What's up? Denver Event Professionals. It's Jared Judge, host of the Denver NACE Podcast, and I am so excited today to be joined by one of my good friends and somebody who is one of the first people I met in our chapter of the National Association for Catering Events, mr Joe Kuhn. Welcome, joe, how is it going?

I'm doing great. Thanks so much for letting me join in Jared, and I'm so excited to be here.

Fantastic, I'm so excited to get to know you better, especially you and your photography and, potentially, videography company. We'll talk about that because you recently played a concert where you were the videographer. But Joe runs Studio JK photography and so, joe, tell us a little bit about yourself, your backstory and what your company does.

So my name is Joe Kuhn. I have Studio JK photography. I spent in Denver for over 20 years. I started out in Denver around 2002 and 2003. And then it's been growing and really consists of myself and my wife. My wife's name is Joyce and both of us are really passionate about photography and really passionate about people more than anything, because when you are passionate about the people and capturing the most precious moments on their life usually the wedding day or the baby birds or any kind of special, celebrate, general anniversary that translate to the great pictures, that picture actually has the emotions and moments in it that will treasure for the lifetime. So that's what I do. We are a photography company that really specializes in capturing the moment and translate those moments into the images.

That's amazing. It sounds beautiful. It's beautiful that your philosophy is like we love people, people come first, and the photography really is a natural byproduct of the relationships you develop with the guests at the event. Well, super cool. How did you get into photography?

So where I got it is it's really kind of comes from my father. My dad actually had a Nikon F3, which is like an old film camera but still very stable, made up the flagship at the time with a $50 million 1.2. And my dad passed away when I was 13, but he let me with this amazing camera which I got to use in high school and then at the college on the freshman year they were looking for a photographer for their newspaper and also the yearbook and they said at the time the McDonald's were like $3.25 on our kind of job. And then the school newspaper said we'll send you to this amazing football games and like lifestyle type of assignments and once you got the pictures that we like, we're going to pay you a $5 for each picture. Wow, that's great. So on their first semester of freshman year I made $2,000.

Quite a bit of nobody if you look at the student life. So from there I became a photo editor for the school managing and photo editor for the yearbook and I got picked up by the professionals, professional photographers, who specialize in school photography from sophomore year. So after I graduate I was working full time job but I was working as a photographer on the weekend and it works great to be a wedding photographer. So I was working with a great wedding photographer in the East area and got trained in a craft of wedding photography with the film, not the digital photography, for about seven years and then I got the wings of the digital photography in all the 2000s and I was one of the first adapter and took it from there and it moved over to Denver and it's a small company and got really into the photography, especially the wedding photography, to capture the moments of the people.

Yeah, that's beautiful. And at some point during this journey you met your wife and she joined up with you as a co-photographer, or how did that happen?

Well, that's a little funny story behind it, but I always tell everybody that my wife is a better photographer than I am. And there's a truth, because it was working as an album designer for the album company in the West End East area and it was one of the very first kind of a flat-lady album, digital design, and it's getting all the films into it and so on and so on at the time. And the album company has one of the best photographer as their client. One of them is his name is Monte Zupper. Only one photographer who got awarded as a photographer was entry by United Nations. Obviously, he's just absolutely like a Michael Jordan level of wedding photography, and then she was working on her, his albums and so on and so on and so on. And then she turns to me and it's like when, hey Joe, you have a same camera and same lenses and flashes, but your picture doesn't look like his picture.

Oh, my goodness.

It's like I took the chance as I oh, I make. I can learn from you, know something from my life. It's like the joys, what do you see that I don't really have and he has. It's like that. I don't know, I don't like your picture. And she thought so many times you'd have for like six months. So one day I got kind of fed up that we had this amazing wedding is the Middle Eastern wedding and that I gave her the same camera and same lens and same Flash as Montezuma asked and ask her like why don't you take a picture, like Montezuma? So we went to the wedding and came back and it was a few long days but some pictures out of those Pictures of shit took Came out to be really good. Wow, I was surprised.

So on that year we enter into the print competition for wedding photographers and portrait photographer WPPI competition. At that time there was about 8500 entries and Of course, one to three, four, which is a grand one to three, and then there's a lot of mention about 160 of them. So from 8500 to 161 or 165. That's a huge honor actually, because it's not open to all the you know, regular adventures, but it's really strictly down for the professional competition. So we entered into four pictures. One of them was hers and two of them was mine. Mine didn't got selected, but her it's got selected as a honorable mention. Wow, from the very first wedding that you went to, you got awarded from WPPI. So I tell everybody that you know he's a better photographer than I am. Yeah, she got all work.

Yeah, that's beautiful. Well, so you guys met. She initially criticized your work and then you fell in love.

Yeah. So you know of course at the time that she doesn't have a lot of technical knowledge per se, but she had the talent, she had the eye, you know. You probably know because you're in the music background. You can teach somebody how to play violin or teach out to somebody how to play scale, but Speed that they pick up, or the talent, the natural talent that the person has, the excels into the next level. That's kind of how I feel with her, that she can see things completely different way than I do and she is just capturing this more beautiful way. So after that, really, I trained her to have to take the beautiful pictures into in terms of technical part and she's just Excellented. So after a few years when we were taking wedding pictures together, I am kind of considerate to a main photographer, which really means that you know you are responsible to take the, you know, essential pictures. I say one pictures walking down or walking out of family pictures and stuff that Versus a second photographer, he has basically all the creative freedom.

Mm-hmm so she can just take whatever she pictures that she wanted to take. Yeah, so at the end when we deliver our Picture, product customer, customer looking at the pictures, like you know, they're looking at my pictures. Oh, okay, that's cool, that's cool. And then when I was she put, her picture comes I was like, wow, so that's actually kind of cool. Yeah, so in my web page, our website, at least about 60 or 70% of my pictures, that our pictures put up on our website, is my wife's pictures, because, yeah, yeah, that's my that's awesome and that's really fabulous that you and your wife have such a healthy working relationship, because it's really hard to do that sometimes.

You know, if you have a significant other, you'll you're bound to butt heads at some point, and having a business together can be especially challenging, which you know. You and I've had discussions during some nace meetings about the business of it, and you've always struck me as a very smart business person, and one of the things that we wanted to chat about in this episode is Positioning your services to a luxury market, because you're not a cheap $200 photographer, right, you're your luxury. You go after the higher end market. Tell us a bit about that decision to do so, and you know how do you do that, because that's a very desirable place to be.

Absolutely. When I first started in here in Denver, one of the things that I was Having to work with is to hire entrepreneur advisor. The reason why is that? Because I was in a computer field, a consulting field that you know, travel all throughout the nation for it, but moving over to full-time photography was not easy decision for me. That's a lot of times that you know that at the time to me it was Cutting my paycheck to about a half of it not even a half, and then future is not really excited. A lot of times that you know if you're an entrepreneur, especially starting the business, you never know where the income is going to come in. So I hire the advisor and advisors recommendation is really really comes down to, in essence, one or two things. A Very first thing is that you need to have a confidence of what you're offering is worth it and second part is to your business is most desirable. Businesses is not gonna come through. You gotta think about this time. If I only 2000 not like this day of social media and anything else you know, at the time was just Really you know Google kind of thing or the not does another not was just a very infancy face. Just bring it up. Um, she really talked about connection, how you water mouth will become your best source of you know before.

So at the time that I didn't really know how to start. So I started out like everybody. I started out with the not I was listed as their private, a private list, and then I was priced out pretty cheap at the time. So literally I was calculating at the end I was working like close to 100 hours per wedding and then you know, I gave a lot of products out and you know all those things. It really turns out, if I like minimum payment of my labor, that was like our labor that was credited. We actually lose money by selling packages that we had but that brought me a lot of work. At the time I was working like at one year, second year I think I was working 60 weddings a year between myself and like we're like we're going to be dying for it.

But how I got into the luxury market, that's actually the most interesting story, because at the time that I hear from one of the convention wedding convention it's called WPPI and Dennis Wedgie, who is a celebrity wedding photographer who photographed John Kennedy Junior's wedding and Phil Bessler Stone, arnold Schwarzenegger's weddings and you know really high-end weddings and you know you talked about 2005 that he was charging close to $50,000 a wedding Wow, of course, some of these weddings that she was going to. So he was on a podium and he talked about a few things and he talked about for in the wedding industry there is four different types of clients out there. So you got to know your client first before you can market it in such a way. And there's a four different client really comes down to the really cheap that they don't really have a lot of money to spend but they get married in ways, but they're not going to spend to go out and book the venues and everything else. They just going to, you know, do it really quickly and then there's nothing. So there's no wedding photographer really involved with that type of client. And then you have 70, 80% of our normal people wedding and then you go to like a doctor's, lawyers or CEOs of you know our wedding that. So you know luxury kind of market. And then there is the last market that he's in. That is a old child locks on your market, like you know, less than two, 1% or one to 3% of the market. That is like old car luxury. They will spend a lot of money to get that.

So, anyway, make a long, long story short. I was in, you know, our natural market 70, 80% of the market which really values price and you know I'm kind of the person like that too, that I want to make sure that I got the most out of any kind of products or services for my money. So I do a lot of research to find the best deal. Usually in these days it really equates to you find a lot of use, go and search for a lot of Google's influence or you know the not party slate or whatever kind of find the best deal for your money. Yeah, and if there is a two competition out there, it's about the same. And this guy offers $500 less. I'll go with the people that $500 less and that's kind of normal set of mind.

Versus you're talking about number three, which is like a CEO, lawyer, doctors and so on. But mostly important aspect with those people is more or less of quality, like what kind of quality that I can get you know we can travel anywhere with any kind of decent car versus they want to travel with, you know, luxury cars or you know 1%. They want to travel with the luxury sports car per se. Right, they just have a cop or whatever you know. But what is the difference? They're willing to pay more money for the quality of the products or services that they want to get.

And it really comes down to a lot of those people. If you think about it. If you're a doctor, you're not going to spend like 50 hours to research for who's the best photographer for you or you know somebody else. So what they usually do is they have a wedding coordinator or wedding planner or anybody else everybody who can help them to find the right qualified, high class vendors and venues. Then they themselves go out and looking for the best deal.

Yeah, so at this point is that if you're going after this current tell, you have to change your mentality and change your marketing to adapt to that.

So really comes down to is like high embedding If you are listed as the vendor at the Rich Colton in Bachel's Gulch, or if you are four season sale vendor, or even listed at the Vale Resorts, which manages all those properties, they have maybe five to 10 vendors on each category. Well, there's a few hundreds or five or 600 photographers out there in the demo market. So being on those lists or being on that selected list give you not only give you credibility but attracts those clients, that who want to kind of look at your work and see what you do and then what you can offer and at that point that you can actually demands a higher pay in terms of your products and services. So that's where it goes and these days is changing so much. That used to be $5,000 was a lot of money for the product. Now I think it's going over to like $15,000 or $20,000 like that, but it's changing times. Yeah, of course my price is not like they were now, but still it's a decent bit of money. But we'll see.

Yeah, no, that is so fascinating and thank you for sharing that insight about that. What I'm hearing from you actually dovetails really nicely with an episode we did a couple weeks ago about building up partnerships in the events industry, because you're saying the high end clients are not price shopping on the not they're not spending hours Googling. They just need a trusted recommendation from somebody that they're already paying money to or somebody who's knowledgeable. And the interesting thing that I heard that really hadn't clicked for me before was these preferred vendor relationships saved the client's time. Doctors, lawyers they don't have a lot of time, but they do have a lot of money, so they're going to save their time, spend their money to get exactly what they're looking for and they're going to rely on these partnerships that you're mentioning with high end venues and event planners. So thanks for sharing that insight with me.

Yeah, and then another thing that I wanted to say on that is that being on that list is great and is one of the best way to get your names out to the luxury clientele, but at the same time, you cannot just get on the list by requesting it. Right, you have to work on it, not only. Usually, what I did before was that I had a job somehow, through the coordinators or the friends of the previous couples or whatever. I had a job in those luxury places and I photographed it and I share my pictures with the right people, like catering manager or sales manager or something in those property, and they really loved it and they were asking me like do you want to be on our free for vendor list? Yes, of course, you know that's how it works. Instead of calling those places up it's like I'm a photographer watch some DC I want to be your free for vendor.

Right, yeah, I know there's a lot of more art to it, for sure.

Yeah, A lot of sales person or catering manager who manages those free for vendor lists. They told me that they get those calls every day, like five or 10 of the day. Of course, they're not going to say anything really bad to you on their face, but they actually ignore those calls. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, unless you had a talk there or you build your relationship, it's really really not right in terms of to ask somebody to be on the proof of Edelert unless they ask you first.

Yes, that makes a ton of sense. I was sharing on our episode where we talked about partnerships. Me as a musician, I kind of have a little leg up on building these relationships because what I do is I actually offer a free little private concert to the staff, which makes it a very fun time and it kind of lets their guard down a little bit. It's not like I'm asking to be on your preferred vendor list, it's like let me just share my beautiful music with you and oftentimes that leads to hey, that sounded amazing, Our clients would love this. Would you like to be on a preferred vendor list?

Yes, and I completely agree with you. It's like you have to have them experience what you can do for the clients, because what a mouth or referring somebody to someone else is. And someone actually the entrepreneur actually asked me like why people do that. Like, for example, when you see a beautiful movie or a great movie and then you were telling other people about this great movie, they should go and see why you do that. And I was like I was asking I don't know. And then the entrepreneur advisor told me, because you want to be good in front of a lot of people. I'm like, oh, and it was all the way.

But yeah, that's true. If you recommend somebody, it's a really good food, product or service or anything else. If they experience it too, then you're going to actually look good for that person. You become an expert in that field. So that really brings up the double S sword that if you deliver bad product or bad services for that referral, you're not only losing your client that you service to, but first they will report you because they look bad.

For sure that makes sense. I mean that kind of speaks to the whole concept of status. Like we all want to have an elevated status, not necessarily status in the material I've got money and fancy clothes kind of thing but I want people to look at me in a positive way and so by providing a recommendation I'm hoping that I'm increasing my status. So you have to deliver on your promise, otherwise you'll decrease the recommender's status.

Exactly. And then some status that is super, super important, like, for example, if you're on the purple vendor list for the four seasons per se, then you want to make sure that you maintain it or increase the status. So that's what I say it's a double edged sword that if you had a bad day you cannot really have that show. Or if you have a bad client service, that is no. No for the high end clients, frankly, because most of the time, literally, I had closer 10 years that I never really marketed myself in anything, because I have so many jobs that come in through our referrals, because they experience it and they are really impressed by it and they are recommending it to all of their friends and their customers.

Yeah, for sure. And that really does circle us nicely back to the beginning of this episode where we were talking about the quality of your service, whether you're a photographer, a musician, caterer, baker, even hotel room block Like, if there's anything wrong with what you do, then that's going to sabotage your efforts. So it really does come from creating a great product and service that's consistent every single time that you deliver it.

And I absolutely agree. And also we are people, we are human, so human make mistakes A lot of times. Our customer or clients also recognize it too, so we can make them take. But how you work with that mistake to make it better for the client or being better for the customer, that speak even louder than excellent service sometime. So that's why I'm focusing on really focusing on the customer service aspect of how can I deliver the best service photography service or the video in the future to our clients than anything else. And so that really comes down to it.

Yeah, that's awesome. What wonderful insights. We did not touch on the fourth market. I was wondering if you could touch on the celebrity, the ultra rich market. How would one break into that market?

Yes, there is a few photographers or there's one guys that I look up to because they are in that market right now and also they're really, really filling it at this point and they're also from. They studied their whole career in the Boulder area. This photographer and they were talking about a few points and when it gets up to the level, it's all about reliability and also it's all about really about referral and recommendation. Client is not even going to contact you. You have this millionaire planner's other conduit to that market, so you need to work with the planner or anything. Of course you have to have amazing quality of your product or service, but let's say I'm just going to hypothetically put it in here Andrew Clark, who was a great photographer, helped pass the Red Westerly Peace just last year, but he actually photographed Clinton's wedding. Oh, wow, not the original Clinton, but Bill Clinton's daughter wedding. Anyway, the thing is he cannot use those pictures with his portfolios Exactly, but let's say if Bill Clinton or their coordinator hires you, that really hires you by reputation or anything.

Also, how reliable you are. So quality or sometimes those photographs is not the world's best photograph per se, but you need to have these beautiful pictures and how reliably able to deliver that and the relationship between yourself and the coordinator makes a big difference. Obviously, breaking into the market is a lot of times it is the really persistence of going after those high-end, extremely ultra secretive planners and then also work with them to bring your name out to them and then they can actually introduce their clientele. So it's a very, very selective market and then not only that once, like if you're the planner and you have a great photographer's or the staff that you work with all the time. Breaking into as a new person into that circle is so mostly if you are interested in the luxury market, I recommend going after number three market first and then be successful in that market. That will usually bring up the opportunities to meet with some of those people that who does ultra high-end and then really build your network and then to be included in that network, to be in that market.

Yeah, that is such great advice. I loved every part of it and it really shifted my perspective on it too. I've already been doing a lot of the relationship building that you suggested, but I'd never really put two and two together. That because I do all of that work, I've tended to attract very good clients. I don't really have problematic clients. They pay on time, they pay me more than what is the average rate for a musician, and it feels like it is because I've been putting in the work that you just talked about. So thanks for helping me put two and two together with my own business.

Hey, darren, hi Darren, Hi, I'm Darren. Hi, I'm Darren. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you, I'm Darren. Nice to meet you, I'm Darren. Hi Darren, Hi Darren, hi Darren, hi Darren Hi Darren, hi, darren, hi, darren Hi Darren. So what's your recommendation from our formal list? Oh, wow, I was working with you know, usually the wedding industry, there is a flow of the people who book the certain type of vendors. They usually go after the wedding dress well, after the ring wedding dress, and then the wedding coordinator, and then go down to the venue catering and photography and videos and go down that list and usually on the near the bottom is where they select the florist or some of the other things.

Musicians tend to be last on that list too.

Yeah, exactly, but I build my relationship from the bottom up on anything because I build great relationship with my musician friends, because I love music and also I really helped out this florist for several times pull free there's. They need some kind of performing materials and I provided to them that that kind of leads me into she recommending me for this amazing wedding and I got to travel out of state for this wedding. It was absolutely amazing.

Yeah.

Yeah, and then I decided from there then some breakthrough happened that I was photographing data at the wedding, and then John Elmell, he was at the wedding after Is he a golfer or a race car driver? No, he is the Denver Broncos quarterback before who won two Super Bowls.

You say that with that logo here. Don't sorry, but I am new to Denver and I'm not much of a football guy, so please forgive me but continue your story.

Jared, you just need to be careful with the Denver is like he's like the most celebrity kind of person. So it was really great because out of those relationship that I built, I was like in two, three years I was traveling all over the world Belize, mexico, several times, all different states, new York, florida, even Texas, and a lot longest one that I traveled was down to Greece in the Sampdorini. So it was just absolutely amazing experiences that I had as a photographer.

That's amazing, very cool, and you're obviously a very active member of NACE. I see you sponsoring a lot of the events there. In fact, you were sponsored the first event that I was at when I played electric violin. How instrumental would you say NACE has been to this strategy of building relationships.

Yeah. So I tell kind of everyone that COVID changed everything. Covid kind of flatlined my network because a lot of people that I worked with quit, moved away, had a different type of jobs after the COVID. So a lot of relationships that I built it really got to almost nothing. Still there's survivors out there that we reconnected after the COVID, which is great, but at the same time I lost a lot of relationships because there is no value in the events anymore.

So being in NACE, also being in this amazing association, especially in NACE under the guidance of the President, that's really brought up a good place to build a relationship. It's not like I'm trying to build my, I'm trying to find somebody that who's gonna hire me, hit me with metal points, it's just really for me to build a relationship back up. And relationship is one of the funny thing that sometimes you're like, oh, there's nothing happening for a few months, but also it has the way of saying it's something amazing happening. You just hit that one breakthrough. Sometimes that can lead into a lot of great things and I had that happen before and I'm still kind of waiting to be happened that. And then the NACES is one of the best place to be because it has such a great welcoming environment and then people who works there and then who associate there. They really put together kind of same-minded people to share their experiences and share their product and services to others so that the other people can experience it and start.

Put you or a person that was involved in, through the referral that they made, so how many places that you can actually go to and stay. Here is the sales manager from the Gailo Hotel and you get to talk with them directly. Naces can do that. Denver Art Museum create team of people that are losing their NACES membership. Then you can actually walk out and start, chat with them and then kind of introduce yourself and also have opportunity to show your talent through the sponsorships or anything and let the other people see what you can do and that will lead you to build a great relationship that will lead you to a job. It may not happen right away per se. Let's say I became a member and next month that I have a tons of job for me. That usually not happening, because any relationship that you need to mature that relationship you become effective. But this is a place that you can actually do that.

For sure and that was very beautifully stated, cause I think that is like a common thing that we hear when we're trying to recruit new NACES members is how fast can I get a return on my investment? And, like you said, it may not happen immediately, but that's not the point of the strategy. The point of the strategy is build your relationships, help others out, and then the return on investment comes as a byproduct of doing all of those things, of being active, of helping people out, of showing them what you're capable of and being consistent about it too. So thank you for sharing that. So we're getting close to the end of this episode, but I wanna address the elephant in the room, which is are you adding a new category to your offerings? Are you becoming a videographer?

Yes, actually yeah, and the reason I myself and my wife were looking at the trend of the whole photography video world and also we are looking at the trend of the commercial photography and commercial videos and everything else. Anything that we wanted to do me myself and my wife wanted to be a top notch service. So we're not really putting it out there yet, but we'll start having different approach and then we are currently building our portfolio with the different type of commercial projects to be able to offer that service in the future. So, the one of the products that you were into, we had four different cameras set up to capture all this different thing, including the gimbal moves and everything else. And yeah, video and photography, even though we may use the same type of YouTube, one is quite different and well, that's not how you capture it and also how you edit it. So we are still planning on that. But wait until you see, maybe end up this year, that we'll have a great production company offering for the one type one on stop for your marketing or commercial projects.

Wow. Well, I cannot wait to see the results of that, and if you ever need a guinea pig musician to help build your portfolio, let's work together.

Yes, Darg, I wanted to do that with you. I know it will be amazing and then you're gonna have amazing products. Yes, man.

That's all together. Let's do it All right. So we're gonna end of the episode here. How can people who listening to this episode connect with you, see your website and reach out to you?

Absolutely, thank you. My website is wwwstudiojkcom and you can reach me through the Facebook Instagram website. Any place you want to be, you can reach me at the facebookcom, slash studiojkphotography, and also Instagram as Studio JK Photo, and you can just contact me through all the website or the Instagram or Facebook and then I will look forward to hearing from you guys and then anybody have any questions about anything that I'm here open book and also I'm also a BPO membership for the NACE. So if you have any interest in joining in NACE, please do so and you can ask me any questions.

That is awesome. Thank you for being so generous with your time and knowledge and expertise. That is wonderful. If so, we just had a great interview with Joe Koum of JK Studio, jk Photography and Videography Amazing interview, one of my favorites that I've done so far. Thank you so much, joe. If you are at all interested in coming to our next NACE meeting, come and hear what we're all about. Please go to nasedenvercom N-A-C-E stands for National Association for Catering and Events, nasedenvercom and we cannot wait to welcome you as our newest member. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Denver NACE podcast and we'll see you soon.