General Manager - Multi Unit Photography Studio

Hawaii Family Portraits; Kailua (HI); On-site; USD 65,000 - 79,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Relocation assistance

Job summary

Hawaii Family Portraits on the Big Island seeks a full-time, in-person leader to start by October 2026, managing operations at Kona, Waikoloa, and Kohala Coast properties and driving guest portrait sessions.

You will recruit and coach a bench of eight photographers, empower site managers, and grow referral partnerships through resort channels while upholding brand standards and delivering memorable, studio-quality galleries.

Qualifications

• Leadership experience overseeing a team of photographers and operations.
• Proven ability to develop referral partner networks and drive sales.
• Willingness to relocate to Hawaii by Oct 20, 2026 and work at resort properties.

Responsibilities

• Lead a bench of photographers and Site Managers (8 people).
• Drive referral partner sales and customer success across properties.
• Oversee resort partnerships, branding, and protocol compliance.
• Schedule, train, and coach staff; conduct performance reviews.
• Ensure high-quality galleries and exceptional client experience.

Skills

Leadership

Sales

Photography

Apple hardware

Tools

Apple hardware

Job description

Kona, Waikoloa, and the Kohala Coast of the Island of Hawaiʻi.

Full-time, in-person.

Reports to the Owner

Target start: October 2026

We are the leading family beach portrait company on the Big Island. We operate at four resort properties, with luau photography at three. Combined traffic across all four is roughly 175,000 guests and 97,800 individual check-ins a year. Most of them still leave the island without portraits.

Closing that gap is the job.

Two skills decide whether you succeed in this seat. The first is referral partner sales: getting people who do not work for you, and whom you sometimes cannot pay, to recommend us and help us succeed.

The second is team leadership: building a bench of photographers, a team of 8, who deliver a world-class experience. Everything else in this posting is downstream of those two.

• 50% Leadership and operations
• 30% referral partner sales and customer success
• 20% photography and coverage. Thirty percent looks like the smallest number on that list. It is the one that moves the business.

You sell through other people, and you build teams that hold a standard when nobody is watching.

• You have grown a referral account. You maximize the potential of every relationship you are handed.
• You have worked with frontline referrers. Concierge desks, activity desks, front office, catering, bell staff, host staff. People who do not report to you, who turn over, and who recommend you anyway because you earned it and kept earning it.

• You have promoted inside somebody else's brand rules. Every resort has brand standards that limit what we can put where. Working skillfully inside that constraint is the craft. If you have done this in a hotel, a mall, a cruise line, a franchise system, an airport, or a host venue, we want to hear about it.

• You have hired, trained, scheduled, and coached a real team. Not one or two people. A bench. You have moved somebody out who would not meet the standard, and you have kept somebody good who almost left.

• You have managed a manager you could not watch every day. You will empower Site Managers on other properties who report to you, and hold their numbers accountable without micromanaging.

• Photography experience is preferred, not required. If you shoot, that is a real advantage, and we will weigh it. If you do not, you are still a serious candidate, and you will learn to shoot to our standard on a defined ramp.

• You are comfortable with Apple hardware. Our brand standard runs on it end to end.
• You are on the Big Island, or ready to relocate. We will relocate the right person. What is not flexible is the date: you need to be here and working full time by October 20, 2026.

• You can work the demanding schedule. Weekends, holidays, early mornings, and luau evenings. July runs roughly three times February's volume.

These are the non-negotiables. You live them, and you enforce them with your team.

• Customer-Centered Experience. Booking, shooting, and receiving galleries is stupid-easy and joyful. Zero friction.

• Quality and Excellence. Every gallery is vibrant, emotional, frame-worthy work a family keeps forever.
• Authenticity and Connection. Real moments, real laughter, real tears. No stiff, cheesy poses.

• Professionalism and Reliability. On time, over-communicate, under-promise, over-deliver. Every time.
• Creativity and Innovation. We evolve our editing, posing, workflow, and technology to stay the obvious choice.

This is the thirty percent that decides the year.

THE TWO RELATIONSHIPS THAT MATTER AT EVERY PROPERTY

• The concierge desk. These are the people a family actually asks. Own the relationship at every property: know their names, know their turnover, train the new ones within a week of them starting, and make recommending us the easy answer. Reciprocity, presence, and showing up in person are the whole method. There is no email campaign that substitutes.

• The resort marketing team. Own the channels the resort itself controls: pre-arrival email, in-room collateral, the activities sheet, the resort website, the app, digital signage. Getting into those is a relationship, not a purchase.

VISIBILITY WITHIN THE RESORT

• Maximize our visibility at every property to the fullest extent the resort's brand standards allow, and know where those lines actually sit at each one

• Own our physical presence and signage everywhere we have a desk. Weak signage is a known constraint at more than one property, and fixing it is yours.
• Never ask for an exception you have not earned. Earn it first, then ask.

CAPTURE RATE

• Own conversion of resort arrivals into booked sessions at every property. This is the single biggest lever in the business and the number you will be asked about most often.

• Build the arrivals and attribution data that makes capture rate calculable. Today it is not, and that is the first thing to fix.

• Own the luau-to-portrait cross-sell. The luau operation touches the largest share of those guests and converts the smallest share of them.

EXISTING PARTNERS, RENEWED AND EXPANDED

• Keep every current partnership renewed year over year, on better terms than the year before
• Report partner-sourced revenue back to each resort quarterly. At properties where the resort earns commission on our sales, that number is the argument, and it is not a favor being asked.
• Never disparage a competing vendor, to anyone. Small market, long memory. Win by being visibly better.

Photographers and coordinators across the properties, plus one Site Manager per resort.

• Recruit, train, schedule, and performance-manage the photographer bench
• Hold the Site Manager seat at each property accountable for that property's numbers. Anyone in that seat is your direct report, and you run them on a scorecard, not on impressions.
• Enforce quality, punctuality, professionalism, and resort-specific protocols
• Give weekly feedback and run improvement plans when someone slips
• Own team retention. In a seasonal business on a small island, the cost of turnover is the cost you control most directly.
• Own the viewing appointment standard: train every photographer to run the post-session sales conversation the same way, and coach the ones who avoid it
• Build the bench before peak, not during it

• The client journey end to end: inquiry, pre-booking consultation, session, viewing appointment, gallery delivery

• Luau operations: staffing, nightly sales targets, print fulfillment, and on-site partner coordination. The lead photographer seat on the luau runs nightly execution; you own the outcome and the profitability.

• Labor cost against revenue, week by week, with peak and shoulder staffed differently

• The operational SOPs, kept current, plus checklists that eliminate repeat errors

• Editing, delivery, and scheduling pipelines on time, including in peak season

• Customer issues resolved quickly and professionally, before they become reviews

• Gear inventory, replacements, repairs, location permits, and compliance

Reported weekly to the Chief Growth Officer. Where the data does not exist yet, building it is part of the job.

• Resort-sourced portrait revenue, by property
• Total portrait revenue and session volume
• Capture rate, by property
• Average order value and upgrade conversion
• Luau attach rate and luau profitability
• Labor cost as a percentage of revenue
• Gallery turnaround time
• Guest satisfaction
• Partner satisfaction, asked of the concierge and marketing contacts directly
• Team retention

Your pay has a guaranteed floor and uncapped upside. The structure is deliberately weighted toward performance, because this seat controls the performance of the business.

• Base salary: $72,000 per year. Guaranteed, paid on the regular payroll schedule. This is the floor, not the target.

• Monthly gross profit bonus: 2.5% of gross profit, uncapped. Paid when the company clears its monthly gross profit threshold.

• Quarterly KPI bonus: up to $2,000 per quarter, $8,000 per year. Earned by exceeding targets on capture rate, average order value, labor cost, retention, and partner satisfaction.

• Session commission: 10% of sales, plus tips. Every session you photograph yourself is paid on the total the family spends. Your salary covers your time, so sessions are not paid hourly.

On-target earnings in your first 12 months: $80,000 - $110,000.

That range assumes the gross profit and KPI bonuses are earned, and that you are shooting personally.

We would rather be blunt now than waste your time.

• You need remote or part-time. This seat is in person, on the island, full-time.

• You cannot be on the Big Island working full-time by October 20, 2026

• You have run operations but have never been responsible for a revenue number

• You have sold, but only to people who were already looking to buy

• You are uncomfortable asking a family to spend more than they planned, or uncomfortable coaching someone else to do it