Meet Brent Evans | Owner/Photographer of real estate photography business

We had the good fortune of connecting with Brent Evans and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Brent, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
For my whole life I said, “I’ll never start my own business, because when you own your own business, your business owns you.” Famous last words! Eight years ago, I discovered “Do something you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.”

I started out gathering photos and videos on the weekend for a land selling company located in Houston. He had me running all over the back country of WY, CO and NM. At the same time, I was being overextended at my M – F job and it was stressing me out. I told my wife that I thought I could do this full time and make a living at it. At first she was skeptical, but weeks later, seeing the stress I was under, relented and told me that I had a year to prove it to her. During that first year, my work for the Houston company increased while I networked and purchased equipment, etc. At just about one year, the business took off and has grown steadily by word of mouth.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I feel like my start was almost by accident. I always had an interest in good photography but never really dreamed of making a living from it. It started out as getting to know a guy who sold land, doing work for him on weekends, then deciding that I could do property shoots full time and quickly expanded into regular residential and commercial real estate photography. I named the company Sacred Wind Photography because it felt like God was just blowing me along in a new direction.
It took a while in that first year to get noticed. I did lots of networking. I joined a couple of networking groups as well as the Realtors association and my local chamber of commerce in Longmont. I did some training with Youtube as well as getting tips from competitors here and there to train myself into that niche of photography.
I set myself apart by offering free drone photos as part of any photo package. Most companies (all that I’m aware of) charge quite a lot extra for drone work but I have always offered it as a perk, along with other acts of kindness like throwing in a couple of extra photos, doing free edits, discounts for referrals, not charging travel fees for anything closer than an hour and doing whatever else to bend over backwards to grant certain requests. My favorite part of being in business for myself has been the relationships formed, and I’ve even formed a few friendships with clients and others I’ve met in the business world. My clients tend to be a bit more to the older side of 40 years old because younger clients tend to like the big companies for being able to do everything from behind a screen, whereas I and my clients tend to value the face to face, the texts, the calls the handshakes and the personal relationship.
One of the biggest lessons I learned along the way was, in my line of work, advertising of any sort has little to no ROI, be it on Yelp, Google adwords, SEO, or just posting ads in any known format. At the beginning, I wasted thousands of dollars on advertising but these days I tell those trying to sell me any of that stuff that my business has boomed on word of mouth alone and that any type of “putting myself out there” is a waste of money.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
We usually take people to Rocky Mtn National Park along with Estes Park, since it’s only 45 minutes from us. Other spots could include Idaho Springs for the shops and charm, Colorado Springs for Garden of the Gods and Pikes Peak, Manitou Springs for shopping and the Incline, downtown Denver possibly for a show, food and shopping.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Tory Watson of Landio land sales
My wife, Beth

Website: https://www.sacredwindphotography.com/

Instagram: @sacredwindphotography

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SacredWindPhotos

Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/sacred-wind-photography-longmont-4

Youtube: @brentevans7936

Image Credits
Self – Sacred Wind Photography