12. FROM BASEBALL UMPIRE TO CELEB SHOOTS WITH DREW BARRYMORE: An interview with Doug Levy

Today’s episode welcomes on a guest speaker, his name is Doug Levy and he is a Boston area photographer. Who has gone through this really cool evolution of his career path. Starting as a professional umpire, to wedding photographer, to where he is now, working with big brands and celebrity clients like Drew Barrymore. His story is super interesting, he is very transparent and I cannot wait to share this episode with you. Let’s dive in.

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Transcript

Today’s episode welcomes on a guest speaker, his name is Doug Levy and he is a Boston area photographer. Who has gone through this really cool evolution of his career path, starting as a professional umpire, to wedding photographer, to where he is now, working with big brands and celebrity clients like Drew Barrymore. His story is super interesting, he is very transparent and I cannot wait to share this episode with you. Let’s dive in.

Let's face it, most of us would rather be making art than running a successful business. But here's the thing We can 100% do both. If you want to create a business that you and your clients adore and that supports the life of your dreams, you're in the right place. My name is Erica Ewing, and I'm here to challenge you to define your best life and then to cheer you on as you build a business that supports just that. Welcome to the Successful Creatives podcast. 

I am so excited to have Doug Levy of Doug Levy Photography with me today. Now, Doug, we've known each other for many years at this point, but before we knew each other, your career was something that was very different from what it is now. You've really developed this incredible career that's really taken off and you're working with big brands and you're working with celebrity clients, can you take me through just an evolution of your career? So you used to be a professional umpire, right?

Yes, so that was my career and my first job after college, I spent six years umpiring professional baseball. After college, I went to umpire school and that worked out and then I spent 2004 to 2009 seasons all over the country, umpiring baseball for 7 or 8 months a year.

And then you went from umpiring to wedding photography, is that right?

Essentially. So I worked from 2004 to 2009, and in 2006 we went on strike because umpires got paid nothing. And I used to, you know, I think the best year I ever had umpiring was like $13,000 or $14,000. And we would get paid during the season and you'd have an off season job and the benefits were laughable. So there was a strike and then they kept threatening to cut off our health insurance. So I started saving money to pay for health insurance. In June, literally 2 or 3 days before the deadline where they were going to cut us off, the strike was settled, we went back to work, but I'd been saving money. So I had, I think it was $1,000 and I spent it all on a camera in a lens. I think I got a memory card, a camera, a lens and a camera bag for $1,000 and took that with me on the road, and then it turned into my off season job. So off season job, I was a substitute teacher and I sold gym memberships, and I mean, really anything, anything that didn't require a commitment that I could come in in October and leave in February. So from there I started begging the Patriot Ledger, which is a local regional newspaper, to let me shoot for them. I had interned there in college as a writer, so I knew the staff and I was begging them like, let me shoot for you, let me shoot for you. They're like, well, we know you can write, we don't know that you're capable of taking photos. And I've been doing that as another off season job, just writing for them. So finally they said, you know, this guy, he's been mall Santa for 30 years. This is my first paying photography job at the South Shore Plaza and he's retiring and go interview him and write a story, and if you want to take some pictures, if they look good, we'll run them. But they knew that I would at least get a story out of it and they could run the interview, and if the pictures were awful, I'd still get paid for the writing. The picture was not awful and they ran the picture and the story. They started sending me to high school sports. So that was my first sort of regular paying photo job was high school basketball, high school hockey, volleyball, any winter, indoor sports, and they would send me there. Then I was doing family portraits and test shoots and anything that I figured was better then substitute teaching, is better than selling gym, like anything I could do with a camera was sort of the best off season job because at the time I think I got $90 a day for substitute teaching and $75 per picture.

If they ran one picture, it was $75 and they ran a second picture, it was an additional $50. They never ran more than 2 pictures from all high school sporting events. But that team lost. That's not the picture. So you sort of learn that to get coverage and you thinking about what the client needs and thinking about design options. There was a lot, I don't think I knew it at the time, but looking back on it, there were a lot of little lessons in there to be had from both, from an art standpoint and a business standpoint, because if you don't get the picture, you don't get paid and we'll probably never call you again.

Okay, so that makes sense. The evolution from umpiring and then substituting your umpire pay with off season, sports photo work. And then when did you get into weddings? I'm so curious about the transition from sports to weddings.

So it was a very low barrier to entry. The sports thing, I loved baseball, I loved the job. But pack your things around Valentine's Day, come home around Halloween, essentially. In 2009, right before spring training, I met my now wife and I had this vision of big league umpires who, you know, they stay at the best hotels. They fly first class. They have a lot of money. But if you're in the La Quinta or the Four Seasons, you're still gone. You're still living out of a suitcase. And that was really fun when I was 24 and single and 25, and I saw a lot of parts of the country that I never would have been to, and there's a lot of experiences to be had there. But I had a vision of me at 50 with a lot of money in the bank and staying in nice hotels and traveling all over the country. But either you're single or you're just never there. I mean, maybe your kids could travel with you in the summer when they're little, you know, and you had more vacation time and certainly you had more money to fly your family with you. But it quickly became a lifestyle that I didn't envision for myself for the rest of my life. That was the spring and then in June, I got hit in the head with a bat and was home for the first time in the summer for 3 months and realized maybe I don't really want to go back and do this. The timing worked out really well, both in terms of baseball and weddings, where the season ended in September and the doctor said I was able to go back to work with, I think a dozen games left. I was like, okay, if I go back to work for these last 2 weeks, they don't have to know that I'm going to quit until spring training, so I'll get to keep my health insurance all winter, I can do 2 weeks. Fine. So I go back, I do the 2 weeks. So October now I'm trying to build up a business where I just had to replace at the beginning, the $2,500 a month I was getting paid umpiring, which is even at that time was just 1 wedding a month, right, and second shooting and assisting. This was anything I can do with a camera in my hand is a good day. So I had about 5 months of runway where I knew I had health insurance and I was going to live with my parents all winter. And just to have a sense if it was going to work out and if it crashed and burn completely, I wasn't formally quitting until March. So I could always go back to baseball for 1 more season and give myself some more time to work it out. At the time I was 28, which is a really good time in your life where your friends are starting to get engaged to get married, and it's a much lower barrier to entry photographically where, hey, we know Doug, we like Doug. Doug's pictures don't suck. We're getting married. And as you know, you can go from not knowing a bride or groom exists to a booked wedding, in half an hour, 45 minutes, it’s easy and it's done. 

I think I did 8 or 9 weddings that first year and then another 30 assisting in second shooting. That was enough, it was a very easy decision. You know, I wanted something where I had a little more control over my destiny. Being self employed is the ultimate, you have control over your destiny.

That's what I love about it too and as you're saying, you got hit in the head with a bat. Not to downplay that at all in any way, but it sounds like just being home and being out of your normal routine really sort of helped you get clear.

Yeah, it helps solidify it. I mean.

Yeah.

I don't think I was having a lot of fun that season anyway. And then I hadn't been home, I hadn't done any summer things. I hadn't gone to the beach, I hadn't been to a barbecue, like all summer. I didn’t know, day that week, it was usually it was like, is it Sunday? There's a day game. Everything else is at night. You know, all my friends were developing careers and I'd be up at 2:00 in the morning in Iowa, in Arizona and Florida, in the middle of nowhere. And every night is the same, and then you have a day game on Sundays.

Right. Right. And just listening to you talk about it kind of makes me think about everybody who's had a perspective shift during COVID and during the pandemic when maybe they were working a 9 to 5 and then all of a sudden they're home with their family more or they've stepped away from this office, this job, and they've realized that they don't love it anymore. It's not what they want to be showing up for. I think that was a silver lining of the pandemic and it sort of sounds like what you went through to in your career, where sometimes it's nice to have that thing that sort of like throws you off track, that makes you say, hey, I need to change this because this isn't what I see for my life long term.

You know, a lot of times it's like, well, you have self doubt or it's like, what if I could do this? And all of a sudden when you have to do something, it's sometimes easier to make decisions because no longer can you procrastinate are no longer can you, it’s not hoping anymore. It's like, well, I have to do this. It's forced decisions and that can be helpful sometimes.

Absolutely. So now you're shooting weddings regularly, you've left umpiring, in New England, you definitely have a big fan base of people who are like, you want to know about lighting, you call Doug Levy. That's how I met you, and I remember coming to your home for a workshop and so it makes a ton of sense to me now, seeing your brand work and seeing just the gorgeous lighting that's so consistent across all, you just have such a knack in an ability to create whatever sort of light, whatever mood with your light. So how did you start to make that transition from weddings to working with brands?

It's a whole different sales process. I was always better at selling to companies and talking to companies then selling to couples. It just came easier for me, I think. I wasn't so great at the emotional hand-holding that I think wedding sales requires as much as there's a lot less emotion involved in the corporate and commercial world where it's a little more results driven. So I think a lot of wedding photographers and this benefited me at the beginning, too. You can get by in the sheer force of personality, you're fun to hang out with on the wedding day, you provide great customer service. There’s so many people and there’s so many weddings, that you should be able to to book 10, 15, 20 weddings just based off of that. 

In the corporate commercial world where I think a lot of the times the budgets are bigger, but the stakes are a little higher because the person wants to feel justified that they hired you and their boss is looking at it. Well, you chose Doug, potentially their job could be on the line. Because it was so much easier to get into, where to get the attention of ad agencies and art directors and magazines. It’s not just as simple as like, oh, I know Doug call Doug. It's, you know, they have to have multiple points of contact with your pictures. They can't wonder like, they're going to look at the worst picture on your website and the best picture and wonder, am I going to get this or am I going to get this? You know, you have to be there's a certain level of certainty and safety there, especially when they're not on location with you, for a lot of magazine shoots, like a lot of those magazines are based in New York. You'll get, hey, we need a vertical picture for the cover or, we need an opener. Make sure you get a horizontal and a vertical and we need two different setups and that's it. Then they're trusting you to go out on location and make an interesting, compelling picture that they can then run in the magazine or they're never going to hire you again and also it reflects on them because they chose you. So you want your clients to feel like you're both the safe choice and also you're going to give them something that they didn't expect in a good way.

Right. And you were talking about really consistency. So they're looking at your worst picture and your best picture. So consistency is something that really is key. I do believe this to be key for success in really any sort of creative business. But when you are dealing with like higher budgets like that, then the minutia starts to become really important, right?

I mean, yeah, and it takes a long time of things going wrong and that happens on all kinds of photography where, hey, I forgot this piece of equipment, or this thing broke, this morning actually I shot my 962nd non wedding job. You look at a magazine or when you look at a website, the people that are viewing that aren't going to go well, they only gave him 4 minutes. So that picture's only okay. They just see the end result. They don't care about your process. Your assistants care about the process because you have to work with them and have your team and how do we do this and how do we solve this problem? But at the end of the day, you know, 3 years from now, when that picture is still living on a client's homepage, it's just what does it look like? Does that person look amazing? Is this something where I feel comfortable with this person? Is this brand impressing their customer base? And it's really that's sort of the stressful but fun part is it's a no excuses type of results driven business. That's what I enjoy. You know I've had a camera catch fire like I've had, you know, on what was that year like? The biggest job I did that year, you know, and it's like, how do we find a way to make these things work? My business started, it was just me and 12 years later, you know, things have grown into, we’re estimating jobs with 8, 10, 12 people on the crew and it's really fun. But then you also, aside from just the photo part, you also become part producer and you're part captain of the ship where you're leading everybody in service of making the best pictures that you need for that day and for that client.

So there's a lot more to it than just, where's the light going to go and how do I shoot this? It's how do we coordinate the timing. My business is now 20% food and it's, how do I communicate with the stylist to get the food in front of the camera when it looks it's best, you know, ice cream is an extreme example. But if you're shooting ice cream, you may have it for 2 minutes and it melts and all of a sudden doesn't look its best. Then it's you need to re-scoop the whole cone or shoot it in a freezer. You know, there's a lot of little things like that, now I'm spending a lot more time in pre-production, where on a lot of shoots, especially in the bigger commercial shoots, you know the picture you're making before you get there, you're just going to fill in the pixels. But you spend so much time on planning, you're not walking and going, okay where am I going to put the lights? You know, 10 to 15 minute increments. We're going to be doing this picture at this time.

So how did you start getting into corporate shoots?

I think it's multifaceted. I started where I had some wedding clients who either owned businesses or they worked in marketing departments of companies. So a lot of them didn't necessarily know other photographers and it was like, well, I just need a headshot. Doug just did a great job on my wedding, he can probably do that. I always tried to to grow and continue those relationships. There's 1 woman, I did her wedding and she's on her probably her 5th job and her 2nd agency in New York and we do essentially 1 job a year. And now some of the biggest jobs that I've done have been, we go to New York and we shoot for the agencies that she's worked at. And when we started, she was the assistant and now she's, you know, 2nd or 3rd at the company, making hiring decisions and budgeting decisions and I've known her for 12 years. A lot of the nice thing about the kind of work I do now is you get repeat business and you can develop longer term relationships with these clients. The best thing is when one of these clients gets a new job. And you've worked so much with them at their old job, their whole team knows you, so they keep hiring you and then they go to a new company and it's like, Well, we have to work with Doug. I worked with Doug at my old job.So that's sort of in an organic way that my business has grown, like the job I'm doing next Friday. It's their 3rd marketing director and I've been shooting 2 or 3 jobs a year for them for 6 or 7 years, and the new person comes in . Well, you have to call Doug, he’s the guy we use. That happens a lot. Then 2 of the 2 that have left, 1 has changed industries and I haven't worked with for a while. But the other 1, you know, new job. Hey, you're coming with me to my new company and so that's been responsible for a lot of growth. Just maintaining those relationships as that side of my business has grown over the years.

I love that because I built my business mostly on referrals. And that's a big part of my coaching program, is helping other wedding photographers learn how to build their referral basis. But when I was thinking about this interview and sort of thinking about from the outside looking into your business, it seemed like a really big shift to go from weddings to corporate and to brand photography. But hearing you talk about that, the referrals coming from your past brides or your past grooms. Before I started my business, I was in marketing, so I was a marketing manager before. So it makes sense that it's the age where people are getting married and they're in these jobs that are marketing or sales related and they're going to have some influence. So then they're referring you because you are that photographer connection that they already have. And thinking about a recent bride that I had, our now mutual client Laurel, who had reached out to me about a corporate shoot, and that's not something that I do. So the 1st person I thought of was Doug Levy. So that's all part of the referral marketing thing. So that's really interesting, it’s not too far of a departure from, like, I'm sure the way that you were running your wedding photography business.

Totally, I mean it was mostly referral based and now it's definitely a mix. Those clients are easier. Like Laurel is a great example, like as long as I didn't screw something up royally in the first phone call, she was already going to hire me, I just needed to not have some crazy budget numbers or be a complete jerk on our call. It was just a matter of filling in the oh yeah, well, I had this great lead in and this fits with the picture of what I expected. Right. The first time I worked for her, and she's like, okay, well, we talked about this, I trust you go. I had never had a client before. And this this speaks to you and the quality of the referral where I never had a client who on the 1st job I've done for them, it's like, yeah, you got this. Usually they bring the laptop and we have an iPad. So that speaks to, I think, both to the way that relationship had begun. I mean, she came in to our first meeting. I looked at your website, I looked at your client list. I think that helps a lot too where being able to put some of these big brands on my bio page. Oh, well, you know, JP Morgan has trusted Doug and Harvard Business School trusts Doug. I'm just a startup, they trust him, I can certainly trust him. So there's a lot of legitimacy that comes in there as well.

Right. Social proof.

Totally. I never thought about it that way, but that's a perfect term.

So speaking about big brands, so you've worked with some pretty great brands over the last year or so that I've seen pop up in your portfolio and some celebrities too. So Drew Barrymore, when I saw her on your feed, I was like, okay. Doug has hit it big. He worked with Drew Barrymore. That's incredible.

That was really fun. I can track that all the way back to one Google AdWords job from 2015. We can talk about the different ways that I market if you want. I’ve had a lot of luck with AdWords, and it's something that I would caution people, you have to watch all the boring YouTube videos and it's like watching paint dry. But if you're going to get your money's worth, you have to do the free phone call with them every 6 weeks. Otherwise you're just throwing money away. I think it's like to me, 2 or 3 days, you have to watch all the videos and really understand the metrics of how to optimize that. So I did all that and there's usually like a free $100 coupon, to get started. I did all that.

Yes. Yeah. 

 So I devoted a percentage of my marketing budget to that, and this company called Yogibo, who are in Nashua, NH, called me. The first shoot we did was a studio shoot, you probably call it an e com shoot. We did models with their products on white seamless and we were doing 2 or 3 of those shoots a year. And you know, the first shoot paid for the Google AdWords for the year. Then we started renting houses and doing location shoots with their products. But then I hadn't done a job with them since 2019, we were doing we were doing 2 a year. I did a job for them fall 2019, and then I hadn't done anything through the pandemic and I don't think they were shooting a lot of production, shut down or got much smaller. This New York producer called me and she thought I was in New York person. She said the Yojimbo CEO said, you're their photographer. We're doing a shoot on Wednesday in Brooklyn. Can you be here? Didn't even tell me it was a celebrity, just a client you've worked with, they said to call you. Yeah, no, no problem. This client had never done celebrity ads before, so this really came out of nowhere. But they're growing and their marketing budget and their marketing presence was growing a lot.

Their product is basically oversized, squishy, squishy bean bags, right?

Correct. They've branched out into furniture, pillows and blankets and a lot of home goods since and that's when we do a new sheet when they have a new product launch and they've been doing licensing deals. They have a Disney product, there was a baby Yoda product, they have all these products. So at that point I hadn't shot for them in almost 2 years because of COVID and because of the way that their marketing had changed. They said you were the guy, I'll email you the details. Companies will spend a lot more on motion, like millions of dollars to make usually you get a 15 and a 32nd TV spot out of a day.

Somebody at the last minute always goes, well, we're paying for a location, a set build in talent, we should get some stilts. There was a 60 person crew, they've been working on this for months. Then they go, Oh, we need we need somebody who's basically somebody who's not going to screw it up and somebody that we can trust to put in front of this celebrity talent and not embarrass us. Like it's a pretty low bar, the company, trusts me, that was it done. So we go down and I was so sick. II knew I didn't have COVID and I didn't have the flu. This was the sickest I've been in years. I know that there's a huge crew tomorrow and I'm going to be that guy with a mask on coughing all day. It was, it was awful. We knew we had her for 15 minutes, we didn't know when it was going to be. We need to shoot Drew with, I think it was 4 or 5 different wardrobe changes and products, and we knew we were going to have 15 minutes. But we didn't know when that was going to be so the call time was 6:00 am. I think Drew was there from 7:00 am till 3:00 pm. It's one of those things with celebrity where if you go over by a minute, like it's going to cost more. So they want to give me the least amount of time possible so they can get the most amount of time with her to get repeated takes her motion.

So I'm there and I'm coughing. They’re doing sound, so I can't be coughing in the background. Finally, I was like, I'm going to go sit outside because this whole crew was looking at me like, who let the sick guy in? And I told my assistant, call me when you need me. So finally at like 2:47 p.m. and she's done it 3. Hey, you're on for stills. We had set up our lights and camera before and we run in, so I knew we needed 6 different pictures. That was the licensing for what they were getting both from me and Drew was you're allowed to get 6 pictures. I think I shot 147 frames in about 14 or 15 minutes and we changed wardrobe and we did 6 products. So we got done and the client was happy and we're driving back. It's one of those where you realize, like, you think I'm really good at this. I just knocked out the celebrity shoot and I did all these amazing pictures in such a small amount of time.

And we realized she's been on camera since she was 4. Like, my job was to not screw it up. It wasn't like, oh, I'm really good. You know, my friends would see the pictures. Like, What did you tell her? How did you get that picture? It was like the most direction I gave her was, can you do that again or hold that click, click, click. Okay, go, and she's I mean, and the best the best people in front of a camera know that it's like click and then they move. You shift your body weight, you change your expression, you change your something. So she knows cameras and lights. I mean, and she has 30 more years in this business than I have and is way better at any of this than I'm ever going to be. So she makes you look really good. And so the client was happy, which is the point.

The pictures look good, which was the point. I made my assistant drive the car back because I coughed into a ball in the corner. We get back to Boston, everybody’s happy and that's the end of that job. That was September of 2021. Then I get a call in January that, hey, Drew's doing another ad for a different client and she has her own production company. And they said, hey, can you come down and shoot stills? The company is called Quorn, they’re like a meat substitute. She's the spokesperson. Can you come do stills, we’re doing this ad campaign. The producer didn't even know I was in Boston. They just got in my name. Drew has her whole team, like she has her own makeup person, a wardrobe people she worked with all the time. And whatever whatever she's doing, this is her team. Something had gone well on the previous shoot, her team passed along my name. So I drive down to New York. This time it's just me by myself. I'm getting no time with her alone. I'm shooting during the video portion while they're shooting.

So it's don't get in the way. Thankfully, this time I was not ill. Don't get in the way. Don't make us be late. But at the same time we need really high quality pictures. We're shooting in Central Park and then we're shooting in a rented townhouse in the afternoon.They shut down an entire city block of Central Park West. So I'm sitting in the middle of a street and there's 4 police officers stopping traffic and she's running back and forth with their mascot while they're shooting, they’re shooting the motion campaign. The police would look at me like, you got what you need and they look at the DP and you got and then they would let traffic go for 5 minutes. They stop traffic again. They do 2 or 3 more takes. I mean, it was amazing at the same thing, there's no oversight in that sense for stills it was like, we trust you, don't fuck this up or we'll never call you again. So we shoot all morning and it's like 33 degrees out with gorgeous snowflakes. Looks like a Hallmark Christmas movie.

At that point I had 1 idea that was not part of the shot list for the motion campaign. They gave Drew a trailer around the corner from the house and they would call her because they would set up the lights, they move the set. She changed her wardrobe and then they she'd go sit in this trailer, change her hair, change her wardrobe. They call her back to set. This went on for the whole day and was like, well, they're doing her hair and this chicken is like, if you haven't seen the Quorn ads picture like a fancier version of the San Diego Chicken. So what if they're both getting their hair and makeup done in this trailer and the producer for the motion shoot was like, as long as you don't cause her to be late for what we need. Go do whatever you want. So I go and I knock on the trailer door, and I'd already talked to the guy in the chicken suit, and he was like, yeah, whatever you need. I was like, hey Drew, what do you think about this? It's her and her makeup person and her wardrobe person, and they're all in there and she's like, that sounds great. So we get the chicken to sit down next to her, and they're both getting their hair and makeup done, and her makeup artist is now doing pretending to do makeup on this chicken. The hair person is doing Drew's hair. This was not something where I had any room for lights or any production. I'm sitting in the closet, it’s a literal trailer. Yes. I'm like, jammed up against the wardrobe, like a tiny ball sitting in the closet shooting available light. It's my favorite picture from the whole day.

I feel like I have the best mental picture of this right now. I need to see this photo.

It's on my website. If you go look, I think there's 2 pictures of Drew. There's 1 from each shoot, and there's a picture of Drew and this chicken getting their hair and makeup done. That was the first time I actually got like, we were in there for half an hour. We actually got a chance to talk. And she's like, oh, she has a dog named Doug. She's like, that’s how I remember your name. Like my dog's name. She's like, can I call you Douglas? I'm like, nobody calls me Douglas. She's like, My dog is named Douglas. I remember your name that way. I mean, she was awesome. I felt like I had made a picture there versus taking stills along somebody else's picture. So that was a little bit of a creative triumph there and that picture got used and that was really exciting and really fun. After that the producer called me and she's like, you were amazing. Like, I wasn't amazing, I was just out of the way. She goes, you don't understand. Nobody complained about you. She goes, you have no idea, you have no idea that people like this, people that they work with, who if I had done that trailer picture, but like, I need 5 more minutes and delayed the entire New York City Union crew from getting another take or another set like that would have been catastrophic.

So I knew, I'm in there, I have no idea how much time I have, I just know that when the PA comes and says, hey, we need Drew. There’s no hey, I need 5 more minutes, it's like she's going. Right. 

So those are the 2 jobs that I was able to do with her and her team and obviously would love to do it again. I think a lot of that is like as you grow and the longer you've been doing this, the more your network grows and the more people trust you and the budgets get bigger. I mean, I remember the first job I ever did, there was a 5 figure budget. It felt like all the money in the world, I made $12,000 umpiring and all of a sudden I'm doing a $15,000 photo job. That certainly wasn't like my cut at the end of the day. But that was what the client was spending on photography and it was like, my brain hurts, this is amazing. And now those kind of jobs happen with a degree of regularity and this goes to one of my things we had talked about before. It all depends on how you think about money and how you present yourself. I think that's so important. I mean, there were certainly times where a crew of 60, I mean, those budgets get the 7 figures really quick.

And they don't think I'm spending $1,000,000 to make a video for Hulu, which is where one of those lived or they think I'm spending $1,000,000 to make $10 million. So that’ becomes the pitch where, when I started and I was doing retail work, it's like your pitches, these photos are for your grandkids and now the pitch is whatever you spend with me is going to 5 or 10 x your product sales and your brand and your growth. So whatever you spend with me is just in service of making your revenue growth and your profit growth that much higher.

Right, It's an investment to accelerate their results in their growth. Completely. 

Yeah, at some point, let's do a whole nother episode on money mindset because you alluded to it and this is something that I've done a lot of work on being on the other side. Where in the beginning we were sort of talking about what it's like to sell to a company with a budget versus a person with their own bank account sort of footing the bill. So there are definitely different money mindsets that sort of come into play there.

Yeah, I mean, and briefly, you start to think about the things that you're selling and it's it's the experience. It's not just the pictures where there's a lot of times where I can say to a client and where. They're putting you in front of their CEO, their board members, and say, I can spend $500 for a second assistant and $200 to rent some more equipment. Instead of you needing me and my first assistant to then move your CEO, he's going to have to wait 10 minutes in between pictures and we're going to need him to do this and we go from needing half an hour of your CEO's time to we need him for 4 minutes. And they go 1, that’s amazing because his time is so valuable too and 2 that makes me look amazing because now I have provided a solution and they're spending say, $750 more to save an hour of this person's time. That's a no brainer to them and to most people, I mean, even to me, like $750 is, that's real money. When I was umpiring, that was half a month salary my first couple of years. Now it's like, what is the what is the return on that? I think that that's the value that you're selling.

Well, this was absolutely incredible. Doug, I just find your success and your evolution just so interesting. So I really love that your transparency in terms of taking us on the journey with you and just sort of highlighting this evolution from umpire to wedding photographer to corporate and big brand photographer now too. 

Doug, thank you so much for your transparency. For everyone who wants learn more and see more of Dougs work you, you can find him at douglaslevy.com. There are some really fun shots of Drew Barrymore with the chicken at the end of his portraits portfolio. Or you can also find him on instagram @douglevy.

I really hope that you liked this. If you got something out of it, would you leave me a review? I'd be so, so honored and would absolutely be doing a happy dance around my kitchen. Is there a topic you're hoping I'll talk about or a creative you'd love for me to interview? Let me know and I'll see if I can add it to the agenda.