Running a small business is no easy task. It's messy and thrilling, and terrifying all at the same time.
But no matter what, it's definitely a journey worth taking. As a mom of two littles, I know the daily struggles, and I'm here to walk this journey with you. If you're ready to feel empowered, encouraged and on fire for the things you truly love, then you're in the right place. I'm Rebecca Rice, a pizza loving hot chocolate drinking family photographer and educator. And this is the business Journey podcast.
Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of the business Journey podcast. I'm your host, Rebecca rice. And today we are talking about one of my all time favorite topics, and that is mini sessions. So today, we're talking about how I prep the week of mini sessions. I feel like this is nice and timely. Because if you're listening to this as it goes live, obviously, we're in the thick of mini sessions season here in the fall. And so I wanted to give you guys a little glimpse of what I do the week of my mini sessions to make sure that they go smoothly that everything goes according to plan. And it's not this like frantic, running around trying to get things set. So hopefully, you'll be able to take the simple things that I do. And it'll you know, ease your burden of mini sessions week. Now before we jump too far into things I wanted to let you know about a free class that I have for you guys. It's all about marketing your mini sessions. And so it's the three secrets to fully booked mini sessions. If you want to check that out. You can either type it in Rebecca rice photo.com/minis-class, or we have it linked in the show notes for you. So I know that that class is going to be helpful for you. And I can't wait to hear about how you implement it in your mini sessions. Okay, so let's jump in to what I do to prep the week of mini sessions. Again, my goal is that the week of minis is not frantic, because I feel like I've done this well. And I've also done this not well. And over the years, I've just learned how I operate best and how like what things I need in place for me to feel prepared, because the truth of the matter is mini sessions can feel really overwhelming, especially if you've got a bunch booked. And so I used to do 15 minute minis, now I do 10 minute minis back to back. And so we're talking up to you know, three hours that could be 18 families that I'm serving in one day. And so I for sure want to make sure that all my ducks are in a row so that nothing goes awry, because I feel like it's the worst if you get into your minis, and then all of a sudden something goes wrong and it just throws off the whole set of minis. So the very first thing that I do to prep the week of my mini sessions is to charge up all my batteries and clear my SD cards. I usually bring if I'm shooting for three hours, I'll bring two batteries with me one that goes in my camera and one that's a spare that are both fully charged, just in case would one battery be enough probably but I don't want to even risk my camera running out of battery. And then having to figure out what to do in between each mini session. Let me tell you it has happened to me before where I thought my battery was fully charged. It only had half the battery. And then I showed up and I was literally charging my battery between sessions like that is so embarrassing, and you don't want to do that I was like charging it in my car, trying to get just enough juice to get through the next session. It was horrible. So a good rule of thumb is don't charge the night before. Give yourself at least a couple of days and then pop the batteries into your camera to test it and see if the battery got fully charged because at one point I was using a charger that for some reason when it was plugged into the wall, it only charged up halfway and it would like stop charging the battery and make it look like it was full. And that's how I ended up with a half charge battery for many sessions. But I learned that when I plugged it into my computer, it would charge the whole way. Don't ask me why I literally have no idea. It was the strangest thing but a good rule of thumb is don't charge your batteries the night before just in case something happens and they don't charge fully. So give yourself a couple of days. charge them up fully and then put them in your bag with your camera because you don't want to leave your batteries at home. And then my s SD cards I made sure to come again with like two SD cards, I like to shoot on 32 Gig SD cards. To me that is plenty of space. And so I bring to again, what if one, just malfunctions for whatever reason or whatever, there have been times that I've shown up with an SD card that I didn't clear because I was like, Oh, I have plenty of space. And then guess what it was full. And I was having to go through and like delete images that were blurry or with closed eyes or whatever, on the camera in between shots, just so I'd have enough space to continue shooting, guys, that is awful. And so embarrassing. And thankfully, the family had no idea. But still, it was not fun. So clear your SD cards, test it out, put it in your camera, make sure everything's good. But always bring a spare, just in case, you know, something happens with the SD card. And it's just malfunctions, you never know, when an SD card could just stop working on you, you want to make sure you do that. So once I do that, another thing that I make sure that I have in place, the week of my mini sessions is I make sure all of my mini sessions spots are added to my Google calendar. So every single time slot, whether you're doing 10 minutes, 15 minutes, whatever, every single one is added to my Google calendar so that I could either go in on my phone or on my Apple Watch and see who is next. I also like to include my questionnaire for each family right there in the notes section of my Google calendar. So that if you know right before our session, I panic and I forget something about them, then I can go into their Google Calendar event and just go look at their questionnaire, I have dubsado. And dubsado actually adds all of my events to my Google Calendar automatically. So when somebody books a mini session, it gets automatically added to my Google calendar. And then I go in and add the questionnaire to that event later manually. And that leads me to the next piece of things that I do before the session is I read all of my questionnaires. So every client that I serve, whether it's a full session or a mini session, they all receive a client questionnaire, just so that I can get to know them a little bit better before our session, because 10 minutes or 15 minutes is not a long time to be with your client. And so you don't really have time for the Hi, what's your name? How, you know, tell me about yourself, you don't have time for that kind of stuff during the session. And so I like to send my clients their questionnaire and then I go through and read all of their answers so that I have a better understanding going into the session, what it's going to look like. So I asked a very intentional questions, you know about the family and their dynamic. And if they've ever had photos before, things like that, but also things that would be helpful for me to know, like, Are there any special needs in the family, because I don't like being surprised by special needs children. It's totally fine. I make do. But whenever I know ahead of time that there's a special needs child, then I know that I'm going to, you know, act a little bit differently, I am not going to be vying necessarily for eye contact, you know, there's just certain things that I'm going to adjust knowing that their special needs so that I can serve that family the best that I can. And so, and I asked it very gracefully on the questionnaire. I'm not just like flat out, Hey, do you have special needs your family? But the way that I phrased the question is very, very helpful. And families are willing, always willing to divulge that information so that I can serve their family best. If you're wanting a copy of my questionnaire, it's actually available in my shop. So we will link it here below for you to go ahead and snag that if you would like or you can make your own whatever works for you. So I read through all of the questionnaires so that I'm prepared before the session. Another thing that I do to prep the week of mini sessions is all of my clients receive a final info email, and that email is reminding them of their time slot, it is telling more information about the location we're at, you know, parking information, stuff like that. And it gives them some like last minute reminders the week of the session. I used to send this out manually now I have it as an automated step in my CRM dubsado. Either way, that is a piece that is so helpful the week of many sessions to go out because the purpose of that email is to answer any and all questions that your clients may have before they have to ask it. So it minimizes the back and forth in your email or texting or however you're communicating with them of like, Hey, where are we going to meet? What time was my session again? What should I bring? Is there anything you know, all the things, all those questions that are so common? Before I sent a final info email I used to get so many questions and they're all the same thing. So that's when I just put it all in this email. And it helps answer those questions so that I don't have to have the back and forth with all of those clients. That email template is also available in my shop in my email template bundle if you want to check that out. So I have two more things that I do to prep the week of mini sessions. The next thing is I watch for weather. And weather is one of those things that the forecast changes so fast, I don't know where you're at. But especially when I was in Dallas, not so much Nashville. But when I was in Dallas, the weather was so fickle, and it would change like crazy. People from Dallas know, Dallas weather is just so unpredictable. And so I would take a look at the forecast for the weekend on Monday. And I would basically communicate to my clients if there was rain forecasted, where I would say, Hey, I see the rain in the forecast. Because I know they're gonna bring it up. So I say I see the rain in the forecast, I'm going to keep an eye on it. And I will be in touch if we need to think about rescheduling. Because one thing about my mini sessions is I don't schedule a rainout date, like upfront, I leave space in my schedule in case there's a rainout. But I don't schedule a rainout date, you know right up front when they're booking because that's just another date that they have to look to see if it works. And it's just over complicates things. So what I do is on Monday, I tell them, I'm watching the forecast, and then I wait. And I look again, let's say the mini sessions are on Sunday. So if they're on Sunday evening, then on Friday, I'm looking again at the forecast to see what it's looking like. And I use the Weather Channel app. And a lot of times you're able to see like the hourly forecast as you get closer. And so if it's like 85 90% chance of rain on Sunday, then I'll just go ahead and make the call on Friday and say yes, we're gonna reschedule, here's what it's looking like. But if it's like 50, or 60% or lower, I tell them, Okay, we're gonna keep watching it and see what happens. And I'll make the call the day before because at that point, you're able to see the hourly forecast. And if it looks like it's gonna rain in the hours that we're shooting, I'll go ahead and reschedule at that point, the day before, I've even gone to like the day of if it's like, right in the middle 50% chance, we're not sure what it's going to look like, my clients are appreciative that I do that. And I am communicating with them because they would rather not reschedule. And so and I would rather not rescheduled. The most I've pushed it is like if the session is in the evening, that morning, I make the call. But I try not to make it that late. I tried to make it a little sooner. But the worst thing that would happen is I would make the call reschedule and then it not rain. And so I don't want that to happen. So I'm really intentional the way that I watch the weather. And I have never kept many sessions and then gotten rained on. So that's a good sign that usually if I decide to make the call, if I'm unsure, I'll just reschedule it. And what I do is I move everybody to a different date with the same time slots so that way, we don't have to worry about trying to fill in all the time slots again. And in the event that the new date doesn't work, I'll either add that one person to either another set of mini sessions that I'm doing, or I will tack them before or after a full session that I already have scheduled, I still want to avoid doing like a one off mini session that is my absolute last resort if zero other dates work for them, and then we find you know, a random time, then I'll do a one off mini session for them. Or I'll just refund them their retainer, it just kind of depends. I try not to do that I try to you know, find a time but you know, we make it work. But that is definitely something that I do to prep the week mini sessions is watching the weather. And then the last thing that I wanted to mention is I will go and scout a location if it's a new spot. So obviously, we've already decided the location that we're shooting at. But if it's a new location that I've never shot at before, I will go and do kind of like a trial run at the same time that I'll be shooting so that I can see what the lighting looks like I can see what like the foot traffic looks like and really get an idea of what I'm going to be facing. Because if it's you know a really crowded pedestrian area, then I'll be able to go and have a practice run kind of walk through where I'm going to position my clients and just have that plan going in. Because I don't want to again be surprised my whole goal of all of this is to feel really prepared before the mini sessions and so I don't want to show up and all of a sudden it be super crowded and I had no idea or the It looks different than I thought it would. So I will make sure and go check it out just to be sure that everything is, you know, according to plan, so and if it's location, I've shot it before, I
don't do that, like, it's not something I do every single time. But if it's a brand new spot, or I haven't shot at that spot at that time, maybe usually I shoot there in the mornings, but these are evening mini sessions are the other way around. That's when I will go and scout it. So there you have it, there's like a short and sweet list, I guess it's not too short, we had several items. But those are all ways that I prep the week of many sessions so that the day goes flawlessly, so that all my clients feel really taking care of the week of our minis leading up to them. So take this as you will feel free to implement all of it or none of it. Maybe you pick like one or two things to do the week before your you know, maybe you haven't many sessions coming up this weekend, pick a couple of these and start implementing them. Don't feel like you have to do all of them this week, because that can feel a little overwhelming. But pick, you know a handful to be really intentional about for your next set of minis and see how you feel, see if it helps. See if it brings your stress levels down. I can tell you it will because preparation is key I had a leader that I used to follow that would say failing to prepare is preparing to fail. And so you you don't want to prepare to fail. Go ahead and make your plans prepare before the mini sessions get here and I promise they will go nice and smooth. So I hope this episode was helpful for you. If you have any questions at all. You can find me on Instagram at Rebecca rice photography. And I'd love to chat with you there in my DMs any way that I can and I am so excited to hear about how everybody's mini sessions are going and definitely keep me updated there. So with that, I'm going to go ahead and close out for today and we'll see you back next time for another episode. Bye guys.
