Episode 062: Building a Business that’s Right for You with Miranda Eorio
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Not every business looks the same, because we all have different personalities, roles, services, and overall goals—that’s why it’s important to build a business that’s right for you. In today’s episode, Miranda Eorio joins us to share what the early days of her business looked like, how she’s grown and pivoted over time, and why personalization is so important in your client experience!
The Business-First Creatives Podcast is brought to you by CRM and Dubsado expert Colie James. Join Colie each week as she discuss how to build a business that brings you joy and a paycheck! From business advice with fellow entrepreneurs to sharing automation tips and tricks, Colie and her guests are sharing industry trends and resources, along with a little bit of sarcasm.
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Guest Bio:
Miranda Eorio is a bright, colorful, and candid Photographer & Educator that shows Family Photographers how to access a revolving door of ideal clients in their inbox!
Here are the highlights…
[:18] Meet Miranda
[2:23] Becoming a Profitable Business
[8:15] Miranda’s Pricing Journey
[12:47] Outsourcing
[14:47] Pinterest for Photographers
[17:40] Biggest Fuck Up
[20:45] Email Marketing and Funnels
[24:03] Data Tracking
[28:14] A Proposal’s Role in Client Experience
Want to avoid a blank screen while setting up your Dubsado templates? Steal mine 😍
The Template Shop is now open with templates created specifically for family photographers for use inside Dubsado. You can copy and customize for your own brand + offers in no time. Save yourself hours per client with these templates 🌈
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
Dubsado – Get 30% off your first payment with code coliejames
CONNECT WITH MIRANDA
www.instagram.com/mirandaeoriophoto
www.mirandaeoriophoto.com
www.facebook.com/mirandaeoriophoto
www.facebook.com/groups/739344889945915
Review the Transcript:
Colie: Hello, hello and welcome back to the Business First Creatives podcast. This morning I am interviewing Miranda Iorio and I am gonna let her introduce herself, tell you what she does, where she’s located, and like one fun fact about herself. So, Miranda, I’m handing it over to you.
Miranda: Okay, so I’m Miranda. I am in central Pennsylvania, just about an hour outside of Philadelphia. And I work with like family photographers who don’t just wanna raise their income but also want to hit that revolving door when it comes to ideal clients in their inbox. I’m a family photographer, which is where, just my heart is really set on fire with everything and anything family photography.
And a fun fact about myself is that I am extremely, extremely awkward. And this podcast is going to be, a rollercoaster for, all of your, your lovely, lovely listeners.
Colie: Ah, don’t worry about it. I know how to talk to people who are awkward, so it makes me a fabulous family photographer. Before we jump into like the actual like business part, I just wanna put out there, Miranda is a Dubsado user, and so at some point we are gonna be talking about how to elevate your client experience in inside of Dubsado using your C R M tools
I like to kick the call off like that cuz I feel like people assume that I invite people onto the show just because they’re Dubsado users and I do not. But now I’m just being a little bit more upfront about who’s a Dubsado user and who’s not
Miranda: Mm-hmm.
Colie: So Miranda, let’s talk about profitability real fast.
Miranda: Mm.
Colie: One of the things that I think is not talked about enough is like when to expect your business to be profitable
I know that at least for myself in the first year, I made very little income, but by year two, I was what you would consider to be profitable.
Miranda: mm.
Colie: And then by year three I was, you know, paying myself what it was that I wanted to pay myself each month. Taking into account that I was totally part-time in my business for like the first six years I built my photography business while my kid was at home half the time.
It wasn’t really until Chloe went to school full-time that I was actually able to like ramp up my business. So when did your business become profitable and can you tell me a little bit about that journey?
Miranda: Yeah, so that is a loaded question. Um, , because I was technically profitable, I wanna say my second year of business now, I still have a four year old at home with me. She doesn’t go to school until August of this year, so I haven’t hit that. stride where I can actually be doing this all day and be profitable like that.
So I’m a little jealous of you at this stage. But, when I say now that I was profitable in my second year of business, it really doesn’t mean anything because I was. I wasn’t using any of the tools that I’m using now. I wasn’t using Dubsado, I wasn’t paying for an email marketing system. I wasn’t paying for a website.
I wasn’t doing anything. So when I say it was profitable, I’m gonna paint this picture. And it is an ugly picture that I’m sure so many people can,
Colie: Okay. That’s why you’re here.
Miranda: yeah, exactly. Like. . So my second year of business, I had bought a $500 Pentax, K 70 camera. Don’t even know if those exist anymore. $500. I was shooting full family sessions for maybe like 90 minutes, $50 tops.
And when I say it was profitable, I was bringing home maybe $200, uh, an entire year. Not a month, not a weekend, not a session in a. I was profitable by $200. Now, if I were to have been using everything that I should have been using, there’s no profitability in that for about until year four for me. but everybody starts off scrappy.
You know, if you didn’t start off scrappy, if by some miracle of God you were given everything from the get-go. I’m so happy for you and very jealous because I, I wasn’t able to do exactly that. So everything in my business has been very scrappy. my third year of business, I was probably profitable by maybe a thousand dollars because those people who I had $50 sessions with told their friends and they told their friends, and then I had a.
of $50 sessions throughout the entire year. It was a great way to get my foot through the door starting as a family photographer and get to knowing my community. But it was not a great way to get to know my ideal client. So probably by year, and I’m in year seven right now, from the time that I picked up my camera initially, I would say year five.
I got Dubsado, I got Flodesk, my email marketing system. I got a website that I actually pay for. I invested, invested, invested. I took courses. I probably broke even that year, and that’s okay because.
Colie: Mm-hmm.
Miranda: I think that I made probably about $10,000 my fourth year in business. And I invested every single bit of that back into my education, back into myself, back into my photography.
I upgraded my equipment, and I wasn’t profitable that year at all. I probably was in the red because I invested so much more money just from my full-time job as well into, trying to be this photographer that I wanted to be, the education, the investments, and really everything.
So long story short, I wasn’t profitable , and you should not expect yourself to be profitable your first, second, maybe even your third year of business. And that’s okay. There is nothing wrong with learning the ropes, being a little scrappy about it. because a lot of these big name people that you’re going to see and that you’re learning from as a photographer, they did the same thing.
They didn’t start off by knowing everything and by having everything worked out and by being profitable their first year.
Colie: So I went from $0 to $700 my first year.
I think my, I think my revenue was, I think somewhere between 15 and 20. and I didn’t have all the tools. Like I had a decent camera. It wasn’t a beginning camera, but I mean, it wasn’t, it wasn’t the equipment that I shoot with now. And then, you know, as I got better, I found, like you, I found more tools and just to put it out there, my first website was a blogger website, which.
Pains my heart to admit that out loud because when people ask me what mistake I made, I’m like, I didn’t make very many mistakes. I am very methodical. I am very strategic, but being cheap about a website was definitely my starting mistake when I opened my business, because I had blogger, and Blogger was free and blogger was.
Awful guys. It was just awful. But I delayed getting a real website for so long because I didn’t want to pay $300 a year for a website, which right now just sounds. , like the most ridiculous thing that’s ever come out of my mouth. But back then, you know, I was really concerned with spending the money that I had, and I thought that getting better equipment, like camera equipment was more important than the website.
I mean, I had a website that was, you know, decent, but then the problem came when I transferred from blogger. To something real. I mean like that was a whole thing in itself. Like you lose your blog posts and you have to reformat them and your SEO tanks, and so that was my big mistake.
Miranda: Absolutely. No, I love that. so I have never used Blogger before, but I was a Wix and Squarespace user. So I was jumping back and forth this one then this one, no, I wanna try this one. So talk about SEO in the toilet. mine didn’t have enough time to get anywhere before, I’m just like,
Colie: get any traction,
Miranda: Yep, exactly.
But no, I, I totally agree with you on that. So my pricing journey is embarrassing. It’s not embarrassing, but looking back now, I’m just like, oh, girl. But it’s where everybody starts, you know? So I started with those, family sessions, basically like for my family to get in the door.
And I’m just like, Hey friends, like, can I take pictures of your kids in my backyard? So that was gross. I look back at those pictures now and I’m like, I need to delete these from my Facebook page. . So no proof. I don’t want anybody to see this ever existed. so it was basically free photo shoots for family and friends.
$50. Then the next year for, Strangers, basically, anybody on Facebook who would let me take pictures of their family. And then I moved from $50, and this is yearly increments, to about $125.
Colie: So more than double. Okay.
Miranda: yeah, so it’s, I finally broke that a hundred dollars mark, and I’m just like, oh my God, this is like crazy.
It’s, it’s too much money. heads up. It is not, it is not, don’t ever think that about yourself.
Colie: I mean, it’s just, you know, we think about these thoughts that we had in our first 1, 2, 3 years of business, and we’re just like, how did we ever think that? But one of the reasons that I like to talk about these things is because I just don’t think we talk about them enough. Like we don’t talk about the money enough so that no one really knows what is normal.
and that it is totally possible to just, you know, raise your prices whenever you feel like it. Cuz you just said you raised them every year. Like, that’s one of the things about me. I feel like no one, like it’s January girl when we’re recording this, you know, everybody is in the mood to raise their prices.
But me, I’m like, you should have raised them in October.
Miranda: Mm-hmm.
Colie: the moment that you are in the middle of busy season, that is when you need to start thinking about raising your prices. But I digress. I’m gonna let you continue.
Miranda: So right now, I started this last year. I have.
Different pricing structures. I have three prices, three packages. My middle package is my most popular one right now. It’s $500 or a little over that. So my prices here I have 700, 500 and 300 and 300 is basically like a mini session.
but I don’t wanna call it a mini session. It’s a whole thing. So we’re gonna talk about that later. But , you get 10 images with that one, it’s like 45 minutes. But the reason that I have my packages set up the way that they are is so that everybody is going to jump into that $500 package. And I been consistently booking that.
for just about a year now. I’m trying to think like when that Exactly cuz I, it’s not that I don’t believe in upping your prices, come the new year. I believe that every year you should be raising your prices, but I don’t think that once January one hits boom price increase, like we said a
Colie: like this miraculous thing. It’s like when you turn your calendar from like 2022 to 2023, let’s just raise those prices. No, I’ve always believed when I tell my students, , cuz you know, fall is crazy. And you know, even for me, who doesn’t take that many sessions anymore, like fall is crazy. And so what I’ve always told people is when you’re in the thick of your busy season and you are at like your max capacity and you don’t think you can do anything else, that is when you should just raise your prices.
And the reason being, if anybody new comes in first of. you’re at almost capacity, so you probably don’t care if they book you or if they don’t book you. If they book you at a higher price, it gives you the confidence. to keep going with that price. And if they say no, I mean, it’s okay. You’ve already, you know, basically made your year anyways, so I actually, I recommend January and February to fix your systems.
I don’t actually recommend January and February to, to up your prices. I think that that should happen beforehand, but like you said, if we, if we got on that tangent, we could, we could hit that forever.
Miranda: Yes. And, and just throwing this out there for anybody who does have that three-tier system or, anything like that if your clients are booking your highest package. consistently booking your highest package. You make that your middle package and you get a higher package there, you raise those prices because obviously what you have, what you’re selling is worth it and people want to, bye bye buy.
So why aren’t you raising your prices? Do it for yourself. Do it for your clients. Do it for your business. Raise those prices. Okay, now I’m done,
Colie: You’re like, now we’re off the soapbox. Now we can. Now we can
Miranda: that off my chest.
Colie: So Miranda, let’s talk about outsourcing. I don’t actually know, do you do any outsourcing in your business?
Miranda: so for a long time I did not, I outsourced two things, because I can’t stand them, I hate them. they weigh me down, they tire me out, and that is Pinterest and taxes. So
Colie: Okay, let’s, let’s pause. You are. I mean, I’ve, even though at currently to date, only 33 episodes have aired, I’ve probably recorded at least another 12 or 15. You are the first person to say that they outsource Pinterest. I just wanna put that out there. You are the first person. Yeah. I mean, I know one of my clients outsources Pinterest, but like Katie outsources everything.
So I mean, I don’t even count her as saying that she outsources Pinterest cuz she literally, I mean, she’s been on the podcast, she literally said, I outsource everything that is not creative. She outsources social media, she outsources email marketing. I mean, she outsources everything
Miranda: I wanna be like her
Colie: Tell me about Pinterest.
Like what is it that you are outsourcing for Pinterest and how is that affecting your revenue stream? Because, I’m in a weird place. Like I, I, you probably know I am transitioning out of photography for a lot of reasons, but I’m getting old. It’s not as easy to catch up with the toddlers. My kid has been homeschooled forever and my husband got a new job this year.
So like family photography just doesn’t fit into my life in the same way that it did even three years ago before the pandemic, let’s say that. So I have been slowly transitioning out, but. when it comes to Pinterest, my most viral pins happen to be fresh 40 eights, and they are not people that are anywhere near me.
So like I have never actually seen like revenue in my business that I could directly attribute to like, My Pinterest pins, even though I have a few that get like thousands of pins every month, but they, you know, they’ve never brought business. So tell me why you decided to go all in on Pinterest and like how Pinterest outsourcing works.
Cuz I’m interested
Miranda: So, I was part of a mastermind this past year. My very first one jumping into education to be able to work with other family photographers and they had said a couple of the other ladies, they said, Pinterest brings me a lot of, a lot of inquiries and they are mainly wedding photographers.
So I said, okay, let me see how this is gonna work. As a family photographer, kind of like being my own Guinea pig. I had no idea how Pinterest worked. I tried the year before to. do anything. And I’m like, I don’t know how scheduling works. I don’t know what this is, what is tailwind? I wanna shoot myself in the foot.
so I wasted a lot of time trying to figure it out, and I said, you know what? Who is your Pinterest lady? Tell me. Let me see how this goes. As a family photographer and as an educator, because I feel like with Pinterest, I’m not really finding people like I would with. my website because when people are looking at my website, they’re looking for Central Pennsylvania family photographer, boom.
My website pops up there, they’re looking for somewhere specific. But for Pinterest, people are kind of looking for like inspirational ideas or it’s other family photographers, looking for posing, looking for courses, looking for tips and tricks and blog posts. So for Pinterest as a family photographer, Got a lot of hits on, a one-year old session, you know, like a, a birthday party session for a one-year-old.
and I don’t do that too much because that was in a studio. I don’t have my own studio. I rent from other people. So as a family photographer for me personally, now this is not a blanket statement for everybody. It did not work, after about six or seven months where I was hoping for it to work.
And sometimes you have to kind of, pick and choose what. get to keep, what works, what doesn’t. And as an educator, I feel like it’s kind of my job almost to try out these new tactics and these new things so I can tell my students, Hey, this is a money maker. This is a gold mine. Or this, like, while it might work for you, I just haven’t seen that same success.
So I can kind of help guide them, into. The tools that they should be using and into, the success that they’re wanting to see. So I feel like that’s my role, with Pinterest.
Colie: mean, you tried it, you outsourced it, it didn’t give you the returns that you wanted, and so you’re pivoting to something else. I love it. That’s, that’s called a data-driven decision. Just for anybody in the listening audience. so Miranda, we’ve talked about outsourcing, we’ve talked about your pricing journey, we’ve talked about the, you know, beginning and, and all of that kind of thing.
Now I’m gonna ask you my favorite question. It’s actually, I think it’s everyone’s favorite question, but we’ll see. Tell me about the biggest fuck up in your business. What did it cost you and what did you learn from it?
Miranda: I have an entire blog post on this because it pissed me off so much. So
Colie: Aww.
Miranda: no, it was totally my own fault. And I’m going to preface this by saying is one of the. Business decisions that I have made, in the past 24 months. So this story is a no reflection of, their capability as an email marketing system and completely my capability, as a human.
So I was switching. I started taking my business more seriously. as everybody eventually should. I started getting my website, on show it. I shameless plug, I started
Colie: I’m a show it user. I’m, I, you’re probab. I mean, many people that come on my podcast are show it users, but I actually did a whole episode dedicated to show it pick time and dto, uh, a few months ago.
Miranda: Okay. So when I decided that it was time to say goodbye to MailChimp, the free marketing system that I was using, I didn’t know anything about. I said, you know what, if I’m gonna pay for this, I’m gonna pay for something that I love, that I want to see in my own inbox.
And that would actually be helpful for me. So I decided to, uh, leave MailChimp
behind Hop on Flodesk I
was importing all of my contacts, all of my email lists and everything I was figuring out. I’m like, Ooh, what are segments? What is this? What is that? This is amazing. And I must have named a segment incorrectly.
So I named it like m e p, like Miranda, Euro Photography Clients 2017, let’s say. And I’m like, oh no, I wanted to put them in the 2018. . So instead of renaming the segment, which I didn’t know that you could do, I see your face and you’re just like, oh my God, I know what’s coming. I, I’m just like, I don’t know anything about email marketing systems, so let me just try this.
So I want, I want to go unsubscribe them from this one and resubscribe them to another. Well, hey, guess the fuck what, guys? You can’t do that like
Colie: So I just wanna say, that, that’s actually one of the things that I hate about Flodesk And while you said it was No, it was nothing. No, I, that’s 100% on Flodesk It makes no sense that you cannot unsubscribe someone, like a group of people from one segment at one time because it unsubscribes them from the whole list.
And yes, it gives you the error. But it, the error popup is still not
Miranda: you dunno
Colie: are unsubscribing them from your whole list? Yes, actually, I mean, I, I think I saw someone complaining about this like two weeks ago, so like, it’s still not fixed. Miranda, it is still awful. And honestly, I do just wanna give you a, a virtual hug and I also wanna say that was not your fault.
It is not clear. And also I think Flodesk is one of the only ones that, that does that.
I recently Miranda, like literally like three days ago, transferred to, uh, convert Kit
Miranda: really? I’ve heard good things. I’ve heard really good things.
Colie: I do love Convert Kit, or at least I love the idea of Convert Kit.
So let me say, I’m thinking of people who only do photography. I think that Flodesk is amazing because as photographers we are really concerned with the visual aspect of our emails, and of course that’s what Flodesk does really. . Okay. We are also not very concerned as only photographers about getting data because when we send newsletters, it’s just to really inform people.
It’s to get the information out there. It’s to say, Hey, I’m having many sessions next month. The schedule is gonna go out. Like it’s really informative and it is not de, it’s not designed to be like a, a funnel to specifically sell things to people where we’re concerned with open. and click rates and all of those things.
But on the other side, as someone who does Dubsado setups and business coaching and has freebies related to those things, all of the data is very important to me. also, segmentation is very important to me because I have people on my list that are podcast listeners. I have people on my list that are clients.
I have some people who used Dubsado, some people who used something else, and it would be really important for me to be able to tag and segment them based on these characteristics. And there is no way to do that nicely in float. Still three years later, I have paid for Flodesk every month for three years, hoping that eventually we would get to the segmentation and tagging that I desperately need for the business side of Colie James.
Okay, so that is why I finally just said, nope, no more. Especially when it comes to like the podcast stuff. Like I’m really trying to like think more about data and so Flodesk just wasn’t cutting it anymore. And while I thought about it last, Like literally three days ago I was having a conversation with my virtual assistant and I asked her something about the data and I said, you know what?
No, I’m done Sarah. I was like, I will have convert kit by the end of the day. Literally we got off the phone, I paid for Convert Kit. I, you know, turned in my form so that they could transfer all of my subscribers. Like I said, I’m done, but because I have many photographers that listen to this, I just wanna say I do still think that Flodesk.
Wonderful. If photography is what your business is and you are using emails to be informative and not really drive
Miranda: Mm-hmm. . Absolutely. And when I joined Flodesk, I was j, I don’t wanna say just family photographer because trust me, I know everything that goes into that. I was a family photographer only, and it was hitting. And meeting every requirement that I needed. But now as an educator, you’re right, like I need to reach this type of, or like the, this amount of my audience and I have them in segments and tagged and stuff, but I’m just like, I’m like going down and I’m clicking and I’m typing and I’m clicking and I’m typing and I’m click just to include everybody who wants to hear about something specific.
So,
Colie: Mm-hmm.
Miranda: It is a wild ride. I’m glad because I have heard really, really good things about convert kit, so I’m going to like put that,
Colie: back with you, Miranda. I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you how it works out for me. I think it’s gonna be great. I also recently discovered Airtable, which if you don’t know what Airtable is and you’re not using it, we’re gonna have a conversation when we hit end on this podcast. But I have recently become obsessed.
With Airtable, and so one of the things that I was talking to my virtual assistant about is now Sarah is going to be entering in the email metrics into Airtable so that I have somewhere else to look. At the open rates, the subject lines, the click, I’m like all of these things. And it’s really easy, I mean, cuz I have a virtual assistant and it literally adds like, I don’t know, five minutes to her weekly podcast tasks.
Anyways, she’s already inside the email marketing program, writing the podcast email. So it’s very easy for her to just look at the previous week and be like, okay, 68% of the list opened this email. You know, 5% clicked on it. She can just put those in the air table so that I can look at all of that. and like make decisions.
So I’m really excited about that. But
Miranda: Heck yeah.
Colie: coming back, that’s also why I switched to Convert Kit because anyone who has Flodesk knows in order for you to see the data, you have to click three time.
Miranda: Hmm.
Colie: I, you know what I mean? Like you have to click on the email like, and there’s no place where you can look at a table inside a Flodesk and like just see all of your emails at one time with all of the open rates and all of the clicks and all of the unsubscribes,
Miranda: know what I want to know from Flodesk. I, and I know that , dammit, gimme this information. No, I know that this has been, talked about in like the Flodesk Insiders Facebook group. What day. , are my emails being opened and read the most? Like, yes, I know Tuesdays in the evening. Okay, great.
That’s a blanket statement. What if that doesn’t work for me? Like, well, I want to see like a little line graph. Like this is Mondays. This is Tuesdays. This is Wednesdays.
Colie: Like I have for my podcast, . I mean, I can see like downloads every day for the podcast. I just, I feel like 2023 is my year of data and I am just moving everything that I possibly can to places where I can get more data to make better decisions about my business.
Miranda: Yes. abso-freaking-lutely. I mean, if something’s not working, how are you? Going to know unless you look at that data, it’s frustrating and I feel like if we don’t have like the tools that we need to actually figure it out, then we’re in the dark.
And you can’t be in the dark when you’re making smart business decisions, because that’s just going to put you off, that’s going to help you fail the whole nine yards. So I totally get that. So, air table, I made like a note in my phone. I’m gonna circle back to that because it sounds.
Colie: It is amazing. There’s so many things that I’m currently doing. An Airtable, I I, we can’t start on the podcast. The podcast will literally never end. Okay. I was trying to look up the episode because I had a growth strategist on the podcast. and that was actually the most downloaded episode of 2022. So actually I’m gonna put that episode in here, guys.
I’m sorry. I literally cannot find the episode number that she was on, but it was Celia. And you know, one of the things that we talked about in there was what kind of metrics I looked at when I considered myself to be a photographer only. And that was when I was really heavily looking at Google. Seeing how many people were coming to my website every day.
Um, you know what they were clicking on, how much time they were spending on each of my pages, and so, If this idea of what Miranda and I are talking about in terms of data-driven decisions interests you, I highly recommend that you go back and you listen to that episode because not only were we talking about the metrics that I like to look at, now that I am like a business strategist and a photographer, we’ve spent a good chunk of time talking about what I did in the first three years of my business as mostly a photographer.
and I do think that most of the things that I was tracking still hold, you know, a level of importance today. So I will have that episode linked in the show notes.
Miranda: Ooh,
Colie: Miranda, let’s finish this out by talking about client experience, because it’s really funny. Like from an s e o perspective, you know, I, I wanna be known as like the Dubsado fairy godmother.
I wanna be known as the Dubsado queen. I wanna talk about automations all day. , but if you’ve ever heard me talk anywhere, you know that I, I feel passionate about that because it makes your client experience better. And I also feel like I’m constantly telling people, you know, getting better systems does not start with your c r M.
It starts with you figuring out what kind of client experience you want in your business. in Dubsado or HoneyBook, or 17 hats or whatever other tools like Flodesk, whatever tools you’re. Are just helping you to facilitate that client experience. So tell me about something that you do for your client experience that you think most people don’t think about.
Miranda: Oh God. Okay. Really putting me on this
Colie: You’re like,
Miranda: I’m like, I have like a million things going through my head to pick one. Okay. So one of my favorite things that I recently started doing and that has saved me, So much time, so much freaking stress. in my family photography business has been to offer proposals,
Colie: Mm-hmm.
Miranda: proposals to inquiries.
So you’re probably just like, what the hell is a proposal? Like, isn’t that for like
Colie: anybody listening to this podcast should not be saying, what the hell is a proposal, because I talk about it all the time. Uh, but talk about how you’re using proposals with, with your inquiries. So are you, because let’s talk about an inquiry. So you get an inquiry in DS oto. Are you doing anything before you send the proposal or are you automatically sending proposal.
Miranda: I love automation. I love it, love it, love it. But not every single step. Is automated, and I don’t want you to roll your eyes at me. I don’t want you to hit me or smack me through the camera. I I have a feeling that not every little . Step, in your process, in your workflow is automated either because can’t be, because if it is, then you are seriously missing out on connecting with that client on a personal level.
So, let me run you through what happens, quickly. When I get an inquiry through dto, so they find me through my website, let’s say, or I push them to my website or whatever. I bully them into filling out, the inquiry form So they do that. I get that inquiry. I’m just like, oh, hey, awesome. Drinking some coffee, eating some cereal.
I’m like, oh, this is great. Hop onto Dubsado. I go ahead and I read through the very short. Tiny, it’s probably like six or seven questions. From the inquiry form, I go in, I write an email to them, I pull up an email, I open up my templates template, template templates for new inquiries. Okay? And it has, you know, this is a little bit about my business, what you can expect to work with me, blah, blah, blah, called action.
But in the very beginning, I. , a bolded all caps message to myself that says, add personalized message here,
Colie: Mm-hmm.
Miranda: because I can have clients that are a family of seven, two-parent home or a, recently divorced mom who wants to update her family photos, which I just had. And that is so magical to be a part of something like that.
Anyway, I digress. So having. That inside that email is going to build like that trust and basically like that rapport with that client like that says, Hey, I know you, I see you. I love and appreciate you. They probably don’t read it in like read into it that much. They’re just like, oh, hey, cool. Like this lady can read my questionnaire.
Awesome. But , it is like, it adds that level of connection, that you get with your clients. This is the first time that you’re actually communicating with. . So personalization is key. So after they get that, the call to action that I have in that email says, Hey, fill out your proposal. Awesome. They click that, then it takes ’em to a completely different page that’s going to have a lot of, information collecting.
Forms, or not forms, I guess, um, like bubbles. So things like, tell me about your family. How old are your kids? Who’s gonna be joining us? It’s probably like 25 questions. Then at the very end of that, it shows my three packages. So it says, Hey.
So amazing. Thank you so much for filling this out. , here are the options that you can choose if you’d like to work with me. And then from there, here’s where the automation comes in. Still sip in my coffee, eating my cereal while they are choosing their package, signing their contract, paying their retainer.
Boom, boom, boom. Just like that from the proposal. Finish my coffee. Hey, you just got a payment for $600 in your account. I’m like, bitching. So that’s, that’s the power of automation. That’s the power of Pine saw baby. That is like my, that is what I, I live for, so,
Colie: My favorite. My favorite story for that Miranda was I was on a rite of Dumbo when I got paid. I mean, people think I make this up. , I was on Dumbo at Disneyland when, and actually that time I had one inquiry that paid and then I had another one that was, you know, filling out the contact form. In the same two minute ride on Dumbo, I had an inquiry and I had a previous inquiry that actually paid on the proposal.
So, I mean, the power of automation is amazing.
Miranda: It, it’s so great. I, I don’t remember if I wrote this in like a blog or an email or something like that, but I told kind of that same story, um, where I had an inquiry earlier that morning. I sent them everything for. Whatever reason, I thought it was a great idea. I’m like, oh my God, kids husband, let’s go for a hike.
Yeah. Like, no, no. So we went on this freaking four mile long hike and it was fun. It was great because I love the people I was surrounded with. and then close to the end, I had like boom, boom. Session paid session, paid session paid. And I’m just like, what is happening? So after those four miles of walking and wanting to, and I know I’ve said this before, but shoot myself in the fucking foot.
I got like that boost of, I’m like, oh my God, do you guys wanna go for like, do you guys wanna do four miles again? Like, yeah, let’s do that. I was like so happy because I wasn’t even expecting it that day. But automation just kind of pushed it forward, you know, uh, we did not walk another four miles. We walked our happy asses right to the freaking car, uh, and we went and got some pizza.
So,
Colie: I mean, I live in the hiking capital of the world. I mean, I’m pretty sure the only place where people hike more than Colorado is probably Utah. But I, I don’t, I don’t partake in the hiking. In fact, I make jokes that I don’t do any out. I don’t do outside. I just, I don’t do outside. I’m an indoor person. And it was funny because one of my yearbook clients, which is what I call the people that I photographed three different times in.
Miranda: Mm-hmm.
Colie: They wanted to do their last session taking a hike in Boulder, and so it’s okay. It’s okay. I went, I did it. It was like we did right under three miles. . And when I posted those pictures, I have never gotten more people in my Instagram dms. They were like, oh my God, you, you like went outside on like a trail?
And I was like, yeah, and it was fucking 32 degrees. I was like, but I was so hot. Like I had on a, you know, a jacket and longs long socks and all that. But like the whole time we were walking, I was thinking to myself, my God, people do this for fun. I am so hot. I feel like I’m having hot flashes right now, but it’s like 32 degrees outside and you know, it’s like 32 degrees on the side of a mountain and so, you know, it’s much colder than 32 degrees.
Miranda: whipping. Oh my God. I’m glad you survived it. I’m so happy that you’re still here with
Colie: great. And that’s the level of sarcasm that people had in my dms. But I loved it. I was like, maybe I should do this more often. Just for fun. I was like, from marketing perspective, what if I like came out here and I took pictures because I feel like people were just so shocked to see me outside.
Like people felt like they needed to comment and felt like they needed to dm. It was, it was definitely a.
Miranda: It’s gonna be probably like your most commented or liked post of, uh, 20 20, 20 21. It’s,
Colie: I don’t, it was, yeah, it was during the pandemic because that was one of the reasons that they wanted to have the session outside instead of inside was because they still didn’t wanna let me in their house. I, I didn’t have very many clients that did that, but that client in particular, I did the first session in their house because that was right before the pandemic. And then the second session and the third session, we did them both outside, which everyone knows how much I love to be outside
Miranda: Yeah, it’s, it’s, it was a lot. I, I. Am imagining that exact thing. And that’s a hard fucking pass for me, buddy. Like, no thank you. I had to walk. I didn’t have to, but we chose to, walk about a mile and a half up and a mile and a half back up of. S incline to the white cliffs of Kenoy here in central pa.
And it’s beautiful. It overlooks like this Conestoga River. It’s white mounds huge. Just a white rock. Just a white fricking cliff, whatever. No big deal. Super fucking cool. , . Yeah, I was in bed for the next two days. Yeah, no. And then this past year, totally unrelated to photography, I decided to coach my daughter’s girls on the run team.
Colie: Okay.
Miranda: Girl, they did not tell you. They didn’t do the, they didn’t tell you on purpose at the end. You have to run a 5K two weeks before you have to run a practice. Five.
Colie: Okay, Miranda.
Miranda: So, so, Hmm. No, no, I wasn’t happy. This is why, like the, one of the reasons I stopped offering weddings, in the first place because, my body can’t physically handle it and my body can’t physically handle the years after having children apparently either. So, peace. No more girls on the run.
Colie: That’s okay. You just, you, you do something. Once you try it out, you decide it’s not for you and you move on.
Miranda: It was a strategical, life decision instead of a strategical business decision. I’m tapping out. No more five Ks for this Mama
Colie: I’m here for those. I’m here for those
Miranda: Yeah.
Colie: All right, Miranda, let’s tell the listening audience, where they can find you on the internet. Let’s, let’s go look at that show at website.
Miranda: Ooh, yes. So you can find me@mirandaeoriophoto.com. You will not know how to spell that. That is okay. I should have kept my maiden name. I understand. That is E O R I O. You can find me on Facebook. Everything’s Miranda Eorio photo Miranda, Eorio a photo. If you can spell it, if you can find me, good luck.
I will welcome you with open arms. And I really hope to see you guys popping in for some free information about family photography, how to raise those prices, and how to get those ideal clients in your inbox. So I am here for you. I am.
Colie: Well, thank you for joining me on the podcast, Marinda. It has definitely been a pleasure.
Miranda: been something. Yeah.
Colie: All right, everyone. That’s it for today’s episode. See you next time.
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