If you are struggling with how much of your life your business takes up—how much time away from your family and your kids—or if you feel like you don’t have time for self-care because you’re constantly dealing with client emails, editing, staying on top of things in your business…you need to read this.
Hi, I’m Rachel Jordan and I am a coach looking to help wedding photographers elevate the quality of wedding photography clients they attract as they build a luxury client experience by focusing on what matters and profitably automating everything else.
Today I want to talk about how to save yourself hours of work per week and detangle your time from your business.
So, the first thing that you need to be aware of is that when you spend time in your business, working on your business, designing processes, creating workflows, and automations, it’s going to take some time to set up these new things and think through how you want things accomplished. It’s not going to happen without some elbow grease, but I like to think of it as 1hr of work to save 10hrs. The more time you can put into your business like this – the 1hr to save 10, the more free you’ll be to live your life and grow your business.
I think about it like if your business is a tree, your service is the trunk of the tree, and your marketing is the leaves, then these business processes are your roots, and if the roots of your tree are not strong and going deep, when a windstorm comes, or something happens in your life to shake things up, it can break you.
A trap that many wedding professionals fall into is using their own brain as the engine that makes their business go. In other words, if you weren’t doing the daily activities of your business, the business would die. Business = us.
The problem here is that we only have so many hours we can give to the business, so eventually we hit a ceiling of having no more time. Since we have no more time, then there’s no more growth. This has a dramatic effect on our income, because we actually don’t have time to bring on more clients.
The solution? Begin leveraging our time and getting ourselves out of the “business = us” trap.
This can feel overwhelming at first, so let’s break down how to get started.
Step 1:
First things first, you need to know where you are spending your time. Start recording all the tasks you are doing and approximately how much time.
Example: Posting to Instagram – 5 min, everyday. Let’s face it, probably 15 – 20 minutes by the time we come up with a caption.
You also need to know where you are spending your brain energy, because that also takes up time. Start a list on a sticky note or computer document of all the business things that you are holding in your head, trying not to forget, or often have to think about.
Example: Important client details that will make or break the client experience
Step 2:
After you have these lists compiled and you realize how much YOU are doing, it’s time to look at what can be automated or delegated. For instance, some common things photographers spend their time on are emailing clients, shooting sessions with clients, posting on instagram, dealing with financial records, culling and editing.
How many of those things do you think can be automated and delegated?
All of them.
Even shooting with clients can be delegated to an associate if needed. You can hire an assistant, you can write form emails, you can hire a social media manager, you can autopost, you can hire a private editor—you can even get an A.I. editor.
Now I’m not suggesting you automate or delegate everything right away. You want to be smart and you need to stay in profit. What I’m suggesting is that there’s probably a lot more you can do than you think…and it’s probably more cost effective than you think.
Step 3:
The best way to get started implementing automation or delegation is to do the Snowball Method.
Start with the smallest, easiest thing to automate/delegate that you can do in less than an hour and get it set up first thing in your day. When you’ve accomplished that first thing, celebrate it! What an accomplishment. You’ve just saved yourself a ton of hours of work for your future. If you can peck away at your list of things that can be automated or delegated every week for a year—or how I like to do it, focusing on pretty much just this for a whole month during the slow season—you’re going to be so much more free within a short amount of time.
Just like implementing your automation and delegation snowball will start small and grow bigger, better, and easier over time, so too will the freedom you experience in your business, as you detangle your time from the “my business = me” trap.
So post in the comments below- what are some of your favorite automations or delegations that you’ve already implemented. What are some ideas for your first snowball step that you can implement today?
If you want some personalized help with thinking through what we talked about today for your business, I offer free 15 minute audit calls. We’ll go over your website, your behind the scenes processes if you want, and get you some quick actionable steps that you can take right away.
These calls are completely sales-pitch free. It’s just there to help you. If you want to book an audit, you can book one here: https://racheljordaneducation.com/audit/
Blessings!
