We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Joshua Marks a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Joshua thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What sort of legacy are you hoping to build. What do you think people will say about you after you are gone, what do you hope to be remembered for?

I want people to be better off in life after knowing me. I want other people to find encouragement to reach their goals, to be the best version of themselves, and to be better off in their careers by something that I can contribute. I want to help others, and I want a few of those people to be able to look back and think, “I would not be where I am if I had not met him.” I want a legacy of giving and contributing.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Joshua Marks. I am a husband, a father to 4 children, and a business owner. I want to tell you my story of how I was able to start a business and grow it into my full-time career.

Throughout high school and college I had no idea what I wanted to do for a career. I tend to be a “jack of all trades” since I spent a lot of my free time learning about whatever random topic I was fascinated with at the time. I worked on cars, built furniture, did archery and shooting, if you can think of it I probably thought about doing it as a career at some point, or at least tried to learn something about it.

During this discovery period, when I was still in high school, I became friends with this girl and she was into photography. So, I asked her to show me some of the basics that she had learned, partly as an excuse to go hang out with her. Fast forward a few years and we got married at age 20 and 19 and we both continued to do photography, turning it into a side job while I did my full-time job to pay the bills.

My career was on auto pilot and I ended up rapidly working up into management at Chick-fil-A, and was doing fairly well in my career, even though it was not my dream job. I began to realize that a career that I love is not going to just drop in my lap, and that I could decide on something and go out a get it. I also had a wake up call when I was about to turn 27 years old and I got on the scale after new year and saw a number much larger than I had ever seen before. This was a much needed jolt and a realization that if I wanted to be around for my family that I would have to take hold of my life and make decisions that take me towards the person that I wanted to be and not just run out the clock hoping that things turned out well.

In 2018 I decided that I wanted to be full-time in photography, so my wife and I decided together to pack up our three kids and move from Meridian Mississippi to Kansas City Missouri. Still working full-time in Chick-fil-A, I started my side business of real estate photography, and by 2019 had also lost 100lbs. This shift in mindset has been a life changing experience and I cannot imagine going back.

The real estate photography business was going well. I realized that if my business was going to be as helpful as I envisioned it, that I would need to offer more than just me running around with my camera taking photos of houses, and the business name Real Estate Marketing KC came about as a result. The business began taking up more and more of my time, which is good because that meant that it was continuing to grow. I reached a point that I was sometimes working 7 days per week between my 2 jobs. By the end of 2020 I was at a cross roads in my life, trying to decide if I should stick with my steady full-time career of 8 years with Chick-fil-A to have a steady paycheck for my family, or go all in on my dream that was still not paying enough to be full-time; doing both was not possible long term.

I was so close to giving up that I made a job switch to another Chick-fil-A location and was making more money than I ever had. I hired a part-time photographer to help me out so that I would never work 7 days per week, and I registered an LLC and the business name so that I could pay my photographer, and other subcontractors that I planned to find for other marketing services. I was basically setting up the business to take a back seat and if it went away then I still had my full-time job. As I worked in my new position at Chick-fil-A with the mindset that I might do this as a career, I began to realize how unhappy I would be. As I trained my part-time photographer, and showed all of the steps in the process, I remembered all of the things that I liked about photography. I was at my new position just 2 months and that is all that it took to realize that I could never give up this dream. I dove back in full speed in February of 2021 and by August of 2021 I was full-time in my business, and had left Chick-fil-A entirely.

As of September 2022, Real Estate Marketing KC is offering more services than just photography, just like I envisioned. In addition to real estate photography we now also offer headshots, drone photos, and video tours. We have also partnered with other small businesses to offer other marketing services such as graphic design, home cleaning, home staging and virtual staging, 3D tours, and social media management. This business is becoming what I envisioned, and I cannot wait to see where it goes from here. My dream is to make this a full service real estate marketing business with a goal of being the most helpful that we can for our clients, as well as our team and small businesses that work with us. Making a profitable business is important, but more importantly I want to make sure that whoever we interact with is better at reaching their goals because of our contributions.

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

This business started right after we moved from Mississippi to Kansas City. I told our real estate agent that I was starting a real estate photography business, and if she knew anyone that needed a photographer I would do a free photo shoot to see my work. The majority of our clients are referrals from the amazing people that we have met over the past 4 years. That first agent told someone, who told someone, and on it goes. I know that this business would not be possible without those referrals and I always want to strive to be a business that drives referrals by being as helpful as I would want if the roles were reversed.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

I have never taken out debt to build this business. It was started with a camera that I had for a couple of years, and I think I had sold some items to purchase it at the time. I try to think outside the box to get better use out of what I already have available rather than buying every piece of equipment that I think would make life easier. As the business grows, I pay cash for the things that truly are needed to make the business better. This ensures that we continue to be profitable and do not get in over our head with debt and unneeded expenses.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.realestatemarketingkc.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/realestatemarketingkc/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/realestatemarketingkc