Scaling Out Loud

Somewhere right now there’s a photo booth sitting in the corner of a trade show with a logo on the print and nobody in line, and the brand that paid for it is wondering where the money went.

I recorded this one live at Illuminate in Miami, the day before Julius Solaris took the stage as our keynote. Julius consults for Fortune 500 companies on their event strategy, everything from sponsorship and registration to overall event design. He’s the founder of Boldpush, he writes a newsletter that goes out to 40,000 event planners, and he’s covered the events industry from a media seat for 20 years (his previous business was acquired by Skift). He’s at CES, Cannes Lions, Dreamforce and South by Southwest, and he walks all of them as what he calls an event Karen, so trust me, he notices the booth.

Our industry has a habit of listening to the same speakers over and over again, and I wanted someone who sees photo booths from the planner’s side of the table and has zero reason to tell us what we want to hear.

So we get into why marketing money is moving into in-person events right now, what separates the activation people line up for from the one they walk past to get the free coffee, and a setup at one of the biggest tech conferences in the world that started with some very basic iPads. Then Julius gives his one piece of advice for photo booth founders, and if your corporate pitch leans on the logo, it’s going to sting a little.

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Know a photo booth owner who’s been trying to crack corporate? Send them this episode.

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It's Saturday night, you finally sit down to dinner, and your phone goes off. It's your attendant, and the printer is doing the same thing it did two weeks ago, the same thing you already walked them through standing right next to the booth.

If you've ever typed "how many times do I have to explain this?" into a text and deleted it before you hit send, I recorded this one for you.

When the same mistake keeps coming back from your attendant, your VA, or anyone on your team, it's pointing at one of three places in your business. Sometimes it's pointing at the person, and I don't soften that part when I get there, but it's the last place I look.

I walk through each of those places with real stories from my own team, including one where the unclear instruction was mine. Then I get into what I count as a real red flag, the kind that's a lot harder to spot, and the homework I want you to do before you say a single word to anyone about the mistake that keeps happening.

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Know a photo booth owner who's one repeated mistake away from losing it with their team? Send them this episode.

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I basically live inside AI now. Most of my day is spent building apps, building schedules, and working with AI employees that handle work that used to eat hours of somebody's week. I'm getting about 10 times more done in a day than I was before.

Being that deep in it for this long has me thinking about AI very differently than most of the people you hear talking about it online.

This one is short. I'm telling you where my head is at, and if you've been feeling like everyone else figured AI out while you fell behind, I recorded it for you.

I talk about the two kinds of business owners I'm seeing right now, what happened the first time I built an app for my own business, and the cost that creeps up on you one upgrade at a time. Then I get into what I've decided my job is as an educator in this space, and what we're building inside the new Thrive because of it.

What You'll Learn:

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Know a photo booth owner who's been beating themselves up for not getting AI yet? Send them this episode.  

Your Next Steps:

Somewhere around $100,000, something strange happens to a photo booth business.

You finally hit the number you chased for years. Then you look around and you're more tired than you were at $40,000. More events, more emails, a helper or two who kind of work out, and a take-home that looks almost exactly like it did two years ago.

I know that stage well. When my business was around $100K, I was still working a full-time job, running the booth company on nights and weekends, and I was every single role in it. So when someone asks me how to get from $100K to $250K, I start with the math, because the math is what makes the ceiling feel real, and it's also what gets you through it.

In this episode I walk through the five moves I'd make if I were sitting at $100K right now and wanted to be at $250K, in the order I'd make them. The order matters more than the moves. I also tell you what I actually did when I made this jump myself, including the part where I took a pay cut on purpose.

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There was a decade of my life where I didn't trust a single person to run one of my weddings. Now I try to avoid going to them.

Same equipment. Same clients. Same standard I've always held myself to. Completely different relationship to the work. That shift didn't happen by accident, and it didn't happen fast.

If you've ever caught yourself thinking "nobody can do this as well as I can" about your events, your sales calls, your marketing, or your team, this episode is for you. It's the same thought wearing a different outfit every time you climb a level in your business, and it's wrong every single time. It just takes proof to believe it.

In this episode, I walk through the five stages of getting yourself out of the day-to-day of your own business, where most people get stuck inside each one, and the mindset wall I'm currently hitting on the other side of all of it.

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I spent two months boycotting AI in my business because it kept handing me copy that used the word "elevate" like a life insurance commercial. I decided it was overhyped. I decided my business was too weird for it to actually help. I decided I was right.

I was completely wrong, and it was an expensive two months.

This episode is not about AI photo booths. We already covered that and it's a totally different conversation. This is about the back office work, the stuff that eats your Sunday and never once shows up as revenue on a P&L.

I walk through the five things AI actually does in my business every week right now, why it failed me the first ten times I tried it, and what actually changed that took me from garbage output to work that's ready to send with barely an edit.

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Three years ago I'd sit down with a corporate client and spend half the meeting explaining what a photo booth even was. What happens at the event. What the guest walks away with. Why it belongs at their conference at all.

That meeting doesn't happen anymore.

Now I sit down with a marketing manager who's already been to four events this year with something in the corner. They've seen the mirror booth. They've seen the 360. They've seen the AI booth. What they say to me now is some version of "what else do you have." They're not bored. They're being measured on whether this year's event felt different from last year's, and they're hoping I'm the one who solves that for them.

So this episode is about what that shift means if you're trying to break into corporate, or grow the corporate side you already have, because it changes what you're actually selling.

I walk through the data behind the shift (the exact searches spiking in our own numbers), why AI is now doing part of the buyer's research for them before they ever talk to a vendor, and the mindset trap that gets founders spending money on new gear when the real answer might already be sitting in their warehouse.

I also talk about Illuminate, our October creative retreat in Miami, and the working activations we're building there specifically so founders can get hands-on with what's coming before it shows up anywhere else in the industry.

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There's a version of this conversation I have on repeat. Someone tells me they had a great year. More weddings booked than the year before, prices finally went up, reviews are five stars across the board. Then they say the part that gives it away: the calendar is packed during wedding season, and then it just stops.

If that's you, stick with me. I want to tell you why weddings can only take you so far, and why most of you are already doing the thing that fixes it and just haven't noticed.

I built my company on weddings. I'm not talking down on the market, it's a real business and it can be a very good one. But it has a ceiling, and most photo booth owners hit it somewhere in the low six figures and spend a couple of years banging their head against it without knowing what they're hitting.

Corporate is the other half most people never build. It runs on a completely different calendar, a completely different buyer, and it's the reason my own business survived two opposite disasters three years apart. I walk through exactly what changed when I stopped treating corporate as an accident and started treating it as a market.

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Ever wondered if that viral "scribble booth" trend is actually worth the investment, or if it's just another shiny object eating up your equipment budget? I put the Scribble Booth by BoothActive to the test so you don't have to guess.

You've probably seen these popping up everywhere lately, ever since a videographer put a piece of plexiglass in front of a celebrity red carpet and had people sign their names on camera. It went viral, and now every booth company under the sun has their own version. I wanted to know if the portable, brandable version from BoothActive (aka the Neon Booth) actually holds up in a real event, so I got my hands on one, ran it through an actual live event, and I'm giving you the full unfiltered breakdown.

I unboxed it, assembled it myself, ran into a few hiccups, worked out the kinks, and took it out into the field at a high-traffic, low-light event to really put it through the wringer.

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At PBX earlier this year, I sat down for an on-stage interview with Brandon CEO of PBSCO in front of a room full of photo booth owners. The questions went past pricing and talked about territory I don't usually cover here: the three plateaus that almost stalled this business, including the stretch where I took it from $500,000 to $1.5 million in eight months.

I wanted to bring you this conversation straight from the stage because it's the plateau by plateau, mistake by mistake breakdown of how I went from building a business around a maternity leave check to crossing seven figures with MDRN Photobooth Co. and MDRN Activations. 

Every founder hits a wall. Mine showed up three separate times, and each one forced me to change something I didn't want to change yet. This episode walks through all three, plus the mindset block that kept me stuck longer than it should have. 

What You'll Learn:

Why I built my entire first year around one number, $30,000, and what happened when I blew past it in a few months

The corporate client that changed my whole strategy, and the $10,000 quote I almost didn't send because I thought it was too high

The three plateaus that almost stalled my business, and what actually broke through each one

Why I didn't hire a full-time employee for years, and what I looked for instead

The mindset shift that changed everything, and why I kept calling a legitimate business a side hustle for way too long

How getting specific about who I was targeting (not just "weddings") took my brand from six figures into seven

Why I eventually split one brand into two, and what that protected

The exact part of my sales process that runs without me touching it, and why I only talk to leads who are already sold 

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