Hey, friends, welcome to another episode of the Business Journey podcast, I'm your host, Rebecca Rice, and today we are recapping your top five favorite episodes of 2021, so I am super excited to be able to go through this today, just kind of as a fun episode as the year is coming to an end. And I think it's just going be great. So before we dive in, I wanted to let you know about a brand new free guide that I have just for you. It's called the three K Mini Sessions Blueprint, and what this is is it's a blueprint, a literal like a step by step guide to walk you through what you need to do to make your first $3000 in a single set of mini sessions. If you have done Minis before and you've made $3000 on a single date of Minis, then this still may be good for you to check out just to see if there's anything that maybe you've overlooked or haven't done before to maximize your profit. But if you have never done Minis or you have and you've never made $3000 on a single date of Minis, then this guide is really, really for you. And so be sure to check that out. It's going to walk you through no strings attached. How to follow the system to get three K on your first set of Minis so you can find that at Rebeccaricephoto.com/3K-minis. That's the number three the letter K Dash Minis, so I can't wait for you to check that out. So I cannot believe, first of all, that we are nearing the end of December of 2021. This is so wild to me. I feel like this year has just completely flown by and I don't know what what happened. I blinked. And all of a sudden it's December. So super crazy. But I am excited to like, go through. One of my team members had the idea as we were trying to think of podcast episodes to do to wrap up the year. She said What if we like went through our students all time favorite episodes of 2021? I loved that idea, so I can't believe our podcast has been going for almost a year. We started it in February of this year, and so we have so many episodes and it's just wild that we've made it this far, which is so fun. I wanted to go through and kind of do like the best of and outline which episodes were the most popular and kind of give you a chance in case you missed them to be able to like, link them to go back to you. So we will do this in backwards order. Kind of like it reminds me on those old like radio shows and they do the top songs of, you know, nineteen ninety five or whatever. I was one year old in 95, so I don't know why I used that date. But either way, it's like the top three songs of the 2000s. OK, so we're going to do our top favorite episodes, starting with number five. Your number five favorite episode was episode number 34 blogging for family photographers with Kristina Dowler. Now, if you missed this episode, Kristina is a member of my team. She does all of our copywriting, so she writes our blog and a lot of our emails and things like that, and she is just so awesome at what she does. And by having her take over our blog, it's just been such a sigh of relief knowing that our blog is getting optimized for SEO and the photos are beautiful that are being shared and everything is just, you know, running as it should. So in that episode, episode 34 blogging for family photographers, Kristina walks us through the different things that we should be looking out for and implementing as we blog. And so this episode was super helpful, very, very practical. If you're looking for like practical steps of what to do to get found with your blog, like what is the purpose of blogging? Is blogging dead? Do I need to be blogging? This episode is for you, so we are going to link it here below in the show notes for you to go take a listen if you did not, but it was one of those. We got so much feedback just on how helpful and how practical this episode was. Christina just lays out all the steps very clearly in a way that's not confusing or scary, because I know blogging you say SEO, you're like, Oh my gosh, what is SEO? That's basically how to get found on Google. But Kristina makes it so easy and so just simplistic. So if you are wanting to up your blogging game, definitely go listen to that. That was episode 34 blogging for family photographers. So number four on our list, let's see. Oh, this song was a fun one. So number four of your all time favorite episodes was episode nine Instagram Reels with Natasha Coyle and Stephanie Case. Now, if you don't know Natasha and Stephanie, they are. First of all, they're both amazing humans. But secondly, they are both incredible at Instagram, Reels and TikTok and all things short form video. And I know for me personally, this episode was transformational for me because. It really unlocked some of those like mental barriers that I carried when it comes to Instagram Reels, and I got some very practical tips and takeaways of things that I could do to lessen, you know, the workload, be able to batch reels because for me, before this point, before this episode, it used to take me so long to do one single reel. Like, I can't tell you why I felt like such an old person that it would literally I would sit there for like 30 or 45 minutes working on one single reel, and it was exhausting. I'm like, This can't be it like there has to be a better way. And so this conversation with the two reels queens was just so helpful. I know for me personally, but also for other people. And so if you didn't get to listen to that? Definitely go because these girls know what they're talking about and fun fact, they both have Reels mini courses out now. Since this episode, we probably need to go back and link it in that episode. But since this episode, they both have mini courses that walk you through how to do Reels and Reels strategy and just all kinds of stuff. They are great teachers, both of them, and so definitely go check out their mini courses. But a great place to start without having to invest anything completely for free is episode 9 of our podcast Instagram Reels with Natasha Coyle and Stephanie Case. So definitely go give that a listen. If you missed it. All right, number three, your number three favorite episode of 2021 was episode 20. How to book mini sessions with no client base. Now, I love this topic because you guys know mini sessions are my jam. They're my thing. I could talk about Mini's all day, every day, and one of the most common questions I get is how do I even book Minis if I've never shot any families in my life like? And I share that story because I. That was me. Like when I first started doing mini sessions. My very first set of Minis was a set of Easter Minis, and I had never worked with anybody that I didn't know before. Literally anybody that I had ever shot by my camera was either family or family friends. And so my very first set of mini sessions were the first ones and they were fully booked. I booked 16 Minis. My very first try, doing a lot of like trial and error, and I learned a lot since then, which is great. But in episode 20, I walked through some very practical things you can do to book mini sessions if you do not have an existing client base, because I feel like there's this misconception that you have to have this massive client base to be able to book out Minis consistently, and that couldn't be farther from the truth. I can't tell you how many students I have. I mean, countless students that have zero client base and book out their minis the very first try. So it's absolutely doable. Definitely go. Take a listen to that episode if you haven't, because it's excellent for those newer photographers that are just starting out that you don't have to wait to do mini sessions until you know you've got this many clients on your roster or whatever, you don't have to wait. You can do it right away. So that episode hopefully will provide some encouragement for you, especially if you're in the zone of like just starting out in your photography journey. OK? Number two Your number two favorite episode of 2021 was episode 2 preparing for Spring Minis. This episode was so fun, it was one that I really wanted to emphasize. We had published it, you know, right before spring, mini session season hit, and so we were able to like, really get ahead of the curve because the number one biggest mistake I see photographers making is not giving themselves enough time to prepare appropriately for their mini sessions. Prepare, meaning get your promo shots and market well and give yourself plenty of time to be able to market. So in this episode, episode 2, we walked through the things that you should be doing to prepare before mini session season hits, because at the time that I'm recording this, there are still people where, like at the end of fall many sessions season and I still see people saying, Hey, I'm wanting to do you know, a set of Christmas minis in two weeks? Do you think I can do it? And I'm like, No, two weeks is not enough time to prepare yourself. And so this episode really helps you gain an understanding of how much time you really should be giving yourself before launching Minis. And it's a great way to listen to now. You know, we're in December. You can listen to this because spring mini sessions season comes very quickly. Once the new year hits, you have like a handful of weeks and then we're boom. We're right into spring mini sessions season, so definitely give that episode a listen. Take notes and it would be a great one to be able to like, get under your belt as you're prepping and planning for the New Year and what you want 2022 to look like and what you want your spring season to look like. So don't miss that episode. And now we have reached the moment. I feel like I need to like a draw this moment out. We've reached the moment your number one, all time favorite episode of 2021. Drumroll, please. Episode 6 family posing secrets, and I love that this was y'all's favorite episode because family posing is one of those things I really wish there were more resources out there for, and I love talking about posing. If you don't know, I recently started my YouTube channel and that YouTube video I did one about posing for families, and that was also like, still our biggest hit. And so you guys love all things posing, which is a really good to know. I may or may not have some resource in the works for early 2022, so you can keep a lookout for that. All about posing. In that episode, I walk through some secrets that I use some tricks of the trade, if you will, for posing families, especially families with young kids. You won't want to miss that episode because if you are like, overwhelmed with the idea of posing or you know you get to your photo session, you freeze thinking, what in the world do I do? Then this episode will be really helpful because we walk through some practical things that you can do for posing and things that you can remember and just have in your arsenal. And then some ways to capture through genuine emotion that we don't want to just take picture pictures for the sake of taking pictures, right? We want to capture memories for families. And so I walk through some ways that we're able to create those memories that we can capture. And it's just a lot, a lot of fun. So that episode, it was honestly one of my favorites, and so I'm so glad that it was one of y'all's favorites as well. So there you have it your top five episodes of 2021. If you missed any of those, we are linking them all here in the show notes for you so that you can go back and listen. The numbers spoke. Those were the favorites. So if you only have time to listen to a handful of episodes, those are the ones you'll want to hit first, because I know you will not be disappointed. So there you have it. There's our top five. I am super excited for next week's episode. We're coming back with even more tips for leading into the new year, and I know it'll be a good one. So with that, we'll go ahead and close out and we'll see you next week. Bye, guys.
