Welcome to minis Made Easy, the podcast that's all about making your mini sessions simple, profitable and stress free. I'm Rebecca Rice, and I've helped 1000s of family photographers, just like you, build thriving businesses through mini sessions. Somewhere along the way, my students started calling me the queen of minis, and I'll gladly own it, because I love showing photographers how to maximize their time and profits while working smarter, not harder. Whether you're brand new to the world of minis or you've been running them for years and are ready to level up if you're in the right place, from pricing and marketing to posing and workflows, this is your one stop shop for everything minis. So grab your favorite drink, get cozy, and let's dive in. You're just one episode away from transforming your business. You
music. Hello friends, welcome to the minis Made Easy podcast. I am so excited to be back again this week for all things, mini sessions. If you're listening and you're very confused, like Rebecca, I thought this was the business Journey podcast. I What happened? Pause here. Go listen to last week's episode. I explained the whole rebrand and all the things, but I am so excited to be back. You guys. It's been so long since I have done podcast episodes and, like, consistently or at all, and so to be able to say, like, I'm back for another week, oh my gosh, it's so fun. Okay, so in today's episode, we are talking all about planning your 2025, mini sessions. So January really is, like a great time to take a look at your year to decide what your mini session seasons are gonna look like. But here's the deal, 2025, can absolutely be your most profitable and stress free year. Hello. Anybody up for that? Planning ahead is key. Planning ahead is what changed everything for me when I went from being reactive to just like, you know, reacting and deciding I was going to do a set of minis because somebody asked for them, to actually planning ahead, knowing what I was going to do. You guys, it just makes all the difference. So as we're headed into this new year and our mini season, I actually have a brand new resource to help you plan, step by step your upcoming mini sessions, and I'm going to be able to share more about that next week, so definitely stay tuned. But I want to talk through briefly why it is so important to plan your mini sessions early. And when I say plan ahead, I mean giving yourselves at least six to eight weeks to properly market, because good marketing takes time, and so we're not doing this last minute like I'm gonna throw together some minis two weeks from now. This is the year that that stops. Okay, promise to yourself that we're not gonna do last minute minis this year. Okay, so it's so important to plan early. Number one, it helps you to beat the competition, because you're able to market yourself and get booked out for other photographers, start scrambling to book. I remember my very first year doing minis. I did not plan ahead, obviously. And I was in, you know, like a Facebook mom group, and somebody had asked, Hey, is anybody doing Easter minis? And I thought, hey, I could probably do Easter minis. And had zero forethought. Did not know what I was gonna price them, didn't know anything. And I was just like, Yeah, I'm doing Easter minis. And threw my name in the hat, and figured I'll just figure it out later. And I mean, it went okay, it could have gone better, but that's obviously not the ideal. I was then scrambling, trying to get all of my stuff together on the back end to be able to market and actually book out my spots. And I was trying to do it, you know, a few weeks from then, and it was just chaos. And so from then, I learned planning ahead is definitely better, because you avoid, you know, scrambling, but it allows you to beat the competition. And so if somebody had the forethought to say, I'm gonna do my spring minis, you know, several weeks before and they had already advertised and booked out their spots, then they would have beat me to it, as I was scrambling, trying to make something it also allows you to book clients early and avoid the rush, and so you don't have to be freaking out about filling your spots, because when you plan ahead, you fill your spots with plenty of time before your mini sessions. Another reason you want to go ahead and plan early is it allows you to maximize your profits. You get to plan your pricing, plan what your themes are going to be, and plan your upselling strategy so that you can have it all in place and maximize those profits, which we'll spend an entire episode, probably several episodes, talking just about upselling and what that looks like, but it allows you to maximize those profits. Hit your revenue goals and have a clear strategy, because you planned ahead. Another thing that planning ahead does is it helps you reduce stress. Okay, so busy season can go smoothly and not be chaotic. I will never forget the first year that I actually planned ahead in all of my minis, in all of my marketing and things like that, my busy season wasn't chaos. I, like, didn't know what to do with myself. I'm like, What do you mean? I'm not sending an email that morning, like, typing up an email to then hit send on to my email list, because I just decided I wanted to book these. Like, it doesn't have to be like that. Nope, sure doesn't. You can have a busy season that runs really smoothly that is mapped out and doesn't leave you in panic mode. So if you're like, oh my gosh, that sounds like a dream, then we're gonna plan ahead this year. Okay? And so I want to reassure you that planning ahead for your minis might feel slightly overwhelming, because really, if you think about it, there are a lot of moving pieces to successful, intentional mini sessions, but I've got you. I'm not going to let you do it by yourself. Okay, so when we're thinking through areas that we want to plan our 2025, mini sessions, one thing that you want to look at is the calendar as a whole. Okay, so I highly suggest mapping out your personal calendar first. When are you taking a vacation? What birthdays Do you have? When are you already going to be out of town? Or you've got other things going on, I don't know, church events, whatever it may be you're going to want to take a look at your personal calendar first, and then go in and kind of pencil in where you could potentially host different minis. Once you like pencil in your minis, you're able to build your marketing timeline around that, which we won't get into the nitty gritty of like what that looks like just yet, but the key is take a look at the calendar as a whole, so that you can not overbook yourself, but be strategic in when you're offering your minis, because that's part of the beauty of having your own business, is you get to decide when you want to book yourself out, right? And so if you know that you love celebrating your birthday, then don't book minis on your birthday weekend, right? Or if you know that your kid has some big competition, or, you know, concert or something like that, put that in the calendar so that you can then work around it with your mini sessions, and then it doesn't all just like happen to fall on the same week, because that would be terrible. So I would map out everything personally, and then go in and pencil in what dates you could potentially have for your spring, your fall and your Christmas minis. The next thing that I would say that is an area you want to plan is think through the themes that you could potentially have for your mini sessions. You want to think of fun, creative ideas, but things that your clients will actually book. And we're going to do a whole episode here in a couple weeks, just about spring Mini's theme ideas, because there are some themes that are great and some themes that are terrible, and so I want to be able to save you some heartache. And, you know, plan mini sessions that are actually going to book because, believe it or not, your theme could make or break you. You could have the most beautiful photos in the world, but if you have a bad theme, then it may not book well. And I think a big mistake that a lot of photographers make is they overthink their theme and try to get too creative with it, and that's where they kind of get into trouble. But we're not getting into that right now. We'll get into it later, but it's just something to start thinking through. Is what themes that you want to do, and when you make your decisions early for that kind of stuff, you have time to look for locations, look for props if you're gonna have them, things like that. So start planning for that. Another big area that you'll want to start planning is your pricing. Okay, so And next week, we're going to have an entire episode just on pricing. So I'm not going to get too into it here, but you're going to want to run your cost of doing business to make sure that your minis are profitable. Because at the end of the day, if you do all this work and you're making pennies, like it's just not worth it, your time is valuable. And I want you to actually, you know, not only book out your minis, but book out your minis and make money on them. And so we're gonna do a whole episode next week on pricing. And then the fourth piece that is so important to plan ahead is your marketing plan. Okay, so you need to start promoting at the right time to give yourself plenty of time to market well and to book your spots out and have a real marketing strategy, things like an email list work on your SEO. You know, advertising through social media and other free avenues, partnering with local businesses like there's so many things that you can be doing, but the key is to plan ahead, because good marketing takes time. You're gonna hear me say that probably
5000 times throughout the course of this minis Made Easy podcast because it's so. True, and I want to, just like, nail it into your head that good marketing takes time, and so if you're going to take the time to put all these other things together, you want to make sure that you're marketing them well, to actually book your spots. And then one bonus thing that I didn't have originally, but I think is important, is planning ahead for your automations and setting things up. So a huge believer in work smarter, not harder, and there's so much amazing technology available now that you know you can really automate so much of your mini sessions, process and your client experience, where it's still special and it still sets you apart, but you're not the one pressing every single button, hitting send on every email, things like that, that you build it out once, and then it's automated, and it just does all of the work for you seamlessly. So that's another thing to think through. And like I said, we're gonna have entire episodes for all of these things. So if you're like, oh my gosh, Rebecca, there's so many things. Yes, that's kind of the point. There are so many things to think through when it comes to planning your minis, but you don't have to do it alone. Okay? Because here's what I hear, I know that it can absolutely be overwhelming. It's overwhelming if you don't plan ahead, and then it's overwhelming to actually put a plan in place with strategy and intentionality and things like that. If you don't have a plan, you potentially are losing clients because other photographers are marketing first, and you're missing out or clients book somewhere else before you ever even start your marketing. You could be missing out on profits and all kinds of stuff by not planning ahead. So I'm telling you, even though it is a lot of work, and it's gonna be slightly time consuming to plan ahead. It is so so worth it, and especially those of you that maybe you've never planned ahead for your mini sessions, I want you to think back. How did those minis go? Like, were you super happy with them? Or do you feel like they could be improved upon? Because I think no matter where you are, whether you've never done minis before or you have done tons of minis, it can always be improved upon. And it comes down to the earlier that you start preparing, the better off you will be. So just to briefly recap planning our 2025 mini sessions. Planning ahead is key to having stress free, profitable mini sessions. And so as we're taking a look at it, there's so many things to focus on, your dates, your themes, your pricing, your workflows, your automation, stuff like that, but we can walk through it together. So with that, we will go ahead and sign off. We'll see you next week, where we're going to talk all about pricing our mini sessions. So make sure that if you're not already, you're subscribed to this podcast, so that you get notified when the episode goes live, and we'll be able to dive even deeper into all things mini sessions. So with that, I'll sign off and see you this time next week. Bye, guys.
