038: Rick Liston – How To Create an Epic Client Journey With The Ultimate Wedding Workflow

August 20, 2021

“Serve yourself and your family first. Once you stick to that, it really I think drives the rest of your decisions”

RICK LISTON

Hey everyone! It’s Sally here, from Studio Ninja. Today’s episode is all about Rick Liston.

Check out some of the biggest points from Rick’s interview below:

How do you get your leads?

So, once I came back to Australia, the first thing I did was make a list of wedding venues here, which I’m sure nobody’s unaware of. It’s a great strategy. But if you’ve only done it half-assed, I can just recommend to really get on there and make sure that you have made the best one.

And we are in the best position, I believe, to actually write one of those lists. I had a look at the Darbyshire top venues, and a lot of them are just listings, and so I really feel that that’s prime for going in and overtaking them. Because that’s not firsthand information. The people that have made those long listings of what venues are there, they haven’t spent wedding days there. They haven’t seen what it’s like. They haven’t seen how staff are treating you at the wedding. They haven’t seen what happens when it rains there, and what their backup options are, how hard it is to get home at the end of the night.

All these things that you can offer and provide will make your article, if you go at it the same work ethic that I did, where I just knew, “This is actually going to be my sustainable source of leads. I am going to try to serve these wedding venues as well as I can before they serve me.” Which of course everyone is going to do. So once they started seeing and hearing from couples, how they found them, believe me, they started recommending me back. And then that little investment of time at the start has just been paying dividends for all these years.

So I make sure we’re always checking in with them: what do I need to do to help you guys, how your mid-week bookings are, what can we do. If we design a package, a small intimate elopement package. We’ve got so many skills that they can benefit on, we can basically be their best in marketing employee. Because we can really make a landing page, take the photos, write the copy, do the ads, send it out. We’re a voice that people should be listening to when they’re planning the wedding, just because of our experience where we’re there the entire day, we see how it happens. So we can just provide venues I think with so much money. So once we’re there being vital for their business, not just another functional photographer, they really respond in kind.

How does your Wedding Workflow work?

My post wedding workflow is pretty extensive. I want to make sure that within 24 hours, they’re getting 100, 150 previews in a blog, with links to other vendors, a slideshow, beautiful gallery. Because I really love jumping on that excitement, not just of the couple, but obviously of the vendors themselves, every guest that’s at that wedding. My VA will put a insta-story together where in each one of those pages they are tagging in all of the vendors. This is laborious work, but it just means it’s my marketing done. So I don’t do any of that myself, but it’s getting it out there. And I’m providing all of those vendors with an incredibly easy way to just hit that “post to your own story,” so they’re out there spreading my photos.

I shoot a lot. It just spreads wildfire. It’s just been a really great way. I’m enjoying the challenge of seeing just how much I don’t have to do myself, and then just how much I could just focus on my one superpower, which is taking photos of weddings and hanging out with peeps having a rad day.

How do you shoot over 100 weddings a year?

All of that, this year, even with the lockdowns, but like I said, there’s 365 days in the year, so it’s, it’s quite achievable once you get your workflow in order.

If you’re feeling burnout at 30 weddings a year, that’s a workflow problem. Working 8 to 10 hours 100 days of the year, you’re not going to get burnt out from that. So I really just think we’re capping our ceiling if we’re not doing the most we can to tighten our workflow, outsource, automate everything you can. And that doesn’t mean you’re not still involved or you’re completely detached. I’ve built that workflow, that’s all me. It’s all based on my experience, my advice, my feedback. Those emails are written from the perspective of someone that’s gone, “all right, I think I need to change this. This didn’t work out. I need to put that back in.” Obviously when I get the edits back, I’m still going over them. And as you say, it’s really incredible. You’re surprising how close they can get to perfection, and what you would have done yourself.

So, it’s just all opportunity cost of our time. And I really love spending that time on actually shooting or being with my family.

Thank you!

Thanks again to you all for joining us and a huge thanks to Rick for joining us on the show!

If you have any suggestions, comments or questions about this episode, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post, and if you liked the episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post!

That’s it for me this week, I hope you all enjoyed this episode.

See you soon,

Sally