We had a blast. What an absolute RUSH. I have a new appreciation for producing, especially LIVE shows. It is obvious how much work goes into making one of these productions, and the mighty cool staff of CreativeLive makes it looks easy.

If you enjoyed the show or you missed it, you can purchase the downloads here. Our course covered everything from marketing, to sales, to shooting, to life balance, so check it out!

Hooray to the crew!

Marketing to Moms…

In honor of Mother’s Day, we brought our own mom! She is really an inspiration to both of us. We love you, mom!

I wanted to thank some inspiring women who took the time to share with us about how they feel about being moms and business women. Thank you to: Me Ra Koh, Tamara Lackey, Vicki Taufer, Sarah Petty, and Dawn Davis! Your words added so much to the workshop.

One of our live student audience members, Michael Houlden had some great thoughts that pretty much summed up how we feel about marketing and sales. He says,

“Words like marketing and sales so often strike fear into the hearts of artists such as ourselves while at the same time they leave a sense of distrust in the minds of our clients. So, I sort of feel almost dirty telling people that I was at a workshop on marketing and sales. Here’s the thing though – marketing is simply the process of letting people know that we exist and what our service is – and done well the message reaches people that are interested in and value our service. And sales (almost a four letter word for some people) is simply the process of determining what our clients desire and then delivering it to them. Pure and simple. No ugly monsters. No scary ghosts.”

And that’s the point! Sales is simply providing a service to our clients to help them choose what it is they have already told you that they want! Thanks for your words, Michael! Thanks also to our in-studio live student audience: Michael Houlden, Julie Pergitone Croff, Joni James, Dan Troutman, Kristin Tetuán and Christiana Sloop Childers. Wouldn’t have been the same without you.

Here are some fun shots of the week … in the studio, the live shoot…
….and if you scroll all the way to the bottom, you’ll find DISCOUNT CODES for lots of GREAT products!

This is actually JOY shooting the CAMERAMAN shooting JULES shooting the family.

See?

The day after our live shoot, we got back into the studio to talk about editing, photoshop with presets and textures, and of course, sales! Joy demonstrated ProSelect and we all had fun editing images together, to decide how to show clients’ your very best.

Here are a few of Jules’ favorites from the live shoot. Thank you Hilary and Scott, for being so accommodating with the crazy outdoor shoot filled with cameras, wires, and people!

and of course, the famous eye-swap one:

And finally, we have to thank all of our amazing sponsors for all the generous prizes we were able to give away! Here’s Jules with her cute little shutterhugger dinosaur, and me with my DaisyGrip puppet! I don’t know who they entertained more, us or the kids we were supposed to photograph!

DISCOUNT CODES!

Proselect – 10% off of ProSelect software, offer also includes a free “Room View Collection”, with promo code: BIANCHI. Offer not valid on upgrades. Promo code expires May 31, 2012.

TotallyRad! – $50 off of RadLab from TotallyRad! with promo code: 1020MOMS, offer valid May 10-May 19, 2012.

Animoto – 20% off a month of Animoto Pro with code: BIANCHILIVE. Offer only for new subscribers. Expires May 31st.

Pictage/ShootQ - 4 Months of ShootQ starter with promo code: julesjoy2012, valid through 12/31/12. You can also get a 2-month trial of Pictage, no promo code necessary. Just go to Pictage Services, sign up, and if you link your Pictage and ShootQ accounts together you can do some amazing things!

Triple Scoop Music - 10% off any purchase at Triple Scoop Music with promo code: julesjoy12, offer valid through May 31, 2012.

VGallery Haven- 30% off of everything in the v gallery haven store, offer valid from May 10th – May 17th, 2012.

DaisyGrip for a special offer!

We also wanted to say THANK YOU to all of you who have visited our shop on Jules Cafe recently. We really try hard to produce products that we think would be useful to other photographers, and it is always something that we genuinely use ourselves. Again, thanks so much and we really appreciate you.

Here goes the Schedule, people. Keep up.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 20.

7pm Go Bee Soiree Party with Sara France and sponsored by Pictage

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 21

12pm Pictage User Group Think Tank meeting… Check out their new blog The Photo Life and see what’s happening at a PUG near you!

For much of the day, we’ll be on the tradeshow floor, gathering prizes for our Tuesday platform talk (see below!). If you find us and ask about Olive, you might just win a prize. Try it. Mention Olive AND Jules Cafe and you will get one for sure!

Speaking of Jules Cafe, check out our new SHOP and enter CAFE2011 for cool discounts on everything from Jules NEW Presets & Textures to our very popular Essential Starter Consult Kit!

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 22

3:30pm – 5:30pm Platform Presentation Studio B Preboard by February 18 at the following link: www.preboard.net
The talk is gonna rock, and you don’t want to miss it. If ONLY for the amazing prizes we will be handing out.
Here’s a list of some of the prizes you may find yourself the recipient of, some of our favorite peeps:

Oh, and we’ll be speaking too, in the midst of handing out a plethora of prizes. Found out more:

How to be a Rockstar in your own backyard
We will talk about developing win-win Creative Marketing Events with local businesses to raise the level of awareness in your own community about who you are and what you have to offer. We will cover marketing, sales, pre-visualization, and the important stuff in-between. Learn how to effectively understand your clients’ needs and deliver products and services that your clients’ can’t live without. Come and join us as we talk about some fun and innovative ways to market to clients that will translate into the bottom line for your business — new clients.

7pm – 9pm: Then we go straight from our Platform to a really fun Panel Discussion at the Grand Garden Arena:
Women in Contemporary Photography. We will be joined by some other AMAZING women photographers including Sarah Petty, Catherine Hall, Kay Eskridge, Lindsay Adler, Dawn Shields, Jessica Claire, and Jasmine Star. We’ll be discussing ideas and philosophies of how we’ve made things work in this competitive field.

And Tuesday doesn’t end there!

9pm Nikon party with Junebug weddings! We’ll stop by before heading out to the final resting place…

9pm. to whenever! After all that, you can find us rocking out at Pictage’s Signature Event, Studio 54 It’s Big, It’s Bold, and It’s BACK. Get More at Studio 54.

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 23

11a.m. You can find us at the KODAK booth along with Kenny Kim

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 24

9am. We are thrilled to do a another performance for the fabulous Photo Ignite with Kevin Kubota. We’ll be joined by some pretty groovy people, including Scott Bourne, Becker, Jasmine Star, Jed & Vicki Taufer, and some new names that you will not want to miss!

We’ll add more as more comes in, but for now, we hope to see you there, and can’t wait for next week!

Joy & Jules

We could not have done had such an amazing party alone. So many people joined us to make this party GREAT and I want to thank them here! One thing about having a physical studio space is that we can partner with our neighboring businesses. Not only did we have prizes and coupons from local businesses, but we had three local eateries contribute amazing food, and a local winery pouring wine!

THANK YOU to our fabulous caterers and wine maker for also donating gift certificates as prizes and giving coupons to everyone who attended!

And a BIG Thank you to Josh Gruber of Three Generations Catering… he’s opening his own business and his food is delicious. You can email him at chefgroove@gmail.com to get a quote for your next event.

Some of our favorite vendors in the photography world also participated by offering prizes and treats for our clients. We really love being part of such a generous community. THANK YOU! The prizes were so fun: Camera bags for both your point and shoot AND SLR, photo albums, canvas wraps, and BLOW POPS for all!

A few more thank you’s are in order, to other local vendors who contributed prizes and coupons for our goodie bags..

Claremont Resort & Spa with an amazing Gift certificate to the spa, and 20% off coupons for all!
Serafino Bianchi, my dad, who helped out with fun signs for our party, and a great coupon for a free portrait (courtesy of yours truly, of course) to anyone who buys or sells a house with him. Great idea, huh?

Thanks also to Shelly Waldman for some of the images posted here, and to Judith Isserman at Silver J Photo for all her help in setting up the tables, food, gift bags, etc.!

Among the list of prizes are:
Camera bags from Tamrac
Spa Certificate from the Claremont
Viva Voce gift certificates
MGS Pizza gift certificates
and more!

When Livebooks invited me to attend Engage!10 on their behalf this past week, I jumped at the chance. Not only was it taking place in the gorgeous Cayman Islands, but among those speaking and in attendance were wedding industry greats such as Colin Cowie, Darcy Miller, Millie Bratten, Carley Roney, Sylvia Weinstock, Randy Fenoli, Marcy Blum, Cindy Novotny, Sean Low, Todd-Avery Lenahan, Simon T. Bailey, Michelle Rago, Todd Fiscus, Christy Weber, Blair deLaubenfels, Marilyn Oliveira, Susan Moynihan, Angela Desveaux, Tatiana Byron, Jennifer Stein, Jill Meister, Two Bright Lights and Jo-Anne Brown. It was incredible to be able to not only learn from such industry superstars, but to genuinely form friendships with many of them.

A few of my most memorable moments:

Being inspired by Cindy Novotny, Carley Roney & Darcy Miller’s presentations
Swimming with the stingrays with Randy Fenoli
A downpour in the middle of the first night’s beach party
Dinner hosted by Colin Cowie
Hanging out in Marcy Blum’s room with a small group of people late into the night, talking about the future
Sylvia Weinstock snacking on Blackbeard rum cake with us at the airport

Wanting to focus on networking, I did not bring my camera with me to the conference. I did shoot a lot with my iPhone and was constantly updating my Facebook page.

Here are my iPhone shots of the beautiful locations, amazing details, crazy generous goodie bag, inspiring speakers, new friends & the stingray adventure!!

A few weeks ago, Joy and I went to Vegas for WPPI and had the most amazing time. I love going to teach and meet other photographers (okay, and the parties aren’t bad, either!) If you are a new (or established!) photographer from anywhere in the world, I strongly encourage you to attend. Not only will you learn what is new in the industry and be inspired on ways to move your business forward, but you will meet tons of like-minded friends and have a lot of fun! I enjoyed each day of the convention, but Photo Ignite, which ended WPPI, was by far the biggest rush. I LOOOVED working on my Photo Ignite presentation with Joy, and speaking in front of 1200 people was crazy!!

Most of these snaps were taken with my iPhone, but there are also shots in here from Amy Parrish, Daria Bishop, Angela Hubbard, Patrick Farrington, & Rosaura Sandoval. Thanks, guys, for getting such cute photos of me & Joy!

Join us NEXT MONTH on April 6th when the fabulous Michael Corsentino will be talking about sales!

(Thank you to Shelly Waldman for shooting these pics of the evening.)

(Thank you to Shelly Waldman for shooting these pics of the evening.)