Weathering the storms - Photographer Adrian Best
About this episode…
Weathering the storms - Photographer Adrian Best
When his wife became ill and his employer wouldn’t offer paid leave, Adrian gave up his job to care for her and their two young sons. And that’s where his freelance journey began.
Now with more than a decade of experience behind him, Adrian knows that there will always be challenges ahead. But with passion, joy and a determination to provide quality work, he’s confident that he can weather those storms.
Read highlights from the episode in the next tab.
“Passion is the first thing”
Adrian’s family find it hard to understand why he’s chosen the freelance lifestyle over a stable job with a regular salary and a pension.
“A job is going to take me away from the things I love to do. My Plan A has to work and every ounce of me goes into my Plan A because if I start thinking, ‘Well if that doesn't work, then maybe I can do this,’ then I wouldn't put the 100% or the 150% needed to make it work.
“And because I have been doing that, I am starting to see the wheels turning. People will say, ‘Well, the universe is responding to you’ or, you know, ‘You're being blessed’. But I know that if I really put my everything in, I should be able to get something out. And that is my strong belief.”
Adrian’s been freelance since 2009, so he’s been in the game long enough to know that it’s not easy.
“There are definitely days where you'll be walking up a hill and then a rock will roll you all the way back down, and then you'll ask yourself, 'What am I doing? This is crazy!’
“So passion, to me, is the first thing, because the trials and the tribulations are waiting for you. They're going to be right around the corner waiting for you. But if you have that passion to excel and that passion to provide quality, you can weather the storms... battered! But you'll weather the storms.”
“Clients buy into me, my personality”
Adrian says that everything about his marketing is based on his personality.
“I got to realise that people don't necessarily buy what you sell, they tend to buy you first. When people can identify with me, have that comfort level with me, where I began feeling like family or a friend from a long time ago, that brings in a level of trust and those good feelings. So people are confident to say, ‘Listen, take my money. I want you.’ And that is how that grew and continues to go at this point in time."
For Adrian, who strives to be present and available for his clients, it’s a round-the-clock job.
"According to my wife, I live on social media. It's constant. But I like to personally reply and I don't want hours to pass because I believe that if somebody is interested in a service, they are looking and you are not the only person that they are asking. So I don't let opportunities like that pass me by. It's literally a full-time job managing my social media, as well as managing the business aspect of it."
More from Adrian Best
Transcript of the Being Freelance podcast with Steve Folland and freelance photographer Adrian Best
Steve Folland: As ever, how about we get started hearing how you got started being freelance?
Adrian Best: Okay. So it seems as though I may have been what you would call the odd one out in my family, because the going thing for us was you complete your school education. You get into the college level and you seek out some sort of safe what you call government type public job. Right. And I went the completely the opposite way in terms of everything I fell in love with was on the creative side as a musician, doing graphic art and that diverged into video. And now to my passion, which is photography. So it seems as though I couldn't get away from freelance, I couldn't get away from the creative side of me. And that was to the detriment of everyone. "You are throwing your life away! No, you need a pension! No!" But I just really couldn't get away from this. This was my calling from the get-go. I held a number of creative jobs, sound engineering, doing video editing, video production. And that just branched off into my own agency, doing photography, doing video and doing graphic design. So I am my happiest, you know, I am not my richest, but I am definitely my happiest. So that's basically how I jumped in into this whole freelance life. And it's something that I would do again and again, and again, if given the chance to.
Steve Folland: I mean, you make it sound easy, but how did you actually do that? Like how did you transition from working for other people in creative jobs to getting your own clients, your own work?
Adrian Best: Oh, that was literally a kick in the butt really. At that point in time my wife just had our second son. I have three boys and right after the second boy, she became really ill to the point where she required bed rest consistently. And my job of course, didn't want to hear that in terms of my new responsibilities. I had a two-year-old, I have a newborn and I have a wife who is unable to literally move on her own. So my time really had to be dedicated to family. I looked around and in my possession recently, I had just registered my small business. So I looked at it and I said, listen... You are how I'm going to live. You are how I'm going to live and I just remember going into work, heading straight to HR saying, listen, my wife needs me. My family needs me. Can I get no pay leave? The answer was no. I said, okay, went to my desk, signed my resignation, emailed it upstairs, took a physical copy upstairs and just walked out the door.
Steve Folland: Wow. So you had the motivation. How did you go about finding the clients that you needed?
Adrian Best: That was what you call guerilla marketing, literally because after leaving the establishment and heading home, that's when you started to get, Oh my God, what did I do? Oh my God. Am I crazy? Go back and beg for your job. But from that day, that first day clients came for graphic design. I pushed that a lot more. I would literally go to the Yellow Pages, look at people's content, call them up and say, 'Listen, that ad you have in the Yellow Pages, that doesn't do you justice, that's crap. Listen, I have something that you're going to want to see. Let's set up a meeting and let me show you what I have.' And that is what I did for months. Just tearing apart people's designs, doing it over and taking it for them to see. And I'm telling you, every time I took a piece of artwork to the client for them to see they bought it.
Steve Folland: So for those first jobs, you were doing graphic design primarily. And was that because you were drawing on the skills you knew you had?
Adrian Best: Yes. And at the point in time, I had video skills and I had graphic design skills. But I knew I could sell them graphics a lot easier. So I leaned on that a little bit heavier than the other skillsets. And along the way, I started getting more clients interested. And what I started doing was once one, two, three persons start asking me, do you do X, Y, and Z? The answer became yes. And I just added it. And if I had to find someone to subcontract, I did that. So I subcontracted photography for a while and it became to the point where I started to not be able to rely on the individuals that I needed to supply the clients. Because coming from corporate, I knew about timeliness. I knew about deliverability. I knew time is money. So when I have a freelancer providing a service for me that I don't directly control, it became difficult when these persons let me down.
Adrian Best: And then I am in fact letting down my client and my client don't need to know that it's a freelancer. It's somebody else. All they know is that they gave me the job. So I suck it up, went on Amazon, swipe that old credit card and bought myself my first camera. And that was the start of it. I learned photography the hard way, but I had the determination. I had the passion for it. And I would say over the years, it has really grown into something that I love doing. Now photography is the mainstay of the business. That's the one thing I do the most, you know, I still get the graphic design jobs. I still get video jobs, but photography - that's where the real passion lies, man.
Steve Folland: So just jumping back to those first clients, you would look at an advert, think those graphics suck and then spend time, unpaid time at this point, redesigning it and then approach them and show it to them.
Adrian Best: Totally. That, that, that was the job. I would sit down and look at your ad, do it over and then take it to you and pitch you back your own ad.
Steve Folland: How long did you keep doing that? Did it get to a point where actually you had a bank of those adverts that you'd done for other people that you could show to someone and they would hire you on the basis of that portfolio?
Adrian Best: Definitely, I would say 12 to 18 months of that - using that to build the portfolio. And then the portfolio became the seller. So I would have the portfolio based on industries, where there's the air condition industry, the security industry, the pet supplies industry, the marketing industry, I would have these different subcategories and so many samples. And what started happening, when you start seeing other people look good, you want to look good too. So I know this is the guy and this is the guy that's doing it then. Yeah. I want to jump on board. So I had, persons coming in and that you're working with your competition, but it looking so good. So I want you to do my work as well. And they asked me, how do you manage to put so much creativity into each person?
Adrian Best: And everyone sells the same service or sells the same product. But to me, every individual is different. So every organization is different. So once I have that first meeting with you, I get a sense of your personality. I get a sense of your style and a sense of where things are, what your business means to you. And I pour that into the work that I do for you. So that helps in creating that unique look for every client. And that went on for about 18 months and then the new portfolio came in and it became an easier sell - with the portfolio, it was a lot easier to get persons interested in what I had to offer.
Steve Folland: Just to put this in perspective, like how long ago was this?
Adrian Best: The walkout took place in 2009. November, 2009. So literally a month before Christmas, I went crazy and yeah, so, but the entire time in 2010 was promising and the photography aspect came in in 2014.
Steve Folland: You were dabbling with hiring other freelancers to do some of the work with you very early on. As soon as you saw an opportunity, you'd be like, yeah, I can do whatever. Yeah,
Adrian Best: Yeah. I'm unstoppable!
Steve Folland: But you also had a bad experience. So I'm just wondering, did you keep doing that? Do you still do that?
Adrian Best: What I've learned is to not tie services that I don't personally provide, I don't tie it directly to my brand in terms of expectations of the clients. I will let them know, listen, I do have a team I work with. I have other freelancers I work with that are really quite good, we mesh services. So I don't necessarily tie it directly to my brand. So the clients get a sense that it is an external entity. However, I am the agency. So I pull everyone together. And that gives them comfort because they don't have to find this supplier, find that supplier, I'm the one who's going to be doing the sourcing and getting the project pulled together and making it work. So that helps now, instead of everyone thinking that all of these services I do personally. Right. So that really helps me in terms of how I approach my clients, work on their expectations.
Steve Folland: When you first went freelance, obviously one of your motivations was to be there, to look after your wife and your children as well as working. How long did you have to keep doing that? Balancing those two things?
Adrian Best: My wife was able to go back out to some semblance of normalcy in late 2010, 2011. So in all of that time, it was literally me alone, because I literally had to take care of her as best as possible cause movement was limited. And so I was in between cooking and doing a flyer and changing a baby, feeding a bottle and sorting a conference call... So it was back and forth and back and forth. But I would just say the motivation was to ensure that, you can take care of your own is the most important thing there. And that drove me through to be able to accomplish the things I did.
Steve Folland: How would you say that your business began to change? Because obviously you introduced photography what? Six, seven years ago. So did you then start to focus on that? Or were you still known for lots of different things? Like how did it change?
Adrian Best: From 2014 I became more known for the photography in terms of my marketing. I completely restructured my Facebook page. I started putting up banners and posters in the public areas where, in the village where I lived at the time, and also outside. So persons can identify, firstly, my brand, the logo I sell. And my name is my brand. So my logo and business is Adrian Best Studios. So that in itself is like a calling card. I wanted persons, as soon as they see the logo, to identify it with me. And it grew from there. So from neighbours having weddings, having family functions, needing photography, I started doing those things. And in typical country-style area, once you please one person, they tell the entire family. So when everybody's getting married, I'm the guy that they would call. So in one year I did six weddings for one family.
Adrian Best: That's what happens. So now I have these six families who, as soon as they are hearing one of their friends getting married or one of the other family members getting married, Oh, I have a guy, I have a guy and it just started rolling. And I started realizing that I had less to do because my clients would push the business a lot more. And at that point in time, also, I got to realize that people don't necessarily buy what you sell immediately. They tend to buy you first. So I created that twist of a personality with the business so that persons can identify with me, have that comfort level with me, I began feeling like family or a friend from a long time ago, and that brought in a level of trust and that good feelings. So persons were confident to say, listen, take my money. I want you. And that is how that grew and continues to go at this point in time. You know, I would literally sit back now and laugh because someone posts on Facebook, 'I need a photographer, Anybody know a photographer?' 15, 20, 25 persons would pop my name up.
Steve Folland: And so is it very much one-on-one - people getting to know you. Do you put yourself out online in any way or is it purely those individual relationships?
Adrian Best: Everything about my marketing is about my personality. Clients buy into me, my personality. I am not by, any stretch of any means the best photographer in Trinidad and Tobago, but I am certainly not the worst, but what I do offer is my unique point, my unique selling point. And that's the one thing that no one else has. So I believe that once I can get persons to identify with who I am, then that's something they feel confident about. That's something they feel comfortable about. So even if someone has a better portfolio, my interaction with them will put them more to ease. Because I've got a lot of clients complain about asking for quotes and asking for information and persons being less than stellar in the response. But my customer response is instant, I have booked shoots at 3 AM in the morning. If I get a message on Instagram, on Facebook, I personally reply. So they get that sense of, okay, this person thinks I'm important. This person thinks, what I want is important. And they get that sense of, I can work with this individual. And that helps me a lot in terms of my marketing, because that's what they tell others, say, listen, this guy, he operates like family. Like he knows you since you went to school and it's so weird he gets into your head and that sells. That really sells.
Steve Folland: That's nice. How do you stay on top of all of those communication channels though?
Adrian Best: According to my wife, I live on social media. It's constant. And it really is tough sometimes because I'm working on a project for a client and notifications are coming up. But I like to personally reply and I don't want hours to pass because I also personally believe once somebody is interested in a service, they are looking and you are not the only person that they are asking. So to have your foot in the game, to throw your hat into the ring, you have to be on your mobile and you have to be where your clients want you to be, or need you to be when they are there. So I don't let opportunities like that pass me by. So it's literally a full-time job managing my social media, as well as managing the business aspect of it.
Steve Folland: And so what would that be? Facebook, Instagram?..
Adrian Best: Facebook, Instagram, Google Business, LinkedIn. That's the main platforms for me.
Steve Folland: How does Google Business work for you
Adrian Best: So far? I've gotten a lot more connections through Google Business. Cause when persons directly search on Google for the services you provide, I seem to be popping up a lot. When I get my reviews from Google, I realized that I have a lot of interactions on Google Business than on my other platforms combined. So it definitely works. And persons will call because for some reason I left my communications open, saying I'm open 24 hours. So persons call me 1:00 AM 2:00 AM. 'Hey, just checking, Um, do you do X, Y, and Z?' And I'm like, yes I do. How can I help you? 'You know what? I was really testing to see if you were honest about being available and you are available. So I'm definitely going to go with you. So get some sleep and we'll chat in a few hours.
Steve Folland: But you mentioned reviews. So do you proactively go after reviews and if so, how do you do that?
Adrian Best: Usually after I complete a job for a client and I deliver the images, I would ask if they would do me the honour of providing me with a review. Most times they will say, of course, no problem send me the links. I will send them both Facebook and Google Business for the reviews. But sometimes, more recently, I don't even have to ask. The review goes up even before they received the images. Just after the session. And they go up and they talk about 'his personality and he's so down to the earth and he is so professional and he puts you at ease.' Cause most people know that they need images. But the first thing you hear is, I am not a professional model. I don't know anything, how to pose, how to stand, where to put my hands.
Adrian Best: And this is where I guide persons while I should give them the advice. Okay, you can turn this way. You can look up this way, turn to light, persons who are more shy or have self-confidence issues. I would work with them. It's a patient process and that now translates into the images. So this experience, they tend to rush to my page, to share I had a job or I did a shoot with Adrian Best. And he was so amazing. And his work ethic is so professional and that has now grown to it, being a, what you call a thing where people want to actually say, I did a shoot with Adrian Best. So I get bookings just because, 'all my friends did it, so I need to do it too'.
Steve Folland: Have you gone after a certain client? You mentioned weddings obviously, but I'm intrigued, obviously you mentioned LinkedIn, which is just a more corporate thing. And originally when you were doing graphic design, you were building up relationships with businesses and I know businesses are run by people who still get married and so on, but yeah, what kind of stuff do you do? How do you focus that side of the messaging?
Adrian Best: Well, at the beginning I would have foolishly told myself 'I love photography. I will do everything photography'. Oh no. That's soon worn off. I would tell now, I specialize in portraits and also product photography. I will do the occasional wedding because I would have people who specifically called for me to do the wedding. I will do other types of photography, but my mainstay is portraits and products. So that's generally what I'm going to focus on. So I do a lot of work with models. Sometimes for commercial purposes, sometimes it's for their portfolio. I do a lot of businesspeople in terms of the corporate headshots, also personal items, like a birthday - they want to celebrate with a photoshoot for their birthday. But it's generally a lot more entrepreneurs, a lot more business in terms of portraits and also for products, which kind of really expanded after the pandemic because now online selling became the go-to. So a lot more persons would need their products to be photographed properly. The phone pics wouldn't work anymore because you really wanted the quality image on your site so that persons can buy into that when they see it. So that really grew from the pandemic doing a lot more products. So that's where my skill set is focused.
Steve Folland: When you realized that product photography was going to be a thing as the pandemic continued, did you have a way of getting that message to potential clients or did you just rely on people coming to you based on the reputation you built up?
Adrian Best: Some of it was reputation, but I really went after it. First lockdown we experienced where our mobility was limited, I took that time and I literally took everything out of the cupboard and I photographed it. My wife's perfume, her shoes, grocery items, hygiene items. I literally looked around the house and I photographed everything. And I put those image up because a lot of people buy what they see. And I wanted persons to realize, listen, your products can look like this. I went to the supermarket and I bought products for some of our local manufacturers, set up the photography shoots, got it done. Watermarked it, emailed it to the company and say, listen, I love your product. This is what it looks like. And they would buy the photos because they want them for their profile. So they would purchase it and then they would send more stuff. Can you do these for us? And that is how it grew, but I knew to get the clients I wanted, I had to make the investment. So I had to spend some, buy some products, buy some props, spend some time set up, shoot, and then use those images now to market product photography available. And that is generally how it works.
Steve Folland: I love that. Especially because actually 11, 12 years on... That was how you started, seeing something and thinking actually I can do this better.
Adrian Best: Yeah, definitely. So, I built on that same platform and I did the same for the photography. So while we were locked away, I just photographed everything possible and use those images as a marketing tool. So then I would create the content, the sponsored content sometimes on Facebook with these photos and sharing it that, you know, beauty industry products, uh, kitchen items, appliances, I would photograph everything - once it could stand by itself, I would take it and I would set it up. I created a small space in the living room. That's now my product photography studio. And I created a small area just to shoot products. So now clients would call, they would drop their boxes over with their local wines, with their handmade soaps, with their body butters and creams. A lot of our artisans now would drop their products because while we do have some of the bigger companies, larger conglomerates and so forth.
Adrian Best: A lot of the entrepreneurs who I know starting out, they also need proper images. And these are the persons who would generally rely on their phone to take an image to sell. But now I target these people and I'm selling them an experience. I'm selling them the ability to look just as good as those big guys. So I definitely targeted them showing them that - not because you're just starting means that you have to look inferior or you have to be inadequate. No, you can look just as good as those big boys when they spend their top dollar budgets. So that's the experience I sell that once work leaves my studio, you are going to be happy.
Steve Folland: Obviously you're not the only photographer in Trinidad and Tobago, but do you see the others as competition? Or do you all know each other? What's that like for you?
Adrian Best: There is a lot of competitiveness within the industry. But we do have a group of like right now, I am in a WhatsApp group with other photographers and we share ideas. We post our latest photoshoots for others to critique and comment. We share our Instagram posts with each other to share. So we are building this community slowly. So I don't necessarily look at these guys as competition. I really do learn from everyone that posts because they may have done something and I'd be like, wow, that's a great idea I would not have. So I know how something to go back and practice - I make a phone call, 'how did you accomplish this? What modifier did you use?' And that information goes back and forth. So it's not really a competition because no matter how much or what I do, I can never shoot an image or the same image like anybody else. We are all still going to be our own person. Our styles are still going to appeal to our ideal clients. So it's not really about, well, I'm a photographer. So I literally just dislike every other photographer. We are really trying to have a community, you know, and it's not everyone yet. There are still a lot of people to come on board with that ideology, but it's definitely getting there. So with the guys that I do know, it's not competition, it really is a sharing of ideas, sharing of ideologies, business practices, because some of these guys are better in terms of business than others. A lot of people may have the creative abilities, but the paperwork side of it, the taxes you need, the filings, in terms of keeping your client records, your email list, a lot of the guys are better at that based on where they would have come from in their corporate lives. And all of this information is shared. We have guys there who are good at accounting, helping others to keep their books, make sure you're on board and staying legal. While we love to shoot, there's also the other side of the business - the back end that has to be done properly as well. So it really is a sharing of ideas, sharing of personalities and coming together to create a group of photographers that would push your excellence. And that's what I like about it.
Steve Folland: Obviously the first 18 months or so for you was quite tough. Work-life balance-wise, but what's it like these days? How do you find that side of it?
Adrian Best: Now? There is no silver lining that stays with being freelance. There are definitely days where you will be walking up a hill and then a rock would roll you all the way back down and you tell yourself, I can do this. This is, and then you will ask yourself, 'What am I doing? This is crazy,!' but everything still comes with joy. And I would tell anyone, if you do not do what you love, it will not make sense. You really have to love what you do for any pain that comes to not deter you from the journey that you're on. So passion to me is the first thing, because the trials and the tribulations are waiting for you. They're going to be right around the corner waiting for you. But if you definitely have that passion to excel and that passion to provide quality, you can weather the storms.. battered! But weather the storms.
Steve Folland: What would you say have been the biggest trials and tribulations, as you say for you in being freelance?
Adrian Best: For me, it's the inability to definitely say I know where every dollar is coming from. And in the corporate world, it's really, really nice to know that on the 25th of the month, your bank has money for you because you were paid, your employer sends you money every month on the 25th, it is guaranteed. You can pay your rent on the 27th, you can go to the supermarket on the 28th. You know that your lights and your cable and your internet and all of these things are guaranteed to be paid. But with freelance, sometimes on the 25th, you haven't gotten your first job yet. And it started being like, okay, what am I doing? What's going to happen here. And sometimes right around that corner, the next day you get the phone call that can change a lot, you know? And it's this back and forth that, it's crazy. A lot of people will not understand why we do what we do, but when you're in it, there's definitely still a love and a warmth and a smile that can happen knowing that I don't know where it's coming from, but it's coming. And until it gets here, I'm going to do the work because the work has to be done.
Steve Folland: Adrian, if you could tell your younger self one thing about being freelance, what would that be?
Adrian Best: Start earlier. You're going to be just fine, start earlier because I had that built-in fear of needing that comfort of a dedicated salary that was pounded into me, into my subconscious for years. And even when I started the business, my wife told me, she said, I never believed that you would have left a pensionable job to go into business because I know how fearful that was for you. So I would tell my younger self to ride that crazy horse faster.
Steve Folland: Because you didn't have any like freelance work on the side..
Adrian Best: I started in business because I thought listen, this is something I can possibly do on the side. Right? This is something that is a good idea because I'm doing little nicks and nacks - someone has a birthday party for their kid, I will knock up an invitation, send it across, but it wasn't like me getting paid for it. It was just a hobby, something I liked doing. So I would just help out friends here and there. So the idea came, listen, register the name, make it a business. And have it there, it's in the basket of things to do. And in doing that, I had an option that I could have literally taken out of the basket when I needed it the most, because now I didn't have to go and file paperwork. I didn't have to go through all of these things to set up because it was already done. I could have just picked up from it and started sending out my invites because designer I already did my logo, my letter had, was done....
Steve Folland: Oh, I see. So you had done it. You had sort of thought about it. You just hadn't actually started doing the work.
Adrian Best: No work was done, no planning was done. This was just, you know, you have an Ace in your hand. This card is going to destroy the table and you have to decide I'm going to wait for the right time to release this. But I never really thought I would have to do it because I loved my job. And everything was perfect there, it's just that in this instant with this bit of emergency, I needed to make a radical decision. And now, I wish I did that earlier.
Steve Folland: Yeah. Do you now have a pension? Have you set one up?
Adrian Best: Privately - Yes.
Steve Folland: What do your family who always, you know, were thinking 'go get the safe government job'. What are your family thinking of what you do now?
Adrian Best: I'm still crazy. Mind you, I have done three siblings, weddings, but I'm still crazy because this is unheard of -everyone is still safely employed. And I'm the one who runs around like a headless chicken every time the month is coming to close because the bills are going to be coming around. And it's like, 'why you keep doing that to yourself? Get a job!' And I'm like, no, a job is going to take me away from the things I love to do. So it just has to work. And my personal feeling, a lot of people feel differently, but I do not have a Plan B my Plan Ahas to work. Every ounce of me goes into my Plan A because if I start thinking, well if that doesn't work, then maybe I can do this. Then I wouldn't put the 100% or the 150% needed to make it work. And because I have been doing that, I am starting to see the wheels turning and people will see, well, the universe is responding to you or, you know, you're being blessed. But I know that if I really put my everything in, I should be able to get something out. And that is my strong belief.
Steve Folland: Love it. Adrian, it's been so good to speak to you. All the best being freelance!
Adrian Best: Thank you very much for having me. This has been a great pleasure.
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