Rick Liston | Outsourcing: Why Your Business Needs It | FloInsider Ep #30

Welcome to the 30th episode of FloInsider – a podcast for photographers and creative business owners who seek inspiration and a fresh perspective on how to run their business, navigate this weird time that we all live in, and find meaning and happiness in their daily routines. 

This is the last episode hosted by our dear friend Oli Sansom. FloInsider will be taking a summer break, and will return again this fall, with a fresh batch of mind-blowing interviews and guest speakers! 

Today, enjoy Oli’s discussion with an insanely brilliant businessman, well-known Australian wedding photographer, and expert at building his local market – Rick Liston. Rick shares his strategy behind building a high volume of weddings and client work locally, his backend workflow, as well as the genius pivots he took during Covid, to keep his business thriving. 

A few cliff notes from our chat with Rick:

• Be an expert in your local area. Be everywhere: have recommendations for everything that your clients could possibly need. Build a strong network and make yourself unavoidable – people won’t always book you, but at least they won’t be able to avoid you. If your name is everywhere they have to consider you.

• Keep a constant communication and check in with your clients. Don’t get the booking and disappear til the day of the wedding. Send a questionnaire, send them tips and advice, send them solutions to their problems. Your clients have questions when planning their wedding and, usually, those are the same for most couples! You can sent them recommendations before they even ask, anticipate the things they need, and build a stronger connection with them. 

• Set up automated systems to work hard for you. Instead of emailing each client individually, you can have automated emails that will go out to your clients at certain points in time prior to their wedding.

• Outsource your workflow to Virtual Assistants. Do it as much as you can – you don’t have to do all your work alone. The more you outsource, the more streamlined your business will be, the easier you can focus on the thing that you love doing and can do well.

• Send the wedding images to everyone involved in it right after the event. Not just to the couple, but to all the vendors who worked hard to make the beautiful day happen. View them as your clients, too.

Follow Rick on Instagram instagram.com/rick_liston
and check out his website:  rickliston.com

Connect with our host, Oli Sansom via one of his websites: 
www.olisansom.com
www.briarsatlas.com
www.strangeatlas.co
or via Instagram: instagram.com/olisansom

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