Happy Valentine’s Day, babes! In honor of this lovable holiday, I’m sharing 14 ways to give love to your past, current, and future clients. Want in on a little secret? It all starts with loving you! Come join me today in celebrating self-love, plus the clients that have helped you build your beautiful business!

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Grab my Snail Mail Kit! These customizable Canva templates will give you everything you need, including a return address label, postcard, and a thank you card! I’ve even included a cute little video to walk you through how to customize the templates!

Review the Show Notes:

Ways To Share Love As A Business  (1:50)

Exercise and Eat Well (2:07)

Loving Your Clients Starts With Loving Yourself (2:19)

Get Creative (3:04)

Celebrate Your Wins (4:36)

Education and Mentorship (8:03)

Invest In Creating Systems (10:30)

Create Magnetic Experiences In-Person To Share Online (11:52)

Create Content For Past, Current, And Future Dream Clients (12:38)

Planning Events To Celebrate Your Clients (14:05)

Ask Your Clients For Help (14:46)

Client Gifts & Sweet Surprises (15:27)

Love Notes & Snail Mail (15:48)

Get The Snail Mail Kit (16:12)

Create A VIP Email List (16:20)

Follow Through And Follow Up (17:16)

Be You! (18:01)

Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Snail Mail Kit

Laura Lee’s Workflow

Review the Transcript:

Welcome to Quianna Marie weekly, a podcast for creatives who love to celebrate wins big or small by dancing in the kitchen photographers who are excited to serve their clients and friends who are ready to chase really, really big dreams. You can find all of the resources mentioned in this episode at Quiannamarie.com/podcast. Join me as I share weekly motivation, chat about growing pains, finding genuine connections and celebrating your wins through the lens of a photographer at heart. Come join me for a dance party ready?

Loves though you are enough, every morning, every sunrise every day. You are enough. This is today’s quote baby. And I am so freakin excited that it is Valentine’s Day as a hopeless romantic. I actually love this holiday. Now I know it’s not everyone’s favorite. We are known for bashing boys and bashing relationships. And that’s kind of a culture that I can get on board with sometimes. But at the end of the day, I absolutely love Valentine’s Day. I think what makes this holiday so fun, is it’s not like a national like crazy holiday where people take off work. And it’s just this big hoopla around creating a big meal. It’s just a fun little reminder about love. And since I’m still single, since I don’t have any children of my own, my business is my baby like my business is my life. And I’m able to pour my heart and soul into this passion project. And I’m just so so happy that you’re here for the ride.

For today’s episode, I want to dive real deep into 14 ways to love your clients. So let’s get started chatting all about Valentine’s Day all about ways that we can love and support and truly build a brand and a foundation for business that will help us stand the test of time. Alright, so let’s dive right in. Number one, exercise and eat well. Okay, so I have to just take a little second and just remind you that yes, this is absolutely a list about loving and serving your clients. But your business starts with you baby. Like I mentioned in the last episode about creating a living brand. Our businesses have souls, okay, like we are the heartbeat behind our business. So when you’re putting yourself first, you can give from a full overflowing cup. Love yourself. First take care of yourself, and then reach out to help others. When you are exercising daily. When you are fueling your body with really great nutrition. You’ll be amazed at how much clarity you have about your business and about life, your blood will be flowing and good energy will just be radiating from you. This is huge.

Your entire business and your entire client experience starts with you. All right. Now number two, get creative. Use your brain for other activities to spark ideas stay inspired and have fun. This could be totally out of your comfort zone by picking up a paintbrush and painting, journaling, crafting, or maybe even just treating yourself to cocktails once a month with friends. Now the reason why I say this is because I am totally inspired by going out to restaurants and peeping their menu fonts, the tiles on the floor and even the decor in the restroom bathrooms, and the signage all around us. When you are constantly in that state of almost like that childlike wonder and you’re just kind of looking around and being inspired by everything. That’s when you’re going to really spark those fun ideas. As a business owner. I know a lot of us get into this as a passion project. And we want to try to turn our passions into profits, right?

I mean, that’s pretty much the soul of today’s small business, especially in the creative industry. But what happens is if we are constantly focusing on creating and staying in our business, that’s when we get burned out. And that’s when we just want to run and what we originally started our business to be as far as being creative and passionate and all those fun things turns into a chore and just wasn’t fun anymore. So to break that habit and to kind of break that pattern. I highly suggest you pick up a paintbrush, go sing karaoke, I don’t know you, you know what your heart is telling you to do. Go do it. Number three, celebrate your wins.

Now this kind of as a quick little follow up to getting out and going out with the girls and celebrating cocktails. But you absolutely have to get out and explore. So you’re constantly in this high vibe state of mind to prevent burnout. This is also a great way to train your brain to embrace celebrations and wins of all sizes. So when you’re manifesting those wins Even if you have a short win by even just checking off a couple things on your to do list that day, girl, you have got to get out and celebrate treat yourself whether that is going to get a pedicure or whether that is planning a monthly massage, which I cannot wait for my massage with Trina this week. She’s my local Arizona Angel here in my neighborhood. And yeah, so I’m just reminding you that you have to get out and celebrate. Now I do want to share a quick story about a recent photo shoot where I had photographed a net and Felicia, they are two entrepreneurs, small business owners have really really big dreams and they are helping other business owners reach those big goals.

Now if you know a net and Felicia personally, you know they are just absolutely stunning. Like they’re gorgeous girls, they radiate happiness, they radiate love and abundance. And I’m just so happy for them to also be to more of my Arizona angels here. And I just want to share a story about how we had just recently done a photo shoot, I had done some Crusher content photos with them, we met up in downtown Phoenix got to experience some really awesome murals. So if you see those images popping up, I’d love to tell you where they are. And after the shoot, we went out for drinks and a net offered to take us out to dinner and just have some appetizers and and take some really awesome photos at this awesome like rooftop bar. Now. I’m not even joking when I tell you that just being in their presence, my VI was just lifted and was radiating.

Everywhere we went. And now of course we were a little extra because they were dressed up. They looked fabulous. They had huge balloons, like we literally were walking around downtown Phoenix with this big huge, like unicorn balloon and this bundle of just stuff right? We were you know, drawing attention to ourselves. But it was all high vibe and super cute. So people were literally driving by to stop and tell us how beautiful we were. They were stopping us in the hotel as we were going up to the rooftop bar. wishing us happy birthday, Shane saying congratulations. They weren’t too sure what was going on. And it was the perfect opportunity. This is where my brain comes in, to plug and to chat about their recent launches and exactly what we’re celebrating because it wasn’t a birthday. And it wasn’t an anniversary party or anything like that. But the accomplishments were there. Right. So this was a great opportunity when I believe it was a server had asked like what do you grow celebrating, and Felicia just whoop, slid right in and shared about their big launches about their mastermind programs. And it was a great way to plug their business super organically and supernaturally because people were asking them about it. So this was just another tangent, of course, about celebrating your wins. But this is huge.

I’m all about creating those magnetic ripple effects in real life. Okay, let’s roll on to number four. I know this list is going to go by really quickly, even though we’re only on number four. All right. So education and mentorship. This is huge. As a business owner, you need to constantly be growing and sharing and sharpening your skills, staying on top of business trends, new tools, and truly enjoying the journey. And the growth for your business will always drip down to your clients share about it, share these experiences online, they can see it and they’ll be so proud to support you. Now I have another quick tangent story about this. When I first started attending workshops for photography, and I’m talking like six, eight, maybe even 10 years ago when they were just starting to roll out. And I remember attending them and I was kind of embarrassed or hesitant to post about it. Because I had this thought process where as a professional wedding photographer, I should know what all I’m the experts. If I was to attend a wedding photography workshop, what is I going to say to my currently booked brides and to my current clients thinking, Wait a minute, I hope Quianna knows what she’s doing because she’s going to this workshop about how to be a wedding photographer or how to book more weddings or something like that. And I was hesitant to post about it, then I you know, I kind of slowed the brakes on sharing about it.

And back then Insta Stories weren’t even a thing. Okay, like social media was not even really popping off back then. So it wasn’t weird that I wasn’t posting this on Facebook. Okay. But as I started investing more in education and traveling around the country, and even the world for workshops and conferences, I quickly noticed like a shift where when I did post about my education and how I was investing in these workshops, I had so many of my past and current clients reach out to me and say, oh my gosh, that’s our girl, like Look at you go back like they were so proud. And they were cheering for me as I was investing in my business. So that was a quick shift that I don’t even want you to even have those feelings. So if you Think Sorry, I’m talking with my hands and like bouncing my microphone everywhere. But if you are feeling hesitant about posting because you, you are learning something new, and you kind of hope your clients think you already know that, don’t stress, just do it because I’m telling you right now, they will be more impressed with the fact that you are educating yourself and adding value to yourself which trickles down to adding value to them. Okay, so that’s a quick lesson on that one. Number five, investing your time, energy and business funds into creating workflows and systems. Okay, this is humongous.

This is going to sum up so much of this client experience and ways that you can love on your current clients. So I have a good friend, her name is Laura of Laura Lee creative, and she creates workflows and systems, tons of strategy and tons of help to help creatives find freedom in their business and their lives, you can take back your time to spend more time with the ones you love, and what you are passionate about by creating that work life balance. So Laura has tons of resources for you, I will absolutely tag her in the show notes. But this is important. Okay, when you are taking the time upfront to create workflows and checklists, everyone that kind of goes through your client experience will be well taken care of. And they feel like they have kind of like a hand holding experience. Without you having to constantly come up with new content all the time, and constantly feel like you’re struggling just trying to maintain your business. Let’s stop with that we are about growth and scaling. Now. Let’s create systems and workflows to help you stay organized and stay super efficient. Laura Lee is your girl and you have to follow her. She’s so awesome. Alright, number six, create magnetic experiences in person to then share on line. Alright, this is where I feel like a lot of people get it backwards, where they feel like they have to focus so much on creating an online persona. Instead of just going out into the real world and doing what they love to do. capture it, record it and then post it baby.

It’s not that hard. But when you are truly coming from a servant’s heart about creating that experience in person, whether that be on the wedding day or during your everyday life, creating that client experience for your clients. This is going to make that like amplify your weddings and amplify your experience. Okay, it starts in person. And then it gets blasted online. Number seven, content creation for past current and future dream clients. I keep saying this again, everything is huge in my world. But this is huge, babe. Okay, when you’re creating blogs, frequently asked questions for your website, YouTube videos, resources and education to help gain trust and add value. This is what it’s all about. Create guides, templates, packing lists, inspiration boards, anything to help your clients feel well taken care of. Okay, once again, this kind of goes back to that content creation. I feel like people kind of do this backwards. This also applies because I feel like people think of social media and content creation, like creating billboards, and creating commercials for new people that have never experienced working with you yet, which is great. Like, we want to create those reels, we want to try to go viral with what we got going on. But that’s not always the best case. When you have such an incredible like pool of people that already love you already know you and just want to get more information from you.

All right. So that is how you’re going to amplify your services is by creating that content for your past clients and current clients. Okay, so this is huge. If you have any questions about content creation, please send me a DM I hang out on Instagram way too much. But I would love to open up the conversation with you and help you come up with a handful of ideas to help target your current clients. Okay, because they’re going to share about it. Number eight, planning events to celebrate them. So I absolutely love offering date nights for my couples brunch and bubbly events for recently engaged couples. And one thing that I cannot wait to do once I get back, I’m going to do a quick trip to California probably this summer or early fall. And I’m excited to plan a potluck for all of my past couples and their family. So I’m talking like I want to do like an old school kickball game or a softball game. Absolutely plan a cute little moment to take some quick photos and just have a big potluck and barbecue and celebrate and share my appreciation for my past clients.

This is huge. Okay, I keep saying that, but it’s true. Number nine, ask for their help. Okay. And when you ask your clients, your either current clients or your past clients for their input, they will be so grateful and once again feel like they are a part of this journey and part make your business grow. So I suggest creating surveys following up with their experiences and genuinely asking for constructive criticism. Trust me, I get it, criticism can sting. And it isn’t always what we want to hear. However, there may be loopholes or missing pieces a part of your content creation or a part of your workflow and client experience that you may totally be missing. So let’s get on that. Number 10 client gifts and sweet surprises. As a photographer, it’s super easy to create super affordable gift prints for a tiny tiny expense, but huge, huge impact.

But all businesses can shoot over a $5 coffee gift cards or meaning and meaningful and personalized gifts. This is huge. Okay. Number 11. Love Notes and snail mail. This one is another affordable but often forgotten marketing tool for your business. Share your appreciation give things in spark a conversation with seasonal postcards and holiday cards. You’ll not only stay top of mind, but don’t forget to share smiles so you can be piled up against a whole bunch of junk mail and bills. Let’s make someone’s day brighter. I have the perfect snail mail kit for you. It’ll be linked in the show notes. Number 12 are almost there baby Hang in there, creative VIP email list. So in addition to your newsletter, whether you blast those out weekly or monthly, or even just seasonally, which is totally fine, I highly suggest you create a VIP list that gives your current clients priority to your services. So for example, if you’re planning mini sessions this fall, we’re in February. Now if this is when you’re listening to this, it’s never too soon to send out a social media blast to ask your current and past clients to say Hey, want to join the VIP list. I will be dropping dates early you will get access to early bird sales, just giving them a heads up. Not only does this actually help you fill your calendar, which is the whole name of the game, but it gives your beloved clients a special feeling for being your top priority.

I use Flow desk for all my email marketing and love the super easy user friendly and pretty templates. If you’re considering doing that I have a code for you, Bill. Let’s get rolling with flow desk. I absolutely love it. Number 13. Follow through and follow up. Do what you say you’re going to do this is business a 101. Okay, lucky number 13 is do what you say you’re going to do, baby, even if you drop the ball, even if things aren’t going exactly as planned. Just communicate it. Okay. Like my probably always says you can always fix a situation before it becomes a problem. But once it becomes a problem, then we all have a problem. Okay? So make sure that you are following through you’re saying what you’re going to do and that creates so much trust, and so much value not just as a business owner, but as a good human being. So let’s do be good. Okay, do better. And number 14, I’m saving the best for last, the you. Yes, stop hiding behind your work, show up, take up space. You truly are a gift to our world. And we all need you to step into that power and to follow your heart. So that wraps up 14 ways to love and serve your clients.

I am beyond grateful that you are here. It would mean the world to me if you could click that subscribe button. And please please if you’re feeling the love today, it just takes about less than two minutes to please leave a review. I absolutely love this passion project and I am so so grateful to have you along for the journey. I cannot wait for next week’s episode. Love you. Love you so much. That’s a wrap on another episode of Quianna Marie weekly. Thank you so much for your listenership and support. You can find the resources and show notes for this episode and more at QuiannaMarie.com/podcast. I’d be honored if you’d show your support by leaving a review and rating on your favorite podcast app. Until next time, keep on dancing.