Time Audit for Photographers: How Long Does One Client Actually Take You?

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Hey, y'all.

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Welcome back Today I'm popping in with

what I hope is a very short and sweet

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episode, but it comes with homework.

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Yes, even if you are not my active

client, if you listen to this podcast,

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I feel compelled at times to give you a

homework assignment, and I really would

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love it if you would come on Threads

@coliejames and tell me what you find.

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So I've been obsessed with offers lately.

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My own offers, your offers, everybody's

offers that I can get my hands on.

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And while it's always been a part of

the work that I do with my clients,

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both in the Experience Edit and Systems

In Session, I don't really talk about

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it a lot because I don't consider

myself to be an offer strategist.

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But time and time again, I find

significant time leaks inside of the

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offers that I am reviewing because a

lot of you guys just have no idea how

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much time it is taking you to deliver

the offers that you are selling.

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You don't know how much time

you're wasting on writing

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communication from scratch.

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You don't know how long it's

taking you to actually get somebody

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from a lead to a booked client.

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And so when it comes to pricing offers

and making sure that they are profitable

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and sustainable, the very first thing

that almost everybody needs to do

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inside their business is a time audit.

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Because you should be able to tell me

how much time it takes you to manage

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your clients inside of an offer.

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You should tell me how much

time it takes you to deliver it.

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And I don't mean the session

time for you photographers.

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There are a lot of other tasks

that go into delivering that offer.

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Driving to the session, communicating with

your clients, actually editing the photos.

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Hell, a lot of you guys are not

considering the time that it takes you

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to just upload the images to the gallery

software and get it ready for delivery.

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And so if you have not actually given

this a lot of thought, if you have not

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literally sat down with a piece of paper

and a pen and written down all of the

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things that you do for a client inside

of your signature offer, along with

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how much time it takes, this is like

your quarterly reminder to do this.

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Because this is how you push your

offers forward to make sure that you

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are actually selling something that is

still serving you in this season of life.

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And so your very next client, I want

you to get a piece of paper or, you

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know, jot it down in a notes app.

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It doesn't really matter the formatting

as long as you are writing down all

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of the things that you're doing.

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Now, I am of course going to use the

example of a photographer because a

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lot of my clients are photographers,

and I just walked one of my clients

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through doing this last week.

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So the first thing that I want you to

do is basically break down your client

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journey into the five phases that I

recommend or the ones that make sense

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to you, because we need to know how much

time you are spending in the inquiry

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phase, in the booking phase, in the

onboarding phase, in the service and

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delivery, and then in the off-boarding.

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Now, a lot of you guys are still not doing

the off-boarding phase, and that's okay.

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I want you to take steps

towards doing it now.

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And to be honest, the off-boarding

stage is the one that's gonna take

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you the least amount of time but is

actually gonna be the most impactful

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on your revenue going forward.

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Because asking for those important

reviews, referrals, and then asking your

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clients to rebook you has a direct impact

on the bottom line of your business.

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But so, again, piece of paper,

pen, write down the five phases.

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And every single time you

interact with one chosen client…

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Yes I'm not actually telling you

to do this for all of your clients.

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Pick one, and then when you're done

with that one, pick another one.

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I mean, I don't wanna add hours of

documentation and tracking to all

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the things that you are currently

likely doing in busy season.

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But I do want you to do this now,

because once slow season comes for

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a lot of you guys in winter, this is

how we determine how you tackle the

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systems in your business and refining

and improving your offers going forward.

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So in the inquiry phase, you are

probably responding to an inquiry.

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You are scheduling a discovery call or you

are sending them an asynchronous video.

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I want you to write down all of the

time that each of those tasks takes.

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but please don't forget the one

time suck that I think a lot of you

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do and that you don't think about.

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Every single time you go to read an email

from a client or you go into your CRM

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just to see if you did something or to

read something, that is time that you

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are spending on that particular client.

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Please don't forget to write that down.

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Now, if you are someone who is

already sending one of those amazing

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five-star booking proposals that

you have a template for, great.

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It's probably gonna be five, 10

minutes if you're customizing it.

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But if you are still creating a custom

proposal for each and every one of

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your leads, you are probably leaking a

significant amount of time in this phase.

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So again, all the things that

you do to book someone, write

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down the time that it takes.

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Now, onboarding is typically

where a lot of you guys feel

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like you are dropping the ball.

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Like, you wanna do more for your

clients, But quite often, the things

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that are on your mind to do are things

that only get done when you have time.

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And so I do wanna make sure that you are

actually writing down the emails that

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you're writing from scratch, the calls

that you're making, the prep guides

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that you might still be customizing

and preparing for every client.

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Again, every single task that you do

for this one or two chosen clients gets

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written down on this piece of paper.

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And then in the end, guys, all

you have to do is add it all up.

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And I simply want you to figure out

how much time it is truly taking

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you for one single client from

inquiry all the way to delivery.

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Now, if you get that number and you're

like, "Wow, that's way more time than

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I thought," I want you to think about

what you could create templates for

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before you do your next time audit.

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Now, again, a lot of you

guys are in busy season.

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You don't have time to necessarily

write a bunch of templates right now.

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But what I will say is that if you

want to pick one thing that is probably

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going to reduce the time that you are

spending with your clients the most,

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it is either creating your five-minute

booking proposal along with the

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automated follow-up emails so that

you are not chasing people to book.

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And the second one that I'm gonna

recommend is probably your client

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questionnaire, because a lot of you

guys are still manually sending the

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questionnaire, manually following

up, and sometimes you just don't

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realize how much time that takes.

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Okay, so again, your mission, should

you choose to accept, is to do one

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full time audit on at least one to

two clients in the next couple weeks.

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Now, if you would like to share, I

would love to hear how long it's taking

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you to deliver to one of your clients.

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Come find me on Threads.

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I'm @coliejames.

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But for now, I think I've

given you enough homework.

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So go forth and do this.

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That's it for this episode.

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See you next time