We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Zachary Egbert. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Zachary below.
Zachary, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?
When writing about what I think it takes to be successful, one thing I have to keep in mind is that my definition of “success” may differ from someone else’s. So, in my view, success is being able to do what I love with the people I love, and hopefully living life with as little regrets as possible. Success to me is a state of living, rather than a monetary goal or how many followers I have. Being able to surround myself with awesome friends and family who support me and push me to grow my career while inspiring my creative passions sounds like success to me. But, success like this just does not happen over night, and here is what I’ve done to try and achieve that state of living.
First, the way I’ve found the easiest way to achieve my goals is with drive and accountability. When you start acting like everything that happens in your life is your fault, the personal accountability and drive to change your circumstances is a huge factor at achieving the milestones you set for yourself. This mindset is very valuable to develop, because instead of thinking “I don’t know how I could ever do something like that?” or “I could never earn that much money!” you should think “HOW can I do that?” or “What do I need to do to reach that goal?”. Now, instead of thinking about how impossible something is, you’re turning the thoughts back at yourself to start figuring out what actions YOU need to take to reach those goals. One thing that’s important about reaching those goals however, is to make sure you set large, long term goals, but also small, short term ones.
Long term and short term goal setting is the next step to achieving success, For example, I’m currently working on growing my YouTube channel and hopefully having it be a viable income source in the future. So, my long term goal is “to have a successful YouTube Channel that can replace my day job income”. Now, if I had that goal and that was my only goal I was working towards, I could easily get burnt out, especially since I have worked on the channel for close to a year now and only make about $1 a day from it, hardly anywhere close to what I’d like to make. But this is where short term goal setting is very important. Right now, my short term goal is to reach 2,500 subscribers. I’m currently at 2,225, so I have another 275 I need to earn. So, while working towards this goal, I am working hard and asking myself “what do I need to do to achieve this subscriber count?” and from there, I make my game plan and get to work. Then, when I hit the 2,500 mark, I’ll work towards 3,000, and so on. These small goals are crucial to not getting burnt out and keeping you on the right track to achieve your dreams.
Now, this next point I want to highlight is very important to the success I’ve had, and that is focusing on the people you surround yourself with. The speaker Jim Rohn has a quote I live by and have found a lot of truth in, and that is we are “the average of the five people we spend the most time with.” This means, if we hang around a lot of people who are not driven, not motivated, and don’t take any personal accountability, then we too will have that mindset towards life and our goals. However, if we hang around people who are driven, supportive, and willing to keep you accountable, then you will realize just how much easier it is to achieve the things you are wanting to achieve. This is because you’re not only working hard yourself, now you have a network of people who are driven like you are, all working towards their goals, and they all want to see each other succeed. Your network is your best tool to help you get new opportunities and reach heights that you never thought possible.
Lastly, on the journey of reaching success, it’s important to understand the “why” for wanting to achieve it. For me, my “why” is what I addressed at the start, it’s living life with as little regret as possible. I don’t want to be at the end of my life wishing I would have done the things I never did. I want to work hard and maybe fail at things now, rather than wonder in the future what my life would have been like if I just had just tried in the first place. When I’ve talked with a lot of my friends who have built great businesses and have become a lot of peoples definition of “successful”, the most common thing they say is that money doesn’t matter, and the biggest thing they want in life is to spend more time with the people they love and to enjoy what their doing, and that is what I want from my hard work and what I hope everyone can achieve in life.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I am an Idaho & Utah based automotive photographer and videographer. I started doing photography about 4 years ago when I was in college at Utah Tech in St George, Utah. I took a photography class for my required art credits and ended up falling in love with the process of creating photos and everything that went into it. For the next two years, I never really did anything professional, but I had a Jeep Wrangler that I would take camping and off-roading and would take photos of that in the different places I’d go. I decided to start and Instagram account for the adventures I would take in the car, and that’s where my first initial social media following grew. After two years of posting Jeep photos, I had to sell the car for better transportation to my job, and because of that, I no longer had a subject to shoot. So, I decided to branch out and start reaching out to local car owners in Idaho to see if any of them wanted photos of their cars. I did my first photoshoot with a client in April of 2021, and I’ve been obsessed with taking photos and videos of other peoples cars since! In 2022 alone, I did over 100 photoshoots, took over 40,000 photos, and was published in 4 international magazines! Starting in August of 2022, I decided to start doing some video work for clients (creating ads and TikTok/IG content) and also creating YouTube videos. Expanding into videography was pretty difficult, but I have found a love for creating videos for as well, and I’ve got to work with awesome clients and companies, and I’d love to be able to keep creating and growing the video side of my brand.
I think the thing that sets me apart from other photographers in my space is the passion I put into my work, which I think translates into the photos I produce. I am a car lover through and through, and I love being able to help others showcase the car they are wanting to show off and be proud of. People know that when they hire me to take photos or videos for them, that they are going to get something amazing and worth sharing.
One thing I am very proud of is the community I have started building through my brand. I have a car show I co-run with my friend Tom, called Snake River Cars & Coffee, and this show has been growing steadily but also been something the car community in Idaho has been needing. At the show, I have a lot of people come up to me and tell me just how happy they are that we put on this show and just how respectful and nice it is. The Idaho car community has been having issues with toxicity and lack of respect being shown to the locations the meets are being held. So having a show people can come to knowing that it is going to be respectful, safe, and everyone is there to share their passions of cars with each other, feels really good and I’m proud that I can say I helped build this space for the community to come together.
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
The thing that I believe has helped me the most with growing my brand and reputation is the fact that I don’t look at clients as “clients” and rather I try to develop a friendship with them. In conjunction with that, I always have tried to provide more value than I ask for in return.
When I first was starting out and growing my brand, no one really knew who I was and they didn’t know if they can trust me to do a good job. So, to help me get practice taking photos and working with clients, but also to grow my network, I would offer my photo serviced completely free. I would tell the person who is bringing their car that the time they’re taking to come take photos with me is all the payment I need. This instantly changes the dynamic of the photoshoot from transactional to one that is more just a few car lovers coming together to share in the same passion we have. This strategy, while not profitable in any way, is what helped my brand grow very quickly, but also, get a lot of practice and hone my skills and style in quickly as well. Also, now that I had a stronger and more personal relationship with the people I took photos for, they are more likely to spread my brand via word of mouth and send other people my way, who then could turn into paying clients, which they have!
Another thing that has helped my reputation in the market is just trying to be as inclusive and helpful to my “competition” as possible. This also sounds just as counter intuitive as not charging anything, but I promise, it is very helpful! In the realm of photography, there is a lot of gatekeeping. People not wanting to help others find cool shoot locations or giving them tips to improve their skills because they think that the person will be taking away clientele. I’ve found that not gatekeeping information and being a support to the photography community has actually done the exact opposite. I always share the places I shoot at with people who ask, and I also try to promote other photographers who I think are doing a great job. This has earned me a reputation of being someone who is a positive light in the community and I actually get more clients because of that. And other photographers are quick to send people my way or invite me to tag along with shoots because they know I do good work and would do the same back. So, having an inclusive and transparent business style has been a huge aspect of gaining the reputation and respect I have today in the car community and photography community.
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.
The main thing non-creatives have expressed to me that they don’t understand is the fact that I still to this day do photoshoots for free sometimes and don’t charge for some services. The fact is, for me, I do this work because I love doing it, not because it can make me money. If I want to really work with someone, or if I know someone wants something but cant afford it, then I am more than willing to still provide that service. Just like my response to the things that helped build my reputation, doing this is not “good business” or “smart” financially, but like I said, I don’t do this for the money. My day job pays me enough to where I have the freedom to provide some services for free if need be. And I don’t feel like I’m getting taken advantage of at all either, because I get to still do what I love to do. Like I stated when I wrote about my definition of success, I want to be able to do what I love, and getting to provide a service to people that I love to do falls in line with that. I have the chance to do what I love, for money or not, and that’s what matters. And this mindset is also what I think helps me from not burning out after doing hundreds of photoshoots and the passion translates to my work. And this passion and drive to keep doing what I love to do ultimately is what is going to help me reach the highest potential with my business and brand in the future.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zecarphotos/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100078057700630
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/zachcarphotos
- Youtube: www.youtube.com/@ZachEgbert
Image Credits
All the images are mine.