We were lucky to catch up with John Glover recently and have shared our conversation below.

John, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Earning a full time living from one’s creative career can be incredibly difficult. Have you been able to do so and if so, can you share some of the key parts of your journey and any important advice or lessons that might help creatives who haven’t been able to yet?

In 2015, I launched my photography business and by 2016, I was working full time as a photographer having recently left a career in information technology. It takes some time to build up income in a creative business and my business was no exception. However, through targeted focus on my customer’s needs, high quality results and sales and marketing, I was able to replace my corporate income within the first 3 years of full time operation.

Those early days of full time operation were stressful and difficult. But like many things in life, the hard path is often the right path. Repeated failure along with some success is how it went for me, which I now know is quite normal in business building. I probably could have sped up the process of business growth by seeking a few more targeted and skilled business mentors, but I’m overall happy with how quickly I was able to build things up. Given my experiences in building a successful commercial photography business, I now offer private mentoring and coaching to help others do the same. The program I’ve created is exactly the kind of program I wished I had found and utilized myself, with the primary focus being to greatly accelerate business success and help others avoid some of the mistakes that I made.

There have been plenty of ups and downs for my business related to COVID shutdowns and other macro and micro economic conditions, but my business remains viable and successful and I’m optimistic as to the future in this niche.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I spent almost 20 years working in the information technology field, which I enjoyed for quite some time but grew tired of corporate politics and the general inability to secure fair treatment based on skills, experience and value that you bring to the table. I eventually realized that the only way to avoid those persistent issues would be to build something of my own.

I was a hobby level photographer for more than a decade prior to launching my photo business, so the interest in creating compelling and creative imagery was there for quite some time. Early in my business launch, I dabbled with numerous types of photography (weddings, action sports, real estate and more) before settling in on headshots and portraits with an emphasis on commercial / corporate jobs. Peter Hurley was and remains a huge influence in my work and I still shoot a lot of headshots styled after his approach.

I think that many of my clients hire me for my unique ability to consistently coach and direct people to an amazing expression – something not all professional photographers are equipped to do. I’m very proud of the work I’ve put in to accomplish this, as I truly believe it is a differentiator for me. There are more headshot and portrait photographers competing with each other than ever before by my estimation, so having some sort of edge when it comes to products and services is critically important.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

I think consistently high end customer experience and results have helped me to build a strong reputation within my market. This includes dozens of 5 star reviews on multiple review platforms (Google, Yelp and others), as well as a strong and steady stream of referral business. One thing that I always emphasize to my business coaching clients is how we often need to market in creative ways to get things rolling in the early days, but the ultimate goal is to replace almost all marketing efforts with return and referral clients (what I call R&R clients). After all, R&R clients by nature have the lowest acquisition cost of any other source of leads or clients.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

My best and most consistent source of new clients is good Search Engine Optimization (SEO), followed closely by return and referral clients. I may never reach 100% return and referral, but that is ultimately the goal.

Good SEO is a combination of technical and creative efforts and is sometimes (but not always) too advanced for creatives to handle on their own entirely. I recommend partnering with a mentor or consultant who is an expert in SEO configuration in order to achieve the fastest and best results.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://johnglover.photography
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jgloverphotography/?hl=en
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/john-glover-photography-costa-mesa