Successful Creatives

Marketing and sales are my jam. But organization, and productivity? Let’s just say I’m a work in progress.

Luckily I met THE expert in this area, NJ Shelsby who sat down to give me some tips on how to get more done, with less stress.

You see, she was overworked and stressed that it disrupted her family and health so much that she experienced a scary bout of short term memory loss.

“I was driving to a doctor’s appointment and I couldn’t remember how to get there. As in, I’m driving around for 10-15 minutes and have no idea on how to get there. And it was very scary and when I got to the doctor’s office, he was panicked for me.”

Her doctor told her “you have to take immediate steps to reduce your stress level.”

If you’ve been feeling stressed or disorganized, or get to the end of your day and wonder where the time went, never quite making enough progress on your business - you’re not alone.

Check out these stats:

• Internet usage in the workplace accounts for а 40% loss of productivity (ohhhh, we know the scroll!)
• Work overload decreases productivity by 68% (so wait, the more work you have, the less gets done?! Oof)

Here are 3 quick tips to increase productivity:

1. Absolute clarity - what’s important RIGHT NOW.

2. Focus leak boundaries - identify things that steal your focus and set boundaries during your “work times” like turn email notifications off, close tabs, silence your phone, etc.

3. Structure your schedule around your most productive times:
a. Deep think times - like big projects
b. Shallow focus times - like emails, editing, etc.

NJ shares the free software she’s using now to help her get organized and increase productivity, and does a little live coaching that will undoubtedly help.

Connect with Erica
@theewingsstudio

Episode blog post

Connect with NJ
www.njshelsby.com
Free Training with NJ
Get out of overwhelm

thesuccessfulcreatives.com

A super talented wedding photographer who’s beyond lovely, with a stunning portfolio and over 70 5-star reviews should be fully booked, right?

But yet out of 40 inquiries, only 2 booked…that’s a 5% booking rate, ouch. AND she’s getting ghosted a ton.

Oh and her prices are a steal.

What’s going on?

The first mistake is in her initial inquiry email.

Well-thought, she provides EVERYTHING her potential new client needs to know about working with her in the first email. No question left unanswered, how helpful is that?

It turns out, it’s actually not really helpful at all.

You see, sales is a process. And if you offer a higher-ticket service (i.e., a 4-5 figure wedding photographer), it’s not designed to be done in one step.

Consider that each step of the sales process should focus on just one thing - move your potential client to the next step.

Your website should move them to submit the form. Your emails should move them to schedule a consultation. Your consultation should move them to book.

Provide just enough so they want to move one step forward.

Revisit your initial inquiry email and see how yours stacks up. Or skip to the shortcut with my free standout email guide and get the exact wording I use in my emails - click here to get your copy now.

Connect with Erica
@theewingsstudio

Episode blog post

thesuccessfulcreatives.com

2023 was a really strange year for me and to be honest with you, it felt like I was riding a roller coaster at times. It was really hard at times. It was really beautiful and easy at times, and it all stemmed from the pivot that I've been making in my business while really starting a 2nd business. It's funny because so many people told me throughout the year, wow, you're crushing it. You are doing so well. So I wanted to give you an inside perspective on exactly what was happening on the inside. Even when on the outside, it looked like everything was incredible.

For a deeper dive free training: the-ewings.com/otfb

thesuccessfulcreatives.com

Have you ever heard me talk about the booking slump that I hit in 2019, where I didn't book a wedding for, like, I think 4 months? I thought it was 6 months, but I think my brain just exaggerated that fact. In reality, I did not book a wedding for 4 full months and this is after 10 years in business. This is after having our best year ever in 2018. So I want to get into what happened and then how I fixed it.


For a deeper dive free training: https://the-ewings.com/otfb

thesuccessfulcreatives.com

The end of busy season is a magical time when you get to think about all of the exciting things that you’d love to see incorporated into your business dream clients. More or less bookings, higher prices. All of this is what will become available to you when you first look back at this year, and then really use that information to intentionally build out next year. This is exactly what we're about to get into.

You got together an incredible group of women to create this amazing shades of purple shoot in Providence, and it was such a fun experience. It was the inspiration behind today's episode and why I really felt called to have you on to share your expertise, because you were a master at running that styled shoot. So this is going to be a treat for our listeners.

When you're repeatedly ghosted, or told you're too expensive, and you wonder why...struggling wedding pros typically look inward first - wondering if it's your work, your website, is it because you don't have enough followers or likes...

But here's the crazy thing. It's actually not you at all. It's your marketing.

In last week's episode, I shared about the nightmare client who changed my business. I talked about the process that I used to make positive changes after the fact, and 4 lessons that you can take and turn a difficult situation into 1 that ends up being really beautiful for your business and your clients. So that was all about what to do after the fact, after you've had a difficult client situation. In this episode, I'm going to help you screen for red flag clients in advance and give you some tips on how to handle them if you've got one currently.

This is a personal story about my last difficult client (which was about 10 years ago!). This particular wedding gave me cold-sweat nightmares for a month, and changed my business indefinitely.

I share the full story in the podcast, but to get right to it, we’ve all had THE ONE. Who makes us question everything we do…or why we do it at all.

Here’s how you can turn a painful situation into a win for your business.

If you asked me last week if I liked the performer Pink, I'd say, Uh, I want to like her. I really like her message. I like what she's all about, but she just doesn't do it for me. Something about her kind of rubs me the wrong way, and I'm just not that into her. However, I did get roped into going to a concert of hers on a girls trip down in Nashville this past weekend. And it inspired this podcast episode because within about an hour I'd say even as little as 5 minutes, I went from a casual, honestly pink avoider. I was like switching the station when pink comes on the radio, to transforming into an absolute super-fan in such a short amount of time. I found it fascinating and I kept thinking about how we could relate this to our business throughout the entire concert, which was incredible, by the way. So I broke it down into 8 lessons. Eight lessons from Pink that will help you become the highly sought, fully booked creative that you know you deserve to be.