Portrait Power

Portrait Power

An entrepreneur seeks a growth track by sticking to a tough task: Using time wisely.

The portrait photography business is yet another niche industry falling on hard times as a result of the economic downturn.

But one of the Sarasota area's leading portrait businesses isn't taking the slump standing still. Stephen LeBlanc, founder of LeBlanc Studios, is using the slow times as a way to plan for more growth. It's a line many business consultants and experts preach, but LeBlanc has been treating it like true gospel the past few months, as he looks for other ways to add more clients and services.

"I've always wanted to break out of my own backyard," says LeBlanc. "I've just always had a bigger vision than being just a portrait studio."

LeBlanc envisions the studio becoming a leader in the business of combining photography with marketing, branding, advertising and Web site development. The company, which has been operating in Sarasota for 25 year, has five employees, with annual revenues in the low million-dollar range.

LeBlanc's strategy in growing the studio and moving into new markets revolves around an underappreciated executive business lesson: Use of time. LeBlanc has spent years refining his time management skills, using return on investment time techniques taught by business gurus such as Brian Tracy and Tony Robbins.

What is the best use of my time now?" asks LeBlanc. "That is a question I constantly ask myself all day."

He answers it by setting up a daily tasks list and prioritizing it based on which ones will generate revenue and cash flow. While it sounds simple, the rub is in sticking with it. Says LeBlanc: "The trick is to keep yourself above the minutiae."

The minutiae of making pictures is what drew LeBlanc to a career in photography, starting when he was 12 years old in his native Baton Rouge, La. That's where his dad showed him how to turn film into pictures in a darkroom.

By his 20s, LeBlanc was working as a youth diving instructor, in places such as Cozumel and the Caribbean. As he navigated the currents and sharks, LeBlanc began experimenting with an underwater camera. He liked the photography side so much that he decided to do it for a career.

He initially opened his studio in the late 1970s in Houston, working other jobs while he grew his client base. He relocated to the Gulf Coast in 1984 and went into the business full-time, ultimately moving into a two-story building on Fruitville Road in Sarasota.

For most of his first two decades in Sarasota, LeBlanc focused on building a high-end, low-volume portrait studio, with a concentration on beach family portraits and school pictures. He expanded into other fields, such as marketing and branding, mostly as a result of portrait clients asking him to after seeing his work.

One of those clients was Neal Nowe, who runs NCN Electric, a Venice-based electrical contractor firm. Nowe was so impressed with LeBlanc Studio's family portraits, he hired the company to do what has essentially amounted to a brand and marketing extreme makeover of NCN Electric.

LeBlanc Studio's photographers spent months following around NCN crews, taking pictures at more than 70 work sites, from Port Charlotte to Tampa. The end result, LeBlanc says, was a new logo, Web site, brochure and other marketing materials for the company.

That's the type of work of which LeBlanc would like to do more.

"If I give my clients value, they will keep coming back," LeBlanc says. "And that's going to help insulate us from any kind of economy."

-Mark Gordon