046: Starting a Successful Business with No Money & No Experience with Michael Mcmanus Co-Founder of M2 Photography, Gethrr & Poser Photo Booth

It just drives me knowing that, we have kind of created this from nothing, and then I get to kind of go every month and work my butt off to try and do anything I can for people.

#00:00:43-2# Neil: Hello, it’s Neil Ball here, thank you so much for joining me today on the entrepreneur way. The entrepreneur way is about the entrepreneur’s journey, the vision, the mind-set, the commitment, the sacrifice, failures and successes. I am so excited to bring you our special guest today, Michael MacManus, but before I introduce you to Michael, I have a quote for you. Ursula Kay Lagoon, and I can’t pronounce her surname, said ‘the only questions that really matter are the ones you ask yourself.’ The entrepreneur way asks the questions, so we all get the insight, inspiration and ideas to apply in our businesses, Michael, welcome to the show, are you ready to share your version of the entrepreneur way with us?

#00:01:31-9# Michael Mcmanus Co-Founder of M2 Photography, Gethrr & Poser Photo Booth: I sure am.

#00:01:33-9# Neil: Thank you for coming on the show Michael. Michael McManus is an entrepreneur, artist, humanitarian and encourager. Having come from nothing and almost losing everything, Michael has become a driven entrepreneur combining his love for people and creativity to create a successful and thriving photography business. His love for humanity and his familiarity with struggle has inspired him to start the non-profit organisation Gethrr. Gethrr is a community of people giving as little as one dollar a month to help others in need. Michael, can you provide us with some more insight into your business and personal life to allow us to get to know more about what you do and who you are.

#00:02:20-7# Michael Mcmanus Co-Founder of M2 Photography, Gethrr & Poser Photo Booth: Yeh sure, so I have been doing photography with my wife for the past eight years, we also started a non-profit a couple of years ago, which you just spoke about and we also have a photo booth company that we run which is over two years old as well. And I am a father, I have two eight year-old daughters, they are twins, and they keep me very very busy.

#00:02:51-7# Neil: And so where, you make your money from photography and you say a photo booth. Can you just talk about a little bit more about what you are actually doing in terms of photography? and the photo booth?

#00:03:01-2# Michael Mcmanus Co-Founder of M2 Photography, Gethrr & Poser Photo Booth: Yeh of course, so we are, we are wedding photographers, so that’s what we specialise in. We only shoot 30 weddings a year, and the photo booth companies are really good transition for us because most of our clients have photo booths at their weddings. So I guess it was an obvious next step for us to take that direction and there we just provide, it is a really modern, fun photo booth experience, instead of the old fashioned kind, which people are used to. It’s open air, so there is no enclosure, we do social media sharing, texting from the booth, you know all that modern stuff. And it’s just a ton of fun and we also do birthday parties, corporate events, things like that.

#00:03:47-0# Neil: And what do you enjoy most about what you do?

#00:03:50-7# Michael Mcmanus Co-Founder of M2 Photography, Gethrr & Poser Photo Booth: I enjoy connecting with people the most, and to be able to do all of this with my wife, I think that’s the most enjoyable part. You know, I love creating images and telling stories, and having the photo booths at events, I know it’s always a lot of fun so I just kinda enjoy seeing the people have a great time, be silly, let their guard down and I think for me everything just comes back to being around people and connecting with them.

#00:04:18-4# Neil: Yeh. And what is it that drives you?

#00:04:25-5# Michael Mcmanus Co-Founder of M2 Photography, Gethrr & Poser Photo Booth: There’s two things here, one is my family, my wife and kids, and the other is just helping people. You know, setting up our non-profit, and knowing that every month, we can go out there and we can help someone, that it just drives me knowing that we have kind of created this from nothing and then I kind of get to go every month and work my butt off to try and do anything I can for people.

#00:04:49-1# Neil: Mmm hmmm. And can you tell us a little bit more about your non-profit please?

#00:04:54-7# Michael Mcmanus Co-Founder of M2 Photography, Gethrr & Poser Photo Booth: Sure so, it was started because of my personal journey, you know before we even started our photography company, we had no money at all, we had twins that were just born. No savings, we were just in a bad situation, and when no one else was really there to help us out, and we were struggling, my wife’s parents they gave what literally they could and believed in us when no one else did. And they kind of basically enabled us to take the steps we needed to take to start a company and to try to live this dream of ours, and it changed our life. So Gethrr is my way of giving back, and doing that for other people and getting other people involved, you know it, like you mentioned in the beginning, is a dollar a month is the first membership option and even my kids can do it. Even my kids give every month, and even volunteer when there is a possibility for that and it’s about just helping people and that’s really what we are trying to do is just grow a community of people who give a little bit, but make a pretty big difference with the little that they do.
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#00:06:18-5# Neil: So when you say you help people, in what ways do you help them?

#00:06:23-4# Michael Mcmanus Co-Founder of M2 Photography, Gethrr & Poser Photo Booth: So what is unique about Gethrr is that we are not trying to solve a particular problem. So for example, like hunger or lack of water or homelessness. For us, because it is just about helping people. Our members actually help us find projects to help people, so the first project we did for example was to help a family build the wheelchair ramp for their house. They had a four-year old son who was disabled, wheelchair bound, they live in a two-level home, split level and you know just providing that simple way of getting in and out of the house, really changed their daily life. You know, we have worked with a community in Arizona, providing garden equipment, because they had the largest fire, lost all their firemen tragically in that wildfire and the community consisted of just elderly people, so they were literally were gardening to grow food, because they did not have enough money to kind of get over what they had been dealing with, so providing them with equipment they needed to make that process easier is what we were able to do. So yes it varies, it’s always very different. In two days we are doing a project, we are working with the Tim Tebo Foundation, to put on a prom for people with special needs.

#00:07:52-3# Neil: Mmm hmm

#00:07:52-3# Michael Mcmanus Co-Founder of M2 Photography, Gethrr & Poser Photo Booth: To give them that experience, to be able to be kings and queens for a day and you know, doing anything like that, you know would fit perfectly with what we are doing.

#00:08:02-9# Neil: Ok, thanks for sharing that with us and how do you relax when you are not working in your business?

#00:08:08-8# Michael Mcmanus Co-Founder of M2 Photography, Gethrr & Poser Photo Booth: We travel, that’s where we get to relax the most. We typically do one big trip a year and then other smaller trips local, within the US. And then also, more personally, I love drawing, believe it or not, for the past year, I have been doing chalkboard portrait’s, which our subject interact with the drawings and it is just like something silly and fun, and I just love creating, so that is something I do to relax.

#00:08:41-3# Neil: And do you have any entrepreneurial role models?

#00:08:44-7# Michael Mcmanus Co-Founder of M2 Photography, Gethrr & Poser Photo Booth: Actually, I don’t. I respect a ton of entrepreneurs, and when I think of role model, I think that’s the person I looked up to as we were growing our business and kind of figured our own way, but we did not have that, it was not even on our radar. So we were just in our own little world at that time, so I would have to say ‘no’ to that one.

#00:09:08-9# Neil: Michael can we just go back to the time before you were an entrepreneur? And can you talk about what difficulties you had to overcome when you started your business?

#00:09:20-5# Michael Mcmanus Co-Founder of M2 Photography, Gethrr & Poser Photo Booth: So the difficulties that we had were no money, we did not have the proper equipment. We actually for the first year borrowed equipment from our friend, we did not have any background in business and we documented at weddings and that was what we were doing and we did not even have experience doing that, I did not know the proper way to do it, so I guess all round we did not have anything on our side, we just were passionate about the idea of giving it a go and being honest about it with all of our clients and it was pretty tough for sure.

#00:09:58-8# Neil: So how did you get over the lack of experience of people who were getting married, because it is one of those days where probably people do not want to find that they have made the wrong choice isn’t it? So

#00:10:08-7# Michael Mcmanus Co-Founder of M2 Photography, Gethrr & Poser Photo Booth: It is. We use the website called craigslist and our personal network, letting people know that we are shooting weddings now and I would literally show up at a Starbucks with a portfolio of six pictures, from weddings that I did not even attend that I happened to see the bride outside or something, and I would be very candid about it and I would say, ‘you know my wife and I, we are new at this and love photography and would love to you know, get the opportunity to tell someone’s story and we were so lucky to have really great clients that first year who just trusted us, and we were friends with most of them to this day, 8 years later.’

#00:10:54-2# Neil: That’s quite a creative way of getting pictures isn’t it? Almost crashing someone else’s wedding, is that what you are saying?

#00:11:03-3# Michael Mcmanus Co-Founder of M2 Photography, Gethrr & Poser Photo Booth: It was unintentional, I did not ever think I would use the pictures, I was like ‘hey this is a portfolio piece, here you go.’

#00:11:09-4# Neil: Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

#00:11:13-0# Michael Mcmanus Co-Founder of M2 Photography, Gethrr & Poser Photo Booth: So bad.

#00:11:13-0# Neil: And did you have any doubts that delayed you starting your business?

#00:11:19-6# Michael Mcmanus Co-Founder of M2 Photography, Gethrr & Poser Photo Booth: We definitely had our doubts, even for the first three or four years, but nothing delayed us because we had no choice. The crazy part is you know when I tell people, we struggled and did not have any money, there was this kind of like, ‘ok it was hard to keep up with your bills’ but it was literally like, we had no money. I could not hold a job, I kept getting fired, we borrowed money just to buy foods for our kids. It was, you know we were just in no position to let our own fears and doubts get in the way, and we just had to push forward.

#00:11:53-3# Neil: And what mistakes did you make that slowed your journey?

#00:12:00-8# Michael Mcmanus Co-Founder of M2 Photography, Gethrr & Poser Photo Booth: I think it was the lack of knowledge, and just direction in general of what we should be doing and how we should be going about things, so it took us a lot longer than most I think to get ourselves to the point where we actually created something that was successful and tangible.

#00:12:21-4# Neil: And what are some of the things that you did before you started your business that would be helpful tips to some of the listeners? who have not yet taken the first step on the entrepreneur way?

#00:12:34-4# Michael Mcmanus Co-Founder of M2 Photography, Gethrr & Poser Photo Booth: So we did not do anything I think that would be helpful, besides not having any idea what we were getting ourselves in and just starting, just being like ‘it does not matter, you will learn as you go.’ and just go, you have to start. And I think that’s probably one of the things that I always tell people, ‘if you want to just do something, just do it.’ You can prepare forever, you can wait for the perfect time, but it’s never going to come. So I think us just saying, ‘ok this is our situation, we want to change it, so go.’

Interviewer: Neil: I think that is pretty powerful advice, considering you said you had nothing to advise on, just do it. I think that is the biggest hurdle a lot of people have when they start out, to actually do it, so that’s excellent.

#0 #00:13:20-1# Michael Mcmanus Co-Founder of M2 Photography, Gethrr & Poser Photo Booth: It’s the hardest part of anything, you know like working out, if you think of that. Or you know, anything you want to do to make a daily habit for example, the hardest part is starting. Once you start, you gain momentum and that’s what drives you forward.

#00:13:34-6# Neil: Yeh, can we now talk about the entrepreneurial journey a little bit. Do you think culture is important from the beginning in a business?

#00:13:45-0# Michael Mcmanus Co-Founder of M2 Photography, Gethrr & Poser Photo Booth: I do, I think for us being honest and up front and sincere, and true to who we were, has always been incredibly important. And I think it has helped us attract the right clients as well. So that is kind of where we are at with all that.

#00:14:05-3# Neil: And knowing what you know now, is there anything that if you had known it when you started out, would have helped you to shortcut the learning curve?

#00:14:13-6# Michael Mcmanus Co-Founder of M2 Photography, Gethrr & Poser Photo Booth: I would say, networking would have been the number one thing, it would have made a huge difference for us. At the time, the photography industry was still very closed and everyone was in that scarcity mode and was afraid to help each other because it will ruin their business, but you know I remember reaching out to one of the best photographers in our area when we started and I was ‘ok I would love to connect with you, talk to you.’ and he was like, ‘yeh I will hang out with you, it costs $200 dollars an hour.’ I was like, ‘how about I buy you a coffee?’ You know so, I know I could have done a better job, but kind of learning everything at the same time was very difficult but I know in starting with a photo booth company and our non-profit, that just connecting with other people, definitely would have made a huge difference for us.

#00:15:06-4# Neil: And how do you network with people now?

# #00:15:10-9# Michael Mcmanus Co-Founder of M2 Photography, Gethrr & Poser Photo Booth: So a lot of it is just taking opportunities to just do things outside of our comfort zone. Going to conferences, looking for opportunities to help other people, without expecting anything in return. And just kind of you know, pushing ourselves a little bit outside of our comfort zone and just to meet the different people and not with the direct attention of getting anything like I said, but just trying to expand your network in general and people will come out of that naturally and be there when you need them to provide what you need.

#00:15:46-7# Neil: How does gut feeling influence your decisions in your business?

#00:15:54-5# Michael Mcmanus Co-Founder of M2 Photography, Gethrr & Poser Photo Booth: I am not sure where we would be if we only went on my gut feelings, I know I am really really lucky to have my wife to balance that out, because I am more of the dreamer and if I am feeling something, I will pitch it to her and she will say that is insane, because you need to think about these things, so we definitely balance each other out and get to a point where we can take chances and risks to move forward, but it is not completely insane.

#00:16:22-3# Neil: Life is made of constant change whether we like it or not, in fact some people say the only constant is change, Michael, how do you try to keep up with change?

#00 #00:16:37-3# Michael Mcmanus Co-Founder of M2 Photography, Gethrr & Poser Photo Booth: I would say we just go one day at a time. I am sure you can imagine the wedding industry changes really quickly. And you know, we have been doing this for 8 years, and we do not stress out about the big things and we take little pivots when we need them to still stay true to who we are, but kind of make sure we are not missing the boat.

#00:17:01-0# Neil: And what is your favourite book on entrepreneurialism, business, personal development, leadership or motivation? and can you tell us why you have chosen it?

#0 #00:17:10-8# Michael Mcmanus Co-Founder of M2 Photography, Gethrr & Poser Photo Booth: One of my favourite books is called ‘the power of starting something stupid’ by Richie Norton. And it makes the case for starting your stupid ideas, and he shares a lot of stories like Geoff Bezos starting Amazon, and it’s just one of those books that if you read it, you will take action. So just a warning to everyone, so that is why I love it because it makes it so obvious that you need to do what you want to do and try.

#00:17:43-6# Neil: Yeh everyone, when you have a busy life, listening to audio books is a great way to expand your knowledge in the time when you may be doing other things, such as driving or when you are at the gym. We have a special offer for you of a free audio book of your choosing, to choose your free audio book, go to www.freeaudiobook offer.com as long as you have not already signed up, then you will qualify. Michael, what I would like to do now is speculate a little bit about the future. What one thing would you do with your business if you knew that you could not fail?

#00:18:20-3# Michael Mcmanus Co-Founder of M2 Photography, Gethrr & Poser Photo Booth: There would be two things I would do, one. would be to shoot less and charge more. We already shoot a small amount compared to the norm, which is 30 weddings a year, but to be able to shoot ten weddings a year, I would love to have the balls to do that, knowing we could not fail and then the other thing with our photo booth company would be to franchise and push it out there and get people to buy into that.

#0 #00:18:53-1# Neil: What skill if you were excellent at it would help you the most to double your business?

#00:18:58-2# Michael Mcmanus Co-Founder of M2 Photography, Gethrr & Poser Photo Booth: Being greedy, that would be the thing that would help us the most, but we put a priority on just enjoying our life and not being greedy, and giving what we can to others and helping others and I think there is much more satisfaction in that in the long run, than to just try and take as much money as possible because typically, at least in my experience, when you do that and that is what you are focused on, you are not focused on actually living your life, when you have kids too, that puts it into perspective and you also are a model for them, so everything you do, say and tell them has to align, and they are going to definitely pay attention, so we are very aware of that.

#00:19:46-7# Neil: But do you not think if you could double your business, you would be able to help more people?

#00:19:53-7# Michael Mcmanus Co-Founder of M2 Photography, Gethrr & Poser Photo Booth: See that is why I started off non-profit’s, need other people to help. It’s not worth it for me to miss out time with my kids. To miss out time travelling and exploring and trying new things, it’s just not. I mean my kids already 8, you only get 18 summers with your kids and then they are gone, we only have ten years left so I am not going to waste that time, you know chasing money.

#00:20:19-2# Neil: You could delegate, ha ha ha ha

#00:20:25-9# Michael Mcmanus Co-Founder of M2 Photography, Gethrr & Poser Photo Booth: To an extent, yes, photographing weddings is a tougher situation, but that is why we started the photo booth company to hopefully grow that and delegate on that end.

#00:20:37-0# Neil: Yeh, in five years from now if a well-known business publication was publishing an article on your business after talking to your customers and suppliers, what would you like it to say?

#00:20:54-6# Michael Mcmanus Co-Founder of M2 Photography, Gethrr & Poser Photo Booth: I would like it to say that we are doing what we love and that we care about it and that we always take care of our clients and we do right by them.

#00:21:04-7# Neil: We are now at the part of the show where you share three golden nuggets with us. So Michael, what is your favourite quote and how have you applied it?

#00:21:13-9# Michael Mcmanus Co-Founder of M2 Photography, Gethrr & Poser Photo Booth: I was thinking about this and honestly, I did not want to go and just pick a random quote and be like ‘hey this is my favourite’ so to be completely honest, I don’t have one that sticks out that I have applied.

#00:21:31-8# Neil: What is your best advice to other entrepreneurs?

#00:21:36-2# Michael Mcmanus Co-Founder of M2 Photography, Gethrr & Poser Photo Booth: My best advice would be to do what makes you happy. You know what is the point in doing something you do not enjoy? Because you are wasting your life, and you are not going to be fulfilled, so I think just doing what makes you happy and if what you are doing for business, is not what you love the most, you have to at least enjoy it. And just make sure you leave time for yourself to actually continue to do what you love outside of that.

#00:22:09-2# Neil: And do you have any favourite online resource that you could share?

#00:22:11-0# Michael Mcmanus Co-Founder of M2 Photography, Gethrr & Poser Photo Booth: One of my favourite new podcasts that I love is called The Unmistakable Creative you can go to unmistakablecreative.com and it’s just a fantastic podcast, it has a lot of smart, successful people and it is always different, and there is always something to take away from a podcast. Well that is my current favourite resource that has been helpful for us.

#00:22:44-5# Neil: Everyone, if you did not manage to get a note of Michael’s favourite resource or his favourite book, you can find a link on Michael’s show notes page. Just go to theentrepreneurway.com and search for Michael or Michael McManus in the search box. Michael is there anything else that you would like to add about your business?

#0 #00:23:04-1# Michael Mcmanus Co-Founder of M2 Photography, Gethrr & Poser Photo Booth: No, not specifically, in thinking about Gethrr and non-profit, I would love people to just consider just checking it out and seeing if it is something that they would want to be part of and help us find people to help and you know just kind of make that effort to make doing good a part of their everyday life.

#00:23:25-2# Neil: Michael, thank you for coming on the show, it’s been an honour having you on here, whilst you share your story and telling us about your views on entrepreneurialism, so thank you very much.

#0 #00:23:36-7# Michael Mcmanus Co-Founder of M2 Photography, Gethrr & Poser Photo Booth: Thank you for having me Neil.

#00:23:36-7# Neil: You are welcome. Thank you.