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BlahBlahBabble Worth Keeping

The Beauty that Life Brings…

“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”
― Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Somehow that just sums up so well why I love working with my Hot Mama clients. The life that they have seen makes them even MORE beautiful.

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ChristineTremoulet.com Getting Down to Business

Growing My Boudoir Business with SEO Marketing

Back in 2007 I launched my wedding photography business. In 2008 I moved in to my first studio in the Heights and launched boudoir sessions as well.

By 2010, I began to accept my superpower. I love, love, love doing boudoir sessions for women because I can help them see themselves as I see them – AMAZING. I can help them grow their confidence and rediscover their beauty. I can help them see something far deeper than the beauty that magazines are always trying to convince us of – so very much more.

Most women opt to do a boudoir session with me involving lots of pretty frilly lace lingerie – but some women don’t want boudoir photographs. They just want incredible photographs that they can give to a loved one, share on Facebook, whatever the case may be — and I’ve always given every client that option. They can wear whatever they want!

For years, I’ve run both a wedding photography business and a boudoir business. They overlap a little bit, but not much. Very few of my wedding clients have booked me for boudoir sessions; a few more of my boudoir clients have booked me for their weddings. It has always performated window films because weddings are mostly on the weekends and my boudoir sessions are during the week. But focusing my marketing energies on one takes me away from the other one, and I have to confess that having the help from this awesome SEO Saas Company, it takes the weight off of my shoulders. I can’t do as much for either one as I would like. If you want to learn about the entrepreneur industry, I recommend Lee S Rosen Blog, CEO of healthy bees business. When expanding your business into the international market, consider using professional company formation services Hong Kong to ensure a smooth and compliant establishment process.

I’ve struggled with feeling divided for the past 6 months or so. Because I spend so much time with my customers but I discovered a CRM, it helps me a lot with my customers, if you don’t know what this is then read https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2013/01/what-is-crm-your-business-nerve-center.html

This past week after shooting a wedding, it hit me. I love weddings! I love the families coming together to celebrate, the traditions, the unique touches that make it their own, the dancing, the music, the cake. But even as much as I love and adore them, it still is not at that magical level as my Hot Mama Boudoir work and my women’s portrait sessions.

Life is short. I want it to be magical. There is nothing quite like that moment when my client sees herself the way that I see her – the way that the rest of the world sees her. It has taken me a few years to reach this point, but my boudoir business is so busy it is time to cut back on the number of weddings I take. From here on out, I’ll gladly accept weddings of past clients, along with their friends & family — and mine of course too! Beyond that, I’ll consider others based on my availability. Brittany & I have such a great system down already for weddings, we won’t skip a beat.

If I want my boudoir & portrait work to have the reach that I can see it having, I have come to terms with accepting that I can’t do it all maybe with a little help of a healthy beverage to boost energy. If I focus all of my energy in one direction instead of two? Hang on tight, it is going to be awesome!

I’m going to start sharing more of the contemporary women’s portraiture work (a more accurate name for my work – with or without lingerie involved) that I’ve done over the past few years on my Christine Tremoulet site. Meanwhile, the Hot Mama Boudoir site will live on as I merge the brands together. I’m working those logistics out. And if you have any suggestions you want to share on how to do that, I’m open to hearing them!

2012 is going to KICK ASS. I can’t WAIT to share this with you! Want to do a session with me? I’m going on TOUR!!! Las Vegas, Paris, London, Boston, New York, New Orleans, Tampa, San Francisco, Napa, and more! Check out the dates and meet up with me for your photo shoot!

And because every post is better with a photo, here is one from Kayla’s photo shoot that we did – a perfect example of my Contemporary Women’s Portraiture sessions! Speaking of business, big part of business is marketing, take a look at SEO Company in Sacramento if you need help with digital marketing.

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BlahBlahBabble

Blog Goals! (30 Days of Lists: Day 7)

Oh goodness, this couldn’t possibly be more timely! As I mentioned before, I’m bad about “living in the moment” and not setting goals. I’m driven enough that this has worked out to be ok for me. Not great, but not bad. Just ok. But I’ve been working with Jeff Jochum on defining different goals, and several of the ones I’m working on involve my blogs.

Yes, blogs. As in I own more than one. This one is personal, but the rest are business focused, so I’m going to break this down by blog.

BigPinkCookie.com (You are Here.)
– Finish up the 30 Days of Lists
– Participate in other writing prompt activities
– Get back to blogging about personal stuff 3-4 times a week
– Before I post something to twitter as a link, write a longer post about it here if it is worthy of it
– Redesign the site, or at least give it a thorough overhaul

Hot Mama Boudoir
– Do my homework from today’s call with Jeff
– Write up my declaration statement
– Write a whole new bio that is more about ME
– Contact more past clients about sharing their sessions online
– Once I have permission for using photos, write up posts – ideally, at least once a week
– Help moms rediscover their true beauty

Christine Tremoulet
– Think more about what my big goals are, my lofty mighty dreams
– Share posts featuring weddings within a few weeks of the wedding date, after the gallery goes online
– Revamp content on static pages on the site, replace the bio, update the FAQs

WhollyMatrimony
– Cheer Melissa on as she has been posting real weddings! Yay!
– Work with Melissa on ad packet
– Fix header image
– Do a weekly editorial post on trends & products
– Work with Melissa on creating a vendor directory within the next 6 months

SLGT Photo Project
– Make sure any pending posts are online
– Check in with clients who haven’t sent PR info for posts
– Schedule outstanding shoots for people who have signed up but never did session
– Find a programmer to change the calendar format for booking to an option to be one of 300 sessions

Some of these things can happen immediately, some with take time, some will require me to work with Melissa on them. Knowing what I want to do helps me focus on getting them done though! Now off to do my homework!

Want to join the project? Check out the 30 Days of Lists site!

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BlahBlahBabble Wedding Photographer

Learning How to Dream…

I attended a workshop earlier this year with Jeff Jochum of Startup Strategy all about Selling to the Millennial Bride. Ironic, because it was during this workshop that I first said out loud how I want to focus even more in 2011 on working with moms and showing them how beautiful they truly are through my boudoir photography. It had nothing to do with brides for me in the end.

Later that night, Me Ra Koh came and joined us for dinner and a more informal chat afterwards. (I wrote about all of this before in my workshop review post.) Somewhere late in the evening, she suggested that it was important to dream big. Like crazy big. REALLY REALLY BIG. Dream about what it was we wanted to be doing in 10 years. Dream HUGE. Crazy dreams, as if you had no limits.

I realized later that night, I don’t know how to dream big. Not that big, not on that scale.

Or maybe I do, but the voice inside just tears the dream down before it can fully form. Either way, I can dream short term – a year, maybe two out. When it comes to business, I can launch an idea fast. But I can’t always see the great big picture. I don’t know how to dream on a huge scale.

I’ve always struggled for years with the fact that if I make plans and then it doesn’t work out, I’m really distraught over it. It is why I’m not a big planner in my social life. Have plans for 3 weeks from now on Friday? Eh, I don’t know. Maybe. I might do something. This isn’t a good thing. I know this.

I’m learning more and more how important having solid, concrete goals are – having them written down is even better. Next up? I want to learn how to DREAM BIG. Like super big. I could change the world big.

A few weeks after the workshop while I was in Asheville, NC working with Regina Holder and photographing weddings at the Grand Bohemian and the Biltmore House, Jeff Jochum sent me a direct message via Twitter. It was in response to a conversation that I really don’t remember anymore. Doesn’t matter. What hit me was his message to me.

He told me that I underestimate myself. I cried as I realized he was right.

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. So now I’m putting it out there. My goal for 2011 is to learn to DREAM BIG. Then to hone & craft my dreams. To stop talking and start doing. I’m constantly having small dreams, little ideas come to me constantly, and I talk myself out of them. I’m either too worried that someone else is already doing something similar, or I just don’t have enough time to focus in on where it could really go. I don’t honor my dreams. One step I decided to take towards this goal today was to sign up for the Mondo Beyondo class in January. I’m pretty super duper excited about this!

That is actually just one part of my learning how to dream big plan – I’m also attending Jeff’s Biz Clarity II workshop in Denver next month. I attended the workshop in Houston last month, but I hit upon such a big breakthrough half the day that it sort of rocked me off my tracks. I decided that attending Biz Clarity II will help take me into 2011 on a stronger footing then if I did it alone. (Think that it sounds like something you could use? The December class is full, but Jeff said that January still has spaces available.)

Interesting thing about all this dreaming – I think everyone has the power to change the world, even in some small way. I guess it is time to learn that that “everyone” includes me as well.

I’ll be in Denver, Colorado and have times available on December 17th for boudoir sessions. If you or someone you know would like to set up a boudoir session while I am there, please contact me through my photography site and we’ll get it all set up!

Mondo Beyondo Dream Big