007: James Broadbent – Top Tips for Nailing Your Marketing Techniques & The Motto of ‘Stop Thinking – Start Doing’

July 15th, 2020

“Don’t think too much about what you’re going to do next – Just do it! “

JAMES BROADBENT

Hey everyone! It’s Sally here, from Studio Ninja.

Today we are joined by James Broadbent – Owner & Photographer at Chasewild and also Founder of the software we all know and love – Narrative.

Sit back and listen about James’ journey so far, his top tips for improving storytelling skills, how to nail your blogging technique, how to attract your ideal client & so much more.

Check out some of the biggest points from James’ interview below:

Where did Chasewild begin? How did that all start?

I guess my passion for photography. I’ve always really been interested in photography. But I never really took it very serious until I think it was probably back in 2012. I was doing a trip where I traveled from India to Europe over land. I decided that I wanted to document the trip. So I bought an SLR, which I didn’t really know how to use. I had a friend who was a wedding photographer at the time. I was like “What kind of lens should I buy?” He was like “I really love this Canon lens. It’s called a 50L.” I was like okay cool. I’ll buy that lens. So I went traveling for like nine months and all I had was this fixed 50 millimeter lens. Pretty quickly I realized oh my gosh, this is the worst lens ever to go traveling with because you can’t shoot wide landscapes and it’s kind of a portrait lens but it’s also kind of not.

I was like… It had kind of been at the back of my mind that I would like to get into wedding photography because I had this friend who was doing it and he seemed to be making pretty good money and having a pretty good life.

So I was like yeah, I’d love to photograph. I didn’t have a job. I was literally traveling with a backpack. So I came home and they were like “How much do you charge to photograph a wedding?” Someone had told me quite early on if you’re going to ever shoot weddings just don’t be cheap because it’s really hard to get out of cheap. So I said “I charge $2,000 to photograph a wedding.” So that’s what I charged for the first wedding that I ever photographed.

Becoming a CEO – that’s insane isn’t it? Do you feel like that’s just been placed upon you and it’s not kind of settled yet even though you went through the process of needing this software and how you were going to build it and that whole journey? Does it still feel quite surreal that you’re in that position?

Yes and no. I mean I think one of the… I’ve always really been interested in I guess solving problems. I’ve always… When I was a kid I used to go to the $2 shop and buy cell phone face plates and then list them on the internet and sell them online. I was literally like 10 years old. I’ve always had this knack for where is there a problem that I can bring a solution to. So I think I always knew that I would run another business. I always knew that photography was a good segue into starting another business. And maybe that’s a really valuable thing for photographers to hear right now, especially in the light of what’s going on. Because the beautiful thing about photography is that you can make most of your money sort of in a small portion of the year. And if you use tools to outsource your editing and streamline your work flow and all of that, actually you can do your work in a reasonably short amount of time. And you’ve got a whole lot of other time to maybe start working on something else if that’s something you’re interested in.

So I kind of knew that going into shooting weddings, that yeah it would be an avenue or a stepping stone into another kind of business. But I wasn’t… I guess I didn’t really know what it was at the time until we started working on Narrative.

Is there one piece of advice that you can give to our listeners; be it personal advice, business advice that you think was really important for them to take away today?

I think probably the one thing which has been sort of quite pivotal for me is just actually just getting off your butt and doing the first thing that you can. I think we spend a lot of time humming and hawing about oh, how do I create a really successful business, you’re too scared to try because you think that maybe you’re going to do it wrong. And I think similarly to what I was saying what I’ve seen in a lot of successful photographers is that they work really hard. And what I’ve also seen is that they’ve tried a lot of things that didn’t work as well. And so did we. We spent sometimes days building out different ideas that we had. More than days. Which just never sort of went anywhere. So I think yeah, building a successful company means a whole lot of trying things, getting rejected, seeing them not work, and then picking yourself up again and then trying the next thing. And that’s what’s really tiring and exhausting about it. But also every now and then something will latch on and it will work for you. So I think that would be my main piece of advice, which is just don’t think too much about stressing about what you’re going to do next. Just actually start trying things.

Thank you!

Thanks again to you all for joining us and a huge thanks to James for coming on and sharing his extensive knowledge and journey through the industry so far.

If you have any suggestions, comments or questions about this episode, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post, and if you liked the episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post!

That’s it for me this week, I hope you all enjoyed this episode.

See you soon,

Sally