How shoots a customer base thought it did not expect | Entrepreneur

Jenner Tsay And Jennifer Yeh are the co-founders and CEO and COO of the professional photography platform respectively To shootThose free photo shoots offers where customers only pay for the photos they love. Entrepreneur Tsay spoke about the birth of the company and the strategies and tactics they used to grow from a local company to a company in 60 cities in the United States.

Please give us the Liftpitch for Shoott
To shoot is a professional photography market. We have set up a photographer station somewhere, say Central Park in New York City, and let customers know that they will be there from 12 to 5 and that they can book a half -hour session. Things are different here: with most other platforms you have to pay in advance for a photo session. But with Shoottt it is risk -free. You don’t have to pay anything until you see your photos and decide that you want them that you receive in three to five working days. You only pay for the desired photos.

Where did the idea come from?
I have an artistic background and I have a business background. And while I worked as an artist, I noticed that so many artists lived on gig-to-gig. Many could not earn enough money and had to stop. So we had something like what if we could make a business model that helped artists remain artists? That was the whole impulse behind it. Let us offer the artists a platform that will produce a volume of work. They do what they are good at and we do all the business activities for them.

How is it as an artist focused on the business part?
I worked for a few years in investment banking in corporate financing before I decided that I wanted to try to be an artist. So I took acting lessons, dance classes, I produced a documentary, I had planned weddings. I had all the different types of experiences and I stamped everything together to create this.

What was your breakthrough moment?
In the beginning we really thought that influencers would use us, and some did that, but we didn’t get the momentum we wanted. Only when we had tested sessions in Hoboken, did we really hit the fact that they are all families. We realized that mothers are usually those who take the photos on vacation, so this was great for them. We took photos of 50 families in one weekend. It was so crazy. That is when we know, there is a real need and need for family portraits. We started on neighborhoods with many children and public parks that were handy for parents. We started advertising very specifically compared to mothers and realized us, this is our demographic target group.

Credit: Shoott

How has your growth been?
In year one we made something like $ 80,000. In year five we hit Breaveneven. And when the following year, that was 2024, we were at $ 10 million above line and almost a million profitability. So we have 20x our profitability. It just shocked us. We had something like: “Oh, we didn’t know we could do that!” We started with only three of us, and now we have 12 full -time people and five part -time people. We are in 60 cities in the US and work with around 750 photographers.

How do you build your network of photographers?
We have a reference-a-friend program with our photographers. And we hand out all the platforms where photographers are looking for work. One of the biggest challenges we had was to train the photographers about our free photo shoot offer. Some assumed that we are on his lights. But we are very transparent about how it works, and last year our photographers made on average between $ 166 and $ 199 per hour, and they don’t have to do any of the business things. They just do what they love. So if you want to earn extra money and you are a good photographer, it’s easy.

What is your best advice for other business owners who are looking for that big momentum boost?
Try new ideas and do them quickly. Not taking your company personally is really the key. It is actually like this weird meditative experience where you keep what you serve and you let go of what is not, and you don’t get out of it. And every day it is always the same process.

What is something that many people think they need to start a business, but don’t really need it?
I think many people want to feel sure and super confident before they start. And I have seen that many people really stay in their own heads, and you just never want to be in that energy. You want to have a hypothesis and test it. Just try to do things. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes at all. I think many people say, “What if I’m doing this wrong?” I don’t even think about that. I have something like that: ‘Let’s try this. Let’s try that. ‘You want a mentality of experiments. Try it on a small scale and don’t think about it.

Do you have a mantra or quote that helps you inspire in difficult times?
I didn’t even know I did this, my co-founder pointed out. I will work and I will start to whisper: ‘I think I can do it, I think I think I can do’ The small engine that could be. You know, sometimes things feel very overwhelming, but you have to continue!