Colie: 0:26

Good morning Annemie. How are you?

Annemie: 0:28

I'm doing so well. How are you, Colie?

Colie: 0:32

I'm excited to have you on the Business-First Creatives podcast.

Annemie: 0:36

Yeah, I love the name of the show. It's such a great it's perfect. You did a great job picking.

Colie: 0:43

Well, I can't take all the credit. I did have someone's help in choosing it, but I will say that originally she had pitched the idea of having it be Business-First Photographers. And I was like, wait, hold, full stop. I want to make sure that everybody knows that this podcast is not just for photographers. So we've got figure out a different name. So then we went back and forth and we settled on creatives because I am really hoping that the audience for this podcast is going to be creative service providers, regardless of what service you provide. So I'm excited to put it out into the world.

Annemie: 1:16

Yeah.

Colie: 1:17

Let me start with a question that I ask everyone, and that is, do you consider yourself to be a business owner first or a creative.

Annemie: 1:27

So, this is one of the downsides to being one of the first guests on a podcast where they do these recurring questions. Cause you don't get to cheat and plan out your answers ahead of time. Um, oh, so, okay. So I think that normally I would say when people ask me, are you a photographer first or like an entrepreneur? Usually my answer is I'm an entrepreneur first. So in this case, that would be like, I'm a business person first. Business person or a creative first, but I, but because we're using the word creative since we're going to be like semantically specific here, I think I would say that I'm a creative first because I think that the thing that has made me successful as an entrepreneur actually is my creativity. Like my ability to think outside the box and solve problems in a creative way. I think that that actually has been, that's the part of entrepreneurship that I like the most. So for this one specific question, I'm going to answer, I'm going to switch it up.

Colie: 2:31

And you know what that means. You're my second guest. So anybody in the audience that listened to Britney's interview previously, you will know that I was shocked by her answer too. So I'm going to take this as an indication that I need to reword this question, because I think I really did mean entrepreneur versus creative. And so hearing you say that and your explanation that actually makes Britney's answer previously, make more sense. So I I need to give that question a little bit more thought, but let me say why I decided to ask it in that way, even if I decide to modify it for future guest episodes. The idea behind the podcast, of course, if you've listened to the trailer, is that we are going to be talking about what it takes to be successful in business when you actually focus on building the business and your business skills, versus learning to be more creative. And so that was where this question kind of came from. But now I can see that even those that I think are 100% entrepreneurs and business people at heart, like you and Britney both are, you guys both chose to talk about being creative because you are both creative business people. So I get it. You don't have to give that a little bit more thought.

Annemie: 3:50

No, I think it's a great question. And I think that, um, in my case or in a lot of people's case, I'm sure this is true for Britney as well, it really is.

Colie: 4:00

I do know because you and I are definitely of the same mindset when it comes to almost everything in business, which is why I love chatting with you, even if there's not

Annemie: 4:09

Both are so important, right? But the the ability to combine the two really is its own super power. Like creatives, they sell themselves short when they say like I'm a creative first and not a business person. It's like, if you would just apply some of that creative energy to your business.

Colie: 4:27

I want to move slightly to a different topic. And what I want to talk about is what you do as a business person, since you've mentioned this. So you have Megapixie, which is your photography studio business, and then you have This Can't Be That Hard. I want you to tell me about how This Can't Be That Hard came to be.

Annemie: 4:46

Sure. So, Megapixie is my portrait photography business. I started at 12 years ago. When I was 30, so I was already starting, you know, it was already a second or actually technically third career path. and that was chugging along for a bunch of years. In 2016, I, got together with a couple of friends of mine and started a conference and a community that, um, that is still in existence to this day. Which was an extremely gratifying and fun outlet to my photography business. Because, you know, one of the hardest things that I'm sure most of your listeners will be able to identify with is the, kind of loneliness of entrepreneurship and running a one-person business. So creating that community and building that community really opened up new worlds within my entrepreneurial experience, and I found myself wanting to lean into that more. And then, a couple of years later all throughout that I was going through this major life transition, I was getting divorced. I was sort of dealing with becoming the one and only financial contributor to my household. And in, so doing, I had to get so much clearer on my finances and the way that my business ran and really like, even just my time management, like everything really changed and had this like major clarity, which was scary and hard, but also really great in retrospect. And through the process of that, I set up a couple of systems in my business that turned out to be, you know, when I started explaining them to people, they were like, wow, I need that too. I need that too. It clicked for me that at the same time, you know, I was turning 40 and I was thinking like, okay, how much longer am I going to be able and maybe willing to like crawl around on the floor after two year-olds. Cause that's what I do in my, in my photography job is like lots of chasing toddlers and doing that sort of thing. And when you take the long view of a business, especially when you're the one and only person doing it, um, you really do have to be honest with yourself about like the career path. And I knew there was some sort of expiration date, even if it was a distance in the future and I needed to be thinking about how am I going to transition? How am I going to stay working as a creative entrepreneurial?

ORIGINAL-bfc-004-annemie-tonken: 7:17

cause

Annemie: 7:17

I love that, but maybe take some of the, physical parts of my day-to-day job out of the rotation at some point. And so I really enjoy the community of my conference, I really enjoy teaching, which I had gotten to start doing some with that conference, people like my ideas, I think I have a good business mind. Then just sort of deciding like, okay, I'm going to give this a whirl. I had some pretty amazing opportunities that I always hate saying fell into my lap because I do think that those things you opportunities are falling into all of our labs all the time. It's kind of what you take advantage of, but I, I was approached by Pic-Time, which is my gallery software like the hosting software that I use for my online photo galleries. The system that I had put in place to sell my photographs was resulting in significantly higher online print sales. And so they actually reached out to me and asked what was happening to create these high print sales, because they obviously have a lot of family photographers that subscribed to their software and my results were outsized. So when I walked them through my system, they were like, oh, this is great. We would love to partner with you to build this out. That it all kind of jelled in that moment because I was like, great. I want to get into teaching more, they want to create this piece of software, but that piece of software is going to require a certain amount of education and explanation because it's different from the way that photographers in general run their businesses. So that was kind of, you know, sometimes you ha you have an idea and you're like marinating on it and wondering, when's the right time? When's the right time. It was, this was one of those, like the heavens opened up and it was like, now is the right time.

Colie: 9:04

Yeah. So I was there from the beginning. And so something else that I want to ask you along that track, because This Can't Be That Hard is not just your course Simple Sales. It's now Revenue on Repeat, and also the podcast, but this is kind of like a chicken and egg question. So which came first, the course or the podcast?

Annemie: 9:22

Definitely the, the course came first. The course idea came first, but as I started to research how to create a course, how to get the word out, you know, prior to two years ago, um, with the exception of my small community that we had built for the conference, which really, I mean, it's a boutique conference. So, you know, the entirety of the people who had come to that and were in that world was like, I don't know, 150 people or 200 people. Like I was still, it was, it was a small group of photographers. Outside of that, you know, my email list for instance, was my photography clients and they were not my audience for what I was going to be teaching. I don't believe in that. If you build it, they will come idea. And I can put together the world's greatest online course, but if nobody knows about it, it's, you know, that's all for nothing. So as I started to research how to get the word out and, um, and establish myself as someone who you should listen to, or, you know, you might want to listen to, I landed on, okay, I'm going to create a podcast and start serving people in that way. And that was the trajectory there.

Colie: 10:38

I mean, because clearly I've started a podcast and I think I did it in part because I saw how you grew This Can't Be That Hard alongside with the podcast. And I was like, you know, I like to talk. I should give it a whirl. But I mean, I do think that you do a really great job with kind of creating your own ecosystem, where you're bringing new people in through the podcast or through your newsletters or through your other reach out processes, and then you're bringing them into your system for your courses. So I now want to take a slight pivot and talk about those systems, because you are no longer a one man show. So let's talk about how that kind of evolved. So when This Can't Be That Hard came around, how long did you run it by yourself? And what was kind of the turning point when you figured out that it was no longer serving you to do all the things all the time?

Annemie: 11:28

So my answer to how long was I running it by myself is too long. Like, that's always the answer. Um, when I think now about the number of hours that I was putting in, to not only create the course, but launch it, answer all of the questions, try and figure out all the tech. You know, not only was I writing and recording my podcast, I was then editing my podcast, creating all the social media around it, like all the different steps. And we all go through phases of life where we have honestly, too much on our plates. And in retrospect, it's always like, how did I even do that? Um, I knew at the time that what I was doing was not tenable for the long term, but I was also in a situation where I had to fiercely protect my profit margin, which were, you know, at the time, like this was an untested product. I had no idea and I had to invest a fair amount on the front end to build the course, like all the tech, all the different things. So I just felt like it was sort of a necessary evil for a period of time. And then I fell into the exact same trap that I try and coach people out of all the time, which is the, like, you have to like pump the brakes. Cause I find that you can have money like raining down on you and it's still easy to talk yourself out of bringing a team member on, hiring somebody, whatever. Because it takes a lot of time and effort to do that. And honestly, at that point I was, you know, 10 years into entrepreneurship. And aside from hiring people who were experts in what they did, like my accountant, I never had to train my accountant, right? Um, same thing with my photo editor, other than a little bit of workflow. Back and forth about like, okay, so how should I get the photos to you? And how do I get them back? She knew what she was doing. I didn't have to teach her how to do her job. Now I was looking at hiring somebody into a business that I had created that had, you know, and let's not be, I have no ego about the fact that like other people have online businesses and they know what they're doing, but it does feel, you know, when you create something like that, it's like your baby, right? And so I was fiercely protective of my brand. You know, I didn't want to bring somebody on who was going to not provide the level of customer service that I feel is important. I didn't want to bring somebody on who was going to send the wrong messages or whatever. And so I felt, it's always easier to tell somebody what to do than to do it yourself, right? I had the same blinders on that I see people time and time again, having on, which is like, it's just easier for me to keep doing it and I'll figure out later how to get help. I know I need help, but I can't deal with it right now. It's too much work. Actually this week that we're recording this, happens to be the one-year anniversary of social media person, Dana, who has evolved into a full on marketing person. Um, so she's been with me for a year or so. And then I had a couple of people that I had hired before her who were shorter term. So now I have Dana and I have a VA who is pretty close to full-time I think, well, not full-time, but she's like 15 hours a week and I have what's called an OBM, so an online business manager slash director of operations, who now is in charge of doing things like hiring and training and all that sort of thing. I also have someone now who edits my podcast. I have two students, who are sort of graduates of my program, who manage my online community. And so I went from essentially this one woman show into now this like large"ish" team, all in the span of a relatively short period of time. We made mistakes, I made mistakes. I had, you know, missteps in times when I felt like, oh, I can't, I can't what have I gotten myself into? And there's a lot of responsibility in signing paychecks for that number of people. But at this point, I know a hundred percent that, without those people, I wouldn't be able to be serving my students in the capacity that I am. So you have to be willing to take on that responsibility and that work, for the long-term health of the business.

Colie: 16:01

I think it's great. You and I are both talking as, you know, people who create courses and do business coaching and that side. But I think that these are still lessons for any entrepreneur, even a photographer, who is becoming overwhelmed with the tasks in their business. And they think that they need to hire someone and they're still in that spot where, yeah, but it's just easier for me to do it all than it is to teach someone else how to do it. And kind of not worry about what kind of job they're going to do, or if they're going to do it properly. Or, you know, in some cases, if they do it wrong, you are going to have to go back and either coach them how to do it right or redo it yourself. So it's that idea of time lost, even if it's not a hundred percent accurate, I think that keeps a lot of us still in the place of not having hired help. Because I have outsourced a lot. But listening to you right now, I am still hiring experts. So I have bookkeepers, I now have someone who edits my films, I have a photo editor. I have all of these people who are experts in what they do, but I have not taken the challenge of bringing someone in yet, to where I can teach them the things that I need them to do, to where they could actually take some of those tasks that take a lot of time off my plate. So, if you knew someone who wanted to hire somebody, I mean, I'll just say it's probably me, um, what, what tips do you have for a first hire and then anything that you feel like you should have done that would have made that task easier, that you have advice for?

Annemie: 17:37

So I have a couple of things that I would say. So as you prepare to bring somebody on, like, basically I think that when it occurs to you that you should probably add a member to your team or ask for help or whatever, by the time that that thought forms into words in your brain, the time is yesterday. What I did myself and what I see a lot of people doing when they're hiring for the first time, or, you know, really starting to do that in a more, um, meaningful way. And when I say meaningful way, I guess, I mean somebody who you're going to be like having a meeting with every week, I just spent about three hours, like clicking around the internet and found somebody and hired them in like no time at all. Like, I'm not really sure I need help, but you seem competent. So that's great. And that I was fully setting her up to fail, um, because I am a perfectionist. I am a super hyper overworker like, let's be honest. Um, and so my expectations for her were probably outsized and I was setting her up to fail by not having like a really delineated, streamlined plan. So there's this fine line to walk because you can talk yourself out of hiring somebody by getting in your head about like, yes, but I'm not ready to hire somebody. I don't have the perfect laid out situation and You go the other direction and hire too fast and then almost definitely be disappointed by the results. So I've gone through a couple of iterations of doing that. And what I would say my recommendation would be is that, you know, when you say to yourself, I need to hire somebody, spend some time thinking through the things that are, you know, there are lots of instances out there in the world of these like grids, where it's like the stuff that you're good at and the stuff that you enjoy doing, the stuff that you are good at, but you don't enjoy doing the stuff that you're not good at and you don't enjoy doing it and whatever the fourth one that I've missed, like that matrix, What you want to do is you, you want to kind of spend a week or so tracking how you spend time in your business. Just like as you start working on, let's say mapping out your social media for the week or writing your weekly newsletter or whatever you spend time on in your business. Jot it down, just make a list. And at the end of the week, you look at the list of all the different tasks that you did and you plot it on that matrix so that you're seeing, like, these are the things that I'm spending my time doing, and here's where they all fall. Obviously the first thing that you want to outsource are those things that you're neither good at, nor do you enjoy doing. For a lot of us, those are the ones that we hire experts for, like accounting, right? I mean, that's just sort of an easy, obvious answer. What gets tricky is the stuff that you're good at, but you don't enjoy doing or the stuff that you enjoy doing, but you're not really good at. Um, those are harder to let go. And oftentimes those are the kinds of things that, for instance, you are good at writing your newsletter, but you it's something that you always drag your feet on and therefore you're not getting it out every week or whatever the case may be. That can be, um, that can be a tougher thing to hire for, right? Like finding somebody who can sort of take your voice and you're going to have to communicate with them about what you want communicated. And those are the things where it's like, eh, it's just easier for me to do it. And thinking that way, means that you end up spending not just the time that it takes to write your newsletter every week, but all the time that you spend stressing and like moving it from Monday to Tuesday, to Wednesday, to Thursday on your calendar, you know, like procrastinating takes a certain amount of energy. And, um, the sooner that you set up systems for someone else to succeed in doing that for you, the sooner you can take it off your plate and focus as much as possible on that quadrant of your zone of genius. once you've kind of created that matrix and decided the things that you want to hire for, I think my next recommendation would be to allocate as much budget as you possibly can to hiring someone who is a quality hire. I, um, have it in my like business vision values document that I am not interested in hiring anybody, um, for low wages. And I have no problem with hiring people outside the U.S. but I'm going to pay them the way that I would pay a U.S. Contractor. Like obviously a happy, happy contractor is going to do better work for you, but, um, but I also think that when you are price shopping, which is a necessary thing, sometimes you get what you pay for and you will very quickly talk yourself out of hiring people, if you're hiring people who are, um, kind of at that entry level I started using ClickUp in January. Right. When my, um, DOL came into my business. And then when we hire, when she hired my VA, for me, the VA happened to have experience with that. I would have hired her regardless because those kinds of like software is something you can train people on a competent person, a competent person will pick that sort of stuff up quickly. But, um, What has happened is that my VA, I specifically hired a virtual assistant who had a lot of systems, um, pay rate. So I feel like, um, I would rather hire one really good person to do the things that are most important to me to get off my plate, but hire them at a higher rate than get more things off my plate with a lower priced employee. Cause I feel like that just sort of increases the, um, the pain cycle. So those are, that was a lot, but

Colie: 23:54

yeah, it was a lot, but it's also great to hear. So talking about systems, because I know everyone is amazed that Colie's podcast is not just about systems, but I'm going to ask you this systems question. So in terms of managing your team and kind of growing your non-photography business, what is one system that's in place that moves the needle the most for you?

Annemie: 24:17

So right now, I always get a little frustrated when people confused systems and software. However, I am going to, I'm going to name the piece of software only because it's the framework on to, you know, on which we're building these systems. I want to have a system in place where the podcast you know, is ready to go. And like, everybody has checked off their boxes because now I have three people in the podcast workflow, who touch the podcast before it goes out the door. And, um, and I was like, I want that system to operate without me having to like check over anybody's shoulders. I want to be able to trust that the podcast is going to be like, ready to go when it's supposed to and all the pieces are in place. And Nicole, my VA, built the system for that in ClickUp, where you know, once I check the box saying it's recorded and sent to the editor, then the editor gets a notification and like they have to check off their pieces. And then once their pieces are checked off, it automatically kicks it over to my social media person and she reads it or she listens to the show and writes the show notes. And you know, there's like this whole workflow in place. Now that workflow took us almost three weeks to put together. Because Nicole would write it all out, she would listen to everybody saying, this is what I have to do. And then here's the order of operations, whatever. And she would build the system and then we would look at it and we would say, oh, nope, here's the problem with that. And, um, and she would go back and re, re edit it and re fix it. Um, and so it took us a while to get to the place where it was ready to go. But now my podcast is planned out through November. I mean, I've now had a podcast for two years. Most of that was the week before me being like, oh what are we going to do for this coming, like At times I called you in from was like, I need someone on my podcast. Will you be that person? And there's, I mean, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Like I do feel like we all have the tendency as entrepreneurs to see someone else's well-oiled machine and be like, why can't my business run like that? And the fact of the matter is even if you like sign up for somebody's massive extremely expensive mastermind where they're going to give you the whole thing. Like you have to learn how to manage that. You have to kind of come into your own. So it is good and maybe necessary to go through some of that learning process, the hard way. But, um, the trick I think, is getting off of the hard is talking yourself out of being in that hard place sooner rather than later. Because too many people just like, hang on to the, well, this is just how it's done. And this is how I do it for so long that they burn out.

Colie: 27:18

I 100% agree. Yeah. When, when Nicole contacted me to schedule our next interview for your podcast and she told me it would air in August. I was like, I'm sorry, what? Like, what month is it? I was like, she's not for. Are you kidding me? And then I remember just being really impressed, like, wow. That system must be really great to put up the podcast episodes now that you, you know, when you have scheduled or at least planned that far in advance.

Annemie: 27:46

Oh, no, no, no, no. I was going to say, and I would never have been able to get there on my own. Um, there's just no possible way that I would have been able to do that. So this is it's like, I feel like a real Testament to the power of bringing, um, good help into your business.

Colie: 28:06

Yeah, I think I'm convinced, see what I do in the next week. um, you know, we've talked about systems that you have in your business. We've talked about hiring outside. There is one question that I ask a lot of people, and I'm going to ask you, even though you might've already said what this is, but I want you to tell me about your biggest fuck up that cost you and what you learned from it.

Annemie: 28:30

So I hired someone who I, um, really enjoyed working with and who was very competent at her job. But at some point in a relatively early period of that, I was like this is one of those hires where I square peg round hole kind of situation. Where I was like, you'll be good at whatever you do. And then I didn't set her up with the tools that she needed, um, nor did she have sort of the baseline experience for what I was asking of her. So. I sort of set, set her up to fail. And then over the course of time, as that was happening as would happen for any of us, like when we feel like we're not good at our jobs, that like has a tendency to wear on your self-worth and make you feel, you know, second guess yourself, and it's a stressful position to be in. So I was watching that play out on my end. And of course it was like the ROI on that investment was flagging, like it was not what I wanted or needed it to be, but I was doing the thing where I was like, I don't want to have this hard conversation. I don't want to, I'm just going to kick the can down the road. Maybe it will change. Maybe it will change. And I got some really great advice. Um, at some point from a mentor of mine, who said, if this person quit tomorrow, would you beg to have her back? And I was like, Nope. And he was like, there's your answer? And, um, I have used that same question, several times since then to try and guide my thought process around like, is this person, the right person for the right job. Um, and and it, it gives me a lot of clarity and I feel like I want to kind of share that thought process a little bit. Because I think we can tell ourselves and like, no question, letting someone go is a horrible. If it's not horrible for you, you should evaluate who you are. Are you a thoughtful person who cares about the people who are working for you? I think that, um, aside from some pretty like horrible situations, you, it should feel hard to tell someone that they no longer have a job with you. However I fully believe and have kept in touch with her, like she's in a much better place now for her. She feels better about the work that she's doing. Like did she, was she excited to hear that news? No? Was it the right move for both of us, absolutely yes. So, um, so I think that you know, the mistake I made was two fold. It was number one, hiring someone that I was setting up for failure. And number two, it was not kind of making that call sooner than later. People say, hire slow fire fast. And now I feel like I know what that means.

Colie: 31:23

I've actually never heard that, but I wouldn't hundred percent agree with it. Yeah, because, I mean, if you had told me before that, I would be thinking of hiring people, I would have told you you were crazy. Cause again, I think, I mean, there's no medal for being a one-woman show. But when I think about the effort that it takes to explain to people what's in my brain, which you, and I know is both hilarious because when people hire me to set up their Dubsado, that is exactly what I do. I mean, I sit down, I ask you all of these questions to get into the nooks and the crannies of things that you have not thought about for your business. And I have to figure out how to translate that into Dubsado. And for some people it's not even about doing it in Dubsado, but like, I have to understand all the pieces of your business to know what is appropriate for Dubsado and you might need, like ClickUp for, or what other piece of software you're thinking of integrating into your business. So, I mean, I totally get it. It's just, I think sometimes when I think of what I do for someone's business, I'm like, who am I going to find to do that for me? Which you're telling me, I just need to, you know, take a leap and do it, which I think I'm fully committed to doing now. So let's talk about where people can find you and of course your amazing podcast, because it is something that I listen to every single week without fail.

Annemie: 32:40

Thank you. Um, yeah, the podcast is called This Can't Be That Hard. The website for the business is thiscantbethathard.com and, um, and I am on Insta thanks to amazing Dana, um, all the time and that's@thiscantbethat.

Colie: 32:57

And I just want to say that this podcast episode with Annemie it was all about kind of business structures and um, course business, her podcast, but she will be back to talk about her core Simple Sales sooner than later. So photographers, if you have not checked that out, I highly encourage you to do so, but she will back on the podcast to talk about it later. Thank you so much for coming on my brand new podcast.

Annemie: 33:23

Yeah, thank you for having me. I am honored to be among your first guests. This is an exciting thing. And, um, earlier I was gonna say, you said something about, like, I saw you having a podcast and that helped you know, with your business and getting your message out. And I just started to say then, and want to make sure I get in here before the end. Like I could not be more excited that you are finally taking this step because the world needs more Colie James and, um, and this is going to be a great vehicle to get your stuff out there. Now I'm just speaking the truth.

Colie: 33:55

Okay. So Annemie spoke her truth and I don't think I have anything else to add after that. So bye guys.