AI transcript
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0:01:14 $70,000 on the side in six months.
0:01:19 Here’s a super unique side hustle I never heard of before today’s guest reached out.
0:01:28 She does aura photography, portraits that visualize someone’s energy field, and maybe more importantly, portraits that command.
0:01:29 44 bucks a pop.
0:01:32 From somalumen.com, Summer Rae.
0:01:34 Welcome to the Side Hustle Show.
0:01:35 Thank you so much.
0:01:37 It’s a full circle moment to be here.
0:01:41 Well, I’m excited for this one, because whether you believe in auras and energy fields or not,
0:01:46 you’re going to want to stick around to hear how Summer’s built this business nights and weekends,
0:01:56 and how she found a steady stream of customers looking for this kind of, I would call it an almost impulse buy kind of product that not a lot of people were specifically looking for.
0:02:03 And it started out with doing pop-up events, kind of a strategic partnership strategy, if I understand correctly.
0:02:04 Yeah, that’s correct.
0:02:10 I reached out to local boutiques, retailers, metaphysical shops, offered my services.
0:02:15 Some people let me set up completely for free because they were excited for a new offering to have on a Saturday.
0:02:20 But I was paying on average like 50 to 70 bucks for a flat rate for several hours in a store.
0:02:24 So I really only had to take two photos all day.
0:02:25 So that was a great way to start.
0:02:32 Sure. And so you’re depending on the existing foot traffic, and I imagine the store is kind of advertising this as a one-off,
0:02:36 hey, come by and see Summer if you happen to be in the neighborhood this week or something.
0:02:40 Yeah. So I have a pretty small social media presence still.
0:02:43 I think people kind of overhype it in the event industry, actually.
0:02:50 But yeah, I would make a social media post or in our local paper and maybe say I would give away one session if you told a friend or something like that.
0:02:59 And then, yeah, in exchange for being in the businesses, they would, you know, sometimes promote me in a newsletter or on their, you know, Facebook pages, things like that.
0:03:03 Okay. So you do these first couple events and there’s immediate demand.
0:03:06 It’s a home run out of the gates or is it a slow trickle?
0:03:07 What’s what’s happening here?
0:03:14 So just as a background, aura photography has existed since like the 60s or 70s.
0:03:22 And the concept is really just there is an electromagnetic frequency going on and there are different ways to capture that on a camera.
0:03:27 But no one has made a new one since like the 90s.
0:03:29 So, you know, 35 years or so.
0:03:39 I was expecting to need to spend more time building social proof, validating the offer, explaining to people how it worked.
0:03:40 But I was pretty surprised.
0:03:46 My first pop-up, I did like, I think, 30 something photos.
0:03:49 The next one I did about 50 photos.
0:03:49 Wow.
0:03:51 Yeah, I charge $44 a piece.
0:03:53 I do offer sliding scale on occasion.
0:03:55 The profit margin is really high.
0:03:58 It really only costs me like $1.50 to $2 each.
0:04:02 I print them on a Polaroid that I put on a postcard that I just printed at Staples.
0:04:10 So I do offer some sliding scale, but my average price usually ends up being about $41, factoring in the occasional one I’ll do for $20 for like a college kid or something.
0:04:11 Okay.
0:04:14 So they turn out to be really popular.
0:04:16 People want this stuff and they’re willing to pay.
0:04:17 Yeah.
0:04:21 I think it’s really not entirely about the photo.
0:04:25 I mean, the photo is compelling and cute and it’s rainbow colors and it’s what color did you get?
0:04:26 What color did you get?
0:04:29 You know, kind of just like the grab bag of it all.
0:04:39 But a large part of it, too, is people feel they feel pretty safe to be seen, which a lot of that is my energy that I create.
0:04:39 I’m very welcoming.
0:04:52 I’ve been really surprised by I would say more than half the people who sit for me for a portrait will say something like, oh, no, you’re going to see the devil on my shoulder or it’s going to be black or I’m going to break your camera.
0:05:04 Like, it’s remarkable the negative self-talk people have and it’s wonderful to have this experience of not being comfortable being seen, having this negative self-talk.
0:05:13 I show them a photo of themselves just glimmering like a gemstone and tell them how delightful they are because everyone is magical in their own right and wonderful to meet.
0:05:17 And that is really the essence of what they’re buying.
0:05:26 And I think that is why it has spread so much is just that energetic feeling of feeling good about yourself.
0:05:28 Was there anybody else doing this?
0:05:30 You’re in Central Oregon.
0:05:31 This is a thing.
0:05:32 I’ve never heard of this before.
0:05:35 Yeah, I would say that you’re not necessarily my target market for sure.
0:05:36 And that is great.
0:05:41 I did a country music festival this summer when I met lots of skeptics like you and it was really fun.
0:05:42 So it does exist.
0:05:50 You’re going to see it more in Malibu, in Austin, in these kind of like hip wellness hubs.
0:05:58 But the original Aura camera that you can still buy, it’s like between $7,000 and $20,000.
0:06:00 They don’t make it anymore.
0:06:04 It’s like old school tech, so you can’t troubleshoot it if it breaks.
0:06:15 Like there’s a couple Aura photographers that have gone out of business because their camera broke and there’s no way to fix it and they don’t have $20,000 for a new one, which was what led me to develop my own.
0:06:23 And then my differentiator is because I use modern tech, it populates a video so you can watch their energetic field kind of move in real time.
0:06:28 It’s kind of guesstimating the speed of things, your little electrons moving around.
0:06:30 So that’s a fun differentiator.
0:06:35 But yeah, it exists, but in a very niche kind of kooky market.
0:06:49 The way I kind of talk about this is that maybe 15 years ago, the only time you had experience with your horoscope might have been your kooky aunt cut it out of the paper and send it to you in the mail on your birthday or something.
0:06:55 And now there are a lot of people who have astrology apps on their phones.
0:07:00 People might like when they’re dating, they want to know what your sun sign is to know if you’re compatible or something.
0:07:08 So I like to think that I’m modernizing Aura stuff in the way astrology has really become more normalized these days.
0:07:17 Okay. The reason I bring it up is it seems like it’s somewhat of a white space in the market where there’s not an Aura photography shop on every corner.
0:07:26 So there was a novelty factor to come in, but it sounds like there was some level of awareness around energy fields.
0:07:33 And that wasn’t anything new, but it was coming in with a new approach to it and a new, I guess, marketing.
0:07:38 I got to get in front of people in situations where they’re like, yeah, I’ll give it a shot. Sure.
0:07:45 Yeah. A lot of the feedback that I get in Bend is, oh, I’ve seen this for years and I’ve never been able to do it.
0:07:47 I get that feedback really frequently.
0:07:56 And then the other thing about me using like modern neurotech and building it myself is the $44 price might sound nuts to you.
0:08:03 But if you look up other old school Aura photographers, they’re charging 80, 100, 180 bucks per session.
0:08:06 So I really bring the price way down, which is cool.
0:08:10 Yeah. I’m picturing like that old overexposed Polaroid.
0:08:12 Dark room.
0:08:18 But you were kind of bringing like a video capture element to it and how does it work?
0:08:29 Yeah. So the basics of how it works is I have little biometric readers that go on people’s hands and there’s two nodes that kind of speak to each other.
0:08:33 And they’re tracking kind of the speed of energy moving around, electricity moving around.
0:08:36 Every time you have a thought, that’s a synapse quite literally firing.
0:08:39 So there’s electricity moving around all the time.
0:08:42 That’s another nice thing is like this doesn’t go against anyone’s religion.
0:08:43 It’s just biology.
0:08:45 It’s just atoms moving around.
0:08:47 It’s very, very low stakes here spiritually.
0:08:48 So, yeah, they sit with the readers.
0:08:51 My computer kind of hangs out with them for a little while.
0:08:57 I let them know when I’m turning the camera on and then it populates a 20 second video.
0:09:02 I show folks the video and then we kind of talk about what the colors mean, what the movement means.
0:09:06 And then we find one where like they look cute and the colors look good.
0:09:08 And that’s the one we print for them to take home right on the spot.
0:09:09 Okay.
0:09:12 So that’s the deliverable is out of the 20 second video.
0:09:16 We’ll take a frame and then we’ll turn that into the printout.
0:09:20 And that’s the hard cost of it, the buck 50 or whatever it is.
0:09:21 Yeah.
0:09:24 And the whole process takes, I like to call it about 10 minutes.
0:09:27 It gives us time to kind of like talk and get comfortable and not feel rushed.
0:09:39 But as an example, part of why the old school technology is more of that, you know, 100, 150 or whatever bucks is they take it with an old school Polaroid, wait like 10 or 15 minutes for the Polaroid to develop.
0:09:40 Then they look at it with the person.
0:09:42 So it’s a much longer process.
0:09:44 So I understand why they charge more.
0:09:49 But on the practitioner side, it’s really nice to keep the cash flow just going and to keep it much lighter.
0:09:54 I’ve even had people come to me who have had aura portraits done with the old school camera.
0:10:04 And sometimes they’re apprehensive because maybe that reader like told them something about themselves they didn’t like and tried to funnel it into paying them more money to cleanse things.
0:10:07 And I keep it much lighter, much friendlier.
0:10:10 I take I’ve done kids parties because it’s really fun.
0:10:12 So it’s just it’s much it’s much gentler.
0:10:14 It’s a gentler mirror to look into is what I’d say.
0:10:14 OK.
0:10:19 And it sounds like relatively low startup costs, relatively low commitment.
0:10:25 And I want to pay 50 bucks to rent out this to space for you where I think my target customers are going to be stopping by today.
0:10:25 Yeah.
0:10:26 And it’s a hit.
0:10:29 It’s, you know, 30 to 50 customers on these first couple pop ups.
0:10:32 And it’s kind of off to the races from there.
0:10:34 What what ends up happening next?
0:10:38 You’ve got this early validation and say, shoot, I got to get in front of more people.
0:10:40 It’s been nuts.
0:10:50 I, for the first time, have been in a place in my life where I do not say yes to every opportunity in my email box.
0:10:56 I’ve had I’ve had to practice a new level of discernment, which has been a magical growth for me.
0:10:57 But yes, I started doing events.
0:11:01 And often what happens is people enjoy their experience.
0:11:05 Then they recommend me to a friend or I did a music festival.
0:11:11 And then one of the women I took a portrait of there, she booked me for her wedding next year where there will be 300 people.
0:11:18 And a and a portrait with me is one of her her like wedding favors at the event at the after party, which is so sweet at the reception.
0:11:19 So, yeah, it’s been really organic.
0:11:23 A lot of word of mouth, which is really validating and wild.
0:11:34 And I’ve currently shut down doing in-person events because I’ve built up infrastructure for other people to license the software for me just because I’ve had lots of inquiries from other people.
0:11:36 But I’ll be doing events again next year.
0:11:36 OK.
0:11:38 Is it somewhat seasonal in that way?
0:11:41 It’s like it’s better if it’s an outdoor type of deal.
0:11:42 It can be.
0:11:46 So, I mean, I think that depends on your energetics as a person, what fuels you.
0:11:51 So, for me, if I’m going to like get into that zone, you’re all up in people’s energetic guts.
0:11:56 Like you might like tell someone a really sweet thing about you and then all of a sudden they’re saying they got it from their mom.
0:11:59 And then it’s kind of this really immersive conversation, which is really beautiful.
0:12:10 But if I’m going to do that, I like doing the big festivals where I’m kind of there 11 to 9 or, you know, these big long days because I’d like to just crank sessions all day long.
0:12:13 Like if I’m going to get set up and bring my laptop out, that’s what suits me best.
0:12:17 So, yeah, having it seasonally, especially while maintaining full-time employment.
0:12:19 Yeah, doing it seasonally suits me.
0:12:27 But I have recently licensed it to another practitioner who’s she’s like a body worker and she just folds it into her regular practice.
0:12:29 So she’s doing it year round.
0:12:38 But instead of doing these blowouts where it’s like I kind of make all my money in like two to six days a month, she’s doing like a few sessions a day.
0:12:39 That kind of thing.
0:12:40 OK, got it.
0:12:41 What’s it like?
0:12:52 So if I have a similar business that would benefit from getting in front of a large crowd of people all at once, like an events type of business, you know, what is the pitch to the organizers or how much does it cost?
0:13:04 Like it’s kind of an intimidating thing to show up and try and set up shop the first time and get attention with potentially dozens of other vendors who are all trying to vie for that same attention and that same share of wallet.
0:13:09 Totally. So I think the big thing is if you can have social proof.
0:13:18 So if you do that in building kind of these smaller pop-ups where, you know, you’re at boutiques and stuff where you can say, hey, I have experience already.
0:13:19 This isn’t going to be my first rodeo.
0:13:21 That always helps.
0:13:34 Generally, if you’re doing bigger events like a music festival or, you know, something more immersive, sometimes instead of just a flat booth fee, there will be a booth fee as well as they want revenue share.
0:13:42 So having proof of, hey, you’re going to make, you know, a couple thousand bucks off me this week can always help.
0:13:45 And I just keep proofs of like screenshots of financials.
0:13:50 So the first music festival that I applied to was 600 bucks.
0:13:51 They took 20%.
0:13:59 And when I applied, I was just getting going and I said, hey, here’s an example of a Saturday farmer’s market.
0:14:07 I think I did like 50 photos and it was kind of an all day thing, but I think because you’re a music festival, I’d have more conversion than at a farmer’s market.
0:14:10 And full disclosure, I don’t have 600 bucks to pay you.
0:14:13 So could I just, could you just take it out of the payment?
0:14:15 And for some reason, she said yes.
0:14:16 Okay.
0:14:19 And that ended up being a great festival and they just took the 600 bucks out of my payment.
0:14:23 It sounds like there’s almost an application or like a bidding process.
0:14:28 Well, like, okay, well, 20% of the rev share sounds great, but well, how much are you really going to sell here?
0:14:30 It’s like, you almost have to pump yourself up.
0:14:31 I think we could do really well.
0:14:36 It’s because they’re like, well, we got limited real estate and we want to make sure we can make the most out of it.
0:14:39 But yeah, you got some, some track record prior to going into that.
0:14:39 Yeah.
0:14:44 And it’s been a beautiful teacher of like, just ask, just put yourself out there.
0:14:52 I’ve always heard in entrepreneurial spaces, if you’re not embarrassed by your performance six months ago, you, you launched too late.
0:14:54 You know, you’re not acting swiftly enough.
0:15:02 And when I look at my first photos and when I think of my first events, I could cry right now and it keeps, keeps getting better every time.
0:15:09 So it’s been a beautiful teacher of acting imperfectly because people really just enjoy a really novel experience.
0:15:14 And it’s really cool being surrounded by kind of similar vendors and you being the oddball.
0:15:17 It sets you up for people being kind of inquisitive about what’s going on.
0:15:21 And then to close the sale, you just kind of have to be, be personable.
0:15:25 So yeah, as people walk by, they have some level of curiosity and say, well, what is this?
0:15:26 How does it work?
0:15:28 And then you, then you put the hard sell on them.
0:15:36 Yeah, basically, again, I’m reiterating every time, every booth I look back on and I see so many errors and I remind myself that my customers don’t see those.
0:15:38 That’s me trying to chase something better.
0:15:48 But as an example, so right now, what I’ve been doing is I have, you know, little rainbow garlands that go around the edge of my booth at the entrance to make it look cute.
0:15:53 And I just have clothespins and I hang Polaroids of previous sessions that I’ve done.
0:15:55 I’ve got like 20 or 30 out.
0:15:57 I try to pick them that look very different.
0:15:58 So it invites curiosity.
0:16:09 But a pain point I’ve found currently is if I can get people close enough that they can see the Polaroids, they get interested, then I get to have the conversation with them.
0:16:14 Then they kind of get in that dance with me and they often will come, come sit for me and enjoy the session.
0:16:21 But my new thing is I’m trying to grab that curiosity from further away, not needing them within 10 or 20 feet of my booth.
0:16:28 So currently I’ve got in production is I printed like a big background with like blown up pictures that are really large.
0:16:31 So hopefully I can grab that inquisitive thing from from further away.
0:16:37 Do you recall how much the music festival ended up making you after the booth fee and the revenue share?
0:16:40 I did the first day.
0:16:42 So this was a country music festival as well.
0:16:48 So it was a big push because this is not, you know, it wasn’t really like hippie wellness zone.
0:16:48 You know what I mean?
0:16:52 The first day I sold out, I didn’t bring enough film.
0:16:55 I did a little over 100 sessions and had to leave early.
0:16:59 And then the next day I did about 100 sessions again.
0:17:05 So I made like after paying all my fees and stuff, I think I made about five grand that weekend.
0:17:05 Wow.
0:17:07 Just a Friday and Saturday.
0:17:08 Yeah, it was it was amazing.
0:17:12 And that’s the one that I met someone who’s now booked me for her wedding.
0:17:16 So that’s another like check with a comma coming next year from from that one event.
0:17:16 Wow.
0:17:18 Five thousand bucks in a week.
0:17:21 OK, everyone’s like, I’m a believer.
0:17:22 Show me the energy fields now.
0:17:23 This is good.
0:17:25 And they’re great for festivals like that.
0:17:29 So another way that I keep improving is I just have like a standard little postcard with
0:17:31 like a QR code to my website or whatever.
0:17:36 I want to start personalizing the package for the photo as well.
0:17:41 So it’s like a memento specific to the event, because I think that will help for sales as well,
0:17:45 because a lot of times people can buy merch for somewhere that they’re going.
0:17:49 But we all have a lot of T-shirts and we don’t want to pay 50 bucks for a T-shirt when
0:17:51 instead you could pay 44 bucks.
0:17:53 And I do couples photos, too.
0:17:56 So I’ll do like, you know, it’s like the couples and they’re in their cute outfit.
0:18:00 And then if I could memorialize it with the specific event, I think that’ll help, too.
0:18:02 So so again, constantly improving one percent at a time.
0:18:04 Yeah, I could see couples, friend groups.
0:18:07 I could see maternity photos being a thing for sure.
0:18:08 Yeah, all the stuff.
0:18:09 It’s really fun.
0:18:14 More with summer in just a moment, including more strategic marketing partnerships that drove
0:18:16 sales coming up right after this.
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0:20:31 And prior to that, it was farmer’s markets or was that kind of a standing every,
0:20:33 you know, every Saturday morning is the farmer’s market?
0:20:37 Not every Saturday morning in the small town.
0:20:42 Where I live, we do events called First Fridays, which are kind of like art walks downtown.
0:20:48 And so I popped up in a couple different spots on the little First Fridays, just cute little
0:20:51 like woman-run boutiques with women’s clothes.
0:20:58 I would say my audience split is probably 70, 30 women just about.
0:21:00 So it is for the girlies for sure.
0:21:03 And do they charge you for those, like for to set up there?
0:21:04 That depends.
0:21:06 A couple of those didn’t.
0:21:09 They were excited to have like an additional offering to their store.
0:21:16 And then even sometimes like one of the shops I’ve partnered with before didn’t charge me a fee,
0:21:19 but they did their own promo of like, you would get your photo with me.
0:21:24 And then based on the colors that showed up, you could buy anything those colors for 20% off.
0:21:25 Oh, that’s cute.
0:21:25 Okay.
0:21:26 Yeah.
0:21:26 Yeah.
0:21:26 Yeah.
0:21:27 It helps bring in shopping.
0:21:29 So it’s pretty mutually equitable.
0:21:34 And then I’ve done a couple pop-ups again inside boutiques where
0:21:38 maybe I’ve shown up and they’ve not charged me a flat fee, but they’ve asked for like
0:21:40 10 to 12% of revenue.
0:21:45 Generally now I prefer the flat fee because I generate enough revenue that it’s cheaper
0:21:46 to pay the fee than the 10%.
0:21:46 Yeah.
0:21:47 Yeah.
0:21:47 Yeah.
0:21:49 At first it’s like, I don’t know what this is going to be.
0:21:49 Sure.
0:21:51 We’ll do it on a, on a profit share basis.
0:21:53 But now it’s like, yeah, exactly.
0:21:55 This is a thing I heard of recently too.
0:21:57 And it was like getting your, your colors analyzed.
0:22:01 And so this seems like it’s in the same ballpark where that was, I don’t know if that was
0:22:05 like skin tone or like, oh, you really look good in yellow or something.
0:22:07 It’s like, well, maybe there’s a combination here.
0:22:08 Yeah.
0:22:09 I did.
0:22:12 It was like a women’s gathering in the woods for like a week.
0:22:16 I set up in their marketplace and there was a woman doing color analysis there.
0:22:20 And we did a really fun thing where again, people could get their photos taken with me.
0:22:24 Then they take them to her and then she would find, so with the color analysis, it’s like
0:22:26 the colors and the undertones and whatever.
0:22:27 Yeah.
0:22:29 So let’s, let’s say your aura is yellow.
0:22:33 She would find like a couple beautiful shades of yellow that look lovely on you.
0:22:37 And then you could take that to, you know, it kind of spread all around.
0:22:39 Like you would get your photo with me, then she would talk about your colors.
0:22:43 And then there was like a whole marketplace where people were selling clothes and then they
0:22:46 would like buy clothes, those colors, which is just cute.
0:22:46 Yeah.
0:22:51 It’s kind of definitely a complimentary relationship in that way.
0:22:51 Yeah.
0:22:51 Very much.
0:22:52 Yeah.
0:22:53 And I’ve done pet portraits too.
0:22:58 One time over the summer, I took portraits of dogs and I donated all the money to like
0:23:00 a local dog rescue.
0:23:04 I’ve always thought it would be fun to partner like with the Humane Society, like take photos
0:23:05 of the adoptable dogs.
0:23:07 There’s all sorts of directions to take it.
0:23:07 Yeah.
0:23:10 And you’re entirely, it’s a mobile studio.
0:23:14 It’s not like, you know, come to my brick and mortar place and set up.
0:23:15 It’s, you know, we’ll come to you.
0:23:16 Yeah.
0:23:18 All the setup fits in a backpack.
0:23:19 Everything fits in my backpack.
0:23:24 So it’s super, super portable, which again is like another bonus over the old school camera,
0:23:28 which is like super big and clunky and heavy and lots of old school parts.
0:23:34 And then because I’m not selling product when I do markets, another bonus is like when you’re
0:23:39 selling packaged goods at a market, you’ve got a lot of setup and teardown time and then
0:23:42 you’re transporting product and maybe your product breaks or whatever.
0:23:43 Yeah.
0:23:50 Everything for my booth fits in like one rolling cart because I really just have my tent.
0:23:54 I put down some lovely textiles and put up lovely textiles that fold up tiny, but make
0:23:55 it feel really homey.
0:24:01 So my setup and teardown is like 20 to 45 minutes, which again, like, you know, we do have to
0:24:04 factor in that unpaid time when we’re figuring out our little side hustles.
0:24:06 That stuff can like really eat away.
0:24:06 Yeah.
0:24:08 I got to drive three hours to this thing.
0:24:08 Sure.
0:24:09 Exactly.
0:24:10 Parking is a nut.
0:24:11 Yeah.
0:24:11 All this stuff.
0:24:14 So it’s really nice to cut down on that and like transporting it.
0:24:16 I’m never worried about it breaking.
0:24:18 So really, really easy on the brain.
0:24:21 Have you ever put this up on Airbnb experiences?
0:24:27 I haven’t, but I was recently traveling and I was looking for an experience and there is
0:24:32 someone with an old school camera in, she was in San Diego and she’s on Airbnb experiences
0:24:33 and I was like, oh, she’s so smart.
0:24:38 Yeah, that just, that just kind of like, because we had a woman who was doing like meditation
0:24:42 retreats or meditation experiences in Sedona on Red Rocks.
0:24:43 Yeah, give her my number.
0:24:47 And another friend of mine was doing like gratitude hikes, like unplugged hikes.
0:24:49 Hey, leave your, leave your phone in the car and we’ll go out into the woods.
0:24:53 And it’s like, oh, this seems like, especially for the type of person who’s typically coming
0:24:57 to Sunriver or to Ben, it’s like, oh, there’s a, I feel like there might be something there.
0:25:01 But the downside was, I think she said, if you get one booking and it’s like, you charge
0:25:04 your $49 or something like now you have to go do it.
0:25:08 And you’re like, oh, that would have been better off doing a group outing or group event where
0:25:10 there’s dozens of different customers.
0:25:10 I know.
0:25:12 I’ve learned that lesson over time.
0:25:13 And it’s very funny.
0:25:19 I had some people book me back in the spring for some events this fall, just a couple weeks
0:25:19 ago.
0:25:23 And in the spring, I had someone inquire about a group of 12.
0:25:29 I could not fathom getting a check for $500 for doing this stuff for two hours.
0:25:29 I was like, no way.
0:25:32 And so in the spring, I gave her a deal.
0:25:36 I was like, oh, if you do a group, I’ll do them for 33 bucks a piece.
0:25:37 She paid half.
0:25:38 I was elated.
0:25:39 Couldn’t believe it.
0:25:43 I door dashed food for the first time in months because I was like, I’m rolling in
0:25:43 money.
0:25:44 I have $150.
0:25:46 Yeah, it’s a great feeling.
0:25:51 By the time her event rolled around in October, it was a beautiful full circle moment because
0:25:58 now there’s enough just organic demand that I don’t do groups under 15 people.
0:25:59 They need to prepay.
0:26:03 And I charged them like full price plus like 50 bucks to show up.
0:26:07 And it was just beautiful that by the time the event came back around, I was like, oh, my
0:26:08 God, I can’t believe I’m doing this for like 200 bucks.
0:26:11 But I was so grateful to show up.
0:26:16 And it was so cool to be like, thank you for booking me when I had no social proof.
0:26:19 Like you just were feeling the vibe and you booked me for six months out.
0:26:20 And that helped me pay my light bill.
0:26:21 And thank you so much.
0:26:22 It was really rad.
0:26:24 Yeah, that’s great.
0:26:31 So today, events, private parties, farmer’s market, first Fridays, weddings next year.
0:26:36 And the word of mouth, like people, you show up, you’re present, you deliver a good experience,
0:26:38 and then the word of mouth starts to spin.
0:26:41 Anything else that you’re doing proactively to market the business?
0:26:46 I’ve done remarkably little, embarrassingly little marketing.
0:26:48 And I hate to say it.
0:26:50 My social media is horrifically neglected.
0:26:52 I could frankly update my website a bit.
0:26:54 And I keep thinking about it.
0:26:55 But again, juggling a day job.
0:27:00 I have been surprised when you think of this offering, you might think of like the teeny
0:27:05 boppers or the young people who like just want the cute selfie.
0:27:07 And I have plenty of those at markets for sure.
0:27:13 But I’ve been really surprised that a lot of the private party bookings, which are really
0:27:19 nice with balancing a full-time job, going to these private events where there’s 12, 15,
0:27:25 20 people, and I just like go to their Airbnb or wellness facility, and I’m just there for
0:27:26 a couple hours in and out.
0:27:27 That’s really nice.
0:27:30 It’s just not the energetic draw of like setting up a big tent at a fair.
0:27:37 For those, I even advertise in like our local paper.
0:27:41 We’ve got super tiny, cute journalism going on here in our small town.
0:27:43 And I get a remarkable amount of inquiries.
0:27:46 And I haven’t done one of those in four or five months.
0:27:49 And I got an inquiry last week where someone saw me in the paper.
0:27:51 And I was like, how did you get here?
0:27:53 I’ve been meaning to call you for a while.
0:27:53 Yeah.
0:27:53 Okay.
0:27:54 Yeah.
0:27:54 All right.
0:27:57 So social media or the marketing side, a little bit neglected.
0:28:02 Maybe the local newspaper still driving some leads, depending on what demographic that
0:28:03 you’re going after.
0:28:05 Anything else on the marketing side?
0:28:05 Yeah.
0:28:10 I have done lots and lots and lots of collaborating.
0:28:17 So beyond popping up in other people’s boutiques, when I’ve done markets, especially some that
0:28:20 have been more expensive, I have split my booth.
0:28:23 There are a lot of markets that will allow that.
0:28:26 They’re kind of like whatever goes on in your 10 by 10 square is up to you.
0:28:31 And so splitting the booth cost is like a really great way to make it accessible for new people
0:28:32 who are testing new offerings.
0:28:37 And generally, it’s just like anything that would be kind of on the same vein.
0:28:41 So I have sat with tarot readers at something that’s a little more mystical.
0:28:46 But for things like farmer’s markets, where we’re not leaning into the witchy crowd overtly,
0:28:49 I’ve collaborated with like a watercolor painter.
0:28:54 So like you get your portrait taken with me and then she paints your portrait in those colors,
0:28:54 which is really sweet.
0:28:55 Oh, okay.
0:28:56 Yeah.
0:29:02 So something I always like to share, I am like a really passionate side hustler, entrepreneur.
0:29:09 What I like to remind people is that you’re really not selling whatever is in your hand.
0:29:12 What you’re selling is the way you make someone feel.
0:29:15 I was a barista at Starbucks when I was 18.
0:29:19 And back then, the Starbucks ethos was all about making the moment,
0:29:23 really whatever you need to do to go above and beyond.
0:29:26 And that is kind of how they got their cult loyalty very early on.
0:29:31 And then another philosophy that I recall this moment,
0:29:33 like the change in my brain chemistry,
0:29:39 was listening to the How I Built This podcast episode of SoulCycle.
0:29:43 So their philosophy for SoulCycle, so when they got their start,
0:29:45 they were like behind a morgue or something super funky.
0:29:50 And they knew to get someone to come into their studio,
0:29:54 they needed it to feel transformational from the jump.
0:29:57 So the way it smelled, the way it felt, the way it looked,
0:30:04 and they would train their receptionists to take notes of whatever someone says in passing
0:30:07 and put that in their customer file so that the next time they come in,
0:30:10 they could say, oh, how did your son do at his baseball game?
0:30:12 How was your vacation to Florida or whatever?
0:30:18 And consuming all of this media and working these jobs on the retail floor at a very young age,
0:30:24 in my early 20s, now that I’m in my mid-30s, I’m able to bring this forward in,
0:30:27 I’ve just alchemized all of that knowledge.
0:30:34 And so anyone who sits in front of me, I just focus on how can I surprise and delight you
0:30:39 in such a way that you forget that you’re at this busy market when you’re inside my booth.
0:30:43 And so I think that translates a lot beyond my offering.
0:30:45 I don’t think you need to do aura photography.
0:30:51 What I think you need to do is create genuine, juicy connection that is enough to take someone
0:30:56 out of where they are, because that’s how you get that dialogue going to get the spend.
0:30:58 Yeah, I think that’s a really, really important point.
0:31:00 You’re not selling the Polaroid.
0:31:04 You’re selling the experience, you know, that you’re selling how you make someone feel rather
0:31:08 than, you know, there’s no shortage of selfies.
0:31:12 There’s, you know, free with unlimited film right in your pocket.
0:31:14 And so this has got to be something different.
0:31:18 Now, that said, do you feel like there’s an AI threat here where it’s like, oh, I could
0:31:24 take a selfie, upload it to any number of different sites and be like, give me my aura reading or
0:31:25 give me my energy fields here.
0:31:26 Certainly.
0:31:27 Absolutely.
0:31:28 That doesn’t come with the experience.
0:31:29 Yeah, yeah.
0:31:32 People are integrating AI into all kinds of stuff all the time.
0:31:35 So yes, I’m sure people are doing that now.
0:31:40 My software is not replicable because there’s no AI used at all.
0:31:42 I coded it all in Python.
0:31:46 So it’s not like it’s like a ChatGPT wrapper or something that other people could do.
0:31:57 And I think people gravitate towards experiences like mine because, again, our society these
0:31:59 days is deeply disconnected.
0:32:03 We’re disconnected from ourselves and from each other.
0:32:05 Our screen time is crazy.
0:32:06 We’re all broke.
0:32:06 We’re all tired.
0:32:14 And so these magical points of connection and being seen and being witnessed, that’s the
0:32:14 magic of it all.
0:32:20 And so I think looking at your phone and asking ChatGPT, hey, what do you know about me?
0:32:23 I have asked ChatGPT that and it’s revealed magical things.
0:32:29 But there is nothing like the intimate connection with another human being because we’re pack animals
0:32:31 and we crave that so bad.
0:32:33 And so that’s why I think I get really sweet feedback.
0:32:38 I got an email a few weeks ago that was like, I didn’t even know this was the medicine I
0:32:38 needed.
0:32:42 And it’s like, girl, I just took your picture and told you that you’re freaking rad, which
0:32:43 is the truth.
0:32:46 She looked cute in her picture and she was so rad.
0:32:49 But it’s like maybe there’s a bigger lesson here about being kinder to each other.
0:32:49 Yeah.
0:32:50 Yeah, I think so.
0:32:57 Yeah, it’s remarkable how sometimes how transformational the sessions can be when it’s like, I’m
0:33:00 just here loving on you, telling you that I see you and accept you and you don’t have to
0:33:04 change because I don’t know you and I’m just taking your picture and I’m just here to tell
0:33:05 you that you’re great as you are.
0:33:07 And I think we just all need to hear that.
0:33:11 And I think that can translate to all sorts of different offerings in any sort of service
0:33:14 offering where you’re just seeing someone and connecting with them.
0:33:18 Do you see a path where this becomes a full time income?
0:33:21 Do you see a path where you don’t need the day job anymore?
0:33:24 I’m really excited for this winter coming up to catch my breath.
0:33:29 Because again, I thought I was going to be spending my first several months like really grinding
0:33:31 and really building a lot of social proof.
0:33:35 And instead, I was kind of just like treading water, like cranking out these sessions.
0:33:40 And so I really crippled myself in like I could have built up my back end significantly
0:33:41 better.
0:33:44 Like I didn’t have a system for sending people follow ups.
0:33:48 I was doing a lot of manual labor that I’ve now automated and will continue to build up.
0:33:52 I am really blessed that I love my day job.
0:33:56 So I’m not planning on leaving, at least within the next several months.
0:34:01 But I do think my first year has given me the proof of it could support me full time,
0:34:04 even in a place in Central Oregon that’s kind of high cost of living.
0:34:05 I could comfortably support myself.
0:34:06 Yeah.
0:34:07 Which is liberating.
0:34:07 Yeah.
0:34:11 And people are like, well, shoot, if I could make five thousand bucks in a weekend and I
0:34:13 could do that even just a couple weekends a month.
0:34:15 But I take the rest of the time off.
0:34:18 People start to get the wheels going a little bit.
0:34:22 On the follow up in the systems, like are there any tools or technology that you rely
0:34:25 on on that front or elsewhere in the business?
0:34:25 Yeah.
0:34:27 My tech slack is pretty basic.
0:34:31 I communicate with people through email and social media.
0:34:34 I do my billing through Stripe.
0:34:35 I started with Square.
0:34:37 Square is really cool for small businesses.
0:34:42 I got a couple loans through Square that I automatically qualified for.
0:34:46 And then to repay the loans, they just take a percentage of your sales going forward.
0:34:47 I found that just like really easy.
0:34:52 And I was able to, in the beginning, like, you know, get that extra like five, six hundred,
0:34:56 fifteen hundred bucks to build out my booth to be a bit better because my first sessions,
0:35:00 my backgrounds for people’s photos was literally my bed sheet.
0:35:03 Like I would get up in the morning and like pull the sheet off my bed.
0:35:06 Now I have some dedicated stuff.
0:35:08 But yeah, the tech stack is pretty basic.
0:35:11 And I’m looking forward to improving that over time because it would save time.
0:35:16 More with Summer in just a moment, including her decision to license her Aura photography
0:35:21 software and the surprising discovery one of her photos picked up right after this.
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0:37:37 Talk to me about licensing the software that you’ve built and apparently coded yourself through
0:37:40 to other people who want to do this.
0:37:45 That’s kind of the next stage of the business that you see is, well, I can only be at one
0:37:46 event at a time.
0:37:50 And so there’s an opportunity to open this up as a side hustle to other people.
0:37:51 Yeah.
0:37:55 When I first launched the business, it really wasn’t on my radar, but it’s something that
0:38:01 I kept getting inquiries about, especially in, you know, kind of healing spaces or even just
0:38:08 in the event space when people go to festivals and people who kind of run these things are
0:38:10 always looking for something new and novel.
0:38:11 And this is really new and novel.
0:38:15 So I pause doing events to build the back end for being able to license it to other people.
0:38:20 And I am less than a tenth of the price of the old school camera.
0:38:22 It’s significantly so much cheaper.
0:38:28 And then I do charge $149 a month, which just covers a lot of the tech to like keep things
0:38:33 going so that I can like update it for people every month and they get really good access to
0:38:33 it.
0:38:35 I have a whole Slack channel built out.
0:38:36 So I used to be a wedding florist.
0:38:41 So I have a lot of event experience, which is what made this so exciting for me.
0:38:45 But I pull from my like 15 years of experience in the event industry.
0:38:47 And so I’ve got like a pricing guide.
0:38:48 I charge $44.
0:38:49 You can charge whatever you want.
0:38:53 Like you could build out the offering to include all kinds of other stuff and make it super
0:38:53 expensive.
0:38:55 Or maybe you don’t even print the photo.
0:38:59 You just airdrop it to people and you charge $30 and you, you know, turn them out faster.
0:39:01 Like that might be more profitable.
0:39:07 I’ve got all kinds of guides on like templates for reaching out to markets, templates for reaching
0:39:12 out for people to collaborate on, examples of how I will go to a new town, scrape and find
0:39:13 people that I could pitch to.
0:39:18 And this is like customers of yours who are coming in and being like, I was visiting town
0:39:22 and they were super fans and they wanted to take the next step.
0:39:22 Yeah.
0:39:27 Or like maybe they met me, maybe I traveled to an event in Portland.
0:39:28 They were also traveling in Portland.
0:39:29 They met me there.
0:39:31 They went home to Utah.
0:39:32 I’ve got one girl in Utah.
0:39:35 She asked if I would come do a pop-up at her shop.
0:39:39 And I was like, girl, no, no, I don’t feel like going to Utah.
0:39:42 I have a day job, but she was like, could you teach me?
0:39:47 So that was kind of the catalyst for me being like, okay, I’ve now gotten like 10 direct
0:39:47 inquiries.
0:39:49 So I started building it out.
0:39:52 And I think at some point I might start doing cold outreach for that.
0:39:54 But right now I’m just letting people come to me.
0:39:54 Yeah.
0:39:55 Follow the demand.
0:39:58 That’s an interesting side hustles on side hustles there.
0:39:58 Yeah.
0:40:00 Never would have thought when I first got started at all.
0:40:04 Are there any surprises that come to mind or surprising stories that come out of these
0:40:07 pictures after doing it for half a year now?
0:40:08 Oh my gosh.
0:40:09 All the time.
0:40:13 I could talk to you for three hours about magical experiences that I’ve had.
0:40:18 The first thing is I’ve really improved the offering as I’ve gone along.
0:40:19 Of course, time under pressure.
0:40:21 I’ve gotten better at relating to people.
0:40:26 I’ve gotten more nuanced with how I talk about the colors that show up for people.
0:40:30 You know, I am both woo and skeptic at the same time.
0:40:34 There is part of me that is like, this is just electricity moving around, babe.
0:40:35 And that’s all it is.
0:40:36 And that’s really cool.
0:40:37 And that’s fine.
0:40:40 And then there’s another part of me that’s like, something’s going on.
0:40:41 And I don’t know what’s going on.
0:40:46 My joke that I tell people when some people will be like, oh, are you clairvoyant or something?
0:40:48 I have never claimed to be that.
0:40:49 My joke is, I just work here.
0:40:50 I don’t know.
0:40:50 I’m just telling you what I say.
0:40:51 I just work here.
0:40:52 Yeah, yeah.
0:40:53 Here’s what the camera picked up.
0:40:55 I’m not going to interpret this for you.
0:40:56 Yeah, I don’t know.
0:40:57 I got no control, babe.
0:41:03 One of my favorite stories to tell is from my second market pop-up.
0:41:04 I had a group of people come up.
0:41:08 It was couples and kids, like eight adults and some kids.
0:41:11 And a woman sat for me.
0:41:16 And at that time, so again, I get more data points as I go on.
0:41:21 I see this color in therapists or, oh, I see this color in artists or, you know, whatever.
0:41:27 So by my second pop-up, I did not quite have that well from which to draw.
0:41:30 So I was really just speaking about the colors and their correlations.
0:41:38 So this woman sits for me and she has this really interesting color population over her face and her body that looks really normal.
0:41:45 But then kind of over her solar plexus, her low stomach where she’s seating, there is this little ribbon of white.
0:41:58 And at that point, in coding the software myself, practicing, showing all of the iterations of it, literally thousands of times because I have anxiety, I had never seen the white populate in that ribbon like that.
0:42:06 So I kind of stumbled through and I kind of just honestly say, I’ve seen this color in like kids and animals, but I’ve never seen it on a grown-up.
0:42:07 And it’s only populating low like that.
0:42:10 I coded this crap and I didn’t even know it could do that.
0:42:12 Like, I didn’t know what to tell her.
0:42:16 And I was expecting this to kind of break the moment and she’d want a refund, which is fine.
0:42:18 But we get to the end of her session.
0:42:27 She tells me that she is 12 weeks pregnant, which is just this fascinating, you’re picking up on baby energy in a very baby zone of a woman’s body.
0:42:29 And, you know, at 12 weeks, she’s not showing yet.
0:42:31 The ribbon was also green as well.
0:42:37 At the end of this group is a man who has green as the prominent color for his aura.
0:42:42 His group, they all start cackling the green that was also populating over her stomach.
0:42:43 He is her husband.
0:42:46 So everyone was joking like, oh, we know what’s going on here.
0:42:48 It’s the aura paternity test.
0:42:49 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:42:49 Yeah.
0:42:51 So that was a really fun one.
0:42:53 Again, I’m not a therapist.
0:42:54 I’m not a clairvoyant.
0:42:58 I’m just someone who loves people and saw a gap in the market.
0:43:03 And I’m really honest with people that I didn’t create this because I’m someone who thinks I see auras.
0:43:07 I’m someone who created this because I thought this would be a really cool experience for you.
0:43:08 And I hope that you love it.
0:43:09 You know, that’s kind of my angle.
0:43:11 I’m always very honest about that.
0:43:16 But sometimes there might be little orbs and maybe they’ll be on a masculine side or a feminine side.
0:43:22 And I might gently say, maybe you can interpret this as just you having really good boundaries or this looking really beautiful.
0:43:29 Or this could be, you know, kind of a masculine figure kind of quite literally on your shoulder taking good care of you or feminine or whatever.
0:43:33 And sometimes it brings up these magical moments of people of like, oh, my God, I lost my dad.
0:43:36 But I had a dream about him last night and it’s, you know, populating on the masculine side.
0:43:40 There’s been really cool, very touching, magical experiences for sure.
0:43:42 And I don’t know what to make of them myself.
0:43:43 And that’s okay.
0:43:45 I love that pregnancy story.
0:43:45 That’s really cool.
0:43:47 Yeah, that one was really fun.
0:43:48 Well, what’s next?
0:43:49 We’ve got the licensing.
0:43:50 We’ve got some upcoming events.
0:43:51 Where do you want to take this thing?
0:44:01 So I’ve been focusing on the licensing for other practitioners, but I’ve also tweaked all of my stuff so that now I can offer remote sessions at home.
0:44:04 And those have been really cool.
0:44:06 I’m getting a few a week for some reason.
0:44:08 Thank you to the people who find me.
0:44:08 I don’t know how you do.
0:44:10 What a good marketing problem to have.
0:44:12 People are coming, but I don’t know how they found me.
0:44:13 It’s got to be word of mouth, right?
0:44:14 You would assume.
0:44:15 Yeah, it’s got to be.
0:44:18 I just don’t know how the first person finds me to tell the other people.
0:44:19 Sure, sure.
0:44:20 We’ll figure that out one day.
0:44:31 So not only is the pricing really accessible at $44 rather than the over $100, there are a lot of people who are these curious, energetic seekers or just people wanting to try something new.
0:44:34 This doesn’t have to go on your altar.
0:44:35 You know what I mean?
0:44:39 It can just be trying to experience something new, trying to find a new mirror to look into.
0:44:43 My remote sessions, a lot of the people who are booking me are in the Midwest.
0:44:45 I’ve got a ton of girlies in Ohio.
0:44:47 Shouts out to my Cleveland girlies.
0:44:52 I’ve got tons of people in like parts of Georgia and then kind of the Great Lakes region.
0:44:57 And what I think is someone travels to a festival, gets a session with me in person, they take it home.
0:44:59 I’m assuming that’s how that’s going on.
0:44:59 Okay.
0:45:04 But offering the remote sessions has been really fun.
0:45:12 And getting all of these people booking me from the Great Lakes, from the Midwest, from the South or whatever, shows me that this is really ubiquitous.
0:45:14 People are kind of wanting this everywhere.
0:45:16 Yeah, that’s kind of cool.
0:45:17 It’s expanding.
0:45:17 People are into it.
0:45:21 SomaLumen.com is where you can find more about summer.
0:45:23 SomaLumen.com slash guide.
0:45:28 That’s S-O-M-A-L-U-M-I-N.
0:45:30 SomaLumen.com slash guide.
0:45:35 Use promo code HUSTLE for $100 off if you want to bring this to your hometown.
0:45:37 Do aura photography as your next side hustle.
0:45:41 Let’s wrap this up with your number one tip for Side Hustle Nation.
0:45:42 Start.
0:45:43 Start.
0:45:44 Just do it.
0:45:46 Do it imperfectly.
0:45:47 Do it ugly.
0:45:48 And fix it later.
0:45:53 And people will be so excited to receive you because starting is so brave and hard.
0:45:54 And you can do it.
0:45:54 Yes.
0:45:55 What’s the line?
0:45:58 You don’t have to be great to start, but you got to start to be great.
0:45:59 That’s something that comes up quite a bit.
0:46:00 Yeah.
0:46:00 I like that.
0:46:02 I appreciate you sharing all this stuff.
0:46:04 This has been really eye-opening.
0:46:05 I think it’s a really cool creative business.
0:46:08 A couple takeaways from me before we wrap.
0:46:12 Number one is this strategy of going after these strategic partnerships.
0:46:14 Well, where are my target customers already hanging out?
0:46:17 How can I get in front of large groups of them all at once?
0:46:20 You know, it’s going to be, you know, hard for me to raise my hand or try and shout into
0:46:22 the void of social media.
0:46:27 So instead, I’m going to go to the retail shops or the boutiques or the yoga studios or
0:46:31 whatever it is, or the farmer’s markets or the festivals and like get in front of a lot
0:46:31 of people.
0:46:35 And I don’t have to convert every one of them, but even just a small percentage is going
0:46:38 to add up and cover my costs really low overhead way to do it.
0:46:43 And then the second thing that stood out is this experience marketing where it’s not a
0:46:44 picture.
0:46:45 You’re selling an experience.
0:46:50 And I think that can apply really across a lot of different businesses, like make it less
0:46:52 transactional and more transformational.
0:46:54 And I think you’re going to be in a good place there.
0:46:57 Now I’ve got a free listener bonus for you for tuning in.
0:46:59 It is my big list of 101 service business ideas.
0:47:02 You can probably apply some of Summer’s tactics too.
0:47:08 You can download that for free at sidehustlenation.com slash aura, A-U-R-A, or just follow the show
0:47:10 notes link in the episode description.
0:47:11 It’ll get you right over there.
0:47:12 Big thanks to Summer for sharing her insight.
0:47:16 Thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone.
0:47:21 Sidehustlenation.com slash deals is where to go for all the latest offers from those sponsors
0:47:22 in one place.
0:47:22 That is it for me.
0:47:25 Thank you so much for tuning in until next time.
0:47:27 Let’s go out there and make something happen.
0:47:30 And I’ll catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle Show.
0:00:10 That’s where our partner Gusto comes in to take the stress out of payroll, benefits, and HR,
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0:01:14 $70,000 on the side in six months.
0:01:19 Here’s a super unique side hustle I never heard of before today’s guest reached out.
0:01:28 She does aura photography, portraits that visualize someone’s energy field, and maybe more importantly, portraits that command.
0:01:29 44 bucks a pop.
0:01:32 From somalumen.com, Summer Rae.
0:01:34 Welcome to the Side Hustle Show.
0:01:35 Thank you so much.
0:01:37 It’s a full circle moment to be here.
0:01:41 Well, I’m excited for this one, because whether you believe in auras and energy fields or not,
0:01:46 you’re going to want to stick around to hear how Summer’s built this business nights and weekends,
0:01:56 and how she found a steady stream of customers looking for this kind of, I would call it an almost impulse buy kind of product that not a lot of people were specifically looking for.
0:02:03 And it started out with doing pop-up events, kind of a strategic partnership strategy, if I understand correctly.
0:02:04 Yeah, that’s correct.
0:02:10 I reached out to local boutiques, retailers, metaphysical shops, offered my services.
0:02:15 Some people let me set up completely for free because they were excited for a new offering to have on a Saturday.
0:02:20 But I was paying on average like 50 to 70 bucks for a flat rate for several hours in a store.
0:02:24 So I really only had to take two photos all day.
0:02:25 So that was a great way to start.
0:02:32 Sure. And so you’re depending on the existing foot traffic, and I imagine the store is kind of advertising this as a one-off,
0:02:36 hey, come by and see Summer if you happen to be in the neighborhood this week or something.
0:02:40 Yeah. So I have a pretty small social media presence still.
0:02:43 I think people kind of overhype it in the event industry, actually.
0:02:50 But yeah, I would make a social media post or in our local paper and maybe say I would give away one session if you told a friend or something like that.
0:02:59 And then, yeah, in exchange for being in the businesses, they would, you know, sometimes promote me in a newsletter or on their, you know, Facebook pages, things like that.
0:03:03 Okay. So you do these first couple events and there’s immediate demand.
0:03:06 It’s a home run out of the gates or is it a slow trickle?
0:03:07 What’s what’s happening here?
0:03:14 So just as a background, aura photography has existed since like the 60s or 70s.
0:03:22 And the concept is really just there is an electromagnetic frequency going on and there are different ways to capture that on a camera.
0:03:27 But no one has made a new one since like the 90s.
0:03:29 So, you know, 35 years or so.
0:03:39 I was expecting to need to spend more time building social proof, validating the offer, explaining to people how it worked.
0:03:40 But I was pretty surprised.
0:03:46 My first pop-up, I did like, I think, 30 something photos.
0:03:49 The next one I did about 50 photos.
0:03:49 Wow.
0:03:51 Yeah, I charge $44 a piece.
0:03:53 I do offer sliding scale on occasion.
0:03:55 The profit margin is really high.
0:03:58 It really only costs me like $1.50 to $2 each.
0:04:02 I print them on a Polaroid that I put on a postcard that I just printed at Staples.
0:04:10 So I do offer some sliding scale, but my average price usually ends up being about $41, factoring in the occasional one I’ll do for $20 for like a college kid or something.
0:04:11 Okay.
0:04:14 So they turn out to be really popular.
0:04:16 People want this stuff and they’re willing to pay.
0:04:17 Yeah.
0:04:21 I think it’s really not entirely about the photo.
0:04:25 I mean, the photo is compelling and cute and it’s rainbow colors and it’s what color did you get?
0:04:26 What color did you get?
0:04:29 You know, kind of just like the grab bag of it all.
0:04:39 But a large part of it, too, is people feel they feel pretty safe to be seen, which a lot of that is my energy that I create.
0:04:39 I’m very welcoming.
0:04:52 I’ve been really surprised by I would say more than half the people who sit for me for a portrait will say something like, oh, no, you’re going to see the devil on my shoulder or it’s going to be black or I’m going to break your camera.
0:05:04 Like, it’s remarkable the negative self-talk people have and it’s wonderful to have this experience of not being comfortable being seen, having this negative self-talk.
0:05:13 I show them a photo of themselves just glimmering like a gemstone and tell them how delightful they are because everyone is magical in their own right and wonderful to meet.
0:05:17 And that is really the essence of what they’re buying.
0:05:26 And I think that is why it has spread so much is just that energetic feeling of feeling good about yourself.
0:05:28 Was there anybody else doing this?
0:05:30 You’re in Central Oregon.
0:05:31 This is a thing.
0:05:32 I’ve never heard of this before.
0:05:35 Yeah, I would say that you’re not necessarily my target market for sure.
0:05:36 And that is great.
0:05:41 I did a country music festival this summer when I met lots of skeptics like you and it was really fun.
0:05:42 So it does exist.
0:05:50 You’re going to see it more in Malibu, in Austin, in these kind of like hip wellness hubs.
0:05:58 But the original Aura camera that you can still buy, it’s like between $7,000 and $20,000.
0:06:00 They don’t make it anymore.
0:06:04 It’s like old school tech, so you can’t troubleshoot it if it breaks.
0:06:15 Like there’s a couple Aura photographers that have gone out of business because their camera broke and there’s no way to fix it and they don’t have $20,000 for a new one, which was what led me to develop my own.
0:06:23 And then my differentiator is because I use modern tech, it populates a video so you can watch their energetic field kind of move in real time.
0:06:28 It’s kind of guesstimating the speed of things, your little electrons moving around.
0:06:30 So that’s a fun differentiator.
0:06:35 But yeah, it exists, but in a very niche kind of kooky market.
0:06:49 The way I kind of talk about this is that maybe 15 years ago, the only time you had experience with your horoscope might have been your kooky aunt cut it out of the paper and send it to you in the mail on your birthday or something.
0:06:55 And now there are a lot of people who have astrology apps on their phones.
0:07:00 People might like when they’re dating, they want to know what your sun sign is to know if you’re compatible or something.
0:07:08 So I like to think that I’m modernizing Aura stuff in the way astrology has really become more normalized these days.
0:07:17 Okay. The reason I bring it up is it seems like it’s somewhat of a white space in the market where there’s not an Aura photography shop on every corner.
0:07:26 So there was a novelty factor to come in, but it sounds like there was some level of awareness around energy fields.
0:07:33 And that wasn’t anything new, but it was coming in with a new approach to it and a new, I guess, marketing.
0:07:38 I got to get in front of people in situations where they’re like, yeah, I’ll give it a shot. Sure.
0:07:45 Yeah. A lot of the feedback that I get in Bend is, oh, I’ve seen this for years and I’ve never been able to do it.
0:07:47 I get that feedback really frequently.
0:07:56 And then the other thing about me using like modern neurotech and building it myself is the $44 price might sound nuts to you.
0:08:03 But if you look up other old school Aura photographers, they’re charging 80, 100, 180 bucks per session.
0:08:06 So I really bring the price way down, which is cool.
0:08:10 Yeah. I’m picturing like that old overexposed Polaroid.
0:08:12 Dark room.
0:08:18 But you were kind of bringing like a video capture element to it and how does it work?
0:08:29 Yeah. So the basics of how it works is I have little biometric readers that go on people’s hands and there’s two nodes that kind of speak to each other.
0:08:33 And they’re tracking kind of the speed of energy moving around, electricity moving around.
0:08:36 Every time you have a thought, that’s a synapse quite literally firing.
0:08:39 So there’s electricity moving around all the time.
0:08:42 That’s another nice thing is like this doesn’t go against anyone’s religion.
0:08:43 It’s just biology.
0:08:45 It’s just atoms moving around.
0:08:47 It’s very, very low stakes here spiritually.
0:08:48 So, yeah, they sit with the readers.
0:08:51 My computer kind of hangs out with them for a little while.
0:08:57 I let them know when I’m turning the camera on and then it populates a 20 second video.
0:09:02 I show folks the video and then we kind of talk about what the colors mean, what the movement means.
0:09:06 And then we find one where like they look cute and the colors look good.
0:09:08 And that’s the one we print for them to take home right on the spot.
0:09:09 Okay.
0:09:12 So that’s the deliverable is out of the 20 second video.
0:09:16 We’ll take a frame and then we’ll turn that into the printout.
0:09:20 And that’s the hard cost of it, the buck 50 or whatever it is.
0:09:21 Yeah.
0:09:24 And the whole process takes, I like to call it about 10 minutes.
0:09:27 It gives us time to kind of like talk and get comfortable and not feel rushed.
0:09:39 But as an example, part of why the old school technology is more of that, you know, 100, 150 or whatever bucks is they take it with an old school Polaroid, wait like 10 or 15 minutes for the Polaroid to develop.
0:09:40 Then they look at it with the person.
0:09:42 So it’s a much longer process.
0:09:44 So I understand why they charge more.
0:09:49 But on the practitioner side, it’s really nice to keep the cash flow just going and to keep it much lighter.
0:09:54 I’ve even had people come to me who have had aura portraits done with the old school camera.
0:10:04 And sometimes they’re apprehensive because maybe that reader like told them something about themselves they didn’t like and tried to funnel it into paying them more money to cleanse things.
0:10:07 And I keep it much lighter, much friendlier.
0:10:10 I take I’ve done kids parties because it’s really fun.
0:10:12 So it’s just it’s much it’s much gentler.
0:10:14 It’s a gentler mirror to look into is what I’d say.
0:10:14 OK.
0:10:19 And it sounds like relatively low startup costs, relatively low commitment.
0:10:25 And I want to pay 50 bucks to rent out this to space for you where I think my target customers are going to be stopping by today.
0:10:25 Yeah.
0:10:26 And it’s a hit.
0:10:29 It’s, you know, 30 to 50 customers on these first couple pop ups.
0:10:32 And it’s kind of off to the races from there.
0:10:34 What what ends up happening next?
0:10:38 You’ve got this early validation and say, shoot, I got to get in front of more people.
0:10:40 It’s been nuts.
0:10:50 I, for the first time, have been in a place in my life where I do not say yes to every opportunity in my email box.
0:10:56 I’ve had I’ve had to practice a new level of discernment, which has been a magical growth for me.
0:10:57 But yes, I started doing events.
0:11:01 And often what happens is people enjoy their experience.
0:11:05 Then they recommend me to a friend or I did a music festival.
0:11:11 And then one of the women I took a portrait of there, she booked me for her wedding next year where there will be 300 people.
0:11:18 And a and a portrait with me is one of her her like wedding favors at the event at the after party, which is so sweet at the reception.
0:11:19 So, yeah, it’s been really organic.
0:11:23 A lot of word of mouth, which is really validating and wild.
0:11:34 And I’ve currently shut down doing in-person events because I’ve built up infrastructure for other people to license the software for me just because I’ve had lots of inquiries from other people.
0:11:36 But I’ll be doing events again next year.
0:11:36 OK.
0:11:38 Is it somewhat seasonal in that way?
0:11:41 It’s like it’s better if it’s an outdoor type of deal.
0:11:42 It can be.
0:11:46 So, I mean, I think that depends on your energetics as a person, what fuels you.
0:11:51 So, for me, if I’m going to like get into that zone, you’re all up in people’s energetic guts.
0:11:56 Like you might like tell someone a really sweet thing about you and then all of a sudden they’re saying they got it from their mom.
0:11:59 And then it’s kind of this really immersive conversation, which is really beautiful.
0:12:10 But if I’m going to do that, I like doing the big festivals where I’m kind of there 11 to 9 or, you know, these big long days because I’d like to just crank sessions all day long.
0:12:13 Like if I’m going to get set up and bring my laptop out, that’s what suits me best.
0:12:17 So, yeah, having it seasonally, especially while maintaining full-time employment.
0:12:19 Yeah, doing it seasonally suits me.
0:12:27 But I have recently licensed it to another practitioner who’s she’s like a body worker and she just folds it into her regular practice.
0:12:29 So she’s doing it year round.
0:12:38 But instead of doing these blowouts where it’s like I kind of make all my money in like two to six days a month, she’s doing like a few sessions a day.
0:12:39 That kind of thing.
0:12:40 OK, got it.
0:12:41 What’s it like?
0:12:52 So if I have a similar business that would benefit from getting in front of a large crowd of people all at once, like an events type of business, you know, what is the pitch to the organizers or how much does it cost?
0:13:04 Like it’s kind of an intimidating thing to show up and try and set up shop the first time and get attention with potentially dozens of other vendors who are all trying to vie for that same attention and that same share of wallet.
0:13:09 Totally. So I think the big thing is if you can have social proof.
0:13:18 So if you do that in building kind of these smaller pop-ups where, you know, you’re at boutiques and stuff where you can say, hey, I have experience already.
0:13:19 This isn’t going to be my first rodeo.
0:13:21 That always helps.
0:13:34 Generally, if you’re doing bigger events like a music festival or, you know, something more immersive, sometimes instead of just a flat booth fee, there will be a booth fee as well as they want revenue share.
0:13:42 So having proof of, hey, you’re going to make, you know, a couple thousand bucks off me this week can always help.
0:13:45 And I just keep proofs of like screenshots of financials.
0:13:50 So the first music festival that I applied to was 600 bucks.
0:13:51 They took 20%.
0:13:59 And when I applied, I was just getting going and I said, hey, here’s an example of a Saturday farmer’s market.
0:14:07 I think I did like 50 photos and it was kind of an all day thing, but I think because you’re a music festival, I’d have more conversion than at a farmer’s market.
0:14:10 And full disclosure, I don’t have 600 bucks to pay you.
0:14:13 So could I just, could you just take it out of the payment?
0:14:15 And for some reason, she said yes.
0:14:16 Okay.
0:14:19 And that ended up being a great festival and they just took the 600 bucks out of my payment.
0:14:23 It sounds like there’s almost an application or like a bidding process.
0:14:28 Well, like, okay, well, 20% of the rev share sounds great, but well, how much are you really going to sell here?
0:14:30 It’s like, you almost have to pump yourself up.
0:14:31 I think we could do really well.
0:14:36 It’s because they’re like, well, we got limited real estate and we want to make sure we can make the most out of it.
0:14:39 But yeah, you got some, some track record prior to going into that.
0:14:39 Yeah.
0:14:44 And it’s been a beautiful teacher of like, just ask, just put yourself out there.
0:14:52 I’ve always heard in entrepreneurial spaces, if you’re not embarrassed by your performance six months ago, you, you launched too late.
0:14:54 You know, you’re not acting swiftly enough.
0:15:02 And when I look at my first photos and when I think of my first events, I could cry right now and it keeps, keeps getting better every time.
0:15:09 So it’s been a beautiful teacher of acting imperfectly because people really just enjoy a really novel experience.
0:15:14 And it’s really cool being surrounded by kind of similar vendors and you being the oddball.
0:15:17 It sets you up for people being kind of inquisitive about what’s going on.
0:15:21 And then to close the sale, you just kind of have to be, be personable.
0:15:25 So yeah, as people walk by, they have some level of curiosity and say, well, what is this?
0:15:26 How does it work?
0:15:28 And then you, then you put the hard sell on them.
0:15:36 Yeah, basically, again, I’m reiterating every time, every booth I look back on and I see so many errors and I remind myself that my customers don’t see those.
0:15:38 That’s me trying to chase something better.
0:15:48 But as an example, so right now, what I’ve been doing is I have, you know, little rainbow garlands that go around the edge of my booth at the entrance to make it look cute.
0:15:53 And I just have clothespins and I hang Polaroids of previous sessions that I’ve done.
0:15:55 I’ve got like 20 or 30 out.
0:15:57 I try to pick them that look very different.
0:15:58 So it invites curiosity.
0:16:09 But a pain point I’ve found currently is if I can get people close enough that they can see the Polaroids, they get interested, then I get to have the conversation with them.
0:16:14 Then they kind of get in that dance with me and they often will come, come sit for me and enjoy the session.
0:16:21 But my new thing is I’m trying to grab that curiosity from further away, not needing them within 10 or 20 feet of my booth.
0:16:28 So currently I’ve got in production is I printed like a big background with like blown up pictures that are really large.
0:16:31 So hopefully I can grab that inquisitive thing from from further away.
0:16:37 Do you recall how much the music festival ended up making you after the booth fee and the revenue share?
0:16:40 I did the first day.
0:16:42 So this was a country music festival as well.
0:16:48 So it was a big push because this is not, you know, it wasn’t really like hippie wellness zone.
0:16:48 You know what I mean?
0:16:52 The first day I sold out, I didn’t bring enough film.
0:16:55 I did a little over 100 sessions and had to leave early.
0:16:59 And then the next day I did about 100 sessions again.
0:17:05 So I made like after paying all my fees and stuff, I think I made about five grand that weekend.
0:17:05 Wow.
0:17:07 Just a Friday and Saturday.
0:17:08 Yeah, it was it was amazing.
0:17:12 And that’s the one that I met someone who’s now booked me for her wedding.
0:17:16 So that’s another like check with a comma coming next year from from that one event.
0:17:16 Wow.
0:17:18 Five thousand bucks in a week.
0:17:21 OK, everyone’s like, I’m a believer.
0:17:22 Show me the energy fields now.
0:17:23 This is good.
0:17:25 And they’re great for festivals like that.
0:17:29 So another way that I keep improving is I just have like a standard little postcard with
0:17:31 like a QR code to my website or whatever.
0:17:36 I want to start personalizing the package for the photo as well.
0:17:41 So it’s like a memento specific to the event, because I think that will help for sales as well,
0:17:45 because a lot of times people can buy merch for somewhere that they’re going.
0:17:49 But we all have a lot of T-shirts and we don’t want to pay 50 bucks for a T-shirt when
0:17:51 instead you could pay 44 bucks.
0:17:53 And I do couples photos, too.
0:17:56 So I’ll do like, you know, it’s like the couples and they’re in their cute outfit.
0:18:00 And then if I could memorialize it with the specific event, I think that’ll help, too.
0:18:02 So so again, constantly improving one percent at a time.
0:18:04 Yeah, I could see couples, friend groups.
0:18:07 I could see maternity photos being a thing for sure.
0:18:08 Yeah, all the stuff.
0:18:09 It’s really fun.
0:18:14 More with summer in just a moment, including more strategic marketing partnerships that drove
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0:20:31 And prior to that, it was farmer’s markets or was that kind of a standing every,
0:20:33 you know, every Saturday morning is the farmer’s market?
0:20:37 Not every Saturday morning in the small town.
0:20:42 Where I live, we do events called First Fridays, which are kind of like art walks downtown.
0:20:48 And so I popped up in a couple different spots on the little First Fridays, just cute little
0:20:51 like woman-run boutiques with women’s clothes.
0:20:58 I would say my audience split is probably 70, 30 women just about.
0:21:00 So it is for the girlies for sure.
0:21:03 And do they charge you for those, like for to set up there?
0:21:04 That depends.
0:21:06 A couple of those didn’t.
0:21:09 They were excited to have like an additional offering to their store.
0:21:16 And then even sometimes like one of the shops I’ve partnered with before didn’t charge me a fee,
0:21:19 but they did their own promo of like, you would get your photo with me.
0:21:24 And then based on the colors that showed up, you could buy anything those colors for 20% off.
0:21:25 Oh, that’s cute.
0:21:25 Okay.
0:21:26 Yeah.
0:21:26 Yeah.
0:21:26 Yeah.
0:21:27 It helps bring in shopping.
0:21:29 So it’s pretty mutually equitable.
0:21:34 And then I’ve done a couple pop-ups again inside boutiques where
0:21:38 maybe I’ve shown up and they’ve not charged me a flat fee, but they’ve asked for like
0:21:40 10 to 12% of revenue.
0:21:45 Generally now I prefer the flat fee because I generate enough revenue that it’s cheaper
0:21:46 to pay the fee than the 10%.
0:21:46 Yeah.
0:21:47 Yeah.
0:21:47 Yeah.
0:21:49 At first it’s like, I don’t know what this is going to be.
0:21:49 Sure.
0:21:51 We’ll do it on a, on a profit share basis.
0:21:53 But now it’s like, yeah, exactly.
0:21:55 This is a thing I heard of recently too.
0:21:57 And it was like getting your, your colors analyzed.
0:22:01 And so this seems like it’s in the same ballpark where that was, I don’t know if that was
0:22:05 like skin tone or like, oh, you really look good in yellow or something.
0:22:07 It’s like, well, maybe there’s a combination here.
0:22:08 Yeah.
0:22:09 I did.
0:22:12 It was like a women’s gathering in the woods for like a week.
0:22:16 I set up in their marketplace and there was a woman doing color analysis there.
0:22:20 And we did a really fun thing where again, people could get their photos taken with me.
0:22:24 Then they take them to her and then she would find, so with the color analysis, it’s like
0:22:26 the colors and the undertones and whatever.
0:22:27 Yeah.
0:22:29 So let’s, let’s say your aura is yellow.
0:22:33 She would find like a couple beautiful shades of yellow that look lovely on you.
0:22:37 And then you could take that to, you know, it kind of spread all around.
0:22:39 Like you would get your photo with me, then she would talk about your colors.
0:22:43 And then there was like a whole marketplace where people were selling clothes and then they
0:22:46 would like buy clothes, those colors, which is just cute.
0:22:46 Yeah.
0:22:51 It’s kind of definitely a complimentary relationship in that way.
0:22:51 Yeah.
0:22:51 Very much.
0:22:52 Yeah.
0:22:53 And I’ve done pet portraits too.
0:22:58 One time over the summer, I took portraits of dogs and I donated all the money to like
0:23:00 a local dog rescue.
0:23:04 I’ve always thought it would be fun to partner like with the Humane Society, like take photos
0:23:05 of the adoptable dogs.
0:23:07 There’s all sorts of directions to take it.
0:23:07 Yeah.
0:23:10 And you’re entirely, it’s a mobile studio.
0:23:14 It’s not like, you know, come to my brick and mortar place and set up.
0:23:15 It’s, you know, we’ll come to you.
0:23:16 Yeah.
0:23:18 All the setup fits in a backpack.
0:23:19 Everything fits in my backpack.
0:23:24 So it’s super, super portable, which again is like another bonus over the old school camera,
0:23:28 which is like super big and clunky and heavy and lots of old school parts.
0:23:34 And then because I’m not selling product when I do markets, another bonus is like when you’re
0:23:39 selling packaged goods at a market, you’ve got a lot of setup and teardown time and then
0:23:42 you’re transporting product and maybe your product breaks or whatever.
0:23:43 Yeah.
0:23:50 Everything for my booth fits in like one rolling cart because I really just have my tent.
0:23:54 I put down some lovely textiles and put up lovely textiles that fold up tiny, but make
0:23:55 it feel really homey.
0:24:01 So my setup and teardown is like 20 to 45 minutes, which again, like, you know, we do have to
0:24:04 factor in that unpaid time when we’re figuring out our little side hustles.
0:24:06 That stuff can like really eat away.
0:24:06 Yeah.
0:24:08 I got to drive three hours to this thing.
0:24:08 Sure.
0:24:09 Exactly.
0:24:10 Parking is a nut.
0:24:11 Yeah.
0:24:11 All this stuff.
0:24:14 So it’s really nice to cut down on that and like transporting it.
0:24:16 I’m never worried about it breaking.
0:24:18 So really, really easy on the brain.
0:24:21 Have you ever put this up on Airbnb experiences?
0:24:27 I haven’t, but I was recently traveling and I was looking for an experience and there is
0:24:32 someone with an old school camera in, she was in San Diego and she’s on Airbnb experiences
0:24:33 and I was like, oh, she’s so smart.
0:24:38 Yeah, that just, that just kind of like, because we had a woman who was doing like meditation
0:24:42 retreats or meditation experiences in Sedona on Red Rocks.
0:24:43 Yeah, give her my number.
0:24:47 And another friend of mine was doing like gratitude hikes, like unplugged hikes.
0:24:49 Hey, leave your, leave your phone in the car and we’ll go out into the woods.
0:24:53 And it’s like, oh, this seems like, especially for the type of person who’s typically coming
0:24:57 to Sunriver or to Ben, it’s like, oh, there’s a, I feel like there might be something there.
0:25:01 But the downside was, I think she said, if you get one booking and it’s like, you charge
0:25:04 your $49 or something like now you have to go do it.
0:25:08 And you’re like, oh, that would have been better off doing a group outing or group event where
0:25:10 there’s dozens of different customers.
0:25:10 I know.
0:25:12 I’ve learned that lesson over time.
0:25:13 And it’s very funny.
0:25:19 I had some people book me back in the spring for some events this fall, just a couple weeks
0:25:19 ago.
0:25:23 And in the spring, I had someone inquire about a group of 12.
0:25:29 I could not fathom getting a check for $500 for doing this stuff for two hours.
0:25:29 I was like, no way.
0:25:32 And so in the spring, I gave her a deal.
0:25:36 I was like, oh, if you do a group, I’ll do them for 33 bucks a piece.
0:25:37 She paid half.
0:25:38 I was elated.
0:25:39 Couldn’t believe it.
0:25:43 I door dashed food for the first time in months because I was like, I’m rolling in
0:25:43 money.
0:25:44 I have $150.
0:25:46 Yeah, it’s a great feeling.
0:25:51 By the time her event rolled around in October, it was a beautiful full circle moment because
0:25:58 now there’s enough just organic demand that I don’t do groups under 15 people.
0:25:59 They need to prepay.
0:26:03 And I charged them like full price plus like 50 bucks to show up.
0:26:07 And it was just beautiful that by the time the event came back around, I was like, oh, my
0:26:08 God, I can’t believe I’m doing this for like 200 bucks.
0:26:11 But I was so grateful to show up.
0:26:16 And it was so cool to be like, thank you for booking me when I had no social proof.
0:26:19 Like you just were feeling the vibe and you booked me for six months out.
0:26:20 And that helped me pay my light bill.
0:26:21 And thank you so much.
0:26:22 It was really rad.
0:26:24 Yeah, that’s great.
0:26:31 So today, events, private parties, farmer’s market, first Fridays, weddings next year.
0:26:36 And the word of mouth, like people, you show up, you’re present, you deliver a good experience,
0:26:38 and then the word of mouth starts to spin.
0:26:41 Anything else that you’re doing proactively to market the business?
0:26:46 I’ve done remarkably little, embarrassingly little marketing.
0:26:48 And I hate to say it.
0:26:50 My social media is horrifically neglected.
0:26:52 I could frankly update my website a bit.
0:26:54 And I keep thinking about it.
0:26:55 But again, juggling a day job.
0:27:00 I have been surprised when you think of this offering, you might think of like the teeny
0:27:05 boppers or the young people who like just want the cute selfie.
0:27:07 And I have plenty of those at markets for sure.
0:27:13 But I’ve been really surprised that a lot of the private party bookings, which are really
0:27:19 nice with balancing a full-time job, going to these private events where there’s 12, 15,
0:27:25 20 people, and I just like go to their Airbnb or wellness facility, and I’m just there for
0:27:26 a couple hours in and out.
0:27:27 That’s really nice.
0:27:30 It’s just not the energetic draw of like setting up a big tent at a fair.
0:27:37 For those, I even advertise in like our local paper.
0:27:41 We’ve got super tiny, cute journalism going on here in our small town.
0:27:43 And I get a remarkable amount of inquiries.
0:27:46 And I haven’t done one of those in four or five months.
0:27:49 And I got an inquiry last week where someone saw me in the paper.
0:27:51 And I was like, how did you get here?
0:27:53 I’ve been meaning to call you for a while.
0:27:53 Yeah.
0:27:53 Okay.
0:27:54 Yeah.
0:27:54 All right.
0:27:57 So social media or the marketing side, a little bit neglected.
0:28:02 Maybe the local newspaper still driving some leads, depending on what demographic that
0:28:03 you’re going after.
0:28:05 Anything else on the marketing side?
0:28:05 Yeah.
0:28:10 I have done lots and lots and lots of collaborating.
0:28:17 So beyond popping up in other people’s boutiques, when I’ve done markets, especially some that
0:28:20 have been more expensive, I have split my booth.
0:28:23 There are a lot of markets that will allow that.
0:28:26 They’re kind of like whatever goes on in your 10 by 10 square is up to you.
0:28:31 And so splitting the booth cost is like a really great way to make it accessible for new people
0:28:32 who are testing new offerings.
0:28:37 And generally, it’s just like anything that would be kind of on the same vein.
0:28:41 So I have sat with tarot readers at something that’s a little more mystical.
0:28:46 But for things like farmer’s markets, where we’re not leaning into the witchy crowd overtly,
0:28:49 I’ve collaborated with like a watercolor painter.
0:28:54 So like you get your portrait taken with me and then she paints your portrait in those colors,
0:28:54 which is really sweet.
0:28:55 Oh, okay.
0:28:56 Yeah.
0:29:02 So something I always like to share, I am like a really passionate side hustler, entrepreneur.
0:29:09 What I like to remind people is that you’re really not selling whatever is in your hand.
0:29:12 What you’re selling is the way you make someone feel.
0:29:15 I was a barista at Starbucks when I was 18.
0:29:19 And back then, the Starbucks ethos was all about making the moment,
0:29:23 really whatever you need to do to go above and beyond.
0:29:26 And that is kind of how they got their cult loyalty very early on.
0:29:31 And then another philosophy that I recall this moment,
0:29:33 like the change in my brain chemistry,
0:29:39 was listening to the How I Built This podcast episode of SoulCycle.
0:29:43 So their philosophy for SoulCycle, so when they got their start,
0:29:45 they were like behind a morgue or something super funky.
0:29:50 And they knew to get someone to come into their studio,
0:29:54 they needed it to feel transformational from the jump.
0:29:57 So the way it smelled, the way it felt, the way it looked,
0:30:04 and they would train their receptionists to take notes of whatever someone says in passing
0:30:07 and put that in their customer file so that the next time they come in,
0:30:10 they could say, oh, how did your son do at his baseball game?
0:30:12 How was your vacation to Florida or whatever?
0:30:18 And consuming all of this media and working these jobs on the retail floor at a very young age,
0:30:24 in my early 20s, now that I’m in my mid-30s, I’m able to bring this forward in,
0:30:27 I’ve just alchemized all of that knowledge.
0:30:34 And so anyone who sits in front of me, I just focus on how can I surprise and delight you
0:30:39 in such a way that you forget that you’re at this busy market when you’re inside my booth.
0:30:43 And so I think that translates a lot beyond my offering.
0:30:45 I don’t think you need to do aura photography.
0:30:51 What I think you need to do is create genuine, juicy connection that is enough to take someone
0:30:56 out of where they are, because that’s how you get that dialogue going to get the spend.
0:30:58 Yeah, I think that’s a really, really important point.
0:31:00 You’re not selling the Polaroid.
0:31:04 You’re selling the experience, you know, that you’re selling how you make someone feel rather
0:31:08 than, you know, there’s no shortage of selfies.
0:31:12 There’s, you know, free with unlimited film right in your pocket.
0:31:14 And so this has got to be something different.
0:31:18 Now, that said, do you feel like there’s an AI threat here where it’s like, oh, I could
0:31:24 take a selfie, upload it to any number of different sites and be like, give me my aura reading or
0:31:25 give me my energy fields here.
0:31:26 Certainly.
0:31:27 Absolutely.
0:31:28 That doesn’t come with the experience.
0:31:29 Yeah, yeah.
0:31:32 People are integrating AI into all kinds of stuff all the time.
0:31:35 So yes, I’m sure people are doing that now.
0:31:40 My software is not replicable because there’s no AI used at all.
0:31:42 I coded it all in Python.
0:31:46 So it’s not like it’s like a ChatGPT wrapper or something that other people could do.
0:31:57 And I think people gravitate towards experiences like mine because, again, our society these
0:31:59 days is deeply disconnected.
0:32:03 We’re disconnected from ourselves and from each other.
0:32:05 Our screen time is crazy.
0:32:06 We’re all broke.
0:32:06 We’re all tired.
0:32:14 And so these magical points of connection and being seen and being witnessed, that’s the
0:32:14 magic of it all.
0:32:20 And so I think looking at your phone and asking ChatGPT, hey, what do you know about me?
0:32:23 I have asked ChatGPT that and it’s revealed magical things.
0:32:29 But there is nothing like the intimate connection with another human being because we’re pack animals
0:32:31 and we crave that so bad.
0:32:33 And so that’s why I think I get really sweet feedback.
0:32:38 I got an email a few weeks ago that was like, I didn’t even know this was the medicine I
0:32:38 needed.
0:32:42 And it’s like, girl, I just took your picture and told you that you’re freaking rad, which
0:32:43 is the truth.
0:32:46 She looked cute in her picture and she was so rad.
0:32:49 But it’s like maybe there’s a bigger lesson here about being kinder to each other.
0:32:49 Yeah.
0:32:50 Yeah, I think so.
0:32:57 Yeah, it’s remarkable how sometimes how transformational the sessions can be when it’s like, I’m
0:33:00 just here loving on you, telling you that I see you and accept you and you don’t have to
0:33:04 change because I don’t know you and I’m just taking your picture and I’m just here to tell
0:33:05 you that you’re great as you are.
0:33:07 And I think we just all need to hear that.
0:33:11 And I think that can translate to all sorts of different offerings in any sort of service
0:33:14 offering where you’re just seeing someone and connecting with them.
0:33:18 Do you see a path where this becomes a full time income?
0:33:21 Do you see a path where you don’t need the day job anymore?
0:33:24 I’m really excited for this winter coming up to catch my breath.
0:33:29 Because again, I thought I was going to be spending my first several months like really grinding
0:33:31 and really building a lot of social proof.
0:33:35 And instead, I was kind of just like treading water, like cranking out these sessions.
0:33:40 And so I really crippled myself in like I could have built up my back end significantly
0:33:41 better.
0:33:44 Like I didn’t have a system for sending people follow ups.
0:33:48 I was doing a lot of manual labor that I’ve now automated and will continue to build up.
0:33:52 I am really blessed that I love my day job.
0:33:56 So I’m not planning on leaving, at least within the next several months.
0:34:01 But I do think my first year has given me the proof of it could support me full time,
0:34:04 even in a place in Central Oregon that’s kind of high cost of living.
0:34:05 I could comfortably support myself.
0:34:06 Yeah.
0:34:07 Which is liberating.
0:34:07 Yeah.
0:34:11 And people are like, well, shoot, if I could make five thousand bucks in a weekend and I
0:34:13 could do that even just a couple weekends a month.
0:34:15 But I take the rest of the time off.
0:34:18 People start to get the wheels going a little bit.
0:34:22 On the follow up in the systems, like are there any tools or technology that you rely
0:34:25 on on that front or elsewhere in the business?
0:34:25 Yeah.
0:34:27 My tech slack is pretty basic.
0:34:31 I communicate with people through email and social media.
0:34:34 I do my billing through Stripe.
0:34:35 I started with Square.
0:34:37 Square is really cool for small businesses.
0:34:42 I got a couple loans through Square that I automatically qualified for.
0:34:46 And then to repay the loans, they just take a percentage of your sales going forward.
0:34:47 I found that just like really easy.
0:34:52 And I was able to, in the beginning, like, you know, get that extra like five, six hundred,
0:34:56 fifteen hundred bucks to build out my booth to be a bit better because my first sessions,
0:35:00 my backgrounds for people’s photos was literally my bed sheet.
0:35:03 Like I would get up in the morning and like pull the sheet off my bed.
0:35:06 Now I have some dedicated stuff.
0:35:08 But yeah, the tech stack is pretty basic.
0:35:11 And I’m looking forward to improving that over time because it would save time.
0:35:16 More with Summer in just a moment, including her decision to license her Aura photography
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0:37:37 Talk to me about licensing the software that you’ve built and apparently coded yourself through
0:37:40 to other people who want to do this.
0:37:45 That’s kind of the next stage of the business that you see is, well, I can only be at one
0:37:46 event at a time.
0:37:50 And so there’s an opportunity to open this up as a side hustle to other people.
0:37:51 Yeah.
0:37:55 When I first launched the business, it really wasn’t on my radar, but it’s something that
0:38:01 I kept getting inquiries about, especially in, you know, kind of healing spaces or even just
0:38:08 in the event space when people go to festivals and people who kind of run these things are
0:38:10 always looking for something new and novel.
0:38:11 And this is really new and novel.
0:38:15 So I pause doing events to build the back end for being able to license it to other people.
0:38:20 And I am less than a tenth of the price of the old school camera.
0:38:22 It’s significantly so much cheaper.
0:38:28 And then I do charge $149 a month, which just covers a lot of the tech to like keep things
0:38:33 going so that I can like update it for people every month and they get really good access to
0:38:33 it.
0:38:35 I have a whole Slack channel built out.
0:38:36 So I used to be a wedding florist.
0:38:41 So I have a lot of event experience, which is what made this so exciting for me.
0:38:45 But I pull from my like 15 years of experience in the event industry.
0:38:47 And so I’ve got like a pricing guide.
0:38:48 I charge $44.
0:38:49 You can charge whatever you want.
0:38:53 Like you could build out the offering to include all kinds of other stuff and make it super
0:38:53 expensive.
0:38:55 Or maybe you don’t even print the photo.
0:38:59 You just airdrop it to people and you charge $30 and you, you know, turn them out faster.
0:39:01 Like that might be more profitable.
0:39:07 I’ve got all kinds of guides on like templates for reaching out to markets, templates for reaching
0:39:12 out for people to collaborate on, examples of how I will go to a new town, scrape and find
0:39:13 people that I could pitch to.
0:39:18 And this is like customers of yours who are coming in and being like, I was visiting town
0:39:22 and they were super fans and they wanted to take the next step.
0:39:22 Yeah.
0:39:27 Or like maybe they met me, maybe I traveled to an event in Portland.
0:39:28 They were also traveling in Portland.
0:39:29 They met me there.
0:39:31 They went home to Utah.
0:39:32 I’ve got one girl in Utah.
0:39:35 She asked if I would come do a pop-up at her shop.
0:39:39 And I was like, girl, no, no, I don’t feel like going to Utah.
0:39:42 I have a day job, but she was like, could you teach me?
0:39:47 So that was kind of the catalyst for me being like, okay, I’ve now gotten like 10 direct
0:39:47 inquiries.
0:39:49 So I started building it out.
0:39:52 And I think at some point I might start doing cold outreach for that.
0:39:54 But right now I’m just letting people come to me.
0:39:54 Yeah.
0:39:55 Follow the demand.
0:39:58 That’s an interesting side hustles on side hustles there.
0:39:58 Yeah.
0:40:00 Never would have thought when I first got started at all.
0:40:04 Are there any surprises that come to mind or surprising stories that come out of these
0:40:07 pictures after doing it for half a year now?
0:40:08 Oh my gosh.
0:40:09 All the time.
0:40:13 I could talk to you for three hours about magical experiences that I’ve had.
0:40:18 The first thing is I’ve really improved the offering as I’ve gone along.
0:40:19 Of course, time under pressure.
0:40:21 I’ve gotten better at relating to people.
0:40:26 I’ve gotten more nuanced with how I talk about the colors that show up for people.
0:40:30 You know, I am both woo and skeptic at the same time.
0:40:34 There is part of me that is like, this is just electricity moving around, babe.
0:40:35 And that’s all it is.
0:40:36 And that’s really cool.
0:40:37 And that’s fine.
0:40:40 And then there’s another part of me that’s like, something’s going on.
0:40:41 And I don’t know what’s going on.
0:40:46 My joke that I tell people when some people will be like, oh, are you clairvoyant or something?
0:40:48 I have never claimed to be that.
0:40:49 My joke is, I just work here.
0:40:50 I don’t know.
0:40:50 I’m just telling you what I say.
0:40:51 I just work here.
0:40:52 Yeah, yeah.
0:40:53 Here’s what the camera picked up.
0:40:55 I’m not going to interpret this for you.
0:40:56 Yeah, I don’t know.
0:40:57 I got no control, babe.
0:41:03 One of my favorite stories to tell is from my second market pop-up.
0:41:04 I had a group of people come up.
0:41:08 It was couples and kids, like eight adults and some kids.
0:41:11 And a woman sat for me.
0:41:16 And at that time, so again, I get more data points as I go on.
0:41:21 I see this color in therapists or, oh, I see this color in artists or, you know, whatever.
0:41:27 So by my second pop-up, I did not quite have that well from which to draw.
0:41:30 So I was really just speaking about the colors and their correlations.
0:41:38 So this woman sits for me and she has this really interesting color population over her face and her body that looks really normal.
0:41:45 But then kind of over her solar plexus, her low stomach where she’s seating, there is this little ribbon of white.
0:41:58 And at that point, in coding the software myself, practicing, showing all of the iterations of it, literally thousands of times because I have anxiety, I had never seen the white populate in that ribbon like that.
0:42:06 So I kind of stumbled through and I kind of just honestly say, I’ve seen this color in like kids and animals, but I’ve never seen it on a grown-up.
0:42:07 And it’s only populating low like that.
0:42:10 I coded this crap and I didn’t even know it could do that.
0:42:12 Like, I didn’t know what to tell her.
0:42:16 And I was expecting this to kind of break the moment and she’d want a refund, which is fine.
0:42:18 But we get to the end of her session.
0:42:27 She tells me that she is 12 weeks pregnant, which is just this fascinating, you’re picking up on baby energy in a very baby zone of a woman’s body.
0:42:29 And, you know, at 12 weeks, she’s not showing yet.
0:42:31 The ribbon was also green as well.
0:42:37 At the end of this group is a man who has green as the prominent color for his aura.
0:42:42 His group, they all start cackling the green that was also populating over her stomach.
0:42:43 He is her husband.
0:42:46 So everyone was joking like, oh, we know what’s going on here.
0:42:48 It’s the aura paternity test.
0:42:49 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:42:49 Yeah.
0:42:51 So that was a really fun one.
0:42:53 Again, I’m not a therapist.
0:42:54 I’m not a clairvoyant.
0:42:58 I’m just someone who loves people and saw a gap in the market.
0:43:03 And I’m really honest with people that I didn’t create this because I’m someone who thinks I see auras.
0:43:07 I’m someone who created this because I thought this would be a really cool experience for you.
0:43:08 And I hope that you love it.
0:43:09 You know, that’s kind of my angle.
0:43:11 I’m always very honest about that.
0:43:16 But sometimes there might be little orbs and maybe they’ll be on a masculine side or a feminine side.
0:43:22 And I might gently say, maybe you can interpret this as just you having really good boundaries or this looking really beautiful.
0:43:29 Or this could be, you know, kind of a masculine figure kind of quite literally on your shoulder taking good care of you or feminine or whatever.
0:43:33 And sometimes it brings up these magical moments of people of like, oh, my God, I lost my dad.
0:43:36 But I had a dream about him last night and it’s, you know, populating on the masculine side.
0:43:40 There’s been really cool, very touching, magical experiences for sure.
0:43:42 And I don’t know what to make of them myself.
0:43:43 And that’s okay.
0:43:45 I love that pregnancy story.
0:43:45 That’s really cool.
0:43:47 Yeah, that one was really fun.
0:43:48 Well, what’s next?
0:43:49 We’ve got the licensing.
0:43:50 We’ve got some upcoming events.
0:43:51 Where do you want to take this thing?
0:44:01 So I’ve been focusing on the licensing for other practitioners, but I’ve also tweaked all of my stuff so that now I can offer remote sessions at home.
0:44:04 And those have been really cool.
0:44:06 I’m getting a few a week for some reason.
0:44:08 Thank you to the people who find me.
0:44:08 I don’t know how you do.
0:44:10 What a good marketing problem to have.
0:44:12 People are coming, but I don’t know how they found me.
0:44:13 It’s got to be word of mouth, right?
0:44:14 You would assume.
0:44:15 Yeah, it’s got to be.
0:44:18 I just don’t know how the first person finds me to tell the other people.
0:44:19 Sure, sure.
0:44:20 We’ll figure that out one day.
0:44:31 So not only is the pricing really accessible at $44 rather than the over $100, there are a lot of people who are these curious, energetic seekers or just people wanting to try something new.
0:44:34 This doesn’t have to go on your altar.
0:44:35 You know what I mean?
0:44:39 It can just be trying to experience something new, trying to find a new mirror to look into.
0:44:43 My remote sessions, a lot of the people who are booking me are in the Midwest.
0:44:45 I’ve got a ton of girlies in Ohio.
0:44:47 Shouts out to my Cleveland girlies.
0:44:52 I’ve got tons of people in like parts of Georgia and then kind of the Great Lakes region.
0:44:57 And what I think is someone travels to a festival, gets a session with me in person, they take it home.
0:44:59 I’m assuming that’s how that’s going on.
0:44:59 Okay.
0:45:04 But offering the remote sessions has been really fun.
0:45:12 And getting all of these people booking me from the Great Lakes, from the Midwest, from the South or whatever, shows me that this is really ubiquitous.
0:45:14 People are kind of wanting this everywhere.
0:45:16 Yeah, that’s kind of cool.
0:45:17 It’s expanding.
0:45:17 People are into it.
0:45:21 SomaLumen.com is where you can find more about summer.
0:45:23 SomaLumen.com slash guide.
0:45:28 That’s S-O-M-A-L-U-M-I-N.
0:45:30 SomaLumen.com slash guide.
0:45:35 Use promo code HUSTLE for $100 off if you want to bring this to your hometown.
0:45:37 Do aura photography as your next side hustle.
0:45:41 Let’s wrap this up with your number one tip for Side Hustle Nation.
0:45:42 Start.
0:45:43 Start.
0:45:44 Just do it.
0:45:46 Do it imperfectly.
0:45:47 Do it ugly.
0:45:48 And fix it later.
0:45:53 And people will be so excited to receive you because starting is so brave and hard.
0:45:54 And you can do it.
0:45:54 Yes.
0:45:55 What’s the line?
0:45:58 You don’t have to be great to start, but you got to start to be great.
0:45:59 That’s something that comes up quite a bit.
0:46:00 Yeah.
0:46:00 I like that.
0:46:02 I appreciate you sharing all this stuff.
0:46:04 This has been really eye-opening.
0:46:05 I think it’s a really cool creative business.
0:46:08 A couple takeaways from me before we wrap.
0:46:12 Number one is this strategy of going after these strategic partnerships.
0:46:14 Well, where are my target customers already hanging out?
0:46:17 How can I get in front of large groups of them all at once?
0:46:20 You know, it’s going to be, you know, hard for me to raise my hand or try and shout into
0:46:22 the void of social media.
0:46:27 So instead, I’m going to go to the retail shops or the boutiques or the yoga studios or
0:46:31 whatever it is, or the farmer’s markets or the festivals and like get in front of a lot
0:46:31 of people.
0:46:35 And I don’t have to convert every one of them, but even just a small percentage is going
0:46:38 to add up and cover my costs really low overhead way to do it.
0:46:43 And then the second thing that stood out is this experience marketing where it’s not a
0:46:44 picture.
0:46:45 You’re selling an experience.
0:46:50 And I think that can apply really across a lot of different businesses, like make it less
0:46:52 transactional and more transformational.
0:46:54 And I think you’re going to be in a good place there.
0:46:57 Now I’ve got a free listener bonus for you for tuning in.
0:46:59 It is my big list of 101 service business ideas.
0:47:02 You can probably apply some of Summer’s tactics too.
0:47:08 You can download that for free at sidehustlenation.com slash aura, A-U-R-A, or just follow the show
0:47:10 notes link in the episode description.
0:47:11 It’ll get you right over there.
0:47:12 Big thanks to Summer for sharing her insight.
0:47:16 Thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone.
0:47:21 Sidehustlenation.com slash deals is where to go for all the latest offers from those sponsors
0:47:22 in one place.
0:47:22 That is it for me.
0:47:25 Thank you so much for tuning in until next time.
0:47:27 Let’s go out there and make something happen.
0:47:30 And I’ll catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle Show.
What if you could earn $5,000 in a single weekend taking rainbow-colored portraits that help people feel seen and valued?
This year, Summer Ray built an aura photography business. She creates portraits that visualize someone’s energy field—and commands $44 per session.
From somalumin.com, Summer has earned $70,000 in just six months while keeping her full-time job.
If you’ve never heard of aura photography before, that’s totally fine.
But whether you believe in energy fields or not, Summer’s strategic approach to building this business offers valuable lessons for any event-based side hustle.
Tune in to Episode 707 of the Side Hustle Show to learn:
- how strategic partnerships with local businesses created immediate customer flow
- what makes customers willing to pay $44 for a 10-minute experience
- creative ways to turn a weekend into $5,000 in revenue
(Learn more about Soma Lumin Guide program — use promo code HUSTLE for $100 off!)
Full Show Notes: $70k on the Side in 6 months with Aura Photography
New to the Show? Get your personalized money-making playlist here!
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About The Side Hustle Show
This is the entrepreneurship podcast you can actually apply!
The award-winning small business show covers the best side hustles and side hustle ideas. We share how to start a business and make money online and offline, including online business, side gigs, freelancing, marketing, sales funnels, investing, and much more.
Join 100,000+ listeners and get legit business ideas and passive income strategies straight to your earbuds. No BS, just actionable tips on how to start and grow your side hustle.
Hosted by Nick Loper of Side Hustle Nation.
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