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Business Scorecard - Part 2

Do you have your client sign a waiver slash release of liability? Yes, that's porter, part of our portrait contract we have burbage written into our portrait contract that says that tamara can use this in her marquis materials on her block for advertising, for sale or for trade. And that is signed off on before we even do the session. Why that is very helpful for me is in a situation like this where I've shown you images that I shot talking about them. I have a release to do that when I have images to send into a magazine and the magazine comes back and says, we need releases on all this, I already have them in hand. I don't have to go track them all down s so that is why we do that. The other thing is, if I have a client who says, you know what a definite with the shoot, but I'm worried about this line. I don't want to release all the images to you, I just want them to go to us and nobody else for them to see it for nobody else to see it. When I say okay, no problem, we'll take that o...

ut, and I know that I don't show this image is anywhere else that being said that happens point five percent of the time, it doesn't really happen that often. Um, and the only time it does happen, of course, is when you're photographing very well known figures or celebrities, and they want some private that that's when you would keep that or that it's somebody's just very uncomfortable with the idea that being shown, but otherwise it doesn't really happen. I'm gonna call that maintaining a city pipeline of work because you would have usually a waiver so you could show them and do something with the images. Um, what is what was the hardest thing for you? This is from amanda. Brooke. Manny, you got a couple questions out there? What? What was the hardest thing for you to master business wise in the beginning? That's a good question, and I've got a very precise answer. The hardest thing for me to master business wise in the beginning was time management. I was figuring out when to do what work life balance, how to stay in business and also be an active member of my family, you know, not miss out on what I didn't want to miss out. Um, and a lot of that had to do with getting extraordinarily efficient about how I ran my business, put systems and processes in place, which we still use today and improve on all the time. We have binders, and we have notes that say you do this and then you do this and you do this if a client comes in and orders a frame, what exactly do you do from here? These things in this order were really big on systems and processes, and that was a hard thing for me to master upfront, not because I didn't know how to do it. Ironically, my job at accenture was as a change management consultant. I went in, and I help people set up a business to be more functional and to move faster for the basically the for the systems become more efficient. One of my major clients for almost the whole five years I was at and t and our job was to move in, install a software program, people in systems integration did that, and then I would work with a team to say, now that we have this software here, we need to change your jobs, and we want to change it in a way that's, more efficient, so let's, walk through everything you do, put them in order and have a really clear path of how things get done so we could knock out extraneous things that aren't really contributing to your business there, just wasting time. That was my job, but when I became a photographer, I thought I wanna run through a field, take pretty pictures and make people smile on that's all I want to do s o I resisted this systems and processes part to my detriment and when I stopped and put it through to my business and incorporated them back in, things got so much smoother and I was happy I was enjoying that running and frolicking and fielding thing even though they're probably takes in the field right um so that was that's a very clear answer I have for that. Um put that here. Who do you need on your what do you need on your website? Who is a good host? This is from did you design the b m t b I am I am by m e m okay, um what do you need on your website? Eso if you go to my website tamara lackey dot com you will see a relatively new website. I actually didn't even announce it, but about uh three weeks or so ago we completely changed the front end and several of the pages on tamara lackey, dot com and and tamerlan q log dot com is only about three months old. We we did a facelift on that too, to be able to incorporate what I believe you need on a web site first and foremost we made it completely responsive it's responsive to all mobile devices what we find when reading our traffic is that it is no longer a few people tapping in on their phone like everybody's tapping in on their phone or their ipad or their mini ipad or they're android eso when you come to our website are images on the front page will re size to whatever size screen you have or it'll set to a mobile friendly sight automatically and you can choose which one you want that is not as easy as it would seem because if you go to the front page of our website offering show that tamerlan dot com that might be actually help it but when you first go in there's baby basically a large image on the front that slowly moves through and there's four quadrants below that guide you to where I want you to go yeah so if you want to do it on your own you can do that um but uh based on weight how you find the site if you're on a twenty five inch monitor if you're in a four inch monitor, those images will resize automatically and either go side to side or or go all the way down and that's actually kind of a tough thing to do because all browsers are different in that took a while to dio but if you can do that for your website you will reach that many more eyes you'll have that les that much less bounce from your website you'll be otto catch people on dh have more of a striking first impression if you're able to do that. That was one of our big shift um when the other big things was putting links to social media right on the very front before they were just kind of hidden in our blogged we recognized a lot of people don't go to tamerlan e block they gotta tear my lackey dot com then click blogged and go in there so we have five I think five different social media icons right up there for twitter and facebook and google plus an instagram and might kitchen no, I don't have a live feed in my kitchen that be so bad, eh? So we have those those social media icons right there that was another thing that we found to be extraordinarily useful. Um the other thing is when I said there's four little shout outs on the bottom four little boxes you can go to, we wanted to put what we cared about the most in the front. So when you're looking at your real estate, you want it's it's like an image it's like taking a photograph you don't want to clutter up, you want a ton of things you want to have the presence if you are a photographer or you want the main presence to be an image so that's, why the images the largest part of the website? But you have a few other things that you want people to see. One of the bottom lynx is our balog. So you go there and that's kind of like where we live and updating constantly on things we dio constantly means at least once a week, then we have the link, teo, and this is probably not in the right order. I don't have it memorized all in one life dot com, which is a website that we started building six months ago and literally launched, like, three days ago. Again, I haven't even said a thing about it because we're going to start the alma life course for relationships tomorrow, but if you click on the bottom now, it goes to our brand new site that just became available all my life. Dot com, which addresses, uh, personal strap of work, life balance, personal joy of work, life balance next to that is a speaking, I think I do it enough presentations and speaking, and we have the same questions over and over and over again. So we decided to just create something that listed events in upcoming things and all that store stuff, and then lastly is capturing life through better photography the whole media siri's we did that we're really proud of and we love that reaches a lot of everyday photographers who just want to get better so it takes you right out to capturing life better dot com um so what I would say is when you're building your sight put what you love what you care about the most make it as simple and as clean as possible right on the front don't make people go six seven klicks to find what you want them to find they won't do it but it all right in the front and the upper right hand but, uh upper right hand screen of our website or three things we care about against different design little buttons called action subscribed to a newsletter contact us for any reason uh no no it's not enough to say contact excuse me it says book a session we made that more specific it used to say contact us then we realised why do we want people contacted the most to book a session? Why don't we just say book a session so now it's book a session and and then it's gift certificates we love selling of idiots we put that right the top because people might not consider it but if they see it they may want to purchase a gift certificate so what we did is we navigated come a simple, clean site that has a lot of pockets information, but they're put in different areas, so doesn't feel overwhelming, right when you come in, but that's kind of what we want you to find. Um, and then once you click through and of course, there's the knave, bar the top with the four photographer section, and once you click on that that's a whole nother subset within there, so those are things I I'd say on a high level is what I'd want you to think about when you're building your website, make it clean, make it uncluttered have a lot there with easy access to the stuff you care most, but don't throw it all on the front page, because that all as just looks like too much, and people go away, they don't even know what you want from them. Um, who is a good host? That's an interesting question. Who's, a good web host um, we are currently using for our host two hosts because that we have several different sites we have host gator is one of our sites that were used, and west host those the two hosts we used west host runs are tamer lackey site and our and our email host gator runs redefined show and I think we're playing to move over there and then it all in one life that is actually run by andy cites a n d I s I t s they built all of one life, we had a really good experience with them, so we're going to keep our site hosted there. S o ho skater andy sites and west host I wouldn't necessarily say go have three hosts. I think the next goal is to bring them closer, but we've had good experiences with them over the three, and I hope nobody gets the set, but of the three, the one we've had the most problems with his west host, so because sometimes there was our sidle crash or our email go down for a while, they've gotten faster on response time, but that's what I would say, uh, okay, so website stuff is going to be under don't make containing a sturdy pipe line of work. It's, your marketing it's how you get everything out there? Um, what is it? A deal number of photos to feature in an online portfolio. First and foremost, the last thing I would do, the thing I would avoid, the thing I was simply tell you to never do something I really want you to pay attention to is don't put images up there to pad your portfolio don't put a lot up because you want to show a lot to show you shoot a lot I would rather you have three amazing fantastic spectacular images and nothing more then three amazing spectacular fantastic images and ten okay images because I will tell you I personally have gone through people's websites we just, uh, judge to contest the other day for the national association of child photographers nap cp great little organization for russians a great little their national um great organization if you're a child photographer if you wanna get a lot of inspiration and fun things to check out and run by great people they have they had a contest and it was the emerging child photographer a contest and I was one of the judges and we had about twenty or so websites toe look through and and the galleries to go through into judge work and I had the experience repeatedly of being like clicking on the first image like oh that's good and then you click on the second image oh that's good this one is going right to the top then it clicked on third image I'm like that's ok like like in the fourth image that's good and then okay okay did they mean to put that in there you know what that does if they had if I had just seen the three images have been they are amazing I don't even care what else they do I know they could do that and I want them if I'd seen all the other ones I would I would re judge my initial impression because I think maybe I got that wrong that makes sense so the number isn't necessary as important as the quality I certainly wouldn't go over one hundred images or do something crazy but uh I would I don't have a minimum set for you other than I want you to well probably three I'm going to say your minimum is three and make them very very strong and and weed out anything that would make people change their mind about how good you are okay who that would be that it's still maintaining steady pipelines that has do with website okay um question what advice would you give for a photographer trying to start at a new city and a new market what's the best way slash ways to get a foothold in a new city that's your question I I could tell because you did this yeah that's your you both have the same question okay that's a very good question and you know I'm just going to completely I'm gonna more part of my answer and then completely rip off joy bianchi brown's answer because we just did that the show on this and she gives him great ideas um one of things I would say is when you're starting at a new city, which is what I did, we moved from san francisco to chapel hill, north carolina where we live now and we didn't know one single soul in the whole city we had no connection to the city, we just rolled out a map and said let's drive this place and that's where we're currently living and loving it now, but I didn't know a single person and the first thing I did is what a lot of you d'oh I went out and photographed neighbors and then their friends and so I don't really have friends yet andi I felt after my own baby at the time it was just sophie and she was like nine months old little pocket on dh then so I went out and had enough to be able to create a portfolio that I was proud of it wasn't a big portfolio. I followed my own advice even at the time, although I'd look back now and said, what was I thinking that that was a great image but at the time I thought it was a great image and um and then I got involved in my community this is world overlap with joyce. Uh, feedback which was? I joined a bunch of organizations I would have never joined otherwise. Like the local area chamber of commerce. Like the local mothers group. Like the it was theirs to different, not mom's group there's, one in durham and one in chapel hill. I joined both of them. I helped do a newsletter for one thing and then offered to supply the photographs, things like that. I got involved in my local community, and I wanted to become the name that people thought of for photographer. Um what I also did was photograph everything. I was very far from specialising. Um, that my my running joke is that I was a land photographer. I don't do ariel. I didn't do underwater, but if it was here, I could shoot it. Um and I did quite a lot. So when someone say, would you photograph this house for a real estate market? Shuriken photographed houses. Could you photograph these widgets? Yes. Second photograph these widgets. Andi, I did all of that. And I got establish that somebody who was easy to work with, um, that's. Another big one right now if you want to come up with what the best advice for how to integrate yourself into a new city establish a relationship as someone that people want to work with. They will choose a lesser quality producer who they can spend time with and not be frustrated by then. Somebody's. Extraordinarily good at what they do and it's a pain to be around, because life is short and you want to be around. People make life easier. So, um, I would I would establish myself as somebody who is very easy to work with very easygoing things. Don't ruffle your feathers. You're not offended easily. And and then I would reach out to the people who are already reached out to the community. And what I mean by that is who were the people that you know that already involved in this community? A lot of people immediately think what I want to go to a local child's boutique and get my work up on the wall. Well, then they walk in and they say, ah, this one's ready taken there's work on the wall. They walk right out. What about going up and establishing yourself as a new photographer saying hi. Say I know your extraordinary busy. I would just love to give you an option to offer a gift. To some of your clients, so you don't have to hang my work, you don't have to show my cards, but if you want, I'd like to give you a gift for a free session or one hundred dollars or two hundred dollars credit or whatever the amount is, um, to give to their clients that they and you come up with a price point if they spend over this or if you just like them or whatever you want these airways to start to get establishes, build those relationships to partner up with people who reached the market that you want to reach a lot of times is are those aren't just children's boutique says their hair salons it's where all the mothers go it's the coffee shops where they hang out, it's it's the events that they tend to attend, it's, the planetarium that always has the fundraiser, and this and that meet those people and try to integrate yourself toe meet those lists, but of course you have to offer something back you never just walking in and saying, what do you do for me? You know, how can I serve you as well? A fantastic suggestion that you'll see on the new episode was two when you're meeting with a if you're doing headshots for realtors. Which is a really great way to quickly build business is to establish yourself as a photographer let them know you're trying to photograph children and families and say, you know, I would love to give you the opportunity to give a gift to anybody who purchases a house um a gift of a session hey, you're in this new home let's get a family a family photograph of you in it I mean there's a lot of creative white ways to do a lot of very cool things um and what was the other one joy had mentioned about you? You know, something just a simple as they wanted to get into dog photography so they partnered up with a local I believe is a local groomer and an animal shelter and they put on a co event and brought everybody together and then then the the event was advertised via the list of the groomer and the animal shelter for this new photographer in photography who looked established when I went out to list joined so and so with some great photographs and then they got access to all that audience by holding this one event without even thinking about profit. It was just purely a marketing effort um a lot of things you could do in that regard to get started in a new city, a new market you don't have to know people to become known how did you hear that, too? Uh, anybody that likes a something that stops it. I wish I had that feeling more often. Um okay, uh, let's. See what software studio management do you use mallory from seattle. Okay, um, interestingly enough, I do not use success where the studio software and I say that because I haven't used them for three years, but I'm still in all their ads. And I say that because I've asked repeatedly to be removed from the ads, but I'm still in them. I just saw one last month. We've probably asked a dozen times and one time someone forcibly doesn't seem to have an effect. So if you see me and success were at, I don't use them. But the software studio we are currently using is shoot. You shoot to is, uh, we we moved to them because it's all web based it enables us teo, be able to check, you know, obviously on our phone or be wherever you are, one of the one of the reasons we didn't move away from success, where success, whereas a customer management tool is. Very robust has a lot of opportunity for you to put everything in there and be able to track it and find things you need um it's a really comprehensive product uh the issue is that you can't it's not web based and it didn't look like it was going to be for a long time and my understanding is it's still not, which meant that you had to have it completely in your server in their studio space or with a little key to operate it singley kind of little usb kind of thing key on your laptop I personally bent that key about five or six times you've seen me with the tether could you imagine with like a like a studio manager key um and and we didn't want to be in the studio twenty four seven when we had to check information that didn't make any sense we invested in a pc kind of option not you see what is that where you can access your pc remotely, but in our case it was our mac we invested in that to be able teo operate it remotely, but the farther you are away from your machine and I am frequently very far from the studio like I'm across the country from my studio, the slower that is it becomes really trouble someone problematic to operate, so we chose the easiest access kind of system that being said um we do have struggles with xu q as it relates to financial reports and and some of the way we gather information and things like that because we're a multi shooter studio we have multiple associates it was just me on my own running a small business it would be more useful to me in terms of what the needs are but some of those some of the abilities that I would normally be ableto access pretty quickly I can't because of the way we operate as a larger business shoot he doesn't necessarily have the resources for that. So there's a couple issues with that but that is what I use how are you got how you guys doing over there great just keep praying living it up all right, but there are definitely loving this, huh? But what would you say tomorrow? Stop it people hate this. I would I would you would you what would you say I would use something tricky to suggest like oh, maybe we want to move onto a different set of content so you raise your voice for death video all right, how goes the worst ugo I had um I had I improved my profitability. Yeah, the golden question right on a golden favor. How do I improve my profitability? The best way to improve your profitability. The best way to improve your profitability is to decrease your expenses obviously the goal is to constantly keep making your revenues go up I know a lot of people whose revenues go up and up and up and their expenses go up and open up and the profit either stays the same or actually dips so I would spend just as much time looking on what I'm spending as looking on how to make more it doesn't matter how much you make if you can't take it home hey, I have a four million dollar business and I made twenty dollars last year you need to do that one of the core waste and prove your profitability is to really look at your expenses and be just ruthless about how you're spending and we're spending and do you have the best deal going with vendors every time you're doing it? We make vendor shifts not that frequently, but every few years will look at it and see are we paying the best prices for what were getting and it's not just cost it's customer service it's the ability to get the product on time it's the ability to not have to follow up five or six times to say where are my frames prince canvases, whatever the deal might be that's part of profitability part of probability isnt just saving money it's saving time because you have to lose thie opportunity to make more money when you're losing your time? Yes so, um, one of the biggest thing is to look at your expenses this could be a simple a scanning your profit and lost your balance sheet, your financial statement going through your credit card statements and saying where my spending, how often the amount of times that you find out six months later, I'm still paying the monthly fee for that I didn't know that I'm going to use that don't use that. I mean, that kind of stuff happens all the time um, so looking at things like that, how can you bundle some of the things that you purchased in a way to be more cost effective? Um, maybe you could use one lab for all your because they can source from other vendors to bring you everything at once and now you're only interacting with one lab and you've got a controlled management environment in terms of you not spending so much time interacting with so many people things like that are big way to manage your expenses thie other thing too, of course, is to price appropriately to look at your cost of good sales and a have a simple markup to be really easy everything's a minimum three time market for us everything's a minimum three time market markup for us to start and then we find that we bundle in more things and we could raise our prices but if I have a fifty dollar frame, I'm not going to sell it for less one hundred fifty and that that's before I start factory in my time and all that sort of thing and I realize that price goes up but I certainly am not going to start at sixty dollars because I have terrible profit. I have no profitability when I factor in my time so that's one way I would look at improving profitability. All right? Black and white toning. What is your black and white toning process? Uh, you gotta sit again. Oh, rebecca that's not business. It is under here, though. What we talked about this yesterday, post processing I showed you literally taking image from nowhere, pulling it up and turning it into black and white. What you do s o for me, my black and white toning process, I should do the simplest way to do it. I have actions that I have created with more convoluted steps that go into the channels and make sure that I've got the right amount of quality and never, ever grayscale image. If you are grace scaling an image that means going image mode, grayscale you were stripping about two thirds of the data from your image and you lose quality you, this ability to create toning and depth and all that sort of thing so everything I deliver is a color file. Everything I delivered to my clients is a color file. It just happens to be de saturated in one of several ways. Whether it's literally de saturated are going into the channels on dh then the color balance is where I come in with the toning. I add some golds and add some rids. Andi, keep that kind of a little dial down. I don't want it to be a c bia. I just wanted to have a touch of toning to it. That's. A simple answer. The rest they actually see the walk through. You can go to yesterday's broadcast or it will be included. Of course in the download. Um okay. What incentive should I give for clients to refer me to friends? This is t j m photo. What incentives should I give for clients to refer me to friends? Okay. The number one answer to this is to not suck. Start with not sucking after that. After that, I would pay a lot of attention to providing an experience during the shoot. Not just to sit behind your lens and click, click, click, click, click and deliver something. You know, I think a lot of people can get into the habit of that you get so lost in how it looks that you forget there's a human on the other side of that, especially when it comes to children I see people disappear, you had a camera and not emerge till two hours later that leaves your subject feeling very alone and it doesn't make for a really great experience. This also happens in relationships, which will be big saturday, but for the sake of photography, the incentive I like to get is first and foremost is to make it a fun experience all the way through and set up the process remember, we talked about system and structure in process, we said the process so that from start to finish it's it's more enjoyable, it's actually something that doesn't feel like I do that's that's one of the first ways you've get people even interested in talking about you if you had an experience, it was rough and frustrated and then you said here I'll give you a golden key if you refer your friend any sort of authentic friend is not gonna refer that, do you? Because they had a miserable experience, I don't care how what kind of key you give me, I don't know where they came in golden key, it's like a key to the city even if I gave you a key to the city s o uh first and foremost make yourself somebody who's actually preferable and then that sounds like so pedantic but it's true you have to start there by actually being conscious of how the experience goes and delivering images of really strong quality um after that I would until them that you would love for them to refer you to friends and family I say that because I have a client who I photographed for about seven years and the last go around she's telling me something about her frank in my house and just amazed because she had all the images from years put together a collection and I said always your friend I'd like to photograph hurt because really because that wouldn't bother you but I said what do you mean and we literally I didn't have this conversation where I found out that she her perception of me was that I was so busy we're friends and social media too and she said you're just so busy I didn't want to ask you for the favor to photograph my friend I don't want to bug you and she meant that in a kind, considerate, caring way I was like oh no look that I would love to have heard of your friend let's get out of the cow that's work something out um you know and I think that that's something that may happen more often than you may even know that. So you have to be able to say, I haven't actually love to photograph it just opened that door. That's a big thing. The other thing we do is we offer client referral vouchers so we'd love for you to say. And in fact here you go. Is fifty dollars voucher to give to your friends and family or whoever I love these images or whoever you know, wants to get a session done. Um, literally a fifty dollar about about your right there. All right, you know what? So what that's waste investment self went their education. How do you establish your prices? And how do you just the measure business progress is okay to be that fast. How do you establish your prices? I initially stopped my prices by looking around me and seeing whatever else did. That was a terrible way to establish my pricing. I just blended in with everybody else. Then I stepped back and actually looked at the cost of goods sold. I actually my time and calculation, I calculated against what I want to make it the end of the year, how many shoots I wanted to dio and I set up my pricing accordingly. Now I adjusted as time goes on by adjusting first my individual ala carte prices and last only a tte the very end my session fee because if I keep my session the pretty steady of the last few years especially we've had economic downturn that's not that's more noticeable than the individual ala carte prices which khun slowly go up over time as my vendor costs may go overtime just because the expo the expansion of doing business where is that horse pricing here short how do you guys market to get clients for children photography I am unsure of how to break into the market we kind of covered that right? Talk about a new market yep uh, what type of insurance coverage do you recommend that's actually really good question insurance we have several types of insurance and they're mandated by the structure we're in. If you're working in a commercial space, you will often find that you must have certain levels of insurance just to be working out of that space but certainly as an individual shooter not necessary in a commercial space I would at least have general business insurance and some sort of equipment insurance you conjoined an organization like professional photographers of america or people o see if canada on be able to get some baxam really good insurance rates like really good very much for for photographers in the last two years, I've lost a five day mark three and eighty five one two and a fifteen inch mac laptop not lost they were all stolen in different ways to two were stolen in new york city during photo plus which was painful and then the laptop was stolen at my associates house when literally her door was broken down and the whole apartment was ransacked and the laptop was taken they were both covered by insurance I had insurance bump unfortunately my premium but not as so significant that I'm not still glad I got the insurance recovery I also had a fifty one to lens stolen when I was in london and buy stolen I think I actually left it there. Um that one was me on they did not cover that because I did not have an international writer because I was in london at a workshop and so that was just a painful, painful loss. All right um insurance goes under uh here how do I establish a fair pricing model? I think I just did that again. I would rather you come up with your individual prices and not just sink into a market because nobody else is doing at a certain price you will stand out better that way. What should I do? Best practice to be paying for vendors, albums, editing, printing campus literal dollar amounts that's kind of a tough answer, but I would tell you that if when you do a side by side comparison of labs you'll find a surprising breakin pricing, we kind of feel like every charge is the same they don't look at what individual prices are look at them not only at a four by six or eight by ten, but go ahead, look at them at thirty by forty canvas compare them, you'll see, especially when you're doing a lot of printing over the course of the year thousands of dollars of difference make sure that the quality stands up to the price difference and certainly the client service experience. This is something we do a lot. We really paid a lot of attention to that because it adds up significantly uh, delivery work. What is your angle for every session when it comes to product sales? What types of images are you looking for when I am in a session? I am looking for a lot of things I told you why I was out live shooting I'm thinking, I I want these varying composition and framing marks because I know different things are appealing to clients. I know that if I'm photographing a group, I want minimum one shot if not several of everybody clear and focused and looking at me the types of images I'm looking for are ones that I think fit those four categories I told you about, I'm not always shoot for me that's the way I get interested in doing this I'm always gonna shoot for my client because that's how they hired me I'm gonna think about this constant pipeline of work I need to fill so I have to shoot for marketing and every so often I'll be thinking about image competition um how do you see the future sale of your business mallory in seattle how do you see the future sale of your business I was talking about like um establishing your brand and then perhaps selling it to somebody else okay and you're like africa or something like that yes. Okay wonderful there's a great book out there that I would suggest all of you read called built to sell that was actually recommended to me by andrew funderburg of fundi uh design and it was a really good recommendation because it gets you thinking about how to structure a service bill a service company like a commodity company it sets you up to say yes I'm providing a service and yes it's unique but how can I streamline this so it's similar to if I were selling products and then I could sell it later very very easily if you never ever want to sell your business in any way to somebody else you can then set up your business to be a lot more streamlined by using a lot of suggestions in that book I would have to suggest you check that out what should I budget for a second shooter uh, so this varies again, depending on where you are anywhere from eight dollars, ten dollars minimum wage, fifteen dollars, twenty dollars and depends on what they're doing for you in my market in chapel hill were actually ideally located between unc and duke to wonderful universities, and we've had some fantastic interns come through who are loving the idea of assisting our current intern kayley she's been wonderful, so she's does assistant, she does a production assistant on shoot, and then she does production assistant and there's no financial trade, but I do a lot of teaching as I go and tell her that very worthwhile and her being on the shoot is very helpful to me. Like I said, I have moved and moved to assistance very often now on shoots versus not at all. I still have never had six assistance that was also but uh, but if you get a chance, if you've never shot with an assistant before trying it out the difference khun b really calming? You can find yourself less frenzied and more able to get a lot more of what you envision because you could get your lighting set up a lot more cleanly and a lot more powerfully and not feel like you're doing it all yourself, you still can do it all yourself if need be but you don't have tio, especially if you could find a great intern situation. Or somebody just wants to get break in or check it out. All else fails. I always use parents.