There is a clip that lives in my head. I can’t shake it.

It’s the music video for Humble by Kendrick Lamar. The camera doesn’t just move. It dances. High, low, side to side, changing angles so fast it feels alive. Every cut lands on the lyric. Every shift is perfectly timed to the beat.

I watched it and felt something shift in my brain.

And I thought: I need a photo booth experience to feel like that.

That moment had nothing to do with the photo booth industry. There was no vendor catalog, no trade show floor, no competitor's Instagram involved. It came from watching art. From paying attention to the world outside the business.

That is what this post is about.

If your work has been feeling flat lately, if your concepts feel recycled and nothing is lighting you up the way it used to, the answer probably isn't more strategy. It might be something a lot simpler, and a lot more personal, than that.

The question isn't just what do you do. It's who are you? What have you lived? What are you made of? Because that's what people are actually buying.

Your Creative Identity Isn't Built Inside Your Industry

There's a book worth picking up called The Art of You. The premise will stop you in your tracks.

Your creative identity, the artistic voice that makes your work distinctly yours, is built from your experiences. Everything you've ever seen, heard, felt, tasted, explored. The places you've been. The films that kept you up thinking. The art that moved you. The music that made you feel something you couldn't name.

All of it goes in. All of it comes out in your work.

That means when a client hires me, they're not just booking a booth rental. They're buying my taste. My instincts. My version of beautiful. My specific idea of what an experience should feel like.

And that version of me is built in my real life, not in my business.

This is why two founders can have almost identical equipment, similar pricing, and comparable portfolios, and one of them has work that stops people mid-scroll while the other blends in completely. It's not the gear. It's the eye behind the gear. And that eye is shaped by everything outside the business.

What Happens When You Only Look at Photo Booths

Here's a trap a lot of founders fall into without realizing it.

When you're growing a business, every hour feels like it needs to be productive. Taking a day to wander through a museum feels irresponsible. Booking a trip somewhere new feels like a luxury you haven't earned yet. Watching a film for pure enjoyment feels like procrastination.

So you cut it. You stay heads-down. You consume industry content because at least that feels like learning.

And slowly, without noticing, you stop feeding the creative part of yourself.

The result? Your work starts to look like everyone else's. Because you're drawing from the same well.

When you only consume photo booth content, you design photo booths. When you've stood in front of a Monet and felt the scale of it, walked through a concept store in Paris, watched Kendrick Lamar's team turn a camera rig into a choreographed instrument, you start designing experiences.

That's a different thing entirely.

When everyone draws from the same well, the water starts to look the same. The way out of generic isn't more strategy. It's exposure.

Film, Travel, and the Inputs That Actually Shape the Work

I describe myself as a massive geek, said with full pride. I geek out on magic, engineering, science, psychology, and the mechanics behind an experience. Not just what something looks like, but how it was built. What decisions were made at every turn. Why something lands the way it does.

I consume film and television with intention. I watch things multiple times. I study cinematography and color grading and how a director makes you feel something through a single choice.

And music videos, specifically, shaped a huge part of how I see what's possible in experiential design.

A music video is a three to five minute condensed experience. Someone had a vision, assembled a team, and executed something that makes you feel something in a very short amount of time. That is exactly what a photo booth activation does. So of course, it makes sense to study the people doing that at the highest level.

But the source that has probably shaped my work the most is travel.

Not as a luxury. Not as a content opportunity. As a creative practice.

The Museum Rule

Every time I arrive somewhere new, the first stop is the art museum.

Not to be cultured. Because I genuinely cannot help myself. Art museums are where a culture puts the things it finds worth preserving. They show you how people across centuries and continents have understood beauty, proportion, emotion, and storytelling. And every single time, I come home with things I didn't have before. Ideas. Color combinations. Spatial concepts. A sense of mood or atmosphere I hadn't thought to reach for. 

Modern art museums are a particular favorite. Things that make no sense, or make different sense to different people. Interpretations. Ideas. It's wild and it's wonderful.

After the museum comes every experiential space I can find. Pop-ups. Immersive installations. Interactive exhibits. Anything that invites you into an environment rather than presenting something to look at. Understanding how people create worlds, how you walk into a room and immediately feel something specific, how a single design decision changes the entire emotional temperature of a space, that is directly applicable to what we build.

Every single time.

What Paris Actually Teaches You About Brand

There's a reason Paris keeps coming up.

It's not because Paris is glamorous, though it is. It's because Paris is one of the only places that holds old and new in the same breath without either one apologizing for the other.

Haussmann buildings that have been standing for a century and a half right next to a concept store with forward-thinking retail design. Classic chateaus and designers actively breaking every rule. Maximalism and minimalism on the same block. Street art next to baroque architecture. Pastry windows designed like stage sets. Interiors so layered and intentional they feel like they took a hundred years to put together, because they did.

The city doesn't try to be one thing. It holds contradictions. It's classic and it's current. It's refined and it's irreverent. And somehow the combination is more interesting than either extreme would be on its own.

That is a creative lesson. Not just an aesthetic one.

The most interesting brands don't flatten themselves into a single note. They hold range. And range comes from wide exposure. From seeing enough different things that you stop thinking in binaries.

The same is true for your business. The founders building the most distinctive, memorable work in this industry are not the ones who studied the most photo booth content. They're the ones who brought the widest life experience to the work.

The Instincts Come First. The Business Comes After.

There's a period I look back on clearly: my starving artist phase. Way before MDRN existed. Way before I had any idea what I was building.

What I remember most from that time isn't the struggle. It's how wide open I was to the world.

I watched everything. I went everywhere I could afford. I paid attention to things with no particular agenda because I hadn't built one yet.

The instincts I developed during that time, the visual sense, the taste, the understanding of what premium feels like, none of that came from studying the photo booth industry. It came from living. From being genuinely curious and genuinely present in the world.

The business came later. The instincts came first.

And the instincts came from everything else.

Your Creativity Is Uniquely Yours. Protect It.

Here's the beautiful thing about all of this.

My creativity is shaped by the specific combination of things I love. Film. Travel. Art. Magic. Engineering. The way a camera moves in a music video. The way Paris holds its contradictions. None of that is transferable. You cannot copy it and get the same result.

And that means your creativity, built from your specific loves, your specific history, your specific obsessions, is something no one can replicate either.

Think about what you loved before you had a business.

What were you into as a kid? What did you geek out on? What films made you want to pause and rewind? What places have you been that you still think about? What art, visual, musical, architectural, whatever, has ever stopped you in your tracks?

That is your raw material.

And if you can't answer those questions quickly? That's worth sitting with.

How to Start Feeding Your Creativity Again

The good news: the fix isn't complicated. It doesn't require a big budget or a lot of time.

It requires intention.

• Go see something. A gallery, an installation, a film you've been putting off.

• Go somewhere. It doesn't have to be Paris. A town two hours away. A neighborhood you've never explored. A restaurant serving food you've never had.

• Let your brain take in something genuinely new.

What happens when you do this consistently, when you make space to be a curious, experiencing, alive human being outside of your business, is that your work starts to change. Not dramatically. Not all at once. But things start creeping in. A color palette you saw somewhere. A concept you felt on a trip. A movement from a music video three years ago that is suddenly exactly right for the activation you're building now.

That is how the best work happens.

Not from grinding at your desk. From living a full life and bringing it back in.

Your homework this week: think of one thing outside of your business that has always moved you. A place, a film, an art form, a subject you geek out on. When did you last make time for that? If the answer is "a while," make some time. This week. Not next month.

Key Takeaways

• Your creative identity is built from your full life experience, not your industry knowledge

• When you only consume photo booth content, your work starts to look like everyone else's

• Film, travel, art, and immersive experiences are legitimate business inputs, not indulgences

• The instincts that make your work premium come first; the business systems come after

• Your specific combination of loves and obsessions is your most uncopyable competitive advantage

• Feeding your creativity is not a luxury; it's a business strategy

FAQ

Why do so many photo booth founders feel creatively flat?

Most founders get heads-down in their business and stop consuming things outside the industry. When you only draw from photo booth content, your reference pool becomes the same as everyone else's, and the work reflects that.

How does travel actually improve my photo booth work?

Travel exposes you to spatial design, cultural aesthetics, immersive environments, and ideas you would never encounter at a trade show. Visiting art museums and experiential pop-ups trains your eye for what makes an environment feel a certain way, which directly applies to building photo booth activations.

What is "The Art of You" about?

The book referenced in this episode explores how your creative identity is built from the full breadth of your lived experiences. Everything you've seen, felt, heard, and explored feeds the instincts and taste that make your work distinctly yours.

Do I need a big travel budget to build my creative instincts?

No. The principle is about exposure to new experiences. That can mean a gallery two towns over, a film you've been putting off, a restaurant serving food you've never had, or a neighborhood you've never explored.

Can't I just study what other successful photo booth companies are doing?

Studying competitors has its place for market positioning. But it won't build the distinctive creative voice that makes your work unforgettable. That comes from inputs no one else in your industry is consuming in the same combination.

How do I know what my "creative raw material" actually is?

Ask yourself: what did you love before you had a business? What did you geek out on as a kid? What films, places, or art forms have ever genuinely stopped you in your tracks? Those answers point to the specific lens only you have.

What's the difference between consuming industry content and feeding creativity?

Industry content keeps you current and competitive. Creative input makes your work original and unforgettable. You need both, but most founders are getting one and starving the other.

Ready to hear the full conversation? 

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