Productivity Calendar for Creatives with Julie Miller Davis

Pat Miller: 00:00

I'm Pat Miller, and this is The Professional Photographer Podcast. Oh, productivity. The word, productivity. I didn't know you could spell productivity with four letters, but yet, here we are. If you're a creative professional, you probably think about all the stuff on your to-do list as a burden, as a chore, as something that gets in the way of your opportunity to capture great images and thrill your clients. But what if we were able to reposition in your head that a freedom comes with the plan? Meaning, the more structured we are, the more free we can be. Now you may be thinking, Pat, that makes no sense, but I promise you it does. And on today's episode, we're gonna sit down with a productivity expert and talk about how you can build a calendar just for creatives that will open up more time for you to spend with your family, with your hobbies, with your clients, and with your art. It's not impossible; it's just a matter of efficiency. So, if you're with me, if you're ready to rethink how you get everything done, which is gonna take some bravery. So, I'll mail you one of those little medals that they give people. So, I'm gonna give you a bravery medal if you've got the guts to stick with me on this episode. If you're ready, we're gonna start the conversation right now. Productivity expert and my pal, Julie Miller Davis. Welcome to The Professional Photographer Podcast. How are you today?

Julie Miller Davis: 01:45

Nice to see you too, Pat. Thanks for having me. I am really doing well.

Pat Miller: 01:50

I'm so excited to have you on the show because you, like, change business owner's lives. How would you summarize what you do for people? Because I've seen you work your magic, and it's really, really cool.

Julie Miller Davis: 02:02

So, really what JMD Productivity and I are all about is, taking business owners who are at that point of kind of getting in their own way, really getting in their own way because they're working so much and not really treating some things more important than others. They're not prioritizing their time or their calendar, and something's gotta give in order for growth to happen. Like, they've maxed out. So, I give them tools and systems and processes and new ways of doing things and looking at their business in order to have the freedom they want, build the business they want, and not spend more time doing it.

Pat Miller: 02:46

Do they think about it like productivity? Do they like, if I'm having the problem that you solve, do I think about it as productivity or do I think about it as something else?

Julie Miller Davis: 02:55

I think about it as, oh, my God. I'm so busy. I don't know how I'm gonna get everything done. And I would love to grow, but I don't even know how that could happen because my calendar is so full already. How in the world could I take on more appointments or clients? How in the world could I find the time to hire someone or delegate to someone? And if I can't make more money, I can't delegate. You know it's like a very vicious cycle. what I like to say is I move on from stuck to strategic. So, it's about, you know. Because they're in a very stuck cycle, and they, a lot of times, will say, I'm just I'm stuck right where I am because there's they just can't find the way. They're so in it that they can't. And they wouldn't think productivity unless they heard it maybe, but they're just juggling everything and treating all things equally. And I think sometimes it's just a matter of hearing the words, and then they're like, oh, my God. That's me. They're just in it. Right?

Pat Miller: 03:55

This show serves photographers, who are for the most part very creative people. So, why is productivity such a problem for creative professionals?

Julie Miller Davis: 04:05

So that's a great question. And, so here's what I hear from creatives who are running businesses is I don't wanna be tied to a calendar. I don't wanna be boxed in to a schedule, and I need my freedom. And, the truth is, by not having a plan and by not having a calendar or schedule, a tight–I mean you guys as photographers, you have a calendar. You have a calendar of appointments. You have a calendar of who you're shooting when. And then I don't know if you're calendaring when you edit or not or you go through things. You may be just kinda leaving that up to me. I know I gotta get it done, and I'm just gonna do it when it strikes me at, you know, midnight on Tuesday, or I got, oh, shoot. I got that appointment to follow-up with these photos with that client. So, now I gotta cram that in today. And so, what's happening is you've lost your freedom, and you've lost time to create by not having a plan. So, the one saying stuck to strategic, the other one that I say a lot and that is 100% true is that freedom is in the plan.

Pat Miller: 05:20

Wait a minute. Just hold on a second. Because if I'm daydreaming about how I'm gonna change the world or picturing this amazing setup that I'm gonna do for a client, freedom in the plan that feels like the walls are closing in on me. So, help me understand that more. Freedom is in the plan because I wanna understand how that works in practice.

Julie Miller Davis: 05:40

So a plan is really about I've gotta have space in my day, in my week, in my month for everything. And that includes creative time. And plans do that. You guys are not writing it in your blood or chiseling it in stone. It's not like a move or writing in pen that can't be scratched. You know what I mean? Like, plans are fluid, and your calendar is also fluid and a living document that can be molded and morphed and revised. But what happens, I am guessing, is that the business side of things is what's falling through the cracks. The admin, maybe the invoicing. You might have thousands, tens of thousands more of dollars hanging out there because you don't have a grip on your admin. Getting back to people when they're wanting to book with you might be an issue. And it's like all these things become urgent and become like a knee jerk reaction to, oh, God. I forgot to do that. I haven't done that. I didn't do that. And so, things are falling through the cracks because you haven't been intentional about building time in for those things. And things are fluid. And I think we're gonna get into it a little bit, Pat, like how to plan actually. But I want you to realize that you have to build there's enough time. First of all, there's plenty of time. To get it all done and have time for yourself and your dogs, your spouses, and your house, and the things that you love. And if you're not seeing where is that space and there is that time, then there isn't that time. Or you don't know what you're doing. You don't have a plan, so now you waste time because you're like, I have a lot to do, but I don't really know what, and I don't know where to start. So, I'm gonna go do this other thing, or I'm gonna do I'm gonna sit on the couch and binge TV or whatever your thing is, or I'm gonna scroll, scroll, and scroll. And now you've wasted this time because you didn't have a really organized thought process of what you're engaging in when.

Pat Miller: 08:05

Is that the real value add that instead of telling a creative, we're gonna schedule a bunch of time for you to do business stuff, which may make them feel like I don't have as much time to be creative. You're scheduling things so they're wasting fewer hours during the week. Is that where a lot of the opportunity comes from?

Julie Miller Davis: 08:21

Oh, yeah. What I have found is that people think if they have a schedule that they are going to be tied in and have less time. And the truth is you're wasting more time than you could ever know. And my experience tells me that you are probably wasting or leaving at least two hours a day on the table at least. Which is if you add it up to 40 hours in a month, which is adding an entire like, if you got that back, you'd add an entire work week back in like, a traditional work week back into your life. What could you do with that? How many clients could you serve then?

Pat Miller: 09:03

I wanna walk through how we start putting this into practice in a second. But I do just want to put it on the table because I think many photographers would see what you're promising, but they would say, no. That's not for me. So, give us an example of someone that you've done this with, a creative, maybe a photographer that you've helped with this, maybe they resisted it first, but then they got on board and saw results.

Julie Miller Davis: 09:27

I had a photographer working for me with me for a while, my photographer. If you check out any of my stuff, all of her all of her shots are my branding, and my lifestyle. But she came to me, and her business was pretty stuck and stagnant. She was doing alright and probably making, I don't know, probably around 60k is my guess when she came to me. And she was all over the place. When an opportunity popped up, a client popped up, she's like either moving stuff around or shoving it to the side to fit the client in. And then she started traveling all over the place to do branding shots all over the nation. And so, then travel was in there, and it was a mess. Like she was exhausted all the time. Exhausted, and working with me, putting systems into place, putting a calendar into place, and strategically thinking about, putting a goal into place, breaking down that goal, and making space to make the goal happen in the calendar. Her first year, actually, she worked with me 6 months of 2020 when she couldn't even photograph people in person.

Pat Miller: 10:41

Wow.

Julie Miller Davis: 10:42

And she broke six figures. And that was not even a normal year where she could travel or do much of any of her regularly special programming. So, we were able to it was just a way of practicing her craft and her passion and actually running a business with it. Because many of you might be running your craft and your passion, and you're like you went out on your own and you're doing the thing, and you haven't yet stepped into the fact that you own a business.

Pat Miller: 11:16

Oh, shots fired, Julie. Shots fired. Okay. So, we believe you. And our little dog ears went up when you said, wait. $40,000 more a year? Yes, please. So, let's walk through how do we start this magical calendar that will help us get everything done. What's the first step?

Julie Miller Davis: 11:35

So the first step is to write all the things that you do or that you don't do, that you should be doing. And yes, I did say the word should because there are some things you should be doing that you're not doing. And maybe you shouldn't be the one doing them, but you know? That's a whole other can of worms, ball of wax, whatever you wanna call it. And so, it's writing down all the things. All the things you're doing. Clients you're shooting, editing that you're doing, scheduling that you have to do, client follow-up that you have to do when you're going through their photos with them. If you're printing, if you're creating books for them, you've got that project piece in there. But then you've got to think about what are the things that are your business builders also. So, there's networking probably in there, hopefully. And there's whatever it is that you are up to and whatever it is that you are not doing that is on your list, and it just continues to live on your list or live in your head. And then, this is the key is taking those things and grouping them together into categories because a lot of them fit together. There might be three or four things that could be grouped together. And it's kinda like when we had science class in middle school and classified plants, animals, plants, birds, mammals, fish, reptiles, whatever.

Pat Miller: 13:06

Whatever. Right?

Julie Miller Davis: 13:07

It's the same principle. And then, you might have marketing. You might have, admin. You might have clients. You might have projects. You might have a business builder. You know, whatever you're gonna call them. But you're gonna find the common thread. And then, to build the calendar, you're going to take those categories and schedule blocks of time for each category in your week, in your month. How much time do you need for each one? And do you need time each week? Do you need time to twice a month? Do you need time once a month? Like, what does that mean? And marketing, you know, could include your social media that you're doing, and it's gonna include networking that you're doing and follow-up. And then you've got customer care. That's not marketing. Customer care is its own thing, maybe. So, how do you look at that? And the very first thing I put in my calendar is I will I would teach you. And I'm doing this in a couple in about a week for free people is talking them through this. You guys schedule yourself first. So, what free time do you want? And when do you want it? When are you taking vacation? When are you taking a day off? When are you doing whatever you're doing? So that was a long answer.

Pat Miller: 14:24

But it was really rich in detail, and I appreciate that. So, I wanna make sure that I hear you correctly. Let's say sending invoices, paying vendors, and processing receipts. Instead of doing that a little bit every day, we may batch those three tasks together, make a block called money, and do it every other Friday. Is that what you're talking about? And why does that work better than touching it every day?

Julie Miller Davis: 14:47

That's what I'm talking about. Because touching it every day, you're either squeezing it in, and it's taking away from another thing you need to do, so you're creeping into other stuff that you're working on. And so, it's bouncing. You start bouncing back and forth. And then you start it, and then something else pops in your head, and so you don't finish it. And then you don't realize you didn't send that invoice, or you know, it's like it's insanity. And so, by doing it every Friday, every other Friday, Monday, or whatever day you choose and you spend – you schedule 30 minutes on it, you'll get it done, and you'll know what's happening with your money. And if you're touching it every day, first of all, you don't have a consistent time that you're doing it. You don't have a consistent way that you're doing it. You're not, so you've got this master list of things that you check on when you get your money block. And you may not need to check on all of them. Maybe it's just one. But you've got this master list that you draw from and what you're gonna spend that 30 minutes on.

Pat Miller: 15:48

I like this. I like organizing by task. I like getting into one frame of mind and doing all the similar tasks at once. That makes sense. However, how do we make this something that we actually stick to and not some pretty thing that we make and it's just another thing that we forget to use?

Julie Miller Davis: 16:06

Well, that's around patterns and habits. And it's a change in mindset around your calendar. And I was actually just talking about this yesterday with a bunch of my clients, that I'm wondering if you would just ignore an event on your calendar with a client. My guess is the answer is no. So, why would you ignore an event on your calendar with your money? So a couple of things need to happen. Number 1, you need to think of it as you are building trust with yourself when you honor your calendar. And the other piece is honor. You're honoring your calendar, and you're building trust with yourself. Because some of you are saying, well, I've tried that and it doesn't work, and I've never been good at that. And you don't have any trust. You don't have any faith that you can do it. And the truth is you can build a new habit. You just gotta be conscious about it because, you know, I study a lot about habits and human nature. And 30% to 40%, closer to 40% of what we do every day is out of without thought or intention. So, it's out of habit. So, if you habitually ignore your calendar, what if for two weeks, you let that habit go and you're like, alright. For two weeks, I am going to pay attention to my calendar, and I am going to do it. Two weeks is not enough to shift a habit, but you will see, and there will be a reward about how productive you've been, how much you've gotten done, and how much time you feel like you have on your like, I'm done with it. What? I'm done? I don't, did I forget to do something? Like, but that's what that's what it will feel like. I have so many clients going. I had a half a day and I was like, did I forget to do something? What's, I don't feel right. Something's not right. And I'm like, no. That's freedom, by the way. That's what freedom feels like. Go get a pedicure.

Pat Miller: 18:08

No.

Julie Miller Davis: 18:09

Why is it happening?

Pat Miller: 18:10

It's been so long for some of us. We forget what it's like because we're driven by the tasks, not by our time. And something that I bet comes up all the time is, well, you said flexibility earlier. So,. So, okay. How do we make the choices? A client like, a big client wants my money and time that I've got set aside on Thursday. How do we adjust for real life and run the business, stay flexible, but still get it all done? What do you recommend for that?

Julie Miller Davis: 18:35

It's a great question. Again, your calendar and your time are flexible. And so if you've built in client time, even though you don't have the clients. So, this isn't a creative example. So I had a client who was a physical therapist. She had her own physical therapy and Pilates studio, all kind of combined. And I was like, you know, at one point, I was like, she wanted this growth. Right? And she was doing all the things, and it was chaos. And I was like, so how many appointments do you want in a week? And she goes, 30. And I said, well, do you have 30 appointments built on that calendar where you could put people? She goes, no. I just fit them in. I was like, well, how's the universe or the business Gods or whoever, how are they to know that you have room for 30 people? So she adjusted her calendar, had room for the 30, and it's like they started coming. So, if you build in client time, knowing that client time may not happen exactly then, but we've gotta see that there is space. We've gotta see that there is time. So, you build in the client space and you build in your money time. And now, a client can only meet with you on Friday at 10.This is a big client. And you're like, right, 10 is my money time. Julie said I'm supposed to honor my calendar. Like, you know what? Let me see if I can make that work. Let me take a look. You're gonna trade–I call it time trading. You're gonna trade money time for client time. Boom. It's done. I'm gonna do money time on Wednesday, and that client time that I had scheduled on Wednesday is now on Friday. What I don't want you to do is be like, oh, yeah. I was gonna, I'm supposed to do, and you're thinking to yourself, I'm supposed to do my money time. Julie said do my money time to this big client. So, I'm gonna shove the money time under the rug, and this is the 3rd time I've done that. How long till the money time trips you up and takes you down? Because you because you ignored it. Instead, you're using your calendar almost like a slide puzzle. Blocks can be exchanged or moved to make the picture that you want.

Pat Miller: 20:36

This sounds relatively simple. List all my stuff, batch them by type, put it on the calendar, hold myself accountable. If someone were to take those four action steps, how quickly can this go into effect? Is this a 90-day transformation? Is this a 6 month transformation? How quick can we go from my hair is on fire? As you can see, my hair was on fire. My hair is on fire, and I'm running the system that Julie taught me.

Julie Miller Davis: 21:01

So you're gonna start building out basically what I call the ideal calendars where this comes to. And you've already got stuff on your calendar. So, it's not an overnight shift. You've gotta give it time. What blocks could you put into place now? What block and then really starting to build that ideal calendar out a month from now, and it should ideally start to take hold within a month, two at the most. And you need to know that your business is gonna grow, shift, and change. Seasons affect your business, whether it's the actual seasons or there are seasons in your business. So, the calendar needs to be reviewed and adjusted with the season. You're gonna like, oh, my God. My busy season. So, you're gonna have more; you're gonna build it differently than you would in January. You know, on photographing seniors, it's crazy. You know? All summer, all fall. It's crazy. So, your calendar in the summer and fall is gonna look like Abby Miller. It's gonna look way different than January, February, March. It's just because she's still photographing. It's just different things, and it's not quite so insane if that's your gig. If and then there's a whole other thing that I talk about how to change the ebbs and flows of your business. That's another story. But you've gotten a big chunk of free stuff here.

Pat Miller: 22:26

So, Julie, don't listen. Okay. If you're watching this right now thinking. This sounds good, but I'm not sure if it'll work for me. I want you to listen to the answer to this question. Okay. Julie, listen again. It is often said, do not take advice from people who have not done it for themselves or done it for other clients. The thing that I think makes you so compelling is the way you lead your personal and business life. Yes. You've helped people create millions of hours of free time and millions of dollars in captured revenue. But the thing that I think really makes you stand out is how you personally time block the things you believe in, the things that are important to you, and the business in that order. If you don't mind sharing, can you just paint the picture of how you do that? Because to me, it is the absolute proof of this system working.

Julie Miller Davis: 23:14

Well, I have been in business for 10 years. And for most of those 10 years, I have built this multi-six figure business working on average three and a half days a week. And it is these systems, and my business is built on the way that I operate. It's something that I do, and I'm not perfect. You know, I have my moments, and my calendar gets out of control. I'm like, what's happening? I'm like, oh, my God. I got to visit my calendar. What's going on? So, but the truth is that there's plenty of time. You've just got to see it and know it, and you've got to build there I know we all wanna be spontaneous. But as a business owner, you have a we can't hold as much in our head. We're not at a job that we just leave behind when we leave. So, we've got to figure out what our routine is. What are our priorities? How do we take care of ourselves and our families and our business and pursue our passion and not feel like we're under duress all the time? And so, I golf, I ski, I hike, I play tennis, and some of those things take all day. Some of those things take half a day. Some of them take a couple of hours. And I might touch my business four days a week, but I'm not working 9 to 5, 8 to 6, 7 to 7, those days that I work. When I work, I work. When I play, I play. I'm fully present where I am, which is my mission for JMD Productivity is that you are fully present where you are. You don't feel bad that you're not with your family. You don't feel bad that you're not with your business. You're not thinking about you're not distracted by things that you're thinking about that are not where you are. And that is to me, the best thing that someone could say to me is you've given me my family back. When I'm with my family, I'm with my family. When I'm with my business, and oh, my God, Julie, I took a four-day weekend, and I did not open my computer. I did not work. And my business didn't suffer because your business won't suffer. Your business will be better.

Pat Miller: 25:25

Being overwhelmed, getting burned out, it's a choice. If you learn from Julie today and you start installing the things that she shared with you, you're gonna be a better place. Julie Miller Davis, thanks for coming on The Professional Photographer Podcast. I appreciate it.

Julie Miller Davis: 25:38

Thank you so much for having me.

Pat Miller: 25:39

Thanks so much for tuning in to this week's episode of The Professional Photographer Podcast. So, what do you think? Are you gonna give it a shot? Do you have the courage to change the way that you work? I'm cheering for you, and I hope that today's conversation was meaningful. Before you go, can you do me a favor? Let me know what you're gonna do with this. Leave us a comment on the episode. When you leave a comment, the algorithmic Gods love it, and it gives us the feedback on what's resonating with you and what isn't. And of course, say it with me, like, subscribe, and share. All of that stuff is really important for us to go out and help more photographers like you. One other thing, if you're not yet a member of the Professional Photographers of America, man, you are missing it. 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 for today's episode and on our journey to get better. We appreciate your support, and we'll be right back here real soon with more tools to help you build your business with The Professional Photographer Podcast. See you next time.