114: Q4 Business Bestie Chat with Colie James

Sabrina: Welcome to the shoot it straight podcast. I’m your host, Sabrina Gebhardt. Here, I will share an honest take on what it’s like to be a female creative entrepreneur while balancing business, motherhood, and life. Myself, along with my guests will get vulnerable through honest conversations and relatable stories because we’re willing to go there.

If you’re trying to find balance in this exciting place you’re in, yet willing to talk about the hard stuff too, The shoot it straight podcast is here to share practical and tangible takeaways to help you shoot it straight.

Welcome back to the shoot it straight podcast. My friends, today is our fourth quarterly business bestie chat with my business bestie, Koli James. We have officially made it a whole year of these conversations, which is super fun because if you go back to the very first episode, you will hear that we weren’t sure this was going to become a thing.

And we were kind of just doing it for fun and we were going to see what happens. But I have heard more feedback about our chats than anything else. Side note, I feel like we could have our own like separate podcast where we do this all the time. I get more feedback from listeners, from students, from people in my DMs, that they just love listening to us chat and have these.

Off the cuff discussions. And so we’re back for Q4 and I’m assuming we’re just going to carry this on into 2025 and let it keep rolling.

Colie: Yeah, we’re just going to keep this going. And I just want to say, you may have been unsure that this was going to continue. I was pretty sure that this was going to continue.

I just didn’t think it might not continue if I quit my business, which in Q4. I am nowhere near quitting my business anymore. So, I mean, that’s an update in itself. Yeah, there you go.

Sabrina: So the way this works in case you haven’t listened, and this is your first one, we’re going to go through some update recap stuff to cover what we talked about on the last quarterly call.

And then we’re going to jump into what’s new in our businesses. And Colleen and I just kind of bounce back and forth. It’s literally like listening in to a Voxer conversation that she would, she and I would have, which we do all the time. But I’m really excited about this chat today. So we’re going to dive right in.

One of the things that was new for you in Q3 was that you finally had childcare. You finally had childcare and the floodgates opened and you were able to be productive again and excited about things and getting stuff done in your business to move the needle. So I’m curious now we are in the school year.

And so I’m curious what your rhythms and routines are, how productive you’re feeling, like how’s all that going for you?

Colie: I am feeling very productive. So, a couple of updates. So, Chloe started school, one school, public school, 8 to 3, 30. Yeah, 8, 20 to 8 to 3, 30 every day. So, on top of that, we have just completed volleyball season.

So, on top of dropping Chloe off and not seeing her until 3, 30, she has actually been at school until 5 o’clock, Monday through Friday. every single day for the first, what are we, we’re like in week seven. So all of those weeks my child was gone all day. It is amazing because one of the things that has still come this year, and I am going to continue to do this, I have been trying to give myself a lot of grace.

My brain just does not work the same way that it used to, and it takes me longer to do stuff. So I am no longer like condensing. My setups or the admin work that I need to do, I have like built in like two days a week where I am not expected to do a call. I am not expected to do anything so that if I fall behind on a day where I did schedule something, I have an extra buffer day or two to allow me that grace.

And my husband just thinks it’s awesome. He, he calls me sometimes and he’s like, so is it a work day or is it a Netflix day? And I mean, you know, my answer varies a lot guys, but with Chloe being in one school and me not having to constantly watch the clock with like 19 reminders to make sure that I didn’t forget to pick up my child, I have been able to just sit down and allow my brain to work on the things that I need to work on.

And it has been amazing.

Sabrina: I feel you so deeply on the reminders, the amount of alarms I have turned on on any given day, just for my children. And like, who needs to leave when, who needs to be picked up when, who’s got to be ready for carpool. I mean, it is wild. And so I, I really feel you deeply on that. And there’s definitely something to be said about having that Clean brain space where you’re not anticipating something like, you know, you have the alarm set, but you still know they’re coming.

And so you’re like, do I want to start this yet? Do I not want to start this yet? I mean, it’s a whole thing. So I love that. I also love that you are building in more margin in your calendar. I mean, that’s something I teach and coach on all the time. So I’m Bravo. I’m proud of you for doing that.

Colie: Well, I mean, it’s a must for me because there are some days where I still wake up and I’m like, not today.

There is nothing getting done today. Also, one of the things that I have come to like, because you and I both talk about this with everybody that we know, your business, Has to fit your life, but it also has to fit the way that your brain works. And I am realizing more and more like I am not remembering stuff.

You and I can have a conversation today and tomorrow I might not remember the nitty gritty of what I said that I would do. So I am building in even more time to like rewatch videos, which until this year I never had to do. But now it’s like I rewatch by default so that In the event that I didn’t remember something, I catch it when I re watch it and or I read the transcript.

Sabrina: Yeah. Okay. One of the things I’m going to update on, I have been working on saying no more. That’s been something I’ve been working on all year and I didn’t start off the year so well. I am getting better. Q3, I had started saying no. Q4, I’m definitely saying no, even more. The big thing that I mentioned on the last call was that this fall was going to look different for me than it ever has, and that I was not going to launch a new product.

fall mini sessions, nor was I going to do an intentional marketing push to book full sessions. I was just going to let it be what it’s going to be. And the beautiful thing is that it’s working out just fine. I have photo clients on my calendar and right now I’m hovering between four and six sessions a month, which is pretty good.

Probably what my capacity really is in this season of life with the amount of education I’m doing and all the things going on with my kids. And it feels good enough to be creating with these families to be, you know, keeping my toes in photography and editing and all of that, but not having the overwhelm of fall busy season for the first time ever is incredible.

In fact, just last weekend. It was Saturday afternoon and I was literally sitting on my back porch reading and I had a moment where I was like, I don’t have any editing to do. I don’t have any sessions to be at. Like all of my students are doing like mini sessions today. And it was such a relief and it felt so good.

I do have some other things that I’m releasing and saying no to, but we’ll get to that Later in the call. So next update visibility, you had a lot to share about visibility on the last call. And I need updates on all of it. Number one, your email challenge. Number two, you had a webinar with Dubzado. Number three, you did Ellen Yin’s freebie fest.

And then you also had a, you also had a birthday sale. So like give me the rundown on how all of those things went for you.

Colie: Okay, I had no time for any of the rest of that because the birthday sale went well. Unfortunately, the birth, okay, so we always pick a word and I don’t know what my word was this year.

I don’t even really care. You and I both agree that there is no passive income. Nothing is passive. But what I am trying to focus on for the rest of 2024 and into 2025 is passive delivery. It’s not that I don’t want to market. It’s not that I don’t know I need to market, but I really need to market things that I deliver and I say, okay, goodbye, even if there is face to face client time on a call, I need to be able to end that call and write the summary or whatever it is and deliver it for my birthday sale, most people booked.

Uh, full setups or VIP days. But why did they do that, Sabrina? I had never offered them at 40 percent off. So that was my bad. That was my bad. Sale actually works. Just there will never be another sale like that. And I told them that, and I really meant it, but I ended up booking, I think, four or five different setups.

And then also, like, one or two additional VIP days that weren’t really, like, Devsado HoneyBook kind of setups. But, I mean, I’m still trying to complete the ones that I booked for the birthday sale. So, just note to self, next time I should, I should really think about that. But, it did finally put me in the black, if you will, for, like, This quarter, I’ve made more money than I have in the previous two quarters, which, I mean, we’ve said this every single one of these calls, for this year, that doesn’t really mean much.

I mean, I’m going to publicly say I do not think I’m going to clear six figures this year, and I’m going to be okay with that. I mean, I didn’t work for like four months, but coming back to the visibility, I did so well on the birthday sale, and I’m still fulfilling those offers to where I didn’t really have a lot of time to be visible in the places.

I will say that the visibility things that I did, like, I do not think, I mean, love Ellen Yen to death, but I don’t think that that was a good fit for my offers, and perhaps, her audience. Um, I didn’t really get any attraction from that. I didn’t really get any sales that I can specifically attribute. And I will say that out of the small number of people who opted in, several have already opted out.

So I will take all of those things as a clue that that just was not a good fit for me. And it’s okay because I just threw a couple hundred dollars at it because I was curious. And that’s one of the things that I value as a business owner is I do like to try things and see if they work. And if they don’t, it’s not a big deal.

And if they do, then I typically double down on them, but that was not a good fit. So the webinar with Dubsado. Um, that also did not really yield a lot of things, but remember that came before the birthday sale. And so I could have had some momentum from that going into the birthday sale. You never know.

But also most of the people who bought for me during the birthday sale were already my clients. I will say four people who bought setups or VIP days were students in the course. And so, I mean, if I had given them the opportunity to do an upgrade at some kind of discounted rate, like earlier in the year, would they have jumped on it?

Maybe. I mean, I didn’t have the capacity for that, but I mean, it was, it did teach me a lot of things. I need to do a better job. of making sure that I am reminding course students that they can upgrade to have me finish their sessions or finish their setups if they are unable to do it themselves. But it also made me realize that where I am taking the course next is perhaps the best direction and so that is what I’m going to double down on.

And by the time this episode airs it should already be switched.

Sabrina: Okay, so we’re going to have to circle back to this. Information at the end of the call because I want to hear more about that. So one of the things I need to update on is my education blueprint mastermind. So on our last call, it had just basically gotten started.

We’d had a couple of calls. We hadn’t had the retreat yet. We are now deep into the blueprint group. At this point, the retreat was set up. Incredible. Like absolutely incredible. All of those women had participated in a root to rise retreat before, so they know the level of retreat that I host. This one was awesome in a totally different way.

You and I have done working weekends together and that’s what this was, except for a group. I mean, no shoots. That’s yeah, no, no sessions. Um, there was teaching, but like as needed teaching, you know, if everybody was asking the same question, I’d be like, okay, huddle up. Let’s talk through this kind of a thing.

But a lot of it was everybody working through their own lists separately. And we would just sit around and have our laptops all day and we’d order coffee and we’d, it was during the Olympics. And so we watched like the kickoff of the Olympics together. I mean, it was really, really fun and crazy productive.

One of the things I did at the beginning of the weekend was I put up a big, one of those huge post it pieces of paper that you can like stick on a wall. And I wrote down goals for everybody to work on while we were there. And I said, You don’t have to achieve all of these. This is just a list and it’s a long list for some of you work faster than others.

And I had them as they finished a task, they went and put their initials next to it. And so we got to see like how much everybody did. It was like a visual representation. It was really cool. I will say that these women are absolutely killing it so far. The, the objective for the program was to start to show up as an educational authority, to launch your first educational based freebie, launch a small ticket offer, or a trip wire.

Map out a high ticket on offer and then launch that by the end of the year. So a lot of moving parts and a lot of objectives, but they’re totally on track. Most of them have launched their freebie or are about to, in the next couple of weeks at time of recording, um, they’ve started getting sales. They’re growing their email list.

They have exciting offers mapped and coming. It’s just so fun. Uh, and for the podcast listeners, you will hear all of them on the podcast before the end of the year. I’m interviewing them individually to kind of help promote their, um, area of expertise, which I’m really excited about. So the thing about the thing now is like, what do I do about next year?

What do I do about next year? Uh, number one, do I launch another group for new people? I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. I’m not sure yet. But what is also coming up is that several of these women now that we’re in Q4 are already mentioning like what’s next. We’re not ready to be done yet. Could there be an extension of the program?

Do we need to go into one on one coaching? Like what happens when this ends? And so that’s noodling over the last week or so currently is, um, What are the options there? Because I definitely am not the kind of coach that’s just going to leave you like up in high water and be like, bye guys, program’s over.

See you later. I want to continue serving these women, but what’s the best fit for that? I’m not sure. So, uh, I’m working on that now. Coley, how’s your evergreen email funnel going? Last time you heard you. Bill needed more emails. You hadn’t gotten really any sales yet. So I want an update on the whole thing.

Colie: Oh, you know what? I mean, data data minded me should have gone in and saw like what I could attribute to sales. I will say, I think the email funnel at this point is up to maybe 20 emails. And my, my goal was 32. So it is about halfway done. I have not kept up with it in terms of. In terms of like.

Everybody’s getting one every week. Like right now, the people that I initially put into it, I think in May, um, they got an email last week, but they’re not getting one this week. So, or no, they got an email two weeks ago, but they’re not getting one again this week. One of the things that I’m working on is restructuring how I’m writing those emails.

And so by that, I have my blog writer. Her name is Kara. She is awesome. I interviewed Candace Coppola. on my podcast for the series that’s currently still going at the time of recording and when this episode will be published. It’s called marketing with intention, but I interviewed Candace and she was talking about her marketing person and her writer and all the things that she did.

And Sabrina, it took me 10 minutes to realize she was talking about my person. Like I forgot, I did know, but I forgot that we had the same person. So this is me. Writing down all the things. Oh my God, what can I make Cara do for me next? And one of the things that I have kind of passed off to her is every time she’s writing a blog post now, I want her to write an email, not only that will like push the blog post now, but that I can repurpose that one and go into the evergreen sequence.

So. I’m approaching writing those emails a little different. And so I’ve kind of just taken like a pause and I am making sure that I’m sending out podcast emails every week to kind of fill the gap, but I want to make sure that if she’s going to take over writing that I give myself a little gap so that, you know, maybe she can write like six or eight and then I can put them in and like add people to a continuing sequence for that.

Um, in terms of sales. I will say there are certain emails that I send out and like immediately within an hour I am seeing a sale, a sale of a template, and almost all of it’s been Airtable. So, you know that I’ve been on like this Airtable kick. And I think that it’s because, For me, I feel like I talk about Dubsado and HoneyBook and really just CRMs and workflows at Nozium.

Like I just, I talk about that all day every day. And so to talk about Airtable is so refreshing and you have the Roundtable membership and I did a talk for them back in Airt in August and I did it a little weird. Like we did it And then I made slides, but what I ended up doing when I was making the slides after the talk was, I was like, Oh, this would make like a really good Airtable 101 for photographers.

It just being in that group in particular, it made me think about the way that I was talking about Airtable and the way that I was marketing it. And along with that talk with you, I also went on the talk, copy to me podcast. And I will say after that podcast aired, I had like four sales same day of Airtable templates.

So it’s definitely something that I am trying desperately to talk about more and more. And I’m in the thick of it in like restructuring what that looks like on my website and what those shop pages look like because I think I do want to like narrow down and talk specifically to photographers for all of those Airtable products that I have.

Sabrina: Yeah, I love that. Um, and I think that makes sense for you too. I’m curious. We’re definitely going to talk more about Airtable in a little bit, but I’m curious going back to the email funnel. I, so as a recap, if anybody’s listening for the first time, what we’re talking about is instead of Coley writing like a weekly or a biweekly email to her list and coming up with it every week on the fly, she is creating one really long Funnel so that when somebody joins her email list, they are automatically triggered into what’s currently 20 emails over a certain amount of time.

And she’s filling in with the podcast and there are things that pop in, but people are being nurtured for a really long time. So it’s replacing the need for like a weekly newsletter, which is such a cool idea. But what I’m having a hard time with is how are you mapping out the flow of the content you’re sharing with them?

Colie: An air table. I mean, that’s not the point, but I, what I did before I started the evergreen sequence was I was like, okay, first of all, what are the things that I need to talk about? In order to generate sales, because as a business person, that is, of course, I want to nurture you. I want to help you, but basically all roads need to lead to something that I sell, something that I sell, or I will even say, getting you to be a podcast listener.

So really those are the two paths that I took for every single email in the evergreen sequence. And so inside my air table hub, I have like the subject line, I have the body of the text. Like all of that stuff. But then I’m also linking it to, okay, what products are going to be specifically listed inside of that email?

What podcast episode could I also talk about? And that is how I laid them all out. Now, in terms of the flow. Originally, I was trying to do it as like a monthly theme. I don’t, I don’t like that. I decided that to me, doing four emails in a row, talking about like website stuff, even though I’m very passionate about website stuff, I don’t sell a lot of products that are related to websites.

So unfortunately it made sense for me to like group them as a monthly theme if it was something that would lead directly to my expertise or my products, but it didn’t work so well when I just wanted to talk about something like SEO or blog writing or your websites, which I’m very passionate about. But I don’t help people in general with those things.

Now, if you’re my client clients, if you’re listening, you know who you are. I will help several of my clients. Like I’m listed on their show. It’s as an admin, like I can go in there and make changes, but that’s not something that I just offer as a service that’s standalone. So. I just thought about all the topics that I needed to make sure that people were being nurtured in terms of leading to my products.

And then I also went through and, and found the podcast episodes that were either most popular, had topics that I’m very excited to talk about, even if they don’t lead to sales. And I kind of tried to infuse them in a way to where it was naturally Like I’m giving my expertise, expertise, expertise. And then now it’s like no more than two weeks when I’m kind of doing something that’s just trying to get people to read a blog post or listen to a podcast episode where I don’t have anything to sell you.

I mean, my new thing is I want to sell in every email. I got that from Damaju. She was on my podcast recently for the Marketing with Intention series. But there is no reason that you cannot link something that you sell in every single one of your emails. And it was my mantra before I emailed, before I interviewed her.

But after I’m like, no, like I’m going with this all in a link in every email.

Sabrina: Yeah, I love that. So do you have them go through the emails in a certain like storytelling order, or are you assuming they’re beginners or does it, does their start like their first email differ based on where they came in?

Like, that’s what I’m curious. No, everybody’s getting the same thing. One

Colie: funnel for everyone. And what I wish I could remember who I got this advice from, but someone said that in every email you should be Mentioning something that’s good for beginners and something that’s good for people who are past the beginning stage.

And I don’t know that the first 20 emails that I wrote that everybody went through necessarily did that, but I think it was in August. Again, it was a podcast that I listened to. I wish I could remember who’s, but I have written down in several places, any new emails that I write, I should make sure that I’m saying something to the effect of, and if you don’t know what I’m talking about.

Please go back and listen to this episode or read this blog post so that I am giving them something else in case they’re not at the point where I think they need to be in order to get the lesson or the content that I am sharing inside of that email.

Sabrina: Cool. I love that. I know that when you first told me about it, like a year ago, I was like, Oh yeah, that sounds really cool.

I want to do that someday. But the more I think about it, the more I think that could be really, really fun. I think for me, I would probably tweak the first series. Of the email based on where they came in, because I have, you know, you are, you have different things that you talk about, but they all kind of go together.

It’s systems and automations, right? Me, I’ve got different entry points, right? I’ve got sustainability, I’ve got burnout, I’ve got marketing, I’ve got wait lists for various things. And so I think it would make more sense for me to have their teed up a little bit more based on where they came in. And then they get kicked into some sort of series.

I do enjoy writing my monthly newsletters, like In real time, not monthly, weekly, weekly, you guys, it’s weekly. Um, I like writing those in real time because I can tell stories that are happening and tie things in, um, and be really vulnerable if I want to, but there would be such freedom and knowing that other emails are taken care of and they’re really fine tuned and they’re optimized based on data of open rates from people who’ve already gone through them.

I mean, I think that’d be really cool. And then maybe for me, I would just do like a monthly. email that’s like a real time, like a recap or something. I don’t know. So I love that.

Colie: I will say I chose the weekly because again, two paths, I want someone to buy something for me, or I want them to start listening to my podcast.

And each of those are kind of like a weekly activity. Like I have a podcast currently weekly, hopefully by the end of the year, I’ll be back at two episodes a week, like I was in 2022 and 2023. But when it comes to me making sales, I feel like. You have like more digital products, but I’m way more focused on those than you are.

So I do feel like there’s just more of an opportunity for me to put those smaller digital products out there on a weekly basis to kind of bring people in. I will say in terms of tying them together in stories in the first 20 emails, I would say that at least eight of them start off at the beginning with, and last week we talked about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And here’s how this builds on that. It is not something that I did every week, because I didn’t want the sequence to feel serial. Like, my husband gets really upset when we’re watching a show, and it’s like, oh, I gotta remember what happened last week in order to get this thing this week. Like, I wanted to make sure that the emails could, for the most part, be self contained.

But there are some where I’m talking or recapping about what I said in the last email, if it was particularly pertinent to what I’m talking about In that week’s email.

Sabrina: Okay. I love that. I think that’s going to be a 2025 project for me to start kind of playing with, because I definitely think that falls under the category of like working smarter, not harder, you know, write these emails once, let them work for you in the background.

Another update for me last call, we talked about how I had launched my brand new course, marketing that attracts. And at the time of the call, I had only, um, had like, Beta students come in and it was really successful. They were loving it, but I hadn’t quite done the first public launch yet. I have done the first public launch.

It went really well. I surpassed my sales goal, so it is rocking and rolling. It’s technically open for enrollment. All the time. If you hear this and you’re like, Oh, a marketing course for photographers, I’m interested. You can go look at it today. It’s available all the time. I’m not planning on doing another, like launch push for it until black Friday.

Um, it’s going to be part of just black Friday in general, a push of some various things I’m doing, but people are loving it. They’re asking great questions. And the other thing that I’m really proud of is it was a really strong. Course to begin with something that I was really excited about. But as I have had the opportunity to create additional resources, for example, if somebody comes into the roundtable and teaches on something that aligns with one of the modules in that course, I add those trainings and extra resources into the course.

So it’s just getting like beefed up even more so that everybody feels really supported. So I’m really happy with how that’s going. Last update before we get into new stuff, you mentioned on the last call that in the month of August, you were committing to making a decision about the future of your one to one offers.

You weren’t sure that they fit the season of life you were in anymore, and so I’m curious, did you actually make that decision?

Colie: I did. It’s not that I, I believe now, you know, my memories a little fuzzy right now, but I believe when I made that statement, I was actually moving towards eliminating them. Like they are the most profitable thing that I do.

I easily make six figures on them. Like they were my bread and butter, but I just feel like now my brain just, it’s very difficult for me to sit down and, and. And do it all. And then also when my clients don’t give me their feedback in a timely manner, I’m not doing a very good job of like harassing them and like coming back on them, like, you know, you owe me this, blah, blah, blah.

Um, although I will say a funny statement. If this client is listening, I apologize in advance. I sent out an email this morning that was like, Oh my gosh, I was wondering why you didn’t give this to me. And I realized. When I did it on Monday, I didn’t hit send, so it’s also my, you know what I mean? Like I feel like there’s like two layers now, but where I decided to go with the one to ones and I’m probably going to launch it Black Friday since that’s when everybody pays attention to everything.

I am going to be announcing a new offer and I guess at when this airs, it’s going to be a month away. I want to do a new done with you offer. And this is going to be a little different than anything that I’ve done before, because right now I give people pre work to understand their business and what they’re doing.

And then I do everything, but. For the end of this year and going into Q1, which is of course my biggest quarter of the year now wasn’t this year by far, but in other years. It’s usually like it’s my Olympics. It’s my Super Bowl season. I am planning to make a new offer where basically we have a call. I set goals for you and I am loading everything into your account that you have to go do in terms of customizing the emails, customizing your forms.

So it’s like a guided done for you, even, or done with you, even more specific than like the course. Because the course, I give you everything in a platform and you have to put it into your account. You have to figure out the order that you want to do things if you’re not going to follow the course, all those things.

But this is going to be like a, we have a call. I give you these set of tasks. And when you’re done with that set of tasks, you come back to me. We have another call. I make sure that you did it all correctly or give you feedback on what you did. And then I give you another set of tasks. I have realized this year with a couple of people that I’ve worked with, I was like, they would have been a really good fit for this because I did a one hour call with someone in Australia recently.

And she was like, Coley, I just need you to help me set up the workflow. And I was like, OK, but you have all these things done. And she’s like, yes. And she is one of the first people that I’ve ever talked to that when she said yes, and I went into her account, it was in fact true that she had everything that she needed.

She was just struggling to make the actual workflows. So that is also a second product that I’m going to be launching this year is I am going to do workflows for people Where I give you the list of everything that you need, upload the templates for you, you go do them, and then I create the workflows for you and give you, you know, like a video to show you how it all works and how you can make changes, but this is my way.

To still help people and let them have my brain and, you know, give them advice on what they should and should not do. But I am going to put most of the admin work back on them because a lot of people have told me they can, they know what to do if I tell them. And so we’re going to try it out and see how that works.

Sabrina: And I think that’s great because then you can also send them the t shirt that says just do what Koli told you to do. We’ve always said that there needs to be a sticker or a shirt or something because just do what you say and everything works. So I love that. I think that’s a really great idea. I’m excited for you to launch that.

So that’s awesome. One of the things I’m asked about the most as a business coach for photographers is marketing. Students want to know how to find their ideal clients. How often should they email their list? How can they use social media effectively? What makes a good blog post? You get it. Marketing is a beast.

And if you’re like most photographers, you’re overwhelmed and probably pretty frustrated with the marketing part of your business. My friend, if this sounds familiar, hear me when I say this. You are completely normal. There is so much out there about marketing books, blogs, courses, coaches, gurus, marketing specialists, and social media accounts.

And they’re all telling you to do something different unless you actually went to college for a marketing degree. It’s no wonder you’re confused. You started your business because you love taking photos, not because you’re a marketing genius. But the truth is that marketing does play a big role. You do have to find clients.

You do have to make money and therefore marketing is something that you do need to learn if you’re going to run a profitable and sustainable business for the long run. The great news is I’m here to help. In my new course, marketing that attracts, I’m helping you filter through the noise and sharing five organic marketing strategies that actually work for photographers.

And I’m giving you the inside scoop on how to do them ideas for what they can look like in your business and all the resources you need to have confidence and clarity to market your business. And don’t even get me started on all of the additional resources and bonuses inside this course. There are swipe files, templates, bonus trainings, organizational tools, worksheets, and how to videos all the way to your heart’s content.

So if you’re ready to stop throwing Spaghetti at the wall and get clear on a marketing strategy that will bring you results in your business. Check out marketing that attracts at the link in the show notes to learn more. Now back to the show. What’s new for me? I am in a season of releasing things and I’m actually really excited about it, which is out of character for me because historically I like to pick things up and add things on and do more and more in your backpack.

Yes. Yes. Put more in my backpack. And. I have always struggled with saying no, which we’ve already talked about, but releasing things, deciding that it’s not actually the time to do this. So I’m in a season of that. And I think it started when I released selling the aligned photographer, right? I put that down, I broke up with that course and it felt really good.

And then I made the decision not to do fall minis and to do a fall marketing push, and I’m just continuing to see things that need to be released. I’ve also made the decision that I’m not going to run a fall group of Roots to Rise in 2025, and It’s equal parts exciting and scary exciting because I know in my gut that something else is coming next year and I need to make space for that to come through.

It’s also exciting. I think the spring group is going to be even stronger because of it because you either join in the spring or you wait a whole nother year. There’s no putting it off until fall. Right. And then The biggest reason that pushed me through that is next fall. My heart is going to be somewhere else because I am going to have a senior in high school and she plays a fall sport and there’s a lot of excitement around fall with homecoming and her Bert, she’ll be turning 18 next fall.

And I don’t want to miss any of that. So I do not want to energetically be focusing on coaching or group, be preparing for a retreat, doing all of those things. So I have decided to release the fall 25 run of root to rise. And I’m excited to see what happens with that. The other thing that I have released is on the last call, we, I mentioned that I had a new core, another new course that I was going to launch in August.

And you were like, OMG, you’re launching two things in August. One was the marketing course, which I just told you guys, uh, is a great success and it’s going well and I’m loving it. I’m so happy. The other one is a course that I. for a little bit. It is s It is going to come with friday fun stuff. It’s so asked about, but I’m exci

I found myself in a deep pit of burnout and it was actually really shocking. If you, the listening audience haven’t heard this yet, I shared about it on Instagram in real time when it was happening and I’m working through it. I’m in a much better place now. Thank you for asking. Um, I I’m out of the, the worst part of it, but I’m still having to kind of like you, Coley, like be hyper aware of my energy and what I’m taking on and just really protecting myself.

The good news is If you’ve been listening for a while, you know that I talk about it a lot and I know how to coach people through this because I do it all the time. I have the skills. Somehow I just had, I don’t know, been ignoring things and doing all the things you’re not supposed to. And all of a sudden, August hit and it was literally the first week of school.

And I just was like, Oh wow, I, um, there’s a lot of stuff I need to say no to and put down and walk away from. And I coached myself through the worst of it. And now we’re kind of just trying to be gentle and stuff. So at the time I decided to set that down for a minute and I needed to just not have that on my plate on that launch coming.

And so anyways, we’re just. continually in this season of releasing and it feels like I’m pruning in preparation for 2025, you know, um, I don’t know. We’ll see what, what happens with that. Uh, I was telling my coach when I decided that I’m not going to do a fall run of fruit to rice next year. She’s fully supportive of that.

I’m like, huh, financially, that’s going to be interesting because, you know, that’s, um, one of my bigger offers and it’s a big moneymaker. And I’ve decided that even though it’s successful, it’s not for me next year. So we’ll see what comes in to fill the gap. I’m trusting the process, but that’s something new that’s going on for me.

I’m curious. Have you finalized your Black Friday plans? I know you’re not a fan of Black Friday, but it sounds like you’re going to roll with it this year.

Colie: Well, I’m going to do the same thing that I did last year. I mean, I, Honestly, I think it’s one of the best podcast episodes that I’ve done when I laid out.

Well, these are what you can do for Black Friday other than give somebody a discount because it’s not that I hate Black Friday. It’s that, well, okay, actually, let me not try to sugarcoat it. It is that I hate Black Friday, but what I hate most about small business owners when it comes to Black Friday is that you feel like you have no other choice than to discount your services.

And to me, again, that puts you in this hole. Where people don’t buy your stuff because they’re waiting to see what the discount’s going to be. And it just creates this chaos of people who only want to buy things that are discounted. I am all for you running something and capitalizing on the Black Friday noise in order to put new offers out there that you want to try or do something that you’re going to beta test or whatever it is.

I’ve always been a fan of that. Or in the case of photographers, I mean, you should all be running some kind of black Friday sale on your products, but your actual service, I do not want you deeply discounting those. And that’s what I’ve always been against. I already mentioned, you know, some of the things that I’m going to have coming out, the way that the course.

is going to be redone, redistributed, rewritten. I am fairly certain it’s going to be done by the time this episode airs, but if it, if for some reason it is not, I will roll that out as a Black Friday offer. But even myself, when I do Black Friday offers, I tend to do them before Black Friday. Like, I call it Black Friday, but it’s not the week of Black Friday because I find Black Friday noise to be very overwhelming.

And Sabrina, I will be at Disneyland Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday before Thanksgiving. So I’m not doing Black Friday on Black Friday, even when I decide what it is that I’m going to do.

Sabrina: Yeah, I agree with you. I think that if you’re running a sale in the month of November, just the whole month, black Friday counts.

It counts. And, you know, speaking of my like education blueprint, a lot of them are launching their things. And so they’ve been deciding, do you want to do actual black Friday the week before the first week of the month? Um, all of it fits under that category, but you’re right. There is a lot of noise. And there’s a lot of pros and cons, you know, it’s like people are ready to spend money.

People have their credit cards out. They’re not thinking as hard over buying decisions because they’re just in a spending spree and capitalizing on that is not a bad thing. But there is a certain amount of like, okay, what’s the strategy to cut through the noise? How am I going to get people to open my emails when they’re overwhelmed and inundated with You know, a crazy email inbox.

Colie: Well, and a lot of that is going to be related to your emails. Like if I could give any advice, I mean, we always talk about like a pre launch strategy and most of us roll our eyes like really six weeks before. Yes, if you are starting to think of your Black Friday offer now, When this airs, you should already have emails in place that are preparing people in order to buy whatever it is that you are going to be marketing for Black Friday, November, December, holidays, whatever it is that you want to call it.

If you are listening to this episode and you do not have emails written, that is your homework this week. Please sit down and write some emails to prepare your audience for what is to come.

Sabrina: Yeah, I agree. And the funny thing is when people scoff at that, like the pre launch emails and the six weeks or eight weeks, I’m like, Okay, but aren’t you the same one that’s struggling to sell out things?

Maybe it’s because you’ve never tried this strategy. There’s a reason why people in every industry sell this way. It’s because it works. It’s because it works. So, um, okay. I love that. Coley’s giving you homework, everybody that you need to get your emails written so that they make sense and they prime your audience for your whatever offers you’re going to have.

I love that. Also, uh, just another little plug for the marketing course. If this is new to you, it’s covered in the marketing course. Uh, you can click the link in the, in the show notes and learn more about that. Update for me, I have a brand new marketing freebie that is kicked off and running, and it is running to Facebook ads and it’s performing really well, and I’m going to continue to let that run until November 1st.

So the rest of this month. After November 1st guys, there’s no point in running ads because I can’t compete with Amazon or Apple or any of the other companies that are throwing millions of dollars in advertising in the month of November. So an election, Sabrina, you also,

Colie: we should also,

Sabrina: yeah, the

Colie: election, we’re very close to the election now guys, but you also don’t want to be competing with the political ads, regardless of which side of the fence you sit on.

So just also think about that. If you’re going to run ads and you’re looking at your ads. Spend, if it is atrociously high, it is not you. It is political ad

Sabrina: season. Exactly. So as long as it continues to perform well with numbers that I am happy with, I’m gonna keep it running through the end of this month.

Um, I will probably also beef up the ad spend a little bit because it’s running, they’re pulling in really cheap right now, which is great. Um, and then I’ll turn them off for November one, and I probably won’t turn them on until January because like. Why? Why? There’s, there’s no point. Um, okay. This is where I’m going to ask you what’s new.

What’s the latest and greatest with your air table love affair?

Colie: I mean, we could do a whole episode on that, Sabrina. So I’ve been really paying attention during my marketing with intention series and my blog writer came on. and talked about the power of Pinterest. Now, I am someone who has largely ignored it, but she told me that pins show up on Google.

That was literally all I needed to hear in order to start putting things on Pinterest that will lead people to my shop, that will lead people to my freebies, that will lead people to my podcast episodes and my blog posts. Now, I only started this week. So by the time this airs, I will have no information for you.

But I am working hard to do more what we would consider to be like evergreen long term marketing strategies so that I can do the work now and hopefully reap the benefits in four to six months down the line when it’s increasing all of my presence on the search engines.

Sabrina: I love that. I used to be really good at Pinterest and really intentional with it.

And then I fell off the bandwagon, but I recently picked it back up as well. And by recently, I mean, within the last few weeks. So I can’t speak to any data on that either, but I did have our designer design, a bunch of pins for a bunch of evergreen things that didn’t have that stuff in there already. And, uh, went through the other day and just like put them all in and updated the whatever.

I’m curious though. Do you have a strategy for what you’re writing in the pin, like when you pin the post?

Colie: So I’m trying to use the same kind of language that I would use as like CTAs and also thinking about the key words that I need now that I know that pins are ranking on Google. So I mean, I’m still playing around with the language, and I may actually hire someone to help me strategize all of the keywords.

For right now, I’m just motivated to start doing it myself, and it’s always better if I’m feeling motivated just to start doing it. And so the reason that I started talking about the Pinterest pins, the first thing that I did when I started pinning, was I created a new board called Airtable Tips and Templates.

Or actually, that was reversed. Airtable Templates and Tips, I think? Whatever. Either one of them is good for keywords, but that was the first one that I made. And I just started pinning anything that I already had created that was related to Airtable. And so that is me, like putting my love of Airtable out there.

And as I said earlier in this conversation, I am starting to work on improving my shop pages. Before Black Friday, and a lot of things that I’m doing are SEO related and also changing my marketing language to be geared towards photographers, because one thing that I did after I spoke in the, uh, in the roundtable group was I took the client hub.

And I added in the very specific things that I told photographers that they needed to do inside your group, and I’ve renamed it the Photographer Hub. And so I need to make sure that it’s very clear on a new shop page that this is for photographers. And these are the questions that are extremely specific to us, like, have you seen this family in, uh, More than 18 months or 12 months, whatever it is that you decide.

And I have automation set up to either directly contact them through air table and Gmail to say, Hey, it’s been a while since I saw you. How’s the family? Are you ready for another session? Or you can get an automated reminder for yourself to reach out personally and do that. But like that is something that I feel is very specific to us photographers.

And it’s a new feature that I added into the new photographer hub, along with a couple of other things that are very specific to us. I added in an online gallery table. Which one didn’t exist before because web designers don’t sell things out of pick time. So it has a brand new table with a brand new zap to bring in all your sales from pick time so that you can have not only your sales from your CRM for your sessions, but also have a way to automatically bring in your product sales from your online gallery software.

Now I’ve only done pick time thus far. Again, baby steps guys. By the time Black Friday comes around, all of these new goodies are gonna be in there. But it was a really good start for me to start to focus on Airtable because I love it, but also go back to the audience. that I am most familiar with.

Sabrina: Okay, I love that and I think I, I know that’s going to go really well.

So I’m excited to watch how that goes for you now that you’ve decided to like focus the air table energy on photographers. I mean, that makes perfect sense. Um, so I’m excited to, to hear how that goes and how all the pins go and all that.

Colie: Yeah, I mean, there’s two hubs that will not be photographer focused because they don’t make sense for us.

I mean, the podcast planner hub, I mean, if you’re a photographer like you and I, and you have a podcast, of course, but that language is not going to change. That’s just for podcasters, no matter what genre you’re in. Um, the other one that’s not going to change is the support ticketing system, because nobody that does photography sessions Only needs that kind of hub, but those are the only two that I am planning on kind of keeping separate and not infusing additional photographer language, photographer keywords, all of that good jazz.

But every other hub that I currently sell and a few others that are like in my back pocket to release, I don’t know if it’s 2024, but definitely 2025. Those ones are going to be more photographer focused in the language that I’m using to sell them.

Sabrina: I love that. And also for the listening audience, Coley’s going to do some projects for me.

So we haven’t fully mapped that out yet, but we’ve been talking about it for a long time and I’m committed to it.

Colie: I mean, she’s committed to where she gave me her password, guys. I have been in there. I was cleaning stuff up for Root to Rise. So she is committed now and I am super excited. I’m committed.

Yeah,

Sabrina: I’m committed. And I’m going to just go ahead and say it’ll be before the end of the year because I want it to be running for 2025. So that’s going to happen. I’m excited about that. I’ll put you on my calendar for December. Yes. So speaking of Root to Rise, we are currently in enrollment. for spring 2025.

And if you have not heard yet, Coley is my retreat guest expert. She is, I am your guest teacher. She is going to be teaching on family filmmaking, which has been something that students have asked for and are really interested in. And Nicole is excellent at this. And so I cannot wait to have you come along on our retreat in Savannah, Georgia.

where we’re going to capture a family and you’re going to lead and teach on how to what’s different about filmmaking than just still photos. So I’m really excited about that. I’m also excited because This is going to be the first time in Root to Rise that you’re teaching in this capacity. You have taught every run, but you’ve always taught something about systems, automations, that kind of thing, which is your wheelhouse.

But now we’re pulling from the other side of what you do and your expertise. And so I’m really excited. Plus it means you’ll be at the retreat. Which is just an added bonus. Uh, Coley at a retreat is really fun. So the women that are going to join us in Savannah are going to have a really, really great time.

And I can’t wait to have you there.

Colie: I mean, and especially since you took this opportunity to announce that there’s not going to be a fall run. So literally people, if Root to Rise has been on your bucket list, I expect to see your name on our list for Savannah.

Sabrina: Absolutely. It’s going to be awesome. One other thing that I, that we just talked about in Boxer last week, and so I was like, I’m going to throw this mention on there because I’m, I want you to talk about how you use it, is ConvertBox.

This is something that I’m sure that my listening audience has no idea what we’re talking about. ConvertBox is, and you can correct me if I’m wrong, it is a software like plug in situation where you create forms or pop ups on your website that direct people based on what their needs are and it’s using tracking.

It knows if somebody’s come to your website for the first time or if they’ve been there before, uh, and there’s all kinds of really cool things it can do. And I’m excited about. what it can do for me. I just bought it last week. It’s one of these softwares where you pay one time and you have lifetime access.

And for me, having a website that’s part photography, part education, and then within education, there’s also all of these different avenues to take. I’m excited to see how I can use it, um, and what it can do for me, but you’ve been using it for a minute. So do you want to talk about like how you’re loving it, what it’s doing for you?

Colie: So I think the biggest use case that I used it for, and I can think of ways that photographers would want to use this, but I, my biggest thing that I use it for is a quiz. And the quiz is for my shop, so not really for photographers, but you go and you type in, you give me a little bit of information and it tells you what the best template is that you could buy in my shop for the pain point or the problem that you’re currently experiencing.

And as you may know, I set this up when I was in Michigan with Sabrina and Annamie. Last May, and so that has been running. Great. You do my quiz. It tells you what template it gives you a 20 percent off coupon based on your results, which not only works for the product that I tell you to buy, but it works on all of them simply because if it tells you to start with this.

But you’re feeling like, okay, no, I’m ready to tackle more and you buy like a bundle. I didn’t want you to lose that on that discount. So if you would like to just go see what this looks like, it’s coleyjames. com slash quits. Now, other features that I use convert box for is to help direct traffic on my website.

I know that that’s what the menu is for. I know that you can have links on your webpage, but the thing about a pop up is it grabs People’s attention, especially in the rainbow colors that I use on my website. So when you visit my website for, I think it’s the first five times, maybe it asks you like, what can I help you with today?

And it says, do you need help with, and it gives you some options that is on my website homepage. I also have a version of that on my podcast page specifically to direct you to podcast episodes that will help you in your business. So what would you like to learn more about today? You pick a topic and then I give you six or seven options that are all related to that topic, depending on if you’re a beginner or if you’re very advanced.

So those are the ways that I’m using it to currently sort people on my website. You can also do things like, you know, offering people a limited time discount or getting them to join your newsletter. I mean, all of the things that we’ve used pop ups for in the past, you can use convert box for, but it’s. A little smarter than the average pop up, like you can do things like tracking.

You can connect it to your software sales, although I don’t really know that this is applicable for photographers because we’re not really selling things in that capacity. But we could track and then if you’ve bought one thing, it may show you a pop up to buy something that is closely aligned with it.

You can set it up to where specific pop ups end up on specific pages or specific blog posts. I mean, it can be on the bottom, it can be on the top, it can cover the whole screen. Like, just the number of options that you have are amazing. And I could actually see, I mean, this is a quiz idea for you photographers.

If you wanted to try to get Get, get help to the people who are visiting your website in terms of planning their wardrobe. I could see that as like a really interesting quiz for you to do, because not only can you ask questions, you can also embed links or put photos. And so this could be a very visual opportunity for you to get people.

To help them plan their wardrobe or to help them pick a location like you could have them go through the quiz and then in the end, you could be like, okay, that’s the perfect location. You know, put in your name and email and we’ll discuss your session or, you know, whatever it is that you want to do on the back end.

But again, it’s a way for you to conditionally lead people from point A to point B and gather data as you go.

Sabrina: Yeah, I love it. I loosely started playing with it after I purchased it. Cause I’m one of those kids that’s like, Ooh, I want to see what this new toy is about. And I was designing something and it has a bunch of workflows and things already built in there that you just customize, which felt really, really user friendly.

I will say I didn’t get to the point where I’m like embedding it and actually collecting data yet. But so far it seems totally manageable, like something that I can handle. I will say, I’m sure that there’s going to be some zaps involved for the data, like collecting data.

Colie: It depends. It, I don’t need it because I have ConvertKit and ConvertKit is an automatic, um, integration.

And so I, it just sends it to ConvertKit automatically. But if you are using Flowdesk, yes, there will be a zap involved to get that information out. Or you could just download the information directly from, um, Flowdesk. Convert box. But if you want it to be like done in an automated capacity, yes. Depending on what you want to use the information for, there might be some zaps involved.

Sabrina: Okay. I think I have shared all of my updates and what’s new. Uh, at least I think I have. Do you have anything else exciting going on in your world that you want to update us on?

Colie: I mean, I think I’m just going to close with talking about the course and why I’ve changed it. The course is not actually changing what is covered.

It is changing the way in which it is bundled and the way in which you can buy it. So a little over a year ago was when I launched my shop and one of the things that I did for my shop, well actually I did this before that, but I deconstructed my course and pulled the templates out that were in the course and put them for sale separately.

And I did this for a myriad of reasons. There are a lot of people that are like, Horse phobic. They’re like, I don’t need a course. I just need this one thing and then I can do it. So I pulled all of these templates out of my course and sold them separately so that for those people who truly just wanted my proposal template, or they just wanted my emails, you had a way to buy it, but what I have learned through this year, both for myself and how I am working now, and also with people that I’ve spoken to is people are really into micro wins and the way that I am currently selling.

The templates, or at least the toolkits, none of them are micro wins. Like they cover something in entirety, even if it’s a smaller portion than was covered in the course. So what I have decided to do for the CRM blueprint and Hey, listening audience, I’m also playing around with renaming it, the client experience cookbook.

So if you have. A like preference on whether or not you think I should keep the name or change it. I would love to hear from you on Instagram. It’s at Koli James. But I am going to restructure the course to teach the client experience in four phases that happen inside of your CRM. And I’m also going to give you the opportunity to buy the course per phase.

So if you just want to do your inquiry phase right now, You can buy the inquiry phase. It will include information on your lead capture, how to schedule your consultation calls, all the emails that you need in order to send your automated lead response and those things. Those are now going to be consolidated in one phase that you can buy.

along with the workflow for that phase. That’s really the biggest difference. Right now, it’s all or nothing with the workflows. You go from inquiry to delivery and nothing else. But so this is my experiment for 2025. You guys know I love to just mess with stuff and see how it happens. But I really believe that the way that people are trying to set up things in a very piecemeal way now, I want you to get the phase that’s going to get you the biggest bang for your buck.

And then when you’re done with that one, and you’re ready to Create a new phase. You can buy a new phase and start from there. Now, I mean, if you buy the entire course, yes, there are going to be buy in full bonuses and things that you’ll only get if you buy the entire course. But in general, I just want to say one more time, like the way that I teach client experience is not changing.

It is just the way that it is packaged. But I truly believe that this is going to be like beneficial, not only for me, but for the people who buy it going forward.

Sabrina: I love it. I think that’s going to be a really exciting experiment. That makes sense to me, you know, to reorganize it and restructure it a little bit.

I love that you’re going to give people the option to purchase what they think they need first without having to do the whole thing. Um, I thought about doing that with courses before. Uh, I love that. I’m excited about that. So,

Colie: because what this means is that every single phase is going to have a workflow video and a workflow template.

It will just be. The workflow actions and triggers that are specific to that phase. So, I mean, in the way that the course is right now, I cover workflows in one module. But now workflows are going to be covered in every module, specific to what you need in that phase. So, I don’t know. It’s like, I started thinking about this I think in June.

I mean it’s been a long time and I even like reorganized it in Thrivecart and I just let it sit for a few months and every once in a while I’d go in there and I’d look and I’m like, yeah, I think that this is what I’m going to do. So right now I have everything reorganized. I just have to re record the videos.

So that they are self contained in each phase instead of saying something like, you know, now you need to go back and do this. I, I need to make sure that all the videos are accurate, but, um, that is an October project.

Sabrina: Okay. I love that. Yeah. So I am currently Obviously, we just said I’m launching the mastermind.

That’s the big October project for me. November will be taking a break, taking a break. The mastermind will be over. So I’ll be taking a break from that. We’re also doing quite a bit of traveling in November and then December is going to be all of this prep work ramping up for changes for 2025. And I didn’t mention this before, but Roots Rise is having a lot of upgrades in 2025, um, stuff.

I’m always tinkering with the program. I’m always making it better and optimizing it, but it’s getting some pretty big, substantial upgrades for 2025, which I’m really, really excited about. And quite frankly, have been things that have been on my mind in the past. I just have not had the bandwidth to do them.

So December is all about actually putting these things in place and getting these systems set up and. All kinds of resources and everything. So I’m really, really excited about it. So

Colie: now is this your working weekend project?

Sabrina: Probably, probably.

Colie: Yeah. Cause yes, guys, when we come back in January for our Q1 bestie biz chat, uh, we will have just come off of the holidays and also a working weekend between us and December.

So we will be able to update you on whatever projects. We complete on that working weekend then.

Sabrina: Yes. I, I almost wonder if we should record a podcast in the same room during the work. We can do

Colie: that. I bought my thing, whatever Haley, whatever Haley told me to buy. I have it. So our audio will be good. Okay.

Sabrina: That sounds fun. I think that might be a fun challenge. Uh, so stay tuned for that. Um, okay. My friends, this was another great chat, chock full of information and ideas. And I always love having you on the podcast. Coley, thank you for being here and we’ll see you next week. My friends. Bye. Bye. Thanks so much for listening to the shoot it straight podcast.

You can find all the full show notes and details from today’s episode at SabrinaGebhart. com backslash podcast. Come find me and connect over on the gram at Sabrina Gebhart photography. If you’re loving the podcast, I’d be honored if you hit that subscribe button and leave me a review until next time, my friends shoot it straight.