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I want you to get into your own personal time machine. And I want you to go back in time to the last time that you felt completely overwhelmed and slammed in your business. I want you to think about how it felt, I want you to think about how frustrated you were how tired you were, how you probably said to yourself, or your partner or your kids, like, I'm sorry, I promise I'm never going to do this again. And I want to ask you what you're doing right now. To prevent that from happening to you. Again, my guest today is Rick Liston. He is a an Australian wedding photographer who I met in Las Vegas at WPI. This past spring, and he runs an virtual assistant agency called wedding workflows, which is a little bit of a misnomer, because it's not just for wedding photographers. And it's not just about workflows.
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This is a regular virtual assistant agency, except that these virtual assistants who work for him are all trained specifically to work with photographers. So things like your upload, download, getting things ready on your gallery software, working in photography, specific CRMs, the emails and kind of communication that needs to go along with photography, blogging, social media, like there's a lot of different things that we do in our businesses that don't need to be done by us. And these VAs are trained specifically to do that. So when I met Rick at WPI, I was like, oh, yeah, you're gonna need to come on the podcast and share more about this business with my audience.
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And our conversation today is not a short one, because we cover a lot of different things about kind of the mindset blocks around outsourcing and automating. And then like, all the way toward, you know, halfway through, we get into more of the nitty gritty of working with a VA, this conversation is definitely worth your time and attention, especially if you don't currently have any sort of assistance in your business.
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Without spoiling it. I will say that once he gives you your code and your directions on how to sign up for a trial, you are going to see that this is a very reasonable price point and way to kind of dip your toes in the water of trying out working with an assistant. So I hope that you have some big aha moments, I hope that this conversation empowers you, and kind of emboldened you to take that step because I can speak from personal experience. Having assistance having people who are lightening the burden for me in my business has made all of the difference. And I would love to get more photographers on board with trying not trying to do absolutely everything themselves.
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Welcome to this can't be that hard. My name is Annemie Tonken.
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And I help photographers run profitable, sustainable businesses that they love. Each week on the podcast, I cover simple, actionable strategies and systems that photographers at every level of experience can use to earn more money in a more sustainable way. Running a photography business doesn't have to be that hard. You can do it. And I can show you how. Hey, Rick, welcome to this can't be that hard. It's great to see your face and have you on the show. How are you today?
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I'm honored, absolutely honored today. I was honored a couple of weeks ago when I got to meet you for the first time and I saw you walking that trade show floor. And should I go and purchase a note?
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No, I wouldn't be so bold. But then there's this little thing that my my daughter often does.
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She's like, Daddy, if I can do it, you can do it. And she's really good at like approaching people. She doesn't know how to ask for stuff. We go to the supermarket or something. And she doesn't know where the popcorn is. She was you know, as easy as I was gonna ask this person. And so I just channeled you know, what would vedra do and went up and said hello, and now and now here we are a few weeks later having a chat on your pod.
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So Oh,
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that's very sweet and very silly. Oh, thank you. It's great to have you I am it was such a fun time getting to meet you and chat with you and learn more about your business. And as soon as I heard more, I was like, I need to not sit on this. This needs to be a conversation that I share with the my wider audience. So so I'm really excited for what we have to talk about today. Why don't we start by I'm gonna have you introduce yourself and your sort of photography background. And then I want you to introduce your other business and I'll I'll let you take it from there.
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So I'm an Australian wedding photographer.
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Not a particularly gifted one in terms of the art form, so nobody, you know, nobody's going to be coming to me for that.
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Like, Oh my God, this the style of this guy, but I think something that I do incredibly well is stay local and look at it from I guess a business first point of view. So securing kind of sustainable leads sustainable income, and then for myself taking a step back from as many things as I possibly can. And the good thing about all of that is that just about everything I do is entirely replicable.
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Right? So the the business that I run, you know, we get probably five 600 leads a year shooting over 100 weddings a year, we all that is based on things that everyone else can do. So it's not based on my incredible photos. If that's if that makes sense. So I think in a way, it's more inspiring, because it's yeah, it's not like, oh, okay, I understand, because these photos are so amazing. But I could never achieve that. Because it's, you know, so gifted, it's no, I'm just, I was just dad, who was desperate, coming back to moving back to Australia with my wife and daughter at that time with no savings, no one can be like, Alright, okay, I need to, I need to make sure I don't, I don't fail. It's amazing, what can come out of desperation. So just just looked at it like, Alright, where are my target audience going to be, and for me, it's like the walking in the doors of venues every day. So I need to do whatever I can to get on those preferred suppliers lists. And fortunately, as photographers, there's so many things we can do for venues, to help them out to help them stand out in their own saturated markets that for me, it's really easy, probably the best use of your time in the beginning is to build those relationships, because that for me, is then being a sustainable source of leads for the rest of my career, and should hopefully continue to be so
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amazing. And you're absolutely right, like desperation, or at least that need that necessity really can be the best kind of motivator where you're like, look, I made feel uncomfortable, even kind of like your story before about, you know, giving yourself a pep talk. I feel that way. Often when I'm approaching either vendors or like, you know, an educator that I want to talk to or any of the above. It's like I have to, I have to give myself permission. But when it comes to like, it's either that or my business isn't going to work.
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And I'm going to have to go back to my, you know, quote, unquote, real job like, you get scrappy.
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And I think that I think that that is really inspiring.
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I'm glad to hear that there's probably a part of your audience right now is like, well, if I don't have anything to learn from him on a photography point of view, then what am I doing here, which leads me to the I guess the next thing that we started doing, and what I'd love to talk about you today is is just the, I guess, the steps that we took to automate and delegate so that I could elevate, right? So basically, all small businesses kind of go through this stage of progress. Where were you starting out? Obviously, you're super passionate, you're taking all this work that, that you can, but basically, you reach this point, if you're good, right? Where you're getting in enough jobs, and you've got the word of mouth going, and then you're like, Okay, I feel like I've achieved everything I wanted to start with. But now I'm at this point where I'm kind of working 12 hour days, seven days a week, and yes, not actually living the life that I envisioned when I first started this. So typically, we probably do start a photography career thinking, Oh, this is gonna be great, because I've got flexible hours, I get to work when I want to work, be my own boss, but then wait a second, well, I'm working way more than a way more than I used to. And if you could like this, this is not the version of my life that I plan for, because now it's eating into a lot of really super important things, eating into my sleep and into my personal relationships, eating into my health, eating into my willingness to do the thing that I loved. So it's taking a toll on that. And there is a very real cost when it comes to overworking yourself. Okay, so basically, you reach that point where you either you're either going to burn out, or you change. And so if you're at that point, I'd love to talk through what that change might look like.
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Yeah, yeah. So talk to me about sort of how you got into automating and delegating. And then and then we'll get into how you started making that possible for other photographers.
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So I think I think on the on both of those fronts, it probably comes to down to real estate accounting background, but basically getting an accounting mindset.
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So like, accountants are all in my family, my dad raised me on opportunity cost and risk and return those concepts have always stayed stayed with me.
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And so for me, it's, it's what is the opportunity cost of my time here, so I am spending my time repeating a task that could either be automated or delegated, that is taking away from what I otherwise could have been doing. And if there is a more high priority task if there was way that I could have been earning more money doing that, then of course, I'm going to do especially when it comes to like if automation and this obviously what you do so well, it's a real no brainer, and like the first place to start. So even in your client journey, where were you spend your time writing so many emails back and forth. If you're writing a single email, write that up. he'll somebody else might need to know as well that needs to go into a workflow that is answering that question before they have a need to ask it. Alright, so this is obviously a headache to have a problem that needed solving, perhaps is a nightmare on the day during the session you'd like that could have been prevented by information, I'm going to put that into a workflow. So it solves that problem answers that question automatically. And before they before they have a chance to ask it. So there's a bit of an art there in knowing when to send that out. That's why I typically prefer like, if you've got from the time somebody books to the to the time to shoot you might have with portrait photography, so you might have a couple of weeks there to send that information out. And certain information is going to be more relevant in different times. So So I prefer a workflow versus here's one large document that typically might not get a chance to read through. But if it's alright, one week from now, this is what you need to be considering three days from now this what you need to be considering the shoots tomorrow, this is these are the last points. Yeah, and then that obviously just helps prevent all those headaches and prevent the amount of time it takes you writing those same emails back and forth. Yeah, so yeah, big fan of big fan of automation on that front, just because it's, I can't even trust myself, right.
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If it's up to me to remember to cover all this, I won't, I will fail in the session will be worse. So I'm actually improving the client experience by automating for those
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of you who are listening and not watching, which is 99% of people. I'm sitting here just nodding my head over and over again, because I am 100%. On the same page, I feel like it is in some ways easier to just create this large document or, you know, huge handbook that you're like, here you go, here's a guide to working with me. But the fact of the matter is not only somebody unlikely to read that, if they do sit down to read it, they're not going to retain all the little bits and pieces. So you serve them and yourself a lot better by just dripping out information. And I'm always my mantra is give them the information they need to know to make the next decision that they need to make or to get ready for the next thing that's coming, because that's what's relevant to them. So that information is going to stick in their heads.
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But this is a little bit of a sidetrack, I just wanted to underline the importance of what you're saying there.
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Thank you very much. And I know obviously, we do put a lot of effort into these guides that we make, it's a great opportunity to obviously get our photos in front of them, get our branding, our voice, all that kind of stuff. So I would just say to put that into a lead magnet, making making a guide that perhaps then collects their email addresses, and then goes into an email sequence once again, automated marketing for you. So
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good. So you started to do this in your own business, it sounds like right from the get go, which is amazing, because it took me a long time. And there's all that opportunity cost of many years where I feel like I was just kind of, oh, well, it's not a big deal to write the same email that I write to everybody over and over and over again. And it wasn't until I was a little bit further down the road that I started to see the importance of systematizing and automating all that stuff.
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I wish I could say I was the same I wish I could say it was from the get go. Not the case, though. I also had to learn the hard way by mistakes, and just had a had a very important lesson given to me by by my daughter, that was just another night where she's come home from school. And you know, she wants to see me she wants to chat she wants to play. And I'm there on my phone, you know, trying to rework a bloody Instagram caption to say that this wedding day was, you know, stunning and in a new and creative way. And she said, Daddy, do you love them more than me? And there's no answer that I could have given was to why I'm constantly giving my time to these clients. So what is the purpose of this business, right? Like my life is not to run this business. The purpose of this business is to serve the life that I want to leave. And I want to be a present Dad, I want to be a present partner. I want to have great relationships with my friends. And I want to be to look after myself as well. And so starting with that end in mind. Right, and you had a great chat with Kirsten Sweeting, I think about this as well. So starting with that, that end in mind, or eight or so what would life do I want to live out what legacy do I want to leave? What kind of relationships do I want to have with people to me, I was actually at a funeral two days ago. And there's and there's no better way than then thinking about that very end, right, as opposed to just one year from now. But what I want to have people say about me, like, what relationships? Will they remember, like what the impact on their lives will will I have made? And if it's like, Oh, he didn't have time for me? Because he was just too busy doing stuff that could have either easily been automated or delegated?
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Right? Because you spent six hours a day on his phone getting served ads, like that's, that's to me, that is no way to live.
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Now. We're one precious and beautiful life, finite amount of time in which to live it. We have no idea how long we're going to have. So I want to make sure that I'm tenacious about how I'm spending that time and kind of went down that pathway off the back of that incredible question that that my daughter asked me and that bet chopping through straight through to I guess, okay, yeah, this is my daughter's questioning if I love my couples more than her just needs to change.
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Yeah. Yeah, I mean, seriously like, what a dagger in the heart. But that's amazing that you were able to sort of take that and let that be that turning point. And I'm personally just glad to hear that it's not just me that I'm not the only one who took far too long to kind of come to that. But it is amazing once you start looking for opportunities to outsource and delegate and automate how many opportunities there are. I mean, I think when I first started thinking about automating and delegating, I was like, I just don't have enough tasks out there, you know, that I'm doing that would be suitable. And it took me a while to kind of come to that. So yeah, I'm gonna keep going.
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Yeah,
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you wouldn't, you would not be alone. So that's, that's just about everybody. And the thing is, that's because you've built your business, doing everything yourself, right. So you've been amazing at getting your business to this point, right. But then at that point, what got you what got you there just won't get you to the next to the next stage. And that's where you're looking at now. Okay. Even though it we're doing everything myself has allowed me to get to this stage, I need to start looking at which parts of my doing just because at that point, you you've got a very clear distinction between priorities of your time, there are certain things that I'm going to be doing in my business that either brings in a lot more income, or lights me up a hell of a lot more than these other things. So if I can be earning, you know, $500 $1,000 an hour by doing a shoot, that's where I need to be spending my time. So if I'm limiting the opportunities of earning that$500, or whatever it is an hour, because I'm so busy doing tasks that could either be automated or outsourced, then it's costing you, right, it's costing you$1,000 an hour to do a $7.50 task. Right. So that's the opportunity cost right there.
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And you're absolutely right, that it does get easier. So once so on that automation front, basically, anytime you're writing an email that you feel like, this could be information that every every one of my clients could benefit from, that goes into an automated sequence that goes into the workflow, you just pick the time before the shoot that that should go out.
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Take the time to write it well.
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And then you don't have to write it again. Okay. And then on the on the delegation front, once you start looking at everything you do in your business in and recognizing that somebody else can help you do this, like it takes, it takes starting with one thing, right and it's like okay, this is working now this is now off my plate. Wow, I don't ever have to do another bank reconciliation in my life because you're looking at it like what why am I spending my finite time on this planet? You know, finding my Adobe subscription receipt, and you know, plugging it every single month plugging it into into my tax records. Once you once you do one, one thing and you're like that's off my plate that's working well, it helps you start looking at the next thing like is this something that is procedural, right? Is this something that is the same process with every shoot, so I've just done my shoot, I've got my photos. Now the process is to edit them. And then I want to put them onto a blog, I want to make a social media posts from them, I want to make social highlight stories, I want to try to look for a real that's trending and put the photos in from from that I need to send the photos to the client I there was a hair makeup artists involved, I'd like to send it to them as well, I need to get the Instagram handle address of that of that vendor of that hair makeup artist. I had a dog too, perhaps a dog groomer because I feel like the Instagram you know, channel of those, those dog groomers actually would be a fantastic place for me to find my target audience as well, because I'm really gonna dog photos or family photos with dogs. So like all these little things, uh, you know, help your business. And typically a you either are doing them yourself, and you're probably not happy about it, because it does take a lot of time. There's other things you'd rather be doing with your life, right, albeit you're not doing it. Because it's pain in the ass. So this is this is the stuff where you're like, alright, let's let's now get somebody else on this. And then when once you do start like recognizing right, this is procedural. Now what would it take to teach somebody to do this? Are there any variances in what I'm doing? So unfortunately, we've got some great software like like loom, which basically you record your screen, you got a little video of yourself in the corner and you can just talk through the process like okay, this is where I go to find the photos from the shoot, I go into my pick time gallery here. And at the top here, these are the highlights.
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So I'm going to, I'm going to make a slideshow from these highlights. So I click this button to make slideshow and now I need to find music that matches the beat and that has, you know, 67 slides. So now I go into my favorites thing and I find the music track that has 67 slides. Listen to it. Does that sound ridiculous? Or does that sound possible? Okay, great. I'm gonna use that one. And now I have a slideshow. Okay, so now I've got a slideshow, I've got my gallery. I'd like to make a blog of my page because I'd love all the friends of this particular couple to be going and spending their time on my website so that I'm getting the traffic and then they can see Alright, is this something that I'd like to book for myself that had the contact information there they had the other portfolio so this is the process Now of making a blog, it's entirely achievable once once you start recognizing what things are procedural to delegate to somebody else.
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Yeah, and I actually like that you kind of went all the way down that task, rabbit hole, and talked it through. Because what's impressive there is, you know, we all do all of those things.
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And we don't even think about them, because we're doing them over and over again. And, you know, we're, we're, it's just part of our workflow. But anyone who thinks that they, as the artist are required to have their hands all over every step of that business, is basically tying a weight around their own ankle like that is, it's not important that you make your own slideshows, pick time, if you're going to use a, you know, pick time software, which is what I use. So what Rick is, is like these are that that is a great tool. But there are plenty of other great tools out there. And none of them require you to sort of hand make that experience.
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Now, if you have a business where that's what you sell yourself on is that like, your hands are on every little bit of it, and you hand make your albums and you like, you know, go and have 100 meetings with your clients, great. I'm sure that you are charging a million dollars a wedding for that, like that's what you should be charging, you're not because that is the piece right time is the piece that we can't make, you know, we all have the same number of hours in a day. So when you think about all of those steps, and how many of them could be outsourced and or automated, that's when you start to understand that you have a huge amount of untapped available time in your business.
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That's right. So yeah, a couple of things there.
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So I find it almost amusing sometimes, even for myself when it comes to the things that we allow ourselves to outsource and what we don't, right. So we obviously outsource the hunting, the growing the preparation of our food, we outsource the care of our children, the education of our children, you know, our health to obviously professionals, our haircuts all these things, right? But we draw the line at our social media and making slideshows. I'm going to outsource the care of my children. But I have to make my own slideshows. Right? And so when you're talking about obviously, you know, my business, I do everything myself, I can make all these things. And that's the service I provide. And I have the 100 meetings, I was the same.
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Alright, until I asked myself the question, what would my business look like? If I didn't?
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What would my life look like?
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What you know, am I put on this planet to be a wedding photographer to spend my time this planet in these meetings, or to live it the way that I want to live? Right to be part of the natural world to have great human connections with the people that I love the most? And then I was like, Okay, what will my business look like if I didn't do these things? And it was even little things like, like making the USB boxes. And so it's like something I'd always done. And then I was just like, doing going through this process makes you question almost everything where you are spending your time in your business and what what would my business look like, if I didn't do this what I stopped getting leads would people stop paying me for my services, if I if I because I hated making those little USB boxes, it was because I shoot a lot, right? They'll just pile up and I put it off and then like, oh my god, today's the day, I gotta make all those handwritten cards gotta make the wrapping. I gotta, you know, all these different design, even just taking it down to the post office writing all the addresses out, it just seemed like a really bad use of my time. And I was like, Okay, if I just stopped doing this, and then instead had a an automated basically, I picked out like a sales automation. They said, Hey, here's $150 print credit.
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You can use it to order a USB box if you'd like. Or you can make that investment decision yourself and spend it on absolutely anything else you like. And guess what? Nobody orders the USB box. Yeah, they much prefer something something else. And like I'm still showing up on the on the day providing a great experience. Like nobody's was judging me on that USB box afterwards, right? It's the penguin for wedding photos. And they had an amazing time experience with me on the day because even the lead up to the day, because my client journey is impeccable. And I don't mind saying that. It really is it really something good. They feel so prepared on the on the day.
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And I'm prepared on the day because I have so much information about them that are turned up and they have an incredible experience. So they've decided that they're raving fans before I've even taken a single photo before they've seen a single photo.
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Everyone the bridal party knows about it when I walk into that into that room. They're raving fans, and that's thanks to the automation beforehand. So so it's not relied on in person meetings, right? So for me, I was just doing my five of those a week and I was in person meetings instead of being at home when my daughter is coming home from school, or having a glass of wine with my wife and all that right what would what would my business look like if I didn't have these? If I just take out this little paragraph on my lead response that says you know book in a meeting with me here and just change that to if you'd like to look this in here's the here's the quote. And you know what, it was actually a hell of a lot more efficient, because any questions that they have, these are things that I could answer either in that initial late response or later in that journey,
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there is a fair amount of ego that we like to tell ourselves is us trying to care for our clients. And I really do encourage people again, and again, to look at their client journey from the very first contact, where they find you all the way to the very end, and ask, what is it that you are providing that only you can provide, in order to provide that good experience for your clients. And it's fewer, it's fewer pieces of the puzzle than most of us would like to think.
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But again, that freedom that that comes, when you sort of embrace that is pretty incredible, I would love to talk about your business.
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So we have a service that provides virtual assistants that help kind of burn out photographers sort of helps them achieve, I guess, their greatest purpose. So if you've decided that your purpose is not wasting your time doing procedural tasks, then that's what we are here to do. And for me, the benefit is not just improving your quality of life, but the quality of life of your virtual assistant as well, because they love this job. It's so great to see it and hear it from so many photographers that come back, like I didn't understand how amazing I would feel from the gratitude that they have for working with me, which is a nice benefit of going down that path as well. So yeah, we provide, we provide VAs and it started just with my own with my own virtual assistant. And I was looking at all the resources that I'd provided in order for my VA to help me and I realized well, with like, the things that they're doing, like the resource hub we've we've got right now that are operating procedures of how to do all these things. And there is a barrier to obviously creating all of these operating procedures and training a virtual assistant and how to run your business, I realized it already kind of done all those hard yards there. So if we were to and COVID was actually a blessing for us, because this gave us the opportunity to have the time that we needed. Even just the neural pathways the we needed to be breaking from the routine of shooting to like, alright, what, what else can we look at here and realize that yeah, it was it was it was a replicable process, so that we could handle the recruiting and training of virtual assistants, on how to serve photographers, and help them live their wild and beautiful life, the way they want to the way they want to live it. And so that's, that's what we provide.
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That's amazing.
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And how many VAs Do you now have, as part of your team, nearly
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50. So I think so 4047, or something, and I've got a plan to get to 150. That's, that's the plan. So I'm heading over to the Philippines in in May as well for big team building day. And it's a, it's probably the most fulfilled, I feel in in my life outside of my family, when we will get to go and hang out over there.
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So talk to me a little bit about how your team is trained, and then how photographers who start working with you sort of make that leap because I think that that first time hiring someone which a VA, you know, it's it's different from hiring an accountant, or having even an editor who just does one slice of your business like your bookkeeper or your accountant takes care of the numbers, and your editor just does photos. But a VA really touches a lot of different or can touch a lot of different parts of your business. And as we've been talking about that can be tricky. So I feel like there's almost a growth curve, a learning curve, certainly to working well with an assistant.
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Yep, so on our side, it starts with knowing I guess a little bit about your business. So just the form that we have on our site, when you want to first express an interest in getting a virtual assistant, just finding out what what website platform you're on what CRM you use, whether it be any other software so we have obviously operating procedures for all different websites, all different gallery software that you're using the the all the different CRMs. So then once we know that and it comes to them recruiting and training your virtual assistant, also also, I guess the the main tasks that you are looking to outsource, then we know Okay, so this is these are the operating procedures, these are the resources we can train these VAs on so that when they're coming to you, great, I'm familiar and using HoneyBook and using pick time. This is not the first time that that we'll be using this so you don't need to show me right this is this is the dashboard.
00:29:42.029 --> 00:30:43.920
This is you know when leads come in. And then when it comes to obviously your website back end as well. We're on WordPress platform. So this is how to create a blog. So all that all those moving parts, basically your CRM, your gallery, software, your website, operating those things seamlessly and then obviously you know Gotta focus on Pinterest or something like that. Or another particular platform that you're really looking to social media management is probably the number one thing that most people want handled for them, which I really like. Because yeah, I mean, I think I think, I think it's five, five hours and 47 minutes is the average amount of time I think Americans spend on on on their phone. And obviously, per day, that's from a book called stolen focus, which I certainly recommend one of the big steps for me, it was like, I'm spending too much time on this bloody thing, because it is incredibly good at doing that, right. So do not feel guilty, like you got the smartest minds in the world, the biggest budgets, doing everything they can to make sure you're spending your finite time on this planet, on their platform to serve you more ads.
00:30:44.279 --> 00:31:03.390
Alright, so it is hard to detach from that. But beautiful thing is like, Alright, once I don't need to go in here to be making these posts, and then I get sucked sucked into the rabbit hole or So once I've got somebody else handling my, you know, my stories, my posts, my reels or whatever it eradicates that need for me to go on there.
00:31:00.599 --> 00:31:06.089
And so there may be okay, I need to check my DMs, whatever. But I can do that on my web browser.
00:31:06.089 --> 00:31:24.599
So you know what? I can actually erase this app on my phone? And then what does that free up for me when I wake up in the morning? And that's not the first thing I jump on? Right? I can now start the day being proactive, right? What do I need to focus my time on? What are these most important tasks that I can do in my focus time right now where my brain is on fire?
00:31:24.930 --> 00:31:54.630
Because I'm not going to waste that that beautiful time in the morning for me anyway, I'm a morning person if you start to be proactive instead of reactive with that was that focus time that you have that it's like a massive unfair advantage over everyone else? That's that's not doing that. You're like, okay, great. I've got my I've got my team handling on Brighton procedural stuff handling leads coming in. I know that's on them. Now, what have I always known is a pivotal thing in my business that I need to now put my time into to grow. And I'm just gonna sit here, and I'm gonna do it.
00:31:54.690 --> 00:32:12.210
Yeah. I mean, when this was something that actually came up, after we had that first conversation, I was like, Oh, great, okay, you know, let's connect whatever. And then I pulled out my phone. And I had to go on to Google to go to Instagram, because I have taken social media.
00:32:14.519 --> 00:32:15.960
Respect ahead for you for that. I was like,
00:32:16.259 --> 00:32:57.569
no idea. We're like, oh, my god, that's amazing. I was like, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Because it was taking me I had to log in and the whole thing. But that, you know, it is funny, it's almost scary when you take those apps off your phone, because especially as a business owner, you you worry like, Oh, am I going to be missing something, am I you know, like, couldn't recommend it more. Now, everybody who is familiar with my social media for this can't be that hard knows that Dana is like back there all the time. And she's doing that as her job. She's keeping me up to date, sometimes I'm in there checking in, but I'm doing it proactively instead of reactively. And that really is it frees up an enormous amount of brain space. I
00:32:57.569 --> 00:33:53.970
do want to touch on certainly not all rainbows when it when it comes to starting out with with virtual assistants that delegating tasks that basically there's there's emotional cycle of change that you typically go through. And change is hard, we biologically fear it. And we need to have like a vision of ourselves or a vision of a future that comes with that change. That'd be so crystal clear. That's going to help us overcome the discomfort of that change. By typically at the beginning, there's this thing called the emotional cycle of change, which, which I love because it's I feel it's so accurate. But it starts with uninformed optimism. So you're like, Oh, I've listened to this podcast, great. I'm gonna get a VA, all my tasks are going to be done, how brilliant, I'll get my time back. And then you'll start working with someone and you start to move into the informed pessimism phase. We're like, oh, wait a second. How do I get all of this stuff out of my brain into somebody else's, you know, somebody else's head, they did a task, but it wasn't quite right.
00:33:50.519 --> 00:34:01.769
And now I'm gonna need to go back and look at my operating procedure. Maybe it wasn't clear, because we're actually really bad at kind of recognizing what we are good at, and what's in our head, because we've been doing it for years.
00:33:59.490 --> 00:34:16.769
So you just kind of assume everyone else knows how to do this. And this happens all the time in our own my own kitchen, where my wife is a fantastic cook. And she asked me to do a simple thing. And she was like, Rick, what are you some kind of idiot? Like, why would you you know, why would you put that amount of salt in? Trying right?
00:34:16.769 --> 00:34:32.250
So it does, does take a while to recognize okay? How just how clear we need to make certain things and for see misinterpretations and be accepting of, okay, I can see where they went wrong there, because I did actually say that.
00:34:32.369 --> 00:34:57.420
But now I need to know yes, in this circumstance, I wouldn't do that I would do this instead. So if you're incredibly impatient person, and you know, actually, Brian, that's something you've touched on as well in terms of that's the the difference between getting from stage four to stage five, you you're stubbornly refusing to change and you can't be taught anything, then then you won't make that step. And obviously, that's, that's, that's fine.
00:34:53.610 --> 00:35:31.980
Stay and keep doing it. Keep doing it your way. And I'm not here to Say there's a there's a, there's a better way I was just this is my way. That's the way I did it. And if that works for you then then great. So after that after that informed, informed pessimism, you basically go into the bottom here the valley of despair, you're like, oh, okay, now this is this is harder, this is now doing more work than I was before. Because I'm not only am I trying to do the work, but I'm also trying to train somebody to make these operating procedures, I'm just going to go back to doing it the way I was doing it before, at least I was in control then and it was going through. And that's typically where most people turn around, and then go back to repeat.
00:35:32.670 --> 00:36:13.260
Basically those same three stages if they ever tried again, but for anyone that's able to persevere through that through that valley of depression, and then get to informed optimism where you like, Okay, I have put the time in now, I've made my procedure, crystal clear, they are working on this. And now I can see Alright, they are making this album design, the way that I would do it myself. And then making those design choices, they got the first two spreads dedicated to the guys getting ready the next three spreads dedicated to the to the girls getting ready, there's no black and white and color on the same spread, whatever, whatever it is, because it because it is a training process for yourself as well just chipping your ideas out of your out of your brain.
00:36:10.170 --> 00:37:02.670
And so now I can see actually that the task is getting done for me this slideshows are getting getting made, how I would want them made. Or maybe, maybe it's not, you know, 100% how I would have done it, but maybe certainly 90% But that 10% of it being done, not how I would have done it, it's actually allowed me the time to go and book another shoot make it incredibly vendor relationship with somebody going out and biking with my mates, I create a memory in my life that I know, I'm gonna remember for the rest of my life. And that's more important to me than that, then that 10%. And then your last step is success. Okay, great. We've got we're on the right path here. And I've trained myself on how to replicate myself basically how to get things that I do into a process that somebody else can follow. Yeah, and even if even if they need to leave the processes there, so somebody else can can step in and run their business. Yeah,
00:37:02.699 --> 00:37:36.090
and that even just the process of figuring out exactly what your process is, I feel like the first time that I went through that was pretty mind blowing. But I, I love the fact that when you were talking about this, it sort of reminds me of the process of learning to, let's say, ride a bike, when you're seven years old, or four years old, or however old you are, when you learn to ride a bike, and there's a blank there, you're motivated, because you you know, you see the other kids, the big kids that are riding their bikes and and you're like, I want to do that.
00:37:32.969 --> 00:38:19.710
But from the first time that you try to get on a bike, you know, you're falling over and over again, whatever. The lovely thing about kids is that they have this singular determination to move forward. And obviously, we're hardwired that way. But it is the way that we learn to walk and talk and all the other things that we learn when we're little that are super hard to learn and require a ton of failure. I think that the process of hiring someone who's working with you, in your business is one of the harder things that I have done as an entrepreneur. However, it is the difference between walking somewhere and riding a bike like you get so much more accomplished. When you're not the one bottlenecking every single one of your processes.
00:38:19.739 --> 00:38:46.500
And you're absolutely right the first time is by far the hardest time and you become better and better as the boss as a delegator in terms of like, figuring out, you know, this is how I've now I'm organized and I've got these things all mapped out for you. So it deserves a healthy amount of respect. And like the knowing that the process is not going to be all rainbows and unicorns. But that, yeah, that picture on the other side is there and it is amazing.
00:38:46.800 --> 00:38:54.869
That was just Case in point of why you're running the podcast out of a that was that was such a beautiful, succinct way that you put it with a fantastic analogy.
00:38:56.070 --> 00:39:10.860
Thinking to the last 15 minutes of me rambling and and in one minute you put it all together, but a really easy to digest way that that sounds great. So Well, thank you so much for drastically improving on what I was trying to say. Oh,
00:39:10.860 --> 00:39:13.320
no, not at all.
00:39:10.860 --> 00:39:27.809
No. And I mean, again, that came from what you were saying. It just reminds me of that. So tell me a little bit about your process when someone is interested in starting to work with one of your BAS. Tell me more. Tell us how that works.
00:39:25.440 --> 00:39:27.809
Yep.
00:39:27.809 --> 00:39:38.820
So basically, there's an initial form where we ask you the questions or which kind of software you use, and then you jump on a call with our head VA head of Clan success.
00:39:38.820 --> 00:40:05.039
Bob's, she's amazing. So a lot of people have, I guess, a fear or there's a barrier there to getting a staff member or somebody who isn't from your own country, right. This is how could this possibly work? So I challenge you to get on a call with Bob's and tell me afterwards if you still feel that same way. All right. Is this a person who has no idea what they Doing and is not could not be trusted with with you know your business or do they know exactly what they're doing?
00:40:05.039 --> 00:41:16.590
So they've been doing it flat out helping photographers get to that to that level five and probably even know a hell of a lot more than the new uncertain things because there's the you know, like we can admit there's a lot of things we could be doing, but we don't typically do because we're out of time, right? Yeah, challenge you to get on a call if you have that fear. Or he had that frustration about about perhaps outsourcing to somebody who isn't even from your own country, because that a lot of people do. And that's what I love about those first calls. And what I love hearing about people who come off the back of them, like, Oh, my God, okay, we're on. So after that, after that call, where she was basically just goes through the process of getting stuff out of your brain, what it takes to create an operating procedure, task template, what like what what your daily tasks might be, what your weekly tasks might be your monthly tasks, what your per shoot, like, you know, your pre and post shoot tasks might be. And then any kind of projects you want to work on where your virtual assistant is, maybe they've done with it, the tasks, and then you've got like a big, a big project that you want to work on. Maybe it's like blogging, right, I want to, I want to really boost the SEO and I want to create a great resource for couples who land on my site. So they know these are the these are the places the best places to get ready, or these are the awesome shoot locations, whatever it is for your for your particular business. Like that's, that's a thing that I've always wanted to do, but never got around to it.
00:41:14.699 --> 00:41:20.579
Or maybe I want to get into Pinterest never, you know, never even opened an account. But I understand it's important.
00:41:18.659 --> 00:42:40.139
There's a lot of people I know that do a really well. So Pinterest is one of those things that was me, never had an account. But you know, so many people still raving about it. So that was like, great. You know, for those periods where I didn't have as many shoots during the winter, I want you to teach yourself, Pinterest. So fortunately, we've already got the courses, we already know kind of the typical things that work well for it. So UVA can start working on that. And the same with that with blogging as well. It's usually it's a beast of a task. That takes a lot of time. But fortunately, it's something that now VA could be doing for So yeah, basically getting getting that stuff out of your head. And onto a plan and then teaching. Okay, so this is how you're going to be sharing your login credentials with a securely. This is how to set up a LastPass account so that we can access your pick time gallery, or we can access your CRM, but we're not seeing a password. And then you can resume that at any time. And then this is maybe relationship guide. So they're so all MBAs are in the Philippines. And there are some cultural differences. So this is this is some things to be aware of when dealing with them. And then other things is the holiday that the times that they're going to be taking time off. So you can prepare for that. We're just working through all those all those little things that comes with taking on a new staff member particularly, right, and especially if this is the first staff member you've ever you've ever had before, which for a lot of a lot of the cases for us that that is that is true. And
00:42:40.199 --> 00:42:56.039
honestly, this sounds like kind of a dream. I add a couple of times have worked with agencies when I have had assistants. And I have not had that kind of an onboarding experience. There has been the like, what's your tech stack?
00:42:56.039 --> 00:43:22.829
And you know, where are your SOPs, but it sounds like you're doing the extra taking the extra step. That's probably super smart. Because your target market is photographers, many of whom aren't going to have worked with a VA before. But giving them the tools for success is I imagine gives them a lot more potential for success. Because the first few VAs that I had I went through very quickly.
00:43:18.960 --> 00:44:09.719
Because not because of them. In hindsight, I realized it was because I my sort of, even though I was am and was a pretty organized business owner. You know, it's one thing to be organized in your own mind. It's like my dad has a super messy office that he doesn't let my mom go in and mess with. And every time that she gets on his case about it, he's like, Look, I know where everything is. So it's a, you know, another great analogy mine. Yeah, this is how my brain works is an analogy. So So then, what do you generally tell people to expect when it comes to the period of time from blank when they sign up to when they've actually got a couple of things off their plate? And and you know, can start to see some real return on investment?
00:44:10.409 --> 00:46:41.280
Well, to your analogy you made it is like riding a bike. Right? So if you've never had a staff member before, we've got to train you, right, so so there was a training period here where we are training you to have a staff member. So you mentioned SOPs, and for a lot of people listening on my blog, what the hell is that? Sorry, it's a standard operating procedure. So that's that's basically kind of going to be the backbone of your operating manual for your business. And for any business to elevate right for any any organizer to elevate, they're going to basically need to start putting together an operating manual with these SOPs of how to replicate yourself how to do these tasks. And the beautiful thing is once you have it there, once you it's almost like putting an email template together that that you know you can can then be automated because once it's done, it's there and then that really protects you from Um, the vulnerability of somebody else leaving because at all, you know, maybe because obviously VAs humans, so other things can come up, or maybe they don't work out, then they leave. So you need to be able to have your manual here so that somebody can step in. This is why McDonald's can be run by 15 year olds, right, the operating procedures are immaculate. So we want to get to get to that stage where you're placing yourself in as many things as possible. So we just have to teach you in those first, like I said, at first month, some people like yourself, like you've had experience before, so you kind of know what to expect, you know what to put into this thing. And other people, there's, there's a large resistance there. And for a lot of people, it might not work, right, that might be too much of a challenge to overcome, to put what's in your head, onto paper or onto video onto an audio message in some way that somebody else can then come in and do those things. And we try to do as much of that as possible for you in terms of learning the software, the back end stuff, the dashboards, but if you've got a particular way of doing things, which I'm sure you have, I'm sure you've got your own secret sauce, we need to make sure that you're able to instruct somebody else on how to do that. So that the first the first kind of, you know, six weeks is almost getting you on board with that. But then once once you can do it with one thing, like just, let's not start with everything at once, right, let's just start like training you to get somebody else to do your slideshows, alright, or to whatever it is make make a blog post after your wedding what to do in Instagram carousel, because that's such as training of the it's training you on how to do that. But then once you once you do that, well, alright, then that's, that's a fantastic breakthrough moment.
00:46:39.449 --> 00:47:51.989
Because now you know, the next time you go to do it, it's going to be so much easier. And you've got a relationship with your VA, and you're like, Okay, you've got trust and trust now, because you can see that they're capable of doing things, taking things off your plate. So now you can put that same time into making the next operating procedure for the next thing you'd like to take off your plate. And then the more and more that happens, the more the better you get at recognizing which things can be taken off your plate. And not everything can not everything, can if you sat down and said, Alright, we've a, I just wants you to answer all my emails. And a lot of people do, that's a request that they have, and you know, you've been, you've been running your business for whatever, 1015 years. So somebody new cannot step in and just start answering all your emails with their with the amount of knowledge that you have, right? So so you're gonna be set up to fail without something like that, you know, we're also not experts in all the different all the different things, these are general virtual assistants who are very good at procedural tasks, then we do a lot of things, but it's, we're not like, you can say, Okay, can you start running ads for me, that's probably going to be better left for an ad agency, if you need them to perform some high level professional activity that typically, you know, you paying an agency $500 an hour for that might not be an expectation that we can realize.
00:47:52.440 --> 00:47:54.780
Right?
00:47:52.440 --> 00:49:11.280
Absolutely. And, and I think that it is, it's a process to learn what those things are, see what the possibilities are. And then it's a and then it's a relationship conversation where you're, you know, you're giving tasks and evaluating and giving feedback, and all of those things really do require you to step into a role that, again, can feel a little uncomfortable to begin with, but it is it pays dividends in terms of the time that you open up in your business, which can lead to, you know, money that you add to your revenue. You mentioned this earlier, and it's one of my favorite things about having people who work for me, is the fact that at this point, and specifically in my this can't be that hard in business, I you know, I am really pleased with the fact that I get to provide incomes for other people, while at the same time, you know, doing the job that I love and it you know, we all talk about as photographers we love our we love the photos that we make and we love the fact that we get to earn a living making our art well think about if you got to do that and provide a living for someone else. I mean, it's just sort of a compound effect in terms of the the joys I think of entrepreneurship so I'm a big fan.
00:49:12.449 --> 00:49:35.460
I love you mentioned that I don't think anyone else is is mentioned that before because that really is one of the benefits that I don't think people expect going into it or know about but there's because they actually end up working pretty closely with with your vendor, this might be a person that you're going to speak to more often than a lot of your best friends right because it's a daily interaction and so yeah, the relationships that are built they're pretty amazing. Yeah,
00:49:35.730 --> 00:49:48.449
so good. So good. Well, we are out of time but I know that people are gonna want to know how they can fill out this form. Connect with you find out more all the good stuff.
00:49:49.619 --> 00:50:36.210
So if you head to wedding workflows.com And don't be put off by the wedding in that in that all the workflow for that matter. Obviously you name I came up with During COVID, because the first thing we offered was an automated workflow, but we have a lot of portrait photographers. So if you had a wedding workflows.com, and then you'll see a virtual assistant page there. And then you can go have a look, all the pricing is are there on the page, see other photographers, obviously, their testimonials, all the stuff that you want to you want to read about, it's there on their page. And then you can also click the Get Started button. And if you did want to go through that process and get a VA, you'll be asked if you have a code, and you can use TCB T H, and when you sign up, that'll give you your first week with a VA for free. So
00:50:36.210 --> 00:50:47.280
for those of you who don't call my business all the time, like I do, it's a long name. So it's this can't be that hard. It's just the acronym for that. So TCB th,
00:50:48.690 --> 00:50:50.340
is clarifying that.
00:50:52.440 --> 00:50:57.780
I know well, and my name is hard to spell. It's just tricky all the way around.
00:50:54.960 --> 00:51:22.170
So wedding workflows, go to the VA page, use code TCB th I you know, especially if this is something if you are someone who like many of my listeners is anticipating a busy season toward the end of the year. This is the time because that learning curve and that sort of getting everything squared away and buttoned up by the time that you get busy. You will thank yourself a million times over for this. So
00:51:22.170 --> 00:51:24.480
I great point.
00:51:22.170 --> 00:51:27.030
Yeah, waiting until waiting until you're flat out is not it's not the right time.
00:51:27.449 --> 00:51:52.050
No, because not only will you not have time to set yourself or your VA up for success. But you'll also be compounding whatever impatience, you know, you might feel in those early stages with the stress of I'm already too busy for this. So you really you do want to pick a time of year when in the back of your head, you're like, I don't know, do I have enough work for this person?
00:51:49.139 --> 00:51:52.050
That's a perfect time to start.
00:51:53.010 --> 00:52:12.420
That is a very wise, wise words really wise. So there's also there's also a free task guide there. So if you're just thinking like what what kind of tasks could a VA do for me, you can have a look at the task guide there and just kind of gives you a little rundown of probably the most common things we would do for our accounts.
00:52:10.170 --> 00:52:12.420
Love
00:52:12.420 --> 00:52:15.630
it. So good.
00:52:12.420 --> 00:52:18.960
Well, Rick, this has been lovely. It's so nice to see you again and reconnect with you.
00:52:18.960 --> 00:52:25.050
And I hope that a lot of people hear this and hear the message because it is an important one.
00:52:22.769 --> 00:52:26.039
It's good work that you're doing. So thank you.
00:52:26.579 --> 00:52:28.440
Thank you. Thank you very much for having me on.
00:52:29.130 --> 00:52:35.219
Well, that's it for this week's episode of This can't be that hard. I'll be back Same time, same place next week.
00:52:35.670 --> 00:52:57.269
In the meantime, you can find more information about this episode, along with all the relevant links, notes and downloads at this can't be that hard.com/learn If you liked the podcast, be sure to hit the subscribe button. Even better, share the love by leaving a review on iTunes. And as always, thanks so much for joining me. I hope you have a fantastic week.
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I want you to get into your own personal time machine. And I want you to go back in time to the last time that you felt completely overwhelmed and slammed in your business. I want you to think about how it felt, I want you to think about how frustrated you were how tired you were, how you probably said to yourself, or your partner or your kids, like, I'm sorry, I promise I'm never going to do this again. And I want to ask you what you're doing right now. To prevent that from happening to you. Again, my guest today is Rick Liston. He is a an Australian wedding photographer who I met in Las Vegas at WPI. This past spring, and he runs an virtual assistant agency called wedding workflows, which is a little bit of a misnomer, because it's not just for wedding photographers. And it's not just about workflows.
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This is a regular virtual assistant agency, except that these virtual assistants who work for him are all trained specifically to work with photographers. So things like your upload, download, getting things ready on your gallery software, working in photography, specific CRMs, the emails and kind of communication that needs to go along with photography, blogging, social media, like there's a lot of different things that we do in our businesses that don't need to be done by us. And these VAs are trained specifically to do that. So when I met Rick at WPI, I was like, oh, yeah, you're gonna need to come on the podcast and share more about this business with my audience.
00:01:48.599 --> 00:02:17.849
And our conversation today is not a short one, because we cover a lot of different things about kind of the mindset blocks around outsourcing and automating. And then like, all the way toward, you know, halfway through, we get into more of the nitty gritty of working with a VA, this conversation is definitely worth your time and attention, especially if you don't currently have any sort of assistance in your business.
00:02:14.129 --> 00:03:00.990
Without spoiling it. I will say that once he gives you your code and your directions on how to sign up for a trial, you are going to see that this is a very reasonable price point and way to kind of dip your toes in the water of trying out working with an assistant. So I hope that you have some big aha moments, I hope that this conversation empowers you, and kind of emboldened you to take that step because I can speak from personal experience. Having assistance having people who are lightening the burden for me in my business has made all of the difference. And I would love to get more photographers on board with trying not trying to do absolutely everything themselves.
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Welcome to this can't be that hard. My name is Annemie Tonken.
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And I help photographers run profitable, sustainable businesses that they love. Each week on the podcast, I cover simple, actionable strategies and systems that photographers at every level of experience can use to earn more money in a more sustainable way. Running a photography business doesn't have to be that hard. You can do it. And I can show you how. Hey, Rick, welcome to this can't be that hard. It's great to see your face and have you on the show. How are you today?
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I'm honored, absolutely honored today. I was honored a couple of weeks ago when I got to meet you for the first time and I saw you walking that trade show floor. And should I go and purchase a note?
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No, I wouldn't be so bold. But then there's this little thing that my my daughter often does.
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She's like, Daddy, if I can do it, you can do it. And she's really good at like approaching people. She doesn't know how to ask for stuff. We go to the supermarket or something. And she doesn't know where the popcorn is. She was you know, as easy as I was gonna ask this person. And so I just channeled you know, what would vedra do and went up and said hello, and now and now here we are a few weeks later having a chat on your pod.
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So Oh,
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that's very sweet and very silly. Oh, thank you. It's great to have you I am it was such a fun time getting to meet you and chat with you and learn more about your business. And as soon as I heard more, I was like, I need to not sit on this. This needs to be a conversation that I share with the my wider audience. So so I'm really excited for what we have to talk about today. Why don't we start by I'm gonna have you introduce yourself and your sort of photography background. And then I want you to introduce your other business and I'll I'll let you take it from there.
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So I'm an Australian wedding photographer.
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Not a particularly gifted one in terms of the art form, so nobody, you know, nobody's going to be coming to me for that.
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Like, Oh my God, this the style of this guy, but I think something that I do incredibly well is stay local and look at it from I guess a business first point of view. So securing kind of sustainable leads sustainable income, and then for myself taking a step back from as many things as I possibly can. And the good thing about all of that is that just about everything I do is entirely replicable.
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Right? So the the business that I run, you know, we get probably five 600 leads a year shooting over 100 weddings a year, we all that is based on things that everyone else can do. So it's not based on my incredible photos. If that's if that makes sense. So I think in a way, it's more inspiring, because it's yeah, it's not like, oh, okay, I understand, because these photos are so amazing. But I could never achieve that. Because it's, you know, so gifted, it's no, I'm just, I was just dad, who was desperate, coming back to moving back to Australia with my wife and daughter at that time with no savings, no one can be like, Alright, okay, I need to, I need to make sure I don't, I don't fail. It's amazing, what can come out of desperation. So just just looked at it like, Alright, where are my target audience going to be, and for me, it's like the walking in the doors of venues every day. So I need to do whatever I can to get on those preferred suppliers lists. And fortunately, as photographers, there's so many things we can do for venues, to help them out to help them stand out in their own saturated markets that for me, it's really easy, probably the best use of your time in the beginning is to build those relationships, because that for me, is then being a sustainable source of leads for the rest of my career, and should hopefully continue to be so
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amazing. And you're absolutely right, like desperation, or at least that need that necessity really can be the best kind of motivator where you're like, look, I made feel uncomfortable, even kind of like your story before about, you know, giving yourself a pep talk. I feel that way. Often when I'm approaching either vendors or like, you know, an educator that I want to talk to or any of the above. It's like I have to, I have to give myself permission. But when it comes to like, it's either that or my business isn't going to work.
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And I'm going to have to go back to my, you know, quote, unquote, real job like, you get scrappy.
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And I think that I think that that is really inspiring.
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I'm glad to hear that there's probably a part of your audience right now is like, well, if I don't have anything to learn from him on a photography point of view, then what am I doing here, which leads me to the I guess the next thing that we started doing, and what I'd love to talk about you today is is just the, I guess, the steps that we took to automate and delegate so that I could elevate, right? So basically, all small businesses kind of go through this stage of progress. Where were you starting out? Obviously, you're super passionate, you're taking all this work that, that you can, but basically, you reach this point, if you're good, right? Where you're getting in enough jobs, and you've got the word of mouth going, and then you're like, Okay, I feel like I've achieved everything I wanted to start with. But now I'm at this point where I'm kind of working 12 hour days, seven days a week, and yes, not actually living the life that I envisioned when I first started this. So typically, we probably do start a photography career thinking, Oh, this is gonna be great, because I've got flexible hours, I get to work when I want to work, be my own boss, but then wait a second, well, I'm working way more than a way more than I used to. And if you could like this, this is not the version of my life that I plan for, because now it's eating into a lot of really super important things, eating into my sleep and into my personal relationships, eating into my health, eating into my willingness to do the thing that I loved. So it's taking a toll on that. And there is a very real cost when it comes to overworking yourself. Okay, so basically, you reach that point where you either you're either going to burn out, or you change. And so if you're at that point, I'd love to talk through what that change might look like.
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Yeah, yeah. So talk to me about sort of how you got into automating and delegating. And then and then we'll get into how you started making that possible for other photographers.
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So I think I think on the on both of those fronts, it probably comes to down to real estate accounting background, but basically getting an accounting mindset.
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So like, accountants are all in my family, my dad raised me on opportunity cost and risk and return those concepts have always stayed stayed with me.
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And so for me, it's, it's what is the opportunity cost of my time here, so I am spending my time repeating a task that could either be automated or delegated, that is taking away from what I otherwise could have been doing. And if there is a more high priority task if there was way that I could have been earning more money doing that, then of course, I'm going to do especially when it comes to like if automation and this obviously what you do so well, it's a real no brainer, and like the first place to start. So even in your client journey, where were you spend your time writing so many emails back and forth. If you're writing a single email, write that up. he'll somebody else might need to know as well that needs to go into a workflow that is answering that question before they have a need to ask it. Alright, so this is obviously a headache to have a problem that needed solving, perhaps is a nightmare on the day during the session you'd like that could have been prevented by information, I'm going to put that into a workflow. So it solves that problem answers that question automatically. And before they before they have a chance to ask it. So there's a bit of an art there in knowing when to send that out. That's why I typically prefer like, if you've got from the time somebody books to the to the time to shoot you might have with portrait photography, so you might have a couple of weeks there to send that information out. And certain information is going to be more relevant in different times. So So I prefer a workflow versus here's one large document that typically might not get a chance to read through. But if it's alright, one week from now, this is what you need to be considering three days from now this what you need to be considering the shoots tomorrow, this is these are the last points. Yeah, and then that obviously just helps prevent all those headaches and prevent the amount of time it takes you writing those same emails back and forth. Yeah, so yeah, big fan of big fan of automation on that front, just because it's, I can't even trust myself, right.
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If it's up to me to remember to cover all this, I won't, I will fail in the session will be worse. So I'm actually improving the client experience by automating for those
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of you who are listening and not watching, which is 99% of people. I'm sitting here just nodding my head over and over again, because I am 100%. On the same page, I feel like it is in some ways easier to just create this large document or, you know, huge handbook that you're like, here you go, here's a guide to working with me. But the fact of the matter is not only somebody unlikely to read that, if they do sit down to read it, they're not going to retain all the little bits and pieces. So you serve them and yourself a lot better by just dripping out information. And I'm always my mantra is give them the information they need to know to make the next decision that they need to make or to get ready for the next thing that's coming, because that's what's relevant to them. So that information is going to stick in their heads.
00:12:08.370 --> 00:12:13.080
But this is a little bit of a sidetrack, I just wanted to underline the importance of what you're saying there.
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Thank you very much. And I know obviously, we do put a lot of effort into these guides that we make, it's a great opportunity to obviously get our photos in front of them, get our branding, our voice, all that kind of stuff. So I would just say to put that into a lead magnet, making making a guide that perhaps then collects their email addresses, and then goes into an email sequence once again, automated marketing for you. So
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good. So you started to do this in your own business, it sounds like right from the get go, which is amazing, because it took me a long time. And there's all that opportunity cost of many years where I feel like I was just kind of, oh, well, it's not a big deal to write the same email that I write to everybody over and over and over again. And it wasn't until I was a little bit further down the road that I started to see the importance of systematizing and automating all that stuff.
00:13:03.419 --> 00:14:36.299
I wish I could say I was the same I wish I could say it was from the get go. Not the case, though. I also had to learn the hard way by mistakes, and just had a had a very important lesson given to me by by my daughter, that was just another night where she's come home from school. And you know, she wants to see me she wants to chat she wants to play. And I'm there on my phone, you know, trying to rework a bloody Instagram caption to say that this wedding day was, you know, stunning and in a new and creative way. And she said, Daddy, do you love them more than me? And there's no answer that I could have given was to why I'm constantly giving my time to these clients. So what is the purpose of this business, right? Like my life is not to run this business. The purpose of this business is to serve the life that I want to leave. And I want to be a present Dad, I want to be a present partner. I want to have great relationships with my friends. And I want to be to look after myself as well. And so starting with that end in mind. Right, and you had a great chat with Kirsten Sweeting, I think about this as well. So starting with that, that end in mind, or eight or so what would life do I want to live out what legacy do I want to leave? What kind of relationships do I want to have with people to me, I was actually at a funeral two days ago. And there's and there's no better way than then thinking about that very end, right, as opposed to just one year from now. But what I want to have people say about me, like, what relationships? Will they remember, like what the impact on their lives will will I have made? And if it's like, Oh, he didn't have time for me? Because he was just too busy doing stuff that could have either easily been automated or delegated?
00:14:36.299 --> 00:14:41.669
Right? Because you spent six hours a day on his phone getting served ads, like that's, that's to me, that is no way to live.
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Now. We're one precious and beautiful life, finite amount of time in which to live it. We have no idea how long we're going to have. So I want to make sure that I'm tenacious about how I'm spending that time and kind of went down that pathway off the back of that incredible question that that my daughter asked me and that bet chopping through straight through to I guess, okay, yeah, this is my daughter's questioning if I love my couples more than her just needs to change.
00:15:08.399 --> 00:15:54.990
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, seriously like, what a dagger in the heart. But that's amazing that you were able to sort of take that and let that be that turning point. And I'm personally just glad to hear that it's not just me that I'm not the only one who took far too long to kind of come to that. But it is amazing once you start looking for opportunities to outsource and delegate and automate how many opportunities there are. I mean, I think when I first started thinking about automating and delegating, I was like, I just don't have enough tasks out there, you know, that I'm doing that would be suitable. And it took me a while to kind of come to that. So yeah, I'm gonna keep going.
00:15:52.500 --> 00:15:54.990
Yeah,
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you wouldn't, you would not be alone. So that's, that's just about everybody. And the thing is, that's because you've built your business, doing everything yourself, right. So you've been amazing at getting your business to this point, right. But then at that point, what got you what got you there just won't get you to the next to the next stage. And that's where you're looking at now. Okay. Even though it we're doing everything myself has allowed me to get to this stage, I need to start looking at which parts of my doing just because at that point, you you've got a very clear distinction between priorities of your time, there are certain things that I'm going to be doing in my business that either brings in a lot more income, or lights me up a hell of a lot more than these other things. So if I can be earning, you know, $500 $1,000 an hour by doing a shoot, that's where I need to be spending my time. So if I'm limiting the opportunities of earning that$500, or whatever it is an hour, because I'm so busy doing tasks that could either be automated or outsourced, then it's costing you, right, it's costing you$1,000 an hour to do a $7.50 task. Right. So that's the opportunity cost right there.
00:16:54.750 --> 00:17:13.380
And you're absolutely right, that it does get easier. So once so on that automation front, basically, anytime you're writing an email that you feel like, this could be information that every every one of my clients could benefit from, that goes into an automated sequence that goes into the workflow, you just pick the time before the shoot that that should go out.
00:17:14.039 --> 00:17:16.559
Take the time to write it well.
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And then you don't have to write it again. Okay. And then on the on the delegation front, once you start looking at everything you do in your business in and recognizing that somebody else can help you do this, like it takes, it takes starting with one thing, right and it's like okay, this is working now this is now off my plate. Wow, I don't ever have to do another bank reconciliation in my life because you're looking at it like what why am I spending my finite time on this planet? You know, finding my Adobe subscription receipt, and you know, plugging it every single month plugging it into into my tax records. Once you once you do one, one thing and you're like that's off my plate that's working well, it helps you start looking at the next thing like is this something that is procedural, right? Is this something that is the same process with every shoot, so I've just done my shoot, I've got my photos. Now the process is to edit them. And then I want to put them onto a blog, I want to make a social media posts from them, I want to make social highlight stories, I want to try to look for a real that's trending and put the photos in from from that I need to send the photos to the client I there was a hair makeup artists involved, I'd like to send it to them as well, I need to get the Instagram handle address of that of that vendor of that hair makeup artist. I had a dog too, perhaps a dog groomer because I feel like the Instagram you know, channel of those, those dog groomers actually would be a fantastic place for me to find my target audience as well, because I'm really gonna dog photos or family photos with dogs. So like all these little things, uh, you know, help your business. And typically a you either are doing them yourself, and you're probably not happy about it, because it does take a lot of time. There's other things you'd rather be doing with your life, right, albeit you're not doing it. Because it's pain in the ass. So this is this is the stuff where you're like, alright, let's let's now get somebody else on this. And then when once you do start like recognizing right, this is procedural. Now what would it take to teach somebody to do this? Are there any variances in what I'm doing? So unfortunately, we've got some great software like like loom, which basically you record your screen, you got a little video of yourself in the corner and you can just talk through the process like okay, this is where I go to find the photos from the shoot, I go into my pick time gallery here. And at the top here, these are the highlights.
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So I'm going to, I'm going to make a slideshow from these highlights. So I click this button to make slideshow and now I need to find music that matches the beat and that has, you know, 67 slides. So now I go into my favorites thing and I find the music track that has 67 slides. Listen to it. Does that sound ridiculous? Or does that sound possible? Okay, great. I'm gonna use that one. And now I have a slideshow. Okay, so now I've got a slideshow, I've got my gallery. I'd like to make a blog of my page because I'd love all the friends of this particular couple to be going and spending their time on my website so that I'm getting the traffic and then they can see Alright, is this something that I'd like to book for myself that had the contact information there they had the other portfolio so this is the process Now of making a blog, it's entirely achievable once once you start recognizing what things are procedural to delegate to somebody else.
00:20:07.799 --> 00:20:24.240
Yeah, and I actually like that you kind of went all the way down that task, rabbit hole, and talked it through. Because what's impressive there is, you know, we all do all of those things.
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And we don't even think about them, because we're doing them over and over again. And, you know, we're, we're, it's just part of our workflow. But anyone who thinks that they, as the artist are required to have their hands all over every step of that business, is basically tying a weight around their own ankle like that is, it's not important that you make your own slideshows, pick time, if you're going to use a, you know, pick time software, which is what I use. So what Rick is, is like these are that that is a great tool. But there are plenty of other great tools out there. And none of them require you to sort of hand make that experience.
00:21:03.000 --> 00:21:44.789
Now, if you have a business where that's what you sell yourself on is that like, your hands are on every little bit of it, and you hand make your albums and you like, you know, go and have 100 meetings with your clients, great. I'm sure that you are charging a million dollars a wedding for that, like that's what you should be charging, you're not because that is the piece right time is the piece that we can't make, you know, we all have the same number of hours in a day. So when you think about all of those steps, and how many of them could be outsourced and or automated, that's when you start to understand that you have a huge amount of untapped available time in your business.
00:21:45.390 --> 00:21:47.789
That's right. So yeah, a couple of things there.
00:21:47.789 --> 00:22:32.519
So I find it almost amusing sometimes, even for myself when it comes to the things that we allow ourselves to outsource and what we don't, right. So we obviously outsource the hunting, the growing the preparation of our food, we outsource the care of our children, the education of our children, you know, our health to obviously professionals, our haircuts all these things, right? But we draw the line at our social media and making slideshows. I'm going to outsource the care of my children. But I have to make my own slideshows. Right? And so when you're talking about obviously, you know, my business, I do everything myself, I can make all these things. And that's the service I provide. And I have the 100 meetings, I was the same.
00:22:29.880 --> 00:22:34.410
Alright, until I asked myself the question, what would my business look like? If I didn't?
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What would my life look like?
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What you know, am I put on this planet to be a wedding photographer to spend my time this planet in these meetings, or to live it the way that I want to live? Right to be part of the natural world to have great human connections with the people that I love the most? And then I was like, Okay, what will my business look like if I didn't do these things? And it was even little things like, like making the USB boxes. And so it's like something I'd always done. And then I was just like, doing going through this process makes you question almost everything where you are spending your time in your business and what what would my business look like, if I didn't do this what I stopped getting leads would people stop paying me for my services, if I if I because I hated making those little USB boxes, it was because I shoot a lot, right? They'll just pile up and I put it off and then like, oh my god, today's the day, I gotta make all those handwritten cards gotta make the wrapping. I gotta, you know, all these different design, even just taking it down to the post office writing all the addresses out, it just seemed like a really bad use of my time. And I was like, Okay, if I just stopped doing this, and then instead had a an automated basically, I picked out like a sales automation. They said, Hey, here's $150 print credit.
00:23:42.990 --> 00:24:16.589
You can use it to order a USB box if you'd like. Or you can make that investment decision yourself and spend it on absolutely anything else you like. And guess what? Nobody orders the USB box. Yeah, they much prefer something something else. And like I'm still showing up on the on the day providing a great experience. Like nobody's was judging me on that USB box afterwards, right? It's the penguin for wedding photos. And they had an amazing time experience with me on the day because even the lead up to the day, because my client journey is impeccable. And I don't mind saying that. It really is it really something good. They feel so prepared on the on the day.
00:24:16.619 --> 00:24:27.299
And I'm prepared on the day because I have so much information about them that are turned up and they have an incredible experience. So they've decided that they're raving fans before I've even taken a single photo before they've seen a single photo.
00:24:24.990 --> 00:25:12.059
Everyone the bridal party knows about it when I walk into that into that room. They're raving fans, and that's thanks to the automation beforehand. So so it's not relied on in person meetings, right? So for me, I was just doing my five of those a week and I was in person meetings instead of being at home when my daughter is coming home from school, or having a glass of wine with my wife and all that right what would what would my business look like if I didn't have these? If I just take out this little paragraph on my lead response that says you know book in a meeting with me here and just change that to if you'd like to look this in here's the here's the quote. And you know what, it was actually a hell of a lot more efficient, because any questions that they have, these are things that I could answer either in that initial late response or later in that journey,
00:25:12.450 --> 00:25:47.789
there is a fair amount of ego that we like to tell ourselves is us trying to care for our clients. And I really do encourage people again, and again, to look at their client journey from the very first contact, where they find you all the way to the very end, and ask, what is it that you are providing that only you can provide, in order to provide that good experience for your clients. And it's fewer, it's fewer pieces of the puzzle than most of us would like to think.
00:25:48.450 --> 00:25:58.349
But again, that freedom that that comes, when you sort of embrace that is pretty incredible, I would love to talk about your business.
00:25:59.430 --> 00:27:36.240
So we have a service that provides virtual assistants that help kind of burn out photographers sort of helps them achieve, I guess, their greatest purpose. So if you've decided that your purpose is not wasting your time doing procedural tasks, then that's what we are here to do. And for me, the benefit is not just improving your quality of life, but the quality of life of your virtual assistant as well, because they love this job. It's so great to see it and hear it from so many photographers that come back, like I didn't understand how amazing I would feel from the gratitude that they have for working with me, which is a nice benefit of going down that path as well. So yeah, we provide, we provide VAs and it started just with my own with my own virtual assistant. And I was looking at all the resources that I'd provided in order for my VA to help me and I realized well, with like, the things that they're doing, like the resource hub we've we've got right now that are operating procedures of how to do all these things. And there is a barrier to obviously creating all of these operating procedures and training a virtual assistant and how to run your business, I realized it already kind of done all those hard yards there. So if we were to and COVID was actually a blessing for us, because this gave us the opportunity to have the time that we needed. Even just the neural pathways the we needed to be breaking from the routine of shooting to like, alright, what, what else can we look at here and realize that yeah, it was it was it was a replicable process, so that we could handle the recruiting and training of virtual assistants, on how to serve photographers, and help them live their wild and beautiful life, the way they want to the way they want to live it. And so that's, that's what we provide.
00:27:37.079 --> 00:27:40.650
That's amazing.
00:27:37.079 --> 00:27:43.980
And how many VAs Do you now have, as part of your team, nearly
00:27:43.980 --> 00:28:03.720
50. So I think so 4047, or something, and I've got a plan to get to 150. That's, that's the plan. So I'm heading over to the Philippines in in May as well for big team building day. And it's a, it's probably the most fulfilled, I feel in in my life outside of my family, when we will get to go and hang out over there.
00:28:04.980 --> 00:28:52.140
So talk to me a little bit about how your team is trained, and then how photographers who start working with you sort of make that leap because I think that that first time hiring someone which a VA, you know, it's it's different from hiring an accountant, or having even an editor who just does one slice of your business like your bookkeeper or your accountant takes care of the numbers, and your editor just does photos. But a VA really touches a lot of different or can touch a lot of different parts of your business. And as we've been talking about that can be tricky. So I feel like there's almost a growth curve, a learning curve, certainly to working well with an assistant.
00:28:53.160 --> 00:29:42.029
Yep, so on our side, it starts with knowing I guess a little bit about your business. So just the form that we have on our site, when you want to first express an interest in getting a virtual assistant, just finding out what what website platform you're on what CRM you use, whether it be any other software so we have obviously operating procedures for all different websites, all different gallery software that you're using the the all the different CRMs. So then once we know that and it comes to them recruiting and training your virtual assistant, also also, I guess the the main tasks that you are looking to outsource, then we know Okay, so this is these are the operating procedures, these are the resources we can train these VAs on so that when they're coming to you, great, I'm familiar and using HoneyBook and using pick time. This is not the first time that that we'll be using this so you don't need to show me right this is this is the dashboard.
00:29:42.029 --> 00:30:43.920
This is you know when leads come in. And then when it comes to obviously your website back end as well. We're on WordPress platform. So this is how to create a blog. So all that all those moving parts, basically your CRM, your gallery, software, your website, operating those things seamlessly and then obviously you know Gotta focus on Pinterest or something like that. Or another particular platform that you're really looking to social media management is probably the number one thing that most people want handled for them, which I really like. Because yeah, I mean, I think I think, I think it's five, five hours and 47 minutes is the average amount of time I think Americans spend on on on their phone. And obviously, per day, that's from a book called stolen focus, which I certainly recommend one of the big steps for me, it was like, I'm spending too much time on this bloody thing, because it is incredibly good at doing that, right. So do not feel guilty, like you got the smartest minds in the world, the biggest budgets, doing everything they can to make sure you're spending your finite time on this planet, on their platform to serve you more ads.
00:30:44.279 --> 00:31:03.390
Alright, so it is hard to detach from that. But beautiful thing is like, Alright, once I don't need to go in here to be making these posts, and then I get sucked sucked into the rabbit hole or So once I've got somebody else handling my, you know, my stories, my posts, my reels or whatever it eradicates that need for me to go on there.
00:31:00.599 --> 00:31:06.089
And so there may be okay, I need to check my DMs, whatever. But I can do that on my web browser.
00:31:06.089 --> 00:31:24.599
So you know what? I can actually erase this app on my phone? And then what does that free up for me when I wake up in the morning? And that's not the first thing I jump on? Right? I can now start the day being proactive, right? What do I need to focus my time on? What are these most important tasks that I can do in my focus time right now where my brain is on fire?
00:31:24.930 --> 00:31:54.630
Because I'm not going to waste that that beautiful time in the morning for me anyway, I'm a morning person if you start to be proactive instead of reactive with that was that focus time that you have that it's like a massive unfair advantage over everyone else? That's that's not doing that. You're like, okay, great. I've got my I've got my team handling on Brighton procedural stuff handling leads coming in. I know that's on them. Now, what have I always known is a pivotal thing in my business that I need to now put my time into to grow. And I'm just gonna sit here, and I'm gonna do it.
00:31:54.690 --> 00:32:12.210
Yeah. I mean, when this was something that actually came up, after we had that first conversation, I was like, Oh, great, okay, you know, let's connect whatever. And then I pulled out my phone. And I had to go on to Google to go to Instagram, because I have taken social media.
00:32:14.519 --> 00:32:15.960
Respect ahead for you for that. I was like,
00:32:16.259 --> 00:32:57.569
no idea. We're like, oh, my god, that's amazing. I was like, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Because it was taking me I had to log in and the whole thing. But that, you know, it is funny, it's almost scary when you take those apps off your phone, because especially as a business owner, you you worry like, Oh, am I going to be missing something, am I you know, like, couldn't recommend it more. Now, everybody who is familiar with my social media for this can't be that hard knows that Dana is like back there all the time. And she's doing that as her job. She's keeping me up to date, sometimes I'm in there checking in, but I'm doing it proactively instead of reactively. And that really is it frees up an enormous amount of brain space. I
00:32:57.569 --> 00:33:53.970
do want to touch on certainly not all rainbows when it when it comes to starting out with with virtual assistants that delegating tasks that basically there's there's emotional cycle of change that you typically go through. And change is hard, we biologically fear it. And we need to have like a vision of ourselves or a vision of a future that comes with that change. That'd be so crystal clear. That's going to help us overcome the discomfort of that change. By typically at the beginning, there's this thing called the emotional cycle of change, which, which I love because it's I feel it's so accurate. But it starts with uninformed optimism. So you're like, Oh, I've listened to this podcast, great. I'm gonna get a VA, all my tasks are going to be done, how brilliant, I'll get my time back. And then you'll start working with someone and you start to move into the informed pessimism phase. We're like, oh, wait a second. How do I get all of this stuff out of my brain into somebody else's, you know, somebody else's head, they did a task, but it wasn't quite right.
00:33:50.519 --> 00:34:01.769
And now I'm gonna need to go back and look at my operating procedure. Maybe it wasn't clear, because we're actually really bad at kind of recognizing what we are good at, and what's in our head, because we've been doing it for years.
00:33:59.490 --> 00:34:16.769
So you just kind of assume everyone else knows how to do this. And this happens all the time in our own my own kitchen, where my wife is a fantastic cook. And she asked me to do a simple thing. And she was like, Rick, what are you some kind of idiot? Like, why would you you know, why would you put that amount of salt in? Trying right?
00:34:16.769 --> 00:34:32.250
So it does, does take a while to recognize okay? How just how clear we need to make certain things and for see misinterpretations and be accepting of, okay, I can see where they went wrong there, because I did actually say that.
00:34:32.369 --> 00:34:57.420
But now I need to know yes, in this circumstance, I wouldn't do that I would do this instead. So if you're incredibly impatient person, and you know, actually, Brian, that's something you've touched on as well in terms of that's the the difference between getting from stage four to stage five, you you're stubbornly refusing to change and you can't be taught anything, then then you won't make that step. And obviously, that's, that's, that's fine.
00:34:53.610 --> 00:35:31.980
Stay and keep doing it. Keep doing it your way. And I'm not here to Say there's a there's a, there's a better way I was just this is my way. That's the way I did it. And if that works for you then then great. So after that after that informed, informed pessimism, you basically go into the bottom here the valley of despair, you're like, oh, okay, now this is this is harder, this is now doing more work than I was before. Because I'm not only am I trying to do the work, but I'm also trying to train somebody to make these operating procedures, I'm just going to go back to doing it the way I was doing it before, at least I was in control then and it was going through. And that's typically where most people turn around, and then go back to repeat.
00:35:32.670 --> 00:36:13.260
Basically those same three stages if they ever tried again, but for anyone that's able to persevere through that through that valley of depression, and then get to informed optimism where you like, Okay, I have put the time in now, I've made my procedure, crystal clear, they are working on this. And now I can see Alright, they are making this album design, the way that I would do it myself. And then making those design choices, they got the first two spreads dedicated to the guys getting ready the next three spreads dedicated to the to the girls getting ready, there's no black and white and color on the same spread, whatever, whatever it is, because it because it is a training process for yourself as well just chipping your ideas out of your out of your brain.
00:36:10.170 --> 00:37:02.670
And so now I can see actually that the task is getting done for me this slideshows are getting getting made, how I would want them made. Or maybe, maybe it's not, you know, 100% how I would have done it, but maybe certainly 90% But that 10% of it being done, not how I would have done it, it's actually allowed me the time to go and book another shoot make it incredibly vendor relationship with somebody going out and biking with my mates, I create a memory in my life that I know, I'm gonna remember for the rest of my life. And that's more important to me than that, then that 10%. And then your last step is success. Okay, great. We've got we're on the right path here. And I've trained myself on how to replicate myself basically how to get things that I do into a process that somebody else can follow. Yeah, and even if even if they need to leave the processes there, so somebody else can can step in and run their business. Yeah,
00:37:02.699 --> 00:37:36.090
and that even just the process of figuring out exactly what your process is, I feel like the first time that I went through that was pretty mind blowing. But I, I love the fact that when you were talking about this, it sort of reminds me of the process of learning to, let's say, ride a bike, when you're seven years old, or four years old, or however old you are, when you learn to ride a bike, and there's a blank there, you're motivated, because you you know, you see the other kids, the big kids that are riding their bikes and and you're like, I want to do that.
00:37:32.969 --> 00:38:19.710
But from the first time that you try to get on a bike, you know, you're falling over and over again, whatever. The lovely thing about kids is that they have this singular determination to move forward. And obviously, we're hardwired that way. But it is the way that we learn to walk and talk and all the other things that we learn when we're little that are super hard to learn and require a ton of failure. I think that the process of hiring someone who's working with you, in your business is one of the harder things that I have done as an entrepreneur. However, it is the difference between walking somewhere and riding a bike like you get so much more accomplished. When you're not the one bottlenecking every single one of your processes.
00:38:19.739 --> 00:38:46.500
And you're absolutely right the first time is by far the hardest time and you become better and better as the boss as a delegator in terms of like, figuring out, you know, this is how I've now I'm organized and I've got these things all mapped out for you. So it deserves a healthy amount of respect. And like the knowing that the process is not going to be all rainbows and unicorns. But that, yeah, that picture on the other side is there and it is amazing.
00:38:46.800 --> 00:38:54.869
That was just Case in point of why you're running the podcast out of a that was that was such a beautiful, succinct way that you put it with a fantastic analogy.
00:38:56.070 --> 00:39:10.860
Thinking to the last 15 minutes of me rambling and and in one minute you put it all together, but a really easy to digest way that that sounds great. So Well, thank you so much for drastically improving on what I was trying to say. Oh,
00:39:10.860 --> 00:39:13.320
no, not at all.
00:39:10.860 --> 00:39:27.809
No. And I mean, again, that came from what you were saying. It just reminds me of that. So tell me a little bit about your process when someone is interested in starting to work with one of your BAS. Tell me more. Tell us how that works.
00:39:25.440 --> 00:39:27.809
Yep.
00:39:27.809 --> 00:39:38.820
So basically, there's an initial form where we ask you the questions or which kind of software you use, and then you jump on a call with our head VA head of Clan success.
00:39:38.820 --> 00:40:05.039
Bob's, she's amazing. So a lot of people have, I guess, a fear or there's a barrier there to getting a staff member or somebody who isn't from your own country, right. This is how could this possibly work? So I challenge you to get on a call with Bob's and tell me afterwards if you still feel that same way. All right. Is this a person who has no idea what they Doing and is not could not be trusted with with you know your business or do they know exactly what they're doing?
00:40:05.039 --> 00:41:16.590
So they've been doing it flat out helping photographers get to that to that level five and probably even know a hell of a lot more than the new uncertain things because there's the you know, like we can admit there's a lot of things we could be doing, but we don't typically do because we're out of time, right? Yeah, challenge you to get on a call if you have that fear. Or he had that frustration about about perhaps outsourcing to somebody who isn't even from your own country, because that a lot of people do. And that's what I love about those first calls. And what I love hearing about people who come off the back of them, like, Oh, my God, okay, we're on. So after that, after that call, where she was basically just goes through the process of getting stuff out of your brain, what it takes to create an operating procedure, task template, what like what what your daily tasks might be, what your weekly tasks might be your monthly tasks, what your per shoot, like, you know, your pre and post shoot tasks might be. And then any kind of projects you want to work on where your virtual assistant is, maybe they've done with it, the tasks, and then you've got like a big, a big project that you want to work on. Maybe it's like blogging, right, I want to, I want to really boost the SEO and I want to create a great resource for couples who land on my site. So they know these are the these are the places the best places to get ready, or these are the awesome shoot locations, whatever it is for your for your particular business. Like that's, that's a thing that I've always wanted to do, but never got around to it.
00:41:14.699 --> 00:41:20.579
Or maybe I want to get into Pinterest never, you know, never even opened an account. But I understand it's important.
00:41:18.659 --> 00:42:40.139
There's a lot of people I know that do a really well. So Pinterest is one of those things that was me, never had an account. But you know, so many people still raving about it. So that was like, great. You know, for those periods where I didn't have as many shoots during the winter, I want you to teach yourself, Pinterest. So fortunately, we've already got the courses, we already know kind of the typical things that work well for it. So UVA can start working on that. And the same with that with blogging as well. It's usually it's a beast of a task. That takes a lot of time. But fortunately, it's something that now VA could be doing for So yeah, basically getting getting that stuff out of your head. And onto a plan and then teaching. Okay, so this is how you're going to be sharing your login credentials with a securely. This is how to set up a LastPass account so that we can access your pick time gallery, or we can access your CRM, but we're not seeing a password. And then you can resume that at any time. And then this is maybe relationship guide. So they're so all MBAs are in the Philippines. And there are some cultural differences. So this is this is some things to be aware of when dealing with them. And then other things is the holiday that the times that they're going to be taking time off. So you can prepare for that. We're just working through all those all those little things that comes with taking on a new staff member particularly, right, and especially if this is the first staff member you've ever you've ever had before, which for a lot of a lot of the cases for us that that is that is true. And
00:42:40.199 --> 00:42:56.039
honestly, this sounds like kind of a dream. I add a couple of times have worked with agencies when I have had assistants. And I have not had that kind of an onboarding experience. There has been the like, what's your tech stack?
00:42:56.039 --> 00:43:22.829
And you know, where are your SOPs, but it sounds like you're doing the extra taking the extra step. That's probably super smart. Because your target market is photographers, many of whom aren't going to have worked with a VA before. But giving them the tools for success is I imagine gives them a lot more potential for success. Because the first few VAs that I had I went through very quickly.
00:43:18.960 --> 00:44:09.719
Because not because of them. In hindsight, I realized it was because I my sort of, even though I was am and was a pretty organized business owner. You know, it's one thing to be organized in your own mind. It's like my dad has a super messy office that he doesn't let my mom go in and mess with. And every time that she gets on his case about it, he's like, Look, I know where everything is. So it's a, you know, another great analogy mine. Yeah, this is how my brain works is an analogy. So So then, what do you generally tell people to expect when it comes to the period of time from blank when they sign up to when they've actually got a couple of things off their plate? And and you know, can start to see some real return on investment?
00:44:10.409 --> 00:46:41.280
Well, to your analogy you made it is like riding a bike. Right? So if you've never had a staff member before, we've got to train you, right, so so there was a training period here where we are training you to have a staff member. So you mentioned SOPs, and for a lot of people listening on my blog, what the hell is that? Sorry, it's a standard operating procedure. So that's that's basically kind of going to be the backbone of your operating manual for your business. And for any business to elevate right for any any organizer to elevate, they're going to basically need to start putting together an operating manual with these SOPs of how to replicate yourself how to do these tasks. And the beautiful thing is once you have it there, once you it's almost like putting an email template together that that you know you can can then be automated because once it's done, it's there and then that really protects you from Um, the vulnerability of somebody else leaving because at all, you know, maybe because obviously VAs humans, so other things can come up, or maybe they don't work out, then they leave. So you need to be able to have your manual here so that somebody can step in. This is why McDonald's can be run by 15 year olds, right, the operating procedures are immaculate. So we want to get to get to that stage where you're placing yourself in as many things as possible. So we just have to teach you in those first, like I said, at first month, some people like yourself, like you've had experience before, so you kind of know what to expect, you know what to put into this thing. And other people, there's, there's a large resistance there. And for a lot of people, it might not work, right, that might be too much of a challenge to overcome, to put what's in your head, onto paper or onto video onto an audio message in some way that somebody else can then come in and do those things. And we try to do as much of that as possible for you in terms of learning the software, the back end stuff, the dashboards, but if you've got a particular way of doing things, which I'm sure you have, I'm sure you've got your own secret sauce, we need to make sure that you're able to instruct somebody else on how to do that. So that the first the first kind of, you know, six weeks is almost getting you on board with that. But then once once you can do it with one thing, like just, let's not start with everything at once, right, let's just start like training you to get somebody else to do your slideshows, alright, or to whatever it is make make a blog post after your wedding what to do in Instagram carousel, because that's such as training of the it's training you on how to do that. But then once you once you do that, well, alright, then that's, that's a fantastic breakthrough moment.
00:46:39.449 --> 00:47:51.989
Because now you know, the next time you go to do it, it's going to be so much easier. And you've got a relationship with your VA, and you're like, Okay, you've got trust and trust now, because you can see that they're capable of doing things, taking things off your plate. So now you can put that same time into making the next operating procedure for the next thing you'd like to take off your plate. And then the more and more that happens, the more the better you get at recognizing which things can be taken off your plate. And not everything can not everything, can if you sat down and said, Alright, we've a, I just wants you to answer all my emails. And a lot of people do, that's a request that they have, and you know, you've been, you've been running your business for whatever, 1015 years. So somebody new cannot step in and just start answering all your emails with their with the amount of knowledge that you have, right? So so you're gonna be set up to fail without something like that, you know, we're also not experts in all the different all the different things, these are general virtual assistants who are very good at procedural tasks, then we do a lot of things, but it's, we're not like, you can say, Okay, can you start running ads for me, that's probably going to be better left for an ad agency, if you need them to perform some high level professional activity that typically, you know, you paying an agency $500 an hour for that might not be an expectation that we can realize.
00:47:52.440 --> 00:47:54.780
Right?
00:47:52.440 --> 00:49:11.280
Absolutely. And, and I think that it is, it's a process to learn what those things are, see what the possibilities are. And then it's a and then it's a relationship conversation where you're, you know, you're giving tasks and evaluating and giving feedback, and all of those things really do require you to step into a role that, again, can feel a little uncomfortable to begin with, but it is it pays dividends in terms of the time that you open up in your business, which can lead to, you know, money that you add to your revenue. You mentioned this earlier, and it's one of my favorite things about having people who work for me, is the fact that at this point, and specifically in my this can't be that hard in business, I you know, I am really pleased with the fact that I get to provide incomes for other people, while at the same time, you know, doing the job that I love and it you know, we all talk about as photographers we love our we love the photos that we make and we love the fact that we get to earn a living making our art well think about if you got to do that and provide a living for someone else. I mean, it's just sort of a compound effect in terms of the the joys I think of entrepreneurship so I'm a big fan.
00:49:12.449 --> 00:49:35.460
I love you mentioned that I don't think anyone else is is mentioned that before because that really is one of the benefits that I don't think people expect going into it or know about but there's because they actually end up working pretty closely with with your vendor, this might be a person that you're going to speak to more often than a lot of your best friends right because it's a daily interaction and so yeah, the relationships that are built they're pretty amazing. Yeah,
00:49:35.730 --> 00:49:48.449
so good. So good. Well, we are out of time but I know that people are gonna want to know how they can fill out this form. Connect with you find out more all the good stuff.
00:49:49.619 --> 00:50:36.210
So if you head to wedding workflows.com And don't be put off by the wedding in that in that all the workflow for that matter. Obviously you name I came up with During COVID, because the first thing we offered was an automated workflow, but we have a lot of portrait photographers. So if you had a wedding workflows.com, and then you'll see a virtual assistant page there. And then you can go have a look, all the pricing is are there on the page, see other photographers, obviously, their testimonials, all the stuff that you want to you want to read about, it's there on their page. And then you can also click the Get Started button. And if you did want to go through that process and get a VA, you'll be asked if you have a code, and you can use TCB T H, and when you sign up, that'll give you your first week with a VA for free. So
00:50:36.210 --> 00:50:47.280
for those of you who don't call my business all the time, like I do, it's a long name. So it's this can't be that hard. It's just the acronym for that. So TCB th,
00:50:48.690 --> 00:50:50.340
is clarifying that.
00:50:52.440 --> 00:50:57.780
I know well, and my name is hard to spell. It's just tricky all the way around.
00:50:54.960 --> 00:51:22.170
So wedding workflows, go to the VA page, use code TCB th I you know, especially if this is something if you are someone who like many of my listeners is anticipating a busy season toward the end of the year. This is the time because that learning curve and that sort of getting everything squared away and buttoned up by the time that you get busy. You will thank yourself a million times over for this. So
00:51:22.170 --> 00:51:24.480
I great point.
00:51:22.170 --> 00:51:27.030
Yeah, waiting until waiting until you're flat out is not it's not the right time.
00:51:27.449 --> 00:51:52.050
No, because not only will you not have time to set yourself or your VA up for success. But you'll also be compounding whatever impatience, you know, you might feel in those early stages with the stress of I'm already too busy for this. So you really you do want to pick a time of year when in the back of your head, you're like, I don't know, do I have enough work for this person?
00:51:49.139 --> 00:51:52.050
That's a perfect time to start.
00:51:53.010 --> 00:52:12.420
That is a very wise, wise words really wise. So there's also there's also a free task guide there. So if you're just thinking like what what kind of tasks could a VA do for me, you can have a look at the task guide there and just kind of gives you a little rundown of probably the most common things we would do for our accounts.
00:52:10.170 --> 00:52:12.420
Love
00:52:12.420 --> 00:52:15.630
it. So good.
00:52:12.420 --> 00:52:18.960
Well, Rick, this has been lovely. It's so nice to see you again and reconnect with you.
00:52:18.960 --> 00:52:25.050
And I hope that a lot of people hear this and hear the message because it is an important one.
00:52:22.769 --> 00:52:26.039
It's good work that you're doing. So thank you.
00:52:26.579 --> 00:52:28.440
Thank you. Thank you very much for having me on.
00:52:29.130 --> 00:52:35.219
Well, that's it for this week's episode of This can't be that hard. I'll be back Same time, same place next week.
00:52:35.670 --> 00:52:57.269
In the meantime, you can find more information about this episode, along with all the relevant links, notes and downloads at this can't be that hard.com/learn If you liked the podcast, be sure to hit the subscribe button. Even better, share the love by leaving a review on iTunes. And as always, thanks so much for joining me. I hope you have a fantastic week.
