Entrepreneur

Sort of. It's much classier, much more portable and considered 'open air' so not a twoseater to crawl into. The modern equivalent of the idea of mall photo booths.

Less is more. It's not about number of booths, it's about profit per event. We have 9 booths, but maybe only 5% of the year 2/9 are actually in service. They each serve a different purpose or function as backup equipment. Our team of 3-4 (including myself) maintains our Statewide services, and the rest is contracted out of state, so we don't carry equipment for out of state events, unless my local team is travelling for something from Arizona.

Purely organic. Took a while to get here but all through SEO. Search, Social, and Referrals.

If you stay local, much less intensity. But still not for the faint of heart (if you care about your business and clients). My nationwide presence means I could be entertaining leads from California to New York at potentially all hours of the day. The intensity also varies cyclically, so there might be some weeks where not much is happening, then times like now (in Fall) where there is always something needing to be done. I also just released a new AI feature which clients are begging for, but it's almost entirely bespoke, so there is a lot of back and forth of specialized knowledge (stored in my head). I'd say if you are focused (I have adhd so it's a struggle), you can get away with working just a few hours each day. But when it comes to responding to leads, clients or answering phone calls, I focus on the fastest possible response. Working on a VA next, but honestly my biggest issue is not too much work / time but rather lack of focus.

yeah, debated this. But overall I think it came down to what we offer is so unique and has so many touch points, that the risk of screwing up is all too easy, by franchising we dilute the brand quite a bit, and we would have to have much lower rates to appeal to a broader market. I can train anyone on how to run the business, but that doesn't help in learning the intricate ins/outs of every possible software, camera, etc to be able to fulfill client's event needs. And I didn't want things to become so generic. So instead I went the white label route and just expanded Nationally with brand partners who could run events on our behalf, keeping us at the top of clients minds, while maintaining more quality control and all.

My Biggest Asset. Jk Mostly worthless. Youtube will teach you more in 6-months for free.

Yeah I've done consulting for this and other industries to help people getting started. Feel free to DM me, lots to say on adding a photo booth as an add-on service rather than a full focus. Plenty to mess up there.

abo 9 booths locally + contractors out of state, have 100 events will finish prob closer to 130 end of year. Yes, there was definitely an uptick in '22 from postponed COVID events. We could hardly keep up. Our growth YoY for the first time was 'stagnant' due to the post-covid rush, but we also did much less events this year and will finish with higher margins, so I'm not complaining.

It's all part of the software platform core features. Take a photo, get a live print, optionally email/text the photo using Twilio account or the platform delivery method. Photos are later (generally) hosted on our site where they can be re-downloaded, and even purchased into other home goods (as a bonus, we don't collect a fee on that).

got rid of props around COVID. Still have em for the occasional repeat client, but otherwise don't deal with them 99% of the time.

Chance (found one at a holiday party and decided I could do it better).

Probably after first three years I started to scale team/equipment. Basically once we received enough leads asking for the same conflicting date. Then scaled back, and found ways to leverage partnerships in industry to be bigger, without managing a larger team or needing a bunch of inventory.

Sorry not in the lending business, but happy to help you come up with a way to make $500 in a day relatively quickly.

Well that's good you are a photographer, so you hopefully know what you are doing behind the camera. That's a huge advantage over most of the market who jumps right in for profit. Find out what your market is offering and what they're not offering, try to craft something you need. If I were you as a photography background, I would create a headshot studio photo booth experience that lets you do headshots at rapid pace and create prints, and free digital downloads for your clients without editing.

You could sell that to corporate services for a fixed fee of $2-5k to just hang out in an office for half a day and snap nice studio quality headshots.

Photo booth doesn't have to be a 'booth'