Brittanyology: Recent Episodes

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Entrepreneur: Brittany SchnellPre-BookingThe first ingredient to connecting with your clients is earing their trust. They need to be able to see with total confidence that you can provide their ideal experience or product. I build trust in many ways: consistently posting to Facebook, Instagram, the Brittanyography Blog, the Newsletter & Podcast, YouTube, and dare I say it? TikTok; I’m always talking about my business because I’m genuinely excited about it; and I run promotions with the local radio station, bridal shows and photo competitions.

They say it takes three points of contact to make a sale, so I’m trying to make as many points of contact as possible. My platforms are diverse and I can easily move to a new platform. Gary Vaynerchudk notes that the top marketers are always looking for the newest way people communicate. So being fluid will allow me to stay on top.

Content is King. So, I always ask myself these three questions when I create any sort of content:

1. Would I find this helpful?
2. Would I find this interesting?
3. Would I find this valuable?

If the answer is “Yes,” I can move forward with the publishing plan. Always making sure that the content matches the platform I am publishing it on.

Finally, your clients are all around you: The kid that bags your groceries will need senior photos. The mom you met at the local paint and sip needs family photos. Your husband’s mom’s friend needs their kid’s senior photos taken. Your pastor could use new portraits for the church website. Talk to them!! See if you are a good fit for them!

Booking ProcessHere is a look into my booking process. My preferred client management system is Honeybook, but there are others out there!

Clients reach out to me and let me know what they would like for services and products.

• Private message on Facebook or Instagram
• Website submission form
• Speak to me in person

When I reply to potential clients, I’m trying to find out all the important things about their photo needs. I ask the following

• Their wants & needs
• Date, Time & Location
• Budget
• Specific Ideas

A person’s reply will help determine what kind and size of session they need. Clients often know what they want. If they want to move forward with booking, I will email them a project proposal composed of a contract and invoice using HoneyBook.

It’s that easy. Clients can sign their contract from their computer or device and pay just as easily. Once the contract is signed and deposit paid, they are booked. HoneyBook will put them on my calendar and automatically send anything I have set up. Seniors photos will have a different set up of prep emails than a boudoir session which will be different from a wedding client. With HoneyBook, I never miss a beat.

I do not work if there is no contract. Contracts clearly layout the expectations of each party. It covers my butt and my client’s butt. Imagine paying a wedding photographer but not signing a contract. The photographer’s word would be the only thing keeping you on their schedule. Or imagine me setting a specific day, let’s say June 4 aside for Jane & John doe- the couple says they will pay me cash the day of their wedding. The night before they call off the wedding. How am I supposed to find work now? Where will my income come from? Not them!

I did not sign a wedding photography contract with my wedding photographer. She backed out the Thursday before I got married. I ended up scrambling to find someone. Special.

I’ll let you know more about my shooting prep and shooting process another time. Until then!

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When I was in Mrs. Walker’s fourth grade class at Mitchell Christian School, a Junior Achievement representative spoke to the class about the business world. My class learned about different jobs in our community including entrepreneurs.

My parents were always interested in my education and how I spent my day at school. After school that day, I can vividly remember talking to my dad about what I had learned. I even remember where we were standing when we had the conversation- on the south side of the Statuary business by the birdbaths. Our conversation went a little something like this:

“What did you learn at school today?

“I learned what you and mommy are.”

“Oh yeah? What are we?”

“Aunt-ep-ra-ners” I definitely couldn’t remember the word perfectly.

He gently corrected me and explained all the different business ventures they had. They owned the concreate statue business (The Statuary), rental properties (commercial, residential and agricultural), two restaurants (a Mexican place called Los Sombreros and an ice cream joint named Sundae’s and More), and rented out large machinery like fork lifts. My parent’s had A LOT going on.

He told me that being a businessman doesn’t mean you make a lot of money- you have to make good decisions & work hard to make lots of money. Sometimes, even when you make good decisions & work hard- things don’t work out. Which means it’s vital to know when to pull out and when to keep going. He’s made wrong decisions before and if I am an entrepreneur one day, I will make wrong decisions too. If I learn from my mistakes, they really aren’t mistakes- they are learning experiences.

When I discovered that entrepreneurs didn’t have bosses, I knew that’s what I was going to do one day. Here I am, a little under two decades later, doing what I said I would do.

AccountingI didn’t think accounting was that big of a deal when I first started photography. At the time, it was only a part time gig and I wasn’t leaning into it for my main source of income. As long as I made enough money to feed my growing camera gear habit, I didn’t care. Big oof.

When presented with challenges like sales tax, income tax and paying contractors, I turned to my college education at MTI. In school, I earned a Quickbooks Online Certification. I used my textbook and advice from my father to create my chart of accounts.

Quickbooks has loads of features like a mileage tracker, time tracker and expenses tracker. Looking at reports like my profit & loss report, allows me to narrow in on what is and isn’t working in my business from a financial standpoint.

Client & Project ManagementBefore I had a customer relationship management (CRM) solution, I was using pieces of paper with the client’s project information in an organized filing cabinet to keep track of everything. Although I rarely lost important information, I would often forget to print it out so this system had a flaw in it from the beginning- me!

When my friend and fellow small business owner and photographer, Mercedes mentioned to me that she was using this CRM called HoneyBook, I was ready to listen.

If I remember correctly, HoneyBook offered two months free and half off the first year plan for new accounts. I figured if I didn’t like it, I could always cancel before the two months were up.

That was over a year ago. This year I gladly paid full price for HoneyBook’s service- $40/per month or $34/per month when paying for the full year at once. Here are a few of the tools that HoneyBook offers:

Essentials

• Templates

  • Invoices
  • Contracts
  • Proposals
  • Questionnaires
  • Brochures
  • Gift Cards
  • Packages
  • Contact Forms
  • Emails
  • Email Signatures
  • Workflow
  • Calendar

Productivity

• Scheduling
• Tasks
• Time Tracker

Finance

• Reports
• Payments
• Expenses
• Profit & Loss

Lead Capture

• Contact Form
• Chrome Extension
• Batch Emails
• Gift Cards

HoneyBook is like hiring a personal assistant with 100% perfect attendance, never lose anything, they always have all the information you need and can keep your calendar straight. It’s certainly been one of the bigger game changing moves for my business.

They have a referral program. If you would like to use my link for a discount for you and a reward for me, click here!

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Here, I’m going to let you know where I have learned the most marketing techniques. Composed of books, inspiring social media accounts and great podcasts that I would recommend to everyone new to marketing or small business.

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My intention for this podcast is to share my business & photography experience with my peers- other photographers & videographers, wedding vendors, creatives, small business owners & entrepreneurs. I’m hoping to build a place for me to be frank with my photography techniques, open about my business practices and available to learn from & with others.

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There’s so many things we can’t control- but what we can control is how we react to them. Socrates reflects about how he reacts to different situations in his life. He couldn’t control them, but he could control himself and how a he reacted is what defined him.

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Squarespace has been a wonderful platform for my website.

Previous Website

I’ve hosted a few websites in my day- nothing serious, but everything made by me. I owned a website for my photography business way back in the day, Splendid Studios (thank God for the name change, right?!). The website was hosted on weebly.com and made by me on a Macbook Pro-late 2014 edition during the off time of printing t-shirts at Sun Gold Sports in Mitchell, SD.

My main thing at Sun Gold Sports was to print illustrations on t-shirts directly from a computer. The process involved a bit of prep work and a lot of waiting around for the printer to finish it’s job. I got bored wayy to easily. I asked my boss if I could work on my computer during this time and they said “yes.”

That website was wonderful and horrible. It was my first try at story telling, announcing my services and blogging about the experience. If by some terrible miracle someone finds an old version of that website, I don’t think I would want to see it. I’m so critical of myself that it would likely send me into a weeks worth of anxious thoughts like

“How did I ever put myself out into the world like that?”
“I can’t believe I was proud of my photography work back then.”
“Wow! I look like I’ve never taken an English or Grammar class in my life!”

But you know what? I don’t think I would have the bad ass website I have today without that shitty website from 2013. And you know what else? I might have those same thoughts about my website today in a decade. And that’s OK.

Current Website

I’m very happy with my current website, but I’ve had it for about a year and I know it’s time for a change. I’ve been taking notes, so I know what I want to add, take away, combine and renew. I have a long list! First I want to reflect on the things I have loved about my current website. AAAAAnd only the things I love- I don’t want to be critical here!

The landing page- I love my landing page. I change the background image frequently and often choose either a still image or a three frame GIF. I’m happy with the “greyed out” effect on the image that makes my brand name and categories pop out. I’m happy with the fonts, the spacing, the icons at the bottom of the screen, and my motto at the top. I think the landing page is crisp, clean and attractive.

Weddings- I love the photos that I have selected for my wedding page. I’m happy with the form that I have for couples to fill out (it get’s used very frequently!), and the blogs at the bottom are the icing on the cake for me. The forms are actually made in Honeybook (my client management system). Honeybook creates a unique code that I can paste into a code box in the Squarespace admin. The first time I did this, I felt super nerdy- but I’ve done so much more nerdy shit since then (like reinstalling windows on a hard drive that didn’t have a partition and was formatted incorrectly- all in the command prompt off of a USB thumb drive with a temporary copy of windows on it!! *takes breath) I’m also very happy with my pricing guide.

Seniors- Wow, my senior page looks so nice. I have tons of photos & GIFs across the page that I’m extremely proud of. I have no clue how the class of 2022 could be better. They are going to need to bring their A game!!! Again, the form on the senior tab is created with Honeybook. It gets used frequently and is a big help in the planning stage.

Families- I like the photos other than that- If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything. Where is my family form?! The page has loads of empty space on it!! Why did I only display photos from a few families? Why are there no GIFs?!!!! This page is the first to get some TLC.

Store - I’m happy I put our store together. Olivia and I are available for oil paintings and you can now order memento boxes through the website. This page has loads of potential and I’m excited to implement my new ideas.

Blog - I blogged the most in 2020 than I ever had. I had my first sponsored blog post and improved my tags, categories, SEO and other behind the scenes things. I’m changing up how I blog in 2021 and I’m looking forward to the change!

Home - This home page is pretty new. I think I made it around November. I love the vortex banner image and the experience, about and connect panels look swell. They contain loads of information and are a great place for anyone new to my brand to start. A very good first impression! The rest of the page has potential, but I’m not currently satisfied with it. I’m excited to see where this page goes!

Resources - This tab is full of information helpful to my clients and peers. The gear list is an up to date place of my equipment list. I’m frequently sending out the link to this page to photographers asking for my kit and is helpful for insurance purposes. The client experience page contains a series of videos I made describing the Brittanyography client experience.

Going through my website again gives me the chills. I made that. Myself. I’m going to make it again. Better. It’s only going up from here!

Next Website

With Squarespace, the pages I have made will transfer over to the next template that I choose or make.

Thanks to SkillShare and Christopher Dodd- I’m learning how to create or edit squarespace templates. I’m currently on lesson 5 of 16. Wish me luck!!!
However, I’m currently down the rabbit hole of installing Facebook Pixel to my current website and linking it to my Facebook Page.

There’s so much to be done.