Photospark

PhotoSpark Show Episode 103: Julie Ferneau & Kate Mills chat with the ladies of Launch your Daydream. They explain why it's important to niche down while giving action steps to attract the right clients. 

This episode of Photospark show is all about how to manage anxiety. We are giving real life suggestions you can start now to better yourself.  

  Kate is the Queen of email organization and let's just say... Julie has #emailgoals. This episode is all about email organization 101. Kate is sharing how to start, tackle and organize your email and gives us tips on how to manage it once you get it down to zero. Email maintenance is super important. First things first - A cluttered email inbox is the same as having a cluttered house. When you have a tidy house, let's be real, we feel on top of the world and ready to tackle our next project. When the house is messy and cluttered, your mind constantly thinks about it. Here's how to tackle your email inbox and get it completely organized. EMAIL CLEANUP GOAL is to get your email inbox to ZERO! Schedule time If you're scared of deleting emails, archive them. Just start. Scroll, Look, Select all, Delete. Repeat. Keep any important emails you have in your inbox or if you already have folders created, file them away EMAIL ORGANIZATION Create folders such as receipts, clients, follow-ups, vendors, etc. When you

This is a SUPER exciting and important episode you guys! We're all sorts of celebrating today! This is our 100th episode which is SO incredible. Of course we're poppin' bottles for that one... We're doubling up the poppin' because it's Julie's birthday week. She is celebrating her New Years Eve birthday this year from Paris and she couldn't be more excited. She'll be sure to Instagram story the heck out of her trip so be sure to follow along @julieferneau. She's been known to pop ALL the bottles on her birthday. And the 3rd thing we're celebrating today is the early arrival of Kate's baby! She was born on Christmas Eve and she is truly perfect in every way! When we get photos we'll be sure to share them. Stay tuned for that! This is also the last episode of 2018. Let's talk about how fast the year went. It flew by so we're take a dive back into the past episodes and sharing 10 of our favorite tips that changed our businesses throughout the year. Favorite Tip 1 Erin Brant of The Leo Loves was a guest on Epi

Heidi Thompson of Evolve Your Wedding Business is on PhotoSpark today talking about creating marketing plans for photography businesses!

As we bring 2018 to a close, many of us are re-evaluating our businesses, figuring out what's working & what's not working, and making goals for 2019. We figured this was an awesome time to invite Braden Drake onto the show to chat with us about business entities! Braden is a small business lawyer & tax lawyer here in San Diego, and he's a genius at making hard to grasp (and let's face it, boring) topics interesting!! On today's episode, Braden helps explain the differences between sole proprietorships, LLCs, and S-Corps.

It's so hard to balance work & family during the holidays! Today, we're chatting about business automation & giving you 6 ways your business can run itself!

Ok... I don't know about YOU guys, but there are DEFINITELY some things I have learned in the past ten (TEN!) years of running a photography business that I wish I knew when I started. We were chatting about these randomly last week and decided there's no better topic for our podcast! Whether you're a veteran photographer or just starting out, there are always changes you can implement in your business... it's NEVER too late! In our episode, we talk about TEN things we wish we knew when we started our photography business, but in the interest of keeping our blogs brief, we're just going to list our top five here. Tune in to Episode 96 to hear more! FIVE things we wish we knew when we started our photography business: Blogging really IS that important: Keeping your blog up to date is not only important for SEO purposes, but it also makes sure that potential clients can see that you're A) still in business and B) have your sh*t together (pardon my french!). Kate chooses to batch blog... she saves up images fr

Hellllooooo listeners! This episode is a doozy! I'm NOT going to give away the big announcement here; you have to listen to the episode. But let's chat a bit about letting things GO & reducing workload. As business owners, we have to constantly be assessing whether or not things we are doing are right for us. This could be everything from niches of photography we're specializing in, to how we run our businesses, to side hustles, to personal projects. There's nothing worse than expending energy on something that isn't beneficial to us in some way. These decisions can be really hard. Sometimes we don't feel like letting go is the "right" thing to do, but when your gut is telling you that something isn't working anymore, it's very important to listen to that and explore it further. This episode is all about us letting go of things that aren't beneficial to us anymore. Whether it's due to extra stress, or it's just something we aren't interested in, the three of us chat about things we've had to let go, both

One of the COOLEST parts of our job is being able to travel & work at the same time! Whether we're taking destination shoots, or just bringing along our laptop for some on-the-go editing on the family vay-cay, working remotely is a huge benefit to photographers! During this episode, we'll cover some tips & tricks to working remotely, and share some stories of our experiences, trials, and tribulations. Key Takeaways: Eliminate distractions: This is probably the HARDEST thing to do while traveling remotely. In Julie's most recent experience, she was visiting family, so getting them to understand that even though she was physically in the room, she was not available to chit chat was a challenge. Sometimes you can solve this issue by heading to a coffee shop, library, or other comfortable, fairly quiet spot, but then you have the issue of privacy (especially when it comes to using the restroom... do you trust your neighbors to watch your stuff or do you pack everything up/take it with you only to risk l

It's been a bit of a crazy month in the photography world, wouldn't you guys agree?? As podcasters, we think it's important to keep ourselves updated on everything that goes on in our world beyond the lens, and the biggest thing this past month has definitely been the Meg Bitton drama!! For those of you who don't know what's going on, here's an article on PetaPixel that sums it up pretty well: https://petapixel.com/2018/09/06/renowned-child-photographer-under-fire-for-sexualizing-young-girls/ Read that, and you'll be all set to tune into our podcast to hear our opinions! As with anything, no publicity is bad publicity, right? We definitely agree that Meg Bitton knows what she's doing... she's riling people up and in turn she's attracting the type of photographers she wants to mentor to, and she's easily swatting the rest away. We talk all day long about finding our ideal client, right? If you're a wedding photographer interested in shooting offbeat weddings, you're only going to cater your website & your

Can you guys believe we are basically in holiday rush season for portrait photographers already?! It's insane how fast these years go by. It doesn't help that we usually have to start thinking about the holidays in the summer while it's still a million degrees outside (at least here in San Diego it is!), but believe it or not... it's TIME! We decided this week's episode should be about various ways you can work smarter & not harder during your holiday rush! Ashley & Kate have learned a LOT as portrait photographers for over a decade, and we share some of the new stuff we've learned over the years that has made a huge difference in our holiday rush seasons. Tune in to hear the details, but here are some quick tips! Automate when possible! Kate uses http://bookedin.com while Ashley uses http://www.calendly.com. Both are awesome ways to automate your session bookings. Kate does mini sessions, so she uses BookedIn to make her availability clear & concise, and clients can book/pay for mini sessions a

Hellllooooooo PhotoSpark listeners!!! It's SO good to be on the airwaves chatting with you guys again. We missed you BIG time!!! If you want to hear the inside scoop on where we've been & why we took a little hiatus, be sure to listen to the episode. We want to be an open book with you guys & we got super vulnerable, so it's a good one! Basically, side hustles are freaking HARD. It's so hard to prioritize something (especially if it's not making you any money... YET) when you have a million other things on your plate. If you've ever attempted a side hustle, especially collaborating with other people, you'll know that oftentimes they fall to the back burner, and run the risk of disappearing altogether. So how do you keep everything working & flowing & growing? Here are a few tips! Consistency is KEY: Instead of just working on your side hustles whenever you get the chance, set a schedule for yourself. Whether this means a set weekly meeting time, set office hours, or a formal deadline, keepin

As with everything in business, you learn a lot of things as you go! Do you guys remember the first time you made a contract for your business? If you were smart, you purchased a photography one somewhere (preferably from a lawyer), but if you're like a lot of us, you probably started with a VERY basic contract template, and have added to it over the years. In this episode we'll be discussing our contracts: what they contain, what we've had to add over the years, and why they're important! Key Takeaways Portrait contracts are JUST as important as Wedding contracts. Recently in a group of ours, a bunch of photographers were having a conversation about whether or not portrait clients need contracts. The answer is 100% a resounding YES! Absolutely every single shoot you do should have a contract to go with it! This protects you, your client, EVERYTHING. So important! Sticking to the contract. This part is up to you. You can be as harsh or as easy going as you want with your contract once it's in place. For exa

If you guys haven't listened to last week's episode yet, you totally should! Last week we chatted all about goal planners and long term planning strategies. This week, we're continuing our "goals" episode and talking about daily planners! Daily planners are such an important tool to stay organized in your business as well as your personal life. I know personally for myself when I don't have an up to date planner, I end up with a million "to do" lists floating around both digitally and on scraps of paper, and I always feel like I'm forgetting something. Keeping up with your daily planner is a good way to avoid that! Key Takeaways Physical planners vs. digital ones: There are pros and cons to both physical and digital planners. Digital planners are great because you can take them everywhere with you via your phone, and you can easily sync appointments & calendars with other people. However, every time you pick up your phone, you run the risk of getting distracted... Facebook and Instagram are probably the

HAPPY 2018 you guys!! We are so happy to bring you another year of PhotoSpark... can you believe we started planning this podcast in 2015? Feels like a lifetime ago! We all know how important it is to get your year off on the right foot... the new year always feels like a great time to re-evaluate our businesses (and our lives!) and see what's working for us and what isn't! Today, we're sharing part one of our two part episode about... PLANNERS! We're kicking off 2018 chatting about GOAL planners specifically today! What's a goal planner? Why should you have one? How are they different from daily planners? If these questions are in your mind... tune in to hear more! In this episode we are referring to Julie's current goal planner, which are the Cultivate What Matters Powersheets. They're SUPER awesome and you guys should check them out! So we're walking you a briefly through the steps these Powersheets take you through to plan your goals for 2018! Key Takeaways Brain dump your goals. When goal planning, som

Photo Cred: Your Face is Rad Today we are chatting about everyone's FAVORITE topic.... criticism!! If you guys are anything like me, the thought of having someone criticize you (in any way!) makes you get a little nauseous! It's a huge weakness of mine, and something I've had to really work on over the years, because it's a normal part of life! And it's actually a GOOD part of life! Criticism helps us grow, both in our business & in our personal lives. It's what you do with the criticism that makes all the difference. So here are a few tips from us here at PhotoSpark about handling criticism! Key Takeaways: Accepting it is a muscle. That's a confusing sentence, but what we mean by this is it takes time to build up your brain to accept criticism in a healthy way. It's a cognitive process that you have to really work on over and over again to improve. It's very easy to take things personally, and it's a trained exercise to take it without getting your feelings hurt or challenging your self worth. Learn to

HELLO PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHERS!!! (I had to put that in all caps to "yell" above the CHAOS that is the holiday portrait season so you guys could hear me). :) In all seriousness, who else is feeling totally drained right now?! Holiday portraits SHOULD be dwindling down (unless you have superhero-esque turnaround times), but even so, you should be coming to the end of your shoots for 2017. How are you guys feeling?! Over here, we're feeling pretty good this year, but still pretty stressed! Julie's off galavanting in Iowa (although, traveling for the holidays has its own set of stressors!), but Kate & Ashley were still rockin the family portraits up until last week, and I (Kate), still have a makeup day coming up this weekend! We decided now was a great time to chit chat about holiday burnout.. more specifically, how to avoid holiday burnout! Enjoy this PhotoSpark episode all about the holidays! Key Takeaways There's more to life than being busy. It's so easy to get caught up with being "busy." It's how we a

Download from iTunes Here Oh man; do you guys remember school photo day?! I have very vivid memories of being like, 10 years old and sitting on that little stool, while some dude told me to put my feet on the "x" and tilt my head to the left, lean my shoulder down, chin up just a bit, and SMILE! School portraits have come a long way since then (for the lucky ones!), and this episode will explore the world of school portrait photography! There's nobody better to have on to discuss this than Natalie Chiles, who is ROCKING the school portrait niche in San Diego! She discusses how she built her business around school photography, as well as some tips & tricks for our listeners who might be interested in diving into school photography! Key Takeaways Modern School Portraiture: In a lot of areas, San Diego included, there's a bit of a monopoly on school photography. We still do have the big company that goes from school to school with their little stool & their 1-2 photos of each kid. However, preschools

Have you guys heard about the BIG changes coming to ShootQ? We have, and we have been SO excited to see them roll out! If you aren't using ShootQ, you are missing out on a CRAZY valuable tool for your photography business. Chances are, if you're doing something manually in your business, ShootQ can take it over, and provide you with precious extra time! Emailing the same thing over and over? ShootQ can handle that. Still having clients sign their contracts in person? Let ShootQ email them a digital contract. Tired of collecting payments or sending invoices manually? Look no further. At this point, we're wondering if there's anything ShootQ CAN'T handle for us! We are SO excited about the changes, we invited Adam Fried back on the show to chat with us a bit about what's new, what's the same, and what to expect from the revamped ShootQ. Tune in to hear how you can take advantage of ShootQ to help you with your photography business! Key Takeaways Take FULL advantage of the free trial. Oftentimes, we'll sign up