Making A Career Out Of Your Passions, A Founder’s Story with Mark Holtzman

I am Mark Holtzman. Photography, music, and flying have been my lifelong passions. I’m fortunate to have been able to combine two of the three into a career. I am especially proud that my son and I have been able to build a business that is able to adapt to the changes in technology and client needs, and continues to bring me joy every time I soar into the sky to take photographs.

Tell us about your childhood and where you grew up

I grew up in Southern California, in the San Fernando Valley. My father introduced me to photography and a very young age, and I spent many hours with him in our home darkroom. Even though I was very focused on music in my early years, I always liked to try all sorts of different things to see if I liked doing them, which is how I ended up getting my pilot’s license at 17 in Boy Scout Explorers.

How did you get started as an entrepreneur?

I was a music major. I had no business background. But looking back, I’ve always followed my interests to see where they lead. I was comfortable trying new things and taking risks. I’ve had an airplane for many years and during the economic downturn in the early 2000s my wife and I decided that we needed to “either figure out how to make money with the airplane or sell it.” This got me thinking about if it would be possible to monetize my interests and how I would go about trying to do that. I decided to combine my two passions (general aviation and photography) into an aerial photography business. I had no idea if this was a real profession. I had a rough idea of what the business plan would be, but there were a lot of holes and things that I would need to figure out later. I started slowly, would try an idea, see how it went, and refine it from there. I stayed persistent and slowly but steadily built my business, making a lot of cold calls and channeling resources to help me with things that I was not familiar with. As time progressed, I would make small tweaks (sometimes big tweaks), assess any setbacks or issues that I was encountering, and just keep at it.

What is one business lesson you would tell a startup founder?

Find something that interests you, figure out how you will monetize it, and give it a try. Don’t worry if it isn’t a traditional profession or if you haven’t figured out the entire business model yet. Start slowly, be persistent, harness your strengths, use your resources, and build. Take a chance and enjoy the challenge.