EP 106: Quarterly Catch Up Q3 2026

Melissa Arlena: [00:00:00] Hey, guys. Welcome back. It is the end and
Alison: Sad. Sad face
Melissa Arlena: sad, but we are, we are coming back, so this is probably… I think this is gonna air, it’ll be our first episode after our replays and some of our guest stuff that we shared with you guys. And, we hope that you enjoy the episodes that we picked and stuff. and we already have, like, a full calendar of, like, planned stuff we’ve
Alison: Yeah.
Melissa Arlena: for this fall.
Alison: And we did that before summer started, so it should make sense. My kids don’t even go back to school until next week, so I’m still in summer mode. I’m still trying to get my August in order. We were just doing that before with my oldest about his work schedule for the next month. So it feels like my brain is mush, so
Melissa Arlena: Yes.

Alison: this should be interesting, to say the least
Melissa Arlena: Yeah, this is gonna be one of our quarterly update episodes for you guys. So this is where we’re gonna look back at our, previous [00:01:00] goals and figure
Alison: The things we forgot.
Melissa Arlena: Or, you know, figure out which ones we forgot. and then this time we’re trying to limit how many goals we’re setting going forward. So,
Alison: And be more realistic
Melissa Arlena: so yeah. Yeah. I

Alison: All right
Melissa Arlena: jump right in. so kind of my looking back goals were to create and launch more of our marketing systems. and then… And we did. we did a Santa marketing system, and I launched it. Y’all, I was, like, working that right before I went on vacation. It was probably the dumbest thing I’ve done kind of thing, you know? When we talk about, like, planning things last minute, that was me getting everything together. but we got that launched, and it did, it did, like, three times the sales I expected it to. Like, I was really surprised, and really happy. And it did so well, and I got emails from people who were like, “Well, what if I’m not doing Santa? Will this help me?” And I was like, “No. If you’re not doing Santa, do not buy this. It is all Santa.” So we’re working on a, a Christmas one to come out in August. So

Alison: for those of you who don’t do [00:02:00] Santa
Melissa Arlena: Yes. Yeah. So if, if Santa is not involved in your holiday Christmas tree farm, red truck, mini… This would be the one for you, this
Alison: There he goes
Melissa Arlena: so. and then we’ve got more on the board to create, so. I also had figure out a summer schedule so I could work three days a week at most. Well, that was a big fat failure.

Alison: Uh-oh. How’d it go?
Melissa Arlena: Nope, not good at all. I have worked very… You know, we have taken off here and there and stuff on things, but no, it’s been, it’s been super-duper busy this summer. and yeah, so that did not go as well as I wanted it to. but it… I think that was one of the things that I also had to realize, like, have a full-time job, you know. I’m, I’m running my business. I also, have taken on more roles and responsibilities with the Motherhood Anthology, and so I, as much as I like to pretend this is a part-time business and all of that, it’s not anymore. It’s, you know…

Alison: Yeah. How do you feel about [00:03:00] that? Is that what you want or is that kind of
Melissa Arlena: I
Alison: more than you anticipate? mm-hmm.
Melissa Arlena: I like working. It fires me up. so, you know, I wanna make sure that, like, my kids don’t hate me,
Alison: Yeah
Melissa Arlena: I enjoy working and stuff, so, you know. We did take off for vacation, so that was a big thing. and that was one of my goals, was to take a two-week vacation with no work, no checking my phone. I would say I was, like, 95% hands-off on that one,
Alison: What were you,
Melissa Arlena: I…
Alison: what was the 5%?
Melissa Arlena: I can’t remember, but there were a couple things, I think, that I, like… I just, I had to check in for my own sanity. I am a, I am so much of a

Alison: You do have a hard time with that
Melissa Arlena: Yeah, and so, like, just, I was, I was sure that there was, like, an inbox, an email sitting in the
Alison: mm-hmm.
Melissa Arlena: that someone hated me and wanted to, like, murder me kind of thing. And I even messaged my girl who was covering the inbox. I was like, “Okay,” I think I said, “I just need to know if there’s any fires, but I don’t wanna know the details.” I just, I was like, “I just need to…” [00:04:00] And I think she came back and she was like, “No, everything’s fine.” And I was like, “I bet she’s lying to me.” She was not.
Alison: Oh my gosh.
Melissa Arlena: Maybe I need to talk to a therapist about this to, like, be able
Alison: Yeah, that’s all in your head, girlfriend.
Melissa Arlena: It was. It
Alison: yeah.
Melissa Arlena: my head. Yeah.

Alison: for the record, if you don’t have that problem, I don’t have that problem. I walk away really well. It’s totally fine. Both things can happen. Like, you can… You gotta do what you, what you gotta do for yourself, right? So, like, don’t feel guilty if you don’t feel that way, but also don’t feel guilty if you feel the same way. Like, to each their own
Melissa Arlena: I do feel like I’m bordering a little bit on workaholic, so I need to,
Alison: mm-hmm.
Melissa Arlena: back on some of that stuff. so I… And that’s one of the things that was also on my goal, was shifting more tasks over to my team, and I’m still continuing to do that and trying
Alison: Yeah
Melissa Arlena: put things on them so that I’m not having to do it all so that I can. But I did, we did have a fantastic vacation. Like I said,
Alison: Good
Melissa Arlena: was off my phone. I was not worrying about stuff. I mean, I was doing some things that were… ‘Cause I mean, I think just when you’re not thinking about work, [00:05:00] things pop into your head, ideas

Alison: Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You gotta put that in a bucket. mm-hmm. That’s smart. I started keeping a journal, one for the mentoring side and one… It’s actually the same paper journal, but it’s unlined, so the backside is mentoring and podcast stuff, the other side is photography things. So I can, like, keep all those things in one place
Melissa Arlena: Some of it’s just, I think, I started doing brain sweeps a wh-
Alison: mm-hmm.
Melissa Arlena: the, I think back in the spring, and I need to get back to doing that, of just getting everything out of my head onto a piece of paper, and
Alison: mm-hmm.
Melissa Arlena: it’s not driving me

Alison: Yeah. And I was trying to use Notes for that, which has its place ’cause you can go search, but I, if it’s digital, I forget. Out of sight, out of mind.
Melissa Arlena: Yeah,
Alison: So
Melissa Arlena: I feel like I’m very much a Gen X paper, pen and paper person,
Alison: Yeah. Yeah, for sure
Melissa Arlena: say, yeah, the marketing systems went well. Summer schedule just kinda is what it is. we did actually just take off this past Monday, and we went to Busch Gardens with the kids, and, like, I, you know, did my work ahead of time so that way I could
Alison: Yep
Melissa Arlena: about [00:06:00] it and stuff. So I… So we did have fun. We had a great time on our vacation and everything. so yeah, so I think
Alison: Yeah
Melissa Arlena: went well and what didn’t and all of my stuff. So what was up with you, Allison?

Alison: All right, so you guys, it’s kind of quiet over here, for the summer. So I guess going, looking back to Q2, we did, the blogging workshop. It was fantastic. We had- we went long on it. It went way longer. I think I probably fire-hosed everybody a little more than I needed to. and so that recording is still there and available if you want more about strategizing how to blog, for, for whether it be a special event or just your area in general. it’s there. We have available in the… I’ll put the link in the show notes. I did launch a free Facebook group for mentoring and the podcast. but then I did nothing with it. So that’s sitting there. maybe we should add that to the next, the next Q3, round of things to do. I did, I was able to do a lot of freebie [00:07:00] swaps, so, and I say a lot. I think I did three I think I did two or three, which honestly is a lot. Like, once a month is enough for me. I did do a daily reels challenge for a hot… Like, for one month. and I think it went well. I think I could’ve gotten more, outcomes out of it, so I did, I didn’t continue it. I stopped it off. But what I, what I realized was that I don’t love being on social media every day. It feels panicky. It feels frantic. I don’t love it. I think it is a great tool. I think it’s totally useful. and it really, I think the best part I think the best part of creating reels and doing a daily challenge like that is, is really f- for clarifying your message. Like, what are the problems you’re trying to solve? Who are you trying to target? How are you… How can you create humor? What are, what are the thing, things you’re trying to say? It really does help, like, fast track some of that communication and, like, your unique value proposition, what makes you s- [00:08:00] different. so it’s still frantic. It worked, but, you know, I’m not gonna do it again. but I ended up do, I did do some ads retargeting. I got a lot of things straightened out on the Meta end with different… If you’ve ever been into a, Meta ads account and had multiple, what are they called, properties? Or,

Melissa Arlena: Yeah.

Alison: properties. so there’s one for the photography side. There’s one for the business mentor side. It’s super convoluted. I got it straightened out, so that’s pretty… I, and I did it all by myself. I didn’t even hire anybody to do it. so that was really awesome. That was successful. and then I wrapped up mentoring. Like, I cut it off at the end of May, and I take mentoring off completely. I think myself and a lot of photographers, we just wanna be present for our kids. We wanna be present and not frantic. And so I just, I just turned it all off. photography picks up a lot in the summer, and then I take off three weeks, right? And I have associates shoot for me. And so it was super quiet. I have not [00:09:00] touched anything. so yeah. So we were able to fill up multiple, sessions for my associates. VA was fantastic helping me track clients, send out reminders, troubleshoot, send me… Basically go through my email and say, “Hey, so-and-so needs this. So-and-so’s asking that,” da, da, da, da. So I could, like, stay on top of things that were client-facing without constantly being in it. So it was really nice to have her be my right hand there. Not that she was doing those things or filling those things. She was just say, just g- sending me the notes of, like, the 50 emails that were in, in boxed. and so that- I do want to, I did set up… I was gonna try to do some, emails on pre-selling, pre-selling albums and fine art prints. And so I did add a couple emails into my, excuse me, added a couple emails into my email flow. this was something, I don’t know, if y’all listen to Colie James, by the time this comes out, we’ll have replayed this, interview that I did with Colie on her [00:10:00] podcast, where she gave me an idea of just adding more emails to my email flow. So for clients who have booked, part of my email flow, sometimes they book six months out, sometimes they book six weeks out. and so some additional touch points, I think it’s 20 days after booking and maybe like 30, not 30, maybe 24 days after booking. They’re gonna get just information from a blog that I already had written about albums, customizations, fine art prints, things like that. It’s just another touch point where I can give them more information. If they’re curious, they can read. If they’re not, they can delete. and it’s automated. and it links back to my website, so it just gets more traffic to my website and all that stuff. And so someday I still wanna do a client magazine and send a tangible version of that stuff,

Melissa Arlena: mm-hmm.

Alison: but someday is not today. Someday is not today. So as far as… So that’s, that’s what I was trying to do, and a lot of it did go really well. I will say we had a big thing that didn’t go well. I, on the photography side, had [00:11:00] this big trend of, dare I say, crappy clients. so, okay, so a little backup if you’re new here. So I am a IPS photographer in Hawaii, right? I have very full service, high touch point, onboarding processes, inquiry processes where I text my clients immediately. I tell them that I’m full service and that we do things differently from the very first response I send them. I get every client I have on the phone. I tell them verbally how it all works from start to finish. they get the e- prices before they ever make a commitment, and I verbally tell them the average investment is over $1,800. I tell them that. They sign a contract that says they’ve seen the price guide befor- when they, at the time of booking. And yet I had not one, now, and every now and then I get a client, you know, maybe every six months, where they’re like, “Oh, I didn’t see the prices,” or, “I never opened that,” or blah, blah, blah, despite all the many layers of effort that I put into it. And I’m [00:12:00] just, I don’t have, I don’t have sympathy for that. I’m sorry. Like that’s, I tried, right? but it does suck because then they don’t come back and hit my minimum order or my average sales, sales investment, and I’ve already done the work. So that happens- Irregularly, but it does happen. Well, I had it happen four times this quarter, which is crazy weird. and so, I… W- and when, when it happens irregularly, it’s like, okay, it’s an outlier. You can’t, you can’t take any action on that. You just have to, it is what it is, and move on. But when you have four, you just, that’s when you’re like, “Okay, what’s going on? What am I d-…” And I didn’t do anything different. So I didn’t do anything differently. I, you know, got on the phone with all of these. Sometimes individual, circumstance might, might change. There were no individual circumstances that were different in the onboarding process, in the inquiry process. and so I did do something. Wasn’t an outlier, I did change. I [00:13:00] immediately, instead of, having a $500 print credit where clients have to pay 500 on top of the session fee at the time of booking, we have now doubled that, and it is $1,000. And so it is more in line with the ultimate, investment, and so it’s going to really weed out the people who are not interested in paying over $1,000. and I’m okay with that. Cl- inquiries have already dropped off, but I’ve also already gotten inquiries for six, nine, and three months out. So, like, it’s working. I’m getting people who are, are planning ahead, and those are people who seem to be really well invested. So time will tell if it’s really gonna work in the long term, but, yeah. I had to do something. Had to do something

Melissa Arlena: I know a lot of photographers who even with, like, collections and stuff, they will pre-bill the client for the bottom collection
Alison: mm-hmm
Melissa Arlena: way they know they’re at least getting that before the session. And then after the session, you know, they present the other collections, and it’s [00:14:00] not as big of an upgrade, you know, at that point
Alison: Yeah
Melissa Arlena: it’s maybe, you know. But I have, I have heard of people doing that, and I mean, that is, it’s hard, you know, when… And there’s no, it just annoys me when people are like, “I didn’t, I didn’t look at that. I have no idea on pricing.” Like, I’m sorry, how do you book a service and not have any idea on what you’re gonna be paying? Like,
Alison: Yeah
Melissa Arlena: I can’t live in that world. Like,
Alison: Yeah.
Melissa Arlena: cannot
Alison: one thing… It would be completely different if I was intentionally baiting and switching, but to say from the very first response, “This is a full service, high-investment service. This is, we do things differently,” like that should be a, your red flag, like right there. You know? hello. Okay, cool. I should, I should look into this. She said this is not normal. Like, but they didn’t, so c’est la vie. So okay, let’s look ahead to Q3, Melissa. What you got coming up?

Melissa Arlena: Yeah, so like I said, we’re gonna keep working on those marketing systems. I really like doing them. and so we’ve got a whole list of ones to be doing and so those are kind of the ideas to shoot [00:15:00] for every other month because there is a lot to building them and everything. so we’re gonna be putting those out every other month, and it’s a great way, especially, like, let’s say, you know, like, obviously we have the heirloom one right- out right now and the Santa, but let’s say you wanna start offering heirloom portraits and you don’t really know where to start when it comes to marketing that. You pick up one of these systems, and it gives you the whole landing page framework, it gives you keywords that people are searching for. You’ve got blog post topics. We even added in, like, a sharing guide on, like, what to share and stuff like that. so there’s more stuff in it that’s just escaping me at the moment but there’s a lot of value in, in those marketing systems. So I’m excited to get more of those guys out. I’m actually gonna do also a launch for group coaching, at the end of August, and I’m gonna do, like, a three-day boot camp. So

Alison: Oh

Melissa Arlena: for me ’cause I’ve always kinda kept my stuff as evergreen ’cause I feel like when it comes to SEO, the time you guys wanna work on it is right now, and it doesn’t matter when that is. It’s always right now. Like, nobody ever wants to hear me say, “Oh yeah, well that, you know, we [00:16:00] don’t have openings again for three months,” you know? Everybody’s like, “But I wanna work on it right now.” So I’m not gonna change the program. The program for Found and Booked is still gonna stay evergreen, I would like to try and onboard a bunch of people at one time. and that way, you know, you kinda have a group that’s going through it together. So, and I know I need to be better about doing these launches and stuff and, like, pitching the program more often. I always feel like ’cause it’s evergreen, I’m like, “Well, it’s kinda awkward. Am I supposed to do a launch? Am I not?” So I’m gonna do, like, a three-day boot camp, and then p- obviously it’ll be a pitch for, for the program and everything. and there will be some bonuses and stuff. That’s kinda how I’m gonna work it out ’cause I always joke around. I’m like, January’s easy to book group coaching clients ’cause everybody wants to

Alison: Yeah
Melissa Arlena: but I need to be better about getting that out there. It’s funny, I think I was looking at, like, my sales page conversions for a lot of stuff, and all of the, like, analytics came back and was like, “You just need more people to get in front of more people.” They’re like, “Your pages are converting great. You just need a bigger audience for stuff.” so I’ll [00:17:00] probably be using, like, Facebook Ads for that kinda stuff and to

Alison: Yeah. Are you doing any freebie swaps?
Melissa Arlena: I haven’t, but I probably need to look into that.
Alison: Especially for the launch
Melissa Arlena: Yeah, for and that is one thing. I am gonna be running ads for some of my freebies to get more people onto my email list and stuff like that. I feel like, I feel like, though, like, our listeners and stuff, I feel like they’re on our email list already and
Alison: Yep.
Melissa Arlena: our world, so,
Alison: I hope so

Melissa Arlena: speaking to you guys. I’m speaking to
Alison: If you’re not on the email list, you need to go in there and get it. Link in the show notes. Thank-
Melissa Arlena: Exactly.
Alison: you
Melissa Arlena: our links in the show notes for our email list that you can join. Actually, well, we’ve got all our freebies in there, so if you
Alison: Yep
Melissa Arlena: freebie lists, you will get on our email list and stuff.
Alison: Yep

Melissa Arlena: so yeah, you know, it’s just building stuff up, you know, and getting more people out there. and then kinda one thing that I don’t… I kinda go back and forth on this, so, like, I do still have my photography business, but I don’t spend any time in it, and it’s not because, like, oh, I don’t care. I don’t have the time at [00:18:00] this point. With the
Alison: Yeah
Melissa Arlena: and with the work I do with TMA, like, if I book a session, I now have to in my head go, like, “Okay, well, I’m gonna be out of the office for a day,” you know? And,
Alison: mm-hmm.
Melissa Arlena: and kind of bookend it. It’s like, well, I’m out of the office for half a day to go do the shoot, and then there’s another half a day of, like, editing and getting it ready for the client and sending it off and stuff. And so that literally is a day out of the business, which sounds like, okay, so what? It’s a day. Well, good Lord, my days are full of meetings and client emails and stuff like that, so it does, like, set me back it feels
Alison: Yeah
Melissa Arlena: it- so it’s hard. I feel like I’ve Almost having, you know how you kinda go through these phases in your career? Like, I did 10 years in and then
Alison: Mm.
Melissa Arlena: done, you know, 18 years in photography. and I kinda feel like I’m kinda closing that chapter a little bit and moving on, but it’s so hard because I do feel like that the moment someone shuts down their photography business and is just doing education, everybody thinks, “Oh, you don’t, you, [00:19:00] you aren’t credible anymore.” and so it’s,

Alison: That could be in your head too.
Melissa Arlena: I know. It’s definitely one of those things where it just makes me feel like, oh, I’m not in the industry, but I am. I mean, I’m
Alison: You are, 100%.
Melissa Arlena: are still there, like so I gotta, I gotta make that decision. I did just have a session, the other week, and, it was funny, y’all, ’cause I thought it was a newborn session, and somehow mom did not get the point across to me. She said the baby was here. I thought the baby was, like, maybe four weeks old, like, maybe five weeks
Alison: Yeah
Melissa Arlena: was like, “Oh, this is gonna be a terrible session because we’re gonna play the pacifier game.
Alison: Yeah
Melissa Arlena: know, this is just gonna be a little bit more stressful.” I walked in, that kid was six months old.
Alison: A big change. It’s a big newborn
Melissa Arlena: was like, old is that baby?” and it was super fun. I think I kinda needed that on the photography side too, to have a fun session. So
Alison: Yeah

Melissa Arlena: They ended up, they had told me they were gonna buy the bundle collection. They bought the top, so that was always
Alison: Woo!
Melissa Arlena: so then that made me think, I don’t know, do I need to shut this down, or do I [00:20:00] not need to shut this down? So, but I have some shoots coming up for past clients. I like saying yes to past clients, so that’s just kinda maybe where it’s at, you know, if it’s a
Alison: Yeah, just a little fun,
Melissa Arlena: for.
Alison: yeah. Just a little fun thing. Get you out of the office

Melissa Arlena: Yes. Yeah. I mean, there is that too. It probably would help for me to get out of the office, so maybe I just keep it as, like, kinda the back burner. I’m doing sessions
Alison: Yeah
Melissa Arlena: but I mean, I’m still number one on Google for my area, so
Alison: Yeah
Melissa Arlena: I’ve just been doing this forever, so.
Alison: Yep
Melissa Arlena: and then probably the last goal is just to actually survive this fall football season. And when I say football season, my husband ha- works at the local high school, and so we have the high school fall football season that he has to be there for games and stuff. And then my middle kiddo is now playing football, tackle football, for the first time, and dude, that kid’s got practices three nights a week and games on Saturdays, and I’m

Alison: Only three? That, you’re doing good if you only got three. Jack is doing, [00:21:00] you’re doing really good because the club football season that starts, I think at, like, age six out in town here, is five days a week, two hours a day, plus all-day game, the half-a-day games on Saturday. That’s just the club, like the not associated to the school. And then my 14-year-old is a freshman playing football for the school, and it is,
Melissa Arlena: mm-hmm.
Alison: was four days a week throughout the summer, optional, until it was mandatory in July. And then he’s doing, it’s every day. It’s five days a, it’s six days a week.
Melissa Arlena: mm-hmm.

Alison: For sure.
Melissa Arlena: It’s crazy. W-
Alison: mm-hmm.
Melissa Arlena: for us on that. And what’s funny is, like, Wednesday he doesn’t have practice, Grace has Girl Scouts. I’m like, we’re never gonna eat as a family again, I
Alison: Yeah.
Melissa Arlena: like.
Alison: find a new troop that’s not on Wednesdays, like, motion to move it
Melissa Arlena: Sunday is the only day that everybody will be at the house and stuff.
Alison: Yeah
Melissa Arlena: so yeah, so it’s just gonna be interesting ’cause we got a little preview last year with my husband working and stuff on football and everything. But, yeah, [00:22:00] this is gonna
Alison: Yeah.
Melissa Arlena: fall for us. It’s

Alison: It’s definitely a new dyn-
Melissa Arlena: of life, I think.
Alison: dynamic, for sure. Well, welcome to sports mom life.
Melissa Arlena: Yeah. I know.
Alison: Awesome. All right.
Melissa Arlena: going on for your goals?

Alison: Yeah, so I’m keeping it light. I’m keeping it light, I’m keeping it light. I got a workshop coming up seven- September 17th, y’all. If you’re not on my wait list, if you don’t get any kind of email from me, link in the show notes, to get on the wait list now. It’s gonna be the next step from the blogging that we did in the spring about how to blog, the strategy for, for getting in front of your ideal client for your area and your niche of photography. And so, what are you gonna do with those blogs once you’ve created them, once you’ve published them? You need to be sending them out, and then not only to past clients, but how do you build a list of new people that will potentially be, interested in nurturing that, and organizing, and the tech stuff on the back end, and who should That is what we’re talking about in September. So that’s coming up. we’re gonna ch- do some more ads, maybe some podcast ads to, to build up my wait list for that. [00:23:00] I’m also doing, end of this month, I don’t know when this is airing, the Black Friday summit with Dolly DeLong and a couple other people, I can’t remember the names, sorry. so I’m actually presenting at that. I am an affiliate with that, and so if you have any interest in doing a Black Friday summit, you need to be thinking about that right now, actually. And my whole, my whole lesson and spiel is about why you need to be thinking about that now, because one time I tried to do a Black Friday sale two days before Thanksgiving and Black Friday yeah, it went as well as you think it did. So you can’t be, you can’t be pulling that off. and so yeah, so Black Friday Summit, I gotta record, my little spiel about that. And then, some of my… On the mentoring side, I want to do, I’ve already started, custom show notes pages, as blog posts for the website. I need to, like, finalize that and get that stuff rolling. I need to get my resource page set up so all the things that we talk about here on [00:24:00] the podcast can be easily found in one place. you know, everything from Visco to, I don’t know, what all the things we’ve talked about.

Melissa Arlena: mm-hmm.

Alison: so those can be done. and then photography, I already mentioned I’ve changed the prices. And so, and it’s not that I raised my prices, y’all, it’s just that I changed what was on my website, and I did that without planning it. I just got fed up and was like, “Something’s gotta give. This is what’s happening.” And so that’s gonna change. it’ll change the what I tell people on my calls, so it’ll change my scripts, it’ll change, you know, those, those billings, the quotes and orders that people take. and so it’ll change a lot of stuff. Yeah, contracts and everything, so I’ve gotta get that… Oh, that’s another photography thing I wanna do. I’m completely revamping my contract. So I’ve mentioned it before, but I joined Braden Drake’s Contract Club probably a year and a half ago. I love it. I love it because he tells you how to do it. It’s, it’s formatted, and it doesn’t matter what industry, what you do, how you take payments, every [00:25:00] possibility is written in there with little videos, and it’s broken down into all these tiny sections so you can just do one section at a time. He walks you through it. You can put them on 2 times speed, s- three minutes, five minute, seven minute video on what this is, what this means, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. And you create one giant Google Doc, and then you import that into whatever you’re using for your contracts. So I’m kind of, I’m, I had already been doing it for mentoring and my associate photography, contracts and agreements. And so I am gonna completely revamp my photography agreements and contracts through Braden Drake’s thing. So if you-

Melissa Arlena: I love when somebody, like when they have a video to go along with the contract, ’cause guys, sometimes you will get clients who will question you on, like, a clause, and
Alison: mm-hmm.
Melissa Arlena: have no idea what that
Alison: Yeah
Melissa Arlena: to have a video where they walk you th- you know, he walks you through the contract of, like, this
Alison: Yeah
Melissa Arlena: are, makes it a lot… Y- you’re gonna feel more confident then when somebody pushes back on a clause and you know, “Okay, hey, this is in here to protect me for blah, blah, blah. Like, I can’t [00:26:00] just erase that. Let me, let me have this conversation
Alison: and
Melissa Arlena: that.”
Alison: and things you may not think about that are, might be outside of photography-specific industry, force majeure stuff in there, all kinds of things that are in there,

Melissa Arlena: Yeah
Alison: behavior, like, all that kind of stuff. and so it’s just really good for you to think about all the what-ifs and possibilities, because he’s not targeting just photographers. It is for all industries. I think he works for, with a lot of creatives, but it’s for all industries. And then he does have samples and whatnot that you can kinda rip off too. So that’s what I’m gonna do. So hopefully we’ll see. I’m slow rolling into this quarter. I’m slow rolling out of, summer and back into, school and work life. So I, my kids start, they s- they have a staggered start, so two of them start next week, and then two of them start the week after. So
Melissa Arlena: mm-hmm.

Alison: I’m just, I’m keeping it easy, trying to keep it low stress over here
Melissa Arlena: Yeah, I think, when this airs, mine will have started last week basically.
Alison: Yeah.
Melissa Arlena: it’ll
Alison: Awesome
Melissa Arlena: in the swing of things and yeah. So well, thanks guys for

Alison: Yeah. Thanks for being here. We really appreciate you guys listening. If you have any questions about anything, reach out to us. Instagram is the best for me. We’ll have all those links in the show notes.
Melissa Arlena: mm-hmm. Yep.
Alison: care
Melissa Arlena: All right. Bye-bye