00:00:00               Welcome to the hair of the dog podcast. This is Nicole, and this is a special podcast episode, brought to you directly out of the hair of the dog Academy. Inside the Academy, our members have the opportunity to schedule laser coaching calls. And not only are these calls beneficial for them, but they get shared inside the community so that all of our other members can benefit from them.

00:00:21               What we've done is we've taken the very best of our laser coaching calls. The ones that I know you guys have questions for as well, and we are bringing them to you here as some bonus episodes on the hair of the dog podcast. Now I'm not promising them every week, but periodically we'll be releasing new laser coaching calls out here on the podcast on Thursdays.

00:00:43               So keep checking your podcast player and get ready for 15 to 20 minutes of quick laser coaching to get some quick wins, get some questions answered and helping our members and you move forward in your business. If you want to learn more about how you can become a hair of the dog Academy member to simply go to hair of the dog academy.com/academy and check it out.

00:01:06               We'd love to have you inside our pack. Now stay tuned for the laser coaching. And when I say laser coaching, is it just me? Or do you picture little cats with laser beams too? That would make this even more fun, but I'd aggress, no cast with laser beams, but some incredible business knowledge about to happen. Enjoy Welcome to the hair of the dog podcast.

00:01:29               If you're a pet photographer, ready to make more money and start living a life by your design, you've come to the right place. And now your host pet photographer, travel addicts, chocolate martini, calmness, sewer, Nicole Begley, everybody Nicole here from hair with the dog. And I'm here with Kate, Kate, welcome to your laser coaching session.

00:01:52               How can I help you today? Right. So I'm finally kicking myself in the butt and I'm having a tough time prioritizing between site slash Facebook because those are not non-existent because I love my dog and I love the horse, but I'd like to vary up my content. Yep. Yep. And then just advertising and marketing, you know, so like trying to get things going all that seems important.

00:02:27               And so then I start procrastinating and I've got no idea how to even divvy it up. Yeah. I know. It's so overwhelming. So overwhelming because there's so many things that we need to do. So do you have, do you have the, the like legality basics of your business started yet? Yes. Yep. I've done all the state. I've done all my state taxes.

00:02:54               I've worked with my CPA. I've done. I've got a banking account. Okay, awesome. Awesome. Do you have liability insurance On my list of things to do for this week? I would definitely do that before you start doing model calls and stuff, just because you never know, and it's, it's good to have cause your usual, your homeowners and stuff,

00:03:15               won't cover business related claims. So, and it's usually, I think for me to have a million dollars, so it was like $170 a year. It's not, it's not a crazy amount. So that's definitely worth doing. And then also make sure that you have your contract ready, which there is one in the Academy under the let's get our legal pups in the road that you can,

00:03:38               you know, utilize, you know, so then that Stuff was a lot easier than all this other stuff. You guys have some courses there. So, And then for the other stuff that we need, like, yeah, we need a website, but you don't have to have the website before you do models and you can kind of do those at the same time.

00:04:07               If you want to like the I, what I would do is kind of make a list of what needs to happen, like for it to have your business, like, just start marketing, have your business up and running. What needs to happen. We need to have our legal stuff in a row, which sounds like you mostly do. We need to have a basic website.

00:04:28               It doesn't mean you need to flush out your entire website and have a 20 page website. It can be one long page where it's like, Hey, here's some images. Here's about me. Here's how this works, contact me. Like it can be as basic as that. And then you can add onto it in the future and then to get regular clients to you'll need to have some pricing in place.

00:04:53               And just an idea of how you're going to do your sales. And that's really all you need, need to get started. And then adding on like a client inquiry guide or a session prep guide and product guides and you know, 8,000 samples and this and that, that all comes later. Like all you need to really start is your legal stuff and an idea of what you're selling and how much it is and super basic website.

00:05:24               Okay, nice. Thank you. That's all you need because I took your, I watched all your pricing course. So I got a good idea about that. Not because I want to do all the IPS. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you can start with that with basics too, of like one type of Walmart and then add in one album and then,

00:05:45               you know, you can add a second wall art or maybe in a second version of the album. So you can, you can slowly add things if you want. You don't have to come out of the gate with a gazillion things. Oh yeah. Permission granted. But yeah, but you could definitely, it depends how much time, like how much time do you have right now during the week to work on your business?

00:06:09               What's your average? I've got a lot more now. I worked a part time job. Okay. So that's a guaranteed 19 hours a week, but for the last month or so I was working about 60 hours a week because we just had a bunch. So all this stuff went to the back burner right now. I work quite 19 hours a week,

00:06:36               but they'll pay me for the 19 hours a week. Nice. They know how much I put in. So it's kind of like a little comp because they can pay me for the 60 hours. So, yeah. Awesome. Good, good, good. So, yeah. So with that extra time then, I mean, you can definitely, definitely work a little bit on both.

00:06:55               Like I would sit down maybe for at least half an hour a day, say, all right, I'm going to work on my website, whether that's writing out your copy or creating a page like, Oh, if you carve out just a little section a day, like you don't have to sit down and get it all done in a day, like just spend a little bit of time,

00:07:14               commit to doing a little bit each day to get it to where it needs to be. You know? And then you can also do some model calls and do that a little bit too. Just don't with the model calls. I think the challenges, you know, cause you were saying like, Oh gosh, I'm going to have to do this and that.

00:07:32               And all these things like just don't go out and shoot five model calls on like the same weekend. And then all of a sudden you're like, Oh my gosh. Now I have to edit all of these just completely, totally overwhelmed. So speak out, like do one and edit it, talk to them and then do the other, you know, until you kind of figure out what your,

00:07:53               what your upper limits of how many you can handle at once. And then all of that stuff gets faster too, as you practice. So like the first couple of sessions, you're like, Oh my God, this editing is taking forever. But as you do it more, it becomes quicker and quicker and quicker, you know? So, so just,

00:08:10               yeah, keep that in mind that it just takes some practice to correct those things, but just not biting off more than you can chew initially, you know, but, but a hundred percent. Do you know, do you know where you want to find your models like that? You do you have that kind of fleshed out or? Okay. All right.

00:08:31               And then, so for model calls, I looked at, I like to look at it as what's my goal of the model call. So for you, what's your goal of, of these model calls? Well, a couple of them is to see how the location would work with the models. And so then to build the portfolio as well as, okay.

00:08:55               Do I like using my 7,200 or do I want to be using my 50 millimeter? Those are my two gotcha lenses that I have and which ones I prefer. And then also different poses, you know, quote unquote poses and B being able to bury those up. So then I would have enough images for albums and variety. Perfect. Perfect. Awesome.

00:09:23               So it sounds to me like your goals of these model calls are really for practice and actually building your more images for your portfolio and you know, for various things. So the, the intention of these calls is for you to get some dots in front of your lens. So you can practice all of these things and get these Awesome. Yep. Always good to have that just clear.

00:09:48               So then the next step would be to just create a little intake form. It can be on jot form, Google form, any kind of form actually you can use if you want a really easy way to organize potential models. Cause sometimes when you put out like, Hey, if I'm looking for models, you get a gazillion applications, there's a software.

00:10:15               It's a, just an online software called air table, air, table.com. It's free. It is awesome. It's basically like an Excel spreadsheet on steroids. So you can create a spreadsheet with whatever you want information to gather. So like name, email, address, dogs, name, dogs, breed a picture of the dog. You know, they can upload,

00:10:44               you know, maybe just a quick behavioral is your dog comfortable in new situations kind of thing. They fill out that form. You, you will, you create the, you create the table and air table and then you basically turn that into a form. So air table then creates a form that just says, here's a link. People go to that link.

00:11:02               They see this form, they fill it out and the form populates onto that air table. So then you can like search it and like give people like, yes, I want to use this as a model. Like, you know, you can have a column where you assign them for different things. You can view the whole table via the files. So you can just like say,

00:11:20               I want to see all the pictures at once. And it pulls up all the pictures of the dogs. So it can be like that dog and that dog And that dog. Awesome. So definitely check out air table. It's a great way to manage models. And the software is free. They have a paid version, but I used it quite a bit and never had to pay.

00:11:37               So I think it's still free for, for all the stuff that you would need it for. Yeah. And then just start kind of putting that out there, you know, on your own social media channels, it doesn't need to be a business social media channel. At this point, I would hold off on a business Facebook account until you have created a little basic website and you've had your kind of model calls and you're feeling good about the sessions you're holding that you're like,

00:12:06               okay. I feel like I'm ready to, you know, like I feel like I feel good with this. I'm feel like I'm somebody contacted me and wanted to pay me for a session. I feel good. And if you need feedback on, because sometimes we're not good at determining if we're ready or not. Cause we're critical. And so you can post in the group and ask us,

00:12:28               we're happy to say yes, that is sellable. That is amazing. Go. You can do the critique coroner with Charlotte. She can give you a good feedback there. So yeah, so I wouldn't do that. I would just start with getting a couple requesting some models, doing them one at a time and working a little bit each day on my website.

00:12:48               Awesome. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Any other questions? No, I'm just by the way, Liz is awesome. Oh, we love Liz so much. I love dealing with her. She's helped me out quite a bit. And then I finally got off my tush and I'm taking advantage of the stuff you guys off. Good. Good.

00:13:13               Well, keep us posted in the group. I will. Okay. Perfect. All right. Thanks for listening to the hair of the dog podcast. If you want to check out the show notes for access to any of the links that we shared in this episode, as well as any additional resources, simply go to www.hairofthedogacademy.com/six four, the number six and the number four.

00:13:41               Thanks for listening to this episode of hair of the dog podcast. If you enjoyed this show, please take a minute to leave a review. And while you're there, don't forget to subscribe. So you don't miss our upcoming episodes. One last thing, if you are ready to dive into more resources, head over to our [email protected]. Thanks for being a part of this pet photography community.