We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Alba & Alberto Diaz a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alba & Alberto, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Coming up with the idea is so exciting, but then comes the hard part – executing. Too often the media ignores the execution part and goes from idea to success, skipping over the nitty, gritty details of executing in the early days. We think that’s a disservice both to the entrepreneurs who built something amazing as well as the public who isn’t getting a realistic picture of what it takes to succeed. So, we’d really appreciate if you could open up about your execution story – how did you go from idea to execution?

We literally hit “launch” at the end of 2022. The idea to start our photo booth business came a few years earlier but I (Alba) was not interested in it and was working on a separate business I wanted to launch. However summer of 2022 Alberto bought it up again. He has been a DJ for years and thought we could start a photo booth business together as I have been a stay at home mom. We started to research the different types of booths out there, the vibe and clientele we wanted to attract and what we were willing to invest or hold off on. We started following other photo booth owners around the world, not just in our area, and we were blessed to learn the ins and outs from some amazing people. By October our first booth arrived at our door. All the while, I was doing more research on how to form an LLC, drafting a contract, creating a logo and building a website, to learning SEO and learning about the software we use to run our photo booth. We created an instagram page to get some traction and gain a following and about December 13, 2022 or so, our website was live.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Welcome to AVAS Photobooth. We are Alba and Alberto Diaz (hint: the two “A’s” in AVAS;) a husband and wife duo, originally from NYC, but now call New Jersey our home. Alberto has been in the events/entertainment industry as a DJ/MC for over 25 years. Alba brings over 20 years of graphic design expertise from her former life in corporate magazines. When we’re not partying with our clients, you can usually find us supporting our kids’ endeavors: one a theater kid and the other a math and science fan/gamer and basketball.

We provide an elevated experience for your events. State of the art technology and equipment that produces clean, high resolution imagery that will make your wedding social media worthy. Add in glossy prints to your wedding photo booth as favors everyone will love. It’s all in the details – from backdrops to welcome screens to the perfect props – all designed to complement your vision. Add in interactive features such as GIFs, boomerangs, video or a print guestbook and your dream wedding will come to life.

While large companies tend to juggle multiple events and you might not know who will actually be there on your special day, we focus solely on yours. From planning (or working with your coordinator) to execution, we are there every step of the way to ensure everything runs smoothly.

What we are most proud of is when we get booked multiple times with a planner or coordinator because to us that ensures a trust in the work that we do and the service we provide. The same goes for when a client refers us. We pride ourselves on bringing you the best experience ever.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

Most of our clients come from Instagram. They see a post or one of our ads and they reach out. However, I don’t put all of our marketing efforts into 1 thing. You have to try other ways to get clients. That’s where SEO helps out on our website and having a google business page. We also joined a wedding website about a year ago and we get leads through them. And there’s always word of mouth via past clients and vendor friends.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

So now that we’ve been in business for more than 3 years, we realize not every event is for us and we can say no. In the beginning we pretty much said “yes” to every event. But it’s all a learning process so now we know what works and what doesn’t, for us. And our business model doesn’t have to look like everyone else’s. We value our time with our family so we make sure our calendar is blocked out for those important moments and work our events around that.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.avasphotobooth.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/avasphotoboothnj/