618: Marcus Anthony – Offers, Not Products: Rethinking How You Sell Photography

618: Marcus Anthony - Offers, Not Products: Rethinking How You Sell Photography

 
Andrew Hellmich: I don't often say I am pumped to record an interview, but today is different, and for a number of reasons. Our special guests has been a PBX member since 2017 and I first interviewed him for Episode 326 in 2019, only a couple of years after he became a member. When researching for that interview, I learned that he picked up a camera to try and make a bit of money on the side, and he established himself quickly as a wedding photographer, but he moved into portraits not long after. At the time I released that interview, he had a record month of USD55,111 in the month of July, 2019. It was a massive month. Moving to today, I just heard that he's written a book. He says it's sort of a philosophy on business. His philosophy on business not specifically aim at photographers. And the best way he knows for entrepreneurs to grow. We exchanged a couple of messages, and he told me his business has gone through quite a transformation since we last spoke. He said I've made roughly $9 million in revenue in the last three years and spent $2.6 million on Facebook ads. I'm talking about Marcus Anthony, and I am rapt to have him with us now. I can't wait to learn more. Marcus, welcome back, mate.

Marcus Anthony: Thank you, Andrew. Good to be here. Good to see you again. What an intro.

Andrew Hellmich: Mate, I can't believe it. Do you still feel like a photographer or you now just.

Marcus Anthony: No.

Andrew Hellmich: You don't.

Marcus Anthony: No, that ship has sailed, but I'm just a marketer who happens to take pictures. If you told me 10 years ago that, you know, I'd spent that amount of money on ads and made that amount of revenue back, there's no way I would have believed you if you told me that three years ago, I wouldn't have believed you. But when you find something that works, you gotta milk it for all it's worth and so, so, yeah, it's been a transformation from, this is a common theme with a lot of your interviews. I've noticed people have kind of have that aha moment where they become a marketer or a business owner or a CEO or whatever, and not a photographer.

Andrew Hellmich: So do you still pick up the camera today?

Marcus Anthony: No. No. It's been 15 months since I've taken a professional photograph.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, so tell me about the business now and then we're gonna go back and sort of try and piece together how you got to where you are. So I'm guessing, if you're not shooting, you've got staff.

Marcus Anthony: Yeah.

Andrew Hellmich: What's your day to day life like today?

Marcus Anthony: So I would call myself a marketer. My day to day is in the back end of Facebook and generating copy and creative for new marketing campaigns. That's where I spend the bulk of my time. And then a lot of it is also logistics. So I have three photographers that work for me at the moment, and they're flying all over the United States. We generally go anywhere between 8 to 12 Cities per month. And so they're very, very busy. But that also means a lot of logistics, hotels, flights, studio rentals, gear rent, you know, all kinds of that kind of stuff. And so I handle that as well.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, so, are you shooting in pop up type studios? Is that how you would describe it?

Marcus Anthony: Yeah, that's exactly how we describe it. Yep, it's a pop up business model.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay. So do you have any fixed studios these days?

Marcus Anthony: No, no. The last one we had was my studio here in Wilmington, and that, I closed that in December 2023, I think it was, yeah,

Andrew Hellmich: Wow. Okay, so how did you get to where you are now? Because I know that, like when I first spoke to you, you know, even when you first started out, you were photographing weddings. My recollection is, you know, you hired Bernie, Bernie Griffiths, the photography business coach. He coached you to get into portraits. You went down that road. You sort of went to black and white photography from color, and things seemed to take off after that. Am I on the right track there?

Marcus Anthony: Yeah, you teed me up perfectly. That's exactly what happened in a nutshell. I hired Bernie. I mean, that was the catalyst, for sure. He showed me why weddings weren't the way to scale. But at the time, when I hired him, I didn't even know what the word scale meant. I was just trying to make any sort of money. You know, I It's not like I've I'm in this overnight success. It's been a slow journey. But you know, like I said a few minutes ago, when you discover that system and it is scalable, because not all systems are scalable, you can ride the wave. So, yeah, so the last time I spoke with you 2019 I think it was I was starting to ride that wave, but it was still just me by myself, wearing all the hats, doing all the things, taking the pictures, doing the sales, all the stuff. And so, you know, there's a ceiling to that in terms of revenue. My city population around here in Wilmington, and I'm about to move to Georgia, but in Wilmington, North Carolina, the Tri County area is like 400,000 people. So not tiny, but not Chicago or New York, you know. So I reached a point where I kind of saw the writing was on the wall. I'm like, I can't take this any further. It's really good. But if I want to grow, and I did, I need to expand. So I opened up another studio in Charlotte, North Carolina, about three hours away, and I hired my first photographer employee, Jorge from Venezuela. He is awesome. He still works for me today, and so, yeah, so I had that studio going as well as my Wilmington studio that lasted about 18 months in Charlotte. And the same thing kind of happened. I'm like, Okay, I can't really, you know, there's only so many people in Charlotte and Wilmington. What's next? So I just had this idea. I remember it vividly. I was laying in bed at night, just squirming and tossing and turning, trying to figure out, how can I make more money, which sounds very greedy if I say that out loud, but that was what I was trying to think. And so I thought, Okay, well, why don't I just send him to a different city, a city with a bigger population, just a stereotypical people have money city, and so I landed on Washington, DC, and I sent him there. He drove up. It's like a five hour drive. It was very like gorilla kind of style, very bare bones. I rented the studio that was basically an industrial warehouse. It was just a big empty room where you feel like you might get kidnapped, kind of, you know, just not, not very professional, but I just did it, and that's a huge learning point for me, by the way. And I think for all the listeners. Imperfect action is way better than perfection every single time.

Andrew Hellmich: And let me just hold you there. So this, this warehouse style studio. This goes against the grain of every photographer, like we all want to have our name up in lights this beautiful branding, photos on the wall. You know, a room to welcome guests. You know, a fridge, a bathroom, a you know, all these things. I'm guessing you had some of that, but it sounds pretty bare bones. So you're telling me it's really just about getting the leads to get the people in. It doesn't matter what it looks like?

Marcus Anthony: Yeah, of course, to a certain degree. Yes. You know, it was just an experiment at the time, and of course, I would rather have had all that stuff, but really, that is something that we tell ourselves to a certain degree. I mean, not all that stuff matters. It matters to a certain degree. And each person has their own brand. You know, I'm not saying this is the only way to do it. This is the way that I did it. And it just exploded despite, you know, the none of that stuff happening.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay.

Marcus Anthony: We didn't have a refrigerator. We didn't have, you know, we had no bottles of water for everybody. All those things were absent completely. It was just a backdrop, a camera, yeah,

Andrew Hellmich: Did people walk in and say, 'Okay, this is'... does it say Marcus Anthony studios? Like, when they walked in, did they know they were in the right place?

Marcus Anthony: Nah.

Andrew Hellmich: Nothing?

Marcus Anthony: Well, you know, it's Google Maps, so you trust the GPS to get you there, and you show up. And most people showed up. Of course, we had the no shows and the ghosters and all that kind of stuff, just like any business will have. I'm not saying it ran perfectly, but it was enough for me to realize, okay, we got something here. Let's do it again and again.

Andrew Hellmich: Amazing.

Marcus Anthony: You know

Andrew Hellmich: So continue the story. So you have this pop up there in Washington. You're getting a good feeling for it. It's, well, you said it's exploding.

Marcus Anthony: Yeah.

Andrew Hellmich: What happened next?

Marcus Anthony: Yeah. So it really is just the same system that Bernie taught me, you know, I don't know how many years ago now, but except it was just for a limited time. So I think that was a bit of a it added a bit of scarcity, because we literally could only be there for the three days. I think we did Friday, Saturday, Sunday, that we rented the studio. So in people's minds, they're like, oh, I have to do this right now. And of course, I had the our sales and Booker, and we use Audra, by the way, who you've interviewed in the past. I used her then I use her now. She's great. But, you know, I just had her lean into that a little bit. We're only here on these dates, and so I think that added to it, you know, a little bit of mystique and stuff like that. But yeah, I ran a wanted ad, you know, I think we did mothers and children and dogs as well. We did both genres, and we just filled up our calendar as best we could. I think I had, like, 30 hours total that I could fit. And I think we booked maybe 24 out of those 30, which I was happy with. And they're all back to back. So my photographer, Jorge, I cannot thank him enough. I still don't know how he does it. He's like, he's a couple of years older than I am, and my back already hurts. I'm 38 but I can't imagine what he's doing. I mean, can you imagine photographing 13 sessions, one hour blocks, back to back, all day? I mean, he does that on the regular basis, and it's just insane.

Andrew Hellmich: No way. I say to Linda, when I went on shooting as much as I was like, two portraits a day, that's it. That's all I can handle. I don't want any more. I don't want any more than that.

Marcus Anthony: Yeah, well, he, he gets it done, and he doesn't complain. It's pretty cool. So, yeah, so that's what happened. And there was a, you know, a period of time where we went to different cities, some of them didn't perform as well as Washington, DC. So my initial theory of more population, you know, I think in Australia, you guys call them the richies, right?

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah.

Marcus Anthony: Is that an expression? Okay, you know people who have a little bit of money in their pocket. So we found that that generally in the United States, those cities, those stereotypical wealthy cities, perform better. And so eventually we started going to those more so than the smaller population kind of cities, and we had more and more success with those. So after a few months of. Sending Jorge to these places. I just saw it. I'm like, let's keep going. So I hired two more photographers at the same time, and they were kind of on the West Coast. I hired them. They live in California. So if you can kind of picture this geographical web, I don't know how well you know the United States, but California is on the west coast, where I live in North Carolina is on the east coast, and Jorge also lives in North Carolina. So I basically divided up the map. I said, Okay, you two guys take the West Coast. Jorge will stay on the East Coast, and we'll just kind of keep running this thing and see what happens. And we had ups and downs again, learning that lesson over and over. Like the smaller cities are not as good as the bigger cities, but, but there's so many of them, so it was like, Man, I wish these smaller cities performed better, but over time, I learned my lesson, and we kind of figured out a steady, stable system on which where, on where to go.

Andrew Hellmich: Right.

Marcus Anthony: You know what I mean?

Andrew Hellmich: You're indicating there, what some of the downsides, or some of the lessons are that you learned there, and that was, you know, staying away from the smaller populations. Like, did you actually, did you really learn the lesson in a hard way? You know, did you send Jorge to a place and then, like, no one showed up. Or did you always have the bookings before you sent him somewhere?

Marcus Anthony: Yeah, I always made sure to kind of say, Okay, we're going here in six weeks. So we had that much time to market to get bookings. But at the same time, it was a huge risk, because I'm booking the studio ahead of time. I'm not booking the flights and the hotels immediately, but, you know, a lot of these studios, they have non-refundable policies, and so there's a good amount of money being put on the line at more or less, a guess.

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah.

Marcus Anthony: But again, you know, in those early days with Jorge, when I was sending them to these places, there weren't really any like, 'Oh my God, nobody showed up. I spent $10,000 on Facebook and nobody showed.' That didn't really happen. But that being said, I did learn a lot of lessons, a lot of lessons. You know, I can go into those if you want, but...

Andrew Hellmich: Give us an example of one lesson that you learned. What's one?

Marcus Anthony: Okay. So, I would say that if you're going to to scale in the way that I have. You really need to keep an eye on your overhead. And I think that's kind of obvious, but saying it out loud, it's obvious, but until you're in it, and you're like, my eyes were literally dollar signs, I could see the potential. So my What is that expression My eyes were bigger than my stomach, or something like that, right?

Andrew Hellmich: Yes, yes.

Marcus Anthony: Yeah. So, yes, definitely some lessons learned. Where if you were, you know, for me, who's not taking the pictures, I'm paying for the advertising, the hotel, the flight, the photographer, the sales, the editing, all these things, and I'm not doing any of them, so therefore I'm outsourcing them. If a city were to underperform, and there's a break-even point somewhere. But you know, it took a few tries to realize what that break-even point was.

Andrew Hellmich: Did it ever get to a point where you thought this, this isn't going to work, or was it always, no, I've just got to crack it. I'm so close it's going to work?

Marcus Anthony: Well, the kind of a disappointing answer, but it almost worked immediately.

Andrew Hellmich: Wow.

Marcus Anthony: So I didn't really have that crisis of, like, you know, 3, 4, 5, 6 months in, I'm like, I'm so close. I'm so close. I was just, because I already did that in my own business in Wilmington and again in Charlotte. So it was already proven. So I had this theory that, okay, we've done it in two cities. Why wouldn't it work in XYZ city? And then, you know, two or three cities in with Jorge. It was like, Okay, I mean, let's go right.

Andrew Hellmich: Awesome.

Marcus Anthony: The sky's the limit.

Andrew Hellmich: So good. When you're booking these or planning these, pop up studio, I don't know what do you call them sessions, or you're targeting an area, what comes first? Do you book the studio first? Do you run your Facebook ads first? Do you qualify your leads first, like, what comes first? Which order does it go in?

Marcus Anthony: So I decide on a city first. Early on, it really was just so there wasn't a system for deciding where to go, except my gut feeling and just basically following a stereotype on a city, again, with those higher populations, you know, generally there's wealthier people, or at least, if there's the same amount or the same percentage of wealthy people, there's just more of them, because there's more population, right? So by proxy, you know, so, but then it took me a while, but I did figure out a system to kind of determine where to go. So I would maybe say, here's 20 cities. Let me run a very low budget, add to all 20 of these and see which performed the best. And then I'll go to those top performers kind of thing. I call it a heat map.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay. So once you've got your heat map, then you think, okay, we're going to go here next. Then you go and find a studio,

Marcus Anthony: Yeah, and then yeah, and then I'll message them, and I'll say, Hey, we're thinking about coming on these dates. Do you have availability? Do the deposit, sign the contract, all that kind of stuff, and then it's time to market on Facebook.

Andrew Hellmich: Right, okay. Amazing. Alright, I'm going to ask you more about Facebook in just a minute. So it sounds like with Jorge, you had a chance to train him up in your style. He was shooting the way you wanted. It was working when you brought on the other two photographers. How did you go about training them? Because did you have a look that they needed to adhere to for you to have the success that you have?

Marcus Anthony: In my head, I did, yeah. I thought, Okay, this is sort of our brand now. And what it was a white backdrop, black and white and in a studio. So we had two lights, very simple setup. We had one bare bulb strobe on the backdrop to brighten it up, and then one giant 65 inch umbrella, about 45 degrees for the key light, and that's it. So, yeah, I did have a specific look that I wanted to keep. And yes, I did train Jorge on that. When I originally trained Jorge, it was like a whole thing. I made it like, Okay, I'm going to go up there. I'm going to visit you every week up here. You know, I'm going to shadow you. Is this whole thing, and it so did not need to be that. So for I learned my lesson, and for the two guys that I well, it was a guy named Art and a woman named Laura. They both lived in California, and so Art was like three hours away. So he drove down to LA, where Laura lived, and I flew out to them on a random Friday or something. And literally, in Laura's garage, we just set up a paper seamless, and I showed them the lighting setup, and it took like two hours, not even we took pictures of each other. I did a Facebook ad, and I got, I just said, Hey, free session in exchange for being a model, because I needed a model to show these guys how to take the pictures. And the girl ghosted me on the day of so basically, we, basically, we just took pictures of each other, and yeah, it took like, two hours, and I was very satisfied that they knew exactly what to do, and I never did any follow up training or anything. I'm not saying that's how you should do it. I'm just saying that it was simple enough to where two hours of training and they were good to go.

Andrew Hellmich: So where do you lose the fear that someone like Jorge or Art or Laura, are going to take your idea and make it their own? 'Hey, he's on the other side of the country. This works. I can see what he's doing. I'm just going to do it myself.'

Marcus Anthony: Yeah, that's such a good question, because that was on my mind a lot in the beginning, and it isn't anymore, but it definitely lingered there. It was always a fear, but so in my head, I did two things. The first thing was, I separated the process out so they were strictly responsible for photographs. That's it. All they had to do was take the photographs, upload them to Dropbox, that's it, and then they can clock out for the day. And then the second thing I did was, well, I didn't really do anything. It just had this belief that most people are not action takers, which I don't know sounds harsh, but I've learned that that is just the reality. They are very content with the either being told what to do or doing it themselves, but doing very small they're just small minded. I'm not trying to insult anyone, because most people are very happy with where they're at in life, and that's totally fine. I've just noticed that, you know, you can give someone information on a silver platter and maybe they'll read it or view it or whatever, but they won't implement it. That is the majority of the population. I would say.

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, I would agree with that. I would agree with that.

Marcus Anthony: Okay.

Andrew Hellmich: So you just pushed that fear or those feelings away?

Marcus Anthony: Yeah. And it just sort of reinforced my belief when I hired these guys and they did not, well, to my knowledge, they didn't do that.

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, sure.

Marcus Anthony: So, yeah. So far. So good.

Andrew Hellmich: Unreal, unreal. So what do you think makes you different? Like, is it your upbringing? Is it because you listen to podcasts? Did you see someone? Do you have a mentor? Like, what makes you different? Why are you the action taker?

Marcus Anthony: God, you're so good with the questions. When I was writing this book, I did a lot of reflecting, and I was trying to figure that out, because if I asked myself that six months ago, I didn't really have an answer. I could bullshit an answer, but I didn't really have one. So I did a lot of reflecting. And there were a couple people in my life early on that I think I was very, very, very fortunate to have. One of them was, are you familiar with Costco?

Andrew Hellmich: Yes.

Marcus Anthony: Okay, I worked at Costco.

Andrew Hellmich: The big shopping center?

Marcus Anthony: Yeah, the big giant, yeah, everything's huge in Costco. It's very American, yes. So I worked at the bakery in like, just after college, at Costco, and I had this boss named Don, and the guy was a total d*ck. Just at least, I thought at first, what I came to realize was he was like me now. He was just an action taker. He let nothing get in his way. He just did stuff, whether it was perfect imperfect. He didn't care. He just he wanted to get stuff done. He was the manager of the bakery, and Costco has very high standards for their employees of you know, getting the numbers done, whatever that meant. And I was, like, 19 years old at the time, so I understood none of this stuff, but I understand it now where he was coming from. So in the Costco bakery around Thanksgiving time in November for the United States, we make these pumpkin pies. And the demand for these pumpkin pies, they're like $6 but they're the size of two heads. They're huge. These pumpkin pies are in such demand throughout the holiday season that the bakery department is literally open 24 hours a day for a good six weeks. And so I'm working shifts at like 2am and I'm 19 years old, so like, I'm doing these all nighters with my friends, and then I'm literally driving to Costco half drunk. Don't tell Don, but I'm stumbling into the bakery to make these pumpkin pies. And so this work ethic that Don instilled in me over time, it took a while for me to kind of understand what it was, but that's one guy that that was just really lucky, and then I would say Bernie again, you know, 20 years later, or whatever it was, meeting him, I made up my mind early on. When I hired Bernie, I said, I'm not going to listen to any other podcast, no other blogs. I'm just going to listen to this guy because it seems like he knows what he's talking about. And that decision has served me very, very well.

Marcus Anthony: So good, so good. Like, I'll just touch on your parents. Are they, are they like you? Or do you have siblings that are similar to you? Are you, are you the black sheep and they're like, 'Whoa, look what you're doing. It's amazing.'

Marcus Anthony: I'm an only child. My parents, I had a great childhood. I have no complaints, but they're kind of, you know they were middle class. I'd say, like, right in the middle, not upper middle, not lower middle, just right in the middle. I can't, you know, nothing against my parents, but no, I can't really say that they, they did give me an allowance, but I had to do chores

Andrew Hellmich: Right

Marcus Anthony: to get the allowance. So there's that, there is that, but it was, like, $5 a week, and I'm like, scrubbing baseboards with a toothbrush for $5 a week. But it did instill some sort of value of $1 I guess. Yeah,

Andrew Hellmich: So are they blown away by what you are achieving now?

Marcus Anthony: Well, you know, I found once I got to a certain point, I couldn't really discuss this with them, because it was just like, at a certain point, once you hit a certain point in revenue, I've found that most people just like it doesn't really register. It's like it's not real, almost. And I kind of have that feeling too, like I can say these numbers out loud, it's almost like it's just like it's Monopoly money or something. So talking to them about making, you know, multiple million dollars in a year, is it just, I don't know, it doesn't register. Really.

Andrew Hellmich: Amazing. With the business that you built. It sounds like everything is a little bit still at arm's length. So let's say you had a fear that it was all going to come tumbling down. You lived every day thinking it can't keep going like this. At some point this is not going to work, but it feels like you've created the business where if it did stop working, you can just walk away. I mean, you don't have leases. You're not tied into, you know, five years of paying a lease for a studio in four different cities. Yes, you've got employees, but if you have to, you let them go. Have you done that on purpose? Is that the way you feel?

Marcus Anthony: You know, that's actually a really good point. I haven't looked at it that way before, but you're right. You're totally right. I could, I could pull the plug right now, and you're right. I could totally walk. That's really Wow. What a realization. Thank you, Andrew. No, I did not do that on purpose. I certainly have set up things in a certain way where I guess I did it without realizing what I was doing. But yes, I always want things to be as simple as they possibly can be. I don't even have a CRM. I still operate on Google sheets with color coding, but it works, and it's extremely simple, and I have proof that it is scalable. So even though I don't have, like, 17 hats or whatever it is, I'm very, very comfortable with our processes, and you're totally right. Yeah, it's set up in a great way.

Andrew Hellmich: It's amazing. But maybe I should have asked this question first, like, when you went into these, say, Washington or Chicago and saw the success that you could emulate that you're having in Wilmington, did you ever consider buying a studio or renting a long term studio in each of those places to have, you know, Marcus, Anthony, the brand, the photography brand around the country.

Marcus Anthony: Yeah, that thought did cross my mind. So there was one city I did actually sign a lease in Washington, DC, kind of in the earlier, earlier, like in the middle of all this. And when I say middle, I mean, I've been doing this for about three years now, the pop up thing. So right around a year, year and a half in I did sign a short term lease in Washington, DC, but I was also well aware that it might like what happened in Wilmington and Charlotte might happen in Washington, DC. We just you know, you can only do so much volume in one city until the market dries up, because there's only so many people willing to pay X amount of dollars for high end photography at a time. And, yeah, it did. That did start to happen. I mean, so I learned my lesson three times. There's only so much milk in the cow, or whatever you want.

Andrew Hellmich: That's true.

Marcus Anthony: Yeah.

Andrew Hellmich: You describe yourself as an entrepreneur these days, a marketer. And I would say there's a lot of entrepreneurs, certainly, to the podcast that I listen to about entrepreneurship, where someone wants to build something to a point where they can sell it. So is that an end goal for you, or is it I just want to hold on to this for as long as I can, while it's while it's working?

Marcus Anthony: I have looked into that. Actually, Bernie encouraged me to look into that, and I did. The business right now is worth just under a million dollars, I've been told by two different business brokers. So that is on the table if I ever want to sort of pull the plug and walk away, or, or, you know, whatever, whatever hybrid version of that looks like. It is not necessarily a goal in the near term, but it's really nice to know that that is an option.

Andrew Hellmich: Are you surprised at that valuation? I would have expected 3 million.

Marcus Anthony: I had no idea what to expect when I reached out to these guys. I had zero idea, you know, because I think you had done an interview with somebody who'd sold their business a while back, and they sold it for, I want to say, like, 180,000 something like that. And at the time, that was just when I was kind of considering maybe selling mine, or at least finding out what it was worth. And when I heard that number, I was very surprised, kind of in the same way that you're surprised, like, I had no idea what her revenue was at the time, so I didn't really, I don't know, but to answer your question, no, because I didn't have any expectations.

Andrew Hellmich: Right.

Marcus Anthony: There is a whole world, they call it mergers and acquisitions, where people are buying and selling businesses that is a whole industry in and of itself, and generally in a service business, you can expect anywhere between two and three times your EBITDA, which is really just profit before taxes.

Andrew Hellmich: Right.

Marcus Anthony: And so for me, because I'm outsourcing so much, I have a lot of expenses. So even though, you know, 4 million a year sounds really, really good, the profit for the business is not as great as it like. If it was just Andrew making 4 million a year and doing the sales and the marketing and all this stuff, you know what I mean?

Andrew Hellmich: Absolutely. Yeah, so did the broker, if that's who you spoke to, or the person you spoke to get a valuation, did they say Marcus, if you really want to have a business that's going to be worth two or three or 4 million, you need to remove yourself totally from the business? Or did you get no such advice at the time?

Marcus Anthony: No, they didn't really. I mean, they kind of, yeah, they asked questions around that. They're like, you know, everyone assumes if you're a photographer, that you're a photographer, meaning, like, when I first approached them, they thought, I'm the guy doing this, you know, and so when we dug into it a little more, they're like, Oh, you're not. You're working like, 20 hours a week or something on the back end of Facebook ad. So yeah, they had to understand that I was not a critical part of it, of the brand, even though it's my name. So yeah, so does that answer your question?

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah it does. It does. Why did you decide to write the book, which, by the way, is called Unstoppable. And why did you not write it specifically for photographers?

Marcus Anthony: So there's a really kind of an aha moment that I had maybe six months ago, and it was just like, are you familiar with the movie The Matrix?

Andrew Hellmich: Yes.

Marcus Anthony: Do you think most of the listeners have seen this would you say?

Andrew Hellmich: Absolutely. Everyone.

Marcus Anthony: Okay. I'm gonna make it a metaphor really quick, basically, I saw the Matrix. So, you know, there's all these different pieces to business, there's marketing, there's sales, there's this, and there's that. And I just had this aha moment where one day I was kind of sitting there on the back end of Facebook, watching all the comments and just kind of seeing like how people are actually behaving. And it really just hit me how everything is interconnected. So the reason I wrote this book, it was really, it started out as just having a kind of a conversation with myself, which sounds really pretentious, but it was just kind of like, you know, how does business actually work? I've read so many business books, the listener probably has read a lot of these, if nothing else. I've listened to a lot of podcasts, and everybody has their opinion on a certain piece here and there. But how does it really all work together. And so that was the premise of kind of this thought experiment, really. And then it turned into like a Word document, and then it turned into like 50 pages of a Word document. And then I'm like, Okay, I got something here. Let me actually, I've never written a book before, and with technology, it's so easy to do nowadays to really get a clear idea of what's going on in your head. So I was just head. So I was just kind of brain dumping all this stuff on a Word document, and before I knew it, I had like a nine, kind of nine step or nine phase framework of the different pieces of business. But it's not like nine separate steps. It's one step leading into the second step leading into the third step. But then the fourth step only happens because the first step happened, you know. So that's the long winded answer to your to your question, why did I write a book? It was just kind of like, yeah.

Marcus Anthony: It was really just a it was a thought dump that turned into a book. So you never really set out to write a book for photographers to help them improve their business.

Marcus Anthony: No, no, I really didn't. No. It just turned into, you know, because before I know it, I had so much information. And it wasn't just like a blog or something a short article. It was really a philosophy. I think of it as a philosophy. And the reason I say I saw the Matrix is because it's not like this only applies to photography. It really does apply to almost all businesses, at least almost all service businesses. I will make that distinction, because e commerce and products are a little bit different. But you know, for the most part, if you can really boil it down, a service business is all about attracting attention, getting leads, converting those leads into customers, converting those customers. Dollars into sales and then rinsing and repeating, and that's as simple as it can possibly get. And it's not like only photographers are doing that, or only landscapers are doing that, you know. So that's why it's more of a general thing instead of photography.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay. So the listener can download the book and it's for free, right? It's a free book?

Marcus Anthony:
It's a free book. Yeah, I made it all pretty on a program called Typeset. So it's an e-book format for now. I might print it later, but, you know, I don't really have an incentive to do that. So it looks really good on any device, iPhone, but yeah, yeah, it's a free book. Just need your name and email, and you can download it for free.

Andrew Hellmich: All right. So for the listener, the easiest way to get this book if you go to PhotobizX.com forward slash Marcus, it's M-A-R-C-U-S, so PhotobizX.com/Marcus. You can enter your details there and download the book, which I've got to say, is a super easy read. It's pretty amazing, mate, like it's you can apply everything in there, obviously, to a photography business, even though it wasn't written for photographers. I do want to dive into some other aspects that you cover in the book. And also, I do want to dive deeply into Facebook ads if we've got time, because I know the listener is going to be dying to hear about those. But one of the things in your book, and that I hear from a lot of other entrepreneurs, is one of the ways, one of the biggest things we want to do to attract a lead is to solve a problem, like we always hear that, but then when I think about photography, we're not really solving a problem. We're supplying something beautiful for the family. Do you still see it as solving a problem for our client?

Marcus Anthony: Yeah, I do, and I totally know what you're saying. I don't want to, like, gloss over what you just said, because it is a very important distinction. There are many, many businesses that are maybe more luxury focused, or it's like disposable income only kind of purchase, and I think photography would fall into that category. But I think again, my brain is all about making things as simple as possible, so I have to categorize everything. And in order to do that, there has to be as few categories as possible. So yes, we are solving a problem. In a sense you could kind of, you know, semantics, but, but yeah, we are solving the problem.

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah. So what's the problem? Because I know that if I know that if I hire an electrician or a plumber or a landscaper or all service based businesses, I'm usually getting there. I'm getting them in to solve a problem. It could be to pretty something up, but it's generally to solve a problem. But what problem do you see us solving? Or you solving?

Marcus Anthony: For me, it's scratching an emotional itch. So I think when somebody kind of comes across an ad or your website, or really gets kind of brought into your world as a photographer, I think that they are in a certain place in their life, whether they know it or not. It could be totally subconscious, but they're looking for connection, I think, or, you know, they want to preserve a memory. It really, for me, it's that simple. So it's not like there. I mean, there's exceptions, of course, but for me, my customers, I don't think most of them, are walking in and thinking, I want a 60 inch portrait on this place in my house. I think there are photographers that scratch that itch. But for me, personally, and I think the majority of photographers, it's very kind of, it's, it's like a whimsical process, almost. It's not really like black and white for most of my clients. Anyway. I don't know about yours, but I think, you know, I think, I think they're just kind of scratching an emotional itch.

Andrew Hellmich: I believe it's the same thing with my clients. With most listeners clients, would it be the same thing. But you know, when I look at your Facebook ads, or when you create your Facebook ads, do you feel like you're trying to scratch that itch, or it's more about having the offer and the hook and the scarcity? Are they the things that are getting people to take action? Is it because they're trying to scratch that, that emotional itch?

Marcus Anthony: Yeah, so for a luxury product like what we offer, what most photographers offer. I think you need to break down the process a lot more granularly than just Oh. They want to feel an emotion, so I'm here to solve that for them. So when it comes to the ad, the ad is there purely to get them to click to the next step. And so when you have an ad for me, for my ads, it's simply just, oh, I want to stop the scroll. I want somebody who's mindlessly scrolling through nonsense on Facebook to be like, Oh, this is a cool picture of a dog. And oh, I have a dog. And you know what I mean, and just start that thought process in their mind. And so it's, it's strictly to pique their curiosity and then get them to take the next logical step, which is to click on the link to learn more. And then in the next step in the process is to educate them a little bit about what we do and what the offer is. And the offer is a free photography session with no obligation to buy anything with their dog for, we specialize in dogs. I don't know if that's clear, but we do, you know, and you can apply this to any genre, but that's just what we do. That's what I'm saying. So, yeah, so you're kind of taking them on a journey. And you know, initially, though, when they see the ad, none of this is on their mind. They're not like, ready to buy photos of their dog. They're just kind of like, we're taking them on a journey. And then, you know that journey for us is a fairly long process. So it allows us to have a lot of touch points and a lot of education and a lot of building value, which is, I think the number one skill that you need to have in business in 2025 is offering value as cheaply and as frictionless as possible.

Andrew Hellmich: So what's the value? Is it the fact they're getting a free session with a credit or is it the fact they get to come and have this experience.

Marcus Anthony: Yeah.

Andrew Hellmich: That's the value.

Marcus Anthony: Yeah that's the value. It's simple as that. They're like, Oh, why wouldn't I go and have my photos taken for free, with no obligation to buy any photos. If I want to buy the photos, I'll buy the photos. Yes, no, maybe I, you know, it's all just kind of very like wavy baby, you know, they're just like floating along, and we're making it as easy as possible for them. And you know, more often than not, when it comes time to buy, they buy.

Andrew Hellmich: So is there any hard sell? Are you one of the studios where, oh, you don't like that photo of the dog, of your dog, and you tear it up in front of them and say, Okay, what about this one?

Marcus Anthony: No, no, are people still doing that?

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

Andrew Hellmich: Love it. Mate, the book is called Unstoppable. I shouldn't tell you that. I should tell the listener. The book is called Unstoppable. Go and get it. It's free, like Marcus said, like, it's, yeah, he's amazing. The book will be a fantastic read, like I said, I've skimmed through it, and I'm gonna go back and read it. It's that good, and it's a super easy read. You can get it at PhotobizX.com/marcus, M-A-R-C-U-S. I'll also have links to where you can find Marcus online in the show notes, where this audio is hosted. Just before I let you go. Marcus, yeah, I saw the tattoo while you're talking, there on your I think it's on your fingers. Was it a tattoo? What have you got there?

Marcus Anthony: Yeah, yeah, I have two things. There you go. One's a heart.

Andrew Hellmich: I can see the love heart, and the other one a lightning bolt. What is the other one? I-A?

Marcus Anthony: It's L-A.

Andrew Hellmich: L A

Marcus Anthony: Which is where I met my wife. So, yeah, the heart is for being married, obviously. And then the LA is Los Angeles. That's where my wife and I met, like, 12 years ago, or something

Andrew Hellmich: I thought was gonna be something entrepreneurial, like Frank Kern has

Marcus Anthony: No, no, I'm gonna do that on my face probably soon. You know, marketing, you can't be subtle,

Andrew Hellmich: But I was surprised. So like you're a clean cut. Yeah, awesome guy. I don't want to say tattoos don't make you awesome. I just didn't picture you as a tattoo kind of guy. If you take your shirt off, is it going to be tattoos all over your body?

Marcus Anthony: I don't know. I have like, a couple on my shoulders. It's nothing crazy, but yeah, definitely from here to here is clean cut. For now.

Andrew Hellmich: For now.

Marcus Anthony: Yeah.

Andrew Hellmich: Marcus, mate, it's been so good to have you back on. Congratulations on your success. It's just it is mind blowing to even try and think about the numbers that you're doing and how you've done it. You're an inspiration. And wow, I can't wait to hear the feedback from the listener. So thank you so much again for coming back to share what you have.

Marcus Anthony: Yeah, thank you for having me. I can't wait to see the feedback either. Just really quick. Do you remember back in 2019 when we did the first interview, there were a couple people in the comments who just flat out did not believe anything. I said.

Andrew Hellmich: Yes.

Marcus Anthony: I went back. Yeah. You remember that? I went back and I saw you going back and forth with them in a very nice way, but like it was, it was just hilarious. So I can't wait to see what people think about this.

Andrew Hellmich: The funny thing about that was it wasn't listeners that didn't believe it because I made your interview, I think I created a Facebook ad around your interview

Marcus Anthony: Oh

Andrew Hellmich: And shared some things that you shared in the ad copy, and straight away, people just flat out the saying, this is BS. There's no way a photographer's doing this. It was funny, so I'll try and find that and link to it in the show notes.

Marcus Anthony: Okay, sounds good.

Andrew Hellmich: What are they going to say now?

Marcus Anthony: I don't know. Who knows. I can't wait to see, though.

Andrew Hellmich: Well, Marcus, look thanks again. Mate. Really appreciate it.

Marcus Anthony: Yeah, thanks for making the time.