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Episode 59: How to Scale a Business - Ryan & Jake, Freedom Edits
145 Plays5 years ago
Want to grow your wedding business to 25 events a year?
What about 50?
What about 250?
Today I am chatting with Jake and Ryan, the founders of Freedom Edits, the outsourcing solution for photographers and videographers who want their lives back. But before they started Freedom, they were photographers who grew their wedding photography business to about 250 weddings a year.
So, of course, I wanted to know how they were able to grow their business to that volume. As you can imagine, a lot of it had to do with hiring and outsourcing. We talk about how they used similar strategies to scale Freedom, and what they’ve learned along the way.
For the show notes, check out https://daveyandkrista.com/btb-freedom-edits-episode-59/.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Background
00:00:05
Speaker
And we really want to be able to be just investing in your business and your growth as you are. So having that kind of initial time and getting to know you and getting to know your business and where you want to be, as well as obviously showing us your editing style, that's hugely important for us. Welcome to the Brands That Book Show, where we help creative service-based businesses build their brands and find more clients. I'm your host, Davy Jones.
Scaling the Photography Business
00:00:35
Speaker
Today I'm chatting with Jake and Ryan, the founders of Freedom Edits, the outsourcing solution for photographers and videographers who want their lives back. But before they started Freedom, they were photographers who grew their wedding photography business to about 250 weddings a year. So of course, I wanted to know how they were able to grow their business to that volume. As you can imagine, a lot of it had to do with hiring and outsourcing. We talk about how they use similar strategies to scale freedom and what they've learned along the way.
00:01:04
Speaker
Before we get to the episode, I have a request. If you enjoyed the Brands That Book podcast, would you take a minute to rate and review the podcast on iTunes? Doing so will help this podcast get more visibility, and it would mean a lot to me. Be sure to check out the show notes at davianchrista.com for the resources we mentioned during the episode. And like I said, I want to hear from you.
00:01:23
Speaker
Let me know what kind of content you'd like to see on the Brands to Book podcast as we move forward.
Managing a Global Business
00:01:27
Speaker
You can let us know over the Davey and Christa Facebook page by sending us a message or you could also send us a DM on Instagram at DaveyandChrista. Now, on to the episode.
00:01:43
Speaker
I am here with Jake and Ryan, the founders of Freedom Edits. It's an image editing service. They actually also edit videos as well. So if you're looking to outsource any of that, these are the guys to talk to. But I'm excited to have them here on the podcast today because we're gonna be talking about how they got started, how they started their respective photography businesses, but then also talk about Freedom Edits a bit as well. So welcome, guys. Thanks for having us.
00:02:05
Speaker
Yeah, so you guys are across the pond, as they say. So it's probably what, late afternoon over there? Yeah, so it's 3pm here, I'm guessing it's morning for you. Awesome. And I know you'll work with a ton of people in the United States as well. How does that work with the time change? You guys work in just extended hours?
00:02:21
Speaker
Yeah. So we kind of like do some kind of shifts and later evenings and things like that. Yeah. All our account handlers that do video calls with customers, they tend to do like three later shifts a week and then a couple of earlier ones. Cause we work with a lot of Australian clients as well.
Founders' Journeys into Photography
00:02:34
Speaker
Yeah. It is a bit of a, it's a bit of a struggle tackling all those time zones. Yeah. I mean, that is very expansive in terms of time zones. You know, you got Australia, you got the United States. That's awesome. Well, anyways, Jake and Ryan, I'd love to hear a little bit about y'all's background, how y'all
00:02:50
Speaker
met each other and how that led to freedom edits, but also just how you got started in photography to begin with. So I guess I'll go on my little journey first. So I started photography when I was in high school. So back when I was 16, something like that. And during that time, I just kind of did the examinations and stuff, I guess you call them here, and the qualifications to do that.
00:03:12
Speaker
and then i went to college to do it university here depends where you're from and i was in photography for six months and just kind of i wasn't in the groove of the education side of things anymore and a formalized education so i kind of just decided after six months to leave university and
00:03:28
Speaker
spread my wings and do it my own way so i go straight into getting i put like a i rented a high street studio i kind of went try to go pretty big at the blocks i guess you could say and yeah so that's kind of worked out and we i grew wind photography business from there started doing portrait photography
00:03:46
Speaker
I kind of did anything and everything for a while until i decide to focus on weddings and that's when i met ryan yes i've got a really similar story to check actually so study shooting weddings done as 16 did a couple of college evening courses and things like that and i actually did a degree in fashion and advertising photography which is really interesting.
00:04:06
Speaker
As soon as I graduated, kind of launched my business, had a bit of a quite a small studio and kind of to client consults and stuff like that there. But was very kind of focused on the wedding industry from the beginning, I guess. Yeah. Kind of managed to go to the business. So kind of the, how we then kind of started working together, I guess, was that I'd been running my business maybe three or four years and you maybe two, would you say about two years? And yeah, we kind of met and we're actually related somehow. There's like a very tenuous link somewhere about how we're related.
Strategies for High Volume Weddings
00:04:36
Speaker
Yeah and then jake kind of like we kind of joined forces i guess kind of just focused on the one business which is really exciting and we managed to go back to about two hundred weddings a year to we did about two fifty i think the year before last that's incredible yeah that was a that was an interesting journey yeah for sure and i wanna i wanna hear a little bit more about how you'll
00:04:53
Speaker
or manage to scale your business to 250 weddings a year. Jake, I do feel like you probably, you just sort of left out a part of your story though, it sounds like. You just went, you went from leaving university and then you just went straight into leasing a studio. Like how did that work? Did you take out a loan to do that? Did you, like what was the thought process on like, okay, well, I'm just, I'm gonna leave school. Were you already running a business in order to like sustain this business that you were starting? Like what did that look like?
00:05:23
Speaker
Yeah, so I was I was essentially kind of had a wedding photography element to my business. I was doing that sort of probably like five wedding zero or something around around that amount, doing some portraits and basically taking in whatever I could. I was also working a part time job. And I was going to full time college. And then I found out I had a I had a baby on the way. So kind of things changed from that moment I found that I decided that you know, I just got a kind of
00:05:49
Speaker
while i've got this small avenue of freedom i need to kind of take this chance and take the take the risk while i can really so yeah i basically just took it alone rented that studio out and
00:06:00
Speaker
Yeah, decided to try and expand as much as I could. Yeah, and things so things sort of fell into place though. I mean, obviously, you all built a successful photography business. But from when you started it, how did you find those first few clients? So first few clients on the wedding photography side of things or photography side of things, it was very much I tried everything and anything like, you know, Facebook referrals has always been a massive part of any business we've ever done. And the kind of the biggest key to get into 250 weddings, but
00:06:27
Speaker
In the small stages, I'd say there's something what I consider or what I call like a power base and just like activating that power base, which is talking to all the people you know in any kind of position, whether it's family or whether it's someone who works at a particular company where there could be potential to work with them and just sort of work as much as you can to be able to chat to as many different people and create as many connections as possible. That's where I sort of started.
00:06:53
Speaker
That's such valuable advice, because I think especially when we start a business, a lot of people are so nervous about sharing with people what they're doing, maybe out of fear rejection or something like that. But a lot of people that I talked to on the podcast, that's what they do is, you know, to get to get started and really to build that referral base, they just tell everybody that they know, and then things go
Client Base and Networking
00:07:12
Speaker
from there.
00:07:12
Speaker
Yeah i think one of the things i think both of us are really useful as well as when you shoot in those kind of like two three four five weddings a year is gonna be maximizing on each of those weddings you know so it's like about point you should really have the time to reach out to every single vendor that was.
00:07:27
Speaker
working that wedding and share free images with them, you know, and kind of really network to your best of your ability whilst you've got the time and you're in that position where you can do that. And that's something that we find quite difficult now to do, just because of the sheer kind of like volume of stuff happening. Also a lot of the time to be completely honest.
00:07:43
Speaker
But yeah kind of when you're shooting those smaller numbers just really maximize on every single vendor that was at that wedding and kind of just bending over backwards really I guess to do whatever you can for them. Whether that's shooting some promo images on the wedding day for them specifically or some head shots or something you know just kind of like working your butt off to do everything you can.
00:07:58
Speaker
Yeah, and that's such a smart idea. I mean, especially if you could reach out to vendors in advance of the wedding and line some of those things up. I always thought that photographers had it easy when it came to marketing in that respect because, you know, every – the proof of the wedding day, right, comes through the photographer. Yeah, everybody wants the pictures. Exactly, exactly. So, Ryan, you had graduated with a degree in fashion and advertising. You were already shooting at the time as well. Did you ever do, you know, I guess fashion photography? Was that ever
00:08:27
Speaker
Not like commercially. Obviously, I did whilst I was at uni or college or whatever. I don't think I ever got paid for that.
00:08:36
Speaker
So it was always weddings from there on out. Yeah, it was weddings. I mean, like, throughout uni, I started the business in 2009, which was my first year of university and kind of just started shooting weddings throughout. So to be honest, by the time I graduated, I was kind of shooting maybe 20, 30 weddings a year, I think. So I was able to kind of almost slip into it full time. I did have a part time job for about six
Trust and Early Career Challenges
00:08:56
Speaker
months, I think, after graduating.
00:08:57
Speaker
And then I got fired from that, decided this is the moment. Sure. And both of you all started your photography business as relatively young. It sounds like either in college or maybe even right before. Is that right? Yeah. How did you all get people to trust you at that age? I was literally thinking about this the other day actually. I'm fairly certain that part of the success of my business, especially early on, was that
00:09:23
Speaker
You know, people would be at these weddings and they'd see like this kid running around with a camera and they'd be like, you know, look at that guy. He's still in school doing photos at someone's wedding. That's really fun. And everything was really laid back and chilled. And, you know, I gave them a really good experience on the day and it was very much about not just my couples having fun or me having fun, but like the entire wedding party, you know.
00:09:42
Speaker
And then so they'd have a great time on the wedding day and then they see the images afterwards and kind of be like i see that kid actually took really great photos and i think that kind of if you put a photographer that was maybe like ten years older than me and my images next to each other they probably look fairly similar or mine would be quite as good but because i look so young they will actually he's really good surprise me.
00:10:04
Speaker
But yeah, and I think that kind of element of surprise really worked into my favor. Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, I know that there's a ton of people out there. We have a couple friends who started their businesses in high school. And I always thought to myself, just how did how did you get people to trust you at that age? I think confidence is surely a big part of it as well. You know, sure, you know, like being able to just look someone in the eye and tell them, I listen, I can take your wedding photos, you know, is probably a big, a big part of that. You know, whether that was false confidence or not, I'm not sure looking back.
00:10:32
Speaker
Yeah, it certainly worked. I'm sure that I'm sure that worked. Yeah, I mean, yeah, like we didn't really shoot many weddings for free kind of when we first started. I didn't anyway, I think I shot my uncle's wedding was the first wedding I shot and I probably did that for free. Yeah, I don't know. It just always worked out.
00:10:46
Speaker
Yeah, that's great. One of the reasons I ask is because especially now, just looking at the landscape of people choosing college or trade school or doing something altogether different and starting a business, I think more now than ever, doing something other than college is a real choice for people instead of taking on thousands of dollars in student debt to go to college.
Scaling through Associates and Outsourcing
00:11:08
Speaker
I don't know exactly how it is over there, but
00:11:11
Speaker
I know here in the United States, schools can, especially private schools, can result in hundreds of thousands of dollars in student debt. So, it's awesome that you all started your businesses in school or shortly before. I do want to start talking about, and this is probably what everybody's thinking and wants to know about, so we'll finally get to this question, but how did you scale your business? You know, because a single person, right, could probably shoot maybe 50 weddings in a year.
00:11:36
Speaker
you know, maybe I mean, just looking at how many weekends there are, I guess, if you shot triple headers every, every weekend. So I'm guessing that which sounds absolutely awful. Oh, yeah, I mean, just terrible. I mean, like nobody, like when you get into business, you think there's going to be this element of business, right? So I doubt there's many photographers out there who are like, Yeah, I want to shoot triple or quadruple headers, so I can hit, you know, 200 weddings. But at the same time, you know, 200 250 weddings, I mean, that's great volume too. So how did you all end up scaling your business?
00:12:07
Speaker
To two hundred two hundred fifty weddings was it two hundred fifty between the two of you did you all have a team what did that look like yes by the time we got to maybe a hundred and fifty plus there is definitely that's when we gonna launch associate team.
00:12:19
Speaker
So at that point, we probably had five or six photographers that kind of, we didn't employ directly, we just paid them on a per job basis. So that's kind of how we were able to manage that kind of volume. So I was probably shooting about 50 weddings on my own when kind of we kind of joined forces. And then we got to about 75 with the two of us. And then we kind of, we bought in another full time studio manager who also shot weddings. And then by the time we got to like 100, 150, that's when we started bringing in kind of team members then.
00:12:48
Speaker
So yeah, that studio manager was really key to us being able to take that volume from say 100 plus just because of the amount of admin. And we kind of just realized that the things that we were spending our time on were necessarily growing the business at that time. As such, that studio manager was really able to take over a lot of that day to day admin, like contracts and payments, and I'm just making sure the accounts were all kind of taken care of and all that kind of stuff, you know, like designing albums and shipping stuff and, you know, all that kind of day to day admin, which really then enabled us to focus on that.
00:13:18
Speaker
additional growth after the after the point that we got to a hundred weddings. The thing i would say is that you can always scale like a hundred weddings on referrals and to like your power base or fan base or whatever it was that jake called it then but then that hundred plus is really where you need to start employing those kind of bigger business tactics.
00:13:36
Speaker
you know so we really start focusing on facebook ads and seo and all that kind of stuff where is up until that point you know obviously we were working on seo and that's something that we were doing and blogging as part of our business strategy but realistically you know we it's not something that we really kind of like we're hitting hard at the time which we knew that to get to the volume that we really wanted to get to we really we really have to focus on.
00:13:57
Speaker
For people who are interested in scaling their business, and it sounds like so most of the people that were shooting for you were independent contractors. So basically, you know, they showed up with maybe even their own gear. Yeah, they showed up with their own gear off their own back sort of thing, I guess. Sure. But beyond that, like if you had to tell people
00:14:13
Speaker
who are interested in scaling their business to that amount, what's the first step that they should take in order to do that? Let's say they already have a pretty good base volume and so it's really just going to that next level. Would it be hiring somebody? Would it be SEO? What would you recommend people focus on? What kind of story is a classic case of just removing yourself from the business so you stop working
00:14:35
Speaker
in it and start working on it. It's just one of those classic, you know, everyone says it all the time, but it is just something that like really did happen. And once we removed ourselves from the day to day and started working on those bigger strategies, it made a lot more sense. So I think having someone being able to take over a lot of that kind of workflow for you or a lot of those day to day tasks is a huge, important step.
00:14:55
Speaker
Even when we had a studio manager, at the time we were still outsourcing edit, then we were outsourcing as much of that workflow as we possibly could, just to really streamline. When we first started and we were shooting 50, 60 weddings a year, everyone was getting their images within about two, three weeks of the wedding date, which was probably another reason why our referral rate was so high. It's because everything was very quick. By the time they came up with Honeymoon, they had their images, they had a pre-design of their wedding album, they had all that stuff in their inbox waiting
00:15:23
Speaker
for them. So yeah, I think kind of if you're not in a place where you could you can hire someone or you don't really feel confident in hiring someone, then definitely like outsourcing as much as you can. That might be a VA that's just kind of organizing shipping and doing accounts for you just to give you a day a week where you can just focus on strategy.
00:15:39
Speaker
or it might be bringing in a studio manager whatever that kind of looks like and whatever you're confident in. I definitely wouldn't feel confident sitting here and saying, if you want to scale your business, then you need to hire a studio manager tomorrow because that's the only way you're going to be able to do it because it isn't. Somebody could scale their business doing all the editing to 100 weddings a year probably if they didn't want a social life.
00:16:00
Speaker
that certainly wasn't the case for 19 year old Ryan. Sure. Sure.
Freedom Edits Origin and Market Gap
00:16:04
Speaker
Yeah, no, I think that's really good advice as far as especially hiring a VA, you know, sort of dipping your toe in the water when it comes to testing out managing somebody and it gives you a really good opportunity to start like documenting those systems within your business as well, which I think is something that really helped us beforehand, you know, we were the only people that really knew
00:16:22
Speaker
where everything lived and where everything should be located and how everything worked within the business and everything was kind of pieced together. But bringing in a studio manager or outsourced and some of our work really made us streamline those aspects and kind of get a really good system in place. So even the stuff like you go into a folder for each wedding and they all look exactly the same. We've all got the exact subfolders, we know where the raw images are, we know where the final Lightroom catalog is. If anybody is looking for anything in the business, they know where to go and get it.
00:16:50
Speaker
and if you're trying to scale a business that's exactly what you need. You need that level of consistency in everything that you do, whether that's your marketing or whether that's just your day-to-day organization on a top level. That really is key. So how do you all record your systems? Do you mostly put that in Google Drive or something like that where it's easily...
00:17:09
Speaker
Yeah, awesome. There's a ton of videos and stuff in there as well for other stuff, but it's mostly Google Docs. Yeah, Chris has had a lot of success with that training our own employees and people and independent contractors that we work with, just recording videos real quick, dropping them into a shared folder. And then that way, anybody who comes along that needs to do that task can watch that video and have a pretty good sense of what needs to be done. And there's obviously still feedback that needs to be given and things like that, for the most part, really does automate training to a certain extent. Yeah, we just have like a standard Google Sheet that just links out to everything.
00:17:39
Speaker
So you kind of just like search that and kind of define exactly what you need, theoretically anyway. Yeah, that's a great idea. Not always the case. So I do want to start talking about the whole image editing side of things and kind of the rise of freedom edits, because you just mentioned that you all were outsourcing your editing. So I'm guessing that something wasn't good enough there.
00:18:01
Speaker
you know, when you were outsourcing your editing to lead you all to, to create your own company around image editing outsourcing. So what did that look like? Kind of how did this idea for freedom edits come to be?
00:18:13
Speaker
So we were outsourcing everything, everything possible, and how that was kind of working was I was taking most of that stuff and sending it off and taking it back and handing all the workflow of that. Now, we tried, I would say, every... Yeah, it was at least five. Yeah, almost every kind of company out there. We've kind of dabbled in all of them and used them and put them inside our workflow at some point in time.
00:18:35
Speaker
And what we always found is we were always like, oh, this is missing or that is missing. And then we'd go and try something else because that we needed, they were essential pieces. It wasn't like these tiny little nice to hats were missing. So we did that over, you know, five or so businesses before we just kind of sat there one day and we were super frustrated. We were like, what, where can we find what we need? Like, what is it that we need? And we just started, it just didn't exist, right? That was the problem is we would sit there and say, right, this is like the list of things that that company needs to do.
00:19:05
Speaker
And it was either the company didn't offer it or they wouldn't be flexible enough to offer it for us. And I think the biggest frustration point there was that we were a big company at the time, realistically, you know, compared to probably 99% of their clients. Sure. But they still wouldn't be a tiny bit flexible to, you know, accommodate the things that we needed that would really kind of help our workflow and enable us to grow. So it was, I remember it pretty vividly. It was super late at night. And we were sat there and we had, I think it was like always late at night.
00:19:34
Speaker
There's like four edits or so came back and we were looking through and they just weren't consistent. They weren't consistent between the images inside a single wedding, let alone the images, you know, wedding to wedding to wedding. And we just started firing off that list to each other like, what if I had this or what if this company had that or after doing that searching for so long and realizing that nothing was out there, we just thought, you know, maybe it is time we do something about this. And to be honest, like the business started
00:20:01
Speaker
Probably selfishly trying to create something for ourselves. Yeah, that's awesome. So as you're trying to figure out how to put all these pieces together, I mean, you're still running a business that is doing 200, 250 weddings a year. So I gotta imagine, even if you're outsourcing stuff, that it's not like you have a ton of free time, right? So I guess what are the first steps that you took to create this company? I guess that's one of my questions that I'm thinking right now. And then another one would be just what are some of these
00:20:30
Speaker
things that you were looking for in an editing company that weren't being provided to you all. The first step we took was we just hired a couple of editors. That was kind of us. We took the leap. Yeah, we just took the leap and we just hired a couple of people that we knew would be great at the job. At that point, we didn't have any clients except for ourselves. But you had the volume that it probably made it worth it, right? So I think we took those editors on. Was it like March time would have been March, April, the one year?
00:20:59
Speaker
And we knew we were going into our busiest season, so we would have the work to kind of the volume to kind of make best use of their time, so to speak. Yeah, we kind of just trained them up on our own work to kind of get that to the level that we wanted it from from a consistency point of view. And then we just, I mean, in terms of those first few clients that we got, I guess we really just, we kind of just based it around how we got our first clients in the photography business. Now we look back at it, right? We were just
00:21:24
Speaker
told all the photographers we knew about it, we sent gifts out and little kind of thoughtful items to photographers that we idolized at the time, you know, that we really wanted to be a part of what we were creating.
Consistency and Service Quality
00:21:34
Speaker
And we just kind of made people aware that we existed, I guess is probably the best way to describe that.
00:21:39
Speaker
Yeah, to be honest, I think a lot of those first photographers kind of just onboarded with us to just be nice, you know, that they've gone through the effort of kind of reaching out to me or doing this or sending me this or doing that. And they kind of said, yeah, I'll book a call with you and kind of see how it goes and send a couple of weddings. And the feedback we got was that a lot of them had
00:21:59
Speaker
tried outsourcing before you know that they used a couple of the companies that we'd used and decided it wasn't for them because they couldn't get the edits right and they wouldn't take the time to learn how they or use their preset which is something that we do or you know that there was there was always that level of apprehension I guess but then when we were able to show them like the quality of edit that we could achieve.
00:22:19
Speaker
you know, they were really blown away. And they just kind of kept sending stuff, which was amazing. And then it all just kind of spiraled and offer funerals. Yeah, I probably missed a lot of your questions. And I'm so sorry. No, no, it's okay. I got plenty of follow up. So we're gonna spend some time here. So at what point did you all realize, okay, this, you know, there's something here that we're offering that other companies are and you're starting to get really good feedback. And when you started this company, or when you hire those editors, did you hire them under your photography business at the time? Or did you start a new business right off the bat?
00:22:49
Speaker
Like did you start freedom from that, like starting there? We started freedom kind of right off the bat, just for tax purposes. I'm completely honest. So yeah, we started freedom right off the bat and those initial editors that we did bring in worked for freedom straight away here. Yeah, awesome. And so going back to what are some of the things that you all were trying to, what are some of the problems that you were trying to solve with freedom that other companies just weren't
00:23:19
Speaker
you know, doing. I mean, realistically, the consistency was a huge problem just between weddings that you'd upload your before and afters, or you'd upload 10 portfolio images, and then you get a wedding back. And you kind of just think like, how did you even get that from 10 images that I've showed you? We had a preset at the time that they wouldn't use, or like a couple wouldn't use than other companies would. And just a lot of the time, we really just wanted to be able to pick up the phone and speak to somebody, you know, and just speak to the person that was
Onboarding and Client Satisfaction
00:23:45
Speaker
edit in our work or maybe not even that but just somebody that we could explain that frustration you know i think sometimes trying to write stuff in an email via screen grabs and videos is just really difficult you just need to like have a face to face conversation so when we start reading that was the first thing that was on the top of that list was like an onboarding consultation you know like somebody and as soon as we thought about it was very much like this is such an easy. Problem to solve that we couldn't understand why nobody else was offering it.
00:24:13
Speaker
It was definitely one of those light bulb moments, I guess, where you just think, this is just going to make everybody who's involved lives easier. If they could just jump on a video conversation, I can just show you how I edit. I can just show you how I crop. I can show you how I use my preset. And yeah, that takes about 45 minutes, half an hour initially. But that investment, it would have saved us hours and hours of reedits and going back and forth over not just one wedding, but over every wedding. We were sending every wedding back at the time to be reedited.
00:24:43
Speaker
Whereas now, you know, our re-edit rate is so low because we have all that information and we just have that all documented for all of our photographers. Yeah, and I imagine that if something does have to be re-edited, it's not like every wedding has to. It's like... No, no, no, it's just odd. Yeah, it's kind of like an odd thing or... And it's very much like, you know, the couple portrait. You just make things a little bit warmer or, you know, it's just kind of really mind tweaks that don't really take us that long. I wouldn't say that I have an idea. This is always going to be that subjectivity, right?
00:25:09
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know every editing company out there but I'm pretty sure that your company is the only one I know where, you know, you can pick up the phone and talk to somebody. Certainly, yours is the only one I know where you do the video consult with everybody at the beginning. Yeah, I'm pretty sure we're still the only one. Pretty sure. And that's so interesting because a company like yours, right? I mean, just to scale to, you know, where you want to scale, I could see why a company would not want to include those things because they require people's time. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:25:37
Speaker
And a lot of it is that a lot of the other companies is all just kind of outsourced and nobody really knows where that stuff is going. So I'm guessing that's why it becomes problematic. But a ton of the people that work for us are all based in the UK and there are actually people here to
00:25:55
Speaker
do those things you know like to have calls with people. Yeah and the trade-off right though is that you save so much time down the road because you take the time to do these things. That's the time investment. Yeah so it's questionable whether some of these other companies save any time because they're probably re-editing more weddings and because of this consistency problem.
00:26:13
Speaker
We always say that constant back and forth that they have to deal with must just be exhausting.
Business Partnership and Client Growth
00:26:18
Speaker
It just must be a nightmare, which is something that we don't really have. We have some really particular clients, don't get me wrong, that require a lot more back and forth and a lot more sample images and all that kind of stuff, but that just comes with the territory. One of the things we've always said is that
00:26:36
Speaker
If we're on a Skype call, the benefit is that you can put on an order form. I want these images to look medium warm, but that means a different thing to everybody. If we're just watching you edit, we can just see what you mean by medium warm.
00:27:00
Speaker
And then we just kind of like translate that into our own language, like what that means internally. And then we just keep that kind of documented. And that's just how it is. And, you know, it just works really smoothly. It's a, it's a lovely process now. I think one of the biggest things of, with
00:27:14
Speaker
with the video call as well is that outsourcing is such a big part of your business. Some people really struggle to hand off edits and hand off that portion of their business, and I completely get that. I think the reason why some people are worried about that is because a lot of companies out there, you are literally just handing it off and it's coming back. You don't know who it's going to. Exactly.
00:27:34
Speaker
But we see ourselves as a partner in people's businesses, and we really want to be able to be just invested in your business and your growth as you are. So having that kind of initial time and getting to know you and getting to know your business and where you want to be, as well as obviously you've shown us your editing style, that's hugely important for us. I think people really appreciate that relationship that they have with their cat handlers with us.
00:27:55
Speaker
It's definitely one of our biggest referral drivers, 100%. So when people come in, they actually have an account manager that they're going to be dealing with on a consistent basis. So it's not every time they call, they're talking to somebody else.
00:28:08
Speaker
No, so we offer like two levels of service. So we do monthly subscriptions where people say, and they're all custom. So it's not like an unlimited plan that's a set amount. So each photographer has a different plan. So they'll say, I'm shooting 30 weddings extra, I deliver a thousand images, and then we just kind of calculate how much that would cost and divide it by 12, which gives them a monthly fee.
00:28:27
Speaker
And they have like one person that they speak to every single time and those are installed inside out so there's photographers that are maybe like a little bit more particular and a really kind of like consistency driven we definitely recommend that that's the route that they go down because they just have that one person that controls everything for them and then we have people that should maybe like five ten weddings a year that just.
00:28:49
Speaker
don't really want that level of commitment because there is a minimum investment with the monthly fees. We keep all that information from the Skype call documented and we don't have really any issues with that. They're generally happy with what they're receiving, but we find that the people that are shooting a bit more of a higher volume, they have some more intricacies in how they do things or how they want things sent back.
00:29:11
Speaker
which is where the monthly plan and that kind of account handler level is really useful for them. What I keep hearing from you all is that there's so many things that you guys do on a personal level that you just typically don't find with businesses at scale, if that makes sense. I think one of the things we've been quite good at is figuring out how we can scale that personal element.
00:29:31
Speaker
To be honest, for us, it doesn't make that much of a difference within our business, those personal elements, because everything's just on checklists and it's all integrated in systems and reminders. That works really well from a backend point of view. I just think a lot of it is just preparing yourself not to be so lazy. We can all sit there and architect a dream business and how it works.
00:29:51
Speaker
A, that's never going to happen. And also B, is anyone actually going to want to buy into that business? You know, like you've got to give people what they want a lot of the time. And for us, that's kind of just worked. And when you and we all started your business, when you started freedom rather, because you've started multiple businesses, but when you started
Expanding Services to Meet Demand
00:30:07
Speaker
freedom, did you all have like how much of this did you learn along the way? Not so much in the business, but you all started with a set of things. Yeah, all of it, right? That's the truth. But when you all started, you obviously had things in mind where you're like, I wish
00:30:20
Speaker
an editing company would do this for me. Were there things that you found where you were like, okay, well, I kind of understand why they don't do that. And so you had to make adjustments maybe in your own business or were there things that you all found that you weren't expecting along the way? Maybe it was with a specific client and you're like, oh, wow, if we do this for every client, it's going to really take our client experience to the next level. Does that make sense? Yeah, I think one of those things is when we first launched, we didn't offer phone support.
00:30:46
Speaker
which is something that we do now because everybody seemed to want it we were just doing video calls with people but now people can just give us a call and ask the status of an order or when it's gonna be back to them if they've lost the confirmation email or whatever and that was really popular and to be honest that was something that.
00:31:01
Speaker
I was struggling to see how we were going to integrate in the business just because of the time zones like we talked about earlier. But yeah, it's not actually that bad now. As we've grown, it's become easier because there's just more people here to kind of help manage that throughout the day with the kind of like the shifts and stuff that everybody works. So yeah, that isn't so much of an issue now. When we first launched, we didn't offer culling straight away, like image selection.
00:31:25
Speaker
Because for me calling was always one of those things that I just thought was too personal and people just didn't want to do. But as soon as we launched it, I think that was just a game changer. And from like a business point of view, you know, we probably doubled our revenue just by adding another product to our existing audience, if that makes sense, which is amazing.
00:31:43
Speaker
But yeah, it's just things like that. We've definitely got the businesses changed time and time again. It feels like from when it first launched, you know, like when we launched, it was like a three day turnaround or something. And that was just never going to be manageable. But you know, we're a really good place now in terms of the product offering. And there are some really exciting launches coming very soon, which we can't really discuss yet. But there's a lot of things happening over the next year or so that are gonna, they're gonna shake things up a little bit. Yeah.
00:32:09
Speaker
Yeah, one of those biggest one of the biggest things that we offered actually was the video editing, which was something we only launched in January, I think, so we were doing it for about six months before that just for some like smaller clients just to kind of test the waters. Yeah, we launched that in January. And I think that just went crazy. Absolutely crazy, because it isn't hands down, there is no other company out there that offer that level of personalized
00:32:35
Speaker
editing that we do for video. You know, like we do on the photo side, there's nobody offering that for video. So yeah, that's going to be a really exciting journey to kind of like see how that goes and how far we can take that.
00:32:45
Speaker
I got to imagine that's a massive market because I just don't think the videographer market, you know, is as big and I'm not talking not that there's not as many videographers, but there's just not as many solutions, it seems like for videographers out there as there are for photographers for sure. Yeah. So how that video I think came about is we were at WPPI in Vegas about two years ago, probably now, maybe
00:33:09
Speaker
three, two, three years ago, say, and we kind of just clicked that there was no real outsourcing solution for videographers. And we were speaking to a ton of videographers there. It seemed like a lot of videographers go to WPPI to kind of just to be integrated in the industry, I guess, because I'm not, I guess maybe there aren't.
00:33:27
Speaker
shows that big for videographers and also it's Vegas. Everyone wants an excuse to go to Vegas, right? So we were speaking to a ton of videographers that were just like begging out for these solutions. You know, like they were just, they were saying, oh, will you edit my videos as well? At the time we were like, absolutely not. There's no chance, you know, we've got enough on our plate. So yeah, it took us like 18 months to kind of get to that place where we were able to offer that. But we got there and it was very much worthwhile. It was amazing. Yeah. And it's nice to feel like you're doing something good for an industry as well, you know? Sure.
00:33:57
Speaker
No, I think there's just so much wisdom kind of throughout this podcast hearing you guys, hearing you guys speak about how it got started. I mean, even with the colon and realizing that, you know, you can increase your revenue by not even increasing your customer base, but by offering an additional service to existing customers, just the flexibility to that you guys demonstrated, you know, from starting your business where you have a certain, you have certain ideas of how your business has to run. And then some of them are willing to get rid of like, for instance, a three day turnaround, just because it just probably with your scale,
00:34:27
Speaker
Yeah, wasn't manageable was unrealistic probably would, if you tried to force it would probably result in some quality, you know, issues.
Outsourcing as a Growth Strategy
00:34:35
Speaker
So you change that, but then you add things like calling and the calling thing makes total sense to me because as as website designers, we work with a lot of photographers. And it's so interesting. One of the biggest questions we get is, hey, will you help me choose what images that should go on my website, you know, I think just as photographers were like, in it, right? You emotionally attached to the images a lot of the time, I think. Yeah, you know, yeah. So
00:34:57
Speaker
That makes some people are okay with letting go of and some people on and that's absolutely fine. I just think
00:35:02
Speaker
You just need to know whether you're okay with that. Sure. So I do have kind of a final question here. As far as when people come to you for image editing, there's some people I know that have no problem with outsourcing. I'm always jealous of those people. I'm not very good at handing things over to other people to complete. So for somebody like me, what are the biggest issues? What are the biggest like hangups that people generally have when thinking through whether they want to outsource something like image editing?
00:35:31
Speaker
So I think the first thing that I'd say is that the fear that a lot of people have when they initially kind of register their interest or maybe even before that is that it's going to take them too long. Like one of the worst times a year for us for onboarding new clients is always kind of September, October time and people get in touch.
00:35:49
Speaker
and they're very much at a place where they're in the hole already and they've got like 10 weddings they have this backlog and they kind of can't see beyond it. And they're like, if I take an hour to kind of onboard with you guys and then I have to send a test and I have to do this, then is that gonna put me further behind? But in reality, once you get that initial test in and you do that onboarding call, it's a couple of days and then you're good and you can start placing orders.
00:36:16
Speaker
All of a sudden, that kind of darkness tends to lift, I think. So yeah, I think, you know, you really need to think a bit more long term than what's happening right now in your business. And just as general business advice as well, I think that's probably a good, a good kind of mantra to keep hold of is to kind of look maybe three, six months ahead and say, listen, if I do this now, I can give my clients a better experience of receiving the final images or I can, and I can boost my referrals that way and shoot more next year. You know, there's, there's so many things that,
00:36:46
Speaker
photographers really short-sighted on that we really need to kind of just like open up and say, it's absolutely fine that I send my images off to a company to be edited because they are professional editors. That's what they do all day every day and they might even do a better job than I will. They might give my brand a more recognizable style because all my weddings are going to be consistent to one. I'm going to use one preset for everything. I'm going to send it all off.
00:37:12
Speaker
And it's all going to come back looking exactly the same, whether I'm shooting 10 weddings a year or whether I'm shooting 400 weddings a year. You know, I think it's really powerful. If someone can go see an image on Instagram and automatically recognize that that's your image, then that is an incredible kind of brand that you've built yourself. And that's really what we help photographers do. I think that an analogy I always use is in the kind of systems and stuff of your business. If you imagine you're in a race and in that race, you're just going to take a little break, you're going to hop on the side, but you're going to start building your bike.
00:37:43
Speaker
And you're going to be building that bike, taking your time. Everyone's going to be flying in front of you. But once you get on that bike and start pedaling, you're going twice as fast. Exactly. Yeah, I think that's a great analogy. That's a good analogy. What you're saying to me about... Build your bike, people. If you are shooting weddings at any sort of volume, I think after a while, there's just fatigue that comes with editing your thousandth and ten thousandth
00:38:06
Speaker
image right where is what sending off to editor that is going to be fresh i mean that's what they do right and so it's not i mean it's still your style you're still communicating to the editor what your image is going to look like but you're giving it to somebody who's fresh and ready to do that instead of you being in the hole feeling pressured and then photographers love going out and they love shooting and they love creating.
00:38:27
Speaker
Whereas our editors, they don't like shooting. Some of them are photographers and they shoot kind of like a small number of events or weddings or whatever, but just because they love to edit the images. And that is what we really look for when we're hiring, is people that just love to edit. So they come to work every day and they're doing the job that they absolutely love doing. You know, as photographers are sat there and they should be out shooting more and they should be out networking and building businesses, but they stop buying a desk.
00:38:54
Speaker
So having someone do what they love, I think that's incredible. Back when we were shooting, at the very end of our photography career, we started to outsource album design. And it was, I think, a game changer towards the end of our career, though. We were already scaling down the photography business. And I always tell people, if I go back in time, this is something I would have done way earlier in my business. One of the things that I had trouble wrapping my head around, though, was if I outsourced something like album design,
00:39:20
Speaker
I would be paying for that outsourcing. I could keep that money if I did it myself, you know? And so, I couldn't really – I didn't understand at the time, well, you know, if I outsource this, then this takes zero hours of my time. I get that time back to do something else in my business or, I mean, just to, you know, have an hour to go on a – a couple hours to go on a date night with Krista or something like that.
Client Impact and Testimonials
00:39:43
Speaker
So and I think Jake you showed me some sort of quiz calculator that helps people better understand this visually. So what do you all have to say about that like in terms of I guess when somebody outsources a wedding to you exactly how much time are they saving. So our average photographer average client saves around seven just over 700 hours a year.
00:40:05
Speaker
Which I kind of know the numbers. 756 hours a year is our average client saving. And that includes calling and editing and sending over whatever average client does. So I'm not actually sure what the amount of weapons on average is. And to save that time for a couple of hundred dollars a month is crazy. Yeah. It's a lot of time when you're working days. So a huge chunk of your year. I mean, I think about what you could do with 700 hours. I mean, you could start another business with 700 hours a year.
00:40:36
Speaker
That's incredible. Well, is there anything else that I should have asked him out that I didn't that you guys would like to share about freedom or do we do we pretty much cover it? I think we've done a really good overview. Yeah, I just, you know, I just hope that, you know, I think this is going out during wedding season, I believe. Yeah, I just hope there's a couple of people listening to it that, you know,
00:40:56
Speaker
A lot of our clients, they come to resent their business because they hate editing and they hate that backlog that comes with Biden season and they can't see past it. We've really been able to change people's lives and it sounds ridiculous. It sounds like we're really overarching, but honestly, some of the testimonials and some of the words that photographers use when they kind of thank us is
00:41:16
Speaker
Just incredible and I just hope there's a couple of people listening that kind of reach out and I'm afraid to ask for help.
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:41:22
Speaker
Yeah. Well, the good news is when people post on like Instagram stories about the podcast, I mean, most of the time they're doing something else. One of the main things is or one of the main things I'll see when people share about the podcast is that they're editing while they're listening to the podcast. So that's good news. Hopefully we have maybe if no one's editing anymore, though, maybe no one listens. This won't be good for me.
00:41:44
Speaker
No, but they can take that time instead of editing and go out for a run. We have people listening on Drive, so I'm not worried about that. I hope that if you are, especially this fall as this episode is released, if you are overwhelmed with editing, reach out to Freedom. They really have, I think, a unique place in the market just in how personal they are with each and every client.
00:42:04
Speaker
So consider doing that. And we've talked a lot about outsourcing on the podcast recently. So hopefully this is kind of a good first step for people who are feeling overwhelmed, especially in, you know, towards the bulk of wedding season here. So thanks Ryan and Jake for taking the time. I know, you know, there's a time difference here. I know you all are used to that working with so many different time zones, but we really appreciate you taking the time to share not only about your own photography businesses, but about how you started freedom as well. No, not at all. We appreciate you having us. Thank you. Thank you.
00:42:36
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in to the Brands That Book Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review in iTunes. For show notes and other resources, head on over to dvandchrista.com.