This Can't Be That Hard

I'll admit it... SEO tools sometimes make my eyes glaze over. I was okay with Google Analytics for a while, but then it changed and I lost track of where anything lived. I suspect I'm not the only one.

So when I heard Melissa Arlena of Picture Perfect Rankings talking about how if she had to pick just ONE SEO tool to use, it would be Google Search Console, I knew I wanted to have her explain it in plain language... not just for me, but for all of us who would rather be shooting or relaxing or getting a root canal instead of figuring out SEO on our own.

In this Stories and Shorties episode, Melissa is breaking down:

• How to see the exact words people typed into Google before landing on your site, and how to turn that into your next blog post
• The Search Console tab most people never click, and how you can use it to spot posts sitting just off page one
• Which indexing errors matter, which ones you can ignore, and
• Google's new report on AI search

One thing I want to flag before you hit play: Search Console only collects data from the day you set it up - it can't go backwards. So if you don't have it connected yet, be sure to grab Melissa's free Search Console Decoded guide and get the setup done now. It takes about 30 minutes, and by the time you're ready to work on your SEO in the new year, you'll have real data waiting for you.

LINKS:

• Follow Melissa on Instagram
• Check out search console decoded

Resources:

• New to the podcast? Go to http://thiscantbethathard.com/welcome to get access to 3 of Annemie's best free resources.
• Join our community! We'd love to welcome you into our supportive, business-focused private Facebook group. Go to http://facebook.com/groups/thiscantbethathard to request access.
• Long-time listener? Leave a review!

The busy season can be a lot. Sessions start to blur together, the inbox never quite empties, and - for a lot of photographers - this is the time when photography starts to feel more like work than fun.

As normal as that feeling is, it's also something to watch out for: if you notice your creative spark flickering, it's important to pay attention so that it doesn't sputter out completely.

The trick is that when you're busy, it often feels like you don't have time to pay attention, much less do anything about it.

Bobbi Barbarich is on the show today sharing an exercise she uses with her mentoring students, and it's perfect for this time of year precisely because it's so simple. In this episode, you'll hear about

• The "interest muscle," and why getting paid for your art tends to make that muscle atrophy over time
• How your body alerts you to your interests, and why it's important to pay attention to those alerts
• An exercise that can help to build that muscle (and takes literal seconds)

Give this a listen, then go dig that old point-and-shoot out of the closet.

LINKS:

• Bobbi’s website start here if you want to learn from her directly
• Bobbi’s IG for proof of what she can do with the gear you already own
• Episode 275with Bobbi her first visit to the show

Resources:

• New to the podcast? Go to http://thiscantbethathard.com/welcome to get access to 3 of Annemie's best free resources.
• Join our community! We'd love to welcome you into our supportive, business-focused private Facebook group. Go to http://facebook.com/groups/thiscantbethathard to request access.
• Long-time listener? Leave a review!

I've met Shaun Austin Gordon at several industry events over the years. He's a former wedding photographer and the founder/owner of KISS Books, which makes gorgeous professional albums. This past spring, we got to talking about the impact we have as photographers, and he shared an idea he's working on that really got my wheels turning.

In this Stories and Shorties episode, Shaun is sharing:

• The concept behind the "relationship care card" he's developing for wedding albums
• The two questions he suggests couples ask each other every year
• How to think about the impact your business has beyond the photos... and incorporate that into your clients' experience.

Shaun's idea is built for wedding albums, so it may not map directly onto your business. The question behind it applies to all of us, though. What could your work do for clients after the session is over?

LINKS:

• Follow Shaun on Instagram
• Check out the KISS Books as well.

Resources:

• New to the podcast? Go to http://thiscantbethathard.com/welcome to get access to 3 of Annemie's best free resources.
• Join our community! We'd love to welcome you into our supportive, business-focused private Facebook group. Go to http://facebook.com/groups/thiscantbethathard to request access.
• Long-time listener? Leave a review!

The first episode I recorded with Lindsay Herkert back in February of 2025 has been one of my most popular episodes to date. Lindsay has a way of taking something as intimidating (and boring) as Google Ads and making it feel doable and even fun... which is no small feat!

Today she's back with a Stories & Shorties episode about what's changed - and what hasn't - in the search world since AI hit the scene, and this one is a must-listen.

Lindsay's take is refreshingly calm. She's not panicking about AI overviews or longer, more conversational searches, because no matter while the tech may be changing, Google's mission is still the same: give people answers they can trust.

In this episode, she walks through what that means for your SEO and for your Google Ads. She also gets specific about a real change she made to her own website, and the ranking jump she's seen since making it.

If you've been feeling nervous about what AI means for your marketing, I think this one will actually calm you down.

LINKS:

• Check Lindsay's website
• Follow her on Instagram
• Check out Episode 302, Lindsay's first

Resources:

• New to the podcast? Go to http://thiscantbethathard.com/welcome to get access to 3 of Annemie's best free resources.
• Join our community! We'd love to welcome you into our supportive, business-focused private Facebook group. Go to http://facebook.com/groups/thiscantbethathard to request access.
• Long-time listener? Leave a review!

When I asked my friend Rebecca Hunnicutt to contribute to our Stories and Shorties series, I didn't give her any specific direction - she's an educator and long-time family, maternity, newborn, and school photographer in Portland, Oregon, so I knew she'd share something good.

What I didn't anticipate was that she'd send me FOUR somethings - four separate ideas, each of which could have been its own full episode - and fit them all into under five minutes.

So I'm doing this episode a little differently! You'll hear Rebecca's four tips first, and then I'm chiming in at the end to unpack each one so none of them get lost!

Here's what she's sharing:

• Modifying your questionnaire to improve your clients' experience
• Auditing your workflow with an eye on automation
• Auditing your marketing to ensure you're speaking to the right audience
• Adding customer support that delivers faster answers (and saves you time)

None of these are complicated, but they can be powerful. Try (at least) one this week!

LINKS:

• See more of Rebecca's work in her website.

Resources:

• New to the podcast? Go to http://thiscantbethathard.com/welcome to get access to 3 of Annemie's best free resources.
• Join our community! We'd love to welcome you into our supportive, business-focused private Facebook group. Go to http://facebook.com/groups/thiscantbethathard to request access.
• Long-time listener? Leave a review!

Every photographer I know would love more referrals, but they're all looking for them in the same place: their past clients. Of course, past clients can be a wonderful source of referrals, but the timing isn't always right, and we don't want to ask too often (or too forcefully) and risk making our clients uncomfortable.

That's why I wanted to bring Emily Kim Huynh back on the show. Emily's background is in tech and business, and her outside-the-photography-box thinking has led her to a strategy that brings in bookings from a different kind of referral entirely: other business owners who serve a similar market.

In this episode, Emily breaks down how to identify good referral partners and how to reach out without feeling like you're pitching. It's a completely different way to think about growing your business, and it takes so much of the marketing pressure off.

LINKS:

• Download Emily's Local Networking guide
• Visit Emily's website
• Follow her on Instagram

Resources:

• New to the podcast? Go to http://thiscantbethathard.com/welcome to get access to 3 of Annemie's best free resources.
• Join our community! We'd love to welcome you into our supportive, business-focused private Facebook group. Go to http://facebook.com/groups/thiscantbethathard to request access.
• Long-time listener? Leave a review!

90% of client confusion and problems - including low sales averages - can be traced back to things that happened (or perhaps didn't happen) much earlier in the process.

That's exactly what my guest this week unpacks. Ina Jalil is a pet photographer based in Canberra, Australia, and she coaches pet photographers globally on booking more premium clients consistently.

Even though Ina's strategy comes from in-person sales for pet photography, this works no matter your niche or business model, because it's really about working backward from an outcome you want to change.

In this episode, Ina shares:

• Why ordering appointment surprises almost always trace back to the very start of the client relationship
• The exact two questions she asks every client at the consultation, before she ever picks up her camera
• A real example of how one client's answer completely changed how she planned and shot a session
• Why these questions help her identify the right-fit clients before she's invested a single hour of shooting

If you keep getting caught off guard by client issues, this episode will help you see how to reverse-engineer those issues to help prevent them in the first place.

Links:

• Find out which gap is costing you bookings in Ina's free Consistent Booking Audit quiz (https://www.inajphotography.com/consistent-booking-audit)
• Connect with Ina on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/inajphotography/)

Resources:

• New to the podcast? Go to http://thiscantbethathard.com/welcome to get access to 3 of Annemie's best free resources.
• Join our community! We'd love to welcome you into our supportive, business-focused private Facebook group. Go to http://facebook.com/groups/thiscantbethathard to request access.
• Long-time listener? Leave a review!

When Lydia Fine suggested client privacy as a topic for her Stories & Shorties episode, I almost said no... it honestly felt too big and important for such a short episode.

Privacy is one of those issues that's expanding fast, in the world generally and in our industry specifically, and it deserves way more than a quick conversation. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized Lydia had something genuinely useful to hand you right now, even if the bigger conversation is still ahead of us.

In this episode, Lydia walks through:

• Why a "share unless you say otherwise" policy is probably costing you bookings
• Why privacy needs to be a spectrum of options instead of a binary yes or no
• The exact language and timing she uses to ask clients about sharing preferences at booking
• A simple habit at the end of every session that builds trust, and sometimes even gets clients to loosen their own restrictions

If you've ever had a lead go quiet on you for no clear reason, this one might explain more than you think.

Connect with Lydia on Insta: https://www.instagram.com/lydiafine_forphotographers

Check out Lydia's website:
https://www.apolloandivy.com/for-photographers

Resources:

• New to the podcast? Go to http://thiscantbethathard.com/welcome to get access to 3 of Annemie's best free resources.
• Join our community! We'd love to welcome you into our supportive, business-focused private Facebook group. Go to http://facebook.com/groups/thiscantbethathard to request access.
• Long-time listener? Leave a review!

Being your own boss comes with a lot of big benefits, but there are challenges, too... and one of the surprising ones is how hard it is to get things done when you're the only one managing your time.

On this week's Stories & Shorties episode, Maddie Peschong is sharing her secret weapon: Marketing Mondays: a block of time every single week that's just for marketing, no matter what else is going on.

In this episode, she's sharing:

• Why Marketing Monday works even though it looks a little different every week
• How she protects that time, even when life gets in the way
• How she uses that time, including her strategies for client research
• Why visibility and marketing are skills you build, not talents you're born with

If you've ever felt the challenges of time management as a business owner - especially when it comes to marketing - this is a must-listen.

Links:
Connect with Maddie on Instagram

Check out Maddie's Rebrand coaching program

Resources:

• New to the podcast? Go to http://thiscantbethathard.com/welcome to get access to 3 of Annemie's best free resources.
• Join our community! We'd love to welcome you into our supportive, business-focused private Facebook group. Go to http://facebook.com/groups/thiscantbethathard to request access.
• Long-time listener? Leave a review!

This week, we're shifting gears. The busy season is upon us, and from now straight through the holidays, we're all going to be chasing our tails in one way or another - with marketing, with sessions, or even just with general pre- and mid-holiday chaos. So instead of hitting you each week with a longer, meatier episode, I've put together a series we're calling "Stories & Shorties." These are bite-sized tips and stories from some of my favorite photographers and educators, intended to give you those little boosts of business-focused inspiration you need each week.

We're kicking things off with a fantastic, outside-the-box strategy from Lyndsay McNiff, who realized the hardest part of her busy season sessions wasn't the time she spent shooting... it was everything around it: wrangling kids off the bus, prepping dinner, handing things off to her husband, and loading the car. Thanks to the strategy she's sharing today, Lyndsay is able to manage four to six sessions a week while keeping up with soccer games and family dinners.

This is one of those creative business solutions that's almost too simple to believe, and will leave you wondering why you didn't think of it first!

Resources:

• New to the podcast? Go to http://thiscantbethathard.com/welcome to get access to 3 of Annemie's best free resources.
• Join our community! We'd love to welcome you into our supportive, business-focused private Facebook group. Go to http://facebook.com/groups/thiscantbethathard to request access.
• Long-time listener? Leave a review!

Here's something see all the time (and have fully been guilty of myself): you run a marketing campaign, it does what it does, and by the time it's over, you don't want to think about it any more... you're just onto the next thing. You skip the debrief. You promise yourself you'll remember what worked. But then six months later you're reinventing a wheel you've already built two or three times.

To close out our back-to-school marketing challenge, I brought on my friend Tiffany Crenshaw from Animal House Photography and Tiffany Crenshaw Education. Tiffany - a business owner and homeschooling mom of three - coaches photographers on building a business that fits their life instead of swallowing it whole.

In this conversation, we get into:

• Why starting a campaign with the end goal in mind, before you touch a single email, changes everything downstream
• How to block off your personal calendar before you set a booking goal, so the plan actually fits your life
• The "hand raiser" email and multiple-choice poll that gets real answers out of leads who didn't book
• Why Tiffany schedules a quarterly planning day and an end-of-year "SHE-EO weekend" to turn this season's data into next season's roadmap

Tiffany is one of our speakers at the Consistency Club's live marketing summit on September 1st, and she's sharing a free quarterly mini planner to help you map out your own goals and action steps.

LINKS:

• Connect with Tiffany — see the storytelling, authentic-moments style she talks about in this episode
• Follow Tiffany on Instagram

Resources:

• New to the podcast? Go to http://thiscantbethathard.com/welcome to get access to 3 of Annemie's best free resources.
• Join our community! We'd love to welcome you into our supportive, business-focused private Facebook group. Go to http://facebook.com/groups/thiscantbethathard to request access.
• Long-time listener? Leave a review!

You know that feeling when you get a client email, a phone call, or even just an inquiry and your heart starts racing... Maybe it's excitement, maybe it's fear, or maybe it's a combination of the two, but according to our nervous system, it's all the same.

We talk a lot on this podcast about what to say to fill your calendar. What we don't talk about enough is how what's happening in your body when you respond tends to show up in your words whether you mean it to or not.

That's exactly why I wanted to bring Melody MacDonald back on the show. Before becoming a full-time photographer, she spent 21 years in 911 dispatch, and now she's built an entire teaching practice around the thing dispatchers know better than almost anyone: how to stay regulated when everything in your body wants to go into panic mode.

In this conversation, Melody and I get into:

• Why automation should remove repetition from your business, never the humanity, and how to keep it that way
• The "pause" practice she uses to keep cortisol spikes from writing her emails for her
• Why every no, yes, and silence is just information, and how to use it instead of spiraling from it
• A simple way to respond to a no that keeps the door open, sometimes for years

Melody is one of our two guest speakers at the Consistency Club's live marketing summit on September 1st, and she's also sharing a free five-minute reset for photographers, worth grabbing before your next hard conversation.

Resources:

• New to the podcast? Go to http://thiscantbethathard.com/welcome to get access to 3 of Annemie's best free resources.
• Join our community! We'd love to welcome you into our supportive, business-focused private Facebook group. Go to http://facebook.com/groups/thiscantbethathard to request access.
• Long-time listener? Leave a review!

Most restaurant menus have a handful of apps, a handful of entrees, and a handful of desserts: enough to give people choices and accommodate dietary restrictions, but not so many that people get overwhelmed.

So why do most of us limit our photography "menu" to one or two items? When your business only has one package, one price, the offer is take it or leave it: you're handing hesitant clients an easy way to say no by saying nothing at all.

In this episode, I'm breaking down:

• Why a single, rigid offer might be costing you bookings
• How to navigate your public-facing pricing so it signals flexibility (without being overwhelming)
• How to develop an off-menu "special" that you can bring out in special cases, and
• Why figuring out what's actually causing someone to hesitate matters more than guessing and discounting

This is part two of our back-to-school marketing series. And if you haven't grabbed your ticket for the September 1st marketing summit yet, a Consistency Club membership gets you in.

Resources:

• New to the podcast? Go to http://thiscantbethathard.com/welcome to get access to 3 of Annemie's best free resources.
• Join our community! We'd love to welcome you into our supportive, business-focused private Facebook group. Go to http://facebook.com/groups/thiscantbethathard to request access.
• Long-time listener? Leave a review!

It's August, which means it's probably feels way too early to think about Black Friday, holiday cards, or filling your calendar for Q4... but that's exactly why now is the time to do it!

Every year I watch the same thing happen: photographers coast through summer, and then the second Starbucks rolls out everyone's favorite seasonal latte, panic sets in: empty calendar, no plan, reactive scramble. This month on the podcast, we're running something we're calling the Back to School Marketing Challenge, and this episode is step one: getting organized.

My marketing director Dayna and I get into:

• Why proactive marketing beats reactive marketing, every single time
• The hot, warm, and cold lead system, and why sorting your contacts into these three buckets changes how marketing feels
• How to go on a "lead scavenger hunt" through your DMs, comments, and email to find people you forgot were even interested
• Why and how this up-front organization step will increase the effectiveness of these conversations

If you're in the Consistency Club, this sets you up for our marketing summit on September 1st, where we turn all of this into an actual plan. If you're not, you're still going to walk away from this one with a spreadsheet and a plan for filling it.

LINKS:

• Learn more about Consistency Club

Resources:

• New to the podcast? Go to http://thiscantbethathard.com/welcome to get access to 3 of Annemie's best free resources.
• Join our community! We'd love to welcome you into our supportive, business-focused private Facebook group. Go to http://facebook.com/groups/thiscantbethathard to request access.
• Long-time listener? Leave a review!

Here's a pattern I've noticed: photographers spend months chasing a version of growth that sounds right, but never actually sits right. Typically this is because they've heard advice or purchased a course that may be well-intentioned, but doesn't really align with their unique circumstances or goals. Before they know it, they've spent their valuable time, money, and energy heading in the wrong direction, and now have to spend more of each of those things to get themselves back on track.

I'm wrapping up our Beyond the Bottleneck series this week, and although this episode may sound a bit like a contradiction to our other episodes, I meant it more as a reminder:

Being organized is important.
Building systems is crucial.
Bringing in help is a big step on the road to growth.
But all of it requires a clear sense of direction.

In this episode, I'm sharing:

• The three questions I'd ask any photographer before they start optimizing
• A breakdown of when outsourcing actually makes financial sense
• Why the math can work perfectly and still not be the right answer

Growth is a strategy, not a goal. This episode is about making sure you're growing in the right direction.

LINKS:

• Grab Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell
• Get The Photographer's Business Plan Glow Up

Resources:

• New to the podcast? Go to http://thiscantbethathard.com/welcome to get access to 3 of Annemie's best free resources.
• Join our community! We'd love to welcome you into our supportive, business-focused private Facebook group. Go to http://facebook.com/groups/thiscantbethathard to request access.
• Long-time listener? Leave a review!

You can streamline and automate every last thing in your business, but there are still only so many clients you can take on because there's only one of you... unless you build an associate team.

This week, I'm sharing my conversation with Ali Leigh, a Minneapolis-based wedding photographer who has been running an associate team for almost a decade. Ali was an open book, sharing the actual nuts and bolts:

• How and why she got started with associates (mostly by accident)
• How she finds and vets associates that represent her brand well
• How she pays them and handles the legal stuff
• How she talks to clients about the fact that she won't be behind the camera
• The honest trade-offs - especially the editing workload
• Who this model is and isn't right for

This is a practical, no-hype conversation from someone who has been doing this for nearly a decade. If you've ever thought "I wish I could book more, but there's only one of me" - or the flip side, "I'd love to shoot less but I can't afford to earn less" - this episode is for you.

LINKS:

• Find Ali at https://alileigh.com/
• On Instagram at @alileighco.

Resources:

• New to the podcast? Go to http://thiscantbethathard.com/welcome to get access to 3 of Annemie's best free resources.
• Join our community! We'd love to welcome you into our supportive, business-focused private Facebook group. Go to http://facebook.com/groups/thiscantbethathard to request access.
• Long-time listener? Leave a review!

My dad had a "system" for organizing his office. You could ask him for anything - any book or file or piece of paper - and he'd be able to locate it in 30 seconds. The problem? No one else had any idea what his system was, and if he wasn't available, nothing could be located.

Maybe your office is super organized, maybe your desktop is as clean as the day you got your computer, but I'd be willing to bet that somewhere in your business, there are "systems" that only you have the keys to.

Colie James is back on the show, and today we're getting into the practical side of what it actually means to get your business systems ready out of your head and into a format that you can hand off - to a person, a tool, or AI.

Here's what we're getting into:

• Why "getting everything out of your head" is the first step
• Colie's "and what happens next?" method for mapping your client process
• The booked-and-busy trap: why the moment you're too busy to build systems is exactly when you need to build them
• How to use feedback forms as a data source - and how to utilize AI to make this easy (and objective)

Colie's story about not outsourcing anything in her business until she went blind is one I keep thinking about. You don't want to be forced into building systems by a crisis. Today's episode makes it easy to get started today without the overwhelm.

LINKS:

• Find Colie at https://coliejames.com/
• Be sure to check out her podcast, Business First Creatives

Resources:

• New to the podcast? Go to http://thiscantbethathard.com/welcome to get access to 3 of Annemie's best free resources.
• Join our community! We'd love to welcome you into our supportive, business-focused private Facebook group. Go to http://facebook.com/groups/thiscantbethathard to request access.
• Long-time listener? Leave a review!

There's an old story about a fisherman who keeps going out every day with holes in his net. Even though he knows the net leaks, he doesn't think he can afford to take the time off from fishing to mend the holes. I've been that fisherman more times than I'd like to admit, and I'd be willing to bet there's a good chance you have been too.

At some point in business, most of us will get in our own way. Of course that bottleneck isn't obvious - instead, it shows up as exhaustion, as the feeling that you're working harder than ever but not getting further ahead, as that sense that success is always just around the next bend... but somehow you never quite arrive.

This month on the podcast, we're digging into how to recognize those bottlenecks in your own business, and covering three strategies to get yourself out of that stuck place: systems, outsourcing, and adding capacity. Today's episode sets the stage for all of it.

Resources:

• New to the podcast? Go to http://thiscantbethathard.com/welcome to get access to 3 of Annemie's best free resources.
• Join our community! We'd love to welcome you into our supportive, business-focused private Facebook group. Go to http://facebook.com/groups/thiscantbethathard to request access.
• Long-time listener? Leave a review!

This last episode in our Summer Essentials series dates back to 2021, but don't let its vintage fool you: it's message is as true - and important - now as it was then: most of your clients don't actually know what they want.

Here's what we're chatting about:

• Why you need to replace "give people what they want" with "show them what they need"
• The importance of showing (only) what you want to sell - a rule most photographers break constantly
• The value of connection: what listening, educating, and handling objections actually looks like in a real conversation
• The benefits of being picky - why the clients who still don't want what you offer after you've made your case are not your clients

If you've ever taken on a session you knew wasn't the right fit, or caved on your packages because someone said they "just want digitals," this one is for you.

Resources:

• New to the podcast? Go to http://thiscantbethathard.com/welcome to get access to 3 of Annemie's best free resources.
• Join our community! We'd love to welcome you into our supportive, business-focused private Facebook group. Go to http://facebook.com/groups/thiscantbethathard to request access.
• Long-time listener? Leave a review!

This conversation with copywriter and brand strategist Courtney Fanning changed how I think about copywriting. The premise is simple (if a little uncomfortable): we all instinctively write for the type of consumer we are, and if there are four types, that means we're only effectively speaking to maybe 25% of our potential clients.

Courtney shares a framework she adapted from Spanx founder Sara Blakely that breaks buyers into four types: the director, the socializer, the relator, and the thinker. Each one needs something different from your website and your copy in order to feel confident enough to reach out.

Here's what we're getting into:

• What each of the four buyer types is actually looking for when they land on your page
• How to do a copy sweep to catch what's missing - without starting from scratch
• What testimonials, FAQs, marketing receipts, and imagery are actually doing for each buyer type
• Courtney's take on voice (and why it's not the be-all end-all most people think it is)

LINKS:

• Take Courtney's quizto find out what your buyer type is.
• Find Courtney at https://bigpicturecopywriting.com/ and on Instagram and Pinterest

Resources:

• New to the podcast? Go to http://thiscantbethathard.com/welcome to get access to 3 of Annemie's best free resources.
• Join our community! We'd love to welcome you into our supportive, business-focused private Facebook group. Go to http://facebook.com/groups/thiscantbethathard to request access.
• Long-time listener? Leave a review!