Lifelong Freelancer Adds Real Estate Photography to Portfolio

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

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Hey, hey, what's up everybody? Thank you so much for tuning in today. My name is Chris Guillebeau. I'm the host of Side Hustle School. I've got a good story for you today.

Really interesting story about a lifelong freelancer who becomes interested in real estate photography after selling his home. When he does that, he learns the trade and decides to start an all new side hustle. As I said, this guy's been side hustling his whole life. And as you'll hear in the story, the most successful marketing tool in this case was using Instagram Direct Messages or DMs. Now I wanted to pick up on this a bit because I often mention Instagram or some other social media platform or tool in passing.

And I want to make sure you understand how he did it. It's not as simple as just registering an account. There's more to it. This is something that a lot of people can emulate, especially if you're doing something locally focused. So in this case, it's a good example because real estate photography is of course locally focused.

So if you're doing anything at all like that, you might be interested. And it's not only for locally focused businesses, it's just some are especially well positioned to benefit from this kind of strategy. And really it's not so much about the technology, it's about relationship building. So we'll look at that in some detail at the end of the story. So story is called Lifelong Freelancer Adds Real Estate Photography to Portfolio.

It's coming right up after this message from our sponsor. [Music]

Randy Hill isn't your typical side hustler. At 64 years old, you'd be forgiven for thinking he was about to retire instead of starting another business on the side. But Randy has spent his whole life doing things the unconventional way, especially when it comes to work. This enterprising anti-retiree has spent most of his career self-employed, preferring to make his own way in the world rather than pass the time in a cubicle.

And he spent the majority of that time doing freelance work in the graphic design and publishing industries. But last year, Randy added another notch in his side hustle belt. He and his wife were selling their home and the realtor sent out a photographer to take pictures. Having professional photos taken is a great way to improve a listing and garner more attention. This was good timing in more ways than one.

Randy had been taking photographs for decades as a hobby. And now he followed the photographer around his house, absorbing the process. After that photographer left, Randy started to think, I could do this. And naturally, he decided to try. The first thing he needed was a proper camera.

In a flash, he purchased a secondhand Nikon for $500 and an accompanying zoom lens for $300. He had a friend who was getting rid of a tripod, so he got that for free. At the very least, he figured if his idea for becoming a real estate photographer didn't fully develop, he'd have a new camera set up to reignite his love for photography. The next step was to get some training. Randy didn't want to spend much money, or any, if he could help it.

So he came up with a clever strategy. He contacted a realtor friend from his local area and asked if he could accompany that realtor and their photographer for a day to watch them work in even more detail. In exchange, Randy would buy lunch with the agenda of bombarding them with questions, questions that the photographer was actually happy to answer. He then moved on to the second step in his education, turning to the tried and true place to learn anything. Am I talking about night school, graduate school?

No, I'm talking about YouTube, of course. He watched dozens of videos about techniques, styles, and methods. He also veered into the business side of things. It turns out there are several photography influencers online who are also happy to share what they know. In fact, that's their business.

But online learning can only take you so far. It was time to start putting some of those lessons into practice. To do that, Randy needed to snap up a client. He put the word out with friends, friends of friends, and friends of friends of friends. He stretched as far as he could for introductions to realtors who might be willing to give him a chance.

At this point, he wasn't even looking to get paid. He was happy to do the job for free and put the work down as a learning exercise. It worked, and in October 2019, Randy went out on his first real estate shoot. It went so well that he continued to get work from that same realtor. From there, he tried postcard drops at local businesses, calling realtors directly, as well as messaging them on Instagram.

And he found Instagram to be the most effective method. He would follow realtors' accounts, then direct message the ones that followed him back, which a lot of accounts do automatically. He would invite them to look through his profile, which now had several examples of his work. And if they liked what they saw, he proposed working together. As an extra incentive, he would offer a free or heavily discounted shoot on their first property.

Well, this technique worked well. Within just a few months, Randy was getting plenty of bookings, a great result for a photographer with only free, informal training. While coronavirus has slowed things down a bit, property is still selling, and Randy is still working hard to introduce himself to new realtors and build up his network of clients. As you might expect from a 60-something side hustler, he's seen a few worldwide catastrophes, and he believes even this will all be over at some point. He wants to be ready for whenever that is.

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Well, you know, in some ways, real estate photography is even more important during the time of a pandemic because tours are difficult. So the importance of virtual tours has actually increased. And people who are buying homes are spending even more time online doing research because they can't, or at least in some areas, they can't drive around and go into a whole bunch of different open houses. Now, in a lot of markets, sales prices have actually held steady over the past six months or so, or whatever we wanna call the first part of COVID-19 season because inventory is less. So this doesn't need to be something that's totally on hold during COVID times, though, of course, it's highly dependent on what's going on in your particular area.

So let's talk about this Instagram DM strategy, DM or direct message. It works because it's hyper-focused on a local market, and not just a local market, but a specific population. So Randy is following local realtors, and then a lot of them follow him back and he sends him a message. If you start randomly spamming people, you're probably not gonna have great results, okay? But if you think, okay, who are the people in my field that might be good clients or at least might know people, the friends of friends or friends of friends of friends thing?

And even if you're not doing something that's locally focused like this, you could still do a version of it. It is, as I said, just about relationship building. It's not really sales heavy or anything. You're just saying, hey, if you need some help with this, or this might be good, or in case you're looking for a photographer, or you'd like to increase the attention on any particular listing, I'm available, basically is what he's saying. So I think this is something that a lot of people can learn from and model in different ways.

So Instagram is not just about registering your account and posting and using the hashtags. It often takes more work, but this kind of outreach strategy is good for those of us who are introverts as well, because it's all online. We can just do it with our phone. We're not actually out making cold calls. I mean, we're reaching out to people that we don't know, but it just feels different than making a phone call or perhaps going to a networking event.

So there is another way. There's probably more than one way, but this is at least one of them. So I'll leave you with that. Thank you so much, Randy, for letting us share your story. Listeners, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better.

Today's show notes, including links to everything I mentioned today, and probably some other stuff as well, are at sidehustleschool.com/1310. That is 1310. If you have a comment or question for the show, just come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. Thank you so much for listening. Be sure you're subscribed.

Much more is coming up. My name is Chris Guillebeau, and you are listening to "Site Us, Old School." [Music]

from the Onward Project.