479: Hark Nijjar – The incredible business possibilities for high volume sports photography

479: Hark Nijjar – The incredible business possibilities for high volume sports photography
 

Andrew Hellmich: I've been wanting to interview today's guest since receiving a message from another successful photographer during a Zoom training session last year. That photographer said privately to me, you need to get Hark on the podcast. He has a great business up in Canada. He'd be a fantastic guest. Hark is based in the Toronto area. He has a beautifully large and well equipped studio, and his business looks to be split in two halves. One part is more boutique and focused on headshots and corporate studio work, and the other half is a high volume sports photography business under a totally separate brand by the name of GTA Sports Photography. So after we exchanged a few messages, I learned that Hark is a big fan of work life balance, and he says in an email to me, "To be honest, I could take on a lot more work and grow my sports business, but I left a very well paying corporate life to spend more time with the family, and I wouldn't trade that for anything." I'm looking forward to this one, and I'm rapt to have Hark of Hark Nijjar Photography with me now. Hark, welcome.

Hark Nijjar: Well, thanks, Andrew, it's really an honor to be speaking with you after being one of your biggest fans. I've been listening to you for years now, at least a few years, and you've had some amazing guests. I'm really honored to be doing this with you at this time. So thank you very much for the intro.

Andrew Hellmich: I am just as excited to talk to you, and look for the listener you need let us know where you are right now, because you're not in your studio, you're not in your home. Where are you?

Hark Nijjar: No, actually not at home. We have in Canada, we call them cottages. It's essentially our cabin by the lake house, and we try to spend a little bit of time each summer throughout the year. So we open up the cottage in typically in May, and close it up in October, November, time frame. And during that time, we spend at least a couple months at the summer, up at the cottage with the family. And it just it's a nice break to get away. It's only within the last year or so that we've had Internet access here. Prior to that, we didn't have cell service, just so you know, we do have running water in, nice kitchen and all that. So it's not a cool cabin, but it's pretty close to this cabin, getting way into the woods as you can get. But we really enjoy it.

Andrew Hellmich: Nice. So when you come up to the cabin, when you stay, like, for a couple of months, do you just block out the calendar like you and your wife or your family do that.

Hark Nijjar: Yes, we have a fairly, fairly good system in terms of how we do them. So my wife works as a regular job, that she enjoys her job, and one of the things that when I left my corporate work was that I want to make sure we had enough time to spend together, so when she has her time off or gauging schedule, I will align that with mine, and I will essentially block it off and making sure that I don't have anything during those time, there have been times in the past where I had to go back. We are about two hours from my actual home. I've gone back to do a shoot where I couldn't get out of, but most of the time, I tried to book everything off so that I don't have to go back and forth, and we can stay up at the cottage without interruptions and just enjoy ourselves.

Andrew Hellmich: Nice. So while you're at the cottage and you're not shooting or working, does that mean there's no income coming into the business? There isn't, like a team of staff shooters out there working for you?

Hark Nijjar: No, there is no. There isn't, for our sports side of the business, which is a volume based business, I do have people that help me out. There's a couple of people that help me out in the studio. So if there's something that I need to get done at the studio, or there's something left behind, I do have people that would actually come and do that for me. But aside from that, I don't have any employees. I don't aspire to sort of get there, even though I can very easily grow to a point where I need to get people in, I outsource a lot of my work, a lot of my editing, some of the other stuff that I do. But in terms of my regular employees, I don't have a regular employee working for me in the studio.

Andrew Hellmich: Right. So you are the man, the photographer, the editor behind GTA Sports and Hark Nijjar Photography,

Hark Nijjar: That's correct. So I'm essentially giving myself, it's a single man band. So I try to do as much as I can with my availability that I have, time wise. And if I feel like I need to do a little bit more, I can absorb some of that stuff. But most of the shooting is done by myself, aside from our sports work, which I bring other team members on board to do the shoots, where I may not be shooting for one particular league, but they're doing the shoots. But on the back end, I'm doing a lot of that work myself, and some of that stuff is outsourced.

Andrew Hellmich: Got it. Okay. So if you were to combine the two businesses, like, well, tell me about the two businesses. I guess there's a separate revenue stream for both, like, is one more? Are you passionate?

Hark Nijjar: Well, I started with, like, most photographers, when they start off with everything, I tried every families. I even did a couple of weddings. And I don't know how anybody that shoots weddings, kudos to them, because that's a lot of work. So that's something that quickly went out the window, because I really knew that I did not want to shoot weddings, but I started with sports. And my son was into sports. He was playing hockey, doing motocross and baseball and throughout, so people knew that I was shooting some families and did some photography. They asked me, would you be interested in being our sports team? Sure. How difficult could it be? Little did I know that if you don't have very good systems in place, it could be very difficult to get going. So I started with that, and I did some workshops in the US. It's a massive industry in the US. Most of what I've learned, I've gone through those conferences. I've met a lot of great people, and they sort of put me on a path to little more automation in the back end to be able to do the job. So GTS Sports Photography is our sports unit, and Hark Nijjar Photography is my essentially what we do headshots corporate. That's mainly what I do on the portrait side. We do a little bit of a specialty work. We call them fairy days. These are fairy portraits. I don't know if you've seen them on my website. They underserved like a fine art work. We do those maybe two, maybe three times a year. We haven't done those in the last couple of years, just because we have been very, very busy with the sports work. But I'm planning to bring those back maybe later this fall. And there I call those, it's also boutique volume, because they're not really high volume, but they're not really a high touch point portrait work that we do in the studio. They're sort of in between. We can typically schedule somewhere from 20 to 25 sessions on a weekend for those fairy sessions, about half an hour, 20 minutes to half an hour sessions. And we can typically do that many and book them out and get great sales from those. So combined with everything between our volume sports, our corporate work, and some of the boutique volume that, I have a pretty comfortable revenue stream that comes in year after year. So it's pretty predictable.

Andrew Hellmich: What kind of revenue is it, Hark?

Hark Nijjar: We're talking look for on our as I mentioned, for our sports photography was pretty much a record year. This year probably been close to little bit over 225, maybe 238, this year.

Andrew Hellmich: Wow.

Hark Nijjar: So that's on the volume side. From the corporate side, I do a lot of work in the mining sector, which I was 15-16 years previously, had in my photography career. So I do a lot of work for those clients. They would either take me out to one of their sites, send me out to one of the mine sites to do their content for whether it's annual reports or whether they're just for internal consumption, or whatever photography needs that they have, photography as well as video. I have another team member. I say team member, it's a person that I bring on with me to do some of the video work as well. I do some video, but I'm not the main person that does the video. So we do video photography for those clients, and then head shots and personal branding. It's a huge thing for the studio. I do a lot of those purely in studio work, unless a large company calls me up and say we're going to do 30-40-50. I've done up 200-150 people in a single day for headshots. And those are more, I come if I can do volume photography, I can certainly do 150 in a day without a problem for headshots.

Andrew Hellmich: Right. So that side of the business that's got its own revenue as well.

Hark Nijjar: That's right. So on the portrait side, we probably get to about, I would say around 150 maybe.

Andrew Hellmich: Wow, I guess you got a great business. So, I mean, really, I want to ask you about the work life balance thing, but it sounds to me like you have a high enough income stream where you don't have to work the whole year if you don't want to, isn't?

Hark Nijjar: I don't. I don't. So one of the best things about for my volume side is very seasonal, and it's also very predictable. So I know we are going to have a busy fall. We're going to have a busy sort of like start of the spring, and then there's a bit of a lull from, I would say, end of mid-March to about beginning of May. There's not really much going on during that time. And then from there, we start doing baseball and little bit of soccer. I try to stay away from the summer sport, to be honest, because I want to spend time up here. I don't want to be shooting soccer or baseball on the weekend. So I work with leagues that are willing to work with me on that. So if I have some baseball leagues that are able to schedule then during the week, we will do those, if it's every weekend, no, I'll just simply tell them, "No, thank you." We'll just move on. And the reason it works is every year because I know those leagues are going to come back next year, so I can generally predict my revenue, what it's going to be for year after year. Sure enough, like there might be some league that they drop off. Hasn't happened to me yet, but if there's league that drops off, there'd be two others that are willing to come on board and join, join the roster.

Andrew Hellmich: So why is that, why are you so confident that they're going to be coming back next year, even if you say, "I'm sorry I'm not doing this." Or how can you be so confident enough they're not gonna drop off. What are you doing?

Hark Nijjar: Well, I don't think I'm doing any different reaches from in terms of the quality that we provide, the product and the service that, I have a very service oriented business model where I don't, I want the clients to get lot more value than what I'm delivering to them as a product. So to them, they get any sort of issues that they have with orders that they come from the parents, whether it's from the leagues, we look after every single one of those issues. I've had leagues that I've been working with for five, six years, and they absolutely love our work. I don't, I mean touch work, they could go I never have to sign any contracts saying that "You're on a contract with me for the next two or three years." I know a lot of volume photographers, volume photography companies. They require the leagues to sign a contract of some sort. I do it by it's actually a handshake agreement with the people that I meet. And I try to personally try to meet those people, because their kids grow up. Most of these people that are working in it. They're volunteer. They rotate it, so their kids might be in that sport for two years, and somebody else comes but, but it's my job to go out there, meet those people, meet the new board members, see how things are going. So for me, I make a lot of those personal connections with those individuals to make sure that when it comes down to them selecting a company that's going to work with that, I'm at the top of their mind, and they're going to call me for that, for the job. For me, those leagues, a bit, some of the leagues are like 20, $30,000 for me per League. So to lose it, yes, it'd be a big loss. But I know also that I have the capability of going getting somebody else, because I have the capability to be able to fill them in or provide a service to that in the time that I have, so.

Andrew Hellmich: I love it. So when you say 'league', is that a club, or is that like?

Hark Nijjar: It's a club, so it's a club. So for example, it'd be a hockey league, Hockey Association. They may have, uh, 11 - 1200 players in that association.

Andrew Hellmich: Sorry, Hark. So when you're saying league to me, I'm thinking that's made up of, say, 12 or 18 different teams or clubs. Is that what you mean by a league?

Hark Nijjar: Team. So it'll be team. So for example, we just recently did a baseball league. So it's just one league, but within the league, they have 90 teams, and between those 90 teams, they have about 12-1250 kids for those 90 teams, and we will photograph all those individual, sorry, individual players. We'll put them together as a team, and also do the individual pictures as well. So the parents purchase the individual pictures, but the league themselves, they also order one print per player for every player in the league. So if it's 1200 or 1250 kids in that in the league. The league's going to pay me for each one of those kids.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, this is amazing. So you're going above the team or club level and going to the actual Association and photographing the whole league within..

Hark Nijjar: That's correct.

Andrew Hellmich: Right. So you're photographing every team within that league and all the players.

Hark Nijjar: Yes, and that's for me, that works like a lot better for me, shooting into, I will go and shoot individual teams, don't get me wrong, but I do it very strategically, like the baseball picture that I just sent you the other day. It was just a single team. I just went out and shot during the week, but I know they have a huge association, so I'm gonna go photograph that one team that came to me, create a great product for them, and because I've already seen this on their social media, they've posted those pictures everywhere. All the other teams see it say, "Why are we not doing the same pictures?" So next thing I know, the League Association, the person that's running the league, is going to be reaching out to me, or "Next year, we would like to photograph every single player in our association, every single team in that association." So for me, that's how I get the bison.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, so are there hundreds or scores of other photographers and photography companies targeting the teens, and you're just going above them?

Hark Nijjar: There is, there are lots of individual photographers that work with smaller teams, so maybe one or two teams, but you have to have a fairly good system in place to be able to handle high volume. So we have in terms of data management, we get the rosters from the Association. We turn them into 2d barcodes, so each kid will have their own barcode when we scan. So when we take a picture, we're scanning the barcode, making sure we know which kid is which, which team that he belongs to. So in terms of data management and data processing on the back end, you have to have a fairly good system if you're going to be able to process how many players for an association.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, I want to talk about the business side of things in just a second. But if I'm looking at one of your recent Instagram posts here, I think I'm going to butcher this. But is it the Mississauga Tigers?

Hark Nijjar: Tigers, yes. So that was a single team that that just reached out to me, we were late in the game. "Our association was supposed to be the pictures. They didn't turn out great, but we were looking to do individual and team photos. Would you come out and do our pictures?" So I give them a price in terms of individual which is way higher than what I typically would charge for volume gig. So I will go and photograph that individual team, give them the product, an outstanding experience, so that they will go and talk to their lead convener. "Why are we not using this photography company to do our pictures for the entire league, as opposed to just us having to go and find this person?" Nine out of 10 times, I generally, if I shoot one team next year, I will get the entire league.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, and like for the listener, you have to go and check out the Instagram feed or the website for GTA Sports Photography, because when I say and when Hark says, a high volume sports photography like these are fantastic. The ones I'm looking at here, of the Tigers, are outdoor portraits with an off camera flash set up to one side. I think there's even a backlight as well. So you got multiple studio lights.

Hark Nijjar: Yes. So we typically have a three light setup for, it doesn't matter where we're shooting.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay. So three lights set up outdoors looks incredible, but the colors are just popping. The kids look amazing. So I can see why you're, you know, out photographing and out delivering these other photographers. Just quickly on the actual photography setup. I mean, at the moment today, it's raining where you are. I'm guessing you get a lot of wet weather in Canada, particularly at certain times of the year. So if you turn up to do this shoot and you want to over deliver and deliver this kind of quality imagery, what do you do when it's raining?

Hark Nijjar: So for some of the smaller team, like, for example, if it's a single team, it's easy enough to sort of reschedule. For a large League, we always have a backup plan. So one, we either will use canopies, or second, we will always say, always have a gym. I will talk to the league about securing an indoor space. And then we make the call within two or three days prior to photo day, that if it's kind of the weather's going to be either raining or snow or something up, most of the hockey is always indoors anyways. But for outdoor sports, if there's an issue with weather that I can anticipate, it's going to be coming down to fight, I will just tell them, "Let's just move it indoors." And we're going to do some and most elites that I work with, they're willing to do that because they know how hard it is to reschedule 90 teams. So especially when they have tournaments or they have other events, parents are not able to make it to another day, so we always have a backup plan.

Andrew Hellmich: Got it ,okay. And I'm looking at another post on your Instagram feed there for GTA Sports Photography, I can see three lights set up. You're inside a big gymnasium.

Hark Nijjar: Yes.

Andrew Hellmich: So the one I'm looking at is shot against a white backdrop. Do you then drop in an outdoor backdrop scene, or you deliver this as it shot?

Hark Nijjar: No, it just depends. We did. I can't remember which one that is, but there's some that we will do, extract the players, and we'll do a composite for the league. So there's two or three different levels of service that they can choose, if they want to use a composite, or if they want to use a traditional team photo, where everybody sort of is photographed together, and we put them as a group and we take a picture of that as a team. Or the other one is we take pictures of individual players and we put together as a team. So if you go to my website, you'll see some of the examples of the banner that's at the top, which I think might be the volleyball players, they were each one of, including the coaches, they were photographed individually and put together as a team.

Andrew Hellmich: Right. Okay, so that's one option they can have, and they've got other options to choose from. So is the league paying your bill, or are the parents of the kids ordering photos?

Hark Nijjar: The league is paying the bill for individual, so the league is always interested in delivering a team photo to each player. So as part of the registration, they will get it's a combination of like a player photo plus the team photo, so it's an eight by 10 print. So the league is going to pay for that for every player in the league. But on top of that, we also have an online ordering system. So while we are doing the team photo, we also doing individual portraits of each one of the athletes as well. We have those online. We remember I was talking about the barcodes data management on the back end, we know exactly for each kid. We give them an access code, and each kid has their own gallery to view and order the images. Parents can order online after photo day. Everything is done by my lab. I just essentially tell the parents go on and do the ordering. Everything gets delivered to their home. I don't even have to touch anything. It doesn't matter what they order. I have a certain number of products that I offer on our online ordering system. I don't have to produce those inhouse prints, or somebody wants to order a button or plaque or a key chain. It's all handled by the lab, and it gets delivered to the parents. Also, for me, lot of that stuff is essentially bonus on top of what I get paid from the leagues.

Andrew Hellmich: Got it. I love it. What a great business model, like here in Australia. I mean, I do some sports photography and a little bit of this work, not to the same extent that you are, that is for sure. But over here, it seems to be that, you know, we would target a particular, say, a soccer club, and photograph all the teams in that club. But I don't think anyone is going to the actual Association, that's just next level. That is amazing. And I love the fact. So, did you sale them on the idea of giving each player in the league a team photo, or that's something that's always done in Canada?

Hark Nijjar: For us in sport, that's always been a tradition. They always do it. I think it's a little bit different. Even in the US, some regions or some markets, they do the same thing. But I think in the US, lot of that is, what you just talked about, if you're a photographer want to go work with a team, they actually anticipate that you do something with the league free of charge. It's actually you're giving away that print so that you can get the orders. For me, it's the other way around. I don't do that. I only working with leagues that are willing to pay for those prints because they're getting quality prints and quality service. And then if they want to order anything additional on top of that, they can do that. However, I will sponsor some teams. So for me, I do give sponsorship money back to the leagues, because they're all volunteer based. Everybody's a volunteer within those leagues, they have a pretty tight budget. So what I try to do is always help them in anywhere I can. If it's a tournament, if I can send one of my sort of what is a team member, they're not really my team members, but I will get somebody that helps me out all the time. I will either pay them to go and shoot for them free of charge, but I will sort of cover that cost on their behalf. Some, but some of those things really go a long ways, because the Association, they appreciate it. They don't generally have lot of action photos throughout the year, really good ones that they can use for their social media, website. And I make sure that they have access to those images when they need those for the league.

Andrew Hellmich: Got it. Okay. So the, I mean, 99% of your income is coming from set up stage studio type shots. You're not doing action sports photography. There's just not the same.

Hark Nijjar: No, yeah.

Andrew Hellmich: Right.

Hark Nijjar: No, that again, when I first started, I thought there was money to be made in that. Unfortunately, there wasn't. There's some people that do a lot of business in it, but if they're very, very special system that they have in place to be able to make money through from turbos, you can do it. But in my experience, it was better for me to go after the individual and team photos rather than via the action photos for sports.

Andrew Hellmich: Right. And so you didn't have to, you're not expected to pay a commission or a kickback back to the association or the teams?

Hark Nijjar: No

Andrew Hellmich: Do other Canadian photographers? Is that a thing in Canada?

Hark Nijjar: Yes

Andrew Hellmich: Right.

Hark Nijjar: Yes. There's a lot of photography companies that offer that to the leagues, and some leagues do end up choosing those options. My job is to make sure, what happens is, so the leagues are always fighting two battles. One is with the parents. It's parents always want really good, high quality uses of the players, and the leagues want to do spend the least amount of money to get somebody in to do those team photos and individual photos. So the battle is among the parents is, "Why are we hiring that company to produce really crappy results when we like we want better pictures? And the parents don't have any other option other than what the league selects. So I try to always educate the board members on it is, "Listen, your association is your board member are the parents. So why are you not deciding on quality company that's going to provide you a quality product, as opposed to going with the cheapest option that you can get? Because this way, not only are you getting great key voters, but also the parents are happy because they have the ability to purchase portrait-quality, volume price, pictures of their players without having to go to a portrait studio. We're still able to offer you that, and not for much more than what you typically would pay for a company that's going to come and do that. But we're not in a position to give you, like a commission or any of that back. We're going to give you good quality, good service, and you can decide from there if you want to work with us." And most of the ones that I work with that says they keep coming back because they love the quality, they love the service.

Andrew Hellmich: I love it. I love it. So one of the things you keep referring to is prints. You know, everyone wants prints. The league wants prints. The family members want prints. You haven't once said to me, digital files. Surely, there's a demand for them as well.

Hark Nijjar: Yes, absolutely. There's a good demand for digital as well. And we do the same thing, online ordering system. They can either download digital files or can order prints. It's up to the parents, whatever they prefer. Well, they can do both. I have an option where, if they purchase a certain package, digital files are included as part of the package, or they can get a reduced rate if they purchase a certain product. So for me, my margins always help, regardless of whether I sell print or whether I sell digital files.

Andrew Hellmich: So what did you say? Your margins are always what?

Hark Nijjar: Margins. Margins are always great for with digital files to this really isn't any product cost that you're talking about. But to be honest, in volume pricing, the labs that you work with, your cost of goods sold on those products is not really, we're not talking about the high quality acrylic prints that you're delivering. These are just eight by 10 standard prints for a lot.

Andrew Hellmich: Right. Okay.

Hark Nijjar: Most of the time.

Andrew Hellmich: And is that the most popular or common product? Is it eight by 10 print?

Hark Nijjar: Yes, typically one, eight by 10 and two, five by seven. There essentially is, the is, so I like for my online cost, it's minimal, minuscule, compared to what the parents, especially on a..

Andrew Hellmich: Right. Okay. What does a parent pay for an eight by 10 and two, five by sevens?

Hark Nijjar: So for an eight by 10, I think it's $28 per print.

Andrew Hellmich: Right. Okay. fantastic.

Hark Nijjar: I'm pretty sure, to this point. So if they buy a package with a two, so when I say two five by seven in volume business, it's essentially unit cost, everything that can be printed on a single eight by 10 paper. Or, as you know, on you can either do two by five by sevens or four by five, whatever you want to print. It sounds like unit cost. So essentially, you price it out as eight by 10, and then the parents can purchase whatever they feel like purchasing, whether it's wallets, whether it's magnets, a little bit different. They cost a little more, but then I charge a little bit more. The other big, big popular item for us in sports is trader cards, where you have the player information on the back and you got the player picture on the front, and it looks like a trading card.

Andrew Hellmich: So who orders that? The association?

Hark Nijjar: Oh, every single parent. Hockey, we sell so many of them. So this is what I see.

Andrew Hellmich: Do they buy just their kids one, or they buy the whole teams?

Hark Nijjar: Yeah, no, just the kids one. So they have, we call them trade cards. So they come in a package 16, so there's like 16 players on the team. They will each give each one of them again, so they get a team. Some people do that, but some people also get the relative. They'll just give one print of trader card to each one of the aunts and uncles, grandpa, grandparents, whatever they want to do. So before we went online, I used to do paper form. So parents will fill out the paper form they would pay on. We had online payments, not online payment, but a Square payment right at site. So I would actually have somebody sitting there taking payments and taking the order forms. But before COVID, like that was pre COVID. After COVID, we put everything online. Now the parents can enter the exact information on the trader card that will appear on the Trader Card. So it reduced the work for me. But prior to us going online, I used to increase the price every year, hoping that parents wouldn't order trader card, but they still kept ordering.

Andrew Hellmich: Right

Hark Nijjar: So, but now that we've got everything online, it doesn't matter. They can whoever wants to order trader card, they can order trader cards.

Andrew Hellmich: So I'm guessing then you have some pretty cool software that does the formatting and just puts in from..

Hark Nijjar: Yes

Andrew Hellmich: Right. So what is that a software that's available to everyone, or that's a high end volume business?

Hark Nijjar: No, no, it's, I mean, there's software available which I didn't know that about it either, in the US on the volume side, the software calls Pixnub software and they do green screen knockouts, they do sports automation. There's a lot of available options within that software that you're able to do, but there's really high end. There's one from Australia called Tombstone that's also really, really good for creating composite. One in the US, the neighbor company was Photo Links. They have a multitude of different software platforms that you can use. And I didn't know any of this when I started this, and the only way I learned about all of this was going to some of the conferences in the US, some in Florida, some in Vegas. So for me, it was meeting those people. How are they doing this? Just picking it up. Because if you're starting this from the beginning, and you got a couple of teams, and you want to grow, it's a daunting task. All that kind of going to manage 1000 or 1500 kids shoot on a single day. How am I actually going to keep track of who's who and who the parents? It all will come to you. You just got to start somewhere, start small, one or two teams, and then it keep increasing. That's how I did it. And even now, I'm only growing by maybe 10 or 15% a year, which is when I say 10 and only 10-15 it's still a pretty big growth. But for me, it comes every year, like this year, as I told you, it was a record year for us, and that's without trying. Andrew, no wonderful lie. I have not spent other than on my website. I have not spent a single cent to attract a client to my sports business, not a single cent of advertising.

Andrew Hellmich: So two questions, why do you even worry about doing, you know, corporate headshots and fairy sessions. When it sounds like this sports business could just be through the roof if you wanted it to be?

Hark Nijjar: Because I find sporters to be very it's almost a formulaic sort of type of shoot. It's very technical, it's not very creative. It doesn't give you the same sort of feel as doing a portrait session or doing something in the studio, which I still love. I love being different lighting style. I love being, I just love photography. To be able to do that on the studio. I just enjoy that process. And even though I have this my studio, I would say empty at least 60, 70% of the time when I'm doing sports, I'm not doing anything about studio space. I could be renting it, but I don't like the idea of having to sort of move all my stuff around and so somebody else can come and do a shoot, and the next time I need to go, I have to set everything else I like my lighting side up the way I like it. I don't care if I'm not getting that money from a rental, but I want to go and be able to shoot when I want to go shoot at this.

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah. So that makes sense. That makes sense. Why not hire other photographers to photograph the sports teams?

 
Sign up to listen to the Premium Version at https://photobizx.com/premium-membership
 

Andrew Hellmich: Mate, I can't believe it's taken me so long to ask you onto the podcast. Thank you so much for saying yes and agreeing and for sharing so much about your wonderful business, massive congrats on your success. I mean, do you still pinch yourself and think, "Wow, this is, this is a great."

Hark Nijjar: Like, I like the consistency and the reoccurrence of, like, predictable revenue. That's been the game changer for me. As I said, when I left my corporate work, I tried everything, tried a bunch of different things. My corporate job is great. Like, I had some great, even now I get some great clients that I will work for them on a contract basis. I'll go and do maybe three, four or five times a year to go, go out to one of the and sometimes they're like 30, $40,000 client. And I still get those clients. But those clients are not as predictable, because you never know when they're going to come about and how long they're going to use you for, whereas sports side, it gives me a foundation to work with. I don't have to worry as much about the rest of the, it's just pure bonus for me to be able to do that. It takes the pressure off. So the best part for me is I work with the clients that I want to work with. I can say no to a lot of clients that typically think ,if you're, every client that was coming and you knew you had to pay the bills with that money, it'd be hard to say no to those people. Now I can say "No, thank you. I'm not, I'm busy, or I'm at the cottage." I can make it, so it's really easy, simple way to just say no so I don't feel guilty about doing it, because I know like I'm going to be busy in the fall. When I say life work balance. I'm not saying it's all life. Sort of you sitting on the beach and making money, still hard work. You still have to work, but it's a very concentrated amount of work in certain times of the year, and once you get through that, then the rest of it, you can plan your year and do whatever you want to do.

Andrew Hellmich: I love it. It reminds me very much. It's a different model, but it's very similar, in the same way, to Erica Dorff from a few weeks ago. You know, she's working hard photographing pets around the country for three months of the year, but then she has nine months off.

Hark Nijjar: Right

Andrew Hellmich: So it's concentrated work for three months. But then the rest is, is nice.

Hark Nijjar: Yeah, see, we wouldn't want?

Andrew Hellmich: That great. I'm going to add links to your website, Instagram feeds. There isn't a Facebook page for GTA Sports, is there or is there?

Hark Nijjar: Yeah, is there. I'm very inactive on all my social. I don't blog on Instagram, or I'm like the opposite to everybody else, photography, you have to be on it. I'm not saying that I don't, but I post very little, but there's some stuff out there, so you'll see my Facebook page in there, and like my Instagram page for both my Hark Nijjar Photography, as well as a GTA Sports Photography.

Andrew Hellmich: I'll add links to all those. And I imagine, in your case, that most particularly with the sports side, the kids and the parents are doing all the sharing for you, aren't they? I mean, you must be everywhere in Canada.

Hark Nijjar: Yeah. I mean, I just told you that team that I just sent you, I had the calls from two parents, and they said they sent this association, and already, I, they made the introduction for me to the association president that this is the person that we need to talk to next year. So that was just like last week. That's basically the process that I described to you. This all happened within a week.

Andrew Hellmich: So good. Again, man, it's been a real pleasure. I've seen your name and your face around for last few years. It's really nice to be able to spend this time with you, and I really appreciate it, mate. So thank you, and thank you to your wife for allowing you to come on while you're in the cabin on holidays.

Hark Nijjar: Well, I appreciate again, the invite, really, I want to say I'm really honored. I mean, when you first asked me, I really didn't know whether any of this would be useful, because I jab a lot, and for me to be able to help anybody, if anybody's looking to do I'm an open book. Just shoot me an email or ask me a question. I'll be happy to answer anything that I can help with, because we've always been there. I didn't always know what the heck I was doing. I had to learn from lot of different people, and if I can pay that forward, more than happy to help anybody that's starting it.

Andrew Hellmich: Super generous. Thanks again. Hark. Really appreciate it.

Hark Nijjar: Thanks very much, and really appreciate it.