35. Alex Strohl’s Business Blueprint: 10+ Revenue Streams, 2 Million Followers, and the Value of Knowing Your Worth
In this episode of Shotlist, host Marshal Chupa sits down with creative director, photographer, and filmmaker Alex Strohl. With over a decade of experience, Alex shares his journey from his first photography sale to Microsoft, to building a multifaceted career with over 10 revenue streams, including 2 million Instagram followers, online education, and more.
They discuss the reps and mindset needed to succeed, navigating shifts in the creative industry, the power of self-worth in pricing your work, and how to future-proof your creative business in the age of AI. Alex also provides actionable advice for photographers and filmmakers looking to transition out of a feast-or-famine lifestyle and into a sustainable, thriving career.
If you’re a creative professional, this episode is packed with wisdom and practical tips on building freedom, fostering meaningful relationships, and staying ahead in an ever-evolving industry.
Key Topics Discussed:
The Journey to 2 Million Instagram Followers: The reps, routines, and serendipitous moments that shaped Alex’s career.
Diversifying Revenue Streams: From brand partnerships to in-person retreats and online education.
The Business of Creativity: Why self-worth matters in pricing, negotiating usage rights, and breaking free from day-rate work.
Navigating Industry Shifts: The impact of AI, macroeconomic changes, and the future of creative marketing.
Building Relationships: How genuine, long-term connections drive opportunities in the creative industry.
Practical Advice for Creatives: Why assisting and interning remain powerful learning tools, and how to approach clients and partnerships effectively.
Episode Highlights
00:37 Building a Career Behind the Lens 02:30 Photography as Freedom 08:10 Transitioning from Agency to Personal Projects 17:23 Finding Your Tribe in the Creative Industry 27:22 Future Trends in the Creative Industry 34:54 Building Meaningful Relationships 37:53 The Power of Accountability Partners
🔗 CONNECT WITH Alex Strohl
📸 Instagram | @alexstrohl 💻 Website | www.alexstrohl.com
📰 Newsletter | www. alextrohl.substack.com
🔗 CONNECT WITH MARSHAL
📸 Instagram | www.instagram.com/marshalchupa 💻 Website | www.marshalchupa.com 👥 Linkedin | www.linkedin.com/in/marshal-chupa-99a7921a8
📄 SHOW NOTES & TRANSCRIPT
Visit the website for the transcript and highlights from the conversation - www.shotlistpodcast.com
🎙 ABOUT THE PODCAST
This podcast is all about helping emerging cinematographers, photographers, and directors navigate the challenges of making a life and a living behind the lens. From workflow to personal growth, creative vision to marketing, finances to production—every episode is packed with a wide range of topics to support visual storytellers in their pursuit of building a business and growing a career they are proud of.
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📱 GET IN TOUCH
You can also drop me a DM instagram @marshalchupa or email marshal@marshalchupa.com
Transcript
Introduction and Welcome
I didn't want to just trade time for money and I think that there is a need for that in sort of the most tiers of photography and filmmaking. But if you can put yourself as soon as you can into the higher tier, create your own space there, then you can actually charge a project fee, creative fee.
Hello and welcome to another episode of Shotlist where we talk about how to make a life and a living behind the lens. I'm cinematographer and photographer Marshal Chupa and today I'm speaking with creative director, photographer and filmmaker Alex Strohl.
Building a Career Behind the Lens
In this episode, Alex and I dive into the incredible amount of reps and a bit of luck it took him to get to 2 million subs on Instagram, 10 different revenue streams Alex has created for himself in the creative industry, how self worth plays a big role in how much money you can earn as a creative and where he thinks things are headed. As we enter into this next unknown season of AI.
Alex has been someone who has led the charge on so many different facets of the industry, such as the influencer marketing space, both on the agency side and as a photographer himself.
Creating insightful online education content on YouTube and through paid courses, shooting large scale campaigns for brands and now building a second agency. This is the longest podcast episode I think I've done to date and honestly one of my favorites as we dove into some very important points around the business side of how we make a living doing what we love.
Let's dive in.
Alex, thanks so much for coming on the show today. Appreciate you being here.
Thanks, Dude.
So for people who don't know who you are, which they probably should know if they haven't lived under a rock and they're listening to this podcast, can you give me a little synopsis or brief overview of who you are and what you're up to? Yeah, you know, I've spent the last 12 years of my life being, well, yeah, the last 12 years being a professional photographer, really. Filmmaker, well, in the traditional filmmaking sense actually. So I enjoy all parts of the filmmaking process, not just the directing. So I prefer to say, you know, it sounds cooler to say director. So I do direct some stuff, but I enjoy just also filmmaking. You know, take a camera, make something out of it, edit it and share it. So that's also been a great part of my life, making YouTube films, I think the focus of my life, photography has been the path that has allowed me to build freedom.
Photography as Freedom
At the end of the day, all I wanted was freedom. And I always talk about this, but it's just that the best tool I found to be free. I kind of fell into it. I never planned it out like that. But photography was the best path to freedom for me. That's what I've been up to, just trying to live a good life, knowing that any day can be the last one. So I try to think about that every day. Marshal Chupa: Yeah. And I like to jump straight into the topic of putting in the work. And I say that because when I was doing a bit of research yesterday and you look at your Instagram profile, you see, okay, 2 million subs. But the number that was actually intriguing to me was the number left of that, and that was 3,000 posts. And when I looked at that, and if I was to equivalate someone who walked into a gym and did 3,000 days in the gym, they're jacked, you know, like they've put in the work. So when I look at what you've done, it's not without an extreme amount of reps and hard work. And for fun, I did the math. You 3,000 divided by 365 days, that's 8.2 years of posting every day and having content and showing that to the world. So I don't know if you ever looked at that number.
Jesus, no. Eight years, wow!
8.2. Yeah.
10,000 hour rule.
Yeah. So when it comes to reps, I mean when people look at high numbers of subs and all that kind of stuff, it just like. I think the important part is also to look at reps. And so looking at all of that, I mean, what has driven you to put in that many reps? Cause that's insane. It's funny, cuz I've deleted a few photos over the years, so maybe there's a few more reps. But honestly, Instagram is just the tip of the iceberg. Like the archive, it's got like 300,000 photos, 60 something terabyte and counting. Like it's starting to be an issue. It's just too much stuff.
Yeah.
Like I can't even go through it. Photography has always been a tool for my memory because I live so many different things that I couldn't remember it all. So thankfully I've got photos to remember. I also have got terrible memory for this kind of stuff. Right. I couldn't tell you where it was last year at this time. And you know, three years ago, man, I completely lost. But I think what's pushed me to put the amount of reps is nothing glamorous, it's just the little Monkey trick, you know, where you do something and there's a feedback from it. Right. You press a button, something happens. So social media has been, was built that way in the sense that it rewarded people who used it. And like I said, I fell into it.
My plan was to share photos I was happy to shoot. I'm a bit obsessive, I have to admit. So when I got into it, I started. The funny thing is I started photos way before Instagram. And I know it sounds cool to say that, but when I say way before, it's like, you know, it's not that old. It's like the flicker days. I didn't grow up in a newsroom shooting film. I wish I did, but I'm just too young for that. Yeah, I'm getting 35. So yeah, flicker days.
Shooting my 18 millimeter wide *** lens with the polarizer on at sunrise in random places. Right. Just trying to see what came out of it and then playing with that on Photoshop because there wasn't any lightroom. So what motivated me really again is what photography enabled me to do. If I put 10% of the, of that amount of photos, 300 on a website that nobody ever looked at, probably I would have stopped at 300. Like it's. I want to be transparent and honest. I was incredibly lucky to be at the right time at the right place. Yeah. So this is a segue, but I was thinking about it today, so I'll make it quick. The sort of social media for creators slash influencers. Back in the early days, I mean 2014, 15, it was like a party, very select party on some block. You could hear the music far away. Very select people would be there. Everybody was getting drunk slash rich, you know, drunk be equaling rich in my metaphor. And then came 2019, 2020, changes of essentially it stopped being chronological, right. That was 2017, 2018, like the feed stopped being chronological to a more sort of ad friendly format.
Right. Because these guys wanted to monetize at Facebook.
And that's when the hangover, that's why it was the hangover at the party. People were waking up headache like what's going on? And it's not the same. And now we're completely past that, 2024, 2025. The room's empty, there's four people there. Everybody's left to find some other party. Few people who are here are trying to get drunk on like 0% beer. That's my metaphor. So it's like it's not working anymore for you know, if that's your mindset. So that's my metaphor today. I was thinking about today. It's like, man, this is the phases we've been through. But yeah, so again, I just want to say I've been incredibly lucky to be here at the right place, right time, and that's fueled me to keep going.
Right, yeah, that makes sense. And that kind of leads into. My next point, though, is like, so I'm friends with Callum Snape, who I know you, you know, and I remember speaking with him and he, he said you were the one that encouraged him to start posting every day on Instagram back when it was the cowboy days before, like you said.
Before everything changed. And again, was this just like, oh, I'm posting on Flickr one day and Instagram's the new Flickr, so I'm going to start posting. Or was there some sort of a. A nudge or like you had some sort of. Like, how did you know that being consistent in that place over and over was gonna be something of value? Or you didn't and got lucky? Like, how does that, how did that begin in the very beginning?
Transitioning from Agency to Personal Projects
I don't think I knew. I didn't know. I just liked using it every day. Back then. You'd follow 30 people, so you'd go through your feed and by 10am you'd be done. You'd see, you'd seen everything. So you'd be sitting on your thumbs for the rest of the day. So you're like, well, I better share something. You know, make the other people see something. Because everybody's waiting for something to happen now, right? There was no unlimited content. It was just like, you made it to the end of the feed.
So that was one thing. And there's also the fact that I'm very routine oriented. So after dinner, you know, we do the dishes with Andrea and I would sit down on whatever rental house chair there was, club chair.
Remember this club chair in Montana? I would sit there and I would try to come up with a caption and I would pair that caption with a photo, you know, so it was like a backwards process. I would really give importance to the caption because I just wanted to share kind of, I don't know, some. Some thought I was making content, talking about photography for photographers. I would just feel like writing stuff and I find a photo. I would shoot every. Almost every day. 2012 to 2018, 19. 5, 6 years of almost shooting every day. So I'd have tons of content. I'd be like, man, let's get this stuff out. What else am I doing? You know, you have to remember, you have to imagine I'm working 60, 70 days a year at that time. The hell am I doing the rest of the time, dude?
When you say 60, 77 days a year, what else are you doing? Or how does that. What did your lifestyle look like then?
Oh, I'm really lazy. I'm not doing anything. You know, my goal was to get big jobs for good clients, get great rates, and then chill, right? I'd be on or off working. So obviously I'd be frantically pitching people and things like that, but that wouldn't take that much. You know, out of the 365 days, I would work 70 of those in the field shooting for clients. And then after that, I'm just kind of pitching stuff to people. And then when you're pitching concepts to brands, you need new photos to put in your deck. You just go into your archive and then you have ideas and you're like, let me share that stuff.
Let's rewind. How far were you a working photographer before Instagram came in, this whole other version showed up of your life.
Alex Strohl: I wasn't. For me, the thing that happens is that I just been lucky. When I was working, I was studying in Quebec in a newspaper. People know this story, but I was working there in a newspaper. They hired me to be the video editor because my friend was the graphic designer. Big newspaper in Quebec, so called Le Soleil, the sun, kind of your big local newspaper, you know, with like 200 people on staff back then, and they're looking for a video editor. And they're like, you know, this guy, my friend is like, this guy knows how to edit video. I'm like, I guess I do. So I just went there, told that to the editor in chief and they hired me. So I was their video editor, you know, when I was. Wasn't in school. And so I was already making good money as a video editor while I was studying. So it's great. I'd go into the field two days with a journalist, I'd edit at night, go to school, you know, you could build your own schedule for me. That was new too. And this is. I want to mention this because I first went to school in Europe, that's where I'm from, in France. And then you don't get to build your schedule. The schedule was the schedule, sort of nine to five. You have school every day, even at a private school, design school. When I went to Canada to study at a public university. They're like, build your schedule, like what? So I just built my schedule to obviously go to school three days a week and have the rest of the time to go shoot photos, work. So I was already a working guy at 19, 20. I was already making a salary from editing video for this newspaper. And then out of the blue, this was the breakthrough for me. Like is this. Microsoft bought this photo from, from me that I had put on 500 pixel 500px. It's Toronto based Flickr competitor back then. And I think they bought it for 50 grand.
So wow. So significant.
I said, yeah. As a 20 year old, you're like, what? So then I'm out. I tell Andrew, we're out. You know, this is the end of the season. Anyways, I just have one more credit to do at this call. I'm not coming back next year. Buy newspaper buy everybody. We're hitting the road here. So I took that money, I took that money to just shoot a portfolio. I mean to just to travel with Andrea for a year. So we went everywhere, all across the world, shot photos, had fun and that gave me a good archive of photos that I just started sharing on social. So it was just like a perfect storm for me.
Wow. Yeah, that's like that one little tipping point moment that you weren't expecting, but then allows the freedom for like almost cracking the shell of what's possible moving forward. So I feel like that moment probably showed you what's possible.
Totally, because I had no idea. I didn't want to be a photographer back then. I was just putting photos on Instagram 1.0. There's square stuff with the toaster filter, Nashville filter, you know, fun shooting only iPhone for Instagram because that was the rule back then. And then I was, I wanted to be a graphic designer, an art director. That's what I was studying, that's what I went to school for. And then these guys are like, you know, we want your photo. Your photo is a good photo. I'm like, really? Huh? There's money in this field. Cool. I shall be a photographer. That's how it went. Because I would build websites for local clients, like shops, you know, and it would be such a pain in the *** because everybody had an opinion on a website or on a logo, but on a photo people were like, do your thing. Much more freedom.
[13:43] Marshal Chupa: Coming back to that very first thing you said, you chose this for freedom.
Yeah, absolutely.
So you've had this moment, you're traveling the world, you got A you know, $50,000 insertion. Your mind is now open to the possibility of photography. Could be lucrative and create freedom in my life. What was that next step between that, was it like a cool, I'm all in now on photography and then the rise of Instagram happens or what was that piece in between there?
We moved to Vancouver. I remember we always wanted to be. I always wanted to be in Los Angeles. That was my dream. My Aunt Juni lives there. I would spend summers with her when I was young, like 10 year old. I would take the plane by myself and spend the summer with her because my parents would send me their see you and I would love it. And I, you know, I came back with blue hair and skateboarding. Right? That's what you. Blue spiky hair and huge baggy pants.
Yeah, yeah.
So I was like sold on the American dream at 10, 10 years old. I knew already I was. That was me because again, I thought it was cool. I just wanted to do cool stuff. I wasn't really cool, but I wanted to do cool stuff. I knew that. So with that in mind, just to give you zoom out. That's why we moved to Vancouver, because to me it was a better, easier way to get slowly to America, to the United States of America. And when I went to Vancouver, I didn't know I wanted to be a photographer still. I had no idea. But I met my old friend Maurice Lee, who was a venture capitalist. Nobody knows how old Maurice Lee is, but he was older than me for sure. Way older. I don't know how. He's probably 100 now, but you couldn't tell if you saw it. But he was also shooting photos. He just came back from shooting the royal wedding back then, you know, Canadian. Yeah, the royal wedding is the honeymoon somewhere. Yeah. So he was kind of high on that gig. He's like, man, I'm done with venture capital. I'm going to sell my **** and do photos. I'm like, great. And then I always, I've always had this sort of pulse on the business of it. And I was like, all these, you know, we would do Insta meets back then in Vancouver sounds kind of lame, but it was pretty fun. You just meet people and shoot photos and out of the a hundred people you'd meet, you'd keep somebody, one person's phone number every time. You're like, you. You know, you and I can hang and hang out. I don't know about the other 99 people, whatever, but it's still cool. You get to hang out. So I told Maurice, we should do an agency. We should represent all these guys who come to these instant meets. Cause they all have an audience. You know, they're all building their audiences, and they're getting ripped off by brands. Like, they're getting free sweatshirts to do stuff. And I've already told this story, but to make it quick is like, let's do an agency and let's represent all this talent because they have no idea how to sell themselves. You know how to. Yeah, you're a BC guy. You know how to make decks. You know how to talk to boardrooms. I don't really, but I can talk to the. To the guys. They're like me, right? You talk to the business guys. I'll talk to the. To the creators. I'll tell them, like, we'll rep them, we'll make them some money. All I wanted was for these guys to make money. And then so we just, you know, as any agency, you take a commission on the gigs and you kind of go out, pitch these guys. That was the closest thing I had to being a photographer at the time.
So you transitioned to an agency model now, how much time did that take of yours? So you just like, okay, now I'm representing all these photographers and not shooting or how did that look?
We rented an office at this fancy building in Vancouver overlooking the sea and I would just walk there every morning for a year. Maurice and I would meet up there, go buy Wayne Candies, the local store downstairs. He's a very candy connoisseur and we go for lunch every day. You know, he was like my brother at the time. Like, we were just totally into it day in, day out. Maurice had no kids, so he had time to do this kind of stuff.
Finding Your Tribe in the Creative Industry
And we were just brainstorming constantly. How can we kind of achieve world dominance? That's the joke. It's like, how can we make this bigger and better? That's what we were doing. It took a lot of my time. One full year. So what happened is that I ended up going on a lot of the gigs that I would put people into as a quote and quote, producer. I was just glorified driver. Make sure everybody's having a good time, the clients are there, being the liaison to the clients. All these guys back then, I had a lot of I don't know, I was like, man, I want to meet this person. I want to meet this person. I always looked up to people because I never had an older brother who I lived with. I have an older brother, but he was way too old to live with us. He didn't grow up with me. So I always had like looked for this brotherly figure. I was like, man, this is the person I want to know. I want to learn from this person. So I had all these American based photographers. I was like, these guys are good. I want to meet up, I want to meet up with these guys. There's like Chris Burkar, there's Jared Chambers, there's all the old cool school names. Chris Ozer, Michael O'Neill. So if you remember these guys, early days, it's like, I want to bring these guys on gigs in Canada and what was really taking off at the time is tourism. Like tourism just got word of Instagram and they're like, spend it all on social media.
Yeah.
It's like a fee for it.That's how we met our third partner with Shad Darwala, who was the marketing guy at Tourism Canada. Digital marketing guy. I mean it wasn't, it wasn't even called digital marketing back then. I think it was called social media. Yeah. And then we pitched him all these ideas to bring these, these people from the US to the Yukon to Alberta and make some sick photos. So these guys had even way more audiences than I had because they were like in the US they're close to Instagram, they're kind of connected to the people at the company. I had at the Time probably had 30,000 followers, they had 300,000 followers already. So I would just leverage that for the clients, our clients, and be like, these guys will come and photograph the Yukon. I'll come with them and make sure everybody's happy. I ended up being associated with all these trips and these guys would tag me on photos. I would sometimes be the talent for photos because they're not shooting photos. I'm just sitting there.
My jacket so I ended up growing the audience thanks to that. Thanks to all these guys do. That was never my goal. But it was a byproduct that all these guys be like, thanks Alex for this or that.
And that's how it happened.
Right. And then the cross pollination of everything on the web.
Yeah. The energy. You couldn't top that energy. It was unstoppable.
Right. So then what was the point where you were like, cool, I'm being Lian's running this agency. Like what was the transition point to be like I believe it's called Stan Wander.
Yeah, yeah, correct, yeah. Stan Wander.
So what was that piece? Where have you left that? Like, is that still going in the background? Have other partners taking that over now to zoom out.
While all this is going on, I'm still trying to. Andrea, my wife is. Was born in the us so she's French, born in the us so she has an American passport. My childhood dream was to live in the US and somehow we met up in the world and things happen. I was like. So she's like, you. Her mother is like, you could get married with Alex. He needs a passport. You guys all moved to the U.S. I'm like, let's do it. So I'm doing all these visa petitions. It's called a K1 visa. You know, the joke was like, oh, you're my green card. Why?
Right.
For her, never was the case, but it was just my joke to her. So as soon as we were able to do that, I had my eyes on the ball, which was LA, CA. So as soon as all this paperwork that took two years, we take two years in Vancouver for the paperwork to be done I also enjoy Vancouver, me very much. But I was never losing sight of what was the goal. You know, I'm pretty focused with the goal. So once we got the permission to go there and get married, boom, we're out. We took all of our **** into a rental car and drove it down to LA. That was the pivot in 2014.
And so from then it became photography after that.
Yeah, once I was there, I mean, I had already all these contacts and honestly, because my audience has grown so much in those two years, I was just getting reached out to go shoot and be the person shooting.
Be the person. Yeah.
So Maurice ended up being.
You know what?
I'll represent you, you go shoot. All right, great. Yeah, so that's what happened. And it's like. So it kind of happened by accident, you know, I remember the first gig I did once we moved to LA. How do so many back to back gigs? You know, back then you're like young, you take it all, you do it all hungry. First one was pretty sick. It was like Land Rover. It was a Land Rover that had this platform called, wellstoried.com. and it was just about owner stories of Land Rovers. So they wanted me to shoot. The agency was called Gray, which is probably still around. Yeah. And they wanted me to shoot this feature and for social, anywhere In California. And what was pretty striking is that everybody would give me total freedom and creativity, which was a pain in the ***, to be honest still is.
I mean, pros and cons.
Everything's possible. You kind of end up being stuck in the rut of the same things. But back then I didn't care. I was like, this is sweet. Yeah, we'll rent this car and go through the desert. And what was it? We went to the Sierra and shoot that in the Sierra. Yeah. These photos are still pretty iconic when I look at them. It worked out great. That was my first gig when I moved to the U.S. yeah. I could see how that all kind of came together naturally and cohesively. It feels looking back. Yeah, but when you're there joining, you have no idea.
Of course. You don't see the end of the tunnel. You don't see where it's going. You just keep going. You know, you got that hustle to drive and it sounds like you know how to put in the reps. If you do enough reps, I think it's impossible for something not to happen.
Oh, yeah, the reps. We do. That's for sure.
So when we originally spoke in email about doing this podcast and I quote you, you mentioned, I feel it is a very inspiring time, but there are also a lot of changes for us in the industry and it's important to talk about them. So we're here. Let's talk about them.
I'll start with a metaphor.
It's very timely. If you follow the stock market, you know, Target and Walmart both released American, huge American retailers. If you're in Europe or Asia. Target and Walmart released their earnings right now at the same time. And it was really a tale of two different retailers. So Target is blaming the industries. Like, people are not spending enough money. And stock went down 20%. They're not growing. They're, you know, ***' bad. Walmart crushing it. People are spending tons of money. We're happy. So you have one blaming the macroeconomics and another one saying the macroeconomics are good. So what do you make out of that? And I think it's a similar story where we are. I want to preface it with that because everybody wants to be a influencer and create work for the Internet. I get that. There's a great piece on the Economist about that, about the saturation of it and what the future is like, so should look it up. It's called Why Everybody Wants to be an Influencer. I linked it in my newsletter, by the way. Shout out to my newsletter. There's a pessimistic side of me. And the optimistic side of it, the pessimistic side, is like, all this **** is going down with AI will be. Right now, AI is terrible at making photos, but, you know, in six months, what could it do? And in 12 months, crazy, who knows? So I'll take the example of a friend who launched a product. It was like a bad bag, and he didn't even bother doing product photos. He's like, you know what? This kid did a render of it that's way better than any photo. You can zoom in, and he zoomed in there. You could see every bit of fabric rendered. And it looks very photographical, right? So that kid did that using, obviously, you know, a lot of knowledge. But once AI figures how to do that stuff, it's not very hard. If you, you could learn that, then there'll be no need for product photography. He's like, we're not shooting any product photos and nobody can tell. You couldn't tell. Then once it, you know, it could start categorizing a bunch of stuff. So there's the sort of the quote unquote threat of AI. There's people. Everybody loves to lead with the threat of AI and then there's the macroeconomics of it, which is like, you could blame brands. Well, brand marketers people at brands have. It's never a brand. It's somebody at a brand has, has done their share of that kind of work with creators and maybe they're spending less because they've had bad experiences, because it's time to chase something else that's shiny. I know that a lot of people in the industry have had pretty bad years the last few years. And then obviously there's the odd men out. You know, there's always the, the people who are like, you know, the, the 2%, the 3% of specialists were like, no, man, this was a great year. I'm speaking about specialist automotive guys or whatever. If you have a specialty, you're good for now, right? That's fine. So this is, this is the rise of the specialist and I think it will be even more important. So for generous. It's getting harder. I'd say it started getting harder in 2019, just to be fair. Right? Like, it's not like we couldn't see this coming. But I think the pandemic threw some problem. That was really the factor for a lot of people. They stopped hustling and then it was hard for them to recover from that. They lost momentum and from them it's been hard. So this is my pessimistic side. And then when I say that, I'm like, you're just looking for excuses. And then the optimistic side is like, there's a bunch of opportunities out there. You could start looking for other parties, quote, unquote. You could do focus on other channels, namely channels where you own the audience. That's why I've been hard on my substack, because I own every single person in the audience. I mean, I own quote unquote. Like I have the direct contact to this person.
Future Trends in the Creative Industry
Can you imagine if I had direct contact to all 2 million people who chose to follow me? I'd have 2 million emails. I'd be in a different place. You'd be talking to me from my boat.
Yeah, the power of a mailing list is something incredible. I do know that.
Oh yeah. And we're actually starting a business around that pretty soon. It's called Studio FRR.
Okay, that was one of my future questions. I'm still only brought it up. What's the vision for that?
So Studio FRR is basically the premise is that the cost of acquisition CAC for brands, cost of acquisition means the cost to acquire a customer is very high and it's higher than the lifetime value of said customer. So this ltv, that's how marketers call it. So essentially bunch of people at companies are spending more money on acquiring a customer than the money it will bring. So that's broken already. So there's very good data about that if you do some research but that's the fact that half the traffic on the Internet is bots. 80% of people don't use tracker, I mean blocking to block trackers on their phone. So you can't really track sales even with a Facebook pixel. This whole sort of economics built around this form of advertising where you pay a bunch of money to Meta or Google is broken so we realized that. And I mean man, like brands are constantly spending money to reacquire the customers they already have.
You have 1 million followers, you're a brand, you have a million followers, you paying for those, man, you put so much content, you fed this content machine for a year, spent millions, millions, tens, hundreds of millions perhaps on content. Right? Think about GE. They used to rock Instagram. They spent all that money on it and then they got nothing to show for it, because they don't, you know, they have to. Now, if they want to address everybody, they have to pay because otherwise only 2% of their people will see it. So if they're cool with that, they could keep going with that. But we're trying to find a solution. And it's focusing on channels where you have direct access to the audience, whether it's in-person events, even apps like Strava will give you. If you market on Strava, you can have access to the audience. Newsletter, focusing on newsletter, proper newsletters, not like there's transactional email marketing and there's newsletters which we differentiate. So essentially we're doing all the deep thinking for brands in the newsletters. We run the brand's newsletter, we'll do all the deep thinking, come up with a few stories per week, month. And from that bulk of deep thinking, we come up with assets that feed other channels. Sure, you can use those assets for social media, that's fine, but that's not where the sort of the money's spent. This money spent on the big thinking, where real connections with consumers are made. And for us, it's three the newsletter.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, to be honest. And I've definitely learned a few business lessons in that. Some of my biggest successes have been partnering with people with massive mailing lists but also I've experimented with partnering with people with massive followings on Instagram and falling absolutely flat. So I think I have been given the insight of what you're speaking to, you know, and I totally understand that a mailing list is extremely powerful, whereas a following, like you just said, they can shut off that button anytime on their own platform. Whereas a mailing list is always those are your people that you're speaking directly to, that person in their inbox. And no one's ever going to get rid of their email. You know, that's just how we operate as humans these days. So what next platform it is? Who knows? So I think you're definitely speaking to some powerful things there. And in that note, you seem to have your finger on the pulse, whether that be back in Instagram days or right now so with that, where do you think things are going?
My prediction for 2025, I think we'll see the spending on social can decrease as it's done past years. In general, the thing is to do what, if you ask Brand marketers. Yeah, Spend money and put it where they need to spend it.
So that's why we're coming up with solutions so they can spend it somewhere else on something perhaps wiser, not chasing the wrong things. So obviously my prediction, and perhaps the fact that I can illustrate that, is the fact that Patagonia and Tommy Caldwell are starting a newsletter together. Like, he's going to be telling me he's going to be writing a newsletter for Patagonia. I think that hints at where we're going. You know, it's like to me, that's one of the things I'm like, yes, good. The shift is happening, right. So obviously podcasting also, I think is a strong outlet because it's not too filtered for now, like Spotify and Apple going to deliver it, I think. Alex Strohl: You should correct me, but there's really nobody in between you and the audience when you share your stuff. Just a feed, right RSS feed?
Marshal Chupa: Yeah, straight up.
My prediction is that we will see more spending in places where people, brands, marketers can control the audience. And I'm really pushing, I'm really bullish on also in person events and personally also, we will be more bullish in private label stuff s meaning brands making, you know, let's say you're not a clothing brand. You're just. I don't know what you are. You make cars, whatever. What if you develop, you know, and you're seeing this with Porsche and Emilio, you know, making a custom jacket for the 911 together. that to me is private label Porsche jacket, ML, own door. That's like Porsche owner's galore. Porsche doesn't care about the money that those jackets will make. They just want to have this connection with the owners. That's like sweet. I'm sending you this jacket. Can you imagine, Porsche owner, you get this jacket sent to you for free or you buy it for, you know, whatever it is. That kind of thinking is brilliant and we'll see more of that.
Okay, so we've kind of got like really far down attention of the business side, which I freaking love and coming back to like creatives who are listening to this, people who want to hold a camera for a living. How can we help? I guess now what do you think is important we talk about as a creative community and how we could help each other with all of this?
In these matters, I think it's important to always start with empathy. I feel for both sides. I feel for brand marketers of needing to spend their ad dollars on ads so they can keep making those sales.
I understand. Like you need to have the Black Friday stuff. Like if you're e commerce retailer, you kind of bleed money all year and then you make all your money in those in this month. So you have to run a bunch of sales and kind of feeding the machine. But are you chasing the right stuff? So when it comes to the community photography community, if I have to give advice. I would like most people to be focusing on direct experiences with their audience. Not sort of empire building, which is like, let's get the most amount of audiences as fast as possible, but more in creating meaningful relationships. That's what I hope will happen. Not super shiny though. That's like doing, you know, that's like eating your vegetables. Right. It's more fun to just try to make viral reels.
Right.
And I just don't know what those reels translate into. Right. Let's see. Like any brand can have a million views on their reel if they pay for it. But what's next? You show that to your boss, sweet. You got million views. Did you move the needle? Well, we think so, we don't know.
Building Meaningful Relationships
So I hope there's going to be more, more meaningful work, but you know, help each other. I'm always big on collabs. I'd like to collaborate with more people on my newsletter. I'm trying to bring people in, do interviews or meet, learn from other photographers and share what I've learned from them. That to me I find extremely helpful and people resonate with that a lot. I know that photography is sort of feels like this solo endeavor, but there's really only upside to doing a collab with somebody else, whether it's through photos or written form or a video together. So I think that's the most powerful thing we can do is just collabs.
Yeah. Even just two days ago, I did a live event in Whistler. It's called Coffee and Creatives. And it was just, I think 55 people there in a small room. And I was interviewing a panel of three producers. I was speaking to, pitching and production. And just the energy in that room, the connections in that room. Thank God we can get off the screens for a second and just have human connection and enjoy just sharing our journeys and like troubles and being connected again. So I think I definitely share your vision for this and is also why I started this podcast. Is that the piece in around how I learned was through these connections, through one to one beer or coffee or whatever it is, like, those were the moments that actually shaped my career so that is why I started this podcast, because for me, you know, I dropped out of photography school semester and being like, I can't learn from a chalkboard. Like, this isn't how I do. And I learned more from one person assisting them in one day than I did in the whole semester of school. I was like, well, what am I doing? I'm just gonna go assist people or I'm gonna go take them out for dinner, whatever the heck it is. So that is what inspired this podcast. So sounds like we resonate on that.
Yeah, and I think you bring up a good point. It's like hosting these panels as sort of masterminds is so powerful. So if you have a space, you know, we're a big living room, you know, what's stopping you from hosting other creatives and from around the block, you know, for just some beers,
Coming back to your party metaphor, right?
Yeah, Starting new parties. Yeah. I think that that's huge. Like, also, you know, getting coached, hiring mentors is always important. I encourage everybody to, you know, spend money on themselves, like continued personal development. That's what mountain guides call it so you got to continue spending on yourself and find an accountability partner, I would say, as well.
That's a good tip, actually. That's a really good tip.
Yeah. Yeah. I think it's super powerful if you can find somebody who you look up to who knows your problems. Not too much, not your best friend, but somebody who knows some of your problems but can bring an outside perspective, see if you can be their partner, and they can be your accountability partner. Talk every two weeks.
The Power of Accountability Partners
Actually, I just joined a mastermind with three other guys, and it's just we're meeting once a month. On the second week, though, we check in, just, you know, video call, and it's just holding each other accountable to, like, where we're going. What's the vision? Where are we, like, checking in? And it's been actually crazy. So for me, getting up in the mornings is challenging. I've never been a morning guy, but since we started this mastermind, like, one month ago, you know, I was like, okay, my goal is 6am alarm goes off and I'm then diving into building a structure for my day, having that on the calendar. Then I'm moving into, like, vision, you know, Doing some visioning and journaling and then I'm diving into work at my desk by like 8. And without a doubt it's just been, I've been so focused and so dialed and honestly the reason I can say that's happened is because I had accountability. I was like, I literally told one of the guys, I said, I have to message you every morning. My scheduled plan of what I'm doing blocked out on the calendar. And before seven or I'm doing 50 pushups. And so I think it's just like if it's a simple thing of like, oh ****, I have to do the thing. Cause someone else is going to notice. And it's so simple, but it actually works. So it's gonna throw that out there.
50 pushups in a row.
I mean, if you can. Yes. So yeah. Depending on my, my energy, you know, you can hit it or not. That's what really is.
That's really good.
Speaking of the education side of things, I just kind of bashed photo and film school. What are your thoughts on that from an education perspective? Because you really dove into. And I would say when things weren't, when there wasn't much on the Internet in regards to how to learn how to do this stuff, you were filming behind the scenes vlogs and you started pushing out courses.
How do you think creatives should learn these days? What is the most bang for your buck when it comes to like, should they go to film photo school or where should they be tapping into?
Well, I don't know which US President said that, but my answer is yes.
So I love that one. So I'd say do it all as much as you can. I don't want to discredit school. To me it's really helped me a lot. Especially if I had stayed where I studied, I'd have a really strong network there. Like, pick why is it where you're going to study? Because if you stay there, it's going to be hugely powerful. All these guys, gals you study with will go and start businesses and you'll be working with them for the rest of your life, some of them.
So don't try to go study somewhere that you're not going to live at. And it's hard to know your life's plan but try to pick a good place to study if you can afford or you know, you can get a good loan, I think that higher education at prestigious schools will always be better for your Resume like that's just the community you get there is very powerful. I think it's a worthwhile investment that I didn't do because we couldn't afford it but if you can, obviously you're probably already doing that. But those schools, I think, are still very powerful. And it's still a cast thing but if you're a member of the cast, it's good. I'm not judging it. I'm just saying it's good to be a member of that cast if you can. It's helped you tremendously. It helped me tremendously. Now, I'd say yes, for sure study film school, study photography, but don't hope that it's going to solve every problem. You'll get maybe 20% of what you need to get, but you'll get friends, you'll get routine hygiene. You'll learn things you wouldn't learn somewhere else. Like, I learned a lot of Photoshop stuff that I still use nowadays from my old photography teacher. It's like, habits, the way you use. My proficiency with those tools came up from university. I'm really fast on any of those Adobe tools. And that just comes from doing it early. So that said, obviously, you always should also intern with people, assist people. So you said the best bang for your buck. The best bang for your buck is to intern with somebody. Like my interns, most of them do really well. I don't want to use the word proud because it could be belittling, but I'm really happy of where they are and I'm not saying it's thanks to me, but they've got really good things from the internship that they're still using now. But again, the interns you hire are the ones that anyways, have the right thing already so it's kind of a biased skew thing but because you get a lot of internship applications, but you only hire a few, so you're already getting the winners.
Yeah, and obviously there's only so many assistants or people you can hire being Alex, you know, and there's only so many professional and I think that's one thing. Okay, so let me just zoom that back. What are the qualifications? What should people have in place in order to kind of be able to assist and step into that role and really take advantage of that?
Well, I'll say that to you. You know, if you're out there listening to this and you want to be an intern for somebody or an assistant. Listen carefully, because I've gotten so many internship applications and 99% of them say the same ****. Here's my resume on a war doc. Don't care. Great. Now here's my portfolio on my website. Don't care. Two things I already don't care about, because I'm not hiring you to be a photographer, and I'm not hiring you for your resume. I'm hiring for personality, not skills. I'm hiring for fit. So all I want to know is, can now you and I have a coffee and have a decent moment? Because I only want to work with people I can hang out with. And I think that's valid for a lot of people, so if you can show somebody on an email, I made you this video. Whatever, I'll carry your heavy ******* cameras. Just make a joke. But what you want from an intern is somebody who's going to do everything you're not doing. And they just seem to forget that. They're like, yeah, I'm a really good photographer. Got all the skills and cool but that's you're not hired to do that. You're just hired to do all this stuff that's not glamorous, just so you have a chance. The privilege the opportunity to learn. To learn when it's time to learn. When we're doing a shoot and you're actually on the go and you're doing stuff that's useful and fun for your own portfolio, you're getting to add all these brands to your portfolio. You're going to get a lot of value. But you need to show whoever's hiring you that you can walk the line. That if the tripod was forgotten in the car because you forgot it or I forgot it and it's an hour down the ******* mountain, you're going to have to go get it, and you better have a good attitude. That's all I need to know.
I agree. It's just like understanding the role in which you're applying for.
Yeah, it's an internship. I've assisted guys when we lived in Australia for a while. I've assisted guys. I'm terrible assisting. You know, I really feel for those guys who hired me to be their assistant.
[44:45] I was just hopeless. But I learned a lot on those days at talking to clients. It felt so awkward to see them all looking at screens and tethered and I'd be putting all those photos on the tethering screen. But I learned a lot. You're going to be terrible the first times you do it so you better get some reps from the beginning.
Yeah and if you're lucky enough, someone will give you a chance. I think one of my hacks was offering behind the scenes so early in the days, like, how do you add value is always the question I'm asking. It's just like, you know, instead of just showing up and being like, hire me. It's just like, well, how I can just like here, I'm going to make you some assets that are going to make you look good, help you sell you on your next job. Like originally to build relationships, I was like, I'm not even going to charge. Like, I'll just show up, you know. And that was like the quote unquote coffee conversation and proving myself, like, hey look, I'm a good guy to be around. Here's some free assets that can help you build your brand and let me know if you're around, like, and with no pressure. And so that seemed to be a bit of a kind of an angle I took that was helpful.
Yeah. You show your value and there's no risk. Absolutely.
So it's clear, speaking with you that you are very business minded in the way you think about things and I had that assumption from doing my research and watching what you've been doing for years.So yesterday I went through and I actually tried to break down all the business models I could see within your ecosystem. So I'm going to take a stab at listing them out and I want to see if I miss any and then speak to them so I found 10.
Nice work.
So the things I see you have is obviously number one. Like you have the following. So you can do brand deals as an influencer and you have that angle which not everyone has. But you also are a brand ambassador I see for brands. I see that you have an agent, so that is helping with usage for your photos. Like, so they're dealing with that for you.
Syndication.
Yes. You also have online education. I've watched you push out courses and create a bit of a platform at one point with that online education piece. I see you pushing in person retreats now, which are a bit more high ticket but also like an incredible experience for someone. I see lightroom presets so you know, residual income coming in quietly in the back end. That can be once it's made, it's made. I see you selling prints, I see YouTube. So there's probably a little bit of ad revenue, but maybe not much. And then substack, which you just talked about, which is your mailing list that I saw as I subscribed yesterday, I see you have tiers. You have tiers that you can sign up for and different price points. And now full circle, you now there's Stan Wander, of course, and now FRR, the new version of the next agency. So how'd I do?
You did great.
What I miss?
Yeah, nice work. That's really, really valuable. You missed what you can't see. You missed the bottom of the iceberg. You just saw the top of the iceberg.
Yep.
The bottom of the iceberg is consulting. So I'd be the director of content for this project in Colorado called Siena Valley Club. It's a big community real estate development. And I've been the director of content for two years. And that keeps me busy. One day a week. I spent 40 to 50 days there on the ground shooting. And so it's sort of my day job. That is not easy to see, but that keeps me really busy. The rest is kind of nice to have. But that is one,consulting. So work with Adobe, the Lightroom board that's on my website. You could have missed it. And I also put money in some companies as an investor and slash advisor so I also sometimes get retainers and or equity in those companies. So if one day there's an exit, you know, I'd say those are the things that are harder to see because it's not like I publicized them, they're just there. But hey, if you have a core brand and you want to work together, love to see it. I always love to add value where I can and work on the strategy with you so reach out. Now to go back to your list, you know, the way you could see is. Yeah, obviously the most fortunate part is having the audience that's big. I do a couple times a year, probably a couple of those deals a year. I don't really seek them out. If they come, they come. If they don't come, they don't come. I decline a lot. It'd be funny because a lot of cell phone companies reach out to me, wanted me to advertise the cameras of their cell phones but if you segue into number two as a Canon Explorer of Light, as they call us, well, I can't work with any other camera brand, including phones so that's a big one. That's a few of the year that I say no to big paychecks but, you know, can't buy loyalty, can I? But they shouldn't stop reaching out because most of the time another friend shoots it, I'll just send it to somebody else because why not? I think the latest one was in Bali. I think Taylor Michael Burke did it for the Oppo.
Yeah, I had Taylor on the, on the pod as well.
Yeah, well, he just did it. It just always works out. Whoever's on the same wonder network will get, you know, get those. Oh no, there's brand deals. Well, sorry, there's a brand ambassadors again. I don't really seek them out but when there's a really good fit, like Salomon is a French company. I'm French. I do run, I do ski. It's just a no brainer. So we've been together for almost two years, going into three now. And I go shoot UTMB whenever they have ski events with their athletes. I just show up and shoot stuff and share it. I see them a couple times a year now. It's a great relationship. Love the guys. Yeah, that's definitely a great sign of what I do.
And when it comes to usage, I think this is something that I see when it comes to my friends who are just photographers, you know, they're charging day rates and that's it, you know, they don't even think about usage. And like I know that's there's so much money in that part of it and I think a lot of creatives get overwhelmed with like, how much do I charge? And how would you even approach that? How do you write that in the contract? And it's a million questions around that, like, can you speak to like, yeah, usage and photos.
Yeah, usage and photos. You know, there's a friend who does all this work for a big pharmaceutical company, a beauty pharmaceutical company. And one day he figured out that in one of his bids that the people who pay for usage are not the people who pay for the shooting so he started making two bids, big bids for each and they just paint it for usage. And he wasn't doing that before. And then one day they wanted to buy a photo and he realized it was a different almost arm of the business who bought the photo from him. He's like, hey, that's an example of how it works. He's like, well guess what? Usage's not included anymore, guys. They'll pay for it.
So that's an example. So if companies are very big, there's usually different budgets, different heads working there and you can totally do that. We never include flat out business in the quotes and this is a Maurice thing, so he makes sure that he's the business arm up there. But yeah, usage is never sort of royalty free forever enjoy unless it's specifically requested. And in that case it'll be heavily discussed and negotiated. It has happened a few times, but namely Apple wants that. For example, if you shoot for Apple, they'll just want to own everything. Give us the raw. Thank you, bye. But not everybody wants that. It's also a pain in the *** to do all those graphs. So people don't want them. But it's also a negotiation factor. If somebody wants perpetuity for all bds while the quote is this much, let's say the quote is 100. And then they're like, well ****, our budget is 50. Well instead of you being like okay, my new price is 50, but in any negotiation you don't take stuff out for free. This is not like the Teletubbies world. Yeah, okay, you have less budget, that's fine. We will take out licensing then. It gives you this huge tool of negotiation and it's real stuff like yeah, sure, you want perpetuity, very expensive.
Oh, you only want one year now.
Cool. Yeah, maybe we can align closer to 50. So make sure that the usage you give and if they don't know what usage they want, then just give a two year usage for the media they want. If it's for digital, to skip digital and unless there's specific requests, don't make it because they could come back down the road and be like, you know what, we want to print these photos. You want to put this on your private investor decks and print it and send it out to all the investors? Well yeah, there's an extra fee.
Yeah. Do you have any advice on how to come up with that structure? Because I mean you have Maurice, I guess, kind of doing the business arm, but I think a lot of photographers just are like, I have no clue about this stuff so I won't do it. How do you even begin? You just mentioned a few things. Okay, two year social media, blah, blah. I Know what. It's about like how do people learn about that?
Dude, I bet you there's a class on that.
I mean if there was, I should find it and link to it because I don't know, I've never found one personally but. Or you should make one. We should make one. I think go to Freelift Live or one of those eLearning specialty websites or YouTube or follow a photo editor also is a good one about sharing that stuff. The bids are always very enlightening in there and you can see how bids are built. So check out a photo editor on Instagram, Google. I think you can figure that out. You know, Getty used to have this usage calculator too. I don't know if this still out there, but everybody used it back in the day. Otherwise find a usage calculator and if you have no idea, then start guessing or hash the brands or be genuine. Like you know what, what's your budget for the usage? I don't know. When Microsoft came around, I had no idea how much it was worth. Right. They wanted to buy this photo for all these things. The biggest amount I could think about in my head was like $5,000. But I didn't say anything. I was like, what's your budget? And they're like, ooh, okay, that's your budget. Oh yeah. Okay, Yep. Deal. Marshal Chupa: So I could have missed out, right? Alex Strohl: And I was very candid about it. It's like, I have no idea. I never sold a photo for this much usage. You want worldwide in perpetuity, A worldwide exclusive for four years. Exclusive. That's a big one. That's more expensive. Usually you double the quote if it's exclusive.
Yeah. So maybe have a lesson early on.
I did have a lesson early on. So I always ask for the budget. If you don't know, ask. I don't think brands are out there trying to squeeze you in general.
That's a loaded question or loaded statement.
Okay, I say big companies are not out there to squeeze you. Local coffee shop is maybe not trying to squeeze you, but they've still got no idea. So don't ask that.
All right. Yeah, that makes sense. And when you look at all these like revenue streams, you kind of just said you have almost a job and then all these are extra on top. Like for someone who is just making day rates as a photographer, like what else should they be thinking about to get out of this feast or famine life cycle you Live in a day rate lifestyle. Well, don't live in a day rate lifestyle, right? No, I think full stop, I'd say don't live in a day rate lifestyle. I've never done that from day one because I never liked the perception of trading time for money. And that just felt, I don't know how to say this, just felt a bit not degrading. It's not degrading. I just don't know. I just don't like it. It doesn't leave me much room for imagination. It's very black or white and creative work is not black or white. I'm like, sure, these guys can pay me for a day, but I'm gonna spend who knows how many hours thinking about this ****. And I can't put that in a, in a bid because it was like, oh, I'm gonna track the hours, I'm thinking about this project. No. So I was like, you know, to me this is more like, this is how much it costs to be bothered. It is definitely work and it's, it's painful to sit down and sort of bleed out information and thoughts about this project. So Charlie Munger, rest in peace, he passed a few months ago, was big on that.
He was, and I'm not taking his side or not his side. I just appreciated the fact that he said, sure, we're rich, but it's not because you're rich that it's easy to give money.
And he's talking about him and Warren. It's not because you're rich that it's easy to give money away. This money cost me a lot of pain, sleepless nights to acquire it. It's not like he went, he came here for free. So I understand that perspective. It's like, man, this cost me something. Whether it's emotional, physical. So I didn't want to just trade time for money.And I think that there is a need for that in sort of the most tiers of photography and filmmaking. But if you can put yourself as soon as you can into the higher tier, create your own space there, then you can actually charge a project fee, committee fee. Like, when somebody asks me how much it is to do something, it's more like, oh, you want me to go next week? Well, obviously it's more expensive because it's more annoying, right? Like I gotta drop everything for this thing. Okay, maybe I can do it, maybe I can. But then it's more expensive already, right? So it's all like, do you have to be honest with yourself, how much is your time worth? So it's more like a real conversation you need to have with yourself. And I know that that stems from having some kind of self worth and I have a lot of empathy. If you haven't been given that at childhood, right, because that stuff's given. So this is really difficult. Like friends have, you know, low self esteem with that, like, man, it's not worth anything. It's my, you know, it's. I get it, it's tough. But from. At least I was lucky enough that especially my mom gave me a lot of self esteem. It's like, you know, whatever you do, you know, don't believe them kind of thing. Like, you got this.
Yeah, it's great. That's something really good she did. You know I would be a troublemaker and she'd be like, yeah, I don't know what they're talking about those teachers. Bad education at the time, terrible. But right now I'm really thankful because it gave me this sort of independence of thinking. Once teenage came, I was like completely detached in my head.
I was like, man, I can't do anything. So I know it stems from having some kind of self worth. So to me, I think I have a bit of self worth. I think my work's worth it. It's worth something. I deserve it. This is when you ask ultra athletes, all the prep they've put before a race. And I love asking these guys these questions like, you know, so how do you feel on race day? You know, a lot of people will say, well, I deserve this. I trained for this for years. This is the culmination of years. I deserve to win, I deserve to race as fast as I can. I've earned it. So this is the same. If you put all these reps, you deserve it.
I agree. 3000 reps and many more that we haven't seen. And I mean that just speaks to something so important. And that's just the mindset in which you're just speaking to the piece around self worth, self confidence. I can't tell you how many photographers that I know should be shooting for the Nike, the Apple, the whatever. And it's just like they're shooting the small business that, you know, for the day rate and they're Struggling. And I'm just like, man, your work is freaking incredible. Like, but the bit like the mindset and the business acumen isn't there to combine those two. And I mean, that's also why people get agents to balance those two out but I think you sounds like from your perspective, you had the ability to see that in the beginning, which is freaking incredible. And it makes sense why you are where you are now.
Yeah, I think it came down to a good childhood. Honestly, that really helps. I had a great childhood. I was really left alone. Total freedom. So kind of developed independent thinking really quickly and I taught myself to learn things myself. So I think that I'm trying to teach that to my daughters. You have to let them fail, right? Not like helicopter parent them. Let them figure it out for themselves. It's painful to watch, but very painful. But no, I'd say that this is the tragedy of life. And I've had fights with friends over that. I remember, I don't know how many years ago, many years ago we were on this Ryanair discount airline from Europe, going to Norway to shoot the northern lights or something and my friend Julien is a romantic French, hopeless romantic. You know, I think the whole is unfair and it is, but he believes that every day he feels that. And there's this flight attendants kind of started rapping on the microphone. And you know, at the time I'm like, whatever, 18 and just total *******. And you know, I'm like, dude, this guy sucks. Why is he rapping? He's like, no, dude, I think he's good. I'm like, no, bro, if he wasn't good, he wouldn't be a flight attendant. And he's like, no, no, you missed the point. Right? It's just like the tragedy of life is that not everybody has the mindset to think like that, right? It's like, no, maybe he's just a flight attendant because he doesn't know what to do. But to me, my instinct, sort of 18 year old, I'm like, no, bro, he wasn't. If he was any good, he wouldn't be flattened. Not that it's a low level job, but he'd be a rapper. And you know, within hindsight now I, I understand that. I have a lot more empathy for all that because most of my life was about driving. Every decision was driven with the goal. And I felt like I had total control over my life just putting inputs and I thought everybody would do the same, but that's not the way it works. So I'm learning now to be a better person around that, you know, like so I think half of my life was like trying to develop perfection in my life, like build the perfect life. I'd be the happiest in. And I think the second part of my life, starting now, is about embracing imperfection. So there's balance in there.
Marshal Chupa: I can relate to that a lot. So for someone who's listening to this and just like, well, I'm a bit lost. I'm trying to make this creative thing work. I love photography or I love being filmmaking, directing. It's just like, how do you even begin to shift that mindset? It sounds like it came natural to you. So maybe there's not a right answer here. But I mean, I'm just sitting here thinking about all my friends, peers in this industry and I'm just watching the talent levels that exist and I'm just like, man, why? Yeah again, why are they not shooting for the Nike, the apples, all the things like how does someone build mindset, self confidence?
Do you want to know why they're not shooting for the Nike or the Apples? Or you already have an idea? I have an idea.
Okay, let's hear it.
The reason they're not shooting for the Nike or the Apples, as unfair as it is, it's because it's always about who you know. And if whoever is buddies with the person at the agency of Nike or Apple always been in contact with them and is frequently in contact with this person and is moderately talented, that's the person who's getting the job.
Yeah, I agree with that. So thank you for calling that out.
It's a people business. It's a people business. You go out, you meet people, you stay home. Bit harder.
Okay, so let's tangent off that that's important. If you don't know the person to get the apple, the Nike, then you're never going to get it. So then.
No.
Oh, I shouldn't say never. Things can happen. But to tangent into the relationship building, how does one build a relationship with someone who has the power to give them that opportunity?
My friend Chase Jarvis will say that the best time to plant a tree was 30 years ago. The second best time is now. So think about it as planting a tree. And this is something he's big on. But you should identify who those people are who you want to work with, not Nike.
Who cares about Nike? It's like who is running the whatever department you want to work with. Who's the boss there? Not the low level, just the boss who's, who's going to, who's got the checkbook and then identify those people and then follow them on LinkedIn, on Whatever and just be there, interact with those people and leave comments. I don't know, just be present for a whole year, see what happens. Genuine present, not just emojis, just generally present, interact with them, offer, offer thoughts. If they're good and if they're saying something thoughtful that you agree with, just tell them that's it.
And you know why? Because all of the interns that I've hired, assistants, all the assistants that I've hired are people who've done that with me. There's gotta be 20, 30 people that are revolving in my comments, my DMs, my emails from long time ago.
We're like always leaving little nice comments, saying a little dm. There's no way I'm going to ignore them after three years of this person. Do that every week, right? So the day I'm like, well ****, I'm in New Zealand, who do I know in New Zealand? Hey, no, this guy Rich. Yeah, Rich is good guy. Yeah. Hey Rich, you want to come shoot this for me? Right? That's the way the brain works. That's the way human relationships work. You need to be top of mind. So it sounds far fetched, but if you put in the reps, there's no reason this person will at least ignore you. Obviously then what you need to have is a site they will see something once they click your profile, your website, whatever, they need to see something good. If there's nothing to see there, you've blown it. You've wasted your time, everybody's time. So make sure obviously you've got the backend deal, the portfolio, whatever, everything, that's fine, everything, everybody's got that. But nobody's got the relationship.
I agree. I feel like the talent and the skills and all that, it's like table stakes. And then it's how do I stay top of mind because I think it's like you need to make some sort of rule. Like you need to make eight impressions on someone before they trust you enough to actually connect and bring you onto something or whatever that is. So like the little like you just said, the quick comment, maybe the email, the opinionated opinion on something that actually mattered to them, something that. Yeah. And then someone happens to refer, say your name to them and then they're like, oh yeah, that person yeah, rings a bell and all of a sudden you build more trust. Cause there's a connection there, like all those little things.
Whatever you do, don't be needy. Don't ask for anything. Don't say, hey, I'd love to shoot this for. No, no, no, no. It's all about this. To the other person, you just supporting character. The moment you start to be transactional, then you've blown it.
I mean, that's super important when it comes to.
Was it like, dating the same?
You know, I was gonna say that. I was just gonna say it's just like dating. Yeah, yeah, same.
It's the same thing. Same mechanics again.
Show up, add value. That was my ticket.
Be present. Also be present on the Instagrams. This other gal I work with calls it corporate flirting. Heidi, she calls it corporate flirting. I love it. She's like, you know, before we reach out to somebody, just be on their DMs. Reach out to the company's DMs. So three months before. Leave comments, whatever. Just be active. Interact. So then the moment they. You reach out, they're like, oh, yeah, yeah, we've been.
Yeah, we've seen him. You know, it's familiarity. You've built it. Start now.
I agree with all that. Again. Yeah, thinking about dating. Same thing, right? You just show up. First point of contact. You know, that's always like, a bit of, like, nerves and like, it's, you know, you're trying to, you know, and people can feel if you're trying to be, you know, transactional about it. Going straight for the number, whatever the heck it is. It's just like, versus just showing up and being like, oh, I'm just like a good human. Who are you? Like, how's it going? What's life like? Let's connect. And then if that feels good, then you're like, well, maybe we should keep in touch. Versus, like, I'm going in with the mindset of the number. You know, I think it's like a different. Again, transactional is a different energy, a different mindset, and I think they both lead to different places.
So, yeah, honestly, whoever, you know, if you're listening, just Google roller necks. That's what people did. They had the Rolodex. You know, presidents would have very big Rolodex just because they need people to raise money. So there's the same idea. This is nothing new. We're not inventing anything. It's the idea of reaching out to people here and then, you know, going through your list of context, I got old school people like that who send me emails about cool videos of land rovers or whatever. That's their way of roller decking me. I'm like, cool, man.
Yeah, yeah.
But yeah, know what I mean? Like, these are just good people, salespeople, people who had sales do that. You should be a salesperson, learn from them, get some sales training. Good one. Read the books if you want, obviously.
Yeah. And then the same talk about money. I like to even just because I know you're a business guy, I want to expand even outside of the creative field. Like there are stocks, real estate, like all the things, like what other things have been able to support your life that you've done? Maybe early on or because I think, I don't know the creative chat I was doing live the other day. I just, I think a lot of people want to know how you build a foundation of financial success. And oftentimes I think as creatives, like, sure, we have our creative things, we do, but then there's other things that are holding our foundation together. And I'm curious what yours might be. It's very simple. I've always tried to save more money than I spend.
Great.
ou can't do that every year. I'm not saying it's possible every year. Some years you nail it and you save even more than you spend. Some, some years you don't, you fail.
But that's the, that's the, the version where you have, you know, you get big project checks come in and then you have nothing for a few months. Well, this is the great, great time to throw that money. You know, put the, put it aside already. And my way of doing that so I can never touch it is like I put it in stocks, sort of opportunistic dollar cost averaging, you know, meaning. Opportunistic, meaning that if it's, you know, if there's an opportunity, I'll go. But heavier one month than the other, for example. Right. If something's undervalued. So I do follow a lot of financial education just because I'm interested in like keep tabs on the markets. I've always been interested in that. I started investing at, you know, whenever I had a bit of spare money in probably 2014. And you know, if saving more than you spend sounds completely out of, out of range, which is fair, maybe you're a big spender, uh, in that case, you know, try to put 10% of your paycheck every month into the markets.
Just some index Funds, you know, Vanguard V, what a VTF is calling Vix. Pick a few of those. Um, yeah, I'd say that obviously low level. Low level thing that, you know, you. We've all heard the story of the UPS driver who retired a millionaire just by putting 15% of his income every day.
I think they call it like couch potato investing. Right. You pick your ETF and you know, it's diversified based on that basket of stocks that, you know, and you just. If you auto set.
Well, here's the thing. You can't really auto set when you're a freelancer. This is something I learned. So again, the percentage thing you just mentioned, I think is important because if you're like, okay, 10% of my paycheck is going in there versus every month, I'm going to allocate whatever 500 to $1,000. ome months are so dry that you're like, there's no way I can do that. But when you have a big paycheck come in, you can. So I think the percentage have been like 10% of X paycheck. Like, that's been a really good method for me. So that's cool that you also mentioned that.
And it's painful. Nobody wants to do that, obviously.
No, it's not fun because then you.
Have taxes and all that ****. So that's why I try to put it into, into work as soon as I can, so I can. I don't touch it. I don't want to sell stock. And then you have pay capital gains. So I've rarely, rarely sell stocks. I only sell the duds at the end of the year, the bad stock picks. And this is probably the time where people say it, this is not investment advice. But yeah, I sell my duds, write it off. Yeah, nobody wants to do that stuff. But again, there's no better time than today to start doing that. Yeah, I think aside from that, I'm not, you know, I'm big into crypto and always been interested in it. You know, I've always been interested in the sort of the new thing, Flickr, Instagram, whatever. I'm just the early adopter guy. So that's my thing. So I was like, oh, crypto, let's go, whatever. So at a time I was 50% crypto guy, 50% of my holdings were crypto. Yeah, yeah, it's painful. It gets painful and it gets good. You know, you just live and learn. Like one year people will think bitcoin's done. And then the year after, like, oh my God, best thing ever and then come will come the next phase. So you get a lot of, you get, you get to write out a lot of emotional waves. It's nice.
And I think as a freelancer you learn to ride those emotional waves. Like some of my nine to fives and they're plugged in and they're like, you know, the only thing they'll ever invest in is a, you know, an ETF and that's secure and that returns experts small percentage here. Whereas like I feel I'm quite risk adverse because of the career path I've chosen. I'm so used to the like insane fluctuations of like a bunch of money and then no money and like learning to emotionally regulate myself between those moments. Don't get me wrong, sometimes it's like, wow, this is. I don't know how I'm going to get out like this dark valley or whatever it is, but all of a sudden you're like, wow, I'm on the most beautiful mountaintop. Like, where did this come from? And so it's such a. I don't know, there's like a certain emotional regulation that comes with freelancing and the stock market that I've correlated, which is really interesting.
I think it's a great point you make that there's a correlation. Like we're almost like more trained for it. People in the freelance industry are more trained for those ups and downs of the stock markets because it reflects the hard jobs. Yeah, that's a really good point. Never thought about that.
Just wired for risk.
Pretty much. Yeah, painful.
Yeah! Well, this has all been really awesome.
I think the last thing, if you're open to one last question here is in around your systems and processes. Okay. You have like, when I look at all those things, you got 10, 11 revenue streams. What teams do you have in place or processes and systems have you built that allow you to manage all of that? Because for me, I know I get really overwhelmed when it comes to like, let's say you have the mailing list and you got the Instagram post and you got the fricking every. All the little facets. Like you only have so much time and energy in a day. You're being a dad. Like all those things. What have you put in place and who helps you with all this?
So I'd like to say that I have a great system called the Pomodoro. Whatever, whatever. But no, I actually don't have a system. I work off of intuition. Right. It's like two options. You're either very structured and rigid and you run with the schedule. I don't really do that. So I work off of intuition. And magically, amazingly, at the end of the year, everything that needed to be done has gotten done. I don't know how.
Well, you're a prodigy. Congratulations.
Well, everything, as I said, everything that's important, that's only 10%, the 90% that I wanted to do hasn't gotten done. But the 10% that's really important somehow gets done. The one that keeps my clients happy. So I think that it comes down for me at talking priorities. Every week I check on my priorities, what needs to happen the end of the month, by the end of the year. And I just take a piece of paper and I write the stuff that's in my head there. So I have this obsessive thing where I keep things in my head and I get them out on paper. It feels great. And then I need to go back to it next week and do it again. But that keeps me on what is really important. Right? And you know what's important when you've decided where you want to go. So for me, I. And you never. You've decided as if it's a permanent thing. You pick a direction in. In a way, like for me, it's about less reliance on photography and. And more because I don't want to have to be in Bali next week. All this sounds great, but it sounds like a pain in the *** as well. So I want to build things that I can run from anywhere. That's why the agency frr. It's going to be great for that. So I've picked that that matches my goals. It's like, man, I want to run things from anywhere. I'm a creative. Creative director. I don't need to be in every shoot. I can create, direct it. Good. So let's invest in things that do that. So what does give me that? Well, like you said, education presets the agency. Those things support that. So that I'm keeping that in mind. And if I'm working on that, I am well aware that I'm stealing stuff from the other part.
Right.
I'm stealing time from the other part of the business. But if it's a part that is not as important because it doesn't match my goals, it's okay. But I have to live with it. So as long as you don't know exactly where you want to go, like, man, I want to more. I want to do more of this or less of that, then it's hard to know where you're going, but once you know that, then it's very easy ish to prioritize. So I do those check ins. The team is fluctuating. Although Graham McDonald is an amazing producer. He runs the retreats. He's a producer of the retreats. My friend Isaac Johnston, he runs the. No one sees videos like he films and edits. So that's great. So you just need to have a few people you trust in place. If you can't afford to pay them, just make them partners. Pay them, you know, partners in, you know, profit share and then that's it. If you have people you trust in place, then it's like Maurice 12 years in the, in the making. I'll trust Maurice with anything. I know that he's got my interest at heart and that he'll do everything to protect that. So you just need people who you trust. I'm a trusting person. I generally trust people.
Yeah. So alignment business partnerships, finding those good people that you really do trust is an important key, at least in my personal journey. But you also have to try things. I think in my personal journey it's like, okay, you try a little business partnership. And one of my maybe pieces of advice is don't over commit in the beginning because there's always a phase of is this going to work? Is this not like, does this feel good? I think but if you get enough reps in with someone, you're like, okay, yeah, this is an obvious fit. Like, let's go the distance. It sounds like you found a few of those people for you.
Yeah, I'm always, always looking for new more. But yeah, yeah, once you find somebody, keep them.
Well, as we wrap things up, I mean, where can people go to find you? I mean you're all over the place, so. And where, where do you want people to go? Because I have a feeling it's substack.
Yeah. AlexTrol.substack.com or just AlexTrol substack on Google. Hell yeah. There's a newsletter, one every two weeks most times. That's where the most value is given. And YouTube. Alex troll.
Awesome.
Oh, and if you're a brand, Sorry, this is a new one. If you're a brand Manager, check out studiofr.com to see what we're up to on the brand side.
Yeah, amazing.
Well, Alex, this has been a depthly conversation and I appreciate all the insights and intricacies of what's going on behind the scenes. So thanks for coming on.
Yeah, of course. Being transparent as I could. Thank you so much, Marshal.
Yeah, thank you.
Okay, that was creative director, photographer and filmmaker Alex Strohl. I have a deep respect for someone like Alex, who has had an incredible amount of success us throughout his career and yet still remains humble while being vulnerable enough to share with us his inner workings of his journey.
I encourage you to check out some of his work@alexstrohl.com find him on Instagram lexstrohl S T R O H L or sign up for his newsletter on Substack, which is really well thought out and you can tell he puts a lot of love into it.
And that's @alextrol.substack.com an effort to continually grow grow this podcast and help you make a living doing what you love. I have a request. I want you to DM me on Instagram arshalcupa and let me know what is one thing you're struggling with most or who do you want me to bring on next as a guest in future episodes, I'll be speaking with photographers, cinematographers, directors, producers, reps and anyone who has decided to take this ambitious leap of faith and making a life and a living behind the lens.
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