20: Your most productive and profitable schedule w/ Hannah Murphy
Sooo… I wrote a free guide for YOU, photog friend. This guide is a DEEP DIVE into video marketing for photographers — not only do I provide tangible, actionable strategy for batching video content for YouTube, IGTV, Facebook, TikTok, and Reels, but I take the time to discuss the WHY of it all. Aannndddd this isn’t one of those guides where I throw up information on you that you have no hope of implementing during your busy photo season — I’m a working videographer and photographer, so I freaking get the struggle to implement a content creation strategy. As always, I’m here to meet you where you’re at with what you have
HANNAH MURPHY: YOUR MOST PRODUCTIVE AND PROFITABLE SCHEDULE
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HANNAH MURPHY
We have an incredibleeee business owner and productivity coach on episode 20 of the Montana Diaries Podcast here to give alllll the guidance and tangible tips — it’s one of my favorite voices in this online business world, the lovely Hannah Murphy! As a business owner who 9xed her client load in just six months, she knows how overwhelming the role of CEO can be - even when your business is thriving on the outside. Hannah helps creative business owners develop PROFIT focused schedules that allow them to outsource the tasks that don’t bring them joy, skip work on the weekends and say yes to more mid-week lunches with your friends, and intentionally dream and plan for the next few years. This is a must-listen episode, friends.
Beginning as a Virtual Assistant
Hannah answered a job posting for a virtual assistant position without truly knowing what being a VA entailed — she researched her way through that first freelance job and called it her “bride between seasons” in business.
Niching Down
The way Hannah figured out what she liked and didn’t like in the VA world!? Giving it aalllll a go. Hannah developed a variety of skills before her client paid her to take a Pinterest course and Hannah ended up developing a strong preference for that work. She loved Pinterest because it was helping people grow their businesses and it is a very strategy-based platform, which is where Hannah thrives. Pinterest is extremely visual and she saw the potential in it for wedding pros, photographers specifically, so that’s the audience she decided to target for her newfound Pinterest strategy niche.
Growing a clientele through pitching
Soooo, Hannah had a niche — Pinterest, and a specific audience — Wedding photographers. But how the heck did she find those wedding photogs and turn them into clients!?
Pitching.
Instead of marketing into the abyss, Hannah took matters into her own hands by finding potential clients on social media and making sure they were a good fit before pitching them her services and getting them on sales calls. Eventually, Hannah scaled her service based business to over 25 clients at a time…and she kept pitching.
Creating a schedule + putting systems in place
“I worked a lot more with 3 clients than I did with 25 clients.”
Whatttt?
Hannah explained that in the early stages of her business, she was doing every task in her business every single day. As she progressed, she created systems in her business that called for batching similar tasks on specific days. Later, after the systems were created and working well, she had a clear idea of what could be outsourced.
Sharing her system
Hannah’s own clients started asking her how the frick she kept up with all of her clients and tasks, so her podcast became the natural next step in her business. Her episodes focused on answering questions she was getting often.
“That’s kinda the pivot to education, right? You get good at your craft, people ask how you do it, and then you teach them.”
Hannah on Productivity
4 Steps to Creating Your Most Productive Schedule
Assessing: Do a brain dump and go through all of the tasks you do in your business and analyze them. Are these tasks actually moving the needle forward?
Plan your schedule: Cater your schedule to the season you’re in. Plan around your life, your business goals, and commit time to the tasks that need to get done.
Develop: This is where you create those systems. You have to look at what needs to be eliminated, automated, and streamlined. What can be done easier and better? What can be batched?
Sustain: What are things you can put in place to help you know when the work day should end? What will help you reduce task switching? It’s one thing to have a schedule, another thing to sustain it.
Reverse engineering your goals
Hannah says, “If I don’t know where I’m going, then how can I create a schedule that pushes me toward where I want to go? Your schedule needs to reflect your personality, priorities, and your plans for the future.”
So:
Identify how much you want to make each month. How many packages is that? How many clients?
Refine your offer — how can you best serve your clients?
Orient your schedule to serve the above two things.
Look at your answers to those three things — is it all aligned? Does it all feel good? Is it realistic?
Work with Hannah
Hannah has a free training that goes deeper into everythingggg we talked about here, so click here to chat that out. You can also check her out on Instagram.
Want a shout out on the pod!?
Be sure to rate + review the Montana Diaries Podcast on the Apple Podcast app — put your Instagram handle in your review and I’ll give you a shout out in a future episode!