Transcript
Speaker: Hey there, you are listening to the Filming Live podcast.
Speaker: Back in May, Kylie recorded an episode interview with Stacey Rolfe, and it was just such an amazing episode.
Speaker: And we just didn't get around to publishing it before we actually had the unfiltered retreat.
Speaker: And so this episode was recorded a little while ago prior to the retreat actually happening, which took place in August.
Speaker: It was amazing.
Speaker: If you weren't there, you're going to want to be next time.
Speaker: And so we wanted to just share Stacey's incredible interview because she just is a wealth of knowledge.
Speaker: There is so many little golden nuggets of wisdom sprinkled throughout this episode.
Speaker: Kylie and Stacey have such a great conversation.
Speaker: It's one that you're not going to want to miss.
Speaker: So definitely stay tuned.
Speaker: Have a listen to Kylie and Stacey and enjoy.
Speaker: Hello lovely people and welcome to another episode of the podcast.
Speaker: I'm Kylie and today I am sitting down with a local Sydney photographer, Stacey Rolfe.
Speaker: She is absolutely amazing.
Speaker: She does beautiful family portraits and also maternity and newborns.
Speaker: And she also runs a really cool business called TogHub.
Speaker: If you are a photographer, you absolutely need to check it out.
Speaker: We will have all of the details and all of the links for you on our show notes on the blog.
Speaker: But today we're talking to Stacey.
Speaker: Welcome, Stacey.
Speaker: It's so good to have you here.
Speaker: Hi, Kylie.
Speaker: Thank you for having me.
Speaker: My first ever podcast.
Speaker: That's good.
Speaker: We're popping that cherry.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Why don't we start with you telling us a little bit about you and what it is that you do?
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: I'm Stacey.
Speaker: I am originally from the UK, as you can probably hear.
Speaker: I moved to Sydney nine years ago and just came for a year.
Speaker: So I did what most POMs do, came for a year and stayed forever.
Speaker: I was a lawyer in my previous life.
Speaker: I trained in London and moved over here to Sydney and
Speaker: And I worked in those great big firms in the city, the ivory towers, and I was an employment specialist.
Speaker: So I did that for 12 years.
Speaker: And honestly, I really loved employment law, but grew to not love law firms.
Speaker: When I went on maternity leave with my second bub,
Speaker: It was March 2020, which is a red flag, everyone in the universe, because we know what else happened in March 2020.
Speaker: And so amongst the chaos of closed borders, family overseas, a job that I'd love for a new baby, and I had this side hustle of photography.
Speaker: And I said to my husband, what would you think if I said, I just wanted to see where this could go for maybe six months or 12 months, I'll just try it.
Speaker: And he cheered and said, yay, we're not going, you're not going back to that job.
Speaker: That's great.
Speaker: And here I am two and a half years later.
Speaker: I feel like being on maternity leave for a lot of people is such a catalyst for making changes in your life because it makes you realize like what's important and it gives you a chance to reframe things and make priorities that maybe you wouldn't have bothered to take time for before.
Speaker: That's exactly right.
Speaker: You suddenly have in a weird way breathing space because especially in a career like law,
Speaker: you're on this treadmill or this hamster wheel and you're pretty blinkered.
Speaker: You just look forward.
Speaker: So you don't really look side to side.
Speaker: So you're a trainee, then you're associate, then you make senior associate.
Speaker: And then next stop is partnership.
Speaker: And you don't really look left or right.
Speaker: sometimes a lot of people find themselves in that position where they haven't really stopped to think what else they could do with their skills and maternity leave parental leave gives you that that pause and you stop and you realize that actually you're really good at a heap of other things that you've forgotten that you're good at because motherhood makes you challenges you and brings to light a lot of
Speaker: skills that you maybe had forgotten or haven't previously realized you were good at.
Speaker: Yeah, I completely agree.
Speaker: I think it's really common for women to go off on maternity leave and suddenly discover a passion.
Speaker: And also your drivers change, your priorities change and what you need from a job changes.
Speaker: So all of that is this perfect storm.
Speaker: And for me, adding COVID and locked borders and international family, and it was just an absolute no brainer that I wasn't going back to that job.
Speaker: And then I was just fortunate that I'd been
Speaker: Jobbing on the side as a photographer, it was very much a hobby business.
Speaker: It pretty much just paid for itself.
Speaker: Everything I earned, I spent on kit basically.
Speaker: And that's all it was.
Speaker: That was all it ever was intended to be.
Speaker: But I thought, oh, I reckon I can pay a few bills if I try a bit harder.
Speaker: And then as I say, I make more money now in my business than I did as a lawyer.
Speaker: I have never looked back really.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: So tell me how you first got started in photography, because I know for a lot of people, you think lawyer, you have a certain idea of what a lawyer is, and they don't seem like a creative kind of person.
Speaker: But obviously, you do have this creative side.
Speaker: So how did you get started in photography?
Speaker: Had you been doing it for a long time?
Speaker: Or was it just something that you just discovered one day?
Speaker: I'm almost embarrassed to admit this.
Speaker: I am very stubborn and pretty determined.
Speaker: And I was having my first baby and wanted to book a newborn shoot and looked at the shocking price of newborn photography and thought, I can just do that myself.
Speaker: So rather than paying $1,000 for somebody to take pictures of my baby, I'll just buy a camera for $1,000 and I will take the pictures.
Speaker: How hard?
Speaker: can that be so as it turns out quite hard and it's taken me many years and I have very few decent photographs of my newborn baby however it was the best thousand dollars I ever spent because camera led me to enjoy taking pictures then I took pictures of my friends babies and it's the classic story from there really one day someone said to me
Speaker: Hey, actually it was a friend that said, oh, my friend wants to know what your rates are and what your availability is.
Speaker: And I was like, I don't have rates or availability.
Speaker: So I probably, I think I quoted a hundred dollars and shot on a Saturday midday or something like that.
Speaker: As we all do when we start out.
Speaker: And yeah, it was, to be honest, it was just dogged determination and also, yeah.
Speaker: total blindness to the industry so when I started I followed about three photographers I was not aware that there were so many photographers in the world I was not aware that there were so many talented people I was not aware that there were thousands of people doing what I was doing and doing a lot better job of it I had no idea of any of that and that blissful ignorance was very helpful in boosting confidence yes
Speaker: And frankly, confidence is the answer to a lot.
Speaker: So it was misplaced confidence for a while.
Speaker: I hope that these days it's better placed confidence.
Speaker: And I'm much more aware of the industry we're in, of course.
Speaker: But yeah, to begin with, I started out just by doing.
Speaker: I started out how I start most things with just doing it and just keeping going and not giving up.
Speaker: That's my approach to most things.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No, I love that.
Speaker: And I think that I know for me, I was, I've always been into photography, like from a very young age, did it in high school.
Speaker: I always had this idea that I would be like a landscape photographer.
Speaker: I want to be like Ken Duncan.
Speaker: So beautiful landscape prints and things.
Speaker: And then the older I got and the more I did, the more I discovered that I enjoyed like actually taking photos of people and things that moved.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But it was that thing, like when it came, when I made the decision to actually just like maybe try and make it into a job, it was that I just dove straight in, totally ignorant of what was out there.
Speaker: And I think in a lot of ways, that's almost one of the best ways to do it because you just, you just jump straight in.
Speaker: You don't know what's good.
Speaker: You don't know what's right.
Speaker: And you just,
Speaker: are so passionate and it carries you through.
Speaker: And I think that is, I think that's almost a really good way to get started.
Speaker: Sometimes I think we can overthink things and it becomes harder the more we know.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So we ran Club Tog yesterday.
Speaker: Club Tog is a co-working space that I run in Sydney.
Speaker: And one of the girls that came along is so new in her business that she doesn't even have a business yet.
Speaker: So this is someone who's who would like to get into it, get back into working after having kids.
Speaker: And she asked the question over lunch.
Speaker: So what do I need to do to start this business?
Speaker: And she sat around a table with 15 photographers who are all at different stages.
Speaker: And the advice was coming thick and fast, right?
Speaker: There were so many good ideas.
Speaker: There was so much stuff.
Speaker: And you could see that it was very overwhelming because this was becoming an absolute enormous insurmountable list of things that you would have to do.
Speaker: And I said, I honestly think you need an Instagram page.
Speaker: ideally get the web domain to match it and just start because apart from that oh and a gallery platform so you can actually deliver your images but I said aside from that the next step will just show itself to you you'll start and then you'll realize ah I'm gonna I will need an accounting platform I need a CRM now because this is becoming unmanageable on my spreadsheet and I said there's benefits to doing it properly
Speaker: in quote marks, and getting all your ducks in a row from the beginning.
Speaker: But that can stop you.
Speaker: It can paralyze you and it can prevent you from starting at all.
Speaker: And ultimately, if all you're doing is starting a small business, it's just step by step.
Speaker: It doesn't have to be all at once.
Speaker: And what you need in your business is different to what somebody else needs.
Speaker: Get the basics, get started, and the next step will show itself to you when the time is right.
Speaker: And that's when you can tap back into this community and ask them how they did that step.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I think that's key.
Speaker: What you said there is that it can become so overwhelming that we never actually move forward.
Speaker: If it's all becoming too overwhelming and you're not actually taking that first step in getting started, then, you know, that's when you need to take a step back and go, okay, what's the absolute bare minimum that I need?
Speaker: I need a camera.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I need a lens.
Speaker: I need some people to photograph.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And just get started and then worry about the other things once you get into it.
Speaker: If getting all your ducks in a row and having everything perfect beforehand is overwhelming and it means that you never actually start taking photos, then maybe it's time to let that go.
Speaker: Anyone who's ever met me will know that my catchphrase at this point is that done is better than perfect.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: That's a big thing that Courtney says too.
Speaker: It's just, oh yes.
Speaker: I, we talked about it briefly before, but I, in my life as a lawyer, perfection was the only thing.
Speaker: So even after over a decade and being a senior lawyer and having experience and being
Speaker: you know, dual qualified and whatever else, every single email of advice that I would send out still went by a partner, still got punctuation change, still got phrasing tweaked to make sure it was absolutely crystal clear and completely perfect.
Speaker: And one of the most beautiful and wonderful and freeing things about having taken this step and doing and having my own business is that I don't, I set the standard.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I don't think
Speaker: that perfection is necessary in this business.
Speaker: I think that being imperfect is beautiful.
Speaker: A lot of photographers...
Speaker: are capturing imperfections.
Speaker: And that's what we love.
Speaker: We love to capture your right now, your life right now.
Speaker: And I think that goes for business as well.
Speaker: In a small business like this, people are very forgiving of glitches and small mistakes or changes on your website or links that are broken.
Speaker: People don't care about that stuff.
Speaker: What they care about is you and your business and your clients will, if you show enough of yourself and bring them along for the ride, clients aren't going to care about those small things.
Speaker: things you just have to start doing and you have to do it with care and passion and you have to try and make it as good as you can but you have to release yourself from that perfectionism and that has been my favorite thing about not being a lawyer anymore is that I'm I feel like I'm released from that cage of ultra high perfectionism
Speaker: Yeah, it's that humanizing side.
Speaker: Like I'm doing a social media management course at the moment.
Speaker: And one of the big things that they talk about when we look at content and strategy and that sort of thing, and they're like the number one thing that works for every single brand and business, like no matter what it is that they do is having that human side to it and letting people see that these are actual real people behind the brand or behind them instead of running it.
Speaker: And that'll be, that's always going to be your bestseller.
Speaker: So yeah, it's been, it's, I think that's really true.
Speaker: So you mentioned just before about Club Tog and I did mention in the intro Tog Hub.
Speaker: So why don't you tell me a little bit about what is Tog Hub?
Speaker: What is it and how did it start?
Speaker: What isn't Tog Hub?
Speaker: Tog Hub is everything though.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: How it started was lockdown.
Speaker: So in 2021 lockdown, I had a pretty, I'd been in my photography business for six months.
Speaker: It was busy.
Speaker: It was exciting.
Speaker: And of course, overnight it just stopped.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So for those who don't know in, I think it was the 1st of July, 2021, Sydney went into a lockdown, like a hard lockdown and it lasted until October.
Speaker: It was a long one.
Speaker: And the first lockdown we'd had in 2020, I had a newborn.
Speaker: And side note, having a newborn is a great time.
Speaker: Great time for lockdown because you're basically locked down anyway.
Speaker: But having a lockdown when you're running a new and thriving business is very difficult, of course.
Speaker: Anyway, originally the way the government did it was that
Speaker: They said, oh, we're locking down for one week.
Speaker: And then it was two weeks and then it was four weeks.
Speaker: And then it ended up being months and months.
Speaker: In the first week, I finished all my editing.
Speaker: And then in the second week, I went into my Studio Ninja CRM platform and I overhauled everything.
Speaker: And then I did it for my friend.
Speaker: And then I did it for another friend.
Speaker: And then I thought this is, this is a thing that I can do in lockdown to keep me busy.
Speaker: And to keep a little bit of cash running through my business.
Speaker: This is something that I can actually do.
Speaker: So during lockdown, I did a few things.
Speaker: I did some virtual shooting, I did some doorstep shooting, but I also did a lot of what I called the tidy tog.
Speaker: And this was going into your Studio Ninja, overhauling it completely and building you the back end of the systems that would automate and make efficient and streamline your business and give you back more time.
Speaker: It started only as something to keep a chronically busy person busy.
Speaker: I'm incapable of relaxing really.
Speaker: And I'm incapable of relaxing.
Speaker: sitting back and enjoying that quiet time at home.
Speaker: I needed a project.
Speaker: And so it was born out of that.
Speaker: So the Tidy Tog continued in the background for the last, what, two years?
Speaker: It's been ticking over.
Speaker: And the next part of it was the Club Tog.
Speaker: I, an extrovert and an extroverted extrovert, really, I like to be around people.
Speaker: And one of the greatest challenges of being a photographer has been losing that community of co-workers.
Speaker: So having people around.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And I'm very lucky that I early on met two women who have, who are also at similar stages in their business.
Speaker: And we just, I don't know, came together, latched on.
Speaker: And then my business besties totally clicked.
Speaker: And without them, I wouldn't be where I am.
Speaker: And I think vice versa.
Speaker: And most people I noticed don't have that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I was going to retreats or workshops and a lot of the feedback around us was we didn't, no one else had this kind of little bestie group that really understand what you're doing because we're all photographers and we're all going, we're different businesses, but really all aiming for the same thing.
Speaker: So I wanted to create a co-working space.
Speaker: And so I just did it again.
Speaker: It's the same MO that I have for everything.
Speaker: I found a space near my house and I just launched it.
Speaker: And so every month we meet and just work in the same room.
Speaker: There's no particular structure.
Speaker: We are starting to have an expert speaker at the end of every session, but we just hang out and ask each other questions and pick each other's brains and talk.
Speaker: Everyone's at a different level.
Speaker: Everyone has different talents.
Speaker: Everybody has different sticking points.
Speaker: It's just nice.
Speaker: It's nice to have community.
Speaker: You walk away super motivated.
Speaker: You solve problems that you didn't know how to solve.
Speaker: You come away with fresh ideas and fresh invigoration for your business.
Speaker: So that's been really nice.
Speaker: And then out of that came the contracts.
Speaker: So from doing the Tidy Tog, the question I was asked over and over again is,
Speaker: I need a contract now because I'm still a lawyer.
Speaker: I still have a practicing certificate.
Speaker: There are restrictions on what I can do.
Speaker: So I can't provide legal advice because I don't work for a firm and I don't have legal insurance.
Speaker: So I can't give anybody legal advice.
Speaker: So what I did instead was reach out to a lawyer who's a colleague of a colleague.
Speaker: And together we have drafted these template contracts that we're now launching.
Speaker: So because they had started to become all these different businesses, we've brought them under the TogHub brand.
Speaker: And the idea of the TogHub is that it is a place to find everything you need to run a joyful, but successful and streamlined business, because you can be the best photographer in the universe.
Speaker: You can be so incredibly talented, but if you don't have
Speaker: the right document, if you don't have the right information, if you don't have a network, if you don't have a good backend admin system, you're going to find this business not joyful anymore.
Speaker: You're going to burn out quickly.
Speaker: You're going to find it draining.
Speaker: It will run you.
Speaker: And we've all been, we all need systems and community to get us through this.
Speaker: A solo business has been born out of various little projects that I've done, which all really are aiming toward this same goal.
Speaker: And it made sense at this point to bring them all together under the TOG hub umbrella, if you like.
Speaker: And there's so much more that I'm gonna be able to do with that.
Speaker: And so much more that I can create and facilitate for the community.
Speaker: So I'm so excited about it.
Speaker: But yeah, that's a very young...
Speaker: It's going to be very hard to make money.
Speaker: It's going to be very hard to run this business.
Speaker: And it is for most of us, we're running solo businesses.
Speaker: And I know like for me, one of the best things that happened for me and my business and what I do was meeting Courtney.
Speaker: and getting to know Courtney and then through her discovering this huge world of other photographers and that building that community and going to retreats and things like it, it really, it helped me to take things to the next level and move forward.
Speaker: And I love that you're providing that space for people and that it's very focused on that business side and trying to take some of the overwhelm and scariness out of it.
Speaker: That's exactly right.
Speaker: This doesn't have to be that difficult, but it feels like anything, everything is darkest before dawn.
Speaker: And it's really hard sometimes to find your way through.
Speaker: If you don't have a sounding board, if you don't have...
Speaker: friends who run their own businesses, if you don't have friends who are photographers, if you don't have people that understand.
Speaker: And if you come, my background is that I was employed my whole career.
Speaker: I've never worked for myself.
Speaker: I don't come from a family where my parents worked for themselves.
Speaker: I just don't, I don't have any of that kind of inherent grounding on entrepreneurial anything.
Speaker: So going out on your own.
Speaker: And I also came from a background where you have to have certificates.
Speaker: You had to have practicing qualifications.
Speaker: You had to have certain experience.
Speaker: People took you seriously because you were something.
Speaker: You had something to prove that you were good at your job.
Speaker: And photography, it's so opposite to that because you could pick up a camera tomorrow.
Speaker: And if you have the talent, you're going to be the best.
Speaker: You could be the best new creative ever.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But as you say, you don't have to make money from this either.
Speaker: I think that's the other thing that I've found that I want that has really stuck with me as I've started to create this hub is a lot of education can be a one size fits all.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that's totally fine.
Speaker: And it's probably a one size fits most.
Speaker: But we're not all trying to achieve the same end goal.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And I think that something I, because I also mentor photographers with their, on the business side.
Speaker: And something that I've really tried to embed in that mentoring process is...
Speaker: You have to decide where you're going.
Speaker: You can change it.
Speaker: You can change that goal.
Speaker: You can change that destination, but let's have a destination and let's map out what that means for you.
Speaker: What does it actually, what actually does your life look like?
Speaker: Do you have a FIFO spouse who's never around and you have really limited...
Speaker: Um, availability or like me, do you have someone at home who works nine to five and can pick up the kids whenever you need them?
Speaker: And you have like loads of flexibility, right?
Speaker: Do you have the kids at home all the time?
Speaker: Do you not have kids yet?
Speaker: Do you, are you going through health treatment?
Speaker: Are you going through fertility treatment?
Speaker: Like what is it?
Speaker: that's driving your business and what is it that you're trying to achieve because you have to work backwards from that in designing your business and I think what the problem sometimes with photographers is that we fall into it it snowballs from there yeah and that's wonderful
Speaker: But it also means that the business is like this runaway train that gets away from you.
Speaker: And it's hard to take pause.
Speaker: It's hard to stop and reassess and say, hold on.
Speaker: I haven't got any of my ducks in a row.
Speaker: I haven't got a contract.
Speaker: I haven't got a CRM.
Speaker: I don't know what I'm doing.
Speaker: Oh my God, I've got to shoot this afternoon.
Speaker: I completely forgot about it.
Speaker: I haven't told the client where they need to meet me.
Speaker: I haven't given them styling advice.
Speaker: It's so easy for that train to run away from you.
Speaker: And I think that having a community and a space to come and pause once a month is really helpful for people.
Speaker: And also to sit down with a mentor who will actually take you back to those basics and encourage you to write this out and nut it out and then do your numbers, reverse engineer your numbers.
Speaker: A lot of people will say,
Speaker: when you're setting your pricing just do your cost of business yeah and sure you need to know your cost of doing business but let's be honest photography is quite a cheap business to run we all get paid up front before we do the work and you don't need a lot of stuff yep
Speaker: And so cost of doing business is important, but it's only one part of that picture.
Speaker: You have to also look at your capacity.
Speaker: You have to look at where you work best, at what tipping point you get too tired or you're taking the joy out of your business.
Speaker: Then you have to pull the numbers backwards from that.
Speaker: It's a much more holistic picture than just do your cost of business and divide it by 12 and...
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: And I think it's also one of the things when we had a filming life retreat in 2019, we had Courtney's husband, who is the filming life CFO, and he's a big business brain.
Speaker: He did a talk on like pricing and profitability.
Speaker: And I think one of the most
Speaker: confronting things for everyone in the room.
Speaker: I know certainly for me, but it was the most incredible talk.
Speaker: Anyone that's going to do a similar thing at unfiltered retreats, anyone that's coming is going to love it.
Speaker: But he's, you know, this idea of going from your cost of doing business to work at your pricing that he's backwards.
Speaker: No, it is backwards.
Speaker: No company does that.
Speaker: You start from your profitability and then you work back to, and he's, and just that idea that, but
Speaker: What's the point of doing it if you're not being profitable?
Speaker: And what a lot of people forget to put a price on is their time.
Speaker: Like not just the time that you spend with the client shooting, but all of the other things, the time that you spend away from your family.
Speaker: That's invaluable.
Speaker: My dad used to say, if you're being paid $100 an hour, you don't do the $30 an hour jobs.
Speaker: That's what managers do.
Speaker: Managers have to work out who you're paying $100 an hour to do those big jobs and who you're paying $30 an hour to do the small jobs.
Speaker: And if you're the business owner, you need to work out where your time is valuably spent.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: being at home with your family is right up there so if you can outsource things if you can find ai or crms that can take a load of the work off you for pennies on the pound to put it in english it's so much it's a management mentality husband is talking about that it's
Speaker: It's a false economy to think, oh, I could just do that myself and it's free.
Speaker: It's not free.
Speaker: It's not free for you to do it yourself.
Speaker: There is a cost, as you say, with doing that.
Speaker: And we have to, I think one of the benefits of coming from a professional services firm is that my time was valued.
Speaker: In fact, my time was the only thing that had value.
Speaker: And I had to record every six minutes of my day what file I was working on and we'd build it.
Speaker: And so every six minutes of my time by the time I left was worth $770.
Speaker: Like I was charging $700 an hour.
Speaker: Now I wasn't charging that fabric, of course, that wasn't coming anywhere near my pocket.
Speaker: But I'm quite used to the idea that an hour of my time has significant value.
Speaker: And most of the time, women, because they are usually women who come from a...
Speaker: an office job career into motherhood, which is of course completely unpaid time.
Speaker: I'm working in the home for $0 an hour.
Speaker: The idea of pricing their time at $100 an hour is galling for them.
Speaker: They find it really, really, really struggle.
Speaker: They value in themselves at $100 an hour.
Speaker: Whereas for me, $100 an hour for my time seems very cheap to me.
Speaker: I think that's a very, I think you're getting a great deal.
Speaker: I think we all have to bring it back to that because ultimately, if you can't make $100 an hour working for yourself and bear in mind, it's not really a hundred because we've all got to pay the tax.
Speaker: We've all got to pay our super.
Speaker: We've all got to put money away for our business expenses.
Speaker: So really it's only $50 an hour, if that, that you're taking home.
Speaker: If we can't value our time at that, you really are better off going and getting an office job.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, that's true.
Speaker: And I think that's, it's one of the hardest things to wrap your head around when you start running a business.
Speaker: And I think a lot of it, particularly because most of the time,
Speaker: we're women that are running these businesses and it's hard for us to get out of that mindset of not valuing our time because often so much of what we do isn't valued society doesn't place value on a lot of what women do and that's a bigger issue than this podcast yes but it does you've got me on my soapbox now
Speaker: It does speak to one of the struggles I think that people do have when they start, that women have when they start a photography business is that there are those barriers that we have to break down.
Speaker: And I think you touched on outsourcing there and talking about how we tend to revert to, oh, I can just do it myself because it costs zero dollars.
Speaker: But that's in that mentality that our time costs nothing when really our time is really so valuable and one of the most valuable commodities that we've got within our business.
Speaker: How do you think that outsourcing can help with that and not only be something that takes the pressure off you, can it give you that opportunity to grow your business, do you think?
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely, Cam.
Speaker: And the TOG Hub is a really good example of this.
Speaker: So if you'd have spoken to me last November, I was drowning, I was fully booked, but drowning in editing work and photography work and all the admin and stuff like that.
Speaker: And I felt like I don't have time to find an assistant.
Speaker: And if you feel like that, you've left it too late.
Speaker: We need to be outsourcing before we get to that point.
Speaker: And I knew it and I could see it coming and I just had ignored all the lines.
Speaker: So
Speaker: In January, I deliberately pulled back my shoot capacity.
Speaker: I pulled back by about one shoot per week.
Speaker: I reduced it and I tried really hard to hold for that.
Speaker: I took on an assistant who is wonderful and I found her via a client of mine who she also works for.
Speaker: And I started speaking to a good friend of mine who is a designer.
Speaker: So she designs logos and does branding and all that.
Speaker: And I said to them, I've got this idea and I want to grow the TOG Hub.
Speaker: Between the 1st of April and the 1st of May have gone from zero on the contracts to launching the contract.
Speaker: In April, we also...
Speaker: rebranded toghub have launched toghub the website is almost done and that's in a month there is absolutely no way that I could have done that on my own first of all I can't design legos but put the skills aside even if I had the skills to do this there is absolutely no way that I could have got to where are we may yeah and have
Speaker: rebranded, launched a new product, be in the process of planning a workshop.
Speaker: I could not have done all of that while also, of course, running my photography business without outsourcing.
Speaker: There is no chance.
Speaker: So I think that you have to view it as you're purchasing more capacity.
Speaker: So there's a couple of ways that I personally would talk about outsourcing.
Speaker: Either you're buying back time
Speaker: So you have to put, again, you have to put a price on your time.
Speaker: You're buying back time with your family.
Speaker: You're buying back perhaps time for self-care.
Speaker: Or you're buying the ability to grow your business and push further.
Speaker: And all of these are valid reasons to outsource.
Speaker: So if you're somebody that wants to grow the million dollar business, you're going to have to outsource.
Speaker: If you're someone that is quite happy with a six figure business and you, but you want to work less and really embrace that lifestyle business, you can only really work less by automating, employing the use of AI or actually hiring somebody.
Speaker: And yeah, I absolutely think if you're feeling like you're drowning,
Speaker: you have got to put some boundaries in place to create time to outsource because outsourcing does take time to do properly.
Speaker: And you have to invest time at the front end in order to get an assistant who understands and who can actually help you.
Speaker: Because if you don't invest the time, then that assistant just cannot do their job.
Speaker: But I do really think that I can vouch for it myself.
Speaker: I could have continued this year just running my photography business
Speaker: And that would have been completely fine running it as I was.
Speaker: It was doing just fine.
Speaker: But in order to create the space to draft contracts, create the club tog, rebrand everything, build a new website, I could not do that alongside everything I already had to do in my photography business.
Speaker: The only way to do it was to hire people to do that for me.
Speaker: So outsourcing the rebrand, outsourcing my admin in the photography side,
Speaker: buy myself the time to grow this part will now fingers crossed generate for me that passive income that we all are looking for.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, yeah, I really think it's not only important to grow your business, but it's also important to facilitate the lifestyle business that you might want from your photography.
Speaker: So it depends what your goal is.
Speaker: Again, it goes back to designing that lifestyle for yourself.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Either way though, outsourcing is the way to do that.
Speaker: And you have to jump on it early.
Speaker: Otherwise it becomes another burden.
Speaker: It becomes another to-do list item.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think that's something that Courtney and I are working through at the moment.
Speaker: I don't really outsource much in my own business because I only run my, the photography side of my business.
Speaker: I only run that as a part-time, maybe even like a third time.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: a third of the time gig because the rest of my business is I am the person that is having other people outsource things to me.
Speaker: And so from that point of view, from having worked with other photographers and helping them, I can see how much of a difference that it makes for them.
Speaker: And it frees up time for them to be able to focus on other things that are going to make them more money or that allow them to get more into that bigger picture of building their business.
Speaker: But I
Speaker: On the other hand, with Filming Life, it's just Courtney and I that run it.
Speaker: And we are at that point now after five years where we're starting to go, okay, now we actually need to outsource some things.
Speaker: And so we're in that process of looking at what can we outsource and what will give Courtney and I back some time to not only
Speaker: grow filming life and unfiltered and to focus on those communities but that will also mean that we can do that sorry we can do that focusing on the communities without sacrificing time with our families and exactly being able to do everything yeah you also I think have to remember we have to check our egos a bit
Speaker: I'm not good at everything.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm just not.
Speaker: And honestly, I don't know how to run a business, particularly didn't do a business degree.
Speaker: I haven't got a history of entrepreneurship.
Speaker: This is my first go.
Speaker: And I fail like everybody else fails.
Speaker: I have things that don't quite go to plan or things where I've wasted time or things where I've had to redo it or technical issues that happen and
Speaker: I'm just as vulnerable to all of that as everybody else.
Speaker: First of all, the difference is your attitude to it.
Speaker: You just have to pick yourself up and try again.
Speaker: Second of all is choosing the right people to outsource to.
Speaker: So my virtual assistant, who is absolutely amazing, her skillset is practically the same as my skillset.
Speaker: We are very similar in how we communicate, how we work, how we like to receive feedback, the kind of jobs that we enjoy doing, the things that we're good at.
Speaker: That's been really good as a VA.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because it's easy to manage her because we have so many similarities.
Speaker: And also I'm very comfortable with sending things over and she's very comfortable receiving them because I can properly brief her.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: With my website design, with my rebrand design, with my accounting and bookkeeping, these are things that I'm absolutely useless at.
Speaker: completely useless I cannot design a camera tile to save my life I just I'm just not good at them and that's fine it's totally fine that I'm not good at those things what's important is that you recognize that somebody else can help you and the value that they bring to your business by doing that better than you can do it so I could sit here all day and design camera tiles and they would be all right yeah
Speaker: But I've wasted a day.
Speaker: I don't particularly like the outcome or for $60 an hour, I can hire my friend who will do a beautiful job for me.
Speaker: It takes the mental load away.
Speaker: It takes the stress away.
Speaker: It means I have a better product at the end of it.
Speaker: There are so many benefits and it's about acknowledging when you're, if you're in a C-suite, if you're in a corporate environment, you're,
Speaker: The whole point is that you have different people with different skillset.
Speaker: You don't have, the person who's at the top of the company can't do what people are doing at the level below.
Speaker: They're not supposed to, their job is to manage that.
Speaker: Their job is to recognize what they're good at, recognize what they're not good at, understand this conscious incompetence.
Speaker: And like, as long as you're conscious of the things you're not good at, you can find a way to deal with them, surround yourself with the people that are good at it.
Speaker: Pay them their hourly rate and everyone benefits.
Speaker: Everything will benefit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I think that's probably one of the things that probably makes the club dog so valuable is that sometimes it can be hard to like recognize those things and find it and then find the people.
Speaker: to do those things for you.
Speaker: So having this, your, your monthly co-working space means that you can get together and you can talk to other people about those things.
Speaker: And sometimes we don't even know what's out there.
Speaker: And so having that opportunity that you bring people together so that you can talk about those things and find you as I think that's just, I think it's a really awesome thing that you're doing.
Speaker: And I think there's probably a lot of photographers out there listening, thinking, gosh, I wish I had that.
Speaker: Yeah, I hope so.
Speaker: Look, we'll take over the world one day.
Speaker: It's coming to wherever you are.
Speaker: Talk to me and we'll get it set up.
Speaker: So one of the last things that we've been asking people, we're almost at the end, is what's one thing you wish you'd known when you were first starting out?
Speaker: I think that kind of comes back to some of the things we've been talking about.
Speaker: But is there one thing that you really wish you'd known?
Speaker: Like if you strip away all the other noise, what's the one thing?
Speaker: I found this question really difficult to answer because to flip it slightly, I'm really glad I didn't know about all the other photographers that were out there.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I'm almost glad for the naivety that I had.
Speaker: I really think if I'd known too much, I wouldn't have done it.
Speaker: I would have been too scared to do it.
Speaker: And that's actually one of the downsides of Club Tog is if you are a really new photographer,
Speaker: It's a huge benefit sitting across the table from all these people running the business you want to run.
Speaker: But it's also quite intimidating because there's a lot of work that you have to do and a lot of time that has to pass to get you there.
Speaker: So it's not that there's one thing I wish I'd known.
Speaker: I'm glad that I did it the way that I did it.
Speaker: I suppose I wish I'd had...
Speaker: I wish when I'd started out, I'd viewed it as a business because when I started five years ago, I had absolutely no intention of this being a business.
Speaker: So for two and a half years, I didn't charge.
Speaker: I didn't, I didn't invest in any education because it wasn't, I didn't take it seriously enough because it wasn't ever intended to be a business for me.
Speaker: I never intended to leave law.
Speaker: I just wanted to pay for more kit.
Speaker: I just wanted more lenses and stuff.
Speaker: So I suppose I wish I'd,
Speaker: appreciated more that this is a legitimate career.
Speaker: So I come from a background of corporate family, real jobs in quote marks.
Speaker: The idea that you would
Speaker: quit all of that and tear up your degrees and whatever and be a photographer like it seemed completely mad I wish I had known that not only is this a beautiful hobby it can be a really lucrative and really legitimate business yeah and I wish I had taken it seriously earlier because um
Speaker: I mean, everyone says, I wish I'd started when I was 20.
Speaker: I wish I'd started before I had kids.
Speaker: I would have had so much time.
Speaker: And you can't turn back the clock.
Speaker: But I think I spent a lot of time not studying, not really focusing on learning.
Speaker: craft on my craft and honing my craft and creating that brand.
Speaker: And I didn't use social media in the way that I could have used social media.
Speaker: It would have propelled me much faster if I had done that.
Speaker: But at the same time, I wouldn't change it.
Speaker: It was what it was.
Speaker: And all of that time working in law firms then gives me all of these skills, which are so different to most photographers.
Speaker: I have all these skills and insights and soft skills that most photographers don't have, which has now put me in a position where
Speaker: I've found myself in this great community in this position that I'm able to both have a creative business and do something a little bit more corporate-y with it, like focus on the business side of stuff.
Speaker: So I wouldn't necessarily change it.
Speaker: But yeah, I think I just wish I'd known that this was possible.
Speaker: And I didn't follow enough photographers who showed that it was possible.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: That's cool.
Speaker: You are going to be joining us at Unfiltered Retreat later in the year in August.
Speaker: It's coming up very quickly.
Speaker: Not quickly enough for me.
Speaker: No, I know.
Speaker: It's that kind of pool between.
Speaker: I just want to be like there at it, just hanging out because it's going to be so amazing.
Speaker: But at the same time, there's still a lot to be done.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: For anyone that's heard about Unfiltered and has maybe been on the fence, we do still have a few tickets left.
Speaker: So hit the website, all the information's on there.
Speaker: It's going to be amazing.
Speaker: But I just wanted to ask you, Stacey, what are you most excited about for Unfiltered Retreat?
Speaker: Oh, I am excited for the creativity to flow.
Speaker: So you've probably realized hearing me talk for however long we've talked for and
Speaker: I'm quite a rigid person.
Speaker: I'm a rule follower.
Speaker: The thing I really struggle with in my business is playfulness.
Speaker: And I'm a playful person.
Speaker: When you come to a shoot with me, I'm silly and I play with the kids and I love that.
Speaker: but I'm not playful with my camera anymore.
Speaker: And I really miss it.
Speaker: So since turning it into a business, I really have, it stifled my creativity a bit.
Speaker: As soon as Unfiltered came out, I knew, I knew I wanted to do it.
Speaker: I'd done the Keepsake filming challenge with you guys, which was just amazing.
Speaker: And I love doing, I love dabbling in film.
Speaker: It's certainly not my primary part of my business, but I love adding it here and there.
Speaker: And I am so excited to come and immerse myself in a creative environment.
Speaker: But the thing I was most excited about was that you seem to have rules around the creativity, you have projects going on.
Speaker: So you're going to actually, and to me, a rule follower, I'm like, oh, projects to enhance my creativity, that bit.
Speaker: I was like, yes, I'm so excited.
Speaker: I'm excited to hear Chloe Lodge speak.
Speaker: in particular yeah I'm just I'm very excited about the creative side of it I want I can't wait to see what it unleashes for me yeah I've taken a lot more time this year to do creative shoots another part of reigning in my shoot schedule this year was to give myself that time to to do free shoots that I wanted to do and I've done a few and every single time they're the one on my social media they get the biggest response and I need more of that I need more of that
Speaker: creative flow through my body and it's that is by far the thing that I'm worst at in my business is embracing it because I always sacrifice the creative flow in favor of efficiency and yeah
Speaker: something solid and so I'm very excited that Unfiltered is going to help me unleash that a little bit more.
Speaker: Yeah that's when we sat down to talk about what did we want because a lot of the people that are coming have had businesses for a long time and we spoke about what are the challenges that people start to have after they've been in business for a few years and that's one of the big things is that the more you start to shoot for other people the less you shoot for yourself and it's you don't have that same joy in it.
Speaker: So we wanted to create something that was going to be really beneficial to people in business.
Speaker: So we've got talks that will be really focused on business things.
Speaker: But then on the other side of that, we really wanted to give people that time and I guess permission to
Speaker: to get back to what they really loved about photography or filmmaking at the start and to play with it and to just create for the sake of creating, not because it's going to make you money or it's going to be part of your business.
Speaker: And for me, that's probably what I'm most excited about because that's where I get my real joy.
Speaker: And what you said about creativity with rules and things, I think.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: One of the things that I'm very big on, and I'll be talking about this at the retreat, is setting limitations for limitless creativity, really.
Speaker: And I think you're going to enjoy it.
Speaker: I think everyone will enjoy it.
Speaker: So yeah, it's going to be really amazing.
Speaker: We can't wait.
Speaker: Like I said, all of the information about the retreat is on the website at unfiltered.au.
Speaker: And yeah, we really hope that you'll join us for it because it's going to be amazing.
Speaker: You'll get to hang out with Stacey and I and a whole bunch of other, oh yes, I'll be at the bar with you.
Speaker: A whole bunch of other photographers that are all just amazing in their own right, both the speakers that we have and our attendees, like everybody that's going to be there.
Speaker: It's going to be a really amazing group.
Speaker: Like I said, there's a few tickets left, so jump onto the website.
Speaker: But thank you so much for chatting with us today, Stacey.
Speaker: It's been really lovely.
Speaker: Thank you for having me.
Speaker: Oh, it's been a joy.
Speaker: I hope I hope I did it justice.
Speaker: You did.
Speaker: You did.
Speaker: Well, thank you for joining us.
Speaker: And yeah, all of the details about what Stacey does and what we've chatted about today will be on the website in the podcast show notes.
Speaker: And we'll see.
Speaker: We'll talk to you next time.
Speaker: See ya.
