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Time Audit for Photographers: How Long Does One Client Actually Take You? · Business-First Creatives: Client Experience & Systems for Service Providers

• 0:26
  Hey, y'all.
• 0:27
  Welcome back Today I'm popping in with what I hope is a very short and sweet episode, but it comes with homework.
• 0:34
  Yes, even if you are not my active client, if you listen to this podcast, I feel compelled at times to give you a homework assignment, and I really would love it if you would come on Threads @coliejames and
• 0:48
  tell me what you find.
• 0:49
  So I've been obsessed with offers lately.
• 0:52
  My own offers, your offers, everybody's offers that I can get my hands on.
• 0:57
  And while it's always been a part of the work that I do with my clients, both in the Experience Edit and Systems In Session, I don't really talk about it a lot because I don't consider myself to be
• 1:09
  an offer strategist.
• 1:11
  But time and time again, I find significant time leaks inside of the offers that I am reviewing because a lot of you guys just have no idea how much time it is taking you to deliver the offers that
• 1:27
  you are selling.
• 1:28
  You don't know how much time you're wasting on writing communication from scratch.
• 1:32
  You don't know how long it's taking you to actually get somebody from a lead to a booked client.
• 1:38
  And so when it comes to pricing offers and making sure that they are profitable and sustainable, the very first thing that almost everybody needs to do inside their business is a time audit.
• 1:53
  Because you should be able to tell me how much time it takes you to manage your clients inside of an offer.
• 2:01
  You should tell me how much time it takes you to deliver it.
• 2:04
  And I don't mean the session time for you photographers.
• 2:07
  There are a lot of other tasks that go into delivering that offer.
• 2:12
  Driving to the session, communicating with your clients, actually editing the photos.
• 2:18
  Hell, a lot of you guys are not considering the time that it takes you to just upload the images to the gallery software and get it ready for delivery.
• 2:28
  And so if you have not actually given this a lot of thought, if you have not literally sat down with a piece of paper and a pen and written down all of the things that you do for a
• 2:39
  client inside of your signature offer, along with how much time it takes, this is like your quarterly reminder to do this.
• 2:48
  Because this is how you push your offers forward to make sure that you are actually selling something that is still serving you in this season of life.
• 2:59
  And so your very next client, I want you to get a piece of paper or, you know, jot it down in a notes app.
• 3:07
  It doesn't really matter the formatting as long as you are writing down all of the things that you're doing.
• 3:13
  Now, I am of course going to use the example of a photographer because a lot of my clients are photographers, and I just walked one of my clients through doing this last week.
• 3:24
  So the first thing that I want you to do is basically break down your client journey into the five phases that I recommend or the ones that make sense to you, because we need to know how much time
• 3:36
  you are spending in the inquiry phase, in the booking phase, in the onboarding phase, in the service and delivery, and then in the off-boarding.
• 3:45
  Now, a lot of you guys are still not doing the off-boarding phase, and that's okay.
• 3:49
  I want you to take steps towards doing it now.
• 3:53
  And to be honest, the off-boarding stage is the one that's gonna take you the least amount of time but is actually gonna be the most impactful on your revenue going forward.
• 4:05
  Because asking for those important reviews, referrals, and then asking your clients to rebook you has a direct impact on the bottom line of your business.
• 4:17
  But so, again, piece of paper, pen, write down the five phases.
• 4:22
  And every single time you interact with one chosen client...
• 4:27
  Yes I'm not actually telling you to do this for all of your clients.
• 4:31
  Pick one, and then when you're done with that one, pick another one.
• 4:34
  I mean, I don't wanna add hours of documentation and tracking to all the things that you are currently likely doing in busy season.
• 4:44
  But I do want you to do this now, because once slow season comes for a lot of you guys in winter, this is how we determine how you tackle the systems in your business and refining and improving your
• 4:57
  offers going forward.
• 4:59
  So in the inquiry phase, you are probably responding to an inquiry.
• 5:05
  You are scheduling a discovery call or you are sending them an asynchronous video.
• 5:10
  I want you to write down all of the time that each of those tasks takes.
• 5:15
  but please don't forget the one time suck that I think a lot of you do and that you don't think about.
• 5:21
  Every single time you go to read an email from a client or you go into your CRM just to see if you did something or to read something, that is time that you are spending on that particular client.
• 5:35
  Please don't forget to write that down.
• 5:37
  Now, if you are someone who is already sending one of those amazing five-star booking proposals that you have a template for, great.
• 5:45
  It's probably gonna be five, 10 minutes if you're customizing it.
• 5:48
  But if you are still creating a custom proposal for each and every one of your leads, you are probably leaking a significant amount of time in this phase.
• 5:59
  So again, all the things that you do to book someone, write down the time that it takes.
• 6:04
  Now, onboarding is typically where a lot of you guys feel like you are dropping the ball.
• 6:11
  Like, you wanna do more for your clients, But quite often, the things that are on your mind to do are things that only get done when you have time.
• 6:21
  And so I do wanna make sure that you are actually writing down the emails that you're writing from scratch, the calls that you're making, the prep guides that you might still be customizing and preparing for every client.
• 6:34
  Again, every single task that you do for this one or two chosen clients gets written down on this piece of paper.
• 6:42
  And then in the end, guys, all you have to do is add it all up.
• 6:45
  And I simply want you to figure out how much time it is truly taking you for one single client from inquiry all the way to delivery.
• 6:56
  Now, if you get that number and you're like, "Wow, that's way more time than I thought," I want you to think about what you could create templates for before you do your next time audit.
• 7:09
  Now, again, a lot of you guys are in busy season.
• 7:11
  You don't have time to necessarily write a bunch of templates right now.
• 7:15
  But what I will say is that if you want to pick one thing that is probably going to reduce the time that you are spending with your clients the most, it is either creating your five-minute booking proposal along
• 7:29
  with the automated follow-up emails so that you are not chasing people to book.
• 7:35
  And the second one that I'm gonna recommend is probably your client questionnaire, because a lot of you guys are still manually sending the questionnaire, manually following up, and sometimes you just don't realize how much time that takes.
• 7:50
  Okay, so again, your mission, should you choose to accept, is to do one full time audit on at least one to two clients in the next couple weeks.
• 8:02
  Now, if you would like to share, I would love to hear how long it's taking you to deliver to one of your clients.
• 8:09
  Come find me on Threads.
• 8:10
  I'm @coliejames.
• 8:11
  But for now, I think I've given you enough homework.
• 8:13
  So go forth and do this.
• 8:16
  That's it for this episode.
• 8:17
  See you next time