Latest / The Nerdy Photographer Podcast / 149 - Seasoned but Still Learning: Experience, Doubt, and Staying Sharp

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149 - Seasoned but Still Learning: Experience, Doubt, and Staying Sharp · The Nerdy Photographer Podcast

• 0:05
  Casey Fatchett: The danger. Nerdy photographer danger.
• 0:08
  Thanks, robot. I'm aware. Oh, hey, welcome to the nerdy
• 0:12
  photographer podcast. I'm your host, Casey Fatchett, if you've
• 0:15
  never listened to the show before, welcome. Thanks for
• 0:18
  joining us. If you want to go back and dive into the back
• 0:20
  catalog after this episode, head over to nerdy
• 0:22
  photographer.com/podcast where you can find our most popular
• 0:26
  episodes, as well as good places to start depending on how far
• 0:30
  back you want to go. In addition to providing entertaining and
• 0:33
  informative photography related information, I also go on
• 0:36
  adventures with the crew of the starship banachi. You may have
• 0:39
  noticed that we're breaking in a new security robot. His official
• 0:42
  designation is C 10, but I just call him robot. Say hi, robot,
• 0:47
  danger. Thanks, buddy. In this episode of the podcast, I
• 0:51
  interview amazing wedding photographer Susan stripling,
• 0:53
  and she has lots of advice and tips for photographers, and
• 0:57
  wedding and photographers in particular, we even talk about
• 0:59
  what makes both of us still experience an existential crisis
• 1:03
  after more than 20 years in the wedding photography business.
• 1:06
  Speaking of existential crises, I may be having one right now as
• 1:10
  robot Meyer stuck in a shuttle with no engines with some alien
• 1:14
  life form eating its way through the hull from the outside to get
• 1:17
  to us, danger. Super helpful robot. Be sure to stay tuned to
• 1:23
  my conversation with Susan stripling right after the break.
• 1:25
  I'm just gonna try to get the engines back online. Danger.
• 1:30
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• 4:00
  Kay, hello and welcome to the nerdy photographer podcast. I'm
• 4:06
  your host, Casey Fatchett, and today on the show, we have the
• 4:10
  wonderful Susan stripling. Susan, welcome to the show.
• 4:14
  Susan Stripling: Thank you. You have me and three dogs in my
• 4:17
  living room at once. So if you hear chaos, sometimes it's just
• 4:21
  unstoppable.
• 4:22
  Casey Fatchett: The more dogs the merrier. Before we get into
• 4:26
  the meat of the conversation, we're gonna start with the dice
• 4:29
  breaker. Do it 18. All right. Dream dinner party like you can
• 4:37
  invite whoever you want, living or dead.
• 4:40
  Susan Stripling: Oh, my God, let's limit it to five people,
• 4:43
  okay, five people. Dream wedding party, living or dead.
• 4:47
  No, dinner party, dinner party, dinner party.
• 4:50
  They could be living or dead, all right, um,
• 4:53
  Casey Fatchett: or fictional, for that matter, or
• 4:56
  Susan Stripling: fictional or you can't open it up like that
• 4:59
  Yeah, okay? All right, we'll take away the fictional Okay,
• 5:01
  so we have to start with the obvious. We're inviting Meryl
• 5:04
  Streep, because Meryl Streep is fantastic. Lin Manuel Miranda,
• 5:10
  that's number two. Alexander McQueen, so we have to talk
• 5:15
  about design. That's number three. Stephen King, because I
• 5:19
  need to discuss his stay at the Stanley Hotel when he wrote the
• 5:21
  shining and, oh no, I feel like I should say something like,
• 5:27
  like, something really deep or insightful, or something like
• 5:30
  that, but it's just not that deep or insightful. Let's invite
• 5:36
  Daniel Radcliffe, okay, our dinner party, and I think we
• 5:40
  would have a very good time.
• 5:42
  Casey Fatchett: There's, yeah, there's just a lot. I mean,
• 5:43
  there's a lot going on there. There's a lot going on, a lot of
• 5:48
  fun. There's a lot of theater. There's which actually leads me
• 5:53
  to my first question, why are there so many theater people in
• 5:56
  the wedding industry? What do you think it is? Is it drama?
• 5:59
  The performance aspect of it,
• 6:02
  Susan Stripling: yes, it's so funny, because it was just like
• 6:05
  a natural pipeline from theater to photography, and especially
• 6:10
  weddings, because, like, theater has a three act structure or two
• 6:14
  act structure, weddings do too that there's lighting, you have
• 6:17
  to design lighting. There's moments. You have to anticipate
• 6:19
  moments like they're pretty much when it comes down to it, the
• 6:23
  same thing, except weddings usually have less singing
• 6:27
  involved, so maybe more like plays and less like musicals.
• 6:30
  But I do know a lot of former theater people who've made the
• 6:32
  transition just into the wedding world.
• 6:34
  Casey Fatchett: So many, yeah, when I moved to New York to be
• 6:37
  an actor, and when I eventually got into like, wedding
• 6:40
  photography, like, the first thing I noticed was, like, so
• 6:43
  many, like the makeup artists, planners, photographers, like
• 6:47
  all these people who were, like, former theater people. And I'm
• 6:49
  like, Why? Why? I'm like, well, and I said the same thing, it's,
• 6:53
  it's a, there's a, there's really a performance aspect to
• 6:57
  it. And I don't like to say that too much around clients, because
• 7:01
  this is like, what? What do you mean? You're performing? And I'm
• 7:03
  like, no, no. It's like, it is like a performance, in the sense
• 7:06
  that you can prepare as much beforehand as you want, but
• 7:11
  there's like, no do overs. You have to improvise if things go
• 7:13
  wrong. There is a structure to it. There is a like, a run of
• 7:17
  show to it. And there are similarities. Even though they
• 7:23
  can be wildly different, there's always a similarity to it. Like
• 7:27
  each like show is unique. The people you're dealing with is
• 7:30
  unique, but it has the same sort of there's a feel to it that is
• 7:36
  like similar. So I think that that, yeah, I think it naturally
• 7:41
  attracts theater people
• 7:45
  Susan Stripling: agreed.
• 7:45
  Casey Fatchett: Oh, and a cat too.
• 7:46
  Susan Stripling: I have three dogs and two cats, so, Oh, see,
• 7:50
  and the cat just smacked the dog. So for those of you
• 7:52
  listening, that's the sound of a likely mean cat punching a dog
• 7:56
  in the face.
• 7:57
  Casey Fatchett: We used to when we lived in the city, we had a
• 8:00
  cat and a dog, and the cat used to lay on the coffee table and
• 8:02
  just wait for the dog to walk by, and we just smack him in the
• 8:05
  face,
• 8:07
  Susan Stripling: it's funny.
• 8:08
  Casey Fatchett: And then the dog would chase him around the
• 8:11
  entire apartment, and then, you know, knock everything over
• 8:14
  until the cat was on top of the bookshelves. You know, you can't
• 8:19
  catch me here.
• 8:20
  Susan Stripling: Well, they're all scared of her. I have one
• 8:22
  cat. She has three legs. Her name is tripod. Obviously
• 8:26
  they're all terrified of tripod, because she's the one that
• 8:28
  punches Lucy. Is just an idiot, and no one is scared of Lucy,
• 8:34
  which is kind of fabulous. Just a big mush, a big, weird mush,
• 8:40
  correct. Awesome.
• 8:42
  Casey Fatchett: So, all right, let's talk about, like, is we
• 8:45
  were talking about, like, a little bit like, preparing and
• 8:47
  getting prepared for a wedding. And I have a routine that I go
• 8:51
  through, what is, what's your routine that you go through to
• 8:54
  prepare to shoot a wedding? Are we talking like, day of, yeah,
• 8:59
  like, just like, leading up to, I mean, like, I have a whole
• 9:01
  thing where I'm like, the day before, I'm like, going through
• 9:04
  and checking all the batteries, is everything charged, are all
• 9:07
  my cards reformatted? Like, you know, just do a quick check of
• 9:11
  the camera, is the camera working? Just, just, let's make
• 9:15
  sure. And, you know, like, those, those are things that I
• 9:17
  do the day before, and then the things that I do, like, the
• 9:20
  morning of like, I just, like, get myself in the like, the day
• 9:23
  before. I'll also go through, like, with my checklist of in
• 9:27
  my, you know, run up show for the day, look at everything and
• 9:31
  kind of go like, okay, just reminding myself of all the
• 9:34
  stuff that's going on. Like, any relationships that I need to be,
• 9:38
  you know, where not wary, but aware of, yeah, some of them
• 9:43
  wary, but yeah, that sort of thing.
• 9:47
  Susan Stripling: It's like, there's the like we all have the
• 9:49
  day before routine, and I feel like they all really look
• 9:51
  similar. It's like, have we synced our cameras on time.gov?
• 9:54
  Have we made sure all of our batteries are charged? Like and
• 9:59
  it's. Simple stuff that I that I'll forget, like, I'll charge
• 10:02
  my batteries, but I could leave them sitting on the counter. So
• 10:04
  this is why we have to do it day before. Day of. It's actually a
• 10:10
  really good question. Day before, I always go over the
• 10:14
  timeline with whoever's working with me. I'll read it. I'll get
• 10:18
  in touch with them. Because, like, if I've got an assistant
• 10:21
  or a second photographer coming into work with me, I want to
• 10:24
  make sure, like, let's all park at the same parking lot, because
• 10:27
  in New York, like, you've got to find your parking and we're all
• 10:30
  going to park here. And let's talk through it and hear the
• 10:33
  weird things you need to know that are not maybe written down.
• 10:36
  So we have, like, a final Roundup, just sort of informal
• 10:40
  text chat. Morning of I pack food, make sure I have my water
• 10:46
  and all of my electrolytes, because I feel like that's
• 10:48
  really important. Some liquid IV, 100 I literally have some in
• 10:52
  my water bottle currently. Right now, I always make sure I have
• 10:56
  my ear plugs, because for some reason, like I never put them
• 10:58
  back in the same place. I know I should, but I just don't, and
• 11:03
  then I usually have an existential crisis, like, that's
• 11:05
  that's my main part of my preparation is a brief
• 11:10
  existential crisis as I leave the house and go into the city,
• 11:14
  and it usually goes like this, where it's like, I don't feel
• 11:17
  prepared. I don't want to do this. I want to go home.
• 11:20
  Something's gonna go wrong. I'm gonna get stuck in traffic. It's
• 11:23
  just, like, kind of a just a small like, Yeah, It's so funny.
• 11:31
  It's like, I love what I do for a living. But in the car on the
• 11:34
  way there, I'm like, How can I get out of this? I just want to
• 11:41
  go home. What am I supposed to do? I don't want to do this five
• 11:42
  minutes into shooting. I'm like, this is the most fun I've ever
• 11:42
  had in my life. Like, this is great. I'm so happy to be here,
• 11:44
  but it's like, on the way in, I just have to have this. What
• 11:47
  have I done with my life? I just want to go home. Yeah. And I've
• 11:51
  been the same way for 20 years. And it's funny, because the more
• 11:54
  I talk to my friends about it, everyone does it
• 11:57
  Casey Fatchett: It's this weird anxiety. Yeah. I mean, I do it.
• 12:00
  I have anxiety anyway, but it's just like, my wife, my wife
• 12:03
  always comments, and she's like, Yeah, go be great and have fun
• 12:07
  and whatever. And I'm leaving, I'm like, I don't want to go,
• 12:09
  like, there's just like, this panic, like, like, and it's
• 12:12
  like, what I what if I forgot something? Because that's always
• 12:15
  the thing. I'll be 100 yards from the house, and I'll be
• 12:19
  like, Wait, did I actually pack all this stuff that I'm, like,
• 12:24
  trying to go back through my head, my head, like, yeah, I
• 12:28
  packed that one. But I will get out of my car. I'll stop, get
• 12:28
  out of the car. Like, just quickly check and yeah, there's,
• 12:30
  there's this, yeah, existential crisis is, my
• 12:33
  Susan Stripling: my worries are they make no sense. It's like,
• 12:35
  am I going to the right venue? Is the web really gay? Do I know
• 12:38
  how to take a picture? And it's like, what are you like, what is
• 12:42
  my brain doing? But it's all in the car on the way there. And my
• 12:46
  boyfriend, who's also a wedding photographer, he second shoots
• 12:48
  with me sometimes, and I'm like, I don't know what's wrong with
• 12:50
  me. And he's like, it's just part of your process. Yeah, we
• 12:53
  all have to get out of it so that then we can have the flip
• 12:56
  once we start. And we're like, This is so fun. I'm having a
• 12:59
  great time.
• 13:00
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, it's such a, I don't know. It's such a
• 13:04
  weird feeling, like it's same thing, like, am I going to the
• 13:06
  right place? Like, I know I've checked this 100 times, right? I
• 13:11
  checked it yesterday. Why am I still
• 13:13
  Susan Stripling: and I don't know about it. It doesn't make
• 13:17
  any sense.
• 13:18
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, we've both been around the industry for a
• 13:22
  long time. My next question has something to do with that, like,
• 13:26
  what are the biggest changes you've seen? And, I mean, I
• 13:31
  started shooting film like, What the What were the biggest
• 13:34
  changes that you've seen in the wedding industry?
• 13:37
  Susan Stripling: That, honestly, my the biggest change is just
• 13:41
  how multi fold marketing is now. Like, it just, and it's so
• 13:45
  funny. I was talking with my partner, literally, about this
• 13:48
  last night. Is people who asked are like, Well, how did you get
• 13:50
  started thinking I'm going to give them some, like, great
• 13:53
  nuggets of information. And I'm like, my dude, it was 2001 like,
• 13:58
  I went to a wedding fair and put an ad in the local magazine.
• 14:02
  That's how I got so, like, that was, that was all you did, yeah,
• 14:06
  and you were good. And now there's just so many different
• 14:09
  avenues to market yourself, and it's too much. It's too much.
• 14:16
  The marketing of it has become a second full time job, and you
• 14:21
  can't. There's no point at which, and like, when I first
• 14:24
  got started, once you kind of built a name in your community,
• 14:27
  people knew who you were and you were good. You just had to show
• 14:30
  up at the wedding fair and put your ad magazine, and your year
• 14:33
  was full, right? And now, like, did I do an Instagram reel? Did
• 14:37
  I do a carousel? Should I be on Tiktok? Are we still doing
• 14:39
  Casey Fatchett: We're not doing Facebook, by the way,
• 14:39
  Facebook?
• 14:42
  Susan Stripling: We're definitely not doing Facebook
• 14:45
  and I'm also not doing Tiktok because I just can't do it. I
• 14:48
  can't do it. I'm too old. I can't do it.
• 14:50
  Casey Fatchett: I do it for this stuff, but I don't do it for the
• 14:52
  work, because it's just it's
• 14:54
  Susan Stripling: and my clients don't seem to really use it much
• 14:57
  like they'll use it like I do for entertainment. Cat videos,
• 15:01
  but legitimately, like so much, like photography, trends come
• 15:05
  and go, but the biggest change has just been what a full time
• 15:08
  job marketing has become.
• 15:09
  Casey Fatchett: Oh yeah, it is. It's the one thing when people
• 15:12
  ask me, like, what would you if there's something you could just
• 15:15
  do? And like, if I could have somebody who could speak in my
• 15:17
  voice and I can trust with all of that marketing stuff, because
• 15:23
  I don't know about you, I am totally I have trouble
• 15:25
  delegating to anybody. So it's like, it's got to sound like me,
• 15:29
  it's got to sound like me. Because if it doesn't sound like
• 15:32
  me, like I am what I bring to the table, yeah, and that's the
• 15:38
  biggest difference from anybody else. So if it doesn't sound
• 15:42
  like me, then what's the point of putting it out there? But
• 15:46
  yeah
• 15:47
  Susan Stripling: It's not only marketing like, we all now have
• 15:47
  to be content creators. And I'm like, I don't like, I really
• 15:47
  don't want to do this. I don't want to wear my meta glasses at
• 15:47
  weddings. I don't want to take behind the scenes footage, like,
• 15:48
  I just want to take pictures. Like, that's that's really all I
• 15:49
  want to do. I want to take pictures. And I don't even mind
• 16:01
  doing Instagram posts. I don't mind doing it, but the level to
• 16:05
  which it has to be done, I feel like there's just been some
• 16:08
  focus has been lost on the work itself. And it's it's just
• 16:14
  again, it's this, I have this second full time job of being a
• 16:16
  content creator, and I don't know how I feel about it. I feel
• 16:19
  old.
• 16:21
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, it has, it has this is, I think it's
• 16:24
  because it's draining, in a way, because you feel like you're,
• 16:26
  you're putting all this energy into it, and you don't have a
• 16:29
  real solid sense of what you're getting back exactly like you
• 16:35
  said you used to be able to, oh, I'm gonna go to this, you know,
• 16:38
  wedding fair. This is gonna at least take care of a big chunk
• 16:42
  of my year. Whenever, when people ask me, I'm like, I used
• 16:45
  to meet people at coffee shops with a print like, not even a
• 16:51
  book,
• 16:52
  Susan Stripling: my one book my one sample album
• 16:54
  Casey Fatchett: it wasn't even a sample album when I started.
• 16:56
  Well, well, mine wasn't. It was like, it was like, you know, a
• 17:00
  portfolio with prints in it. And we'd flip through that, and
• 17:03
  they'd look and, you know, these were all stuff in people like,
• 17:08
  and I was delivering, you know, printed proofs of all the
• 17:11
  photos, and all were, yeah, and it's just, you know, now it's
• 17:16
  throw it into a gallery and
• 17:19
  Susan Stripling: it all on Instagram, and
• 17:20
  Casey Fatchett: how quick can you get into this
• 17:21
  Susan Stripling: correct. And there's a lot that I do like
• 17:24
  about it, like, I don't want to sound like old and curmudgeonly,
• 17:27
  like, I don't like how the industry's changed. I like a lot
• 17:29
  of it. I just feel like the proportion of balance in my
• 17:33
  business is a little it's a little skewed.
• 17:36
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, yeah. It feels like more and more we're
• 17:41
  trying to, we're spending more and more energy on, like, just
• 17:46
  trying to get people to see our work. I think it's a good way of
• 17:50
  putting it, instead of, instead of the Hey, I'm doing the thing
• 17:54
  that, that I like to do. Don't you want it? Right? Don't you
• 17:58
  want the thing? This is why you hired me, right? This is why
• 18:01
  people hire me, speaking of like this, this is something like,
• 18:06
  that's something that I've been dealing with with just my
• 18:09
  wedding business, and thinking about, like, do I really need to
• 18:13
  post on Instagram, not every day, but like, regularly? What
• 18:17
  am I posting? Or whatever, but you kind of get burned out by
• 18:20
  it. Yeah, have you ever felt the burnout creeping in?
• 18:24
  Susan Stripling: Like, absolutely, and I've, what
• 18:29
  worked best for me is batch process, not batch processing,
• 18:35
  but like, bulk scheduling stuff to go out on Instagram. It's not
• 18:42
  so much burnout. It's at what point, at what point are we just
• 18:49
  churning out content to churn out content. Like, I want to
• 18:52
  share my work. I want people to see it. I want prospective
• 18:56
  clients to find it. But like, does it have to be at this
• 19:00
  frenetic pace. So it's not so much. It's funny. It's not, not
• 19:04
  even burnout. It's like it gives me great anxiety. I almost miss
• 19:08
  burnout that was at least a little relaxing. This is just
• 19:14
  kind of panicky. And the speed to which things need to be put
• 19:21
  out there is also panicky. You know, it's not enough. If you
• 19:26
  shoot a wedding on a Saturday to get some sneak peeks out in a
• 19:29
  week, it has to be out a day, or in two days, or then the
• 19:32
  planners need them, and it's just things have gotten a little
• 19:35
  manic. Yeah, I miss the days of burnout, kind of, who knows?
• 19:42
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah. It's that feeling of like, Yeah, are you
• 19:44
  gonna how many selects Are you gonna have for us tomorrow? And
• 19:47
  it's just like, I've got another wedding tomorrow. Or like, you
• 19:50
  know, I'm, you know, I'm getting home from this at five o'clock
• 19:54
  in the morning, and I'm
• 19:55
  Susan Stripling: I can do it. I can absolutely do it. It's just
• 19:58
  trying to figure out. The app, like, what matters, and what
• 20:02
  kind of timeline actually matters, and what is, what's
• 20:07
  reasonable, and what not, and does it even matter? Like,
• 20:09
  there's a planner that I really love who got married probably
• 20:12
  about a month ago, and he didn't drop all of his previews of his
• 20:17
  own wedding, and he's, like, a really, like, just amazing
• 20:19
  designer. You would have expected his stuff would come
• 20:22
  out, like, the next day, yeah, he actually didn't start sharing
• 20:24
  sneaks for, like, a couple weeks, decided to go on
• 20:27
  honeymoon and, like, not, and I loved it, because I was like,
• 20:30
  Okay, we we kind of waited for this.
• 20:33
  Casey Fatchett: So anticipation people have that delayed
• 20:37
  gratification.
• 20:38
  Susan Stripling: Yeah, I really balance my burnout and my panic
• 20:41
  attacks. I feel like they kind of, you know, they level each
• 20:44
  other out over time.
• 20:45
  Casey Fatchett: I feel like we're kindred spirits in a lot
• 20:47
  of things you're saying, yeah, it's the Yeah, the constant
• 20:54
  like, Hamster wheels, what I refer to it as, like, you're
• 20:56
  just like, you keep you feel like, if you stop, you're
• 20:59
  somehow you're not a shark. You're not if you stop swimming,
• 21:02
  you're gonna die. And it's not the case.
• 21:04
  Susan Stripling: Actually, it's hard, though, because, like,
• 21:07
  this is the kind of job where you never like you don't get
• 21:10
  tenure, you don't have job security like you, you have to
• 21:13
  basically audition for your own job dozens of times a year,
• 21:17
  every year. And, you know, I've had people ask me, they're like,
• 21:20
  what it will at what point does that stop? And I'm like, I don't
• 21:22
  know. I don't know when adults will tell you, because it just
• 21:26
  it's the same thing every year. And as I get older and sort of
• 21:29
  life priorities shift and change, I have a really hard
• 21:33
  time enjoying that the way that I did in like my late 20s and
• 21:36
  early 30s. It would be nice if there, if there was a point
• 21:41
  where absolutely have to hamster wheel it every single
• 21:47
  Casey Fatchett: I get that a lot from younger photographers,
• 21:49
  like, oh, at one point, does it get easy? And I'm like, Yeah, I
• 21:53
  don't know. That's sweet, does it? Doesn't it's like you're
• 22:01
  always going to be like hustling your entire career, if you're if
• 22:06
  this is how you want to do it, if you want to be a freelancer,
• 22:10
  then you are a freelancer, and you
• 22:12
  Susan Stripling: my oldest kid is a free theatrical she does
• 22:16
  lighting. She's an electrician, and asked me probably about a
• 22:22
  year into it, like, is this what freelance life is like? And I'm
• 22:26
  like, Yes, it is,
• 22:29
  Casey Fatchett: guess what? This is how things go.
• 22:33
  Susan Stripling: Enjoy. We all chose this.
• 22:37
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, it's, remember this? In New York,
• 22:42
  there used to be a thing called the Freelancers union. There was
• 22:45
  like a just people who get, like artists and people who had
• 22:49
  joined, and you can contribute to gate 401, K, and there's
• 22:54
  other things, whatever. But it was just like, it's since gone
• 22:57
  the way of the dodo. But I always thought like this, at
• 23:01
  that point in time, people kind of there was a greater
• 23:04
  understanding that this is not a not a career like others, where
• 23:08
  you and had, like, a lot of resources to help, like people
• 23:12
  plan for the rest of their life and how it was going to be. But
• 23:17
  I agree with you. I think that that, I mean, frankly, age does
• 23:21
  have something to do with it. You get older and your
• 23:24
  priorities change, and there are times when, like, I turn down
• 23:28
  jobs because I'm like, I can a I can tell this is going to be
• 23:33
  problematic. There's going to be something going like, I hear key
• 23:36
  words that people say, and I'm just like, I am not the right
• 23:40
  person for this job anymore, or I wasn't ever the right person
• 23:43
  for this job. Like, I'm not a type, I'm not a type A person.
• 23:47
  I'm not going to shout at people and scream at them and tell them
• 23:51
  to get in order and then, you know, and I can see, like, in a
• 23:54
  meeting where, like, somebody's like, I, you know, my family's
• 23:56
  really unruly, and you're really going to need to, like, and I'm
• 24:04
  like, I'm pretty good at handling people. I was a
• 24:04
  director, too, but like, but when I started to, like, hear
• 24:05
  certain words, I'm like, No, this is like, they want somebody
• 24:06
  who's gonna, you know, is a drill sergeant, yeah, and that's
• 24:10
  not me, and I'm not gonna enjoy that. But they're like, I've
• 24:13
  gotten better at, like, identifying those things and
• 24:15
  just being like, this is does not I'm not a fit for it, and
• 24:19
  actually being comfortable saying no, because it preserves
• 24:22
  my sanity. And I think that when you're younger, you're more
• 24:27
  willing to, like, I'm going to take every job I can get this
• 24:31
  that's that pays my rate. And I'm going to be like, I don't
• 24:34
  care. I'm going to do 50 weddings a year, or whatever.
• 24:37
  And just,
• 24:38
  Susan Stripling: Oh, my God, I used to do that. I'm never doing
• 24:40
  that. Yeah, and in a lot of ways, like I do feel like
• 24:44
  getting older does make things easier, because you know who you
• 24:47
  are, and I've done this so many times that even though I do have
• 24:51
  my existential crisis on the way to every single job, I could do
• 24:55
  this in my sleep if I had to write like, there's there's such
• 24:59
  i. Security and knowing who I am as a person and a photographer,
• 25:03
  and it does get easier to balance, like my life with my
• 25:06
  work. And so in a lot of ways, like being a freelancer is a
• 25:10
  huge gift. It's just again, getting a little older, you feel
• 25:15
  the parts of it that are not a gift.
• 25:18
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, yeah. It just, it's sort of like, oh,
• 25:21
  man, there are days like, my wife has a, you know, a job,
• 25:27
  like her regular office job, and she works a lot of hours, but
• 25:32
  it's like, you know, there's, there's sometimes where I'm
• 25:34
  saying, like, there are times when I would like to just go to
• 25:36
  an office, yeah, and, and the work is set here. Like, this is
• 25:41
  what you're going to work on today. Might be a couple things
• 25:44
  that pop up, but like, you know, instead of always being in
• 25:47
  charge of making the decisions, and that's something I tell
• 25:49
  people like, you have to get used to if you're going to run
• 25:59
  your own business, you have to get used to making the decisions
• 25:59
  you are in charge of making all the decisions. Like, nobody's
• 25:59
  going to come in and be like, Oh, this is what you should work
• 26:00
  on today. You have to prioritize things, and you have to do it,
• 26:04
  yeah, and you actually have to do the things you can't just
• 26:07
  write down. I have 1000s of lists. I've got notebooks and
• 26:14
  like, writing pads all over the place with like lists, and
• 26:17
  there's stuff in like and I actually went flying somewhere
• 26:21
  and I grabbed a notebook because I just, like, because I just
• 26:23
  like to do some writing while I'm on the plane. Like, oh, I
• 26:25
  need to organize my thoughts on some things, whatever. And I'll
• 26:28
  have pulled out this notebook and I go, wow, there's some
• 26:31
  really great ideas in this notebook that I just never went
• 26:33
  back and read. I wrote these things just like, there's like,
• 26:38
  great marketing stuff in here, there's, like, fantastic, like
• 26:43
  that I wrote down. And I don't know how old that is, but yeah,
• 26:46
  you actually have to do the things that
• 26:49
  Susan Stripling: sometimes it's a lot easier to just not things.
• 26:54
  But that's what I feel like I've gotten a lot better at just
• 26:57
  being in business for a long time is okay. I know that I can
• 27:00
  do the things, and I know how long it will take me to do the
• 27:02
  things, so I'm going to do the things today and tomorrow. I'm
• 27:06
  just going to go to the beach with my friends, like, we'll
• 27:08
  just get it to end. I used to be, like, super hyper into,
• 27:13
  like, hustle culture, like, you're always working, you're
• 27:15
  always grinding. And I'm like, wow, that's terrible. Why did I
• 27:18
  do that? That doesn't make me feel good at all, and at a
• 27:22
  certain point I'm just working to work. So why not just put
• 27:27
  that down and read a book for just a minute? Like just a
• 27:30
  minute.
• 27:31
  Casey Fatchett: So I think one of the things that really woke
• 27:33
  me up to it was my wife would joke about how, you know she
• 27:38
  when may rolled around, she's like, Oh, see you in October.
• 27:43
  And, you know, and I my friends would say things like, oh, you
• 27:47
  know, we're gonna have, like, this, get together, a barbecue,
• 27:50
  or whatever, assume that you can't make it because you're
• 27:53
  probably working. And I was just like, wait a second, what? And I
• 27:58
  was like, how many? And I was, I was sort of like, think about,
• 28:01
  like, how many gatherings I missed. And like, I've got, you
• 28:05
  know, a friend's 50th birthday coming up next month, and I
• 28:09
  like, set that weekend aside. So, like, somebody I've known
• 28:12
  for 30 years, 30 more than 30 years, and you know, I'm going
• 28:19
  to that birthday party. I'm not like, I'm not working. I'm not
• 28:22
  gonna, like,
• 28:24
  Susan Stripling: take some my daughter's college graduation is
• 28:27
  on the calendar, and it is a prime may weekend. And I mean,
• 28:32
  there's no amount of money that would make missing that. Well,
• 28:36
  you know what? That's actually not true. There definitely is an
• 28:39
  amount of money that would make missing that okay, but it's not
• 28:42
  funny. You would make
• 28:43
  Casey Fatchett: It's not practical.
• 28:44
  Susan Stripling: that's like, win the lottery money. And then
• 28:48
  at that point she would understand, yeah, and she'd be
• 28:50
  like, Okay, we'll figure something out. No, you can't
• 28:52
  like. And when I was younger, I thought, you have to take every
• 28:54
  wedding whenever it comes, because you know there. You
• 28:56
  never know when there's going to be another one. And at some
• 28:59
  point I was just like, there I have to be able to say no
• 29:02
  sometimes, like, I have to have, like, an actual life this, this
• 29:07
  isn't what you do for a living. Is not who you are.
• 29:11
  Casey Fatchett: I recently turned down a job. What kind of
• 29:13
  turned down did not get the job because or was not, did not move
• 29:17
  forward because it was a corporate gig for six days,
• 29:22
  yeah? So this could be, and it was six long days, like, 12 plus
• 29:27
  hours. Oh, wow. So pretty substantial amount of money.
• 29:32
  Yeah, they wanted everything delivered the next day. So I was
• 29:35
  like, I'm gonna have to hire an assistant to because there's no
• 29:38
  way I'm, like, pulling editing photos. So I said, you know, I'm
• 29:42
  gonna have to budget for somebody to be there. And I
• 29:47
  provided them a quote like, you know, like, with the
• 29:49
  information, and this is a pretty big like, lot of people
• 29:54
  know about this event. It's a big deal. And I was like, Okay,
• 29:58
  there's probably gonna be a healthy. Budget for this. So I
• 30:01
  sent them my quote broken down a little bit, and they were like,
• 30:05
  Oh, well, how much if we do a full buyout on the images,
• 30:09
  because we like, don't like, because what you have in your
• 30:12
  quote is for, you know? I was like, it's internal use news or
• 30:20
  whatever, things like that, licensing for like, certain
• 30:22
  things. They're like, what if we, what if we open that up to
• 30:25
  anything, any sort of use in perpetuity? And I'm like, and I
• 30:28
  said, you can't afford it. It's definitely not in your budget.
• 30:30
  What do you mean? And I'm like, well, that's going to be like,
• 30:35
  $750 an image. And they're what
• 30:38
  Susan Stripling: That's different order that's in
• 30:40
  perpetuity. Buyout is a very different, yeah, and I was then
• 30:44
  they were like, huh, you're really asking for when you're
• 30:46
  asking for that?
• 30:47
  Casey Fatchett: Well, it's because they don't want to go
• 30:49
  back and have to, like, figure out, would we still have a
• 30:51
  license to use this image? But this was like, of two months of
• 30:57
  going back and forth about this job, and then finally they came
• 31:00
  back and they said, Oh well, you know, we're moving forward
• 31:03
  unless you can, like, do this in the within the budget, which,
• 31:07
  you know, I don't think that you can, because, because their
• 31:12
  budget for both photo and video was half of what I quoted them.
• 31:19
  Oh no. And I just said, yeah, it's not gonna work. Best of
• 31:23
  luck, you know. And there's, there's an inside of myself, I
• 31:27
  was really proud, yeah, because I didn't say, Oh, how can I make
• 31:30
  this work?
• 31:32
  Susan Stripling: Plenty of times when, like, I mean, there's,
• 31:35
  there's great luxury and privilege and being able to say,
• 31:39
  no, there have been plenty of jobs that I've been like, Okay,
• 31:43
  I'll do it because I have to pay my bills. But it's a really
• 31:47
  beautiful feeling to be able to be like, You know what? I can't
• 31:51
  bend to the place that you want me to be, right? Because it's
• 31:55
  still what you want at the level that you need it right?
• 31:59
  Casey Fatchett: Because it was still a substantial amount of
• 32:01
  money. And I was sitting there thinking, like, and I'm like,
• 32:04
  they're just gonna find some, like, 25 year old kid who's
• 32:07
  gonna work themselves to death, like, literally, probably, like,
• 32:11
  trying to edit those photos themselves and everything like,
• 32:14
  this is just, yeah. I was like, I felt really proud of myself
• 32:17
  for saying no and being able to do that and be like, Okay, this
• 32:20
  would have physically, I'd be a mess.
• 32:23
  Susan Stripling: And, you think about those jobs in your career
• 32:26
  where you're like, this was a learning lesson. Like, the first
• 32:29
  time I shot like a three day Indian wedding in the summer, I
• 32:33
  was like, I under quoted this. I'm dying of heatstroke. Some 20
• 32:37
  something year old kids gonna get that job and is gonna look
• 32:41
  back on that job and be like, I didn't quote this properly.
• 32:44
  These are the things that I need to consider. And there is like,
• 32:48
  a lot of like, I don't make those mistakes anymore, like,
• 32:52
  and now if I do say, You know what? Yeah, okay, I can do it
• 32:55
  for that budget, because I just need to make some money. I i can
• 32:59
  always be right with the decisions I've made, because
• 33:03
  I've I've had so many lived experiences. I know what I'm
• 33:06
  saying yes or no to, and I'm not going to say yes to it, even if
• 33:10
  it's dropping rates for do it, doing a job you don't want to
• 33:14
  do. I'm always going to be cool with whatever decision I've made
• 33:17
  instead of and I think back to things that I said yes to when I
• 33:21
  was younger, and I was like, Well, I didn't know, yeah, yeah.
• 33:26
  Casey Fatchett: You hadn't learned yet that that's that
• 33:29
  though there are warning signs, or that there are things that
• 33:32
  you're gonna you're gonna regret doing the job more than you're
• 33:36
  gonna regret not taking it. Like, that's the like I had. I
• 33:40
  had a wedding once, like, I mean, I've been very lucky where
• 33:43
  I can count probably in two hands the number of like, bad
• 33:46
  experiences I've had weddings, mostly like amazing people. But
• 33:52
  I had, we had just signed, we were in my office, like meeting
• 33:56
  space in Manhattan. They had signed the contract, handed me
• 33:59
  the check, and they said, So how many of these photos are going
• 34:02
  to be perfect? And I was just like, my, I felt like my, felt
• 34:05
  like my head was just gonna, like, go through the table. I
• 34:08
  was just like,
• 34:10
  Susan Stripling: Man, I open the window and see myself out.
• 34:13
  Casey Fatchett: This is not gonna be good, and it wasn't,
• 34:16
  and it wasn't. But those are the sort of things that, like, I
• 34:19
  know to ask questions now, like, as much as the the I think that
• 34:23
  a lot of younger photographers don't realize this, that that
• 34:28
  first call, or whatever you do, meeting with potential clients
• 34:33
  is as much figuring them out as it is for them to figure you out
• 34:37
  like you actually,
• 34:38
  Susan Stripling: they're not just hiring you. You're it's a
• 34:41
  relationship that goes both ways, and everyone in that
• 34:44
  relationship needs to be comfortable with it. And there
• 34:47
  have been plenty of clients that I've, you know, taken the job
• 34:49
  for the paycheck and been like I, I think there might have been
• 34:54
  somebody, I mean, and I the amount of, like, mental
• 34:58
  calisthenics and Like. Just bending over backwards to make
• 35:02
  sure they're happy, because that's really important is at a
• 35:05
  great expense to my own personal ability. And I think again, one
• 35:10
  of those things with like, age and what jobs you take and what
• 35:13
  jobs you say no to, is understanding that taking care
• 35:16
  of yourself is, like, super important. It's not just like,
• 35:20
  well, I could stay up until four o'clock in the morning editing
• 35:22
  these images, but can I do that? And if I do that, like, I know,
• 35:26
  I know I could do it, but I would need to clear the schedule
• 35:28
  for the next week, because I would need to recover from it.
• 35:31
  Like, I need to make sure I drink a lot of water. Like, am I
• 35:34
  eating enough protein? Like, how do you take care of yourself in
• 35:37
  this job that you've this crazy field we've chosen to pursue.
• 35:42
  Casey Fatchett: And I think one of the things that we commonly,
• 35:44
  one of the common things that comes up in wedding photography
• 35:48
  industry is the discussion like, how are you serving your
• 35:50
  clients? Yep. And I think recognizing that you're not the
• 35:54
  right person for the job or the person that they need is one of
• 35:58
  the biggest ways you can serve them. And be like, not be like,
• 36:01
  I'm gonna take this job because I want the money, and go like,
• 36:04
  hey, and you learned who people are around you. Hopefully you
• 36:08
  have a community of other photographers, but I will refer
• 36:11
  people to somebody else because, like, this person does what you
• 36:15
  need, and that's the conversation I'll have with the
• 36:18
  potential client. I'll be like, Listen, you know, enjoy talking
• 36:21
  with you, but I don't think I'm the right person. And being in
• 36:23
  that, being able to get to that place, you know, is it's hard
• 36:28
  and, like, I've kind of wish I had gotten there faster, but
• 36:32
  it's being able to say, like, oh, Susan is much better suited
• 36:35
  to this. Because what, like this style, or not even just list the
• 36:40
  style of images, because a lot of people, there are a lot of
• 36:43
  wonderful wedding photographers out there, but it might just be
• 36:45
  personalities, it might be other different things, but I will,
• 36:49
  like, recommend somebody else and say, like, Hey, I think
• 36:52
  that's the person that you need. And it has actually benefited me
• 36:55
  in the long run, because then those people, like, have come
• 36:58
  back to me and said, I understand now, when you had
• 37:02
  that conversation with us and said, like we needed, what what
• 37:05
  you what you do, and what we needed were different things,
• 37:09
  and they've recommended me to other people, because I had the
• 37:13
  foresight to see that you know what somebody needed,
• 37:18
  Susan Stripling: and also the photographers that are In your
• 37:20
  network, if you can refer out to someone and then they can refer
• 37:24
  back to you, just it's, why would you why would you put
• 37:29
  yourself in a situation that you're going to have to
• 37:33
  drastically change the way you do things to make a client
• 37:35
  happy? It's going to end up making no one happy. And there
• 37:39
  are concessions I've made where I'm, like, I actually do think I
• 37:42
  could serve you. I just need to, like, tweak a few things, and
• 37:45
  I'm fine doing that. But then there's I, I think I could serve
• 37:50
  you, but I just, there's just something that makes me think
• 37:54
  you'd be happier, right, my buddy, so and so, right?
• 37:58
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, exactly. I think that that's that it takes
• 38:03
  a lot of personal insight to be able to feel comfortable with
• 38:08
  that. I think that, as you said, hustle culture, there's a lot of
• 38:13
  like people think that I got to be grinding all the time. I got
• 38:16
  to take every possible job, and if I don't, I'm failing like no,
• 38:20
  you gotta help yourself to like. You gotta like. The reason how
• 38:23
  you can have a any longevity in this business, especially, is by
• 38:28
  taking care of yourself and, like, figuring out how to
• 38:31
  balance stuff. Like I said, like we were talking about earlier,
• 38:33
  50 weddings a year,
• 38:34
  Susan Stripling: And we all take jobs. Like, we all take jobs
• 38:37
  just for the paycheck because, like, it's, you know, pay bills.
• 38:40
  And some years are better than other years. And sometimes I
• 38:44
  don't have the privilege of being like, I don't really want
• 38:47
  this one, but if I take it, I'm going to still like, I know I'm
• 38:51
  going to have to work harder. I'm going to have to do, you
• 38:54
  know, jump through a few more hoops to make people happy. But
• 38:57
  I just think with all of the decisions that you make, it does
• 39:01
  get easier over time, because you know yourself better, and
• 39:04
  you know how you like to exist and show up in your business.
• 39:08
  And if you're going to make exceptions, you're making those
• 39:11
  exceptions with the experience behind yourself to know what
• 39:14
  making that exception is going to look like exactly.
• 39:18
  Casey Fatchett: So I mean, like the one thing about like, making
• 39:20
  the concessions, because that was, like, one of the things
• 39:22
  that I always things that I always failed at early on, I'd
• 39:24
  be like, Oh, I'll cut the price down, but I'll still give you
• 39:27
  the same services and product. One of the best advice I ever
• 39:31
  got was, in regard to that, was if you're taking something off
• 39:35
  the price, you're also taking something off of what you offer
• 39:39
  in some way, so that people realize that they're you're not
• 39:41
  just like, or they have to give you something in the sense
• 39:45
  arbitrary, yeah, it's not like, because you do yourself a
• 39:48
  disservice, because people then start thinking like, like it is,
• 39:51
  like, you're just setting it for whatever reason. And if you say,
• 39:54
  I'm going to give you 300 bucks off, but you have to book this
• 39:56
  week, like, you have to book within like, today or tomorrow.
• 40:00
  Or those sorts of things where you're getting some ear I'll
• 40:04
  take off X amount, but then I'm removing the album
• 40:08
  Susan Stripling: right take it down a certain amount. But
• 40:10
  you're not going to get eight hours. You're going to get
• 40:14
  seven. Or we can your wedding is smaller. We could remove the
• 40:17
  second photographer because you wouldn't really need one. Like,
• 40:21
  there has to be a trade off. The only time I'll really come down
• 40:24
  in price, just for funsies, is if someone's like, we're getting
• 40:28
  married on a Thursday in January. And I'm like, okay,
• 40:31
  then we can then, because there's it's supply and demand,
• 40:34
  and I know that there is no one else that's going to be getting
• 40:38
  married on that day, and it's dynamic pricing, like, I can
• 40:41
  imagine your venue's not as expensive as it would be on a
• 40:45
  May Saturday. So I have more flexibility to, like, be able to
• 40:48
  help out.
• 40:49
  Casey Fatchett: So there's, and I'll tell people that, like, you
• 40:52
  know, I've, you know, same thing. It's like, oh, it's, you
• 40:55
  know, since it's a Thursday or it's a Wednesday, and you know,
• 41:00
  we're way out of season, like I'm I can be a little I have a
• 41:03
  little bit more flexibility. Yeah. So we've talked a lot
• 41:09
  about a lot of things that taking on jobs wise. But what
• 41:14
  other sort of mistakes do you often see newer photographers
• 41:19
  making, and how can they avoid that?
• 41:23
  Susan Stripling: This sounds really like, this sounds like
• 41:26
  just so vague and idealistic, but thinking that what you do
• 41:29
  for a living is who you are, because, and I see it more now
• 41:34
  with like we talked about before, with the content
• 41:37
  creation part of the social media where you have to, you
• 41:41
  have to show up on your social media. You have to talk to your
• 41:43
  clients. It's and then it just becomes like you almost have to
• 41:49
  be an influencer in your field. And this is not like, I don't
• 41:54
  mind that aspect of it as much, because, again, I came at it
• 41:56
  from a theater background. I can turn a camera on myself and
• 41:59
  start talking like it's that doesn't bother me at all. And in
• 42:04
  fact, the weirder and sillier I am, the more people find it
• 42:07
  entertaining, which is news to me. But when I was younger, and
• 42:12
  when I was getting into this, because there's just so much
• 42:17
  social aspect of what we do, especially now with like,
• 42:21
  there's so many networking events and get togethers and
• 42:25
  things like engage like, things that you can go to and it it, I
• 42:32
  felt like so much of my own self worth was wrapped up in my
• 42:36
  business and what it looked like and how It was doing. And that's
• 42:40
  just not. That's not a way to live. That's not. It's not, I
• 42:48
  don't want to say healthy, but it's not who you are. So I wish
• 42:52
  when I was earlier on, I was better at saying, like, I'm just
• 42:56
  not going to do work today, like I keep bringing up, like, going
• 42:59
  to the beach, like, my friends go to the beach every Tuesday in
• 43:03
  the summer, and I was like, I can't go. I have too much work
• 43:06
  to do. And it's like, do you though? Like, and do you really,
• 43:12
  do you have to do it on Tuesday? Like, don't you want to be a
• 43:15
  person? So I think, I think people need a better separation
• 43:26
  between who they are for work and who they are in real life,
• 43:29
  and both of those things need to be nurtured really heavily.
• 43:32
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, I completely agree. I've and I
• 43:35
  think it's because the pandemic kind of threw a wrench into
• 43:38
  things. I think that that really forced me to, like, really
• 43:42
  rethink a lot of stuff. And it's in similar way, like, you know
• 43:46
  what, there's, there are days where I'm, like, sitting, just
• 43:50
  sitting in front of my computer, kind of going, what do I need to
• 43:54
  do? Like, I kind of know some things, and I'm like, and maybe
• 43:58
  I would be able to focus more if I took a day and just, you know,
• 44:02
  didn't work. And, like, gave myself some time off, and, you
• 44:06
  know, spend some time with my wife or my dog or friends or
• 44:10
  whomever. And you know, released all the that, you know, had some
• 44:14
  positive energy coming in, so that I can then focus on the
• 44:18
  work product. And actually, the work product has gotten better,
• 44:22
  in the sense that
• 44:23
  Susan Stripling: exactly the more I step away from working.
• 44:27
  24/7 first of all, I'm better at it. When I'm actually doing it.
• 44:31
  I'm more efficient. Like I realized over the past few
• 44:34
  years, I used to work at night as well. Like I would work
• 44:37
  during the day, and then night would roll around. I'd get on my
• 44:39
  laptop, I'd put something on, and I keep working. And then I
• 44:45
  did, I gesture to the side, as if you can see my boyfriend, all
• 44:48
  of you on the podcast, who is sitting here on the sofa over
• 44:51
  there. He moved in with me, and I was like, Wait a second. I
• 44:55
  just want to lay on the sofa and watch TV with him at night. I
• 44:58
  don't want to. I pick up my laptop, and sometimes I do
• 45:02
  because I have to, but more and more I want to put it down and
• 45:06
  just zone out while watching terrible horror movies at night.
• 45:11
  And we've watched a string of absolute junk over the past few
• 45:15
  weeks. It's been fantastic because we both just, like at
• 45:18
  the end of the day, you just want to turn your brain off and
• 45:21
  just consume the fast food of television. Yeah, so we have
• 45:24
  watched some truly horrible found footage horror movies.
• 45:27
  It's been delicious, but if, like, at night now I watch TV
• 45:32
  and I take a bath and I read a book, and it's like, oh, this is
• 45:36
  so much better than doing, like, four more hours of work that
• 45:39
  weren't productive anyhow, right? And I, but I almost feel
• 45:45
  like I had to go too far in the direction of working too much
• 45:49
  for me to then put my finger on, okay, I've gone too far. I need
• 45:52
  to, we need to go back the other way. Because this isn't like, I
• 45:56
  hate the phrase of like, if when you're on your deathbed, later
• 45:59
  in your life, like, Am I really going to get virtue points for
• 46:03
  working until midnight every night? Like it's that's just not
• 46:07
  how this works. So, and I realized that saying all of
• 46:10
  these things is like, it's so privileged to be able to say
• 46:13
  this is, like, I'm not going to work at night. Well, I'm very,
• 46:17
  very grateful that I don't have
• 46:19
  Casey Fatchett: You work really hard to get there, yeah. But
• 46:21
  still, yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's the thing that people say,
• 46:24
  like, oh, you know when they're starting out. And I'm like,
• 46:27
  listen, yes, you're gonna, like, when you're starting and you're,
• 46:31
  like, really getting your feet under you, you're gonna do a lot
• 46:34
  of jobs that, like, you're gonna push yourself like, I was
• 46:37
  talking about the jobs that I didn't get, didn't take
• 46:40
  whatever. There's going to be some younger person who's going
• 46:43
  to take that job, and they're going to work themselves, you
• 46:46
  know, to the bone, to like, for that paycheck, and it's like,
• 46:49
  but you're going to learn a lot from that. And, yeah, you're
• 46:53
  going to figure out that when you get older, or, like, there's
• 46:56
  going to come a point where that's not the right thing for
• 46:59
  you. And or
• 46:59
  Susan Stripling: if it is, if you're like your I will work
• 47:02
  myself to the bone over this job, but I'm going to take it
• 47:05
  because I need it. Yeah, but I know what it's going to look
• 47:08
  like. I know how to take care of myself. I know how to recover
• 47:12
  from it, like I'm aware. But my parents would tell me, like, you
• 47:15
  need to drink water. I feel a lot better after a wedding if
• 47:19
  I'm actually hydrated. So like, I would go to, I would go to a
• 47:22
  long day of work with, like, a bag of M, M's and a coke when I
• 47:26
  was like, 23 right? Like, never drink water. What was water?
• 47:29
  Casey Fatchett: Why do I need that?
• 47:31
  Susan Stripling: Yeah, but I feel like the more you take care
• 47:34
  of yourself and the more you understand who you are as a
• 47:37
  human being, it just makes life better with work and just gives
• 47:41
  you a nice, little, healthy separation, just a
• 47:44
  Casey Fatchett: little absolutely okay. We got a couple
• 47:46
  of questions from listeners. I love it. Listeners. This is from
• 47:51
  got the low down on Reddit, tips for networking with venues and
• 47:56
  other vendors.
• 48:00
  Susan Stripling: Um, everyone like this is what everyone is
• 48:02
  doing right now. This is the big thing, is networking. Because I
• 48:06
  think a lot of people have realized that planners and
• 48:09
  venues hold a key that we do not have access to. And if we want
• 48:13
  access, we need to be friendly with them. They need to know who
• 48:17
  we are. But now what that has resulted into, and this is
• 48:21
  literally some literally something my partner and talk
• 48:24
  about all the time, is a frantic, like feeding frenzy of
• 48:28
  photographers trying to get to know every venue and every
• 48:31
  planner out there. And some of my planner friends have even
• 48:35
  said, like, we are inundated with people trying to network
• 48:38
  with us, and I think just on a photographer side, but they're
• 48:42
  getting photo and video and floral and stationary and hair
• 48:46
  and makeup and like everything, everybody, everybody. So what
• 48:50
  I've been doing for networking is honestly, like the people
• 48:53
  that I like working with the most. They're my friends in real
• 48:57
  life, the planners that I like, the people at venues that I
• 49:01
  like. Like, I text them for funsies, one of my favorite
• 49:04
  planners, we're trying to find a date that we can go to the
• 49:08
  theater together. Like, these are people I want to hang with.
• 49:12
  So when I go to these networking things that I go to, it's I'm
• 49:15
  not really trying to network. I'm trying to make friends. And
• 49:19
  that feels different, because I feel like, first of all, most
• 49:23
  people have their people that they work with. They planner,
• 49:27
  they have the people that they're referring and if you're
• 49:30
  going to break into that, they really are going to have to want
• 49:34
  to bring you into their team. So the place I've been enjoying the
• 49:38
  most, I've been involved with WIPA. And what I like about WIPA
• 49:42
  is that, what is it? Wedding Industry Professionals
• 49:45
  Association, something like that. There has to be an
• 49:48
  educational component to some of the things they do, and then
• 49:52
  there has to be a community outreach. So in a couple of
• 49:56
  weeks, we're going to go volunteer with WIPA Philadelphia
• 49:59
  at an animal shelter. And. Do, there's a 50% chance I will walk
• 50:03
  out with a cat. But, like, listen, it's helping the
• 50:06
  community, right? It's, it's outreach by taking in more
• 50:10
  animals now, but I like that. There's, you know, they have
• 50:13
  masterminds and panel discussions, and it's not just,
• 50:17
  let's all get together and dress fancy and go to parties, which
• 50:20
  part I don't like the parties part, but going to these things,
• 50:24
  and I find that like I'm gonna have a much better conversation
• 50:28
  with someone I'd like to work with if I'm sitting next to them
• 50:32
  at a printing station for a photo booth at a charity event,
• 50:36
  I actually get to talk to them versus cocktail party
• 50:39
  networking, which is my own personal circle of hell. And I
• 50:42
  went to something recently called Kindred, which I thought
• 50:46
  was actually really, really special. It was 50 planners.
• 50:50
  Hold on, nope. 50 planners, 25 videographers, 25 photographers,
• 50:53
  and they set it up, kind of like speed dating, where you did a
• 50:57
  zoom call with the people that ran kindred they get to know you
• 51:01
  a little bit, and then you get six one on ones over the course
• 51:05
  of the time you're there. And they match you up with people
• 51:09
  that they think that you would work well with.
• 51:12
  Casey Fatchett: Who do you fit with? That's a great idea.
• 51:13
  Susan Stripling: And they're very conscious of like, who they
• 51:16
  sit you with at dinner and who they sit you with at lunch. And
• 51:19
  it really felt like I was there to make friends instead of being
• 51:22
  like, hi, what do you do? How can we work together? Right?
• 51:25
  That's creepy. So I've been going to these networking
• 51:28
  things, but finding people I want to hang out with in real
• 51:31
  life as well.
• 51:32
  Casey Fatchett: I think that that's really your find the best
• 51:34
  connections with, like the same here, like, the people that I
• 51:38
  work the most with are people that I'm friendly with and we
• 51:43
  actually do, like hang out and do stuff together outside of the
• 51:47
  working part. One thing I would like to add for anybody who's
• 51:50
  listening is that don't mass email people. No, don't do it.
• 51:57
  Don't just like DM people if you're going to reach out. Be
• 52:01
  very selective about who you reach out to, like and and
• 52:04
  actually learn about them, whatever they're, whatever they
• 52:06
  do, their florist or a venue or whatever. Like, don't just come
• 52:10
  in and go, I'd really love to work with you. And like, please
• 52:12
  hire like, please start referring me. I've had, I have
• 52:16
  had, like, florists and makeup people contact me and say, like,
• 52:21
  please start referring me to your clients. And I'm like, why
• 52:23
  would I do that?
• 52:24
  Susan Stripling: Also, I what, yeah, like, how am I ever gonna
• 52:27
  refer a florist? Like, that's not, I'm not the person to maybe
• 52:30
  hair at makeup, but like, and I also the when I'm trying to get
• 52:34
  to know people. Like, if there's someone on Instagram that I want
• 52:37
  to know better, I'll comment on their posts and whatnot, but
• 52:40
  I'll mostly respond to their stories. And like, there's a
• 52:44
  planner that I really like in the DC area, and we message back
• 52:47
  and forth about handbags. Like, is it has nothing to do with
• 52:52
  work, and we've never worked together, but she's someone I
• 52:55
  think is cool, and someone I'd like to hang out with so and
• 52:59
  also, the other thing you have to consider, if you're emailing
• 53:03
  and you're DMing people, is, are you even getting in touch with
• 53:05
  the person you want to get in touch with? Right? So many of
• 53:08
  these people don't manage their own social so the person that
• 53:11
  they're responding the person that's responding to you could
• 53:16
  not even be the person that you would need to be in touch with
• 53:19
  in the first place. So, yeah, do some research. Yep, do some
• 53:24
  research, and then go talk to people and go meet people in
• 53:27
  person. Yeah, don't ask them to go have coffee with you. They
• 53:30
  don't want to have coffee with you, right? Like, they're busy,
• 53:33
  they're they
• 53:34
  Casey Fatchett: just don't leave their job and like, or whatever
• 53:36
  they're doing. And like, Come, like, meet with fandoms.
• 53:39
  Susan Stripling: Like, I like going to these networking events
• 53:42
  and then complaining about how I don't like being at networking
• 53:44
  events and people that I complain with, I'm like, You're
• 53:47
  my people. But I've met some really great people at these
• 53:50
  networking events just by going and having, like, random
• 53:54
  conversation with folks. And I find that's a lot better than
• 54:00
  doing what everyone else is doing, which is, like, frantic
• 54:06
  cold calling.
• 54:09
  Casey Fatchett: That's brilliant. It's like, You mean,
• 54:12
  like, yeah, I get way too many, like, cold calling emails of
• 54:19
  people like, oh, I want to do, or my favorite is my talk about,
• 54:22
  like, second shooters. People want to be a second shooter who
• 54:24
  will send an email to me and 40 other photographers, not even
• 54:29
  in, like a BCC, but it's they're all in the two. And I'm just
• 54:34
  like, and then, of course, somebody on that list replies
• 54:38
  all and it starts a whole, like, cascade of things, but it's
• 54:43
  like, tricky
• 54:44
  Susan Stripling: because I'll have people emailing me and be
• 54:46
  like, Are you hiring second shooters? And I'm like, there's
• 54:50
  actually a part on my website about employment, and it says
• 54:53
  I'm not hiring. So if there's someone I'm going to want to
• 54:56
  reach out to, I I just need to do a little pre. Research before
• 55:00
  I'm going to send emails that might not land right. Like,
• 55:03
  there's a planner that I really like, and she did it was a, I
• 55:06
  can't tell if it was like, one of her own webinars, or if she
• 55:10
  was on a podcast. And she was like, if you're going to reach
• 55:13
  out to me, this is what you need to say. And like, don't send me
• 55:16
  a link to your Instagram. Send me a picture, send me like, your
• 55:20
  favorite picture and include it in the email so I can see it
• 55:23
  don't make people click out of the email. And I was like,
• 55:26
  that's so helpful, because you're telling me how to reach
• 55:30
  out to you in the way that is going to best speak to what
• 55:33
  you're needing. And I think some of this is people don't know,
• 55:36
  and I don't think anyone's being, you know, malicious or or
• 55:40
  or irresponsible. I just think that there is an extra like, if
• 55:43
  you're going to go interview for a job, you're going to research
• 55:47
  the company that you're interviewing and the position
• 55:49
  that you're interviewing for, doing a little pre thought
• 55:53
  before cold reaching out to someone, which is why I don't
• 55:56
  even like cold reaching out to people. I like to just kind of
• 55:59
  like slide into their DMS to chatter about nothing, like the
• 56:02
  planner that I talked about before, who waited for a while
• 56:06
  to reveal his wedding never worked with him. But we've been
• 56:09
  Facebook friends for like, eight years. And we became Facebook
• 56:12
  friends because he was renovating a house and put up
• 56:15
  some really cool curtains that he liked that I was like, Oh my
• 56:19
  God, those curtains are so cool. And then we talked about the
• 56:22
  curtains. And now when we feather it networking events, we
• 56:25
  we know who the other is.
• 56:27
  Casey Fatchett: You have a basis to go from
• 56:30
  Susan Stripling: it's personal. And it's not me just being like
• 56:33
  great florals. It's me responding to things that that I
• 56:36
  actually feel really moved by. And then it's more of a connection.
• 56:40
  Casey Fatchett: Becomes more personal that way. And that's
• 56:42
  why, I mean, anything we talk about it in like, you know,
• 56:46
  people hiring you, it's all emotionally based. And so it's
• 56:50
  like, if somebody's gonna refer you, they're gonna refer people
• 56:54
  they want to work with, like, they're gonna refer people they
• 56:56
  want to hang out with. Because, I mean, let's face it, when it
• 56:59
  comes to like, planners and photographers, it's like we end
• 57:02
  up spending like, almost the entire day together. And it's
• 57:05
  like, if I don't feel like I want to hang out with you, I am
• 57:10
  never going to refer you to people like, if you have, like,
• 57:15
  a troubling attitude or whatever, like, that makes me
• 57:20
  feel like, I'm not gonna say when, when a couple asked me for
• 57:23
  a florist, because it's happened a few times when they get makeup
• 57:27
  a lot. Or DJs, people like, Oh, we're still looking for a DJ. Do
• 57:30
  you know anybody? Video is
• 57:31
  Susan Stripling: the big one for me that people ask about video
• 57:33
  because I don't do video, and it's like, I'm gonna refer my
• 57:36
  friends, people that I know, are gonna do great work for you. But
• 57:39
  also, we have a hell of a good time hanging out together,
• 57:42
  right? Or your, you know, your guests who don't know that photo
• 57:45
  and video are different teams. We're going to seem like one
• 57:48
  symbiotic unit, because we're buddies, like in real life,
• 57:51
  we're friends.
• 57:52
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, we like each other,
• 57:54
  Susan Stripling: all right? Who doesn't want to hang with their
• 57:56
  friends on a wedding day?
• 57:57
  Casey Fatchett: it's way more fun, right? This was a really
• 58:00
  interesting question, and I hadn't that what is a must have
• 58:04
  piece of equipment that isn't photography gear? And they
• 58:08
  brought an example, which I was like, Oh, that's really I'd
• 58:13
  never thought about that. Apparently, Ray Alvarez talks
• 58:17
  about bringing command wall hooks to hang dresses
• 58:22
  Susan Stripling: ear plugs. Earplugs, yeah, I always forget
• 58:24
  mine, hands down, earplugs.
• 58:27
  Casey Fatchett: That's the thing. I always misplace it.
• 58:30
  Susan Stripling: Is it? Is I have been wearing earplugs at
• 58:33
  weddings since, I think, my second year of being in
• 58:36
  business. I have too many photographer friends with. I
• 58:39
  mean, I already have bad hearing, like we my partner, and
• 58:42
  I joke about it all the time. I can, like, never hear him. Like,
• 58:44
  I'll be in the other room and I'll be like, What are you
• 58:46
  saying? But I just, I can't, it's, it's the earplugs.
• 58:51
  Constantly, I'd say that was, that was the big one. I used to
• 58:58
  bring, like, command strips or things to hang dresses, and then
• 59:01
  I would run out of them, and I would never, like, restock them
• 59:05
  up again. Now I'm like thinking through my bag, not it's nothing
• 59:11
  that exciting. Electrolyte tablets and earplugs and a bunch
• 59:15
  of Advil
• 59:16
  Casey Fatchett: Liquid IV or whatever is like a it will save
• 59:20
  you if you forget to drink enough water,
• 59:24
  Susan Stripling: okay, oh, and an uncrustable sandwich that
• 59:26
  pretty much go with me. It is a perfect food.
• 59:30
  Casey Fatchett: I never yuck. Anybody's yum. I like an
• 59:34
  uncrustable All right, couple more questions. This is for me.
• 59:40
  These are not from what advice would you give your younger self
• 59:47
  if you were just
• 59:48
  Susan Stripling: If you calm down, like, I would literally
• 59:51
  just be, like, none of this is life or death. Just take a
• 59:55
  breath. This is just work like you, and you don't have to do it
• 1:00:00
  all now, like. You, I am so relentlessly competitive with
• 1:00:04
  myself. I have to achieve all of the things at once. Like, just,
• 1:00:08
  just slow down. You will make yourself insane, which I did,
• 1:00:13
  and it was great. Like, I, you know, I achieved what I wanted
• 1:00:17
  to achieve. But like, I feel like a lot of people who own
• 1:00:21
  their own businesses, again, there's just a lot tied up
• 1:00:25
  personally in the success or non success, of your business in a
• 1:00:29
  way that people with other jobs don't feel. And I wish I had
• 1:00:34
  taken some of the pressure off of myself to be like, this is a
• 1:00:38
  long road, and you don't have to run the first part of it like
• 1:00:43
  it's it's really okay. Also maybe start saving a little
• 1:00:47
  earlier, financially, yes, just a couple years earlier, and I
• 1:00:51
  did start saving, but not until I was 30. So I wish I had, I
• 1:00:55
  wish I'd gotten a little bit more of a jumpstart on that. But
• 1:01:00
  again, that would have that was a privilege that didn't really
• 1:01:04
  have. So, yeah,
• 1:01:05
  Casey Fatchett: I mean, you do it when you can. I think that,
• 1:01:09
  like we said, but like, my wife will always say, like, don't
• 1:01:12
  take it personally. And then you sit there and go, like, it's my
• 1:01:15
  name on the door and
• 1:01:17
  Susan Stripling: my art that I made. How do you not? But I've
• 1:01:21
  also realized a lot of times when clients take something out
• 1:01:25
  on me or they're upset about something, they're not really
• 1:01:28
  upset at me, they're not upset at the photos. They're upset
• 1:01:31
  about something about the day or about a relationship that I
• 1:01:36
  don't know about, like with their mom or their best friend,
• 1:01:39
  like it has something else to do with something else, and the
• 1:01:45
  photos are a representation of it. So that has helped me be a
• 1:01:48
  lot more gentle with people when they are unhappy, because it's
• 1:01:53
  not, I mean, unless I literally walked up to a client and
• 1:01:56
  punched them in the face and they were like, I'm mad at you
• 1:01:58
  because you punched me in the face. That's rational?
• 1:02:02
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, there's a million different reasons why
• 1:02:04
  people, like, make decisions or, like, get upset about
• 1:02:09
  Susan Stripling: and we're not the main character. Like, I'm
• 1:02:10
  the main character in my own life, but at somebody else's
• 1:02:13
  wedding, I'm, like, a walk on player, so
• 1:02:16
  Casey Fatchett: I'm a really cool guest star for that
• 1:02:18
  episode. That's, that's, that's,
• 1:02:20
  Susan Stripling: if it were law and order, I would have been the
• 1:02:23
  murderer. But no, just like telling myself like it's
• 1:02:28
  personal, but it's not meant personally towards me, would
• 1:02:33
  have calmed me down a lot. Also, maybe start therapy a little
• 1:02:38
  sooner, but that's neither here nor there.
• 1:02:41
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, I mean, I'd say yes to that as well. I
• 1:02:44
  mean, it would have helped me a lot more. I'm a big proponent of
• 1:02:48
  therapy. Oh, and
• 1:02:49
  Susan Stripling: maybe go to the gym in your 30s. Don't wait
• 1:02:51
  until your 40s. Yeah, all these things I wish I knew, like Diet
• 1:02:57
  Coke is not hydration. No, we should put that as number one.
• 1:03:04
  Coke is not water.
• 1:03:05
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, that was a lesson. Also why I have my big
• 1:03:09
  Stanley Cup,
• 1:03:10
  Susan Stripling: my emotional support, Stanley water bottle,
• 1:03:12
  correct.
• 1:03:14
  Casey Fatchett: How much water can you consume in a day? As
• 1:03:16
  much as I can these days. Last question, yeah, you love dogs. I
• 1:03:21
  love dogs. How do we get more people to agree that dogs are
• 1:03:24
  awesome?
• 1:03:28
  Susan Stripling: There are people that don't think that
• 1:03:30
  dogs are awesome. That feels like a trick question. If
• 1:03:33
  someone thinks a dog is not awesome, I don't want to know
• 1:03:36
  you like that's just look at them. Walk on the street and
• 1:03:41
  look at dogs. How can you not just think that's the best thing
• 1:03:44
  you've ever seen?
• 1:03:45
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, I mean, I'm always my wife jokes that,
• 1:03:49
  oh, look at that face
• 1:03:51
  Susan Stripling: for everyone listening. I just held out my
• 1:03:53
  best friend in the whole world. This is Chloe. She's always
• 1:03:56
  perfect queen.
• 1:03:59
  Casey Fatchett: So she's so cute. I'm glad that my door is
• 1:04:02
  shut. My dog can't come in here and hear me talk about she's
• 1:04:05
  also asleep,
• 1:04:06
  Susan Stripling: so now she's going back to sleep. But dogs
• 1:04:09
  are just they're wonderful, they're loving. They take care
• 1:04:12
  of you when you don't feel good. They will listen to you complain
• 1:04:16
  all day long. They won't talk back like I don't again.
• 1:04:20
  Everyone should just understand their sheer perfection.
• 1:04:24
  Casey Fatchett: My dog, she loves me very dearly. She's a
• 1:04:27
  border collie. I was feeling sick few weeks ago, and I was
• 1:04:31
  just like, I don't know what I had, but I was, feverish and
• 1:04:35
  just like, aches. Tested negative for covid and the flu,
• 1:04:38
  so I'm not sure what I was fighting off, but I was just
• 1:04:42
  laying on the couch, just like, shivering and like, horrible
• 1:04:46
  headache. And she was, she had no sympathy. She was like, I
• 1:04:50
  want to go outside. I want to go for a hike. I want to, I have a
• 1:04:54
  lot of energy.
• 1:04:55
  Susan Stripling: My dogs will just lay on me. They will
• 1:04:57
  literally just surround me and lay on me. It's amazing.
• 1:05:00
  Casey Fatchett: She also like every day, like, at a certain
• 1:05:02
  time, working from home, should come into my office at like, 330
• 1:05:06
  every day, and like, for snuggle time, she's like, because first
• 1:05:10
  I didn't realize that she needed to go out to go to the bathroom
• 1:05:13
  or what the deal was, but then I figured out, after a couple of
• 1:05:17
  months of her doing it, that she was trying to herd me to the
• 1:05:20
  bedroom so, so that we could lay down and snuggle together 15
• 1:05:25
  minutes. That's all she wants. Oh, but I was like, it took me a
• 1:05:29
  while to figure it out, because I was just like, are you hungry?
• 1:05:33
  Like, do you need to go? Like, and she's not saying. She was
• 1:05:35
  just like, like, staring at me. And I'm like, Why are you
• 1:05:37
  staring at me? But then she would like, get, like, try to,
• 1:05:39
  like, nudge me towards the stairs to, like, go. I'm like,
• 1:05:42
  Okay, what's upstairs? Like, went upstairs and, like, laid on
• 1:05:45
  the bed, and she just jumped up and, like, curled next to me.
• 1:05:48
  And I was like, Oh, this is what you want. So now she comes to my
• 1:05:52
  office. I'm like, do you want to cuddle? And she's like, gets all
• 1:05:55
  excited. Yeah, do. But when you're feeling sick and you're
• 1:05:58
  not letting me out to, like, go and like expensive energy, I
• 1:06:02
  like, I have no sympathy for you.
• 1:06:10
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• 1:07:05
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• 1:07:35
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• 1:08:00
  Unknown: Hey. Now for my favorite part of the show,
• 1:08:05
  what's that? Say? Useless information. This is always
• 1:08:10
  death.
• 1:08:12
  Casey Fatchett: Fair enough. All right, now it's time for our
• 1:08:15
  useless information for this episode, I love it. Susan, when
• 1:08:19
  do you think the first technically plastic surgeries or
• 1:08:24
  cosmetic surgeries were performed.
• 1:08:27
  Susan Stripling: Oh, no, probably way further back than I
• 1:08:33
  would think,
• 1:08:36
  Casey Fatchett: ancient Rome.
• 1:08:37
  Susan Stripling: Oh, that feels unhygienic,
• 1:08:39
  Casey Fatchett: yeah. Well, it was mostly two for, like, people
• 1:08:43
  who had been injured in the arena in the Coliseum. Like it
• 1:08:47
  was to fix issues that people had after, like fights in the in
• 1:08:52
  the Coliseum,
• 1:08:54
  Susan Stripling: sepsis waiting to happen.
• 1:08:56
  Casey Fatchett: Most likely gonna work on your ear. Here.
• 1:08:58
  We're gonna reconstruct your ear.
• 1:09:00
  Susan Stripling: Your ears gonna fall off.
• 1:09:02
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, it's not like we found it. We're just
• 1:09:05
  gonna sew it back on. Should we clean it off first? We'll just
• 1:09:10
  pour some wine on it. Pour wine on it. That's very Italian. The
• 1:09:15
  the what we now consider cosmetic surgery really started
• 1:09:19
  in the early 1900s
• 1:09:22
  Susan Stripling: interesting. That's actually very interesting
• 1:09:24
  fact, yeah,
• 1:09:25
  Casey Fatchett: I'm a cornucopia of like, of useless, and my wife
• 1:09:32
  says I should go on Jeopardy. But that's not organized like
• 1:09:36
  anything, not specific random information. It's not helpful.
• 1:09:43
  Never Susan. Thank you so much for being on the show. I really
• 1:09:47
  so fun. This is great. You're welcome to come back anytime,
• 1:09:50
  Susan Stripling: and now I know about plastic surgery.
• 1:09:54
  Casey Fatchett: So where can people find you?
• 1:09:56
  Susan Stripling: People can find me on the internet. My website
• 1:09:58
  is Susan stripling.com, my answer. Graham is Susan
• 1:10:01
  stripling photography. You should
• 1:10:02
  Casey Fatchett: go check it out. She takes amazing photos. People,
• 1:10:04
  Susan Stripling: I try.
• 1:10:12
  Casey Fatchett: Welcome back, Crisis averted. Thank you,
• 1:10:16
  robot. While you were gone, I reconfigured our shuttle's
• 1:10:19
  proton engines to neutralize the acidic spittle of the aliens in
• 1:10:22
  the hull. Long story short, science Many thanks to Susan
• 1:10:27
  stripling for being on the show. I'm glad our schedules finally
• 1:10:29
  coincided. We were able to get this recorded. You can find
• 1:10:32
  Susan's info and links in the Episode Notes. Go follow her if
• 1:10:36
  you don't already, and check out her work. And while you're
• 1:10:39
  clicking on links, be sure to subscribe to the show. You know,
• 1:10:42
  leave a review, because that helps new people discover the
• 1:10:46
  program and follow along with a nerdy photographer on social
• 1:10:50
  media, at the nerdy photo. That's at the nerdy photo, no
• 1:10:56
  dots, no underscores, no dashes. On Instagram, blue sky threads,
• 1:11:00
  tick tock. Reddit, you don't want to miss out on all the
• 1:11:03
  shenanigans that happened between the episodes. Do you
• 1:11:07
  conditions normal? Do you have to say it so loud until next
• 1:11:13
  time? Everybody stay safe and stay nerdy. You
• 1:11:27
  Unknown: who's your heart been beating about you better. Get
• 1:11:33
  better. Get better. Get better. Listen, you.