Pat Miller welcomes volume photography expert Jason Marino in an eye-opening episode where they explore business strategies that have led to his phenomenal growth in the world of volume photography. This episode will shatter your preconceived notions about volume photography and reveal the staggering potential within this seemingly simple line of work.

Episode Highlights 🎤💡:

(10:21) - The Importance of Volume Photography

(29:02) - Developing a Workflow for Volume Photography

(38:20) - Finding a Good a Mentor

Connect with Pat Miller ⬇

LinkedIn | Website

Connect with Jason Marino ⬇

LinkedIn | Website

I'm Pat Miller, and this is The Professional Photographer Podcast. The things we choose can quickly become our identity. IPhone or Android, Coke or Pepsi, Stones or Beatles. Or maybe to not be a 1000-year-old, Kendrick, or Drake. When you add these identities to your perception, you begin to form opinions of those on the other side. Oh, you like pineapple on your pizza? How in the world could you be a morning person? You do volume photography? I only do portraits. The push-pull in the industry of portrait and volume. If you're on the portrait side, what do you think about those that do volume? Like, really? What do you think? Do you think they can shoot really awesome creative work and make big, giant, humongous bucks? Yeah. Dollars and profit and the volume side is feeding their portrait side. It's happening. Would you like that too? On today's episode, we're talking with Jason Marino. He and his wife saw the light of volume photography, and now they are crushing it. We're gonna talk about the assumptions he made before he got into the volume business what he found when he entered the space and the business benefits. Hello, money, when you add volume to your business. If you're curious about what it's really like doing volume work, you are gonna love this episode. We'll be right back with Jason Marino. Jason, welcome to The Professional Photographer Podcast. How are you today?

I am doing really good, and I'm really happy to be here. Thank you.

I'm excited to have you on the show. We've got a very big topic and one that seems to be really common right now. You and your wife built this amazing portrait business, but now you're also in the volume space. So this episode is gonna be really interesting because we're gonna help a lot of people. We're talking about scaling up to volume photography. So let's start with the portrait business. Tell us about what you had built prior to getting into volume.

Yeah. My wife has been a photographer for, you know, since high school. So literally, you know, a year or 2 ago according to her. And, we won't say anything else, but I met her, and I found a lot of interest in it myself. She did a few weddings, for good friends of mine, bandmates of mine, even some family members of mine. And I was watching her work, and I found it really fascinating. And I had a bit of an artistic background, asked her if I could, kinda join in. And we're going back into, like, you know, 0 7, 0 8, 0 9, way back when. And, she said, here, you can take this little point and sheet I have and play with it, but don't you dare touch my actual camera I use to make money. So I followed her around at one of the one of the weddings of a friend of mine and a few behind-the-scenes photos, and I immediately fell in love with it. And, you know, after a little bit of time went by, I was like, hey, you know, you're really good at this. I think I can be like your, you know, assistant and second shooter. Let's do something really great with it. I think that was probably around 'eight. And it quickly turned into something really great for us where we were booking weddings left and right all over the Southwest. And then we got you know, we were always doing portraits as well, but we really started focusing on portraits after about 5 or so years because we have kids. They were all athletes. They were getting through elementary school into middle school, and we were starting to spend all of our weekends away, and it had built to the point where we were traveling out of the country and traveling overseas, traveling all around the states for weddings, and we were gone every weekend. And then when we weren't gone, we were at home editing photos. And so to get our lives back, we decided to put more focus on having a portrait studio and less focus on weddings, and we did that around 2016. And so we built up a, you know, really profitable and, you know, high-functioning portrait business starting around that time. And, the you know, let let us to here.

So as I understand it, because, again, not a photographer, but as I understand it, artistic wedding and portrait photographer that travels all around the world couldn't be further from what most people think about from volume photography. Is that right? These are, like, opposite sides of the coin perceptually?

Yeah. Yeah. Very much so. And as a matter of fact, all of I not all of us. I can't speak for everybody in the portrait and wedding business, but we're all artists. And so when we go to our, you know, we go to our shows like WPPI, you know, we all snooze together, and we're we talk about our art, and we talk about our business and all those things. And, what I realized was that when you go to a conference that's for volume photography, it's a whole different world, and it's not so much a bunch of artists. And I'm not saying there aren't some great photographers, but there are, a lot of really great business people, and they are really good at making a lot of money, and it's a whole different world. They're not they're not showing up, you know, dressing to impress or looking like super hip and cool. And a lot of them have, like, wizard haircuts and strange things like that. But these people make money. And you know what? A lot of the people at WPPI and the conferences we're used to going to, they aren't making a lot of money. They're struggling artists.

Yeah. Well, think about that. If I could have wizard hair, I'd take it personally. Any hair, I'd take it. But also making money. So that's attractive to many of the artistic photographers. So living in this world where you had been all around the world shooting photos, doing portraits, living that life, When did you first notice volume photography and made you go, hey? What's going on over there? And maybe that's for us. How did that happen?

Yeah. So it was kind of a the way a lot of it happens for a lot of people is that we essentially were getting our kids sports photos and school pictures and just be like, oh my gosh, we can do this so much better. Let's go talk to the school and see if we can just do at least do their sports pictures. And so we approached, you know, the school that kids were at and, Hey, you know, we're not thrilled about the sports pictures or any chance that maybe we can just do the sports. We don't wanna do the school. We don't want anything to do with it. Like, that sounds really difficult, but if we can do sports, that'd be great. And they said, you know what? Actually, you can do the sport. And so we jumped in and started doing the sports photos, and we kind of just had to learn everything on our own. And, we probably spent way too much time initially, and we had to basically figure this all out as we went and assemble the pieces as we went and starting from 0. And and so it was really difficult to come up with processes and then realizing that they were all wrong and then rebuilding them every time we learn something new. And so this is dating back to 2016, right around the time we started focusing on our portrait studio that we started tinkering with, volume photography.

So let's talk about volume photography as it stands. If an artist is thinking about it, they probably have some preconceived notions about who does it, what kind of work, what are the myths and the misunderstandings that you realized about volume photography once you got into it.

Right. I mean, you know, the truths are is that there are a lot of people with wizard haircuts and they wear vests and they, they look like magicians, you know, it's, there really is. And a lot of people look like magicians and wizards. It's the weirdest thing. I don't understand it. I'm just, I love him embracing it. It's great. And I'm jealous, but, what are the, you know, some of the myths and like mysteries and things around it are, I guess that you would think that not that I didn't think anybody was artistic that did it. I figured that it was all kind of funny, dirty boring, people taking boring pictures. And because that's all we ever saw as consumers, as parents, we saw boring photos that were just lifeless and didn't seem like they were fun or anybody wanted to be involved. Didn't seem like the photographer wanted to be there. Didn't seem like the kids wanted to be there. And that's what we got from our photos. And so we've found out that it actually isn't quite like that. And there's all, you know, there's so much more involved. And once you start doing it, you realize, okay, this isn't nearly as easy as working with a single client over, you know, a couple of hours and just dealing with what you're dealing with with them. There are so many other things at play that sometimes it can't be helped that it might seem like someone doesn't actually want to be there, but, you learn to balance in some of the tools that we brought over because a lot of people that are in volume weren't photographers before, and they aren't even photographers now. They're just business owners. Us as artists and photographers decided that we were going to use the service skills we've learned and taught for so many years, and also the photographic, knowledge that we had gained over all these years to really try to set ourselves apart and put ourselves on another level when it came to, our skill set and what we're able to do as volume photographers.

Some, not all, some artistic photographers are allergic to the idea of making a lot of money, and they look at volume as a money grab. Yeah. True? False? Kinda true? What did you find?

It's kinda true. We meet people that quite literally say, hey. I've never been a photographer, never was a photographer. I only do this because it's a way to have a business. They look at it. It's just like for them opening up, you know, a franchise for a Chick Fil A or a Sure. Wendy's or whatever the case may be. There are people though who are incredibly talented photographers who got into photography because of volume and became really creative and artistic and learned as they went. And so I'm talking about people like Jay Boatwright and his wife, Corina, or, they're incredibly talented people, super, super good with sports photos and really creative. And they weren't photographers before, but now they are excellent at it. And they are really great business people as well.

Now how many years ago was it that you went into Voluum? Can you remind me again?

Around 2016, so it's been, yeah, it's been 8 years. Wow.

Yeah. Alright. So we're gonna flashback 8 years then. Yeah. You pull into the space. You're an accomplished photographer. You've got processes. You've got the way that you do stuff. Your images look great. What was the state of the clients? Were they happy with what they were getting? How they react when you 2 showed up?

So, I mean, the funny thing about volume photography is it's very much like a backup quarterback on an NFL team. They're always the most popular guy in town, the backup quarterback. You know, so they everyone's hungry for change. Everyone dislikes their photographer when it comes to school and sports photos.

Sure.

Everybody, you know, it's just like how everybody dislikes their licensed photograph. Everyone dislikes their, their volume photographer from school. So, you know, it's pretty easy to come in and go, hey, we're new. And they go, great. The backup quarterback's here. Now we can actually get some good plays going, or we can get some good photos. And so then they realize that you're just gonna piss them off as well. But, no, it's, we were, we were warmly received. And you know, there are people that like traditional. We didn't do traditional. We still don't. And so when it came, especially when it comes to sports. And so we did, you know, know, you can see how this room is lit very dramatic litigating. This is how we light our sports photos. And we definitely had a principal or a parent go on, Hey, why are the pictures so dark? Hey, why aren't the kids smiling? And it's like, well, do kids smile while they're standing on the gridiron with their football helmet on and sweat and mud dripping down their face? Are they looking tough? And are they looking like they're there too, you know, they were game-based on? And so those are some transitions where we had to help people understand that your kid doesn't have to be grinning ear to ear at every picture that is taken of them, especially if they're an athlete.

Sure.

We had to explain to them that everything doesn't have to be brightly lit with 2 big lights on each side pointing from 45 degrees, just lighting everything up. It's okay to have drama and depth and shadow. And so those are things that it took a few seasons to get people to stop complaining about seeing a little shadow under the chin. Like you see on mine here. Yeah. You know, those are things that you can see the difference between what you look like right now and what I look like, and what you look like is great, perfectly great. What I look like is a little more interesting, I guess, the lighting I'm saying.

For sure.

But both work, and there's a place for both. And it's hard to to help people understand that what your lighting looks like is great, but it's also great to have lighting like how I'm lit.

Yeah. So let's take us into the world where some parent had their sophomore year photo look like and then their junior year photo look like ESPN. How did they react, and how do the kids react?

Yeah. We've, you know, we actually live in a small town just outside of Vegas, and so we actually run into the parents and the kids all the time. We see them in the grocery store everywhere. We also put an added level of pressure on things that we can talk about later. But, we've get stopped, you know, of coming through the parking lot, whole parent come up and just be like, Hey, I know you don't know me, but man, the picture you took of my kid, you know, from the basketball team, those are the coolest pictures I've ever seen. You guys are awesome. And, and those are, those are the kind of moments that you really love to hear. You don't hear them a lot because usually it's people that have an issue with something that you hear from, not people that are happy.

Yeah.

And that's true for any industry. So it is really great though to get the you know, the kids are excited. The kids are much more excited about pictures. The parents are happier with what they're getting, and, it's really cool when you do, you know, get some accolade from for that, get some love from that. One of

The things that I'm curious about or I think is different about volume is that you don't have one client. Yeah. You wanna make the parents happy. Yes. You wanna make the kids happy, but you still have to get the blessing at least of administrators and club organizers. So when you 2 showed up and did things differently, how did they react? Yeah.

I mean, you've gotta be able to sell your the person you're selling to initially is the school, the school administration, or the athletic director thing on what you're trying to do and how the school runs itself. And you've gotta come in and impress them and get them to go, okay, fine. We'll fire this other person that's been working here for a decade. And, and we'll we'll let you give it a shot because that's a huge gamble. They're gambling that if you're doing their school portrait, that you're gonna be able to give them a great-looking set of yearbook photographs that are uniform and everyone looks great. They're banking on the fact that you're gonna be able to, do all the technical things that no one thinks about when it comes to the volume of photography and that you're gonna be able to deliver the photos in a timely manner and to keep the parents happy. Because the second the phone starts ringing to the school from the parents, the school is calling us going, what the heck are you guys doing? What's the problem here? And they don't remember that this happened with the other photographer. They're only worried that it's happening with you. And so, yeah, there's a ton of pressure to come in, get the school to wanna agree to work with you, and then from there, keeping them happy. And it requires a lot of schmoozing.

Let's shine some light on that for a second because you're selling to the parents and the families of the kids that are, you know, in their football uniforms or in their cheer uniforms or whatever, but you still have to placate those leaders and organizers. Can you think of a time or something that you did that, whew, wow, we dodged a bullet or, woah, we did this in advance proactively, and thank goodness we did that may have diffused the situation with an organizer or principal or a club leader?

Yeah. I mean, I could probably count, you know, or I need more fingers and toes to count how many times we've made mistakes. The biggest thing is that early on, we made a ton of those mistakes because we were going in blind. It had no reference, no help, but there weren't, you know if you go back 8 years, there weren't very many places to turn to for information on volume photography. Other than maybe some of the labs there weren't these great groups online or on Facebook where you could hop in and learn. And so we kinda just built it up on our own. So there were times where at first we were writing down the photo numbers and matching them with the name of every kid. We'd have a roster and here's the little Timmy and, you know, here's Dame D Damon for their school pictures. What was the photo we took in their number? Okay. Cool. We've got that. So we mixed up kids' pictures, then we started using QR codes. 10% of those, like, religiously, 10% of them fail when you do QRs. And so there's 10% of a 1000 kids that aren't showing up, and now you've gotta sit there and figure out who these kids are, and you're causing a lot of heartache. And so getting great tools, you know, tools like Photo Day that use facial recognition, they've helped resolve all these things that we used to do that got us in a little bit of trouble, a little bit of hot water with the pool. Wow. I mean, I yo u know, specifically, I can't even begin to tell you because there's literally so many things, but we've, you made a 1,000,000 mistakes, forgotten to do a 1,000,000 things, and it's really just about being charming and being able to, smooth it over, without, getting in too much trouble.

Which to keep this relatable to a family portrait photographer or a senior picture photographer that might be looking at the space, it's essentially the same muscle that you use with your 1 on 1 client. You're just doing it with a larger group. I mean, this is something that the average successful photographer, they could navigate this, couldn't they?

I mean on some level, but it's it's there's so much more to it. And we were naive that we thought that. We felt that way. We thought that, oh, we're we're we're good photographers. We deal with people. We have you know, we're doing multiple $1,000 deals with someone on their pictures. You know, it's no big deal. We'll be fine. But what you realize is that balancing keeping the school happy first is how you keep the job, and then everything from there, it's like, okay, now we have to create great images and do them in an efficient manner, keep everything organized, and keep the parents happy so that they don't call the school and complain, and then have the school wanna get rid of you. So there's so many different angles it comes at you from, you know, and once picture day's over, you have to submit the photos to the school organized for the yearbook, for the administrative software, for whatever needs they have. And again, your organization and your back-end processes, all of it has to be perfectly set up. And very few of us come out of the portrait and wedding side prepared for what's ahead of us when you get into the volume business.

That's a really great insight. Keeping the school happy so you earn the opportunity to go sell the families. That's that's gold. And I can't help but follow my curiosity. It's a little like having a landlord, which is the school, and then having to sell to the kids in the mall that you have to be in good standing with the landlord in order to keep the studio open to sell to the parents and families that are walking in the mall. Is that one way to think about it?

Yeah. That's actually a really cool analogy. I hadn't thought of it that way. But, yeah, I mean, you basically have to, yeah, keep the keep the landlord happy so they don't boot you. Because if you can't keep your store your storefront open, you're not gonna be able to sell anything. And so, yeah, it really does come at you from both ways. And then if you're not selling, we can't possibly maintain your your storefront in the mall. Yeah. So how could you you know, so it really does come at you from both directions.

Okay. If someone's thinking about this, let's say until now, they're like, okay. Great. I see the opportunity. He's talking me into it. This makes sense. But as you said earlier, this isn't a new space. There are contracts or someone's already doing this work. So let's talk about winning the contract. You talked about how you just made the phone call and got the deal. But moving forward, like, as you're trying to expand into other clubs and other schools, coach us through displacing the person that's already there. How does that go and where would we start?

Yeah. I mean, that's actually the, probably, the single biggest hill you have to climb to, kind of break down barriers. Once you are in, they slowly kind of just the the dominoes fall. And, getting into a district that's tight-knit, you know, and they all know each other, and they all talk, that's once you've gotten the 1st person to accept you, then they start asking questions. Because what happens is that I talked about the backup quarterback. Every year, somebody that works at the school is upset with the school photographer, and it's usually a decision-maker of some level. The yearbook administrator is usually the person that's doing it. The teacher that teaches yearbook helps the kids put the yearbook together and processes all that. That's the person who is looking through the pictures. They're going, oh my god. You know, this is terrible. What are they doing to me? They're the one that's reaching out to the photographer and not hearing back for weeks at a time. And if you can come in and go, tell me your troubles, and they list them and you go, okay. Here's how I'm going to fix each one of those problems. And you're good at explaining it, you can articulate it, and they believe you, that's how you break down those barriers. And outside of that, relationships are the number one tool. Having great relationships with yearbook companies, such as Jostens, who produce yearbooks, because if you are close with the Jostens rep in your area, they get complaints all the time about photographers. They might go, hey, you know, I know a guy. I know a lady. I know a business. That might actually work for you. And so that's something that having that relationship, being a person who is out there and people making yourself known that you are available and having good relationships can really open some of those doors for you and make that make the whole process that much less difficult of breaking down the barriers and getting in front of the person you need to get in front of.

You said it that relationships are super important, and I'm glad that you hit on that. But you also said the thing that I want t-shirts for this show to say. Sales isn't selling. Sales is problem-solving. It's like, what's wrong with the photographer you have? These three things. We can fix that. Boom. Deal. Done. I don't know why that particular phrase sticks out to me, but when people say, I don't like to sell. Well, you're not trying to convince them of anything. You're just trying to solve their problems, and they will throw their money at you. Now give me an example. Give me one thing of one of these deals. Oh, the photographer wasn't doing x, and you go, I could do that. Can you think of one thing just so we kinda know what to listen for?

Yeah. I mean, the number one thing is being with great communicators. I briefly mentioned that they may not hear from them for 3 weeks when they ask for they do your photographer goes, hey. I need a photo of a kid because it's not here. It's missing, whatever. 3 weeks goes by and a random person from inter large corporate pool photography brand here doesn't reply for weeks. And then when they do reply, it's a person they might never even heard of. And then trying to steer their very large aircraft carrier of a business to make adjustments is difficult for them. And so when, when a, when a school says, hey, we need a picture of a, of a student, I'm like, oh yeah, just text me. You have my personal phone number. You have Joanne's personal phone number. You don't have to talk to one of our management people or one of our lead people, or our support desk. You can just talk to us. I don't care if it's Saturday. Just text us. And so we well, I can give you an example. Last November, we were in, out of the state. We were in Texas and on a little vacation. I had a school yearbook photographer. We were working with them remotely while we were in a hotel visiting Austin, helping them get a picture they needed, helping some things get resolved with the yearbook. We're on vacation, but we're knocking it out instead of making them wait. And so a big thing is communication. If they call you and they need something, it's like, okay, yeah, I'm going to not only answer, but I'm going to probably get it to you within an hour or 2 instead of making you wait week.

That's very, very awesome. Thank you for sharing that. We're gonna go for the big finish here. We've got more to talk about, but when it really comes down to the advantage and the benefit of being a volume photographer compared to being a portrait photographer doing weddings big sells of being a volume photographer? Yeah. It's that and scale of the big sells of being a volume photographer?

Yeah. It's that and scalability. You can only scale your portrait wedding business so much before it's no longer your brand, and it's no longer about you. Because in that business, people very much want to work with you because you are your brand. In volume, you can still be that. And at this level, we are still that. We have enough schools and sports leagues and things we do that we can still be the face of it. But you can you, when you're a portrait and videographer, it's easy to be your own brand and easy to have your face involved. But if you get you can only do so much labor. Your labor is required. This business doesn't require your labor once you put it together correctly, and you can spend your day doing things like being on podcast instead of actually being out working because other people are working. And they I think I don't know who said it, but somebody smarter than me said, if a business requires your labor, it's a job, not a business. And it's a harsh reality to face. And so being able to scale, you can't scale a portrait business without bringing in associates. And that's doable. People do it all the time, but it's not necessarily going to be you.You have to be really clever and do a really great job of doing that and handling all the back. Plus, you have to have the client base that wants to, make purchases at that high higher level than that we do. You know, we were doing averaging over $3,000 a sale with our portrait studio. But you're only doing that a couple times a week if you're lucky. Most people are maybe doing that one every couple of weeks, you know, quite frankly. And even then, it might only be a few $100 sale. And so the reality is that you're never going to get enough time in the day and enough days of the week for you to make the kind of money that a volume photographer can make, doing the same amount of work.

But it's not a binary choice.

No.

Pat Miller 25: 32

If you become a volume photographer, it can lift up your portrait work, and you've experienced that. Tell us about that.

Yeah. We still, of course, have our portrait brand. And the cool thing is that you can leverage your volume business into or sorry, your volume business, like school photos and stuff. Parents are always like, well, do you guys do this too? Do you do family photos? Do you do senior photos? Hey, you know, can we book a session? Can I get headshots done by you? So these people they're the con they're consumers and they're all from different places. We have we have regular old blue-collar workers. We have lawyers. We have race car drivers, what maybe even professional athletes. Like, quite literally, some of the kids we photograph, their parents are professional hockey players and stuff. And so the hockey players and stuff. And so they'll go, hey. You know what? I love the we need a family photographer for next year. So you you have people that directly ask you and you can just directly talk to them and set up business that way, but you also have the ability to remarket to people who are making purchases with you, and let them know that, Hey, by the way, we do these things. Here you go. 20,000 different parents who made a purchase last year.

It's kinda like you're getting paid to prospect in a way.

it really is. Yeah. That's actually really smart to remember a thought of it that way, but you're actually out getting paid to get more client. And that's usually completely backwards without work.

Your customer acquisition cost is actually negative. I could do this. This is fantastic.

Exactly.

To be granular on that, when someone goes through the volume system, do they come into your CRM and data for the portrait side? Are you retaining their information so you can remark it to them?

So, yeah, you have to be really careful about that. There are, like like, rules in place as far as, identifying information, things like that. But when parents are voluntarily providing their contact info to you, totally cool. It's not a problem. Generally speaking, we if it's sports leagues or something, there aren't like those kind of laws in place, you know, but with school pictures, it's very specific on how you can or cannot remarket. You have to have optional tick boxes they can check going, Hey, it's okay to contact me about something else. But yes, it's very effective. It's a very powerful tool, even if you're just touching base to go, Hey, don't forget to, order a, you know, holiday tree ornament with your kids' sports pictures on it from 6 months ago, you know, we're able to do send out information on that side, still spool or sports-related and doesn't require any particular, you know, release or anything like that.

I can't help myself, but what would be really cool is to create a boys and girls Valley all-star team. Email everybody that took a picture with you and say, listen. We're doing an all-star team of the 12 coolest photos we took this year. If you want your kid to be a part of this, we may select their information and put them into a calendar. And if they're selected, they'll be 1 of the 12, but all they're doing is they're giving you their data. They're ticking the box to say, yes. Please remarket to us. You could do that with every different sport. We could go on for days. Okay.

Yeah. You're you're you want a job? You're a pretty good salesperson. I, you know, we can start you at, x per hour and

Well, that means I get to come to Vegas more often. You got me. Right? I mean.

There you go.

This is good and what's nice is it's kind of cut and paste once you figure out how to run a volume studio. Is this something that's easy to scale? And if you were to start scaling it, what are the benefits? Right.

Yeah. It's it's it's I don't know if I'd say it's easy to scale, but it can be scaled and it becomes easy once you have your processes in place. So you have to treat volume business like it's a corporation. I mean, you have to have processes so that when you hire people they, you don't have to sit there and, like, work with them for days and teach them every little aspect. There needs to be guidebooks and videos, or there needs to be, all the equipment has to be labeled, or needs to be a checkout process for the equipment. You have to think about storing it and transporting it and scheduling and all these incredible things that once you have in place, you just repeat it over and over. There's not really ever a new challenge at that point. As long as you've got all this stuff in place like we've done over the years, now the challenge is simply growing. And so once you have all the processes in place, you're ready to start scaling. Every time you get another school, it's no different than opening up another 711. It's you're just putting another one on another street. And every time you open the doors, the customers start coming in and you provide them with great service and you provide them with great photographs, which is like buying a Gatorade or something at 711. And as long as you're doing that, that 711 becomes profitable, and you move on and you open another one. And so it really is an incredible model for business and scaling, which is probably why so many of the people we talked about earlier with the wizard hair and the vest get into it because they see the writing on the wall. They understand that, Hey, I can make great money doing this. There's not a ton of overhead and we can operate a profitable business. We can grow and someday sell if we want.

But look at that. Yes. Scaling is something that can be rinsed and repeated. Yes. This is something we can do. But to earn that opportunity, you have to take care of a school, do a good job. Word begins to spread. You have to have the courage to reach out to another school. You have to have the processes so you know what you're doing every single time. And all the while, you still have to satisfy the parents and the administrators of the schools that you're taking on. Are you seeing I wouldn't even say peaks and valleys, but new peaks as you add more schools moving forward. Is your revenue starting to hop up the ladder to the point where you're like, hey. This volume thing is pretty great.

Yeah. It's actually really incredible. Over the last few years, especially as we've incorporated new tools like I've mentioned, I think, Fotodame briefly. They handle all their sales, marketing, fulfillment, everything for us, allow us to focus on building the brand and building the company. And so we're allow us to focus on building the brand and building the company and acquiring more schools. From there, it really turns into where the growth starts to skyrocket because you're no longer chasing after it trying to catch up. The tools are in place, and all you're doing is creating great photos and providing great service at that point. And so we've been able to grow, we grow about 30% year over year every year. And, it used to be a little more like 15 or 20. I think this year, we're projected to do 35%. And the cool thing is that because it's like opening a 711, all you need to know is how many students you're gonna be photographing that year. You know what your pre-buy rate is, like how what percentage of the parents actually purchase for their kid, and you know what your average is across all your schools. So you can very quickly and easily do the math. You can say, okay, there's a 1,000 kids at this school. Our purchase rate's 50%, and so we're gonna have 500 purchases. And our average is, let's just say it's $50 a kid. Now we know we're gonna make $25,000 in gross sales for that school. And that's really that easy. And so you could take the number to look, we have 8,000 more kids this year. Okay. Well, we're gonna sell to 4,000 of them. We're gonna do it at 5, at $50 a pop. And so you do the math, and it's $200. So it adds up really quickly, and the numbers are always accurate.

That's the crazy thing about it. We very rarely find that the numbers don't work. The math is the math.

And that math, as it gets so big, that's where things get really exciting because let's say you go from 50 to 55, and you find a way to shave $5 off your expense per kid, now you don't have a $5 spread. You've got a $10 spread times 1,000 of kids.

Yep.

That's where things and the profit can really start going crazy. So to that end, how passionate and aggressive are you on expense controls? You mentioned software that you're using. What other ways are you trying to keep the bottom line suppressed so you're bringing a bunch of profit home?

So a big thing for us is that you know, I actually come from a very humble, you know, means, in the beginning, and I'm a big fan of really taking care of people. And so we pay far more than anybody else does for our people, maybe else in this business, generally speaking. I don't know everybody, but we know some of the numbers. So we pay really well. We don't try to cut everyone's hours. We want people to work and keep them happy because they're happy. They're gonna do a great job with and for us. We treat everybody like they're part of a family and, and we really truly love the people that work with us. The only place that we try to save time and save money is on the process itself. Our efficiency when we're taking photos and our efficiency after the fact, because it's okay to cut down the amount of time it takes for the work to get done afterward, using technology. There's no reason for anybody to sit at a computer for hours on end trying to edit photos. So we really, have a really good model. We're happy with where the percentages are. All we focus on now is trying to actually increase the buy rate by taking great photos and increase the average spend by taking great photos and also using, better and more communication tools to get the word out to the parents that will result in that higher buy rate and the, higher percentage of purchases. And that's really where we focused on because it takes a lot more work to, get new clients than it does to get the clients you already have to, you know, spend more and things like that. So we're essentially going, hey. If we could get these schools to all go up 10 or 15%, that's gonna take a lot less effort than it is to try to trim other people's hours, and it's gonna be far more rewarding. And then we can just give them more hours. Hours. So really our focus isn't on cutting back. It's on growth and better product and better end result, better service, because that's gonna result in better percentages. And that's really what it comes down to for us.

Now, this is the $1,000,000 question or multimillion-dollar question that you don't need to be specific about. Has your volume photography surpassed the portrait photography in gross revenue?

Yeah. It actually has, and it did. Yeah. Going back probably about 3 years ago. There was a shift in those, to where they got they pulled even with one another prior around 2021, and then the volume thing quickly doubled and then tripled and then quadrupled. Like, it just, skyrocketed. And so it's become a cool thing because now when our portrait business, when we get a phone call for that, not like, oh, man, we gotta re you know, we have to take great photo, but we don't have to really worry about as much what the end result is. We just wanna make sure we take great care of the client like we always did. And if they aren't gonna come in and spend 3 grand, that's okay. Not how we're feeding our family. It's not how we're, you know, paying paying the bills.

Yeah.

It's just fun at this point, which is really great for us.

Now I wanna go back to the beginning here because your head would almost spin when you think about this. You and your wife probably flown on planes to the Bahamas to do glamorous weddings, leading the dream photographer's life, and now you're showing up at Roosevelt High School doing basketball photos, and that business is making more money than the other business does. It's see you see what I mean? Like, at some point, you won the photographer lottery twice. How does that feel?

Yeah. Actually, I've ever been gosh. Well, first of all, that's pretty cool to hear. But, yeah, I never thought of it that way. I guess I feel, proud of all that because, again, coming from kinda nowhere and nothing, and, you know, I was a high school dropout, you know, and being able to be business savvy enough and be able to work with my wife, who's a brilliant person, to create something that's actually got, great value to it, and helps, you know, give job provide jobs and makes people happy. That's a real honor. And, yeah, I don't know how we did it twice, but it was a lot of hard work and we got forklift, I believe. But now instead of having to go to the Bahamas and stay an extra day or 2, you know, after the wedding so we can get a little vacation out of it, we just go on vacation. And that's really what it's all about.

Alright. So someone's watching this and they're thinking, alright. I get it. I am now interested. I'd like to investigate volume work. What would you have them do? What would you have them do first to step into the world of volume photography?

Well, they should probably book time with me to sit and let me help them through, the roadblocks that are initially are there because there's so many finite details and little tools that you have to have and understand to make it work for you. We stumbled around so much out of the gate that it's a miracle we're even still here. And, we sometimes look back and think, I don't know how we did this. So my advice is, is find a mentor that's willing to share their time with you, pay those people because their time is valuable, and get all the tools and information you need so that you can get going and not feel like you are, like, you know, chasing, you know, chasing it the whole time. They're behind the 8 ball the whole time. You wanna be out in front of it. You wanna be in control as best you can be. And so you really do need to approach the right people, get the education first and then jump in because if you just go for it, you know, it's a really good chance you're gonna be frustrated. You're gonna be burned out. You're going to end up, you know, making people unhappy. And, you know, it's like the person who hops in the forums and goes, hey. I got a camera last weekend, and I'm shooting my first wedding. What do I need to bring? And everybody's like, I'm sorry. What? You don't you realize you're going to really ruin the most important day of somebody's life if you show up and actually try to shoot this. Right?

Yeah. It's possible that this conversation was the first step for someone, and they'll look back and thank you for sharing as much as you did. Jason Marino, thanks for joining us on The Professional Photographer Podcast. I appreciate it.

I am so glad to be here. I really appreciate you. That was a lot of fun.

I hope that you got something out of this episode. That something, like, lit up in your head thinking, woah. Maybe that's a way that I could go, because why yes? I would like to make a big pile of money, and I never really thought about doing volume before. I really appreciate Jason coming on the show and being so collaborative. I'm Pat Miller, host of the show, founder of the small business owners community. Really glad you joined us today, and I hope we'll see you for a future episode. See you next time.