Build a Business You Could Actually Leave

Build a Business You Could Actually Leave

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 business completely from scratch, no outside investment, no funding rounds, and sold it for eight figures. Since then he's mentored and coached over 400 founders, many of whom went on to exit their own businesses successfully. Most of us started this business messy. Maybe it was a side hustle to pay off some bills, and you built it as you went, figuring it out one event at a time. That's exactly what real entrepreneurs do. But somewhere along the way, the goal has to shift from "keep the business running" to "build something someone else could actually run, or buy." Adrian came on to break down exactly what separates the two, and why most photo booth businesses, even six and seven figure ones, would fail the test if you tried to sell them tomorrow.  In this episode, we covered: * The "bus test" Adrian uses to figure out, almost instantly, whether a business is sellable * Why documentation and SOPs matter way more to a buyer than how busy you are * The accounting habits that quietly kill a sale before it even starts * Why naming your company after yourself might be costing you more than you think * What it actually means to hit a ceiling in your business, and what to do about it * The concept of "optionality" and why it changes how you should think about exiting What You'll Learn:  * The exact test buyers use to know if a business can survive without its owner * Why "shoebox accounting" is one of the fastest ways to scare off a buyer * The branding decision most booth owners make in year one that can tank their exit later * How to find an advisor who can actually help you avoid the landmines, instead of learning them the hard way * What it means to have "optionality" when it comes to exiting your business, and why it's bigger than just selling or not * Adrian's own story of building and exiting an eight figure business with zero outside investment  Mentioned Resources: * Illuminate, taking place in Miami, October 11 to 14. Adrian will be speaking in detail about exit strategies and optionality to a room of six figure photo booth owners, with live Q&A and real case studies.  Your Next Steps: Work with Me: https://bit.ly/POD-Site2 Join Photo Booth Mastery Hub: https://bit.ly/POD-Hub Connect on Social: https://www.instagram.com/photoboothmastery

Who You Actually Hire First

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 living room. Two full-time jobs between me and my husband, and a photo booth business crammed into every crack of time we had left over. We built the first $100K–$150K on our own, no staff, no team, no help. And it worked, right up until it didn't. In this episode, I'm breaking down the two hires that finally got us out of that chaos, who you should hire first (not who you think), and what the order actually looks like when you're the bottleneck and there aren't enough hours in the day. Your first hire and your second hire are doing different jobs. Mix up the order and you'll be frustrated when the first one doesn't fix the problem you thought it would. What you'll learn:  * Why hiring event staff first frees your weekends but doesn't actually free you * The three non-negotiables Catalina looks for when hiring attendants (hint: a photography degree isn't one of them) * The exact three-event shadowing system she used to get attendants event-ready without standing over their shoulders forever * Why the second hire is the one that actually changes your life, and what that person actually does * The "dual role" hire strategy that tells you exactly who to bring on next without having to guess * Why the first six months of a full-time hire feel expensive on purpose, and how to stop panicking in month two * The simple question Catalina asked every single time the business hit a wall: automate first, then hire * The homework exercise that will write your next job description for you Resources Mentioned:  * Photo Booth Supply Co. (Legacy Booth): https://www.photoboothsupply.com * Photo Booth Mastery training videos (used for attendant onboarding): https://www.photoboothmastery.com Your Next Steps: * Work with Me: https://bit.ly/POD-Site2 * Join Photo Booth Mastery Hub: https://bit.ly/POD-Hub * Connect on Social: https://www.instagram.com/photoboothmastery

Winning the Bid War Means You Agreed to Make the Least

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 internet to be standing in. This episode is about why local Facebook bargain groups are keeping good founders stuck, and what you actually do about it when Facebook is where most of your leads come from right now. I start with who's in those groups, because this is the part everyone skips. When someone types "reasonably priced photo booth," they're telling you everything. They're not asking about your prints, your experience, or how you run an event start to finish. The filter they're leading with is price. And the booth that wins in that room is whoever answers that question best. Which means whoever goes lowest. Then I walk through what happens next, because it gets brutal fast. The client calls booth one, gets a number, calls booth two and mentions the lower quote, booth two matches it, and on it goes until the person who wins the bid war is the one who agreed to do it for the least. That's not a win. It's a race to the bottom with a trophy made of exhaustion. And the part that really gets me? A lot of the prices I see flying around in those threads don't even cover the real cost of the event. Gas, gear wear and tear, consumables, staff time, setup, teardown, admin. When you add it all up, some of those booths aren't making a small amount. They're paying to be there. This episode is not about making you feel bad for starting there. A lot of us got our first bookings right there in those threads. This is about what comes next. What you'll learn in this episode: * Why the prices in bargain groups aren't "the market." They're the lowest slice of one corner of it * What is actually happening in a bid war thread and why the winner always loses * How to calculate the real cost of a booth event so you stop flying blind on profit * The mindset shift you need before anything else will stick * How to show up in bargain threads without playing the price game * Three channels to build that bring you better buyers: referrals, your own content, and corporate * How to use Facebook completely differently than you have been * The honest timeline for transitioning out of bargain group dependency while still keeping the lights on Mentioned resources: * Profit Over Volume episode https://youtu.be/PM6b8dPQ1d0 [https://youtu.be/PM6b8dPQ1d0] Your Next Steps: * Work with Me: https://bit.ly/POD-Site2 [https://bit.ly/POD-Site2] * Join Photo Booth Mastery Hub: https://bit.ly/POD-Hub [https://bit.ly/POD-Hub] * Connect on Social: https://www.instagram.com/photoboothmastery [https://www.instagram.com/photoboothmastery]

From $280K to $400K: What Actually Changed

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 retention, cracked the corporate market, and figured out how to make keychains worth over $30K in a single year. And she did a lot of this in her first year inside Photo Booth Mastery. This is a candid, community-style conversation we had inside Thrive, and I knew more people needed to hear it. Whether you're trying to crack corporate, build a team you can actually trust, or stop doing everything yourself, Stephanie has been through it. She doesn't sugarcoat it either. We talked about the moment she finally split her brands (after fighting it for years), how she turned content and training days into a $2,500 investment that pays off for an entire quarter, and what actually helped her go from $280K to a projected $400K in one year. Spoiler: it wasn't just the gear. We also got into the messy, real stuff. Her CRM situation she's been stuck in since 2012, why commission-only salespeople can backfire, and what she'd do differently if she were starting over. What you'll learn in this episode: * Why you can't market to a bride and a corporate client from the same brand, and what Stephanie did to tackle this * How she runs quarterly content and training days for under $2,500 and walks away with 400 video clips * The three revenue pillars that added tens of thousands to her business: keychains, trading cards, and the look book * What changed in her business when she stopped being the only one who could do things (and hired her sister as a VA) * How she went from $280K to a projected $400K, and what systems made that possible * Why her leads come from Google and venue relationships first, not Instagram, and how that shapes where she focuses * Her honest take on Booth.Events [http://booth.events/], Breeze, CRMs, and the softwares she uses to run the show * What she's thinking about for salespeople, commission structures, and team building as she grows * The one piece of advice she'd give to anyone who's a year behind where she is now * And why education got a "38 out of 10" from her on the importance scale Resources mentioned: * Juju Booth: https://www.jujubooth.com [https://www.jujubooth.com] * Photo Booth Supply Co: https://www.photoboothsupply.co [https://www.photoboothsupply.co] * Snappic: https://www.snappic.io [https://www.snappic.io] * Booth.Events [http://booth.events/]: https://www.booth.events [https://www.booth.events] * Simple Booklet: https://www.simplebooklet.com [https://www.simplebooklet.com] * ADP Payroll: https://www.adp.com [https://www.adp.com] * ConnectTeam: https://connecteam.com [https://connecteam.com] * Kolbe Index: https://www.kolbe.com [https://www.kolbe.com] * LinkedIn for corporate outreach * Chamber of Commerce / WIPA networking Your Next Steps: * Work with Me: https://bit.ly/POD-Site2 [https://bit.ly/POD-Site2] * Join Photo Booth Mastery Hub: https://bit.ly/POD-Hub [https://bit.ly/POD-Hub] * Connect on Social: https://www.instagram.com/photoboothmastery [https://www.instagram.com/photoboothmastery]

How AI Is Making Software Risky (Thanks, Vibe Coding)

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 side to this that nobody in our industry is actually talking about. The side that could put your business and your clients at risk before you ever see it coming. This episode isn't about how to use AI in your business. That's a different conversation for a different day. This one is about the software AI is helping people build, the stuff landing in your inbox and getting passed around in the groups, and the questions you need to be asking before you hand over your data. Because here's the thing. The moment you start loading client information into a tool, names, emails, phone numbers, photos, videos, you've taken on a level of responsibility that most people never stop to think about. And if the app running your business has no privacy policy, no terms and conditions, and no real infrastructure underneath it? That responsibility lands on you when something goes wrong. And something always goes wrong eventually. That's just software. What you'll learn in this episode: * What "vibe coding" actually is and why it's showing up everywhere in our space right now * What a full stack app means in plain English and what's usually missing from the tools being sold to us * The four things real software has that vibe-coded apps almost never do: error reporting, security, data backups, and staged updates * What "spaghetti code" is and why it matters when something breaks on a Saturday night * The exact questions to ask any software vendor before you hand over your client list * What a good answer sounds like versus a bad one, and how to tell the difference without being a tech person * Why the software you choose becomes a sales decision, not just an operational one, when you're going after corporate clients * The difference between building tools for yourself and selling them to others, and why that line changes everything * Why your photo booth business insurance does not cover you the moment you start selling an app you built * Which companies in our space are building it the right way and what actually makes them different Resources Mentioned: * Photoboothsupply.co [http://Photoboothsupply.co] * Snappic * Booth.Events [http://Booth.Events] Your Next Steps: * Work with Me: https://bit.ly/POD-Site2 [https://bit.ly/POD-Site2] * Join Photo Booth Mastery Hub: https://bit.ly/POD-Hub [https://bit.ly/POD-Hub] * Connect on Social: https://www.instagram.com/photoboothmastery [https://www.instagram.com/photoboothmastery]