
Last week it was 106℉ here locally so why am I talking about winter when we haven’t even experienced fall? Here’s why; many businesses thrive in the fall season. There is a mad rush of lead harvesting, client fulfillment, and often an abundance of financial security that comes with the fall busy season. With 17hats payment schedules, you can maintain financial stability even during the slower seasons, ensuring a consistent income stream. This financial security can often wane as the wind turns colder, nights come sooner, and the crisp air of autumn takes a harsher turn toward the winter, but it doesn’t have to be this way.
My name is Tabor Warren, and I am here to show you how my wife and I use 17hats to weather the seasonality that comes with many of the service based businesses we all know and love. In the text below you will find strategies, real use cases, and insights from over a decade’s worth of experience as full-time wedding photographers. Now is the time to plan for winter, and I’m here to help you do just that.
Financial Growth Without Freedom
Em and I decided to launch our wedding photography studio on January 1st, 2012. Based in Oklahoma, our business now runs as a multi six figure studio on auto-pilot. Despite the studio’s present success, it certainly hasn’t always been this way. I remember the days of holding our newborn son on our lap while we typed away at the computer located in our office/bedroom during the winter of 2015. We were working hard—hustling really— just trying to get that extra bit of income we needed during those winter months. With a newborn on my left arm, and the computer mouse to the right, we finally joined 17hats as a solution to the madness in January of 2016. (Image below was captured 2 months before joining 17hats)
2016-2020 growth continued on and we became accustomed to the seasonality that is wedding photography. Here in Oklahoma, our Spring and Fall are booked solid but our summer and winter are brutal, both in extreme temperatures and the fact that only a handful of our weddings occur during these months. An actual breakdown of this year’s weddings is shown below!
Cue 2020—no one’s favorite year— but certainly one that revolutionized the way we all do business. I was chatting with my friend and fellow 17hats member, Nathan Bell about how seasonal our profession is and Nathan had an interesting solution, payment plans.
Prior to this conversation, we would sell our products and services the traditional way. For our wedding photography service, we would collect a retainer and the rest was due 30 days before the couple’s wedding day. For products, we would collect half down and the rest due when the product(s) arrived.
How Payment Schedules Changed The Way We Do Business
At this point, most of our couples reach out to us about 12-18 months in advance of their wedding day. We create custom collections for every couple and when showing our couples their options, they are greeted with 4 lines pertaining to the price of the collection. For the example below, our client chose a Platinum Collection and their wedding is 13 months away, therefore they have 12 months to pay their invoice, and their collection would read:
Platinum Collection | $7,200
-$1,000 retainer
$6,813.22 due 30 days before your wedding or
$567.77 / month
Consider yourself a prospect for the moment and decide which option would be best for you. This chart shows three common ways services are paid, as well as the retainer + monthly option we apply for our studio. If you are comparing 4 studios, all charging the same amount, which of the following payment structures would you prefer?
Traditional | Quarterly Splits | Retainer & Thirds | Retainer + Monthly |
$1,000 due today | $1,953.31 due today | $1,000 due today | $1,000 due today |
$6,813.22 due 30 days before the wedding | $1,953.31 due 3 months from today | $2,271.07 due 3 months from today | $567.77 due each month for 12 months |
$1,953.31 due 6 months from today | $2,271.07 due 6 months from today | ||
$1,953.31 due 9 months from today | $2,271.07 due 9 months from today |
Even if your preferred method is not the one we recommend and utilize, we use 17hats to send over an interactive questionnaire to determine our clients preferred payment structure. The payment schedule they choose does not have to be equal payments across the board, (though that tends to be nice for everyone). We’ve had clients in the past who know that every spring they have a windfall of money due to the seasonality of their business, and we ask them what would work best for their financial situation.
⬆️ This is an example of a questionnaire that uses if/then logic, available in Premier and Founding plans. Want this questionnaire for your business? Use the sharing code KVKDZV to import this questionnaire! Need help, check out step 3 of this blog.
How Payment Schedules Enhance Product Sales
Services are not the only thing we use payment plans for, we also sell a lot of products! Our products are all top-of-the-line, most of which are crafted in Italy and sent directly to our clients. One of the things about our studio, no one has to buy through us, although nearly every couple does! Why? We make it easy.
Prior to 2020, if a client chose $6,000 worth of products in our studio, they would be very excited to order. The only problem is that we would say, “Great! That will be $3,000 now and $3,000 when it arrives.” This changed the mood in the room since $3,000 is often a lot to come up with on the fly. Now we say, “Great! $500 will take care of your first payment, and then we extend the rest over the next 12 months.” The latter is often much more obtainable and creates an environment in which our clients can receive incredible wall art. Additionally, our business receives the same amount of income and is much less vulnerable to the seasonality of our industry.
If you’ve never scheduled payments before, there may be a natural apprehension toward setting up your first schedule, after all, payment schedules increases the number of invoices being sent, and unless your client is set up on automatic payments, (which I would encourage), it could increase the amount of past due payments. To counteract this, I would encourage you to read Amanda Rae’s blog on 3 Ways to Deal with Past Due Payments.
Utilizing Payment Schedules For Your Business
Payment schedules are available on Standard, Premier, and Founding Plans. If payment schedules would be beneficial for your business, you can find out what plan you are on in three steps;
- Log into your 17hats account
- Click the “account settings” button near the top-right corner
- Click “plan information” near the center-left of your screen
Scheduling in times of plenty has been one of the key factors to the strength and continued growth of our business. Now, we have 6 kids, a thriving business, and predictable income without the hassle of seasonal adjustments, all from the power of scheduling payments with 17hats.