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Corey Garrison shares his journey from Uber driving to boudoir photography.
0:00All right, today we're talking to Corey Garrison from Corey Brandon Boudoir and he's going to walk us through how he went from driving an Uber at night to make ends meet to opening two boudoir photography locations as a man and averaging over six thousand dollars per client lately.
0:20What's up, Corey? Can you tell everyone who you are, what you do, and where you do it?
0:24Sure, love to. First, just excited to chat with you today, but I'm Corey Garrison. I'm the owner of Corey Brandon Boudoir photography. We are a boudoir studio based here in Houston, Texas. Also, I just opened up another location, so based in Houston and also in Dallas. So I gotta get used to saying that because it's kind of a new thing, but that's who we are.
0:52Yes, which you're gonna jump right into it, I guess, but yeah, tell me about that. So two locations, what caused that?
1:00So what caused it was basically just geographical. One of the things that I noticed, I'm originally from Baltimore, moved to Houston in 2019, so we've been Houston-based for a couple years now, and through that process and growing the business here and establishing it, I noticed that I was having a lot of folks that traveled from out of state, out of the country, and then also a lot of folks that travel from within Texas. So Dallas is like a three and a half, four-hour drive, so it's doable for a day trip. Had an opportunity, was having clientele come down, so I just figured it would be the best way to dip my toe into expanding a little bit wider from my home-based market.
1:47Okay, so I'm definitely gonna have to get back into that because that's interesting how you schedule it with shooting. But yeah, tell us a little bit about your background. What did you do before photography?
1:57So for me, photography is something that I stumbled into by happenstance. I spent my years cutting my teeth in sales. I did telecom sales for probably 10 years or so, so probably for the entire working life, if you will, up until that point. That was basically what my background was and what I excelled at. So that's basically what I was doing before photography came and knocked on the door and eventually kicked down the door and made me have a career shift, if you will.
2:34Okay, and then, yeah, so I mean, were you always artistic? Were you always a photographer?
2:42So what's interesting about that, I believe that you find things out maybe later on, when you get a chance to reflect. So if I answer this question a year ago, two years ago, I would say I used to draw as a kid, but I never really expressed a bunch of artistic talent or anything like that. But what's really interesting is that photography is something that was kind of always in me and it just took the right opportunity or the right moment for that calling to come out. So my baby pictures, my dad took my baby pictures. My dad was a professional photographer, and it never clicked when I started my journey, but I'm doing something that my father had done. It never clicked on me that I remember taking a photography class, a film photography class in high school, and being excited about that process. I never clicked that. Specifically speaking about boudoir, I've always appreciated the human body. So I love going to art museums, seeing the sculptures and things like that, and I've always just been fascinated with that, the form that we take physically and the art and being able to document that. So I have come to that realization through the journey, but it was one of those things where I was being guided subconsciously and it took for me to sit down and think about everything to see that these little embers into this fire were sparked at different points in my journey before I was conscious to put it all together.
4:21So obviously you've gone a long way in your photography career, mainly because number one, most people don't have two locations. Most people don't even have enough business to really run one full-time. So walk us through the contrast of like when you first started, what did you do? How did you run your business and how did you get to where you are?
4:44Okay, so I'm gonna tell a little story. When I first started, it wasn't something that was intentional for me to do this genre. So all of my research and my planning and everything else was I'm gonna shoot portraits, I'm gonna shoot weddings, all that stuff. And for me, the way it happened was this was a genre that kind of kept finding me, kept coming around and coming around. I'm sorry, I got lost in the story. First, I could repeat the question. I want to stay on track.
5:20Okay, because I was getting ready to go way left. Yeah, how did you go from the beginning? What was business like when you first started?
5:29For me, I didn't know a lot. I would say my story is probably average like a lot of folks. I was shooting boudoir. I was very nervous about what I was creating because I didn't come into boudoir knowing how it worked or what it was about. I was like, hey, I'll just shoot you for a couple hundred bucks. You know, 250, 300 was my go-to price at that point in time. And that pretty much included the entire show. So that was the way I ran my business. As I learned a little bit more about how successful studios ran, I was very nervous and apprehensive to try some of those things because for me, a lot of that information was tailored towards weddings and I didn't know if you could use those same concepts towards boudoir. So I remember just doing student boudoir. I remember trying same-day sales sessions. I kind of feel like I've touched on a little everything in that journey to get to where I am now to find a system and a process that works for me. But I wasn't afraid to experiment and go through the ringer, if you will.
6:47Yeah, and it's, I mean, you've done super well with it. I guess tell me, how did you even get into boudoir initially? And by the way, I know for a lot of guys, a lot of times the people we coach or the studios we have, the concerns are always, hey, you know, am I going to be able to do as well as a woman? This seems like a woman's genre. Are they gonna be comfortable with me? So, yeah, how do you navigate that and has it affected you?
7:13Okay, so great question. I love the fact that you brought it up and I want to make sure that I take the time to drive this one home because when I was early in my journey and my process, having someone to relate to would have helped me out tremendously. So for me, the way that I got into boudoir photography was it was a genre that just kept finding me. So literally, my first client that I shot was a family session. Everyone's home for Thanksgiving, they've all got the same matchy-matchy outfits on, we're doing all the typical cheesy family portraits. And the mom who booked me had daughters that were in my age and a couple years older. One of her daughters was pregnant with twins. So after the family session was over, she was like, hey, would you mind doing a maternity session for me and my husband? Like, yeah, sure thing, no problem. I'll do that. And you're not gonna laugh, but she goes up to the changing room and she comes back downstairs in like an Amazon lace, you know, dress or black lace robe. She comes back down in that and it completely rattled me because I was like, okay, wait, she's halfway naked. I can see her. As a photographer, I have to look at you to take your picture, but how do I navigate through this? And it made me really uncomfortable. But I'm still excited to do it because, like I mentioned, about loving the body and loving the creation, I was really excited that they trusted me to capture this. And as far as I know, that was our last pregnancy, so to be able to capture that apart. I did that. Went ahead, was running my wedding business, trying to get that off the ground, and I just kept having people come to me with these types of sessions. I didn't have a word for it, didn't have a name for it. I thought that I'll do some milk baths and some roses and that'd be great for Valentine's Day and maybe I'll do it again next year, but no one's gonna want it after February 14th. This is a seasonal thing. And for me, I was trying to find something that made me happy, and I thought weddings would make me happy. And you get romanticized with this picture of, you know, this is the day that you've always dreamed about, and everyone's like, this is their fantasy. They have this big, beautiful wedding, most important day of your life. And I'm quite sure, because you work with so many photographers, but you're busting your ass for 12 to 14 hours. I'm glued to my bride. My eyes are wide open. I'm capturing everything. I'm delivering galleries with a few hundred images in them. And my clients were appreciative of the work that I put in, the sweat equity that I put into it, but I just didn't feel that the work that I was creating had that impact that I wanted to. And I think as artists, we are a little selfish in that sense, that we want our work to have meaning because it's our baby. We create this and we give it to you, but we want to know that you value it with money but also value what it does for you. And for me, as boudoir kept knocking and kept finding me, I realized that I could do five of these sessions in a week and I could only do maybe one or two weddings in a week because it was just so physically demanding. And how I would change my clients' lives from the moment they walked in to when they walked out, that four or five hours, however long the whole process takes, I was having a greater impact on people. And that's what really connected me to the genre. So that impact is what made me fall in love with it. And I remember I was at a Wedding Wire Expo, and I'm an introvert, so networking events, that's the scariest thing in the world for me. So I'm in there, I'm trying to pass business cards out and meet vendors, and we were on break and I was watching a YouTube video. I only knew of one other guy at the time that was in the business. He made a video and posted it about why he quit doing weddings to do boudoir full-time. And I'm walking outside and it was one of those things where everything he said, I agreed with. He was like, I'm tired of shooting plates, I'm tired of shooting invitations, I'm tired of shooting ring shots, I'm tired of not having my work impact people the way I wanted to. And that was the sign from above, if you will, that was like pursue something different.
11:56By the way, I don't take kindly to talking bad about ring shots. For some reason, my favorite part of photographing a wedding was always pulling out a macro lens, seeing whatever backgrounds and lighting I could put on them. So ring shots are cool. It's cool, but they look like you'll spend five or ten minutes, usually in the beginning, adjusting to the bride's chaos, and I'm pulling all the lights, gelling, lining up here, and they're like, oh, that's cool. I'm like, do you know how hard I had to work to get this minimum focus distance?
12:27All right, so I know you said there was somebody that inspired you, so walk me through this because it couldn't have always been super easy as a guy in boudoir. What challenges did you have? Yeah, let's start with that. What challenges did you have?
12:43So for me, doing the sessions themselves wasn't a challenge. My family is all women. I've been raised around women my entire life, so that was naturally comfortable for me. It wasn't like a scary experience. I mentioned it being a little scary with that first client, but that was mostly because her whole family is around, so I was like, okay, wait, this kind of caught me off guard. For me personally, the things that I struggled with in the beginning was learning how to market myself because everything that I saw was from the woman's approach. And as relatable as I want to be, as relatable as you can be as a guy, you can't do girl talk. So when you're seeing all these studios and all these brands that are positioned around girl to girl, I can't emulate that. So I had to find the concepts that they were doing and figure out a way that I could make it my own or make it unique to myself. Because at the end of the day, are there some people that won't shoot with me because I'm a guy? Absolutely. Does it affect me? It doesn't, because they make that decision before reaching out. No one gets to a consultation call and says, oh, your voice sounds like a guy. I thought you were a lady. I'm not gonna do this shoot. So they kind of weed that portion on the front end. Other things that were challenges for me was honestly just finding someone to help cut that learning curve and just some type of positive reinforcement. I remember having questions we'll touch on this later in the talk, but before I had some resources, if you scroll up in our Facebook messages, I'm like, can I do this as a guy? Don't lie to me. Tell me if I can do this because I came from a previous educator or previous course, whatever you want to call it, and literally to mask that person's failure, and I'm not going to speak ill of someone, but I'll just give you the facts, but to mask that person's failure, it was you're not getting booked because you're a guy. You're not getting what you want because you're in a home studio and people aren't going to be comfortable with that. So basically killing the confidence or killing the bravery that I thought I had to have to be able to say, I want to carve out a niche in this business and my intentions are honest and true. I'm not just doing this because I want to be around women without clothes on. I could care less about that. I love what boudoir stands for, the vision of it, and I want to bring my artistic talent to this. So those are the biggest challenges for me, in addition to regular business things like how to price it, where to get albums from. Man, I remember the first album that I brought, oh my gosh, that thing was like I paid client prices for it because I had no idea how to put that stuff together. So those are some of the challenges, and just finding your style as a photographer. You can't copy what everyone else does. You have to find what makes you unique, in a sense.
16:00By the way, who edits your albums or makes them? Like puts them together and, like, all the calls? I do all of it. Yeah, all of it. I create everything, so like all the album spreads and everything. Of course, during the sales session, they pick the images, and then I just take whatever they give me and make it into something. So I'm saying, so walk me through this because I remember we had a lot of those conversations, you know, through messenger or through Slack. And I'm the first person to say, right, in the High Rollers Mastermind where we have our group coaching program, I want to say of the almost 1000 students, 50 to 75 are probably men. And I'm the first person to acknowledge like, you guys have way more hurdles and obstacles, but it's not like they can't be overcome. And the advice I give you guys, if there's women on the call, which there always are because there's 900 women, I'll tell them everything I'm telling them is what you guys should be doing, except the guys definitely have to do it. We've talked about video content, we've talked about social proof, testimonials, just being, you know, having pictures of yourself, having pictures of you with clients. So walk me through that because when we look at your website, you're one of the clients we've worked with that has some of the most videos and has the most amount of social proof. You really jumped head first into that.
17:31Yeah, I had to because I love what I do. I love the clients that trust me for this journey. And the number one rule in business is never run out of money and make money. But having more clients is not about a dollar for me. It's about being able to give what I create to someone. I'm like, I romanticize the business and I'm like, hey, listen, I have to bring this to you. I am bound to do this. I am bound to bring this experience to as many people as I possibly can. So having the social proof for me was a way to eliminate some of that barrier. It was a way for me to be comfortable in myself, to know that this isn't a shady thing, you're not coming into the basement in the corner and it's dimly lit and it's just a service that I provide, and I provide an excellent service. It just so happens that I'm a guy, but I'm a business owner and I'm an artist. So that's why I brought the social proof out there. And then also, I saw a trend. This is stuff that people want to consume, this is stuff that you know, how many clients do you speak with that don't even know how to pronounce the word boudoir, let alone what actually goes on during a session? So I found that it'd be a really good way to differentiate myself from others and be able to show that too. It's part of my passion, to make it approachable, to make it for the every woman, right? So I wanted to give as much of an insight into it as I could so that I can educate as much as I could and inform potential clients on why we are the best studio that you can go with.
19:30So walk me through, like, how many times are your clients on video? Is it something you do every single time, or you just kind of randomly asking people? Like, is it a system now? The fact that you create so much video content through testimonials, yeah, how do you do that? And most of the people I talk to when I tell people, hey, you need to create video content, you need video testimonials, they'll say things like my clients don't want to be on camera. And a lot of times I feel like they're saying that without even asking. They just are like, and everyone's clients are unique to them, I guess, but they say things like all my clients are professionals and nobody wants to be on camera, all my clients are private, and they would never do that. And then I'm like, that's strange. There's a studio right next to you and all of their clients do. I can't imagine. So tell me, what do you actually do day to day to get all of that content?
20:26So for myself, the way that my process works is this. My hair and makeup artist stays with me throughout the session. So he'll be doing touch-ups and things like that as we're going through it, and one of the roles that I have him do, in addition to touching up hair and makeup for clients, is creating content. Content is key. Content is the currency in which we all trade in. And the way I do it is this. I create this work, these images, these albums for my clients. It's not my client's responsibility or job for them to allow me to share. There are some folks that just are private and don't want to share. I mean, I've got celebrity clients that you'll never know who they are, but you'll know who they are if you see their pictures. So sometimes we can't share those images. But in my contract, there's a permission slip and it is completely their call and completely optional. It doesn't change or affect the level of service that we give them, but it will let them know, hey, do you agree for us to share your images online? Do you agree like a full image release? A no image release at all, like, you never speak of it again, or yes, but with anonymity, right? So no faces, no identifying marks, things like that. So there's different levels of consent, I guess, is a good word, or permission for them to give us as a studio to use those images. And I send that out to them. It's like one of the first things that they get. So I never want someone to feel like they come to the studio and they have to do this. You make that decision. We respect that. Whatever it is now, for people that are mentioning that they may have a difficult time, I'm gonna kind of detour them to get back to where I was going with that thread. When you do amazing work and you provide an amazing experience, and that's the first thing we focus on here, people want to have it shared. They want to inspire others because they realize that whatever they got during their session, they want the next woman to feel that level of empowerment, strength, love, fearlessness, whatever that may be. So it almost becomes cathartic for them to say, I want you to share that experience because I want the next person to be able to get what I got because I was once in their shoes. And knowing what I know now in the backend, it is completely worth it. So that's that first portion. The second thing, getting back to what I was talking about before, is that the de facto social media platform right now as we're speaking is TikTok. That's where everything is. All of the platforms at this point in time are legacies or ones that are slowly dying. And with TikTok with it being such a great platform for reach and everything else, it has a level of censorship built into it. And it's hard to show some of the stuff that we do because we basically are working with little to no clothes on. So the way I got around that as well, I had my hair and makeup artist basically there to create behind-the-scenes content. Instead of turning the camera and focusing on my clients, I had them turn it around and focus it on me. So if my client is here, off camera to the right, if the camera's focusing on me, I can still do my thing, instruct on different poses and stuff that we'll be doing and you can see that, but you don't have to see the person. So that can be another way that you can still create that content because if a person doesn't want to be seen or doesn't want their stuff out there, I don't think they're gonna mind as much if you especially if you let them know, hey, listen, this is just focus on myself, just so other people can kind of see what I'm doing in a sense. And that's how we create the content that we create, with permission from clients. And if we can't, turning it onto myself to be able to create that.
24:48By the way, the fact that you just said TikTok, let me see, I actually pulled up your TikTok. Man, you create a lot, and not that, not that I get...
24:57Discouraged but obviously starting from zero I'm just going to stick to Facebook my email list and stuff like that but I was watching somebody speak on the topic and they basically gave the analogy that if you got 20 people to hear you speak you'd be in front of a classroom in front of a hundred it's like a lecture hall a thousand is a small theater you know 20,000 is an arena basketball and then 50,000 is a football stadium so all of these views like this is a huge lecture hall if you had 300 views on this so it really it's way more than we could have otherwise gotten and these platforms between reels and TikTok really let people engage with you communicate with you and then hopefully trust you enough so that when they want to do this they come to you
25:50So yeah tell me about your journey on TikTok how's that been so I love I'm going to totally steal that analogy that you just gave because I love that because what happens is you know I'm looking at the views right and this is something I've been guilty of in the past I'm like oh man it's only a couple hundred like you know I'm making this stuff and you start having comparison right in comparison is a thief of joy and when I stopped trying to compare myself to what some of my other counterparts were doing you know as far as view wise popularity wise I just started focusing on what was fun for me right so like you know I got views that are like 80,100,000 you know 20,000 or so but then I got some that are like you know a couple thousand a couple hundred so for me I noticed that every time I posted and I would post consistently I would have people that would say I saw your Instagram I saw your TikTok you know I'm interested in booking and for me I'll take that conversion versus having like 50,000 views every time I post and maybe no one's no one's the ones talking right so I just shift my mindset and say if I'm putting the content out there something will blow and pop eventually right but also it's still making headwinds it's still continuing to influence people that are on the fence and also bringing new people into that orbit right like these platforms you know again it's about attention so they're going to pitch it up in front of people that are interested so they'll find you sooner or later one way or another whether it's convincing somebody that's on it or converting somebody that's been looking at you for some time you know so that's been like my philosophy with it
27:39There's another creator on YouTube as pretty popular guy named Mr Beast and did an interview and he said you know hey do your first 100 videos right now and don't worry about trying to be perfect because they're going to suck right you're not going to be a perfect YouTuber or a perfect TikToker out the gate just start creating stuff now and you'll get better as you go along and I heard that probably the beginning of this year and I said you know forget it I'm just going to start creating and I'll find my way along the journey right and you know by posting I'm getting more views I'm creating an audience you know my strategy is this is going to become you know my Facebook group if you will and we can you know if you want to jump into that portion now but you know that's my methodology behind it
28:31Yeah and that's a really good point because a lot of people do rely and I know I notice you know obviously in our agency and like with what we teach we tell people like yeah get on make your accounts and tend to all of these platforms but in reality I know that a photography studio can be super successful if they're just set one of them so we have studios that like the owner might be a little bit older or they just hate social media and they don't want to post and dance and stories and stuff so they just email every single week once or twice and we have owners who hate everything and they just grew a Facebook group through different group grow methods and all they do is Facebook posts they don't even have a schedule on their website they're like we're going to schedule all our consults from the Facebook group messenger and like as long as you're doing one of them really well and connecting with people like you're going to have a lot of success and I saw I started following this really cool creator on TikTok and one thing that she said that stood out to me was she said she treats TikTok like her group like she used to treat her group or like if you were in a group and you run a business you know like if people engage with you you usually DM them or you reply you have conversations you engage but people don't do that on TikTok they just post throw stuff up and then on to the next video where she's like kind of like what you said I'd rather have you know a couple hundred views some comments and then like three conversations from every video then to just have a bunch of views but no bookings no sessions no conversations from it so what did you mean by group what are you doing to make it more like a group exactly that right
30:12So you know one of the things that you learn if you're in this genre is that like you know everyone will tell you like Facebook group Facebook groups right and you know for me personally I've never had a great amount of success from my Facebook group right like I've had a little bit here and there but to get the return out of that group for the effort that I put in it's not been there like for other studios right and I talked a little bit about comparison robin joy so instead of me just being like oh man like I'm failing at this right this isn't working for me like I'm not booking how other people are booking buying what you enjoy find what works best for you and you know go be like water so like follow the path of least resistance and you know hello like TikTok is a platform that has given you organic reach every other platform is constricting or restricting that and you know with the intention to take you towards pay your reach right because that's how they make their money their advertising platforms and we are the product right so when it comes to how I'm using that like I can directly have a conversation with you know let's say my videos on average again 300 views right now right that's 300 people that like my content I don't know how many but the percentages of returns but for you know simple is the simplicity say let's just say it's the same 300 people right they're starting to get to know you right like when you put yourself out there you put yourself on video you can't hide behind words of an email you can't hide behind like these extremely manufactured images of yourself right whether it's like posting the perfect selfie or like curating a timeline like you're just being yourself and that authenticity is what draws people to them because in our business we're asking people to be vulnerable with us right like during the session to do a session is to be vulnerable so if I can't be vulnerable or quirky or me or just however I am in my face-to-face interaction how can I expect the same for someone else to give that to me if I'm not willing to meet them there basically so I just use that as just a way to talk to my closest friends that I don't know all their names but you know we follow each other you know so that's like my thought process there
32:37Okay so talk to us about obviously me and you met through the high rollers mastermind talk to us about like the shift there what were you doing before to get clients and then you know what are you relying on now fast forward okay so before high rollers I was Mr model call that was like model call giveaway that was my whole thing man that was the only way I run one every month and give away three winners and hope that one of those three people would buy something right I was like hey they don't buy anything I'm building a portfolio but if they buy something then I'm proving the concept that it is going to work right you know hack man like dude I was using Thumbtack like Thumbtack is like what launch my photography career in a sense you know so like advertising on there or playing the face the local Facebook group game like hey I'm looking for such a photographer and you're competing with like 50 people who are like tagging a thing like me I'm that and then you know DMing that person and kind of going from there so like that was my marketing angle if you will or like how I was driving clients you know like I had very small goals man like if I can do three shoots in a month that was like a successful thing for me back then yeah but I know this is highly debated in a lot of photography groups but like a lot of people talk really bad about like doing free work and doing model calls and giveaways and for me I'm assuming back then you were kind of beginner-ish at it like the level of work you did is not what it is now and like I look at it as like if you're in an art you know if you're an actor if you're you know an artist of some kind like you got to kind of burn your chops somewhere and you're not just going to be able to get a ten thousand dollar job just because you've bought something you know so I actually think the model calls and the giveaways are just like an expedited social media like a faster way of like getting all that experience into your belt so like walk me through that like was that on Facebook was that in like group posts like what did you do to get those at that time
34:45I would I was very very new in paid advertising so like Facebook posts so I was dabbling in that but it was mostly like boosted posts it's like I don't even know ads manager I was posting on like Instagram and just like word them out that way like I literally like it's funny that you the way you were that it kind of took me back from a minute I had to like kind of put myself back to like 2016 2017 Corey but like it was literally like ten boosted Facebook posts you know with like the most minimum targeting you know on Instagram or on Facebook and that's how I did it you know that was what drove everything in from the very very beginning you know I did a lot of like TFP like trade work so I can have stuff to show in a sense you know and that was that's what I did that's how I gathered those folks together basically
35:49Yeah it's really that's really interesting so from the model calls from the giveaways now what because obviously you went to the high rollers and then like what did you start implementing that made it so you didn't have the wrong high rollers or sorry giveaways so no I still run I usually do like one a year though right so like you know now it's like an event if you will right but like back then it was like every month there's like a new one right so some of the things that I implemented to kind of change the business I would say it's a two-part question it's like what you do on the field and then what you do in the classroom right so the classroom portion of it was excuse me building a website right building a uh the social media portion of it right the social proof is what I meant to say so like my Google reviews the website the portfolio stuff like that so as far as how I go about acquiring clientele now that is going to be heavy heavy through Google ads Facebook ads I've been blessed to be able to get a lot of word of mouth you know like people will say oh you shot my mom or you shot my sister you shot a coworker of mines you know so that has been like my main my main avenues if you will so of course like by running ads and you know social media things that are having like those capture forms you create an email list you create a text messaging list you know you have people in your pipeline in your funnel if you will so those are the main things but I would say my business like lives off of paid marketing whether it's Google Facebook you know like that's like my jam
37:45It's funny when I was pulling up your Google I just Googled your name one of the blogs you wrote for us showed up you remember one of the blogs you submitted to us how to grow it yeah yeah oh you know what I do man I think that was like pandemic time when we wrote that but yeah I do remember that one yeah yeah that's pretty cool and it's really thorough actually it's a really good resource because I'm sure it was a snapshot in time because like you went all in Google ads Facebook ads pixels like you posted screenshots of your analytics everything and but I'm sure all this has improved since then so like actually walk us through like you know how has your business grown or like where were you at last year and where are you trying to get next year okay so how is the business grown so last year but it was a very interesting listen we all have gone on this journey together from you know 2020 through through now right so like this three-year window has been like ten years in some capacities and I don't mean just in a negative way because like the growth has been tremendous in that time frame right especially for us in our genre like you know when the world was falling apart like we were just taking off at like the perfect time so as far as how that growth has been last year was very good to me you know I've went through a lot of personal stuff man you know that has affected my business you know so and we can jump into that if you want to if we can just keep it on business it's fine it doesn't matter to me but I would say my sales average uh I would believe that it's probably one of the highest in industries like my sales average was like 6,700 or 6,800 last year so pretty pretty damn healthy so that was a shocker because you know it went up from the year previous but it jumped up dramatically honestly so that was really cool and then my goal for this year is to continue to grow the business out like I want to I'm not the sales average for me it's not an advantage number right it's not a vanity metric but I am more focused on creating the value for the clients and I will let the average carry me where it does right so as a business you want to be able to meet the market where it is and because I'm now operating in two markets had the luxury to be a little bit creative in my approach so yes I still expect to have and maintain a high sales average but I want to increase you know the number of bookings so like I have a goal this year to shoot 100 clients I have a stretch goal to book 150 in this year and that's what I'm focused on and my focus there is because I want to change 100 lives so like I'm not focused on the money on the dollar amount that stuff will come if you put out good if you do good work people will respect your work they will pay a premium for it right because I'm priced at a premium but I am so focused on on delivering you know the gospel if you will of what this session is and what it does and what the experience with myself in the studio creates
41:06Nice so how are you going to get there this year so this year is exciting I am growing the team right so I am adding on some creative business solutions as far as continuing to schedule calls having sales reps to book the calls for me in addition to me doing them myself I am doing expos for the first time so that'll be an exciting thing if you will but also just growing the team and all in all facets you know like you know I I tell people like you know you may see you know the front-facing folks is going to be myself and like the hair and makeup team like the artist that I have but there are so many people that touch this business that like you just you don't see them because they're not forward-facing so continuing to grow and hire and add help will allow for me to you know do the stuff that's fun for me to do right outside of business but also allow for me to be the best version of myself tonight not be burnt out to not be overworked and not like I want to still have that hands-on touch that every client that comes in is going to get the best that Corey Brandon has to offer and not like oh man this is like my eighth client in seven days like let me just get you out the door because I'm really tired and like please just give me the money and go right so that's like the focus for the year
42:31Yeah and it's definitely you know we have a actually we start working with another male photographer he photographed like 130 women but best sales average or actually it was like 200 but the sales average was like 1,500 so for him like the goal was hey how do I like maybe equal that or scale that down but like triple quadruple the sales average so with yours being so high like what do you credit that to like yeah obviously he's part of the high rollers mastermind 2.0 so I told them like hey first thing I suggest is like go watch Jen's training on that but what would you suggest like because obviously a lot of people they and I tell them to watch the training adopt it and then make changes but don't second guess it as you're trying to do it do it how we say and then make all your changes afterwards so I completely agree with that one thing that I did is when I joined high rollers dude I was I was not making it you know like I was freaking driving Uber in the middle of the night like I was married at the time my wife was pregnant like things were falling apart like this business was taking more money than we was making and I remember like I had like 10,000 left in my name and I was like you know listen I'm going to give what I got and buy this course and let's hope that I can at least break even I don't lose any money right but one of the things that helped me and you touched on this is doing what you guys say to do how you guys teach it and you know like if I can just kind of plug the work that you guys do right so whether it's your specific agency or whether it's high rollers is that you know like Umberto dude like you're so freaking smart and talented man like and I'm not just saying that because like I'm on it with you like you're you're like the real deal man like you're that guy when it comes to it right like you walk it you live it you research it like all of those things so and the same goes with Jen you know like she walks as she lives so when you have you know these two great minds that have coming together and that are educating on how to do it and you guys don't hold back it's not like this you know behind the doors like what really works and we just give you like what worked two years ago type of deal right you guys are dynamic in your teaching so you would be a fool to not follow exactly what it is that you guys are doing right and you know do it scared you know like I did it scared you know like I remember like you know looking at the investment menu that because I think you guys have like different ones that you can like kind of plug and play the numbers on and I remember like all right I'm starting the bottom one because like you know I've got no clients so like I'm not going to go to the top one because I'm not there yet right but I did it scared and I put it in the top one and when it comes down to it it's like people will pay whatever you ask them to pay right if something costs a dollar they're going to pay a dollar something costs a thousand I was going to pay a thousand for it right and I did it scared you know I be honest with you I still do new things scared because you don't know they're going to work out but it's like screw it I'm going to go and the worst thing that can happen is I'll learn a lesson on how to improve in the future right so that would be the first thing is like just follow everything like you know I remember I didn't have I had the luxury of time but not the luxury of money so I spent hours man like I went through the course you know I did all the training like I built everything step by step by step I literally I have it up in one window I would do this look at it do this like I was just cross-checking it right because I knew that if I followed what you guys taught I would have a level of success didn't know what it would be but I would have it would set me up to have the greatest level of success that I possibly could so that's like the first thing that I just want to say is just like you know when you find people that are living and walking the walk and talking the talk you'd be crazy to try to reinvent the wheel coming in what did what did you change what did I change yeah I found I found me right I found my identity as a business owner as an artist so some of the things that I changed was the like I believe that I approach sessions differently than other folks right so again my main thing is client experience right like I focus so hard on the client experience portion of it I increased my pricing and I also I wouldn't necessarily this is something that changed but something that I was cognizant and aware of is who and what type of class that I showed because you always hear the attitude like you show what whatever it is like whatever you show is what you shoot basically right yeah so being mindful of that and focusing on that experience and then investing into myself is what I change I don't know if you guys have like a module on that portion but like you know I'll give it an example right I think I'm in a 2,000 square foot studio right my studio is and I need to update my website to have an actual studio tour I'm behind on that one but you're like I invested in like the best design like I spared no expense when it came to designing my studio right like my studio is immaculate it's a work of art in itself we create art and a work of art I've spent thousands of dollars on client lingerie wardrobe right like I have so much freaking stuff man it's crazy right you know and that so something small like that people want to shoot in a place like mines because it doesn't look like everyone else's I'm not carbon copying the same thing right I'm creating something that is of quality when it comes to the wardrobe I'm not going to be limited by what I can sell a client because they buy cheap lingerie and it doesn't fit the body shape or body size right like you know I'm I will I will style you for your whole shoot I will put you in nice lingerie I will you know like do that little bit of extra work there that makes the image that much better that's something that I changed you know I don't I don't care how long it takes when we're doing the session we move at a pace and speed is comfortable like those are like some of the things that are like they're soft things if you will that have changed if you want like a hard thing I would say videos right social media is staying out there pricing scripts and then my voice and how I want the studio to be presented and what I want you to see is that does that answer your question or do you want to dig a little deeper no no no yeah I guess I was asking specifically like on the price list were there things that you change from it because I know a lot of people you know aren't comfortable they're like hey I'm confused by this I didn't like this I changed products yeah so for pricing I got rid of print credit right I looked at it that one thing that Jen says and I feel the same way too is like you know we give you print credit because like I want you to hang my stuff on your wall right that's what she says and I think that's great and I I love that portion but what I noticed is when I took out the print credit it did not
49:38Lower my sales average, it increased it which was interesting, and it lowered my cost of goods, which means that I was being more profitable, which meant that I can invest into myself into the business a little bit more. I added in a five figure package. So I bumped up to $11.99, this is my top end. I eliminated my floor, so $11,000.99 okay. I eliminated my floor, so my collection started free. So I still have a loss leader, a thousand dollar loss leader, but it's not a collection. And yeah I was willing to tweak some of my deliverables. I don't do eight by eight albums, I do ten by ten and up. I don't do eight by twelves or 12x14s because they cost too much to create. Those are some things that I changed. I switched vendors for my wall art because the vendors that I was using, they're fantastic, but it is a pain trying to open that package. It takes forever, it takes too long, and I found somebody that was significantly cheaper as well. I eliminated some of the bloat, so I still have a viewfinder, but I hate ordering those and they don't really move the needle, so I don't really offer that as much. I got rid of metals. It's available on the pricing thing, but I never talk about it because canvas is cheaper and people understand canvas a little bit more. Yeah those are some of the things that I tweaked, and I added some things into my top-end packaging. So for example, I'll give the free session retainer if you get my top two collections for your next go round. I tend to use wall art as a closing offer, so it's a not listed special or not listed perk that you would get. It's like if someone's looking at getting like a 4K or a 5K package, I'll throw a piece of wall art in to push them towards 8K. If they're looking at 4K or 12K, I'll give them a couple pieces of large to push them towards the 12K. So those are some of the things that I tweaked in my investment menu to be able to better serve my clients the way in which I want to serve them.
52:07Nice. Okay, so I don't want to take too much of your time, but I will ask, because you've accomplished a lot and we've talked about kind of how you're going to achieve your goals for the next year, what are some challenges that you're going to face this next year?
52:33I would say one of the challenges I'll start listing in no particular order is comparison. Just because one year went one way doesn't mean that you should expect that same thing to be there. So being able to meet a market where it is, being an agile business, those are challenges because it's going to be something new. We can't rinse, wash, and repeat the same thing every day, year over year. We're going to have to tweak and we're going to have to change. That's a challenge that I look forward to embracing. Another challenge of mine is the economy doesn't make sense right now. From what they teach you in books and how it's going, it's a little bit different. There are smaller factors that are having an impact on our business. Inflation can be a sticky thing. Sometimes the cost of groceries can determine if someone books a session with you or not. It sounds simple, but a couple hundred dollars on a retainer when your grocery bill goes up, maybe that takes away some of your disposable income. So those are challenges, so being able to meet the market where I need to. And then also growing and having faith and trusting the process and scaling up and bringing on other people. You hire the right people, it's like you guess when you hire, but you know when you fire. Going through that process, those are challenges navigating a new market. In restaurants, if you open one successful restaurant, your new location is not the same thing. It's a completely new business. The same can be said with an additional market. Yeah, so those are some of the things that are challenges or opportunities on the table for us to compete against. Also, not listening to what the masses are doing. There's a bunch of people that are into this genre now because it got more popular. Those people are going to struggle if they aren't built to cut the mustard. They're going to close up shop. I'm not going to listen to people that aren't more successful than what I am or listen to people that aren't doing things the right way. So I'm not going to let people's negativity affect my business trajectory. So those are challenges that are on the horizon to navigate through.
55:11Is there anything else you'd want to share? Anything something people don't know about you?
55:20Okay, because by the way, I had no idea that you were driving Uber. I did not know that.
55:25Fine, tell nobody. Oh no, I totally not a soul. You're kidding me? I was started like midnight. I was like, mind you, I'm so I could laugh at now, man, but I knew three people when I moved to Houston. I was like, these people will not know. I'm going to drive at midnight. No one's going to see me. I'll be in and out. I'm a very private person. So when I'm going through stuff or stuff is bothering me, it's hard for me to share in the moment. So the Uber story, I can laugh and say it now because I'm years removed from it, but in the moment, I'm like, I'm not tapping into this at all. You didn't see me. And there's nothing wrong with that, but that's just my own thing. I would say, you said, is there something, what was the question again? Something that people don't know about you? Yeah, as we sign off. I mentioned going through some issues, and listen, personal stuff. I went blind in one eye over the course of late 2020 into 2021. And that was scary, dude, because my eyes are what I use to produce my income. Going through and having surgeries and things like that, that stuff is scary. You don't know how long you're going to be down. You don't know if you're going to recuperate. You don't know what this is going to be. So being able to adjust to that, when people find that part out, it's usually met by, and you took that picture? I'm like, yeah, I took that picture with one eye. So that's something. So I would say that no matter, because everyone's story is not going to be similar to mine, but if you're going through difficult stuff in your personal life, you're going through stuff, if stuff is affecting you, that you can still be great through that process. You just have to have a North Star, a light, something to guide you through that. Because I went through some dark times. That stuff, man, I did that, but my business didn't break, even though I tried to break it. I'll be fully honest with you. My business still persisted through that. So that would be something that I would share with folks, maybe inspire somebody. Maybe someone's going through the same thing. I don't know, man.
57:44Did you get your sight back by the way?
57:46No, I can't say I don't want to.
57:49Oh really? Yeah, no, no, no.
57:51How does that affect you at all, if anything?
57:53I mean, one of the good things I guess is when you're looking through a camera, you only kind of use one eye. My wedding training comes into play. Because when you're shooting for a wedding, you usually have one half of your vision blocked anyway, so you learn to know what other people are. The way it affects me laughingly is that I will bump into people at airports because I can't see on my right side. So if I bump into you, my bad. My depth perception is off because you need both eyes to be able to judge distance properly. So that part has been affected. It affected my confidence for a long time. If you go back through my TikTok and stuff, now that you know it, you'll see it. When I'm wearing glasses or turning to one side, I'm trying to cover it because I feel that I'm not as symmetrical as I once was. But those are the things. I don't think it affects my shooting. I could be wrong, but I don't think it affects my shooting.
58:48No, I mean, you're sharing your website earlier. You definitely have way above average, extremely high percentile work. So I don't think it affects you. And by the way, you did an amazing job with the website and everything you did build. I know you said you sat down and really put time to it, but you can really tell that. The other good thing about everything you've done is a lot of it is Evergreen. So you built it once and then you maintain it. So all the videos you talked about, the site, all the social proof, you've amassed it all, and the automations, all the ads, a lot of what you've done just kind of carries over. Every year probably gets more streamlined. I know it is for me in my business. Sometimes it'll go months or years without updating some things, but it's fast and easy to update and it's just cool to know. And I basically have the mindset that anything I have to do more than once has to be automated. So anything from an employee onboarding to getting them to do something, boom, automated. If I sign my and sometimes I'll find myself doing something more than twice, sending them an offer letter, and for anything, if a new client signs on and they don't know exactly where to do this, I've just automated every portion of it. So it just removes that much work because I know I'm going to be doing those things over and over again.
60:13Yeah, that stuff pays dividends, man. When I was going through and setting everything up, the stuff that I built, that's why I was so diligent in just following exactly how I was taught and not trying to tweak it or change it. I changed it later when I found my voice, but what you guys gave was Evergreen enough. There are some emails that I haven't changed three, four years into it. But as I found my voice, I was able to tweak some things. I built that stuff once and did it the right way, and it continues to pay dividends even to this day. So if you do it right the first time, you don't have to continue to keep doing that. Because as business owners, everything's going to move fast, man. So take advantage of when you don't have the bookings that you want to have or you're not where you want to be, because you have the time. You're either going to have time or you're going to have money. Use those two tools to your success. When I was broke, driving Uber, and just starting, I had time. Twelve hours by day on the computer building out the business, building out the skeleton, the machine. I can quote videos that I've watched because I've watched them so many times. I just went into it that deep. But if you make that investment, if you follow that structure, it will continue to pay dividends because that stuff doesn't change. You tweak different parts. You build a car, but you can change the tires, you can change the oil, but the car is still the same. That vehicle is still driving towards studio growth, year over year, revenue growth, sales average, and all this other good stuff.
61:52By the way, this has inspired me. You're probably going to be the first chapter in the book just because what you did share about your struggles and stuff.
62:03Yeah, I think it's so easy to just, my background's in the military. I've done some of the, I actually had somebody DM me on Instagram and they were like, hey, I want to side hustle. They make six figures. A good friend of mine, and they were just like, I want more in life, what did you do to become self-made? And I basically just said, I don't know, but one thing that happens to me is I always am the best at everything I do. So when I joined the Marines and I was in I.T for the first five years, I felt like I was the best I.T guy. I volunteered to go on all the missions. I volunteered to go to all the areas to set up comms, and I just took pride in it. When everyone went to sleep because they couldn't figure something out, they would wake up and they'd see it fixed, and I stayed up for four hours. I joined Special Operations. I remember I went and came back, and somebody had told me that somebody I really respected was kind of a mentor, didn't think I was going to make it. They found out that I was going to try out, and his response was Umberto's too small. He's cool and everything, but he's not built for that. The first thing I did when I came back, I went to his office and I was like, did you hear? And he was like, I heard, I knew you would make it. No, you literally said I was too small. I wasn't going to make it here. There were guys when I showed up that looked like G.I. Joes. There were guys that were just ripped, six packs, looking like the dudes in the movies, like action heroes, just jacked. And I remember when I got through the tryout, I was ranked number six out of a hundred something. So a hundred guys are all at peak physical condition, and I was ranked number six, and I didn't do anything special. I wasn't from that community. So I literally looked back at the time, and all I did was just work out every day, swim every day, every three days or maybe every two days I'd hike three times a week, and I just did that for months before I went to the tryout. And I remember talking to people about what they did to prepare, and not much really. And I was like, damn, you guys had all this heads up. We had to go through all this paperwork to get here. We knew we were going to get here, and all you had to do is just put in a little bit of work over a long period of time.
64:19And the people that failed, and you probably heard this analogy if you watched all the videos, there'd be guys that I thought were going to be easy for them, and they would quit. And what would happen is when people would quit, you'd go back and their bed would be missing. The rack would disappear. We'd be in the middle of a training exercise, maybe you'd be alone by yourself, and you didn't know who made it back because you'd just scramble in and start. By the time you get back, you're like, was that mattress gone before? You're like, wait, that's his mattress. And one of the reasons I think, because I talked to some people afterwards—you're not supposed to talk to them because they can poison the well—but you kind of bump into people sometimes, and you'll like bump into people, and they can't stop you from talking to each other. But I remember I talked to people, and they'd be like, yeah, man, I just knew that later on, four weeks from now, we'd have to do this hike. Six weeks from then I'd have to pass this qualification. I'm already struggling with this. And they would just let everything pile up on them. So with me and my friends, what we were saying was, we just have to get chow to chow, just have to make it to breakfast. When we make breakfast, we just only have to worry about everything. Some of the days were hard. I'm talking about literally throbbing in pain and can't move, and you're like, glad it's over, and you're just happy to eat dinner, and then all you have to worry about is the next morning. You got to make it past the four a.m. workout or whatever. But if you started thinking, hey, I have six more workouts this week and a twelve on twenty mile hike next week, and I have to pass this qualification, now you're facing everything at once, and it's really hard to overcome. So our saying was, you just got to live chow to chow, one step at a time. If you just focus on that and your goal, it's almost like the process. Your goal is just not getting to the end. It's just beating it every single day. And I feel like with a lot of what you've talked about, it's like you're not going to build your website and build all your ads and get a hundred clients in a day. But it's better than six years from now you wake up and your business is in the same place. It's one of those things where just add a little bit to what you mentioned. Listen, the military is not just going to slap a badge on you and clear your special forces. There's a responsibility that comes with that. You've got to earn that portion. You've got to dare yourself to be great. You've got to dare yourself to do something, to rise to the occasion that you can get to. I understand what you're saying with that, and it's one thing that I got. I was listening to a podcast. I forgot who, but maybe SEALs or something. I don't remember. But what his saying was he's going through that training was, quit tomorrow. Whatever you're going through, it's cool, just quit tomorrow. Make it through today, but just quit tomorrow. And that's what drove him to getting to that goal. And the same thing can be said for business. Just do it today, quit tomorrow. I one of the things I always say is the time is going to pass anyway. You can't stop the time from passing. It might as well make something out of it. And then you're right. Those small incremental things like getting all this stuff is cliché, man, because it works. Success does not reinvent itself. It's been around for thousands of years. So getting one percent better every day, making that progress, will get you towards that goal. I think that's a hundred percent true for business. And just do your own journey. Do what makes you happy. Follow your own path. Follow your own journey. Listen, do I look at other studios and say, man, I should be where they are revenue-wise? Of course, you have that doubt. But I say, hey, I'm focusing on what I can focus on. I mentioned this time and time again throughout the interview, but there may be other studios that create better work than me because art is objective. Someone may prefer someone else's work. That's fine. There's no studio that has a better client experience than mine, and full stop on that. I don't care. You can challenge me. No one has that. If you don't believe me, read my reviews. Sitting on a session or book me, whatever it is, no one's going to have a better client experience than what we provide. And that little detail, raising that bar every day, is what gets us closer and closer towards that, whatever that thing is for you. Joining Special Forces, for me, it's interviewing with you and having an assessment studio. You're always going to have people that don't believe you. Some of my closest people don't believe in me. And I had to learn to just turn them off. Listen, you don't believe in what I'm doing. You want me to fail.
69:04Yeah, that's crazy because I'm not going to say one is harder than the other, but they're different in the sense that when you're in the military, I know what to do. There's a standard. It's written on the chalkboard, on a formal piece of paper with letterhead. There's no doubt how to pass and the exact steps I'm told what to do. So in that sense, yeah, physically it's hard, mentally it's hard. But in business, I find the really challenging part is there's so much to do. It's like, how do you prioritize? How do you know things are working? What timeline? I know I'm supposed to run three miles in this time on this path, but how do I know if I've built this thing right? How much am I supposed to lean into it? Is it even going to work? And it's really easy to just stop or have to double check things. The next thing you know, you're just stuck on a problem for a while.
70:00Success leaves clues. Find your North Stars. They leave clues, and they gave you the game if you just stop talking and start listening or open your eyes and start watching. They leave clues. Those little breadcrumbs may not be like, complete this in this mile on this date and you get this certification, but it'll get you closer to what you want. You'll get a higher vantage point on that mountain, and you'll be able to survey the landscape and see a little bit further.
70:27Speaking of which, that actually gives me an idea. I should create those checkpoints, like that roadmap of exact syllabus, because it's obviously what we do.
70:39Yeah.
70:42All right, that actually is a good idea. I'm writing that down.
70:48Having that mile marker, if you will, because it's lonely being a business owner. It gets romanticized, but it's hard, man. You're doing this by yourself. Especially with this type of business, you don't have coworkers. Even though my hair and makeup artist is with me, they're contractors. They're not coworkers of mine. So I have no water cooler talk. You're on an island by yourself navigating this. And the easiest person to cheat is yourself. Self-doubt will creep in. So that checklist could be paramount for new people's success in an existing studio.
71:31All right, man, I really appreciate the time, and yeah, we'll keep in touch.
71:36Perfect, appreciate it. And I will see you guys later.