Dean Sanderson, Dean Sanderson Wedding Photography: Wedding photography business and lifestyle imagery in Cancún, México

everyone welcome to another edition of founder wisdom podcast today with us we have dean sanderson he is the founder of dean sanderson wedding photography so he's a top photographer and it's a physical edition of the podcast i'm not used to those um we often do them online so it was quite a setup today like at least 10 to 15 minutes to find this place and then another

10 to 15 for the equipment set up but i'm glad to have you here dean um today we're we're gonna talk about a lot of interesting stuff so yeah maybe introduce yourself to our audience tell us what you do and we'll take it from there my name is dean sanderson i'm a photographer originally from canada i moved to mexico nearly 10 years ago shoot photograph mostly weddings

we have well now post covid we have photographers two videographers essentially different crews um full-time retoucher it's it's an interesting time for the business because we're just getting going on to like almost a regeneration because covet turned everything upside down and stopped it so yeah interesting time since how much time have you been doing photography and since how much time have you been doing photography in mexico

in cancun i was doing photography about seven or eight years before i got here so i would say all told about 18 20 years wow 18 20 years why did you come to cancun mexico um i just started coming down because the weather was better i was living in toronto i was trying to do commercial work up there to be frank i wasn't being very successful and i was getting the odd wedding here so i decided that why don't i stay here and i'll go up to the commercial work start promoting myself more here i saw a segment of the market that wasn't being helped and so what customers wanted and built a business around that pretty cool and let's say so five to seven years in mexico is that right in canada seven to

ten seven to ten so how is cancun different from the canadian landscape in terms of business when i was doing wedding photography i was mostly in vancouver canada yeah so two big things one the season is a lot shorter in vancouver we're looking at four months five months okay here we're looking at 10 to 12 months about 10 to 11. it's almost 12 now but um but we do have some slow times we have christmas pretty much nothing um stuff like that so yeah we're probably around 10 months a year we're shooting so it's a lot more active a lot longer time so that's one of the big things and two it's not all weekends we have the odd weekday shoot and it's just different challenges it's like

well completely different country and like i saw a couple of weddings on the the beaches here i saw some baby showers i mean cancun seems to be like a place that people celebrate these uh types of events does that mean more business or more competition how's the the landscape here means both but it was like that in vancouver i think you know there's photography um it's one

of those things that a lot of people want to do and they aspire to do it and they love so they they want to try to make a business out of it so you have a lot of competition in that amateur pro-amateur sort of range and then other people who really want to do it and starting to do business and just don't know how to do business and they can sometimes be complicated competition because they uneducate the clients essentially which can be challenging and then we have a lot of just competition not to mention down here we have different regulations and rules and resorts and what they will allow and what they will not allow and so every year we get new surprises but we also get a larger market every year because there's three

new resorts every year it seems wow i didn't know that cancun was still growing in turn in terms of tourism you know i think well in my mind my parents have celebrated their honeymoon in cancun you know and i thought that you know cancun had it's its high days um at that time maybe tulum was a bit in terms of uh development in terms of tourism i think tulum is growing right now is cancun still growing as much nowadays i wouldn't be the one really to know to ask i can only know that one it's two statistics that i know of which is one cancun airport which would include people flying in from tulum it's grown about 10 per year for the last 10 years which is incredible compound growth yeah and the number of

hotel rooms in cancun in the last five years i think there was a calculation someone told me around eight thousand more well i've got more i think that's a very minor estimate there's a whole new um the last five years they put in a whole new um hotel zone to the market yeah and we see new new condo growth here the place that we are right now marina puerto cancun is growing so i think it's people that are staying more long-term and less like tourists for example so that's pretty cool i can see that growing an important step as well has been that since coven mexico is one of the only country that allowed people in without that much restrictions you know so i think that has helped you for for sure um in the

whole in the whole world touristically drink of it mexico has been the country that has had the most uh tourism so i mean that that's pretty cool in terms of um you know the competition yes there's a lot of people here that do photography how does your business uh distinguish itself from the others i think um we do something specific we do lifestyle imagery and i think

that you know creating a niche and sticking with a is you know it's important unless you are going to have unless you have very deep pockets and you go for a very big market then that's it and in the wedding photography business wedding photography itself is a niche so you're a niche within a niche within a leash type of thing and i think that the more you

specialize the more the customer knows what you do the more you can charge for that product or service and i think that grows with every business i don't think it's solely in photography niching is the way like just today i was talking with employees of my business i do cold email for example for b2b right and i want to niche down in crypto so if i niche

down in crypto for example that places me with like five competitors worldwide yeah so that's crazy in terms of cancun yeah so let's say that there's probably 10 20 other wedding photographers 30 40. what what's the scale here other wedding photographers yeah yeah you can add zeros how much at least 400 500. holy [ __ ] i didn't know that and then if you niche down in lifestyle i mean you're pretty much like five or ten yeah it depends see there's probably about seven or eight of us doing it well okay i think yeah doing it well yeah because there's like say and then the others interesting now the competition here is it's not it's not minor okay yeah another

thing too is we we're dealing often with a client who's their first wedding for the most part even if it's their second if they're it's the second time usually they're hiring a photographer so they really don't know what they're doing until they get educated yeah but you know and and and you educate somebody by discovering what they want you know and it's through that process of discovery

that you learn whether or not you're a fit or not a fit and i think that's ultimately what my aim and my business is to is to find clients who are ready to get married make the decision to buy a product that i sell and then get them into a discovery situation where we can discover what they want and if what they want and what i do match then i ask them to sign a contract okay so is that how it works do you invite them to a restaurant then you chat with them how does the demo and discovery session works all my clients are from uh uk canada or the us okay how do they discover you in first place uh via email yeah well via not email but via the website seo search

engine on google yeah and we run some ads as well okay and through that we uh try to educate them on what we do i do have two other photographers who do slightly different things because the thing is the other thing i believe in is authenticity um within the market and it's something because because before i had another photographer who did lifestyle like myself and we could

sell the same thing uh using two different people depending on who was available and now being that i can't find that other person we've gone to we're going to a different model they should a little different so i said tell them these other options are available and um and it works so so just answer your question we we find them you know through you know advertising uh

social media and seo facebook ads insta ads you do a lot of that or mostly google uh probably google would be more than uh the facebook instagram ads but i think it's all important yeah you have to um be careful with your advertising dollars yeah i'm just curious on the the keywords you advertise for uh wedding photography in cancun or because you you said in uk right

and in canada or do you go for expensive keywords such as wedding photography which must cost a ton in canada or u.s the thing is is that if you go for if you go for non-specific especially in this market what happens is um it's actually probably easier to describe on uh facebook so facebook if you're a photographer in chicago you can easily advertise to newly engaged people

in chicago about wedding photography it makes sense but if i target newly engaged people in chicago for wedding photography only one percent of them are going to have a destination wedding in cancun exactly so it's incredibly expensive yeah so and nonsensical so that's why i say you do need to be strategic and understanding about your um your seo you know and and to be honest that is

complicated enough that i have a full-time consultant on it 100 understood i'm thinking you know wedding photography abroad for example because they still haven't chosen their destination but they know they want a beach for example yeah and then you still have to be careful where you're in this case i guess potential client like where they are in the process psychologically okay you know um because you just

have to watch where they are in the adopting cycle and what you're going to do with them because in my opinion uh since mexico has been one of the only countries opening his border drink that's about to change am i wrong in saying that this was an opportunity in the last two years since it's one of the only country that has opened its border i want my

wedding at the beach i'm tired of this environment wearing a mask and you know being stuck in my condo in canada let's say i want to get out was there an opportunity during those two years since you were in mexico actually no the opposite the opposite so what happened here during covid all closed down when it opened up um the tour companies private tour companies were slammed

oh yeah yeah i know that but destination weddings is about asking all of your family members to get on a plane and go somewhere okay so you're not gonna get it happening only now are we starting to see it turn around okay but with that said it was a weird year in 2021 so i didn't shoot actually probably probably at 25 30 level normal but we would have weddings of 20 people and we would have weddings of 120 people because either you got the people either you got a group of people who like friends didn't want to come because it was coveted or you got the friends who were like yeah i just want to get out of the country you're giving me an excuse i mean yeah you know and those people all showed up to weddings and you would end up with 120.

so you can imagine friends have like friends so you know when word of mouth for you well no yeah no i mean no what i mean is like from the cove perspective right so people who were happy to travel and weren't worried about covid would have friends that were like that and they would end up with these huge weddings and they'd be complaining to me saying my

wedding suddenly blew up to 150 people and i can't get anybody and people still want to keep coming does that work for you more complicated if more people are more complicated but it's not horrible it's not that bad you have upsells like could you make more money let's say if they did you sell them a wedding how much should i pay you let's say if i hire

you for my wedding which is in a year how much should i pay you somewhere between 2000 and 2500 for photography only okay for videography you're looking at somewhere three to four thousand dollars is my price points which is fine yeah canadian or usd us dollars okay yeah that's better okay um do you have ways to upsell people let's say we're at the wedding and because for

example okay um told you that i do iron mans and a business that has been kind of getting my attention for the wrong reasons is i forgot the name but they take your pictures at iron man's right and they sell it afterwards and you know they they charge ridiculous price like 100 usd for like three images and they they don't even deliver their full thing their ai

technology doesn't identify my face well and so forth i forgot their name i won't call them out but um i think it's a fascinating business because in cozumel there's 2 000 people 100 it starts at 100 right so i mean that that's like 200k right there and then with the upsells they can easily go at 2 million per event um so i'm wondering if you have this

kind of package in which you take you could take pictures of people during the wedding and ask them or does that does that doesn't make any sense because the owner pays for everything and everyone gets their pictures yeah i think what you're describing doesn't sound very luxurious it doesn't sound luxurious but it sounds profitable as a business owner yeah and and we provide a so a luxury

experience isn't one where you're going to get nailed with costs afterwards yeah i think a luxury experience is one where you you paid and you don't have to worry about more um you know and and there isn't really an opportunity for that because we should be taking those photos anyhow in my opinion um i don't think we should you know i think if if we want to

upsell on people we can you know work with products like wedding albums or prints for their walls or fine art stuff rather than trying to go for you know charging people 100 because they were dancing at a wedding you know yeah well i mean i could i could foresee something like that because it kind of leads to my next question which is the trend of tick tock

and instagram and everyone wants their stories and their photos on their insta profile have you seen this lately in your business and how have you integrated it in your business you also provide digital format optimized for instagram profiles of people how has this changed in the digital years it's changed a lot we don't necessarily offer an optimized one but the photos that we do they kind of

are correctly done because we know that people are gonna put where they're gonna put them so we just make them a decent size make them make sense so there's that and then um so i guess we kind of do yeah and it's ever changing in the digital world to be honest with you like it's it's one of those things it's like tick-tock is one that i've tried to stay away from but we do you know we're looking into creating i'm looking into creating more reels and figuring out how to you know create those products um the one thing that has changed the laws we've gone from having our videos be three to five minutes at the like at the very shortest and now people want a 30 uh 30 to 60 second video of their

wedding this is like a real kind of a compilation of the [ __ ] thing yeah that's the reel of their wedding okay yeah because i mean they want to show that to their children's like my parents now at the age that i'm at i want to see their wedding pictures and see like how it has been i guess that's part of the experience and the way you describe your business is like lifestyle so it's in the moment i've read on your website and that's also my philosophy with pictures you know it's not about looking at the camera and smiling anymore it's just catching the moment how hard is it to catch that moment i don't think it's that difficult but when i try to get other people to do it apparently it is well

that's called a superpower my friend i don't know if it's a superpower but how do you do it it's frustrating when people aren't doing it properly but i don't know it's um i don't know to be honest with you um because there's like i always say it's it's the it's that french term the gender of a photo you just don't know how to describe why it is that this photo is perfect and there are technical reasons um you know converging lines all the you know triangles all these different like technical reasons you can describe a photograph and once you know those and practice those regularly they become innate but then there's there's always a photo where the expression and everything is perfect and it breaks one or two rules and it's always amazing because it's

almost like a photograph that follows all of the rules almost turns a little dead you know even when it's amazing but one that just had to break one rule or something where you're like oh it's all perfect and then you're like this is not working technically but you look at the photograph and everybody loves it you know that's the thing too is a great photograph doesn't really

need to be described people know it when they see you know the problem is that it's about not everyone has a discerning eye so there's other people say like i think you know i think this is a great photograph and other people will come down to here and say everything from here up is a great photograph right so but once you i don't know it's one of those things i guess it's experience and i guess what you're talking about is mastery so let's say in my field cold email copywriting um i break i'm at the stage which i break rules right now and people love it you know because i mastered all the rules of the previous best copywriters there is like i guess that's that's part of it to need to break something and

reinvent it once you're at some level i'm curious as per you know like when i copyright i have my specific state that i get in you know and i don't write um good until i'm probably 300 or a thousand words in and then i get in this semi-flow state i consume caffeine as well to get me in that state do you get in a flow state yourself once you are at a wedding you have a specific recipe to get in that state no it's funny because see what you're describing is controlling your environment at a wedding i'm not in control of the environment per se i still take control but yeah there is there's a little something i do in my head when i'm taking photographs and it it it's about just having a sense

of gratitude and then things start to flow so what things are are you great because there's multiple gratitude techniques is it just like i feel the air on my skin i'm at the beach i'm with beautiful people i'm doing what i love sometimes there's not enough air on the skin but yesterday it was just really hot yeah um really because i put them in the shade and

ice hand in the sun so it's very hot for me um but no it's just you know grateful for what i'm doing just you know i don't know how to describe it well i mean it's just something that i do it's just a feeling i have you know this is a feeling i i try to express you know and then and then i try to i try to read the people and everybody needs something different you know and that's one of the nice things about wedding photography is that no two days are really the same because even if you photograph a you know wedding at the same resort in the same kind of hotel rooms and the same location you know a week apart they're going to be completely different because the people are completely

different no matter what and the dress the bride the flowers the groom the suit the groomsmen the number of bridesmaids the number of groomsmen all of that are going to change you know the family dynamic the mums what they want heirlooms like all of that changes every single wedding so it's different you know and yeah it's i don't know how to describe it but so you but

but i just get into it get into a bit of a zone you know naturally i guess with like that much years doing it i have this kind of thing and my dad has it too he's an entrepreneur and he fantasize about his restaurant not to make money because restaurants are money losing businesses like here these restaurants i mean they're luxurious they pay a shit-ton of rent

and yeah like in five years most of them won't be here anymore um but for the the flow and the the passion of serving people and creating moments and living these experiences with people they celebrate birthdays and restaurants they celebrate magic moments you're like in the business of experiences and magic and being there with those people so first my first question is it was that on purpose

is that why you chose wedding photography and the second question is do you still feel that magic even now to this day or you're coming kind of immunized and it's like oh just another wedding no i i don't think i i think if it ever gets to it's just another wedding i'll quit shooting and i i do want to reduce the number i'm shooting because sometimes i

i feel like that either on the way there or on the way back if we're at the wedding um but you know what's funny is i didn't really ever want to get into wedding photography okay it was kind of like i did it because it was somewhere i could get in and start making some money and i kind of fell in love with the idea of wedding photography it was when i came down when i was in vancouver i enjoyed it i liked it when i got here and it started providing me the kind of life that i wanted to live and i became more grateful for it that's when things kind of changed you know what funny things do we see at weddings because it's a sacred moment it's two souls uniting together um

you've you've talked to me last conversation we had about interesting things do sometimes thoughts come up in your head like oh these two are not gonna last or this is a [ __ ] mess you know like these these folks are just crazy and like what goes on in your mind once at your at uh wedding uh like that and what kind of events do happen there i've only ever had one wedding that was cursed from his vows on um he's a funny wedding he's a quebecois people really yeah yeah and his vows were all about how he couldn't live without her he completed her it was like he took every cheesy movie line and put him in his mouth and you can almost just see her shoulders go down while he was saying it

you know i don't know i just felt like her energy just kind of left that and it was painful yeah it was sad and her dad was a psychologist working at a university i think it was a psychotic psychiatrist a psychiatrist like a psychiatrist he was a psychology teacher teacher of psychology a professor i believe and she was a facebook friend of mine and i think it

was within six months later she put up a post that she was in a new relationship oh man and i remember the first or third comment somewhere there was someone someone wrote already and i was like oh also at the wedding um she lit these um their paper lanterns and you light them and you release them and the ideas that they they take your love away so that it will always come back sort of thing right so it's very symbolic of the love and relationship between the couple and she was lighting hers and it got windy and hers burnt up before she was even able to let it go so i grabbed hers and handed her mine and she some reason they gave me one i was like shouldn't i be taking photos but whatever

and then another guests one got caught in a palm tree and it was one of the very first times i saw like like like security in mexico like really worried because this pumpkin looked like it was gonna catch on fire and finally it went out um it was really quite funny well it was funny afterwards dramatic yeah in the moment watching this palm tree on fire thinking

the whole resort gonna go up in fire like we don't have hoses on the beach like what are we gonna do you know like we're gonna lose all the palm trees on the beach like so you're thinking this is not really that good but the palm tree obviously carries a lot of water and didn't catch on fire so um so anyhow they went off hers burnt up which yeah so the letting her love thing whatever symbolized didn't progress and then six months later i swear it was six months later she uh six months man that's so humiliating especially on facebook like can't you wait a little and do it a bit more subtly no idea but i think i i don't know i i'm not going to judge you know i i i because she's

still a facebook friend she actually he's still a facebook friend as well yeah yeah i think so um i'm pretty sure he is yeah and the new guy looks really nice she has babies they're married she's happy and then about two or three years later i saw him going on a trip about self-discovery about himself and he was sharing a little more t-shirt on social media yeah

you know the type where it's like you know they're i feel for the guy too bad your ex-wife's father couldn't help you yeah but uh but yeah it was um yeah that would be the most encompassing weird sort of thing and then otherwise i get a lot of couples that like you know message me they now have kids they want to do family photos especially when i was in vancouver you know i have couples that i've married whose kids i think are now graduating from high school so let's see them matt your home how much um total weddings have you done that lifetime like 100 200.

you know i stopped counting around 500 because i think if you go over 500 it makes you sound like you've done too many but how i'm just curious how does that change a human because like i said this is like a sacred union and you see so many of these how does that change psyche to see like that much celebrations and humans getting drunk and dancing and

having the time of their lives for us it's a it's a little bit it's different because we see it as work yeah yeah exactly that's when we have a job to do and we we know what we need to do like me and my team like i've been i usually yesterday two videographers and a photographer with me so there's four of us and i don't you just make do you just keep going there's no right or wrong to it you're so focused in the work but you do capture moments as well and you must be smiling sometimes like wow man that's a beautiful moment you know i remember once i was walking onto a resort and i was complaining in my head and i walked out to the like onto the lobby and then you

see the main gardens and there was this sort of fountain that went down the middle with these bridges that went across and i stopped and i was like why am i complaining oh man that's you know what i mean and it's like yeah this is i'm not in a cubicle you know this is life yeah you know so life is a in a way like i'm a commercial artist right life as a commercial artist is it's not bad it's good it's not bad at all and i guess for me though the other thing too i enjoy is getting myself to the next stage business-wise like i enjoy that part as well and now that i'm getting older i'm starting to pull back on the number of weddings and i want to bring on associate photographers

and train them and help them because like there's a lot of people in that pro-amateur range that need help to become a pro i want to grab a few of those and build a business around them and how does that happen what would be your plan because i've recruited a bunch of interns lately i've recruited precisely seven and i've fired seven um over the past few months

and that's been interesting team in my business how will you do that i don't know um i have two that i work with currently um i think that what i've changed up this time like i've mentioned earlier is that we're going to go truly authentic so i'm asking them what they want to shoot and then sell them that way rather than saying hey they'll train you in

my style um it's more authentic and people i think want to [Music] they'll see that with different photographers you get different styles and if you go to someone and they say oh i can do anything then you know that they're bullshitting you your customer right so i think that that that will give us more people um i think that uh with the three of us i already

have enough to test the business and then i think i'll learn as i move along you know i'll make my mistakes you know i'll fail i don't really believe in failure but whatever yeah failure or lessons and i love them make it their idea right like let's not change their mentality they must have something that they that burns inside them and if they suggest it to you

well let them try their approach at least and see what it does i'm just curious as per the profile of your tree employees i think or associate or whatever you want to call them freelancers are they from here cancun or do you take them from canada us who who are they what is their profile their age what do they look like well they all the the three that well the two others that are working with me they're all similar to me a bit younger they have all photo they're all very experienced they've all shot a lot of weddings and they i'm 100 confident if i send them out they're going to deal with it because the thing with wedding photography is that yeah it's a product but it's really an experience as well right people

need to sure because you can't miss the kiss when the end of putting the ring and moments like that i guess that's that's an easy thing to get but what you need to do is you you can't be standing in front of the parents while they're doing this either oh for sure so so details like that yeah so it is an experience and also you know like we want them to be looking happy in their photographs so we have to keep them happy so do you coach them do you tell them like hey their wedding it's not like they come grumpy yeah they're happy all right yeah it's just about not [ __ ] up so they get unhappy yeah yeah or like if they're posing too much for a picture and like smiling fake

you tell them sometimes or they're just like naturally happy throughout just those techniques for everything okay so you coach them a little bit sometimes if needed or a lot of people all right so um those two persons like again are they local are they freelancers oh yeah by the way everybody has to be local because um immigration and it's impossible to work in the united states without

a green card why should it be different here so they speak english and uh did they go to university or like are they because i can picture you know a young photographer with its own ideologies you know a younger person on instagram a lot of times but like you said they need to have experience for weddings so they must have already done them in the past um

well give or take you know i would love to grab somebody who has very little experience but lots of passion how do you teach them on this spot how does that work you can bring them to some weddings i can teach them we get them some models we could work it we could work and we could work it they could do a lot of selects they would figure it out so to get an idea um let's say i'm your intern at what time does the wedding start uh is it always at one place or it's like it's any hotel it's all over all right any hotel at what time does a wedding start like 3 p.m depends on the sunset time it depends on what time they're able to get the ceremony done at the

resort so it's not really something i can control and most of the time like what would you say 3 p.m 1 p.m or no it depends on the time of year so now we're getting into right now the sun is setting at 7 o'clock 7 30 so 5 o'clock and in the winter in december it sets at 6 o'clock so you're looking closer to 4 o'clock and then sometimes it's very late i didn't know yeah well because you don't want to be out for clothing much before that through the sun like a one o'clock ceremony time is very hot yeah like right now it's it's perfect you know it's 6 30 p.m but before that that was crazy yeah 7 15 sunset and okay so i arrived on on the spot and then what happens

during wedding i haven't been to any wedding yet actually i've been to vegas for my uh buddies yeah whatever they call that i think i'm sure his party and he's gonna get wet um in the months in canada that's why i'm coming back one reason so i'm gonna experience my my first wedding what happens uh during a wedding is there like a ceremony before and the ring

or like how does that happen no the guys get re well for guys we uh shower get ready have a drink go to the ceremony welcome people to the ceremony and then the ceremony happens is it only for the guy's side or when do you have a woman for the woman's side i guess you're on the guy's side i'm usually on the women's side okay so yeah so yeah part of my job is watching women dress so it's one of those things that's different right you're at a wedding um and it's you know we leave the room when they're actually you know in their underwear and stuff they want us to or we stay there it doesn't matter to us um because like say that's where it really becomes a job it's like whatever yeah

but also it's about them being comfortable right it's not about me i don't care like you know so yeah it's you usually do the preparation ahead of time women tend to have a whole lot more preparation than men um women and there's all the details can you take photos of that the preparation yeah preparation the dress the shoes other details that they might have and then after

that we go to the um the ceremony as well you have the ceremony then usually there's family photos afterwards then we usually do photos with the couple and stuff here we do photos afterwards for about an hour and then go to the reception and then the reception you have your first dances and then party and dinner and speeches okay that gives me a better picture how does

one grow a wedding photography business other than hiring great photographers and promoting it like what's your plan in the next five years where do you want to take your business well it's much more complicated than what you just mentioned um because it's it's an interesting market because one it's all ever-changing because you're always getting new clients where do i want to take my business in the next

five years i'd like to have four or five photographers and i think that would be enough i don't really want to build it much more than that i would i kind of aspire to actually build a different business as well um something that's not in the wedding business i think kovid taught me that having one revenue stream is not enough these days um so yeah so i

hope to build this one well um you know say four photographers and hopefully three or four videographers as well um you know probably two or three people in in support staff and then editors as well i guess so probably yeah for that many photographers my guess is two three editors and then um probably four or three four support staff and then that would give me a like

yeah that's always appreciated time freedom that's why we got in the game in the first place right so hopefully yeah yeah and in the on the sales and marketing side uh what do you want to hire someone or do you want to keep on with that well we're sticking with the consultant for some time it's a program it's a consultant that does um basically it's like a

90 a 90 to 120 day sort of um rebranding strategy and so we're going to do that and see how it goes um but a lot of it's based off the principles i already use so and i already know work so it's just about refining and redoing the program that i already know works post kovit so just redoing my tests redoing everything it's a different market people are a little different but it's really the same thing what are you seeing on the technology side in your field because i know of snapper for example which was a somewhat exciting company allowing you to pick photographers for for cheap and instantly like uber and not only for cheap they have luxury too i guess it's a different market but what do you see in your own market

in terms of technology and where it's going it's a good question actually no i see i think when you're hiring an artist you're hiring something else right you're hiring that juno you're hiring a luxury experience you know specifically yeah and i think that that's the market i want to stay in you know like tailored experiences yeah it's like i want to sell mercedes lamborghinis mercedes there's too

much but here i think people want a mercedes okay if you're if we were in uh martin or if we were in uh you know like dubai then yeah okay mercedes right yeah there's more uh you know lamborghinis and maseratis would be your low end you can still be an sls though yeah exactly like we're a high-end mercedes whereas you know you're saying you know oh the

the industry's going towards lattas and you know all these you know asian cars the bricks and stuff that we see in this country nobody sees in you know canada the us or whatever like we see cars that like have weird ass names that are made in china you know what i mean and you're like yeah don't be in one of those if you're getting an accident but you know is that the way the market's going you know it's like no i don't think so people are still gonna you know and i think your wedding photos for this now generation for the millennials they're the only ones that probably the fourth generation where they have photos so they'll have photos their parents will have photos their grandparents will have photos and their great grandparents will have

wedding photos right and maybe their great great grandparents will have wedding photos great great grandparents and great are probably the only photos they have of them are military and wedding right there's something about that tradition about fulfilling that tradition properly that i think you know builds in a necessity for luxury you know i can see on my side also that like our generation well you know the

greatest value probably that i'd get from your photos is posting them on my instagram i'm a bit different as well because my insta is used for business too and i want to grow my subscriber base and yeah even share these beautiful moments with my audience because they've become more than my subscribers they're like my friends you know um and i can see the reels also tick-tock yeah

sure if you use it personally it's very much polluting but for business can be interesting anyway i can see that i so like videography for vr and reliving these moments like if i was in this is this i could see a changing in the future for video yeah is there's going to be some sort of vr experience or drone i mean drone has been freaking huge in the last few years do you do drones uh yeah yeah drone has been around for a while the biggest problem we have with drone is one the wind two the resorts three but they they don't allow them come on when you're on vacation you don't want to look at your wedding drone yeah well i mean they're silent one but also there are no there's no it's not

about silent it's about like it's about the resort's liability you know like you're shagging you're naked in your room you look out and you see a drone you're like and you're at a resort here are you going to be happy about that no no okay i can see the use case for that then then the resort has to deal with that it's easier for the resort just to say no drones no problems you have a points like the google glass glass hold thing you know it's um thank you it's drones are great and and you know the reality is it's not wedding photographers or applying drones in front of windows and if they are they're not placing them out the window they're facing them somewhere else and no one cares but um but at the

end of the day yeah it's about reducing liability and problems i can also see potentially like nfts and blockchain you know just to identify a moment somehow um as more technology is permanent for example deep fakes you know like people will be able to invent fake weddings you know online stuff like that and yeah i can see the potential use case for that anyway um yeah technology

is very exciting for me and i've always been fascinated by it i still want to cover a couple of things with you we're on the personal side i always like talking to the person behind the entrepreneur you know because most people need to understand that we built these uh characters and we built these these humans first and then that human build the business and in most of

our case the business is us um i don't think that's the way it works well maybe i have more gray hair than you but here's how it works we build a person the person builds the business the business destroys the and the person learns and builds the product business properly well if you mean this i think i think i think businesses are a very good way to

work with self-development because your business is not going to be any better than you you you basically someone once told me you don't have a business problem you have a personal problem it's not until you can overcome that for sure you can be successful yeah if you mean destroyed by challenges i call it like enlightenment through business and startups in my case so yeah we shared the

same philosophy in that case but okay let's think it that way first like who was the dean before he was an entrepreneur and then how did the business build the actual dean that i have in front of you um well as a pharmaceutical rep before so i was probably pretty cocky overly confident making good money fairly good nothing compared to running your own business running it well

for sure but you can also go the opposite way um i don't know how to describe that person before i've never thought of it to be honest with you i always think of who i am now and deconstructing that in an attempt to see what i am blocking in my life you know and i i i find that process fascinating you know i think that um i think that we can when we're developing businesses like i especially in the micro level or it's just a small business run by one or two people i think that the self-development that's what i work for is incredibly important um i think that yeah that that is the key to taking your business to the next level you know because you'll find where you're blocking yourself from doing things

you know almost like where you're self sabotaged you know and even self sabotage isn't the right word for it because um i don't remember who was getting in your own way i'd say yeah but it but you think about it self-sabotage is a part of your body and emotions that when you go to do something that's stopping you from doing it because it's scared it's true it's

scared yeah it's traumatized because it thinks if you do that you're gonna die yeah right or you know so it might be around money where you're like you're like oh i need to make this much money and there's a part of you is like no don't do that then we don't know the answer to because just being stressed out about money will i be able to make it next month next year like or maybe when you grew up your parents like i grew up in a union family and i remember like this this trust and hate for management people and also sort of for money right not entirely but i just remember a certain sort of and i wouldn't even say it came from my parents as much as it came from my community yeah

okay so i don't want to i'm not throwing my parents under the bus they did an amazing incredibly independent thank my mother every day for that i mean you became an entrepreneur yeah exactly so obviously they did they did a fantastic job yeah so i don't know where i was going with that but they well how do you get better you know because there's the past dean

and there's the actual dean the self-help you're better every day you told me you did hits before coming here that's one part of your success yeah exercise is incredibly important but i think it was talking about self-sabotage so i think that when we if you can identify what emotions are happening when you're self-sabotaging yourself then you're able to go through it and it's not about hating that

thing or trying to push through it because that's you're just gonna have to push through all the time it's about understanding it and saying how can we use that energy in a productive way or in a way that puts me towards my goals you know and having those goals written down having those goals in a place where you kind of look through them regularly you know and

you're measuring what you define as success which could be different you know like you said your father's success is like making sure people enjoy themselves at the restaurant and stuff right more important than the finances for him you know and usually those altruistic goals are tend to keep people motivated because there's there's purpose in them yeah you know being generous giving and stuff like that and yeah

to self-sabotage i mean i've done since the past few years i've done so much work you know i'm carving a piece of art day by day and lots of introspection lots of self questions lots of uh keeping track of my thoughts you know what i think how do i feel how does that thought make me feel and every time i dig far enough i discover something about my childhood about being rejected in some situation or about being bullied in another and fact is i wasn't rejected and bullied much i cannot imagine other people that for real every day suffered for that and i think that that kind of brings answers and then once you have that answer kind of you need to get to work and kind of fix that and realize that you know

you can fix that through in my case been meditation yeah sports discipline journaling i've talked to a lot of entrepreneurs that is journaling how do you deal with that how do you improve yourself in those situations i meditate for about in well now i'm back to an hour and i plan on going probably to two hours every morning yeah it's a long time and i started with

five minutes so to me meditating to an hour a day is like training for a marathon you know it's literally yeah it's not what training for vipassana yeah and it's not you know it it's perfectly fine to go run for and running a 10k is keeping yourself in really good shape running a 5k is keeping yourself in shape going for a walk around the block is keeping

yourself mobile yeah you know what i mean so so the idea that like if i don't want people to think oh he meditates for an hour a day or two and he's going to two i'll never get there yeah you won't just kind of like you're not going to be an ultra fun runner in a year if you're a couch potato on relatively heavy and your knees will blow if you're around 20 miles tomorrow anyhow you know what i mean so it's one of those things like you i worked my way up to it in the last probably 20 years and yeah now now i sit every morning at least an hour um and i sit there it's funny because there's times when i sit down and suddenly the first thing that comes to mind

is grab a grab your journal yeah that or sometimes grab your day timer because it's like i know what i need to do today is going to come out you know your day timer yeah so because i know what is this for me i'm old enough that i keep everything on a list in a book okay yeah what i'm going to do the next day or whatever yeah you schedule the calendar yeah kind of i have an online one as well needing schedules online but this this schedule is more um it's just what i'm going to do so i said sometimes i just know that and it comes up write it down sit and just go back into that space of nothingness be the consciousness that watches i wrestle with that a lot during my

vipassana retreat um i've done various retreats three days ten days dark room retreat and it was a challenge during my 10 days being the ocd guy that i am you know every because um i mean psychologists teach that in in case of ocd people to get what is in there on paper so that you don't lose it and frankly i had various insights with time are they like game changing inside some of them but i think sometimes you need to wait um is it better to get out of my meditation and take that note or to get deep deeper get calmer and get the physiological effects of my meditations i guess it's an equilibrium between both so to be honest like there's so much going on in my life that i don't have much memories

but i was planning to write a book about it about because i took bunch of notes on how i was feeling but what i can tell you is that yeah definitely i mean day uh day seven was a struggle it was like when is this gonna end you know like i wanna get back to my old life i wanna see my wife i wanna hug her i wanna go to the restaurant i wanna eat the food that i want and talk to people you know because one of my purpose in life is to talk to people which is why we're here today so yeah that's how i felt man are you thinking to do one or oh i did one you did one where i did one in thailand and um about day three i

was just my brain went silent holy [ __ ] yeah um well not necessarily because on day four i got dengue fever and day five i was gone um but i i remember the feeling and i can only describe it as like so the the guy who was running it said i said he said well how are you doing i much better i said how are you feeling and i started to cry immediately i just broke down in tears like what's happening i'm like i finally feel like me all the [ __ ] is gone and it's just me here you know and it was so nice it was so amazingly nice i it was just this if you were to put words to it would give it something that like you can't call it

joy you can't call it gratitude you can't because it it doesn't work you can only just say that it was you know just to be just pure consciousness and not have your brain going over and over again and it's interesting because i thought for the first three days i was so exhausted i was like every thought that came up jump on it like a [ __ ] yeah you know like those little things on the the um yeah the circus that come up i was like that with them and then i was like i got so tired i'm like i'm just [ __ ] yeah i'm just gonna give up you know forget it like just in my head i'm just gonna give up trying to stop thinking about thoughts and i'd be like oh

whatever there was another [ __ ] thought there was another thought and then i was doing walking meditation and then all of a sudden i was doing walking meditation i was like wait a minute i have i don't even remember last time i was thinking and i was like wow and then that lasted until i had dengue fever essentially so and then i was meditating and i

almost passed out expanding meditation almost hit the ground um and i thought something's wrong with the body and then and then and then so but um but that feeling is it's incredible and it's even now i now i meditate and it's different i still get a lot more thoughts i don't go to that space because i think it takes it would take me a couple days to

get there and did the retreat stayed with you like in some shape and forms that you know this was a long time ago this was um before anybody even knew what the truck like this was um 2002 okay yeah 20 years ago now nobody knew about the last that aspect that nobody was doing this stuff you know you have a very steady practice one hour days man that's very good like it's my practice sucks nowadays um and i need to improve on that and well you know they say when the last um the last bit of sleep your brain is putting back together all of your memories and reassociated them and that's apparently when neuroplasticity really happens and the spiritual people here especially will say if you really want to meditate you wake up at

four in the morning and you meditate then and they said that's when you get like you know just sit there and meditate then that's when you're gonna get it and i think it's because your body goes into that sort of thing you know and there's a couple times where i woke up at four in the morning and couldn't sleep and decided to meditate um and just had

out-of-body experiences like crazy where it's just like like i'm sitting there watching myself sleep but i'm not a sleeper yeah lucid dreaming have you done some of that or i haven't been able to do that yet same here well at some points i remember i could control some of my dreams and go to places where i am when i wake up in the night i try to pick up on my dreams so where i left them and that that tends to work also um makes me more creative as well i'm very creative person uh we talked about your spiritual life you know the habits that brought you to be a great entrepreneur and to forge potentially a great business um tell us a bit more about your the sports that you did the physical activity

to maintain your body tell us a bit more about that well i've always done something i started with hockey when i was a kid then i went cycling went through a bunch of other sports i guess yoga for quite a while and now i uh in covet i got into hit exercises and really liked it and then found them a little too heavy because i'm on the other side of 45 and need to watch that i don't you know don't overly extend my cartilage too much so i do low impact and a little bit of high impact um hit exercises and then a lot of stretching a lot of mobility stretching super nervous yeah shoulders you know have a goal to wipe my ass when i'm 100.

what would you ask me it's quite a movement yeah and not to have someone doing that that task for someone yeah exactly because like when you think about you think talk to an eight-year-old or i have trouble like myself especially after the gym yeah yeah still not flexible with my back i have a huge back like genetically so yeah it's it it is actually a mobility thing

that i i i want to i want to be able to do a full squat like where i put my ass underneath on the ground and then sit stand straight up when i'm like 80. can you do that now yeah pretty much yeah all right yeah that's always good feels good also to stretch up the hip super important um i want to close this up because we've got a couple minutes left before our order comes in so we talked about you know some habits that you practice today what lessons have you your business taught you over the year what challenges did

it put in your face and how did that make you a better human oh i would say covid kobit was incredibly interesting for me um because from the business perspective i've never had such confidence watching something implode like normally when businesses go under it's the entrepreneur's fault at least in my position it was always my fault and i'm trying to figure out why it's going under and

i have anxiety about it this one it was like totally out of my control nothing i could do and i needed money to survive as a result i raise 15 000 u.s by writing my customers saying hey my neighbor is probably not going to have food because they're poor and these are the people that work at the resorts and your servers your gardeners or that they sent

me all told everyone all my customer base sent me fifteen thousand and we we gave out twenty five hundred three thousand food hampers to people very coveted at the very start while everything was locked down and um so put a little it was a drop in the bucket to help people to get through um so that was kind of cool and then after just watching things slowly

come back on but it was weird to have this confidence and when i thought why am i so confident about this and it's like immediately the immediate executive because i've been here before like because because of my failures before built up enough confidence that i know if i lose it all it's fine it's like i'll make it back you know and the tent on the beach and

live there yeah well whatever we'll figure it out you know the house is paid for in full so no one's kicking me out right so it's [Music] it's nice you know it was a different feeling and and the only reason i had that feeling is because i failed before probably more than once you know i hope so yeah and i think that that's that's the thing that i would put out there with people is that like you know like know where your rock bottom is and be happy you have one because i know people who at the age of 45 live with their parents and their parents have always helped them out and these people live with so much anxiety about the world because they don't know where their rock bottom correct you know we

always have that safety net right yeah whereas my mother changed my room when i was like between grade 11 and 12. so in grade 12 in canada after that you go to university between grade in the summer of grade 11 going into grade 12 my father and i went on a fishing trip a guy's fishing trip when it came my mother said i'm going to change your room around when you're gone i thought i'd come back my bed would be the other side whatever she just wants to

stay busy she misses me i'll go right no i came back she had painted repainted the place and would put up wall flower wallpaper and i walk in i'm like what did you do to my room she said well it's gonna be the guest room when you leave anyhow and it's like she's always had this like you're going to be independent you know yeah it was a little embarrassing living you know like you're great you're 12 year old comfortable yeah like you know flower wallpaper on your wall but like you know but my mom was always that way she was always like you know like get out of the house and figure it out yourself okay interesting and you know and as a result like that attitude has always helped me move on with my

life made me like who i am today and i think that um you know and and those failures i had in business made it so that i had no anxiety during covey like i was so like this is this is gonna end and when it does we'll figure it out so there's a recession coming recession whatever you want to make about that word um what would you tell to conclude this podcast what would you tell people that are going through that recession or that want to start business businesses during this recession what would you give them as advice okay so i'm old enough to have lived the recession in the 90s okay and saw it in the 80s that i was too younger remember exactly what it was in the 90s i was selling cars

for lincoln ford uh mercury and i remember there's a chrysler dealership nearby that was selling twice as many and i remember also a guy a new guy came in to sell cars and we were all selling like two to three a month and i think he sold ten in the first month so i would say the cream always rises to the top you know and sometimes when times are good too you know know this recession is going to breed opportunity exactly the opposite way opportunity was spread during cover okay because in covid we had lots of money everyone had things and there's lots of opportunity this is going to be the opposite where we're going to have less things and people are going to you know be more concerned about like it's just going to

be it's going to be kind of the opposite i don't know how to describe it well no injections of cash right like more like you're left out by your own is that yeah you know well yeah there's going to be a lot a lot a lot of opportunity in there and you know because [Music] people aren't gonna want people don't really settle for less like we're this exponentially growing cancer on this earth right correct so because cancer we grow similar to cancer cells right we're exponential in our growth right and you know and in a way this reckoning of bringing us back could be an incredibly good thing you know and it could make us you know really evaluate what we do who we are you know and and all i see is opportunity i

don't i when i see the recession all right coming i see it as opportunity because you know they printed way too much money during coping and as a result that's going to cause inflation you know so advice for entrepreneurs would be like open your eyes for opportunities is that it yeah and be ready to to really you know the other thing i should say i'm dyslexic so

i think laterally on everything right so just be ready to think outside your box okay don't get ready to change much quicker and look for ways to make people people in their serve the services or product you're giving to people get it to them in a way that they um in a way that they can afford because there's probably for a little while until wages go up

people are going to have left for sure you know and wages will go up they'll go up slowly you know yeah to adapt to a new reality and also i think changing the relationship to change people need to be comfortable with being uncomfortable do hits do these long ass meditations throw yourself in a vipassana you know people can learn these things yeah and i think let's think

about it when you think about like how do and people salaries really go up when people change jobs because you don't really get a good raise from your current costs yeah i hate to say that as an entrepreneur right right like people change jobs to get heavy raises you don't get it any other way unless you tell them you're leaving and they say oh we're going to

create a new department for you go over there you know um so until you see that and enough changes that's when things will come around the other thing to remember with the recession luxury brands always do people who have money always have why did rolex um went into bankruptcy during kova did do you know or no i didn't didn't even know that happened probably mismanagement but i

do agree with you i mean the rich keeps getting richer right then i mean the louis vuitton store you see these a lot of chinese folks in there and i mean you know they they just have it yeah that's the thing is you know like like someone with a billion dollars who loses ten percent doesn't change doesn't change his purchasing habits yeah you know and someone with

a hundred million dollars who loses 10 20 they still don't really change their purchasing habits you know someone who makes a hundred thousand dollars a year and loses 20 percent yeah and i think um if i mean we're in cancun right now both of us we've experienced that different lifestyle i would encourage people to seek out these different lifestyles and go live in other countries that are

cheaper get a rent that is lowered and you know live under your means until you can afford it and until you can ball out for not having a better term than that and you know make good income and obviously try to start a business i i think both of us will agree with that livestock yes some people might have a significant disadvantage but i would encourage people

to go for that higher freedom yeah i don't like giving too much advice to other people but if i could give advice to the 20 year old me um and there's only one thing that would stick i would say take 10 of everything you earn and put it into a savings account into a just put it into a index fund for mental safety or to invest it in something just no just invested it so that that becomes your nest egg so that when [ __ ] hits the fan and it's all over with you've lost your business you have that you know if that happens yeah thank you so much for today it's been uh wonderful where can people find you out where can people well you can find me at dean sanderson weddings that's

my photography business that's the thing that's rolling right now and then hopefully like say i'm doing this for the next 90 to 120 days of building that and then after that i'm going to start another business as well a tour company here cool we'll talk about that one later on i guess for sure thank you for your time man awesome thank you