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Office Hours Overview

So, Susan, you know, I've been hanging out, you know, on the Facebook, the Facebook group, and looking looking at stuff and one of the things that kind of resonated with me because I am a little bit of a procrastinator, eyes that I some of the homework assignments folks might not have gotten, too. So what is your recommendation? If they haven't gotten to those those business homework assignments, Do they need to stress out that they have todo or could they just move on starting today and move forward with the wedding photography, which is going to come up for the next month? Absolutely. I mean, we basically broke this mentor ship down into three parts business and marketing, shooting and then everything that comes after the shooting, right? So there are people in all stages of month one which was business and marketing. Some people have done every single assignment, half of them, maybe 1/3. Some people only done one, and that's okay. And what I've noticed is I've been going through eve...

ryone's homework. Assignment is, for the most part, nobody has a problem that is completely unique to them. We're seeing the same problems over and over again with each homework assignment. You know, I'm struggling with this. I'm struggling with that. I'm still not sure what to do about this. So if you haven't gone through the homework assignments yet and you're watching this now, you're probably going to hear me answer some questions that you're going tohave as well, right? And I don't want to see you rush. So if you see that month to is starting and you think, Oh, God, I haven't done month one. I got to do this all today before we start shooting. Please don't do that because you're not going to get the most out of the course. I would recommend that you just not do month one right now. Like, let's shoot. Let's been a month shooting. And then if, while you're shooting you want to start tackling some of these month one assignments, do them. This whole live day will still be there for you to reference. If you get stuck, you can come watch this. And hopefully someone else had the same problem You did, and I can help you through it that the main thing is, I don't want people to stress out or to feel like it's feel like they have to rush, because it's sort of the point of buying the class. You have the class if you can't start it now, even started tomorrow. You been started a month from now. The homework will still be there. The resource is will still be there and you'll be fine whenever you get started. And most of this work, we've been making people turn it in just simply to make them be accountable to it. Like there. There's some homework assignments that don't need any critique, right? Like you guys all sent in your gear in equipment, spreadsheets with your replacement costs and your totals, there's nothing to critique with that You either did it or you didn't do it. Turning it in meant that you had to sit down and do it right. And most people, most people did it. And if you haven't done it, do it tomorrow. But the next day. But when you're ready, So please keep that feed That coming and we are listening to you. And one of the changes that were making pretty much ASAP is we're changing up how office hours are gonna work in the weekly videos and we're changing office out. Let's talk about office hours first cause we still have office hours, but it's gonna be folks will ask questions directly in the Facebook group. And then you will take those office hours sometime during the week, randomly during the week and answer questions. What were you noticing is we're giving people two portals ask questions, right? You have the questions that you could ask for the weekly video and then the questions that you could ask for office hours, and they were very specific sets of questions. But as the group is evolving and ask people's needs a revolving, we've realized that having two different portals to just ask questions isn't as helpful as it can be for this group. A lot of people need real time help, like they're trying to do something, and they need someone to help them that day not to wait for a week to get an answer from a video. So we've decided to do is to make office hours. I'm gonna come back into the Facebook group is going to be a little bit more interactive. I'm not gonna be in there every day. All day. I have clients. I need to take care of two. But that 60 to 90 minutes per week that I was spending answering questions in the document I feel would really serve you guys better, actually, being in there, answering the questions that you have in the Facebook group, and now I know that a lot of people are gonna hear this and they're gonna think, Oh, my gosh, I'm not even participating in the Facebook group or I find the Facebook group overwhelming or there's just so much talk in the Facebook group. And a lot of people who got very overwhelmed at the Facebook group at the beginning was because it was 200 new people coming into a room together and everyone was talking. Everyone was figuring out the program. Everyone was introducing themselves. If you were in the group and you left, please come back. We've all of the housekeeping, and now it's just questions that are helping. And if you missed the Facebook group, if you're not in there for a week, you could just read like it's there for you. You can scroll down as far as you want, so if you have questions for me during the week that you used to put in an office hours document. Just go in and ask them in the Facebook group and I'll come in and I'll find them and I'll answer them. I feel like that would be the most helpful thing for this group specifically, and now we're taking the weekly video and changing that up as well. Let me just make one more comment on Facebook group. So again, if you guys were overwhelmed, I know something for me that I like to do is a top of that group. You will see a notifications icon. You can actually click on that notifications icon, and you can manage how you're being notified about every single question. So if you want to keep going in there, but you don't want an email every day with every question, you could just click that off. Okay, so now let's talk about the video weekly video weekly videos, which which I've actually really been enjoying. You guys have been sending in your questions, which have been great, and I've been making you this weekly video, but it's it's a little I feel like it can continue to be evolved to meet the needs of the specific group of people. So we were going to turn office hours into a Google hang out. We're going to turn the weekly video into a Google hang out, so you'll still be able to ask those questions. But instead of just pre recording a video to show you were going to do a Google hang out, and that way you'll be able to get the answers to that. So office hours will now be me in the Facebook group during the week, and the weekly video will be a Google hang out. We will get you instructions, you know, again on how to get the questions to us for the weekly video. But that's the same. It will still be that pinned post at the very top that link that was posted to ask questions. As a matter fact, my Could you put that link up on the screen, please? And those guys will be doing that yet. So that's questions for the weekly video, and Drew is also pacing that link into the chat rooms. We will also pace that link into the Facebook, the Facebook page as well, so you'll have every every opportunity to go ahead and do that. But this shows them these air, the separate links that people really need, the homework assignment, email and the logistical questions. If you again. Guys, we want to encourage you. If you have logistical questions about how this works or you're not getting emails, that's really when you want to go to support a creative live dot com. That's not the appropriate questions for the Facebook group. We want to keep things on topic to mentoring and wedding photography. Susan, that's all I got. That's roll with this thing and have a good time. And the most important thing about today the reason why it is locked down to just you guys so that I can answer all of the questions that you have. So as we're rolling along, you know that the only people in the chat room with you are the people that are actually doing the mentorship program with you. So don't be afraid to ask questions. We're gonna throw it to questions way more often than we normally would in a live broadcast. That's why it's private. I'm here to help you So what we're gonna do today, basically, we're gonna go through each of the homework assignments Now I want Teoh back up a little bit and explain sort of what I'm doing with the critique today. As I mentioned with the gym a few minutes ago, people are having the same universal problems, right? Like when I'm going through people's pricing and profitability. Spreadsheets. The same problems keep coming up over and over again. When we're talking about working from home versus working in a studio, the same issues are coming up over and over again. So if you don't hear me critique your specific homework assignment, that doesn't mean that I didn't read it. I read every single one of your emails thoroughly. It means that somebody else had a problem that was the same as your problem. So if you listen to what I'm saying today and you're like, Well, you didn't critique my homework assignment specifically, it's because I critique someone else's that had the same issue that you were going through. So I don't want you to think that I didn't read your homework. I read every single email that came in, Um and hopefully you will find that this will be very helpful to you. So one thing that I have noticed, as I've been going through the homework assignments and listening to the Facebook group and interfacing with the people in the mentor ship is common frustrations that people are having. And one of them is. You know, all of these homework assignments are taking me a lot of time. This whole thing is taking a lot of time. It's taking forever to get my business off the ground. You know, it's the time factor and this does take time. This takes a lot of time. In the past month since I launched the program with you guys, I have shot at least one wedding every single weekend. I'm home with my kids. I have a husband. I am actively working to create an entirely new business, which is a blogger for photographers. I'm in the final development stages of a of an educational blawg directly for wedding photographers only. Been working on that finalizing my website still been working on that and I did all of the homework assignments again because I felt like if you were going to have to do them I was going to have to do that as well. So I did all of them with you. And I'm not standing up here to say that to brag. It's that it's to really sort of send home this point that all of this takes a lot of time. And one major thing that I have been seeing from the people in the Mentor Ship group is time management that keeps coming up over and over and over again. This time, management. I don't have time for this or this takes up too much time or, you know it's taking me forever to do A, B, C and D. So first of all, yes, this all does take a lot of time. But one thing that I'm hoping that this mentorship will give you is the ability to better use your time to mawr efficiently maximize your time, and I'm going to talk about a bunch of parts where I feel like people are spending way too much time on certain things and just simply tightening up your time management will solve a lot of your problems. The other thing is, this takes years and it takes a lot of years, right? Like I'm a here in front of you guys helping you in teaching you. I've been doing this for 13 years, almost 14 years and again, that's not to stand up and say like, I am awesome. Look at how awesome I am because I'm not. I've got a lot of business issues as well that I'm working on right alongside you guys. But this is just to say that this isn't gonna happen overnight. You're not going to do this mentorship program, and all of a sudden you're going to book the 30 weddings that you need per year, and all of a sudden you're going to make all of the money you need per year. This is going to take a lot of time. And I know everyone wants to find that silver bullet that's going to take the place of experience. But nothing is going to take the place of experience. So unfortunately, you just have to get out there, and you have to keep doing it, and you have to keep doing it again. So you go through all of these homework assignments, and I think that it would be very beneficial for you to go through all of these homework assignments again a year from now and two years from now, because the needs of your business and your abilities and your business are going to change. The other thing is, I can't give you all of the answers. No one can. There were a lot of people who sent in homework assignments that said, You know, I've got 9/10 of the way there. Tell me what to do to finish this. You know, here are my spreadsheets and here, or what I'm thinking of for my package prices, tell me what my package prices should be. I can't tell you what your package prices should be. And more importantly, on top of that, I shouldn't tell you what your package prices should be. The purpose of the mentorship is to get you 9/10 of the way there. I could give you all of the tools that I use in my own business. I can give you every single assignment and spreadsheet and thing that I can think of to enable you to make the decisions. But when it comes right down to it, you have to make the decisions for yourself. I can't make the decisions for you. So if you're sending in the homework and you're like, just tell me what to dio not only can I not tell you what to do, I'm not going to tell you what to dio because I am making the decisions for you and your business. There's going to come a time when I'm not God. That just sounded really those about sound really morbid. But I'm not here to help you make those decisions, like not planning on dying anytime soon. But if someone's making all of the decisions for you, you're not going through the process yourself and making them. I can't give you the A, B, C and D finite answer on anything. You're going to have to make it yourself. And that's not saying that I'm not trying to help you, that I'm not here to help you, that I'm not reading all of your homework assignment, but that what final number do I put on my package? What do I do for this? What do I do for that? The final answer have to come from you, and if it doesn't come from you, it's not genuine And if it doesn't come from you, it's not helping you grow. Um, and then the last one. And if this is, you know, this is kind of my tough love section. I put it to the very beginning. You've got to stop being afraid and get to work there. You know, I hear a lot of chatting in the Facebook group, and I see a lot in the homework assignments that people have sent the same words being used over and over again. I struggle with, I'm afraid of I'm too insecure to and I I understand being afraid I do. There are things in business that I'm afraid of also. But what I'm seeing from a lot of people is almost a crippling fear and an inability to get up and make a decision. And a lot of people still stuck on question number one. And you've got to stop being afraid. You've got to get over that and you've got to start making decisions. And this isn't me being cruel to you. This isn't me trying to tell you to stop or to defeat you or to make you more afraid. But I struggle with I'm afraid of. I'm nervous about all of those things are normal, but feeling all of those things to the extent that you can't make a single decision, that's something I can't help you with, either. You've got to get yourself past that place where you're afraid of making all of your business decisions and just start making them.