Meet Jasper, 33 years old and full-time photographer since 2011. He is also a stay-at-home dad for his 2-year old son Jack every Wednesday. I asked him why and how he uses ShootZilla.
“I found out about ShootZilla in early 2013, right at that point where I knew I had to find a solution for the growing amount of work in my business.
I had started doing photography because I was fascinated by beautiful images. When I started to notice and see more beautiful photography I thought to myself “I want to create that too!”.
I still have that drive to this day, I always want to create better work. This is also why I don’t take many family pics since it has to be beautiful and when I am with my family I don’t want to be distracted with my camera, I just want to enjoy and savor the moment.
My photography business was launched in 2011 without any shoots booked. Starting with a clean slate so to say. So I had enough time to invest in marketing, LOL. And it paid off, I was growing pretty fast.
In 2013 I was doing around 200-250 shoots of which about 20 weddings.
I always have a lot of things going on since I do weddings, corporate work, portrait & family shoots (in the studio and on location) and bachelorette party shoots. I like all those different types of photography just as much. Especially the diversity of it all combined with the work behind my desk.
Every type of shoot requires a few different things in preparation or workflow so I needed to remember lots of details.
I was managing my shoots with a combination of Evernote, my calendar, and my mind. For every shoot I was doing little calculations in my head, looking at the calendar, recalling what my next move for that particular shoot had to be and putting it in my weekly and daily overviews in Evernote.
At a certain point, I was looking at a week with a lot of shoots booked, but then I glanced at the week after that, and the week after that, and even 2 months after that and I saw all these shoots booked.
I knew it would turn into complete chaos.
My mind was already pretty occupied with remembering all these details and at that time my business was really taking off.
When I signed up for ShootZilla I immediately put in all my open shoots or my shoots in progress. And the effect was also immediately, peace of mind. ShootZilla created overview and I could really let go of all the details.
I didn’t have to calculate anything anymore, I didn’t have to remember anything anymore.
So it’s a no-brainer that I really like the overview of all the Jobs in ShootZilla. But next to that is the contact form integration. All my inquiries flow directly in ShootZilla and I can just follow up with them. Super easy!
I used to scroll through my email box to see if I had to follow up with someone again, but you know how that goes, after page 1 of your inbox you get distracted and you forget to continue. Well, let’s say I forgot a few now and then.
With ShootZilla I never forget to follow up. It’s just so easy because they are now in my overview and I just don’t lose sight of them.
One of my big wins is that I am more consistent in blogging my work and it is just a much quicker process. Before ShootZilla I used to check my Evernote document and the Lightroom library to see which shoot I could blog and had to recall which ones were still to be blogged.
Now I look at ShootZilla and just pick one of my blog todo’s that I fancy. I know I am not forgetting any blog since it’s a task in my workflow.
I also really feel like getting much more work done since it’s so neatly laid out for me. It’s there, I don’t have to think about it, just execute and go.Now I finally have time to work on extra stuff as well, like updating my branding or reaching out to wedding blogs.
I am still not using all the features in ShootZilla, my next step is to start using the email templates too and I can only imagine that that will give me even more time.”
I love it when I receive comments like Jasper’s because they remind me of how I used to struggle with managing things as well.
Please feel free to share your thoughts or questions about ShootZilla with me in the comments!
You can find more about Jasper here:
Wedding Photography ‘Een Hoffelijke Dag‘
Corporate, Fashion, Events & Portraits ‘JasperHof.nl’
Very inspiring! Thank you, Jasper and Esther! :)