 Welcome back to Geeks are Sexy. I'm Jason Laduke. I'm your host for the fourth Friday of March and the fourth Friday of every month where you talk about business success and the things you need to do to be successful in Las Vegas. Continuing with our theme or actually starting with our theme today of branding and how to visually and graphically represent your business and yourself in the best possible light. My first guest is Casey Jade. She's a Las Vegas based photographer who loves people and capturing their beauty and true essence. She's here on this beautiful planet to do great things, capture humanity and make waves. Casey, welcome. Thank you for joining us today in Geeks are Sexy. Absolutely. I absolutely agree with the Geeks are Sexy thing and I am happy to be a guest. Thank you for being here. So let's jump right into it. Tell us how you came to be a photographer. I was an operations manager in the retail electronics field for a while and I miss I really miss going to school. So I sat down with my mom to have a conversation one day telling her that I missed learning. And she suggested that I go to school for photography and there was kind of no backing on that. I did. I had never played with any film cameras. I only had those little wind up ones with the flash that you kind of. So did she just look around the room like saw cameras like I don't know photography just the only basis she had was from me taking those little disposable cameras everywhere with me during summer camp. Okay, so that was I guess because I had started and started in theater and then psychology and then I thought about teaching and those stuck so with all of those marked off all very lucrative professions by the way. Absolutely. I needed something more creative than that. So she bought me my first DSLR and I paid it off on her credit card monthly into with interest because I'm awesome. And I love my mom the first day that I did commercial photography classes at college. I had no idea how to even turn the thing on. Okay, it was so much fun. I I dealt really deep really fast. I fell in love with all of the aspects and there's a lot more science and math that goes into photography than I thought. There really is. There's a lot. There's a lot of science and math and I learned photography back in the film days. So it's back when it was about silver nitrates and chemicals and and you know all the rays and light you know mirrors and all kinds other stuff and I'm sure a lot of that still applies today. Well, thank you. Thank your mom for us for for getting you on this path of becoming a photographer and I've seen your work and you need to check out the KCGA photo Instagram page. If you want to see some really great photography done here in the Las Vegas area and we'll talk a little about the kinds of photography you do. But I want to I want to go back to something you said about as you learned about photography. There were a lot of aspects of Pealdi. What's your favorite aspect about photography? That I get to tell a story and bring any element that I want into the photo with photography with Photoshop with everything. I love being able to tell a story and I love being able to build confidence in people and help them change their lives by building their confidence by them seeing themselves in a different light. That's great. And so that leads us right into the kind the kinds of photography you do and tell us a little about that. Tell us about who your clients are, who the clients you'd like to work with are and the kinds of photography you like to do to build their confidence and to tell their story. I empower women in the two places that they need at most the their businesses and their bedrooms. So I do business and branding photography as well as Boudoir photography which for those of you who don't know what that word means it is French for in the bedroom. And that's that's kind of a unique combination right is you don't hear you hear about photographers who would do portrait and Boudoir and modeling kind of photography. And then you hear about commercial photographers who work a lot of business things and they might work marketing campaigns that kind of where they're taking the pictures of the burgers before they go they go out in the print ad and that kind of thing. And those are two very different kinds of photography two very different commercial photography businesses that you found a way to blend together and what what is it about those two what what blends together in your mind with those two businesses. Well everything is all about confidence and consistency so with business if you don't have any confidence in yourself you're not going to go far if you don't have consistent imagery. Excuse me if you don't have any professional or consistent imagery you're going to look like Roberto's instead of Wolfgang Puck. Okay. So when it comes to being professional and having confidence in yourself in your business that's huge that all stems from who you are in the bedroom. I know not a lot of people talk about bedroom stuff but if you can feel confident in yourself stemming from who you are in the bedroom when you are in a lovely silk robe and you can feel good about yourself there that actually transfers to all the other arenas of your life so I love bringing those two together and helping women see that they can do whatever they want with just a bit of confidence and knowing that they are all that they need to be already. That's great. It ties back so much to what we talk so many things we talk about on the show a lot of times you talk about coaching people for business on the show and we find that some of the root causes of the things they struggle with in their business have to do with things that are a little bit more tied into their personal life and we have to find ways to work on the business problem. At the same time helping them solve that problem in their personal life that root cause in their personal life and it's sometimes hard to get past that it sounds like you do a very similar thing. You help especially women develop their confidence to go out and be successful business women by addressing that let's build up your confidence in a different way. And especially with Boudoir photography that's a very personal thing and a lot of when I first started niching that way a lot of the pushback that I got was in 10 pounds or when I have the money or a lot of these kind of limiting beliefs that they try to tell themselves. So what I try to instill in everyone is that you are your perfect self right now and if you want to invest in yourself that's the best thing for you to invest in. So that's why I came up with an all inclusive photography experience that makes you look and feel your best. It takes you from wardrobe styling, hair and makeup, luxury handmade album, hotel suite, champagne for bubbles and me to guide you through every single lighting trick and pose to make all of your favorite aspects of yourself and attributes shine and to hide things that you may not want highlighted so well. And that's something something else as I read your bio and I was looking through your website is doing prep for the show today. One of the great things I saw as I was putting all this together to get my prep done today was you talk to people about seeing you the real you and this is a really unique town. This is not something that everyone has and not even every photographer has and I want to I want to understand I want our clients to understand as you put together these all inclusive experiences for them. How does this help you as a photographer and how does it help your clients when you see the real them? Well, I'm sure all of you have seen the the family portraits that get done at JC Penney with everybody just smiling and kind of holding the pat. Hello, this is Toto this smile. This is not me. This is just okay. We're taking a picture right now. Are you ready? And that's not your personality. Every one of us has certain poses that we feel comfortable in every one of us make certain faces during while we're conversating. So the first thing that I do with my clients when I'm meeting with them is I just ask them about themselves what they love about this life. And I see like I see that you're leaning with your elbow right there. That's a comfortable pose for you. I would see that and I would like I would figure out the faces that you make so I could figure out what what you actually look like when you're happy. And when you're actually laughing and when you're actually interested in thinking so that I could bring those out in the photography that we're going to do. So I try to bring personality into the photo and actually see the soul of the person instead of just the cheesy smile from JC Penney. Okay. Yeah. And that's that is something that you don't see from every photographer, whether you're talking about from JC Penney all the way up to very high and very expensive photographers. They're not they're not always that invested in making sure your personality comes through and that's very important when you're getting photography work done for yourself. And it's especially important when you're getting that photography work done to market yourself, your brand and your business. And I think that's great that you're bringing that forward. So so tell us a little more about these all inclusive experiences. You sit down and you have a consult with the client before you do this. But what when they show up, what do they need to bring? What do they need to prepare before they come to a session with you? If they choose to do the all inclusive experience, they literally have to do nothing except show up. All they have to do is come with a clean face and clean hair and they will get the absolute rest taken care of. They will have clothes waiting for them. They will have a professional hair and makeup team waiting for them will have snacks throughout the day. Literally hit the easy button. They literally have to do nothing to prepare except if they have any inspiration images for what they want their hair and makeup to look like from that team. Or if there was anything that they really wanted to show me as an inspiration for something that they want to accomplish during the day. So it's a real Las Vegas rock star experience that you that you put people through. Absolutely. That's what I've been trying. Very cool. Well, I do have a couple more questions for you. I want to make sure that we do get our viewers to know to know where they can find you. But before we dig into that, I want to know what's your biggest lesson you've learned from being a professional photographer? Because this is something you've been doing for a few years now, but it's not where you envisioned your career going when you first started. So what have you learned as you've made this transition? I have learned a lot. When I first started my photography business, I knew a lot about photography and not a lot about business. So it's really easy to do what you know. It's really hard to leave your comfort zone and do the business thing. So I've been learning. I've been reading podcasts. I've been reading podcasts. I've been listening to podcasts, reading a lot of books, listening to them on audible. One of the most important lessons I think as a business owner, I've learned is to value yourself and to know that everybody has something to offer this world. And you have to really focus on what you're passionate about and what you would do even if you weren't getting paid for it. And that's what you should get paid for. I've always loved talking to people. I was a bartender for seven years before that and then operations retail management. So I've always loved helping people. I've always loved talking to people, but I couldn't be a psychologist because it was too empathetic. It's hard to leave it behind. Exactly. I love bringing out the best in people. I had to leave bartending because I was so sad watching so many people come in with the same stories, throwing their wallets into all of the machines, and then drinking their lives away. I wanted to have a positive impact on the community and the world. All right. So besides this show, which I know is your favorite, your new favorite, that I know you would recommend to everybody. Absolutely. What's your pick for a podcast or a book that our viewers who might be starting a business or want to start a business or have had a business for a while and are looking for something to read or listen to? My absolute favorite top podcast is actually another girl based out of Vegas, Amber De La Garza. She does the productivity straight talk show. Literally actionable steps in every single podcast that make you want to go take action in your business and be a better business owner and be more productive with books. I think the four hour work week, if you have a product based business by Tim Ferriss, I think that is an absolutely outstanding book. And even if you have a service based business, you can still have a lot of key takeaways from that. And the third one would be how to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie. I keep that on hand at all times. I reread it constantly. It was written in the 30s, I believe. 20s or 30s. It's been around for a long time. Still just as true today as it was back then. Millions and millions of copies and it is very true to today. All right. Awesome. Well, we're running out of time for the segment. So tell our viewers where they can get a hold of you and how they can book one of your all-inclusive packages. Well, as he said already, the Instagram is at KCJDphoto, C-A-S-E-Y-J-A-D-E-P-H-O-T-O. And also my website is www.KCJDphoto, spelled the same way, dot com. All right. Well, we'll be right back with Anna and Rachel from Averly West Marketing. I'm Jason Laduke from Evil Genius Leadership Consultants. This is Geeks Are Sexy. Stick around for a few minutes. We'll be right back with our next guest.