EP 74: Mini Mentoring with Mollie S Moving from Texas to Florida

74: Mini Mentoring with Mollie S Moving from Texas to Florida

Alison:
Have you done anything to tag team or be sideline support for any other complimentary services like bridal shops? Bridal shops, you’re gonna have the same clientele. Are you doing anything to support them or connect with them? Picture this, two military spouses, cameras in hand, businesses in boxes, moving across the country again. I’m Allison, six-figure family photographer based in Hawaii, married to the Marine Corps, business mentor to photographers craving more clients, more income, and more freedom. Oh, and professional PCS survivor.

Melissa:
I’m Melissa, newborn photographer by day, SEO wizard by night, and fellow expert in the art of rebuilding your business from scratch.

Alison:
We’ve been each other’s voice of reason through 27 combined years of photography entrepreneurship and 9 business relocations that would make anyone’s head spin. Countless Marco Polo videos later, we realized we’ve got some stories to tell and some wisdom to share.

Melissa:
Now we’re taking those real, raw conversations public because every photographer needs a friend who gets it. Ready to keep it moving? Let’s go!

Alison:
Okay, guys, welcome back. This is an episode of mini mentoring where we help a real live small business owner who’s facing a move or has already moved and needs help restarting their business faster. Welcome, Molly. Thank you for being here.

Mollie:
Okay, so tell us a bit about yourself. I have been doing this quite some time. I started shooting weddings back in 2005, so 20 years, but I started my business in 2008. From where we got married and went to college back to Southern California, where I started my business. And so we lived there for 13 years. And then during the pandemic, we moved to Texas. So we relocated then and it went great. The move, like I knew nothing, didn’t have anything, but thank goodness it went well. So you’ve done it before already by yourself? I have, yeah. Okay.

Melissa:
Winning? And weddings during the pandemic and moving.

Mollie:
Oh, hello. I know. I said if I can do anything. What do you need us for? The last two years have been obviously a little rougher, but right now my income is the main income in the family. Okay. So my son is starting a business and you know how that goes. It’s like. A little more pressure. crazy times, but we decided to move from Texas to northeastern Florida, so Jacksonville, St.

Melissa:
Augustine area.

Mollie:
I know that area.

Melissa:
We used to go, we loved it up there and we’d go visit.

Mollie:
I’m very excited.

Melissa:
If we moved to that area, I don’t think we’d have come back to Virginia.

Mollie:
I am from Southern California, so I am very much a beach Disney person and Texas does not have Either one. So we’re getting back to there. So we are moving again, and there’s a little bit more pressure because everything’s on me. My kids are older, so they require more stuff. So we have to have like five tons. They’re more expensive. They are so expensive. So ports and all the things. What is your timeline for arriving in Jacksonville? So we are hoping to move in February. Yeah, that is the plan. I have been working on everything for a while, for a year, because we’ve known for… Oh, yes, ma’am. for like a while. I’ve been switching SEO and things like that. And so I do have some background in that.

Melissa:
But I could tell I looked I was like, wait, she’s already got her keyword squared away.

Alison:
Yeah. When will you know or have a drop dead date? Like this is what’s happening. Is February a drop dead date or is it a it’s a wishy washy?

Mollie:
Oh, it I really truly hope that’s the drop dead date. Okay, cool. So let’s act like it. Okay, cool. Yeah, like that’s what I’m just like, you know, if we don’t do it, then when are we going to do it? Because there’s never really a good time because we’re just up and moving a business and Yeah, okay. So you’ve been working on this for a year. What have you done? I I’ve switched over my keywords. I’m still, my keywords are St. Augustine wedding photographer for my homepage, and then Jacksonville wedding photographer, I do believe, for my wedding page. But on there, I still have that I’m St. Augustine and Houston, because I still am booking my weddings here also. So I’ll fly back and forth.

Melissa:
Okay, okay, gotcha. So you’re gonna be flying back and forth. Have you thought about, and how long are you planning to fly back and forth?

Mollie:
Hopefully just a year because I did that when we moved before and it’s not so much fun. So we’re hoping to minimize that. Probably a year, but I have booked weddings there. Oh, congratulations! Yeah, thank you. That’s huge!

Alison:
When’s your first wedding?

Mollie:
November is my first one. Then I have one in April also.

Melissa:
And is the venue going to be one that you hope you’re going to shoot at more?

Mollie:
Yeah, it’s really both of them really nice. They’re both country clubs and they both have planners and they’re good. They’re good. So I’m still not understanding why you need us.

Melissa:
You sound like you.

Mollie:
What can I do for you? I have Ubersuggest and so I can tell where I am and I can tell how many clicks I get and how many clicks the people above me get. And there’s just a huge, huge, huge, huge difference between the very first person and the second person. So I’m like, legit, I need to be number one or like number two to get there. And I’m not ranking at all for Jacksonville wedding photographer. So I don’t know what that is either. Are you blogging? I am.

Alison:
How often and what are you blogging about?

Mollie:
I have been. I haven’t done it this week, but I have been trying to do every week. I am going between families and weddings. Okay. When I went to do the engagement session for the couple that I’m doing their wedding, I went and visited venues. So I actually. Okay. So you’ve done a planning trip. A scouting trip. Yeah. I actually messaged Melissa. I don’t know if you remember, but I’m like, huh, but what should I do? You went and scouted venues. Did you do photos? Yeah, photos. So I have a whole blog post on Jacksonville wedding venues for light and airy weddings. And I’m actually ranking in the top 10 for that blog post already. Okay. Yeah, that’s good. So I’m blogging that. I have some other really location specific. I’m trying to be as location specific with not being there. Okay, like with what? What are your topics? So it’s the engagement session. So I did an engagement session and I did best beach locations because we did it. But that doesn’t really help me so much because when they’re looking for engagement sessions, they’re already engaged. But I did it just so I can do one. And I also use those to send out to people for information purposes. Yeah, well, I did winter weddings in Florida, which is that was the only keyword that I could find. So that was my keyword. And then my title was in Northeast Florida, St. Augustine, Jacksonville. So I went more into specifics with that. But that one’s ranking like I’m like number one for that one. Yeah. And I talk to people about it. Yeah.

Alison:
Have you done anything to tag team or be sideline support for any other complimentary services like bridal shops? bridal shops, you’re gonna have the same clientele. Are you doing anything to support them or connect with them?

Mollie:
One of the planners that I’m working with for my April wedding that’s there, when I go to shoot the wedding, I’m hoping to do a style shoot or some sort of shoot. there, so I’ve worked with them. I’m going to work with her. She’s great, so I’m excited. Can you do an interview with her about her business? Yeah, I can. For the winter wedding one, I contacted two planners and I quoted them in there. Yeah, so do something similar with bridal shops.

Alison:
Think about any service or brick-and-mortar store that a newly engaged person is going to be going to. You’re right about the engagement photos. They’ve already got a photographer, right? But the bridal shop, what is gonna come before finding the wedding photographer and meet them there? Interview those people. Planners are gonna be a big one. All those things. The venue itself, using the venue to rank for that venue and it be your blog posts, right? Your locations, your images. And then using all that content to blog interviews, blog more venue information. When it comes to your planners too, this is a really fun idea. You may need a little bit more content before you do it, but I would create a studio album, like an album that is all your work at that venue, and give it to the planner that works there. You might need a few more options under your belt, but then that helps them do their job. Oh, this is this one photographer, and this whole album is just her work at this location. And these are the different angles, and that helps them see themselves there, but also see them with your shoot style. Yeah. But it’s a gift to them, right? So it’s going to be a pretty costly gift. You probably want to do a 12-inch album, really nice, really on brand with full-page stuff. But you want to help those planners help you, right?

Mollie:
Okay. Yeah.

Alison:
So give them content. And it lives there, right? At the country. And you could do that for every venue or every planner. If you’re working with planners that are not venue-specific, it could be a multitude of venues, right? And you can have it sectioned out

Melissa:
Okay, so you’ve heard me talk about the blogging club before, but here’s a major update. We just rolled out AI-powered tools that help you write faster while keeping your authentic voice. Plus, we’ve got a tool that takes your blog post and creates all your marketing for the week in minutes. Our member results are incredible. Danielle just finished an entire blog post, including photos, in under an hour. Sarah moved to a new city and now has 13 pages ranking on page one of Google. And Jasmine booked a baby plant client directly from one blog post. Here’s the thing. While social media posts disappear, your blog posts work for years. I’m still getting clients from blogs I wrote in 2019. If you’ve been on the fence about joining, now’s the time. Get 50% off your first month with code keepitmoving at thebloggingclub.com because your blog should work just as hard as you do. There are 170 searches a month for St. Augustine wedding planner. I would do a blog post and I would say, top five St. Augustine wedding planners for your wedding. And I would talk about each one of them and try and tackle that. Because again, that’s what Allison’s saying. It jumps the line where they’re looking for a planner first and then you’re later. And if you’re coming up as a blog post, because I have that actually for Fredericksburg still, I never got rid of it because it had such high traffic volume for me that I was like, I’m just going to keep it around. Okay.

Alison:
So this, so Note for the audio, I’m showing Molly a giant 12-inch album that I did this with. So this is a studio album. So it’s 12 inches. It’s a slipcover, so right here it has my information, my name, my little tagline, and my website. but then there’s chapter dividers, so it’s just a page that says families, and it’s like, you would, this would be like XYZ venue, and nothing but giant beautiful images from that venue, and then you’re going to have another chapter of this venue, and then give that to each planner, and then maybe 12 inches is too big for your planner, but don’t do eight inches, cast it, maybe do a 12, ask them, I don’t know, take them, see What would you like?

Melissa:
I used to do venue albums. So for the venues I really wanted to work at, I would go ahead and get an album for them and I would drop that off. But I’m trying to think who else is jumping the line. Planners were the big one and venues were the big one of trying to get there. So you said you did a bunch of venues that you visited? I did five. In the three days I was there, I went to five.

Mollie:
And have you blogged about those five? Yes. Yeah, so not individually. I haven’t because I didn’t have enough to do enough photos or enough information either.

Melissa:
I would say, honestly, photos wise, you could get by with one or two photos and you can fill them in later because it’s going to take a while for blog posts to rank. But I would email those venues and I would just say, hey, I’m writing a blog post on your venue because I think it’s amazing. Would you answer these questions? And I used to give them just five questions that let them sell their venue. So then they were like, oh, yeah, I want to talk about my venue. You know, that we have a bridal suite and we have this and we have that and the reception holds this many and we have three outdoors. And then I could just copy and paste those answers and put them into a blog post. And that’s how I got started ranking for venues before I was hired there. I would just email them and then I would go out and take pictures kind of thing. And that let me get in without emailing and being like, hey, add me to your preferred vendor list, which I love. Yeah.

Alison:
And I would even say, I would even say doing the five questions, give them the option to just do a voice memo on their phone and either email or text it back. Hey, if you don’t have time to write this out, just do a voice memo per question. And that way you can just speak the answer out and they can just do, and like less than five minutes and then you do the work of transcribing it. You can pop that into AI, have it transcribe it for you.

Melissa:
Exactly.

Alison:
And so that just, whatever makes it easier for them to help you help them, do that. And then backlink and then be like, oh, when the blog’s done, share it with them. Make sure you send it to them. Give them some, I don’t know if they’re on social media, but give them some content that so-and-so Molly just wrote up about how fantastic, and here’s some photos that she took of the venue. They could share that. They could put that on their email list. They could put that on their website and help do their job for them.

Mollie:
Yeah. You guys need a lot more work to do. That’s awesome. That’s so good. Families, what are you doing to try and target families? So my goal a couple years ago was just to go into families because my kids are getting busy. Yeah, yeah. You don’t want to go on weekends. Yeah. Yeah. And so that is the eventual goal. But then I have to do weddings to like financially like I just have to do that. And I’m good at it. And I have all my systems set up. And so when I realized this was a long game for a while more, I worked on all that just to make it even better. I get even better brides. Do you know if the brides in St.

Melissa:
Augustine, are they destination or are they local?

Mollie:
A lot of them are local. There are a lot of elopement destinations. Those aren’t my favorite. I like the whole shebang. So that’s not really my market. I thought about it, but I like the getting to know someone.

Melissa:
Yeah. Those wedding clients can become your family clients down the line. And I used to know a photographer who did a Photographer for Life program. You could probably Google those things. But basically, she was, I’ll waive your session fee, and you come to me for your family photos because you’re a fast client. I think she waived the session fee, but then they still made their purchases through IPS and stuff. But that kind of encouraged them to come back to her every year after that. Oh, I love that.

Alison:
That begets a good question. What is your structure for both weddings and families?

Mollie:
So for weddings, it is just all-inclusive. It comes with all the pictures. Yeah, that makes sense. Any artwork? Any upsell options? There’s options to add them. I used to have an album in there, but I have cut it out and they can just add it on later because it became such a hassle because they wouldn’t get back to me for a year.

Alison:
I think I have a client from years ago. If you’re going to include it, you’d be like, you have a three-month expiration on this or it’s gone. I know.

Mollie:
I had little kids when those were on there and I was like, we’re just get rid of those altogether. So yeah, so they can add those on. And I actually encourage a lot the sign in books. That’s what I really love to sign in book. So I have that option that I really encourage. For families, I was doing a session fee that included a certain number of images, and then they added on. So I just took that off. And just right now I need something simple. And so I just raised the prices raised to 650 and includes all the pictures. Okay, yeah. So it was I know. I know. But that is one thing that I’m dealing with right now because I need to book as many family sessions as I can. I get it. I totally get it.

Alison:
I did the same thing when I moved to Hawaii. But guess what I’m doing in Hawaii right now? You’re making a lot more. I don’t even want to tell you. It sounds like I’m bragging, okay? You are capable. And I’m going to backpedal a little bit. How much do you think, how many destination family sessions do you think you can get particularly in the summer? Oh, I think it’s in Augustine.

Melissa:
Oh, it wouldn’t be the summer though. It would be in Augustine. It’s different, but yeah.

Mollie:
It’s like the beach, I think a lot of people go there during the June. That will definitely be something that I focus on when I get there.

Alison:
You need to change your structure then. And not that you need to do that right now. Before next summer and probably before February, maybe over Christmas, you need to change that family structure. You need to go virtual IPS or some sort of high-end hybrid option here. Because I know you got to keep it simple. But you need to shoot for the stars and then land lower in the meantime, but be able to work your way back up. You can have a temporary spring 26 entry offer or limited time offer. It’s a hybrid option, right? But make it temporary. Tell everybody it’s temporary because what you don’t want to do is get in, this is what I’m doing and then change it again. And now you have to remarket to a different clientele because that’s, you did all this work for somebody else, right? Like for a different demographic. Change it now. Virtual IPS, IPS or a hybrid that, you know, like a simple sales system. Yeah, I use simple sales and I really like it. You bare minimum need to double.

Melissa:
So that’s the thing. Before I did Simple Sales, I was at $650 all-inclusive. Five years ago? Yeah. As soon as I implemented Simple Sales, that became my bottom collection. And my top collection at that time, I think, was like $1,200. And I started booking the $1,200 all the time. And I was like, oh my god.

Alison:
Without the in-person, virtual… Yeah, I don’t do in-person. So I do a virtual gallery reveal, but my average sale is $2,500 for a family session. So now I do have a lot more touch points. I do emphasize this is a full service experience over here where I am custom designing and custom editing a lot of stuff. But they’re not getting everything with that investment. They’re still only getting 20, 30 images with that investment. Now they’re getting high end quality European made artwork. That’s gonna last forever. But I think you’ve got a similar clientele and you need to shoot for that. Because you need to make more money per session, regardless of what you’re doing.

Melissa:
No, I definitely do. Florida is such a destination for that kind of stuff. I just got an inquiry this week for Florida, and I was so bummed.

Alison:
And let me tell you this. I switched from all-inclusive and hybrid to this virtual IPS model in Virginia Beach. I did not have a move. It was right in the middle of our three years that we were there. I think I did it literally halfway in between, and it worked in Virginia Beach. My average sales a little lower because it just was I was starting out and I just I’ve crept up since but I was doing virtual IPS with a session fee included all that stuff in Virginia and it was successful. So Florida is going to be even more.

Mollie:
I know and I I love doing extended family. I love that because I made the most money off of those sessions.

Alison:
And it’s the best value for your client as well because everybody’s getting what they want at the same time. And so it’s a real beautiful streamlined system.

Melissa:
Yeah. I did see on your website, your family page is still Houston right now, right? It is, yeah, because I’m trying to like really hit that. Get that fall, that fall, that last fall rush. We’ll go ahead and duplicate that page and then make it for St. Augustine Family Photographer and get that started now. Because here’s the thing, even if the photos aren’t an exact match, and I had this problem coming from Virginia to Florida, I didn’t have any beach images, but I still wanted to get that page out on Google because it’s going to take a while for it to start ranking. So if it’s sitting on page seven and it’s got fields and forests and not beaches and stuff, I’m okay with that because then by the time I got down there and got photos, and you could use some of the engagement photos you’ve got on a family page too. I would go ahead and get that out soon too, but I would just duplicate that current family page and then just update it all for St.

Mollie:
Augustine family photographer. That’s great, yeah. I thought about, because we are close to Galveston, not close, but two hours from Galveston, and so I thought about going down there and trying to do like a session down there, find a camp to do a session just to get down there. Are you guys traveling back to St. Augustine or Jacksonville anytime? I’m going to be there in November.

Melissa:
Oh, that’s the time people want to get photos, like Florida. I think even northern Florida, it’s still that way. I would say instead of Galveston, I would try to do it when you go back in November, because then you’ve got locations that are specific for there.

Mollie:
Yeah, and it’s nice also because I’m in Houston and the foliage is actually, other than the beach, is very similar. Oh good. Oh, that’s awesome. So there’s a lot of forests and things like that, fields up in that part of Florida. I don’t think that I even drove by this forest with the tall trees that I always shoot at. I was like, oh my gosh, that looks just the same as down the street. So yeah, it’s good that it won’t be too much of a change.

Melissa:
Yeah, scenery wise.

Mollie:
Texas. Yeah.

Melissa:
And actually, I looked at her website because she’s been around for so long. You’ve got a higher domain authority than I have. Yeah.

Alison:
Yeah. I think once Google realizes you’re moving and you actually physically move, it won’t take terribly long. Just a matter of keeping that content relevant, sharing it on social media, sharing it in the right places and connecting with the right people that your audience wants to see and being super, super helpful and consistent. But once you get there, I think it’s going to be pretty quick. Yeah. Yeah, it sounds like you’re already doing all the right things. You’re doing exactly what you’ve described is exactly what I did when I left Virginia Beach. I had about a year out to plan. And I think I moved everything in the spring. We moved in July. And then by the following March, I was in the top three. So you’re on track to do something similar. It’s a lot of work. You got a lot to do, not gonna lie. And it’s so scary. Yeah, it is. And I think that’s the best thing you can do is verbalize that. It is scary. You’re running two businesses in two places right now. You’re trying to work your tail off here in Houston, and that’s its own cup of tea. And then you’re literally traveling to go do another session, and then you’re going to move in the middle of all that. It’s a lot. It’s a lot. But you’re already doing a really good job. You really are. You have any questions for us?

Mollie:
Anything? Real quick one. Yeah. What do you guys think about Pinterest? Does that help your SEO? Yes. Yeah. It’s a backlink. Especially with weddings.

Alison:
I tried to use it a lot for Hawaii trip planning. But when it comes to wedding and events and people want an aesthetic and a look and a style. Yeah. Use your florists. Use Florist. Use all those vendors to their advantage and do exactly what I mentioned we talked about for the planners. Do their job for them. Create content for them. Create stuff and put your name on it, right? Label everything. Hey, I want you to share this. My only request is you tag me. You tag me. I mean, wedding, you almost got the whole SEO thing in your back pocket so easy.

Melissa:
The only other thing I would say to do is go back through your blog of anything that’s Houston that if you don’t love that wedding anymore or you don’t love that family session, go ahead and get rid of it because right now you’re top heavy on the Houston content. So we want to tip that scale to St. Augustine. So if it’s a wedding you love, obviously keep it. But if you were like, oh, I didn’t love this one anyway, feel free to say you’re out of here. Archive off some of that content to start helping that balance more.

Mollie:
What do you think about using a wedding that I have for here and doing something like the best farm venues in Northeast Florida and using one of my farmish looking weddings?

Alison:
So I did something similar moving to Hawaii. We had lived in Okinawa, Japan, which I called the Hawaii of Asia. Subtropic island, blue water, but there was a lot more rock formations off the beach and stuff. But it was still otherwise an island. And so I used them right before we got out to Hawaii. And I’ve had one person ask me, where’s that rock? And I’m like, Oh, actually, that’s in Japan.

Melissa:
I had to grab every image I had from Virginia that had any kind of water in it and throw that into my family portfolio. And it was Potomac River. It was But you just you fake it till you make it just so there’s something in there. So yeah, I think you could do that. And then just go back and change that out later. Yeah, an actual one. Because the important part is planting all those SEO seeds now and then you can always go back and adjust things.

Alison:
Yeah, and it will not affect your ranking, whatever you change. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you so much, Molly. Keep us updated. Let us know how it goes next spring. Maybe we’ll have to have you back on.

Mollie:
Just get there and just book like 20 weddings right away. And that’s great. 30 family weddings in like the first two months. That’s going to happen. I would love to hear if anybody does that anyway.

Alison:
Awesome. Thanks, Molly. Wish you all the luck. Thank you. Bye.

Melissa:
would be awesome. And two, forward this episode to a biz bestie, mill spouse, or anyone facing moving their business. We’d love it if you shared this episode with even just one person. If you have questions, you can reach out to Alison on Instagram, at Alison Belfotag, or you can find me, Melissa, in my Facebook group, Picture Perfect Rankings. Check the show notes for links, and we’re so excited to have you guys here.

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