Premium Members, click here to access this interview in the premium area.
Brent Johns of PXL Media Studios has two bachelor degrees, two masters degrees and is just finishing up a PhD in Digital Cinematography. He says, “making money is about the easiest thing you can actually do in life.”
His company offers a variety of services from wedding and real estate photography and videography to senior portraits and product photography. They also offer corporate videos, aerial photography and videography, web design, internet marketing and branding.
Brent has been in business for 22 years, services 5 countries with 56 offices and a staff of over 300! All this and he started with $3 and change following a divorce.
Here’s some of what we cover in this interview:
What’s on Offer for Premium Members
If you’re a premium member, you should have received an email with links to your version of this episode where you can hear lots more content and we dive deeper into some of the earlier topics plus some new ones that I pushed for and include:
If you’re on the fence about becoming a premium member, join with the $1 trial today and get access to the FULL interview with Brent, get access to an amazing back catalogue of interviews and ALL future interviews delivered automatically to your phone or tablet.
Plus, access to a members only Secret Facebook group where you'll connect with other members and interview guests to help, support and motivate you to take what you hear in each episode and put it into action. You will not find more friendly, more motivated and caring photographers online.
What is your big takeaway?
Following this interview, I’d love to know if you're up for the challenge and willing to invest a little time and effort into yourself, your writing and your business. If so, let me know by leaving your thoughts in the comments below and feel free to share links to your blog posts – I'd love to check them out.
If you have any questions that I missed, a specific question you’d like to ask Brent about the challenge or if you just want to say thanks for coming on the show, feel free to add them below.
There’s plenty of business for everybody. You just have to go out and knock on doors. You got to go do the work. You can’t sit behind the desk and wait for the phone to ring – Brent Johns
iTunes Reviews and Shout-outs
Each week I check for any new iTunes reviews and it's always a buzz to receive these… for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, it's confirmation that I'm on the right track with the interviews and that they really are helping you improve your photography business. That's awesome!
Secondly, iTunes is the biggest search engine when it comes to podcasts and it's your reviews and ratings that help other photographers find PhotoBizX. More listeners means more interviews and ultimately a better show.
If you have left a review in the past, thank you!
If you haven't and you'd like to, head to https://photobizx.com/itunes and you can leave some honest feedback and a rating which will help both me and the show and I'll be sure to thank you on the show and add a link to your website or blog if you let me know the URL of your website and your name.
I developed my business model because it’s different than what anybody else is doing – Brent Johns
PLUS: if you let me know the key word or keyword phrase you'd like me to use to link to your page, post or site, let me know via email after leaving a review and I'll do what I can to make that work.
For example, If I were linking to my wedding photography page on my photography website ” Impact Images” and want to target the keyword phrase “Central Coast wedding photographer” and left an iTunes review, I'd add something like this:
Thanks for the iTunes review by Central Coast wedding photographer, Andrew Hellmich on June 27, 2016
Alternatively, if you've left a review for PhotoBizX and are looking for more backlinks to help your SEO, leave a review for the new Photography Xperiment Podcast and email me your key word/s and where you'd like me to link to.
The NEW Photography Xperiment Podcast is live and available
Following the success and support shown by listeners after the experimental format of the recent interviews, the new Photo Xperiment Podcast has been launched and is available on this site and in iTunes now.
Interviews are underway and I'll be looking for new guests, not restricted to wedding and portrait photographers. If you have someone you think would be a good fit, let me know in the comment area below or email me, andrew@photobizx.com.
If you want your business to succeed, then you have to invest back in your business both time-wise and monetary-wise – Brent Johns
The idea behind these interviews is to get into the headspace of the photographer and find what makes them tick, what drives them, their thought process, philosophy on shooting and how they achieve what they do with their photography. So yeah, a little technique type content too.
These interviews will not focus on the business of photography – that'll be preserved solely for the weekly and unchanging format of the PhotoBizX podcast.
To hear these interviews in your podcast app, you will need to subscribe to the podcast – these interviews will not be delivered automatically if you're subscribed to PhotoBizX. Open your favourite podcast app and search “Photography Xperiment Podcast” or enter the feed URL, https://photobizx.com/feed/xperiment/ into the search field of your podcast app.
Links to people, places and things mentioned in this episode:
Thank you!
Thanks again for listening to the show and thanks to Brent for coming on and being totally open about what he's doing in his business to achieve the success he is.
When first starting a business, you have to run it like you don’t have any money – Brent Johns
If you have any suggestions, comments or questions about this episode, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post, and if you liked the episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post!
That’s it for me this week, hope everything is going well for you in life and business!
Thanks and speak soon
Andrew
Woa…mind blown.
What an amazing interview Andrew. Thanks Brent for sharing so much. Loved your drive and enthusiasm.
Cheers Heath – Brent is definitely a power house of enthusiasm, it’s difficult not to get swept up by his positivity.
I liked this interview. Then I checked out this biz on the links. For as much as he talked how big his biz was it looks to me like maybe he was a little bit over zealous? I mean he does web work social media for other yes his FB is slow and has under 40 followers? Just seemed a bit fishy to me.
Thanks Joe. Yeah, there were a few red flags that started appearing after this interview and lack of social media followers is probably the least of them. You’ll hear in the episode a week or two later that I had another Skype call scheduled with Brent to go over things I’d heard since the interview went live.
In the end, I cancelled the follow up call – it felt like I was chasing after Brent to simply embarrass him and that just didn’t interest me.
Interesting interview, but throughout the whole interview I couldn’t quite work out if he was for real or not. Sounded to good to be true. (I’m the eternal pessimist)
Yeah, I had the same feeling and uncovered a few things that made me second guess a lot of what Brent had to say.