027: Mark Rossetto – How to Supercharge Your Business For Success & Why Having Goals Are So Important

April 30, 2021

“There is no rule book. There is no right or wrong. Do what suits you and your lifestyle.”

MARK ROSSETTO

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

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

How can photographers establish themselves in the market?

The main part is that you photograph what you love. If you love photographing people or babies or personal branding or shoes, you’ve got to be passionate about your business either way. But then learn the craft of the photography. Know your lighting, know your skills, know your camera, know your computer, and then it’s like okay, now I need to learn my business part of thing, where there’s so much resource out there, and I’ll talk about the resources afterwards, but there’s so much resources out there. But whenever I speak to anybody about any business, I always say, “Start from the bottom and work your way up.” Always photography, photography first, then your business model, product and price list. You need to make sure you’ve got the right business model with the right price list, with the right products to suit your brand and style.

You need a website because when finally someone finds you, they will look up your website. Do you really need a website or is Instagram enough or clubhouse enough or Facebook? As a business professional, yes you do. Especially if you want to charge a proper charging rate. Once you’ve got your website, work on your workflow. Understand your client journey, and this is where Studio Ninja comes into it enormously with a workflow that’s really quality, professional, that looks like what you’re doing even though you might not know what you’re doing. Make sure that client experience is flowing really well and make sure that you can take your inquiry through to a booking, through to a shoot, do an amazing shoot, then through to your design consult where you’re selling your artwork, to actually producing products. There are people like yourself, Studio Ninja and your labs and all these amazing photography industry software suppliers that are just here to back you and help you. There’s a lot to choose from, but make sure you’ve got the right one that suits you and your business and your flow as well.

How do Photographers work on how to get leads and what they should charge?

Okay, well like any photographer starting out, you start in the friend zone. Family and friends, photographing family and friends. You know you’ve made it as a photographer when you’re out of the friend zone and you’re into random inquiries that you’ve never even heard of you, heard of them or spoken about.

But how do you get out of that zone? I guess depending on the genre you have, if you’re a wedding photographer, go to your industry nights, go to your venues, go to your vendors, go to your expos, go on forums. Be omnipresence in your business and connect with other wedding suppliers and people within your area. It might take a little bit of time. You might need to assist a photographer. I worked with Nick and also Jerry Ghionis for four years and I loved working with them because I learnt so much of a photography wise, but also a business wise and how to be that professional photographer and personality as well.

Get around other photographers who you want to look up to and you admire and you want to mimic. You don’t want to copy them because you don’t want to be a copycat, but if you’re hanging around them, like sharpened iron. If your portrait and your wedding and your personal branding, your networking groups are fantastic, your Facebook groups are fantastic, there’s three marketing strategies. Your passive marketing is being seen in the marketplace, your active marketing is actively going and getting your clients, and your digital marketing will amplify to get your clients. Working them together, because you can have the best Facebook ad ever written by amazing copywriters and you could spend $1,000 on a Facebook ad, but if you have got a shocking website or you’ve got no audience, doesn’t matter. Then we know those other photographers that have a massive audience and they don’t need to market at all because their passive marketing and their social media does it all for them. It’s a bit of a mix depending on what you’re doing.

I know that you’re quite an advocate of using the CRM as a photographer. Why should photographers out there se a CRM themselves?

Yeah look, organisation is just the key. I started off with three folders. These aren’t the folders, but I started off with three folders. One folder was my leads, one folder was my shoots coming up, and the other folder was my production, and that’s how I used to organise my… That was my CRM. I can’t even think of something funny. CRM. That’s how I used to organise it.

Then what happened, I used to have to send out a contract that you have to send by PDF, that they have to print, then I have to sign, then they have to take a photo or scan it back and send to me, and then I had to send them my business number to make the payment through there. I had to send, then it had to go back and for my payment gateway, and it was just an absolute nightmare. Don’t even get me started on Post-it notes. Then I spent every Friday entering into a sales database of who my sale was and how much it was and how much they owed and how much I needed and where they were at. It was just a pain in the arse. Having a CRM, for me, is like, from a photography point of view, you own a camera, you learn Photoshop. You’ve obviously got a computer, you get a CRM.

Don’t wait. I can’t stand, that drives me nuts if like a, “I don’t really need it yet. I’m not busy enough yet.” When you’re too busy, you don’t even have time to implement what you need.

Right. Maybe what you think you don’t need it yet, but you really do because if you can have it all in Studio Ninja where you can just send them the link and it’s got their contract and a questionnaire, and what is it? Contract questionnaire and a payment in a click of a button, and it looks professional and clean and branded, and your diary is linked to Google and it’s organised, and everything’s in the one spot and I know how much money I’ve gotten, I know how much money is coming and I know where my leads are coming from, and I’ve integrated my contact form into my website so everything’s in the one spot, and this is a tip, if you’re on Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn and all, all the roads should lead to your contact form so it’s all organised. It’s imperative.

Thank you!

Thanks again to you all for joining us and a huge thanks to Mark 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