If I had a bull horn, I’d be broadcasting this to all potential brides and grooms! Race over to the new Maine Wedding Blog Love and Lobster immediately and check out the crazy generous offer French’s Point is offering to our readers! FREE site rental (um, that’s 10K+ in savings!!!) for all remaining dates in 2010 AND 2011 if you book during this month. If you’ve dreamed of marrying in a grand estate on the water, oh, French’s Point is the place for you (this venue was on our radar when we entertained the idea of marrying in Maine)!

STARTING OUT RIGHT: ONE-DAY INTENSIVE

This is not a typical workshop.  It’s not a seminar.  If you’re looking for a day of learning more about your camera and shooting pretty models – this isn’t for you.

On the other hand, if you’re ready to go deep – and get serious about your photography business, you can’t afford to miss this. You can’t afford to NOT start out right.

Unlike most photography “workshops,” this isn’t about photography.  It’s based on business principles to help you grow your business.

Jason brings a background in management and marketing from working at as an executive at a Fortune 100 company, and the experience of starting – and building a successful boutique studio based in the midwest.

You’ll leave with answers.  You’ll leave with a PLAN.  You’ll leave with the best practices and key strategies to help grow a business built to last.

KNOWING YOUR NUMBERS

We’ll start by helping define your goals.  Using that as the foundation, we’ll get a grip on the numbers – including pricing, budgets, cash flow, expenses, and more.

MARKETING AND BRAND STRATEGY

Developing a brand – and a marketing strategy to support that brand – are key to finding the right clients.  We’ll go through best practices in marketing and brand development – so that you’ll leave with key principles you can put in to place immediately.

THE CLIENT EXPERIENCE

The relationships you develop with your clients are about more than smiles and smooth talking.  We’ll cover how we walk our clients through from inquiry to completion – and how we start the cycle over.  Our goal is to build clients for life.

SETTING UP SYSTEMS FOR SUCCESS

You only have so much time, and we often find ourselves spending it on things that barely help us get by – and DON’T help us grow our businesses.  We’ll talk about how developing efficient systems can help set your business up for real growth.

WORKFLOW AND SALES

From the time you shoot it, to the time you sell it, we’ll cover how you can develop a workflow and sales process that results in real income and profit.

Sponsored by:

Who should come?: Photographer/Small Business Owners.  Whether you’ve been doing this for less than 2 years or more than 10, this workshop is designed to help you learn best practices to grow your business.

Cost: $450 ONLY $300 per person! Includes all materials [business planning and budgeting tools, contract worksheets, participant manual] and lunch.  Also includes chances at some pretty cool giveaways, including a 6 month free subscription to ShootQ, a Livebooks subscription site, a one-year Pictage Lite membership and MORE!.  More giveaways to be announced shortly!

Dates/Locations: Current Cities include: Atlanta, Nashville, Jackson, MS, New Orleans, San Francisco, Chicago, Cincinnati, Austin and Houston.  For more info, click on the Register Page!

How to Register: Just CLICK HERE to go to the registration page!

Vegas Tourney will start at 9:00pm on Sunday the 7th!

Last year we had just over 60 people and I have told the tournament crew that we will have 100 this year, so feel free to pass this around!

We are going to bring back playing online on Wednesday nights on Full Tilt if you want to practice

Email info(at)weddingpokerstars(dot)com to get on either list.

Emilie and I just returned from a terrific couple of days in Vegas at the Engage09 The Encore, a luxury wedding business seminar! The speaker lineup was terrific…starting with Rebecca Grinnals, who also put on the day, and Marcy Blum to Simon T. Bailey and the brilliant Sean Low. Networking at this event was 2nd to none! Randy Fenoli, Director of Fashion at Kleinfeld in NYC and “Say Yes to the Dress” fame entertained us in the evening at Blush. Our great friend Jennifer Dominick of LoveLifeImages brought her Snapshot Studio to capture some of the fun!

Just four years ago thousands of families from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast states were left homeless, with many of their personal belongings destroyed by the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. A large majority of these families lost what could arguably be their most valued treasures – family photographs.

In response to the disaster wrought by Hurricane Katrina we’ll be providing hundreds of families with charitable mini portrait sessions as part of PartnerCon New Orleans! With YOUR help, all families will be provided a CD of their images the day of the shoot, along with a package of assorted prints delivered to them a few weeks later. This is your opportunity to play a direct role in making a big difference in the lives of others, while simultaneously enriching your PartnerCon experience.

We’re seeking 100 attendee volunteers to make this charitable shoot a success. Reserve your spot now!

The Details:

The shoots will occur on Thursday, November 5, from 1 – 6 pm (volunteer teams will be organized into 2-hour shifts) We’ll be photographing more than 200 families at venues located near the West Bank in New Orleans, just 10-minutes from the hotel. We’ll have 5 – 7 shooting stations set-up (with back-drops) — each family shoot will last approximately 15 minutes. Volunteer teams will be organized in advance of the event – each team will consist of a photographer, assistant, image downloader/laptop attendant, runner and various other roles and responsibilities (team members will have the flexibility to rotate responsibilities). Those that prefer to be the Photographer on their team must supply their own camera and 2 off-camera flash units (we’ll be providing all the other gear, including light/flash stands, remote triggers, backdrops, CF cards, extra batteries, etc).