This is the Photo Business Help Podcast, a 10-ish minute show published every Tuesday & Thursday. I want to help you build a better photo business. Loving what you get paid for is amazing, so is having more flexibility and free time. Today we cover three tips to save you time in your business.
Number one, Text Expander.
If you haven't given this a shot yet, I highly recommend it. It is a way to shorten things that you write out, whether it's URLs, formatting and emails that you find yourself typing over and over again. It can be just names of things.
When you open up the app or the program, you create shortcuts for things that you type a lot. And it saves so much time when you do it. So I use it a lot for the show notes for this show. I use it for other things in emails, like I said, sometimes it's just if you are typing out a name, your own name, the name of the show the name of something, you say a lot. It's just a really, really easy way to create a shortcut. Try text expander and it'll save you a bunch of time.
Number two, templates
Email templates, as well as some of my newsletter templates and a few other things. If you find yourself sending out the same newsletters, the same sorts of emails and response to people, definitely get those saved so that you're not having to type up the same thing over and over. Personalize them so that you're not sending out just the same thing to everyone all the time.
If someone sends you an inquiry for a wedding, I would certainly comment about their venue choice and ask them how they're doing. But the bulk of the email could be something that you have tucked away and saved as a template. You could also save this template in Text Expander, which is double exciting and super, super time saving.
The third thing is a CRM
I did not want to use one. I taught a workshop for years on how to start a photo business way back in the day. For those of you that went to Escape the Cubicle, which was the name of the course, I was really proud of the way I organized everything. I'm naturally a pretty organized person. I didn't feel like I needed a software or a system to help me send out contracts, stay on top of emails, etc.
I started trying Honeybook last year. And it took me a while to admit this, but I really really love it. If you are one of those people that has a hard time staying on top of who's got contracts out and who hasn't paid yet and what's going on with certain projects, this is definitely the thing for you to try.
Honeybook organizes things by project and then there's a pipeline view where you can see where in that project things are. There are tons of different templates and different things that you can use as well. So you're sort of getting everything all in one place to help you stay organized with your clients.
If you want to try honey book with 50% off your first year, go to https://photobusinesshelp.com/honeybook. And if you use that link, you'll get 50% off your first year. That's all I've got for you this week. Thanks for tuning in. I will be back every Tuesday and Thursday with 10 ish minute episodes. And remember in everything that you want to achieve consistency is key.
Episode Notes
- Text Expander: https://textexpander.com/
