Photographer Derek Emge

In this insightful interview, Patrick talks with Derek Imke, a successful photographer from San Diego, about his journey from a service-based photography business to establishing a lucrative fine art print enterprise. With real numbers and practical advice, Derek shares how he transitioned from his previous career as a lawyer into photography, leveraging social media, online sales, and innovative marketing strategies. Learn about his unique experiences, from smaller art shows to landing a major $29,000 installation for a medical facility. Discover the importance of diversifying revenue streams, engaging with the community, and continuously innovating to grow a successful photography business.

Podcast Transcribe

Patrick Shanahan: When you're a photographer and you're trying to turn your passion into a business, you have two mountains to climb. The first mountain is how can you get paid being behind the lens, and that more often than not leads into some aspect of service-based photography. Essentially, you're trading hours for dollars in the service of portraits or sporting events, or you're shooting pets or whatever the case may be. While not an easy mountain to climb, it's the easier of the two. The harder mountain is how do you move to a fine art print-related business where you're getting paid sort of passively for the work that you've already created, whether it's corporate installations, selling prints, selling limited editions, and that's why I love this story today with Derek. He started out like many in the service-based portion of the business, and over the last couple of years, he's really been able to transform the one revenue silo into two revenue silos and then you just keep growing that fine art print revenue silo, keeping the service base going with the eventual goal of not having to do the service-based stuff if you don't want to. So this is a great story with real numbers. I'm super partial to Derek because he lives down in San Diego. I love San Diego. So I think there's a ton of insights that you can gain on how he's done it. Highly encourage you to follow on socials, per usual. All of the stuff, the links, his website, his socials, everything will be in the show notes. And I'm really curious about feedback on this whole new series in general. So if you're watching on YouTube, leave me a comment whether or not you're liking these episodes, whether you want to see more individual artist stories like this at all different phases of their careers and stages of the game and niches and such, or what you would like to see more of. So leave me a comment if you're listening on Story or leave me a comment on YouTube. And as always, if you're enjoying the show, I would highly appreciate a rating. But let's get started with today's episode, and here is Derek.

Derek Emge: Hey guys, Patrick from Art Storefronts back with another customer interview, and I'm fired up about this one because I have the multi-talented San Diego native, Derek Emge. Do I pronounce that right? Emge? Yes, you do. I go by Emge, but I'll answer anything. Okay, Emge. Then what would you classify yourself as? A surf photographer technically or an ocean photographer? Yeah, you know, I struggle with that. I struggle with that. I kind of when I started this, I thought everybody had to have a niche and be able to identify themselves. I guess I would say coastal photographer, coastal-influenced photographer, but I do a lot of surf photography and some sports photography as well. So that's sort of the non-marketed side here, but it's an important part of what I do. Yeah, it's all about the "what is my brand, what is my niche?" when I like to shoot a bunch of different things, which is not easy. Now, during the course of preparing for this thing, I found a video on your Instagram that I just want to show because I think it's hilarious, and then I want to ask you about this pivot from your previous career to your current. So this is the one that I found: "Ever since I quit my law practice and took up photography as a full-time business, people think I spend my whole time, my whole weekend, out shooting beautiful pictures out by the ocean, out in the mountains. But you know what? It's Sunday afternoon, and my subject matter for the day is a vacuum cleaner, a scrub brush, and a toilet cleaner. Yeah, I got to clean my house too. I hate it. I'd much rather be out taking pictures, but price you pay to live in a nice house. Hope you have a great weekend everyone. Nothing fun to see here. Moving on." So you were a lawyer, a practicing lawyer, and you're like, I'm done with that. I want to be a photographer. To which all your friends and family were like, Derek, what the hell is wrong with you? That is a lucrative career that you went to a lot of school for. Give me the background on that decision.

Derek Emge: Yeah, well, actually, I would back up another step and say I was a photographer first, not professionally. I got my first camera when I was in seventh grade, and all my friends growing up knew I was the guy with the camera. So wherever we went or whatever nutty stuff we did, I was the one taking pictures of our pranks that we did in high school. I love the thought about, "I was the guy with the camera," and I loved that. I took photography classes in college, darkroom days, remember those days where you print on actual film? But anyway, I never considered it as a potential career. It was just something I loved to do. And when I got married, we both, my wife and I, went to law school together, and we started practicing. That was 35 years ago or something. So I did my stint for three decades in the law, had a phenomenal practice, did really well, well enough that we could retire. And so as soon as we retired from the practice of law, we were actually down at a local gallery-slash-frame shop getting a picture framed, and they had a show coming up, and the owner loved the picture we were framing and said, "Hey, you want to be in our exhibit?" And I said, "Why not?" I threw one up on the wall, sold a few pieces at that first exhibit, and then I thought, okay, I'm going to do this. And that's how I began.

Patrick Shanahan: Wow. And how did you find Art Storefronts originally out of curiosity?

Derek Emge: Yeah, so I started out kind of floundering. I did a ton of Facebook ads, and I was on Saatchi Art, that was a failure, but I was doing well in the galleries. I was in a gallery in Laguna Beach up by you, and I was in a gallery down here in Coronado. I'm in Coronado, California, by the way. And I was trying to, I was spending a lot of money just on ads trying to expand out, and then somebody, I think, reached out to me from Art Storefronts, or I clicked on it, must have been that I must have clicked on a promo ad and thought, well, maybe this one looks pretty good.

Patrick Shanahan: Super interesting. What I love is, you know, we have this private internal Facebook group, and people would post on there occasionally, and I saw one of yours. Okay, and I'm obviously a huge tech nerd, right? And AI is everywhere. So, you know, like AI is such a contentious topic, right? Like, some people get really fired up on it in one way or another. But I took a photo of you, okay? This is just because you've never seen this, you're going to laugh. I took a photo of you, turned it into a Pixar character, okay? I voiced your comment, switched the voice, and then made a video. So I want to show this to you, but it's not an AI gimmick. Really, what I want to talk about on this is that you talked about the progression of your business, right? And a lot of times early on, those numbers are not sexy. And your numbers, we'll just play it, and then I can't wait to see what you think about this because I think it's... I've been with Storefronts now for two and a half years, and I'm happy to say that my sales have increased nicely each year. I've gone from

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3,000to16,000 to $52,000 in sales for 2023. I sold 103 prints, 25 cards, 13 mugs, four calendars, two pillows, and a puzzle. I've also landed one large corporate installation in 22 photo shoots that never would have happened without the website and consistent marketing. Thank you, Art Storefronts, and looking forward to 2024. So anyway, it's crazy. I know. First of all, you made me look like I'm 15 again. Thank you very much. That's hard to do. We got to look out for us agent folk, need to look out for each other, you know, we gotta take care of it. But I loved that progression, you know, in you honestly sharing those numbers because that's what it looks like in the real world when a business is growing, right? Like, that's how it actually goes. So I'd love to hear you sort of talk about that journey and how you've seen the growth gone in your sales, and has the trajectory continued?

Derek Emge: Yeah, you know, I posted that on the member portal or the Facebook page just because I had seen so many people getting frustrated by the process and having, and I've only been in this for what, two and a half years with you guys, so I'm a neophyte, I'm nowhere near where I want to be, but it's a constant struggle. But I got a lot of negative vibes from the group, a lot of frustration, I should say, frustration. And we're all there, I mean, we feel at different times. And then I got, I just frankly, I think I got lucky on a few breaks, and I have my fingers in a lot of different aspects. So I wanted to share that just that progression, and then I hope it continues, although we'll see if it does. You know, a lot of it's, I don't sell a ton on the website, but I do sell from the website, and that's one thing I want to clarify because a lot of people here say they haven't sold anything on the website. Some of it's midsize, some of it's been big, like, you know, a thousand, I sold a thousand-dollar piece off the website, but I sell a lot of small things too, like a lot of the merchandise. I'm a big believer in what you're doing and promoting with that. Yeah, so that sells, but all of those led to contacts and other projects. So last year, a whole point that we're trying to pound home is just the number of new customers acquired per year is directly proportional to the revenue potential of the business. That's it, or directly reflective of the revenue potential of the business. And this whole journey is so uncharted. I don't know where I'm going, and I just keep throwing it out there. And as I've always told my kids, there are opportunities in life where you're going down the path, and there's a fork in the road, and if you're prepared at that moment, you get to decide to go right or left. If you're not prepared, you're going to go whichever way you were going thoughtlessly and go on. So opportunities in life, I've always believed and preached, you have to be ready for them. And so I just throw my net out there and see what sticks and then go. So as a way of example, I did an art fair here in Coronado, a small art fair. I mean, it was fun, I made like a thousand bucks and met a lot of people, got some new emails, but one of the people that I met and chatted with is a local entrepreneur here who is doing a startup business. She contacted me six to nine months later and explained what she was doing. She's starting a business, and she needed some photography for her website, for her products, to do product launch, and for her marketing material. And we entered into an agreement to do at an hourly rate, and that was a ton of fun. But I did not anticipate that absolutely not. And it's a sports-branded concept, and so I was able to do a lot of sports photography for her with athletes using their product, and that's just launching now. Will it continue on? I have no idea, but it was fun to do, and now that's in my repertoire, and I can market that to other potential people as well.

Patrick Shanahan: 100% social proof, right? And like, what was the ROI of that show? It wasn't the $1,000 that you sold. It was the secondary deal, right? And you mentioned luck. There's this kind of like guru startup investor guy named Naval Ravikant. He's amazing, but anyway, he always talks about luck, right? And everyone hears the word luck and thinks dumb luck, right? Like, you're walking through the casino, and you throw a coin in that slot machine, and somebody charged it up, and you pull and you win. Yeah, okay, there's dumb luck, but there's also luck that comes as a residue of the execution that you're actually doing, right? So you say you've been lucky, and I know you haven't been lucky. It's because you're out there and you're grinding, right? I've got two quick questions that have come online. One, I'll throw them up here for you, is how much money have you been spending on your journey? Obviously, you've invested with us. Where else have you invested in your business? That's a curious question.

Derek Emge: So great question. So the first two years, I was in the red, and my accountant was telling me, "Okay, you've got three to four years, and then you're going to have to declare this as a hobby and not as a business." And so that was kind of scary, but then fortuitously, last year was a big year, and I was, so last year, I grossed, I sold in product about

000

53,000,54,000 of merchandise, prints, art, and my profit for the year was $27,000. So clearly in the black now. And my marketing expense has decreased actually. I spend much less now than I did when I was kind of floundering and buying Facebook ads and things like that. So my marketing budget, I call it budget, it's nothing written down or set up, but I've focused now on using tote bags and giveaways and phone cases as my marketing tool. So I pretty regularly, I guess, a couple of times every few months, will give away phone cases to like my highest follower. So, you know, Facebook gives you that little thing every so often that says, "So and so is your favorite fan or whatever." Yeah, yeah. I'll reach out to them and say, "Thank you, Facebook told me you've commented more, you're one of my loyal followers. I'd love to make you a cell phone cover of your choice. Let's look at some images." And that's been really fun to do. Yeah, I've given away a bunch of tote bags, and I'm starting now finally to see them around the neighborhood here, which is really cool. You know, going to the store, and you see someone carrying your bag. So I think I'll continue to market that way as opposed to like buying ads or something like that. They're just ads. The merch is just ads. That's just what they are.

Patrick Shanahan: Have you heard me rant on cell phone cases by the way?

Derek Emge: Oh yeah, oh yeah.

Patrick Shanahan: I honestly believe that they are the number one most advantageous piece of merch creatives can be selling. And when I say selling, break even, giving away, losing money on it, doesn't matter. It all makes sense when you look at the number of pickups per month. It's absolutely, or per day, it's absolutely staggering. Have you looked at your own data on that?

Derek Emge: I have not. That would be interesting to see, but don't want to look because it's scary.

Patrick Shanahan: Oh, you mean how many times I pick up the phone? Yeah, oh, I think it would be infinity. It's the, you could only count how many times I actually put it down. Yes, I mean, I literally just did a podcast episode on this because I'm so hot on the topic. I want like everyone to understand, I am just not sure that there is another piece of anything that you could sell that will have that many eyeballs per day on your art. No one looks at your art that much. You don't look at your art that much, you know, 150 times a day. Like, insanity.

Derek Emge: Yeah, Patrick, I heard you when you, this was now maybe what, two, three months ago when you started this, and it sort of built with a little bit of momentum, and I was listening to that thinking, okay, this resonates, this makes sense. And then Mary came on, and Mary said, "Oh, I put my phone down in the restaurants that I go to." Bingo, right? So I have multiple ones. So I live in Coronado. Coronado Bridge is a mainstay here, and this is my cover this week. I have several of them depending on where I go. I'll swap these out. I go to a restaurant, and I put this face up on the table, and especially if you're sitting at the bar for happy hour, I'll get comments on it maybe one out of every 10 times, and that starts a discussion. And then I'll just say, "You like it? Hey, let me see your phone," and I'll put them right to my website right there. I set up the gift store like you suggested, and I'll zero right into the cell phone cases, and I haven't made any sales on that to be honest, but the conversation started.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, the conversation started, and you've acquired a customer, and you know, it's now running around. Now, have you been putting any branding on them at all?

Derek Emge: No, and I need to start. Absolutely need to. I need my name, like, where is it? I need my name right here, yeah, my logo. I just, and I think, you know, this is super nascent, and we're just sort of extemporaneously figuring out how to best leverage them, but I think not all cell phone case transactions need to be the same. You intelligently have arrived at, I need to advertise my business. A cell phone case, if I pay for it and give it to someone, is just an ad. I think in those capacities, QR code and name because you're giving it away, and then I think in the other capacities when you sell them, you know, maybe a smaller logo or not so in-your-face. But honestly, I think it could go into a subscription service where you buy in for a reasonable price, and every month you send a new case out, and you surprise them, right? And there's a serendipity of that. Throw that item in there. I think when you get a case, why order one? Order a series so you can switch it up, three or four or five different ones, right? I think there's the opportunity to throw text on top. I just like the size of the cell phone market, cell phone case market in the United States alone is such a huge business. It's mind-boggling. It's like billions of dollars a year. I searched ChatGPT for it when I recorded the episode, so I'm very, very curious to like build out more of our capabilities on how we bundle them, subscription services, series, all of that kind of thing. I really like the subscription idea. I haven't even thought about that. Recurring revenue is the Holy Grail of revenue, and it's not available so easily to photographers. So like, why wouldn't we mix that in? And who wouldn't like the serendipity of not knowing what the hell is coming, and then all of a sudden getting it in the mailbox and be like, "Oh, this one's awesome," and then if it's not awesome, you give it away to somebody, right? You know, we had, we're patterned for that. There's the flower-of-the-month giveaway, there's the Frame TV subscription where you get something new every day or every month. Yeah, yeah, I can see how that might work. Yeah, and I think it's worth it. And like alone, it's just such a huge, huge market. So that I love that you're on that. I'd be curious in terms of the revenue of your business, how do you see the split between the commission stuff versus the actual sales of the print stuff versus are you doing like photo shoots of other stuff too?

Derek Emge: That's interesting because that's always changing. I would say that, so right now, I am selling off the website about

500

500amonthofstraightsalesoffthewebsite.Ihavesold7,000 in product so far this year, which is a little bit lower than last year. Yeah, and then I, it's not like we're in a great economy right now either, like, you know, I'm always reticent to talk about that, but things are a little right now, especially for us in California. I've heard that. And I don't, you don't want to use it as a crutch, you don't want to use it as a crutch. I haven't sold enough to really be able to compare myself, so I mean, yeah, you're the guys with the data on that. Yeah, but last year, I walked into my doctor's office and saw there was a sign on there basically, "Please excuse our dust, we're going to be starting renovation." And so I waited, well, I was waiting for my appointment, I walked into the admin lady and said, "Hey, I'm a photographer, I'd love to do a bid for your project here." And I immediately showed her some of the stuff I had, and for whatever reason, it resonated with her, and she took it to the main doctor, and that doctor loved it, and we started this discussion, which ended up being a 32-print installation in their new, and some of them were 8 feet long, and some were 5 feet tall. They were awesome. It was really hard for me because the doctor wanted, it's a concierge medicine facility, and so it's clients that come in for their medical treatment, right? Repeat clients for them. They wanted a comforting feel to it, and instead of your like landscape that you see in a lot of doctors' offices or abstract art or anything, she specifically wanted a floral theme. I don't really shoot flowers much. Right, yeah, yeah. And so what I did, I had shown her like 20 different options from waves to mountains to whatever, and she zeroed in on one of a flower that I had on there and said, "I want to do this theme, and what can you do?" And I'm like, "Oh no, what can I do?" Fortunately, it was springtime, we had those big rains last year. Oh God, the flowers have been, he and I are both in Southern California, the flowers out here have been off the chain. I mean, it's the second wettest winter we've had since, I mean, 1998 because I always remember my freshman year of school, out of control, the rain in San Diego. I went to school in San Diego. We were talking about this offline, but two years ago, last year, in 1998, are the three wettest times we've had in 25 years. I mean, it's insane. Anyway, so I went out to Torrey Pines State Park, local beautiful park here, and on a stretch of maybe a quarter of a mile, I spent about two hours photographing wildflowers. And you know, the wildflowers are small, yeah, but brought out the macro lenses and did this whole array, and ended up she loved it. So we did 90% floral stuff there in the medical center. So that was, I would say, kind of a one-off anomaly for me.

Patrick Shanahan: What was the total ticket on that install?

Derek Emge: It was $29,000, I think, on that one.

Patrick Shanahan: Boom, boom. Yeah, that was a good one. Now, can I replicate that this year? I've been trying, but I haven't gotten a nibble yet.

Patrick Shanahan: So Derek is now gonna be going into every corner doctor's office in the general Southern California area. But let me share one more thing, Patrick, from that one. I then at the end of it, I actually talked to you guys about how to do some of this, and you gave a great recommendation, and that was at the end of it, send out a message to all the doctors that practice in there and give them a discount and an offer to do something. And one of the doctors bit, and I ended up doing an eight-piece installation in her new condo.

Patrick Shanahan: Wow. Amazing. And you know what? I would do too, like, I'm very cognizant, first of all, number one, you get the deal over the line, that's the only thing that matters, right? But what I would probably have done is, hey, a suggestion for you, this is when you're taking payment, would it be okay when I installed to put little placards with a QR code? My thought is that you know people are sitting in the offices and they're bored, you're walking around, you're waiting, you know, if they have the great photography to look at and they can scan things, you know, I'll have videos behind them that explain the piece, right? And then also be able to purchase the piece and get on your email list. And I think especially in those types of offices where they're waiting rooms rather than just like walking down a hallway or whatever, I would even probably knock a couple thousand dollars off the price. I would pitch them on that idea like I just pitched you and then shut up and see what they say. And they'll tell you. I pitched QR codes, but not the idea of the story behind it. It was just sort of link to the website, and that was rejected. They wouldn't allow me to do that, but I didn't try the story behind it. That's interesting. Yeah, the story behind it because, you know, make it a win for me. If I'm sitting in your waiting room bored, I am not in a good mood. I am angry. I want to get the hell out of there. I don't like being at the doctor in the first place. You're wasting my time. Entertain me. And so if you could pitch in on the entertainment side of things, I need a playbook for this, like, from, we probably need to update our software from QR code directly to the image, a little bit of text, a YouTube video, and then a subscribe, enter to win a free print. I mean, that would be cooking with gas. And it's a win-win for the hospital too, the doctor's office. And I also think like we're not there yet, but I mean, there's been a million different startups of the digital screens, you know, TVs with the frames on them that go on the wall and like rotate through the images, and nothing stuck. I would have thought that would have been like, you know, I mean, we have phones where we can talk to each other like the Jetsons that I grew up watching. I would have thought that we all have the digital picture frames in their house, but how many houses have you been into that has a digital picture frame? Have you even been into one that has one? I mean, even like one or two houses? Mine. Yeah, that's it. Like, where the hell is that technology? Why isn't it hit yet? I'll tell you what, I got a Frame TV over our mantel in our living room, and when people walk in, that's, they walk into the living room, so they see, did you do the Samsung one that has like the nice frame? Yeah, yes. Yeah, but that thing's really expensive. It's like a, what is it, like a $3,200 TV depending on what size it is. It's a nice TV. We needed one. We're gonna buy one anyway, and then we actually went to a frame store and bought a custom frame to match our decor, elaborate frame. But I put images on there, and I don't rotate them through like on a slideshow, just depending on the time of the year, I'll put like one static image up there, but it shows so well. People walk into my house, and they look at it, and they go, "Is that a painting, or is that, did you take that? Is that?" And again, conversation starts, and it just presents so well because when you're not watching TV, if you have a TV, it's a big black box on your wall. It's ugly, right? For sure. These Frame TVs really present your art well if you're either an artist or a photographer. I can't imagine why you wouldn't have that in your studio or in your home for when people come in, and they see your latest piece. It's just, yeah, it's too good. And then also, not to go too far down the tangent on this, but the serendipity of having one of those screens and having the images automatically pop in. Now, I have the Google screens at home, and the Google screen allows it to connect your phone automatically, and then Google's AI will determine what is a good photo and then put it on the screen. And I have them here, and I have them at my mother-in-law's house and my mother's house, and they just love them because it's always images of the grandkids, and I love it too because it's like, "Oh, there's something I did three days ago. Oh, look at how cool it is that that's the one it picked," right? So to be able to deliver that type of serendipity, I almost feel like we need to develop that, like, honestly, a TV that is inexpensive as possible with a frame where you can just walk into a doctor's office and say, "Hey, here's this, you know, what do you think?" And then I'll install it. You don't have to do a damn thing. Okay, every once in a while, my logo is going to flash on the screen, as well as your doctor logo. Yeah, I mean, because I have like moles, not TMI, but I have to go into the skin doctor's office, and he's got a huge TV in there, and it's showing his awards and hawking some stupid skincare products, and I'm bored of watching it, but you know, it would be much nicer, especially with your photography, to go into a doctor's office and at least waves in the Coronado Bridge and Mission Beach and Pacific Beach and North County or whatever, you know, all of it. Imperial Beach even. Crazy. Imperial Beach, yeah, yeah. Amazing, amazing, amazing. I ask one ambush question on these all the time by the way, and I love using this concept of the one thing. If there's one thing that we can improve at Art Storefronts, and just one thing, what would it be for you?

Derek Emge: Keep innovating. New ideas are where it's at to me. I love the marketing, I love the basis of what you're doing, but every time you come up with a new idea, whether it's the cell phones or what we're talking about right now, it amps me up, and it gets me excited to go try it. And we don't know what's going to hit. You know, one of these might, five of them won't. And so I'd say just keep innovating, doing what you're doing, doing it well.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, that's the whole ball game. It's arrows tired, right? You never know it's going to work, but I'm very cognizant of like, you know, this thing primarily, I have to hold it up. This thing primarily, you know, unlocking this creator economy, the fact that we can get anyone's attention on this all the time, and then, you know, our whole customer base, artists, the photographers, and creatives with all these different stripes, I just am really fascinated about cultivating these additional revenue sources because I feel like you have a creative talent, okay? You want to get paid and be able to feed your family. I've never met a revenue source I don't like as long as it's legal. Like, what else can we do? What else can we expand into? It's why like the subscription stuff we were talking about, like that fascinates the hell out of me. Like, what could we get going on that? Have you done a photo book yet? Are you going to do a photo book?

Derek Emge: You know, I would love to. I've seen some of the artists on your platform here that have done that, and they've done it well. I think Jonah did a book as well that looks phenomenal. Yeah, yeah. I suffer from comparison problems, if that's a word, if that's a thing. Yeah, I look at the other artists on this platform, and I look at the other photographers on this platform, and I'm blown away. I'm just like, "Oh, my work isn't up to the level of what these other people are doing." Yeah, and it may just be they have one image that's awesome. I don't know how deep it goes, but so I get a little bit of a fear of like, who am I to put out a book? And but I've absolutely thought about it a ton of times.

Patrick Shanahan: And I have some really good advice for you on that. Get over it. Okay, get over it and put one out. Like, you know, I'm extremely cognizant of the fact that you don't realize how impactful a book is on a consumer until you have one. Okay? And customers send me theirs, right? And my wife has Jonah's like behind where she works on this little stand, and she doesn't know Jonah, she's never been to 30A, it's not like a, you know, Alys Beach and all that, that's not a special place for her, but she now wants one of his pieces because that damn book has worked on her. And everyone, well, she'll look at it. So my belief is that it works both ways. The book is so powerful. You have the original on the wall that you spent the big money on, or the limited edition in your case, then the book is on the coffee table. You've got the tote, the print, the print drives the desire for the coffee table book, and then when you have the coffee table book, it drives the desire for the print or more prints. So I think it's mega, mega powerful. And I also think, you know, you and I, you and I are Southern California natives. Do you remember like in the '90s how big locals were? And these were what locals were, I'm not sure how huge they were in San Diego, but they were little stickers on the back of your car that was like essentially repping your neighborhood, right? Like, where I am, there was one, there was Laguna Beach, there was Corona del Mar, there was Balboa, you know, there was, yeah, and it became like a huge thing. You know, like, everyone wanted to have those things on their cars. I mean, there were thousands and thousands of them. In your case, books, like, I think you could go macro and you could go micro on the books. You could do a Coronado book, you could do a Mission Beach book, you could do a Pacific Beach book, right? And have those as like this incredible memory of where you are, and then just cold walk into every single solitary shop that has any kind of display going on and say, "Hey, here's a couple of books. It's all about this town." You can sell them, right? Like, I think that could be an incredible revenue opportunity. Now, you would have to open yourself up to shooting a little bit more of the zeitgeist of the town, right? Like, you would have to shoot Coronado Brewing, shoot the hotel, shoot the bridge, shoot the Navy SEALs training, you know, rock everything that's going on in Coronado or Mission Beach, but that could be kind of fun.

Derek Emge: You know, I actually do that somewhat right now. I am in a local store, it's a cave, is what they call it. It's like a furnishing store, and they are carrying the mugs, they're carrying prints and note cards, note cards and mugs from your site, and then prints are just my prints from the local producer. So I'm already expanding that out to capture more of the community. I don't want to call them tourist shots, but that's kind of like what it is, right? Yeah, yeah, the common known places like the bridge and the hotel, but I like that idea of a book. That's interesting. How big does it have to be? I mean, volume.

Patrick Shanahan: There's no rules. There's no rules at all. It can be anything. You know, it can be big, it can be small, it can be short number of pages, it can be a lot. I think you just ship them, you just ship them and give them a shot. Now, we're working on getting some proper book providers, some better ones. Blurb will do them, but we just haven't unlocked it on the platform yet. I don't know why. I got to go follow up on that after the call, but I think we're going to find some other vendors in the next year. But in the meantime, there's so many vendors out there that do it. Like, do a limited run and see what happens, or in your case, pre-sell it, you know? Right, right. Get a prototype, show it, and say, "I'm thinking about making this. You know, I would sell it for a hundred bucks. For the first 20 that put a deposit down, you get it for 50. Let's go and see what happens," right? Before you even print it or before you even get into it. I think they're just too powerful on too many levels. And you know, I always rant about the merch being non-wall art and how important non-wall art is, right? Because you open yourself up to an impulse buy. I don't have to talk to my spouse. I don't have to go measure my wall space and then look at the image again. It's like a very low-friction purchase, and the more low-friction purchases you have when your marketing message reaches whoever it reaches, the higher revenue you're going to have. You know, the more new customers you're going to acquire, and that's the game. That's the game essentially, right? Question for you because I know we talked about it, I'm curious if you ever put it into practice. You're on the beaches shooting on a regular basis. Did you ever rock the QR code flag in the sand?

Derek Emge: Yes, I did. So we had gotten on, I don't know if you remember this, probably a year ago, I told you that I do a lot of surf photography, and how do I connect that to people? That was your idea: plant a flag, put a QR code on it. Yeah, and I was in the process of doing that, and then a company that provides, it's called Swell, and it provides surf photos to the surfers, and they run it, they capture it, and they upload them all onto the website by session. So let's say it's Black's Beach, you know, May 17, 2024, they have the whole catalog there, and so there could be three photogs working the beach, everything goes up there, and then the surfers are just like, "I wonder if there's any shots of me," and then peruse. So they have a flag for their company and a QR code, and what that does is, if you get on that QR code, it goes directly into their system, and so you're a subscriber, but it subscribes under my name, and in exchange for providing these, they give me a small stipend, and then their platform is that anybody who wants their photo can give a contribution, and I make like a couple hundred bucks every time I go out. It's fun. I love shooting surf, so it's just, you know, a couple hundred bucks just automatically through that company. That's a hell of a, yeah, I usually get enough tips on it. They like the way I edit them, and, you know, it's two hours of shooting and maybe two hours of editing, and boom, couple hundred bucks. Really? So then I figured out this is working really well, but I'm not capturing their emails, and so, problem. Yeah, so I got rid of the banner, and people kind of now know who I am, and so they, as they come out of the water, I will use the little app that this company has on the phone that it's basically the QR code, put your name in, and press enter, right? On the phone, instead of having them do it, I do have them do it on my phone, and then I do a screenshot before I hit enter, so then it enters into their company, but on the screenshot, I've captured their name and email, and then I follow up and put it in, and so I probably pulled in 150 emails that way.

Patrick Shanahan: Love it. It's a pretty decent retention from the surf crowd, and I have sold both their surf images but also some of my art that I have on the website has gone through that process. So I'm trying to link the surf crowd with my coastal art.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, and I, you know, I don't know what car you use to drive to all the spots, but I'm almost inclined to, and you know, we're sort of narrowed down in the niche of surf photography, but it would apply everywhere. Like, you know, I'm not saying you have to wrap the entire car, but maybe wrap the back windshield, you know, wrap the back windshield with something amazing, and then have the QR code, or you know, if there weren't punks in this world, you could use the magnets, but I, as a kid, I used to steal those magnets off cars. I was a tyrant. Right, I considered the gorilla, you know, drop the card on the windshield thing. I considered a lot of things. It's really hard to make money in surf photography. For sure, it is. For sure, it is. Always has been. And so, to me, it's more passion. I love doing it, and it's marketing. It's a lead to the art. Now, the third thing that's led to is I've gotten enough positive response and enough questions that I'm now creating an online course of how to get sponsored as a surfer, as a young surfer, what do you have to do to get sponsored, which is all photographic image-based discussion, right? So I'm creating a course for that. I don't know how it'll go, but you know, why not give it a shot? Give it a shot. That I'm gonna have to market that, which puts me back on the beach with sort of contests with the young kids and their parents. So who knows? We'll see.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, you never know. And then another potential revenue story, and it's like, look, a lot of these things are hit or miss. Sometimes it works great, sometimes it doesn't, but with each one, you're putting your name out there in the community more, and what you'll end up finding is the thing that you thought was total bust, somebody found out about you three years later, they bought a new house, and you get another $10,000 order, and you're like, "Well, that whole thing just got a lot more rosier," right? And so it just becomes about how many of these things you're putting down range, how many arrows you're firing at the target that will eventually yield results. It's, everyone always asks me like, "How am I going to get better at social media?" You know, and how am I gonna grow my follower account, and you know, what do I look at, do I look at this, do I look at that? Like, no, it's arrows tired. It's just arrows tired. If you just focus on that as the metric, how many times you're posting per week, the score takes care of itself because you get a little bit better every time, and you learn something every single solitary time, and some things work, and some things bomb, and then five years you're down the line, and you don't have any damn idea because things are hard to track what did it, but your forward motion created enough that you're getting the deals, and that's how it goes. I mean, that show is the perfect example. Went to a show, sold a thousand bucks, okay, maybe the booth was a thousand bucks, you get broke even, but then someone came in and was like, "Hey, I want to talk to you," and there's the ROI. And you know, never would have happened if you didn't fire the arrow, and that's in your playbook on doing shows. And I just did a show, what, three weeks ago, and I reviewed the playbook once again. One thing I didn't do, which I want to try, is a sale in the booth while it's going. You have to. I failed to set it up in time to do that because I watched the playbook like the day before, but I was especially aware of people looking for something down the line, and I had a really good discussion with somebody who's building out an office space, relatively small, and we started going over options for doing wallpaper because I've actually done a wallpaper installation based on a photo. They turned out really well, so I showed them that. We got into this big discussion about their space. It hasn't followed up yet. I have their name, they have my name, but then another person came in and saw a piece that I had up that I had had from the get-go. So when I was in Laguna Beach in a studio there, I made these acrylic rounds, which there's not, back then it was three, even three years ago, no one was printing on round, and I thought, "Oh, this is going to crush the market. It's something new, it's vibrant, it looks really rad." And it fell flat. I didn't get a single bite on it. So I had these two rounds for three years. I brought one and just set it up because it looks cool, and one lady walks in, and she ignores everything else, and she's just standing there staring at the round, and her friend's standing at her shoulder, and they're like, "Do you think round would work, or should I stick with rectangle?" And that started the discussion. The size I had was the wrong size for her place. She placed an order. We went and printed a new one for her. I took it up this last week. There's a little reel on there of what that round looked like on my Instagram feed.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, let's take a look at it. Show me because I kind of want to see it myself. How far down do I have to go? See, so scroll. I got right there in the middle. It's art hanging week, and by the way, I do that every time I install a piece, and I love to go install them at people's homes because it allows upselling. Genius. Yeah, but this is it. It's just a, wow, is it acrylic?

Derek Emge: It's acrylic. It's a 34-inch round, and it's a picture of the bay with a long, with a high telephoto lens that compresses all the depth of field, and it looks absolutely awesome in her place.

Patrick Shanahan: Amazing. Big hug afterwards, and of course, I had two, three, what, three other pieces in the trunk, kind of guessing what her house might look like. One of them seemed right, so we went out and looked at that, and it was one of those things of her and her friend were, same friend was there again, she was, they both loved it, but she's like, "I don't have any more money. I can't justify it," and you know, so I was like, "Hey, you know where I am," and she wanted to write a good review for me and everything, and like, "Yeah, great, just you know," so that's in the future. So those things, I don't think I would have been aware of in the booth had I not kind of watched your whole show playbook, yeah, playbook, and what to look for, and it's just that when they pause and look at something, that's like enough to start that conversation. And then the other thing that I've learned, which is a little weird, people ask me, "Who's your biggest market?" Because I thought my market was going to be younger male surfers. Yeah, my market, probably 80% of what I sell goes to females between 50 and 70. Wow. I have no idea why, and I don't know if I should keep focusing on that or expand out, or I don't even know how I'm focusing on that, but that is my market right now.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, and you know, it's this classic question to me like, what is my brand? What is my niche? And you go and do it with best intentions, and it applies in this case to you like, what is your avatar that you're selling to? You don't get to decide all the time, though. Sometimes they decide for you, and you should 100% lean into this discovery market towards it, right? You know, it even potentially brings in a notion of ads because you have this tight avatar that you could target, at least potentially in remarketing capacity. But I love it. One other thing that I think is an important playbook about in-person installs, when you go, every single solitary time, take extra pieces. Absolutely, yeah, and walk right in with them and just go, "This is just a fun thing that I do when I'm here. Everybody likes to see what their house looks like refreshed. If you want me to just hang a couple of things here, see what they look like, check out some other pieces, we can totally do that." That is a great upsell opportunity because the number of times that new art comes walking in your front door that you can just look at and then potentially leaves is zero. That never happens, right? So it's just a genius way to go about it, especially don't say anything and then just roll in with them, you know?

Derek Emge: Absolutely. So the doctor that bought the eight pieces after the hospital or the doctor's office install, that's what it was. She had ordered one piece, and I walked in with a couple others, and she had all these beautiful blank walls, and we just like, "What about this? What about this? What about this?" And one more hit, and then she's like, "I kind of like this theme. Where can we go with it?" I also like, and then she named like, I think it was hiking or something, and "What do you have in the way of hiking?" Just kind of a weird genre, hiking, but yeah, with that's open, it's like mountains, streams, whatever. And one thing led to another led to another until she had what, in my personal opinion, too many in her house, but that's what she liked, and I'm not going to say no. So, but if I hadn't brought the additional piece, it never would have gone anywhere. Never would have happened.

Patrick Shanahan: Amazing. Amazing. Well, thank you for being so gracious with your time. I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation. I think you and I could have probably gone on for another hour and a half, but it's Friday, and I want you to have a productive day. Where can people find you? Where do you want them to follow you? Is Instagram your favorite jam? Are you doing the same marketing on Facebook too?

Derek Emge: Same. I'm roughly the same. I've got 2,700 followers on Facebook under Derek Emge Photography, 2,700 on Instagram, Derek Emge Photography. They're totally different. Well, not totally, there's some crossover, but there's a lot of difference in the audiences. I don't know which one's better or worse. I sell from both.

Patrick Shanahan: I love it. You guys, give Derek a follow. You know, give him a shout-out, leave him a positive comment, and just as before we conclude, have you done any live broadcasts yet?

Derek Emge: Yeah, I do. I do almost every time I go down to the beach to shoot. I'll do a live. I was going to do a live this morning about being interviewed by you, and I ended up just doing it as a video, so I now have a video of this video before it happened. Amazing. Every time, everything is an opportunity. And so the funny thing is, people, I get more follows on like, "What am I doing today?" than actually showing my work, or more comments, more engagement. The mantra that I always like to ask people to repeat is like, "Well, you know, I'm posting a ton of my art, and I'm not getting a ton of engagement." Well, of course you're not because it's just your art all the time. You're only fishing in one pond. Each different content type opens you up to fish in a different pond, right? And that reminds me, I got to show you something after this, but the prompt you want to give yourself is, "What can I post today that has not a damn thing to do with the fact that I'm a photographer or that I'm an artist?" If you just think that way, everyone has interesting things in their life that they're doing right that come up that are a thing, and that's where you led with on this whole thing. You led with the video that was me on Sunday, and I was sitting with a vacuum behind me not wanting to get going, and I just shot a quick video of like, "Nothing going on here. It's cleaning day. By the way, do any of the rest of you have to clean? Can you feel my pain on this one?" You know, it's like, we all do. We all do. Have you been playing around with ChatGPT? Do you even have a subscription to ChatGPT?

Derek Emge: I do have a subscription. My wife is a fanatic on it. She loves it, so I get drawn into it. I haven't gotten to the point where I like what it does better than my words, but I'll keep trying.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, the reason I bring it up is like, let's get back to your page here and just pull this up right. We'll just use this one for instance. I want to see the captions that you're writing on it. Well, go on, show me the caption. I see, "Thursday mornings with Derek. You may ask yourself, how did I get here?" Right? So good caption, works well with the content. But what I've come to realize is like, we're moving into a social era where you kind of need to focus on SEO for Instagram, okay? And it's a little bit less straightforward. The video, although I think ChatGPT will soon be doing the videos, but on the photos themselves, the algorithm has gotten so good, right? The algorithm has gotten so good. You have Co-Pilot? Yeah, is this a Co-Pilot post?

Derek Emge: I am not on Co-Pilot, actually. So this is just a post.

Patrick Shanahan: So let me see if I can do this all on the phone and just do this. So you wrote, "Happy Love Tree Day," right? So I'm just going to take a screenshot of that, and what I'm going to do is I'm going to edit it down to just the image, and I'm going to save it. Is that how I save that? Save the files? No, why isn't it just let me save it? I guess maybe it does save. Done. There it is. Save the image. So where am I going with this? Instagram's algorithm knows that this is a tree, right? It has a very good idea that there's the ocean in the background. That's all very, very interesting. And so you have a short caption on it, right? Well, when you ask ChatGPT to give you a little bit more context on the photo, and so I'm going to grab that photo that you just did. I'm going to go add, I got a p, please write a detailed description. You're so polite to ChatGPT. I am polite. Please write a detailed description about this tree. So let's see what she comes up with. Or it. This is awesome by the way. I've never tried this before. "Pine tree against a sky transitioning into dusk. Has a gnarly twisting trunk. New growth. Great character. Branches." Okay, so this one is like hit or miss. Let me see what kind of tree is it? So I would grab all of this. Okay, I would go back to your post, and I would edit the caption after what you have here, "Happy Love Tree Day," I'd hit enter, enter, enter, and I'd say, "For you nature lovers out there," paste. Okay, and what that's going to do in the caption is it's going to give Instagram, which their algorithm is not as advanced as this, maybe it will get there eventually, it's going to give Instagram all this additional context on what the hell that tree is, okay? And what that's going to do is, is everyone gonna read that caption? No, most people don't read the captions. Okay, the default behavior is scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, oh, cool image, like, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, maybe, maybe I don't even think it's one out of 10, maybe one out of 20 reads the caption within reason, right? Unless you say, "Hey, read the caption." So all you're doing is you're essentially giving that extra textual context to the algorithm to say, "By the way, if you know people that love mossy trees, show it to them. If you know people that love trees and coastal bluffs, show it to them," right? And it doesn't have that automatically. It just knows that it's a tree. And so as quickly as that is to do when you have the subscription because it allows you to do that image, like, it's worth the effort. It's worth the effort. But try it. I'm gonna try it and see how it works.

Derek Emge: Yeah, 100%. You don't like the description, like grab the parts that you do or rewrite another line, right? Like, totally works.

Patrick Shanahan: Cooking with gas. Anyway, follow Derek on Instagram, follow him on Facebook, and by the way, he mentioned the guide on shows. If you guys want that, if you're watching and you're watching on Instagram or you're watching on Facebook, all you have to do is leave a comment with the word "shows," I will send it to you. And yeah, great interview. Can't wait to see where your career goes. Let's keep cooking. Thanks, man. The photo books and the picture frames offline.