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Welcome to OxTalks, powered by Enterprise Oxfordshire (formerly OxLEP). OxTalks is your partner in tackling business challenges and achieving your goals, giving an insight into the great work that Enterprise Oxfordshire does to support local organisations and communities. OxTalks host Howard Bentham talks to successful leaders from Oxfordshire and beyond to hear their advice to help your business flourish.
[00:00:00] Howard Bentham: Hello there, and welcome to another edition of OxTalks, the podcast powered by OxLEP, the local enterprise partnership for Oxfordshire, and sponsored by leading national law firm Mills & Reeve. OxTalks explores issues affecting business today. In addition to highlighting the excellent work that OxLEP does and how they could potentially help your company prosper.
I'm Howard Bentham, and throughout these podcasts, I'll be talking to inspirational leaders from Oxfordshire and beyond to hear their practical advice and guidance to help you achieve your goals. Every one of my guests is keen to acknowledge the valuable support that's available from OxLEP, and how it could be crucial in helping your company or organisation develop and grow.
Our focus for these podcasts is on Oxfordshire, but naturally you may be listening to us elsewhere. Many of the subjects and issues raised here will be very similar to the ones that you're potentially facing where you are. Please do share any thoughts and observations and join in the conversation. Head to our social media. We are @OxfordshireLEP on X and Oxfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership on LinkedIn, and to raise questions with us for future discussions, please use the email address in the podcast description, it's always good to hear from you.
In this edition, our focus is on top tips for building your personal brand and developing your organisation's reputation. Many of us have hobbies and interests outside of work that occupy our spare time, give a welcome relief from the daily grind, or perhaps even allow us to dream of a different life. Whether the pastime is a sporting one, an artistic one, or a volunteering role within a local organisation, whatever the activity may be, it plays an important role in our social life, as well as our mental health and well being. But what if your hobby or pastime was to become your job? How could you monetise something that you've been doing for fun and without a fee to get it to pay the mortgage and feed the family? How would you go about it? Where would you start? What about the risks involved in leaving secure employment and having to make your own way? Is there any help out there and to whom should you turn? Building a personal brand is often a long and difficult process that has many pitfalls. As comedian Robin Sharma put it, it generally takes about 10 years to become an overnight sensation. Many a true word, they say, is spoken in jest.
Our OxTalks guest has certainly trod that tricky path from job security to setting up his own business Born from a burning passion, and he's made a wonderful success of it. From simply taking pictures of family and friends, he's become a multi award winning photographer and trainer, working in all aspects of portrait photography, from lifestyle through to fashion, editorial and branding imagery. Amongst his many accolades, he's been named the UK Portrait Photographer of the Year and boasts an impressive client list including Cadbury, The Sunday Times Magazine and Le Manoir. I'm delighted to welcome to OxTalks from Paul Wilkinson Photography, the man with his name on the tin, Paul Wilkinson.
Paul, welcome. Great to talk to you. Before we chat about the photography, let us in on the tale of your early career. You worked as a senior manager at Accenture, then as a management consultant at the Financial Times. How did you get into that sphere?
[00:03:33] Paul Wilkinson: Well, my PhD's in Artificial Intelligence, and off the back of that, I worked with a little venture capital company up in Birmingham, and they had me travelling all over assessing projects, one of which involved predicting financial markets. I was assessing whether they should invest and in that process, I met some guys from Accenture who headhunted me into the company and with my background as a designer, really, that was an odd choice, my first degree is industrial design and all of my friends and quite a lot of my family were questioning whether Accenture would be a prudent choice. But I went and I loved it. I loved every single start second of working for this huge corporate, I ended up as a senior manager, systems architect, so designing all sorts of platforms.
First one I got involved with was at the stock exchange, so I was truly in the financial markets and very quickly we worked out that there was a better fit for me if I headed out into media. So I transitioned across, started working with clients like the BBC, and then off the back of that went to Sony Music and spent two years working on the platform that now is part of the warehousing that takes all of the musical assets into the warehouses that supply things like iTunes and Spotify. So we were part of the architecture team taking the original tapes and converting them into digital assets and tracking all of the metadata and all of the records and all different publishing things.
[00:04:58] Howard Bentham: You speak with such passion and clearly, as you said, enjoyed what you were doing.
[00:05:03] Paul Wilkinson: It was great.
[00:05:03] Howard Bentham: So, why say, nah, I want to take photos?
[00:05:08] Paul Wilkinson: It was because my wife and kids were greater. So I ended up, when we were expecting our first child, I got called away all over the place, expecting our second child. I was based in New York, I left New York just before the Twin Towers came down, that was the timing. And then, you know, just the pressures of that kind of existence were huge and I loved the job, but the demands on Sarah and the kids with me not being around. Yes, Sarah, she probably enjoyed the peace and quiet, I think, but I never got to be part of that world and then eventually there was a pull, really an emotional pull to try and find something else to do and it coincided with a little bit of serendipity.
[00:05:50] Howard Bentham: Yeah, well, maybe we'll talk about the timing in a second, but help us understand the, photography passion that you had. I mean, you sound, obviously you were very full on doing your, jobs in various parts of the world. Where did you find time to be a photographer?
[00:06:05] Paul Wilkinson: Well, not just could I find time to be a photographer, I could have the finances to be a photographer because I was being paid really well, as you'd expect. I suddenly found myself in New York, living in a hotel with an American team who, a lot of the time weren't around, they'd go home or travel back to family and friends in the evenings and weekends and so I just used to go and find second hand cameras in New York and buy a camera and some film and go and take some pictures and I've had a camera in my hand since I was 10 years old and it's like asking the musician about when did they start? You know, you start the minute you sit down at the instrument and then obviously the professional side of it builds, but I've always had a camera in my hands and now I had an opportunity. and the money to fund it and it just became more and more of a passion and from there it grew.
[00:06:48] Howard Bentham: So the sort of photography that you like to do in your spare time. I've just got a mental picture of you now ambling around central park.
[00:06:55] Paul Wilkinson: Yeah, pretty much.
[00:06:55] Howard Bentham: Taking pictures of folks sitting on benches or whatever.
[00:06:58] Paul Wilkinson: Yeah. Pretty much, but I was never a very good street photographer. In my head I'd love to be, right? You know, the black and white shots of downtown Manhattan or Brooklyn.
[00:07:07] Howard Bentham: Central Station.
[00:07:08] Paul Wilkinson: All, yeah, so I mean, the number of times I went to Central Station to try and take a good photograph, never did, never, and I've got rolls of film. I'm not a street photographer, that's not my bag. But while I was working at school and then early in my university, I worked with a lot of orchestras, I was a percussionist and so that's a great opportunity to mix with people and I always had a camera. So I take people's portraits and it was just, I liked talking to people as, and anyone who knows me will tell you that's true. I love the chat and in the chat, if you get the chat right, and you're just talking to someone, you can actually swing up a camera and take a picture really easily. It doesn't get in the way, nobody really notices it, even though it's right in front of my face, because that's how as humans we perceive dialogue and so I'd be chatting to friends, people in the orchestra, I'd take a picture and they'd like the picture, I'd give them the picture and then eventually people started saying, Oh, Paul's all right with a camera, can you take my picture? And that part of the thread was just my people skills, not a photography skill and then gradually, of course, an understanding of light and form and shape and all of those things, they come with practice. But all of the fundamental thing is never changed. I just like people.
[00:08:17] Howard Bentham: What about the, if you like, the road to Damascus moment where you think well, I can actually make a living at doing this. Was there a shall I shan't I? Take us through the thought process there.
[00:08:29] Paul Wilkinson: Well, it's, we always tell these stories like it's a linear story, right? And it's never that. It goes backwards and forwards and there's three different threads running at the same time. But there was a key moment where I had taken a picture of my two kids, just as a present for Sarah and off the back of having children, we suddenly had relationships with lots of other people who had kids at the same time and Sarah got together with someone having a coffee and they'd seen this picture or a couple of these pictures and so I get a phone call, I can't remember which client I was at, but I get a phone call from Sarah laughing, saying, you'll never guess what. No, I'm not going to guess, you know, well, one of our friends in this circle owns a marketing company and she's just seen your pictures and has asked me who was the photographer because we've been trying to find this style of photography locally and couldn't find it and here it is on your wall, who's the photographer and so Sarah was like, well, it's just Paul, you know, and the lady's right, well, how much does he charge? And Sarah's like, he's not a professional photographer and so the thread very rapidly went from could he do the work to how much would he charge and then me having a conversation saying how much should I charge and then the guys in the marketing company booking me to do a gig and helping me set up my portfolio so that they could show their client because, of course, when you're working into marketing companies, they're not really my buyer, the buyer is the person on the end of that food chain. That gig never actually happened. It never went ahead for the marketing company either. But in the meantime, they booked me to do a couple of other jobs and paid me the rates that we'd agreed that we're going to charge their client and that's the light bulb. That's the moment that you realize what you have in your hands is a saleable asset. Pricing? TBD. What we're going to do with it? TBD. But the product, there is a product. Now what I've got to do is hone it and make it something that's truly sellable.
[00:10:16] Howard Bentham: Was the decision to make a leap of faith a financial one or a financially driven decision or something that was burning away in your heart, I've got to be a photographer!
[00:10:29] Paul Wilkinson: I was working, as an IT consultant for, so I was working at Accenture when this thread happens. It's in 2004, 2005, and we looked at what I could charge as a photographer and laughed. But it got this thread...
[00:10:42] Howard Bentham: Laugh because it was terrible or laugh because it was good?
[00:10:44] Paul Wilkinson: There's no money, not at that stage, you know and at the same time, I had a client, they'd moved me out of media into telcoms. I was working with telcos and that was not a natural fit for me. I had a client that was a very particular style of manager on the client side, who would literally ball you out in the middle of a room, which he did to me a couple of times, and it's fine, you kind of get used to it, you're a consultant, you paid an awful lot of money to be there and if you haven't delivered what he thought he'd asked for, fair enough, you know, I delivered what I thought he'd asked for, and there's lots of those little threads going on and at the same time, I'm driving home from this client, having had a pretty rough day, and my phone rang. So I pulled into a lay by. It's an American number, but I don't recognise it and it's an old client that I worked with at Pearson Tech, Pearson Education, Pearson Technology and he asked me, he said, Paul, he said, after a bit of chitchat, he used to be my client in New Jersey. He said, do you know anyone with your skillset who we could recruit in to look after a project at Financial Times Business, which is the magazine arm of the FT, and I kind of chatted to him a little bit about the skill set, and eventually I said, are you asking me to find someone, or are you asking me, would I consider the jump? And he said, well, tell you what, he said, I'm in London next week, do you fancy dinner? So I met him, had dinner, and sure enough, they were gently angling, because there's some rules and regs around it, you can't just headhunt somebody out of a company you've worked with. So we danced around it a little bit, and eventually got down to, no, there's an offer on the table, and we looked at the offer and he was 20 percent under the rate that I wanted, if I was going to jump, I was going to jump for a certain amount and it was 20 and he said, I haven't got that and I said, is that because you've got rules about how much you can pay in external, or is it because you don't have the budget? And he said, I don't have the budget and I saw, okay, you're 20 percent under. So by my maths, that means I could take Fridays off and so he kind of looked at me, I said I'll be on call, you've got my mobile number. Well, clearly you've got my mobile number, you rang me from New Jersey. So how about I do four out of five days, but I'm available to your team on a Friday, if you need me. I'll pick up as soon as I can and what's going through my head, I've got four days paid at full rates, and now I've got three days a week to build a photography business, because by then we were starting to get requests in to do stuff. So basically what I said was, I'll go to the FT, to the Financial Times business, and help them run this project, which we did successfully over three years. In the meantime, in those three days, I'll set up a photography business and see how it goes. Accenture tried to hold on to me. The client, who'd been shouting at me a lot, when I told he was the first person outside of my immediate management, I told I was jumping and he looked at me and said, why didn't you tell me? He said, I'd have recruited you in a heartbeat, which is the irony having shouted at me and having been one of the reasons I'd had enough, you know, and it's that's how life rolls sometimes. Anyway, I jumped, did four days a week, then three, then two, then one, as we delivered the systems that they wanted and eventually I'm just on a retainer, they're just holding on to me so that I can help them when they need it. I was a systems architect, I was pretty well qualified and then the one day I bumped into the head of all of the project manager side at the FT and he said, I need you to deliver another project for me, would you do it? And I said, what does it entail? He said, it'll be five days a week though, none of this four days. He said, we'll pay, we've got the budget, but it will be five days and I remember I was in a lift with him and I said, Would you consider it rude if I turned you down and said, now's the time for me to, leave and give this other thing I've got going, see if it's really got legs and he laughed at me and he said, we'll keep the door open and, I walked out the lift.
[00:14:18] Howard Bentham: Not as in, you'll be back here, Sonny. He wasn't...
[00:14:20] Paul Wilkinson: No, not at all.
[00:14:21] Howard Bentham: In a nice way.
[00:14:22] Paul Wilkinson: Yeah. By then I'd been running a photography business seven days a week, basically, but I was on call to the FT. So we knew to an extent that there was, we got the product, right? So that's the first thing, right? I got a product, but we hadn't really got our arms around in quite the right way was how to make a living out of it. So I stepped away from that world and took a 90 percent pay cut. So in answer to your question, did I do it for the money? No, and since then, that's been the governance for an awful lot of what we do, because there are a lot of ways, even in the photography world, where I could make a lot more money. Straight cash, you know, a high volume, low charge rates, multi photographer studio, sell your soul a little bit, product photography. I got asked by a very big high street store that everyone would know if I consider quoting on doing all of their product photography and it would involve sitting in a very small studio all day, every day, photographing things on neutral backgrounds and I can make a lot of money, but it wasn't why I left. I already had money. The money, you know, I had a very lucrative career. Occasionally we look back and wonder about that decision. But it was never about that. It was about life, it was about the kids, it was about Sarah, it was about me not having jet lag and having cancer scares because I'd spent so long going through time zones backwards and forwards. In the end, it just disrupted me, every bit of me and it was about everything but the money. But that's not to say that I ever wanted to not have a living. So we... I left and in 2008, and this tells you the irony of all of these decisions. I left and went full time as a photographer. I think it was the beginning of March 2008, just in time for the world's greatest ever financial meltdown. That's how good I am at business acumen. So, you know, all you people judging me, we've made a great success of it, but that initial timing, I think I might have stayed for a year. If I'd have been three weeks later in the decision process, I'd have stayed. I'd probably still be working as an IT consultant, because nobody in their right mind would jump into that.
[00:16:20] Howard Bentham: Incredible, yeah, and I just think people, other people I know, and those sort of decisions, sometimes you use the word serendipity. It is that, isn't it? That it just happens and that conversation with Sarah then, I mean, was she actually driving that? It sounds like if she was worried about you healthwise?
[00:16:38] Paul Wilkinson: Yeah. I think she was to an extent and in the end it's a really tough call because I know what's coming and luckily Sarah had a really well paid job and a really good career. But we approached the kids and said, look, you know, in the Accenture days I was controlled by projects, so for six months nobody saw me. But then I get three weeks off and of course, unpaid really well. So we'd have a nice holiday. We've got nice cars. The kids had nice clothes, particularly when I was working in New York for Sony. My office was directly above Gap Kids. So I'd buy a suitcase in New York, I'd go down to Gap Kids, load it up and come home. You know, they had the best clothes and we said to the kids, look... You will see more of Daddy. They're young at this point, you know, Jake must have been, what, four or five. You'll see more of Daddy, but that's the end of the flash cars and the lots of clothes and the skiing holidays, you know, when the kids were skiing, Jake's skied since he was three years old. What a luxury, right? What an absolute privilege for me and for us as a family to be able to do that and we said, that's the end. You know, we're going, just isn't going to happen anymore and they both went, oh no, we want to see Daddy. We want to see Daddy. Well, I've now got two 20 year olds, 20 something year olds. Ask them now. They wouldn't say, Oh yeah, they'd send me back to New York with the suitcases and, you know, the fine cars and the nice holidays. So it was driven from all sorts of angles and it was only really when we sat down and looked at the business modelling and figured out there's enough in there to get us going, and then we have to figure out how to be truly successful and we looked at a couple of other photographers who'd made a real success of it so that we had visibility. We're not bleeding edge, we're not, you know, breaking new ground and the hardest bit was convincing ourselves that if we got it right, there was enough of an income in it to support the four of us.
That was tough and also a slight unknown, but we'd seen other people do it. We knew it was possible and I, never burnt any bridges. You know, I said goodbye to the FT in a really nice way. I'm still friends with all of the guys at Accenture. They're still in my circle of friends. So there was always doors open and that way we left enough safety nets to be able to do it and that was the decision.
[00:18:47] Howard Bentham: Let's talk about the brass tacks of actually getting a business off the ground. Where did you start? I mean, you know roughly now what you want to do. You've painted the vision brilliantly, but you've actually got to create a company. What did you do?
[00:19:02] Paul Wilkinson: We'd already started the company, so the privilege of having these two and a half, three years of working as a freelance consultant, was I had a degree of flexibility that I didn't have at Accenture. Accenture...
[00:19:14] Howard Bentham: You ran it as a sole trader?
[00:19:15] Paul Wilkinson: Yeah, well, no, I set it up as a limited company actually straight away. So when I jumped across to, it was, it's one of those odd things, but there's lots of little stories in it. We knew I was jumping to the FT to set something else up. So when the partners at Accenture tried to persuade me out of it, my reasoning for leaving was it wasn't about moving to a different client. It was about checking to see whether there was a business, whether the photography business would have legs, right? It's that thing, I'd never want to get to the end of my life and go, if only I'd given it a go, because if you haven't given it a go, that's an absolute failure. If you have given it a go and it hasn't worked, well, fair enough and I hate when you hear that or feel that, it's just, oh, if only I'd done this. So that was the logic, if that's logic. So when the FT employed me, I immediately set myself up as a limited company, Paul Wilkinson Photography Limited, myself and Sarah co directors, which caused a degree of consternation. But the reason we did it was that working on the systems I was working on, in Pearson, they gave me, I had to have a requirement was like, I think it was a 20 million indemnity insurance with clauses on the contract that they could investigate any work I did and come after me if they thought I'd been negligent or, you know, maltrust and all of these things.
So we'd set the limited company up to give us a degree of ring fencing away from the house. That was the logic so that if something did go wrong, at least that part of our world was completely ring fenced rather than sole trading, in which case, fair game. On top of that, I've got insurance policies and all the rest of it to cover me. It did take a couple of months with FT or Pearson's lawyers and accountants coming after me saying, why are we being charged this amount of money on a regular basis for a photographer? It's like, you're not, I'm not delivering photography to you, I'm delivering consultancy services to you. I haven't picked up a camera on your behalf at all, not in any way, shape or form. But I set the company up knowing. I'd exit that too. So, of course, when I exited it, I'd already got a company that had three years of good trading. So, the banks were happy. Ironically, I live on a street, it's a tiny little street in the backwater of nowhere, but it's called High Street, so, I've got a High Street address with years of trading, which meant when I'm doing trade accounts with suppliers, that's really easy because I've got everything and we thought about all of this as a business. We said, what's the product? And the product is originally, we thought the product was the photograph, which is really, that's, that has changed. So the product was the photograph. I can take a good photograph. I can make people look good. I can put them at ease. Here's a photograph. What we've learned since then is the product is so much more nuanced than that and now I wouldn't sit down and say the product is the photograph, I'd say the vehicle for me producing the product is the photograph. The product is the experience and the memory. If you give someone an experience, they'll buy the memory. So the product is the experience, the vehicle for it is something to go on a wall or in an album.
[00:22:09] Howard Bentham: Did you utilise any local business support services, apply for any funding? I guess you were sort of, not quite in the money, but it sounded like you were well paid before. So did you need to sort of go cap in hand?
[00:22:21] Paul Wilkinson: Well, there were two stages to the business. There's the first stage. So Paul Wilkinson Photography version one. We set up our studio next to the house and I pulled the shares that I had from Accenture to fund that. So we had the money, at least some and we used that to set up a small studio, so we didn't need any more funding at that stage, and Sarah was still working, so we bankrolled it, and I'd already been buying kit, because, of course, I'd, effectively, I was my own investor. For three years, I'd invested knowing we were going to exit. So the joy of when you go freelance is I'm still paid the same loaded cost to the client, except I don't have a big Accenture taking their share, which is quite a lot. I now get all of the money. Now, ideally, that would go into a pension and lots of other things, of course. But what we did was say, right, okay, this is our exit. We will bankroll the business. So we invested in the studio kit, the cameras, marketing, websites, all of that and built version one and then we got to a stage where we needed to do a version two because we'd got our brand elevated, but I could no longer work out of a garage connected to our house. It's a big garage, it's a big studio space, but I heard a client I was pitching to come up the drive and I heard her say, I was just a converted garage and I remember thinking, okay, we need to change. Couple that with the fact that one of my clients one day needed to use the loo in the house and open the loo door to find our son, who was about six years old sitting on there reading a comic and you kind of, all right, I know, I now know we need to do something more professional and through a whole series of coincidences and relationships bumped into someone who happened to know the guy that owned the studio I'm now in and he loved the idea of me being in there. We managed to engineer a whole process to make that happen. But of course that now takes a bigger investment than we had with starting again. So I knew we needed to refund to a degree. We had some money, we had put some away, we knew at some point we'd do this, we went to the business, went to the banks for a business loan, but bearing in mind this is, when was that, 2011. They weren't dead keen on giving a small business money. The interest rates they asked for their loan was higher than a credit card, which is, you know, to me was crazy. I assume there's a logic to it, but it's a crazy commitment and they also wanted to secure it against the house, which having had built a limited company to avoid this, wasn't going to do.
So our in laws are very kind and they helped us secure a loan, a personal loan to do it. There are accountants as well, which is really kind of them and then Sarah hunted around for grants and so we found out there was a grant. Bucks Council, which we're just on the border between Bucks and Oxfordshire, but Bucks Council, Aylesbury Vale, had grants available for startup businesses provided we were going to employ someone. I'd always wanted to employ someone. So Sarah and myself by now, Sarah jumped ship. She was now full time with me and, you know, we were doing really well, but we had a ton of clients and more work than we could deal with and still live a normal life and so I knew I was going to employ someone, so that's okay, I think we can tick that box. So we approached the council and they said it was like a Dragon's Den style thing. So you put your business case together, you put your spreadsheets and your pitch and Sarah and I are very different people. I'm this.
[00:25:42] Howard Bentham: We've got the idea!
[00:25:43] Paul Wilkinson: Yeah, sorry. I'm very happy telling a story. You may have noticed. If you need to break, feel free, but I'll still be here. Sarah's much more succinct, much sharper, and very much about the numbers. So she put all these spreadsheets together, and we'd agreed in advance that I would do the talking because I love that kind of sales pitch, I'm quite happy with that and Sarah would make sure, a bit like Dragon's Den, right? There's always one who's the gobby one and one who's the smart one and you know, by now you've worked out which is which. So we sat outside this room and one by one, other people who were putting their pitch forward were coming out ash and white, having had a grilling because they only had enough funding for so many companies and it literally was probably two or three days of interviews trying to figure out who to allocate it to. So we're sitting there and I'm now beginning to shake because I didn't think it was going to be like this. I thought I'd say, you know, how beautiful our work was, how happy our clients are, we'll employ someone. Yes, of course, you're going to give me the money on you. That didn't occur to me that actually I'd have to fight for it. So we go in and everyone stands up. I'm introduced to, I think there were five or six people on this panel and I get to the last lady who shook my hand and she stopped everyone from sitting down. She said, just before we start, and everyone's still standing at this stage, she said, just before you start, she said, I just want you to know that I drink in the coffee shop at the end of your road, and I've seen your work on their walls, because we'd arranged with them to put our frames on the coffee shop wall. Free, we provided all the frames, we provided photography to them, free, provided I could put these beautiful big frames on their walls and she said, I've seen these frames, and I just want you to know, and I want everyone else to know, Just how beautiful your work is and how, what a thrill it is to say hello finally and meet the guy that creates them. Right. Everyone sit down. Should we start? We'd won it before I'd opened my mouth. I didn't have to do anything. She knew our work. We got the gram. It was big enough to get us rolling. I recruited someone, she's still with us and this is 11 years ago and that is where that support was priceless. I mean, it can't be priceless. They gave us a fixed amount of money, but you know what I mean? It wasn't, but it was on two different levels. Yes, the funding, and it was a grant as opposed to a loan, which is great because you suddenly got some seed capital to get sofas and lighting and frames on your walls. But it was the other part of it, which is there's a psychological trick anyway, which is, you need to commit. Totally commit. If you're going to set up a small business, you don't just tickle at it, you know, I'm sitting in a really beautiful podcast studio, with you guys and at some point the guys that own all of this said, no, we're going to make this real. You can do it with three microphones and a bench and a back shed. But the minute you commit properly, you get this, you get a proper business and so having pitched, done our numbers properly, like, you know, one year, two year, three year, five year projections, I now knew our business model. Properly. Sarah always did, but now I knew it too. The grant was, had some strings attached. I had to employ someone or they could, in theory, retract. I don't know quite how they do that, but that was certainly in the T's and C's. So not just did they give me however many thousands of pounds that was, they gave me the same thousands of reasons to not fail and that push was priceless and we moved into our new studio with that behind us, the wind properly in our sails.
[00:29:12] Howard Bentham: Let's bring into the conversation OxLEP's, communication manager, Rob Panting. Rob, how do OxLEP work with those who want to bring their passions to life like Paul?
[00:29:23] Rob Panting: Thanks, Howard. Yeah, certainly since COVID in particular, I think it's an area of our work, which we've worked very hard to ensure that we're supporting people who want to harness a passion like Paul's and very much make it a commercial enterprise and make money from it. So we've evolved our support over time, and like I say, particularly over the last two or three years off the back of COVID, with the introduction of aspects like a startup club that we coordinate. So those with a business idea can understand perhaps the basics behind running a small business, how they can grow, how they can expand the everyday skills that they need to run that business. So that's a big area of our work at the moment, but also, and I suspect it's probably an area that we'll touch on in due course. The networking aspect, so particularly for a local business who predominantly operate in a tighter geographical area, that networking opportunity to meet suppliers, to meet potential clients, to develop B2B relationships, we create lots of different networking opportunities and different guises. In particular, our most recent one is the introduction of a networking opportunity called OxBoost, and that is very much focused on collaboration, you know, meeting like minded people and building a personal brand, which, you know, Paul has done successfully.
[00:30:46] Howard Bentham: Yeah. Is it a fair assumption to make that when you first started your business, very few people had heard of Paul Wilkinson Photography. I mean, you're saying about your kids, you're hardly a household name in your own household.
[00:30:57] Paul Wilkinson: That's rude! True but rude! Yeah, you start out and I mean, the thing was we, I had a degree of pull. So I didn't wake up one morning and just think, you know what, I'm going to pick up my camera and turn it into a business. I had already picked up the camera. I was already producing pictures and I'd had a pull. The pull was the trigger. So. I had now got a job, so we built a website. Off the back of the website, I filled it with pictures from the jobs I'd begun to do, plus personal work. The harder bit of that very early days was everybody did know me, but they knew me as Jake's dad or Harry's dad, which is a little bit more nuanced when you're trying to sell photography and the photography market hasn't improved in this regard because people don't value it necessarily. You have to explain to people why they're going to pay proper fees and so there was a little bit of like, Oh, you're just Jake's dad, why are you charging that kind of money? That kind of conversation and then there's the other part of it. You sort of struck onto personal branding and in this instance, I'm going to slide away from the personal branding, but certainly branding our business and because it's got my name on the door, you know, it is personal to me, but it's still just branding. The beginning part of it was people will come to you and say, I've seen this guy who does these pictures down the road. He's quite expensive, could you do that for me, but not charge as much? And it's like, well, A, why do you think I'd be cheaper? B, why would I be copying somebody else's work? So when you start out, there is a lot of that going on and it's just, it's only in a creative industry, it's tough.
And then gradually you start to show what you love and when you show something you genuinely love, right or wrong, you know, if you love what you do, you're absolutely right, there's no wrong in creativity. The challenge is finding other people who love it and it just so happens that the photography I create is pretty commercial. I'm not an edgy, out there, avant garde, you know, photographer, I'm not. I really like people. So my job is to make people look and feel good, that's pretty much it. So when you start to show pictures that do, that actually that starts to build and people start, it becomes like a crystal seed that it, things migrate towards it and it grows.
[00:33:11] Howard Bentham: What about the company name itself? Was that anything you agonised over?
[00:33:15] Paul Wilkinson: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:33:16] Howard Bentham: Should I put my name on it?
[00:33:18] Paul Wilkinson: Man. Did we agonise over it? I think at one point it was gonna be called, I kid you not, I think it was gonna be called Golden Box. I can't remember how that came up. Possibly with whiskey, but I can't remember what we were wrestling with when we set it up was how do we sell it on? So how do we make it not dependent on me? That was the conversation we didn't try to do... when we started out, we said, right, this is a business that we're going to build, make it successful and then our exit, when we retire, we'll sell it. And we sat and we brought some really clever friends of ours in, all marketeers and we went through a million options and I think we were playing on ideas of a box of memories, you know, that kind of idea. It's not quite as random as it sounds and I'm like looking at it and Sarah's looking at it. I was like, that's no good and then somebody said, what is the product? Why do people come to you? And I said, well, they come to you for Paul. Well, there's your name, it's you as an artist and so we actually stepped away from a clever, non disc, and at that time, do you remember, every company name at that stage, and we were in those 2000s, was a colour and a geometric form, you know, red box, purple box, purple circle, red circle, blue circle, you name it, it's out there as a kind of this juxtaposition of randomness. It didn't mean anything. But when you say Paul Wilkinson Photography, it's quite clear what we're doing, it's not trying to hide behind it, and so that's what we did, we set about making me an artist that people would come to have that experience.
[00:34:47] Howard Bentham: Rob, what are the challenges that commonly stop people following their dreams?
[00:34:52] Rob Panting: I think Paul's touched on several, access to finance is a, big one. I think what Paul describes is a very successful career prior to moving in to setting up his business and it's not to say that Paul didn't work hard to be in that position and, you know, but for a lot of people with ideas and wanting to harness their passion and turn it into a business, they don't have the finance behind them to push forward with, you know, capital purchases or whatever it might be. So access to finance is, we find is a big one that comes up, but then actually some of the associated business skills, you know, a lot of people find solace in working within an organisation and they know they're taking home a salary at the end of the week, end of the month, whenever it might be, so they've not necessarily had to worry about things like tax returns or things like, you know, marketing we touched on earlier, how do you, sell your product? And so there's a whole range of elements really, which is why our support is, you know, we would suggest quite critical the fact that it's multifaceted and I think probably the big one is having the ability or being brave enough to step away from regular work because it's something which not many people will embrace or be willing to embrace so it's probably the psychological barrier maybe versus the practicalities of it all.
[00:36:23] Howard Bentham: Let's talk about the marketing side of it. So, Jake's dad with a camera takes a great photo to getting the word out there. What, did you do? Was it word of mouth? Word of mouth is incredible. I know people that literally only advertise by word of mouth, but did you go the whole hog? You talked about websites?
[00:36:44] Paul Wilkinson: I built a website. I was working alongside a guy at the FT, who's a freelance web coder, and so I designed it, he built it. So we had a website right from the beginning. I have to, I get into trouble a little bit because I think on one hand we didn't really do any marketing, but the reality is we did a ton of it. What we didn't do was advertise in magazines or press. We didn't pay for advertising in that sense. So I've talked about the coffee shop. You know, it's a, they serve the nicest coffee in the area and I approached the owners and said, in return for me doing all of your photography, would you give me your wall space? And they said, yeah and so of course I had the perfect client in there. It was an expense, still an expensive coffee shop, my pictures are on the walls. We supported lots of local schools and charities. We would just run a photo day, 15 minute sessions. It wasn't really about generating revenue. It was about getting our name out there.
But in terms of marketing, my view has been that make a friend, keep a friend, make another friend, keep that friend too. We had the luxury of me working for three years on a proper consultants fee and not having to worry too much at that stage about it being the only income. It wasn't the only income. We actually had two salaries supporting it. So I could make a friend, keep a friend, make a friend, keep a friend, tune the pricing, make a friend, keep a friend and for us, Lots of little things like that have been our marketing policy. We have made friends along the way. Now obviously, websites are core. So it was really carefully tuned with SEO and I wrote a blog. So all of that side of it and then you do things like in 2008, when I went full time pro, it made me eligible to join the Master Photographers Association and I won some awards right out the gate. Big awards, Family Portrait Photographer of the Year. I got my first qualification that year. I was runner up in Studio Photographer of the Year. So we just blitzed the press. We wrote press releases and put them into the local Thames Gazette, I think it was, and then the following year won a bigger award and so it was lots of things like that. But the biggest trick for us wasn't really a, let's get out there and make everybody know us. It was, let's find one person and get them to talk about us. Then find another person, keeping the first, don't let the first person go. Let's get the second person to talk about us. We gave an experience, we gave them memories, we gave them these beautiful pictures with my signature on the walls. Somebody came in the other day and joked that every house they went into in Addenham, there's my signature. A chef at Le Manoir came in one day, he was a front of house, he was a front of house manager, he came in and he said, even my girlfriend's family, he's got a new girlfriend, even my girlfriend's family, he's got your signature on their walls, these big pictures I'd shot for them. So we've done it drip by drip and let it grow organically. Now, in a way, and this sounds counterintuitive, and I don't know necessarily whether Sarah and I entirely agree on it, but my view is that the compression in the entire marketplace of the economy in 2008, when we went live, probably saved us.
Two big reasons. Firstly, we were not scaled up. To be able to satisfy a demand greater than we had. We couldn't have done it. We thought we could, and I wanted to be busy seven days a week. Well, I'm now busy seven days a week, and I can do it because I've got a team, and we've got our processes down, and I understand my psychology and then the second part of it, that is it made us really think about how to drive a business. So I'm at a wedding, Sarah's coming out to assist. It's the day they announced we've gone into a recession. Gordon Brown's rescuing banks, left right and centre. Everything's gone. And I'm, Sarah rocks up and I caught her before we walk in to do some photography around the back of the church, and I was like, have you seen the news? It's Radio 4. I've got Radio 4 on the way in because I wanted to hear the reports. Have you heard the news? That's it's dead. The year I decide to give up my very lucrative career, it's gone. What are we going to do? It's doom, gloom, you know, I'm quite dramatic. there's no, I'm not temperate. No. Don't, you laugh at me. This is one creative to another. Darling, we're done, and I'd had a proper meltdown, but I'm walking into a wedding and Sarah looked at me and she said, and Sarah's super smart and super level headed, and she looked at me and she said, that's the last time. She said, you can do that to me. She said, that's the last time I want to hear you talk like that. You walk into that wedding and everything's amazing. You're having fun, best decision of your life, great career. You know, this is a true passion. All of the things that we've talked about and we've built the brand around, that's what you're going to walk into what you're photographing right now, because that client does not deserve to hear you muttering for one and you think for a minute, you're going to attract clients if you're moaning, shut the up, get in there and do your job. So being a performer that I am. Darlings! And that was, and those two things I think probably saved us because it made me think it brought me up with a proper jolt and said, right, that's how you do it. You give people an experience, you give people joy, and then you can monetise that, and equally it gave us the time to build the processes and workflows and good habits. You talked a little bit about business. I wish I'd had OxLEP in my back pocket. I, honestly, I was fortunate. I came out of Accenture as a business management consultant, understanding the functions in a business and the problem with small businesses, I've got the same number of functions as Accenture was advising. I've got accounts receivable, accounts payable, I've got an HR function, you know, I've got ops, I've got production, all of these things. It's just now there's only two of us looking after it and we've all got to have these kind of multiple heads on and I wished I'd had access to a few more heads at that time. You know, now it's a joy working with you and I can see what it brings, and I so wish I'd had that and I've had to learn a lot of it and we brought a lot of it out of our corporate background. So it's interesting.
[00:42:41] Rob Panting: Absolutely.
[00:42:41] Howard Bentham: And just in terms of where OxLEP can help, I mean, we're talking about marketing there. I mean, there are some really active things you can, offer if people email or call.
[00:42:56] Rob Panting: I mean, we've touched on elements like our startup clubs, our networking opportunities. We do have access to a variety of different business advisors as well. So depending on, you know, which category of business support you need, we will be able to provide that support. Point you in the generally in the right direction and offer that support and I mean, just picking up Paul's point around the support that organisations like OxLEP offer and how it could have been of use to Paul and Sarah, there are a lot of tools available to people starting up their business and starting their business journey. Now you think, I mean, it's easy for me as a comms marketing person to say this, but the power of social media is, has never been as strong as it has now. So you look at a lot of these individuals who are starting up their businesses and they're looking to build their brand, to build their network of partners and, you know, platforms like LinkedIn have never been more effective and they've become cleverer, shall we say, in terms of allowing you to use the different demographics built into LinkedIn, to, segment your audiences, to reach the right people. So there's plenty of tools available, I think it's just the encouragement and being bold enough to go with it really, which is the key issue.
[00:44:14] Howard Bentham: But equally to know you're there, which is a great safety net too. Paul, a thought from you on how you keep a good reputation, because you can have one bad job and you're only as good as your last sale and all that sort of thing. Do you need to keep evolving what you offer to stay current?
[00:44:32] Paul Wilkinson: Reputationally... I mean, for instance, there are tricks that we've done. The idea that you're going to be perfection every day, you've got to get over that and you've got to somehow deal with the insecurity that producing this kind of work gives you. There's no easy answer to that. There's always going to be a day when it doesn't go to plan or somebody doesn't like their pictures, at least in my market. But reputationally, that's a collective thing, that's not one person's view. So you make sure that you do the absolute best every single day you build a product that's reliable, you build relationships that have true strength, you make sure you actually care. You can't fake this stuff, you know, you've, got to be authentic in this world I've got to actually like you when I photograph you. You may not know that's what was going on. But actually during a shoot, I have to like, you know, and I've met all sorts of people, whether it's politicians or business leaders, rock stars, you name it. I have to like you because if I don't, there's no love from the camera, it's just not going to connect. So, and I'm born that way, that's fine, there's almost no one I don't like. There are people I've grown not to like over years, I'm sure, but so you've got to have that and that's where, for us, that's where the reputation comes from. And you ask about whether you need to evolve and of course, the answer to that is yes. Now you're talking about all sorts of businesses, but from a creative business, if you don't evolve, the bigger problem actually is a psychological one, as much as it is about being relevant, because as we've grown older, our client base has come with us.
You mentioned LinkedIn, you know, everybody now is talking about LinkedIn being the perfect place to sell lifestyle kind of products. So I'm a portrait photographer, I sell to families and what's becoming really quite clear is the people who are in a position to buy my services. Not commercially on the lifestyle side, so family portraiture, are actually people who are on LinkedIn. The demographic is much better for me now in my stage of this job than for instance maybe Instagram or, heaven help me, TikTok.
But of course, if I was a young startup, that's exactly where I'd head because my market would be young people on TikTok. They're not my market. So understanding where you're headed and moving with it, you know, as our prices have gone up, the profile of people who are buying it has changed slightly and so understanding what's going on, and we track numbers. You haven't brought it up really, so I'm going to bring it up. Data. I mean, I've got a PhD in artificial intelligence, so you might think I like data and you'd be right. I love data. So we have a proper business system behind the business. It's one we pay fees into. It tracks every job. It tracks all the fees. I can tell you the profile of any client, any job. I can tell you the type of job that's likely to do well. I can even, to a degree, tell you based on who's coming to the shoot, I can give you a likely outcome of the sales profile for that job, which gives me the ability to look at the work, the different blends of work we do mathematically and say, okay, if I move less, so at the moment, you know, weddings, lifestyle, so portraiture for families and commercial all occupy space in our business and I can tell you more or less the margin per minute of my team on any one of those job types, and you can tweak that and tune that depending what products we put into the mix to sell. So on the lifestyle side, we sell product. Well, product has a cost. So depending what product I'm trying to sell, I can either raise or lower my margins.
But I can also raise and lower the revenue by charging differently for it. But we understand all of that, and I can tell you the job profiles. So things like this, commercial is my favorite thing to do. Not only, I mean, you know, I'm blessed to have clients like you who make my life just a joy. It's brilliant...
[00:48:19] Rob Panting: We should probably throw that in actually. Paul and I have worked together for quite a while. If it hadn't already come across already.
[00:48:25] Paul Wilkinson: So yeah. So Rob's been a client of mine for a very long time, and it's an absolute joy to work alongside him and for him. So, the great thing about commercial work for a photographer is if I'm working, I'm being paid. Lifestyle, it's a gamble. I'll do a, you know, most photographers, we do a reduced fee for the shoot, and then we hope to upsell later. But of course, that's a gamble. But I know the probability because I keep a really tight eye on my numbers and the one thing, and I've talked to a lot of Directors, company directors, finance directors about this. The one thing that would kill a business is cash flow and that's, you haven't brought it up as a specific, I'm going to. So the one thing we watch, like our hawk, along with our data, cash flow, because the minute you run out of cash, life gets really tricky, really fast. You talk about having access to money, but in fact, it's understanding parameters in which you're... And then it sounds really kind of businessy, right? And I'm a photographer, I take pictures for a living! You know, what do you worry about? Light? Yeah, of course I worry about light. Do you worry about cameras? Yeah, of course I worry about cameras. What do you really worry about? Cashflow. You know, it feels a bit dull. Yeah, photographers don't like to hear it, and nor do most creatives. But cashflow is your killer. Cashflow is the thing that keeps you awake at night. Have we got enough to pay our VAT bill, our tax bill? Have I got enough to pay salaries? Have I got enough to pay if I've got leased equipment or, you know, the rent on the studio? Electric bill, you know, cashflow, everything is about cashflow and so we manage the business and we will tune what we're pitching at any one time in the year, depending on what's going on behind the scenes to help make sure cashflow is always where it should be.
[00:50:00] Howard Bentham: Absolutely fascinating. Paul and Rob, thank you for the moment. We'll chat again shortly. Thanks for listening to OxTalks, the podcast powered by the Oxfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership and sponsored by leading national law firm Mills & Reeve. If you want to get in touch with the team at OxLEP to comment on what you've been hearing, find us on social media. We are on X, what was once Twitter, @OxfordshireLEP, or via LinkedIn, search for Oxfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership. Perhaps you run a company or organisation that is looking for some specific help, or simply need a steer to the most appropriate business advice available. Why not try the OxLEP Business Support Tool?
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[00:51:52] Howard Bentham: Let's chat more to Paul Wilkinson from Paul Wilkinson Photography. Aside from hard work, Paul, what did you do to build such an impressive array of clients?
[00:52:01] Paul Wilkinson: I was given some advice way back that like attracts like. So you present yourself in a certain way and that's what your business will attract and I don't know quite whether that's what we've done or how we've done it, but I laugh constantly over just how happy I am. It's just ridiculous. Our clients are amazing and I don't honestly have like a solid answer. I show pictures, I write a little bit on Instagram, I have a little bit of a blog, I've got a podcast. Whatever we are doing is amazing because the people who come to us are amazing. I've met authors and musicians and dancers and CEOs and financial directors and MDs and charity leads and you name it, I've met them and. It's such a thrill every single time and I wish I could bottle the answer to the question because I would sell it. I'd run training courses on how to do precisely this and I can't put my finger on it, it's elusive, and the only thing I can think is that because of the language we use, not just visually, but also the written word. I write for magazines now as well. Those things echo or resonate with a certain type of person and they're the kind of person I'm gonna like. It wasn't like that at the beginning, you know, we worked with anybody and everybody. Now, I don't need to filter very much and I've only ever turned a couple of clients away, ant but that's rare. You know, the clients walk in and I just love them.
[00:53:36] Howard Bentham: What about another first? The first time you had a client who wasn't a friend or a family member, that must have been a magical moment.
[00:53:44] Paul Wilkinson: Yeah, to be honest, I wish I could tell you who it was. I mean, I'm guessing, you know, when the marketing company picked me up and put me in front of a hair salon, which I think that must have been the first gig, I suppose, they did the marketing for what became quite a well known brand, beauty salon, treatments, hair, that kind of thing and they walked me in. But in a sense, I had the security blanket and I found a client, so the marketing company were there as creative direction and I was there really as a glorified button pusher. I mean, I brought my piece to the table and my, I think the early signals were there. Like I said earlier, the product isn't the photo, the product is the relationship and the experience. At the time I was thinking the product is the photo and I don't really understand why I'm having to do what the creative director is telling me, but that isn't what I was there, my job was to make the person in front of the camera relax and look great, and the creative director can take care of everything else. So that was probably the first time I was out there working, photographing someone I had no connection with at all. And it was great because it was a beauty salon, right? I mean, the zhuzhing and makeup and hair, everything was perfect. You know, you go into somebody's house and it's not quite like that, but...
[00:54:51] Howard Bentham: Let's explore the networking side of things, Rob, if we can. I mean, OxLEP excel at enabling networking. Tell us about some of the magic that goes on behind the scenes.
[00:55:01] Rob Panting: Yeah, as I mentioned earlier, it's something which I think maybe over the last couple of years, people were very nervous post COVID and networking was something that people were perhaps looking to do differently, and perhaps adopt a different approach as they were regaining confidence post COVID so it's something that we try to transfer to online platforms immediately following COVID or when COVID happened, and that's an element that we've retained to a degree.
So we run a number of opportunities, peer networking groups is a particularly fruitful one for us. So you find, and this is the other end of the spectrum, a lot of business leaders, MDs, chief executive, finance directors, it's a good forum for them to discuss common problems, opportunities, and that level of networking in a safe space is actually something that we get really great feedback on, but we do try and evolve and cater for different sectors. We've got a flourishing women in business set up as well. So they meet regularly, again, people starting out in, business, more established women who are leaders within that particular company. It's something that we invest quite heavily in and something that we're very keen to continue because, you know, going back to your point, Howard, you know, word of mouth. Massive really massive, and when you meet some of the clients that OxLEP support, they're all interlinked, you know, that person's met that person, that person's met this person, and actually the common link is often OxLEP, so we create the forum and the magic happens from there really, so it's something we're keen to support.
[00:56:42] Howard Bentham: So would your clients be speaking to each other? Le Manoir be speaking to another, ask Cadbury perhaps. How does your networking work then? Is it sort of client led or are you...?
[00:56:51] Paul Wilkinson: That's really, I've never really thought about it that way. It's going to sound so shallow. I don't honestly know. I've never asked Le Manoir if they've talked to Cadbury. I mean, there are definitely, so I do a lot work at the Royal Institution in London, and I've worked with them for about, you know, 13 years, probably that's longer than I've worked with Rob and through that, people who are tuned into science and science research have seen my photography and now I work quite a lot with Oxford University and of course Oxford University works an awful lot with OxLEP. So there are threads that run through these things. You know, you can't do anything in isolation, but whether... I can't say that I've got my arms around how my clients network with each other, except that there are little threads I can track back to certain jobs and I, if I keep hold of every relationship and they may not need to see, the thing is for me, the lead time or the cycle time between photography is probably five years. You think about the last time you had a, I mean, you're different, Howard, you have a public persona. I'm sure you have your headshots updated on a seasonal basis, you know, latest haircut, latest jacket, new headshot. But for most people, I reckon a headshot's five years, 10 years for some. So we build relationships that when eventually they want something again.
I had an email this week on, it was a DM on Instagram. Dear Paul, I don't know if you remember, but you did a shoot for me 13, 14 years ago. I'm getting married and I always wanted it to be you that photographed my wedding and that's a proper gap as well, there's no other shoots with them in between, just two fixed points. So if you can build relationships that at least get you into the consideration when they next need a photograph, then you know, that's all to the good. But it doesn't mean I'm plugged into all of the networking that goes on, I'd love to be, and listening to Rob, I'm kind of sitting there, I must attend more networking groups.
[00:58:45] Howard Bentham: Let's just pick up a couple of questions raised on our social channels. Rob, let's get your thoughts. We've touched on finance earlier, the point made is finance is often a barrier for most with a business idea, what steps should people take if they're actually and actively looking for finance?
[00:59:01] Rob Panting: Yeah, it is a big issue for a lot of people. To be truthful, the funding avenues that OxLEP have perhaps prescribed in the past are avenues that aren't quite as plentiful as they were maybe in immediately after COVID where, you know, there was funding available that we could provide for small businesses. We do have some opportunities that come up. Our most recent one focused on the visitor economy. So there, there are opportunities that we, try and facilitate. The best advice that, that I can give, you know, the government website actually has a real strong array of funding options open to people just starting out, businesses growing. That is a very good first port of call, clearly, you know, information is at your fingertips, really and a lot of it is very much down to hard work and looking for those opportunities.
[00:59:52] Howard Bentham: And an answer from both of you on, is it important to have mentors when you start on a business journey? That's certainly something OxLEP can...
[00:59:59] Rob Panting: Oh, well, 100%, and it's something that, yes, something that we can formally create and again, that's something that we do try and facilitate, creating mentor opportunities, but informally as well, you know, people that I've looked up to in my career aren't necessarily those people who I've sort of worked directly with, it's those associated partners and agencies, and I think it's critical.
[01:00:24] Howard Bentham: With you, Paul, obviously Sarah, you've mentioned your wife a lot. She would have been your key sounding board, but outside of that relationship, anyone else that you would have turned to over a latte in your expensive coffee shop?
[01:00:37] Paul Wilkinson: It was a glass of champagne darling! Yeah, I did, early doors before I'd jumped I'd done a job for a really nice guy. He was the MD chair and owner of a big property development company and he was also a client on the personal side. So at the end of one of the jobs, I deliver everything into him, loved it, and I just rang him up and said, look, would you be willing to at least have a conversation for me to come and sound some stuff out? And he did literally open his fridge and there was bottles of champagne. He said, would you like a glass of champagne? I said, no, I'll have a cup of tea if that's all right. Not because I don't drink, but because I talk already and the idea of adding alcohol into that was just not wise. We sat, we chatted, he asked, I asked, would he help, just with some informal mentoring? I remember the conversation really clearly and there's a few after that, just about business acumen, really.
As a photographer, I already had eyes, I could see a picture, I could produce a picture, I didn't need help at that stage from photographers. I needed help from business people, entrepreneurs, because being a photographer, that's not a business, that's the product. I've got that, that's done. What I needed help with was running a business around it.
So I described what I wanted. He helped me visualize it, map it out, fed into what Sarah and I were doing in terms of, the business planning. Anyway, he came into our studio just after we'd opened this version two, the new studio, and I bumped into him, it was an open day, and he's grinning at me, and he shook my hand, and he said, do you remember? And I said, I don't know what you're on about. He said, do you remember what you described? He said, I asked you, what's your goal? What's the end point? He said, where do you want to get to? And I kind of must have dreamt something up and he said, and I said, yeah, I don't, but yeah, okay. He said, well, I'm standing in it. He said, what you described, nuts and bolts, I'm now standing in exactly what you wanted to do. What are you going to do next? And that was like, oh, okay. So yeah...
[01:02:34] Howard Bentham: That's a question I can ask you. I mean, let's bring our conversation to a close with some final thoughts. What is next?
[01:02:39] Paul Wilkinson: Well the big thing for me is now planning the exit side, or at least the transition to the not quite so intensive, you know, seven days a week working as it is. So a few years ago, Sarah Plater, another photographer and myself wrote a book called Mastering Portrait Photography, which I own the brand for and we've set up a website called Mastering Portrait Photography, which is already rolling, I have a podcast called Mastering Portrait Photography, which we haven't been very original with the branding, but at least it hasn't got my name in it and so there's all of these little bits of the puzzle now that we're figuring out how to produce assets that have a resale value, a longer life than just a personal photo, a monetisation, to use the Americanism, a monetisation to them that will happen while we sleep, whether it's subscriptions, whether it's products, whether it's, you know, workshops and training. But we've actually spun out an entirely separate arm, a separate company that will wholly develop that side and while that one grows, it'll take us a while because clearly I've still got this business cash rolling it, while that grows, this one will run and then gradually we'll turn this one much lower. The reality is though, I'll never retire. You know, this was my hobby. It's still my hobby. I'm still a kid with a camera. I still get excited about it because it's everything I ever tried to do when I was a kid and I'm still doing it, the difference is now it's a business. So I am lucky in that's the energy. That's the fuel rods in the reactor, they just keep going. So it's doubtful I'll ever put the camera down. But what I'd love is to not think of, if I don't do it tomorrow, the money doesn't come in the day after. I'd like something where we can have a much smoother cash flow profile at the moment. Essentially, the model is I shoot one, sell one, shoot one, sell one. It's not quite like that, but you get the gist and I'd love one where we can just shoot one and let it monetise for a while.
[01:04:32] Howard Bentham: Do you regret not getting into business in photography earlier?
[01:04:36] Paul Wilkinson: No, I don't. I've often thought about it and Sarah and I have often wondered whether the transition time was the right time, you know, if we'd have stayed another couple of years, we'd have had more money in the bank is the theory. But of course we wouldn't, right? Because if you're earning money, you're spending money.
We'd have had some more money and a couple of years older. If I'd have left earlier, I'd have a couple more years, you know, I'd be a few more years down the road of becoming a photographer. But the reality is when I left, I was ready to leave. When I left, I had not just the energy to do something new, but the conviction that I was right. So when we're investing in the stuff, it was like, no, this is right. I can't keep doing what I was doing, it was breaking me. So I knew I was ready. We had the money. The kids were just about the right age, so I got to build a relationship and both Sarah and I had enough under our belt to do it with our eyes open. If I'd have gone earlier, I don't know if that would've been true. If I'd have gone later, I'm not sure I'd have ever left. So actually I think we did it about right.
[01:05:37] Howard Bentham: And finally, the one piece of advice you would give someone wanting to quit their job and start their own business with their passion project?
[01:05:45] Paul Wilkinson: That's really hard because I suspect the advice each person needs is very specific to them, and that's where OxLEP and people like OxLEP can really help because actually it's amazing how much people know, but those gaps are what you need to fill. For us, it's always been about the relationships and I mean in business, it gets called networking, in my world, it gets called building a relationship, but they're all the same thing, right? You meet someone, you like them, you do some work for them, you hold on to them and if you can hold on to those relationships, which is why I use the word relationship, networking for me is that initial finding people, but actually holding onto those relationships and keeping them true, you know, they're real. That is where the real power for a small business is because it's a lot easier for me. Yeah, at the end of COVID, I'll give a great example, at the end of COVID, we were closed by the government because although as a commercial photographer, I could have kept working, but as a portrait lifestyle photographer that we were on the government list to close. Photography studios closed, and we took the view, right, we're just going to close and we're going to figure it out, because if you start messing with hybrid working, they start messing with hybrid support, it's just not wise, and there was no nuance in the way they were giving out support. We, just, say, right, we close the doors.
When they announced that we could open up again, we sent out a quick email, just saying our clients, we're all right, everything's okay, we're open again. we'll let you know what's going on in the future and we just got this influx of emails. All of these relationships we've built over the years, you know, many of whom have now got cash in the bank, because of course, it was a very weird couple of years, wasn't it? Lots of people now are better off and in a heartbeat, the people we've built relationships with over the past 10, 15 years, they were emailing in and off it went, it was like there was a dead patch, we were very binary, we were off and then we were on again. So we were very fortunate, but it's all because we built relationships. I've got relationships, Sarah's got them, Michelle's got them, we've all kept them. That would be, I think, for the kind of business that we run, that's the nugger. Build your relationships, make them stick, mean it, customer service, you know, this is not news is it. It's not new, but it's perfect.
[01:07:54] Howard Bentham: But it's been fascinating to listen to. Thank you for sharing that with us. Huge thanks to Paul Wilkinson from Paul Wilkinson Photography. A big thank you also to Rob Panting from OxLEP too, and thank you for listening to OxTalks, sponsored by leading national law firm Mills & Reeve.
There are now a number of editions of OxTalks available from where you normally get your podcasts. Check out some of my previous conversations, including with the CEO at Bicester Motion and Bicester Heritage, Dan Geoghegan, on what makes a great leader, Abena Fairweather from sustainable events company, Legacy, on the four day working week, and Andy Edwards from Makespace Oxford on repurposing empty properties in the county, all well worth a listen.
Please spread the word, tell your friends and colleagues about us and if you feel so inclined, leave us a review. You can offer your thoughts and suggestions on our social channels and email your questions for inclusion in future editions too. The address is in the podcast description.
Business support in Oxfordshire is close at hand. The OxLEP business support tool can signpost you to expert help in a matter of minutes, it's definitely worth taking a look. Find it on our website Oxfordshirelep.com. But for now, from the whole OxLEP team, and from me, Howard Bentham, it's goodbye.