:03:00] Yeah. So just being able to do all of that.

Um, getting on more podcasts. Um, I mean, I’ve been on a few. I feel actually I was just on a podcast right before this. Uh, I di I am, it’s interesting now when I’m looking at other companies for things or I’m, I’m checking people out if they have a podcast and it seems like a good fit, like I’ll, I’ll, I’ve started just applying to random podcasts.

I feel like it’s been hard to find photographer podcasts ’cause I don’t think people put necessarily in their notes. That they’re for photographers. I don’t know what it is, but when I’ve tried to search, a lot of ’em are defunct kind of thing. But then now I’m finding, yeah. But then now I’m finding other people that it’s like, oh, they have a podcast.

Oh, maybe I’ll go check that out. So,

Alison: what platform are you using to do that searching?

Melissa Arlena: uh, I think at one point I had chat, GBT searching. I think I just tried searching on Apple, searching Google. It’s probably something I need to revisit. Yeah.

Alison: um, I did some searching on Spotify and I found a little bit more success

Melissa Arlena: Oh, okay.

Alison: the defunct.

Melissa Arlena: Yeah. [00:04:00] Yeah. So I, I may need to do that,

Alison: would be like, oh, less updated in 2023. Like,

Melissa Arlena: right? Yeah. And it’s like, that’s not gonna be helpful. Um, so still working on that. I’m probably not doing as well as my business coach would like me to, but, um.

Alison: Say lovey.

Melissa Arlena: Yeah, mapping out the rest of your marketing plans. I’ll talk about more of that in, um, in my goals for this year.

Uh, updating keyword research course. Uh, we, we actually, my husband, um, that’s a whole funny story and it goes into bringing my husband into the business this summer. He was off this summer, kind of, he was government worker, took the early release and, um, and so he was gonna kind of work in his way into my business.

Well. As God would have it, some other path has been laid out before us.

Alison: of events.

Melissa Arlena: Yeah. And he is now an ROTC instructor at one of the local county high schools. So he’s teaching marine future Marines basically. Um, so the other day he was like, oh, I still need to get you your spreadsheet fixed. ’cause he did work on it this summer to make it better.

But [00:05:00] he is gotta put the finishing touches on it. So once he gets me that, then I’m gonna have to. Update that, that course. So that just hasn’t necessarily gotten done. Um, but yeah, so those were kind of some of my goals. Um, so Alison, what were your goals? Let’s talk about yours.

Alison: my big thing was I had been planning for the whole year. Of 2025 to take off July to travel back to the mainland. So I’m in Hawaii and I am from

Melissa Arlena: I.

Alison: Carolina and I wanted to get my kids back to South Carolina. I wanted to be in South Carolina. Um, we had not at, at the summer, half of my kids had been back for a cousin trip.

The other half had not been back to the East coast in well over a year. It was like 15 months or something like that. So that was my big goal, was to take the month off. enough to make, to fund that, to make it happen. But then also my big project was to hire an associate photographer. So I’ve done this before.

I had done it back in Ver Virginia Beach. I just wanted somebody who was willing to take on a little extra work for me, maybe one a week. Um. [00:06:00] And it was so hard to find the right person. I went through people, I was really shocked at how many photographers weren’t even willing to have a conversation. Like I would reach out to ’em and say, Hey, so-and-so recommended you. This is what I’m looking to do. are you open to talking about the details? Would you like to talk? And they’d be like, Nope, not interested. I’m too busy. Okay. I was really sorry. So yeah, so I ended up finding somebody. It, it was definitely through word of mouth, not a cold thing. Um, and she is phenomenal.

I like we will get into a little bit more about it, but finding the right person was, was very necessary. Um, we didn’t get as many sessions in as I wanted, um, but I found her so last minute I was happy. We’ll share a little bit more too lately, uh, later, but, um, about how that panned out. But

Melissa Arlena: That could probably be a whole podcast episode.

Alison: It really probably could. And

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: we have an ongoing, uh, relationship, so we’re gonna keep it going. So as long as she’s available, she’s got some big travel plans coming up [00:07:00] this fall. Um, so. We’re gonna, we’re just gonna keep going with it.

Melissa Arlena: Nice.

Alison: excited about it. okay. And then, so I had to get that contractor agreement.

I used Braden drinks the contract club to create that agreement. Y’all we’re gonna put the, um, affiliate link to there. If you don’t have a contract, if you’re not sure about your contract, you need to make some amendments to your contract. I cannot recommend Braden. Drake enough. He really walks you through that stuff.

You put those videos on, it’s really broken down into like four minute videos. You put that stuff on two times speed. Like you split that stuff as done and you understand it. It’s not like you’re going to somebody speaking over your head, like he really does a great job of that. So if you’re worried or interested about contracts, I would highly recommend Brad and Drake. Uh, we’ll put some links in the show notes about that.

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: hopefully we remember to do that. we did, I did do mini sessions. Um, and I did a great job of leading up to those mini sessions. Historically. I am really good at planning it out in my [00:08:00] head, having it down on paper, and then failing to execute and saying, this is really happening and I need to like do a nice lead up and launch to, to, booking those dates. I did a good job with that this year, this time, back in the spring, I had two sessions on two different dates, one morning, one afternoon, and I still still. I only had two families for one of them and one family for the other, and they were friends. not doing that anymore. We can get more into that later about goals and about Q3 coming up, but that’s how

Melissa Arlena: That’s kind of funny because isn’t like mini sessions a huge thing that gets searched for you?

Alison: Yeah, it’s the biggest, it’s the, it’s my, one of my number one, uh, performing. Uh. Blog posts

Melissa Arlena: I assume though, it’s probably people traveling in who just are like, oh, I don’t wanna pay a lot.

Alison: And I do get a lot of inquiries, um, of people looking for a mini

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: lately. And I’m just like, I’m, I don’t provide those anymore. Sorry.

Melissa Arlena: Yeah.

Alison: I

Melissa Arlena: Yeah.

Alison: to, to people[00:09:00] 

Melissa Arlena: I.

Alison: um, because

Melissa Arlena: I love when they’re like, yeah, we just, we want you to come out of your way to meet for 15 minutes. Uh, we’re the only client,

Alison: for this hotel room

Melissa Arlena: uh, yeah, No.

Alison: Like, no, sorry, wrong, wrong girl over here. Um, And then, um, and then I was considering doing three sessions a week in June to kind of compensate for possibly not having any work in

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: Uh, and I did that and it was. Tough to say the least.

It was hard. Um, I was able to do that. Uh, so yeah, it was Q2 was, was busy. It was busy. Uh, a lot of baseball going on in there too. Another reason why I’m not gonna do many sessions again, so So, so, yeah. All right. So wins and celebrations. Melissa,

Melissa Arlena: Yeah.

Alison: on?

Melissa Arlena: Well, it’s funny because I think when I looked at the previous notes we had, I was down like 11% in revenue. So I was like, oh, well I wonder what I’m at now.

Alison: Yeah.

Melissa Arlena: looked real quick and I’m up almost like 8% revenue. So I was like, okay, good. And really for [00:10:00] me, um. Uh, this is the second year in a row that I have noticed that my summers are really slow on the SEO side because everybody’s off with their kids.

Revenue is down for a lot of people. Like, unless you’re, you know, living in Hawaii and people wanna travel out there kind of thing.

Alison: not sorry.

Melissa Arlena: But yeah, revenue is down for a lot of photographers and so, and they’re just kind of checked out like they’re,

Alison: Yeah.

Melissa Arlena: doing their own thing and stuff. Actually, Allison isn’t a perfect example of that except for the revenue down, I guess.

Alison: Yeah. Like, yeah.

Melissa Arlena: so it’s just, it’s not a time where we get a lot of like done for you. We don’t get a ton of group coaching. I did pick up a few of those, which is always nice. Um, so just being able to like. Have that revenue up because, you know, we’ve got the blogging club. I’ve been doing a lot of consulting on marketing for other companies and stuff.

Um, but we had a lot of boat, weekends, that kind of thing too. So, um, so yeah, but I’m ready for August. I’m ready to jump back in. I know my team’s ready to jump back in and, and have some clients and, and do some work and help people. Um, I [00:11:00] did get. Like I got messages over the summer, which was nice of people we’ve worked with before who are like, Hey, we’re getting inquiries from Google, and like, look at my rankings and stuff.

So I’m like, yay. That’s always a hard part for me guys, is like when we finish with your website or you’re done with group coaching, you know, just a couple months is not enough time to see a dramatic increase in your SEO. Yes. I’ve had some clients that have had that. But that is not the norm. So it really takes like six months, 12 months, 18 months before you really start seeing the fruits of that.

So I have the worst time getting like reviews because I hand you your website back, but you can’t give me a review on how it’s doing because it’s not doing anything yet. And so it’s nice when I do get an email from somebody months later saying, Hey, I am seeing results. I’m like, yay. Okay. Now can I get a testimonial?

Alison: Right, and

Melissa Arlena: So.

Alison: That was exactly what I was gonna say. And you’re like, can you write, put that on Google.

Melissa Arlena: exactly.

Alison: That’s

Melissa Arlena: So what are your wins and celebrations?

Alison: Um, so my wins was [00:12:00] that we actually got a associate photographer. I

Melissa Arlena: Yeah.

Alison: I went through so many people. I had somebody on the line and then she bailed last minute.

I had so many people just not willing to even have a conversation about doing extra work. And y’all, I’m paying, I’m paying double and triple, like second shooter prices. Like, like associate shooter prices. Like I like because you are not second shooting. Right? Like, I was not willing, I was not being cheapo about it.

Right. Um, and then I was just like banging my head against the wall with a friend here in Hawaii, another photographer friend, and she was like, Hey, did you try this person? And she had sent her to me a long time ago and she. I had not, I thought I hadn’t, I had not reached out to her, or maybe I reached out to her Instagram and she, um, I should have done, I, maybe I did her phone or something.

Like she wasn’t responding on Instagram or something. Um, and she’s just a perfect fit. She is another military spouse. She’s a mom of younger kids. She’s homeschooling. She doesn’t have the bandwidth to create a business. She doesn’t even have a website.

Melissa Arlena: Oh yeah.

Alison: a gallery system,[00:13:00] 

Melissa Arlena: Right.

Alison: right with, with portfolio, uh, portfolios.

And she shoots for friends only. Um. But she, all the things that she needed to do to get. Real legal, right. She wanted to do, she just hadn’t had a reason or an impetus to get them done. And so I walked her through how to do that in Hawaii, create her business, doing the permitting and the insurance and all that stuff. Um, and like she’s shooting on her own. I want her to build a business if that’s what she wants, but she just doesn’t have the bandwidth like she wants to be mom and and homeschool first,

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: because I just wanna send her a few sessions here and there.

Melissa Arlena: Yeah.

Alison: Um, and she’s got, but most of all, she came out and shot with me before we really committed.

And I was just really impressed with her initiative and her directive and all the things that I find really important in a

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: control and not, and not letting your clients feel like they’re floundering and wondering, well, what do I do with my hands? Where do I

Melissa Arlena: Well, yeah, and you’ve, you’ve built your brand around fast, fun, and done. So if you bring an associate who can’t get that done, then that goes against your brand.

Alison: [00:14:00] Exactly. And

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: just needed somebody to talk to me and then we were gonna get to the, the important stuff.

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: she had it all. Um, and so it’s, it was fabulous. She ended up shooting, um, two sessions for me. We had three on the books. Um, and one of those, uh, they got sick and didn’t even come out to Hawaii.

They had to cancel their whole trip. Um, so. Wasn’t, wasn’t because of any of that. I, but I will say we, I ran into a lot of, I would say probably, probably a third, maybe a half of my leads in June. So leads in June inquiring for June. In June, four July Sessions, um, didn’t book. And I had a couple of them say specifically because they didn’t want a second shooter.

And I get it because my website, I hadn’t had the bandwidth in June to put her on my website. That was fully my intention. I was very upfront of like, Hey, we have availability for that, da da da da. And then I would even tell them whether before we got on the phone or on the phone, that Sarang would be their [00:15:00] photographer, um, that they would. You know, not have me, but everything would work out. And some people just straight up were like, we didn’t wanna work with another person. And I get it. Like, I

Melissa Arlena: Yeah.

Alison: it’s, photography is personal. Like

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: all my marketing is for me,

Melissa Arlena: Right. Yeah.

Alison: So that gets into a goal for this quarter is to add, add her into my website so people understand that they may or may not have me.

Most of the time they’ll have me. Um, so anyway, I worked my T in June, which is a good thing ’cause I had a lot of inquiries, um, and was able to execute a bunch in June, about three sessions a week, which is a ton for me. Um, and then was able to take four whole weeks off in July, sort of like from shooting.

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: chaotic on the back end, um, but finding that associate was the big win of quarter two.

Melissa Arlena: Nice.

Alison: that was huge.

Melissa Arlena: Yeah. And that really sets you up like in the future too for stuff. So,

Alison: Yep. All right. So

Melissa Arlena: let’s see here.

Alison: and lessons learned.

Melissa Arlena: Yeah.

Alison: what you got going?

Melissa Arlena: Um,

Alison: I.

Melissa Arlena: I think for me it was really [00:16:00] kind of just balancing everything. Um. In past years, I’ve definitely beat myself up that I feel like I didn’t do enough with my kids in the summertime. And I think this year I just was like, okay.

Summertime unfortunately is not meant to be a free for all fun fest for kids. Like, as much as I want to make it that way,

Alison: Yeah,

Melissa Arlena: it’s just, it’s not gonna happen. We did, um, switch things up and instead of last year, I put the kids in camp. Every other week for five days. And what would inevitably happen is that the week they were at camp, or the week they were not at camp was a week, they were doing something fun.

And then the kids were upset because, well, they’re going to the roller skating rink and we’re not there. Or they’re going to the pool and we’re not there. And it was like, I, it felt like I can’t win, I can’t win. And then the weeks they were home with me, um. It was too hot, like, or yucky to like go and do anything.

And so, so this year I was like, you know what? I’m gonna sit and I had to sit down in like April and figure this out. And I was like, we’re gonna do three days a [00:17:00] week versus every other five days every other week. So it cost a little bit more, but it really wasn’t that much more, and it, it made it a lot easier.

So then they knew Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, they go to camp. Monday, Friday they’re at the house. Um, and then that let us have longer boat weekends. Um, we could leave on Friday morning. We could come back on Monday. Um, but just trying to balance everything because not only, you know, when I was talking about the fact that, um, PPR, our SEO stuff takes a dive in the summertime, photography actually picks up for me.

So I ended up, um. I had like two or three membership clients again this summer. Um, and then I had my membership clients from last summer coming back for family sessions this summer. So trying to balance photography and then balance, you know, SEO for PPR. Um, and then, like I told you guys the last time we did one of these, um, I’m now like a marketing director for the motherhood anthology, so I do that on a consulting basis.

And then I’ve been consulting with another company on their marketing. And so it’s like [00:18:00] trying to balance all of these things.

Alison: Okay, so are each of those temporary? Are they short term? Are they

Melissa Arlena: no, I mean TMA I’m probably there until they decide to fire me.

Alison: Wow. Okay.

Melissa Arlena: So it’s, that’s more of like, yeah, it’s like a, these are like long-term consulting projects and stuff. Um, and so I’m just trying to figure out also how to balance that with my business because if I’m spending all my time on other people’s businesses, then mine’s gonna suffer.

So I gotta like watch that. So that’s been kind of the challenges on that. Um, and then really too with the camp thing, um, I think we got to the second week in July and the boys, um, that was when. Uh, the summer camp is through my kids’, uh, Christian school. And so they hit all the vacation Bible schools in the area and my boys were like, no, we’re not doing all the vacation Bible schools ’cause they’re 11 and 12.

And so at that point we kind of realized they’ve aged out of that particular camp. Like my daughter loved it. She had a blast at everything, but the boys not so much. So then it was one of those. You know, I told my husband, I was like, well, if [00:19:00] they’re home, like you’re in charge of them. And so he actually had them, uh, doing all kinds of chores around the house, like they were farm hands practically.

Alison: Yeah.

Melissa Arlena: But it worked and.

Alison: what has not been cleaned in a year since

Melissa Arlena: Yeah.

Alison: Like,

Melissa Arlena: had a giant pile of mulch and they ended up lining our entire driveway with this giant pile of mulch and stuff, um, and lining the, the fence and everything. But I am gonna, it’s gonna be a challenge for next year that I think Grace could. Still do the, the summer camp with the school.

Um, the boys actually, with the changes of my husband now working as a teacher, the boys are now going to public school in that county. Um, and so they’re, so I need to figure out something next summer for them, you know? And we did do the one week sleepaway camp, and they love that, so definitely gonna do that.

But I can’t just have them sitting around at home playing video games or bugging me all day. And so trying to find a balance on that kind of thing. Um, so those, that’s really have been my challenges I think this quarter. So, yeah. So what about you?

Alison: Um, so [00:20:00] yeah, so I touched on a little bit finding an associate photographer had a lot of hiccups, a lot

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: out, and then also losing leads to

Melissa Arlena: Yeah.

Alison: correctly, um, which I totally understood, but I also did not have, like, I, I couldn’t fix it in real time.

Melissa Arlena: Right.

Alison: had my niece in here, uh, visiting in June for. Three weeks while I was doing three sessions a week. So taking her around. I was working in the morning and doing sessions and working until about 12 or one and then saying, okay, what do you wanna go do? Let’s go do something fun. Um, boys hate the beach, so they’re kind of. Lame about that. But um, when it came to July though, um, so I was off of shooting, um, but I was still editing, I was still meeting with some clients.

There were a couple weeks I took clean, clean off from doing any client facing work. So like gallery reveals, uh, inquiry calls, things like that. Um, but I did a couple, um, from the East coast and getting those scheduled. [00:21:00] Was, I thought I had it all lined up and I did not. So I’m in Hawaii, all of my CRM and some of my scheduling stuff is in Hawaii time.

I changed it to East Coast time. I changed um, Google Calendar actually updates where you are based, right? Based on your phone. Um, and then I did not update my Calendly link, which is what I use for, um. My inquiry call my leads. So they’re not a job, you know, so I have tave for, you know, you’re a job, you’re, they, they go to leads and then if they book through me, everything stays through Tave. But if you’re not a associated with a job, if you’re just still in inquiring, everything goes through Calendly. And so I had adjusted my hours for what days I was available. So I blocked off whole weeks. I had blocked off certain days, um, but I did not realize until it was way too late that I was all still in Hawaii time. So I got to the East coast thinking I had these session, these phone calls, client calls from 10 30 to 12 [00:22:00] and no, they were from five 30 to seven.

Melissa Arlena: Oh no.

Alison: so, but you know, like I, I realized a day like what, maybe 36 hours out and I was like, that blows. But I’m just gonna have to deal with it.

Melissa Arlena: Well, at least it wasn’t like AM or something.

Alison: It was still a manageable time,

Melissa Arlena: Yeah.

Alison: just, I felt it was two, it was, it was three or four of ’em in the same day. Um, and that was, that was tough, like just having to do that. And it really kind of got into the evening because, you know, it’s the evening time we wanted to leave the house, go

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: and, but there were a lot of. Summer thunderstorms while we were

Melissa Arlena: Oh yeah. Well, that’s normal. Yeah.

Alison: Yeah.

Melissa Arlena: Yeah.

Alison: not used to that anymore.

Melissa Arlena: I know. But I was like, poof. Yeah. We’ve had ’em every day practically.

Alison: like we can’t go to the pool because there’s weather like. Well, that’s lame. It was, it was a, it was like a small, like, uh, what? weather, that’s a thing. so that was difficult. And then that happened a couple times coming back with, um, [00:23:00] so adjusting things back from Hawaii, from east coast time to Hawaii time. Um, about a week before we came back, I was scheduling a couple gallery reveals to do when we got back here. And lo and behold, I had accidentally scheduled them for East Coast time. I, I don’t remember They were for the wrong time. And I had to very politely be like, I’m so sorry. This is also, this is the first day of school. Maybe that’s what it was. It wasn’t the time so much as it was the first day of school.

Melissa Arlena: Yeah.

Alison: wasn’t tracking that yet. I was still very much in summer mode.

And I was

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: can we please reschedule? And they were fantastic.

Melissa Arlena: Yeah.

Alison: for me. and one big lesson learned, if I do this again and I am already trying to set myself up. You know, coming here, we’re gonna talk about that in the next quarters. Um, should have had a BA this whole time.

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: care of all of those intricate little details. It would’ve left in like the e responding to email. My email

Melissa Arlena: Yeah.

Alison: a couple times. Um, following up with clients, letting clients know like, Hey, we wanna take care of this for you. [00:24:00] We, but you know, it’s gonna be X, Y, and z. I would have. would’ve saved a lot of stress on me.

I think it would’ve sped a few things up for my clients. Um, ’cause I mean, I, I did a lot to inform everybody. I’m off island. I’m off island. I had, you know, I’m, I’m traveling, I’m on the East coast. Um, I’m gonna be gone for a while,

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: but it’s going to be slow. So I prepared everybody and I had the autoresponders and the email responders up.

Um, so everybody was at least informed. Um, but I think it could have been. Less slow. I could have had a, a faster response time and gotten some of those edits and orders placed, um, more seamlessly. Had a VA already been on top of that admin stuff that I was falling behind on

Melissa Arlena: Yeah.

Alison: I could have, so I gotta hire a va.

Melissa Arlena: No, I’m with you on that. I’m with you on that. I’ve had, you know, I was telling, I have, I have the girls who work for me and they, they kind of have their own things that they do, so I don’t, it’s not necessarily [00:25:00] that I wanna be like, okay, well hey, now you’re gonna come over and also do VA work for me. I kind of like that.

Like you’re in charge of this part of the business and you’re in charge of this part of the business, and I need a separate VA to kind of come in and. Kind of help be like a little bit of a go between, between me and them and stuff, and when they have questions and I’m, I haven’t responded or something, is it something the VA can handle?

Or even like drafting emails for clients for like a check-in. Like, I don’t necessarily need to be the one doing that. Um, and so just trying to like, let go of some of that stuff of like, for the love of God, if you, if you need me to check in with a client, I need you to draft the email because otherwise I’m, it’s gonna go to the bottom of my list and I’m gonna forget.

Alison: to check in on them about? You know, what that is

Melissa Arlena: Right. Yeah. So I’m like, I need you to do this for me just because, like, I don’t, I don’t need to hold the reins that tight. I don’t want to be holding the reins that tight. Um, and I think I, we did have a VA for a while, a couple years ago, and she really was just kind of in the inbox. Um, but I would like to have somebody who is more of, you know, a contractor on the team, [00:26:00] not another business that I’m hiring kind of thing.

Um, so, so that’s on my list too. Yeah. Which I guess goes into like setting Q3 goals.

Alison: Yeah. What’s goals, Melissa? Let’s hear your

Melissa Arlena: Yeah. So this kind of goes with the, the planning out. Um, the other day I was updating my, uh, my quarterly plan calendar from Catch Moyer that we’ve talked about before. And, um,

Alison: for my family.

Melissa Arlena: oh, really? Nice.

Alison: month. I think I’m gonna do it like I want

Melissa Arlena: not gonna lie, I have almost pushed the, pushed the buy button on the, uh, what is it?

The calendar, the skylight calendar, like the 27 inch one. Whew.

Alison: at that

Melissa Arlena: I can’t.

Alison: same reasons. I think it was our conversations

Melissa Arlena: Yeah,

Alison: just can’t, I, one, I

Melissa Arlena: yeah.

Alison: written down. I like the pencil and pen,

Melissa Arlena: Uhhuh,

Alison: I just,

Melissa Arlena: it’s expensive for Yeah, I know. I’m like, so I keep, I keep holding off on it. But yeah, so I was up. Yeah, I was updating my quarterly plan calendar and I really was realizing, you know, looking at the rest of the [00:27:00] year and what my revenue goals are, and then kind of working my way back from that.

Okay, if this is my revenue goal for the month, what do we need to book for that month? And I personally would like to not work too much in December. I’m not saying not work at all, because that’s impossible, but I don’t want any done for you clients. Like I want like one. In November, like the beginning of November, so we can have it done by Thanksgiving.

And then I don’t want any done for you clients in the rest of November or December. I’m fine with group coaching students because. They do the work themselves, I just check it.

Alison: Yeah.

Melissa Arlena: I wanna be able to just relax in December and not have to stress about it. But in order to do that, I have to offload that December revenue that I need into other months, which means the other months have to pick up the slack for it.

And so I really sat down and figured out. Okay, well what is that slack looking like and how much do I need to make in these types of things? And the thing is, you know, when it came to photography, especially November was typically when I would do like some kind of holiday minis, like red truck minis is what I usually did.

Um, and the revenue I would make from that would like [00:28:00] cover November and December kind of thing. So it was easy. Um, but you know, now it’s just a little bit different. And so I, now, I feel good about that. I’ve, I’ve planned out kind of that fall marketing, and so now’s that time to think about that guys.

It’s like, look at your calendar. When do you wanna work? When do you not wanna work? Where do you need to make the money? We all, yeah, for the rest of the year. It’s not that far, it feels like.

Alison: not, I

Melissa Arlena: Yeah.

Alison: just started the year.

Melissa Arlena: I know, well this summer it just flew by kind of thing.

Alison: It really did.

Melissa Arlena: you know, the other thing is promoting the blogging club more.

Like I definitely have not promoted that enough. Um, I just did a new sales page for it. I’ve got a new email sequence for it. ’cause my other one was just not converting.

Alison: Yeah.

Melissa Arlena: So hopefully this new one will convert better. Trying to work on Facebook ads for that. Um, and then, um, and then I do need to figure out how I wanna handle Black Friday.

I think kind of, instead of doing a big, you know, week long over Black Friday sale, I’m probably just gonna drop like a two day sale early in the [00:29:00] month, or maybe even in October. Um, I just, I don’t wanna do the 18 emails over seven days and the cart system and, and then like two for me because I’m using show it and it’s not really a cart platform.

Like, I’m manually going in and updating like the pricing that’s on the page for everything. And I was like, I just don’t wanna do any of that because it,

Alison: Yeah,

Melissa Arlena: it makes a difference when you strike out a price for somebody that they’re like, Ooh, that’s on sale. Like.

Alison: it

Melissa Arlena: And you know, and so I’m like, I just, I don’t wanna have to do all of that.

And like last year, black Friday, I mean we were just all so inundated and like I have a feeling Black Friday’s gonna start like October 31st this year or something. So I’m like, I just don’t wanna participate. It’s kind of where I’m going with that. I’m like, I don’t wanna do it. Um,

Alison: don’t have to.

Melissa Arlena: so

Alison: of it.

Melissa Arlena: yeah.

Alison: to,

Melissa Arlena: So I dunno.

Yeah.

Alison: it as the sales page, but it’s got Thrive Cart, something embedded then? Is

Melissa Arlena: Well, so it just links to the Thrive Cart checkout page kind of thing. But the actual pa, you know, like product [00:30:00] descriptions and stuff are on, show it. So, you know, just trying to, yeah, just trying to, mm-hmm.

Alison: type.

Melissa Arlena: No, not really for, I mean, you could have, yeah, not really for those things. And I mean, I’ve tried different things with the Black Friday sale where you focus on like one product per day and it’s just, yeah, it’s just a huge pain in the butt.

So I’m like, no, I don’t think so. And then, you know, I don’t plan to do a lot of family sessions this fall. Um, you know, I have a couple families that I’ve photographed last year and this year kind of thing, so, um, so doing just a few of those guys. Um.

Alison: Have

Melissa Arlena: And that’s kind of,

Alison: Christmas truck minis? Like finding a truck, like now’s the time to

Melissa Arlena: that just sounds exhausting to me.

Alison: Yeah.

Melissa Arlena: I mean

Alison: It

Melissa Arlena: the, when I would, yeah, when I would do those, like I remember at the end of the day I was just so spent, and now I kind of am like for the, you know, I would, I would just rather. Like, and I don’t [00:31:00] necessarily have the list for that here. Like by the time I started doing Red Truck Minis, I had a really good list for Northern Virginia of past clients.

Um, and I, I, you know, and so I haven’t, I’m still building up the list here.

Alison: for that.

Melissa Arlena: No, not really. And my neighbor, who I had the truck from before they, I think she, they moved to Georgia, I wanna say, or something. There was something going on.

Alison: or something.

Melissa Arlena: I think that was something, something like that. They may have sold the truck or something, but,

Alison: because

Melissa Arlena: so

Alison: to him

Melissa Arlena: Oh, oh, yeah.

Alison: I was like, like, ha, let’s see if we can do this.

Melissa Arlena: Yeah.

Alison: so Denver didn’t come together.

Melissa Arlena: Yeah. So I think that’s kind of it for the rest of Q3. Yeah.

Alison: yeah, man. The rest of the year. That’s crazy.

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: so, so my goals for the next couple months is get that associate on my website.

I’m gonna add her to my about page and, um, I don’t know what else I’m gonna do, honestly, but I need to just sprinkle it

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: it’s not. inquiry and leads. Um, I do want to hire a VA for marketing. I have, I think I’ve probably said this for a couple of [00:32:00] our quarterly reviews that I wanna hire somebody and get some help. Um, I just gotta find somebody at the right, somebody capable at, at a. Price I can manage,

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: comes by contracts and bundles of hours, and so I gotta find something where I have enough work to justify the cost, et cetera.

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: also upcoming next month in just a handful of weeks is, uh, hosting a nap, c nap CP event.

So that’s the

Melissa Arlena: Yeah. By the time this airs, I think it’ll be, we’ll have already done ’em. Yeah.

Alison: So yeah, we gotta do that together.

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: then, Oh, mentoring. Mentoring was closed for the summer. I didn’t, I didn’t even mention that. I closed mentoring for the summer. I was at capacity, could not take any more people. Um, and so I closed that back in May when the kids, um, and finished out the clients that I had and, uh, didn’t take anybody new, didn’t even take any inquiries over the summer.

And so mentoring’s gonna be opening up here shortly. When does this air It might already be opening,

Melissa Arlena: It’ll be in September. Yeah.

Alison: it’s August right now. It is not open at the moment. [00:33:00] But maybe in September it will come back open.

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: and then I just need to do some backend to, to, um, get ready for a va so a VA can, can take over some things for me.

And I am not doing mini sessions at all. Not even gonna do it. Now if I have friends inquire and ask, ask me, I will do them for my friends.

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: that kind of, you know, completely kills the whole multiple people lined up at the same time thing. And scheduling is. Pretty nightmarish when it comes to that.

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: I’ll be able to tag them onto an existing session. You know, go out to Lonnie Kai,

Melissa Arlena: Yeah. Yeah.

Alison: Like, come on out right after, and let’s do

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: a quick one. Or they’ll be so close to my house, it’s no sweat off my back.

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: scheduling them, ’cause they’re, they’re gonna wanna do the evenings, right?

They’re

Melissa Arlena: Yeah.

Alison: interested in doing sunrise. Um, it, the scheduling gets to be a little crazy. And so if I

Melissa Arlena: Yeah.

Alison: I can’t and it’s not a big deal,

Melissa Arlena: I will say that there is a field location that is 10 minutes from me that I really [00:34:00] wanna do a session at. ’cause it’s a, it’s a local park and it’s got the overgrown fields and stuff. And I’m like, Ooh, a field 10 minute, like that’s be the first time that I could go to a location that’s like 10 minutes from me.

Um, but I feel like a lot of my clients have come from Richmond and stuff. And so I don’t know if they would wanna come all the way out here for that. But that may be my thing of like, Hey, if you want a family session, I’m only doing them at this field. And then like, that’s how it’s gonna be. ’cause I just, I don’t wanna travel all over for ’em.

Alison: You know, in the very first mini session we ever did,

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: a family of four, when my oldest was two, uh, she said the same thing. She was like, I can’t justify coming out there. And so we drove the 30, 45 minutes to

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: fantastic.

Melissa Arlena: Yeah.

Alison: You know, like I didn’t have any qualms with that.

I was getting a good price. Right.

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Alison: So, yeah. Well, that’s everything guys. That’s everything we have, um, for this quarterly review. If you loved it, um, let us know. Reach out to us on Instagram, leave a review, and wherever you’re listening to this, um, because this [00:35:00] is, we really have fun doing this, but there’s no feedback. So let us know what you’re thinking. Let us know what was helpful specifically. Uh, and don’t forget to dip into those links in the show notes. Um, we’re gonna put the contract club in there. Um. Uh, Melissa’s got some free blog post topics in

Melissa Arlena: Yeah.

Alison: you get started with your marketing. And then I’ve got, um, free 39 ways to get more clients.

Okay? So if you need some help, we’re here for you. Um, reach out to us on Instagram. Thanks guys.

Melissa Arlena: Thank you. Bye.

Alison: Okay.