Gretchen Adams' Class

My apologies to the blogosphere for forgetting to update you on how my night class with Gretchen Adams went. Some background: Gretchen Adams is a family portrait photographer in Clyde, CA. She is all about beautiful prints and wall portraits with canvas and other beautiful displays for the works of arts she creates for her clients. Listening to her speak about her background, how she started her business, and her workflow was so helpful to me. Some things I picked up:

• KEEP IT SIMPLE, STUPID! You don't need fifty lenses and the best-of-the-best equipment to produce high quality images. You do, however, need to understand how light works and how to, umm, for lack of a better word, manipulate kids to do what you need them to do in order to get amazing portraits. (;
• I'm a big fan of online galleries; Gretchen does her viewing sessions in-person about a month after the session. At that time, clients can view the slideshow she's created of the images and order wall-sized portraits and extras like albums and the slideshow DVD itself!
• Gretchen does absolutely no advertising. She never has, and just works off a base of clients acquired through word-of-mouth marketing. Obviously I'm doing something wrong because while I get referrals every now and then, it's definitely not enough by itself to sustain my business. While I haven't full-blown reached out to my social network yet (*jots note on to-do list about emailing friends about my business*), I'm still nervous about client acquisition. At this point, I just had to concede "to each its own." I already know my business shortcoming is my lack of sales skills combined with my habit of saying random things at random times. Deadly combo!
• BTW - I was so surprised that Gretchen didn't keep a blog, but I guess she has a regular flow of clients so she has no need for an additional marketing item such as a blog. Even if I "made it" I wouldn't give up this baby. It's so much easier to post photos on my blog than it is to manually update my websites! (:

Speaking of blogs, I'm going the San Francisco leg of David Jay and Jasmine Star's Free to Succeed Tour. I'm very excited to meet j*, but anticipate she'll just be pretty much her normal, goofy self and is, in fact, not a super-human being... although her business growth in the past couple of years is nothing short of astounding! (Yes, she's been around for only a few short years and yet everyone's heard of her or seen her amazing photos.) Plus, she's always touted that it was her blog that helped her with client acquisition. I guess there's something to be said about putting everything out there.