The Systems and Workflow Magic Podcast

Your editing queue is stacked with holiday mini galleries, Black Friday emails are flooding every inbox, and your marketing has shrunk down to one topic: Christmas. Then January 2nd shows up, the decorations come down, and your contact form goes dead silent. If that sounds familiar, you are doing nothing wrong. That January quiet is one of the most predictable patterns in a family photography busi...

You do not need to post every day to market your family photography business. In this episode, I am sitting down (for the fourth or fifth time, honestly, she should just be a co-host) with Tayler Cusick Hollman, co-founder of Enji, to talk about the four words she emailed me that I could not stop thinking about: consistent does not mean constant. You can watch the full conversation on YouTube or l...

Do your inquiries go silent every January, every summer, or the week after your busy season wraps? Before you blame your photos, your pricing, or the algorithm, check one thing: which month is your marketing talking to? For most family photographers, it is the wrong one, because the families booking you this week made their decision weeks ago. I'm going to share 3 different types of marketing...

Picture it: it’s Wednesday night of a packed October week, minis are on Saturday, and you can’t remember if you texted those families. Then Saturday rolls around, and your camera battery is sitting at 12%. Crap...you forgot to charge your batteries because your mind is frazzled! This episode is for that scenario, and for the overwhelm behind it. I’m walking you through the exact pre-session routin...

Nobody will care about your business as much as you do. True. But that doesn't mean nobody will care at all. This week I'm sitting down with Hannah Allen, owner of Outsourcing with Love, to talk about how family photographers can start handing off parts of their business without living out one of those horror stories we've all heard. What you'll hear in this episode Why the middle...

You don't sell courses. You don't sell PDFs. You sell sessions, and every email list tip online seems to assume you have a shop tab full of digital products. In this episode, I'm spilling the tea on three ways family photographers can grow an email list when all you have to sell are sessions (like THAT is the only thing you do!!!) I'm talking about this because I see it all the tim...

Your December roster (aka your clients) were decided back in September (because of marketing). That means right now, in September, you're deciding what February looks like. If your marketing falls apart every October and January shows up with an empty calendar, you don't have a time problem or a discipline problem. You have a decision problem, and that's much easier to fix. I promise T...

It's 9:47 PM on a Sunday night. You open Instagram, tap the plus button, type three words into the caption box, delete them, and somehow end up two hours deep in another photographer's feed with nothing posted. Friend, you are not out of ideas, and you are not uncreative. You're asking yourself the wrong question, and in this episode (watch it on YouTube or listen right here on the podcast) I'm sp...

You made the color-coded content calendar back in January. Then an inquiry came in, one of your kids spiked a fever, three galleries landed in your queue, and you needed to prep a mini session day. Somewhere in the middle of all of that, the calendar stopped existing. You did not decide to quit. You just stopped, and a few weeks later you opened Instagram, saw you hadn't posted in eleven days, and...

It is the first week of September, which means your inbox is filling up, your calendar is filling up, and somewhere in the back of your brain there is a quiet voice asking whether you forgot to follow up with someone who emailed you two weeks ago. If that is you, hear me before we go one sentence further: you are not a disorganized person. You are not flaky. You are not bad at business. You are mi...

It is December 22nd. You have three last-minute sessions on the calendar because a family messaged you begging for updated photos before the grandparents arrive, and you said yes. It is 11:30pm, you are culling one gallery with five more stacked behind it, and your own family keeps asking when you will be done with work. Sound familiar? Here is what took me way too many years to figure out: the De...

Check your inbox. I bet there is a Black Friday email sitting in there right now from a course creator, a template shop, or a digital product seller, and I bet you skimmed it and archived it and thought "well, that's nice for them." Then you closed the tab and counted yourself out of Black Friday for another year. In this episode, I am making the case that Black Friday is for you as a family photo...

If a quiet January makes your stomach drop, pull up a chair. I am giving you a behind-the-scenes peek at the session I recorded for the 2026 Black Friday Summit, which runs August 25 through August 27, and my session takes a different angle than most of the others you will see there. The other speakers walk you through a Black Friday that already happened. I am walking you through the plan I am bu...

Guess what percentage of a recent course launch came straight from a waitlist? 78 percent. In this episode, I'm sitting down with email strategist Allison Hardy to spill the tea on exactly how she built that number, and why your email list might be sitting on more Black Friday potential than you realize. Allison is an email strategist who helps business owners write highly strategic email funnels...

I am sitting down with Megan Moore, a minimalist marketing strategist and Black Friday Summit speaker, to talk about why your Black Friday sale starts today, not in November. Megan owns a marketing agency and has been helping entrepreneurs in the digital space since 2014, working from her tiny house on the side of a mountain in British Columbia. Before running her agency, she owned a Pilates studi...

Spilling the tea today with two guests who manage hundreds of launches a year, so grab your notebook. If you've ever assumed Black Friday planning doesn't apply to you because you're a service provider and not a course creator, this episode is going to change your mind. I'm joined by Riley and Samantha, project managers with the KS Agency, ahead of our second annual Black Friday Summit this August...

Ever wondered what happens to your marketing when you actually step away from your business? I took 45 days off this summer for a family trip with no plans to work. In this episode, I am spilling the tea on exactly how I front-loaded six weeks of YouTube, podcast, blog, and newsletter content so my marketing kept running without me. You can watch this one on YouTube or listen right here on the pod...

(This is a replay of Episode #61, Aired in 2023) Are you putting in hours on Instagram only to watch your content vanish within 24 hours? Same. In this episode, I'm sitting down with website designer and Squarespace SEO expert Bekah Read to talk about her genius content distribution system called PIGFL (yes, like a full pig, and yes, it's hilarious). Becca walks us through exactly how she creates...

What if the money you're already spending to run your family photography business could also fund your next family vacation? In this episode, I'm sitting down with travel points coach Megan Lanford of Points Too Paradise to break down the actual system behind earning and using credit card points for free travel. I also put Megan on the spot and have her walk me through planning my son's birthday t...

I sat down with Santa Scott himself for this one, and yes, I mean a real, professional Santa Claus with 51 years of experience. If you're a family photographer thinking about adding Santa minis to your holiday lineup this year (or making them run smoother than last year), this episode is packed with behind-the-scenes insight you won't find in a Facebook group thread. Santa Scott has been portrayin...

You know SEO matters for your photography business. You have heard it a hundred times. But every time you sit down to actually do it, you freeze up, second-guess yourself, and end up scrolling Instagram instead. Sound familiar? In this episode, I'm sitting down with SEO strategist Brittany Herzberg to break down how to build an SEO system you can actually maintain as a solo family photographer. Br...

You know that moment when a new inquiry hits your inbox, and you freeze? Not because you don't want to respond, but because you can't remember what you said last time, whether you should mention pricing, or where that one email template went? Yeah. That's what happens when your entire business lives in your head. In this episode, I'm walking you through five specific AI prompts you can use today t...

A mom finds you on Instagram. She loves your work. She visits your website. And then she closes the tab, finishes making dinner, and two months later books a different photographer in your city. Sound familiar? That is not a portfolio problem. That is a middle-of-the-funnel marketing problem. And in this episode, I am breaking down five strategies you can start using this week to stop losing warm...

If you've been avoiding SEO because it sounds like something only tech people care about, this episode is going to change your mind. I'm breaking down exactly what SEO means for your family photography business, why it has become one of the top inquiry sources for photographers who actually invest in it, and the three things you can do this week to start showing up on Google. This is a solo episod...

If you have ever opened Instagram, stared at the screen for three minutes, and then closed the app because you had no idea what to post... this episode is your permission slip to stop winging it. In this episode, I am building you an entire week of Instagram content in real time. Five posts. Five days. Hooks, captions, and CTAs mapped to the client journey using my 4C Method (Connection, Clarify,...