The story of Studio Builder.

KPR | Kevin Patrick Robbins

Hi! I’m Kevin, but everyone calls me KPR because, well, it’s the most creative nickname ever. I’m a professional photographer based in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada and, yes, I am one of those people whose had a camera in his hands most of his life. Maybe just like you.

I am a perfectionist who hates doing anything more than once. My biggest pet peeve is people who waste my time and, until recently, I absolutely hated being unproductive. One of the blessings of the COVID-19 pandemic is that it’s forced me to take time to breathe and focus on self care, things that aren’t strictly tied to my business, like Studio Builder.

Because my photography business ground to an absolute halt — in Ontario we weren’t even permitted to work — I had the time to meditate and think about the things I really love to do and, to my suprise, photography was not at athe top of the list. What really gets my fire going is helping other people.

Before I was a professional photographer, I founded and ran an improv comedy company in Toronto for 12 years, where I taught THOUSANDS of people how to better create, collaborate, and communicate with each other.

Running that businesses virtually game me an MBA in how to bootstrap a company together on a shoestring budget. More importantly, I learned how to teach and educate people of all walks of life, learning styles, and abilities. I had to meet them where they were at in their development and connect with them in a way that inspired them instead of letting them feel like a failure.

In improv, as in life and business, you cannot fail if you understand that growth and development is an incremental process. In software development and project management, they call this agile. “It advocates adaptive planning, evolutionary development, early delivery, and continual improvement, and it encourages flexible responses to change.”

I don’t miss running that company, but damn do I miss teaching!

It’s been more than seven years since I shut down that company and focused on photography full time. In that short time, I’ve been the chair of my regional branch of the Professional Photographers of Canada, run a local meetup for photography professionals, and was the professional development director for the Professional Photographers of Canada. I’ve taught full-day workshops to my colleagues on running Facebook to generate leads. When I shut everything at the beginning of March I was getting more than 120 leads a month for my wedding photography business and had to cancel 12 scheduled client meetings.

I’ve been building websites since 1994, studying SEO since 2004, using Facebook ads since they first existed, shooting headshots for 10 years, and photographing people for the covers of magazines since 2014. All the skills I’ve developed through my previous careers have led me to this podcast. I’ve been thinking about this podcast, or something like it, for a couple of years and now seemed like the exact right time to get it started.

I’m really excited to share what I know with you, to continue to learn from you and with you, and to help you grow your photography business in way that doesn’t feel overwhelming — one short session at a time.

We’re going to approach this show the same way we approach a photo shoot: we’re going to discuss what we need to do, we’re going to act on it, and then we’re going to take time to process the outcome and fine tune the results.

Let’s get to work!