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The 28 Day Study Group

28 Day Study Group, you go to Facebook, you put in 28 days study group, it's not one word, it's separate words, this website was started by Laurie when we did 28 days, so it's been going for a year and three months. Who are your administrators? They're all photographers? In the 28 day group? Just me and you Ah, just you Good, okay, so you run the challenges? Yes Tell us about that, tell everybody about that. Okay, well basically we have every session, they're called sessions, on the 28 Day CreativeLive course page, so it's Session One through 28 basically, and what we do is we run each session one a week, instead of one a day. We're gonna take 28 weeks to go through it because we understand of course that not everyone can get a model in every day for all the different reasons, so we'll take one week and we'll break it down basically through in the file section on the top there's tabs, and a lot of people don't realize there's a tab on the top that says "Files." You click on t...

hat and you go down and you just scroll through that menu and you're gonna find every single session, and you click that open and you'll see just a little synopsis of what that session's about, in my words basically. So, you can go back to each session? Yeah Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah So Files is in that, like in the boxes? There's like a tab on the top, yep, says Files. Yep, and that's where you find all of the sessions, and we concentrate on one a week, but you can since 28 Days has been out awhile, and we're in Cycle Two, we've already gone through it once. We're gonna continue to just have another cycle each time cuz we're gonna also get new people coming in that wanna start or that need to just pick up the ball and start doing it cuz people aren't doing it. I mean we don't have enough engagement right now right in the group. I would love to see more engagement on these files, but the file system is how this group works and what makes it unique to any other photography group that you might see out there. This is a true classroom-style study program. For free? For free So, the cool part is you buy a workshop for $199 that is like 93 videos on a business model and then you can go and join other people working through the model, really working through it, in the arena getting kicked in the face everyday, just like you, and work through the challenges and go back through the challenges. Consider one thing, if Laurie's doing this for free, how is she getting paid? So, I want everybody who joins that group that works within that group to consider how they can help Laurie do something and connect with her personally as well because somebody doesn't just create a community and then start working, I mean, doing 28 Days was the biggest thing I've ever done, if I was running weekly challenges from that, that would end me and to have people like this running community is absolutely incredible. Laurie is a human being. Every photographer needs to consider her amazing goal is to create and run communities, and now she needs to consider how she can monetize that because as an entrepreneur, working for free, doesn't fly. So, it can be anything from Laurie decided to, maybe you should set up a Paypal account maybe you can do every month, everyone donates one dollar to you, then you get a new laptop or a new camera or something, but you don't get people that do this for nothing and the fact that she's done it is unbelievable cuz she just creates these communities, and then the fact that she's working it every week I think is phenomenal. And the fact for you guys is that it exists there for free every week, and I mean we just got hit, Laurie just showed me the web page, and she just got hit with a massive influx of people that have bought 28 Days that are joining the study group cuz they probably didn't realize it was that amazing. This is not a group where you just bitch and moan or talk about people as a private group, it is a closed-down group dedicated solely to on-going education of a single workshop, and I think it's absolutely incredible. Does anybody have any questions about 28 Days study group? You have to have bought 28 Days in the past or have bought it this week in order to get in. You have to screenshot the receipt and send it to her, but you have to "friend," how does that work? They don't have to "friend" me, they just have to ask to join the group. You have to do two things, and the most important thing to do, I rewrote the description of the group that everybody can see, and you click on 28 Days and where it would say description, read that description of how to get in. People aren't doing that, there's 800 people sitting in that queue that have never sent me a screenshot, and I know that it's gotta be over half of them that own this course, so click on that short description, I even have in there how to take a screenshot, there's a link to this great page that tells you if you have a mac or a pc Command, shift, three Yep, but it tells you no matter what kind of computer you have how to do one easily, a lot of people don't know how, so I've had a lot of people send em to me that way. Take your screenshot, ask to join is so important, I get a lot of verifies without the ask to join and then it's almost impossible for me to go down through 800 people and find, believe me For free I've gone dizzy trying to find the name, so recently I've been asking, if you asked to join months ago, which I'm gonna find, we're gonna find today a lot of people saying, "But I did ask to join," or something or "I did send a screenshot," cancel that request if you did and you're now sending me the screenshots so that you float to the top, and I don't have to go through 800 people that would be great, but those are the basic rules on how to get in. There's just two things you gotta do. Well, three, you have to buy the course, you know, because it's only designed for people that own the course. Then again, in that File session, that File section, you're gonna find every single session that we have with Sue, and you can study with us on the current session like right now we're doing, gosh, I've been in a whirlwind of travel this week, Connection, yep, yep. It's gonna be Kenna's photo actually on the group, whenever I get to my real Imac, but anyway, Connections and Expressions, what we're studying this week, and should have gotten a model, you should have shot that. We're discussing it, and the way we discuss it is in that File link, there's a description, and then we discuss it in the Comments, and what happens with that is because it's in the Files, it never gets lost in the shuffle. Yeah So, if you're in a group That's pretty cool And you're posting something, especially in the In Bed with Sue group, it goes down, down, down, really, really fast, it's like, "Where's my post?" It's probably there, you know, but with the files, now if we're talkin about Connection and Expression, we have Cycle One banter and now we have Cycle Twos and because Facebook has now allowed us to put a photo in Comments, it's beautiful cuz then, that's where you put your photos, "here's my example, how'd I do, what could I do better?" and people are interacting there. That's pretty cool. Yep, and then if you decide like yesterday Alyssa had asked me if she could post about men, In bed with Sue, we can't post about men, we can't post about children, we can't post about a lot of different things. I'm keeping that only women, modern women portraiture basically, but the 28 Days group you can because Sue covers everything Yeah Families, men So, is this a stupid question, the Files thing, is that now on just the group ability for all Facebook groups to be able to do that? Yeah So, if you're building say a group page for your clients, and it's a private group page just for your clients, I suggested this in my marketing, Facebook is free, you don't have to go and build a blog, if everyone just wants on Facebook, let's say you start accepting clients into a private group and then you start cataloging like a blog on Files, so instead of it just being a running feed, so if they're not on Facebook for a week, they miss a whole lot of stuff, they can go back to that, that's something that anyone can do in a group? Absolutely, and you can tailor it to however your needs fit. That's so, cool I didn't know that Yeah Mark Zuckerberg changes a lot of things, but he doesn't always surprise me with good things. Yeah, there are good things with Facebook actually, the group system is Amazing Incredible I can't not tell you the testimony that goes on in that group, and In Bed with Sue, but you really see it a little more detailed and more honest and more straight-forward because the people let their guard down in 28 Days more because it's such a concise group of people with the same goals So, I need you to understand if Laurie can create a community and support it like that, she needs to be supported as well, and we're gonna try and find more ways to support her to keep supporting us, so she does personal work I'm allowing Laurie to link anything she does personally to 28 Days because she's running that group and nobody else runs or markets themselves in that group, so we opened up In Bed with Sue to more mentors and more people that can contribute because there's so many people in it, but 28 Days exists only as this workshop working and anything Laurie does personally because she's doing that for free, so huge props to you for what you do, and you know, in terms of purpose she was already doin it for free cuz she also did CreativeLive Students, CreativeLive Alumni. What other groups did you start? Well, it all started with the CreativeLive Alumni group experiencing growth. I took a, I was a student here twice, and I asked Craig if I could start a group for the alumni people that actually have set foot in the CreativeLive studio, and it's a nice group since that, and the CreativeLive Junkies, of course, was already there, since those two groups, there use to be a lot more banter in there, but now there's like a photography group for everything you can ever think of now, so you know, and that's wonderful. 28 Days and In Bed with Sue are my main two and then what we did with In Bed with Sue is, Sue decided that she wanted to focus more on 28 Days cuz she does not have the time to interact, so In Bed with Sue we have now, I think, 12 mentors, go-to people that I trust to answer questions about marketing and so forth. A lot of them are actually doing the Sue model, and then we're expanding it just a little bit more from the modern women's portraiture workshop, we're kinda modeling it after that too, to get a little more experimental stuff in there and everything. A bit more fashion? Women, it's all women, but Any questions about that online? Well, people are very supportive Laurie and saying, "Thank you," and saying, let me go back to the chat rooms, saying what a great group it is. Of course there are some people in here, somebody's suggesting, "Yes, if we all gave you "one dollar a month that would be a fabulous start." And I didn't come here knowing that she was going to say this, by the way. I mean that's very generous for her to say cuz I might need the first tissue, but I did this from my heart. I do it from my heart because, do I want to learn this myself, yes. This group creation with Sue was about almost intentionally that I wanted to learn more too, and you're in a chat room in CreativeLive, and I love a chat room on CreativeLive, but, guess what, when this ends today, that ends, and you're done talking to people, you're done sharing links, you're done all this stuff Well, what did you do about that or whatever. I wanted another form of communication for people to continue talking about what she is teaching, and testimonial place for people to hold each other up, to cry, to laugh, to celebrate, to almost quit and then people raise people up. We don't allow any crap in there. No one's allowed to bully people. They get kicked out right away. You see it once in awhile of course, there's 16,000 members. We will find those bad people and get em out, but we're only talking about the good people really, and the testimonials are crazy and they're attributing it to both CreativeLive, Sue workshops, and the group interaction, and the way that there's so much support there. We're seeing people opening studios that probably wouldn't have done it without these two models working together. Opening real live studios, showing their pictures, it's been going on like crazy, Nikki's one of em, it's been, you wouldn't believe how many people have opened a real studio, signed a lease and done this, reveal walls, I get e-mails, do you know how many e-mails I get a day that are the questions. Do you know how many thank you e-mails I get, unbelievable, I read every single one of them, but the one thing that I love reading the most is, "Today, I did a $4,000 sale, today I did an $1,800 sale, "today, Sue, I did a $3,000 sale, "today Sue I did an $8,000 sale" and people send me their ground-breaking sales, and I just, when I read those e-mails, do you know how many people stop by just to thank me? Like, when I ask for questions, "thank you, for doing this, "for flying to Seattle and doing this." I'm just like, wow, it's so amazing. Anyway, I love it, please join it, please support Laurie, it's really, really important. There is no such thing as a free lunch. My dad taught me that. He said, "There's no such thing as a free lunch," and I don't believe there is ever a free lunch. People do something always to get something themselves, so you need to consider that whenever you ask for something, whenever you expect something. Support, sometimes even just networking with people, is enough to pay them back. Sometimes giving them something, a connection, a network, anything is enough to give them back.