281 How I Sell Out Photography Workshops Organically

Speaker 1 I just send them an e-mail saying like hey, here it is, you can sign up and then everything was solved within a week. I would spend a lot of money but still have the same amount of bookings if I was just doing that organically. Speaker 2 E-mail, in my experience, is normally about 80% of the potential revenue in the business selling courses and digital products. Speaker 1 Yeah, that's how I feel sometimes when I spend lots of time creating, sometimes for my social media, and I feel like this is not what I signed up for. Speaker 2 Hello and welcome to the Art of Selling online Courses. We are here to share winning strategies and secret hacks from top performers in the online course industry. My name is John Ainsworth and today's guest is Ivona Podlashinska. Now Ivona is an award-winning children's and family portrait photographer from Poland and she is one of the most recognised names in the world for a very particular style of image. It's this dreamy, emotional, almost painterly portraits of kids that sit kind of somewhere between reality and a dream. She picked up a camera to photograph her own children back in 2014 and it grew into a global teaching business. She's run in person workshops across 17 countries. She was named the most followed photographer on Flickr in 2017. She's an International Photography Awards Photographer of the Year and a Sony creator. And today she teaches photographers all over the world how to capture and edit those magical light filled portraits through her courses, her presets, her workshops has got thousands of students to date. Evona, welcome to the show. Speaker 3 Hi. Thank you so much for having me here. I really appreciate this this great opportunity and I'm looking forward to hearing your questions. Speaker 2 Well, talk us all through who's your audience? Who are you helping with your your courses and your workshops and everything else that you're doing? Speaker 3 Judging on who comes to my workshop, those are most mostly women. And those are mostly women after 35. Like over 35 up to maybe 60, sometimes over 60, usually mums. Speaker 1 That either just want to take. Speaker 3 Photos of their own kids or mostly kind of looking forward to maybe making this another like a career or maybe just like a side job. So they can, you know, do what they love is usually photographer lovers. And they've they've knew they loved photography for all their life, that they're now just trying to either, you know, finally have that passion in their life, actually after having their children, after doing the hardest job as a mom when everything settles down. Or sometimes grandmas like no women at the certain age, although there are sometimes men, just maybe 10 or 20% are men. Speaker 2 Okay, OK. And how often do you do those workshops for people? Speaker 3 Really depends on the time. Sometimes those are very often. Sometimes you know, there are months like in November when it's very cold and a lot of people don't really want to come to an outdoor workshop. And so we'll still do some especially in like those warmer places on Earth, like I would sometimes go to Texas, for example. This is a great time because it's not not hot anymore here in Europe, it's usually June, July, May. So I just had a workshop in Denmark this weekend. 2 weeks ago I was in Holland at the Netherlands. 3 weeks ago I was in Sweden. So sometimes it would be very, very often. And then at the time I feel like I'm, I cannot get a hold of what I'm doing online because, you know, it's always, I'm always somewhere. And then there are sometimes some months like from like December and January where I do more of like my sort of Internet. So I'm some like on my online stuff. Like I would try to to catch up with like record maybe on your course if I have an idea for that. Speaker 1 It. Speaker 2 Looks like you do these courses in some lovely places, which is really cool, right? That must be fun, fun travelling. I see you in the New Forest, which is one of my favourite spots in the UK. Oh yes, absolutely lovely. Going to Valencia, which I went to about a month or two ago. It's just a gorgeous city. And then Vienna, and I don't know anything about Leipzig, but I see that you've got a whole load of these coming out. This is great, isn't it? Do you enjoy it? Speaker 1 I love travelling and people often ask me like how do I find the places? And The thing is that I don't usually choose the spots myself, sort of like with a finger on a map. As I say, I usually have hosts that invite me to certain places and those are either some other photography lovers that come me online and they say like, hey, I want to open a new my studio, my home for this workshop. I want you to come. I can organise everything. Sometimes organisations that run workshops, like for example, in Sweden in December, I'm doing a an workshop in the winter time and it's a it's an organisation that does that more people, they have their own group of photographers that they would take on photography journeys, sort of like to Africa, the Black Alliance, but also at the same time we'll do workshops. So, and also what I love about, you know, travelling. One more thing that I wanted to say that I really love the fact that I often, I'm often at just local people houses and I can learn a little bit about, you know, how they live, how they run their lives, you know, in between the workshop. Of course, it's just another way travelling. You would you think about travelling? It's often that people just go to like touristy places and that you should this year, these are done when you're a certain country. But I, what I find very interesting is just being in people's houses and seeing how they live their life. That that's, that's another way of, of knowing the world. I guess I for me it's that's even more interesting. Speaker 2 So how does that work from a financial point of view? If there's other people inviting you to do the workshops, are you selling? Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm selling to your own. Speaker 2 Audience or were they selling some of them or like how does that work? Speaker 1 Yeah. So two different ways. So either it's, if it's I would take private host or a fellow photographer doing that, then I say, I tell them that the deal is that I'm going to gather the group using my own audience on my social media and your job is just to help me around. They usually don't make money on this. They, they only get only they get a, a workshop in return. But for there are some, some organisations that do that, for example, as I said, like Zoom photo resource is going to make money on this and they are going to sell that. And in that case, I have to make an agreement on them how much I'm involved in the whole selling process. And we get it depends on how like what kind of deal we have. Like if I'm making money on on a person or if I'm making money from the group, of course, that that in in a different ways and instead advise me to doing more advertising. So everybody depends on how I, I think I feel like both ways work great. First of all, like on 1st, 1st type, I would say that the private house. Then of course I'm making all the money and I have my costs. Like I have to travel there. I have to sometimes book a like a hotel room, I have to book some things. Of course that's a cost and, but I'm not actually sharing the income with anybody else. And that's good. But what? But I don't feel like it's the best. I think it's good doing both. And I, as I said in the in the e-mail that we were sharing that I find that working with others is, is very important. Even if I'm not making full amount of money on this, I'm I'm not worried that like maybe they getting half of that, but they really help me out with widening my audience and, and that's very important. Some sometimes people say, like, oh, how do you like? So they only organise and they get half of that. But then on the other hand, I'm telling that if they incentivize to, to, to sell this, they are going to spread my name around and then say like, Hey, is this even if those people don't take the course right now, there's always kind of widening my audience. And if I'm starting trying to sell things or organically, mostly because workshops I do sell mostly organically. I tried to do some advertising like a Facebook, but it's really, it doesn't really work very well for me because it's a very specific, very narrow group of people that would do the workshop. And it's also sometimes people would say, some of my hosts, oh, I have this person that do that does advertising like marketing, maybe they can help. And I'm telling you that really don't believe that's going to help because of what I see that people, because I have a very, as I said at the beginning, I have a very specific type of photography and they have to know that this is what they're looking for. It's not like anyone that has a camera will want to do this type of workshop. They have to know that this is a specific so then advertising that didn't work for me because it kind of goes to a like a more audience, more wide audience and and I didn't see much that actually working for me. I would spend a lot of money, but still, you know, have the same amount of bookings as I had if I was if I just doing this organically. Whilst for other things that I do, because there are also online courses sometimes presets like different, different levels of what people can get when it comes to money and get the amount of, of stuff. Then then in that case, you know, advertising like Facebook sort of adverts work better in that situation. Yeah. So, OK, yeah, that's what I, that's what I see so far. Yeah, that's what I think. Speaker 2 What do you see with the workshops? How much do people pay for a ticket to attend one? Speaker 1 Usually between €700 and $1000. So I'm done giving different, different numbers because really depends on like where, where those photos are, where the photos are sold. So it really depends on how much cost there is and what's included. I would say like if, if it's usually all the previous ones that I had in Europe that you know, accommodation wasn't included, there was more like €700. But then if I fly to the US then that's usually more expensive because no, of course my costs are bigger. Then on the other hand, I sometimes do in Poland, I do some workshops with accommodations where I run the whole building and we spend 2 days together, which is a great experience because you get to know people better when you just spend all two dates with them and you know, some being nice friendships are made then. And then of course it's a little more expensive because you know, I have to pay for the building. So I'm trying to kind of like calculate my costs around it. I basically know how much I'm going to spend for a plane ticket to anywhere in Europe, so that I can say I will be probably around €700 for for a workshop without accommodation somewhere in Western Europe. Speaker 2 OK, cool. And what do you how many people could attend one of those? Speaker 1 Up to 10. Speaker 2 OK, cool. Speaker 1 After 10 sometimes I will do poor but then. Speaker 3 War is. Speaker 1 Still OK for me, so I'm not doing a lot of money, but still I'm like, no, I'm not losing money. And then it's easier for me to run because those are often, those are the children usually post for those photos. And even if those who are not children, you know, it's it's a lot of it's difficult to take photos in such a big group. And I feel like I'm not able to attend every single person so well in a bigger group. But at the same time, of course, I'm trying to make some money at the same time. So. Yeah. So it's. Speaker 2 I was chatting with, I don't know if you've ever come across in Mark Smith, Mark Smith Photography. He does birds, like birds in flight. I'm just going to double check that I've got his name right because we said before, but yeah, that was it. Mark Smith. Yeah. And he basically said he sells courses and he's got a big audience, but he doesn't. All he really wants to do is be outside taking photos. So when he's doing the workshops, he's like, great, because we're outside taking photos and I'm showing other people have to do it, but I'm also taking photos. And when he's like selling courses and doing e-mail marketing, he's like, I just want to be outside taking photos. Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. That's how I feel sometimes when I spend more, most of the time doing the content creating, creating content for my social media and I feel like this is not what I signed up for. Speaker 2 Well, let's talk about that a little bit. Like, what's your main traffic source? What's the biggest social media for? Speaker 1 You The funny thing is I focus so much on Instagram, but actually Instagram doesn't do as well as Facebook. I don't know. I think the reason is that this is a certain group of people like they're over 40, sometimes 50. And I feel like those that little older audience prefers Facebook or Instagram, but for photographers, basically Instagram is the place to be. I'm also trying to I'm not very good at it though, but I'm trying to also do a little bit on TikTok. I think that this is the younger generations. And on Sunday, someday, you know, those people will be at the at the age where they could come to me. So I'm trying to, you know, just. Speaker 2 Building the TikTok audience now, like in 10 years when they're the right. Speaker 1 Age, you have to start early. I guess when you start early, I have a little bit of chance and if it if it just happened, then I kind of realised that, oh shoot, there's no one on Instagram anymore that I will be. Speaker 2 Diversified a little bit, yeah, OK, that makes sense. And then how when you're selling your your workshop spots, how are you doing it? You you don't do e-mail marketing that much anymore, do you? I. Speaker 1 I know what I was, so I'm so disappointed, but I, this is not the right word to say. I guess it's just with the low number of openings of those emails, I feel like I'm just spending so much time trying to, you know, put together a nice e-mail and, and so that's such a small rate of openings of those emails. I do have a lot of emails stored because I at some point I have this kind of like newsletter and a lead map magnet over there and I stored the e-mail address, but it wasn't working as well. And then, and I feel like every time I do very well on Instagram or on Facebook with like interesting reels and so and such, then I get a really nice response and I get a lot of questions about workshops. So yeah, so that's mostly organic. So I'm trying to create content on on Instagram and Facebook that speaks to those people and then and then hope that they will find, but you know, selling workshop starts getting I don't know it's the this year or what that it's trying starting to get more and more difficult. Not in every place is the same way. I don't know what I might. Netherlands is such a good country for me, but I have I just had a workshop with 10 people and then there are still people asking me like, are you going back to Netherlands? I want to I missed that one. I want to come and so on and there are places like they're difficult to sell like the South of Europe, like Valencia is a Valencia, but like I hope that I'm going there because there are not so many good bookings. So so really depends like I can plan something, but what how if it's actually going to happen that that we will see Yeah. So I had Australia was always asking, people will be asking about Australia. And then I then, you know, I started gathering their info, like the contact info. And once I had it, I just let's send them an e-mail saying like, Hey, here it here it is. You can sign up. And then everything was sold within a week. So it really, so it's really weird. And this year it was a little more difficult. So I was thinking to kind of change this a little bit. I know that, you know, from from everything that I sell, workshop is the top product. You know what I mean? Like if there is a certain like a value ladder. OK, you got the right. Speaker 2 That's like a marketer term for it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So learning marketing speak today. Speaker 1 Oh, great. That's what I need. So this is the the top, the top, top of the top record is the most important, the most expensive thing that you can get from me and the most like sort of like valuable valuable at the same time. But that's also for a very small group of people. And while I want to keep a product like that, I'm thinking whether I should now kind of, you know what I'm also thinking. I'm sorry, I'm just kind of jumping from 1 foot to another that this product might change a little bit because, you know, I'm trying to what I'm trying to do right now is make people understand that I'm not selling and I'm selling like knowledge, but don't focus on knowledge, focus on the experience. And I'm trying to get more focused on on the experience on that and the fact that I understand that most of the people laugh photography. But the problem is that they hope they don't have time for this. And it's life. You know, they have kids, they they have to do their job and in between, it's very difficult for them to find the time to do what they love. And then, you know, they can come to a workshop to read what they love. And I was thinking maybe doing some more like just just people this places where we can meet and just take photos together and I can organise everything for them. So they they would get beautiful photos, like what I do. And like, if they like what I do, then I can, they can I can give give them like donkeys, dots, whatever children spaces advice. If they need my advice and telling like, Hey, look, look up this from this angle, then you will see what would then display. This thing will look beautiful. So another thing that I'm also why I'm also thinking about, you know, just adding something like this more like an experienced thing is the fact that, you know, once this customer comes and does this workshop, there is very little I can offer next because then it's a lot. So, you know, so that those are because those are people that usually are kind of returning because they already had some of my like presets or some of my like overlies. Those those those the smallest step they already took that or sometimes they have a course. So in the middle and they will take this. And then then I was thinking that at this point, I kind of lose the client because they, they already did the workshop. So you know where can can do another one, but they won't because it's the same sort of like the same knowledge. They won't come to the same lecture again. They won't come to do the same stuff. And and that's why this winter I'm doing an experience for them. So I'm trying to kind of like, I'm thinking about how to first of all, like find those people and also how to keep those people, which is saying now, which is always a struggle. I'm not saying I'm doing things right. I'm just trying to give you my my ideas and about how I think about this job. Speaker 2 How much of the the revenue for you is your of your business is from the workshops and how much is from the, the courses or the what did you say you got overlays and presets, that kind of thing? Speaker 1 Yeah, most of it is from from the workshops because this is I actually get most money there and this is a very expensive. The rest I have to put a little more money into advertising. If I run a new product, then it's and sells well to this very my my best like my fans the best, the best group of audience and that sells very well. And then I would just drops down and then I have to put more and more into advertising and then I don't get, I will get a good revenue from from a course or something like a product once it's launches and then it kind of hides away. But with workshops, it's, it's continuous high revenue, you know, with, with from every workshop. But at the same time, I'm trying to kind of think that it's not whenever I do a workshop, I do a workshop and then it's, it's done right. There's when I do a course, when I record, when I've got a product, I know that once I put it here, it can last for a long time. So overall I get more money from, from workshops. So I would love to them to, to continue, especially that this is also great for me. As I said, the photographer said that they just want to go out and take photos. And this is how I to what I like because I love meeting those people and I love doing taking photos. Whereas what I'm doing like courses and stuff, it's nice. It's, it's just, it's just done. It's just a job. It doesn't doesn't know do anything for me other than making money. Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. Interesting. If you could sell more of the courses to your existing audience so you're making more money from it without having to do more work on it, that would be great. Assuming that would be cool, right? Speaker 1 That would be cool. Yeah. The problem with my courses, I'm very excited to interrupt you, but the problem with the courses that I do is just drives me nuts because they change the interface of the programmes and I'm using for editing all the time. And once I record something, few months something change and I think oh, they added something or they changed that. I'm used to. There are things that used to be very difficult to do what now we AI is just one quick and so on. So it keeps changing and those courses are the worst thing because then they are never sort of like and they're up to date maybe for like a month or two. And then you know, it's best thing for me right now. We're best thing for me. That was a very little revenue, but I had nothing one site when somebody buys those overlays, I really don't have to do anything. It's just like it's just sells. And this is the really like a passive income then rather than courses seem to be active over and over, you know, because when you say say something on a workshop, you can always say whatever is up to date, But of course you just record. And then they think like, Oh my God, I just recorded that three months ago and I already had to update and and that's open that when I don't have the time to update it. So if if Adobe could stop, you know, doing so many updates, that would be nice. Speaker 2 What's the I'm really curious about this. Do you do you have any idea of why your e-mail open rates were so I? Speaker 1 Have no idea I've been. Speaker 2 Like that's not normal. Like you've got a loyal fan base. If people got onto your e-mail list, I would have expected them to be keen to open your I wonder. Speaker 1 I can message no idea with you. Maybe maybe I'm using the wrong app or something, I don't know. I've been trying to find, because then The thing is that I used to use one app, I used to use Mail Train Boy, which was in my opinion, very expensive. At some point I was like, I'm not sending that many emails to pay that much for that. And then I was trying to find something else that would not charge me for just having an audience. I know just for actually sending emails rather than just, you know what I mean? Because they charge you depending on the amount of emails that you have. And then I found one app that only charges for the amount of sent emails, which was very great for me because then, you know, sometimes I would not send emails for because I didn't have anything new. And it doesn't make sense to send emails to people in Denmark that I'm doing workshop in the USA right in. So it has to be very specific. And sometimes, and the audience in Denmark would be very small, like maybe I don't know, there'll be 50 emails on that list. So, so then to keep and pay for having 1000. And then I could send about, tell about, let me send emails about courses. But then those courses will, you know, launch maybe once a year. So, you know, just paint. And I don't know, maybe just because I'm not using the right app, maybe that app just tends to go to spam and others don't. I don't know I I my idea is that for some reason that those emails and end up in spam. Speaker 2 Yeah, I'm going to. I'm going to connect you with Joseph afterwards and see if he can help you figure out what's going on, because I'll tell you. I'll tell you why. e-mail in my experience is normally about 80% of the potential revenue in a business that's selling like courses and digital products. So I'd even would be surprised if it wasn't incredibly valuable. Normally for workshops as well, I do less stuff with in person workshops. So if the e-mail marketing isn't working, it probably suggests you're leaving a lot of the money that you've kind of built up as potential in your business in the just on the table, right? So you've got all this audience, you've got what, 180,000 people on Facebook and 140,000 people on Instagram and you've got 18,000 on YouTube and all of this. And then you've got all these courses and these presets and these workshops. So you've got the products and you've got the audience and just a bit in the middle is how do you get the audience to buy the also to buy whatever you've got, right. And in my experience, nearly always, like 99% of the time, the best thing to do is, is e-mail marketing. And, but if you're, if something's broken in that process, then that means that you've got all this potential to make money, but you're, you're not making as much as you could be. So what I'll do, I'll connect you with the OCP afterwards and I'll get him to kind of go back and forth with you and help you figure out what's going on and what, how, how is this fixable? Because it does sound like something's something's gotten broken in the process, and I suspect you could probably increase your revenue a lot by by fixing it. Speaker 1 Thank you. Yeah, yeah. Speaker 2 No worries, here to help talk me through. How did you land on this just very distinctive look that you've got in your photography? Speaker 1 It's a lot of experimenting at the beginning and we feel if I look at the photos that I at the beginning I would take out, there were some very random photos. They were like random photos of cats and some birds and, and some butterflies. And then I decided, and then I said taking photos of my kids and I was really mostly interested in light and like how it could be captured. Well, you know, at the same time, you know, having the kids in there because then it would. So on one hand, I was interested in light and I when I was when I was trying to take photos of random things, as I said, like birds and something, I didn't feel connected to those photos anyway. It didn't even feel like, you know, they meant anything to me. But then I added the kids into the game and then it started, you know, everything started making sense for me. So I had what I wanted. So I really wanted to capture how light kind of changes that where we see things. And at the same time, I had my kids on those photos. And then then it just, I could emotionally connect to, to, to, to, to that. So, and also it was great because I felt like whenever I was doing that, taking photos of my kids, I could sort of explain to others why I'm doing this without making it work look weird. I'm kind of like also also kind of, I'm, I kind of weirded out by people like even if I'm trying to kind of record content and so on. I, I always feel like people are looking at me and asking a question why, which probably they don't, but I, I always had to have an answer of like, why, why you're doing things. And I could always say like, well, I'm doing bonus of my kids, whereas I was actually doing something for myself. You know, this is the great thing of, of, of us, of me thinking that I do not, I should not like, I should not do things for myself, I should do things for others. And I felt like I was doing what I should be doing. And then I started putting them online and trying to find, like connect with other photographers. And that at the time was on Flickr and I did find that audience and I had, you know, people that were also interested in photography. And I felt like this sounds, this is so good because then, you know, I wasn't interested in taking photos for others. I was interested only taking photos for myself. In that case, you know what I mean? Like a lot of people would think that this is the next step would be to start because at the time I was, I had a good job. I was an architect and kind of like still am in a way, although I'm not working in that job anymore. And it was I was quite good paying job. So I didn't have, I wasn't looking for a different job and I also wasn't looking for a way for like situations where I would have to do what other people were expecting from me. I was trying to do what I wanted to do and I fell into the great, great spot where I could. People started asking me how do you do that? Like because I started connecting without a photographer, song picker. People are asking like, oh how, how do you take those photos? How do you edit those photos and stuff? And at the beginning, because I didn't have money for photography is very expensive thing. And of course I didn't have money to to spend on photography and I didn't want to spend like, you know, go on my family budget to to take what to to spend on that. So I decided I'm going to try to like I will. And I one guy was asking like, how do you do that? And then I said to him, well, I can show you. But of course, you know, he said like, I can pay. And I said, like, oh, OK, well, in that case we can talk. And then I didn't, I have no idea how to how what to charge. I had absolutely no idea. And I remember that I gave him two prices, like one for B for like, you know, poor explanation. And one would be just kind of like showing him basically the layers and everything. And I just remember showing that to my husband, you know, the prices. I figured, and he will be like, wow, that much? And I told him like, so I don't have to do this. Like, if he wants me to do it, I will do it. But if he says no, it's not like my, my no life depends on it. And I decided to go and it turned out to be actually quite good. And then, you know, I started doing no. Then next time I posted a photo, I was like, hey, you want to like do a commentary session with me, you know, just give me a call. And then, you know, I started doing that more and more, more of that. And people, usually people from the US and, or people from like sometime Australia. So that would end up like me having to either go to bed at midnight whilst I still had a day job and I still had little kids because they were because of the time difference or sometimes get up very early in the morning to do something with people from Australia. But you know, ended me making some money. I could buy a new lens and I was happy. And then and I saw people were asking like, do you do workshops? And I have never been in a workshop myself. So I was thinking like, well, I could guess I, I could, I guess I could do this, but like, I didn't know how. And on some point, you know, just, there was a studio in Warsaw that they, they said like, hey, we're looking for somebody to second run a children photography workshop. And I said like, OK, I'm, I'm going to do this. It was a terrible workshop. I'm, I mean, it was, that was me trying to figure out how to do that. And it turned out a lot of things that don't really work. But you know, still a lot of people came at the time that I think I came from my audience. So I didn't really need that studio in war. So but I just needed some confidence that I could actually do it and sell it. And yeah, at some point it became so intense that I had to say goodbye to my my job, which I'm very happy about. And I don't really don't want to go back to architecture at this point because that gives me that the freedom of, of doing things where I want and doing something that I love and travelling and so on. But yeah, so that's, that's how it basically all became. And at some point I was doing the workshops only and people were saying that, oh, you should do, you should record some because they're, you know, there are people that would love to come to workshop, but it sometimes, you know, just they, it's not where they are or that that particular weekend doesn't work from them. And they definitely would like to see that. And I started doing some tutorials, which was fine. And then then COVID came and on COVID, we decided to that that couldn't do any workshops. And me and my husband, we just figured I'm going to record something like a workshop and start saying that online. And that kind of worked well. I think that we, we, I saw a lot of that at the beginning of the launch. It was really good money and but I was only on the at lunch and now it's still there. It's still like it's still there and I had to update that and I audited that I think last year. I still have to update the beginning sort of the theory. That's the thing with courses. I have to update them or I have to launch a new one. And I always think like whether I should update the existing one or launch a new one. And then another thing came, if I can continue on my roundabout what I did so far. Another thing that expert photography, which was like another organisations came and asked me like would I do you want to do an ebook with us? And I did an ebook with them, which was very good, was very professionally, everything was very professionally arranged, arranged and everything they paid me for work for doing the, they pay me for doing the, the, the book. And now I get like an affiliate programme with them where I just, I can make some like partial part of the sales and they are doing most of the sales. But people ask me like, Oh, that's so I, people tell me that, oh, I bought this from you And I said, I can allow you bought it from export photography. And they're surprised when I say, like, if you bought it from export photography, I'm actually not making money on that on it. And people say, Oh, that's so unfair. But usually saying to people like, Hey, they really advertise it a lot. And people, a lot of people that will come to markets, I ask them, Hey, where do you know me from? Like, and they a lot of people would say like, Oh, I saw this ad on from expert photography because they're running ads on this. So people get to know me because some book that's another like an ebook I did with completely other group of people. So I find that those corporations really good for for running your business. So it's on some point you on sometimes you do things on your own that you will make the full income. But doing sometimes some corporations where you know that you're not going to immediately get, I mean get a good income, but the same time you're just running your audience. I feel like that would really work well for me. Speaker 2 Interesting. What's the goal for you? Where do you want to be with the business I. Speaker 1 I, I think where I am, where I am, I'm really good where I am. And you know what, what I love to do more workshops like keep on doing what I'm doing right now because this is like, this is the best thing. Of course, sometimes, you know, just going away, leaving my family for, for the weekend and missing sometimes some, some stuff that's going on at home. It's sad. But at the same time, I, I feel like so free and so, you know, amazing during the workshops and I love to meet those people. And so I would love to in the future, I would love if it continued and lovely people who are signing up for the workshop. So, so selling, selling workshops would be my I would, you know, what's my dream just to kind of put a workshop like announcement and have people find up just immediately. I will be my dream rather than, you know, struggling sometimes to waiting for people to sign up before I can actually firm with, with different things, like different with the host or our flights and everything. Sometimes I'm waiting for it until like last weekend, People sign up last week and I have to buy a ticket last last weekend and confirm models and everything, which drives me nuts. But yeah, so my goal would be to continue what I'm doing, do what I'm doing and get, you know, people interested. I guess like I, I know that they have potential. Sometimes I feel like, okay, there's potential. I have a lot of potential. Definitely. I feel like I'm not using the whole potential. I do agree with that. I'm not using that to the full extent, but sometimes I feel like, Oh my God, I'm just one person. Like how, how much can I do in the time that I have? Because I'm working on weekends and I'm coming back home, doing all the contents and also doing the editing my photos, doing all that. And I sometimes think I should hire but someone. But then I think that now I will not do that. I think I have AI have a little bit of like a bad experience with that because my parents used to let around I their own company. They would hire people and you know, I grew up with them, you know, talking about how, how they probably sometimes they would only have to work just in order just to give, give them their salaries. And I thought like, no, it's if I'm working, I'm working. If I'm not working, I'm the only one that will suffer from that. I cannot really, but I'm open to corporations. So if if I can get somebody like some like, you know, somebody else, like you said, like you know, you will connect with someone that will help me with with my emails, then that that I would love because that just like a part, like it's not a permanent thing. It's just, it's just when it, when you're working with specialists to give you their advice and, and sometimes help you around. I just, I started working with one person that I do that was kind of helping me around recently to maybe refresh my social media. And I really like that cooperation so far. So we are working on some new content. We are working on a new lead magnet, which may also be good, very good for that e-mail thing because I used to have an an older lead magnet that was just as I said, like things that these things need to be updated and I was really out of date and I decided to get rid of that. And I'm doing a new e-book, like a free pre like APDFE book right now, which takes me a lot of time more than I thought. I thought it would be very easy and quick to do. And then I'm just kind of stuck on the one page and, but I'm trying to do another thing like that. So I feel like yes, I, if I can give any advice to anybody, just cooperate with others, whether that's. Whether that's them kind of like talking about your company, talking about your courses because they are because they they will only talk if they actually make money on this. Otherwise that people would not spread around your name. And the other thing is working with specialists to get to help you around because I see as I may be good in photography, I don't never felt good in marketing. And I always and I, there's a lot to learn and sometimes I just don't want to learn. I just want somebody to tell me what to do and so I can continue doing what I like and and I get someone to. Speaker 2 Yeah, that makes sense. And I think you're not on your own. Like so many people who I've, I've helped with their e-mail marketing and funnels, so many of the people who've been on the podcast, they're an expert. They've done a lot, They're an expert in a topic, you know, whether it's photography or piano or parenting or whatever it is. And then they've become an expert in growing an audience and they've grown a big audience. And then they've become an expert in making a course and making courses. And it's just like they're not got, not everyone's got it in them to then also become an expert in marketing as well for it, which is why you know why I'd set up a business helping people with that as well. Speaker 1 I would definitely learn a lot on the way, you know, even if sometimes figuring out things like that, I would never know those names like leave madly. I've never no idea and I've never had an idea if I work where I work before, if I didn't do all the stuff that I did so far, I had no idea what that be, what that even is like, what's, what's, what that even means? So definitely learn a lot on the way. But you know, as you may know, you know, even in your own field, things change so fast and new technologies and people start. People also react to advertising different way because you know, they're get accustomed to one thing and then you have to come up with another thing to get them more involved and so on, so on. So it's, it's, it's, it's constant. Even if you learned 10 years ago, it's not going to apply right now. I think so, at least that's in photographer. We, we change, we change so, so quickly. And I, we as like, as, as a educators, we have to keep up with this to be sort of like, so we're not following, we are leading. So we have to be in front of everybody else and keep a, keep, keep an eye on what's changing in the world. As I, I think that even if I, for example, if I was doing something that worked for me a couple of years ago, when it comes to selling workshops, that thing doesn't work anymore. If you see the decline in things like, you know what I mean, Like I, I was doing, I, I could only do organic reach for some time. And it sounds things like this year, well, I have to do more. I have to do more. I have to do something else. Speaker 2 Interesting Ivana. This has been great hearing all about your business and your journey. If people want to go check out your website or your Instagram, where should they go? Speaker 1 So my website is my name. It's very difficult to spell. So it's best to just go ivanapublishing.com or just type Ivana and publishing Iska on on Instagram anywhere because I'm always I use my name like my my original, my birth name, it's my husbands name, but my name for everything. So you wanna put lashkaanywhere.com on my website, my website on Instagram. It's actually photography. When I put Lashka on Facebook, just type. When I put Lashka to my YouTube channel which I abandoned a little. Speaker 2 Oh, no, okay. Speaker 1 No, just all have the time to record those videos effects so much time Yeah and yeah, I know that it's it's it's really good and I would love to be I would love to the day to have more more hours than 24 for me to do yeah. So if you want to check out yes, hi, follow me. I do I think that a lot of people would just enjoy sometimes just looking on nice photos. You don't have to be interested in photography to enjoy nice photos. Speaker 2 Beautiful. They're totally worth checking out if I want to. Thanks so much for coming on today. I really appreciate your time. Speaker 1 Thank you so much. Speaker 2 Great having your story. Yeah, thank you. Very welcome as always, everyone. Thanks so much for your time listening and we will see you next time. Hi.