Scaling Out Loud

You've hit six figures. You've built the team. You've got the systems in place. By every metric, you're winning. So why does success feel hollow? This is the conversation that had an entire room of six and seven-figure founders coming to tears at Jasmine Star's mastermind. I sat down with Dr. Natasha, an industrial organizational psychologist and my personal mentor, to talk about the invisible sid...

What happens to your photo booth business the day you decide you're done running it? Not the day you sell it. The day you actually try to walk away, even for a few weeks. For most owners, the honest answer is: nothing good. This week I sat down with my cousin Adrian Salomunovic, mid-rainstorm, on a sidewalk in Ottawa, because that's apparently how we do interviews now. Adrian built an eight figure...

It's 2 a.m. and a stranger is backing a car into my driveway. He just dropped off a photo booth, fresh from a wedding. The next morning, I grabbed it from the garage in my pajamas and loaded the galleries. My neighbors probably thought we were running something out of that house. And honestly? We kind of were.  For a long time, that was just our life. Booths in the garage, the basement, the l...

You've seen the thread. Someone posts in a local wedding Facebook group asking for a "reasonably priced" photo booth. Within an hour, 30 booths are in the comments. Links, DMs, pick-me energy everywhere. I want to talk about what's actually happening in that thread. Because if you're trying to charge more and build a business that actually pays you, that thread is one of the worst places on the in...

She came in as a photographer, almost sold her business in 2020, and is now on track to hit $400K, all while packing up and moving to a brand new state with her team still running things back home. Stephanie of Juju Booth in South Florida is the kind of operator that makes you want to audit your own business. She's been in the photo and events industry since 2007, built a loyal team with insane re...

New apps are popping up in the photo booth space faster than I can keep up with. And the pitch is almost always the same: I couldn't find a solution that worked for me, so I built one. And now you can have it too. Sometimes that's exactly what it is. A founder who solved their own problem and wants to share it. That part is genuinely cool, and I'm not here to knock it. But there's a whole other si...

You're exhausted. And it's not even peak season yet. Your calendar is packed, your weekdays are spent prepping for the weekends, and somewhere in the middle of all of it, you're supposed to still have a life. Missing dinners. Pushing vacations. Your body hurts. Your phone never stops. And underneath all of it? This quiet panic that something has to give, but you can't figure out what. The thing th...

  I just got back from two weeks in Japan and I am still not over it. Honestly, Asia was never really on my radar. Not because I didn't want to go, but because the flight is like 20-something hours and it just never felt urgent. But my friend Mir, who owns South Beach Photo Booth Company, got married in Kyoto and invited us. And I am not someone who turns down a wedding in Japan, so off I wen...

The future of the photo booth industry isn't in your next gear purchase. It's you. I bought my first photo booth over 11 years ago from Photo Booth Supply Co. Charged $9,000 USD to my parents' emergency American Express card without telling them. I had a vision. Got back to Ottawa and realized everyone had the same booth in a different shell. That was the moment I understood that the gear was neve...

In 2022, we ran over 500 events, crossed seven figures in revenue, and I sat in my kitchen at the end of that year looking at the numbers, looking at the calendar, and wondering how my body got this tired. I had built something I was proud of. And the cost of running it that hard was catching up with all of us. That year changed how I think about growth. Because somewhere along the way, I had conv...

Do you know what your clients are going to be asking for six months from now?   I do. And it started with me sending my friend Zach to run around Coachella with one job: grab samples from every photo and video activation he could find.   Here's why this matters. Whatever big brands are spending their experiential marketing budgets on at festivals like Coachella is exactly what's going to...

You've been thinking about free events all wrong. What if I told you that one single free event,  one where you spent maybe $500-$1500 on setup and staff, could bring you millions of dollars in revenue over the next decade? Because that's exactly what happened to me. If you're stuck on marketing, struggling to find consistent leads, trying to raise your prices, or desperately wanting to break...

I'm going to tell you something I've never said quite this directly before. I didn't think a photo booth business could make a million dollars. Not mine. Not anyone's. I thought there was a ceiling on this industry, that you could do well, make decent money, have a good little business. But seven figures? From photo booths? That felt like it was reserved for other kinds of businesses. More "legiti...

There is a clip that lives in Catalina's head. She has never been able to shake it.   It's the music video for Humble by Kendrick Lamar. That moment where the camera doesn't just move, it dances. Every cut on the lyric. Every angle shift perfectly timed. It made something shift in her brain. And it planted an idea: what if a photo booth experience could feel like that?   That's what this...

You are losing clients before they ever contact you.   And most of you have no idea it's happening.   There is one word spreading through this industry like wildfire, on websites, in proposals, on Instagram captions, and it is being used completely wrong. Every single time I see it, I cringe. Because I know exactly what it's costing the person using it.   The word is activation. &nb...

You're working. You're learning. You're in the groups, you're researching, you're asking questions, you're staying current.   So why hasn't the revenue moved in two years?   That's the question nobody wants to sit with. And it's exactly what this episode is about.   Let's get real: there's a version of shiny object syndrome that doesn't look anything like impulse buying. It doesn't...

There's a version of success that looks great on paper and feels like a trap in real life. Aldo from I Touch XP has been in this industry for 16 years, worked the Super Bowl five times, activated for Beyonce's tour across 22 cities, landed Disney as a client after Coachella, and crossed seven figures in revenue. And then he scaled back. On purpose.   This episode is for the founder who thinks...

Let's get real for a second. Everyone in this industry is out here posting their wins. The bookings, the revenue milestones, the glam shots from their best corporate activations. Nobody is posting about their 2 a.m. regrets. This episode is the one I almost didn't record. Because talking about your biggest mistakes out loud is uncomfortable. But when I stepped into the coaching world, I made a pro...

What does a seven-figure photo booth business look like when it's built by one person who also works full time at NBC's Today Show? Spoiler: it looks a little chaotic, wildly impressive, and absolutely worth listening to. In this episode, I'm sitting down with my friend of ten years, Zach Shiffman, owner of Studio Z Photo Booth based in the New York metro area. Zach has built a seven-figure experi...

What happens when three industry veterans sit down in Vegas and realize the conference they keep coming back to no longer feeds them? They build something new. This episode is different. I'm sitting down with two people who have been shaping this industry for over 16 years, Meir and Lisa, the original founders of PBI (Photo Booth Professionals International), a conference that people in our indust...

Ever scrolled through Instagram and watched yourself go from "I'm doing great" to "I'm a complete failure" in under 30 seconds? Yeah. Same. In this episode, I'm getting real about something I still struggle with, even as a seven-figure photo booth business owner. Comparison. That sneaky, soul-sucking habit of looking at someone else's highlight reel and deciding that your behind-the-scenes isn't g...

What if you could attend your own funeral?  Not literally. But metaphorically—watching the version of yourself that built this business be laid to rest while you stand there, mourning and celebrating them at the same time. I know that sounds heavy. Maybe even a little dark. But stay with me, because this might be the most important conversation we have all year. That scrappy hustler who said...

  Photo Booth Expo Shopping? Ask These 5 Questions First. Photo Booth Expo is coming up, and if you're anything like me a few years ago, you're already mentally spending money on that shiny new booth in Aisle 3. The demos look incredible. The sales reps are convincing. Everyone around you is talking about what they're going to buy. And that voice in your head starts whispering: "This is the b...

If you've ever wondered why your wedding inquiries aren't converting, this episode is your answer. Here's the truth: saying you "do weddings" tells potential clients absolutely nothing. It's like running a restaurant and saying you serve "food." Cool. So does everyone else. The wedding industry isn't one big market. It's a hierarchy of five completely different tiers, each with their own clients,...

You've been pricing wrong this whole time. And I'm not talking about mindset, I'm talking about actual math. Let's get real. When you started your photo booth business, nobody handed you a pricing playbook. So you did what everyone does, you googled it at 2 AM, copied what other companies were charging, and hoped for the best. You looked at your costs, added a little on top, and crossed your finge...