Breaking into Sports and Volume Photography Business with Alison Carlino

Pat Miller: 00:00

I'm Pat Miller, and this is The Professional Photographer Podcast. Let's say you're doing volume photography, or you're thinking about getting into volume photography. It would be pretty interesting to sit down and learn the tips and tricks from one of the best in the business. What if someone that's doing it on a super huge scale was willing to walk you through what to do before, during, and after the shoot. That's what we're gonna do today with Alison Carlino. She's in Texas, and she's doing it big time because, well, everything's bigger in Texas. Right? She's gonna talk us through things to ask the coach, tips and tricks to communicate with your team, and an insight that it's just so good, she has the best insight about should your volume brand have a different name than your portrait brand? She has a great answer for this question that's, like, so good. I'm angry I didn't think of it first. So high five, Alison. So you're thinking about volume or you're doing volume and you wanna get better? This episode is for you. Alison Carlino is standing by. We'll talk to her next. Alison Carlino, welcome to The Professional Photographer Podcast. How's your week been? How are you doing?

Alison Carlino: 01:24

Hi. Thanks for having me today. We are actually doing pretty well down here, Southwest of Houston. The temperature dropped to a balmy 79 degrees finally. So we're, don't worry. We're going up to 95 again today, still in October almost. But you know what? My family and friends got to escape the hurricane that was, Helene. And so we are doing well. So excited to be here, kinda share my knowledge and focus on some things that are what I live and breathe and eat on a daily life right now.

Pat Miller: 01:55

I'm so excited to learn about high volume sports photography because it is an exciting opportunity that a lot of people are beginning to pay more and more attention to. I want to set the stage about what high volume means. How high volume is high volume? Can you give us an example?

Alison Carlino: 02:14

I sure can but I wanna put to rest the fact that volume is not a dirty word. Okay? It's okay for a portrait and wedding photographer to want to go over to this side. It has a lot of implications where if you've coming from portrait and wedding, your portrait posing and your lighting skills are really gonna transfer into this. If you are not a great organizer or a great person with speed, or even, maybe you're a man and you're gonna be doing a lot of women's sports, I would suggest hiring staff or people that are better around you for organization and dealing with females. That's my first biggest advice as you're jumping into this. Please restate the question now that I can answer that.

Pat Miller: 02:55

Alright. So let's go back to the beginning about this high volume concept because to someone that doesn't do any volume at all, they may think high volume is 5 or 10 people, but you're talking high volume. Can you give us an example of how high volume is high volume?

Alison Carlino: 03:09

Absolutely. So I can tell you that this is my 21st year, and I can tell you for about the last, almost 9 years, we've been doing team sports. That's high school, that's private leagues, that's junior highs, even recreational leagues. So anywhere ages 3 to 18. Okay? So I can tell you that before 9 years ago in August, I did nothing, but maybe a wedding on the weekends. It's too hot in Texas to do anything else. And my sales were probably, January and August were my lowest two points of sales throughout the year. And now August is literally the highest month of sales.

Pat Miller 3:45

Wow.

Alison Carlino: 03:46

So we push over 60,000 a month, in August.

Pat Miller: 03:50

That, let's just pause and celebrate that. That's amazing. That's great.

Alison Carlino: 03:52

So, that’s sales. That’s sales. Yeah. That's not how much is gonna go out the door with labor that it takes to run this and product costs, and extraction fees, and design, and it's just so much other costs that goes into that. But now it's my highest producing month of the whole year, and that's all due to team sports of, if you can imagine Texas has, you know, we're the religion of sports here. So, football, cheer, volleyball, dance, and cross-country is all we do in July and August. Like the last week of July and then all of August for like 5 weeks straight, we're working 6 days a week, probably anywhere from 12 to 18 sessions a week. So it's just like this. So that's what high volume means to us. Right now, I'm settled into a little bit more of an easy schedule, and that's probably anywhere from 5 to 8 bookings a week. Now we're starting Christmas portraits on the Fridays and Saturdays, and then the occasional wedding on the weekends. So that's what high volume means to me.

Pat Miller: 04:47

Now you shared that August used to not be great, and now it's killing it. How long was that transition to go from August wasn't great to now it's awesome. How long did that take you?

Alison Carlino: 04:56

I would say a good 3 to 4 years to really build up to saying August is now our top month.

Pat Miller: 05:03

Wow.

Alison Carlino: 05:03

Yeah. Not overnight. I can tell you the biggest lesson if you don't take anything else away from this today is if you grow too fast, you're gonna fail. So grow slowly or fail fast. And that is the biggest, if you're trying to scale up in this, you have got to take your leagues slowly during the week and your bookings, or you're gonna fail fast.

Pat Miller: 05:21

As you grow slowly, what are some of the things that you learn along the way? Is it email sequences? Is it simple things like naming conventions and keeping yourself organized? Or those are the type of things that you learn when you grow slowly?

Alison Carlino: 05:35

I think you learn that you're not gonna be able to do it alone. I tried in the beginning. Now I'll never do anything alone anymore. There's always somebody else there. Even if it's just for liability and safety and security, there's always someone there. I think you'll learn organization. You'll learn to divide this volume vision into pre, on-site, and post, and underneath those, you'll slowly start to realize how much you can't do alone anymore. And that's where you're gonna need to get some help with graphics, with ordering. If you just wanna be the shooter or photographer, because we can't say that word anymore. If you want to be the on-site person or the one that's marketing for your business, you've got to trust and hire and give that job off and delegate, or you're not gonna be able to scale up.

Pat Miller: 06:16

Talking with someone that's so high volume and ready to share secrets, I wanna look at this from booking through delivery. So let's go to what you alluded to, that pre-work, the stuff we have to do before we show up on-site. How do we go about selling our services as I can show up and take all of your team pictures with high-volume photography in mind?

Alison Carlino: 06:36

Absolutely. It does help if you are already established because I'll start with me, which is the easy route, and then I'll start back with a beginner that hasn't broken into the business yet. Okay? For me, I'm still marketing; you can't just be quiet and hope they keep coming to you. So, I'm putting banners up on the fences and in the gyms with my logo on it, that is walking gold advertisement right there for a visiting team that comes and sees these, and they don't have banners, they might be taking a picture of it on the phone, and then they know your name. So a lot of that is silent marketing. That's one way we're getting into teams that I don't even recognize anymore, or I didn't try to get, which is great. Another way, this summer for the first time, we donated back our services to a good cause where they took the top athletes in the district from the 12 high schools and they brought these kids together and they built 30 beds for CPS, for Child and Protective Services. And we came that day and we took an individual picture of each person in their, I forgot what the name of the event was, their serve shirt, whatever it was that said what they were doing that day, just like we would do teams, individually shot, composited together into a big group, and then highlighted 1 kid from each of the 12 high schools in our district and made a huge banner for them to put out on social media. And we donated our time, our images, the design, all of it, and we've already booked at least 11 schools, not school, whole schools, but teams that we would have never seen otherwise. I wouldn't have known the coaches, I wouldn't have known the kids, and that one day we've already seen so much return come back from. So find a good way to get in with some kind of community service that they're doing; offer to cover a carwash; offer to, I mean, this was a serve event that we offered to do for them. So that's one way you can open doors. If you are super, super brand new guys, find someone with a kid that plays sports, get them in full uniform, get their ball, get their gear, whatever it is, and make yourself a pose guide. Ask that kid to go through and play your position, and when you see something you like, ask them to stop. If they're holding the bat like that in a certain position, or if they're following through all the way, you know, you tell them play your position and you'll eventually make a post guide out of what that kid shows you. So find a friend with a kid that plays sports, ask them to do their different positions, and then make you a guide of what you can do, make you some sample products. That's how I would break in. That way, you have a marketing kit to show a coach.

Pat Miller: 09:01

The post guide and the marketing kit for a brand new business, that makes a lot of sense. The creativity to do the charity event that then got access to 12 schools and many more, that is absolute gold. So thank you for sharing that. I appreciate it.

Alison Carlino: 09:17

Yeah. Yeah.

Pat Miller: 09:18

Let's talk about getting ready for the high-volume shoot. What kind of role do graphics play? Are they important?

Alison Carlino: 09:24

Graphics are, I would say 95% of what our teams book us for these days are for the composite style, meaning for the purpose of finishing it with some kind of beautiful JPEG in the end; 5% of that is still live group shots against the net in the volleyball gym, on the stands or the bleachers. We still do those. It's not a dead art by any means. It's just that so many teams when we show up are missing players. And if that's the case, they wanna wait on these players, and composite is the only way to incorporate them later on a week later and know exactly where they have to stand. So, organization-wise, we come with what we call a storyboard. So the coach gives us a roster, we know how many people are on that team, and we draw it out with X's so we know which way to turn shoulders left and right, we know who's missing from that team and they can join us 3 months later and be added into that spot. So organization on-site is so key as far as how you shoot it on the front end. As far as having help, they help, you know, a staff member could help set up your gear, they can be talking to coach and the players about their order forms that they're about to turn in. They could be checking the kids in through Photo Day. We're using AI through Photo Day to match, face find their face with their order form, so it matches it all up to keep it organized for us. We don't scan barcodes or do any kind of ticket systems. So organization on-site is crucial to running it well.

Pat Miller: 10:48

If someone hasn't done this as much as you have, what's it like to work with the coaches? Are they great with details and always get back to you, or are you chasing them down the hallway proverbially and trying to get them to just give you an approval on the graphics so you can show up?

Alison Carlino: 11:01

Yeah. A perfect world would be that they are communicative and responsive ahead of time, and they've chosen the graphic from a link that we give them. A lot of them don't. So on-site before I drive away, I make them say, “This is the one I want.” Because if they choose a whole new graphic, we charge $50 to even start the rework on that. And that's just for a mock-up; that's not talking about making the whole team. So they are involved with the organization of the graphic and the choosing of it. I think that getting them to submit a roster has been harder than I thought. We don't ask for any private information; we just need first name, last name, the team level and the grade level. So this is something that most people have no problem putting it out there for us. It's just getting them to do it and send it over so we can import it has been a struggle. I don't know where I was going with that one, but yeah, just sometimes they're communicated, sometimes they're not. And to be honest, that plays into whether we're gonna return to that organization or not. Decent sales and a communicative coach and feeling safe and secure on-site as a woman are things that we put into play, whether we're gonna return.

Pat Miller: 12:10

And isn't that the luxury of being good at your job so you have enough demand so you can choose not to go back to a client that—

Alison Carlino: 12:10

Yeah.

Pat Miller: 12:11

—isn't serving the needs of the business. That's not a power play, but it's control. Right? It's opportunity because you're doing a good job of filling your calendar.

Alison Carlino: 12:18

Yeah. And even 21 years into this, I will still take anything once. Like I wanna do ice hockey and ice skating and fencing so bad I can taste it, but we just don't have that around here. And it could be poor sales, but I wanna try it, you know. So there's that need to keep expanding and keep trying things, but if they don't produce, we can't come back.

Pat Miller: 12:40

Yeah. I know you're passionate about Media Day Services. I've never heard of the concept of a Media Day. What is it? And what will we learn when you talk about it at Imaging USA in February?

Alison Carlino: 12:49

Absolutely. I am in the crux right now of making that lesson plan. I'm recording these live videos on scene because obviously I can't bring the whole Media Day to Grapevine, but I'm making a lot of videos on here's what you're gonna learn. You're gonna learn what is it first of all, because colleges have been doing it, professional teams have been doing it, and it's trickling down to our high schoolers now and they're asking for this more and more. I'll be honest, the first, I would say this is probably my 4th year of doing Media Day, the 1st year to year and a half with those teams that came through from fall to winter to spring sports, I would do them no charge and add it onto a regular standard day. So that means I'd come in, do their team and individual and their banner stuff; that's no charge to do that. They pay for the products, but I don't choose a charge that's called a standard. Anything they wanted above and beyond like the colored smoke or the action skills, that was something that we didn't have an additional price structure on until about 2 years ago. I needed to build my base of samples first of all, so I would take just the seniors or just the captain, select 2 or 3 kids, not all 15 varsity, and I'd do the colored smoke with them. And then I would have some for marketing, and they would have some to showoff for social media, and I would just give them the images, and they would be able to show it. So I worked like that. I'd add it on here, add it on here, maybe for as a league that bought a lot and did really well for us, and I'd give them a couple of freebies, you know? So I would add it on and add it on. And before you know it, I had a big portfolio to be able to show in a package. There are different structures I'm gonna go through at Imaging USA. There are sometimes just headshots, sometimes it's just colored fog, sometimes it's the stills and skills on the court. I'm gonna talk to you about not only the gear that's needed for that, but I'm gonna talk to you about how to work the flow. Like, how do you know who goes 1st and 2nd and how many poses they get to do in that certain amount of time? Texas has large varsity teams. So sometimes, if you think about a football varsity, there could be 80 varsity. Well, their starters are the ones really that should be doing the Media Day. That's the ones they need all the big, hype stuff on, player of the week, profile of the week, captain, senior highlights, that kind of thing. So we don't do this for all 80 of the varsity. They all may get a headshot, but they're not gonna get all the fun images. So I'm gonna teach you how, where that dividing line is that we're finding works with who gets to participate and who doesn't.

Pat Miller: 15:19

You mentioned something that I wanna extract because it's interesting and you've learned it. So you know it to be true, or at least I think it's to be true that there's a trend and there is, hey, how come the basketball team got to do that and we didn't get to do that? By giving them some of these really cool files. Did that help you grow into other sports in the same school or other schools of the same sport? Because they got a little bit envious of why did West get to look so cool and we didn't.

Alison Carlino: 15:47

Yes. Because that, you know, that tennis team would post what we did, and then the other sports in the spring or summer would be like, “Okay, we have to do this as well.” And then it just got to be where I had enough requests where I said, “Okay, now it's time to put collections down on this and make some money from it,” because the atmosphere aerosol, the fog in a can, that's not free. You know, the labor to shoot it, my staff had to stay there longer, so you have to pay people longer to help. You have to move lights around a lot during the court. You can't do these alone. I really think that you need help when you're doing these Media Days. So that's another thing.

Pat Miller: 16:21

We're gonna move from pre-work to on-site work. And what's so great here is you're gonna talk about actually how to deal with the team. So what is the most important aspect for your team when they arrive on site?

Alison Carlino: 16:33

Friendly and smiling, and actually looking like they're excited to be there. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten a booking from someone that they said, “My previous photographer was just grouchy, and it was time to let them go.” So if you can't put a smile on, I know we're all human, we have bad days, but I really just need you to be a part of this team today and act like you are part of welcoming these folks and being an approachable, smileable face because honestly I'm often not the one. They're not gonna walk in and see me first. I get out there and I welcome the team once they're all in there. But my staff is who they see first a lot of the times. Smiling, honestly.

Pat Miller: 17:08

Easy concept, but often overlooked when you're busy or carrying heavy things. It's, well, I'm doing work. No, you're on stage because they're there to see you.

Alison Carlino: 17:18

I tell them we're interviewing for our next job. You don't know which parent or which coach is part of some private league that they're watching us, and they're gonna take us over to something else after. So you are interviewing for our next job and to keep your job security right now. So please smile, please. Please be friendly.

Pat Miller: 17:33

Let's talk about the art of setting up. You've set up and torn down so many times. Any production hacks or ideas that might literally lighten our load as we do what we do?

Alison Carlino: 17:42

Oh, yes, I’ve got one. Absolutely. And you will all buy this because I have people who are envious of this thing right here. I bought a double-decker cart, like a camping wagon, off of Amazon. It's double-decker, meaning it's got a bag top like a sack, and then it's got a laying flat top on the bottom and all my light stands go straight in the bottom. So the double-decker gets us from in and out of the schools quickly, and we're doing sometimes 3 schools in a day up and down, up and down, up and down, and it's, yeah, that double-decker camping cart, good thing. Timber Ridge. I think it was a couple of $100, and I've already gone through 3 of them.

Pat Miller: 18:20

We're gonna need like an Amazon affiliate link from you on that or something. You were gonna sell a million of those. That's awesome.

Alison Carlino: 18:27

Yeah. So that's one thing to get things in and out quickly is a cart.

Pat Miller: 18:30

Sure. Yeah. And your team is doing that. They're loading and unloading and all of that. But when they're setting up, you mentioned you greet the team once everything's ready to go, but while they're setting up, what are you doing?

Alison Carlino: 18:41

While they're setting up, I'm discussing with coach any last minute details they haven't told me over email, such as graphics. Oftentimes with the team banner, I can't start until they choose the graphics so I know what we're doing. Are we doing action? Are we doing still? Are they smiling? Are they gonna be serious? Because it all has to be consistent. Once you shoot that first person that way, they've all gotta be consistent or it won't look right on the design. So a lot of the times my first thing is, “Thank you for having us, we're so glad to be here. I promise you, I've got this from this point. We're gonna show the players what to do.” And a lot of times, they'll have like their freshman and JV go first because those kids just take a team and individual, and they're out of there. But varsity comes on and that's where we're taking, it's usually team, individual; buddy, if they're doing it; and then the headshot, if they're doing that for Media Day; and then senior banner and team banner. So sometimes maybe even social media marketing kit, sometimes 7 images per person depending on what they're purchasing after the sale. So, yeah, and they agreed to this upfront, that it's not paid for upfront because they have to do check requests and pull it from PTO funds and things like that, so I never get paid on-site for volume. But it is with leagues that I trust, and I fortunately have not gotten burned. Everybody that has booked a Media Day package has purchased it. It just may take 4 to 6 weeks for the check to come in, And that's tough.

Pat Miller: 20:03

Yeah. Well, we're gonna knock on desk that that continues to be the case. Right? I've never been burned. Good. Don't get burned now. That would be terrible. Through your experience, you've also learned some other questions to ask that maybe someone who's new wouldn't think of right away. Like, you mentioned team captains. Who are the team captains? But one thing you said in our pre-interview was that, is this the way the uniform should look? It seems like such an easy, simple question that if you weren't told to ask, I think I would forget to ask that.

Alison Carlino: 20:32

Yeah. That's a great point, and that's every sport, too. Yesterday, we had a dance and a drill team where they were putting on gauntlets. So the girls had their nice sparkly outfits and their hats and everything, but they had these white cuffs that had little tally marks right here and little tally strings that came out, and the girls were putting them on for the first time is because it's been too hot in Texas to wear our full uniform. So they haven't actually practiced putting those on yet, and they were all putting them on backwards. And so that first person that was dressed before I ever photographed her, I looked at the coach and I said, is this correct? And she's like, “No, the gauntlet's turned the wrong way.” You know? So little things like that, you can't fix that in Photoshop. There's no AI that can turn a gauntlet around the correct direction with the right tassel hanging off of it. So it's not working yet. So yes, you're right. Pre-checking to make sure that bra straps are covered, that the shorts are the same level on the thighs if it's volleyball. You know that the football jersey is pulled down nice and straight where the numbers are not all crunched up like this. That's the worst thing ever. Coaches care about that number, but if they hold their pads or they put their hands behind their back and that number's all squished up and they can't tell that it's 76, it's not gonna be good on you. They're not gonna hire you back. So that attention to detail, guys, that you might have had as a wedding shooter, that's gonna carry over into volume so much.

Pat Miller: 21:52

You said that. I've heard others that do volume say that as well. That when you're a portrait photographer, you get into volume. You're kind of ready to take care of some of those details because you're used to doing that. So you are, it sounds like, of the camp that if you know how to do great portrait work, there's a lot of nuance and hard work and volume to make it work for you, but you may have a running start based on your eye and attention to detail.

Alison Carlino: 22:17

I agree. I agree. Yes.

Pat Miller: 22:19

That's great.

Alison Carlino: 22:19

Attention to detail. Yeah.

Pat Miller: 22:21

Yeah. I can imagine that you get back to the office and every once in a while, you see something like, oh, how come we didn't notice the thing. That has to be infinitely frustrating?

Alison Carlino: 22:34

Oh, gosh. The thing, I am such, not, I'm not OCD-ing in this about it, but I'm definitely a perfectionist when it comes to noticing those things because it's my responsibility. I'm the only one for my business hitting that shutter button. And if it's not ready to hit the shutter button, I will go up there and fix it myself. If my lighter missed it, my posing guide person missed it, I am the one still responsible for going up there and fixing it. So I try to minimize those mistakes. I'm sure I'll come up with something other in this conversation while I'm thinking about it, but I'm just thinking about what we've done this week and I can't, fortunately, I came home with no blinks this week and no mess ups and no bra strap showing, and that's just a matter of catching it before you hit that shutter button, guys.

Pat Miller: 23:20

It's a great reminder. Thank you for that. Let's go from shoot is done. Let's talk about the post-work. Is this where the pre-work and the on-site work pays off?

Alison Carlino: 23:29

Oh, 100%; 100% because whether you end up doing the post work or you have staff that you have to communicate these notes to, one of you is gonna thank yourself for it because you have to be prepared in the beginning. I make a habit of, and this is probably why my days are so long, but I make a habit of making all those notes in our client database for my staff, the same 24 hours that I shoot those bookings. I write notes on-site to remind myself what needs to happen and then I make sure, we use ClickUp, it's a system called ClickUp and it's got staff dots for everybody on every task so we know exactly where everyone is on this, why it's delayed or why we're, haven't reached this one yet or if it's finished, it goes in the done category, but they get my notes as to what happened on-site. For example, like yesterday, there was a nose ring in one of the girls and coach said, "Please edit this out for the team photo, it can't go in the yearbook like that." So those kinds of little bitty notes are already on the database for the girls to attack. So yeah, that's what the backend looks like as far as getting the notes out. I am responsible for bringing the images through Lightroom and backing them up to our hard drive system that we have. From that point, the girls take the JPEGs and they load them to Skylab, which handles all of our extractions. You put them up, and within 10 minutes, all the images are back down. I would say that 97%, 98% of the extractions are nice and correct with hair even. If they are not, if there's some that have like a tennis racket strings or some of the orchestra strings, that may not extract really well, or lacrosse nets. Some of the things that are fine tooth like that, we might have to put them up to retouch up and pay a little bit more for them to get in there and really dig on it, but most of the stuff through Skylab works well. It comes down as a PNG file and then another staff member takes those into the PSDs into Photoshop, and they design them into the graphics. From that point, the staff proofs what the coach over the email, and once everything's approved, then they work the whole batch, all the individuals, all the memory mates, all the things. And then another staff takes those images and orders them to Miller's. And we drop ship to the school with the coach's name on them, and it's already got names on the envelopes, and they just pass them out. And then finally, a link is posted online and then the coach posts that link online for people to buy that didn't buy on Photo Day. So that's kind of the procedure on the back end in a nutshell.

Pat Miller: 25:57

It's a remarkable process, and thank you for going through it in such detail. I'm curious if you're doing 10 or 12 shoots in a week, even with your detailed notes, downloading it into ClickUp. Don't forget the nose ring, yada, yada, yada. How often or frequently are you communicating with the team about a shoot from 3 days ago about what did this note mean or did you say this certain thing to the coach? How often are you communicating with them as they go through that process?

Alison Carlino: 26:27

To be honest with you, you might be surprised by this, but not often. Not often. So if I get the notes out of my head and into ClickUp, then that should transfer correctly into the right design that coach had envisioned when they see that proof for the first time.

Pat Miller: 26:41

That's really cool.

Alison Carlino: 26:43

The only push back we ever get is a coach looks at it and says, “My gosh, I hate that graphic. I'm so sorry. I chose that one. I wanna start over.” And then that's where the $50 fee comes in to pull all the PSD down, to recolor each layer, you know, to put all the players back in. That's where that fee comes in in labor.

Pat Miller: 27:01

You mentioned storyboards when you were talking about setting things up. I've never heard of a storyboard used like this before. What is a storyboard and what do you do with it after the shoot?

Alison Carlino: 27:12

Can you see this?

Pat Miller: 27:13

Yes.

Alison Carlino: 27:13

Oh, you can. Good. Okay. You don't need to see my face. Is it backwards or forwards to you?

Pat Miller: 27:19

No, it looks great.

Alison Carlino: 27:19

Oh, good. Okay. So this is a storyboard, and you'll see X’s and numbers, and if they don't have a jersey number on their chest and that's the order that they stepped up. It also shows you the lines of players, meaning we're gonna have a front row and a back row, and that this is gonna be a boys line and a girls line on a team banner, and it shows you that the X's are center facing people, and then the left and right arrows are the left and right turns that we use on the bottom of where the player's standing on the floor. There's a floor train with ones, twos, and threes, and they’re marked on the floor in footprints, and I tell them, “Put your feet on the ones or the twos or the threes.” So that's a storyboard, and it helps me know if somebody's absent exactly where that person's supposed to be if they join me 2 weeks later.

Pat Miller: 28:03

Is that part of the post-production process that you capture that storyboard? So when athlete number 29 needs to get dropped in, your team knows this is exactly where they go?

Alison Carlino: 28:12

Yeah. So when they step up on-site, I'm writing this down on-site, and then I scan it in and attach it to the ClickUp entry so my team can see it.

Pat Miller: 28:20

Wow. That's really cool, and a cool visualization.

Alison Carlino: 28:23

Yeah. It has to be, because it has to get out of coach's head and out of my head and onto somebody else that wasn't even there that day, which is wild that they can produce it then and have it match what we all envisioned. You know?

Pat Miller: 28:35

With the number of schools and the number of athletes, then the number of notes you have to make in your head, the number of pieces of software that it goes through, all of the files, all of the mix-outs, all of the layers, then go into the sale. I mean, it is an infinite number of challenges, and hearing it organized the way that you did, that's really, really great.

Alison Carlino: 28:57

Yeah.

Pat Miller: 28:57

Let's talk about the sales activity. It's starting to happen now that everything's been done and uploaded. What kind of sales activity is going on once your team is starting to chew on the files?

Alison Carlino: 29:06

Yeah, Carlino's is still a hybrid. So we do paper on-site for anyone that turns in a paper order form. We give them a 5% back on the sales that's turned in that day. So a lot of coaches just put that straight back toward the cost of the banners. So they use it as a fundraiser, and then they help get their banner to be a little bit cheaper. I'd say about, you know, if you're taking over a new league that someone else maybe didn't do so well on, and it's your first time and people don't know you, if you walk away with 50% of the people buying, consider that a win. That's big, okay? So you'll do a great job, you'll come back the next year, and more people will recognize your name, and sales will be higher on-site. If they don't buy on-site, then about 2 to 2 and a half weeks after Photo Day, when all the graphics are done, they're put on Photo Day, and the link is sent to the coaches, and the coaches post it wherever they communicate to players, and people buy online through Photo Day, which is easy. If you don't wanna do paper and you don't have the staff to order all that, you can do all link through the lab, and you never have to do anything but watch your bank account grow. So you don't have to go click the orders on. Like literally, the person buys it, it goes straight to the lab and then back to their house. So they handle everything. I've had some teams lately that have not been doing really well on-site. Sometimes the envelopes just don't make it, the USPS loses them, coach accidentally throws them in the trash, the players never bring them home, like we've had a lot of things lately where we had on-site sales have not been as good as I want them to be. So with those select organizations only, the next school year, we may go back to just paperless, just digital only, which is such a risk again because now you're showing up on-site, you're paying labor, you have to pay all the extraction costs, all the design fees just to get it online and hope someone will buy. So it's yes, volume is a risk, and there are folks around the US that will pay or that will say, “Okay, it's, whatever, $250 for me to even get on-site for you because that's gonna at least cover my labor so I'm not in the red on this.” If we assessed a fee like that, we wouldn't have any of the junior highs. I can hands down guarantee they don't have budgets like that. So I guess it depends on where you wanna work and what kind of leagues and what kind of teams that you're wanting to aim towards with volume.

Pat Miller: 31:17

Not using paper, but we're relying on online sales through Photo Day would make life easier, but you mentioned the risk of moving away from something that's traditionally done this way. Have you considered a full move to online sales, or do you think paper is still gonna be part of your process for the near future?

Alison Carlino: 31:36

Paper is still gonna be part of the process. We've got enough small town Texas schools here that still do a lot on paper and they do well. Now, there is one district here that has decided their middle schools went all paperless this year, and they gave every kid a laptop, and there are no order forms for anything, for uniforms, nothing. Parents do everything online. So we're testing that out this year to see if they're actually gonna go and buy pictures online, too.

Pat Miller: 32:00

This has been a great overview of beginning to end, but let's go back to your beginning because you didn't always do volume sports photography. What was the life before this?

Alison Carlino: 32:11

Twenty-one years of photography. But before that, I was a 4th grade classroom teacher. And maybe that's where the organization and being able to work with the public came out of all this. I always knew I'd be back in the public face somehow, but wedding and portrait that's built me. That's been my love for so many years, it still is, and I can tell you that now that I'm in front of these high school teams, the priceless marketing that I'm getting for high school seniors, you couldn't have seen those kids otherwise. They don't give you your mailing information; you know, you can't see these kids and get to know them. I bring my books and my grad cards, and I advertise my senior sessions there. So I'm still getting to do my love of senior portraits. So it really is a full cycle kinda deal.

Pat Miller: 32:54

I heard you in a conversation use a phrase I had never heard before. T&I on spec. T&I on spec. I wrote that down and thought, I wanna know what T&I on spec means. Can you translate that for us?

Alison Carlino: 33:06

Team and individual in the hopes that people will buy, which we've rebranded as our standard package, which we've done for 7, 8, 9 years. We just put a name on it this year, finally. No charge to get us in the door, and we'll come and shoot the team picture for everybody, the individual pose for everybody, and put that online for sale or offer paper sales to you. And there's no charge to your team for us to come in and do that.

Pat Miller: 33:31

That is so slangy. I'm gonna find a way to use that. I like that. T&I on spec. That just sounds—

Alison Carlino: 33:36

Yeah.

Pat Miller: 33:37

It's fun to say.

Alison Carlino: 33:38

Rolls off the tongue well, doesn't it?

Pat Miller: 33:39

Yeah, it does. We're nearing the end of our time together. Let's talk about big picture ideas. Any other mistakes or upgrades you've made in the process over the years that you'd like to pass along that might save someone that's watching this just a little bit of heartache as they move towards volume sports photography?

Alison Carlino: 33:57

I don't know if it's heartache, but I can tell you something that I've toyed with for, well, the last 8 or 9 years, and that's should I have branded my volume side of the business under a different name? Last week, we officially pulled the DBA and met with a lawyer and branded us and we're going to be splitting off my volume away from my portrait and wedding. So we bought a new company name, and we're gonna have that logo alongside Carlino's simultaneously for 2, 5, 10 years, whatever it takes for people to realize it's still me. But it's time for me to look at this with a sense of when I'm ready to retire 10, 15 years from now, I want to be able to package this up and sell it. I can't really sell my portrait and my wedding business, but volume is something that's repeatable, it's trainable, and it's got contacts that come with it that I can sell to someone. So it's time for me to get my Carlino name out of it and we've called it Lit Media, and it will encompass our schools and our sports. So we're gonna roll that out starting January 1, and it's big. I've toyed with it for a long time because I thought in the beginning volume meant just cheap. Okay? That's why I say it's not a dirty word because there's so much money to be made in it. But it's not something people should think of as a diversion from my custom line. So I didn't want people to think, “Oh, she's, you know, $30 a package when it comes to sports, but all of a sudden she's $5,000 for her wedding collections,” and something Jerry Gown has taught me a long time ago is collections are for your top-end and packages are for your cheaper end and you really need to use that verbiage on both sides. And I didn't want people thinking that all of a sudden, you know, what's the difference in the 2? And I have toyed with this for years, so I advise people to think about that real hard in the beginning before they jump off if they wanna have 2 different brand names that don't play with each other. And I think now I see the reason, as I get closer to retirement, why you should have 2 brand names. And so we finally made that official.

Pat Miller: 35:53

That's really insightful though, because I think that question comes up primarily when people are getting into volume and they don't want to, like you say, tarnish or change the perception of their portrait brand. But you're looking at it as an opportunity to have another piece of equity that then can be sold when you're ready to leave the business. That's fantastic.

Alison Carlino: 36:13

So if you're looking to grow and you've already got an established name that looks quality and you've got a great reputation, then that will help you get into these volume doors. It has not hurt me. As you can see, I've only grown. And I've gone from 4 staff to 11 of us now because we have that much work because of volume, not because of portrait and wedding. So it's not gonna cheapen your brand. If anything, if your brand is already that high and that well-known and that well-seen, it's only gonna help you get in those doors because they're gonna think quality. So I have toyed with that for so many years. Is it hurting me? Is it helping me? And now I just see it as it helped me. I'm glad I did it. And now I wanna package it up and sell it eventually.

Pat Miller: 36:52

Congratulations on that, and thank you for sharing as much as you have with us today. I know you've really helped some people. Alison Carlino, we look forward to not only learning from you, but also seeing you at Imaging USA in Dallas. We'll see you then.

Alison Carlino: 37:05

Thanks, y'all. I enjoyed it.

Pat Miller: 37:07

It's so much fun to make you a ton of money. I really hope you enjoyed this week's episode of the Professional Photographer Podcast. We are already working on next week's episode, so make sure you hit subscribe. Because when you go “boop,” and hit the subscribe button, we automatically show up in your feed. It's that easy. So hit subscribe, and if you can leave us a comment. For some reason, comments really help the show grow. So like, subscribe, comment, tell the mailman, do whatever, but give us some feedback and help us make a great show for you so we know we're on the right track. One other thing, if you're not yet a member of Professional Photographers of America, you're missing out. PPA offers incredible resources like equipment insurance, top-notch education, and a supportive community of photographers ready to help you succeed. It's perfect for photographers who are serious about growing their business in a sustainable and profitable way. At PPA, you belong here. Discover more about membership at ppa.com. That's ppa.com. I'm Pat Miller, Founder of the Small Business Owners Community. Thank you for joining us on this episode and for being a part of this whole podcast journey. I gotta tell you, we're having a blast. We appreciate your support, and we'll be right back right here real soon. See you next time.