I would say I- I've been doing this for seven years now, so I have systems down, and systems are king. You have to have systems. But for me now, it's when I'm hitting my busy season and I have maybe four or five jobs a week, which is, which is really stretching myself, and it's being able to stay on top of everything and stay organized and not confuse my jobs. Mm-hmm. Um, I wanna make sure that I'm t- I'm saying the right cl- um, client brand name, the, the right name. When I show up, I have the right lighting diagram when I show up, um, because it can get really hectic. So making sure that I'm clear about each of the jobs that are just back to back to back, and I am able to make the appropriate amount of time after the fact for follow-ups, for, um, retouching and closing out of a job. I don't schedule specific days that I photograph. Like, I know some, uh, photographers do, but I want to be available to when my customers need me, and a lot of times, these are a quarterly meeting or an annual meeting, and I just need to be available. So I, I can't do that pre-planning to make sure that I'm building enough of the back end. So I'm just, I'm planning that on the go and just trying to make sure I don't drop any balls when it gets really busy. Now, this is kind of a, just a side quest kinda question, but you brought up something that made me go, "Wow, I wonder how she handles that." So your biggest client says, "We're doing a corporate board meeting, and we want you there on Sunday." Uh, thinking about boundaries and lifestyle, do you just make it happen and charge them an inconvenience fee, or is that just part of the job? Like, how do you handle those personal boundaries with the demands of some of these large clients? Well, I should clarify, as a corporate headshot photographer, I don't work weekends. Ah. And it is extremely rare for a client to even want a weekend. Um, I think that happened once last year, and I just... And maybe it was even a studio. It wasn't even to come on location, and I said, "Absolutely. I charge one and a half times for weekend shoots." And they said, "Yep, no problem." So- It's not really something I need to worry about, and it's one of the things I love- Mm-hmm that I can then be home, you know, be- my kids are in college now, but before I could be home when they're home, I could be home when my husband's home. Um, I have no interest in working weekends, and that's part of the reason why I went down this path. Yeah. That's a great benefit, for sure. Well, let's set up a specific job that we get to reference throughout the entire interview, because if someone has a frame of reference of who you're going to be referring to, I think it will be easier to follow all the good stuff you're gonna share. So for this example in this interview, let's set up a corporate job. Where are we going and how many people are you gonna take pictures of? Sure. So I just did one recently. Um, it was for probably a mid-size construction firm, and they wanted to level up all of their headshots. They, these sorts of service-based companies need headshots, not necessarily to put on their website, although a lot of times that they do, but mostly to put into proposals. So they, they send out proposals to bid on jobs, and they want a great looking team, and they wanna be able to switch in and out whoever's gonna be on that team for each of those specific pages of their proposal. So this particular company contacted me. They have two offices in California, one in Northern and one in Southern California, and they had me go. I photographed over two days and two in Northern and two in Southern. I did about 35 headshots in Northern California, and then I spent a half day doing what, um, they like to call in their industry marketing stock images. So they're custom stock images. I go around their offices, um, primarily taking pictures of people interacting with each other. These aren't used in proposals. They're used for company culture and recruiting purposes, and then also just, um- When they have company new- in- internal newsletters, each of the offices kinda get to know each other. And then I also went down to Southern California for two more days and did the same exact thing, and I photographed 93 people there. Wow. And then also did the marketing, um, images for them. It was a blast. Yeah. It was definitely busy. That sounds great, and we get to go behind the scenes on that job, so- Sure ... that's our frame of reference for today. Let's begin where it begins. This job has an inquiry. How do you schedule it? How do you actually pick the days in working with them? Uh, well, first of all, it's usually an email inquiry that I get from them, and then I will ... They'll give me enough information that I can provide them a quote. So I'll, I'll spend a, a good amount of time making sure that I have a thorough quote to send back that addresses the questions that they have as well as anything, um, that I think that they need to know. And i- if it ma- if they've already pu- put out some dates, great. Um, or if, um, it's a bit open, then I might wait till the next stage. In this instance, um, they sent that, they asked for a proposal back, and then they're, they came back and said, "We'd like to do a video chat with you." So I then got on a video chat a few days later with, um, about three different people from various offices. They also have, um, I think, uh, a fractional, uh, CMO, um, who is on the East Coast, so we were able to... They were able to make sure I'm a real person. Um, that's a concern. Yeah. They, you know, they need to do their due diligence. They need to get, you know, a, a vibe of does this person know what they're doing? Does she look like someone, um, that they could work with? And so, yeah, you gotta be on your game- Mm-hmm ... um, for that. You ha- it, it... And it's not, I think a lot of people get really nervous about how do I act in that instance. You, i- it's, it's a relaxed professionalism. So you, um, you wanna have everything buttoned up, but you have to show, be relaxed and confident.
