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Trimming the Fat in Your Workflow with Q&A

Lesson 29 from: Build a High Volume Senior Photography Business

Matthew The Body Kemmetmueller

Trimming the Fat in Your Workflow with Q&A

Lesson 29 from: Build a High Volume Senior Photography Business

Matthew The Body Kemmetmueller

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Lesson Info

29. Trimming the Fat in Your Workflow with Q&A

Lessons

Lesson Info

Trimming the Fat in Your Workflow with Q&A

Increasing your earnings are all your steps streamline you know it's the old saying is the juice worth the squeeze? Are you working too hard to get a couple of drops are you getting what you need streamline it figured out have a happy to do a price you're happy to do it price means of making money and if you can't be happy to do the job you shouldn't do it so let's trim the fat from our businesses and it's really a tricky thing to get on creative live and talk to everyone about their work flow because truthfully I have I have a good work flow I have a sound workflow if you do it it will work for you it will absolutely speed up your process it will absolutely help you make great images but that's my process and your process might be different and you're different process is just his valid as long as it works as a business decision as long as you're processes thought out works so what I want to do is just go through some ideas and ask you guys some questions not really to tell you what y...

ou I don't want to tell you go do this this this this is I showed you every step I showed you everything I d'oh and that's a great way to do it and I like the way we do it I think it's great I think it's phenomenal there might be some things that need to be changed and tweet for you, so all I want to do with this is askyou some questions that you gotta ask yourself and ask yourself if you can cut the fat from your own business. So every step it's necessary, it's consistent its point are its profit and driven to the point, we're going for this purpose, okay, everything we do in our work flow it's I mean it's that simple and your workflow needs to be consistent and we are in touch on this. But if I hire cole to do my session and I go in and I pay you a hundred bucks for your session, p and I come and see my images and I get like thirty images and they're good and that's just get thirty images and they're good on elene comes and pays a hundred bucks for her session, and you guys really get along a lot better than you and I did, and her session takes twice as long and she ends up with sixty images because he just had so much fun. You got lost in making composites, and you spend four hours retouching her session in thirty minutes, retouching my now the images of the same quality. But I bought a session and she bought a session. They're the same session. The work needs to be the same or you're ripping someone off and when people feel like they're getting ripped off that they're way more likely to talk about getting ripped off then getting what they bought so don't don't cheat your clients don't cheat yourself let's take some some questions now I hope I gave you guys I want to reach I loaded it on the front and if you had any questions about any of the work flow stuff that we've gone over speak up because I want to make sure that I'm able to help you guys out there as well absolutely let's start here in the room if anybody has anything that they wanted to ask let's, go ahead and let people know so you can jump into the chat room there's the green chat live with class participants link below the video feed and then we have the creative cues room and that's where we would love to have you asking questions for matthew will you know what rust to have it? I'm going to go through a couple of points right now, okay, that are some questions that people might need to ask themselves and this might challenge some people and get some different questions in there as well so let it be a great idea let's do that so kick through this session and then we'll come back to that so if you have anything anything that you saw me do if you have any questions about how why we do our work flow in any way ask now because I want to make sure I cover all your questions but the questions that I want you all to ask yourself this is all on you and I don't need to know the answers I want you guys to go home and ask yourself this okay, how are your clients finding you is our marketing working? I assume everybody here has some clients maybe you don't do as many as you want maybe you have a ton but how are they finding you what's working in your business? Is it a direct mailing? Is your business really struggling because the clients are finding or just the people that you work with at your day job and you just like you had a baby? I could do your baby session today? Is that how your client's a friend? How are you being found like? And they told you when we walked through the first question I asked when people call in for a senior session awesome I'd love to book you in for your session where did you hear about us from? So pay attention to the stuff because what's working for you is something that you may want to exploit if you're figuring out that, uh you are in at a certain event center as a preferred client as a preferred vendor and that's really driving you a lot of business probably be in your best efforts to get into a war venues as the preferred vendor. All right, I've heard of boot while you say you do boudoir work, I've heard of people that send albums, two plastic surgeons offices, maybe that works I don't know I've never tried it, but if you got him in getting a bunch of business out of it because you might want to get in a couple others, so start asking yourself like, what is my marketing? What am I doing? And what's what's working for me? Secondly, like, how are you booking your clients and work flows talked about all the time let's talk about all the time at every dimension to go to you, log onto creative live and a lot of people have a lot of tips workflow and it's all good information because well, it's like there's a thousand ways to do it it's just finding the right one for you oh, but not focusing on the digital work flow the client workflow how are you dealing with your clients if I asked you right now, how many sessions did you do last year? Could you tell me if I asked you if you shot a session on may fifth, could you tell me who it wass the phone number? Their email address? Could you tell me how much they ordered? I mean, this is all stuff that we have at our fingertips and go back years it's easy because we're using a good system and I want to make sure that you are and I don't care what software it is. I don't care if youse studio plus and kara views taavi I don't care of you use shoot q. I don't care ofyou studio cloud. I don't care if you use anything. I don't care, but you have to have that information and it has to be accessible. So are you doing that? How are you doing that? Is that a good system for you? Said something you need to work on. Do you have a digital workflow? I know that sounds like really dumb. And I know that everyone's like, well, yeah, I I make images. Yes, of course I would. It'll work well, but no, really. Do you have a digital workflow? Can you tell me every step that happens from the moment you take that memory card out, too? The moment those files are done because I can tell you every step that ours to go through I could tell you where the memory card goes I can tell you who knows what to work on I could tell you how it's downloaded I could tell you how it's process I could tell you the things that are edited that are retouched and I could tell you how it's edited on every single session and your digital workflow should provide you with that same information you should know what's going on with your files and you should know every sessions got and like susan brought up yesterday it's yes you can edit things differently and yes you can provide your clients with a look if they want a signature look absolutely but do you know what do you have a system for it? Do you know how it's done? Can you recreate it or is it some random thing that you just stumbled upon a photo shop and you've no idea and then you put on your web site because it's super cool the next guy comes in and says, I want that and you don't know how you shot the image and you don't know how you processed it do you have a digital work flow like in your digital work foolhardy store you images it shouldn't hurt now I am at an extreme with sorting my images in that eye shoot very few I get it right I do my cullinan camera that's unique I understand that I really I know that a lot of you mentioned that you took away over shooting from this and that's great and maybe your overshooting is not quite as, uh extreme is mine and that's okay but shoot less, make them count every clique needs to serve a purpose and when you do that, sorting becomes way easier my goal when I sort my images I assume that what I'm downloading I'm going to keep if I'm sorting I'm sorting with the vision of what do I need to exclude because I'm going to keep way more than I'm going to get rid off so my vision when I sit down to sort I got a system, I load the images I make him really big I have huge previews, I hide my panels, I go full screen and I looked for the ones that aren't good enough and it's really easy when you know that that's what you're looking for you know what isn't good enough for you right now? I also use I got it zen instinct it isthe it's like you go off in your gut is that a good image is good? Can you sell that it's going to meet my client's expectations if there's something that kind of makes you feel weird, it doesn't scream to you? Yes, then you need to work on that that's you know that means that you're taking too many images so it's kind of a yes or a no thing and the other thing is like dees light room and I use light room so much how do I sort I sort through the light room because there's other software out there here a lot of people that pushed like oh photo mechanics amazing you should use photo mechanic can sort through your stuff so quick I don't use photo mechanic I bought it I have two licenses I might just give those away I don't even know like I don't use it I've had it for years and I don't like it because of the simple reason that if I go through and I set up my previews right on light room I could have day near the same speed and I'm only working in one piece of software keeps it simple to your sorting and what you're doing you're editing it make it easy and are you organized? You need to stay organized use light room what a dhobi devon they made light room is they made a piece of software that forces you to be organized you can't move your images around willy nilly they have to be in a certain place or the system doesn't work all right do you need to work faster use light room okay um light room is this ridiculous tool that's made to generate aye you can preset anything you could preset anything so are we are we looking at anything that I'm going to do twice? Exactly the same should be a preset if I'm going to make the same corrections because I'm shooting in my studio and it's always the same white bowne I should never have to go and click the white balance quicker. I should run it as a preset it's done get it perfect! Save it, save yourself the work. All right, let's, take a couple of questions there if we got any so in the whole scheme of workflow and when you set all this up for your business, how do you keep all of your associate photographers and all of your employees aligned with the workflow? So cruel eyes had asked, I have I have no problem with overshooting with some of my associate photographers do how do you suggest addressing the issue with them once the new ones we have a new studio once that opens, I don't want to be hard, but I want to be encouraging and I know you talked about having them photo shop and that's the way that you get them to really big stick. Thank you. How do you keep your employees aligned with your values and all those, you know, all of the work flow in the structure that you put in your business? You know, I think that I hope at least that my passion for the business and workflow that I hope that I've been able to show you guys that this is something that means a lot to me and this is something that's, their values that I carry throughout my business and my employees are employees, but they when you some forty hours a week with somebody, get to become even you get to be friends, teo and it's easy, tio, they know what the expectations are put upon them, they know that we don't overshoot. I have associate photographers that shoot more than me like I do not not everybody in my city or we'll shoot twenty shots and that's, okay, because they also aren't shooting the hundreds, and we talked about how I bought the small memory cards to make sure that they don't go crazy and we talk about it and that's something that if you are having issues with that that's, just a dialogue that you need to have an honest conversation like go through the images with them. Why did we take five images of the same pose with the same expression from the same angle? Why'd we do that and have them think about it because you don't I want a parade or belittle anyone. I mean that you don't want to make people feel dumb for how they're doing their pictures and I and when they come in and they start working for me the first time they work for me, they start shooting for me. I take as many as you need to get the job done don't be so focused on understood that I'm not over shooting, that we don't have enough good ones, so that's going to take you one hundred pictures to nail this session take a hundred pictures, but once we know that you're able to nail the session consistently, then we're going to start streaming down. We're going to start turning down the number of shots that you're taking, so the goal of this is never when I when I told you guys don't overshoot absolutely don't overshoot but it's way more important to make sure you have good images and so if you are, don't don't be so concerned about not over shooting that you wind up with junk and it does take a little bit of time and it does, but if you know that this is this is our goal, we know that this is what we're working for, we're going to get there and that's something that you just need to have a conversation with her in place like we we need to we need to cut this down you're killing me. You're killing me, smalls. No, you're killing me. So so what? What do we need to do to get this? Get this time back? I think part of it goes back to what you've been saying is that you need to master your craft and that's going to help you that's what makes it so that you know that you can get it on the first or second shot is you've worked at that, you know, balanced out your lighting, you figured out everything that you need to do in that area, you've done it enough times that you know what you're looking for, and so you know, when you've got it and then when you can move on so it's about master crafting yeah, like that, we've got one here really quick, I'm going to take one from rick chemical who says, matthew, how much time do you allow after a session to process the images before the client returns for proof, so what's the timing workflow as far as post session, how long until you've got them edited and then how long until they're back for the group? That's a great question and I'm actually disappointed myself for not going over that in the work clothes, so thank you for pointing out of efficiency in my workshop, and I'm glad I asked these questions because I absolutely should have gone over that. So in our workflow we talked about that we set up a proof book pickup meeting in that meeting they come in and we walked them through the order catalog, which we'll talk a little bit about in the sales process that's when they get to see their images on a big screen still because we kind of do this hybrid in studio viewing proof book system so at that point when they when that meeting is though it's typically two weeks after your session now our systems like it really does depend on what time of year it iss like with our boudoir stuff way set a time scale at the front end of the month and we're like, okay, with what we have booked, we should be able to turn these in ten days with seniors we'd like to stay it two weeks now and some with the boudoir stuff like when it's crazy and we're doing we have times of the year where were doing five or successions a day it's two to three weeks it's not ten days we push it out and so what's important is like finding that that number the amount of time that your client will deem appropriate and you can keep up with your work on and the one thing that's really, really important I think that you should always I don't like the dropping client. I like to know when my clients are coming. I like to be ready for them. I like to have everything prepared. And so I set appointments for, like, for for weddings. When I used to just have my weddings, there seems to be like, I'll be ready in, like, four to six weeks. Okay, what would happen is I would get a phone call a week. Three hey, matthew, we're so excited about our wedding images. We weren't sure if things were running ahead of schedule. And if you got our wedding stuff done, can we swing by and pick it up today? And he's a no it's like I told you four to six weeks. We aren't even in four weeks. It's absolutely not done yet, but I'll give you a call when it's ready. You know what happens at nine o one on the fourth week? Your phone rings hey, matthew it's been four weeks. Everybody in photos that and yet today? Oh, no, they aren't done yet, it's. Four to six weeks. I'll give you a call and it can actually become a frustrating experience for your client. Because they're obviously excited to see their images, but you obviously need to have time to get your work done, and now I'm not saying that four to six weeks is inappropriate amount time, it could be one of two days, whatever you need to, you need to set an appointment with that client, because when you set an appointment with that client, you've set the expectation they know at three o'clock on wednesday, their stuff is done, and by knowing it's done at three o'clock on wednesday, you know what happens? They never call to see if it's done on tuesday, they never call to check of it where you're at in your process, because you've set that expectation. Now, the big thing with doing this is you can never be late. You make an appointment, you have to meet that deadline. If you don't, you haven't met the expectations of your client. You set yourself up for this date, you've got to make it. So whether seen your stuff, our turn to weeks, and with our in house printing, I mean, we could do it in a day if we really wanted to push it out. We have that as an option with twenty four hour turnaround time, you gotta pay for it, but we could download, process or print a session that quickly, but also two weeks allows the perception of it allows you to perceive value in the work, and if I'm a one our lab, people don't value one our work, so we turn it out in two weeks and then we'll talk about this in depth and our sales sessions. But the next step is like with the proof book and the order catalog and sending them home. We do that for a variety of reasons. One I can't take two hours for all of the kids that we do and do an in studio order in session it doesn't work, it doesn't work with with that after I would have to hire another employee just to do sale sessions for me with the amount of work we dio and that's not really that's not a profitable decision for me to go hire a full time person just to do my sales and we already mentioned like, if you if you do the incident of you and you can make great money, it's an awesome option and I'm not taking that away and saying that's a bad option, I will talk trash about online ordering. I got no problem with saying that online sales is junk, but instead he, uh, viewing great. And if you want to work the hours so that you can have your clients come in whenever works for them and you want to make it convenient for all the decision makers and that means that you're gonna have to work some nights and that means you're gonna have to work some weekends maybe sundays and if you're okay with that do it but for our system, how we encourage them to come in and order quickly is we discount our products if you place your order in the first thirty days, you get a better price and the faster someone comes into order, the more they're going to spend the way that when you hit him with that emotional high, that when they love the images that much that's when they're going to spend the most money. So we wanted to come back and that's also the beauty of having a real proof book because when they have that emotional high, now what you're doing is you're sending the mountain to the community with something to brag about they have that book and they're able to go and tell everyone, oh my gosh, look at these amazing images that they took of junior oh he's so great and that's that's the beauty of our system I really quick just want to point out something that you said that I don't think I've ever heard said on creative live before which is this idea of not of actually setting up an appointment of when to give them their images that is huge the number of people who I hear here who are like you have four to six weeks and then they talk about how client management is so difficult and like managing expectations and making sure people are happy and I need to do a reveal on facebook and put a couple pictures on my block to keep them happy and all that all that's great if it's working for you but if it's not setting appointment you're done, you get rid of all that need to set up all those expectations and manage that stuff if you just tell them what to expect exactly. I just wanted to underline like the the what you just said that because that's huge pay attention people love it you talk a little bit about not so much the digital work flow as faras going through light room and photoshopped but the actual files and how you're moving those around because you you move things from different people to do different steps, right? I mean, you know what I'm gonna call you one step ahead did because that's my next slide pasta it's about next flight I mean, if not my next slide but I'm gonna have them go in and monkey with my slide show so it is now no, it is my next life I'm going to talk about file management a little bit more because that is really important but I did want to touch on one thing that that you would just kind of brought up and it was a topic that I haven't discussed and you said that people have to do they talk about have to do like a facebook reveal and stuff I don't do like and I'm awful at social media as a business owner I think I'm awful at it I will admit that fault we don't have a lot of action on our page we don't do a lot I told you guys on day one that it's really hard now because facebook isn't is restricting your native reach now you gotta pay to have people see your posts ah lot of the people that are seen it when you pay are not really clients it's not turning into dollars I have not found a successful way to turn my fans into income like and it's great that I've gotten like more likes on my my chemist miller photography page from photographers from during this creative life but I have from clients in three years we're just wonderfully I'm not gonna do much on there guys like I'm not telling you to leave but I'm not gonna do much but what happens when you have all those photographers or people that aren't clients you're hurting your chance to be successful to the people that might be because when you post those people are included in the small amount that facebook release your post too, and if you're another photographer and I talk about a big sale I have going on, you probably aren't going to like that post if you don't like that post, the chances of that post getting sent out to more people is lessened and the idea of doing facebook reveals in doing a sneak peek, I'll just ask you this question rest if you're going to do a facebook preview, which images are you showing from the session? Hopefully the best one? Yeah, absolutely. So why am I excited coming to see the rest of my photos? I just saw the best ones on facebook a week ago, so why would you want to take your best image? The one that you're the most excited to give to this client and not even be able to see them enjoy it for the first time? Why are you taking the wind out of your sails? To have them come in and be energetic and excited about seeing their images and you're ruining it by giving them a sneak peak of your best five? They're probably only gonna order five poses you just sent them the best five shots that you took, I don't believe in facebook preview images it just doesn't make sense to me yes, it can get people like excited about about it, but the overall excitement in their experience it doesn't increase it's just this spread out a little bit more in a way that doesn't help your sales so we do post ah high school senior images on facebook and that's one thing that will talk a little bit about in sales as well, but how we do it is in this industry everyone's been seen declines in numbers of wallets people don't order wallets anymore. Why? Because kids don't handem out why? Because they just won't put it on facebook so how many people get as a photographer and you should have seen your session and I love it when they try to slip it in at the end of the session like it's not a big deal and you're like ok, so what do you want to order? Okay, we're gonna order this gonna order this, we're gonna order this we're going over to this like, oh yeah, can we get all these on facebook? No, no, you can't get all of these on facebook and and I've have you like no that's expensive that's worth something that's a value if you have all of your images on facebook, you'll spend less money because there's value that's being taken away by me putting it on facebook hurting my my ability to sell so what we do is we just put our we put a price on it it's twenty five bucks and image it's a low residents watermarks and I put chemical euler right by your face you can't crop it out twenty five bucks well matthew, that doesn't sound like very good customer service but I'll give it to you for free if you buy it as a wallet anything by his wallet you can have it for free one of the wallet images the kids going by their favorites they're the ones that they want on facebook it's not the moms that are already in the wall it's it's the kids so make it an opportunity for your clients to spend more money have the kid want to drive the sail up higher because they want for five pictures on facebook so they need to order for five different poses of wallets you're making more money it's an ethical way to do it also but what you're doing is guiding people where you want them to go through your price in your products all right so um dave brought up what do we do with our files have you back that thing up? Ah file management and how you work with your files it's so important and we didn't go over this at all there's the basic three two one philosophy with backups which means that you should have three copies on two different media types and one needs to be off site. So how we work? Our file management is what? Like I told you, dave early we take and shoot a session as soon as we're done with the session. A memory card goes in a plastic folder with a piece of paper. That piece of paper has a client name, session number, pickup date and we write in by hand which memory card that was shot up? All of our memory cards are numbered on the back. So it's card number fifty six kids coming in june second at ten a m that goes in a little folder rack that we have and that just goes on the shelf until it's ready to be worked on it's all sealed up it's not going to fall out it's in a safe place now what would happen is mercedes is one of my she does a lot of our retouching right now, just also one of our boudoir photographers. But she would work through the sessions in order of who's coming up with their next appointment and the other thing that we didn't touch base on ross with setting appointment times that's beautiful about setting appointments is that sometimes you have clients that if you just say, like, I'll call you when it's ready and so you just worked through all your your sessions in order and then you like maybe worked really really hard to get a session done and then they don't come in for like three weeks because they're busy they're on vacation well, you could have prostate you could've worked on that job later when you didn't have a cz many things going on so you're working on the jobs when they need to get done by having a pickup date okay, so we go in, we set up I pick up date or it goes on the it goes on the shelf with the species paper with all that information she would go download that card, changed the route folder name move that onto her computer and start working the files at this point there's only one copy of ross on the computer but that's ok, because we still have the ross on the memory card she would go through and do you start a session? You finished a session? We don't do anything in half if you start to see your session you're there until it's done I can't come back to it so she would go through download change the light room catalog game, download the files export the j pegs process sort developed at it make the proof book make the order catalog taken our two two hours then that whole folder of raws with the j pegs that whole folder is moved to an external hard drive that's only plugged into her computer when we're moving files there and the j pegs are moved onto our server which we use the drogo server as well as called backup we used back plays and that's just always running in the background so I have my files on an external hard drive I have my files on a server and I have my files backed up off site and there's never an opportunity for me to lose them like if something were to go wrong with the light from catalogue are the hard drive crashes while she's working on it it's cool with scott the memory card and if that external hard drive is gone we still have all the j pegs that our clients have ever seen in two other locations but we do not back up I don't pay for storage to backup raws forever that's just silly it's too much too much work too much face we don't need to do it and it's just as well these things it's just not necessary so we keep all of the j pegs that you see we'll keep all those ross for one year and I feel like if you haven't come in and said I want to see the raws I think maybe I missed something if it's over a year and you haven't said anything it's gone I don't have it but I'll give you a year and then we purge the ross but we always have two copies of the j pegs cool all right let's also talk about this have you guys ever asked your lab when people place orders like the time that the most orders go into labs is like eleven p m to one I am because like people are sitting at home like drinking their five our energies beating their heads against the keyboard because they haven't ineffective workflow and they're drowning and they just want to go to bed doesn't people turning their orders why why why do we have a broken system to submit our orders okay it needs to be systematic when your client orders a canvas when you place your order for the campus gotta order right away guys don't back burner these things get the products ordered I have all of my clients they sign the piece of paper they signed their invoice all finals or order are all finals are ordered all orders are final we'll get there together don't worry uh you placed the order the moment you place that order the moment you pay me your orders in production we don't change orders and it's just because if we're going to start working on it we start working on it right away we get the canvases ordered can't this is khun take you know a week you take ten days that's a really like you'd be really dumb for me to have everything else done and then order a campus which is going to delay me delivering my client's order by ten days have a system placed the order right away when they leave another thing about placing orders, we do a lot of boudoir work and I'm going to use the actual conversation that I would have with you if you ordered an album from us. We do fully customized albums for our boudoir kinds we make an album for you it's not like anyone else's so we tell people okay, you're going to get your album proof in two weeks we're going to send you a pdf the pdf is gonna be low resolution and water mark, but it's going to give you an idea of what this looks like, you can make unlimited changes. I want this book to be the best thing you've ever ordered. I want youto love it more than anything else and I want to make it that way for you. But I don't want to design your album thirty seven times so you can make unlimited changes once after that's five bucks to change and we have had a few people that have additional changes and I hope they're watching right now because we generally don't honestly charge people to five dollars we generally don't actually do it because it's pretty small tweaks and we're like oh, well, way should jarred you but we'll be nice this time but by doing that, what you've done is you've put the expectation on your client that no, I don't want to show you what this looks like with seven of these images and black and white and then have to go back and change it back to color no, I don't want to move I don't wanna have you check out what it looks like this picture on page one so you can decide no, it really did look better on page seven where we put it, you put that on them, make them tell you it's good make them tell you it's perfect and tell them that there's no excuse for them not to have a perfect album they just need to do that and then you figure it out in one email, okay? Do you outsource stuff davis system for outsourcing? I'm a big believer in like I try to do a lot of stuff myself. I tried like we have the workflow and this is some setup toe plow through an insane amount of work, but I outsourced and I'll send out braces removal, I'll send a glass claire removal, I'll send out all of that stuff to retouch out dot com a couple bucks and it looks great on and get it right away okay, now we have a massive sports shoot coming up on april twenty six don't call me I'm not gonna be available on april twenty six we're shooting sixty six baseball teams it's like eight to nine hundred kids it's crazy and I have, um, made a bold decision this year where we are going to do the custom twelve by thirty six inch posters for every team. The most time consuming process in making those posters is the clipping masks were outsourcing it, sending it to a company I'm standing on my j pegs I'm getting back my clipping masks it's something that we can d'oh it's just going to take me more time than it's worth so all outsource it. So I don't think that you should think that out, so I don't think that you should think a lot of thinking going on that I don't think that you should just instantly assume outsourcing is bad don't because there's a lot of times where it might make more sense to just pay someone else to do the job now don't if it's if it's something, you can do it so you don't have anything else going on if you're just hanging out at the crib and watching some judge judy on theun, you have no excuse to outsource, but if you're legitimately busy and you're working your hours and you don't want to work an insane amount sent it out get it done stay on time, stay focused and he has written down your steps yet and he said he started I talked about this is like the first thing I talked about in this whole workshop and I bet not one person has actually done this which is really upsetting because that's going to be the easiest way for you to see what's wrong with your workflow and I can't do that for you. I can't do this step for you to start writing down every single step I do this I do it next question time yourself yet put yourself on the clock and when I told you to write down all the steps I told you to write down how much time you're spending on it I bet you that if you time to yourself it might be a little bit different than your perception the actual number maybe love it more would be a lot more figure out how much time we really spending on your stuff and I know that everyone was doing and I and over the fact that we shoot are that we spent two minutes retouching are images and that's cool it's a great number and I love it and I understand that there are people that's been way more time than that retouching their images remember I sessions that air thirty images that's still an hour that we spend photoshopped just photoshopping one session and still an hour of my life so be realistic about what how much time you're spending doing yourself in the easiest way to do that put yourself on the clock figured out all right as but not least practice a lot with purpose like good better best never let it rest till you're better until you're better I messed it up good better best never let it rest until your good is better and your better is your best like if you keep practicing this stuff if you guys are if you're really really willing to make the commitment like we talked about in the sixteen things uh on the first day have the desire to do this but remember that desire doesn't matter if you weren't acting so let's get out let's start making changes let's start changing this industry for the better let's go back to treating this like a craft let's go back to getting it like it's film let's go back to not you know the workflow for photographers used t take pictures and then you send it to the lab that was done. Now we've taken on all these other roles retouch was used to hire retouching out that's what it used to be now we do so much more we've taken on way more responsibility and unfortunately we haven't adjusted our work to do it effectively so I want you guys. So I hope that this just what my goal today was just to challenge you guys. To start thinking about this stuff. They really honestly think about what you're doing with your business and really, honestly, try to figure out how you could make it better. Because the steps that you need to do to make this career of yours better are simple. And I've showed you how to do it. It's. The commitment that you need to make to yourself, that you want to be able to have more time with your family, that you want to have more time with your friends, make that commitment to yourself, and then start start doing it's easy.

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Lightroom Start to Finish Guide
Order Catalog
Step by Step LR5 and PS Workflow
Keynote 1
Keynote 2
Jen's Design
Lightroom Templates for Ordering
Keynote 3
Syllabus and Keystroke Shortcuts
Order Catalog PSDs

Ratings and Reviews

a Creativelive Student
 

I decided to listen in on the free course of Build a High Volume Senior Photography Business w/ Matthew Kemmentmueller...I thought it would be good to have the skill sets even if I chose to do another photography forum other than seniors. And I was laughing thru the whole thing...he is one funny guy!! So, I decided to buy it...not only is this course full of great tips/advice/ and "did you know facts" but it's really informative and again, he is down right funny. I'm learning lots. Thanks for having him on Creative Live...this one is a keeper.

Diane Yvon
 

I absolutely loved this course. I am primarily a maternity and newborn shooter and to my surprise what I learned here applies to my current work as well as developing my senior work. I thoroughly enjoyed Matthews delivery of each topic as it was clear, precise, fun and non intimidating. I will watch this over and over and the course downloads were amazing! 100% satisfied with this course

fcaisp
 

Matthew's class is excellent! I watched it live, but decided to buy it since it's so foundational. I think his information and materials are excellent, whether someone wants to be "high volume" or not. I love how he continually drove the point home about how so many photographers overwork themselves and gave excellent ways to resolve this issue. CL does such a great job of covering the gamut in education of all types. Thanks!

Student Work

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