As a business owner and mom, do you feel like you’re juggling a million responsibilities and dropping half of them? Do you lack systems that help your business and home life thrive? If so, this episode is for you.
Listen in as guest host Lydia Fine shares the tried-and-true systems that allow her to run a successful business and show up as a mom. Lydia is the founder of Apollo and Ivy Photography, as well as a business coach and editor.
You’re going to learn so much from this jam-packed episode, and after it’s over, you’ll feel equipped and excited to build your own systems to make your life and business run smoothly.
Listen to this episode now:
Search for episode 142 of Called to Both on your favorite podcast player!
Meet Our Guest Host: Lydia Fine
Lydia Fine is a lifestyle photographer based in North Liberty, Iowa, where she runs Apollo & Ivy Photography and photographs families, seniors, and newborns. She earned a marketing degree and an MBA, and uses her 20+ years of marketing experience to make her photo business work smarter, not harder. In 2024 she started educating and coaching other photographers on how they can do it, too. Lydia has appeared on the This Can’t Be That Hard and Business First Creatives podcasts. In her free time, she loves pickleball and kickboxing, and hopes one day to get the Wordle in a single try.
Systems That Support Your Business
Lydia relied on these tech platforms to support her systems:
- Honeybook: workflows, client communication, emails, contract scheduling, and booking.
- Airtable: data storage, expense tracking, system of record.
- Zapier: brings all the other systems together
The first system that supports her business is her lead and inquiry workflow. As soon as her inquiries fill out a form, they get an automated email. She also uses the Honeybook app to send them a quick message that lets them know when they’ll hear from her.
With Honeybook’s Smart Files feature, her clients can also view prices and packages, add to their package, sign their contract, and pay their deposit.
The next system is her onboarding and offboarding process. For her photography clients, Lydia has a step-by-step workflow: she sends an outfit guide, schedules a consult, and sends a prep guide. A week before the session, she sends them a specific plan that tells them where they’re meeting, what time, where to park, weather conditions, etc.
A couple of hours after the session, Lydia’s clients receive an automated thank-you email. Finally, after she delivers their gallery, she sends an automatic survey. This entire workflow is done in Honeybook, which takes a huge mental load off of Lydia’s plate.
Your business may look different from Lydia’s, but you can apply the same concept. For example, anything you do more than twice should become a system. Complicated tasks should also have systems, even if you do them infrequently.
Systems don’t need to be complicated. It can be as simple as an email template. This week, pick one task that you repeat constantly and build a simple system around it.
Systems That Support Your Home Life
Lydia uses Home Chef to make meal prep easier and buy back her time. She and her self-employed husband maintain and share Google calendars for both of their businesses and their personal lives.
When it comes to booking things on future dates, they use a “first-come, first-served” system. For example, if a client wants to book a session on September 1st, but her husband already has something scheduled that day, Lydia has to find childcare or book the session on a different day.
On the flipside, if Lydia has a photoshoot and her husband receives an offer for work on that same day, he has to find childcare or turn it down. The fact that they can both schedule childcare, rather than that task only falling to one spouse, makes scheduling easier.
Every other week, Lydia employs a local housekeeper to clean her house. Outsourcing this responsibility, which she doesn’t enjoy, frees up more time for her family.
What’s stressing you out in your home life right now? Pick one thing and consider if it can be hired out, delegated, or solved with technology. Then make a plan to fix the problem.
Prioritization, Time Management, and Scheduling Systems to Help You Balance Your Business and Home Life
In order to prioritize your time, you need to know what you love doing in your business and what you don’t. What’s your zone of genius (aka, what you love doing and what you’re good at)? Knowing this will help you say no to opportunities that aren’t right for you.
A time management concept that Lydia loves is called idea capture. She uses a dictation app called Letterly to record all of the ideas she gets for her business so that she can implement them later. It allows you to brain dump, and then AI cleans it up and translates your ideas into a clear list.
For example, while on a long drive, Lydia dictated two full blog posts, and Letterly wrote them for her. Now all she has to do is post them.
Another crucial key to time management is setting boundaries. However, setting boundaries is only half of the equation. You also need to voice them to others. It’s hard to stick to boundaries that only you know about. Tell a partner or close friend about them and ask for support or accountability to help you keep them.
Another way to set boundaries is to do capacity planning. At the end of each year, Lydia looks back at how many sessions she took each month and asks herself how she felt at the time. Was she bored, just right, or overwhelmed? Her answer determines how many shoots she’ll take during each month in the coming year.
The final step to setting boundaries is to write them down. Later, you can look at them again and reflect on how well you stuck to them throughout the year.
Systems Aren’t Built Overnight
It takes time and experimentation to find the right systems that work for your business and home life. Remember that the goal is more freedom, and that doesn’t mean you have to overhaul everything all at once. Work on your systems one at a time until they run on their own in the background of your life, and then move on to the next one.
For an easy win, check out Lydia’s guide to three client-pleasing emails you aren’t sending yet!
Find it quickly:
- 0:57 – Meet Lydia Fine
- 1:50 – Systems that support my business
- 7:08 – Systems that support my home life
- 11:10 – Prioritization, time management, and scheduling
Resources Mentioned
- Honeybook
- Airtable
- Zapier
- Home Chef
- Letterly
- FREE GUIDE: The 3 Client-Pleasing Emails You’re Not Sending (Yet)
- Lydia’s Resources For Photographers
Connect with Lydia Fine
- Website: apolloandivy.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/lydia_apolloandivy
If you decide to use any of the links above and buy through them, I’ll receive a small commission back. All of those affiliate income commissions really add up over time and help generate revenue to help support this podcast.
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