October 15, 2016

Meet North Hollywood Photographer & Entrepreneur: Chris Manitius

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Chris Manitius.

Chris, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I fell into photography casually looking for a new hobby while pursuing acting. I took Intro to DSLR Photography at LA Valley College and I was hooked. I started to take headshots of my actor friends, and I started to get paid for it. I still remember the first time I got $90 for headshots I took in an hour. It was a life changing moment. Before then, to earn money, I had to serve tables and work catering shifts. I was happy if I earned $100 in a five-hour shift.

From then, I continued to practice my skills and build my portfolio, getting my feet wet in event photography and bartending on the side. I noticed a photo booth one day at an event I was bartending, and naively thought “I can build one of those.” I then decided to start a photo booth business at the end of 2014 by hiring a friend to buy some cheap wood and build an open air style booth. It looked kind of funky and took AN HOUR to set up. My first gig, which took me a few months to even get, was for a Christmas party. During the set up I realized I forgot a critical cord in the hour-long setup process. I had to beg my roommate to bring it for me during LA traffic, which luckily he did, and the event went on. Somehow the client didn’t notice we started 30 minutes late!

After that party, I knew I needed a more modern, efficient photo booth to compete with other companies. I took a risk and invested $6,000 in a new, modern photo booth, which I took possession of in March 2015, and the Maple Leaf Photo Booths of today was born. I had no idea how much more money I’d end up spending, but I knew, in the end, it would be worth it. I started out by doing groupon events for graduation parties, and have since gone on to do multi-day marketing activations for clients such as Ferrari, Warner Brothers, The Wonderful Company, The Los Angeles Times, Gearys Of Beverly Hills, DirecTV, JCPenney, Alcatel, and the list goes on. In the beginning, I was happy to do small parties for a few hundred bucks and had no idea that down the road I’d be sending clients five figure invoices.

I now hire a rotation of friendly LA actors and models regularly to set up and host my booths. If you told me a year ago that I’d have a payroll of $1,000 or more for a single event, I wouldn’t have believed you. I now mainly focus on building event photo and video solutions for my mainly corporate and high-end event planner clients and take some select photography work on the side.

Has it been a smooth road?
Hell no! I had no idea it would be so challenging to put together a photo booth…much less a photo booth business. In the beginning, I was lucky to get one gig in a week. Now I’ll sometimes have 3-4 in a week, sometimes multiple rentals in one night.

Getting leads and winning clients was also a challenge. There are so many competitors so figuring out how to stand out and win business was a huge challenge and continues to be at times. Not being able to forecast income in some months also makes things interesting.

In the beginning, I took an investment from a friend to start the business, which equated to not a lot of cash for 10% of the business, which I very soon regretted. It was a real life lesson in the value of equity. After some tense back and forth I ended up buying out his share for money I didn’t really have at the time, but it ended up being an extremely smart business decision.

I also learned the hard way to have backup equipment and risk management strategies. One night a new software I was trying failed and I ended up having to switch software and replace the camera mid-event. That was very stressful and I had to refund a client half of the money for the event. That was an anomaly as our events normally go very smoothly. Being an entrepreneur feels like jumping out of a plane without knowing exactly how you’re going to land. But (knock on wood) it usually ends up working out.

What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
Christmas 2015. I had wanted to go up to Canada to visit my family for years, but never had enough money to do so, or I could only take a few days off from my crappy restaurant job. I remember showing my grandfather live photos from my photo booth at an event in Southern California that my staff was executing while I was enjoying time with my family that I hadn’t seen in years. It really was a life-changing moment because that was the first event I had done completely remotely.

I also had enough money to buy my family awesome Christmas presents which really brought me joy. I love to give when I can, but I was always too broke to get any good gifts. I remember I got my sisters some gift cards to stores and they were like “you don’t make enough money to buy these gifts!”. Well, I did. My Dad didn’t really understand what I did and might have secretly suspected I was a drug dealer. But that was a great moment.

Tell us more about the struggles you’ve faced along the way.
I didn’t have any money when I started my business, but I DID have credit cards. Lots of them. I kept getting more and loaded them up more than I ever thought I should. It started with just the photo booth and then all of these other secondary expenses that I didn’t really anticipate. It really made me nervous.

As mentioned earlier, I also took a small investment from a friend for 10% of my business, which I very quickly regretted. I decided that I had to buy him out no matter what it took, and after a very heated back and forth, he agreed. So I hired a lawyer, got an equity buy-back agreement written up, and bought him out by borrowing more money on my credit cards just to get him out. But I knew that the 10% that he owned of my business could one day be very valuable, and he wasn’t the right fit to deserve that kind of value as he didn’t assist in any way with growing the business. It was a hard lesson in the value of equity.

Even recently, I had come off of a very busy few months, only to have a slow summer. It really tested my grit and self-belief. I knew I had to develop more products and services and invest more in my online presence and marketing efforts to smooth out the slow periods. It’s still a challenge I am working on and was a tough reminder that if I’m busy today it doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll be busy tomorrow.

Is our city a good place to do what you do?
I originally moved to Los Angeles to act. I think to start an acting career here sucks. I wish I had stayed in a smaller city to build up my reel and then moved out here. It’s just so competitive.

However, to be an entrepreneur in my business, the photography business, I can’t think of a better place. There are so many opportunities that there’s plenty for everyone. Plus, I love the quality of life out here.

As far as whether I see myself staying in Los Angeles or maybe living in another city, that’s an interesting question. I could imagine myself living in other cities at a future time but still coming to Los Angeles frequently to continue business here. I enjoy the city but I’ve also fallen in love with other cities like Baltimore, and if I can work remotely, I don’t feel it’s impossible.

Pricing:

Portraits/Headshots- Start at $300
Photo Booth Rentals- Basic packages start around $750 for my DSLR booths, $500 for my iPad booth
Event Photography- usually around $150-300+ an hour, depending on the options
Magazine/Editorial- Depends on project

Contact Info: