Recorded: Welcome to The ReWork with Allison Tyler Jones, a podcast dedicated to inspiring portrait photographers to uniquely brand, profitably price, and confidently sell their best work. Allison has been doing just that for the last 15 years, and she’s proven that it’s possible to create unforgettable art and run a portrait business that supports your family and your dreams. All it takes is a little rework. Episodes will include interviews with experts from in and outside of the photo industry, mini-workshops, and behind-the-scenes secrets that Allison uses in her portrait studio every single day. She’ll challenge your thinking and inspire your confidence to create a profitable, sustainable portrait business you love through continually refining and reworking your business. Let’s do the rework.
Allison Tyler Jones: Hello, friends, and welcome to 2025. We have been a little late in getting this season six restarted because there has been sickness at the Jones residence. As many of you have experienced, we have been down with colds and all manner of sickness, so we are glad to be on the mend and back in the podcast studio.
Allison Tyler Jones: It’s January and we are dipping our toe into the new year. Not quite ready to throw our entire body into it, not quite ready to face what 2025 has to offer, but we’re just dipping a toe, so I would invite you to dip your toe with me. And what better topic to dip our toe into the new year than calendaring? There’s nothing like a fresh new calendar when all possibilities seem open to us, but as we know, by the time we get to the end of the year, all those possibilities are not open to us if we didn’t have them on our calendar.
Allison Tyler Jones: What I’ve learned after almost 20 years in this business is that it is essential to have a strategic calendar for a successful, profitable, and dare I say it, enjoyable portrait photography business. I know you heard it a million times. If it’s not on the calendar, it’s not real. And I didn’t ever really take that to heart until the last probably, I would say, five or six years. I have really learned the value of if there’s something that I want done, even no matter how minor, it needs to go on my calendar.
Allison Tyler Jones: So, what we’re going to talk about in this episode is we are going to talk about how calendaring gives you, correctly, calendaring correctly gives you control over your business. We’re going to talk about the steps that we need to go through to set up our calendar for the year to set us up for success. So, we’re going to set our business priorities. We’re going to group like activities together. We’re going to build in buffer times for things like workflow management, and then I’m going to give you some real life examples from our studio that have helped us have a more successful calendar, and some mistakes to avoid.
Allison Tyler Jones: So, let’s dig in. Calendaring correctly gives you control. It gives you control of yourself. It gives you control of your business. It allows you to set boundaries so that you don’t burn out. As the owner and the creator of the business, your creative mental energy is the primary asset of your business. I’m going to say that again. Your creative mental energy is the primary asset of your business. It is imperative that you protect that asset. If you’re running around from appointment to appointment with no scheduled time to regenerate or even tidy up an order and organize the work that you’ve already completed, you are going to burn out. You are going to not be providing the kind of experience that you want to provide for your clients. You’re not going to be organized enough to do that, and you’re going to be exhausted, tired, and constantly feeling like you’re just running from one thing to another.
Allison Tyler Jones: How that translates into client experience is that when your calendar is clear and you are running your calendar in an effective way, your clients see that, “Okay, she knows what she’s doing. She’s organized.” And you can show up at your best, most creative with your highest energy for your clients. It also helps you to profitably focus and have certain days for like activities, booking people strategically so that you can maximize your energy for those types of activities. I’ll talk a little bit more about that as we get going.
Allison Tyler Jones: So, step one into looking into our calendar for the year is we want to set what are our business priorities for the year. Your calendar should align with your goals and your personal values. So, you want to just look at the year, whether it’s Google Calendar or whatever calendaring software that you use, or it could be even a paper calendar. I love both. I love to have a paper calendar to start with and have little Post-it notes that you can move around. That helps me physically, like an analog way, to see a year at a glance. You can buy those year-at-a-glance calendars at Staples and just put the smallest Post-it notes on it and block out the days for things that you’re have upcoming. So, you can see in a year what your year looks like, and it really puts it into perspective because it makes you realize we don’t have as much time as we think. A year is actually pretty short.
Allison Tyler Jones: So, what I’ll do is I’ll look at that year, and then I want to go in and map out any major promotions, launches. Obviously, we’re going to block out all the holidays. You want to go in and block out your personal time and vacations. For us, we block out our vacations during the typical slow times. So, for us, that’s July in Arizona because it’s dead here, and then usually the couple of weeks between Christmas and New Year, we’ll block that out. If you’re not sure what your busy season is yet, maybe you’re newer to the business, you want to look at past booking data and see when were you busy last year, or talk to other photographers that shoot your same kind of genre and see when they feel like is the busiest time of year for them.
Allison Tyler Jones: Step number two, I am a big fan of grouping like activities together. So, I will go out ahead into my calendar before my client coordinator starts scheduling for any clients and I will go into the next quarter ahead, and then I will list shoot days, sales appointment days. And sales appointment days are going to be what we call our view and order, which is a sales appointment or a consultation. So, anything where I’m sitting up to the desk, need to look cute, and I’m talking to a client, having a meeting with a client in my office at my desk and I want to be dressed cute. And I might have a dress on, depends, but I’m not going to be wearing those same kind of clothes when I’m shooting because I’m on the ground. So, if I’m on the ground, I’m not going to be in a dress. And if I’m installing with our installer, I’m not going to be in a dress because I need to be in tennis shoes, comfortable. I might be on a ladder, that sort of thing.
Allison Tyler Jones: Grouping like activities really helps me mentally to get in my zone. So, if I’m shooting, if it’s a shoot day, I know I’m just shooting all day, so I’m in the shooting mode. If I’m in a sales appointment day, I’m selling all day, so I’m in the sales appointment mode. I’m in my client meeting mode. On the rare occasion where we have to mix appointments, like if I had to do a shoot in the morning and then do a sales appointment in the afternoon, it’s just not ideal because I’m not in the same headspace and I really notice when… Occasionally, sometimes there’s no avoiding it, you do have to mix the appointments, but I try very, very hard not to do it because I’m not at my best. I’m at my best when I’m grouping like activities all during that day.
Allison Tyler Jones: The next step is that you want to make sure that you’re building in buffer times for workflow management, so that means, on my calendar, that means I’m booking production days. Production days are days when no client meetings, no shoots are booked. That’s just an office day, whatever you want to call it, a studio day where I’m coming in to actually do the work. My employees have access to me and we can just produce the work and get it done. This avoids bottlenecks and last-minute rushes because it builds in a buffer time to actually do the work.
Allison Tyler Jones: So, for example, I’ll go in, say on a given week, and I might put a Tuesday is a shoot day, a Wednesday is a production day, and then a Thursday would be a view and order, a sales appointment day, and then a Monday would be a production day. I don’t usually Fridays and I don’t work weekends. So, that’s a very typical. Monday will be a production day, no client meetings. We kick the week off, get the week started. We can have a staff meeting, figure out what needs to be done that week. Then Tuesday’s all hands on deck. We’re just shooting all day. Then the Wednesday, another production day. We get the studio cleaned up, get it re-prepped, and instead of… In shoot mode, we get it into view and order sales appointment mode. And then on Thursday, I’m with clients at my desk, looking cute, and we’re having client meetings, either consultations or sales appointments. And then I’m off Fridays.
Allison Tyler Jones: Another day that I would put in on a week might be an installation day so that I know that I can schedule my installer for all day that day, and then he and I are going to be out in the van installing all day that day. So, that makes really good use of my installer’s time. He’s really happy that he’s getting multiple installations in a day. It’s not like one here, one here, one here, which takes him out of his groove, and they don’t really love that. He knows that he can get a lot of installations all in one day, and it’s much more effective for him.
Allison Tyler Jones: The other items that I want to encourage you to put on your calendar, and so many of us don’t, is personal days I have to take care of. Go see the dentist, go see the doctor, things that we never take time to do. If we put those on the calendar, they magically will get done. The other thing that’s great about setting aside these appointments and setting aside these types of days is that when you hire somebody to schedule your appointments for you, it’s very difficult to give over that control, I have found from when you’re used to doing your own calendar, but if you look ahead and say, “Okay, Tuesday is a shoot day, Thursday is a view and order day, you can schedule me however you want, schedule me for those types of appointments on that day,” then I just know that that’s what I’m doing that day.
Allison Tyler Jones: And then my client coordinator can go and schedule. She doesn’t have to keep calling me and saying, “Well, they don’t want to do it on this day. They want to do it on this day. Is it okay?” She just can look ahead and say, “Okay, I have Allison available on this Tuesday. The next available shoot time I have for her is on Thursday the 27th,” or whatever. She already knows all the dates that I’m available. And so it does create a sense of scarcity. It does create a sense of urgency that we’re not just available all the time anytime for anyone. We’re not just standing there waiting with our camera in our hand for somebody to walk through the door. We’re running a tight operation here. We know what we’re doing. Our time is valuable and we would love to work with you.
Allison Tyler Jones: Some of the most common mistakes that I see and that I have made when it comes to calendaring in the past is just booking clients without any limits, meaning just because they ask for it, “Okay, we’ll find a way. We’ll find a photographer. We’ll make it happen.” Just because they ask. I want to give you an example. When I met Kathryn Langsford, she and I first became friends, she was working every weekend because she thought she had to. That’s when her clients wanted to book, or was it? And we got to talking and she said, “You mean you don’t work every weekend?” And I said, “Well, I used to work a lot of weekends because I felt like I had to because people were always asking for Saturdays.” But then I realized they really didn’t want Saturdays because that’s when their kids had soccer and different appointments, and it was actually a pain for them to do it on a Saturday, but they thought they had to do it on a Saturday.
Allison Tyler Jones: But as we noodled through it together on the phone, and I have a bunch of kids, I know what it means to take kids out of school, I know that it’s a pain to do that, but I also know that, man, sometimes doing an appointment in the middle of the week is so much easier than trying to wedge it in on the weekend when it’s so crazy and busy. So, what I found is that when I charged more as a session fee for shooting on the weekend, then less people wanted to shoot on the weekend. They found a way to make it work in the afternoon during the week, and they were so much happier doing it that way. So, that’s what Kathryn did. She started to charge. She still offered weekend sessions, but she raised the price of those sessions, and it was amazing that those clients became available during the week. And they liked it better. They enjoyed having their weekends freed up for their family time, and they were actually so much happier because they had been shown a better way.
Allison Tyler Jones: Another common mistake is over-committing your time during peak seasons. Oh my gosh, I was so guilty of this. I made a huge mistake on this in, I think it was 2010. When you’re already busy, so let’s say you know you’re going to be busy, if you’re a portrait photographer, family portrait photographer, you know you’re going to be busy October, November, December. That’s just generally when you’re going to be your busiest, so don’t schedule promotions during your peak season. You’re already going to be busy. Schedule a promotion for a slower time so that you’re not just running ragged and discounting during your already peak time. So, that is a caution that I would give you as far as your calendaring.
Allison Tyler Jones: The last piece of advice I’d love to give you is that while the busy season of 2024 is still fresh in your mind, take a minute, take a piece of paper, sit down, and list what really worked last year. What was great? What did you do? And it could be workflow. It could be calendar. It could be anything, something new that you tried, a new product, a new policy that you put into place, a new way you started doing something. Maybe it was a new way that you were sending proofs to clients. I don’t know. But I know that you did something probably new this last holiday season, and it was good. What was it? And then I for sure know that some things slipped through the cracks for you. What were those? And how could you have done those differently? So, make those changes now, make those lists.
Allison Tyler Jones: Some of the things that I have learned and that I put onto my calendar, just a quick list, are I know that in the US the Monday after Thanksgiving, we call it Hell Day. We never schedule client appointments on that day because we know this is when it’s just sheer chaos because our clients get through the holiday weekend and they all of a sudden realize, “Holy crap, it’s December. It’s Christmas. We got to get going. Where are my cards? Where’s all my stuff that I’ve ordered?” And they start checking their Amazon carts. They start checking their Christmas lists. They start checking their portrait photographers and want to know, where are their holiday cards? Where are their gifts? Where is everything? And so the phone is ringing. It’s insane. And so you do not want to schedule client appointments on that Monday after Thanksgiving. We literally have it blocked off. It’s a production day, and it’s called Hell Day. Schedule nothing here.
Allison Tyler Jones: So, get out your calendar, whether it’s physical or virtual, digital, and start mapping out 2025. Focus on your profitable seasons and the client-friendly booking windows that you want to open up, and lay in the days that you want to work. Lay in the buffer days for production. Lay in the shooting days. Lay in the sales days and client meeting days. If you’re doing installations, lay in the installation days. Lay in those vacations and the personal time that you need to take out so that you can actually have a life.
Allison Tyler Jones: And it is amazing that when you put those things onto the calendar, your clients begin to schedule around you, then everybody wins. Your client gets the best version of you because you’re rested. You’ve been to the doctor. You’ve been taking care of yourself. You’re not completely burned out and frazzled. You’re not running from retouching something into their sales appointment. You are doing the same types of activities, and you’re in your groove with them that day and you’re really present for them. This all comes down to having control of your calendar.
Allison Tyler Jones: And of course, we’re never going to leave you empty-handed at the ReWork. We have for you a free PDF, which is all about time blocking, how to do it, and tips for creating a calendar like I’ve just described in this episode. So, go to dotherework.com/timeblocking, that’s dotherework.com/timeblocking, and download it for free and learn how to take control of your calendar and make 2025 your best year yet. I’d love to hear your favorite tips and how you use your calendar to your best advantage. You can DM me at @atjphoto, that’s the studio Instagram, or @do.the.rework, that’s the rework Instagram, or support@dotherework.com.
Allison Tyler Jones: I’m glad you’re here. Thank you for being part of the ReWork community. We’re thrilled to have you, and looking forward to a wonderful 2025.
Recorded: You can find more great resources from Allison at dotherework.com and on Instagram at @do.the.rework.
Recorded: Welcome to The ReWork with Allison Tyler Jones, a podcast dedicated to inspiring portrait…
Recorded: Welcome to The ReWork with Allison Tyler Jones, a podcast dedicated to inspiring portrait…
Recorded: Welcome to The ReWork with Allison Tyler Jones, a podcast dedicated to inspiring portrait…