We were lucky to catch up with Adam Taylor recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Adam, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

In November 2020, while the global pandemic was still in full effect, I left behind my client base (and steady paychecks) to move from Southern California to Hawaii where I didn’t have any clients and had to rebuild my business from the ground up all in pursuit of following my dream of living every day of my life as if it was a vacation. Here’s how it went down…

My wife and I fell in love with Bali several years prior. It had an energy that was hard to describe…we just referred to it as “The Bali Vibe”. We just loved how we felt when we were there. We are active and enjoy freediving, hiking, and exploring tropical places. However, we really only did those things once or twice a year while on vacation.

Every night we’d go to sleep looking at our vision board, and every morning we’d wake up and see it again…the board basically depicted a life where every day had vacation-style “Bali Vibes”.

Eventually we started to ask ourselves how we could create a life that looked and felt like our vision board NOW…not when we retired.

To make a long story short, we put pen to paper (literally) and made a checklist of everything we wanted our daily life to look like, then started thinking about places that could offer that lifestyle.

Hawaii checked all the boxes, so we made the choice to leave behind our lives and clients in California and move to the island of Oahu. At the time I only knew one person who lived here and had zero leads for potential clients. All I had was my camera gear, a skillset, a lot of drive and determination, and a dream.

I’m happy to say that almost three years later now we are thriving and living the life of our dreams.

Adam, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’m an architecture and interior photographer and educator based in Oahu, Hawaii. I collaborate with architects, interior designers, and contractors to translate the beautiful environments they create into artful photographs—so basically I take high-end photos of buildings for companies to use in their marketing. I also create educational content for photographers to learn more about their craft and the business side of our industry.

I grew up outside of New Orleans and was obsessed with BMX riding my entire life. After graduating from LSU in Baton Rouge with a degree in graphic design I moved from small-town Louisiana to larger-than-life Southern California to work at my literal dream job—a BMX magazine. For eight years I traveled the world photographing and filming the sport’s best athletes while getting exposed to a wide variety of cultures.

After losing the passion for BMX and the lifestyle that surrounds it I dabbled in other types of photography before trying my hand at real estate photography. This was relatively short-lived, but helped push me into a new direction that I didn’t even know existed at the time—interiors and architecture. So in 2017 I niched down into this genre, where I still work today.

I’ve always held experiences and freedom as something extremely important to me, and I’ve always been a big believer in following your dreams to create your life the way YOU want it to be. So throughout my career I’ve prioritized taking time off to travel—which is enriched even more now that I have a family of my own.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

With architecture photography it takes many years to build up your skill set and client base. It’s not the type of work where you can just pick up a camera and start getting hired several times a week—or even per month.

Even transitioning from shooting real estate photos to architecture photos isn’t something that can be done very quickly. They seem very similar, but are actually quite different when it comes to the shooting, editing, and more importantly…the business model.

So when I decided I didn’t love the real estate photography business and pivoted to shooting for designers and architects, I had a choice to make… Keep shooting real estate on the side so I still had income while building my new business, or find another income stream of some sort.

In keeping the theme of following dreams and creating your own path, I decided the real estate work wasn’t fulfilling enough to keep doing, so I got creative.

I started learning how to re-license my photos to other companies. So for example, if an architect hired me to shoot a kitchen remodel, I got really good at pitching and selling those same photos to product manufacturers like the tile company and faucet company that were used in the space.

I got so good at this I started helping other photographers sell their photos and became a licensing agent for them, so I created a second income stream for myself.

Then I created an online course to help other people in our industry learn how to do the same thing. This photo licensing course lead to making other educational content for architecture photographers, which is now a third income stream.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

When I moved to Hawaii I literally had no clue who my clients would be. I didn’t do any research before I moved here. I just knew there were plenty of buildings, so I figured there had to be clients that would hire me to photograph them.

So once I made the move I had to start building up my clientele, and my basic approach became, “Be Everywhere”.

I immediately started building up an email list and sent short, top of mind emails on a weekly basis.

I unfollowed everyone on Instagram, followed only local companies that were potential clients, then started posting on a daily basis, as well as interacting with the companies in my newly curated feed.

I deleted my old LinkedIn account, made a new one, and only connected with people locally who were potential clients. Then I did the same daily posts and types of interactions I was doing on Instagram.

And finally, I joined a few industry organizations and started going to as many networking events as possible.

Within a year or so every time I went to an event people would comment about how they “knew me” because they “see me” all over… I was everywhere, and people noticed.

In a location and industry that is so relationship-based, getting my name, face, and work out there was the first big step to getting clients in a brand new market.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://adamtaylorphotos.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adamtaylorphotos/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamtaylorphotos/
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@adamtaylorphotos
• Other: https://adamtaylorphotos.com/education/ (My educational content for photographers.)