We were lucky to catch up with Tyler Drehobl recently and have shared our conversation below.

Tyler, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. So, let’s imagine that you were advising someone who wanted to start something similar to you and they asked you what you would do differently in the startup-process knowing what you know now. How would you respond?

If I had to start from scratch, the number one thing I would have done differently is to have found a mentor(s) to shadow immediately upon starting my business. When I first started my business, I had to figure everything out on my own and learn through trial/error; this was not only very time consuming, but often times I got things wrong and only partially corrected the issues each go around. Having a mentor not only allows you to see someone’s tried and true process, but also allows for constructive feedback on way to improve your own!

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

So I am a 29 year old photographer/videographer from San Diego, CA. My passion for photography started when I was young, but I never really viewed it as a viable career path or source of income. Due to this, I followed the beaten path of going to college and getting a degree in Business management before getting a 9-5 job in corporate America. Although this path did provide valuable insights and business experience, I ultimately found that it didn’t provide me with any sort of fulfillment or passion. Eventually I decided to go backpacking and brought my camera along with me, through this process I was doing photography and videography. Slowly but surely, people started paying me for my work and that’s when I realized I could make a living doing something I had a life-long passion for. In recent years my business has really taken off and some of my photos were even published in a magazine! I’m also very proud to say that I have been able to create videos for large companies like Intuit and Genentech. What sets me apart from other people in my industry is that I wasn’t classically trained, so my approach to content is uniquely my own. In addition, I have a value based model of creating content; in contrast to most creators’ processes who just do what their client asks for, I look at my clients business and tell stories that help them to convert content to actual sales!

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

The biggest pivot I had in the duration of my business was when covid hit the world. Before covid I was traveling and the majority of my content creation was hyper focused on travel/travel related industries. Obviously Covid put a halt on all things travel related and I was forced to head back home and lose all of the momentum I had gained in my industry. For the first year of being home, I focused mostly on TFP working in order to build my portfolio in the following industries: nightlife, real estate, corporate content, and lifestyle photography. Through this process I found my two mentors, with their mentorship I was able to expedite both my skills and my portfolio. On top of this, the allowed me to work with them on high-end clients and build my name within the industries in my local area. Now I have managed to not only become profitable back home, but have a significantly larger and more valuable book of clients.

How did you build your audience on social media?

The number one thing I can recommend to people about building a presence on social media is to get out and meet people in the real world. Your ability to sell yourself in the real world and share your social media will drive people to actually be engaged in the content you are producing on your social media channels. Think about it this way, on your personal social media channels, who are the majority of your followers and likes coming from, your friends right? If you can get people to become “friends” with you business as well, they are much more likely to interact with you content this pushing it in the algorithm to the potential clients that may have otherwise not seen it had you gotten less engagement from those you already met. Another piece of advice that should be rather obvious is always be consistent with your social media presence, consistency is the best way to ensure your content/engagement stays relevant to the people who are engaged with it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.drehoblcreative.com/
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/tydretravels?igshid=YTQwZjQ0NmI0OA==