AI transcript
0:00:04 – 85 bucks an hour organizing other people’s photos.
0:00:06 What’s up, what’s up, Nick Lofer here.
0:00:08 Welcome to The Signed Hustle Show,
0:00:09 part of the entrepreneur podcast network.
0:00:12 It’s the business podcast you can actually apply.
0:00:17 And on the docket today, a sign hustle I’ve never heard of
0:00:20 that can pay $5,000 plus per project.
0:00:21 You’re gonna love it.
0:00:23 It’s photo organizing.
0:00:25 And apparently it’s in high demand.
0:00:27 My guest says she’s got more than enough work.
0:00:28 Keep yourself busy full time.
0:00:31 And it’s built into a six-week business process
0:00:34 from mymemoryfile.com.
0:00:37 Cheryl DeFrank, welcome to The Signed Hustle Show.
0:00:38 – Thanks so much for having me, Nick.
0:00:39 I’m thrilled to be here.
0:00:40 – Me as well.
0:00:41 Looking forward to this one.
0:00:44 Stick around, we’re gonna learn how all of this works,
0:00:46 who it might be a good fit for,
0:00:48 and how to get this thing off the ground.
0:00:51 But I wanna talk about this transition moment from,
0:00:54 really, there are people who would pay me to do this,
0:00:56 to actually landing that first client.
0:01:01 Walk me through the early days of my memory file business.
0:01:02 – It was quite a surprise to me.
0:01:05 I was kind of in between jobs,
0:01:06 trying to figure out what my next thing was gonna be.
0:01:09 I was just helping a friend organize her digital photos,
0:01:11 all her photos on her phone and her computer.
0:01:13 And she just couldn’t handle it and was overwhelmed.
0:01:15 And so I was just helping her out,
0:01:16 just getting things organized.
0:01:18 And she said to me, she said,
0:01:19 “You should do this as a job.”
0:01:21 And I thought, that’s crazy.
0:01:22 That’s not a job.
0:01:23 That’s not a thing.
0:01:25 So I kind of dismissed it.
0:01:27 And I just happened to be talking to my sister
0:01:30 who lives in a different state.
0:01:31 It’s crazy idea that my friend had.
0:01:34 And my sister said, “Oh yeah, I have a friend that does that.”
0:01:37 And I just thought, what in the world,
0:01:39 that there is actually somebody who does this?
0:01:40 – Yeah, this is a thing.
0:01:41 – This is a thing.
0:01:43 At least this woman has figured out how to do this.
0:01:45 And then my sister said to me,
0:01:47 “Yeah, and my friend who does this
0:01:49 is a member of an organization,
0:01:51 a trade association of photo organizers.”
0:01:53 I thought, well, that’s crazy that there’s not only one,
0:01:55 but apparently there’s more than one.
0:01:57 – So you’re gonna have to have its own association, yeah.
0:01:59 – Exactly, to have their own association.
0:02:01 So obviously I got in touch with this friend of my sister
0:02:04 who put me in touch with the organization,
0:02:05 which is called the photo managers.
0:02:07 And the rest is history.
0:02:09 As soon as I kind of decided I was so excited,
0:02:11 I learned kind of the potential.
0:02:13 I talked to other photo organizers.
0:02:15 I decided to kind of go with it.
0:02:18 And pretty much from the get-go,
0:02:21 as soon as I talk to people and tell them what I do,
0:02:22 the reaction is always,
0:02:24 “Oh my gosh, I need to hire you.”
0:02:28 I had no idea that I could hire somebody to do this.
0:02:29 They’re just thrilled.
0:02:32 And granted, not everybody turns into a client, of course,
0:02:35 but the number of people who are just so excited and thrilled
0:02:38 to know they could hire somebody to do it is the same thing.
0:02:41 We’re all capable of cleaning our own homes,
0:02:42 but many of us don’t want to,
0:02:44 or we just don’t have the bandwidth to do it.
0:02:46 And this is a much, much bigger project,
0:02:48 a much more emotional project for many people.
0:02:51 It creates so much stress for them,
0:02:53 knowing that their photos are in the attic
0:02:56 and have them forbid if the house burns down,
0:02:58 or, “Gosh, I wish I could find that picture
0:03:01 of my great-grandmother,” or, “What happens?
0:03:05 I’m so worried that my phone’s gonna fall in the toilet
0:03:07 and I’m gonna lose all the pictures of my kids.”
0:03:08 And they’re just so thrilled to know
0:03:10 that there’s somebody that will help them with it.
0:03:13 A lot of times, I’ll be at like a cocktail party or something
0:03:14 where everyone says, “Oh, what do you do?
0:03:15 What do you do?
0:03:16 What do you do?”
0:03:17 And, “Oh, I’m a lawyer, okay, great.”
0:03:19 Or, “Oh, I’m a whatever, okay, great.
0:03:21 Oh, I’m a photo organizer.”
0:03:24 And everybody stops.
0:03:27 Like, I mean, they’re just so curious and excited and so on.
0:03:29 So, it has been a great ride.
0:03:30 It has been a great career.
0:03:32 – It’s fascinating, ’cause right,
0:03:34 I mean, we’re 600 episodes into this show
0:03:35 and I never heard of it as a thing.
0:03:39 There’s this education component in the marketplace
0:03:41 that you could hire somebody like Cheryl
0:03:45 to come and help you out with this heavy anxiety feeling
0:03:46 of, “How do I digitize?
0:03:48 How do I back this stuff up?
0:03:48 How do I organize?”
0:03:51 Like, there is a lot of emotion surrounding that
0:03:54 and a level of trust and like, “Wow, would somebody else
0:03:56 do it the way that I would want it done?”
0:03:57 And all of that.
0:03:59 So, you find the photo managers.
0:04:01 There’s a professional organization.
0:04:03 And we had another guest who he was talking about.
0:04:04 He’s starting a software business.
0:04:06 He’s like, “If it is a big enough industry
0:04:09 to have its own association, it’s worth going after.”
0:04:11 It’s more niche than that, maybe not.
0:04:12 But what happens from that point?
0:04:14 Your sister says, “I’ve got a friend of mine
0:04:15 who’s doing this.”
0:04:17 From that point to first paying a customer
0:04:20 or practicing for free first with another friend.
0:04:22 Like, how do you go from zero to one here?
0:04:23 It was pretty quick.
0:04:25 The friend that I was helping who had this initial idea,
0:04:28 who I will always credit to me being in this business.
0:04:32 So, I did her photos for free to kind of get some confidence
0:04:34 and just kind of see how it worked
0:04:37 or if I was able to, really.
0:04:40 And then I just started talking to friends.
0:04:43 And my first actual paying client was another friend
0:04:45 who just said, “Hey, can you help me out
0:04:46 with the photos on my phone?
0:04:47 Because they’re such a mess.
0:04:48 I know I’ve got so many duplicates.
0:04:51 Everybody has tons of duplicates.”
0:04:52 It was a relatively small project,
0:04:55 but I helped her out and she was grateful.
0:04:58 And then she just started talking to other people.
0:05:02 A lot of people would say to start with friends and family.
0:05:04 And that’s a good idea.
0:05:05 I mean, they obviously will already kind of have
0:05:06 a certain amount of faith in you
0:05:08 and already want to support you.
0:05:10 But it can also be a little bit hard
0:05:11 to work with friends and family.
0:05:14 So, I kind of started spreading the word
0:05:15 as quickly as possible.
0:05:17 I’m on a neighborhood listserv.
0:05:19 So, which is kind of like next to them.
0:05:20 It’s basically an email listserv.
0:05:23 All the families in my kid’s school are on a listserv.
0:05:25 All the people that belong to our pool
0:05:27 are on another listserv and so on.
0:05:29 So, you’ve got all these different kind of groups.
0:05:32 Either I would post something about my services
0:05:34 and sometimes there’s rules about self-promotion,
0:05:35 but either I would post something
0:05:38 or a friend would post something for me.
0:05:40 Kind of maybe even a scripted thing like,
0:05:42 “Hey, you guys wouldn’t believe this person I found
0:05:45 to organize all your photos and give her a call.”
0:05:47 And of course now, years later,
0:05:49 my previous clients will post things
0:05:50 on their own listservs.
0:05:53 So, just the word kind of spreads
0:05:57 and the phone hasn’t really stopped ringing in 10 years
0:05:59 based on just kind of word of mouth.
0:06:01 I always say like, someone told me early on,
0:06:03 and this is probably true in every business,
0:06:06 someone told me early on to put your company name
0:06:08 and kind of a little tagline in what you do
0:06:11 at the bottom of every single email you write,
0:06:13 no matter who you’re sending it to,
0:06:15 whether it’s a business email or not.
0:06:16 Yeah, and it’s not a new concept,
0:06:20 but in my case, because it is so unique,
0:06:21 I’ll send an email to somebody
0:06:24 about my son’s La Crosse game or something
0:06:26 or La Crosse team and they’ll see what I’ll do
0:06:29 and they’ll write me back having nothing to do with La Crosse,
0:06:31 but say, “Wait, what is that you do?
0:06:32 I see you’re a photo worker.”
0:06:33 Like, “What’s that?”
0:06:35 And then might turn into a job,
0:06:36 might turn into a project.
0:06:37 – So conversation starter of nothing else
0:06:38 and we’ve talked about that.
0:06:39 – Absolutely is.
0:06:41 – That email signature space underutilized,
0:06:43 marketing real estate in some cases.
0:06:44 – Exactly.
0:06:48 – I was assuming this was going to be almost all digital,
0:06:49 but when starting locally,
0:06:51 I get maybe it is in person.
0:06:52 So it’s that box in the attic.
0:06:54 It’s like the physical pictures
0:06:57 and so does it need to be kind of a local radius for it?
0:06:58 – It’s both.
0:06:59 It’s really both.
0:07:02 The three main areas of photo organizing.
0:07:04 Number one is the print photos.
0:07:06 These are usually maybe older families
0:07:08 that still have print photos in the attic.
0:07:09 You know, it’s a mess.
0:07:10 They’ve been hiding up there for years
0:07:14 and so they’ll give me the boxes of print photos
0:07:16 for me to organize and sort
0:07:18 and usually it’s chronologically.
0:07:19 For the most part,
0:07:21 because there is a physical exchange there,
0:07:22 those are usually local clients.
0:07:26 But I’ve had people mail me boxes and boxes of photos
0:07:27 from other places.
0:07:28 So that’s one area.
0:07:31 And then the other area is digital photo organizing,
0:07:33 which is again, the photos on the phone
0:07:34 and the hard drives
0:07:35 and all those little camera cards
0:07:37 that we have in all kinds of drawers around the house
0:07:38 and so on.
0:07:41 That clients also have no idea where everything is
0:07:43 or what it’s on these hard drives.
0:07:46 So in that case, again, it certainly can be local
0:07:49 but then you can have people either send me hard drives
0:07:52 or sometimes for instance,
0:07:55 and we’ll log into their online storage.
0:07:57 So for instance, I can log into a person’s iCloud
0:07:59 or a person’s Google photos
0:08:01 or something obviously with their permission
0:08:03 and organize straight online
0:08:05 and never meet the client in person.
0:08:06 And then the third aspect,
0:08:08 which is kind of one of the main areas is scanning
0:08:10 or digitizing photos.
0:08:12 There are certain photo organizers that just do that.
0:08:14 So they just do scanning
0:08:16 and they don’t really even do the sorting process.
0:08:19 So there’s lots of different aspects.
0:08:21 And then there’s other kind of offshoots
0:08:22 like just creating photo books.
0:08:24 There are certain organizers,
0:08:25 their specialty is creating photo books
0:08:29 for all kinds of different events or slide shows,
0:08:30 kind of anything having to do with photos
0:08:35 that a lot of people either just have no idea how to do
0:08:38 or don’t wanna spend the time figuring it out.
0:08:41 Or the other thing too is working with your own photos,
0:08:42 whatever you’re doing,
0:08:43 whether you’re sorting them,
0:08:44 whether you’re creating a slideshow,
0:08:47 trying to pick the photos for the slideshow
0:08:48 is a very emotional process
0:08:50 when you’re working with your own photos.
0:08:53 So what I tell clients, which is true,
0:08:55 is there’s no emotion for me.
0:08:57 So I can do it much, much faster
0:09:00 and I’m not reliving my son’s three-year birthday party
0:09:02 in the process and so on.
0:09:04 – Yeah, it takes three times as long
0:09:06 as you’re going through everything again.
0:09:06 – Right, right.
0:09:07 – All right.
0:09:10 – So yeah, so there’s a variety of different ways,
0:09:12 different things you can do in the business.
0:09:14 – Was there anybody else doing it in your neighborhood
0:09:16 or was it a blue ocean when you were starting out?
0:09:17 – There were definitely people locally.
0:09:19 When I first joined the photo managers,
0:09:21 that was 10 years ago,
0:09:22 they put me in touch with some people
0:09:24 that were in my local area.
0:09:25 I’m in near Washington, DC.
0:09:27 So there’s kind of the tri-state,
0:09:29 DC, Maryland and Virginia area.
0:09:31 So they did, they put me in touch with a few other people
0:09:33 and we would get together periodically, locally,
0:09:36 just to kind of compare notes and just support each other
0:09:37 and so on.
0:09:40 And one of them is now still one of my closest friends.
0:09:42 She lives about 20 minutes away and we see each other
0:09:43 but we text daily, kind of,
0:09:45 “Hey, what would you do in this situation?”
0:09:46 And so on.
0:09:48 Actually, one of the nice things about the photo managers
0:09:51 is they will create regional groups.
0:09:54 We actually now meet once every two months
0:09:56 with people in the Mid-Atlantic region,
0:09:59 obviously by Zoom, but just kind of compare notes
0:10:00 and ask each other questions,
0:10:02 share stories about projects and so on.
0:10:05 – All right, I looked up photo organizing near me
0:10:09 and sure enough, this company has got 29 five-star Google
0:10:11 reviews, they’ve been in business for a while,
0:10:13 like somebody is doing it.
0:10:15 It’s interesting, but it doesn’t seem too, too cluttered
0:10:17 ’cause I think the third result is Yelp
0:10:19 and it says the best photographers in Sammamish.
0:10:22 Like, well, that’s not exactly what I’m looking for here.
0:10:23 That’s a different skill set.
0:10:24 – Right, right.
0:10:27 The good news, the reality is that you’re right.
0:10:29 It’s still not saturated at all.
0:10:31 Even in New York City or major metropolitan areas,
0:10:33 there may be several, at least members
0:10:36 of the photo managers organization doing it.
0:10:38 And there are some professional photographers
0:10:40 who I’ve seen who are getting into it,
0:10:42 who may not be members of the association,
0:10:44 but there are people getting into it,
0:10:48 but there is definitely plenty of business to go around.
0:10:52 I mean, I can’t stress enough that even in our local area,
0:10:56 there is absolutely no feeling of competition
0:10:57 or competitiveness.
0:10:59 It is really very collaborative.
0:11:02 We talk all the time and sometimes,
0:11:05 again, my colleague in Virginia will refer a client to me
0:11:09 or vice versa if she just doesn’t wanna come up to Maryland.
0:11:10 It’s a very collaborative.
0:11:11 – Customers aren’t in the position
0:11:13 of getting multiple competitive bids and say,
0:11:16 “Well, Cheryl said you do it for this price.”
0:11:17 – Yeah, yeah.
0:11:20 I think I’ve come across that maybe once in 10 years.
0:11:23 And in that case, again, we realize
0:11:25 that they’re doing competitive bidding
0:11:27 and we kind of collaborate.
0:11:28 It’s not a competitive thing.
0:11:29 It’s not like we say,
0:11:31 “Well, I’ll do it for the less to get the job.”
0:11:33 ‘Cause that never really works out anyway.
0:11:35 – So taking a look at the local competition,
0:11:38 maybe you not too much was going on
0:11:42 and even still today, not this crazy oversaturated,
0:11:45 but then opening up the local marketing playbook
0:11:48 in terms of your local neighborhood Facebook groups,
0:11:51 the next-door pages, the local list serves,
0:11:55 and almost playing this education game of here’s what I do
0:11:57 to the extent that self-promotion is allowed.
0:12:00 One of the creative ones we heard recently was,
0:12:01 “I just got my truck wrapped
0:12:04 “from this great truck wrap company.”
0:12:06 But of course, the picture of the truck
0:12:09 is blazing with this businesses logo.
0:12:11 You’re ostensibly plugging the car wrap company,
0:12:13 but subtly plugging yourself as well.
0:12:16 And then if you can have happy customers post that
0:12:18 on your behalf, that’s something that we see really commonly
0:12:19 in our neighborhood, Facebook group.
0:12:22 Hey, if anybody needs a pain in your recommendation,
0:12:24 we just had so-and-so out and they were fantastic.
0:12:26 If anybody needs a handy person,
0:12:27 you gotta give these guys a call.
0:12:29 So we hear that all the time.
0:12:29 Yeah, absolutely.
0:12:34 Anything else on the local or even online marketing front,
0:12:36 to what extent does SEO come into play,
0:12:39 or do you have to do any paid acquisition?
0:12:41 Maybe some percentage of the customer base
0:12:42 is actively seeking this out,
0:12:45 but it sounds like it’s almost more like,
0:12:46 “You know somebody who had this done,”
0:12:50 and then they tell, “Is that a typical customer flow?”
0:12:51 I think that’s a lot of it.
0:12:52 Marketing and how to get clients
0:12:54 is always a big topic of conversation
0:12:55 in photo manager meetings
0:12:57 and just among our groups and so on.
0:13:00 And I do think that word of mouth is a lot of it.
0:13:02 There’s such a trust factor here, right?
0:13:04 Because whoever you’re gonna give your photos to,
0:13:07 you have to trust that they’re gonna take care of them
0:13:09 and trust that they’re gonna be confidential and so on.
0:13:11 So I think there’s such amount of trust
0:13:13 that it really is so valuable getting that referral
0:13:16 from either someone that they trust
0:13:19 or a previous client who’s actually worked with me.
0:13:22 As far as online marketing in terms of social media,
0:13:25 honestly, I don’t do a lot of it.
0:13:26 And quite honestly, probably partially
0:13:30 just because I am not a great person at constantly posting,
0:13:31 whether it’s Facebook or Instagram,
0:13:33 and I say this all the time too,
0:13:36 I have been intending to put together a marketing plan
0:13:39 for 10 years and I just haven’t had time
0:13:42 because I’ve been too busy with paying clients.
0:13:43 – Busy doing the work, yeah.
0:13:44 – Right, right.
0:13:46 I mean, it’s still important to have it.
0:13:48 I just haven’t gotten around to it.
0:13:50 However, I certainly do know
0:13:52 that there are plenty of photo managers
0:13:53 who are much better at that,
0:13:55 who get a fair number of clients.
0:13:58 Again, you can get remote clients with the digital organizing
0:14:00 or people sending you their photos
0:14:01 ’cause they don’t know of anybody in their local area
0:14:03 and they’re thrilled to find you.
0:14:04 They’ll send you the boxes of photos.
0:14:06 I have a colleague in Colorado
0:14:08 who a client sent her a bunch of stuff
0:14:11 from I think the Midwest, that kind of thing.
0:14:14 One of the things I had done early on
0:14:17 was you have like those school auctions, right?
0:14:20 Parents are donating things or either items
0:14:22 or a week in each house or something.
0:14:26 And I would donate two or three hours of my time.
0:14:27 But the nice thing is you get the chance
0:14:29 to do a nice display of what you do.
0:14:31 And again, it catches people’s attention
0:14:32 ’cause it’s photo organizing.
0:14:36 And the nice thing is that two or three hours of my time
0:14:39 was only gonna scratch the surface of a project.
0:14:43 So I’m giving away two or three hours of my time,
0:14:48 but I know that they’re gonna most likely end up paying me
0:14:49 for many more hours
0:14:51 because the project itself is just gonna require
0:14:52 that much more.
0:14:54 – More with Sheryl in just a moment,
0:14:57 including how much she charges for this work,
0:14:58 potential startup costs
0:15:01 and how AI may impact the business right after this.
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0:17:29 – Yeah, what’s typical?
0:17:31 How do you figure out how much to charge for this stuff?
0:17:32 – I mean, I will say that is hard.
0:17:33 I tell my clients off the bat
0:17:35 that it’s really impossible
0:17:37 to know exactly how much it’s gonna cost.
0:17:39 And I know there are other photo managers
0:17:41 who are better at kind of giving an estimate
0:17:43 or they feel that they need to give an estimate.
0:17:48 I have not, because every project is so different
0:17:50 and you really don’t know what you’re gonna get
0:17:52 until you kind of dig into it
0:17:54 and get into kind of those boxes of print photos
0:17:57 or the hard drive of photos or whatever it is
0:17:59 that I will usually kind of say,
0:18:02 we’ll check in every six hours or eight hours
0:18:05 or a number that we agree that’s kind of I agree on
0:18:06 to give them a sense of where we are.
0:18:10 But I would say an average project of, again,
0:18:15 let’s say four boxes of photos from the attic,
0:18:18 I would probably say just to get those sorted and organized
0:18:21 is probably 15 hours.
0:18:23 That’s after having done it for a long time.
0:18:24 So 15 to 20 hours.
0:18:26 And then if you’re gonna scan on top of that,
0:18:28 of course, that’s obviously more time.
0:18:31 But a lot of it depends on if they wanna scan everything
0:18:34 or if they just wanna scan kind of a select percentage
0:18:35 and so on.
0:18:36 So it just depends every time.
0:18:39 – Yeah, and then what’s the hourly rate
0:18:40 and has that evolved over time
0:18:42 or is it are you just kind of set on it?
0:18:46 – The average hourly rate for what we do across the US
0:18:47 and of course it depends on your market,
0:18:50 but the average hourly rate is $100 an hour.
0:18:52 I can confidently say that there’s plenty of people
0:18:53 that are charging more than that.
0:18:57 I would say the minimum is $50 an hour.
0:18:59 That’s kind of just for someone starting out.
0:19:04 So most projects are probably minimum 20 hours to do.
0:19:07 So that’s a nice little chunk of change.
0:19:08 – Yeah, absolutely.
0:19:10 It’s like you may not take very many clients
0:19:12 to hit your income goals,
0:19:14 but it is you are working for it.
0:19:17 You’re doing the manual hands-on organizing
0:19:18 and everything else,
0:19:19 but pretty strong hourly rate for sure.
0:19:20 – Yeah, yeah.
0:19:23 And it’s nice that the hours can be very flexible, right?
0:19:26 First of all, very few clients have hard and fast deadlines.
0:19:28 They’re just so happy to hand it over to you
0:19:32 that they don’t necessarily need it done by a certain time,
0:19:33 which can be good and bad, right?
0:19:35 It’s good that there’s no pressure on us.
0:19:37 Sometimes the people with absolutely no deadline,
0:19:39 it’s easier to put them off
0:19:40 or kind of think there’s no rush with that.
0:19:41 – Yeah.
0:19:42 – But the nice thing is it’s flexible.
0:19:44 If you’ve got kids or family obligations
0:19:47 or family events that you want to participate in
0:19:49 and can’t work one day or one week,
0:19:52 it’s not necessarily a problem with most projects.
0:19:53 – So that makes it a good side hustle.
0:19:55 Like I can do it after hours.
0:19:57 I can do it after kids go to bed.
0:19:59 I can just squeeze it into the gaps in my day,
0:20:02 provided I have like some workspace to spread out
0:20:04 and do the physical sorting and scanning.
0:20:09 – Yeah, if you’re doing the physical just sorting of prints,
0:20:11 probably all you would really need
0:20:12 is some space to spread out.
0:20:14 And honestly, I have an office here that I use
0:20:15 that I have computers and so on,
0:20:17 but it doesn’t have a lot of space for me
0:20:19 to spread spread out on a big table.
0:20:21 I use my dining room table.
0:20:23 If I haven’t finished a project, I’ll kind of put it aside.
0:20:25 Obviously, when we’re using the dining room table,
0:20:27 but then I go back to the dining table.
0:20:31 So the nice thing is the investment of equipment
0:20:33 for that part of the project is minimal.
0:20:34 You really don’t need much,
0:20:37 but some rubber bands and photo safe pencils
0:20:38 and sticky notes really.
0:20:43 – And the scanner is probably the biggest ticket investment
0:20:45 is something that can get through it quickly.
0:20:45 – Right, right.
0:20:49 So as far as a scanner, a lot of photo organizers,
0:20:50 especially when they’re starting out,
0:20:53 will use what we call a speed scanner or a feed scanner,
0:20:56 kind of where you feed the photos through
0:20:57 and it goes quickly.
0:20:59 And a good one, a professional one
0:21:01 is probably around $500.
0:21:02 So it’s a bit of an investment,
0:21:06 but again, think about the fact that we usually charge,
0:21:11 it ends up working out to be about a dollar an image to scan.
0:21:15 Most people are gonna have at least 500 pictures to scan
0:21:15 in most projects.
0:21:18 So that’s usually paid for itself in one project.
0:21:20 – And one thing that’s cool is like once their images
0:21:24 are digitized, especially if it’s this old grainy photo,
0:21:27 you can run it through some AI image upscaler
0:21:30 and like you can make this like almost digitally remastered
0:21:34 type of thing, that kind of begs the next question of,
0:21:36 well, what’s the role of AI,
0:21:38 especially on the digital side to say like,
0:21:43 look, you took 13 shots of your kid blowing out the candles
0:21:45 at his birthday party, which one is the keeper here?
0:21:47 Like we don’t need 13 of them.
0:21:49 And the AI tool will help you pick,
0:21:52 and I don’t know what algorithm it’s running through.
0:21:54 Do you use any of that stuff to help speed up
0:21:56 the digital coaling side?
0:21:58 – Sometimes, there are some software options out there
0:22:01 that will kind of start that process for you, right?
0:22:04 They don’t really know who the key players are
0:22:05 necessarily in the family.
0:22:07 Like that’s one of the things I learn as I’m going through
0:22:09 these thousands of photos from a family
0:22:11 is you learn who the important people are, right?
0:22:13 Just who constantly shows up in photos.
0:22:16 The software sometimes is helpful in, yes,
0:22:20 figuring out of the 13 almost identical pictures
0:22:22 of the group, which one is the best.
0:22:24 – Yeah, it can detect like who has their eyes open.
0:22:25 – Exactly.
0:22:27 – It can do that kind of stuff, but you’re right.
0:22:28 It doesn’t know well, which kid is your kid.
0:22:30 – You know, maybe over time it would learn that.
0:22:31 I don’t know.
0:22:33 – I mean, facial recognition software has been around
0:22:36 for ages and you kind of have to teach it
0:22:38 as a person progresses in age.
0:22:40 That yes, this was Johnny as a baby
0:22:42 and that’s him as five and that’s him as 10 and so on.
0:22:43 So it does get better.
0:22:46 I think it’s gonna be quite a while before they replace us.
0:22:47 And again, with the print photos,
0:22:49 there’s no AI until they’re digitized,
0:22:52 but there’s still a lot of work to be done there.
0:22:56 And again, it’s such a personal process in many cases
0:22:59 that you really do have to kind of get to know the family
0:23:01 and the people in the photos.
0:23:03 – Okay, I’m going back to your, you know,
0:23:08 maybe it’s 20 hours times a 100 bucks an hour average rate.
0:23:12 I’m already at $2,000 and that’s just for the photos.
0:23:14 If you wanna scan stuff that it’s extra,
0:23:16 it could be thousands and thousands of dollars
0:23:17 into this project.
0:23:21 And it’s gotta be an affluent customer base.
0:23:23 It’s gotta be like, who’s paying for this stuff?
0:23:24 – So it’s interesting.
0:23:26 There’s no question that a lot of my clients
0:23:29 are clients with a decent amount of disposable income,
0:23:30 no question.
0:23:31 But then there’s also clients
0:23:33 where this is just a really important thing to them.
0:23:36 This is more important than going to Europe every year
0:23:40 or this is more important than getting the newest car.
0:23:44 This is kind of where they want to invest their money
0:23:45 because it’s their family memories.
0:23:48 I definitely would say that I have clients
0:23:52 in varying levels of income and disposable income.
0:23:54 There’s no question that there are clients
0:23:55 who when I do quote my price, they say,
0:23:56 “Oh, I just can’t afford that.”
0:23:58 And I mean, it’s unfortunate.
0:24:00 And sometimes I will try and figure out a way to help them
0:24:02 or maybe for instance, maybe I’ll say,
0:24:05 okay, look, I will sort and organize the print photos
0:24:07 for you because you really can’t do anything
0:24:08 until that’s done.
0:24:11 And then you can buy the scanner
0:24:13 and do the scanning yourself or not.
0:24:15 We can meet again next year
0:24:16 and we can do the second phase of the project.
0:24:20 I’ve definitely had clients who we pause at different times
0:24:23 and kind of pick it up again when they’re ready to.
0:24:28 – Okay, right, as timing and budget allows and everything.
0:24:29 And this is like, this is hard.
0:24:32 It’s like, you keep making more photos every month
0:24:33 that goes by and you’re like, “Hey, I took more pictures.”
0:24:36 And now eventually I gotta build a system around this.
0:24:38 Otherwise I’m gonna have the same problem again.
0:24:42 – Yeah, I think it does also make our clients,
0:24:43 I mean, first of all, they realize
0:24:46 they’ve gotten themselves into this situation.
0:24:49 Just again, especially when it comes to the digital photos
0:24:51 because we all, I mean, I’m guilty of it too.
0:24:53 Absolutely, I can’t help myself
0:24:55 but hit the shutter three or four times
0:24:58 with the same scene just in case.
0:24:59 – Yes, the film is free, let’s keep going.
0:25:00 – Exactly, exactly.
0:25:02 So I am guilty of the same thing,
0:25:05 but then I end up thinking, gosh, this is crazy.
0:25:06 Why did I do that?
0:25:08 And we get ourselves into this situation
0:25:12 and it actually has started to change my photo habits
0:25:14 ’cause I realize, okay, look,
0:25:15 I don’t need 12 versions of that photo
0:25:18 because even the one with that person’s eyes closed,
0:25:20 I still have the memory of that great moment
0:25:21 and that great party.
0:25:22 So it’s interesting.
0:25:26 People start to realize their photo taking habits change.
0:25:28 – This is what I try and do on the return flight
0:25:29 from any trip.
0:25:31 It’s something I could do in airplane mode.
0:25:33 It’s like, okay, well, I took those 13 shots.
0:25:36 Let me favor it, the best one and give her to the rest.
0:25:39 Something to kill time on the airplane.
0:25:43 On those sales calls, so you’re kind of ballparking.
0:25:45 I really don’t know how long this is gonna take
0:25:47 but here’s my hourly rate.
0:25:49 You could start off with this.
0:25:52 This is the order of operations I would suggest going in.
0:25:54 We can check in and then you get the balk
0:25:56 of like, whoa, I’m starting to add this up
0:25:58 and it’s gonna be thousands of dollars.
0:26:00 What kind of common objections or handling
0:26:01 do you have to do at that point?
0:26:03 – I think the smartest thing to do
0:26:05 and the best thing to do is to prepare them upfront
0:26:07 and not to try and sugarcoat it and not to try and say,
0:26:10 oh yeah, I think I can probably do this in 10 hours
0:26:14 or something because very often it does end up taking
0:26:18 longer than anyone hoped that it would.
0:26:19 That’s just the way it is.
0:26:22 I mean, I certainly always try and reinforce the fact
0:26:25 that it’s still gonna take me a lot less time
0:26:25 than it would take them.
0:26:27 Granted, they’re not paying anybody
0:26:30 if they do it themselves, but it will take
0:26:33 at least twice as long because of that whole emotional factor.
0:26:34 – Did they give you an answer key?
0:26:38 Here’s the family in arrows pointing to who’s who.
0:26:41 So you go back and you see this picture from 50 years ago
0:26:44 and like, well, I don’t know if this is an important one.
0:26:47 It seems very personal in a lot of ways
0:26:48 where it would be hard to delegate.
0:26:49 – It is very personal.
0:26:50 And to answer your first question,
0:26:53 in every intake meeting that I have with a new client,
0:26:56 we go through a list of not only photo gathering,
0:26:57 but information gathering,
0:26:59 all the important birth dates of everybody,
0:27:01 wedding dates, depending on how far,
0:27:03 sometimes we’re going backwards in generations, right?
0:27:05 Grandparents, great-grandparents and so on.
0:27:07 And sometimes we’re really just dealing with
0:27:11 the last 20 or 30 years of my client’s children’s lives
0:27:13 and kind of just going forward.
0:27:15 And I always say you get the birth dates and so on
0:27:18 because it’s especially if there’s children in the photo,
0:27:19 you can tell a one-year-old from a three-year-old
0:27:21 from a five-year-old and so on.
0:27:23 And so that’s an easy way to figure out
0:27:26 when the picture was taken pretty close.
0:27:28 So we gather all kinds of information, again,
0:27:30 about birth dates, wedding dates, death dates.
0:27:33 If there’s somebody in the picture that I know died in 1981,
0:27:37 then I know it’s obviously at least prior to 1981.
0:27:40 You really get to recognize faces.
0:27:42 I’ve gotten very familiar with recognizing
0:27:44 people’s faces at different ages,
0:27:48 even adults from their childhood to adulthood.
0:27:50 You get to know who the important players are.
0:27:53 And yes, hopefully the client can point out,
0:27:55 this is my parents, this is my husband’s parents.
0:27:58 – And it’s primarily, give me this box or give me these boxes
0:28:00 and I’m gonna take it back to my workshop.
0:28:02 You don’t need to be involved.
0:28:04 Or do you have people wanting to be going through
0:28:07 photo by photo and explaining the backstory of this?
0:28:09 And like, is that important?
0:28:10 I can imagine keeper toss.
0:28:15 – Yeah, I have had one, I think maybe literally one client
0:28:18 in 10 years who kind of insisted.
0:28:20 And quite honestly, this was early on
0:28:22 and I probably should have insisted to her
0:28:23 that that’s not the most efficient way to do it.
0:28:26 But I was early on in the career and I thought,
0:28:28 okay, we’ll sit and we’ll do this together.
0:28:31 It was exhausting for her, exhausting for me.
0:28:34 It went so slowly because again,
0:28:37 she would tell me a story about every picture,
0:28:39 which was lovely and was probably therapeutic for her.
0:28:43 But I mean, she was paying for a lot of extra time.
0:28:45 And I do tell people that ’cause some people just assume
0:28:47 that’s how we’re gonna do it because they think,
0:28:49 well, Cheryl, how could you possibly do it?
0:28:51 So we’re gonna have to do it together.
0:28:53 And I explained to them again,
0:28:55 how long it’s gonna take if we do it together
0:28:57 and how emotional and just stressful
0:28:59 it’s gonna be for them to do it
0:29:01 because they don’t wanna throw away anything.
0:29:02 But for the most part, they have to make,
0:29:04 it’s like making a decision every time
0:29:07 they’re looking at a photo and that’s exhausting.
0:29:09 So we kind of build this trust
0:29:11 throughout the initial part of this project.
0:29:12 They learned to trust me
0:29:15 and I try and communicate with them as much as possible.
0:29:18 And then I think a lot of it comes down to,
0:29:19 here’s your choices.
0:29:22 The choices, you can do this on your own.
0:29:23 I’m talking to the client.
0:29:24 Client can do this on their own
0:29:26 and go through the pictures and sort them
0:29:28 and kind of curate them themselves,
0:29:31 which in my mind, I’m pretty sure is not gonna happen
0:29:34 because never gets to the top of the to-do list.
0:29:35 Or we can go through it together,
0:29:37 which is just gonna take twice as long.
0:29:40 I really am happy to do that for your comfort level,
0:29:44 but it’s gonna take twice as long or you can trust me.
0:29:47 And I will go through and I will pick out
0:29:50 the best representation of every year or event
0:29:53 or vacation or whatever it is.
0:29:55 I’m not gonna throw away anything.
0:29:57 I’m never gonna throw anything away.
0:29:58 I’m just gonna put the best pictures
0:30:02 that I think are the best representation in a separate pile
0:30:04 and you can review them.
0:30:05 You can review the ones I didn’t choose
0:30:07 and if there’s anything you wanna put,
0:30:09 again, they’re never gonna do that
0:30:11 because it’s just an overwhelming task.
0:30:15 But they’re just so happy to have a curated collection.
0:30:19 I tell them, I will make sure to select something
0:30:22 from every event, even if they’re kind of blurry,
0:30:25 so that you can remember that you went there.
0:30:28 That was that dinner at that restaurant or whatever it is.
0:30:32 Be comforted in the fact that I won’t skip over any events.
0:30:33 – More with Cheryl in just a moment,
0:30:35 including how she’s growing the business
0:30:38 beyond hours for dollars right after this.
0:30:41 That kind of digitizing service or scanning service,
0:30:46 that would be, in my mind, maybe top of the funnel.
0:30:47 That’s what I think I need.
0:30:49 I wanna digitize this stuff
0:30:51 and then maybe I’m gonna go through.
0:30:52 Is that where customers come in
0:30:54 and be like, that’s part of the solution,
0:30:57 but then what we really gotta do is step two, three and four.
0:31:01 – Well, and truthfully, scanning really should be step two
0:31:04 because if you scan, if we take that big–
0:31:05 – You don’t need to scan everything yet.
0:31:07 – No, you don’t need to scan everything
0:31:09 and you don’t really even know what you have
0:31:10 until you organize it.
0:31:14 Scanning an unorganized mess,
0:31:16 you just end with a digital mess.
0:31:21 And it is really harder to sort those scanned photos
0:31:23 after they’ve been scanned.
0:31:24 So for instance, if you think about the fact
0:31:27 that I’ve got a box of print photos
0:31:29 and I’ve got my dining room table fully clean
0:31:30 and I can just spread everything out
0:31:33 on the dining room table and kind of make different piles
0:31:36 for different years and so on or different people,
0:31:38 I can kind of just see the whole thing at once
0:31:39 as I’m working on it.
0:31:41 But once it’s all scanned,
0:31:44 you’re confined to a computer screen
0:31:47 to kind of figure out where things go.
0:31:48 We tend to kind of default to,
0:31:50 you really should organize first
0:31:52 and then decide what you wanna scan
0:31:53 ’cause you’ll probably end up scanning less.
0:31:56 You’ll actually end up saving money on the scanning step.
0:31:58 – Okay, that makes sense.
0:32:01 Do you see a future where you’re the CEO
0:32:05 and then you have subcontracted photo managers?
0:32:06 It sounds like at the moment,
0:32:08 it’s we’re wearing all the hats right now,
0:32:10 like a solo service provider.
0:32:12 – I definitely am trying to grow my business.
0:32:14 There’s no question.
0:32:16 And the way that I feel comfortable doing it
0:32:18 is with employees.
0:32:21 So I actually do have two people that work for me part-time
0:32:24 that just do some of the tasks that I can hand off to them.
0:32:26 And one of them I’m training,
0:32:28 obviously the intent is to train them to do more.
0:32:32 That’s at the moment how I am growing my business.
0:32:34 I can charge my hourly rate for what they’re doing
0:32:36 ’cause they’re basically doing what I would do.
0:32:37 – Where the different levers you can pull, right?
0:32:39 We can serve more clients, we can raise rates,
0:32:42 we could expand to new geographies.
0:32:44 – Right, and passive income is another one.
0:32:45 You mentioned subcontracting
0:32:48 and actually that’s what a lot of photo organizers do,
0:32:50 work with other organizers.
0:32:51 So for instance,
0:32:54 and actually the kind of sorting scanning steps
0:32:54 is a great example.
0:32:57 So there are some photo organizers
0:32:58 that don’t wanna deal with scanning.
0:33:00 They just either don’t wanna invest in the equipment
0:33:01 or they may think it’s boring.
0:33:03 So they’ll do the sorting part
0:33:04 and then they’ll subcontract out
0:33:06 to another organizer to do the scanning part.
0:33:08 And it works great.
0:33:09 They can either do it in a sense
0:33:13 that I’m gonna pass this client onto you to my colleague
0:33:15 and my colleague is gonna give me a percentage
0:33:18 of what they charge the client.
0:33:20 Or I’m just going to,
0:33:22 everything’s still gonna come through me.
0:33:23 I’m gonna build a client,
0:33:24 but we’re gonna agree on what you’re gonna charge me
0:33:26 for the scanning and I’m probably gonna mark it up
0:33:28 to the client and so on.
0:33:30 – Yeah, are you setting everybody up
0:33:31 with their own cloud account?
0:33:33 Like that would be another potential,
0:33:34 really common in web development.
0:33:36 Like, hey, we’ll build your website,
0:33:37 but then we’ll also host it
0:33:40 and we’ll charge this ongoing maintenance fee, hosting fee.
0:33:41 It’s like something like that
0:33:44 for like the cloud backup storage for the stuff.
0:33:45 – I definitely don’t host anything.
0:33:47 It’s just not a business I really wanna get into.
0:33:48 But there are definitely services.
0:33:50 So in general,
0:33:53 the goal usually is for any client is,
0:33:54 okay, whatever we’re doing for you,
0:33:57 whether it’s just digital photo organizing
0:34:00 or sorting and scanning and digitizing things,
0:34:03 whatever it is, is anything that is ultimately digital,
0:34:05 we want to make sure is backed up
0:34:08 because you don’t wanna lose that hard drive
0:34:10 or that flash drive or wherever the scans are.
0:34:12 So we certainly encourage people to back up
0:34:16 in kind of multiple places and one of them being online.
0:34:17 One of them actually being offline
0:34:20 and a lot of that comes down to the client’s comfort level
0:34:22 or where they already are.
0:34:24 So for instance, if there’s a client
0:34:26 that already is all Apple, right?
0:34:29 And they use iCloud and Apple Photos,
0:34:31 we might put the things we scanned,
0:34:33 we might add to their Apple Photos.
0:34:34 So now that everything’s in one place
0:34:37 or same thing with Google Photos, if they use that,
0:34:38 there’s other options.
0:34:40 There’s one called forever.com,
0:34:41 which is a great website.
0:34:44 It is strictly for photos,
0:34:47 is strictly for a family photo archives.
0:34:51 And it’s a great platform, very easy to use platform.
0:34:54 This is again, kind of a passive income option
0:34:58 where it does need to be set up by a photo manager.
0:35:00 Basically, it’s an affiliate based program.
0:35:04 So if I have a client who wants to use forever,
0:35:06 they’re gonna pay the fee forever and so on,
0:35:08 but they’re going through me.
0:35:12 And anything that they purchase through forever
0:35:14 or if they have to add additional space,
0:35:17 anything they pay forever, I then get a percentage.
0:35:19 – Okay, like a reseller fee or…
0:35:20 – Right, exactly, exactly.
0:35:22 Is that recurring every year when it renews or something?
0:35:25 – No, forever itself is actually a one-time fee,
0:35:28 which is why it’s very appealing to a lot of people.
0:35:30 It’s a higher fee because it’s one time.
0:35:32 And it’s based on how much space you’re taking up.
0:35:34 But there’s a lot of families who really just,
0:35:36 they just want to know that it’s taken care of.
0:35:39 It’s guaranteed for, I can’t remember exactly,
0:35:41 but it’s guaranteed forever.
0:35:43 – For forever, you would think, yeah.
0:35:45 – And of course, there’s safeguards to put in place
0:35:46 to make sure that it passes down
0:35:48 to family members and so on.
0:35:50 So it’s a really popular platform
0:35:51 that a lot of photo managers use
0:35:53 with their clients as a backup.
0:35:56 – Okay, yeah, that may be more organized.
0:35:58 I think most of my stuff is like Google Photos right now,
0:36:01 but forever.com, all right, we’ll plug that.
0:36:02 What surprised you the most?
0:36:03 You’ve been doing this for 10 years.
0:36:05 I know you’ve got crazy client stories.
0:36:08 What stands out as a surprising moment
0:36:09 or something like that?
0:36:12 – You do see behind the curtain of your clients
0:36:14 and you do see pretty much everything.
0:36:18 So I’ve seen a few things that were a little surprising,
0:36:21 but it’s all confidential and the breastfeeding photos,
0:36:22 babies in the bath and so on,
0:36:26 but it’s all very appropriate and confidential.
0:36:28 I tell people, think of me as your photo doctor.
0:36:30 There’s no judgment and I’ve seen it all
0:36:34 and I don’t even think about it after I’ve sorted it away.
0:36:36 I think the biggest joy for me
0:36:39 is just how appreciative people really are.
0:36:42 I mean, even when they’re writing me a big fat check,
0:36:45 they are just so appreciative to have this done
0:36:48 because they really didn’t think their photos
0:36:50 would ever get organized or get preserved.
0:36:52 I’ve had people say,
0:36:55 I really thought my photos were gonna die with me
0:36:58 and that my kids would never know what to do with them.
0:36:59 My kids would not want them
0:37:03 because who’s gonna want to take all these bins of a mess?
0:37:05 – Yeah, well, and even if they do take them,
0:37:07 they’re not gonna know who’s in this picture, right?
0:37:08 – Right, exactly.
0:37:10 And that’s one of the things, obviously, again,
0:37:12 especially if we’re dealing with previous generations,
0:37:14 is we’re very careful to identify everybody
0:37:17 and make sure the whole point of preserving our photos
0:37:20 is not only for us to enjoy them now, but to pass them on
0:37:24 and to pass on those old photos of great-great-grandfather
0:37:26 and that farm that was in the family for decades
0:37:29 and all these memories, I didn’t live myself,
0:37:32 but I can hopefully maybe live them through the photos.
0:37:35 – Yeah, it’s like in Coco, where Teo Ector’s friend,
0:37:38 he’s being forgotten and he’s like fading away.
0:37:39 He’s like, no, no, no, you gotta put my picture out,
0:37:41 you gotta remember me.
0:37:44 So you’ve got a couple part-timers on the team now,
0:37:46 looking for ways to grow and scale
0:37:51 and build this into a little bit more time-leveraged operation.
0:37:52 What’s next for you?
0:37:52 Where do you wanna take it?
0:37:55 – I think the next thing, probably in order for me
0:37:57 to grow further would be to move out of my home office
0:38:00 and find rental space to work in,
0:38:02 which the nice thing is it doesn’t have to be flashy,
0:38:05 it doesn’t have to be retail space necessarily,
0:38:06 it can just be warehouse space or something,
0:38:09 just where we can kind of spread out and have more people.
0:38:11 It’s gonna be really just more people
0:38:12 that can do more projects.
0:38:14 Right now, I’ve actually got more projects
0:38:16 than, again, no deadlines,
0:38:18 so it just means they hang around longer,
0:38:20 but I mean, I’ve kind of got more clients than I can.
0:38:22 – But that’s fascinating that we had more space,
0:38:24 we could take on more business,
0:38:25 so we had more people who could like,
0:38:29 that’s really interesting that even at thousands of dollars
0:38:31 a project, people are paying it.
0:38:32 – Yep, I cannot stress enough
0:38:35 that there is plenty of work to go around.
0:38:36 I’m doing it full-time.
0:38:38 If someone wants to do it as a side hustle,
0:38:39 one or two clients a month,
0:38:42 I’m quite confident that you would have no problem
0:38:43 finding that. – Yeah.
0:38:46 – I would think even if you started talking to people
0:38:48 just about you’re thinking about doing it,
0:38:50 hey, I heard about this photo organizing
0:38:52 and I’m thinking about doing it
0:38:53 because it sounds like something I would enjoy
0:38:55 and I would be good at,
0:38:57 you should test it out and see what people’s reactions are.
0:38:59 You might find that there’ll be several people
0:39:01 right off the bat who say, “I’d hire you in a minute.”
0:39:02 – Yeah.
0:39:02 – “I’d hire you in a minute.”
0:39:04 – They’re like, “Okay, press here.”
0:39:04 – Yeah, right, exactly.
0:39:06 – Here’s my Venmo, yeah.
0:39:07 Okay.
0:39:08 – I think a lot of the reason is
0:39:11 there is so much anxiety around photos.
0:39:13 Not only around the photos in the attic,
0:39:15 because again, once those are gone
0:39:18 or once those are lost, they’re gone forever.
0:39:20 There’s so much anxiety about that.
0:39:21 And then there’s so much anxiety
0:39:23 on all the photos on our phone
0:39:25 because everybody knows
0:39:27 they have way too many photos on their phone.
0:39:29 And every time we go looking on our phone to say,
0:39:31 “Oh, I wanna show you this great picture
0:39:33 “of my daughter from camp.”
0:39:34 Hold on.
0:39:35 – Yeah, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll.
0:39:37 – Hold on, hold on, hold on, yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:39:41 And that just reinforces like I’ve got too many photos.
0:39:44 I’ve got to find a way to get to those great photos quickly.
0:39:49 So there’s so much anxiety around photos, I think, really,
0:39:52 that the idea that you could relieve some of that anxiety
0:39:56 and some of that stress is huge, is a huge bonus
0:39:59 and a huge benefit to what you could offer them.
0:40:01 So I would start talking about it.
0:40:03 – Yeah, what a unique 21st century point.
0:40:06 Like I got too many pictures, like what a time to be alive.
0:40:09 Like the truth is the film really wasn’t free.
0:40:11 Like here’s the mental cost to it.
0:40:12 But that’s fascinating.
0:40:15 So mymemoryfile.com, thephotomanagers.com
0:40:17 is the industry association.
0:40:22 If you hit up thephotomanagers.com/sidehustledownload,
0:40:24 Cheryl’s put together a couple free resources for us.
0:40:28 One is 20 different types of potential clients
0:40:31 that hire professional photo organizers.
0:40:34 We’ve talked about the families preserving different memories,
0:40:36 but lots of different types of people
0:40:38 who would be potential prospects,
0:40:40 potential customers in this space.
0:40:42 And then the other resource is a set of worksheets
0:40:46 that will help anybody considering entering photo organizing
0:40:49 as a side hustle, as a full-time business to identify,
0:40:52 okay, what’s the menu of services that I’m gonna offer
0:40:54 and what kind of clients might be a match for those?
0:40:59 So that’s thephotomanagers.com/sidehustledownload.
0:41:02 And be sure to check that out over there.
0:41:04 – And I actually wanted to add to that too.
0:41:06 I actually told Kathy at the photo managers
0:41:10 that for anybody who goes and downloads that free download
0:41:13 and then decides to then join the photo managers,
0:41:16 the first three people who do join the photo managers,
0:41:19 I would be happy to give a free 30-minute consultation
0:41:22 to answer any questions, give any tips,
0:41:24 tell more about how I got into it
0:41:26 and what kind of projects I do.
0:41:28 – Yeah, very generous, appreciate you sharing that.
0:41:33 Again, thephotomanagers.com/sidehustledownload.
0:41:35 Cheryl, thanks so much for joining me.
0:41:36 So let’s wrap this thing up
0:41:38 with your number one tip for side hustle nation.
0:41:40 – Find something that you love doing.
0:41:42 And again, I love working with photos
0:41:45 and I never thought it would have turned into a business
0:41:47 and it has, I mean, it’s turned into a wonderful business
0:41:51 and I really, really love going to work every day
0:41:52 and your clients will know it too.
0:41:55 But find people, find community that can support you
0:41:57 because that’s, especially if it’s a side hustle
0:42:00 where you’re working independently, it’s critical
0:42:02 and can make or break the hustle.
0:42:04 – That’s so lonely to be like, I’m doing this thing
0:42:07 but I don’t have anybody to bounce ideas off of
0:42:10 or get feedback or even figure out
0:42:11 what my next step is gonna be.
0:42:12 – Yeah, but there is a community here
0:42:14 so it’s there to lift everybody up.
0:42:16 – Very good.
0:42:18 I think one of the biggest surprises for me
0:42:21 was this market education component
0:42:25 of like letting people know that such a thing exists
0:42:28 and then the reaction in a lot of cases
0:42:31 if there is budget in somebody’s household income
0:42:34 to allow for it, be like, oh, can you start with mine?
0:42:36 Here, I know three people that you ought to,
0:42:39 I go to try and get that word of mouth spin in
0:42:41 but you can kind of start to play
0:42:43 the local marketing playbook.
0:42:46 I love the idea of sponsoring the school auction
0:42:48 to get in front of 200, 300 parents.
0:42:51 Even just only costs you a few hours of your time
0:42:53 and it may even just be a sampler of a larger project
0:42:55 or a starter of that larger project.
0:42:58 But that’s actually your listener only bonus for this week.
0:43:01 It’s my local marketing checklist, 10 proven ideas
0:43:04 that you can use to increase the lead flow for your business.
0:43:05 You can download that for free
0:43:07 at the show notes for this episode
0:43:11 at sidehustle-nation.com/sharyl with a C
0:43:14 or just follow the show notes link in the episode description
0:43:15 and I’ll get you right over there.
0:43:17 Big thanks to Cheryl for sharing her insight.
0:43:19 I’ve taken a ton of notes as I always do.
0:43:21 Big thanks to our sponsors for helping
0:43:23 make this content free for everyone.
0:43:25 You can hit up sidehustle-nation.com/deals
0:43:29 for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place.
0:43:30 And thanks for supporting the advertisers
0:43:32 that support the show.
0:43:33 That’s it for me.
0:43:34 Thank you so much for tuning in.
0:43:36 If you’re finding value in the show,
0:43:39 the greatest compliment is to share with a friend.
0:43:41 We talked about the importance of word of mouth.
0:43:42 So fire off that text message.
0:43:44 Hey, did you know you can make money doing this?
0:43:47 Until next time, let’s go out there and make something happen
0:43:48 and I’ll catch you in the next edition
0:43:50 of the Side Hustle Show.
0:43:51 Hustle on.
0:43:55 As a side hustle show listener, I know you’re driven.
0:43:56 Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here.
0:43:59 But I also know you can end up hustling
0:44:02 and driving yourself into exhaustion, overwhelm
0:44:04 and even burnout if you don’t stay anchored
0:44:06 to why you’re doing it.
0:44:08 That’s why I want to recommend another podcast
0:44:10 that will massively support your side hustle.
0:44:13 It’s called What Drives You with host Kevin Miller.
0:44:15 Kevin’s a former pro athlete.
0:44:17 He’s a lifelong entrepreneur
0:44:18 who started 19 different businesses.
0:44:21 He’s a father of nine kids, an author
0:44:23 and a mountain adventurer as well.
0:44:26 He knows both the glory and the dark side of drive
0:44:28 and has devoted his life to helping people
0:44:30 who want to drive further, faster,
0:44:33 but also enjoy the ride every single day.
0:44:35 He brings on today’s most influential people
0:44:37 in personal and business development
0:44:39 to see what drives them and get their guidance
0:44:42 on the key ingredients that power our own drive.
0:44:44 If you want to fully harness your drive
0:44:46 and find peace and fulfillment in the process,
0:44:49 go find What Drives You with Kevin Miller,
0:44:50 wherever you listen to podcasts.
0:00:06 What’s up, what’s up, Nick Lofer here.
0:00:08 Welcome to The Signed Hustle Show,
0:00:09 part of the entrepreneur podcast network.
0:00:12 It’s the business podcast you can actually apply.
0:00:17 And on the docket today, a sign hustle I’ve never heard of
0:00:20 that can pay $5,000 plus per project.
0:00:21 You’re gonna love it.
0:00:23 It’s photo organizing.
0:00:25 And apparently it’s in high demand.
0:00:27 My guest says she’s got more than enough work.
0:00:28 Keep yourself busy full time.
0:00:31 And it’s built into a six-week business process
0:00:34 from mymemoryfile.com.
0:00:37 Cheryl DeFrank, welcome to The Signed Hustle Show.
0:00:38 – Thanks so much for having me, Nick.
0:00:39 I’m thrilled to be here.
0:00:40 – Me as well.
0:00:41 Looking forward to this one.
0:00:44 Stick around, we’re gonna learn how all of this works,
0:00:46 who it might be a good fit for,
0:00:48 and how to get this thing off the ground.
0:00:51 But I wanna talk about this transition moment from,
0:00:54 really, there are people who would pay me to do this,
0:00:56 to actually landing that first client.
0:01:01 Walk me through the early days of my memory file business.
0:01:02 – It was quite a surprise to me.
0:01:05 I was kind of in between jobs,
0:01:06 trying to figure out what my next thing was gonna be.
0:01:09 I was just helping a friend organize her digital photos,
0:01:11 all her photos on her phone and her computer.
0:01:13 And she just couldn’t handle it and was overwhelmed.
0:01:15 And so I was just helping her out,
0:01:16 just getting things organized.
0:01:18 And she said to me, she said,
0:01:19 “You should do this as a job.”
0:01:21 And I thought, that’s crazy.
0:01:22 That’s not a job.
0:01:23 That’s not a thing.
0:01:25 So I kind of dismissed it.
0:01:27 And I just happened to be talking to my sister
0:01:30 who lives in a different state.
0:01:31 It’s crazy idea that my friend had.
0:01:34 And my sister said, “Oh yeah, I have a friend that does that.”
0:01:37 And I just thought, what in the world,
0:01:39 that there is actually somebody who does this?
0:01:40 – Yeah, this is a thing.
0:01:41 – This is a thing.
0:01:43 At least this woman has figured out how to do this.
0:01:45 And then my sister said to me,
0:01:47 “Yeah, and my friend who does this
0:01:49 is a member of an organization,
0:01:51 a trade association of photo organizers.”
0:01:53 I thought, well, that’s crazy that there’s not only one,
0:01:55 but apparently there’s more than one.
0:01:57 – So you’re gonna have to have its own association, yeah.
0:01:59 – Exactly, to have their own association.
0:02:01 So obviously I got in touch with this friend of my sister
0:02:04 who put me in touch with the organization,
0:02:05 which is called the photo managers.
0:02:07 And the rest is history.
0:02:09 As soon as I kind of decided I was so excited,
0:02:11 I learned kind of the potential.
0:02:13 I talked to other photo organizers.
0:02:15 I decided to kind of go with it.
0:02:18 And pretty much from the get-go,
0:02:21 as soon as I talk to people and tell them what I do,
0:02:22 the reaction is always,
0:02:24 “Oh my gosh, I need to hire you.”
0:02:28 I had no idea that I could hire somebody to do this.
0:02:29 They’re just thrilled.
0:02:32 And granted, not everybody turns into a client, of course,
0:02:35 but the number of people who are just so excited and thrilled
0:02:38 to know they could hire somebody to do it is the same thing.
0:02:41 We’re all capable of cleaning our own homes,
0:02:42 but many of us don’t want to,
0:02:44 or we just don’t have the bandwidth to do it.
0:02:46 And this is a much, much bigger project,
0:02:48 a much more emotional project for many people.
0:02:51 It creates so much stress for them,
0:02:53 knowing that their photos are in the attic
0:02:56 and have them forbid if the house burns down,
0:02:58 or, “Gosh, I wish I could find that picture
0:03:01 of my great-grandmother,” or, “What happens?
0:03:05 I’m so worried that my phone’s gonna fall in the toilet
0:03:07 and I’m gonna lose all the pictures of my kids.”
0:03:08 And they’re just so thrilled to know
0:03:10 that there’s somebody that will help them with it.
0:03:13 A lot of times, I’ll be at like a cocktail party or something
0:03:14 where everyone says, “Oh, what do you do?
0:03:15 What do you do?
0:03:16 What do you do?”
0:03:17 And, “Oh, I’m a lawyer, okay, great.”
0:03:19 Or, “Oh, I’m a whatever, okay, great.
0:03:21 Oh, I’m a photo organizer.”
0:03:24 And everybody stops.
0:03:27 Like, I mean, they’re just so curious and excited and so on.
0:03:29 So, it has been a great ride.
0:03:30 It has been a great career.
0:03:32 – It’s fascinating, ’cause right,
0:03:34 I mean, we’re 600 episodes into this show
0:03:35 and I never heard of it as a thing.
0:03:39 There’s this education component in the marketplace
0:03:41 that you could hire somebody like Cheryl
0:03:45 to come and help you out with this heavy anxiety feeling
0:03:46 of, “How do I digitize?
0:03:48 How do I back this stuff up?
0:03:48 How do I organize?”
0:03:51 Like, there is a lot of emotion surrounding that
0:03:54 and a level of trust and like, “Wow, would somebody else
0:03:56 do it the way that I would want it done?”
0:03:57 And all of that.
0:03:59 So, you find the photo managers.
0:04:01 There’s a professional organization.
0:04:03 And we had another guest who he was talking about.
0:04:04 He’s starting a software business.
0:04:06 He’s like, “If it is a big enough industry
0:04:09 to have its own association, it’s worth going after.”
0:04:11 It’s more niche than that, maybe not.
0:04:12 But what happens from that point?
0:04:14 Your sister says, “I’ve got a friend of mine
0:04:15 who’s doing this.”
0:04:17 From that point to first paying a customer
0:04:20 or practicing for free first with another friend.
0:04:22 Like, how do you go from zero to one here?
0:04:23 It was pretty quick.
0:04:25 The friend that I was helping who had this initial idea,
0:04:28 who I will always credit to me being in this business.
0:04:32 So, I did her photos for free to kind of get some confidence
0:04:34 and just kind of see how it worked
0:04:37 or if I was able to, really.
0:04:40 And then I just started talking to friends.
0:04:43 And my first actual paying client was another friend
0:04:45 who just said, “Hey, can you help me out
0:04:46 with the photos on my phone?
0:04:47 Because they’re such a mess.
0:04:48 I know I’ve got so many duplicates.
0:04:51 Everybody has tons of duplicates.”
0:04:52 It was a relatively small project,
0:04:55 but I helped her out and she was grateful.
0:04:58 And then she just started talking to other people.
0:05:02 A lot of people would say to start with friends and family.
0:05:04 And that’s a good idea.
0:05:05 I mean, they obviously will already kind of have
0:05:06 a certain amount of faith in you
0:05:08 and already want to support you.
0:05:10 But it can also be a little bit hard
0:05:11 to work with friends and family.
0:05:14 So, I kind of started spreading the word
0:05:15 as quickly as possible.
0:05:17 I’m on a neighborhood listserv.
0:05:19 So, which is kind of like next to them.
0:05:20 It’s basically an email listserv.
0:05:23 All the families in my kid’s school are on a listserv.
0:05:25 All the people that belong to our pool
0:05:27 are on another listserv and so on.
0:05:29 So, you’ve got all these different kind of groups.
0:05:32 Either I would post something about my services
0:05:34 and sometimes there’s rules about self-promotion,
0:05:35 but either I would post something
0:05:38 or a friend would post something for me.
0:05:40 Kind of maybe even a scripted thing like,
0:05:42 “Hey, you guys wouldn’t believe this person I found
0:05:45 to organize all your photos and give her a call.”
0:05:47 And of course now, years later,
0:05:49 my previous clients will post things
0:05:50 on their own listservs.
0:05:53 So, just the word kind of spreads
0:05:57 and the phone hasn’t really stopped ringing in 10 years
0:05:59 based on just kind of word of mouth.
0:06:01 I always say like, someone told me early on,
0:06:03 and this is probably true in every business,
0:06:06 someone told me early on to put your company name
0:06:08 and kind of a little tagline in what you do
0:06:11 at the bottom of every single email you write,
0:06:13 no matter who you’re sending it to,
0:06:15 whether it’s a business email or not.
0:06:16 Yeah, and it’s not a new concept,
0:06:20 but in my case, because it is so unique,
0:06:21 I’ll send an email to somebody
0:06:24 about my son’s La Crosse game or something
0:06:26 or La Crosse team and they’ll see what I’ll do
0:06:29 and they’ll write me back having nothing to do with La Crosse,
0:06:31 but say, “Wait, what is that you do?
0:06:32 I see you’re a photo worker.”
0:06:33 Like, “What’s that?”
0:06:35 And then might turn into a job,
0:06:36 might turn into a project.
0:06:37 – So conversation starter of nothing else
0:06:38 and we’ve talked about that.
0:06:39 – Absolutely is.
0:06:41 – That email signature space underutilized,
0:06:43 marketing real estate in some cases.
0:06:44 – Exactly.
0:06:48 – I was assuming this was going to be almost all digital,
0:06:49 but when starting locally,
0:06:51 I get maybe it is in person.
0:06:52 So it’s that box in the attic.
0:06:54 It’s like the physical pictures
0:06:57 and so does it need to be kind of a local radius for it?
0:06:58 – It’s both.
0:06:59 It’s really both.
0:07:02 The three main areas of photo organizing.
0:07:04 Number one is the print photos.
0:07:06 These are usually maybe older families
0:07:08 that still have print photos in the attic.
0:07:09 You know, it’s a mess.
0:07:10 They’ve been hiding up there for years
0:07:14 and so they’ll give me the boxes of print photos
0:07:16 for me to organize and sort
0:07:18 and usually it’s chronologically.
0:07:19 For the most part,
0:07:21 because there is a physical exchange there,
0:07:22 those are usually local clients.
0:07:26 But I’ve had people mail me boxes and boxes of photos
0:07:27 from other places.
0:07:28 So that’s one area.
0:07:31 And then the other area is digital photo organizing,
0:07:33 which is again, the photos on the phone
0:07:34 and the hard drives
0:07:35 and all those little camera cards
0:07:37 that we have in all kinds of drawers around the house
0:07:38 and so on.
0:07:41 That clients also have no idea where everything is
0:07:43 or what it’s on these hard drives.
0:07:46 So in that case, again, it certainly can be local
0:07:49 but then you can have people either send me hard drives
0:07:52 or sometimes for instance,
0:07:55 and we’ll log into their online storage.
0:07:57 So for instance, I can log into a person’s iCloud
0:07:59 or a person’s Google photos
0:08:01 or something obviously with their permission
0:08:03 and organize straight online
0:08:05 and never meet the client in person.
0:08:06 And then the third aspect,
0:08:08 which is kind of one of the main areas is scanning
0:08:10 or digitizing photos.
0:08:12 There are certain photo organizers that just do that.
0:08:14 So they just do scanning
0:08:16 and they don’t really even do the sorting process.
0:08:19 So there’s lots of different aspects.
0:08:21 And then there’s other kind of offshoots
0:08:22 like just creating photo books.
0:08:24 There are certain organizers,
0:08:25 their specialty is creating photo books
0:08:29 for all kinds of different events or slide shows,
0:08:30 kind of anything having to do with photos
0:08:35 that a lot of people either just have no idea how to do
0:08:38 or don’t wanna spend the time figuring it out.
0:08:41 Or the other thing too is working with your own photos,
0:08:42 whatever you’re doing,
0:08:43 whether you’re sorting them,
0:08:44 whether you’re creating a slideshow,
0:08:47 trying to pick the photos for the slideshow
0:08:48 is a very emotional process
0:08:50 when you’re working with your own photos.
0:08:53 So what I tell clients, which is true,
0:08:55 is there’s no emotion for me.
0:08:57 So I can do it much, much faster
0:09:00 and I’m not reliving my son’s three-year birthday party
0:09:02 in the process and so on.
0:09:04 – Yeah, it takes three times as long
0:09:06 as you’re going through everything again.
0:09:06 – Right, right.
0:09:07 – All right.
0:09:10 – So yeah, so there’s a variety of different ways,
0:09:12 different things you can do in the business.
0:09:14 – Was there anybody else doing it in your neighborhood
0:09:16 or was it a blue ocean when you were starting out?
0:09:17 – There were definitely people locally.
0:09:19 When I first joined the photo managers,
0:09:21 that was 10 years ago,
0:09:22 they put me in touch with some people
0:09:24 that were in my local area.
0:09:25 I’m in near Washington, DC.
0:09:27 So there’s kind of the tri-state,
0:09:29 DC, Maryland and Virginia area.
0:09:31 So they did, they put me in touch with a few other people
0:09:33 and we would get together periodically, locally,
0:09:36 just to kind of compare notes and just support each other
0:09:37 and so on.
0:09:40 And one of them is now still one of my closest friends.
0:09:42 She lives about 20 minutes away and we see each other
0:09:43 but we text daily, kind of,
0:09:45 “Hey, what would you do in this situation?”
0:09:46 And so on.
0:09:48 Actually, one of the nice things about the photo managers
0:09:51 is they will create regional groups.
0:09:54 We actually now meet once every two months
0:09:56 with people in the Mid-Atlantic region,
0:09:59 obviously by Zoom, but just kind of compare notes
0:10:00 and ask each other questions,
0:10:02 share stories about projects and so on.
0:10:05 – All right, I looked up photo organizing near me
0:10:09 and sure enough, this company has got 29 five-star Google
0:10:11 reviews, they’ve been in business for a while,
0:10:13 like somebody is doing it.
0:10:15 It’s interesting, but it doesn’t seem too, too cluttered
0:10:17 ’cause I think the third result is Yelp
0:10:19 and it says the best photographers in Sammamish.
0:10:22 Like, well, that’s not exactly what I’m looking for here.
0:10:23 That’s a different skill set.
0:10:24 – Right, right.
0:10:27 The good news, the reality is that you’re right.
0:10:29 It’s still not saturated at all.
0:10:31 Even in New York City or major metropolitan areas,
0:10:33 there may be several, at least members
0:10:36 of the photo managers organization doing it.
0:10:38 And there are some professional photographers
0:10:40 who I’ve seen who are getting into it,
0:10:42 who may not be members of the association,
0:10:44 but there are people getting into it,
0:10:48 but there is definitely plenty of business to go around.
0:10:52 I mean, I can’t stress enough that even in our local area,
0:10:56 there is absolutely no feeling of competition
0:10:57 or competitiveness.
0:10:59 It is really very collaborative.
0:11:02 We talk all the time and sometimes,
0:11:05 again, my colleague in Virginia will refer a client to me
0:11:09 or vice versa if she just doesn’t wanna come up to Maryland.
0:11:10 It’s a very collaborative.
0:11:11 – Customers aren’t in the position
0:11:13 of getting multiple competitive bids and say,
0:11:16 “Well, Cheryl said you do it for this price.”
0:11:17 – Yeah, yeah.
0:11:20 I think I’ve come across that maybe once in 10 years.
0:11:23 And in that case, again, we realize
0:11:25 that they’re doing competitive bidding
0:11:27 and we kind of collaborate.
0:11:28 It’s not a competitive thing.
0:11:29 It’s not like we say,
0:11:31 “Well, I’ll do it for the less to get the job.”
0:11:33 ‘Cause that never really works out anyway.
0:11:35 – So taking a look at the local competition,
0:11:38 maybe you not too much was going on
0:11:42 and even still today, not this crazy oversaturated,
0:11:45 but then opening up the local marketing playbook
0:11:48 in terms of your local neighborhood Facebook groups,
0:11:51 the next-door pages, the local list serves,
0:11:55 and almost playing this education game of here’s what I do
0:11:57 to the extent that self-promotion is allowed.
0:12:00 One of the creative ones we heard recently was,
0:12:01 “I just got my truck wrapped
0:12:04 “from this great truck wrap company.”
0:12:06 But of course, the picture of the truck
0:12:09 is blazing with this businesses logo.
0:12:11 You’re ostensibly plugging the car wrap company,
0:12:13 but subtly plugging yourself as well.
0:12:16 And then if you can have happy customers post that
0:12:18 on your behalf, that’s something that we see really commonly
0:12:19 in our neighborhood, Facebook group.
0:12:22 Hey, if anybody needs a pain in your recommendation,
0:12:24 we just had so-and-so out and they were fantastic.
0:12:26 If anybody needs a handy person,
0:12:27 you gotta give these guys a call.
0:12:29 So we hear that all the time.
0:12:29 Yeah, absolutely.
0:12:34 Anything else on the local or even online marketing front,
0:12:36 to what extent does SEO come into play,
0:12:39 or do you have to do any paid acquisition?
0:12:41 Maybe some percentage of the customer base
0:12:42 is actively seeking this out,
0:12:45 but it sounds like it’s almost more like,
0:12:46 “You know somebody who had this done,”
0:12:50 and then they tell, “Is that a typical customer flow?”
0:12:51 I think that’s a lot of it.
0:12:52 Marketing and how to get clients
0:12:54 is always a big topic of conversation
0:12:55 in photo manager meetings
0:12:57 and just among our groups and so on.
0:13:00 And I do think that word of mouth is a lot of it.
0:13:02 There’s such a trust factor here, right?
0:13:04 Because whoever you’re gonna give your photos to,
0:13:07 you have to trust that they’re gonna take care of them
0:13:09 and trust that they’re gonna be confidential and so on.
0:13:11 So I think there’s such amount of trust
0:13:13 that it really is so valuable getting that referral
0:13:16 from either someone that they trust
0:13:19 or a previous client who’s actually worked with me.
0:13:22 As far as online marketing in terms of social media,
0:13:25 honestly, I don’t do a lot of it.
0:13:26 And quite honestly, probably partially
0:13:30 just because I am not a great person at constantly posting,
0:13:31 whether it’s Facebook or Instagram,
0:13:33 and I say this all the time too,
0:13:36 I have been intending to put together a marketing plan
0:13:39 for 10 years and I just haven’t had time
0:13:42 because I’ve been too busy with paying clients.
0:13:43 – Busy doing the work, yeah.
0:13:44 – Right, right.
0:13:46 I mean, it’s still important to have it.
0:13:48 I just haven’t gotten around to it.
0:13:50 However, I certainly do know
0:13:52 that there are plenty of photo managers
0:13:53 who are much better at that,
0:13:55 who get a fair number of clients.
0:13:58 Again, you can get remote clients with the digital organizing
0:14:00 or people sending you their photos
0:14:01 ’cause they don’t know of anybody in their local area
0:14:03 and they’re thrilled to find you.
0:14:04 They’ll send you the boxes of photos.
0:14:06 I have a colleague in Colorado
0:14:08 who a client sent her a bunch of stuff
0:14:11 from I think the Midwest, that kind of thing.
0:14:14 One of the things I had done early on
0:14:17 was you have like those school auctions, right?
0:14:20 Parents are donating things or either items
0:14:22 or a week in each house or something.
0:14:26 And I would donate two or three hours of my time.
0:14:27 But the nice thing is you get the chance
0:14:29 to do a nice display of what you do.
0:14:31 And again, it catches people’s attention
0:14:32 ’cause it’s photo organizing.
0:14:36 And the nice thing is that two or three hours of my time
0:14:39 was only gonna scratch the surface of a project.
0:14:43 So I’m giving away two or three hours of my time,
0:14:48 but I know that they’re gonna most likely end up paying me
0:14:49 for many more hours
0:14:51 because the project itself is just gonna require
0:14:52 that much more.
0:14:54 – More with Sheryl in just a moment,
0:14:57 including how much she charges for this work,
0:14:58 potential startup costs
0:15:01 and how AI may impact the business right after this.
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0:17:29 – Yeah, what’s typical?
0:17:31 How do you figure out how much to charge for this stuff?
0:17:32 – I mean, I will say that is hard.
0:17:33 I tell my clients off the bat
0:17:35 that it’s really impossible
0:17:37 to know exactly how much it’s gonna cost.
0:17:39 And I know there are other photo managers
0:17:41 who are better at kind of giving an estimate
0:17:43 or they feel that they need to give an estimate.
0:17:48 I have not, because every project is so different
0:17:50 and you really don’t know what you’re gonna get
0:17:52 until you kind of dig into it
0:17:54 and get into kind of those boxes of print photos
0:17:57 or the hard drive of photos or whatever it is
0:17:59 that I will usually kind of say,
0:18:02 we’ll check in every six hours or eight hours
0:18:05 or a number that we agree that’s kind of I agree on
0:18:06 to give them a sense of where we are.
0:18:10 But I would say an average project of, again,
0:18:15 let’s say four boxes of photos from the attic,
0:18:18 I would probably say just to get those sorted and organized
0:18:21 is probably 15 hours.
0:18:23 That’s after having done it for a long time.
0:18:24 So 15 to 20 hours.
0:18:26 And then if you’re gonna scan on top of that,
0:18:28 of course, that’s obviously more time.
0:18:31 But a lot of it depends on if they wanna scan everything
0:18:34 or if they just wanna scan kind of a select percentage
0:18:35 and so on.
0:18:36 So it just depends every time.
0:18:39 – Yeah, and then what’s the hourly rate
0:18:40 and has that evolved over time
0:18:42 or is it are you just kind of set on it?
0:18:46 – The average hourly rate for what we do across the US
0:18:47 and of course it depends on your market,
0:18:50 but the average hourly rate is $100 an hour.
0:18:52 I can confidently say that there’s plenty of people
0:18:53 that are charging more than that.
0:18:57 I would say the minimum is $50 an hour.
0:18:59 That’s kind of just for someone starting out.
0:19:04 So most projects are probably minimum 20 hours to do.
0:19:07 So that’s a nice little chunk of change.
0:19:08 – Yeah, absolutely.
0:19:10 It’s like you may not take very many clients
0:19:12 to hit your income goals,
0:19:14 but it is you are working for it.
0:19:17 You’re doing the manual hands-on organizing
0:19:18 and everything else,
0:19:19 but pretty strong hourly rate for sure.
0:19:20 – Yeah, yeah.
0:19:23 And it’s nice that the hours can be very flexible, right?
0:19:26 First of all, very few clients have hard and fast deadlines.
0:19:28 They’re just so happy to hand it over to you
0:19:32 that they don’t necessarily need it done by a certain time,
0:19:33 which can be good and bad, right?
0:19:35 It’s good that there’s no pressure on us.
0:19:37 Sometimes the people with absolutely no deadline,
0:19:39 it’s easier to put them off
0:19:40 or kind of think there’s no rush with that.
0:19:41 – Yeah.
0:19:42 – But the nice thing is it’s flexible.
0:19:44 If you’ve got kids or family obligations
0:19:47 or family events that you want to participate in
0:19:49 and can’t work one day or one week,
0:19:52 it’s not necessarily a problem with most projects.
0:19:53 – So that makes it a good side hustle.
0:19:55 Like I can do it after hours.
0:19:57 I can do it after kids go to bed.
0:19:59 I can just squeeze it into the gaps in my day,
0:20:02 provided I have like some workspace to spread out
0:20:04 and do the physical sorting and scanning.
0:20:09 – Yeah, if you’re doing the physical just sorting of prints,
0:20:11 probably all you would really need
0:20:12 is some space to spread out.
0:20:14 And honestly, I have an office here that I use
0:20:15 that I have computers and so on,
0:20:17 but it doesn’t have a lot of space for me
0:20:19 to spread spread out on a big table.
0:20:21 I use my dining room table.
0:20:23 If I haven’t finished a project, I’ll kind of put it aside.
0:20:25 Obviously, when we’re using the dining room table,
0:20:27 but then I go back to the dining table.
0:20:31 So the nice thing is the investment of equipment
0:20:33 for that part of the project is minimal.
0:20:34 You really don’t need much,
0:20:37 but some rubber bands and photo safe pencils
0:20:38 and sticky notes really.
0:20:43 – And the scanner is probably the biggest ticket investment
0:20:45 is something that can get through it quickly.
0:20:45 – Right, right.
0:20:49 So as far as a scanner, a lot of photo organizers,
0:20:50 especially when they’re starting out,
0:20:53 will use what we call a speed scanner or a feed scanner,
0:20:56 kind of where you feed the photos through
0:20:57 and it goes quickly.
0:20:59 And a good one, a professional one
0:21:01 is probably around $500.
0:21:02 So it’s a bit of an investment,
0:21:06 but again, think about the fact that we usually charge,
0:21:11 it ends up working out to be about a dollar an image to scan.
0:21:15 Most people are gonna have at least 500 pictures to scan
0:21:15 in most projects.
0:21:18 So that’s usually paid for itself in one project.
0:21:20 – And one thing that’s cool is like once their images
0:21:24 are digitized, especially if it’s this old grainy photo,
0:21:27 you can run it through some AI image upscaler
0:21:30 and like you can make this like almost digitally remastered
0:21:34 type of thing, that kind of begs the next question of,
0:21:36 well, what’s the role of AI,
0:21:38 especially on the digital side to say like,
0:21:43 look, you took 13 shots of your kid blowing out the candles
0:21:45 at his birthday party, which one is the keeper here?
0:21:47 Like we don’t need 13 of them.
0:21:49 And the AI tool will help you pick,
0:21:52 and I don’t know what algorithm it’s running through.
0:21:54 Do you use any of that stuff to help speed up
0:21:56 the digital coaling side?
0:21:58 – Sometimes, there are some software options out there
0:22:01 that will kind of start that process for you, right?
0:22:04 They don’t really know who the key players are
0:22:05 necessarily in the family.
0:22:07 Like that’s one of the things I learn as I’m going through
0:22:09 these thousands of photos from a family
0:22:11 is you learn who the important people are, right?
0:22:13 Just who constantly shows up in photos.
0:22:16 The software sometimes is helpful in, yes,
0:22:20 figuring out of the 13 almost identical pictures
0:22:22 of the group, which one is the best.
0:22:24 – Yeah, it can detect like who has their eyes open.
0:22:25 – Exactly.
0:22:27 – It can do that kind of stuff, but you’re right.
0:22:28 It doesn’t know well, which kid is your kid.
0:22:30 – You know, maybe over time it would learn that.
0:22:31 I don’t know.
0:22:33 – I mean, facial recognition software has been around
0:22:36 for ages and you kind of have to teach it
0:22:38 as a person progresses in age.
0:22:40 That yes, this was Johnny as a baby
0:22:42 and that’s him as five and that’s him as 10 and so on.
0:22:43 So it does get better.
0:22:46 I think it’s gonna be quite a while before they replace us.
0:22:47 And again, with the print photos,
0:22:49 there’s no AI until they’re digitized,
0:22:52 but there’s still a lot of work to be done there.
0:22:56 And again, it’s such a personal process in many cases
0:22:59 that you really do have to kind of get to know the family
0:23:01 and the people in the photos.
0:23:03 – Okay, I’m going back to your, you know,
0:23:08 maybe it’s 20 hours times a 100 bucks an hour average rate.
0:23:12 I’m already at $2,000 and that’s just for the photos.
0:23:14 If you wanna scan stuff that it’s extra,
0:23:16 it could be thousands and thousands of dollars
0:23:17 into this project.
0:23:21 And it’s gotta be an affluent customer base.
0:23:23 It’s gotta be like, who’s paying for this stuff?
0:23:24 – So it’s interesting.
0:23:26 There’s no question that a lot of my clients
0:23:29 are clients with a decent amount of disposable income,
0:23:30 no question.
0:23:31 But then there’s also clients
0:23:33 where this is just a really important thing to them.
0:23:36 This is more important than going to Europe every year
0:23:40 or this is more important than getting the newest car.
0:23:44 This is kind of where they want to invest their money
0:23:45 because it’s their family memories.
0:23:48 I definitely would say that I have clients
0:23:52 in varying levels of income and disposable income.
0:23:54 There’s no question that there are clients
0:23:55 who when I do quote my price, they say,
0:23:56 “Oh, I just can’t afford that.”
0:23:58 And I mean, it’s unfortunate.
0:24:00 And sometimes I will try and figure out a way to help them
0:24:02 or maybe for instance, maybe I’ll say,
0:24:05 okay, look, I will sort and organize the print photos
0:24:07 for you because you really can’t do anything
0:24:08 until that’s done.
0:24:11 And then you can buy the scanner
0:24:13 and do the scanning yourself or not.
0:24:15 We can meet again next year
0:24:16 and we can do the second phase of the project.
0:24:20 I’ve definitely had clients who we pause at different times
0:24:23 and kind of pick it up again when they’re ready to.
0:24:28 – Okay, right, as timing and budget allows and everything.
0:24:29 And this is like, this is hard.
0:24:32 It’s like, you keep making more photos every month
0:24:33 that goes by and you’re like, “Hey, I took more pictures.”
0:24:36 And now eventually I gotta build a system around this.
0:24:38 Otherwise I’m gonna have the same problem again.
0:24:42 – Yeah, I think it does also make our clients,
0:24:43 I mean, first of all, they realize
0:24:46 they’ve gotten themselves into this situation.
0:24:49 Just again, especially when it comes to the digital photos
0:24:51 because we all, I mean, I’m guilty of it too.
0:24:53 Absolutely, I can’t help myself
0:24:55 but hit the shutter three or four times
0:24:58 with the same scene just in case.
0:24:59 – Yes, the film is free, let’s keep going.
0:25:00 – Exactly, exactly.
0:25:02 So I am guilty of the same thing,
0:25:05 but then I end up thinking, gosh, this is crazy.
0:25:06 Why did I do that?
0:25:08 And we get ourselves into this situation
0:25:12 and it actually has started to change my photo habits
0:25:14 ’cause I realize, okay, look,
0:25:15 I don’t need 12 versions of that photo
0:25:18 because even the one with that person’s eyes closed,
0:25:20 I still have the memory of that great moment
0:25:21 and that great party.
0:25:22 So it’s interesting.
0:25:26 People start to realize their photo taking habits change.
0:25:28 – This is what I try and do on the return flight
0:25:29 from any trip.
0:25:31 It’s something I could do in airplane mode.
0:25:33 It’s like, okay, well, I took those 13 shots.
0:25:36 Let me favor it, the best one and give her to the rest.
0:25:39 Something to kill time on the airplane.
0:25:43 On those sales calls, so you’re kind of ballparking.
0:25:45 I really don’t know how long this is gonna take
0:25:47 but here’s my hourly rate.
0:25:49 You could start off with this.
0:25:52 This is the order of operations I would suggest going in.
0:25:54 We can check in and then you get the balk
0:25:56 of like, whoa, I’m starting to add this up
0:25:58 and it’s gonna be thousands of dollars.
0:26:00 What kind of common objections or handling
0:26:01 do you have to do at that point?
0:26:03 – I think the smartest thing to do
0:26:05 and the best thing to do is to prepare them upfront
0:26:07 and not to try and sugarcoat it and not to try and say,
0:26:10 oh yeah, I think I can probably do this in 10 hours
0:26:14 or something because very often it does end up taking
0:26:18 longer than anyone hoped that it would.
0:26:19 That’s just the way it is.
0:26:22 I mean, I certainly always try and reinforce the fact
0:26:25 that it’s still gonna take me a lot less time
0:26:25 than it would take them.
0:26:27 Granted, they’re not paying anybody
0:26:30 if they do it themselves, but it will take
0:26:33 at least twice as long because of that whole emotional factor.
0:26:34 – Did they give you an answer key?
0:26:38 Here’s the family in arrows pointing to who’s who.
0:26:41 So you go back and you see this picture from 50 years ago
0:26:44 and like, well, I don’t know if this is an important one.
0:26:47 It seems very personal in a lot of ways
0:26:48 where it would be hard to delegate.
0:26:49 – It is very personal.
0:26:50 And to answer your first question,
0:26:53 in every intake meeting that I have with a new client,
0:26:56 we go through a list of not only photo gathering,
0:26:57 but information gathering,
0:26:59 all the important birth dates of everybody,
0:27:01 wedding dates, depending on how far,
0:27:03 sometimes we’re going backwards in generations, right?
0:27:05 Grandparents, great-grandparents and so on.
0:27:07 And sometimes we’re really just dealing with
0:27:11 the last 20 or 30 years of my client’s children’s lives
0:27:13 and kind of just going forward.
0:27:15 And I always say you get the birth dates and so on
0:27:18 because it’s especially if there’s children in the photo,
0:27:19 you can tell a one-year-old from a three-year-old
0:27:21 from a five-year-old and so on.
0:27:23 And so that’s an easy way to figure out
0:27:26 when the picture was taken pretty close.
0:27:28 So we gather all kinds of information, again,
0:27:30 about birth dates, wedding dates, death dates.
0:27:33 If there’s somebody in the picture that I know died in 1981,
0:27:37 then I know it’s obviously at least prior to 1981.
0:27:40 You really get to recognize faces.
0:27:42 I’ve gotten very familiar with recognizing
0:27:44 people’s faces at different ages,
0:27:48 even adults from their childhood to adulthood.
0:27:50 You get to know who the important players are.
0:27:53 And yes, hopefully the client can point out,
0:27:55 this is my parents, this is my husband’s parents.
0:27:58 – And it’s primarily, give me this box or give me these boxes
0:28:00 and I’m gonna take it back to my workshop.
0:28:02 You don’t need to be involved.
0:28:04 Or do you have people wanting to be going through
0:28:07 photo by photo and explaining the backstory of this?
0:28:09 And like, is that important?
0:28:10 I can imagine keeper toss.
0:28:15 – Yeah, I have had one, I think maybe literally one client
0:28:18 in 10 years who kind of insisted.
0:28:20 And quite honestly, this was early on
0:28:22 and I probably should have insisted to her
0:28:23 that that’s not the most efficient way to do it.
0:28:26 But I was early on in the career and I thought,
0:28:28 okay, we’ll sit and we’ll do this together.
0:28:31 It was exhausting for her, exhausting for me.
0:28:34 It went so slowly because again,
0:28:37 she would tell me a story about every picture,
0:28:39 which was lovely and was probably therapeutic for her.
0:28:43 But I mean, she was paying for a lot of extra time.
0:28:45 And I do tell people that ’cause some people just assume
0:28:47 that’s how we’re gonna do it because they think,
0:28:49 well, Cheryl, how could you possibly do it?
0:28:51 So we’re gonna have to do it together.
0:28:53 And I explained to them again,
0:28:55 how long it’s gonna take if we do it together
0:28:57 and how emotional and just stressful
0:28:59 it’s gonna be for them to do it
0:29:01 because they don’t wanna throw away anything.
0:29:02 But for the most part, they have to make,
0:29:04 it’s like making a decision every time
0:29:07 they’re looking at a photo and that’s exhausting.
0:29:09 So we kind of build this trust
0:29:11 throughout the initial part of this project.
0:29:12 They learned to trust me
0:29:15 and I try and communicate with them as much as possible.
0:29:18 And then I think a lot of it comes down to,
0:29:19 here’s your choices.
0:29:22 The choices, you can do this on your own.
0:29:23 I’m talking to the client.
0:29:24 Client can do this on their own
0:29:26 and go through the pictures and sort them
0:29:28 and kind of curate them themselves,
0:29:31 which in my mind, I’m pretty sure is not gonna happen
0:29:34 because never gets to the top of the to-do list.
0:29:35 Or we can go through it together,
0:29:37 which is just gonna take twice as long.
0:29:40 I really am happy to do that for your comfort level,
0:29:44 but it’s gonna take twice as long or you can trust me.
0:29:47 And I will go through and I will pick out
0:29:50 the best representation of every year or event
0:29:53 or vacation or whatever it is.
0:29:55 I’m not gonna throw away anything.
0:29:57 I’m never gonna throw anything away.
0:29:58 I’m just gonna put the best pictures
0:30:02 that I think are the best representation in a separate pile
0:30:04 and you can review them.
0:30:05 You can review the ones I didn’t choose
0:30:07 and if there’s anything you wanna put,
0:30:09 again, they’re never gonna do that
0:30:11 because it’s just an overwhelming task.
0:30:15 But they’re just so happy to have a curated collection.
0:30:19 I tell them, I will make sure to select something
0:30:22 from every event, even if they’re kind of blurry,
0:30:25 so that you can remember that you went there.
0:30:28 That was that dinner at that restaurant or whatever it is.
0:30:32 Be comforted in the fact that I won’t skip over any events.
0:30:33 – More with Cheryl in just a moment,
0:30:35 including how she’s growing the business
0:30:38 beyond hours for dollars right after this.
0:30:41 That kind of digitizing service or scanning service,
0:30:46 that would be, in my mind, maybe top of the funnel.
0:30:47 That’s what I think I need.
0:30:49 I wanna digitize this stuff
0:30:51 and then maybe I’m gonna go through.
0:30:52 Is that where customers come in
0:30:54 and be like, that’s part of the solution,
0:30:57 but then what we really gotta do is step two, three and four.
0:31:01 – Well, and truthfully, scanning really should be step two
0:31:04 because if you scan, if we take that big–
0:31:05 – You don’t need to scan everything yet.
0:31:07 – No, you don’t need to scan everything
0:31:09 and you don’t really even know what you have
0:31:10 until you organize it.
0:31:14 Scanning an unorganized mess,
0:31:16 you just end with a digital mess.
0:31:21 And it is really harder to sort those scanned photos
0:31:23 after they’ve been scanned.
0:31:24 So for instance, if you think about the fact
0:31:27 that I’ve got a box of print photos
0:31:29 and I’ve got my dining room table fully clean
0:31:30 and I can just spread everything out
0:31:33 on the dining room table and kind of make different piles
0:31:36 for different years and so on or different people,
0:31:38 I can kind of just see the whole thing at once
0:31:39 as I’m working on it.
0:31:41 But once it’s all scanned,
0:31:44 you’re confined to a computer screen
0:31:47 to kind of figure out where things go.
0:31:48 We tend to kind of default to,
0:31:50 you really should organize first
0:31:52 and then decide what you wanna scan
0:31:53 ’cause you’ll probably end up scanning less.
0:31:56 You’ll actually end up saving money on the scanning step.
0:31:58 – Okay, that makes sense.
0:32:01 Do you see a future where you’re the CEO
0:32:05 and then you have subcontracted photo managers?
0:32:06 It sounds like at the moment,
0:32:08 it’s we’re wearing all the hats right now,
0:32:10 like a solo service provider.
0:32:12 – I definitely am trying to grow my business.
0:32:14 There’s no question.
0:32:16 And the way that I feel comfortable doing it
0:32:18 is with employees.
0:32:21 So I actually do have two people that work for me part-time
0:32:24 that just do some of the tasks that I can hand off to them.
0:32:26 And one of them I’m training,
0:32:28 obviously the intent is to train them to do more.
0:32:32 That’s at the moment how I am growing my business.
0:32:34 I can charge my hourly rate for what they’re doing
0:32:36 ’cause they’re basically doing what I would do.
0:32:37 – Where the different levers you can pull, right?
0:32:39 We can serve more clients, we can raise rates,
0:32:42 we could expand to new geographies.
0:32:44 – Right, and passive income is another one.
0:32:45 You mentioned subcontracting
0:32:48 and actually that’s what a lot of photo organizers do,
0:32:50 work with other organizers.
0:32:51 So for instance,
0:32:54 and actually the kind of sorting scanning steps
0:32:54 is a great example.
0:32:57 So there are some photo organizers
0:32:58 that don’t wanna deal with scanning.
0:33:00 They just either don’t wanna invest in the equipment
0:33:01 or they may think it’s boring.
0:33:03 So they’ll do the sorting part
0:33:04 and then they’ll subcontract out
0:33:06 to another organizer to do the scanning part.
0:33:08 And it works great.
0:33:09 They can either do it in a sense
0:33:13 that I’m gonna pass this client onto you to my colleague
0:33:15 and my colleague is gonna give me a percentage
0:33:18 of what they charge the client.
0:33:20 Or I’m just going to,
0:33:22 everything’s still gonna come through me.
0:33:23 I’m gonna build a client,
0:33:24 but we’re gonna agree on what you’re gonna charge me
0:33:26 for the scanning and I’m probably gonna mark it up
0:33:28 to the client and so on.
0:33:30 – Yeah, are you setting everybody up
0:33:31 with their own cloud account?
0:33:33 Like that would be another potential,
0:33:34 really common in web development.
0:33:36 Like, hey, we’ll build your website,
0:33:37 but then we’ll also host it
0:33:40 and we’ll charge this ongoing maintenance fee, hosting fee.
0:33:41 It’s like something like that
0:33:44 for like the cloud backup storage for the stuff.
0:33:45 – I definitely don’t host anything.
0:33:47 It’s just not a business I really wanna get into.
0:33:48 But there are definitely services.
0:33:50 So in general,
0:33:53 the goal usually is for any client is,
0:33:54 okay, whatever we’re doing for you,
0:33:57 whether it’s just digital photo organizing
0:34:00 or sorting and scanning and digitizing things,
0:34:03 whatever it is, is anything that is ultimately digital,
0:34:05 we want to make sure is backed up
0:34:08 because you don’t wanna lose that hard drive
0:34:10 or that flash drive or wherever the scans are.
0:34:12 So we certainly encourage people to back up
0:34:16 in kind of multiple places and one of them being online.
0:34:17 One of them actually being offline
0:34:20 and a lot of that comes down to the client’s comfort level
0:34:22 or where they already are.
0:34:24 So for instance, if there’s a client
0:34:26 that already is all Apple, right?
0:34:29 And they use iCloud and Apple Photos,
0:34:31 we might put the things we scanned,
0:34:33 we might add to their Apple Photos.
0:34:34 So now that everything’s in one place
0:34:37 or same thing with Google Photos, if they use that,
0:34:38 there’s other options.
0:34:40 There’s one called forever.com,
0:34:41 which is a great website.
0:34:44 It is strictly for photos,
0:34:47 is strictly for a family photo archives.
0:34:51 And it’s a great platform, very easy to use platform.
0:34:54 This is again, kind of a passive income option
0:34:58 where it does need to be set up by a photo manager.
0:35:00 Basically, it’s an affiliate based program.
0:35:04 So if I have a client who wants to use forever,
0:35:06 they’re gonna pay the fee forever and so on,
0:35:08 but they’re going through me.
0:35:12 And anything that they purchase through forever
0:35:14 or if they have to add additional space,
0:35:17 anything they pay forever, I then get a percentage.
0:35:19 – Okay, like a reseller fee or…
0:35:20 – Right, exactly, exactly.
0:35:22 Is that recurring every year when it renews or something?
0:35:25 – No, forever itself is actually a one-time fee,
0:35:28 which is why it’s very appealing to a lot of people.
0:35:30 It’s a higher fee because it’s one time.
0:35:32 And it’s based on how much space you’re taking up.
0:35:34 But there’s a lot of families who really just,
0:35:36 they just want to know that it’s taken care of.
0:35:39 It’s guaranteed for, I can’t remember exactly,
0:35:41 but it’s guaranteed forever.
0:35:43 – For forever, you would think, yeah.
0:35:45 – And of course, there’s safeguards to put in place
0:35:46 to make sure that it passes down
0:35:48 to family members and so on.
0:35:50 So it’s a really popular platform
0:35:51 that a lot of photo managers use
0:35:53 with their clients as a backup.
0:35:56 – Okay, yeah, that may be more organized.
0:35:58 I think most of my stuff is like Google Photos right now,
0:36:01 but forever.com, all right, we’ll plug that.
0:36:02 What surprised you the most?
0:36:03 You’ve been doing this for 10 years.
0:36:05 I know you’ve got crazy client stories.
0:36:08 What stands out as a surprising moment
0:36:09 or something like that?
0:36:12 – You do see behind the curtain of your clients
0:36:14 and you do see pretty much everything.
0:36:18 So I’ve seen a few things that were a little surprising,
0:36:21 but it’s all confidential and the breastfeeding photos,
0:36:22 babies in the bath and so on,
0:36:26 but it’s all very appropriate and confidential.
0:36:28 I tell people, think of me as your photo doctor.
0:36:30 There’s no judgment and I’ve seen it all
0:36:34 and I don’t even think about it after I’ve sorted it away.
0:36:36 I think the biggest joy for me
0:36:39 is just how appreciative people really are.
0:36:42 I mean, even when they’re writing me a big fat check,
0:36:45 they are just so appreciative to have this done
0:36:48 because they really didn’t think their photos
0:36:50 would ever get organized or get preserved.
0:36:52 I’ve had people say,
0:36:55 I really thought my photos were gonna die with me
0:36:58 and that my kids would never know what to do with them.
0:36:59 My kids would not want them
0:37:03 because who’s gonna want to take all these bins of a mess?
0:37:05 – Yeah, well, and even if they do take them,
0:37:07 they’re not gonna know who’s in this picture, right?
0:37:08 – Right, exactly.
0:37:10 And that’s one of the things, obviously, again,
0:37:12 especially if we’re dealing with previous generations,
0:37:14 is we’re very careful to identify everybody
0:37:17 and make sure the whole point of preserving our photos
0:37:20 is not only for us to enjoy them now, but to pass them on
0:37:24 and to pass on those old photos of great-great-grandfather
0:37:26 and that farm that was in the family for decades
0:37:29 and all these memories, I didn’t live myself,
0:37:32 but I can hopefully maybe live them through the photos.
0:37:35 – Yeah, it’s like in Coco, where Teo Ector’s friend,
0:37:38 he’s being forgotten and he’s like fading away.
0:37:39 He’s like, no, no, no, you gotta put my picture out,
0:37:41 you gotta remember me.
0:37:44 So you’ve got a couple part-timers on the team now,
0:37:46 looking for ways to grow and scale
0:37:51 and build this into a little bit more time-leveraged operation.
0:37:52 What’s next for you?
0:37:52 Where do you wanna take it?
0:37:55 – I think the next thing, probably in order for me
0:37:57 to grow further would be to move out of my home office
0:38:00 and find rental space to work in,
0:38:02 which the nice thing is it doesn’t have to be flashy,
0:38:05 it doesn’t have to be retail space necessarily,
0:38:06 it can just be warehouse space or something,
0:38:09 just where we can kind of spread out and have more people.
0:38:11 It’s gonna be really just more people
0:38:12 that can do more projects.
0:38:14 Right now, I’ve actually got more projects
0:38:16 than, again, no deadlines,
0:38:18 so it just means they hang around longer,
0:38:20 but I mean, I’ve kind of got more clients than I can.
0:38:22 – But that’s fascinating that we had more space,
0:38:24 we could take on more business,
0:38:25 so we had more people who could like,
0:38:29 that’s really interesting that even at thousands of dollars
0:38:31 a project, people are paying it.
0:38:32 – Yep, I cannot stress enough
0:38:35 that there is plenty of work to go around.
0:38:36 I’m doing it full-time.
0:38:38 If someone wants to do it as a side hustle,
0:38:39 one or two clients a month,
0:38:42 I’m quite confident that you would have no problem
0:38:43 finding that. – Yeah.
0:38:46 – I would think even if you started talking to people
0:38:48 just about you’re thinking about doing it,
0:38:50 hey, I heard about this photo organizing
0:38:52 and I’m thinking about doing it
0:38:53 because it sounds like something I would enjoy
0:38:55 and I would be good at,
0:38:57 you should test it out and see what people’s reactions are.
0:38:59 You might find that there’ll be several people
0:39:01 right off the bat who say, “I’d hire you in a minute.”
0:39:02 – Yeah.
0:39:02 – “I’d hire you in a minute.”
0:39:04 – They’re like, “Okay, press here.”
0:39:04 – Yeah, right, exactly.
0:39:06 – Here’s my Venmo, yeah.
0:39:07 Okay.
0:39:08 – I think a lot of the reason is
0:39:11 there is so much anxiety around photos.
0:39:13 Not only around the photos in the attic,
0:39:15 because again, once those are gone
0:39:18 or once those are lost, they’re gone forever.
0:39:20 There’s so much anxiety about that.
0:39:21 And then there’s so much anxiety
0:39:23 on all the photos on our phone
0:39:25 because everybody knows
0:39:27 they have way too many photos on their phone.
0:39:29 And every time we go looking on our phone to say,
0:39:31 “Oh, I wanna show you this great picture
0:39:33 “of my daughter from camp.”
0:39:34 Hold on.
0:39:35 – Yeah, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll.
0:39:37 – Hold on, hold on, hold on, yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:39:41 And that just reinforces like I’ve got too many photos.
0:39:44 I’ve got to find a way to get to those great photos quickly.
0:39:49 So there’s so much anxiety around photos, I think, really,
0:39:52 that the idea that you could relieve some of that anxiety
0:39:56 and some of that stress is huge, is a huge bonus
0:39:59 and a huge benefit to what you could offer them.
0:40:01 So I would start talking about it.
0:40:03 – Yeah, what a unique 21st century point.
0:40:06 Like I got too many pictures, like what a time to be alive.
0:40:09 Like the truth is the film really wasn’t free.
0:40:11 Like here’s the mental cost to it.
0:40:12 But that’s fascinating.
0:40:15 So mymemoryfile.com, thephotomanagers.com
0:40:17 is the industry association.
0:40:22 If you hit up thephotomanagers.com/sidehustledownload,
0:40:24 Cheryl’s put together a couple free resources for us.
0:40:28 One is 20 different types of potential clients
0:40:31 that hire professional photo organizers.
0:40:34 We’ve talked about the families preserving different memories,
0:40:36 but lots of different types of people
0:40:38 who would be potential prospects,
0:40:40 potential customers in this space.
0:40:42 And then the other resource is a set of worksheets
0:40:46 that will help anybody considering entering photo organizing
0:40:49 as a side hustle, as a full-time business to identify,
0:40:52 okay, what’s the menu of services that I’m gonna offer
0:40:54 and what kind of clients might be a match for those?
0:40:59 So that’s thephotomanagers.com/sidehustledownload.
0:41:02 And be sure to check that out over there.
0:41:04 – And I actually wanted to add to that too.
0:41:06 I actually told Kathy at the photo managers
0:41:10 that for anybody who goes and downloads that free download
0:41:13 and then decides to then join the photo managers,
0:41:16 the first three people who do join the photo managers,
0:41:19 I would be happy to give a free 30-minute consultation
0:41:22 to answer any questions, give any tips,
0:41:24 tell more about how I got into it
0:41:26 and what kind of projects I do.
0:41:28 – Yeah, very generous, appreciate you sharing that.
0:41:33 Again, thephotomanagers.com/sidehustledownload.
0:41:35 Cheryl, thanks so much for joining me.
0:41:36 So let’s wrap this thing up
0:41:38 with your number one tip for side hustle nation.
0:41:40 – Find something that you love doing.
0:41:42 And again, I love working with photos
0:41:45 and I never thought it would have turned into a business
0:41:47 and it has, I mean, it’s turned into a wonderful business
0:41:51 and I really, really love going to work every day
0:41:52 and your clients will know it too.
0:41:55 But find people, find community that can support you
0:41:57 because that’s, especially if it’s a side hustle
0:42:00 where you’re working independently, it’s critical
0:42:02 and can make or break the hustle.
0:42:04 – That’s so lonely to be like, I’m doing this thing
0:42:07 but I don’t have anybody to bounce ideas off of
0:42:10 or get feedback or even figure out
0:42:11 what my next step is gonna be.
0:42:12 – Yeah, but there is a community here
0:42:14 so it’s there to lift everybody up.
0:42:16 – Very good.
0:42:18 I think one of the biggest surprises for me
0:42:21 was this market education component
0:42:25 of like letting people know that such a thing exists
0:42:28 and then the reaction in a lot of cases
0:42:31 if there is budget in somebody’s household income
0:42:34 to allow for it, be like, oh, can you start with mine?
0:42:36 Here, I know three people that you ought to,
0:42:39 I go to try and get that word of mouth spin in
0:42:41 but you can kind of start to play
0:42:43 the local marketing playbook.
0:42:46 I love the idea of sponsoring the school auction
0:42:48 to get in front of 200, 300 parents.
0:42:51 Even just only costs you a few hours of your time
0:42:53 and it may even just be a sampler of a larger project
0:42:55 or a starter of that larger project.
0:42:58 But that’s actually your listener only bonus for this week.
0:43:01 It’s my local marketing checklist, 10 proven ideas
0:43:04 that you can use to increase the lead flow for your business.
0:43:05 You can download that for free
0:43:07 at the show notes for this episode
0:43:11 at sidehustle-nation.com/sharyl with a C
0:43:14 or just follow the show notes link in the episode description
0:43:15 and I’ll get you right over there.
0:43:17 Big thanks to Cheryl for sharing her insight.
0:43:19 I’ve taken a ton of notes as I always do.
0:43:21 Big thanks to our sponsors for helping
0:43:23 make this content free for everyone.
0:43:25 You can hit up sidehustle-nation.com/deals
0:43:29 for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place.
0:43:30 And thanks for supporting the advertisers
0:43:32 that support the show.
0:43:33 That’s it for me.
0:43:34 Thank you so much for tuning in.
0:43:36 If you’re finding value in the show,
0:43:39 the greatest compliment is to share with a friend.
0:43:41 We talked about the importance of word of mouth.
0:43:42 So fire off that text message.
0:43:44 Hey, did you know you can make money doing this?
0:43:47 Until next time, let’s go out there and make something happen
0:43:48 and I’ll catch you in the next edition
0:43:50 of the Side Hustle Show.
0:43:51 Hustle on.
0:43:55 As a side hustle show listener, I know you’re driven.
0:43:56 Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here.
0:43:59 But I also know you can end up hustling
0:44:02 and driving yourself into exhaustion, overwhelm
0:44:04 and even burnout if you don’t stay anchored
0:44:06 to why you’re doing it.
0:44:08 That’s why I want to recommend another podcast
0:44:10 that will massively support your side hustle.
0:44:13 It’s called What Drives You with host Kevin Miller.
0:44:15 Kevin’s a former pro athlete.
0:44:17 He’s a lifelong entrepreneur
0:44:18 who started 19 different businesses.
0:44:21 He’s a father of nine kids, an author
0:44:23 and a mountain adventurer as well.
0:44:26 He knows both the glory and the dark side of drive
0:44:28 and has devoted his life to helping people
0:44:30 who want to drive further, faster,
0:44:33 but also enjoy the ride every single day.
0:44:35 He brings on today’s most influential people
0:44:37 in personal and business development
0:44:39 to see what drives them and get their guidance
0:44:42 on the key ingredients that power our own drive.
0:44:44 If you want to fully harness your drive
0:44:46 and find peace and fulfillment in the process,
0:44:49 go find What Drives You with Kevin Miller,
0:44:50 wherever you listen to podcasts.
Do you have an overwhelming number of photos scattered across your phone or even tucked away in dusty albums in the attic?
Would you hire someone to organize it for you?
I never imagined photo organizing as a side hustle could pay $100/hr, nor did I anticipate its high demand.
But Cheryl DiFrank from mymemoryfile.com says she’s building a six-figure business in the process.
Tune in to Episode 619 of the Side Hustle Show to learn:
- how photo organizing works
- who it might be a good fit for
- how to launch this side hustle going off the ground
Full Show Notes: $85/hr Organizing Other People’s Pictures
New to the Show? Get your personalized money-making playlist here!
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