Ep 116: Q4 Quarterly Catch-Up

Alison: [00:00:00] All right, guys, we are back by the grace of God. We have been through so much this week. It is Thursday, our normal recording day. We were supposed to have a field trip today, so we had pulled it up a day and recorded on Wednesday, which is unheard of for us, only to be foiled by a dog, my dog, who got out of the fence.
And it was just the most chaos. We had a hole in the fence. We spent 30 minutes trying to find her, only to wake up today and the field trip’s canceled because of weather, and school’s canceled because of a power outage.

Melissa Arlena: Well, wait, go back to the dog for a minute, ’cause I love that you shared your dog. There was a shame picture of your dog posted in someone’s garage that said, “Whose is this? She’s been chasing chickens.” But it had a laughing emoji, so they weren’t super pissed off, but I thought that was funny.
I also was like, “You guys have chickens on base? You’re allowed chickens on base? What?”

Alison: They’re feral. In Hawaii, just like in Moana, they’re everywhere. They weren’t on base when we moved out here, because there are actually only two ways onto base, [00:01:00] and then it’s surrounded by ponds and ocean. So the suspect is that somebody brought them on.

Melissa Arlena: Okay. Yeah.

Alison: And they’ve been here for years now at this point. But no, she got out of a hole in our back fence that does not lead to our street. The street we live on is a circle, and it’s surrounded on one side by water, so it’s actually pretty contained.

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: She got out the back of the fence, which goes to the backside of the base, which is open to everybody.

Melissa Arlena: Okay, gotcha.

Alison: I was texting friends, the boys were calling friends. Thank God it was fall break, because all the kids were home. Owen’s talking to a friend, and he’s like, “Hey, she was in our garage. We were trying to get her, but she went up Daly.” So we went up the street. We’re talking to everybody. I had kids on foot. And then meanwhile, my friends, the mafia, are sending me screenshots of what I posted on Instagram. Come to find out, homegirl was three blocks in the other direction chasing chickens. [00:02:00] I have the address of the people who we ultimately picked her up from, so I need some ideas for what to give them. I need a little thank-you something.

Melissa Arlena: Right. Yeah.

Alison: I mean, my profuse gratitude. We don’t know what time she got out, but it was 30 minutes from the time we realized she was gone until we had her, which isn’t terribly long.

Melissa Arlena: Yeah.

Alison: But Lord have mercy, it’s a chaotic week, and the fact that we’re recording right now is a testament to our perseverance. Holy cow. Woo-sah. So today is a quarterly catch-up. We are going to review our Q3 goals, what happened, and then what we have coming up for the final quarter of the year. You wanna get us started?

Melissa Arlena: Yeah. My first goal was to publish a new marketing system every month. I’d said we’d have Holiday Non-Christmas Santa, and we did. I wanted to get it out in August. We didn’t get it out till September. I know there were a lot of photographers that were like, “Melissa, I’ve already started my stuff.”
And I’m like, “I tried. I tried to get it out as [00:03:00] fast as possible.” But the good thing with these marketing systems is that even if you buy it now and start implementing it, it will help for next year. So it’s not like you’ve missed the boat. But we are trying to get them out early.

Alison: Yeah, get ’em out, get it now. It needs time to bake in for a year, but if it’s not live or it’s full, you put a waitlist form on there.

Melissa Arlena: Yep, yep.

Alison: A waitlist for the holiday.

Melissa Arlena: We walk you through all of that in the marketing system, how to do that. We are working on our next one, which is Spring Blossoms, which should be coming out in November before Black Friday. So we’re trying to be ahead this time.

Alison: Working on it. Yeah.

Melissa Arlena: And we’ll have some others that’ll come out next year.
So that’s going good. I’ve been trying to figure out a launch for group coaching for Found and Booked. I was gonna do a three-day boot camp. That got scaled way down to a workshop, and I ended up postponing the workshop at one point, and then I almost canceled it the day of because I didn’t have a lot of signups, because I hadn’t been really great about [00:04:00] marketing it.

Alison: Hard.

Melissa Arlena: Then I sent out a last-minute email, and we had seven people show up, so I was like, “Woo-hoo. Saved the day.” I was messaging Alison like, “I have two people, and one already told me she can’t be there live. I should just cancel this. Or should I do it?”

Alison: 50% of the people that sign up do it within the last, not even 48 hours.

Melissa Arlena: Yes. Yeah. So that worked out really well. We had great people on there. I am gonna do it again in December, and I’m gonna plan better for it this time and get some emails out ahead of time.

Alison: Proof of concept.

Melissa Arlena: Yeah, it’s kinda like, guys, a consultation call type thing.
The first time you do it, it feels really rough and doesn’t work out right, and then the more you do ’em, the better you get. So it’s that same way. We have been running ads to keep building up our email list, and that’s kind of hit or miss, dealing with Facebook on types of people, am I hitting the right people?
So I’ve got some ideas for Q4 [00:05:00] on some new ways to really target it in to get better results. And then, oh, I had “make a decision about my photography business.” That’s funny, because I’ve actually had a session a month since then. Every month I’ve had a session, and it’s all been past clients.
And every time I do it, I’m like, “I’m doing it because it’s a past client, but otherwise I’m out of the office.” It’s hard for that kind of stuff. But it’s nice seeing people and everything, so it’s still there. I am still getting clients. I’m still getting inquiries.
I’m probably the best referral person in Charlottesville at this point, because I just have a list. I’m like, “I’m not available. Here, send it to this person. I’m not available. Here, send it to that person.” So that makes it nice. So I guess there’s not necessarily a decision made there, but this fall I’m not doing anything.
I’ve already gotten inquiries for Black Friday family stuff, all of that, and I’m like, “Nope, nope, nope, I don’t have to.”

Alison: Stay strong.

Melissa Arlena: And then, [00:06:00] my last goal was to survive the fall football schedule, and that has been a thing.

Alison: Real.

Melissa Arlena: Y’all, I clicked on one Reel about how football practices never end on time, and the next time I logged into Facebook, my entire Reels feed was all football mom stuff, and I was like, “Wow, that was quick.”

Alison: That escalated.

Melissa Arlena: That escalated so quickly. In fact, Alison and I only have a short amount of time to record today, ’cause I have to take the kid to football practice tonight. So those were my goals, what went well, what didn’t. How about you?

Alison: All right, so on the mentoring side of things, I had planned way back in January, when I mapped out my marketing for the year, to do a September workshop. It was supposed to be on the 17th, but due to personal schedules and my husband traveling, he wasn’t available on the 17th, so we bumped it a week. It was all about email marketing. It’s still available, the recording’s there. [00:07:00] It went swell. I did a great job on the content. I think in May, with the blogging workshop, I said way too much, and it was too confusing and overwhelming. I think I did a better job of sticking to the necessary stuff for the email marketing workshop, and to the time I promised. I did a poorer job on the marketing part. I didn’t start Reels as early as I wanted to. I didn’t start ads as early as I wanted to. I did nothing as early as I wanted to, because I was still coming off, and still am in some ways, the summer rush, right?

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: So even with that extra week, it just wasn’t enough. It’s the summer rush, and it’s the need to get my 16-year-old to pass his road test. That’s what happened this quarter, and there’s no way to plan for that. You think they’re gonna pass the first time. Well, apparently here in Hawaii, it’s standard to have to take it three, four, six times.

Melissa Arlena: Wow.

Alison: Yeah, and [00:08:00] currently we’ve only taken it four times, but his permit has expired.

Melissa Arlena: Oh gosh.

Alison: So we have to renew his permit, and then we can start booking again. Anyway, the whole process for even scheduling a road test at one point took me 45 minutes at 3:00 PM, when they open up slots for the next few days, clicking dates back and forth, back and forth. And you just take what you can get, by God.

Melissa Arlena: That sounded like me booking our Santa session minis. They’d release them at midnight. I was like, “I’m gonna wait till 6:00 AM.” And then I was just like, “Okay, what’s still available? We’re just going with that one.”

Alison: And if you get a date, you’d better be using a device with autofill, because it could be gone by the time you finish.

Melissa Arlena: Yes.

Alison: And the only ones we could get were across the island, so it took half a day for every single attempt at this road test. I’d have to pick him up from school early, it would take us 45 minutes to get there, and you have to be there 30 to 35 minutes early to check in. [00:09:00]
And then if you have any sort of lingering stuff… it’s been a lot of days out of office.

Melissa Arlena: Yeah.

Alison: And that kinda kept me from getting my junk together for the workshop. Woo-sah. I did a better job of that in May, and I’ll figure it out if we do this again in December. Then I needed to record a training for the Black Friday Summit. Did that in the ninth hour, but I did it. It was great. I think I could have done some things differently. I definitely got some benefits out of that Black Friday Summit, but I didn’t do a great job of tracking it.
I just gave them a freebie I already had. I should have made a new landing page with a new form so I’d know who came from the summit, and I did not do that.

Melissa Arlena: Yeah, it’s hard.

Alison: I wasn’t thinking about it. It was summer. And I should have. Shoulda, coulda, woulda. Oh, well.
My other goal was to create custom blog pages for [00:10:00] podcast episodes. Nada. Hasn’t happened. The resource page still is not up. I think we’re at about two years at this point. That was supposed to have been up already.

Melissa Arlena: Uh-huh.

Alison: My photography contract is definitely updated.

Melissa Arlena: Oh, that’s good.

Alison: It’s updated, and let me tell you why. Per the red flag episode that just came out, I had a client, and this client wasn’t a red flag, but they were 35 minutes late to a 30-minute session.

Melissa Arlena: Yep.

Alison: Thankfully, we were at a location where that was feasible. We were across the island at a spot that had a lot of shade in the morning. By the time we got to the end of the actual session, we had lost light, it was hella hot, all these other things.
But we got it done, right? And we got what we needed. But instead of being there for 30 minutes, I was there for over an hour.

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: So I have a new policy. If you are more than 10 or 15 [00:11:00] minutes late, there’s a $100 late fee. And it’s $100 because that is the difference between my 30-minute session and my hour-long session.

Melissa Arlena: Yeah, that makes sense.

Alison: And it makes up for my time. It’s in the contract already. All the things are there. But there is a grace period, because you never know, there’s traffic and people.

Melissa Arlena: Yeah, but I love that it’s easily defendable. It’s easy to say, “Your session started at this time. You didn’t show up till this time. I will now be here for an hour, therefore you are now paying for an hour-long session, because it was on you to be on time.” It’s not just, “Oh, I’m just gonna randomly charge you $100.”
You’re easily able to say, “This is why.” So I love that.

Alison: And it’s rare that I get a client like that. This has never happened in 15 years, that somebody was that late. But I will say, I sent an email out at every point. My contract already [00:12:00] says, “We’re gonna be on time, and here’s what happens if you’re not on time.
You lose images. You lose the minimum requirement. All bets are off if you’re late.” I send out another email a week in advance that says, “Here’s where we’re going. Mark your travel time now.”

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: And then a few days out, I send that same pin again to their device via text: “Don’t forget. Here’s your time. Be there on time. If you are 10 to 15 minutes late, it’s a problem,” right?

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: And these people were so late that the closest parking lot was full, so they had to park a couple blocks over, and it just snowballed. It was so bad.

Melissa Arlena: Yeah.

Alison: So yeah, that contract’s updated. That’s what’s happening now. So that’s the photography side, but back to the mentoring side with the resource page and show notes. I think I found somebody to do this for me.

Melissa Arlena: Oh, nice.

Alison: I went to look on Fiverr for somebody to do this. I haven’t executed it because I haven’t had time, but I’m a little nervous about giving somebody [00:13:00] access to my website from Fiverr.

Melissa Arlena: I mean, set up a separate login for them at the very least. That way you can take it off when they’re done, versus just giving them yours. You could always change your password, but I think it’s just easier to give them their own login and then take it off.
Now, are they creating something on the Showit side or on the WordPress side?

Alison: Showit.

Melissa Arlena: Oh, okay, ’cause I was gonna say, on the WordPress side you could have limited it to, not administrator, but editor, stuff like that.

Alison: And I haven’t even given it enough time to consider it. But I found somebody who does it. I can give her sample pages that I like, and be like, “Create me a page.”

Melissa Arlena: Right. Yeah.

Alison: That’s the problem I’m running into. It is worth the money for somebody to just do it. Two years into this, somebody’s gotta do it.

Melissa Arlena: Yeah, yeah.

Alison: So that’s where we stand there. I just haven’t given it enough bandwidth to even consider [00:14:00] solving the problems yet, but here we are. That’s what makes this conversation and these reviews so valuable. Like, wow, I should get this together.

Melissa Arlena: Well, and just as far as referral stuff too, guys, Alison got her photography contract updated. If you’re looking for a photography contract, we recommend Braden Drake’s Contract Club.

Alison: Mm-hmm.

Melissa Arlena: We’ll have a link for that in the show notes. He puts out contracts every month for different things. So associate shooters, makeup artists, vendors, different things.

Alison: That has been the best, ’cause, you know, there are templates, right? You can get a template and customize it a little bit. But Braden’s whole thing is that it’s for all kinds of industries and creatives at all stages. He’s got some templates that just dropped specifically for pet photography.

Melissa Arlena: Oh, nice.

Alison: It’s crazy how nitty-gritty and in depth he gets. He has [00:15:00] videos of, “If you need this, if you do this, here are your options.”

Melissa Arlena: Right. Yeah.

Alison: You can really customize it. I use it for both of my businesses: on the mentoring side for coaching services, and on the photography side for associates, for my photography clients, and for appearance releases. I can’t speak highly enough about Braden Drake.

Melissa Arlena: And it turns out he’s a Marine Corps spouse, so shout-out to another military spouse.

Alison: Shout-out. And hopefully, if you’re listening, Braden, you’re gonna be on our podcast soon, ’cause that would be amazing. And then more stuff on the photography side: I had a great summer. I had several sessions run by my associates.

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: It probably wasn’t the busiest summer, but it was a full summer. And for me being off-island for three whole weeks, what more could I ask for? I’m pretty happy there.

Melissa Arlena: Awesome. All right, so Q4. I’m trying to be quick with this, but one of the things for me: I just took this training and I’ve been geeking out [00:16:00] on it, and it’s about creating smart sales pages. Basically, there’s a quiz you take, and then the page adapts based off your quiz answers.
So I’m playing around with that, and I’m trying to figure out how that would work for photographers. That’s one of the things I feel like Alison and I are both doing: looking for people who are educating, not towards photographers, just in general business stuff, and then taking that and trying to figure out, okay, how could this work for photographers?
So we’re trying to keep up on the latest stuff. And one of the things I just saw yesterday was, “Is the freebie PDF dead?” And I do agree, I think it is.

Alison: Yeah. Y’all, let us know what you think. Get on Instagram. Are you over it?

Melissa Arlena: Yeah, so my plan is to change up my freebie strategy. And as I’m changing up mine, I’m gonna be thinking about what we could do as photographers too.
I told Alison, “I think it would be really cool if there was a [00:17:00] quiz before your family page.” The thing is, you are gonna turn some people off, ’cause some people don’t wanna take a quiz. This does have an option where you can skip the quiz and it’ll go straight to the page.
But if she had a quiz asking, “Is this an extended family? Is this a nuclear family?” And then the next one, “How many people are gonna be in the session?” And then the next one, “Are you gonna have teenagers? Check this box. Or elementary?”

Alison: Where are you staying?

Melissa Arlena: Yeah, and she could have all of that, and then have some of her clients’ fears or pain points, and they pick one.
Maybe they’re like, “The kids are gonna be miserable.” And then as soon as it opens the sales page, the first line maybe says something like, “Your kids are gonna have the best time. I guarantee it.” Just something that hits that pain point. I’m really fascinated by this, so I’m gonna be playing around with it and figuring out how we could do that as photographers, having different marketing.
Because if somebody’s landing on your website [00:18:00] and it’s got a little quiz that says, “Hey, take this quiz and we’re gonna build…” For Alison’s, my thought was, “Take this quiz so we can build the perfect session for your family,” as a tagline. Because then people might be more interested, like, “Oh, okay, let’s play this game.” It’s like choose your own adventure, if anybody remembers those books.

Alison: And I think it also gives them a little insight into what it would look like to work with me, and the factors involved, before they inquire and get on the phone, right? And I think it also helps justify my prices.

Melissa Arlena: Right. Yeah. ‘Cause now you’re something different from everybody else. And I think it could be a really fun thing to do. So I’m playing with it on sales pages right now. We’re actually using it for the Motherhood Anthology.
By the time you guys hear this, it’ll be over, but we’re doing a smart quiz on there. And so far, what we’re seeing is that the people who complete the quiz also go to checkout. So I’m like, that’s pretty crazy.

Alison: That’s [00:19:00] my question. How are people landing on this? This is not the homepage?

Melissa Arlena: We have a normal sales page up. This one’s going to a warm audience, because since it’s brand new, I’m just testing it out. So that’s where we’re at on it right now. And it’s kind of funny, ’cause I was in a meeting today for a group I’m in through TMA with Amy Porterfield, and I actually got to tell Amy Porterfield about it.
And she got really excited, so it’ll be interesting to see if they start implementing something like this when it comes to freebies. But I just think people are tired of PDFs. And for photographers, you need some kind of way to get your clients to opt in. So how do we figure out what that’s gonna be?
And then how do we turn that into something that’s smart and isn’t just a PDF that somebody downloads? So I’m playing around with that. I’m geeking out on it, and I’m gonna mess with my freebie strategy. And then I’m working on a marketing calendar for 2027. I don’t know if you can see it here, Alison. Look, I got a…

Alison: I noticed that the other day.

Melissa Arlena: Yeah. [00:20:00] I got this huge calendar. This one’s called Own the Year. There’s also one called The Big Ass Calendar.

Alison: That’s what I thought it was, but I was like, “That doesn’t look the same.”

Melissa Arlena: No, but this one is a little prettier on the design.

Alison: It’s your aesthetic.

Melissa Arlena: Exactly. It’s more my aesthetic than having a curse word up on my wall, if my seven-year-old came in.

Alison: Y’all, if there are curse words on the bumper sticker or the back windshield, take it off. We are not crass.

Melissa Arlena: I don’t need my seven-year-old coming in here and being like, “Mommy, why is that up on the wall?”

Alison: “What’s that mean?”

Melissa Arlena: So yeah, it’s a calendar that displays every month all the way laid out, and I got the one that doesn’t have the weekends on it, but it has stickers for weekends. So I can just put the stickers on and change those up.
It doesn’t really matter, it’s a marketing calendar. But this way I can go in and say, “These are the dates for January. This is what we’re doing. This is what we’re doing in February.” So my goal is to use it to plan everything out, from the freebie opt-in all the way to the final goal, and [00:21:00] start putting that on there.
I don’t think it’s an affiliate thing, it was from Eterna Goods, but we’ll drop it in there. I also love Cat Schmoyer’s. I’ve got my quarterly plan one over here. She has a 2026 yearly calendar that’s smaller.

Alison: Mm-hmm.

Melissa Arlena: But I really like that this one is reusable and bigger.
I do use her quarterly plan one. I actually need to update it now that I look at it. It still says July, August, September.

Alison: I thought about using the quarterly planner for my family, because one month at a time is just not enough.

Melissa Arlena: Oh, good point, yeah. We’ve looked at getting the Skylight calendar. I just haven’t pulled the trigger on it ’cause it’s so expensive.

Alison: It’s expensive and it’s ugly. I don’t want that out. I have a really pretty magnetic whiteboard calendar that’s aesthetically pleasing.

Melissa Arlena: Yeah, there was one that Hearth & Hand partnered on, and it had a gold frame, and I was like, “Oh, I want that one,” but I haven’t seen it since, and I want the big 27-inch. But yeah, we haven’t done that.

Alison: When you’ve got kids and schedules and moving parts, you’ve gotta find what’s gonna work.

Melissa Arlena: Yeah. And then the last thing we’ve got is [00:22:00] we are actually retiring our citation service.

Alison: Mm-hmm.

Melissa Arlena: So everybody who’s a client knows, and we’re starting a new monthly service, but we’re only starting it for past clients.
The reason is that we’re gonna be helping clients more in depth on their website, and I need them to either have gone through our done-for-you, so I know all their main pages are good, or have gone through our group coaching, so I know all their pages are good ’cause I’ve reviewed them.
That way we can come in and help with updating old blog posts to be better for AI in 2026 and 2027, fixing things like broken links and little things that hang people up, and really getting into the nitty-gritty. The problem is I can’t open that up to everybody, because a lot of times people don’t have their pages optimized, and there’s really no point in us fixing links if you don’t have keywords and headers and all your other stuff up to date.

Alison: That’s getting the cart before the horse.

Melissa Arlena: Yeah. So if you are a past done-for-you client or a past group coaching student, you’ve probably already gotten an [00:23:00] email about this, but it’s something we’re gonna be launching. So my next thing is to get that off the ground next week, ’cause I have people who are like, “Okay, Melissa, when’s it coming out?”
So that’s what I’ve got.

Alison: All right, that’s pretty good. Did we talk about the new offer before this?

Melissa Arlena: I don’t think so, no.

Alison: That’s cool. That sounds good. All right, you guys. So for me, Q4 photography-wise: right now, here we are in October, and October’s kind of a slump. September and October are slow seasons, unless we have families visiting from the western half of the country, which does a fall break.
Y’all, I’m East Coast born and bred. We don’t do fall breaks. Apparently, fall breaks on the West Coast are very common. So I actually have a session tomorrow morning with somebody from the West Coast. So, very slow. That’s normal. My goal, though, is to fill up the [00:24:00] holiday weeks, right?
People typically aren’t gonna take their kids out of school in September, October, or early November, unless they’re already tagging along on a holiday trip. So Thanksgiving weekend or the week after Thanksgiving is kind of full, and then again around Christmas and New Year. Of course, I wanna be off for my holiday, so I really plan to use my associates pretty heavily. And on top of that, Colin’s got about three weeks where he’s not gonna be available to take the kids to school at sunrise.

Melissa Arlena: Oh.

Alison: So I’ve already lined up a couple of backups. It’s mostly October and early November, so at this point those would be fairly last-minute bookings, and chances are it won’t be a big deal.
But I’ve got my associates and a couple photographer friends that we’re gonna swap back and forth with if something comes up.

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: So that’s how the photography’s looking. Facebook ads, though: I started a Facebook retargeting ad, and I was working with some [00:25:00] AI evaluating its progress, and we found some really big hiccups with it.
So I am gonna continue to work on Facebook ads, evaluating what’s working and what’s not. And I may create some new landing pages to specifically drive those clicks and eyeballs back to a page for extended family photos. I’ve talked about this for probably a year. My whole website talks to family photos, but I have a pretty strong contingency. It’s a minority of people, but they’re big spenders that I really wanna target.

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: Extended families that come out here because, “Hey, we promised them we were gonna do it,” or there’s been a terminal illness, or there’s a giant anniversary or big birthday, and they’re bringing the entire extended family out: their adult children, their children’s children, sometimes great-grandchildren.

Melissa Arlena: Do you find those types of people usually use a travel agent?

Alison: I have no idea. [00:26:00]

Melissa Arlena: That might be something to look into.

Alison: Well, I’ve had a travel agent reach out to me, and she loved it. I got on the phone with her, but the client didn’t book.

Melissa Arlena: Right. Yeah. But I wonder, could you do an ad targeting travel agents, with a page that’s like, “Do you have a client who’s booking a trip to Oahu?” I wonder if you could run a small ad for something like that.

Alison: Yeah, it’s an interesting thought. But when I did talk to this one agent, she wanted a kickback for it.

Melissa Arlena: Gotcha. Yeah.

Alison: And it’s like, well, I can raise the price and send you something, but what’s gonna be insulting or…

Melissa Arlena: Wedding venue kickbacks and wedding planner kickbacks are coming back to me.

Alison: So I don’t know.
So, maybe. But I’ve been considering and kicking around the idea of just duplicating my family page, but talking to grandma. Sometimes it’s an adult daughter that’s planning it as a gift, like, “Mom and Dad are bringing us all out here. We wanna gift them photos back.”
And sometimes it’s grandma saying, “Hey, I wanna do this for everybody.”

Melissa Arlena: Yeah.

Alison: And at my price point, it is [00:27:00] very cost-effective to get everybody their photos, right?

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: So that’s something I’ve been thinking about: fine-tuning the messaging and the landing page there. Secondly, with Pinterest, having Natalie on recently got me reinvigorated to resuscitate my Pinterest plan, so that’s something I’m working on with my VA, and AI, right? I’ve got the blogs.

Melissa Arlena: Yeah.

Alison: We’ve got it halfway there. We just need to keep it going and keep the momentum up, and I’ve got the people in place so I don’t have to deal with that. And then about freebies: I’ve got the same freebies. I’ve updated the content, but I haven’t updated the format since 2023.

Melissa Arlena: Oh, okay.

Alison: It’s in a horizontal presentation format, a PDF download from Canva, and I just don’t like it anymore. It’s not user-friendly. It’s 10 or 12 pages long, and I just feel like it’s archaic at this point. So I feel like I’m gonna update it.

Melissa Arlena: [00:28:00] What is the freebie about?

Alison: There’s one that’s your travel guide to Oahu, and then what to wear for beach family photos.

Melissa Arlena: Oh, I think you could turn those into some kind of interactive smart thing.

Alison: There’s what we’ve been talking about, I could do that. Or are there people like me who still like downloads and wanna print something out? Like if they’re coming to Hawaii, do they wanna print out the best beaches, or where I suggest to eat, or some of my itinerary stuff?
Maybe this is an email where I ask them, “Hey, what would you do if you had the option?” Trying to get those clicks and replies, you guys. I feel like something’s got to be updated there, but I’m not convinced about how or when.
We’ll see. If y’all have any input, if you’re traveling to Hawaii, let me know if you would want a printer-friendly version of all my information. But then with the what-to-wear one, it really does require photos.

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm. Yeah. [00:29:00] Yeah.

Alison: I don’t know. And then on the mentoring side, same thing. The smart landing pages we were talking about seem kind of fun.
And you’re gonna be so ashamed of me, Melissa. I have to confess, I haven’t told you this. I went to set up Claude to analyze my Google Analytics for the mentoring side of my business, and Search Console wasn’t even set up. Neither one of them was set up. The tags are on the pages and the data’s being collected, but Search Console for my mentoring pages, and Google Analytics as a separate property, weren’t set up.

Melissa Arlena: Yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm.

Alison: The data’s there, it just wasn’t set up. And I had to go through and update… I don’t know what happened or when this happened, but I had tags on every page of all the websites, and it was some old tag from Tag Manager, so I had to go through all my pages and update all the [00:30:00] header stuff.
It’s taken days. I haven’t been able to look at Search Console much yet, but Google Analytics was just flatline, flatline.

Melissa Arlena: Yeah, yeah. Well, and I think Google Search Console will only track going forward.

Alison: Yeah. And I can’t believe myself. I know I’ve looked into that before. I know it, I know it, I know it. And then also on the mentoring side, I wanna do some sort of Black Friday offer. If you’re on my email list, I sent you a poll on the 7th. Reach back into your email and vote on that poll.
Before I make a decision, I would love to hear what you want, right? I want to offer what is interesting and valuable to you. And then in December, back in January I planned to do a fourth workshop. So in December, I’m considering doing a workshop, but this time it probably won’t be live, because I wanna do it on pricing, right?
If we’re all gonna update our pricing, [00:31:00] it’s gonna be fresh for the new year. So we’ll see about that. If you have any input, reach out to me on Instagram. I think you have to leave, so we’re gonna wrap up. That’s our quarterly catch-up. As always, guys, feel free to reach out to us. We’d love to hear from you.

Melissa Arlena: Bye.

Alison: Bye. Oh, and that was 31…