Workflows - Photography Podcast

[00:00:00] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Welcome to workflows presented by ImagenAI .Workflows is a podcast about . Saving you time and money in your photography business here from people just like you put down that camera for little connect the headphones and get to work with. Dave Shay is an entrepreneurially minded photographer who loves working at the intersection of art and technology from a parent camera's for like, and Fujifilm to starting his own photography business and being an ambassador for MagMod and SLR lounge.

[00:00:32] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Dave always seeks new challenge. His most significant business challenge came in the form of busy-ness in 2013, Dave photograph over 53 weddings up from 15 the year prior with Nova reliable systems in place to handle double digit growth. Dave grappled with burnout learning from his life lessons. Dave made it a mission.

[00:00:55] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: To help photographers, simplify their workflows and build better systems. I am very excited about this conversation with Dave because well, he and I are very similar in so many ways. So with that, let's get into this conversation with Dave Shay. Hey Dave, what's going on?

[00:01:14] Dave Shay: Not too much, man. That's just a getting ready to kick off few sheets this week and get back into the swing of things.

[00:01:20] Dave Shay: I bet you,

I actually do have a, I have a, I have got a. client job to do this weekend. You just made me realize I still have that coming up. I don't, I don't take on client work as much as I used to do these days, but, I'm actually photographing, client that I did their engagement, I guess, at this 0.4 years ago.

[00:01:37] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: And, they now have two kids. So, were you ever going to actually going back to the same spot way to the engagement? To do a family session. So it should be really

[00:01:45] Dave Shay: cool. Oh, that's really cool. I like that kind of like repeat client.

[00:01:49] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yep. Awesome. For sure. So let's dive right into the topics at hand. first question that, that I ask every guest is what is one thing that you do for the photographic process that, uh, save you time?

[00:02:06] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Th the, the beat behind the camera, you know, that kind of.

[00:02:10] Dave Shay: Yeah. So I mean, automation and kind of like moving things in a more streamlined fashion is, is the key to what I've, what I've done historically. Right? Like I've spent so much, so much of my time focused on how much, what can I do to enjoy photography as a career without spending my entire.

[00:02:28] Dave Shay: Photographing, right. Like, I, I, I'm not the let's bring cameras everywhere. I go kind of person. I kinda like try to automate as much as possible. and so in terms of in camera and stuff like that, I am the like biggest stickler among me and my team for like getting in camera. Like if it is not perfect coming out of the camera, Hi, I don't, I won't deliver it.

[00:02:46] Dave Shay: I won't do the stuff on the backend. So like my editing process is very, very nice because of that. but like when it comes to saving time and during the photographic process, I've got my cameras calibrated to my, like the back of my camera screen and my Lightroom screen like will look identical. And so like when I'm taking a shot in camera and I look at it in the back of like the camera.

[00:03:04] Dave Shay: This is, this is exactly how I want it to look. And so one of the things that has really kind of cut down when I first started, photography, my, my joke is that like the better I get as a photographer, the less time I spend editing, is like when I first started photography, I did an engagement session.

[00:03:18] Dave Shay: Okay. It's like an hour and a half engagements that I want to say took me like seven or eight hours to edit. Right. Cause I was like Photoshopping stuff out of every single background. I was paying attention to like all this extra stuff in the images and not everything like trying to get every detail.

[00:03:31] Dave Shay: Perfect. But like, as I kind of forced myself to Sarah. What is my composition? What is my color? What is my white balance? Like, how am I getting this to the point where like, I could be one of those people that like condescendingly shoots, JPEG and like wants people to know that I shoot JPEG, but I'm not quite there.

[00:03:46] Dave Shay: Like, I'm always like, like my safety net, but I try to get that stuff just right. Perfect. Out of camera. Yeah.

[00:03:51] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: I, I think it's so important to, to spend the time, to get it as close to what your, what you have in your head in camera. it really is so important. I mean, this. No, I would, I would much prefer to.

[00:04:06] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Not ever bring a light with me and just rely on natural light, but sometimes you just, you have to use a natural, I mean, an artificial light in order to get whatever it is going on in your head. Right.

[00:04:16] Dave Shay: Well, that's why, like I was, I was very much at the same camp. Like I was a very like a self-proclaimed natural light photographer for a long time, but then I realized, like I would find myself in situations where like, I would spend a ton of time in post correcting for these like situation.

[00:04:29] Dave Shay: Like if I just put a light here, like this would not be the issue that it is. And that's how I got like, can I do a different lighting companies and stuff like that was just through like, all right, what do I need to do to make sure that when stuff is like coming out of my camera, it is good to go. Like, even like, like my double exposures or like my more artistic portraits.

[00:04:46] Dave Shay: Very, very rarely am I spending time in post-production on those outside of a simple, very simple tweak and sometime a little bit of light color correction and that's that's about it. but that comes at like, Well, like what, how many pictures have I taken at this point? Like 4 million or 5 million? I think my Lightroom catalog was up to last.

[00:05:01] Dave Shay: I checked like it's coming at a pretty hefty time investment to say the least. Yeah,

[00:05:06] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: yeah. Yeah. For sure. For sure. so, so then what is one thing you do for the business side of things that has saved you time or.

[00:05:14] Dave Shay: This. So that's my, this is like my favorite thing to talk about. Cause like when, when we get into photography, right?

[00:05:20] Dave Shay: Like a lot of times we get into it because we were creators or we're artists at heart. Like sometimes people get into it and they're a business owner first and they see an opportunity there. But a majority of the photographers that I work with in my mentoring and coaching and when I've kind like gotten to know throughout the community, we get into this because we like to make stuff we like to kind of create something cool for couples and just kind of photography gives you just such a unique way to do that.

[00:05:42] Dave Shay: Where you can work with things that are natural, like natural light around you, and you can work with things or you can just make something crazy. Like you can take an incredible off-camera flash shot that no one would ever guess is like next to the dumpster behind the hotel. But like you made it work.

[00:05:55] Dave Shay: Right? Like, and so you're able to just create so much. but on the business side of things, so often I found myself at least really struggling. So like I grew my business pretty quick on the artist side of things. I got in and I was like, ah, let's look at how awesome this is going. I went from five weddings my first year 15, my second.

[00:06:11] Dave Shay: And then I went to 53, my third and I zero stars do not recommend the money was great. The, the situation was terrible. and it taught me a really valuable lesson when it comes to saving time on the back end. Like you have to find what you're good at and you have to be able to scale things up from there.

[00:06:25] Dave Shay: And what most photographers do is they, we, we set our business up so that we are it's failure. And it can never grow beyond where we are. And that's the biggest mistake that I've made. It's one of the tweaks that I've made since I really had this kind of like boil over in 2014 and 2015 is looking at how to kind of remove myself from the equation to quote Tron legacy, is to, how can I take things off of my responsibility?

[00:06:50] Dave Shay: And automate them or grow them and set them up for scale. And so when it comes to the backend systems, I've spent a lot of time focusing on different CRMs and different automation tools like Zapier. I have IFTTT. I'm managing like things. And sometimes you can get like super technical that you can dive in and do things with like web hooks and all sorts of crazy stuff.

[00:07:08] Dave Shay: Or you can just be like, I want Zapier to do this for me. And I don't want to deal with any of the hard technical stuff, but like blog posts, things that are repeatable. Like my blog posts, all of them are automated, but my clients fill out a survey. That survey then comes into my studio manager by manager then sends it out to, blog posts, our WordPress through Zapier, and the whole process takes me 10, 15 minutes.

[00:07:31] Dave Shay: Am I the SEO genius. Am I doing fantastically? No. Am I doing well? Yeah. So like find where, like you've got these repeatable, scalable processes and really hone in on them to see how you can improve those processes. It's one of those things that I think a lot of people don't realize you're answering the same.

[00:07:47] Dave Shay: 50 times a year with every single client. Wouldn't it be easier if you just made a blog post out of that email and then sent it to them before they send it to you right before they ask you the question, right? Like there's so much stuff like that. And our businesses are just full of those opportunities.

[00:08:02] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: And, you know, there, there, there are ways to do what you're doing with automation, to create a blog post, for example, and make it, sort of like ready for searching. Oh, yeah, but that might, that might take like more, more developer involvement to a spinning of the, of words and, and all that kind of stuff.

[00:08:21] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: But, you know, anything is doable. and, but, but there are actually, so there's even outsourced blogging companies for the photo industry that are basically doing what you're doing. they're automating it's to get there, basically like you would go as the. Submit submit the, the wedding that you photographed or whatever it is, submit some of the information they'd ask a bunch of questions.

[00:08:42] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: It will deliver them a blog post ready for their writers to then manually spin words, to make it more, more SEO. so it there's some human involvement there, but, but yeah, I, I agree if you can streamline. Any part of your business with automation, whether it is a Zapier or an IFE thing or whatever it is, It's a big win.

[00:09:07] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: It's a big win it to order.

[00:09:09] Dave Shay: It's huge. And I think a lot of people don't realize, so like one of the weird habits I've gotten into since kind of like, and it was like, like when I say a failure of my, like, I mean a failure, like I built up a business that was very successful. Money-wise financially. We were, we were doing fantastic.

but in terms of the mental toll that it took on me, that it took on my family. Like we really restarted the business completely after watching it grow and then watching kind of like what the repercussions of that growth. And so one of the weird kind of like habits that I've picked up since then is once, usually about now it's about once a quarter or once every two quarters that I'll actually go in.

but I will audit every single email that's coming into my inbox from clients and every interaction that I have with my clients. And I will look for commonalities between. And I will say, all right, you know what? I had three engagement sessions that all asked me what their, what my recommendations were when it came to picking a place.

[00:09:58] Dave Shay: Right. Or what my recommendations were on outfits they were supposed to wear. And a lot of people have gotten really good with like specifically outfit selection. Like, Hey, here's my style guide or here's this. But like, think about that in terms of every. If every single client emails you and goes, Hey, I know I've got a balance coming up.

[00:10:14] Dave Shay: How do I pay that? You need to streamline your payment process, right? Like you need to look at that. And that's like, one of those like real life tactical decisions that I've started to do is like, I will go through my entire inbox and I will like in an Excel spreadsheet, like a psychopath, I'll be like, what's the topic of this?

[00:10:29] Dave Shay: What could I have done to resolve it? And if I see that, like that same theme more than three times, I will like usually do something big to prioritize, fixing that in the weeks or months to come so that I can preempt that. Cause then like, if I figured if one client asked me how many clients didn't have that or had that same question and didn't think, you know, maybe I don't want to bother him or whatever.

[00:10:49] Dave Shay: Yeah. I want to solve their problem too. And I think some of the best ways that we can, we can grow our business, we can build it is by really just managing those client expectations proactively. And intentionally

[00:11:01] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: one thing that I did was, so I don't use a CRM because I don't have the client, volume to necessitate it.

[00:11:08] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: So like, I on in purposefully because I have a full-time job, I keep my client workload very low. but, you know, I was running into an issue at one point where clients would say, you know, I collect the payments through square of deposit, they would say, okay, so when do you want me to pay the remainder?

[00:11:24] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: And it's like the day of right. All that stuff. And it was very manual, but then square eventually came out with the ability to automate half, you know, partial. So the moment that they did that, I was like, I'm automating this thing. I don't want to have to get that question in and answer that question anymore.

[00:11:43] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: So now, like when I, when I set up the invoice, I literally set it up with the, you know, day of, for the deposit, or a day of like sending the invoices of the deposit in day of the photo session for the other half, the remaining balance. They put in the credit card once and it would automate the entire thing.

[00:12:00] Dave Shay: So, well, let's just say it, like, you find those ways to just streamline like small thing. Like, so when I first started out before I had a CRM, like I have this, I would make like a Google doc for like every couple. And I just be like, Hey, here's all the stuff you need to know. And it would have like, And it was like not well done at all.

[00:12:14] Dave Shay: Right. And then I took it like to the opposite extreme where I would try to make like a customized web page for every single couple that I worked with. I like make like a page on my site and be like, and then I'd like use pictures from their engagement session and like all this stuff. And like, it just got out of hand quickly, but like, Any step that you can do to keep your client informed without you having to think of every single client that you have and make a mental list of like, all right, Katie's wedding night next week, Lisa and Kayla, is this coming month?

[00:12:42] Dave Shay: How do I like you? Like, you're not going to be able to manage that in any sort of world, no matter, like, if you have three clients, if you have. You're not going to wind up, being able to be like, oh yeah, just mentally I that's, what's coming up. Like eventually that's going to lead to burnout. It's gonna lead to stress or it's going to lead to a missed client connection.

[00:12:56] Dave Shay: And so like, just being intentional about all right, where are my opportunities to do better here, is just such a massive, opportunity for so many people, when it comes to photography and running their business on the backside.

[00:13:07] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: For sure. For sure. okay. So, so earlier you mentioned that you like to, you know, try to get as much done in camera as possible.

You know, it does involve, you know, the manual editing to, to get you to your final results. So, What is one thing that you've done for the editing part of the process that has saved you time?

[00:13:25] Dave Shay: So this is a timely, so I am a preset base person more than anything else. So when I, when I go to edit, Lightroom has presets in every cell, every area it's not just.

[00:13:35] Dave Shay: Developed presets that apply like your tone curve and stuff like that. You can apply presets for your metadata. You can apply presets for your export, your all that stuff. Right. So everything I do is broken down to preset. So if you'd asked me this, like two months ago, I, that would have been like my key answer.

[00:13:50] Dave Shay: Right. But like, Scott, you and I have talked about like, using, using Imagener all that stuff. Like I have a very strict rule when I'm editing. And so I've done all my own editing for the. 10 years, I had like one year where I tried outsourcing and I was like, eh, let's see if I can pay somebody else. And the cost and all that stuff had factored into that decision.

[00:14:08] Dave Shay: When I'm editing, I have a rule where if it is not going to be an image that my client is going to print, or I am going to use in my portfolio, if there's not client value there, or if there is not company value there, I will not spend more than five seconds on that. Don't matter. What's wrong with like, if there's an exit sign, great.

[00:14:23] Dave Shay: There's an exit sign in that image now forever. Right? Like that's kind of my approach. Like if the client does not find value in it and, and there's, there's a ton of those pictures throughout the day, right? Like some of my clients really care about details so that client value might look different for a bride that has like a full, like lay flat and all this stuff.

[00:14:40] Dave Shay: Right. Like that might be a big thing for her there. But then during like the reception and stuff, like there might be different parts where like, I've just got a guest dancing. It's not somebody that I know is close to the. I don't need to spend 10 minutes Photoshopping out an exit sign or something like that.

[00:14:53] Dave Shay: Like they're aware that exit signs exist out in the world is the boast photographically perfect thing. No, but right. Like, but so that's been probably the biggest thing that imaging has really changed for me is with so many of my images falling into the background. They're like, think about like how many client orders you've ever had prints, but so I've taken five last.

[00:15:11] Dave Shay: I checked my Lightroom catalog. I had like 4.5 to 5 million photos that I've taken. I've had. In 10 years, call it 20 to 30 printers a year. So you're talking about 300 print orders and they take me so assume everyone had 10 photos in. So here are 3000 print orders out of 5 million or 3000 prints out of 5 million photos.

[00:15:33] Dave Shay: Right? Like my best album is going to have maybe, maybe 60 to a hundred pictures in it. Right. Like if I, if I like kind of stretch things and I don't make it the way that I like. So you're talking like you're not printing all this stuff. Like a lot of times these pictures, like we take an abundance of pictures on a wedding day, I deliver 600 to 1200 images, photographers, like will our, my, my clients will print call it, like, they'll see ever a hundred of those on print.

[00:15:59] Dave Shay: Right. And so I was spending so much time and energy on pictures that were just going to live in a flashlight. And that doesn't necessarily negate their importance, but it means like when I'm as a business, I have to invest my time where I have to. And so that I can save and actually make a life that I want to enjoy.

[00:16:16] Dave Shay: And I think one of the things that I really love recently about using images is those images that are like, I have to get these images out. They're important to the couple intuitive. Like image. It gets me all the way there. Like it's, it's not like a, like, is it, is it technically perfect every single time?

[00:16:30] Dave Shay: The way that like, if I were to spend every minute, like fussing over an image, like probably not, but like for the, like the core of my images, cause then like, I I'm really editing like 30 to 50 images per wedding now out of that 600, 800. And that's like, what are you talking about? Like a time-saver like, that's insane.

[00:16:47] Dave Shay: Like I edit faster than just about anyone else. I know. And the fact that I'm now like, yeah, I spend about 40 minutes in the morning, two days after the wedding. That's about it. Yeah. That's insane. Like that's absolutely ridiculous. so like my presents and stuff, like, yeah, sure. I saved like a couple of minutes here and I saved like, I, over the lifetime of my career, I've saved a lot by making out presets and doing stuff like that.

[00:17:06] Dave Shay: But when it comes to the future, like with, with AI editing, what that offers like there's just so much that can be done. I don't really have to do much anymore and I'm not like, yeah, I'm not the best editor in the world. And I understand that. But at the same point, like I run a very efficient business.

[00:17:19] Dave Shay: That's very, very profitable because I'm able to prioritize things like this. And that's where imaging has really been a good partner for me.

[00:17:27] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Could you, we're we're going to talk about this. We're going to talk about this later, but, Exit sign removal. Yes. Little check, box, check, check.

[00:17:37] Dave Shay: It's one of those things, man.

[00:17:38] Dave Shay: Like I get, like I get, I tell my clients pretty openly at the beginning of like, Hey, like I'm going to photograph, what's important to you. And so I had like three or four different surveys where I asked them, like, what's important to you. And I'm like, Hey, would it be more important for you? Or like, would it make sense for me to charge you more money?

[00:17:53] Dave Shay: If I went in and did like all this extra. Or would you rather me just take it on a photo by photo basis? Cause like, if I find out they're getting a print of something, I'll absolutely take out an exit sign. Like if I know, like they're gonna blow that thing up, like, like, like I felt like one of these sized prints behind me, like if they're blowing something up like this and it's gonna feel good, like, like I want the thing to look its best of course I will pay for a picture there, but like.

[00:18:13] Dave Shay: On the front end for 800 images. Like you see the places, reception halls put exit signs, like I'd be doing this all day. Like

[00:18:20] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: where's that where we're in the United States where every two feet,

[00:18:25] Dave Shay: I wonder like gorgeous tile. Chandelier's everything, no matter which angle. There were like 19 doors and everyone had, I was like, I'm not doing this, like it's not possible.

[00:18:35] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yup. Yup. okay. So I want to take a moment and just ask everybody who's listening. If you are at the park with your kids while letting them play or whatever it is, you're hanging out. You sit on a park bench, take a moment and think about your next business task. Is it something that you can do while Imagen edits your photos?

[00:18:53] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Let us know by sharing in the ImagenAI community. We want to hear from you. What you got lingering, for your business, so that, you know, you can be mindful about it and, and work on it next time that your photos are being edited by Imagen. Okay, Dave, we've now talked about photographic process.

[00:19:12] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: We've talked about business, we've talked about editing. Can you share, one thing that you do after a session that has increased.

[00:19:24] Dave Shay: Yeah, one thing after, after the session. So when you say increased visits, do you mean specifically made me more money or do you like it I'll

[00:19:33] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: get your clients or leads.

[00:19:36] Dave Shay: Okay.

[00:19:36] Dave Shay: So I've got a post-sale process. And one of the things that a lot of times I see photographers do, is they just kind of like, Hey, here's your photos. Good luck, goodbye. Right. Like, and that's right. And so, there's gallery services out there. I'm going to like, ShootProof pick time. I think pixie set does as well, where you can have like email campaigns based on that gallery delivery date, where you can say like, Hey, here's your photos.

[00:19:56] Dave Shay: You can do that stuff. A lot of times, they're just around the gallery and trying to get like print orders and stuff. And there's a lot of opportunity there. So the day after if I do a wedding, so I'm primarily a wedding person. I don't think I've expressed that, but like I do weddings and then I do some commercial stuff.

[00:20:10] Dave Shay: I'm really just a horrible family photographer, just I'm bad. And I will own that, to my core. my kids don't listen to me. Nobody else's kids are gonna listen to me. Like, there's just. Not on the table. but when it comes to weddings and commercial, I've gotten very good at managing expectations. And that's where I've spent the entirety of my career, right.

[00:20:24] Dave Shay: With 400 weddings. And I don't even know how many commercial shoots now, that's where I really try to spend my time, my energy. And so the day after somebody's wedding, one of the things that happens is 8:00 AM, which nobody on like the world is awake. The 8:00 AM the day after their wedding. Usually they've been out to like two, three in the morning after an after party or traveling or doing whatever.

[00:20:42] Dave Shay: But at 8:00 AM, they get an email from me that says, Hey, congratulations, you did it. Well, who you did the wedding thing. It's awesome. Right? Here's what to expect from me over the next two months. And I outlined in that email immediately. Hey, I'm going through your photos right now. Cause I call same night of the wedding, right?

[00:20:59] Dave Shay: So I'm going through your photos. I'm going to color code. And then we're going to talk about how you want to use these photos. And over the next couple of weeks, you're gonna get a few emails from me that talk about print sales and print, like decorating your house and what that's going to look like.

[00:21:15] Dave Shay: And whether or not you want an album and you might not want an album right now, but you might want one later. So if you want one for your one year anniversary, let me know. And I'll follow back up with you then. Or if my labs are running a promotion and you don't want to pay full price for an album out, but you are interested.

[00:21:29] Dave Shay: Let me know, and I will reach out to you the next time out, but my albums are on sale. Right? And so I start doing this stuff and I use Fundy for a lot of this stuff to kind of like manage the backend of like wall art stuff and album design and all that stuff. So it's already a pretty simple, simple process, excuse me.

[00:21:44] Dave Shay: But as I'm doing that, I am painting my client's expectations already to say, Hey, you're going to have the opportunity to fill your house with your photos from. And I'm usually like at that point, like they've got some money from the wedding leftover, like wedding gifts, they're getting back into things they're getting settled.

[00:22:00] Dave Shay: And that first like six week post event thing is a big opportunity. And this is where I get on photographers. And I like this. Doesn't make me the pop most popular guy around. But if you have a super long turnaround time, you are missing your sales window because they are by the time, if you deliver images, I'll throw out three months.

[00:22:22] Dave Shay: And as an example, if you deliver images three months after a wedding date, they are so much less likely to actually order prints from the day you are losing money. So I deliver in a week seven to 14 days. If I'm in peak season, occasionally it'll take me 10 to 14 days, but like I prioritize getting that in because it's one of those things that makes me.

[00:22:43] Dave Shay: And it also makes my life a lot less stressful.

[00:22:45] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Three months is the average for a wedding photographer

[00:22:49] Dave Shay: in the world. Like, but that's like, that's real life. And like in saying all it takes and like, and I can speak a little bit confidently on this because I've, I've tweaked my process. Right? Like I was one of those three months people, and now I'm, I'm the psychopath that calls the night of the wedding.

[00:23:04] Dave Shay: Like I will go through, no matter what time it is, I'm culling, I'm importing. Like I'm, I'm that end of the spectrum. And I understand that, but the thing. All it takes is if you will get, if you look so say your normal turnaround time is two months and you're like doing a backlog rather than like staying ahead on stuff and staying caught up the risk.

[00:23:23] Dave Shay: There is like, all it takes is one thing to happen. I had a ligament, I had a torn ligament in my jaw from a bad dental procedure that knocked me out for like six weeks. And that six weeks, like I went up, I was like, I can't handle this. I had to pay somebody a ton more than I would have. I took a huge financial bath that year for no reason, just because I was already behind on things.

[00:23:47] Dave Shay: Right? Like that's the risk of, if you, if you don't get ahead and you stay in that stuff, let alone the money you're, you're missing out on. So it's one of those things that like following up is setting expectations and capitalize on that window. Those moments are fresh. Like, and you, and it's not just the couple that you're getting, like those princesses.

[00:24:04] Dave Shay: But you get grandma, grandpa, you get mom and dad, like you get all those people placing current orders early. Like that's what really will drive things home. And especially like, that's not just a wedding thing for family photographers for other things as well. Like while that is fresh in their mind. And if you've given them a good experience, you want to capitalize on that as much as you possibly can.

[00:24:23] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: This is one of those things that, takes a lot of time to set up the automating of, of this whole educational series of emails. it takes a lot of time to set up, but once it's. It's effortless, literally.

[00:24:34] Dave Shay: Yeah. And it's one of those things too, that like, you don't have to start with the nine email series, right?

[00:24:39] Dave Shay: Like, I've been doing this for 10 years. I've shut 400 weddings. I've been all over the states, like doing the stuff you're looking at. It's easy to look at me like, oh, like, yeah, that sounds great. I can't do it. Like it started with one email. The reason this all started was I sent an email. The 8:00 AM email the day after the wedding was just so that I would stop getting the email.

[00:24:55] Dave Shay: Hey, what are my photos going to be done? Be done. Right. Like, are they going to be ready to like later on today? And I'm like, Like that's where that email started. So it started off as just one email. And then I added in a sales email a week later, and then I added in an album sale. Right? Like, it's you just start, start with what you can do today and make one small change that saves you time.

[00:25:16] Dave Shay: And then continue to think about that three months, six months, eight months down the road of how you can improve this. If you look at your business and how can I save myself more time and how can I make myself more money? Like there's always going to be opportunities, but start with. And iterate and test.

[00:25:30] Dave Shay: If you can see what works, see what doesn't like, make those changes there.

[00:25:34] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. Testing is important. so now the part of the show where I want to ask you to look down at your business from a 30,000 foot view, right. if you can share an outline breakdown of your workflow, workflow from lead to delivery, you don't have to go into too much detail.

[00:25:52] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Some sort of breakdown of, of what your business looks like a 30,000 foot view.

[00:25:57] Dave Shay: Yeah. So, I mean, I'm, I am now on the very, very much hands-off, trend that I would kinda caution people from trying to jump to where, where I am. so I kind of take that as a disclaimer, before I go, if you have a ton of leads coming in the door, then you can reduce the contact you spend per lead.

[00:26:17] Dave Shay: So if you. Like your websites off the ground, your Instagram is always full of leads and all that stuff. Then. If you are not getting a ton of those, then I increase and I say, all right, I'm going to spend a little bit more, I'll maybe disable an automation or two, and I'll send a personalized text to somebody when they reach out to my contact form.

[00:26:36] Dave Shay: Right. Or do something like that. But mine is very much in the process of most of my leads come online. they come, they find me through my website or through some publication or something like that, that I, that I've worked with. I do work with a lot of photographers these days more so than just people that have kind of like, Hey, I do this thing.

[00:26:52] Dave Shay: Like. A lot of my clients are photographers. And so they'll find me through a blog post. They'll find me through some publications, something like that. So it all comes through contact form first. Usually at that point, I will do one of two things. If it's, if it's, like I said, I'm trying to get more business.

[00:27:06] Dave Shay: I'll be a little bit more high touch. If I'm really overwhelmed, then I will try to do a little bit of a low touch kind of path. but I send automated questionnaires through both of those processes. And then sometimes it's just like a, Hey, let's have a conversation other times. Hey, here's everything you need to know to book that scares people, photographers love to like meet with every single couple and all that stuff.

[00:27:25] Dave Shay: If you've got enough leads coming in, like it's okay to book people like, and just be like, they're probably good. And like, I mean, there's a whole rabbit trail, whether or not you need to know consultations and all that stuff. But for me, the last two years, I've found great success in just. Not doing them and it's been great.

letting people book and having a streamlined experience, I find that people prioritize the ability to book and have that be in a low effort, low friction process. and so that's really everything from there is designed to be as low friction as possible. So I will go through booking, like I said, I used a CRM.

I'll automate a few things throughout that process where they get different questionnaires and different. Contract type stuff and upsells the throughout the kind of like process, I will give them different opportunities to scale up their package if they'd like to, kind of like think of like add-ons, I think it would like kind of like Snickers in the checkout aisle at the grocery store.

[00:28:16] Dave Shay: Like I've got these people, they book with me sometimes 18 months ahead of time. If you're hanging in the aisle long enough, usually I'll pick up a Reese's or two and I'll throw it in the cart, right? Like it's stuff like that where it's not going to necessarily move the needle on my business. But sometimes those things are an extra three, 400, $500 per print sale.

[00:28:32] Dave Shay: Our first. Client 20 clients a year. That's a nice little vacation with my family at end of the year. Right? Like, or something like crazy. Like, so there there's stuff you can do on that front. and then when it comes to the actual image and processing, I am, like I said, a stickler for getting it right. I will go through, I go through, I shoot that night.

[00:28:49] Dave Shay: I come in from my session immediately go in a photo mechanic, call everything down. Then now at this point I'm dropping that into light room, doing my important. with like my metadata stuff and everything dropping that on, and then it's off to Imagener and then I wait and like the fact that I'm now sending the stuff off to Imagener.

[00:29:04] Dave Shay: I don't know some weird hour of night when I, when I'm done calling he's great because like now, like I can take my Sundays off. and so like, I'm pretty, I'm a pretty big stickler for taking some family time. making sure that like, if my spouse was home and she was with the kids all day yesterday, and like, while I was off at a wedding or doing something like that, then like I can try it and I can give her time off or we can do something as a family.

[00:29:26] Dave Shay: We can do that stuff. Like I really want photography to be an enabler for me to live the life I want. not a, an entrapment that like is now just another job. Cause like a lot of times photographers get into this and they're like, oh yeah, it's going to be a dream job. And then they, like, you could be more profitable making more per hour working some entry-level job doing anything else.

so it's one of those things that. But yeah, from there, it goes into that automated kind of email series. And it's very like the thing I would challenge everyone to do. I use a tool called Miro. but there's other ones like mural and it's like kind of like a flow chart maker. but I kind of outline what that path is for everyone.

[00:30:01] Dave Shay: And then like, look at like little choices and things like that clients might make, oh, I'm going to get a second shooter. I'm not going to get a second shooter. Like if you document all that stuff out, you can. See opportunities just kind of leave off that page at you. And that's how I've gotten to where I'm at right now is that whole flow of like high touch, low touch and high priority customer.

[00:30:20] Dave Shay: And then like standard priority customers. Like some people I know are going to come in and spend a whole lot more money, which means that like, you know what, they might've been loaded. I'm now going to jump them into the high touch thing. As soon as I realized that, like, there's a lot of kind of opportunities throughout.

but as you think, like a business and you look at and you map those opportunities out, that's where you'll be like, oh, here's where it is. Like, how did I not think of that earlier?

[00:30:40] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: I wonder actually, how many photography businesses have actually gone and done a float chart of their, of their business structures, their systems and stuff.

in fact, I, I encourage everybody who is listening. hopefully you're inspired by Dave,you know, note there that's, you, that you're, you might take, take the step and do it. So please go to the ImagenAI community, share if you've even thought about doing it before. and in fact, if you're even willing to share yours, share it in the community, you know, like share a screenshot of what you did.

[00:31:12] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Because it might help others trying to do the same thing. I'm really curious to see because I've never done it for my, like I said, my business, I purposely keep small, so I've never needed to do it, but it's such a good idea to do, especially as your photography business grows and grows and grows, then you need to find these things to.

[00:31:35] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: To make it even better in

[00:31:36] Dave Shay: three months. So that's the thing like, as were most photographers, like I want to say the last time I looked at the numbers was like 97% of photographers are solopreneurs. Right? Like they are the least one stop shop for getting everything accomplished. Right. And so with so many of them being on that.

[00:31:54] Dave Shay: On that scale. And on that level, we don't necessarily look at our business from kind of a holistic perspective. And I think there is a great opportunity to look at what big businesses are doing. Look at how they make things scalable. Right? Like I got the joke. I own the domain. My photographer loves tacos.com.

[00:32:09] Dave Shay: That's an easy way to get more revenue coming in is make a weird website. So it's. Both for people. Right? So I spent a lot of time at taco bell. One of the things that taco bell does to make things repeatable. It's like they look at process, they look at scale, like, look at any business that's out there.

[00:32:23] Dave Shay: They're looking like Disney plus look at how much money they've made over the past few years. Right. And they make it process, make it scalable, make it repeatable. And that's the thing where if you can start to do that, you're spending less time in your business. You're making more money and you're able to do what you want to do.

[00:32:38] Dave Shay: Like build a better life. Like that's the thing is like, and it starts so small. Just document it, just look. Oh, yeah. Yeah, of course. I can do that.

as a completely side note, but related to what you just said, God bless Disney plus for streamlining the process of making star wars shows. Because even though they're not as good as the original movies, it's just so much fun.

[00:32:57] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Seeing these star wars content come out as often as it is, including coming up very, very soon with the new open. I

[00:33:05] Dave Shay: hosted a party at my house that night just for it. So anyone's welcome if you want to be an area swing on by. Yeah. But that's the thing, right? Like it's easier for them to produce things.

[00:33:13] Dave Shay: It's easier for them to create because they streamline that stuff. And if you look at like tech and all this stuff, that's out there. One of the big things like where a lot of companies will invest their time and energy is in user experience. Right. And understanding that. And the first thing they do, if you like, if you're going to user experience and are you UX 1 0 1, I want to dive into this.

[00:33:29] Dave Shay: What I'm going to do is I'm going to look at how the client gets. Sign up to value. Right. Like, that's it like if you, if it's like, if you sign up on Amazon, how do they, from the time they create an Amazon account or land on the Amazon page to the time they place an order. Right? So the time I sign up on Disney, plus the time I watched the best star wars show that I've seen in forever, like whatever that, like that connection, that journey across is what we'd have to understand.

[00:33:53] Dave Shay: Diagnose. Hopefully improve for our customers as we go, because that's what, like makes such a difference as you, as you kind of navigate through it all is if you can identify the journey your customers are taking, and then the next step is realizing that you have different journeys. So to speak, not every client comes in the door is the same one.

[00:34:12] Dave Shay: And there's a lot of talk about ideal client and like, oh, it's just this one client. Like, no, Clients that prioritize printing and clients that prioritize digitals and clients that prioritize people and clients and prioritize things on a wedding day. You've got all these different people and you want to understand who that client is and what value looks like for them, because then you get like different maps and you start to go, all right, they're on journey a, this person's on journey.

[00:34:34] Dave Shay: C how can I help them here? And that's when your business really starts to scale up. So that's cool stuff.

[00:34:41] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Awesome. Awesome. okay. So. Earlier, you mentioned removing exit signs. And this is where I feel like that might come up again, potentially when I asked you this question, but what does the future of AI and photography look like?

[00:34:59] Dave Shay: Yeah. So I'm, I'm probably a little bit unpopular. I tend to be slow. I started out as a very like early adopter, right? Like, so when, I I'll use the, the Nikon, I'm an icon shooter I have been for, for a long time. And so when the Nikon D four came out, I bought a D four D D 4s, one of the two D four S I think I bought it the day it came out.

[00:35:18] Dave Shay: And I learned that when you buy it the day that it comes. It means that Lightroom does that support it. And you like should not shoot weddings on that thing or that you're going to have some problems, right. Talking about that like six week window, or you can get yourself in trouble. Like that's a very good way to land in there early and so early adopting when it came to AI, it's something that I was, I came in with a very skeptical approach because as an artist and as a photographer, I know that I shoot five to 10,000 images on a wedding day.

[00:35:42] Dave Shay: I deliver six to 800. If I know what my ratio is, and I know that sometimes I will see four images that are almost the same, but I know that the, like the flower girls face and the bride's face in one photo, that smile is just better than the other ones. Right. And then I'm like, oh, I can't do that for me or whatever.

[00:35:59] Dave Shay: And like, I can kind of like, it's, I can't trust it to call for me or whatever. Like, and I still kind of stand in in that, in that camp for a little bit, but when it comes to the future of AI and. The AI around photography. I think there's so much of an opportunity like editing. Like I do the same thing for every, every wedding and every event that I shoot, every single image that I've basically delivered in the last, I don't even know.

[00:36:21] Dave Shay: Now, couple years has the same tone curve, the same, basic it's a high contrast, clean look like that's what I'm going for and doing that across the. Oftentimes it's harder for me to get that right. Than it would be for AI to get that. Right. Yeah. and so I think that like, just streamlining that stuff is, is really the foundation.

but I've look at like the, the export problem, the things that I have, like if I tag something for, for, a blog or I tag something for my portfolio or a text, something for different contests or publications, like I think about like integrations, like I know something's going to be album design and funding.

[00:36:54] Dave Shay: I know I love funding. Album builder. Right? So like, I think about like tagging a photo there and then having it auto moving to the next step. Right. And I've, you've got ways to make that happen already. Like I've got like, I've played around with Photoshop droplets where like you can connect an export plugin to Photoshop and then it'll resize it and sharpen it and then save it in a different folder.

[00:37:15] Dave Shay: And you can do like all this stuff, but like it's cumbersome and it's not necessarily. Yeah, I wouldn't do this all the time. And the setup process, like we're going to talk about a setup process. It's awful trying to connect a Lightroom export to a Photoshop droplet, to like an auto upload sequence. It's not zero stars.

[00:37:32] Dave Shay: I do not recommend it, but I think there's a lot of opportunity to think about where photos are coming from, how they're headed. even just like when I connect a memory card, knowing that it's a memory card and this is where those photos go, here's how they get organized and all that stuff. No, there's just immense opportunity there.

[00:37:50] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Cool. yeah, it's always, it's always nice to hear what people think. Typically the answers are very much involved with calling and editing, so it's nice to hear a different, a different perspective on, AI in the photo industry. okay. So you've been using ImagenAI for, for some time now. I am curious and you've touched on this briefly, but truly how did ImagenAI impact.

[00:38:15] Dave Shay: Oh, man. I, so like, I, like I said, like, I'm skeptical, right? Like I envelope like the early adapt I had to like publicly apologize to a company. I was like, ah, that's stupid and trendy. And then I wound up using their products later on. I want to be able to get ambassador for them after I actually tried it.

[00:38:27] Dave Shay: And I was like, oh shoot, I got to tread carefully. So what, when AI editing came out, it was one of those things that I was like, eh, don't trust it yet. How, like, I'm not sure. And so, like, I have a few people started mentioning charmy. Pena was like, you don't have to just do it, just do it. And I was like, all right, fine.

[00:38:40] Dave Shay: Like, I'll check it out. And so, as I, as I, as I did it, like the, the real times I had an engagement session, I shot for a friend. and this is probably the best example that I have is so like, I've used it for a few weddings here and there. And like, I've brought in some like paid jobs and stuff, but I had a friend that wanted me to do, can engage with you for him.

[00:38:55] Dave Shay: And I was like, Hey, yeah, like you're proposing, this is awesome. Let me, let me. Right. And so I came and I did that as a friend for a fee, as a favor for a friend. Right. And as I came in and I did this, the shoot, like this is coming at a personal expense to, to me. And so normally a photo shoot like that for, for a proposal, that's going to get me a fair, fairly sizable amount of money.

[00:39:13] Dave Shay: Right. Like I'm not the cheapest photographer around. And so as. Kind of doing this, sorry. As I'm I'm sharing, this is the chaos, this is what I'm actually about to touch on, which is funny. as I'm walking through editing this and going through it all, one of the things that I'm doing is I send it off to images.

[00:39:31] Dave Shay: So I came home from the proposal. I sent it off and I never. Once that was off and sent out that night. I was on, I think it was a Sunday or Saturday night that I, I came in for the shoot. So I came in call, like I said, and I sent it off all day Sunday. I didn't think about any of it. I didn't think about like my pictures or whatever.

[00:39:50] Dave Shay: I disabled my phone on the weekends. So like I can't access email, on Sundays, like at all, like I can't, I can't check, I don't check my texts. I don't check my, my business stuff at all. and like when I came back in and ready to start working on Monday, like that was just good to go. And that I think is such a value add, that I don't think people really realize that if you can save five minutes per job, and it takes you 10 minutes to set up that first time, even 20 minutes per that first time, it's so valuable to go and go through that.

and doing like moving to image and for a lot of this kind of additional. Like baseline. It's not even like, like heavy lifting, like the baseline editing just comes back and like the last wedding that came back, I touched, I think, 10 images. I was like, this is good to go. That's three and a half hours back in my life.

[00:40:37] Dave Shay: Yeah. And if I go on like, I'm a stickler for hourly rate, like my hourly rate, when I first started in photography, started measuring, it was like $6. I was making $300,000 a year. So it sounds all fancy, but I was working for six bucks an hour with how many hours I was putting into my business. Now that's that number's a lot closer to two to $300 per hour.

[00:40:54] Dave Shay: Take home profit at the end of the year. And that's a big, like a big adjustment, right? Yeah. And part of that is because I find ways like using imaging to, to kind of. Take care of that kind of background stuff and the stuff that I don't need to be doing, I don't need to be killing myself over the computer all the time, just editing and going through this stuff on images that are going to live on a flash drive.

[00:41:15] Dave Shay: The important ones absolutely put in that extra time, but like a lot of the stuff like. I think Imageners has been better than me in a few cases. And it's kinda made me mad too. Cause I had one where I sent it off and I like, I edited one myself and I came back and I had like, I got it back. And I like kind of compared side by side.

[00:41:30] Dave Shay: And I was like, Ooh, my grades weren't as good as I thought they were like, there's been a few cases of that. So I would say for the skeptics out there, like just embrace how much time it saves you. and yeah, I was very much skeptical myself.

[00:41:43] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Awesome. Thank you so much for sharing that. Yeah. I'm glad that we were able to free up time, so you can wrangle your children and hang out.

[00:41:54] Dave Shay: It's it's, it's funny. Cause like I it's, we've all kind of become this. You got the remote world that we've all lived in over the past two years and there's all this stuff has changed, but like what's really kind of changed for me is like the amount of like what's important and how much time I spend on.

[00:42:08] Dave Shay: My priorities have shifted massively over the last two years to spend time with them being psychopaths at all hours of the day, no matter what is going on, but like, I can embrace that and I can go, like, we're gonna, we're gonna end this call and I'm gonna get. Abel, I'm going to go hang out with them for awhile and we're going to go build all, you got the, Lego infinity gauntlet.

and we're going to go build that this weekend. So we were super excited. There's all this like Avenger stuff that we're going to go do, but like, I'm able to do that stuff because I've made choices to prioritize the scale and the ability of my business to not just live on my shoulders all the time.

[00:42:41] Dave Shay: And it's like one little thing here and there using Imageners. Automating a blog post here, like these little things, all of a sudden now with my 60 hour a week photography job, I worked for like five, 10 hours a week. If I'm shooting, I bowled the most I'll ever work in a week is 20 hours straight. Yeah.

[00:43:00] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Amazing. so Dave, thank you so much for, for joining, and chatting and sharing your insights. Where can the listeners learn more about you connect with you and of course see your incredible photography and your love for. Yes.

[00:43:12] Dave Shay: Yeah. Yeah. So as I mentioned, my photographer lives, tacos.com that does go to my website, for better or worse at this point.

[00:43:18] Dave Shay: It's part of who I am. I think I will tell everyone I'm not a huge Instagram person or social media. this isn't just like some like thing that I talk about on stage. And then I go like, oh, I'm actually on social all the time. Like I'm not on social. I don't like I'm not active on that stuff. I spend as much time just hanging with my family, interacting with the people around us, doing what we can on that front.

so my website is Dave shay.com. If you choose to not use the taco link, you can always get in touch with me from there. There's a contact form. I do work with photographers all over the states to try and help them kind of navigate through system management and how to kind of streamline. which is one of those things that's really important to me.

but I'm also here and there you'll find me all over the place in different like communities and stuff on Facebook. I will, what I log in. It's usually to join Facebook groups for photographers and just see ways that I can help here and there, but I'm always around kind of here to help and, yeah, that's about everything.

[00:44:09] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Awesome. I can't wait until finally a hang out in person and tacos with you. Yeah,

[00:44:14] Dave Shay: that'd be good. I think I'm up there sometime, sometime this year for, for a wedding or something. So.

[00:44:19] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Awesome. So you are invited to be part of the bigger conversation, joined the ImagenAI community today, by going to imagen - ai.com/community.

[00:44:29] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: And don't forget to subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen to. Thank you, Dave so much for that incredible conversation for sharing your insights, from what you've learned over the years, not only as a photographer, but from everything else you're doing in the photography industry, you've been listening to workflows presented by Imagen AI to see the show notes and everything referenced in this episode, please go to Imagen

[00:44:57] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: - ai.com/podcast.