We were lucky to catch up with Josh Pather recently and have shared our conversation below.

Josh, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

Our mission is to help people have a side hustle. So they don’t just have to rely on big corporations. This is the reason why we started Photo Booth International. It’s to give people the opportunity to create wealth for themselves.

Josh, 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?

My name is Josh Pather, I am the founder and CEO of Photo Booth International. We manufacture photo booths and sell them to people who want to start a successful photo booth rental business. We started as a photo booth rental company back in December 2012. During this time, I worked at a call center during the week, but I also used to DJ on the weekends. One day, a friend and I went to a wedding and saw a photo booth for the first time and thought it would be a great addition to my DJ services, so we decided to make our own.

After some brief research, we drove to Home Depot and spent $300 on all the materials. We made our first photo booth out of wood, we made the cutouts to fit the monitor, sanded it down, painted it black, and spray painted the words “Photo Booth” in white on the side of it. We didn’t have a lot of money to invest in professional high-end electronics, so we went to Walmart to get our printer, computer, and monitor. That first photo booth wasn’t perfect by any means. It was slow to print, the software was difficult to use, and the monitor wasn’t even a touch screen, but it made us our first ten thousand dollars. We knew we were onto something, so we did even more research and optimized our photo booth with better equipment and a better outer shell.

Fast forward one year later, our fleet of photo booths quickly grew to 15 booths, and we were booked out every single weekend. At this point I had already left my 9-5 job and was 100% invested in my photo booth rental business. My wife Jazmine even left her job to help me because I couldn’t handle all the bookings myself. Within the first two years of business, Photo Booth Dallas made over $1million dollars. It was so awesome to see that this was a profitable and high-demand business. Every time we went out to work the events, people always asked us “How can I get started doing this? It looks like a lot of fun”. This was when I realized there was a demand for turnkey photo booth packages, and that’s how Photo Booth International was born.

I launched Photo Booth International in 2015, and since then, we have helped over 5,000 entrepreneurs and made over $18million in revenue. We were also named #63rd fastest-growing company in Texas and #1239 fastest-growing company in the country by INC 5000.

We help people generate their own income and provide all the tools and resources they need to succeed, all in one place. Many of our clients are looking to escape the rat race of their 9-5 job, seeking financial freedom. Starting a Photo Booth rental business gives them the opportunity to earn extra money while spending time with their family and loved ones. They can do this part-time or full-time.

We’d appreciate any insights you can share with us about selling a business.

After I sold my first business, I realized that I could have made a lot more money if I had learned more about accounting in my beginning years. So I stress to new business owners, even though it’s not fun, that you need to have a proper understanding of accounting practices and how to read a profit and loss statement and balance sheet. New entrepreneurs think their accountant knows about it and they don’t need to know about it when it is very much the opposite. Any great business starts with a clean set of accounting books and practices. If you want to be successful, this is imperative.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

My first business was a photo booth rental business. This was a side hustle business on top of my 9 to 5 job working at a call center which I hated. My corporate job did offer great benefits like health insurance and 401(k) employee stock purchase plan. Looking back on it now, those are all the tricks they do to keep you hooked and plugged into the matrix. I thought I was safe for my corporate job, but I walked into work one day, and they told me their position was moving overseas. Of course, this is going to benefit the stockholders. I did not take any consideration of the organization’s employees, so at that point, I decided to take the severance package and go full-time with my photo booth rental business. In hindsight, it was the biggest blessing of my life

Contact Info:

• Website: photoboothint.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/photoboothint/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/photoboothinternational
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/photo-booth-international/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/photoboothint
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Photoboothint/