After 30 years as a professional photographer, I’ve learned that building a successful photography business has far less to do with buying new cameras and far more to do with serving clients, building relationships, creating efficient workflows, and reducing friction throughout the customer experience.
In this video I share the biggest business lessons I’ve learned, including networking, marketing, client communication, CRMs, automation, online scheduling, image delivery, email marketing, and the systems that have made the biggest impact on my photography business.
17hats (Save 50% your first year):
https://referrals.17hats.com?r=JohnGress or use the code JohnGress
MailerLite:
https://www.mailerlite.com/?linkId=lp_170762&sourceId=john-gress&tenantId=mailerlite
Take your photography to the next level with my digital book The Photographer’s Journey, Lighting Handbooks, Digital Downloads, the Academy with John Gress, in-person workshops, and one-on-one mentoring.
Digital Downloads: https://johngress.com/downloads
Academy: https://johngress.com/academy
Workshops: https://johngress.com/workshops
Chapters
00:00 – Introduction
00:53 – Serve your clients
01:29 – Build Relationships
02:27 – Working on your business
03:00 – Building a Better System
04:18 – QuickBooks Tried to Get Paid
04:33 – Why I Switched to 17hats
05:09 – 17hats Discount Code
05:31 – Reducing Friction
06:42 – Image Delivery
07:33 – Turnaround
09:08 – How about you try being nice instead?
09:50 – Networking & Marketing
11:36 – Blogging and Social Media
12:16 – Email Marketing with MailerLite
12:50 – Focus on what is important
13:27 – Why Emily’s advice was so important!
Disclaimer: The QuickBooks and Acuity pricing shown in this video reflects my best recollection of the approximate monthly costs I would have incurred at the time I switched platforms in 2024. Pricing and subscription plans have changed over time and may differ today. My decision to leave QuickBooks was prompted after Intuit discontinued functionality I relied on in QuickBooks Desktop 2020, including the ability to upload downloaded bank transactions, unless I upgraded to a subscription version. Intuit’s support forum confirming this policy can be found here: https://quickbooks.intuit.com/community/banking-4/quickbooks-mac-2020-now-getting-unable-to-get-your-banks-profile-429-21690?tid=21690&fid=4
A separate discussion illustrates how frustrated many QuickBooks Desktop users were at the time, including one user who described the policy as “extortion”: https://quickbooks.intuit.com/community/banking-4/support-for-quickbooks-desktop-mac-2020-will-end-on-5-31-23-33597
