We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kevin Shook a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Kevin, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you tell us a bit about who your hero is and the influence they’ve had on you?
Gary Vaynerchuk would be a hero in my life that has influenced me not just in business, but in personal life as well. He is proof entrepreneurship can’t be taught in books. He also really helped me understand I do not need a college degree to be successful. I’m living life against the grain, I’m marketing against the grain, and it feels amazing. I typically consume his content daily, whether I’m driving and listening to his podcast, or in the studio with Tea with Gary V playing on one screen, he’s really helped me navigate life, business, all of the things.
Kevin, 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?
Being the owner of a digital marketing agency was not on my bingo card as a kid, teenager, heck even the first 35 years of my life. After high school, I served as an EMT, a volunteer firefighter, and then I got into personal training inbetween shifts, moving into career firefighting and paramedicing. Along the way, I picked up aerial photography as a hobby. Because of a local realtor and friend, Chandra, I was able to break into the real estate industry after obtaining my Part 107 from the FAA. With this, I was able to provide commercial drone services. Realtor began booking me for shoots, but they wanted the interior images taken as well. I had no idea how to use an actual camera, all I had was the drone. So the first ‘full listing’, I photographed this amazing older home with my drone and then used my cell phone for the interior pictures. It went as imagined, complete train wreck. At that time, I knew nothing about composition, google files, dropbox, anything. I had NO PROCESS. Not sure how that house sold. Anywho, fast forward a few months. I had another agent reach out and tell me he has a ‘high dollar’ client who wants to hire me to shoot the interior and exterior photos again. There went my anxiety. But yeah, 2 hours before, I was at best buy praying someone knew something about cameras, atleast enough to sell me something I could use on this house. The Canon Rebel T6 it was. 30 minutes before the appointment, I was in the drive way of this house, frantically scrolling youtube to figure out how to even use this camera. Long story short, shot in ‘auto’ mode and they liked the images enough to hire me for marketing photos of their medical office. So maybe that was the segway into marketing? Idk. The same realtor called me one day, begging me to start offering virtual tours for real estate. I was very hesitant because last time I knew, I had to by a $6k camera and could not afford it and would not have much ROI in this area. But I told her to hold on, put her on speaker phone, and searched it. Little did I know, this company released it’s software to a few small, lower budget cameras making it feasible for the little fella like me. I made her a deal that if she paid for 50% of the camera, I would pay the other 50% and we would be ready to go in 2 days. She did. So there I am now taking real estate photos and creating virtual tours. Fast forward again, I pitched this concept of creating these virtual tours in the local hospital emergency department for healthcare education to a friend and trauma coordinator of the facility. He introduced me to some folks, and we did. And of course, their marketing department wanted it as well. So again, time goes by and there’s Richmond’s Ivy Tech campus reaching out during covid, asking me to help with a virtual tour. The campus was restricted from high school students visiting, making recruitment challenging, so they wanted a very comprehensive virtual tour the students could navigate and learn about the campus. Valerie & Morgan at Ivy Tech shared another Campus tour with me from a different campus, and I was shocked! It was so impressive, so many features, people in the tour talking to me, it was amazing. One problem, I had no ideal how the hell to make something like this. So, I resorted back to youtube university to teach me. I figured it out and built the tour. They were super satisfied and now I had something really amazing in the portfolio. I create this tour off of a $300 360 action camera, and made I think $3500 to build the tour. I then showed this tour to that marketing team at the hospital, and sold them an $87k tour featuring 43 facilities in 6 counties for marketing/recruitment. Crunch those numbers. Youtube University = free tuition. Action Camera = $300. Dreams & Ambition = priceless. Because of this, I’ll forever be grateful of our Ivy Tech Richmond campus for showing me the finished product first and believing in me to learn how to achieve such goals.
Meanwhile, I’m still in public safety, but struggling. Mental health was declining, alcohol intake was increasing. I started living in instant gratification mode with no future in sight. I was labeled with PTSD, depression, anxiety, had a suicide attempt, stayed dependent of alcohol. I wasn’t a good human. To cope with a toxic work environment, I would consume alcohol and be stupid. After EMDR, more therapy, I realized my side hustle has been there for me, allowing me to be creative and that I needed to go all in with caffeine and cameras. I walked away from public safety.
So today, I’m over 2 years sober and thriving. What I love most, this is my brand. I’m not perfect, I’m authentic. I don’t sell snake oil, I build relationships. I’m now producing podcasts, creating talking head videos, shooting photography, providing live streaming services, just all of the things I can do to avoid having a niche. I would be bored there.
Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
Artificial Intelligence…I was late to the game. Not really maximizing the potential of AI in the creative journey until early 2024, I would consider myself a late bloomer. Fortunately AI can catch me up to speed on itself. We chat daily.
How did you build your audience on social media?
Be authentic and don’t focus so much on the ‘brand standards’ that you miss out on marketing. Brand standards can kill creativity. Especially if you’re the one enforcing that Lato Regular 16. Like, c’mon. Post it already. The world loves imperfection, it’s more relatable.
