EP 3: What Works, What Doesn’t?

00:00:05 [Alison]
Hey, I’m Allison, military spouse and family photographer.

00:00:08 [Melissa]
And I’m Melissa, also a military spouse, lifestyle newborn photographer, and SEO expert for photographers.
00:00:13 [Melissa]
Between the two of us, we have a combined twenty seven years of photography and have lived through nine business relocations.

00:00:19 [Alison]
We’ve coached each other through challenges privately on Marco Polo, and now we’re bringing our polos public.
00:00:24 [Alison]
On this podcast, we’ll give you actionable steps to help you keep it moving.

00:00:32 [Melissa]
Hey, guys.
00:00:33 [Melissa]
So last episode, we talked about creating FOMO before you move.
00:00:37 [Melissa]
Figuring out how to book out your current location, make the moola while you can because, you’re you could be facing a very dry spell when you first move.
00:00:46 [Melissa]
So getting all those clients in and taking care of all of that before you leave so you can check that out on the last episode.
00:00:52 [Melissa]
We we are going to be talking about what works and what doesn’t in your business because now is the perfect time to change.

00:00:59 [Melissa]
Like, what do you love and what do you wanna walk away from?

00:01:02 [Alison]
That’s perfect.
00:01:02 [Alison]
Yeah.
00:01:03 [Alison]
Because, absolutely, like, you are literally starting fresh, so this is a perfect time to rebrand, pivot niches, do giant overhaul changes.
00:01:12 [Alison]
Maybe you’re going from all inclusive to IPS or any anything else.
00:01:16 [Alison]
This is this is it.

00:01:17 [Alison]
So, before you move and before you start, really prepping for that move in any of those things, you need to what needs to change, in your business personally and professionally.

00:01:28 [Melissa]
Yeah.
00:01:29 [Melissa]
I would start by creating a list.
00:01:31 [Melissa]
And, like, I would have, what do I love?
00:01:32 [Melissa]
What do I hate?
00:01:34 [Melissa]
So something you love, maybe I’m only shooting during the week.

00:01:38 [Melissa]
Something you hate, maybe your website.

00:01:41 [Alison]
Yeah.
00:01:41 [Alison]
You could

00:01:41 [Melissa]
have something you love as you love like, for me, shooting newborns.
00:01:45 [Melissa]
Something you hate is shooting weddings.
00:01:47 [Melissa]
You know?
00:01:47 [Melissa]
Like, figure out what it is that you are ready to walk away from in your business, but also what you want to keep.
00:01:52 [Melissa]
And we’ll dive more into, like, individual as we go along here.

00:01:56 [Alison]
Yeah.
00:01:57 [Alison]
Absolutely.
00:01:57 [Alison]
So I know when I, when I moved to Hawaii, this I I didn’t even plan for this.
00:02:03 [Alison]
I did not plan for it, but I realized once I got here that Hawaii is the only state or country in this particular time zone and everybody that comes here is jet lagged.

00:02:14 [Melissa]
Yeah.
00:02:14 [Melissa]
So Never thought that.

00:02:16 [Alison]
I use that to my advantage.
00:02:17 [Alison]
I shoot sunrises.
00:02:19 [Alison]
I have been known to bash and hate on sunrise sessions my entire career, but I am loving it right now.
00:02:26 [Alison]
Why?
00:02:26 [Alison]
Because we can drop the kids off at school or I can drop them off early, and then I go straight to a session.

00:02:31 [Alison]
I’m not missing out on weekends.
00:02:35 [Alison]
I get the session done in the morning, and the whole day is ahead of me.
00:02:39 [Alison]
But, also, my clients like that.
00:02:40 [Alison]
They come a lot of people get on the phone, and they’re saying, oh, we’re expecting sunset, da da da da.
00:02:44 [Alison]
And I’m like, well, actually, for a number of reasons.

00:02:48 [Alison]
I mean, it’s ease there’s fewer crowds in the morning.
00:02:50 [Alison]
There’s easier parking in the morning.
00:02:52 [Alison]
And, also, we do the session as early as possible on their trip, so the jet lag works in their favor.
00:02:57 [Alison]
Usually, when there’s little kids involved, they’re better off in the morning, and they’re like, oh, yeah.
00:03:02 [Alison]
I’m like, you don’t have to, you know, stop what you’re doing, go back to the hotel to get dressed and ready for po photos, and then go back out somewhere else.

00:03:09 [Alison]
Yep.
00:03:09 [Alison]
Get it done, and you have the whole day ahead of you.
00:03:12 [Alison]
So that was a major major change for me, but I actually didn’t plan that one.

00:03:18 [Melissa]
Yeah.
00:03:18 [Melissa]
For me, I was hardcore.
00:03:21 [Melissa]
No weekends in Virginia because we spend our weekends on our sailboat on the Chesapeake Bay, so that is family time.
00:03:27 [Melissa]
And I always had that straight up when people would inquire, one of the things would say, weekends are not available because that’s my family time.
00:03:33 [Melissa]
When we got down to South Florida, we didn’t have the boat.

00:03:35 [Melissa]
The boat was still up here in Virginia, so suddenly weekends actually became better.
00:03:41 [Melissa]
So, obviously, they were easier because, you know, everybody wants to shoot on a weekend.
00:03:45 [Melissa]
But I also found when it came to, like, childcare and stuff like that, it was so much easier than trying to find a babysitter to show up and, you know, either get my kids off the bus or have to go to the bus and get them.
00:03:56 [Melissa]
Plus, I had one at home who was napping, and then and, you know, I couldn’t have my husband take off work to come home a couple hours early.
00:04:02 [Melissa]
So it just made it so much easier for me to say, hey.

00:04:05 [Melissa]
I’m gonna do a shoot on the weekend.
00:04:06 [Melissa]
And then weekdays, it just didn’t mess with our schedule this month.
00:04:09 [Melissa]
But now that we’re back in Virginia, weekends, we are back on the boat on weekends and stuff.
00:04:14 [Melissa]
I’m back to I don’t do weekends.
00:04:16 [Melissa]
Weekends is family time.

00:04:17 [Melissa]
And then if I need to shoot during the week, I’m really kind of trying to transition away from, like I don’t mind families in my memberships.
00:04:26 [Melissa]
I love that.
00:04:27 [Melissa]
But just one off family sessions that I’m not gonna see them again, I’m really kinda transitioned away from that because it’s just kind of a pain in the butt when it comes to, like, finding babysitters and stuff.
00:04:37 [Melissa]
I’m a little better situation now with the kids because they’re all together, so, you know, they could stay in aftercare and my husband but I haven’t had that before, so this is kind of all new for me on that.

00:04:47 [Alison]
Yeah.
00:04:47 [Alison]
All completely new.
00:04:49 [Alison]
And so, that kinda gets us to how does this look like for you?
00:04:52 [Alison]
Like, personally speaking, do you want to shoot on the weekends?
00:04:56 [Alison]
Do you wanna shoot in the evenings?

00:04:58 [Alison]
Is child care an issue?
00:04:59 [Alison]
Do you are your kids in school?
00:05:01 [Alison]
Do you wanna do daytime only?
00:05:03 [Alison]
How many shoots a week, which, you know, all of this runs together.
00:05:07 [Alison]
But your cost of doing business in the new location, do you know what your costs are gonna be?

00:05:11 [Melissa]
Do you

00:05:11 [Alison]
need to do more or less?
00:05:13 [Alison]
Like

00:05:13 [Melissa]
Yeah.
00:05:14 [Melissa]
Because it depends on where you like.
00:05:15 [Melissa]
Allison, she moved from a lower cost area to a much higher cost area being in Hawaii.
00:05:22 [Melissa]
We I feel like our transition from Northern Virginia to Miami was pretty flush on, like, cost.
00:05:27 [Melissa]
I mean, Miami was definitely more expensive for things like real estate taxes and stuff, but and I actually, I take that back to your our groceries were a little bit more expensive.

00:05:35 [Melissa]
I I would always talk to my parents.
00:05:37 [Melissa]
I’m like, how much are eggs costing you guys?
00:05:39 [Melissa]
Because I don’t know if it’s because they got further to travel down here, but they’re costing a lot more.
00:05:44 [Melissa]
But you really need to figure out maybe you needed to shoot five sessions in your old location a month, but now you need 10, or it could be the opposite.
00:05:51 [Melissa]
You know, we’re now in kind of more rural Virginia, and I could get by with less sessions because our costs on everything have come down a lot.

00:06:00 [Melissa]
So you definitely when you were looking at a new location and you may wanna do this before you move.
00:06:05 [Melissa]
Let’s say there’s several opportunities, and you’re like, well, we could go here, here, or here.
00:06:09 [Melissa]
You might wanna sit down and look at, like, what is the cost for that location?
00:06:12 [Melissa]
How many sessions do I need to shoot?
00:06:14 [Melissa]
Because maybe the decision is, like, we’re not gonna go to location a because I work full time in my business and be hustling all the time versus if we go to location b, you know, we could keep it a little bit more part time, or, you know, I could still work hard and make extra money, but that money stays in our pocket versus having to go out for, you know, real estate or bills and stuff like that.

00:06:35 [Alison]
Yeah.
00:06:35 [Alison]
Absolutely.
00:06:36 [Alison]
If you have a choice on where you’re moving, come talk to me because I have never experienced that, and that is a whole other can of worms.
00:06:44 [Alison]
I mean, we’ve got a friend who was kind of in that position, and she’s not sure where she’s gonna move.
00:06:48 [Alison]
She’s down to a but she’s looking at all those details, property taxes, income taxes, all the different things for her her scenarios.

00:06:56 [Alison]
And I’m just like, I don’t know anything about it.

00:06:59 [Melissa]
So I was lucky.
00:07:00 [Melissa]
We we were kinda looking at different spots and stuff.
00:07:03 [Melissa]
And we were looking at overseas at one point too, like Germany or England.
00:07:07 [Melissa]
And if that was the case, like, I didn’t have to work, which kinda for me was a little soul crushing because I’m like, but I like

00:07:13 [Alison]
working.
00:07:13 [Alison]
I want to.
00:07:14 [Alison]
I like it.
00:07:15 [Alison]
I want to do this.
00:07:17 [Alison]
That’s all kind of on the personal side.

00:07:19 [Alison]
And now talking about cost of doing business into business changes.
00:07:22 [Alison]
This is where the real work is.
00:07:25 [Alison]
This is a real hard look at what is working and what is not.
00:07:30 [Alison]
So first thing, your website.
00:07:33 [Alison]
Your website should be your biggest asset for marketing.

00:07:37 [Alison]
It should be showing up on Google.
00:07:39 [Alison]
It should be converting people.
00:07:40 [Alison]
It should be speaking to their needs, agitating, and your clients potential clients should be going yes.
00:07:46 [Alison]
Yes.
00:07:46 [Alison]
Yes.

00:07:46 [Alison]
Yes.
00:07:46 [Alison]
Yes.
00:07:46 [Alison]
Every at every section.
00:07:48 [Alison]
Right?
00:07:49 [Alison]
Your portfolio images are, you know, speaking whether or not people should hire you.

00:07:53 [Alison]
So what’s working and what’s not?
00:07:55 [Alison]
In all those categories, is your design working?
00:07:57 [Alison]
Do you need to rebrand?
00:07:59 [Alison]
Do your I know we always think of colors when we talk about branding, but do your headshots, does your color, does your personality of your website reflect the experience you’re trying to give your clients or your you already are giving your clients?
00:08:11 [Alison]
Is there any sort of disconnect in any in any of that?

00:08:15 [Alison]
This was huge for me.
00:08:18 [Alison]
Last year, Melissa had been telling me for, like, a year that I needed a new website, and I just, like, plugged my ears because I don’t wanna spend money on it.
00:08:26 [Alison]
I don’t wanna put effort into it, and that is a whole rabbit hole and giant project that I just wasn’t wanting to take on, to be honest, because I’ve always DIYed it.
00:08:34 [Alison]
I’ve always, like, made it work, with different themes and stuff on on word WordPress.
00:08:39 [Alison]
But then I worked with this marketing, like, what do I call it?

00:08:44 [Alison]
Marketing girl.
00:08:44 [Alison]
I I just keep calling her my marketing girl, and she’s a girl.
00:08:47 [Alison]
She’s got a boutique, so it’s like her own small business, to really amp up and help me work on some things, that I was trying out.
00:08:54 [Alison]
And she got into my back end to to execute our plan, and she said, Allison, you need a new website.
00:09:01 [Alison]
And that

00:09:01 [Melissa]
And when Allison followed me and said she said I need a new website, I said, I’ve been saying that for a long time.
00:09:06 [Melissa]
She is not wrong.
00:09:08 [Melissa]
Because here’s the thing.
00:09:09 [Melissa]
Allison has a very vibrant personality, and she has, like, beautiful photos, and her website was doing her zero favors.
00:09:16 [Melissa]
I was like, girl, I love you and I love your work, but your website sucks.

00:09:20 [Alison]
And so when Kristen broke that news to me, I was like, you’re not

00:09:25 [Alison]
the only that’s not the

00:09:26 [Alison]
first time I’ve heard that.
00:09:27 [Alison]
So we did it.
00:09:28 [Alison]
We but, thankfully, Kristen Kristen did it.
00:09:31 [Alison]
Like, I had somebody else do it.
00:09:32 [Alison]
She designed it.

00:09:33 [Alison]
She did my color.
00:09:33 [Alison]
She did all the stuff.
00:09:34 [Alison]
But let me tell you the short end of it.
00:09:36 [Alison]
Within six working with her, so three months after that website, that new site launched, but six months of working with her, so she did she optimized three three blog posts.
00:09:46 [Alison]
I had not quite started working on Hawaii, locations and blogs yet.

00:09:51 [Alison]
My organic traffic tripled.
00:09:55 [Alison]
Tripled.
00:09:56 [Alison]
Let that sink in for a minute.
00:09:58 [Alison]
All that changed was one giant website.
00:10:01 [Alison]
Now that’s one giant big big mega change, but I didn’t I hadn’t started extra blogging yet.

00:10:07 [Alison]
I was doing the same thing I had done before.
00:10:09 [Alison]
Even asked Kristen, I was like, what on earth did you do?
00:10:12 [Alison]
And she was like, I just got you a solid website.

00:10:15 [Melissa]
Yeah.
00:10:15 [Melissa]
That’s all it takes.

00:10:16 [Alison]
I still don’t know what exactly is different about it, but, instead of my clicks every month being in the hundreds, like, two to 500, I am averaging 1,200 clicks a month.
00:10:26 [Alison]
Yeah.
00:10:27 [Alison]
That’s huge.
00:10:28 [Alison]
So evaluate your website, what’s working, what’s not.

00:10:31 [Melissa]
Yeah.
00:10:32 [Melissa]
And, like, I know when we moved to South Florida, I had been wanting to redo my website.
00:10:38 [Melissa]
I am also a DIYer, and every couple years, my website, I’m like, it’s time for an upgrade.
00:10:42 [Melissa]
And I remember holding off.
00:10:44 [Melissa]
I was like, I’m gonna wait because we were trying to figure out, are we moving to Florida?

00:10:47 [Melissa]
Are we moving to Germany?
00:10:49 [Melissa]
Are we moving to England?
00:10:50 [Melissa]
Like, where are we going?
00:10:52 [Melissa]
And as soon as my you know, we found out, okay.
00:10:54 [Melissa]
Yes.

00:10:54 [Melissa]
We are going to Florida.
00:10:57 [Melissa]
My husband took the kids, and he went for a weekend with it was like his mom’s birthday weekend.
00:11:01 [Melissa]
They had rented a cabin, and I said, hey.
00:11:03 [Melissa]
I’m gonna bow out of this one.
00:11:05 [Melissa]
Like, I’m gonna stay home.

00:11:06 [Melissa]
You’re gonna take the kids, and I’m gonna have three solid days to redo my website.
00:11:11 [Melissa]
And and that was the thing.
00:11:12 [Melissa]
Like, Brew and being able to take that time updating the copy, updating the SEO, updating the design, and making that complete switch over from the old brand to what I wanted was a little bit more refined higher end brand than what I had.
00:11:25 [Melissa]
So the images stayed the same, but the rest of the brand around it, was updated, and that was the perfect time to do it.

00:11:32 [Alison]
That’s awesome.
00:11:32 [Alison]
And, yeah, when it comes to those kind of big changes, highly suggest doing what Melissa did.
00:11:37 [Alison]
Like, you can’t do a page at a time or half a page and be interrupted and forget what you were doing.
00:11:43 [Alison]
That’s how it’s happened.
00:11:44 [Alison]
That’s how things don’t get connected the way they’re supposed to take a big project.

00:11:49 [Alison]
That’s actually on my to do list for next month.
00:11:53 [Alison]
Awesome.
00:11:54 [Alison]
Okay.
00:11:54 [Alison]
So and then what about your workflow?
00:11:56 [Alison]
That’s something else we need to talk about.

00:11:58 [Melissa]
So workflow wise, I think, you know, obviously, at that time, I had, like, an editor and stuff like that, but I was heading into a position where I wasn’t gonna have any, like, jobs and stuff.
00:12:08 [Melissa]
So, you know, I kinda let the editor know, like, hey.
00:12:11 [Melissa]
I’m we’re moving.
00:12:12 [Melissa]
I don’t know when I’m gonna have sessions again, so we’re gonna kinda walk away.
00:12:15 [Melissa]
You do my editing.

00:12:17 [Melissa]
I think I had been testing out at that point already, you know, AI type of editing and stuff, imagine.
00:12:24 [Melissa]
And, and so I just kinda switched over to that.
00:12:26 [Melissa]
But, like, you can really sit down too and, like, look through.
00:12:28 [Melissa]
Workflow can be everything from your your editing to also, you know, going through going through your emails of, like, okay.
00:12:36 [Melissa]
Hey.

00:12:37 [Melissa]
And even right now, I’ll go to send an email, and I’m like, oh, shoot.
00:12:40 [Melissa]
That still says Miami area.
00:12:41 [Melissa]
And I have to go and then I tell myself, don’t just update this one email.
00:12:45 [Melissa]
Go open the templates folder bay and go update the original one and change it to Charlottesville, Richmond.

00:12:51 [Alison]
That’s huge.
00:12:53 [Alison]
That’s huge.
00:12:53 [Alison]
Going into settings in Tave is a whole can of worms.

00:12:56 [Melissa]
Yes.
00:12:57 [Melissa]
But go in there and make that change so you stop having to make it again.
00:13:02 [Melissa]
So keep that in mind of, like, what do you need to figure out on your workflow?
00:13:05 [Melissa]
So, like, if it’s like, alright.
00:13:06 [Melissa]
The editor’s out, but maybe this is in.

00:13:08 [Melissa]
And maybe you were trying to get away from an editor and do more editing on your own or work in more AI stuff.
00:13:14 [Melissa]
Thinking about too your labs, it might be a good time to reevaluate what labs you’re working goes into the love hate type thing.
00:13:20 [Melissa]
Like, maybe your lab has done away with your favorite product and another lab has still has it, and so you can go to them.
00:13:27 [Melissa]
But you really wanna evaluate all of those things in your business and, like, what what works and what’s not working, and then make this time the time to go ahead and change it out.

00:13:36 [Alison]
Yeah.
00:13:36 [Alison]
We have a mutual friend who, on that same line, was not happy with the way her framer was handling some some issues.
00:13:45 [Alison]
She was not happy with her customer service, and so that, you know, moving would be an excellent time to just break up with some people.
00:13:53 [Alison]
But it but, but yeah.
00:13:54 [Alison]
So labs also, you know, I’m guilty of this too.

00:13:57 [Alison]
We think of workflow when we think immediately, like, editing and delivery.
00:14:00 [Alison]
But what about your social media workflow?
00:14:03 [Alison]
Do you have one?
00:14:04 [Alison]
Do you have a system?
00:14:05 [Alison]
Do you have a pattern that helps alleviate the pressure of always having something to post?

00:14:10 [Alison]
Do you have something at all?
00:14:11 [Alison]
Like, maybe that’s maybe that’s something, you need to work on or you’re gonna outsource.
00:14:17 [Alison]
Or outsource.
00:14:18 [Alison]
There it is.
00:14:19 [Alison]
Or what about the workflow of onboarding a new client or even getting inquiries to begin with?

00:14:25 [Alison]
This goes back to your website.
00:14:26 [Alison]
Like, how many people are work reaching out to you?
00:14:29 [Alison]
How many of those are converting?
00:14:31 [Alison]
Are you getting phone?
00:14:33 [Alison]
How are you responding to them?

00:14:34 [Alison]
How quickly are you responding to them?
00:14:36 [Alison]
Get in.
00:14:36 [Alison]
If you’ve got a CRM like, get into the booking trips.
00:14:41 [Alison]
Get in and look at those numbers.
00:14:42 [Alison]
What are those percentages like?

00:14:44 [Alison]
What are what are your most profitable thing?

00:16:16 [Alison]
And figure out what you can do better to set yourself apart when people are reaching out to you.
00:16:22 [Alison]
That was a big one, for me when I went to IPS was people would reach out.
00:16:27 [Alison]
I would get the email, and then, I would take my time to respond.
00:16:31 [Alison]
And now no, ma’am.

00:16:33 [Alison]
I have, hacked it so that I’m getting those, those in my phone via text message, and I am playing a game with myself of how fast I can respond.
00:16:43 [Alison]
And it shows it’s I’m getting a lot of, really happy responses when they’re like, wow.
00:16:48 [Alison]
That was so fast.
00:16:49 [Alison]
No.
00:16:49 [Alison]
All within reason.

00:16:50 [Alison]
I don’t do it in the middle of the night, but, you know, but it it works.
00:16:54 [Alison]
You know?
00:16:54 [Alison]
So when you’re thinking about workflow, like, it’s not just editing, onboarding, how you edit, how you deliver.
00:17:00 [Alison]
Maybe your gallery system needs to be changed.
00:17:04 [Alison]
I did that too right before we did the website change, and it was it’s it’s hellacious.

00:17:08 [Alison]
I went from one platform I’d been on for ten or thirteen years and completely switched, and it took me a whole year to kinda figure out the ins and outs of all its bells and whistles.
00:17:18 [Alison]
And but, again, it’s a good time to make that happen.

00:17:22 [Melissa]
You can also because you use that as a time to say, hey.
00:17:24 [Melissa]
Your gallery is going offline.
00:17:25 [Melissa]
This is your last chance to purchase.
00:17:28 [Melissa]
That’s

00:17:29 [Alison]
a great idea.
00:17:30 [Alison]
That kinda goes back to, creating that FOMO.
00:17:33 [Alison]
Like, you need a little cash injection, like, make a sale on prints on your through your gallery system.
00:17:39 [Alison]
Even if you’re not, it’s like or even if you don’t even do prints, like, put it out there, have the gallery, the third party system take care of it all for you, but you run a sale.
00:17:50 [Alison]
Make sure your

00:17:50 [Melissa]
prices are

00:17:51 [Alison]
high enough for that, though.

00:17:52 [Melissa]
Well, but here’s the thing.
00:17:53 [Melissa]
Keep in mind, you’re leaving all of those customers behind.
00:17:56 [Melissa]
So if there’s a point to say, you know what?
00:17:59 [Melissa]
I just need to get some extra cash.
00:18:00 [Melissa]
I’m gonna run a bigger sale than I normally would.

00:18:02 [Melissa]
Obviously, you wanna have your cost of doing business covered and stuff, but maybe you’re gonna be offering a 50% off sale.
00:18:07 [Melissa]
So you’re not gonna make quite as much as you would have made with, like, a 20% off sale, but you’re like, I’m just we’re like, it’s either I make the money on this now or I don’t.
00:18:15 [Melissa]
And the other thing can be selling more digital files on that.
00:18:18 [Melissa]
Like, maybe they only bought a couple, and you’re like, hey.
00:18:20 [Melissa]
If you want this whole gallery, now is the time.

00:18:22 [Melissa]
Here’s the dollar sign on what it is, and just get it out there.
00:18:26 [Melissa]
That’s

00:18:27 [Alison]
absolutely right.
00:18:28 [Alison]
Absolutely.
00:18:28 [Alison]
And, actually, I have a story, but I’ll save that for another episode of when I did that.

00:18:34 [Melissa]
So let’s talk about pricing.
00:18:36 [Melissa]
That would be the big thing.
00:18:38 [Melissa]
You know, we talked about doing your cost of doing business.
00:18:41 [Melissa]
So let’s talk about what’s working.
00:18:43 [Melissa]
Allison mentioned we’re moving from all inclusive.

00:18:45 [Melissa]
Are you wanting to test out IPS?
00:18:48 [Melissa]
Are you wanting to go the other direction?
00:18:50 [Melissa]
You know, are you wanting to stop doing in person sales and doing virtual in, you know, IPS type stuff?
00:18:57 [Melissa]
Are your are your collections working?
00:18:59 [Melissa]
That kinda thing.

00:18:59 [Melissa]
You know, you really wanna sit down and look at your cost of doing business for that new location.
00:19:04 [Melissa]
How many shoots do you wanna do?
00:19:05 [Melissa]
And, like, sit down and go through your pricing.
00:19:07 [Melissa]
And there’s it’s always a good idea to go through your pricing once a year.
00:19:09 [Melissa]
And as I say that, I’m like, yeah.

00:19:11 [Melissa]
I don’t know when the last time I looked at, like, what my pricing is.
00:19:14 [Melissa]
Me through it.
00:19:15 [Melissa]
Yeah.
00:19:15 [Melissa]
I just take time that, like I’m like, yes.
00:19:17 [Melissa]
If you if prices go up on the lab, then make sure my my markup is x amount and just auto apply it.

00:19:25 [Melissa]
So, like, I I don’t even know what it is.
00:19:27 [Melissa]
I’m like, just do it.
00:19:28 [Melissa]
But now might be a time to go through and say, like, okay.
00:19:30 [Melissa]
Is that enough?
00:19:32 [Melissa]
You know, what what can I work with on there?

00:19:34 [Melissa]
But pricing’s a big one.
00:19:36 [Melissa]
Two, you wanna be careful in your new location because and I’ve made this mistake before.
00:19:41 [Melissa]
When things are slow and you’re getting stressed out, the first thing you think you need to do are pricing.
00:19:47 [Melissa]
That’s what we all think.
00:19:49 [Melissa]
What ends up happening is you start lowering it, and then you lower it some more, and then you lower it some more, and, like, you know, you’re just you’re just falling backwards down the hill at that point.

00:19:59 [Melissa]
This hill that you’ve already climbed and you’ve already gotten to that point.
00:20:01 [Melissa]
And it’s not that in the new location, your work isn’t worth your price like it was in the old location.
00:20:06 [Melissa]
It’s just that you’re not in front of enough people marketing wise to do it.
00:20:11 [Melissa]
I when we got down to South Florida, you know, especially after, like, six months, you know, you start thinking, okay.
00:20:17 [Melissa]
Well, I’ve had three sessions in the last, like, two months.

00:20:20 [Melissa]
That’s not enough to, like, keep food on the table kind of thing, it feels like.
00:20:24 [Melissa]
So I remember, like, lowering my pricing down, and it was about the time that my SEO real helping me kick off.
00:20:30 [Melissa]
And I I remember booking clients that I, you know, I was shooting some clients at a price that was, like, 25% of what other clients were were paying kinda thing because they got in on a membership and they got the membership discounts and the price had been lower and then they were and this this sounds kinda wrong, but they were a client that was stretching to afford me, and so they were only buying the bottom kind of thing.
00:20:55 [Melissa]
And so that’s not what I was trying to do.

00:20:58 [Alison]
You know?

00:20:58 [Melissa]
I was trying to be a profitable business, and this was like it I brought introduced clients into my business that were not my ideal client, which meant that any referrals from them were not my ideal client.
00:21:08 [Melissa]
So be very, very careful about lowering your pricing and getting into a pricing bracket of clients that aren’t the type of clients you wanna work with.
00:21:16 [Melissa]
I mean, they can be perfectly nice clients.
00:21:18 [Melissa]
It’s not that at all.
00:21:19 [Melissa]
But when they’ve got a price cap that they’re not willing to go over and that price cap is just barely over your minimum, it’s not gonna lead to the clients you want that are gonna help you to be able to increase your pricing or to sell, like, the albums and the things that you want.

00:21:33 [Melissa]
If they just wanna take the digitals and run, then, you know, it’s not that client you’re trying to get to.

00:21:38 [Alison]
Yeah.
00:21:39 [Alison]
There’s a lot of people who just want the digital to run.
00:21:43 [Alison]
I get that a lot.
00:21:45 [Alison]
Okay.
00:21:45 [Alison]
Yeah.

00:21:45 [Alison]
What about style?
00:21:46 [Alison]
So your photographic style, are you, are you shooting a new niche or genre?
00:21:52 [Alison]
Like, this kinda goes back to that personal list.
00:21:54 [Alison]
If you only wanna shoot in the daytime, like, last year when my kids were in school for the first time, I had the whole day ahead of me.
00:22:01 [Alison]
I didn’t have to get childcare.

00:22:03 [Alison]
I didn’t have to take or get, you know, have sitters on that are available during the day.
00:22:08 [Alison]
So I wanted to do more newborn stuff.
00:22:10 [Alison]
I love in home stuff.
00:22:11 [Alison]
I love lifestyle stuff.
00:22:13 [Alison]
So I was trying to add on to not change, but add on to my family things by having more work during the day because my schedule allowed it.

00:22:20 [Alison]
What about your editing style?
00:22:22 [Alison]
Are you feeling like a little itch to change?
00:22:24 [Alison]
Like, you wanna go a little more amber and a little more dark and moody, a little more blue, what have you.
00:22:29 [Alison]
This is a perfect time to do that.
00:22:30 [Alison]
I would say if you are going to do that, do that sooner before you actually move.

00:22:35 [Alison]
You have the portfolio to push that out once you move.
00:22:39 [Alison]
So but, you know, if you’re gonna change dramatically.

00:22:42 [Melissa]
That new location, and is your editing gonna be different there?
00:22:46 [Melissa]
I know you’ve actually gone from, like, beach to beach to beach, but your beaches are different.
00:22:51 [Melissa]
And I went from fields to beaches.
00:22:53 [Melissa]
And so, like, editing from a beach versus a field, like, was very different for me.
00:23:00 [Melissa]
And so it wasn’t necessarily that my entire editing style changed, but I had to learn to edit of the beach scenes to be, like, you know well, especially to get people off of the beach kinda thing.

00:23:12 [Melissa]
Like Yeah.
00:23:13 [Melissa]
Yeah.
00:23:13 [Melissa]
Yeah.

00:23:13 [Alison]
And the direction of the sun and Yeah.

00:23:16 [Melissa]
And the wind.
00:23:17 [Melissa]
Oh my gosh, guys.
00:23:18 [Melissa]
Oh my gosh.
00:23:18 [Melissa]
The wind.
00:23:19 [Melissa]
I totally followed Allison.

00:23:21 [Alison]
What do you do about the wind?
00:23:22 [Alison]
I’m like, you’ve got a problem.
00:23:24 [Alison]
There’s no back.
00:23:25 [Alison]
I actually take pins and hair clips and, hair ties and headbands to my sessions, because there’s no contending with the wind.
00:23:32 [Alison]
Yeah.

00:23:33 [Alison]
Unless, like, 25 miles an hour, then we probably need to reschedule.
00:23:36 [Alison]
But after that, like, the beach is windy, y’all.
00:23:38 [Alison]
Like, the beach is windy.
00:23:40 [Alison]
Okay.
00:23:40 [Alison]
So, yeah, we we we went from beaches in Japan that were coral, and I could, you know, Japan we were in Okinawa, so I shot on the west side of the island because it was pretty.

00:23:50 [Alison]
That’s where the sunset, and I could backlight.
00:23:52 [Alison]
And I had this one beach that I really liked because it had some shade, but the water was blue, and it was fabulous.
00:23:57 [Alison]
And then we went to Quantico, and I felt like I was in the middle of the woods in Quantico, like, straight up in the middle of the woods.
00:24:03 [Alison]
I would drive forty five minutes one way just to get to Manassas Field Battlefield so I could have some sun because I did not know no trees.
00:24:10 [Alison]
Like and I even took a lighting and location course to help me, and I still didn’t.

00:24:15 [Alison]
I just felt like a fish out of water.
00:24:17 [Alison]
So when we got that surprise orders six months after moving to Quantico that we are gonna go to Virginia Beach that summer, I was like, well, I’m back to the beach.
00:24:25 [Alison]
This is what I want.
00:24:26 [Alison]
It was one of those it was one of the silver linings of, like, I don’t like my work here.
00:24:31 [Alison]
I don’t know how to do this.

00:24:32 [Alison]
I don’t like it.
00:24:33 [Alison]
Yeah.
00:24:33 [Alison]
Give me back to the water.
00:24:34 [Alison]
But what was unique about Virginia Beach was that Virginia Beach had both the bay and the ocean.
00:24:40 [Alison]
So we had water in in two completely different directions to the sun.

00:24:45 [Alison]
So it was it was a lot to learn.
00:24:47 [Alison]
So you’re gonna have to figure that out.
00:24:48 [Alison]
That will that geography will factor in, you know, mountains, fields, trees, urban, rural, all of that.

00:24:58 [Melissa]
Alright.
00:24:58 [Melissa]
So next, think about portfolio updates.
00:25:00 [Melissa]
So I was used to fields and woods and things like that.
00:25:05 [Melissa]
I did not have beach photos like Allison because I had been in Virginia my entire life.
00:25:10 [Melissa]
So knowing that we were moving to Miami area well, the good news is I’ll have plenty of beach photos later, but I wanted to make sure my website was going to be representative for South Florida, for what things that people were looking for.

00:25:23 [Melissa]
Because I did learn real quick too, people see a field photo and you say you’re a South Florida photographer, they’re like, where’s that field?
00:25:29 [Melissa]
And I’m like, yeah.
00:25:30 [Melissa]
That one’s back in Virginia.
00:25:31 [Melissa]
So sorry.
00:25:33 [Melissa]
So, like, pulling those images off your website that obviously aren’t going to fit.

00:25:38 [Melissa]
Now and I will say this, be careful because, obviously, you don’t wanna pull everything off your website.
00:25:41 [Melissa]
You can’t do that, but things that are are fairly obvious that you’re gonna be able to pull off.
00:25:46 [Melissa]
And then I remember going through my portfolio and looking for anything with water because we were on, like, Potomac River.
00:25:54 [Melissa]
So a few images from sessions that we did that kinda had a little bit of a, like, a river beach feel, but not like an actual beach.
00:26:02 [Melissa]
And granted, the color of the water was not the same at all.

00:26:05 [Melissa]
But at least it was, like, something waterfronty.
00:26:08 [Melissa]
And I remember kind of front loading my home page and everything with those images, just so that it felt like, okay.
00:26:16 [Melissa]
Maybe this would work down in South Florida.
00:26:17 [Melissa]
And then the funny thing was coming back here to Virginia, I was like, alright.
00:26:20 [Melissa]
Now I gotta get rid of all of these because otherwise people are gonna think this is, like, Virginia Beach or something like that, and I don’t wanna travel there because that’s a couple hours from me.

00:26:28 [Melissa]
But I was easily able to just go back and say, okay.
00:26:31 [Melissa]
Let me pull all my images that are fields that are, and, actually, here, we’ve got a lot of mountains.
00:26:37 [Melissa]
We’re right on the the, the outskirts of the Blue Ridge and stuff.
00:26:40 [Melissa]
So I do need to get some images to, like, update for that, but I’m still trying to, like, focus more on lifestyle newborn and a little bit of maternity type things.
00:26:48 [Melissa]
So I haven’t worked too much.

00:26:50 [Alison]
That portfolio is especially important, for those updates.
00:26:54 [Alison]
If you are going to switch genres, emphasize that one genre over the other or anything about your editing style because you’re gonna sell what you show.
00:27:01 [Alison]
So show them what you wanna sell.
00:27:03 [Alison]
Right?
00:27:03 [Alison]
Okay.

00:27:04 [Alison]
So and then the last one here were half sessions.
00:27:07 [Alison]
I this was something I did, and this kinda goes along with when you’re when you’re new to an area.
00:27:13 [Alison]
I had done a half so I created this offer, and really, it was kind of a promotional offer because I was new to the area, But I called it a half session, kinda came up with this whole thing, and it worked for the hot minute.
00:27:23 [Alison]
Right?
00:27:23 [Alison]
Like, I had some stipulations on it.

00:27:24 [Alison]
It was different from what I did.
00:27:26 [Alison]
It was basically kind of like a mini session meets a custom full center.
00:27:29 [Alison]
It was half the time, came with half the stuff, but it had some pretty strong limitations, for when and where I would shoot because it was a more affordable option for families.
00:27:41 [Alison]
And it worked for a hot minute.
00:27:42 [Alison]
It worked for it would worked great for the fall.

00:27:44 [Alison]
It was really able to drum up some business for my first fall here in Hawaii, but, it’s no longer working for me.
00:27:49 [Alison]
It’s no longer working for so I am cutting that.
00:27:52 [Alison]
Like, it’s it’s completely being cut out of my vocabulary now.
00:27:56 [Alison]
Okay.
00:27:56 [Alison]
So that is our chat on what’s working, what’s not working.

00:28:01 [Alison]
You need to know this because these things, what you do or don’t change is really going to outline your plan for moving forward and keeping your business moving and keeping it moving successfully because that’s the whole goal here.
00:28:12 [Alison]
Right?
00:28:12 [Alison]
We want to relaunch and restart faster so that you’re building up an income and a clientele, as soon as humanly possible.
00:28:21 [Alison]
Alright.
00:28:21 [Alison]
So that’s our conversation on what is working and what’s not working.

00:28:25 [Alison]
These are the things you really need to really spend some time focusing down on.
00:28:29 [Alison]
If it that means, like, an evening away or getting having a little work retreat, this is going to be the outline for moving forward.
00:28:38 [Alison]
This is going to be the basis of how you’re gonna plan out your move in order to relaunch and restart faster because that’s the goal here.
00:28:45 [Alison]
Right?
00:28:45 [Alison]
We want to do everything we are in our power to launch successfully so that we are regaining an income and building a clientele in our new location as soon as possible.

00:28:54 [Alison]
So thank you so much for listening.
00:28:55 [Alison]
If you have any questions for me or Melissa, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us.
00:29:00 [Alison]
All the links for this episode, for our websites are gonna be found in the show notes.
00:29:04 [Alison]
You can find me, DM me directly on Instagram.
00:29:07 [Alison]
My handle is at Alison Bell Photog.

00:29:10 [Alison]
My name is spelled with one l, a l I s o n.

00:29:14 [Melissa]
You can find me on Instagram at melissa arlina.
00:29:16 [Melissa]
I will let you know I am not the best Instagram.
00:29:18 [Melissa]
I’m not as on there as much as Alison, but if I catch your DM, I will definitely try to respond back to it as soon as I see it.

00:29:25 [Alison]
So awesome.
00:29:26 [Alison]
Thank you so much for listening, guys.

00:29:32 [Melissa]
Thank you so much for listening.
00:29:33 [Melissa]
If you’re enjoying this show, would you do two things?
00:29:35 [Melissa]
First, leave a review.
00:29:37 [Melissa]
Just stars would be awesome.
00:29:38 [Melissa]
And two, forward this episode to a biz bestie, mil spouse, or anyone facing moving their business.

00:29:43 [Melissa]
We’d love it if you shared this episode with even just one person.
00:29:46 [Melissa]
If you have any questions, reach out to Allison on Instagram at Allison Bell Photog or Melissa in her Facebook group, Raise Your Ranking.
00:29:53 [Melissa]
Check the show notes

00:30:04 [Alison]
for links.