044: James Schramko – Photography Business Tools You Need For Success

044: James Schramko – Photography Business Tools You Need For Success

Andrew Hellmich: I'm really excited to have James Schramko on the line today. James is a world-renowned and incredibly successful internet marketer and founder of Super Fast Business. He speaks on a range of subjects all around the world, but specializes in business coaching, traffic generation, website optimization, and is absolute powerhouse when it comes to content creation. Now, the number one reason I invited James onto the podcast is he doesn't just teach this stuff. He actually does it himself. He trials, tests, and shares what does work and what doesn't. James, it's an absolute pleasure for me to have you on the line. Welcome, mate.

James Schramko: Thanks, Andrew, what a lovely introduction. I'm actually excited now.

Andrew Hellmich: That's great. Mate, I know you quite well through your podcast and been following you for quite a few years, but I imagine some of the listeners may not be aware of what you do, and maybe you can fill us in and give us an idea of your background and what you do day to day.

James Schramko: Yeah. Well, if a listener doesn't know what I do, then I've failed miserably. I'll attempt to rectify that. In all seriousness, my business is split into two parts. One part is, I help people with their internet business knowledge, so I have a coaching community and a mastermind, depending on what level they're at, and that's sort of the information marketing, coaching side of the business. And the other side are business services which are very complimentary to those people, because we build websites that are mobile responsive, and then we host them, and we make them really fast and easy to use. And then we also do traffic services. We help people get their websites ranked in Google, and we create content and images and press releases and articles and all the good things that Google are looking for these days.

Andrew Hellmich: Like I said earlier in the introduction, the amount of content you put out is just amazing, and I really want to dive into that in just a bit. But I'm going to take a tangent right from the start with you, because I interview guests every single week, and they all give such great ideas to the listener. And I'm getting these emails coming through from the listener now, saying, "Andrew, you tell us to take action every single week, but we hear all this different advice. Where do we start?" What do you say to that listener? Because you're going to come through with a bunch of stuff today.

James Schramko: Yeah. So it's, look, we're in the attention age now. There's a lot of information out there. There's more information than we can consume. Think of it like going to a buffet meal. You're sitting there, you're hungry. There's a buffet table. We know you can't eat everything on the table. It's, you just got to take your plate and walk down the buffet and find the things that you like, put them on the plate, go back to your table and eat. And don't stress yourself out the fact that you can't have every single thing on the table, it's not going to happen. So I would listen to this episode with a pen and a paper or a whiteboard or a digital notepad of some kind. And if something comes up that you really connect with and you think, "Wow, this idea is the one that could shift my business more than anything else", you write that down, and then I would actually write down every other idea that you're currently holding on to, all on a piece of paper or a whiteboard, and then score them. And take the top three, like take a picture of the board so that you can relax. It's all there, you can go and look it up later, but rub everything off except for the top three. And just order them, 1,2,3, and then implement them so that you're only working on the biggest and the best ideas, and you'll get more results from that. In fact, if you just focus on 4% of the ideas, you'll get 64% of the results that you would have gotten out of doing all of the ideas and only doing a fraction of them. So you can actually get a lot more result by doing a lot less. And that will be a consistent theme of mine is ignoring everything that's irrelevant and just going straight for the important stuff.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, so let's say a listener takes, you know, they've got four things on their list, and they listen to the podcast next week, and there's another guest who says something a little bit different. And I think, "Well, hang on, that might go high on the list."

James Schramko: Yeah. So, well, that's the whole, just like habit swapping, idea swapping, you know. If something's a better idea, and you know, it's better then trade it out and bring in the new idea. The chances are, you know, my desire would be the absolute best person you could ever speak to, and that my ideas would be by far the best. I mean, let's face it, the reason I'm doing the things that I'm doing, and the way that I think, the way that I think is because of all the things I've become aware of. I think that what I'm doing is the best option. Otherwise I would be doing something different, right? And the same might be for every other guest that you have. So then it's a matter of context and relevance. How much does your listener resonate with the person speaking? Do they agree or disagree with the general theme of it. Would they like the results that I get, or would they like the results that someone else gets? Because everyone's going to have different results in a different field, it could really be a process of validation. You know, they can go and research each of your guests and see where they are on the pecking order. You might interview someone like Warren Buffett or Bill Gates, and your listener might not be able to connect with that. They say, "Well, you know what, I'm not really a share trader and don't want to go and create software that's going to be on every person's desktop. I think that's maybe too big a mission, and a lot of the esoteric, big ideas may not actually flow through to my small business." So my goal would be to have the most contextual relevance possible and look at it through the eyes of your customer. And everything that I deliver will be an attempt to match where the customer is at, or where the listener would be, and to make it relevant, because that's the ultimate thing. If everything that I talked about was actionable and got an instant result, then that would be the perfect scenario, and hopefully that that's what we can deliver.

Andrew Hellmich: Perfect, okay. So what about I mean, I was so careful. I mean, I hate using the word internet marketer because it has these negative connotations. So what do you say when you're speaking to wedding and portrait photographers today, and I introduce you as an internet marketer, and I think, "Oh, you know this guy, he's not in photography." Like, "Is he really, the stuff that he shares today? Is it going to be applicable to my business?"

James Schramko: Yeah, well, I don't really see myself as an internet marketer. I'm a business person, and I'm in some ways, very similar to a photographer. I create and publish things, and I have customers who want us to do it for them as well. So it's really no different to photography. I've got a bit of artistry with my podcasts and my videos. I mean, I'm using DSLR camera every single day, so that's got to count for something. I use a lot of still pictures in my Facebook and social media marketing. Pretty much every day, I'm posting a beautiful landscape or interesting picture or quirky sign. So I'm using Image Marketing. I'm using videography. I am using that to market my business and to stand out in a sea of mediocrity. But also we have customers who want us to do stuff for them. And so if a photography business is all about capturing and keeping a customer and making a profit and growing that profit, then I'm sure we'll be on the same page.

Andrew Hellmich: Perfect. I know you will be. I know you will be, that's for sure. So let's, let's move on to one of your, I guess it's your newer things you've been talking about or for a little while now, and that's "Own the race course." Can you explain what that is and how it affects us.

James Schramko: One of the biggest traps out there facing a small business is that they sort of get conned into putting all their best stuff on other people's platforms. They load up their videos to YouTube, load up the pictures to Facebook, and they're playing the game that the big guys want, but you don't really own anything. And the most important fundamental idea behind "Own the race course" is to build your asset and then use other people's assets to help your asset. So what is an asset? What is a platform? I'm talking about your website. Have your website, whatever it is, photography.com.au, and put your best content on your website, your best videos, your best pictures, your best audio, whatever rich media you can put. Infographics, consumer buyer guides, onboarding video training, like for people who have just ordered something from you or follow up posts, renewal reminders, all that sort of stuff should all go to your website and make that the epicenter of your universe. And when you put that stuff there, then go and share it on social media sites and let people know that it's there, and link back to your site from all these places, so that they're now getting put to work for you. But you own the asset. You are in control of your domain. You could sell that if you wanted, and you can change the rules on yourself. But the thing is, if you build your whole business on Facebook, or you build your whole business on YouTube, and they change the rules, that might not go in your favor, it might be very hard for you to exist after that. And I've seen people get wiped out where they were building on someone's platform, and the rug gets pulled from under them.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay. So photographers are notorious for putting, you know, a hundred photos onto Facebook after a wedding or after maybe a few less for a portrait session. And their argument is, "Well, that's where my prospective clients are, and that's where friends of friends of the client are. Why not put everything there?"

James Schramko: Absolutely, because you're playing Facebook's game there. So put the pictures on your site, publish the pictures on your site, and then syndicate that post to Facebook. The picture will still show in a thumbnail, and you can still put a headline, and you can see how I do this on my fan page. If you were to go to FB james.com you'll see lots of pictures, and when you click on the pictures, it brings you back to my site, where I can build my email list and I can show people my products and services. So really, the question is, "Who are you doing this for? Are you doing this for Facebook as a free photographer?", or "Are you doing it for you, the business owner who would like to make a profit?" Absolutely put pictures there, but make sure you watermark the pictures with your website, or put a link right next to the picture where people can go to find out more about these pictures. And yes, get everyone from the wedding to tag themselves in the picture and spread it everywhere. But remember, once that's happening, like, what is the point? Well done, you've got your picture and you've spread it to a thousand people. But is that, is that the goal, or would you like to sell some photography?

Andrew Hellmich: So you tell, you saying that we can't profit by having a thousand likes on a photo?

James Schramko: Well, you might profit, but it's hard to bank that down at the local supermarket, you know, "Hello, I'd like to check out. Here's my bread and milk." "Oh, okay, that'll be $15". "Oh, but I've got a thousand likes on my picture." "So we don't accept likes." "What you don't accept likes? But it's such a good picture." Now, what you really want to do is be able to pay cash, which comes from your bank account, because your business is profitable, because you bring people back to your site, and they can see how you can solve their problem, or what amazing portfolios you have, and there's a call to action that asks people to do what you'd like them to do that's going to help them and help you.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, so you sort of brought up the next phase, I guess, of the own the race course, and that's once we've got people back to our website, again, photographers and notorious for making, you know, nice, fluffy, looking, pretty websites featuring their images, really, they should be doing more than that. So what should our websites be doing for us?

James Schramko: Well, and it's such a design heavy industry. You want your website to look beautiful, it's important. That's your business card. So make it amazing, make it fluffy, make it incredible, make it look and feel. Make someone cry when they go there, that's fine. At the same time, you can still do that and have your site work on any browser. So it should be mobile responsive. That's one thing. Two is it has to load quickly. Now, the problem with big images and big videos is that they can slow a website down. So figure out the best way to compress your images with lossless compression technology, and that's a big techno term. But there are tools out there, one is called Smushit, and it's provided by Yahoo for free. You can load up your, if you were using a WordPress platform for your websites, for example, which is what we build on that works on all different devices. If you use a responsive theme, you can load a plug-in, and it will go and smash all your pictures and make them smaller, but still not lose the quality of the picture, and they'll load quicker. And you might think, "Well, why is it important to load quickly?" The reason is, people will leave your site if it's still waiting to load. And sometimes you go to a design heavy site and you see that little pinwheel on the page, it's like loading, loading. If you want an example this, go to formulaone.com. You see, they have this start video, like a Formula One visual. And a lot of people have gone, they're like, "I'm out of here, I'm going back to Google. I've got the attention span of a nap, so I'm going to go back to Google and go for the next one, because this just ain't happening." So you've got to be fast. So make your website fast. Put it on a fast hosting account, like, like the sort of ones we provide our customers. And it's not expensive. I think we sell it for $59 a month, and that gets people access to a server that I pay a couple of $1,000 a month for, because it's just a beast, like it comes with its own hairs and needs to shave every morning. So you want the site to be fast loading. You want it to look amazing. You want it to work on any browser, and then remember to ask people to do something, you know, whether it's to download their free photography report, whether it's how to have an amazing wedding day report, or whether it's simply to have you contact them, "Click here for us to call you", or "Put your phone number on the site." There's an idea, a lot of businesses seem to overlook that one. Their web designer convinces them to put a 17 field opt-in form that you have to put name, middle name, surname, country of origin, DNA sample, blood type, and you know, the things don't get filled out. There's a lot of friction for filling out a form like that. So keep it really simple. In fact, on my site, generally will be a phone number, there'll be an option to leave a message, and there'll also be a simple opt-in, which will just require an email address so that I know where to send the information.

James Schramko: So you mentioned a couple of things that I just want to take you back to. You mentioned WordPress, now I know a lot of photographers, they sign up to things like Squarespace, or there's pre-designed photo blogs where you pay like a subscription fee to. Is that, does that all sort of fall under that heading of own the race course, when you don't own that blog?

James Schramko: Yeah, you're basically surrendering a lot of control. To put this in simple terms, it would be like someone thinks they're going to be a photographer. So they start setting up shop, and they're going to take all their pictures with an iPhone. Which is great, but it's really not going to give you the control you need and the level of customization or professionalism that you could have if you went for some better gear. So the, the DSLR version of a website is really WordPress, because it's yours. You can got more control of it. There's more you can do with it. And the good news is, it's like it powers about a quarter of the world's website. So it's not some little weird over in the corner thing, and you can host it on your own account, and it's not difficult or expensive. I mean, we sell websites from $299 that already work in browsers, that one of them is actually a photography style thing. It's like a black site with big spaces for your pictures, and then you just get it hosted, so you instantly have an advantage over every other photographer who's letting someone else make all the decisions. That's like having your camera set to auto and just pushing the button. It's easy and it can work, but you're not going to get anywhere near the same results.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, great analogy. So what about the hosting side of things I know, like photographers, if they're not going with one of those prepaid sort of setups, then they're looking at things like Bluehost and Hostgator. So how do they compare to different styles of hosting out there? Does it make a difference?

James Schramko: Yeah, those servers are going to be pretty ordinary, if you go for the nine, $6 or $9 a month thing, they're going to be, you're sharing it with a bunch of other people who, who are.. they're just slow and shitty service. So I used to have 18 servers on Hostgator, and I moved all of them to my new server because they were getting unreliable and they were slow. So we moved to a dedicated server with a more professional company, and my hosting cost is a lot more. But the thing is, you know, I actually put other people's sites on my server, and my team actually update all the plugins. They do security checks. They do basic coding, things like putting email opt-ins or cleaning up the plugins, like installing Smushit for example. And we do triple backups. So we back it up on site, we back it up off-site in two separate places. We sell that for 59 bucks a month. So for the extra $50 a month, it will change the load speed from 20 seconds to about two seconds, and you don't have to update plugins or check security or back it up anymore. So I think that, solutions like mine were created because other people's solutions really do suck.

Andrew Hellmich: So are you serious? You really will see that much difference in load time?

James Schramko: You can check it yourself. Anyone listening to this can go and google Pingdom speed test. And they can type in their website address and see how fast their site is loading. And then they could compare it to my site, superfastbusiness.com which will load reasonably quickly for the site, I have nearly 7,000 index pages. I've got pictures on every page and videos and audio, and my sites are quite quick compared to the average site. And you know how we noticed this? It's a funny story. We would develop a customer's site on our server, on our test server, and the customer would check it over, and they'd say, "Yep, it's all ready to go" And then we'd load it to the customer's host, and then the site would slow down. And the customer's like, "Hang on, why is it so slow" And we're like, "Yeah, why is it so slow?" And then we worked out just because the hosting sucks that much, it was noticeable like to log into the admin to navigate the site. There's an enormous amount of data that shows that site loading speed is very important for conversions and for SEO.

Andrew Hellmich: So pay attention to that one and make sure your site is loading fast. I guess is that is the biggest message there.

James Schramko: It's a good investment.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay. You talked about list building. Now, photographers, again, there's not many of us doing list building or building lists with the opt-in forms and things like that. I mean, we hear internet. I mean, I've listened to a lot of podcasts, and I've heard you talking about them quite a bit in the past. Do they suit every business?

James Schramko: Well, I'm not going to add my email address down at the petrol station. I don't really want them following me up, so I guess there's probably not so much of a need. But what every business should definitely be doing is paying attention to having a database of their actual customers. Because I'm willing to bet that a lot of photography studios are doing a poor job of even capturing the details of people that already buy from them, let alone people that might buy from them with a bit of decent follow up. So start with your existing customer list. Have that database clean and lean and ready to be contacted. And then you can do stuff like reactivation. I know, with a photography studio, at the very least, you could be reactivating someone who got married a year or two ago and say, "Hey, come for your update pictures." Or "Hey, have you had any kids yet? Let's do the family." And you could do that every single year. And then you can, so you can say, "Oh, we've got this new technology that lets you turn your picture into a fridge stamp or whatever, or a whole wallpaper thing." Like you can introduce new ways that they can use their images and sell them those things. So if you're able to contact your customer, that is absolutely number one. Number two might be to actually re-contact people who used to be your customer that have sort of dropped away a bit. And then the other thing that would be important is to start collecting the details of people who could possibly be a customer. And then start sending them really useful information so that you can warm them up to being a customer.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, so this, this also either starts with building lists on your website or just capturing the details of existing clients. So just start somewhere.

James Schramko: If you just had a notepad and you wrote down every single customer's name, phone number, email address and a physical address, there's a lot you could do with that. Someone like me could walk into any business, grab the database and start making money from it instantly with certain sort of follow up emails or postcard campaigns or tele sales. These things are right there to get, but most business owners are so worried about rushing off to the next job and doing the actual work. They're not putting a lot of thought into maximizing the asset that they've got. The real asset is actually the customer database. That's why companies like Twitter and Facebook are worth money, even though they don't make a profit. Well, Facebook does, but Twitter doesn't.

Andrew Hellmich: Not yet. Yeah, it's interesting, because I know, you know, as a photographer, we're so, you know, so keen to attract new clients when we, you know, we probably have, you know, 2, 3,4,10, 20, years of clients details, you know, locked away in filing cabinets.

James Schramko: Yeah, it's insane. And you know, one of my best students is a video production company, and he was doing all the work himself. Making, taking all the sales inquiries, doing all of the jobs, editing all of them, and he was working most days, and he couldn't afford proper staff. So he had interns who would work almost for free, but then leave. And I took him from that to a new scenario where he now travels overseas with his family for more than a month at a time. He does long bike tours, he does exercise. He only works on the passion projects, the jobs he really wants to do. He'll still go behind the camera for those, and he'll still edit the very special ones occasionally, but he's got two guys full time doing the filming and doing all the editing. His business makes more than double what it did when we started, and he's got all this family time. So imagine that more time, more money in your bank, and only working on stuff you enjoy. And the main change is that he's embraced this idea of setting up the marketing properly, setting the business up in a way that it's working without him to some extent. So he's got automated marketing happening. He puts out content videos that educate people on the best ways to engage a video production company. He has people watching these things, and when they're ready to buy there's no choice as to who they're going to get to do it, because no one else is communicating to them. So he's like the only competitor in the race when they enter that buying window. And it's also a body of work that he can send to a potential prospect. And he's got cool stuff, like a Consumer Guide on How to Choose the Right Video Production Company. He captures emails on his website. He drives traffic to his site via search engines and also through paid traffic. And this thing is a big automated machine, and he's absolutely smushing it. And now he's doing little feature guest spots on podcasts and live events and webinars for other people in his industry. And he's becoming like a superhero because he's just put down the camera for five minutes to think about it like a business owner rather than a technician.

Andrew Hellmich: It sounds like what he's doing is really open to, to everyone, and we can all do the same thing to some degree. We can all give advice and tips and on how to have a better photography experience. Know what to wear to get the best shots and the best time of year. We can give all that same sort of advice and how to choose the best photographer for your family and locations and so on and so on.

James Schramko: Yeah, because man on the street doesn't know any of that stuff.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, and, and we take it all for granted because we do it every single day, but we're just not sharing it with the right people.

James Schramko: Yeah. And if you honestly, if you have an iPhone in your pocket, you have a content creation device that is able to create stuff that you could share. You can record audio. You can take pictures when you're on set, you know. Talk about lighting and sound and talk about, yeah, wardrobe, makeup, location, costs, even there's so much education that you could do that that would help people find you, but also trust you.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, see, I mean, you put out so much content, and you just said then, if you have an iPhone, that's, that's enough. And I know that people that haven't done this, get so hung up on the on the production, you know, getting the sound right, getting the vision right. So, like, seriously, with an iPhone, that's enough, we can produce content.

James Schramko: That's pretty much all I travel with when I go overseas. I don't take a DSLR, I don't take a high level recorder for audio anymore. Just take the iPhone and SmartLav mic, which is $69 a Rod SmartLav. And when I'm on location somewhere, I just make a video, and your audience actually love it. They love to be brought into the environment, wherever you are, and have the story behind it. So photographers are storytellers. They're doing it with the lens. Now, you probably already have a billion pictures sitting there that, that could be utilized, the, even you put them into a slideshow. Or, had someone in a junior in, in the studio, compile portfolios and make videos and put music to them. And there's a lot of things you could do but tell your story and get it out there, like you have amazing content there, and you've just got to publish it and put it in a systematic format.

Andrew Hellmich: So I'm just thinking out loud here. So let's say I'm a photographer. I'm shooting a wedding. I'm going from the bride's house for the prep shots, and I'm heading over to the ceremony. If I had an assistant with me in the passenger seat, they could record me, and I could talk about what I've just done and where I'm heading and what's happening, and that will be interesting to other people?

James Schramko: Documentaries and reality are fascinating to people. The, literally, a day in the life of a bride would be a great little duco. So, you know, "It's four in the morning, it's dark, packing up the gear, we're going to see a very special day today." And then, yes, you're doing all the setup and the lights and the photo and the bride and the gown and all that, and then riding the car. And, yeah, just literally get one of your buddies, like probably in your own community. People could pair up and film each other for a day, and you'd have your own story that would be extremely compelling. Because if I was going to get married, and I wasn't sure about the photographer, and I watched a 12 minute documentary, and I got to know the photographer, and I love the style of the shots, and I felt like they had good work ethic and that they turned this wedding into an amazing portfolio. I would think, "Well, I don't even care how much it costs. This is the right person for me."

Andrew Hellmich: Then looking at what you said earlier and using the iPhone. So I know the photographer listening, they've got a hundred ideas just popped into their head. They think, "Okay, let's do this." And then I know that when they go to start doing this, they think, "Hang on, iPhones not going to cut it. I need better sound. The lighting is not great. I've got to have to buy lights for this." Are you suggesting we don't need to do that and just take action?

James Schramko: Well, I think you're going to have your own threshold of design standard. I think, by all means, if you can, you know. I know you can grab a Sennheiser wireless mic and lapel mic, just put it in your pocket and have a proper video camera. That's fine if you can do that, do that. Pay someone like my guy, he'll probably do it three, three to 5,000 bucks. He'll come and film me for a whole day and edit it and give you the finished product for you to put on your website. And that's what I do for my customers. So you can make a choice. You are potentially somewhere between two to $5,000 away from having a professionally crafted, scripted, filmed, edited, produced masterpiece, or you could do it ghetto cheap with an iPhone, and it's up to you to decide what's going to work for you. For me, I'm not a photographer. I'm not going to have peer group critiquing my work in terms of quality. A lot of people are interested in what I use, and especially they can't believe that I get good video quality out of the tools that I use, especially even my camera. They just can't imagine how I'm taking the pictures I do with an iPhone. But there are some basic hacks and techniques that any photographer would probably know about, how they designed the shot and the lighting and all that stuff. But I'm just saying, pick your mark and dive in there with, with a simple plan in mind. You, you could have a nice documentary up within a week from now that's doing some heavy lifting for you or not. And the guys and girls that do it are going to have an advantage over the ones that don't. And this is the way it's moving forward. This is what my clients do to get an edge on all their other clients. And these are, like, really boring industries like motor dealerships and lawyers. These guys, when they start telling the story of why they became a lawyer and they wanted to help people, and they make the customer almost cry, because they really care that much, they stand out from all the sharks in the industry.

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, if I was looking for a solicitor and they came across like that, they're the one I'd be ringing for sure. You, you touched on something there that I don't know if you realize how relevant it was to photographers. When you said peer group critiquing this is something that photographers, especially up and coming photographers fear. I mean that they, they get scared of what their peers are going to think about what they put out there. What do you say to those photographers?

James Schramko: Then get another photographer to do it for you, like contra each other.

Andrew Hellmich: I thought you say, "Don't worry, do what, do what you're doing."

James Schramko: No actually, I understand that they're going to be concerned about so I'm just giving you a way forward that means you don't have to compromise on that. Do great work. Just make something amazing, but do it. You know, pick up the phone and ring your other.. It's like that, you know, it's just like this conundrum of the world's greatest heart surgeon or the eye doctor or the hairdresser. They're that good, but they can't do it on themselves.

Andrew Hellmich: True.

James Schramko: So, you know, get your other photographer to do it. Say, "You know what? Let's do a, let's do a duco swap. I will tag along for one of your weddings and take a pictorial, you know, I'll make you the subject, and you the hero while you're doing it with the bride and the groom and all that. And then you do it for me, it would take one day out of your life to do something amazing."

Andrew Hellmich: Great idea.

James Schramko: It's an amazing idea. More people should do it.

Andrew Hellmich: It is a great idea. Okay, and you don't need to spend the two or three or $4,000 if you're starting out. You can use your iPhone.

James Schramko: You can, you can actually take quite a professional thing with an iPhone. And iPhone 5 is going to give you 1080 peak resolution on the front camera. And if you hold it steadily, and you use a lav mic, you're away. I mean, that's all I travel with these days. And some of my videos are good. Some of them are a bit ordinary, but I don't get people wincing about it. They're like, "Oh, man, that's.. you went to the Ferrari Museum? That's amazing, thank you for sharing that." You know, I have my kids hold it, and they can't even hold it straight, and they're like, shaking around or dropping it, and I'm trying to, you know, slink down on my legs to stay in the shot. But customers don't care. They just care that I'm sharing the story with them and that I'm bringing them on the journey.

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, that's great. That's great. So I guess it shows a real, the real side of you as well. It's not, doesn't always have to be super polished.

James Schramko: It's real. That's the whole point. People want real. That's why they like reality shows which are not real at all, but they feel real compared to, you know, the plastic Hollywood productions, you know, which it just getting harder and harder to flag.

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, for sure. And I know that some of your videos that you put out, you know, two minutes, three minutes, they're not necessarily a half hour big productions, so it's okay to do little snippets and chunks and things like that?

James Schramko: My customers love it. They're like, "James, I love when I get an email from you, because I know it's going to be short, and it's always good stuff." Look really, what is the, you know, your attention is valuable. Like, if I'm going to send you an email, I want to be respectful, and you're sitting there, you get an email from me. It's clearly labeled. There's no tricky subject lines, like "Warning! You're about to die", or something like that. Because you know, someone sent an email last week, "Facebook shuts down."" Okay, good, good points for getting the email opened. Bad points for being a douchebag, right? So the thing is, if you, if you get an email from me, and it's clearly labeled and it's describes what the video is, there's a thumbnail picture of it, and there's a few bullets explaining the content of it, and then you click on it, and you commit yourself for that whole two to three minutes of your life. My contract with you is I really have to make you feel that you got more value for watching it than for ignoring it. Because you'll keep opening and watching my videos, which it means that I can communicate with you and you can communicate with me by commenting or replying to emails, and now we're real. And now I will take a higher position in your mind than the sleaze bag that sends you tricky subject lines and forces you to watch a 60 minute sales pitch, and then you end up disliking that sort of marketing. I do, I can't stand it. So short is good.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, that's great. Everything that's looking easier and easier the more I talk to you. So is certainly no excuse not to take action and try this stuff. Now, traffic generation, that's another big thing that you cover in your business, and you talk about quite regularly. So if we have our website optimized, it's working. It looks fantastic. It's a great experience, but we want to get people there. What are some of the best ways to get people to the website?

James Schramko: Email them.

James Schramko: And now it's a chicken and the egg.

James Schramko: Yeah. Well, seriously, the best traffic source is my own email list. I send an email and say, "Hey Andrew, just put a video up about how you can double your business profits", you know. And they will go and check it out. They already know me. So email is great, and if you can't get the email, then, then you go to Facebook and say, "Hey, just did a new post about seven ways not to stuff up your wedding day or something", and it'd be like, you know, "Don't eat beer and pizza the day before, because even the best makeup artist in the world is going to struggle with that one." So you can come up with some quirky and fun stuff as to, people really like to be entertained, and so come up with interesting. I had block videos like, "Should I shave or not?" And I did picture of me with a scruffy t-shirt, unshaven, and then me with shaved and a nice shirt. And I asked my audience, you know, "What do you prefer I wear on the videos for you?", and those 300 comments, but when people comment and share it on Facebook, then it goes out in front of everyone else, but they're sharing my post now, not my picture on Facebook.

Andrew Hellmich: What was the result by the way?

James Schramko: The result is that people who know me don't care what I wear, because my information is good and they like me. They said I can wear whatever I want. They don't care if I'm nude. They're still going to listen to it. And then the people who don't know me, and first time visitors say, "When I first saw your video, I think, what could this guy possibly know about business? But then when you open your mouth and you start talking, I'm thinking, "Oh, okay, he obviously knows what he's talking about." And the bottom line is, it's costing me customers if I look too scruffy. So I tend to shave. And found a nice sort of middle ground of wearing a polo shirt. I'm never going to wear ties and stuff, but I, you know, sometimes I don't, I don't iron. My iron is still in like a box. I haven't opened it, so I'll try and wear a nicer clothing and a shave. But again, if I'm, if I'm not shaved or I don't have the right gear, I'm still going to make the video anyway, because my audience love me, and that's because we've built up a relationship over time, and I've earned it.

Andrew Hellmich: Nice. Let's say we're talking to the new business owner or the website owner that doesn't have an opt-in box. They don't have a big list of emails, and they want to bring more traffic to their website than, than, say, even Facebook can bring. Or they want to make their, they want to get their website ranking naturally in Google. You know, do we have to go and pay an SEO specialist these days?

James Schramko: No, the old, the old SEO is like paying an SEO specialist to manipulate the backlinks and push a piece of crap website up into the search results. But Google's not going to play that game anymore. They've made that hard. So your best place to focus is on your site. Get your site. Deal with your site first, okay? Get your site looking good, loading fast and navigating well, and then commit to putting, you know, three pieces of content on there, and the best three pieces of content you can muster, you know, sit down and reflect upon what do people ask you every single time you get on the phone? They're probably gonna ask you, "How much is this going to cost?" They might ask you, "What about hair and makeup?" Or "When will you be turning up?" Or, you know, "What do you need from us?" Or, "What pictures are included in the portfolio?" "What size frames do we get?" "What if my Uncle Bill wants to get an extra copy of blah, blah, blah, all these things." I don't know what people ask. I'm sure..

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, right, yeah.

James Schramko: So write them all down, and then go for the most general one, the one that every single person asks them is probably a price question. How much is..

Andrew Hellmich: Exactly, exactly.

James Schramko: So do a video. How much should you pay for a wedding photographer? And then tell this story. Say, "When people want to pay for a wedding photographer, they're thinking about the picture. But you know, as you know, you can have a good picture, a bad picture.", and then you might show a picture, a really bad picture, like, go and find a really an ugly, shocking, horrible picture. It's like websites, right? Everyone has some kid down the road who's doing tech studies at uni who can knock up a website for 20 bucks. But I can tell you, it's going to be a piece of poo, it's going to be a terrible website, it's not going to do anything useful at all. Or, you could pay someone, you know, $399 or a $2,000 for a completely custom, you know, do it however you want type website. It's going to be amazing, and it's going to sell you 10s of 1000s or hundreds of 1000s or millions of dollars’ worth of business, because it's got all the right elements. So point out the difference between good and bad. So build this expectation, by the end of the video, someone's probably going to be ready to pay $10,000 for their wedding photographer, and they'll be delighted that it's only $5,000.

Andrew Hellmich: Nice. So, and you said that, you said to put that on video. Now that sort of goes against the tradition of having, you know, a thousand word articles, blog posts to drive up your rankings through SEO. So is the video still going to be as, I know it's better for the client, but is as good for our website?

James Schramko: Well, why don't you have it transcribed? How long is the video?

Andrew Hellmich: Three minutes?

James Schramko: So it's going to be $1 per minute transcription. How much would that cost?

Andrew Hellmich: Serious? $1 per minute.

James Schramko: Yeah, go to rev.com, R-E-V.com.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, so then we've got the transcription that goes below the video, and then that's good for SEO?

James Schramko: Yes, and put a nice picture too, why not? You're a photographer.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, and should we put that same video then on YouTube?

James Schramko: You can, if you want. Yep.

Andrew Hellmich: Does that, does it help or it doesn't really matter?

James Schramko: Yeah, sure. You might pick up some YouTube search traffic. Put a full title and long description, put in the closed caption, like paste the transcription into the video in the background. You can do that and put a few tags, by all means.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, so if we take this sort of approach, and we're recording videos, getting transcriptions, writing blog posts, and, you know, and our, still coming up through the rankings is slow. Should we be, like, would you recommend paying for traffic?

James Schramko: Well, it doesn't have to be slow. It can be really quick. Like, once your blogs found by Google and they say, "Oh, you know this, this blog is pretty good." Like you, I put a post up today, it'll be ranking tomorrow. It's very fast because, like, it's building on the authority of all the other stuff I've done, and it's got now internal linking structure. Google updates its index because they, "Oh, there's a new blog post." They go and check my site every day.

Andrew Hellmich: But you already have authority. I'm talking about, say, someone that's newer, and they've only got they've..

James Schramko: Let's just put this in perspective. I started doing my Super Fast Business project around about March or April last year, so we're only talking 8 months. And I've managed to have like 7000 index pages in there. And yes, it's got authority. Yes, it gets visited all the time by Google. And like, the last time Google visited the site was today, which is good, right?

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah.

James Schramko: If I put something up today, then they'll update their search results and I'll rank tomorrow.

Andrew Hellmich: How do you, how can you tell they are there today?

James Schramko: I can see the cache date. So you can actually look up, search command you go web. Basically, if you just do, I think it's cache colon on your website, it'll probably pull it up. But I use a little tool on my site that tells me it's a, it's an add-on. We don't want to get people too tricky. Basically, if you just look up cache in your site, you'll be able to see how often it gets visited.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, cool. Sorry, I distracted you there. Yeah, so that you were visited today.

James Schramko: I was visited today. So Google's like, "Oh, okay, there's a new post there about reputation management." You know How to Manage Your Reputation was a post we put up yesterday, but chances are it won't take long until I start ranking for phrases like, 'How to manage your reputation', because that's the topic of my post. And they're like, "Oh well, we like this blog, it's pretty cool."

Andrew Hellmich: So what about the, what about the photographer, the business owner out there that starts the title of every single post: Sydney Wedding Photographer, da.. da.. da, or, you know, Melbourne Wedding Photographer da.. da.. da.

James Schramko: Yeah, so they're going to look a bit like a spammer, aren't they?

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, to Google or to their prospective clients, or to both?

James Schramko: To everyone. That's stupid. That's, that's just old school SEO. You might have that on your homepage, Wedding Photographer Sydney, whatever, great. But what you want on your blog post is other stuff. You know, it's like, which, which locations in Sydney are best for wedding photography. Or, where should I have my wedding photographed around Sydney and put a list of suburbs. But have a normal conversation. Have a conversation about, "Well, a lot of people like to take pictures at Sydney Opera House or by the Harbor Bridge, but there are lots of other places. Some considerations might be Taronga Zoo or Balmoral Beach." You will start ranking for people searching for Photography Balmoral Beach, like my mom is actually a wedding celebrant, right? So I know something about the related industry, and she comes up for phrases like Marriage Celebrant Balmoral beach because of the same sort of stuff. And you go put some pictures and have a post about it, and boom, you start ranking. You don't want to be spamming every post with 'Wedding Photographer Sydney', that's the surest way to not get ranked.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, good. I don't have to keep chasing those guys and doing what they're doing.

James Schramko: You don't have to do that and that they're going to be dropping out of the search results.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, that's good to know. Now, I normally ask this question to photographers, but let's say you were to, let's say you were going to start your own photography business tomorrow James, and it could be a portrait studio or a wedding photography studio. What would you do to get things going fast?

James Schramko: Ah, it's too easy. I'd probably hire a professional photographer, because I, I'm not.

Andrew Hellmich: Good start.

James Schramko: And then, I'd then I would find out more about that photographer, and I'd like, I'd interview them, and I'd say, "Well, tell me all about it, what do people ask? What are the biggest challenges people have? What do you think they're looking for when they're searching for a photographer? What sort of photography do we do, that special that no one else can do?" Like, "Are we better with a certain type of lens? Do we, are we stealthier? Do we direct people around because they don't know what to do?" "Like, what makes us a special photographer compared to other people? And what do people ask all the time?" And I'd interview that, and I'd have it all transcribed, and then I'd have pictures of the photographer. And then I would say, "All right, we need to build our website." So I'd pick a website that's got the right country code for where I want to be. If I'm an Australian one, I want a .com.au but I'd also want a.com and I'd point it to the .com.au then I'd build a site. I'd probably go and get the $300 site, which is responsive, and it's black, and I'd load up the best pictures we have, and I'd fill in all the text and make it easy to read. Put a phone number on the top right, and I'd have 10 blog posts all with pictures covering all the top FAQs. And then I'd have a call to actions like bookings or inquire or whatever. And when they click on that tab, I'd have the story of our photographer picture and why we're so special and different, and all the reasons why this is a sales copy, and then a big, clear call to action "Phone this number or have us contact you, put your name and email address." And then once that's live, I'd go and announce it on Facebook and say, "Hey, you know we're, we're doing photography. If you know someone doing a wedding or looking to update their website portfolio, here's some more details." And then I'd start syndicating each of the FAQ posts, Facebook, Google, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Twitter. And probably, if I'm really going to get behind it, I'd start up a podcast, because that's awesome podcast rock. And I would have, I would basically talk about everything to do with photography, camera gear especially just to, just to start getting people who are interested in that sort of topic, but more into the, you know, the other aspects of photography that are less common, that people really should know about, bringing it to the public. And I would just be very clear about who my customer is. That's the most important thing of all. Everything is centered around the customer. All the things that they need to know, that they would want to know, making it easy for them to deal with us, making them know that we're the best person for the job, and that's it. And once they enter their details, we would be entering that into a database, and we would definitely let them know every time we update the site with an ongoing news story, you know, so it's, and then, of course, you could do offers of some kind. You can say "We've got a the three picture speaker pack. The speaker pose, you know, what they're, they're confident, cheesy grin with one leg lifted on a chair sort of shot, and the other one with the head shot, and then whatever. And this package is normally 1799 and if you book this week, we've got some studio space available. We can do it for just $999. Okay, but please, if you phone us and the lines busy, call back, we expect we'll be swamp blah, blah, blah." So there's so much you could do, and that's probably how I would roll it out. And then I would start some Facebook ads or some Google Pay Per Click ads, leading people to the, you know, the special copy written story page about why we're so awesome with lots of pictures and bullet points.

Andrew Hellmich: Perfect answer. You make it sound so easy.

James Schramko: It is actually easy. And then I'll do some consumer guides. You know, three ways to know if your photographer can actually take pictures, and how to avoid the common misconceptions of hiring a professional photographer and all this sort of stuff, and you drive people to this report. Give it away, go and do guest comments in forums, get on someone else's blog, be on anyone else's podcast you can and then start cranking out the videos. Or go for the rich media, you know, behind the scenes at a corporate event, behind the scenes at a wedding and get these little mini stories up.

Andrew Hellmich: That's an awesome. I mean, you've just proven that, you know, the stuff that you teach and that you practice is you can use it in any industry by the sound of it, it's going to work.

James Schramko: I've got clients in all sorts of industries all the way through, like from funeral homes.

Andrew Hellmich: That's the other end.

James Schramko: Software as a service is all, it all works.

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, that's, that's, yeah, you made it sound easy, and certainly something that we could do right away if we're not already doing it. So that's perfect. James, where can people find out more about you and, and the stuff that you offer?

James Schramko: Go to superfastbusiness.com. You'll see some of my videos and my photography. But you know what? I don't care, it's fine. And also you can listen to some podcasts and interviews, and if you want, enter your email address, I'll be able to send you some emails when there's new stuff, and you'll get a feel for exactly what I do. And keep in mind that my products tab on that site generates several million dollars a year in business. That's pretty much the only marketing that I'm doing is this one site, and the podcasts that lead to this site.

Andrew Hellmich: That's awesome. And I'll put links to everything that you mentioned in the show notes. And once again, James has been a real pleasure for me. So thank you.

James Schramko: You're welcome.

 
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