J. Balough Photography

is owned by our brilliant and talented friend Jessa (who also happened to take all of Sara’s professional photos). Launched in 2013 and based in St. Louis, Jessa specializes in capturing unedited, human moments.

the problem

all of Jessa’s processes were intense manual work & built based on Honeybook’s software, rather than for her own business model. in our strategy session together, we addressed everything including her current processes & time commitments, tech budget, and how we could align them to her business goals.

in Jessa’s old workflow, we found that she spent approximately 23 hours on every client project from start to finish. only 10 of those hours were spent on creative deliverables — everything else was admin which is not what a creative business is supposed to be focused on.

total tech spend reduced by $302/mo.

adding a scheduling tool saves 5-7hrs per client.

increased offer pricing by 20%.

the solution

in order to give Jessa more creative time back, we took several extreme measures to overhaul her workflow, including removing Honeybook, adding Cal.com & Kitchen.co, and lastly creating a single offer deck for potential clients.

scheduling: 

every offer now has a calendar in cal.com for availability to book a photoshoot and collect a nonrefundable deposit. we also set up multiple email templates & triggers to auto-send reminders and other info. This saved Jessa 5-7 hrs per client.

project management:

kitchen.co is streamlined tool for communication that doesn’t make the client have to log in or take extra steps outside their inbox. This reduced Jessa’s overhead by $600/yr. 

other accomplishments:

  • Increased all of her pricing by 20%;

  • Reduced her work shooting schedule to 5 days/mo;

  • Reduced tech stack spend by $302/mo;

  • Created a client referral process to increase leads;

  • Created a surprise client gift experience using Canva’s magic tools.

“ I don't want to be sitting at a desk. I want to be outside playing. I want to be taking pictures, making art, and laughing and not being an adult. So, I called Sara. We built a new, state-of-the-art, wonderful, out-of-this-world client process. I cannot say enough about all of the things that she’s done to make my business easier to manage. I get overwhelmed when there’s too many moving pieces and Sara took it and made it digestible for my sweet little brain.

She’s made it to where I actually want to be a business owner instead of just an artist.

And when I say Sara has also made it to where I can do my mom thing and not worry about my clients every minute of the day. My business is literally taking care of itself now. I used to spend hours every single week responding to emails, sending invoices… so much back and forth. It’s all automatic now, but what I love most is everything still shows who I am as a person, and let’s my clients get to know me as their photographer, without me slaving over my computer to make it happen. Anyway, call Sara. She’s the freaking best.”

— Jessa Balough