Today’s podcast we talk with Shalem Kitter, who owns The Studio in Anchorage, Alaska. He and his husband, Mitch, also started, and are continuing, the Love is Love Project. Shalem specializes in senior portraits with fashion projects on the side. He tells us about how he doesn’t think he’d still be in business (due to being in year four of a recession) without the strong systems they’ve built. They’ve made desk manuals (they call them the Studio Bible) for their staff to ensure their clients get a consistent and positive experience, every time. They make sure their clients never leave a touch point empty handed – you’ll want to hear about this!

Shalem also tells us about how they made sure to pay themselves first and how important that is. He recommends we stop looking at other photographers work and focus on making our clients evangelists for our studios.

Online Resource:

Creativemarket.com – weekly freebies

Book:

Emyth by Michael Gerber – https://amzn.to/2S7zt3k

Read Full Transcript

Transcription was done by Temi.com which means it’s an AI generated transcript. The transcript may contain spelling, grammar and other errors, and is not a substitute for watching the video.

Shalem: [00:00] This is Shalem Kitter and you’re listening to from nothing to profit.

Speaker 2: [00:05] Welcome to from nothing to profit, a photographer’s podcast with Matt and Kayak where each week they talk to photographers about what is working in their business now so you can swipe those ideas and grow your business faster.

Matt: [00:20] Hey everybody. Welcome to back to the podcast. So today we have shamed kitter who was one of my good friends that lives in Anchorage, Alaska on the show. So let me just give a quick introduction if you guys haven’t seen him, seen his work or follow him. So Shalan and his shame and his husband live in Anchorage, Alaska and they do some really, really amazing work. They mostly specialize in senior portraits, but they’ve been in publishing and tons of magazines and like legit magazines like cosmo girl on American Salon and stuff like that. And then they’ve also. They’ve also been featured on the Huffington Post, buzzfeed and advocate because they did this amazing project called the love is love project. I guess it’s still an active project. [inaudible]. You guys still work on it regularly, so it’s called the love is love project. And it was an, it was like a nationwide photo project promoting equal rights and marriage and equality, but Shannon and I have been friends for awhile. We, um, we met years ago speaking together and we’ve kept in touch ever since. We actually text each other quite often. And so I was really excited to have you on the podcast and so you can tell us exactly what’s working now for you guys and what’s going on in Anchorage.

Kia: [01:31] I’m so excited that you’re here and I am assuming we’ll hear a little bit of it, but I feel like you and I’ve always kind of shared a love of like trends and fashion and that type of thing. And so, um, yeah, I’m super excited to hear all of it. I’m excited to be here. Thanks for having me. Very good. So, uh, our first question for you is to share a little bit about what your area of expertise is, what you’re known for, I kind of thing

Shalem: [01:57] then this winding journey for me in the industry, I’ve kind of gone to a lot of different portions of portrait photography, but now I’ve really settled into senior portraits and I kind of...