We recently connected with Jason Collin and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Jason thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How did you scale up? What were the strategies, tactics, meaningful moments, twists/turns, obstacles, mistakes along the way? The world needs to hear more realistic, actionable stories about this critical part of the business building journey. Tell us your scaling up story – bring us along so we can understand what it was like making the decisions you had, implementing the strategies/tactics etc.

I was able to scale up over time by first getting a foundation client that had repeat work for me that set a baseline through the first two main years of the success of my business. In those two years I was very visible in person in the business community and joined the chamber of commerce so as many people knew I was a photographer and could be referred to for work. Each new client I got I provided more than I said I would, in a way then exceeding the client’s expectations. Then I added the client to my weekly photo newsletter that I did not sell in, but just featured my work and thanked clients for their business. In this way I was able to begin to establish repeat clients, a key for a sustainable photography business, as finding a whole new set of clients every single month is a tall task. I put up 3 to 5 blog posts a week so that I could show up in search results with dozens and dozens of pages, for example, about headshots, rather than just my headshot portfolio page.

Jason, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I got into the photography industry because in 2009 when returning from living 10 years abroad in Asia, the job market in the U.S. was in a bad situation, so I decided then to just create my own job, and I have been working as a full time professional photographer ever since then.

One of the things that sets me apart from others is my flexibility and immediacy in my work. I am often not given full details about a shoot, or presented with a significant change to the shoot upon arrival. Through my experience I am able to still produce the photos the client wants even with minimal prep time.

I am most proud of being able to make photos of people that say they do not like photos of themselves, but they like the photo I made for them.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Like many photographers, I started out as a lifestyle photographer, meaning shooting family portraits and weddings. My heart was not into working every weekend, and I found the high end market was already owned by long time photographers and then what was left was a race to the bottom with a lot of “weekend warriors” getting DSLRs and working for just extra money, not a living photographer amount. Upon realizing this, I pivoted to being a commercial photographer and not only liked the variety of work I get to do as a commercial photographer, it was much more economy proof and I did not have to work weekends!

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

I built my reputation by staying in the mindshare of my clients, and my clients sharing the same business circles. So I did not have to say anything, happy clients did it for me in person and in Google reviews that I would incentivize them to write by offering bonus photos if they did.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://jasoncollinphotography.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jasoncollinphotography/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jasoncollinphotography
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonjcollin/

Image Credits

Jason Collin Photography