SNM221: Why is networking worth its weight in gold with Gary Pageau

Gary Pageau: It's not going to happen overnight. You can't build a network in a year or two. It's going to take a long time. And again, I'm more old school. I know people are very digital and I'm very well aware of these, but a lot of my really core contacts are people that, you know, five or 10, 15, sometimes 20 year relationships with.

And a lot of times what people don't understand is your direct network probably can't help you a lot, but a lot of times they know people who can, and that's really where I think people fall short when they're networking. They don't realize that there's, a second and third-degree connection that may be more helpful to you. Jonathan Green: Hello everyone. And welcome to another amazing episode of the Serve No Master podcast. We have an amazing guest with us today, Gary Pageau, and hopefully I said it right.

I was practicing for the episode, but I probably messed it up again. And I'm really interested in a lot of your career. I'm so excited to have you here. So, thank you so much for giving this time, Gary, how are you doing today? Gary Pageau: I'm doing great, Jonathan. It's great to see you. Jonathan Green: So, I'm very fascinated by people that make a dramatic career change. Because we often think it's too late. I'm locked in and we think this thought different ages.

Some people are like, I'm 25. I can't change careers. Or once I do choose a major in college, I've made a life decision. I remember that being such a dramatic decision for me. Choosing my major, I was like, I'm choosing my fate. Feels like you're one of those movies where you pick up a Goblet and that's it. Like you cannot change your fate. So, you were working for 25 years in the nonprofit industry sector? Gary Pageau: Yeah. I worked for industry trade association.

My background was actually journalism. I actually came from, I was an English and art double major, which, when you're going to school in the mid-eighties, it's probably the least profitable or income producing majors you could ever have. But that's where my interest lies and I migrated toward journalism. I worked for a small, weekly newspaper in Northern Michigan for a year, which kind of, A got my feet wet in that world. And B showed me, I didn't want to be a newspaper reporter.

So, from there I got a job at a small college in Michigan. They worked in their publications and kind of corporate communications area for about a year and a half. And then from there I was basically recruited to work for a international trade association based here in Michigan, which was the photo marketing association. I started writing newsletters and kind of trade journalism, a B2B focus.

And, at the time PMA was the largest photographic trade association in the industry in the sense that we had one of the top 200 trade shows in the United States, almost 30,000 people would come to our convention. And so, we had 18,000 members worldwide. We had offices around the world and it was a very successful organization by almost any metric you could have. So, my plan was to stay there and retire, right?

So, like a lot of people, they had great benefits, very well compensated, great community to live in, called Jackson, Michigan, which is the middle of the Palm of Michigan if you do that. And so, that was the plan. And then as to happen to a lot of people, the plan changed or the plan changed for me, it wasn't really a selection I made partially because of a lot of outside influences. The photo industry changed, we went from a chemical based process of photographic film.

And went to digital. When your exhibit space, your show charges people to exhibit, and there are fewer exhibitors because there's no one there making the machinery anymore to process film and things like that. And then a lot of our vendors who were our big exhibitors came under economic stress because of the change of the industry. Primarily Kodak and Polaroid would be two of the larger ones. And that impact impacted our revenue stream.

Our membership base again start was 18,000 and it declined pretty rapidly as digital printing changed. It went a lot of to online. And some home printing. So, people didn't have to drop off their role of film at a retail store anymore. And so, that affected the industry. And then, camera sales is basically capitalized by smartphones. There were a lot of external influences that the association didn't adapt to.

So, at one point we had close to a hundred employees, which was pretty large for a trade associate that doesn't really lobby. We just basically put on events, did publications and did member service things. We weren't a lobbying organization. So, most people wouldn't have heard of us. And so, basically, I lived through four rounds of layoffs until I finally decided that, I selected to go basically.

And this went out on my own basically 10 years ago, this month, I decided to use my skills in industry contacts to start my own marketing consulting firm in the photo imaging industry, and am doing a lot of the things that PME used to do. I guess the lesson I learned was, stay with your strengths and that's me in a nutshell. How was that? Jonathan Green: No, that's great. Happy anniversary, 10 years of being out on your own. That's a really great milestone.

It's great to have you here for that. So, I'm very interested in that because you're not really a photographer yourself. That's not your area of expertise. Your area of expertise is the other, that's very fascinating to me. So, I'd love to dig into the two parts. The first thing is the decision to go out on your own, what that felt like? And dealing with a lot of people are afraid to go make that move because of family because of security. Gary Pageau: Oh, sure.

Jonathan Green: Because you go from having these benefits. At least for me, I have wife and four kids and they're in school. So, you have to have the discussion. How are we going to pay for school? What are we going to do if someone gets hurt, how are we going to deal with insurance? All of those things. And that becomes part of the decision-making calculus.

That's why it seems like as we get older, we're more and more afraid to take risks because we rely on these even more than the salary, right? These other benefits. So, what was that process like? And especially knowing that as a lot of people are caught by surprise, it wasn't your fault. It's often, most people lose their jobs for reasons outside of their fault. So, often when we think, oh, I lost my job, it's because I did something wrong.

And that's pro in my experience, that's one to 10% of the time. Most of the time, it's a downsizing in industry shift. I saw that in my family, in the music industry, where record companies were laying off 10% of their employees every single month. Gary Pageau: Very similar to the record industry. Actually, if you look at what happened to the photographic industry, it's very similar, the analog to digital transition. Look at what happened in music industry, right? Where's your corner record store, right?

Now it's same thing as where's your corner camera store. There's still a few out there and there's still people who enjoy analog music, in terms of LPs. In fact, they just had a resurgence. Film photography for the same reason, a lot of young people have gotten into film photography for the same reason.

So, to answer your question, it was pretty darn scary, actually, because basically what happened was the association had a 40,000 square foot headquarters that, we went from a hundred employees to 19 when I left and we had sold the building and we're going to move to a small office park and actually I had seen where my office was going to be in the new and on the floor plant in the new place.

But then the management came to me and said, basically, your salary is too large for this organization. So, you can basically do the same job to take a 40% pay cut. And at that point, honestly, I had lived through a lot professionally by that point and I probably would've gutted it out, but they had lost a lot of credibility with me. The management had, so I said, you know what? I went talked to my wife.

This is how it's a bad deal when they call you in and give you that deal at 10 o'clock in the morning and say, they want an answer by 2pm. They don't even let you sleep on it. It's not a great offer. And so, my wife and I talked about it and I was just having, I said, listen, I just don't trust these folks anymore. Now I think was the biggest issue was the trust issue.

And I called a lot of my industry friends I said, I've been in the industry 25 years. I had a lot of friends and peers and all, every one of them, I made about eight or nine calls said, get the heck out. We'll basically help you. So, that's what happened. So, a lot of the people I called on that first call, they actually became clients. They said, Hey, we're happy to support you now, going back to your original question. Yeah.

It was a darn scary decision because, I was making pretty good money, low six figures which for Jackson, Michigan is a very comfortable lifestyle. Put four kids through private school and still had one couple kids still in high school at the time. And it was a pretty scary decision. Now we had, some cash, but it was a necessary decision in the sense that. It wasn't great for my health at the time either.

Having lived through four rounds of layoffs and watching friends, people I'd worked with and, gone to battle with, if you will, in many ways, for the past 20 some years, be asked to leave and there's the survivor guilt of having, oh, they kept you, but they let me go kind of stuff. So, I think what helped me was getting feedback from people saying, if you leave we'll take care of you.

You've got contacts, you've got people in the industry, you've got support out there to do that. So, I think that would be advice I would give to somebody who is looking at making this transition is what is your other support system? What kind of people in the industry you're in what support can you get? What contact can you use? Jonathan Green: Your former employer, do they still exist? Gary Pageau: No. Jonathan Green: Is that company still around?

Gary Pageau: No, they imploded about three years after I left and nothing to do with me leaving. Of course, I'd like to say that, without me, they didn't survive, but they didn't transition well from a management standpoint and here's a good thing. And after 911, here's a little story I like telling. Now after 911, PMA realized that too much of our business was focused on trade chosen events. So, we were requiring people to fly somewhere, to go to our events.

That was like 80% of our revenue. And we realized I don't know if you remember after nine 11, our show was in February. So, in September we were like, are we going to be able to have an event, right? The following February? Unfortunately, we were able to have it, but remember airport shut down. There was a lot of paranoia.

People were thinking they weren't going to, it was a lot like COVID in the sense that people were like, boy, this is going to change how people behave. So, we had an executive retreat following that, saying, well, how are we going to reshape the association around? And this is like early 2000. So, it's early internet. How are we going to adapt the association to a world where events aren't our primary revenue source? What else can we do?

And we came up and we had three days facilitator discussion and all that. So, we got a binder about this thick and we didn't do any of those things. And so, we didn't follow the plan at all. We just got, we're fat, dumb, and happy if you will, which is a lot of the Kodak story. When you're got the gravy train of a lot of revenue coming in for an organization, it's very hard to have the urgency to adapt. So, if that makes sense.

Jonathan Green: Absolutely. That's something I think is very interesting. So, you, when you left. Unfortunately, you did it sounds like you would've had two, three years later against your will. So, you had a little more breathing room and it was your decision. Gary Pageau: Sure. Jonathan Green: Which is great. You're able to do some of the things that the larger company could and you had that agility when you're on your own. Gary Pageau: Exactly.

And that was the thing, I was able to cherry pick what had worked for the organization. Without a lot of the overhead. So, for example, one of the main features I did at PMA for a lot of years of running was news organization. We went from a twice monthly printed email newsletter to a fax newsletter every week to a daily news update on the web. And I managed that transition right to the website, to a WordPress site and all that.

That basically, after a few years, I got so much feedback from the industry, which was like, we really missed this resource. So, I basically recreated that if you will, under my own label, The Dead Pixel Society is the name of the site and the newsletter. And so, I built up a readership around that. And then since then I have gotten into some online education and also actual physical events through partnerships with other organizations.

So, I don't obviously have the resources of a, $22 million nonprofit trade association, but I do have a lot of experience that kind of said, okay, this worked, how can I adapt this to what I'm doing? And I even put together an advisory board for The Dead Pixel Society, to guide me into what things does my audience want. And more importantly, what things do I want to do that are probably bad ideas that they'll talk me out of.

Jonathan Green: So, a lot of people hit two big problems in their lives that you solved first is that when they lose their jobs, that's when they go, oh, who's my network. And this is very common. This is basically what LinkedIn is. You see someone as soon as they lose their job, suddenly they're adding new connections, updating their profile, updating their resume, trying to reach out.

So, when people off, either, whether they're looking for a new job or we can start their own businesses, I teach a lot of people to do. We often focus on the hard skills. We'll learn how to do web design, learn how to do this, learn how to leverage this. But so much of our income, even for me, I live in the middle of nowhere on a small tropical island. 90% of my business is relationship based. It's networking.

It's who I'm friends with more than anything, the beauty of being an entrepreneur, you only have to work with people you like, right? That's such a freedom, but how can people, or how did you develop these relationships so that when it was time to leave, you had the network there.

And how can other people thinking about that actually before they lose their jobs and before they're ready to become an entrepreneur, either way, make sure they have enough of a network so that if something goes wrong, they have at least enough people to ask. To start to say, do you know someone with a job? Cause that's how so many people get hired. Gary Pageau: Yeah. You do get that desperation. There on LinkedIn where people, a change is made or a change happens to them.

And all of a sudden, they're super visible and they're posting things and you can see what's going on. In my case, I had a very valuable experience for me, where PMA actually paid for me to go through the Dale Carnegie program. And I'm already fairly social. I'm a good networker. And they were saying, Hey, we want you to do more public speaking and be the face of the association in certain ways.

So, there's a lot of skills there that Carnegie teaches you about, just how to listen to people, all that interpersonal relationships. And I think that's a lot of it. It's not going to happen overnight. You can't build a network in a year or two. It's going to take a long time. And again, I'm more old school.

I know people are very digital and I'm very well aware of these, but a lot of my really core contacts are people that, I have, five or 10, 15, sometimes 20 year relationships with. And a lot of times what people don't understand is your direct network probably can't help you a lot, but a lot of times they know people who can, and that's really where I think people fall short when they're networking its they don't realize that there's, a second and third degree.

Connection that may be more helpful to you and how to not necessarily ask for that, but to encourage that. Jonathan Green: I think that's a really good point. I read some studies, I'm really fascinated by networking, done a lot of studying it myself. Very passionate about that topic. Unfortunately, people aren't interested in until they really need it and it's too late exactly.

But what's interesting is that yeah, when you get hired through a relationship, it's never your friend, it's always a friend of a friend or a friend of a friend it's always the second or third. Gary Pageau: Exactly. Jonathan Green: Secondary, that tierce connection. And a lot of people when we're at our jobs and you went through this, it's very interesting. We think all my coworkers are my network.

But how many of the people who went through those first four rounds of downsizing of that company are you still friends with, or you still communicate with? Gary Pageau: Actually quite a few. We were a very tight organization, almost like a family business from a staff standpoint now, obviously there's, some people are closer to than others, but I still see some of the folks occasionally. Again, not a lot of them. I haven't really used a lot of them for business purposes, more social.

We do have a little private Facebook group, PMA staff, alumni, where we post, pictures and that kind of thing. There's only one other person from the staff who's still in the photographic industry actually, which is interesting because the PMA staff never really consider ourselves part of the photo industry. Really? It was good because we weren't photographers. We didn't process film. We weren't in retail. We were just really good at doing meetings and marketing research and communications and that sort of thing.

So, a lot of the people who left PMA went and did those things in either other industries or for other organizations, really, they weren't photo industry people. I tended to build my contacts more externally than internally. Because I was interested in the industry because I was interested in digital imaging and photography and all these things. Anyway, again, I'm not a great photographer. I wouldn't abuse that term and call myself a photographer, but I know how a camera works and all that fun stuff.

So, I think you've written on a good point. You can focus internally to advance your career, is Bob in accounting really going to help you in your next job as a sales executive or as a marketing person? Probably not. Bob's circle of influences is somewhere else. Not that you're not friendly with Bob in the lunchroom, but Bob directly probably isn't going to help you get a job as a sale or a marketing guide, but he might know someone who does, who can help you.

Jonathan Green: So, a lot of people have this feeling, oh, I can't enter an industry or I could never do a podcast about photography unless I'm an expert. There's this fallacy. It's the most common message I get, as I've done a lot of work in the writing space, I've been a lot of books, a lot of people, upcoming authors, they want to enter new market like, oh, I can't do it unless I'm an expert. There's always someone who's more of an expert.

There's always someone better, whether it's new or younger expert. Gary Pageau: Sure. Jonathan Green: It's very fascinating that you are in a market and you're not an expert. So, how can someone first start to think about the possibility of going well, I can enter as an interviewer, which I think is very valuable and it's interesting. Also, you talk about facilitating these other parts of it. So, how can people overcome that? I must be the expert feeling and often it turns into imposter syndrome.

They go, oh, I can't do it because what do people find out I'm not as good a photographer. Gary Pageau: It's interesting. You said, because at PMA, we actually were very early in podcasting. We had a podcast and then about two years ago, I was thinking I was in the middle of COVID and I was thinking I'm going to double down during COVID I'm already working from home anyway. So, I'm not really, but I need to do more.

So, I started looking at doing a podcast and again, it was like you said, who wants to hear me talk about what I'm talking about. And that's what, a lot of podcasts are like that. I know there's nothing wrong with that, but I think I'd run out off content pretty quickly. So, I stole the old PMA format of our podcast, which is called the DMA cast. Just did an interview format.

If you go to The Dead Pixel Society, Podcast site you'll see the graphic for every episode is the guest picture. It's not mine. It's about the content. And I think that's one of the things just in general, people tend to, when they're looking at doing content marketing, which is the area I help people with is B2B content marketing is they tend to think. I'm going to write a blog, I'm going to create some videos and they don't realize that it's not a one-shot deal.

You're not going to write or do one blog. You're going to do one video. It's going to be a stream. So, you have to think of, okay, what am I going to line up to feed that beast? If you will.

And so, when you're looking at making a change into another format or another industry or something like that, you really need to look at it from a standpoint of what is the ongoing business, what is the ongoing content or sales or whatever that's going to drive that, not there's anything wrong with a one off, but you can't build a business on that. I've done 70 some podcasts and I've got another 10 lined. Which is what you have to do.

So, I think the key if you're talking about entering into that space is to be interested in the topic and have enough of a network and awareness to realize that you can find people who can help augment that content. Jonathan Green: Markets are still shifting, I think. Gary Pageau: Oh, sure. Jonathan Green: One of the advantages talk about as a smaller company is agility. Gary Pageau: Sure. Jonathan Green: And now there's a time of massive shift towards video.

Although video show, if you look at Instagram, they're trying to copy TikTok. They're trying to say no, Instagram's a video app. Wait. Is it, I thought it was a photography app. They're shifting it. They're trying to rebrand it. We'll see if it works or not. And photography is shifting like I'm using right now. The camera I use, it's a DSLR. It's supposed to be a photography camera, but I'm using it for video, right?

Because if I was using a dedicated computer like a video camera is either going to be really expensive or you have one for the computer. They're not that good. So, it's the kind of in between? So, there's a shift in the market that you're going through, how are photographers, the people you're interviewing adapting to that and product creators. How is the market adapting to that?

And do you think the size of your business is allowing you to adapt along with it, as opposed to maybe if your previous employer was still around, they'd be hitting another problem as still photographers are suddenly becoming videographers. Gary Pageau: You've hit on a great point. The nimbleness is definitely a big piece of it. Like for example, I will attend an event, an industry conference or whatever.

And what I've started doing is I've started, I've got an iPhone 12 pro and I've bought a gimbal for a hundred bucks from DJA. And so, what I do and I bought a little microphone. If you're going to do video, please get some decent audio. For the sake of your audience. And again, it's a very similar format where I walk around, I do some clips from sessions and then I talk to people and I'm not on camera.

I'm having the other people talk about their experience at the conference. And again, that's something that, in the PMA world, they would've hired a professional videographer and a sound guide to make it look good. And it wouldn't have again, the same ability to do that. So, in terms of how the market is changing, you're exactly right. It is really shifting towards content creation. Now the devices are crazy, like you said, you're using a DSLR, there's mirrorless cameras out there now.

And actually, for a lot of people smartphone will do a great job. If they add enough accessories to make it work. It's not as hard to do, but it's really hard to do well in the sense that, photographers who are shooting weddings, for example, really have to bring a tag along person to do the video and they're doing drones and all this. So, the technology is out there to do all this stuff, but to be a professional, right. Which I'm not.

But again, I talk to people who are, they've really had to figure out. You know how it fits into what they're offering. Because a lot of the people I may talk to on my podcast may be higher end photographers. So, they got to figure out, how can they justify the higher fees? And they may, for example, do other content, for example, pre or post wedding and things like that. So, the other thing that's changing is this idea.

If you remember when you were a kid and you got your senior pictures taken, part of the package you got was an X number of prints, right? Like for the wall, an 8x10 and that kind of stuff. And those prints were part of the package and the mindset that's changed with photographers now, as you're learning how to sell photography as a service where output prints may not even be part of the equation, you may just sell a download.

And if mom wants to print, she can go do it herself. So, there was a lot of reluctance to adopt that model, because again, going back to the PMA thing, you are fat, dumb, and happy selling prints, and you're getting a really good margin on those. How am I going to sell something that's just bits? It's just intangible. But people have learned. And there's actually a lot of innovation. That's one thing about professional photographers you understand is a lot of them really know how to hustle.

And for example, I know quite a few who made pretty good money during COVID and you think how did they make money during COVID? Because they couldn't photograph people. They shifted. So, as you remember, the housing market was still pretty hot during COVID. So, they got really into real estate photos, or a lot of restaurants got into delivery, so they needed better photos for their delivery app. So, they got into food photography, they expanded that way.

So, there's a lot of opportunities that technology has afforded people. Cause you certainly aren't going to shoot a lot of that stuff with film from back in the day. Jonathan Green: I think this has been really wonderful.

And some of the lessons I hope people pull out of this interview is that even when it seems like circumstances are against you and you have to go out on your own, sometimes it can be an advantage to have been building a network, having forging relationships and that being smaller and having that agility can be an advantage. Sounds like the photographers have done the best over the last few years are the ones who adapt to the quickest. Gary Pageau: Exactly.

Jonathan Green: And smaller companies can adapt in the way that larger companies just can't. Anytime I encounter someone, they go, oh, I have to talk to someone else to make the decision, I always think of a train. When a train hits the brakes, it takes longer. The more cars, the slower it is for the train to stop and pivot. And that's simply from company size, right? That's why really large companies like take 10 years to go, let's start a streaming service.

10 years to do a shift. The music company took so long to realize, oh, it's not about million-dollar studio albums everywhere, but the train takes so long to slow, because you have to work the decision up to the person in that company. So, there's such an advantage that we have a smaller brands and companies to have that agility to go. You know what podcasting isn't working. I'm going to shift to TikTok. TikTok is not working. I'm going to shift of blogging. That's working.

I'm going to double down. Gary Pageau: Or you can do all of those, right? You can do bits and pieces across all of those platforms, relatively easy in the sense that, if you're doing a podcast, you can do excerpts on Instagram and you can do just bits and pieces around that. Now you have to know where your audience is. Like my audience is not a TikTok audience. I know that, so I don't worry too much about TikTok. But it is a LinkedIn audience.

There's a group there that I manage that is about the industry. And I make sure my stuff is in there along with everybody else's of course I don't like police other people's content, it's definitely, you have to look to see where your audience is or your customers are. Cause I treat audience and customers as the same thing really in today's world. Jonathan Green: That's great. Exactly. The ability to make the decision without having to get someone else's permission or someone else's approval.

Exactly means you can be faster. You can see what's working. You can double down, you can shift because certainly when I worked for a larger company, you sometimes your boss would get a visit from the good idea fairy. And you're like, we want to try this for six months. Oh, it's definitely not going to work. In six months, we'll re decide. Whereas if it's yourself, I can't afford to ride a bad idea for six months. My business and I really have that level of focus.

Gary Pageau: Exactly. Exactly. Jonathan Green: This has been really wonderful. It's been very informative. I love hearing about your story and your journey and thinking about the importance of agility and that being a smaller company can be an advantage and that. Sometimes scary can lead to better things. So, what's the best place for people to visit? I know you have a lot of websites and a lot of projects. Where can people go to find more about you? What's the best place?

Gary Pageau: Obviously I'm on LinkedIn. So, if you do search for Gary Pageau, you'll find me. I would really recommend, if you're interested in the category at all, go to TheDeadPixelSociety.com, that would probably be the best place. And it points you to all the different things we do and that would make it easy. Jonathan Green: That's great. That's really helpful. Thank you so much for spending time. I really appreciate it was great to have you here. Gary Pageau: It was great to meet you, Jonathan.

Thank you. Jonathan Green: Thank you so much.