485: Seva Mozhaev – How to attract photography clients with TikTok videos

485: Seva Mozhaev – How to attract photography clients with TikTok videos

 

Andrew Hellmich: Today's guest is a photographer, videographer and social media guide based in Perth, Western Australia, but coming to you from Italy today. Now it was longtime listener and PhotoBizX member Jakub Redziniak who made the connection with this message. He says, "Hi, Andrew. I'm reaching out because I wanted to make an introduction to a fellow photographer that has been crushing it on Tiktok, and I thought he might make a great guest everyone can learn from. He's booked up two years of weddings until 2024 with 70% of these bookings coming from Tiktok alone. I hope this works out, as I myself, can't wait to hear what he has to share." So I jumped over to Tiktok, and I was immediately drawn into the videos. I loved his self-deprecating personality, his candid approach, the raw honesty and fun of it all. It's no wonder that he's a total hit and has over 1.2 million followers. I'm talking about Siva Mozhaev of Sev's Pics and The Sevo Show on TikTok, and I'm rapt to have him here with us now. Sev, welcome.

Seva Mozhaev: Hey, mate, thank you for having me. It's always a pleasure being on someone else's podcast and discussing all things photography, so, yeah.

Andrew Hellmich: Unreal. I'm so looking forward to diving. We haven't done an interview based around Tiktok so far, I've been waiting for the right guests, and I've got a feeling you're going to be that guy. First of all, what are you doing in Italy?

Seva Mozhaev: We're on holidays. It's a three week stint. We're only just at the start of it, and my wife's cousin is getting married in Tuscany, and I'm just a guest, but I've been given permission to bring my camera so I can take some cheeky snaps and maybe even push an international portfolio out. But it's pretty, pretty much just a holiday.

Andrew Hellmich: Fantastic. Sounds so good. I mean, I just watched one of your TikToks earlier, you know, trying Italian pizza for the first time. So are you enjoying the holiday?

Seva Mozhaev: Yeah, it's been amazing so far. It's day four now, so it's early days. Yesterday, we went to Lake Como, which is one of my dream destinations to shoot a wedding. So being around there and having a look at all the spots, and like seeing where some of the snaps were taken from some photographers that I've been looking at, but it's surreal. It's such a cool spot. But yeah, the whole trip so far, it's been incredible, and I'm looking forward to Verona next. We're going there later today.

Andrew Hellmich: Unreal. Did you see George Clooney getting around Lake Como?

Seva Mozhaev: I saw a couple of photos, actually, of him around there, but not in person. No, unfortunately.

Andrew Hellmich: Right. Do you call yourself or refer to yourself as an influencer on Tiktok?

Seva Mozhaev: I try to refrain from using the word, but when you have influence, you automatically are an influencer, but I feel like the word is overused, and for me, an influencer personally is someone who actually makes an impact, a positive impact, on someone else's life. Most of the time, I feel that influencers are just there to influence people to buy a product, whatever product it may be at the time, whether it's something that they believe in personally, or something that they push out because they got a sponsorship deal or something like that. For me, that the broad term and what everybody else is using it, me it needs to be narrowed down. Like, I want to influence photographers to, like, get onto Tiktok and really push their personalities. I want to influence younger people to have that self-awareness built up for them to do whatever they want to do. I don't want to have that influence to go, "Hey, here's an app. You should download it", you know, unless it's, of course, something like a really good culling app, or something like that, that's relevant to my everyday life.

Andrew Hellmich: So in regarding being an influencer or having a positive impact, I mean, aren't you still trying to do that in regards to getting your own bookings or selling the things that you create and make and do for your potential clients?

Seva Mozhaev: Yeah, yeah. I mean, my personal influence, it has to be related to something that I believe in. That's my one and only rule about anything I share on social media. And when it comes to my couples, my clients for photography purposes, I want to make sure that they understand the person I am first and foremost, so that they understand that we can connect before we connect. And that's been the biggest part of my success, is couples or any clients or anyone that wants my work or wants to work with me in the creative space. They say we really like your personality. Obviously they like the product as well, what they see. But it's that connection that is what makes it happen. I can't guarantee that same product result if we don't connect on a mutual kind of human connection sort of thing, you know.

Andrew Hellmich: For sure, for sure.

Seva Mozhaev: And that's where my authenticity has come in. And I can speak from personal observation and not stutter and just go, "Hey, this is what I do. This is how I do it. This is what I think. And here's some value for you on your, for example, wedding day that I think you should think about." And then I would get message after message going, "Oh my God, I didn't even think about that. Thank you so much. By the way, we're still looking for a photographer", so that's where the whole kind of idea comes from. And the more I did it, the easier it was to get that, like, overwhelming amount of inquiries all over. Like, I remember one time I had a video that I released, and it was just about, "Here's what I take with me to the weddings, not just my cameras." And I just did a list of different things, and it was like sticky tape, tissues, flat lay blankets, and I explained to the audience why I brought those things. And then I would get the brides, in particular, they would comment something like, "You're very well organized. This is amazing. I haven't seen someone else do this before." And I'm like, there are some other photographers that do this, a lot of other photographers actually do this, but they don't talk about it. That's the difference. And I got them to book me, which was it.

Andrew Hellmich: So good.

Seva Mozhaev: So, yeah.

Andrew Hellmich: I'm going to take you back to that and hear more about the, I guess, the commercial side of utilizing TikTok as a business owner in just a second. But what I wanted to ask you was, you're on holidays with your wife, you're in another country, you're having the time of your life. How much pressure do you put on yourself to produce content while you're away? Like, do you have to be pumping it out day after day?

Seva Mozhaev: Yeah, good question. So over the last, because I've traveled, this is my third time traveling this year overseas. The first two were for family reasons, for my side, and then my wife's side. And this is, this third one's technically for a family reason too. But the first two times, I realized it was a little bit difficult making sure I was editing content, pumping out content, and all that. And then I was able to be involved with a few different things back at home in Perth and I discovered or met a few of the right people who became my editors and my assistant interns as well, like young people who want to learn the creative space, and they get paid as well now, because they've passed that phase, and now all I have to do is just approve creative content. I've got a Google Drive that has all of my content on it, raw content, and all they do is they get into the folder and then they just batch edit in their own time, and they just send it to me for approval, and then I upload it. So it's not about making content every day. It's about batching content once or twice a month to have a forecast for the rest of the month. That's actually the biggest one, biggest issue people don't realize is you don't have to make content every day. Make 30 pieces if you can, in one or two days, have it all ready to go, and then away you go. You don't have to do it every day. It gets exhausting every day, unless you really love it.

Andrew Hellmich: So you're recording or creating content every day, but batch processing it once a month. Is that what you mean?

Seva Mozhaev: Yeah. So we actually made a system where my iPhone automatically uploads it or backs it up on the iCloud. And then what I would do is I would create different folders of different things, like my travel stuff, my interview stuff, my wedding photography stuff, or my business specific things that I may want to just post on LinkedIn, for example, or even Facebook pages that are relevant to someone like a couple that may be interested in my photography or a wedding photographer who may be interested in learning how to do it better. And all these different folders are accessed by my editors, and they would go, "Okay, this one for this." And then they would put it up for me to approve. And once I approve it, they would caption it. So the system is pretty much automated now. To get to where I am, looking at a light's taken me a good almost year to perfect it, but it is so worth it when you have the right people behind you. Because the biggest thing that I had was when I was creating a piece of content to put out, I would think about the whole thing, and they would instantly get overwhelmed. And this is a problem I notice a lot of people have is they go through the same process. They think of it as a project. They don't think of it as individual actions. Or maybe if they do, they think of having to do all the actions at once, and then they think this is too hard, and then they don't do it at all. So the answer to that problem is you record it, do what you can and what you can do the best. For me, it's just filming, then it's uploaded, and then someone else takes over, and all you have to do is approve it, and over time, they just get really good. And now my editors are hitting me edits that are getting quarter of a million, half a million. I had one hit 4 million views the other day. It was all edited, outsourced by the people that I trained. So it's really if you want to do it, if you believe in it, it will work, but it does take time.

Andrew Hellmich: For sure. So okay, let me ask you about, say, the pizza video that you created that I referenced earlier. Does that happen in your head or in your mind? Does that have to go out while you're still in Italy? Or could you, if you didn't have your staff, could you record that content and then share it when you get back home in three or four weeks.

Seva Mozhaev: Yeah. So last time I went overseas was in July, June, July, and we went back to my wife's home country of the Netherlands. She's Dutch. And we also went to Paris for a couple of days, and we did a few things there, and we recorded content there all over, and we pumped out the content whilst we were there, because I really wanted to test how the algorithm would see my phone, because I had an international SIM card in the country, and who it would go out to. And after a couple of days, it would actually start going out to the people in the Netherlands, the people in France. And then I have still a lot of content that haven't put out yet from those countries. I went back home, and it would still be doing well, but the content would actually be pushed out to the Australian audience. So I don't mind posting it after I'm out of the country. It's fine. I don't have to be in the moment, I've detached myself from that. Originally, I thought maybe I should keep it relevant whilst I'm still in the country because of and I get comments like, "Oh my god, I thought you only just got back", or, "Oh my god, weren't you in France like two months ago?" You know, those comments still happen. But then you gotta realize most of those comments are kids not realizing that you can record it and post it two weeks later. And that's something that's in a lot of people's heads like, "Oh my God, I want to get that comment." Who cares? So now when I post it, it really depends on which demographic you want, because it is true that when you're in a specific country and you push out that content with that SIM card, it goes to that audience first.

Andrew Hellmich: Right. So what if you kept your let's say you had an Australian Vodafone SIM card, for example, or a Telstra SIM card, and you're in the Netherlands, is Tiktok still going to show your content to the Dutch people?

Seva Mozhaev: So that's an interesting question. I'm currently testing that now. I've got my Vodafone SIM card for the $5 roaming and I'm pushing it out. I'm slowly starting to push out content in Italy, and I could better answer that question probably a week from now, to see if the Italian markets receiving the content more so with my Australian SIM card that is roaming through Italian, backing off an Italian provider. So it's a few technical things there which are interesting, but we'll see.

Andrew Hellmich: Sure. So really, then for the listener, and most listeners are targeting people in their own communities. They don't have to be afraid of Tiktok sending their videos all around the world, because most of the content is going to be shown in the country of origin, where they're based.

Seva Mozhaev: Yeah, pretty much. But in saying that, there are times where I've posted content late at night and it actually pumped out to audience overseas. Now I don't have a definitive this is how it is. If you want to get an audience overseas, you have to post in the middle of the night. There's, I don't have enough data for that. There are people out there that will tell you different but I can. I've got a math’s background, and I taught statistics for a while as a high school teacher. The data is too, there's not enough sample. The sample size is too small to make that a definitive answer. But when I have had videos go viral in the UK and the US, which are my other two main domains. Like I did a car series where I was looking at which cars I would fit into, and I got a quarter of a million new followers from just the United States.

Andrew Hellmich: Wow

Seva Mozhaev: You know, but I was posting it at any time of the day, and it would just hit that market. So it really depends on the interest. It really depends on the trends that are interested in specific countries. I had a client that I helped become one of the most followed in their niche in Australia. The majority of their followers are overseas, which is a problem because their target audience needs to be local. But to fix that is where you go, "Okay, our most viral videos", that's when you retarget them as paid ads, because the human elements been proven, right? And because that's been proven, you can adapt that to any demographic, or any local demographic to apply to them, because they'll still find it interesting, very specifically in wedding photography as well.

Andrew Hellmich: Do you like the idea of running ads on Tiktok? Are you talking about other platforms here?

Seva Mozhaev: Yeah, absolutely. So running ads on Tiktok in parallel to growing organically on your account is my best practice, right? I've done it organically only, but I've taken a long time to do it. So if you have the patience and the grit to make a lot of content all the time, then organic is your play. But if you also have a bit of ad spend, you can throw some money behind and test once you have a handful of videos going viral, I mean anything above 10, 20,000 views on Tiktok, once you start getting some of those, put it up as an ad simultaneously as well and see what happens. But to give you more information about that, we'll be talking all day.

Andrew Hellmich: That's all good. So good. Okay, let me just keep pushing on, because I've got so many things on to ask you..

Seva Mozhaev: One more thing, though..

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, sure.

Seva Mozhaev: One more thing just before we move on, though, is the one thing that I want people to avoid doing is going straight to ads without building an organic channel, because a lot of the time, people see an ad and they want to explore the account more, but because it's an ad, they can't go to that account and explore more of the videos. So there's a detachment of trust. You need to be able to have an organic account built up with a library of content that people can look and explore on their own without having to be stumbling upon an ad that ends up being a funnel to the website.

Andrew Hellmich: Right

Seva Mozhaev: The organic side is very important here.

Andrew Hellmich: So talking about that on the organic side, how many videos would you say? It would be a minimum before you start running ads? 10,20, 30?

Seva Mozhaev: I think my personal number is one a day, so for 30 in the first month, and then of that 30, you have probably a good 10% maybe three or four decent videos that did better than the rest. Then you have a look at those videos and go, Why do they work so well? And then you analyze that, and then in your second month, adapt that same template for the second month. It's called the 80-20 theory. So 80% of what works, and then 20% of experimenting. And then you run that again for a third month. And then by then, you should be if you're consistent, and you pay attention, and you have a bit of attentiveness to the quality, the quantity becomes the quality of the videos. And then in that third month, you should really start to look at, "Oh, look at this video this way, did far better than everything else. Let's put that as an ad."

Andrew Hellmich: Got it. Okay. So you're talking about having 90 to 100 videos before you start running ads.

Seva Mozhaev: Yeah, it sounds like a lot. Sounds very, very tough, but it's what I did, and one of the end points is I literally did one video. It had 200,000 people in Australia. Unique people watched it. Within a week, I had 20 inquiries in my inbox for weddings, and of the 20, I closed five on an average of three and a half grand per wedding. That's over 17 grand of work from one organic video.

Andrew Hellmich: Fantastic.

Seva Mozhaev: If that sort of effort took you 90 videos across three months to make 17 grand, would that be worth it?

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah

Seva Mozhaev: I think so. That's above the base salary, you know.

Andrew Hellmich: That's right, and it's only going to grow as well. That's just the start, isn't it?

Seva Mozhaev: Exactly.

Andrew Hellmich: So with the ads, and we don't need to go too deep into this, but with ads on Tiktok, does it have an interface like the Facebook ads manager, or do you like boost ads? It does?

Seva Mozhaev: Yes, absolutely. Yeah. It's got the same sort of interface. You can change demographics, geographical regions, age, what the interests are, and everything. And whilst I'm at it, when you do repurpose those very good videos that succeeded on Tiktok, they're most likely to do well on Instagram reels, YouTube shorts and Facebook pages, and you can run them as ads across all those channels as well.

Andrew Hellmich: Love it. Love it. So with the Tiktok ads manager, can you target, you know, demographics like engaged women between this age and that age that live in my local area or can't go that granular?

Seva Mozhaev: You know what? I'm still yet to run an ad for my personal wedding photography page, for my wedding photography videos, because I don't need to. So I have not actually tested that out, for the sake of me doing it. I think if I did it, I would be super overwhelmed, even more, because, as I'm already fully booked, it would just be overkill. But in saying that, I am thinking about going into that space now where I have photographers that I'm helping that are working alongside me who want to upskill their business in terms of ads. So then, if I started adding running ads on behalf of Sev's Weddings, is what I called myself when people do inquire. And this is what's happening already with one of my students I'm mentoring. She's a fantastic photographer, but just needs help with the confidence in the business side. And within a month, I was able to get a two bookings at two and a half thousand each, just through my sort of inquiry, inquiries list, because I said, "Sorry, I'm booked out. However, this, this and that this girl is amazing", and they've gone and proceeded with her. And I'm like, that's a business as well.

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, for sure.

Seva Mozhaev: And I should explore that. So Andrew, I'm going to push that more and see what happens. But it's a new realm that I'm not, it's just sounds too overwhelming already, but it's a lot of opportunity as well. So yeah, what do you think?

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, well, absolutely. What a great service. I mean, particularly, look, I think a lot of photographers are comfortable running ads on, certainly Facebook and Instagram. Somewhat TikTok becomes a whole new realm. I mean, I think the idea of recording 100 videos to start is a bit scary, but I'm gonna push the listener to go and check out your TikTok feed, because what I found when I saw you, I mean, I expected to see a hyped-up super personality, dancing, singing, like, overproduced content, like, and that's not you at all, like, you're just, you're just yourself, and that's what I loved about, that's why I contacted you straight away for this interview. Is that how you started, just being yourself?

Seva Mozhaev: Yeah, so originally I started from as a school teacher, the kids were on TikTok, and I was like, "What's this?" And I thought, "Oh, it's another vine app. It's another small version of YouTube or Snapchat." I got into it a little bit, and I decided to just make a couple of TikToks, just random stuff, just exploring the app. And I was one of those people that overused all the features, which is a big no no, like, all the filters and stuff. And then, like, a couple of weeks later, the kids at the school said, "Sir, we found your Tiktok. It's really cool." I'm like, "What didn't even like, advertise it." It's really interesting. So I put up a few more videos making fun of the kids. Like, "These are things that kids say at school", you know, like, "My WiFi is not working", you know. And that went so viral. And then I had a few more followers. And then I used another model for my quirks, which is my height being six foot 10. I said I was walking through Woolworths, and I was like, "It's really cool being six foot 10, because I just poked my head over the aisles and go, 'Oh, look, there's the pasta sauce'." And that went so viral. And I got 10 - 20,000 followers, just like that. And I was like, "Oh, is that it?" And then I started just pumping out more and more. And some went viral. Some went, you know, it was about a 10% sort of ratio of viral and then just whatever. And then that's when I decided to go, I'm going to put out a wedding video. I feel like majority of my viewers are still kids. They all prefer the funny stuff, and the kids so they're not ready to get married, nor do they have the two to $5,000 budget for a wedding photography. Yeah. So I did it, first video, two days later, two bookings.

Andrew Hellmich: Wow

Seva Mozhaev: And I was like, "Wow. No way, no way."

Andrew Hellmich: What did you cover in those first two videos? What was the content?

Seva Mozhaev: From memory, this goes while back now. I think I was just talking about something to do with just me as a wedding photographer and like a day, and I just just shared my business, just literally shared what I do, what else I do. "I'm a school teacher, but I'm also a wedding photographer. Here are some of my photos." I think that's, I have to go back and have a look actually, it's interesting, but yeah, two inquiries, and the comments were, "I didn't know you were a wedding photographer and you lived in Perth. That's so cool. I've been following you for so long, and we're getting married next year, and you're like, the obvious choice. It saves me so much time having to look at someone and find someone that we like, because we've been watching your content for ages." So not only did I build that indirect rapport, I helped them discover going, "Oh, he's a wedding photographer." Actually, my very, very, very first inquiry, I've got a screenshot of this somewhere. It was a 50 year old teacher. I think they were having their second wedding marriage, and their kid actually found me on Tiktok and said, "Mum, can you please hire Sev as the wedding photographer so we can have him at your wedding. That would be so cool."

Andrew Hellmich: Because you're a celebrity in his eyes. That's so good.

Seva Mozhaev: I had the kids my business cards, right?

Andrew Hellmich: That's great.

Seva Mozhaev: That's, that's a good thing. It sounds a bit dodgy, but it is what it is, word of mouth from kids.

Andrew Hellmich: That's so good, but it also tells me then that not all your followers were kids, because this engaged woman as well.

Seva Mozhaev: Yes

Andrew Hellmich: Right. Okay, so other people were watching these videos too.

Seva Mozhaev: Exactly. And now the analytics have been updated. We can finally see the age demographics on our Tiktok channel per video, they don't have it overall in the channel yet, not that I've seen, but in each video, you can now see what the age group it most hits in, which is very, very fascinating.

Andrew Hellmich: That's so good. So, I mean, you've mentioned Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, you know, the other social media channels, even LinkedIn. Do you still, I mean, I know you do. I know the answer this, but you're still using those platforms. Why? When Tiktok is so successful for you?

Seva Mozhaev: So originally, there was a place called Oneflare. I don't know if you've heard of Oneflare?

Andrew Hellmich: No.

Seva Mozhaev: So Oneflare is this quoting system online, so if you search up, I don't know, 'Perth wedding photographer on Google'. One of the top results will say Perth's 30 top wedding photographers. It's like a click bait. You go in there and it's a, it's a pay to win, sort of in order, right? So that's what happened. And I was like, I'll get onto it. I purchased some credits, and all of a sudden I was on page one because their SEO pushed it up there and but I still had to pay to quote so what would happen is, if I would go on the website and go, "I'm looking for a wedding photographer in my area, Perth", all the photographers who had the right settings would get a notification saying 'New Inquiry'. And it would be the first three people that quoted back that would be able to get their details, so the email, and it would cost between 15 to $20 per inquiry. My close rate was about 20-30% back then, but in those six months, I learned so much about sales and how to write back to people and how to get in touch with them, which was like a, you know, people pay thousands of dollars to learn sales, scripts and stuff. And I did it organically, naturally, on Oneflare. And within probably six months, I booked probably three months’ worth, three months, four months’ worth of weddings.

Andrew Hellmich: Wow

Seva Mozhaev: And this was at about 1500 to $2,000 per wedding. Then I realized, do I put my prices up because I purchased it, you know, like, I've made so many, like, I've closed so many couples. And then I like, "Okay, I'll do it." So I had a 2500 and I discovered that that was, like, the point, like the critical number, where, like, Oneflare, it is redundant after that, because people that go to a place like Oneflare are shopping around.

Andrew Hellmich: Right.

Seva Mozhaev: And then I thought to myself, that's not my customer. That's not my client. I don't want people shopping around to get the best deal. I want people to come to me because they see the value in me, right? So I thought, and this was all at the same time I was growing Tiktok, because I was still a school teacher. And then what I did was I dropped Oneflare to the disapproval of their customer relations officers. They will try to keep me but with Facebook, I joined all of the local Facebook pages, like wedding, Perth, everything, weddings, whatever. And I looked at how all the photographers were advertising themselves, and they were saying stuff like, "Here's my website, inquire with me." Some had an, like they would cut and paste the entire essay all about them. "Oh my god, please, amazing. It's great. Congratulations and your engagement, and it's cool, like, great", but it's all the same, there's no value. So I thought, "Okay, I'm going to come in and I'm going to literally just put up a post like a photo", because no one was commenting photos. They were just putting out their text and their link. And I'm like, you're a wedding photographer, why don't you puta photo in the comments? It's like, it grabs your attention. "Oh, I like that photo." So I did that,

Andrew Hellmich: A photo of a couple or of yourself?

Seva Mozhaev: Of a couple, like a previous wedding

Andrew Hellmich: Of a couple, right. Yep, right, sure.

Seva Mozhaev: So I did that. Bookies, inquiries, bang, bang, bang

Andrew Hellmich: Wow

Seva Mozhaev: And then couple weeks later, everybody was doing it. I'm like, okay, cool. All right, let's level up again. What's something that can't do that I can do? You know? So I thought, "Okay, I'm going to give value. There's going to be no sales at all. There's not going to be any call to action. I'm not even going to put my website up, maybe my Instagram instead." So I did that, couples inquiries, DMS, bookings, all of that. Everybody else started doing it. Okay, I guess, I guess I'm a leader in this, or something like, I'm the person that's come in and disrupted everybody can't become, you know. And my favorite, my favorite game was to come into a post, because anytime a poor bride would come in and go, "I'm looking for a wedding photographer", within 30 minutes, 130 comments "me, me, me, me". My favorite game was to come in and sniper. So sniping is when you come in after 130 comments and put in the best comment, then they would still book you after all these other people came in because you've given them the best value, and you're probably the only person that gave them value, because everybody else was still going "me, me, me, me, me." And how I did that was I gave them tips, three different tips, like, think about this, think about this. And sometimes I actually answered their question, because what they actually would ask for is, "Hey, can I have some recommendations for photographers?" And I would go, "Hmm, I'm actually going to give them recommendations. Three of my favorite photographers. As a photographer, I'm going to do that. Let's, let's give it a go", and then I would go, "I'm also here to help with any other inquiries. Here's my Instagram." Value. Then I'd get a DM on Instagram going, "Hey, Sev, thank you for all the recommendations. I also had a look at your Instagram and fell in love with your photography. I like to book you."

Andrew Hellmich: Wow.

Seva Mozhaev: "By the way, you were the only person that actually answered what I asked for, and you gave recommendations. I thought that was really cool." And I'm just like, there it is. There it is too easy. Then everybody else started doing that awesome. Now this is where, this is where I stay on top, because not many people still in my area, especially put out videos. So in these Facebook groups, I use those viral Tiktok videos of my wedding stuff, and put them in those group places weddings. And it was like random, relatable things, like when a client says, "I'm not looking to pay an arm and a leg", I'm like, "Oh, okay, an arm and a leg. Cool, cool, cool. Yeah, I feel that. But let me tell you what an arm and a leg is to me." And I itemized all the things that requires you to be a photographer, like cost of cameras, cost of Lightroom and things like that, insurance, all these things. "I kind of get it. But you know", anyway, it was a skit that I did, and it had over 100 people liking, commenting, engagement, and I had so many inquiries from that one Facebook post, and still, to this day, I have not seen someone else do that in Facebook pages as well as I have and I turned the tap off. That's why I've never done ads, specifically, because I tried ads once through an ADS expert on Facebook, I spent five grand and got nothing, no disrespect to them, but they just they were, weren't it? So I thought stuff like, organic is my time, but it's the value in video. If you can put value of your skills that showcases your authority and also your expertise like your proof, because like me putting out a video or a photo of my work, that's it. And then it gives them the option to make the call, because people don't like getting told what to do. But if you give them options, going, "Hey, here's something you may have not here thought about." And pro tip for any wedding photographers listening, all couples have got so many things they've never thought about in weddings, you find three of the four of those things across a year, and those couples, they join those Facebook groups and they stalk them. They're in that they're obsessed, especially the brides, and once they see you three or four more times, you know that that touch point, that yes, that trust touch point, they're going to inquire, they're going to give you a stalk, and then they'll make the inquiry, and then all that's left is your ability to close. That's it.

Andrew Hellmich: Sure. So first of all, Sev, you said that you're doing this organically on your Facebook page. Did you mean pages or in groups?

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

Seva Mozhaev: …And now that's what I do.

Andrew Hellmich: I love it. So if the listener wants to work with you, do you teach them how to do Tiktok better, or do you do the Tiktok videos for them? Like, how does that all work?

Seva Mozhaev: So both, either one. Over the last probably eight months, I've had people inquire for my workshops, and at the end of it, they were upskilled. They loved it, but they also still struggled for time. I tried to problem solve with that, but they just did not have time. But they still want to scale their business, they didn't have time, which was interesting, because if you don't have time and you're plateaued, there's a few gaps in your business that you need to work on. So I helped them with that, but then they said, "I still don't have time to make the content." And I said, "Okay, you still need to film it, unless you want to fly me over to, I don't know, United States, and I can film it for you by all means." You know, I'm six foot 10, though, so I need business class. But they would, I actually get them to film it, and then they would send it through the Dropbox, and then I get my editing team to edit the content for them, and then they would upload. So it really depends on where you are in the world, because, for example, if they want me to upload for them and their wedding photographers in like Utah or something, they're going to get a lot of people seeing their content in Australia. So, and this is something that I'm still working on, trying to figure out working internationally, but the bottom line is, you still need to record it, because it's you, and if you don't have time to edit it, because that's probably the hardest part. Anyway, we do that, then you get it back, and then you have to upload it, and then I go through some things with you to make sure that you're posting correctly, because that's the other thing. As a photographer, I hate it when I do my work and I give it to my client, and the client puts a shitty filter up or something, and I'm just like, "What are you doing?" You know, same thing. It's the same thing. You can't escape it.

Andrew Hellmich: So good. So, okay, so where's the best place for the listener to go and learn more?

Seva Mozhaev: To learn more, you can find me on my Instagram, which is sevspics, s-e-v-s-p-i-c-s, or you can go to my website, which is sevspics.com and you can inquire through there. I've also started my own creative agency, which is called SevEra. It's like new era, but severa.com.au but the inquiry, yeah, you can inquire through there. A lot of people are hitting me up for one on one catch ups. "Let's, can I pick your brain and let's have a coffee together." And over the last eight months, I've been doing that, but now it's overwhelming and I can't, don't have time, so I've created a like one on one 45 minutes paid session that people can book me through, to just filter out the non-serious people. Just bluntly put, bluntly put. You know how it is.

Andrew Hellmich: For sure. So to inquire about any of those services, that's all at sevspicks.com

Seva Mozhaev: Yep, sevspicks.com, exactly.

Andrew Hellmich: Unreal.

Seva Mozhaev: Yeah.

Andrew Hellmich: Sev, you've been an incredible guest. I know everyone's going to be going to check out your social media profiles, your website. I'm going to link to all of those in the show notes. Have a fantastic time in Italy, and thank you for taking some time away from your lovely wife and spending it with us. And I really do appreciate it.

Seva Mozhaev: Thank you so much, Andrew. I really appreciate your time as well, and I look forward to seeing you expand this further and further. But if I could sign off with one piece of advice to anyone about anything, it would be, make sure what you're doing is something that you truly, truly love, and you're not just doing it for the money. If you truly love something, go for it. Go for it with intent. Your integrity is everything. The money will come eventually.

Andrew Hellmich: I love that perfect way to leave this. Thanks so much, Sev.