Original subtitles

Okay, so I know you haven't signed up

to this course just to hear my life

story.

If you have, you're weird and may need

to reassess a few life choices you've got

going on, but I do think it's important

to give you a little insight and overview

into my background and how I transitioned into

wedding photography and in turn rapidly grew my

business, becoming an in-demand and successful-ish

wedding photographer throughout the UK and Europe.

You might be able to relate to some

of this background.

We all have our own stories and makeup,

but I do think it's important that you

as an individual recognise what makes you unique.

Now, I'm sure like most of you watching,

I never left my educational years and thought,

you know what Jim, Jim was my best

mate, have a great time at uni pal,

I'm off to be a wedding photographer.

That never happened.

I kind of wish I had planned that

a little bit now, but I decided to

take the long route round.

So instead, I had a few dead-end

jobs before deciding to go to university because

there was just nothing better to do.

I studied creative product design and marketing.

It was a really popular course.

I think it had three other students on

it.

Needless to say, I did not go on

to become a product designer.

Instead, I ran a fashion business with a

friend for six years, like you do, right?

We bought and sold everything vintage designer fashion

online.

From Burberry coats to rare football shirts to

vintage bell staff jackets, we sold it all.

But it really introduced me to business.

We employed five or six staff, had an

industrial unit, get this, we had two transit

vans.

Not one, but two.

We called them Tiny Dancer 1 and 2,

obviously.

I thought I'd made it to the big

league, but how wrong I was.

But that business was really the beginnings of

my photography journey because I would be responsible

for running the studio and also producing the

styled shoots that we used for marketing material.

So my transition into the world of wedding

photography started when that business began to struggle,

which coincided with my cousins getting married, not

to each other.

Whoa, that would be strange and just wrong.

Instead, I took a film camera, Canon AE

-1, to a couple of family weddings that

summer and the frames turned out okay.

They may have turned out better than the

paid professionals' images, which was the opportunity that

I needed.

That was the point at which I recognised

things were going to change.

And I have a few personality traits that

I was less aware of until I started

out as an educator.

But one of those is just saying yes

to opportunities.

I'm not one of these people who worry

about every possible outcome and procrastinate over every

minute detail.

I'd rather try it and fail than not

try at all.

I have no formal education as a photographer.

I am completely self-taught, but one question

I would often find myself asking during those

opening few years as a wedding photographer was,

why the hell did I not start this

sooner?

I didn't start weddings until I was 29.

But I'm also a firm believer that everything

happens for a reason and that those jobs

I had in my late teens and early

20s actually served a purpose way beyond how

it felt at the time.

Jobs that just allowed me to get some

beer and petrol money actually instilled some important

lessons that I still carry with me today.

I've worked in McDonald's, in bars and on

shop floors selling high-end fashion.

Jobs that I didn't feel were ever going

to be my career as such.

But while some friends may have been off

at university or finding their so-called careers

that most of them have been pretty much

miserable in ever since, I was out having

a good time.

I had some good times, not earning any

money obviously, but gaining experience in the real

world and building a library of skills that

I now carry with me to every single

wedding or even before couples book.

That kind of makes me sound like Liam

Neeson, yeah?

Let me get back on track.

A library of skills and lessons in terms

of how to run a small business or

how not to in some cases, punctuality, process,

systems and how to approach people, how to

sell, how to upsell.

If I hadn't have had those experiences, I

wouldn't be the photographer or entrepreneur that I

am.

It's as simple as that.

Another trait of mine is optimism.

I have and always will be a glass

half full kind of guy.

There are always people in worse positions than

me, people less fortunate.

I feel incredibly lucky to be able to

pursue a career in photography and surround myself

with people who share that passion and with

people who are celebrating marriage with their friends

and family.

It is a job that provides a level

of satisfaction that is simply unrivaled compared to

the corporate world.

That said, there is only one negative for

me in this industry.

Remember I told you about being honest and

open on this course, yeah?

There's just the one.

And it's that I have to work weekends

throughout the year.

Being away from home, no matter how much

I love destination weddings, they can be tough

and they can be lonely.

I'm sure that any of you already in

the industry that have children will absolutely be

able to relate to that.

If I could find a way to charge

four grand and only shoot weddings on a

Thursday, I would.

That's the dream, right?

So yeah, being away from these guys, most

weekends, not every weekend, but most, that can

be really tough.

When Buddy arrived in 2015, I think I

was charging £2,000 a wedding at that

time.

And that was a pivotal point for my

business.

I made a very conscious decision that winter

to adjust the direction of my business, a

business that had been going very well for

the previous four years.

Bookings were strong.

I was shooting on average 45 to 50

weddings each year without trouble.

If I wanted to shoot 120, I could

have, but I didn't want to continue shooting

that volume because the results of those numbers

meant that I'd be away every weekend from

April through to October.

You can't shoot 100 plus weddings and have

a family.

It's not possible.

So I made the call to start striving

for a higher end and more affluent clients

purely so that I could charge more to

shoot less.

Now that doesn't happen overnight.

It took four years to get my business

to the goal that I set, which was

20 weddings for 80 to £85,000 a

year in turnover.

I'm now charging and booking weddings at £5

,000 plus, which to a guy from a

working class background whose parents worked for the

NHS and the local council blows my mind.

But here we are, here you are, and

that's me in a nutshell.

Now it's time to let you know what

I've done and what I'm doing to get

my business to that level.

Shall we get stuck into lesson one?

See you on the other side.