FULL TRANSCRIPT: Please note this transcript was generated by AI and may contain errors.

 

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You’re listening to the Portrait System podcast,

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and then that led me to, hey, we should automate all these things so we can get back to what we love, which is taking really cool pictures instead of doing paperwork and cashing checks and doing bank deposits and entering credit card transaction sucks like that, all tied together to where let’s get to a place where you and I can sit on the sofa and watch TV most of the day or go to the gym or take road trips, watch our kids play sports instead of working.

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This is the Portrait System podcast, a show that helps portrait photographers and people hoping to become one. Navigate the world of photography, business money and so much more. We totally keep it real. We share stories about the incredible ups and the very difficult downs when running a photography business.

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I’m your host, Nikki Closser, and the point of this podcast is for you to learn actionable steps that you can take to grow your own business and also to feel inspired and

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empowered by the stories you hear. My guest this week on the portrait system is Jason Merino, and he is a powerhouse of a photographer and business owner. Jason and his wife, Joanne, decided six years ago that Jason would quit his job and they would do photography full time, and it has been full speed ahead ever since. Their business is definitely multifaceted because they focus on both high-end wall art for their portrait clients, but they also have a separate brand where they do high-volume school photography. Jason shares how they have systematized and automated so much of their business that they really don’t have to do as much work as they used to do at all.

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Jason was also very open about how having attention deficit hyperactivity disorder impacted him as a business owner and how addressing it really changed his life. It was an absolute honor to chat with Jason, and I’m so glad to share this interview with you. OK, let’s get started with Jason Marino. Hi, Jason, welcome to the portrait system.

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Hey, happy to be here. Nikki, thank you.

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I’m so glad to have you here. You’re in Arizona, right?

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Yeah, I sure am. I’m in northwestern Arizona, about 90 minutes outside of Las Vegas.

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Awesome. And you and your wife, Joanne just built a brand new house, right?

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We did. We were. We did an owner build. So we were our own general contractor. So we had to organize all of the subcontractors. And we did all the bidding done all of that. And we joked, Oh no, it was. It was a lot of work, and we actually finished the house and closed on it. April Fool’s Day of 2020, about two weeks after the whole coronavirus pandemic really got me going. So it was touch and go for there for a little bit.

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Yeah, no kidding. Oh my god. OK, so you and Joanne are full time photographers, right?

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Yeah, we are. Yeah, I, you know, I haven’t had a day job in about six years. Yeah. Joe left her other business she owned and only is doing this now as well.

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Yeah, fantastic. I just want for our listeners. I just kind of want to just give a little brief history of how we know each other. So Jason and I are part of a Facebook, just a Facebook photographer group together. And you are one of the most generous people with your knowledge, like you are so willing to help other photographers and just share what you know any time I I make a post in there that you know the answer to right away, you’re like, Oh, you need to do this, this, this and this, and it’s like, Wow. And I just really appreciate it.

00:03:14:00 – 00:03:29:24

No, that’s nice of you to say. And then part of me, I’m wondering if it’s just because I’m a know it all? Or is it because I’m genuinely trying to be nice, but I try to be I try to be helpful. I feel like giving people sharing with people, you know, it’s a good thing to do and and a rising tide lifts all ships.

00:03:29:26 – 00:04:01:09

So yeah, totally. And we have a lot to cover today. But I just I just wanted to say one of the questions I recently had. I’ve talked about this with the listeners before just about how I did this. I photograph three hundred graduating dental students and the shoot itself is a breeze like going setting up during the shoot. I can pose people like that like, not a problem. Got amazing photos. Everyone was super happy. And now I’m sitting here like, I have to put together these class composites and I’m like, like just getting it all organized and how to do it. And you really stepped up and help me figure out how to do that.

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And so I was like, Wait a minute, so you must do a lot of this sort of you call it volume photography, right?

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Right? Yep. Yep, high volume photography. We just kind of stumbled into that. And it’s not glamorous. It’s not sexy. It’s not particularly interesting. But we quickly kind of found out that it can be really lucrative once you’ve got like a system in place and got a a foundation built so you can grow and expand in it.

00:04:30:22 – 00:04:41:11

Yeah, yeah, OK. I want to talk a little bit about that. But before we get into just how you make that work and how you kind of add it to your brand because I know you also do like seniors boudoir headshots, right?

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Yeah. Well, even, you know, we do the occasional wedding. If it’s something we want to do, we kind of stop doing those because they, you know, they got a little bit too much work and we’re doing them all the time. But yeah, that’s we kind of do a lot of stuff. Yeah, absolutely.

00:04:52:18 – 00:05:07:06

So yeah, I’ll be really interested to hear how you bring in the volume photography because, like you said, it’s not the most. Exciting sexy type of photography genre, but it can be a really great, great way to like, supplement and make a ton of money.

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Yeah, it really can. As long as you get it figured out and have a really good foundation there because you’ll stumble around in the dark for months trying to figure it out.

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I can see that too. Just having gone through this one, you know, one huge shoot. OK, so let’s back up a little bit, though, because you mentioned I know that you and Joe are now full time photographers and she and you haven’t had a, you know, a W-2 job in six years. So let’s back up a little bit and tell me what you did before photography, OK?

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I mean, gosh, how far back you want to go middle school or

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wherever you want to start?

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Yeah, right. I’ve got a really interesting path and I’ve done a lot of things in life. That’s it’s probably due to my ADHD, which keeps me from being able to focus on one thing too terribly long. But yeah, I’ve done everything from like like racing cars to, you know, like, not professionally as an amateur. I was a big time, you know, really big in basketball as an athlete and thought I was going to play professionally at some point that didn’t work out. And then I went to graphic design school and did a little bit of design and that didn’t work out. And I just got into it kind of tricked my way into an I.T.

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job because some of my buddies worked for a software company and they said, Hey, man, it’s a great job, great career. If you can just kind of fake it and tell how modems work and how to operate Windows 95, you could probably get a good job. And so I literally went into an interview after about three days of playing with Windows and just kind of faked my way through the interview. And they offered me a job and I even negotiated a higher starting salary of nine. And I literally knew nothing. And so then from there, I just kind of have a career in it and learned and became like a manager and have like a team. I ran and everything and and became like, really good with it.

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And so that’s going back to like nineteen ninety nine, probably. But then essentially did that on and off all the way until, gosh, two thousand and sixteen. So it turned into this really long term career for me.

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Wow. All right. So so at what point? I mean, because that’s kind of a pretty big jump from I.T. to a full time photographer. So how did that even come about?

00:07:09:20 – 00:07:42:25

Right. So I met Joe, Joanne, Joe in 2003. I’m sorry, 2005 on accident and my band. I was in like a punk band at the time and we were playing at this big hair show. She owned a salon. We were at the hair show, at the convention center, and my band was playing on this Paul Mitchell stage while there was a person doing haircuts. So it was this crazy scene after where we were staying at a hotel across the street. She was also staying there with her girlfriends from the salon she owned. And I was in my room watching Scarface in the evening after we’d been done playing.

00:07:43:10 – 00:08:15:06

I was waiting to go to dinner and and we were going to have an after party show at a club around the corner. And so I realized my phone was dying and I have a phone charger, went downstairs to the front desk. They had a box of them, was waiting for them to bring them up. Joanne walked by. I was like, Hey, who are you? What up? Start talking to her, followed her around the lobby, driving her crazy and eventually got enough attention from her. And I got her phone number and the rest is history. Well, I tell you that to tell you this, she was a photographer as well and did that part time as well as owning a salon. And that’s how I was introduced to it, essentially.

00:08:15:14 – 00:08:23:19

Oh, OK. What a fun story. Oh, like in a punk band and an apartment ponytail hair show. Like, it sounds so cool. It was.

00:08:24:03 – 00:08:29:05

Yeah, it’s my life is really weird. I should probably write a book. Maybe I don’t know if maybe I read it, but it’s very weird.

00:08:29:22 – 00:08:40:06

That’s so awesome. OK. So she introduced you to photography, and it sounds like you really you started liking it. And you know, at what point did you decide like, I’m quitting my job and we’re doing this?

00:08:40:12 – 00:09:13:04

Well, so you know, again, two thousand five and essentially a couple of my bandmates asked her to shoot their weddings because I was like, Oh, my, my new girlfriend, the photographer, you know? And so I was watching her works. I was at these weddings myself, and I thought it was kind of cool and, you know, and then she’d go do shoots on the weekends sometimes, and I’d sit at home or whatever. But I kept thinking it was super neat and I like that kind of stuff and I was into art. You know, I was a designer at some point. So I just started saying, Hey, do you mind if I grab your little point and shoot camera and take a couple of pictures while you’re actually working at this wedding? And she’s like, Yeah, sure.

00:09:13:08 – 00:09:36:13

And so I took a couple of pictures. I’m like, Man, this is really fun. And immediately I was like, super into it, and that’s going back to by 2007. And at the end of the rest was history. From there, I just kind of jumped right in and I was like, You know what, Joe? This should be like a real thing, and you’re really good at this. Let’s like make it a business all second shoot for you, and we’ll start doing tons of weddings and it’s going to be amazing. And that’s kind of, you know, fast forward a bunch of years. You’re we are.

00:09:37:00 – 00:09:40:03

Wow. So so what, genre did you start in?

00:09:40:18 – 00:09:44:27

Yeah, it was. It was weddings. I mean, we did a mortuary here and there, but mostly weddings. Yeah, yeah.

00:09:44:29 – 00:09:49:23

Yeah, OK. I thought, that’s what you meant, but I just wanted to make sure because you don’t really do weddings now. You said just here and there.

00:09:49:29 – 00:09:54:22

Yeah, we just do. We will do like one a year if it’s something we like, but we usually just turn them down at this point.

00:09:54:24 – 00:10:02:10

Yeah, OK. So transitioning from weddings into. Portraits, how did how did that go?

00:10:02:16 – 00:10:33:20

Oh my gosh. Yeah, so what happened essentially is like once our our kids, we have a bunch of kids are all like athletes and they were all playing at a high level and they were all, you know, getting ready for like college careers. And one of them is actually still playing in college and he plays baseball. And so we were wanting to see our kids more. And we’ve realized, like in 2015, that I think it was on 25 flights that year and just every other week, basically out of town, shooting a wedding somewhere, traveling for something. And it got to the point where it was like, We’re never home, we’re missing everything they’re doing and we got to change something.

00:10:33:22 – 00:11:04:03

And we kind of heard about a guy named Steve Sapporito and he was like, really popular at the time, helping people, you know, do in-person sales because, you know, in the mid-teens, you know, 20 teens, it was basically like everything was digital and everyone was of the opinion that no one cares for or wants anything printed anymore. So digital world, yeah. And he was like, You know what? People do want things printed. And if you if you do this right, you’re going to actually be able to build a lot of value into what you do and people are going to want to pay you for that.

00:11:04:07 – 00:11:07:00

And none of us believed it, but it actually worked.

00:11:07:14 – 00:11:12:00

Wow. OK. Is that something a system that you still use in your business to this day?

00:11:12:06 – 00:11:24:03

Well, so we like to learn bits and pieces from people, and there were things. There’s things that Steve taught us that we use, and there’s things that we don’t. And we basically just took what some of the parts we think are great and utilize those, and it works really good for us.

00:11:24:14 – 00:11:31:06

OK, so do you focus heavily on prints then, or are you more into the digital or both?

00:11:32:00 – 00:11:53:06

You know, our studio is like a 100 percent focused on providing finished artwork and albums and other printed, you know, pieces of art and items and. Yeah. And what we do is we reward our clients with, you know, digital files from the things that they purchase essentially. So it keeps that kind of easy. They don’t have to ask about digital because they’re going to get them from everything they purchased on the wall or put on an album.

00:11:53:18 – 00:12:03:04

So it sounds to me like you have two separate parts of your business. So when someone comes into your studio, do you have a do you have a physical studio or is it are you doing on location? No, we

00:12:03:06 – 00:12:13:01

have a physical studio that we shoot in a, you know, retail space downtown in our little village downtown. And then we also shoot around the deserts and mountains here on location and even travel still for portraiture.

00:12:13:09 – 00:12:32:06

OK, gotcha. So it sounds like you might have to separate parts of your business. You’ve got the part where it’s like your studio, where that’s where you’re focusing on the prints and the wall art and that sort of thing. And then you also have the kind of the other side of your business, which is the volume where you like for volume photography. Is it like more sports teams or

00:12:33:03 – 00:13:05:02

it’s a it’s a healthy mix of school portraits. So you could we actually come in and set up at a school and we’ll photograph all like, you know, fifteen hundred kids at our high school or whatever the case may be. But then we also come in during certain weekdays and photograph their sports teams as well. And it’s a completely separate brand. And what we didn’t want to have happen is this we had our portrait side at our studio is more of a luxury, high end upscale business, and our clients, you know, are averaging several thousand dollars that they’re spending every portrait session when we do volume.

00:13:05:08 – 00:13:30:16

What we didn’t want to have happen was our customers who are used to paying volume prices where they’re just buying 50 dollars worth of, you know, wallets or five by sevens of their kid’s high school pictures. So then come into our studio to expect the same thing. So we have a completely different, yeah, complete different company, completely different name that we have different employees. It’s a whole different thing between the two brands and we don’t want anything to get, you know, crossed wires or cross traffic there.

00:13:31:09 – 00:13:40:11

That’s really smart, especially because, like you said, the difference in just how you operate with everything from pricing to the turnaround time, everything.

00:13:40:25 – 00:13:57:15

Yeah, it’s a whole different experience for people. You know, we want our clients who are spending a ton of money to have a completely different kind of experience with us. I mean, we’re interacting for 30 seconds with a kid at a high school and we’re taking their picture and we’re spending hours with our other clients and it’s a whole different world.

00:13:57:17 – 00:14:28:08

Yeah, we were we were laughing when we were messaging on Facebook, or I was laughing when I was sharing the experience, how my son, he’s in kindergarten and this was his first like, you know, picture day at elementary school or whatever. And I was like, Buddy, make sure you tell them to brush your hair to the to the right. Because I remember, like we all when I was in elementary school, I remember we all had like a comb and they would like, I don’t know, we were like, Brush our hair. I don’t know. So honestly, I couldn’t. I couldn’t care less what my kids kindergarten photos look like. But I was like telling them, Brush your hair to the right. I don’t know why I said that.

00:14:28:18 – 00:14:38:06

And when he came home, I was like, How’s picture? Did they brush your hair to the right? And he is like, mama. They didn’t even care about my hair. Yeah, yeah. You were like, We care about hair.

00:14:38:16 – 00:15:11:04

Yeah, yeah, we really do. We try to like, give people still a good experience. Obviously, they’re not spending that kind of money at our other brand, but it’s not. We’re not going to take things, you know, less seriously or to treat them poorly because of it. So yeah, we still want to make sure the kids look great. And I think that actually the parents, one of the things they like about us is that my wife in particular is very, very, very specific. You know, it comes from posing a lot of boudoir, like working with seniors and making sure his hair looks great, so she she sees everything and she’ll like, come over, you know, as well. We’re like kind of managing shoot and jump in and be like, Hold on a minute.

00:15:11:06 – 00:15:22:19

Let’s take another one of this of this kid because this hair is out of place. And so she’s she’s great about that stuff. Whereas I have a bald head, I’m like, I don’t know anything about hair, you know, I have no clue. But yeah, she she’s amazing at it.

00:15:22:28 – 00:15:42:03

Yeah. And I think it’s important to remember as that type of photographer where you’re photographing all these kids, those parents are not photographers. This might be the only professional photo that they get of their kid all year long. So it’s like, I think I feel like it would really help to take that extra moment or two to make sure that it looks that they look good.

00:15:42:09 – 00:16:16:17

Yeah, yeah, you’re 100 percent right. And that’s actually something that’s exactly what we say and how we express that to schools. Like when we’re we’re coming into, you know, maybe courting a new school that we want to get business from and be able to do their shoot or like, Look, these literally what you said, these some of these parents, this is the only portrait they’re going to have of their kid this entire year and sometimes their entire childhood. And so we really do want to take our stuff to a different level. So we use the same lighting techniques that we use in our our studio sessions on location for the school portraits and that first the parents were like, Wow, those are really dramatic.

00:16:16:19 – 00:16:36:22

I don’t know if I like that. You people would complain a little bit. So we toned it back a little and we weren’t necessarily doing Rembrandt lighting at that point. So but yeah, we give them a little more light and filling the shadows a little more because parents were still kind of want that life touch thing where it was a little more flat light and a little more a little more boring, you know? But we kind of mix it up now and give them a little a little bit of flavor.

00:16:37:04 – 00:16:46:12

Yeah, OK. Very cool. Were you? Were you tell the listeners just a little bit of how it works as far as pricing and how you make money on on these school sessions?

00:16:46:20 – 00:17:21:12

Yeah, it’s very transactional and it’s so boring. But yeah, that’s essentially you. You just want tons and tons and tons of volume, but you also want averages to be high because if there’s a thousand kids at a school, maybe 400 of them are actually going to pay for photographs. And and, you know, we were doing probably a $30, you know, 30 to 40 dollar average or something like that for these students to pay for sports photos, for instance, or if it’s school portraits closer to $40. And so, yeah, you could you know, you could make 10 grand in a few hours just photographing the kids of the morning.

00:17:21:14 – 00:17:53:04

We bring our team in and do it and get out of there and and but then we would go home and we have to spend several hours of the day dealing with the entering credit cards and earning all those things because we’re there handing in packets with checks in cash in our credit card number. And it’s incredibly awful doing all that. And we just recently found out about Photo Day, which is a software company, and they have a cloud based software for for the photographers to do volume. They handle and interface with your lab and they handle all of the transaction side, but then also handle the marketing side on the front end.

00:17:53:10 – 00:18:24:14

So you import the data from that the school gives you of all the kids with like their email, phone name, all that stuff, and you just imported into a job. And then that job will send all the marketing materials to the parents so that they can sign up online and pay for everything online. So we’ve completely, in the last couple of months, eliminated all of the backend work and now we show up, take pictures, come home. Yeah, we’ll do a edit on them. We use Phyto and like, you know, have them automated our editing system, and then we just upload these to the cloud where the job is located. Parents get notified automatically.

00:18:24:16 – 00:18:46:07

Their kids pictures are there because it uses facial recognition and then they get an email. Pictures are ready. They go in and start making purchases. Our averages went from, you know, thirty five bucks proximately. We’re averaging sixty three dollars a purchase right now. And we’re like drinking coffee at Starbucks and there’s money money coming in. We don’t have to work after the shoot. It’s incredible.

00:18:46:12 – 00:19:17:10

Oh, I love that isn’t. It’s so great to automate business. It’s the absolute best. And one of the things when I was talking with you about just even just creating this composite because I have to do three separate composites with it’s like two of them. One hundred and forty people. One is twenty something people anyways. And I was like, Jeez, and I don’t even know how to do this. And you were like, Oh, I have this girl on Etsy, who does it? And I was like, Really? So I reached out to her and she was like, done and done. It was like 50 bucks or something. Yeah. And I was like, Amazing. So now they’re done, and I didn’t have to do it and it was perfect.

00:19:17:12 – 00:19:25:16

And now when I do this again for them next year, first of all, I’m going to raise my price. But second, I’m going to have it automated where I’m going to have other people doing the works like the best.

00:19:25:25 – 00:19:58:28

Oh, it absolutely is. Like we literally just got done this week and hanging out with our friends, our Johnathan and Sandy Jonathan’s, the CEO of Fundi Software and Lensbaby. Yeah, and we we were up in Vegas at Saturday. We had a photograph of a big city basketball league with about 300 kids. When we got done, we, you know, got their photos uploaded. The next day we went to Las Vegas, spent twenty four hours there with our friends, going to dinners and having drinks, watching the football game. And you know, the whole time my phone’s getting alerts, showing people making purchases and I literally Photo Day is so funny they use a cha-ching sound.

00:19:59:00 – 00:20:12:25

Every time you get a sale that it alerts on your phone. And while we were hanging out this, this last 24 hours, there was thousands of dollars of sales just coming into my phone while we’re like out drinking coffee or having a steak, and it’s just the best thing in the world to not have to work.

00:20:13:19 – 00:20:29:12

Oh, it’s so amazing. And I’m assuming I mean, you guys obviously have your lighting nailed down and that sort of thing. I know you played around with it a little bit, but I’m guessing that getting the light right in camera makes, you know during the shoot makes it so much easier for your editing process afterwards.

00:20:29:22 – 00:21:10:27

Yeah, it’s very formulaic. So we have everything written down and we have worksheets and like guidebooks that the photographers that work for us and the assistants that work for us utilize when they’re on site shooting. And so they have tape measures and everything’s taped out where the kid stands or sits, where the background goes, where the lights go, the heights, everything is set up a certain way. And yeah, we’ve kind of this this past school season. In the fall, we transitioned out of having to actually take pictures ourself even now. So where Joanne’s on site managing what’s happening. I’m able to stay home and do other business and not actually have to be on site, wasting the efforts that we that I could be doing, you know, and be marketing, go to schools or just handling other business with our studio.

00:21:11:01 – 00:21:13:29

And it’s been really great the autonomy we are able to achieve.

00:21:14:13 – 00:21:20:07

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. So it’s basically like you have associate photographers then doing the rest of your shoots.

00:21:20:13 – 00:21:51:06

Yeah. And most of them are like young people that we trained. And so they’re kids that we knew when they were in high school and they’re hanging around town. Maybe they’re 20 years old or something now. And we’re like, and we put out ads, we’re looking to hire people and it’s seasonal work, mostly part time seasonal work, but they work a whole lot in the fall. So for once, like August hits, we’re like late summer. They’re working for a few months straight, like really busy several days a week and then yet tapers off a little, then spring. It kicks back up a little bit, but we’re essentially training these great kids who are really outgoing and and we’re teaching them how to do this, how to take the photos.

00:21:51:15 – 00:22:12:04

And there’s so many great tools out there, like we have software from a company called Pick Snub and we are able to have auto head sizing, so we don’t have to even have the pictures just that way in camera. Yeah, that’s brilliant. So we set it to eight by 10 or whatever it is and and hit a button like go drink a glass of tea, come back and all the pictures are resized exactly the same. It’s just crazy.

00:22:12:17 – 00:22:49:21

Oh, I love it. I love it. If you’re listening to this out there, think about how you can systematize these things more. You know, fine programs, Google things. Ask other photographers what makes your workflow easier? You know, just all of these things, like someone reached out to me this morning from Filter Pixel. I never heard of it before, and I just watched their demo on their website and I’m like, Sign me up because it’s about culling, and they automatically take out the ones where that aren’t in focus. It’s the eyes aren’t in focus. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve called down my photos, got lazy, didn’t zoom in to see if the eyes were in focus, sent them off to my retoucher or my retoucher does.

00:22:49:23 – 00:23:12:19

I’m sends them back to me and I’m like, Is this even? This one isn’t even in focus, like when I’m doing my final edits and touch retouching and I’m like, God damn it. So anyways, like all these, there are so many programs out there that I think we just don’t either know about or just don’t utilize for whatever reason. And there are so many things out there to make our lives easier and it’s so important to use.

00:23:12:21 – 00:23:42:24

Yeah, we yeah, we have so many partners that we work with and we’re ambassadors for. I know it sounds ridiculous. Things like we’re sponsored like a race car or something. We have like stickers all over us with all these companies that we work with. Amazing, that we use after shoot and we’re ambassadors for them. But they their software is very similar, finds guys that aren’t open and it finds things are out of focus and it kind of just sets it all up and color codes so you can go back and look at it. And then it’s machine learning. So as it learns how you like your photos, it starts picking those photos out of the so selling for you.

00:23:42:29 – 00:24:06:19

Yeah. And I used it for the basketball photos the other day, and it literally was, you know, we took about six or seven pics of each kid and we want to be able to post three or four of them. And it went in and found the best ones. And it was right 90 percent of the time, like without issue. And then I have to make a few corrections next time, so can be ninety five percent. And eventually it’s going to know how we like our photos and do all the work for us and then we’ll know it’s ready to go. We don’t have to actually put any thought into calling. It’s incredible.

00:24:06:21 – 00:24:12:25

So great. That sounds like exactly how this filter pixel is to. I mean, I don’t know how they compare with each other, but

00:24:13:03 – 00:24:26:02

yeah, and I’m super into tech. So it’s like if I can find something, if I can pay something or someone to do something for me and I can have like time on the sofa, like watching something on Netflix with my wife that sounds really, really, really great.

00:24:27:01 – 00:24:38:14

Well, I know, I know you are speaking at WPPI this year and you’re doing a panel about it has to do with mental health and burnout and that sort of thing. As far as photographers go, right?

00:24:38:24 – 00:25:00:22

Yeah, really? Absolutely. That’s exactly right. And how that started is kind of a funny thing. So Joe and I have been speaking at WPPI for like six or seven years now, which is in and of itself pretty incredible that we’ve been invited back that many times because I remember going with her like in 2012 and 2010 and walking around the trade show and we were, you know, we didn’t even have enough. By the fall, for an all or platform, you know,

00:25:01:13 – 00:25:10:17

I stayed at Hooters, Jason, right, usually with Ashley Fisher. My my first year, we went together and we stayed at Hooters in 2012. So I was with you at that.

00:25:10:21 – 00:25:46:21

Oh, absolutely. And we would we would go up there and walk the trade show and we would just come home because we just lived 90 minutes outside of Vegas. So, all right. Yeah, and we would just drive up for the day, walk around, look at all the cool cameras and then come back home. We wouldn’t learn a thing and then eventually we actually decide to take a class or two. And then eventually, somehow or another, we got to a point where people knew who we were and are like, Hey, will you come teach? And then, yeah. One thing led to another. So I was supposed to be at Imaging USA and we’ve been teaching there a few times now, and those people are great over there at PPA. And I was going to do a class on mental health, and it was called succeeding through the success, through the struggle or something like that.

00:25:47:10 – 00:26:19:27

And it was going to be kind of about a little bit about me and mental health, things that I’ve worked through and it’s helped me get better. And then, you know, just about things in general that was going to be cool. What we canceled because DC back in January and and, you know, the snowstorms covid, all those things were going crazy. We’re like, You know what? Let’s skip this year. Well, I let Arlene know I was going to do something like that, and I said I could do that for WPPI. And then she said, You know what? A panel might even be better for this for us, and we can bring in a therapist, an actual real therapist that can kind of moderate a panel.

00:26:20:03 – 00:26:48:24

And then that’s how it turned into what it is now. I invited my wonderful friends, Rakida and Kirsten, and Charmi. And so I’ve got like three of the most incredible photographers out there, and they’re really important people as far as like, you know, social justice issues and just being great voices for women and women of color in general. And I admire them so much. Yeah. And actually, this is probably good to come out after WPPI. But I think about it what? It’s going to be awesome either way, and I hope some people that are there see it.

00:26:49:17 – 00:27:24:00

Yeah, I’ll be sure to bring it up on on a future episode just to make sure people talk about it. And and maybe that maybe even I’ll be able to have one of the people you mentioned come on as well. Maybe we could do something for the podcast too. So that would be the reason I brought up the mental health pieces as business owners. Obviously, we get so overwhelmed with so much to do, and then a lot of us have kids and just so many things going on in personal life. And it really is a lot to manage. And it seems like the more you can automate and the more you can outsource, and the more you can have boundaries around what you’re doing in your business and what makes the most sense.

00:27:24:09 – 00:27:40:24

I figure the the better it is for our mental health. And I’m wondering if now that you’ve got all of these pieces in place that really help free up your time and just, I’m sure, relieve some stress, like do you find you’re in a better mental health situation now?

00:27:41:05 – 00:28:13:27

Yeah, I really do. And it all kind of started by finding these automations because what was going on is going back to like this past summer, I kind of had like a sudden realization. I started seeing a therapist a little bit and they were like, You know, I think you have like adult ADHD. And I was like, You know what, when I was a teenager, I heard I had ADHD, but this is like the 90s, right? Like I was in high school. Yeah, I was 15 in 1990, and they’re like, they didn’t really know much about that stuff. Very little. And then I started, I started seeing friends making posts and they were saying, Oh my God, I had ADHD and I just started taking medication.

00:28:13:29 – 00:28:51:09

My whole life has changed. I’m like, what? And and I was like, I’m super cool with medication like, that’s fine. I’m into it. Let’s try it out. So I went to my therapist and said, Yeah, maybe I do, and he’s having to fill out a worksheet and I’m like, Oh my God, I have literally every single sign of someone with ADHD, like from having a really short temper because your brain is so busy that anybody even asking you a question makes you angry. And I didn’t realize, yeah, my kids would ask me a question, or my wife would talk to me and just talking to me made me mad. And I had no idea. And just being frustrated constantly and never being able to sleep at having noise in your head and just all these things and can’t focus and get anything done.

00:28:51:20 – 00:29:22:07

And I took a pill and an hour later, it all stopped. It was literally like a light switch. And even compulsive eating. I was like, Oh my God, I’ve spent my entire adult life since I was twenty three. I would stop playing sports and like, I just slowly gained weight all those years and I realize I was compulsive eating because your brain is looking for a dopamine response and that food was giving me that. That’s how I found it. So every 90 minutes I would get this like aching pain that was fully my brain, just making me go eat.

00:29:22:09 – 00:29:58:06

I was in this pain in my stomach, and there’s no way I’m hungry. An hour after I ate right? Right. So I go in the kitchen, find something to eat, and in an hour and a half later, same thing. And this went on for years, decades and all that changed immediately, too. And I’ve, like, lost 20 pounds just like that because I’m not spending all my day thinking about eating to get dopamine rush. It’s crazy how it works. So that being said, that actually helped me get some clarity and focus and be able to actually try to build our business and get better at that. And then that led me to, Hey, we should automate all these things so we can get back to what we love, which is taking really cool pictures and.

00:29:58:15 – 00:30:33:10

It of doing paperwork and cashing checks and doing bank deposits and entering credit card transaction was sucks like sitting there hand typing in credit cards off of a freakin photo packet like come on. And so that all tied together to where let’s get to a place where you and I can sit on the sofa and watch TV most of the day or go to the gym or take road trips, watch our kids play sports instead of working. And that’s really what we’ve been able to achieve it in the last three months. It’s really been cool. Like right around November, we got introduced to photo day and signed up, set that up and immediately changed everything.

00:30:34:05 – 00:30:46:22

Yeah, I mean, like, it’s so wild because, OK. Do you think that being on the medication helps you then to be able to set up these automations?

00:30:47:03 – 00:30:49:08

No, that’s exactly right, because I

00:30:49:10 – 00:30:50:07

thought, Oh yeah,

00:30:50:26 – 00:30:59:03

I could not bring myself. I couldn’t bring myself to come sit down at the computer and put the effort into even signing, like putting my email address and name in, like,

00:30:59:05 – 00:31:00:16

you’re speaking my language right now.

00:31:00:18 – 00:31:27:06

I know, and I’m like going around right now, like I’m on like my Facebook like everybody. Listen, this is incredible. Let me tell you about adult ADHD and how it’s going to change your life if you fix it, you know, like, it’s incredible and I blows my mind and my life is so much better. And like, I immediately realized I’m not, you know, pissed off all the time, and I’m not like snapping at things all the time. I’m just super chill. I don’t get like pissed off in traffic, and I’m just like, I’m just fine. Everything’s fine. It’s incredible.

00:31:27:14 – 00:31:57:18

Someone said something to me, my friend Laura, on the other day. She’s like, I mean, I know you’re not a mean mean mom like me, but I just have to tell you what happened with my kids today. And I’m like, Why does she think? What is it? What I was like, What do you mean? What do you, what do you mean? And she’s like, Well, I know you don’t like, raise your voice and like, flip out. I’m like, Oh my god, do I make it look like I’m like a perfect mom on social media? Oh, hang on. Like, we need to discuss this because I’m like, You’re like, bad moms. I’m like, I’m like, I’m like, the world’s OKest mom. You know, like I have.

00:31:57:20 – 00:32:28:05

My husband is very patient and he is so even keeled. He does not he he’s raised his voice like five times since we’ve been together. That’s Jo. I’m the one who has been working for the last decade on my quick to elevate and just be irritable and everything that you’re saying, I’m like because I’ve always I mean, since I was young, I’ve known I’ve had ADD, but they always call it like an intensive type, which I know doesn’t exist anymore. But anyway, well, sort of it does. But now it’s lumped into ADHD, inattentive type. Gotcha.

00:32:28:17 – 00:33:09:03

So I never really put the irritability and just the questions part. And then also hearing you. I’m like, I’m we’re just putting it all out there today and and then hearing you talk about how you got on medication, then you were able to automate. Like, it’s like Jason, I’ve never done a CRM program. I’ve had companies reach out to me saying, You don’t even have to pay for it, just get it set up. And I’m like, I open up and I look at it and I just close my computer and I’m like, Nope, not never happening. I’m never going to do that. Like, I’ve never hired an officially hired an assistant because the thought of training that person and just doing it like overwhelms me to the point where I just don’t, like, I use my Google calendar.

00:33:09:06 – 00:33:10:00

That’s what I do.

00:33:10:02 – 00:33:40:05

Oh my gosh. Yeah, no, that’s that’s difficult. Like, Yeah, and those are the things I hate. I cannot sit down and just get something done and I’m writing, I have to speak all the time. I’m always doing, you know, talks or Zoom conferences for people are going to do presentations on stage, and I can’t sit down and write my presentation. I just get up there and talk. I literally just bullshit like and it’s because I’ve been an entertainer my whole life, right? So getting up on stage and riffing is easy. It’s just sitting down and making the goddamn presentation like, this is nuts. Yeah.

00:33:40:09 – 00:33:56:13

And so I actually got worse paying people to make my keynotes for me and just like them, just like they do all the graphics, do all the stuff. Here’s some words throw them in there and I’d make final adjustments. And that way I didn’t have to deal with it because I hate it. Yes, now I can do it. I just sit down and I go to work, and it’s incredible.

00:33:56:21 – 00:34:15:22

That’s so awesome, man. I love, love, love all of this. OK, yeah, you know, and when it comes to mental health, what if there’s anything that is getting in your way, whether it’s depression or ADHD or, you know, trauma or grief or anything? I feel like,

00:34:17:12 – 00:34:58:00

you know, it makes me wonder if I had truly, you know, paid attention to being ADHD and how that is affecting my business. I mean, clearly, I’ve done really well for myself. I have an amazing course that I love. I have an incredible, you know, personal branding business. I’m not complaining or anything. I just wonder how much less stress I would have had along the way and maybe how much maybe I would be even further along than I am right now. Not that I have regrets or anything, but moving forward, I think it’s really important for us to take a look at if there is something, you know, mental health wise getting in your way, it doesn’t necessarily mean you have to do medication or whatever, but I just feel like it’s so important to address it because then it’s like your true potential can really shine.

00:34:58:02 – 00:34:58:20

Don’t you think?

00:34:59:00 – 00:35:29:19

Yeah, I agree 100 percent, and I have had some trouble dealing with the fact that if I had been able to handle this when I was in high school, I would have had a different path as far as I felt, literally, literally. I’ve been a decade behind in my success, my entire adult life, and I’ve been really resentful about that. I’m coming to terms with that. I’m pretty chill about it now, but I look back and go, I probably could have been a doctor. I would have loved doing that, you know? And instead, I didn’t. And I could have played basketball at a D1 college.

00:35:29:25 – 00:36:01:13

But I didn’t it because my grades suck because I couldn’t focus. You know, so and then like our business, I our business should be twice what it is right now, and I should have a podcast and I should be doing all these great things. But everything was stopping me until literally just this past summer. Yeah, so it’s important. And I also think it’s important that, you know, I’m a black man and in our community, like mental health does not get talked about a lot. I think it’s kind of pushed aside because it makes you look weak and it makes you you don’t want to be vulnerable and you don’t wanna be vulnerable because of all these things that it goes back decades of the way.

00:36:01:15 – 00:36:32:27

The way, you know, being black in America is, and if you’re vulnerable, then you’re open to attack. And so this past couple of years, you know, going back to when the pandemic started and then George Floyd and all the protests, we have literally just been on the receiving end of just constant attack. And it’s been a really hard time to be black. I mean, it’s a hard one to be black constantly, but it’s been really difficult recently. And so taking all that on top of other mental health stuff, it just was way too much to like deal with. And that’s why I finally was so glad to get my stuff fixed.

00:36:33:06 – 00:36:50:02

Yeah, and I appreciate I know all the listeners do too you sharing all of that and just sharing, you know what it is like for you. And I mean, you deal with something that I’ll never understand, you know, never go through. And yeah, I just appreciate you sharing your perspective for sure.

00:36:50:09 – 00:37:24:27

No, I appreciate it, and women go through their own version of this. You know what I mean, regardless of race? I mean, sure, there’s some things that you’re going to have to deal with, but there’s things I’m not going to have to deal with. You know what I mean? And and there’s a lot of terrible misogyny, especially in our business. I mean, it’s I mean, just up until the last few years, there were almost zero women that were brand ambassadors for the major camera brands. I mean, it was ridiculous. Yeah. So those kind of things are terrible. So I’m here for that. I’m here for growth and I’m here for women and people of color and black Americans and black people everywhere. I want to see these people get their shit squared away so that they can find success.

00:37:24:29 – 00:37:27:04

And I’m all about that right now. So it forever.

00:37:27:17 – 00:37:32:18

Absolutely, absolutely. I’m so glad you brought all this up. And yeah, and it’s all so important.

00:37:32:20 – 00:37:34:22

I appreciate that. I’m glad for the platform.

00:37:35:11 – 00:38:06:17

Well, when Sue was kind of coming up as a, as, you know, a really a top instructor in the industry, she kind of took a lot of heat from a lot of men like criticized a lot of criticism. And we’re all like, why like, how do you even like, have you ever even heard her teach or speak like it was? And it’s not so much like that anymore at all, like she, but she always had to really prove, prove herself more being a woman, it seemed. And yeah, it was. It was pretty wild. It was pretty wild to watch.

00:38:06:19 – 00:38:15:02

And now, I mean, I think definitely things have gotten better, and she’s kind of quote unquote had to earn the respect, you know, it’s just so ridiculous.

00:38:15:04 – 00:38:50:24

But it really is. Yeah, it’s a lot to constantly be trying to. You have to do so much more than anybody else has to do. If you’re a woman or a person of color, you literally are starting from negative, not on the ground floor. You’re in the basement. You’ve got to get just to the ground floor to even begin to start to climb up from there. And it’s everything is there’s so much gatekeeping and just toxicity, and it really does hold people back and my friends who are women of color, you know, I watch the stuff that they go through and it’s just unbelievable.

00:38:51:02 – 00:39:12:11

You know, luckily, I have privilege. I’m a man. I have some privilege there and I’m a large man. I know people don’t bother me, right? But you know, there are people that have to be there physically can be intimidated and scared because some of someone’s gatekeeping and giving them a hard time and trying to beat them down just, you know, not even physically, but just mentally. And it’s just a tough, it’s tough. It’s just tough out there for people.

00:39:12:13 – 00:39:14:03

Yeah, yeah, it really, truly is.

00:39:14:21 – 00:39:48:10

And so even with, you know, with this misogyny stuff, my wife experiences that even to this day, I was talking about how hard it is for women, especially women of color. And she’s Asian and and so people will come up to us at the at the trade shows, WPPI, etc. And they walk up and they’re like, Hey, Jason, how’s it going? My wife standing right next to me, they don’t even acknowledge her. And you know who’s the worst about it? Other women like, it blows my mind. And and I feel terrible about that when it happens to her. And it hurts me because she’s hurt. And it’s like, you know, it’s 20 and 22 now and still all the time.

00:39:48:12 – 00:40:15:10

She’s overlooked by people. She taught me how to do what we do. She’s the reason I do what we do. She’s the reason we have success. We are a team. She was, I learned everything from her and the fact that like she has to fight just to get people to acknowledge exists like, Oh, are you a photographer too, Joanne? It’s like, Yeah, I started this business, you know? Jason was my assistant. Like, you know, it drives me crazy that that happens to her and it makes me really angry and it hurts her.

00:40:15:23 – 00:40:25:18

Yeah. Yeah, it sucks. It really does. And it’s good to bring attention to it, you know, because it’s it’s real and it happens and it’s important. So thank you for sharing that.

00:40:26:02 – 00:40:26:18

Absolutely.

00:40:28:01 – 00:40:29:12

OK, well, we

00:40:29:14 – 00:40:30:23

didn’t dwell on that too much, right?

00:40:31:24 – 00:40:56:12

No, it’s so important. It’s so important. It really, truly is. So again, just I’m glad. I’m glad we’re having this conversation. OK, so then let’s talk a little bit also about how you run the like portrait studio side of it, because I know you said it’s a much more luxurious experience. And, you know, tell us a little bit about that. Like, if I were one of your clients, what would the experience look like?

00:40:56:16 – 00:41:34:00

Right? Yeah, we we are really big on our brand is like accessible luxury or quiet luxury. It’s not about like being super super super. I know I’m a little flashy, but it’s not about that. It’s about, Hey, this is like going to be something really cool and special for, you know, that’s we want the clients to think it’s going to be really cool and special. And yes, it’s going to cost me a lot of money, but I still feel like it’s something that’s for me. And it’s not like so snooty and like, you know, over the top that I can’t walk in, like, you walk into Bergdorf’s and you’re like, Oh my God, this place and I won’t touch anything, but you walk into Nordstrom and you know, it’s high end, but it still feels very comfortable.

00:41:34:08 – 00:42:07:25

And so we’re huge Nordstrom fans and we like, like, literally try to model everything we do like around the way their brand is, where it’s this accessible luxury. And it’s, you know, it’s like upper middle class and it’s, you know, and it attracts that kind of people, but it’s not snooty and shitty and snobby and at the same time. And so, yeah, if you were a client of ours, essentially from the first moment you reach out to us the way we talk to you, I mean, even the way our website speaks to you in the photographs we post on social media, they’re already kind of telling you and attracting people that we want to work with, like our ideal clients.

00:42:08:08 – 00:42:24:22

And then we basically start our process from the time we talk to them and the words we say in the way we quote things and the way we talk about money with them. It’s all in a way that it keeps us on brand and keeps us seeming like it’s a luxe experience, but again, not inaccessible.

00:42:24:29 – 00:42:33:26

Yeah, I love that. All right. So yeah, this is great. Well, you tell me about your packaging and pricing and while art and all that good stuff.

00:42:34:09 – 00:43:13:27

Yeah, absolutely. So kind of you know what your experience would be as a client? You know, we would we would set up a meeting with you and we’re back to doing those in person. You come down to the studio and when you come to our studio, it’s very much set up like a workspace, but also an art space. And so when you walk in, you’re seeing really big pieces of art that are just, you know, we use a lot of like our reflective metals or high gloss metals to where people are walking in and things are just, you know, shining at them and jumping off the wall. And we’re showing, you know, we’re showing our best stuff because very much like a car dealership, you walk into a Chevrolet dealership, they’re going to have the most expensive Corvette right in the middle of the showroom because they want you to be blown away right off the bat.

00:43:14:05 – 00:43:48:10

Yeah, they’re not putting that $25000 car that you know with college kid has. They’re putting the $100000 top of the Line zr1 Corvette. So that’s what we do in our studio. You walk in the whole front half of the studio is art just art everywhere, and it’s on easels that are on tables in the window and it’s on the walls and there’s albums everywhere. And we want you to come in and see the biggest and boldest and most incredible things we have because we want you to immediately have the mindset as a client that, hey, this is serious, I’m here for something really important. And yes, it’s going to be expensive and that’s what we want people to feel when they walk in and take it seriously.

00:43:48:21 – 00:43:56:14

Yeah. All right. So then you do the shoot and then do you have some time in between when you do the viewing or do you do same day?

00:43:56:24 – 00:44:30:02

So this is the thing that really blows people’s minds. We not only do same day, we do within about five minutes, guys. And so people are seeing their photos about five minutes after their shoots over, and we do that consistently with essentially every single client. And our system for that is that while we’re shooting and again, I’ll take a quick step back, but Joe and I work together as a team. And Joe is incredibly good at posing. She’s really great at taking care of details like we talked about and almost overly detailed.

00:44:30:04 – 00:45:08:07

It’s almost annoying, right? And so I’m like, Come on, just get all the way. I gotta get this shot. But I’m technical. I’m very technical. And so what we do is that Joanne does posing and deals with that. She’ll have the light move, the light around with her when we’re on location or in the studio, she’ll move the lights and I’m shooting, so my job is actually a little easier. I’m just a composition to shoot. But what I do is that every time I know I’ve got a great photo, I just, you know, we’re using Sonys and I just hit the lock button and that puts a checkmark on that photo. A graph from when we import into Photo Mechanic, so I immediately know all my best photos are there when I’m done shooting, I don’t actually have to call from a portrait session.

00:45:08:11 – 00:45:38:28

It’s already called in camera as I’m doing it, and it doesn’t slow me down because it came at, yeah, it became a habit and it took some training. But I realized that I don’t want people to go home, have to wait, then get a sitter again and come back or, you know, do all these things. I want them to come in for their shoot, do everything and be gone in three hours and never have to come back again because that’s super convenient for people. Mm-Hmm. And so that’s what we did. And I think that just kind of like learning to use the buttons and just get so familiar with the camera that it became habit. Now we do that, we’ve done it for years and it’s people are blown away by that.

00:45:39:00 – 00:45:41:06

They can’t believe they get to see their photos right away.

00:45:41:27 – 00:45:47:26

Fantastic. And then do you have different packages or do you do just all all alacarte?

00:45:48:13 – 00:46:19:10

So we actually started out only doing packages for seniors, and we still offer packages to everybody. But what we do essentially is we have a session fee. That’s not a lot. It’s, you know, it’s small enough to where it’s accessible, but because we know we’re going to make our money later, selling people something tangible and wonderful that they want. And people generally just get a la carte items, they’ll buy a piece of art. And the reason they do alacarte is because we use fundi software. And using that software, we can design something for their space, live with them.

00:46:19:16 – 00:46:54:00

And so a pre-planned package isn’t going to work for everybody because a piece of Waller, a certain size doesn’t work for everybody or, you know, an album. Maybe they’re not album people. They don’t want to have to pick up a book and flip through it to see pictures. They just want to see them on the wall. And that’s how we are at our house. Our house has got artwork everywhere because it’s so nice to walk through the house and just see it every day, every time you walk by. So, yeah, we’re designing our live with our clients. They get to be part of the process, which they love. They get to design their albums right there with us as part of the process, and we literally put it page by page and let them design each spread.

00:46:54:06 – 00:47:09:21

We give them input and we definitely act as experts for our clients so they don’t make mistakes that we know they’re probably going to regret later, and we help them build all this so that they’re part of it all. And then when they leave, they’re really excited because they got to literally build something. It’s like going to build a bear, but it’s for photography.

00:47:09:29 – 00:47:14:27

I love that. That’s awesome. Very cool. And what’s the average that your clients are spending?

00:47:15:14 – 00:47:17:19

We average pay about $3500 a client

00:47:17:25 – 00:47:29:09

Sweet and you’re getting it all done. So so once they leave, you just have to retouch those final choices and order the prints and get them shipped or packaged up. And then you’re good to go,

00:47:29:17 – 00:47:49:09

Yeah, that’s exactly right. Yeah, we come home. Everything’s already been selected, so there’s no more work in that regard. And then we send it off to one of our another of our partner brands. We we send our pictures to Image Salon. They do the color correcting and all the retouching. We get them back. And if we didn’t do a little tweaks to them, we do. Then we order our work from one of our partner labs.

00:47:49:23 – 00:47:54:29

Fantastic. And you guys just have this down to a science. I love it.

00:47:55:03 – 00:48:26:01

It’s fun because look, really leisure is very, very, very important to me. So I want to relax. I don’t want to work a lot, and honestly, I don’t really want to. I don’t want to even get bigger. I want I’m happy where we’re at. I’m on the volume side can get bigger because we’re ready to scale. We’re ready for growth. We have a system in place for today really helped us get to that place where we can grow now and not worry about the back end of it and being overloaded. So now we’re like, OK, we can scale that business. But on the portrait side, I’m happy with the volume of portrait work we’re doing and the volume of head shots we’re doing, and it’s perfect right now.

00:48:26:13 – 00:48:38:14

Awesome. I mean, I’m just I’m so happy for you guys. It just feels like you’re really like, you said you’re in a good place. You’re exactly where it feels right to be right now. And it’s really cool. And it’s just it’s awesome.

00:48:38:16 – 00:49:09:16

Thank you. And you know, one of the best parts is that, like our friendships, we actually have friendships with people. Not that we didn’t have friends, but we’re actually spending time with, like other couples that we absolutely love and we’re able to, you know, this past fall, we went to Seattle in October and November was Portland, and then we took our kids in New York City right before Christmas for a week. And then, you know, we’re in Vegas all the time, just spending time with people this weekend. And so, you know, it’s so nice to just be able to, like, take time away and not have to sit around and grind.

00:49:09:21 – 00:49:11:22

I don’t want to grind. I’m done grinding.

00:49:12:07 – 00:49:13:00

Oh my God.

00:49:13:13 – 00:49:33:17

So the irony, the irony is, is that if you came and saw me talk any time in the last five years, I was like, You know, money, money, money, money, money, make money. It’s all about making tons and tons of money. And I’m like, You know what? I got enough like, I’m good. Let’s make the same amount of money and not work as much. Let’s make less money and not work as much. I’m okay with that, too, and that’s where I’m at in life, and I’m really happy with that.

00:49:33:24 – 00:50:06:22

Isn’t it great? It’s such a great feeling because you’re what? Forty six, you said you’re 50, 90, OK, so I’m forty four. OK, and I don’t know if it’s just being in my forties or what. And I know for my listeners, I’m sorry. I’ve been talking about this a lot lately, but it’s, you know, it’s where I’m at my life, I guess. So I talk about it a lot. But soon I have really been having these, these deep conversations about, like you said, the grind and and. Physically have struggled with. OK, so now I’m going to sit down and not work right now in the middle of the day.

00:50:07:14 – 00:50:30:06

Wait, no. It’s like having to reprogram ourselves that it is OK to not be constantly fucking working all the time, you know, it’s like, Oh, it’s like pre-programming. And the older I get, the easier it. The last couple of years have just I’ve made such a shift on that and it feels so good. It feels so good to work smarter and not harder. And it’s just the best.

00:50:30:16 – 00:51:13:07

Absolutely. And there’s like all these, like others, kind of like things that are touched by that, for instance, like my relationship with my wife is really, really great and it’s always been good. Like, we don’t have like huge fights like, you know, maybe like once every couple of months, we’ll have like a bit of a disagreement or raise our voices a little, but like, we’re just happy. And what’s really cool is that she has more leisure time because my wife is like a worker, she freakin grinds. She’s always been that way. It’s like, culturally, you know, she’s Vietnamese and culturally, her mom grinds, you know, and now she’s like realizing that, you know, she too, is finding that she doesn’t have as much do because with the automation we have now, she’s not sitting around entering credit card or counting checks and putting stamps on the back of checks and all these things.

00:51:13:15 – 00:51:45:10

And so she has the time to just like, take care of herself. And so now she’s actually she, you know, we have a home gym and she’s working out the gym at our house and and having time for herself. And I love working out. So I go to the gym, probably almost. I go six to seven days a week. I sometimes will take a day off, but I’m lifting like all the time and I always make sure that I have time for that. So in the week before last, you know, our our youngest son is up in Northern California playing college baseball. It’s his first year in college and he’s, you know, doing what he loves. We actually popped in with our little road trip car and drove up to Napa for the weekend.

00:51:45:16 – 00:52:10:04

We went up one on Thursday, came back Sunday and just had this wonderful time watching him play baseball and beautiful sixty five degree weather, going out to dinner and having a wonderful time. And the whole time we didn’t have to work and it was incredible. And so having that all these systems in place and the autonomy to be able to just hop in your car when you want to and just disappear for four days is so great and it just so great for your relationship and your mental health. And I’m so excited about the future because of this.

00:52:10:12 – 00:52:18:06

Oh yes, gosh, this is just such. Yes. Yes, yes, yes. This is amazing. Everything you just said. Absolutely incredible.

00:52:18:16 – 00:52:30:20

I hope some people are like feeling excited about it. You know what I mean? I’m not a mental health professional. I just know about me. But you know, things are going really great and I have been in the best place I’ve ever been. Actually, right now, I can honestly say that. Yeah, it’s

00:52:30:22 – 00:53:06:05

so wonderful, you know, and I’m trying to think like, OK, so you and I have been at this for a while. You know, we’ve been in this career for a while. So I’m just trying to think like for for people who are newer in their career who are, who are, you know, still built in the building phase. The initial building phase really take what Jason saying to her at at trying to systematize as soon as you possibly can so that you don’t get to a point where you are, just like to use your word, just grinding and just, you know, all hours of the day and your family is struggling, you know, is feeling at your relationships, are feeling it and you’re feeling it.

00:53:06:07 – 00:53:18:14

It’s like at any point in your business, you can find a way to just make it easier on yourself, I guess. Like, don’t feel like you have to do it all because you can’t. You can’t.

00:53:19:03 – 00:53:49:03

No, that’s absolutely right. And and if you do it initially, it definitely is a lot easier. I mean, we’ve Joe and I have been working professionally doing this and around two thousand nine. Like truly working hard at this. And so, you know, here we are, 13 years and it was just in the last like six months where we really got our shit together so we don’t have to grind. And, yeah, do it soon. Get it in place. There’s a there’s something out there for everything. I mean, literally in this last year, all these, you know, the auto calling I calling softwares are out there now.

00:53:49:06 – 00:54:13:10

That wasn’t the thing 14 months ago. And now you don’t even have to call your own photos if you don’t want to. I mean, it’s it’s yeah, we don’t call our photos, you know, we don’t edit our photos. We literally given that off to other people. Initially, I was like, Oh my God, like, it’s expensive. It’s all these things, but it’s not. And we make more money because we’re doing it. It’s incredible, and I just don’t give a shit like I’m I’m OK spending money. If it’s going to make me not have to work. And I love that.

00:54:13:15 – 00:54:43:15

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Just one last thing about this like workaholic grinding thing is my my husband recently, like severed his finger, his right ring ring finger, and he’s a lecturer, an electrician with his own business. He’s right handed and he’s. Yeah, yeah. Oh my God. Hanging by tendons and it was they were able to reattach it. And he is very… He rides BMX. And to be able to grip a bike is like probably the most important thing in his life other than me and our children.

00:54:44:00 – 00:54:46:06

Right? Yeah, those handlebars, let me tell you,

00:54:46:08 – 00:55:20:06

it’s very important to him. And so he was very persistent and got the surgeon to take the pins out way early, and he’s just been like at it with OT and all that. So he’s doing quite well, so we don’t think he’s going to have to amputate it at this point, we’ll see where he’s going to give another couple of months anyway. Fast forward, he couldn’t work for a while. And Dan was raised in a very blue collar family. You get a trade, you work your, you know, 50 to 70 hours a week and you don’t work, you know, you don’t work on the weekend, but then you do this for 30 years, then you retire.

00:55:20:08 – 00:55:52:25

You know, it’s just like, not how I want our life life to be. So when out now as I’ve been showing him, like, you don’t need to do that. And this has been a couple of years in progress for us. And he’s always had, but I still have to work, but I still have to work. So even though I got him to quit his job with a company and start his own business, which has been wonderful for our family. He still is like, I still have to work a lot. You know, he still cannot get past that mentality. And then it basically took him cutting his finger off to really realize he doesn’t have to work.

00:55:53:06 – 00:56:23:22

He doesn’t have to work that much. And I’m like, Babe, look how much happier you are when you are like playing on our property and building your jumps and building things for us and, you know, building the toy room for the kids, like you’re not stressed out, like it’s OK. And I just want to remind people out there, someone said this to me. Don’t let it be a getting your finger cut off situation to make you slow down and really like take a look at how things are going for you and take a look at truly what makes you happy and realize it doesn’t always have to be work, work, work.

00:56:24:03 – 00:57:03:00

Absolutely. And I think for a lot of people, that finger being cut off was when the pandemic happened and they they couldn’t work. Yes. True. Yeah. With all that leisure time, you’re realizing that not working is actually kind of kickass and you can you can figure out a way to to generate revenue for your business in creative ways and find ways to still make money but not grind. And I mean, we’ve all like there was a culture of grinding. It was it was celebrated up until two years ago. It was like, Oh my God, you got to work as hard as possible constantly, just like you’re saying with your husband and now everybody celebrating mental health and relaxation and autonomy.

00:57:03:02 – 00:57:34:08

And I use that word a lot. But it’s, you know, Ryan Brunheiser my wife and I saw him talk at the fearless conference in Scottsdale Pride back in 2012, and he used that word and he talked about autonomy and is choosing what to do with his time and paying people to do things. And it always stuck in the back of my head. I think we hired a housekeeper soon as we got home. After that, after after hearing that because I realized that spending our time cleaning our home took us away from hanging out with our kids or going to the movies.

00:57:34:15 – 00:57:55:07

And so that was like the first step, and I’m like, Babe, let’s hire a housekeeper. And that changed a lot of things. But then, now, now it’s like, Hey, let’s hire someone that does the rest of this work for us. So we don’t have to. Yeah, those things are really valuable, and I’m loving that the focus has shifted from grinding to free time and leisure and enjoying your life instead of trying to kill yourself for more money.

00:57:55:17 – 00:58:13:24

Totally, totally. And again, it does. You know, it takes some building. It does. It takes some building. I don’t want people to think that it’s like you can start, but I guess you could. Maybe you could start off, you know, with some, I don’t know. I’m sure there is a better way to do it than how I did it starting out.

00:58:14:01 – 00:58:44:24

Yeah, I mean, you could start out with using like auto-culling software if you don’t want to deal with that. That’s part’s easy because you’re just paying, you know, a monthly fee that’s, you know, a few, but a few dollars and their software. Does that magic for you. So now you’ve saved a few hours from a wedding and you’re shooting. If you’re shooting a lot and keeping, you know, keeping your finger on the trigger and getting tons and tons of shots like a documentary photographer, should you come home from it at our wedding with, you know, six thousand pictures? Yeah, it’s going that’s take you hours to go through. So yes, if you want those hours freed up and spend with your kids, send it off to After Shoot.

00:58:44:26 – 00:58:48:25

Let them do the work for you. It’s that easy. Yeah. Take the time to do it.

00:58:50:12 – 00:59:13:17

Well, we have a set of time. I feel like I can talk to you all day, OK? We are out of time, but I do have. Well, first of all, thank you for everything that you’ve shared and just it’s I know people are going to walk away with so much good information. So this is just brilliant. But I do have four other questions that I have to ask you that I ask at the end of each episode. And the first one is what is something you cannot live without when you’re doing a photo shoot?

00:59:14:06 – 00:59:30:00

Oh my god, that’s rough. I can’t live without off camera flash. It’s literally everything to define. It defines our style and our look. And so we use it for pretty much every single photograph we take, no matter whether it’s indoors or outdoor. That is literally something I hate working without.

00:59:30:11 – 00:59:34:04

All right, cool. What lights do you use? I know you said you shoot Sony, but what? Like, yeah,

00:59:34:06 – 00:59:46:00

we we use Geekodo there, another one of our sponsors. I just I literally am like a race car with names all over us. It’s like, Yeah, but we use Geekodo, so they make a bunch of really cool stuff and hire them over. There is amazing. Cool.

00:59:46:05 – 00:59:51:15

Awesome. OK, number two, which I know, I know you talk a little bit about this, but how do you spend your time when you’re not working?

00:59:52:06 – 01:00:22:22

So my wife and I love watching television together and we love road trips and we love great food and we love hopping on airplanes and going to foreign countries and around the kind of around the globe. So Mexico City, Vietnam, the Pacific Northwest, New York City, you know, just traveling, traveling, traveling and watching our kids succeed and being involved in their life. They’re all adults now. They’re all in college or trade school, whatever the case may be. But yeah, we’re all about leisure, television, great food, great friends, and traveling and all.

01:00:22:24 – 01:00:27:29

That sounds just that. Just amazing, like you just described everything that is amazing in life.

01:00:28:01 – 01:00:39:10

It’s a it really is amazing, and I never look, I come from nothing. And so it’s really weird to be able to do any of this because we had food stamps when I was a kid, my mom worked two jobs. Had I had two sisters, we had nothing.

01:00:39:23 – 01:00:47:09

Mm hmm. And look what your the life you provided from your for your kids. I mean, and for yourself, it’s I love it.

01:00:47:21 – 01:00:51:05

That’s all my wife. It’s all my wife. She’s she’s she’s been incredible.

01:00:51:10 – 01:01:00:17

I know your wife is amazing. It sounds well. I’ve never met her personally. I’d love to, but I believe that you each provide your own superpowers to make it to make it work.

01:01:00:24 – 01:01:02:02

That’s very fair. Thank you.

01:01:02:12 – 01:01:07:24

Yeah, for sure. OK, so number three is what is your favorite inspirational quote?

01:01:08:15 – 01:01:39:24

OK, so. This may not sound inspirational to people that don’t quite get it, but it’s a James Baldwin quote, and it says to be black and conscious in America is to be in a constant state of rage. And the word rage is a powerful word. But you know, it’s really true, and I’ve really become to learn and understand what that means. And it does inspire me, and it inspires people that look like me because it helps us have a better understanding of the world around us in this country and the way things are for us, and that it helps us to be inspired at how to overcome and achieve great things.

01:01:40:06 – 01:01:42:20

Yeah, awesome. Thank you for sharing that.

01:01:44:07 – 01:01:50:15

OK, and number four is what would you tell people who are just starting out?

01:01:51:15 – 01:02:24:25

This is my favorite question, because I really want people to understand that if you start with prices that are really, really low and you’re just trying to get some work in the door, you’re going to always be known as the cheap photographer. So when you’re starting out, work for free if you have to and keep your day job going. But don’t go out there and hop on Craigslist or Facebook groups and be like, Hey, I’ll shoot your wedding for 50 bucks, because the next person that gets referred to you by that person is going to want a $50 wedding. You need to charge what you’re worth when you’re ready to charge anything.

01:02:25:13 – 01:02:30:01

I love it. Absolutely. It’s so much harder to get your prices up. Oh my gosh.

01:02:30:07 – 01:02:34:11

raising your prices versus starting out with them. Where you need them to be is really, really difficult.

01:02:34:21 – 01:03:01:25

We talk about that a lot on the portraits. Some just like the Suze education, where you use gift vouchers. If you’re not comfortable charging a thousand dollars for, you know, for a package, give them a four or $500 gift voucher. At least you’re saying that this is my price a thousand, but because you know, it’s just, you know, your new client or special deal this month or whatever, here’s a gift voucher. So now at least you’re feeling more comfortable about where you’re at, but then you don’t have to give a gift voucher to the next person if you don’t want to. So. Exactly.

01:03:02:04 – 01:03:08:10

I love that. And your and your clients can feel special because they feel like they’ve gotten, you know, something special just for them. Yep, absolutely. I love that.

01:03:09:09 – 01:03:14:16

Oh, last question is, where can people find you online if they’re looking for you and Joanne as well?

01:03:14:23 – 01:03:45:12

All right, cool. Yeah. So Joe and I, we have, you know, we have Instagrams, our own personals. I don’t know if you care about those at all. Mine is the Jason Marino, Jason Marino, Moreno, so the Jason Marino on Instagram. And then we have, you know, our company, Instagram is imagine photo A-Z. And it’s the same on Facebook. Imagine photoaz. Or Imagine photography in our websites. Imagine photoaz.com. And yeah, we’re, you know, Instagram probably gets the most updates. And yeah, we do a lot of fun stuff on there. You can go there, check out our work.

01:03:45:16 – 01:04:01:29

And yeah, if you ever come to conference, we’re generally going to be at imaging U.S.. WPPI will be speaking in the vendor booths or doing a platform class, things like that. And I love doing selfies with people, love talking to people, always come up and say, hello, I love meeting people. Even I look like I’m big and scary.

01:04:02:10 – 01:04:06:22

You do not look scary. You look big. Good way, but not scary.

01:04:07:12 – 01:04:11:09

And I appreciate that. Thank you so much, Nikki. This has been a great time.

01:04:11:11 – 01:04:16:22

Yeah, yeah. Thank you, too. And I look forward to seeing you at WPI too. I’m really

01:04:16:24 – 01:04:20:14

excited. Yeah. Very cool. And it’s been such a pleasure being on here or something.

01:04:21:20 – 01:04:54:12

Thank you so much for listening to the Portrait System Podcast. Your five-star reviews really help us to continue what we do. So, if you like listening, would you mind giving us a review wherever you listen? I also encourage you to head over to SueBryceEducation.com, where you can find all of the education you need to be a successful photographer. There are over 1,000 on-demand educational videos on things like posing, lighting, styling, retouching, shooting, marketing, sales, business, and self-value. 

There’s also the 90 Day Startup Challenge, plus so many downloads showing hundreds of different poses. We have to-do checklists for your business, lighting PDFs, I mean truly everything to help make you a better photographer and to make you more money. Once again, that’s SueBryceEducation.com.