What was the New Adventure Workshop like?
It was an absolute dream come true for me. For the 10 attendees who hailed from all across the United States from the east to the Pacific Northwest, it was informative, filled with fun, and jam-packed with content. The New Adventure Workshop photography marketing workshop was everything I ever dreamt it could be.
Our timeline allowed us very little downtime because of travel and the amount of education we hosted in 3 days. Upon arrival, each of our attendees received a name tag so that the others would know who they were.
We had set out charcuterie for everyone and the attendees filed in. We all settled in and began our first educational chats with Sam Burke, who discussed Pinterest and how to utilize it successfully.
Afterward, we took a shot break and reconvened back in the living space to discuss the importance of vendor relationships when growing a business and how referral marketing between fellow vendors and photographers is a great way to build a business.
Afterward, some of our friends went to bed but a few of us stayed up and discussed cost of doing business and charging our value.
The first morning we headed out to The Saltair Palace to photograph our two sets of models. We had such a blast doing so and afterward, returned home for lunch and to hear from Ellie McKinney about our Core Values and getting to know ourselves. This was a super hard hitting portion and really made us all think about how we are serving but also how to figure that out.
We took a break and ate a delicious lunch and reviewed our notes.
Next up we heard from my wife, Felicia about setting client expectations and communicating with clients effectively. This piece of the workshop was really well done because of Felicia’s attention to detail and her different background in the wedding industry.
We also heard from my payroll specialist, Kyle of BBCS Payroll on why it was important to run a payroll and how people can do it.
We left for our second styled shoot at Cottonwood Canyons and met up with our amazing models Joey and Gage and Bri and her wife, Andy. This was more of an adventure engagement shoot and we also swapped headshots during our time in the mountains.
When we returned home, it was late so we relaxed, edited images, and compared notes from the day.
Our third morning didn’t require an early rise and instead featured me kicking off the morning with breakfast and a final education piece from me. I covered SEO, blogging, and how to build content around your ideal client.
We took a break for lunch and our keynote speaker, Sam Starns, arrived to share about being a destination elopement photographer. It was an absolutely perfect education piece that took nearly 3 hours. She went over her pricing, how she built it and expanded on it. During this time, our lovely model, Haley Piacitelli of Utah Gowns arrived along with Janelle Ingram, one of my favorite hair and makeup artists in Salt Lake City.
After Sam ended her education portion and left back for Oregon, we left for The Bonneville Salt Flats and spent an amazing evening with beautiful décor provided by Rustic Urban Goods and my friend, Trish Atkinson, who I always refer to all my elopement clients.
The sunset was absolutely stunning and we shared in the last bit of champagne purchased for our styled shoots.
We left for the AirBnB one last time but not before stopping by In-N-Out Burger because hello, In-N-Out Burger!
The final day we said our goodbyes and went our different ways.
The workshop was amazing and we all left so filled with new content and lots of great ideas to elaborate on.
New Adventure Workshop Education and Educators
Our education from each workshop will always center around marketing. But marketing is vast and really too much to cover, even in a 3 or 4 day span. That’s why I focus on the aspects of marketing that we can make differences on during our workshop.
Specifically, we cover.
Our brand. Understanding who we are and how we can and want to serve our clients. While we obviously can deliver the same thing with our camera, it’s bigger than that. Being a destination elopement photographer is about providing value and bridging a gap that your potential client has. So our brand goes hand in hand with knowing our ideal client.
Our ideal client. Knowing who our client is will help us narrow down how we market. There are hundreds of thousands of people who elope each year. But each person is different and each elopement is unique. And while there may be hundreds of thousands of those people, we really only can manage to be the photographer for a handful of them. That means identifying who they are and how we can serve them. (feeding into our brand and message).
SEO. This is a scary subject to broach for many creatives since SEO is really a very different talent than running a camera and having people skills. It requires a lot of research, understanding, and design capabilities that many of us do not have. SEO doesn’t just come naturally through talent and blind luck. It’s one of those things that you have to know.
But each attendee gets an SEO breakdown of their website and at the workshops we will sit down to create an SEO rich blog together.
Blogging. Blogging and SEO go hand in hand and help one another. Having good SEO helps your blog and having good blogs helps your SEO. So what to blog and how to create one? Well, we’ll go over that at the workshop but if you want a little sneak peek into them here’s a blog about blogging.
Cost of business. Between blogs, SEO, and our ideal clients, we have to know how to make this job sustainable. So we are going to get real about how to price out elopements, travel, and how we can make the most out of it all.
Styled content. Of course no destination workshop would be complete without styled content. While we aren’t spending $20,000 in floral installations, we are paying each of our models, investing in clothes, and ensuring that everyone involved is compensated. Our elopement styled shoots will feature beautiful, diverse, and inclusive couples of different orientations, genders, sizes, colors, and cultures.
Amazing community. Each workshop not only includes the stay, the transportation, the food, content, and education but also a community of like minded individuals. While we ask our attendees what they want to learn, we also ask that they share in their knowledge together. The collective is far more powerful than the singular and I, nor any educator I bring in, knows everything. But when we combine our talents together, we are able to solve more problems.
Each of our signed up attendees is added to an Instagram pod and a private Facebook group. Typically, we also create a group chat so we can keep in closer contact during the actual workshop and afterward.
Along with the connection and the shared learning, there’s this team camaraderie that begins to form. While each of us are working to shoot more destination elopements with our ideal clients, we’re all there, rooting for one another and cheering on each other’s successes.
It truly is a team feel and even more than that, we become a family. And that is something that I truly appreciate and love.
If you want to learn more about our New Adventure Worskhop, be sure to follow along at our instagram www.instagram.com/thenewadventureworkshop and if you want to read more about our education, you can see it here.
Finally, if you’d like to join us at our next workshop, just check things out here!
New Adventure Productions is owned by Nate Dale, a Lafayette, Indiana wedding and elopement photographer. We travel nation and worldwide to capture beautiful and intimate weddings and elopements while providing a guidance, love, help along the way.
He is married to the love of his life, Felicia with their two doggies, Pika and Princess.