JIM
KOETTING
Influence Is Chemical™: Why Photographers Have to Tune Themselves First
Learn how your stress, expectations, and story shape every client session, booking, and referral. You've mastered your camera, but the most important setting in your business is you. Every interaction with a client, second shooter, or referral partner changes how they feel. That decides whether they relax in front of your lens, book you, pay your price, and tell their friends. Using storytelling, brain science, and live guitar, Jim shows photographers and studio owners how to recognize when stress is shaping their sessions, how to surface the unspoken client expectations behind bad reviews and price disputes, and how to communicate with people who think differently. As AI makes images easy to produce, clients choose the photographer they trust. Every attendee leaves with a "Tune First" guitar pick and one change to practice at their next shoot.
JIM KOETTING
Jim Koetting is a Kansas City–based serial entrepreneur, TEDx and keynote speaker, executive coach, and author of Hijacked. He has started and run a dozen businesses, including owning a registered investment advisory firm, building institutional financial software, and leading Reef Systems. Through CEOM Consulting Group, he helps leaders and teams strengthen communication, trust, alignment, and execution. Jim also hosts the Speaking With Authority podcast, which has about 70,000 YouTube subscribers, and he writes The Available Brain, a newsletter on judgment and attention in the age of AI. He's the only non-photographer on the PhotoCon stage, and he brings the people side of running a creative business. Jim's signature keynote, Influence Is Chemical™, was first introduced in his TEDx talk. It blends storytelling, brain science, and live music to make the lesson stick: tune yourself first.
