Brian Brosmer’s father-in-law heard the word “freelance,” got stuck on “free,” and figured Brian would never get paid again. It took a magazine spread on a Barnes & Noble shelf to settle it. In this episode of the Default Profitable podcast, host Matt Nettleton sits down with Brian Brosmer, owner of Brosmer Photographic, a Fishers photography, video and design studio that shoots for agencies, publications and businesses across the Indianapolis area. Brian got hooked in a high school yearbook darkroom, studied at Franklin College and Ball State, and worked catalog production in southern Indiana, where a road trip to Chicago showed him the earliest days of digital photography. He moved to Indianapolis, worked for agencies and magazines, and about fourteen years ago got tired of making everybody else money and went out on his own. He and Matt have known each other for twenty-plus years. His son Connor got married a month ago, and Brian says he’ll keep shooting until they nail the coffin shut.
Brian and Matt get into the part of the business that wasn’t the creative work: the money conversation. Twenty-five dollar headshots, contracts so a client who skips payments can’t ask you to let it slide, and the day it hit him he was worth more than he’d been charging. He’s now passing that on to three creatives under thirty, including one who was proud of a job he’d lost money on. Brian’s advice was short. They need you more than you need them. Walk away. Matt runs his usual three questions, and Brian lands somewhere around one and a half, which keeps the tally at one guest with all three in a couple hundred episodes. They also cover how a favor for a Cathedral mom turned into the Produce Mom campaign with Indianapolis Fruit Company, why niching down is making a young remodeler more money, and why the hardest part of working for yourself is that it’s lonely. His advice for anyone thinking about it: try it, because if it doesn’t work you can go back, and find a support system before you need one.
Learn more about Brian Brosmer and Brosmer Photographic at https://brosmerphotographic.com/.
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