Episode 001: 4 Cringe Worthy Things I Did At The Beginning Of My Business

Hey-hi-hello-and welcome to this-the very first episode of the Kelsi Bailey Photography podcast. Sigh. It feels so good to be sitting here at this mic that I purchased a year ago. That was when the idea of this podcast idea was one that just lived in my heart an in the margins of my notebook..and how here it is-out into the world and I’m just over the moon about it.

SO however you found yourself here-whether you’re a client, a mama, or a fellow creative, thank you for sharing some of your precious time with me. I know you’ve got a lot going on today-I see you-so without further adieu, let’s raise our coffee mugs-cheers-and jump into today’s episode. 

I was sewing with a friend, actually, recently, and she asked me ‘Hey, Kelsi, did you study photography in college?’ and I realized that while I talk a lot about my business, I don’t actually…talk…about my business. So let me paint you a bit of a picture and then I would love to share 4 totally cringe worthy things that I did in the beginning of my business that I would zero out of ten recommend. 

The short answer to her question is, no, I did not study photography in college but like I said, let’s paint a picture, let’s go back in time a little bit and let’s talk about what Kelsi Bailey Photography looked like in its infancy stages when it was actually Photography by Kelsi. So I think the best place to start here is going to be about the spring of 2013. Okay. So come on, come on a journey with me. We’re going to time-hop back to 2013. There were two things happening in the spring of 2013 in particular that had be standing at a big of a professional crossroad. Crossroads? Crossroad. Either way, the first thing that was going on is that I was actively dissolving a business that I had started with a friend of mine in college. We had started a wedding videography business. It did not end on bad terms, nothing went wrong per se, there was nothing bad, it was actually quite beautiful. But we realized very quickly after we graduated that the business we had created and built was not going to be sustainable or in alignment with the lives that we were trying to build. So I’m really thankful for the foresight that we had in 2013 to stop taking new wedding clients. As you know, weddings book out years in advance and in the spring of 2013, we had weddings contracted through October of 2015. So, like I said, I’m really thankful for the foresight that we had to say ‘yes, we’re going to continue shooting through 2015 but we are no longer going to be taking any new clients’ so at that point, her and I both went our separate ways and we pursued other full time work. I was fortunate enough to find a job at a small video production house in St Louis. I had studied video production in college so it was in alignment with my degree and I believe my title there was junior video editor slash video producer. So it was exciting and I did enjoy it. For awhile, I was juggling both Monday through Friday corporate work and then the weddings were contracted on the weekends. However, in the spring of 2013-not too long after we had decided to dissolve the wedding business, the video production house I had been working for went out of business. They closed its doors and we all lost our jobs so here I went from having one and a half jobs to having like, half of a job that I was no longer actively building. At the time, my now husband and I were planning our wedding and looking at each other going ‘Well, Kelsi, you have to have a job, so what..next. What are we going to do about your job” And of two things I was absolutely certain. The first thing was that I had no interest in finding another full time corporate style job. Having had the opportunity to dip my toes into the world of entrepreneurship, I really, in my heart of hearts, knew that the corporate setting was not a good fit for me. That being said, the other thing I was certain of is that I did not want to build another business with such a small niche. Weddings are amazing, I do enjoy photographing or shooting wedding videography from time to time but weddings are a really hard niche to make a full time salary at. So, I knew I didn’t want another corporate job, I knew I didn’t want to build another job that had such a very specific niche, and so, I thought, what next, what am I going to do?

I do want to take a second to acknowledge how grateful I am for having those weddings on the calendar at that point. Having them in my back pocket still bringing money in gave me the opportunity to pause. It gave me the opportunity to take a deep breath and think about where I wanted to take the next step in my entrepreneurial journey. I know that the was a huge privilege at that time so I’d just like to acknowledge that had the weddings not been there, had I lost my full time job and not had the weddings to fall back on, things could’ve looked very different so I did just want to acknowledge that. 

Now, photography was not something that was new or foreign to me at all. In fact, I had spent many years working in photography studios starting as early as my senior year in high school and I worked at portrait studios throughout my years in college so photography was something that I had been doing for, at that point, what felt like almost as long as I can remember. And I already had the gear because for my wedding videography business, we used the same cameras that we used to take photos. They were DSLR cameras and what I mean by that is if you think about having your photos taken, if you think about the camera that you envision in your mind the photographer is using, that’s the kind of camera that I’m talking about. At that time, they were being introduced with both photo and video capabilities. So I was really lucky that I already had the gear at my disposal and had already been playing with it on the photography side for years while I was using it for my actual work. But it had been pursued at that point as a hobby. I was, you know, photographing a family here, a family there, a senior here, and senior there, but I was not pursuing it professionally at all at that point…..until I was. 

During my pause period, if you will, I was thinking about what felt like the next most natural step and I reflected on my life personally and at that point, I was planning our wedding, we were excited about starting a family, and that saying came to mind ‘first comes love then comes marriage then comes the baby carriage’ and I had been there, done that, with the wedding world and so the next best natural step felt like family and newborn photography. And so, at that point, Photography by Kelsi was born. 

An old co-worker of mine from the video production house helped me whip up a logo and put together a website and before I knew it, I was hitting the ground running and I was working on marketing Photography by Kelsi, the lifestyle newborn and family photographer. I was, well, let’s see, at that time, Instagram was not the polished marketing tool that it is today. It was heavy on the filters, it was heavy on the-you know-posting in the moment-you remember-you know what I’m talking about. And Facebook was there but it was not quite the same as it is today and so I was leaning largely on my website and my blog, a bit of work with the SEO as I was trying to figure it out, and then obviously the marketing on Facebook. It was not gaining a lot of traction. So I was brainstorming thinking of like, anything short of a billboard, where I could put my marketing information out- out into the world for people to see it. In my brainstorming, I came up with a few things and I will share them here on the podcast with the hopes that it can stay between you, and me, and this podcast, because they are so cringe worthy and we can all have a little chuckle, while we talk about them but then we’re just going to leave them in the past. We’re going to be happy that we did them, it’s important to remember where you came from, but if you are a creative, a photographer, perhaps, and you’re thinking about starting a photography business, these are some things that I would absolutely not recommend that you do. 

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Okay, so now that we’re all on the same page, let’s just dive in and talk about all the things I wish I would maybe not have done. 

The first thing that I did was print out a bunch of marketing materials and I drove up and down Manchester Road. We lived in St Louis at the time and Manchester was a very hot and heavy road, a lot of businesses, very busy, and I just drove up and down the street and any business that I saw that I thought young families might be hanging out at, I’m thinking daycares, preschools, pediatricians offices, little playhouses, anywhere that I drove by and thought ‘Ope maybe a family might hang out there’ I got out of my car, got all of my marketing materials; I had flyers and business cards I believe, and I would walk in, introduce myself, and ask if I could leave some of those marketing materials at the desk or in the window or wherever. And, I’ll tell ya, I don’t think I had one business allow me to leave my marketing materials in their office. I don’ blame them. I imagine I looked a bit like a crazy woman walking in with these marketing materials, ‘Hi I’m Kelsi and I’m a photographer and I’m new to the area and I would love to leave some of my business information here in case any of your clients or patients or whoever wanted to just pick up a flyer on the way out’ No. No one wanted to do that. I don’t know what I was thinking. So after several rejections there, I realized that that was not going to work. 

So the next best marketing idea that I had would be number 2 on the list and that was to take out a newspaper ad. I literally did. I literally put a newspaper ad in black and white and I have gone back through my emails and I have tried to find any information that I could about the ad, how much I paid for it, what it said, how long I ran it, and I can’t find any of that information anymore but I did do it. I did pay to have a newspaper ad placed in the local paper and I thought ‘This is it. This will be in front of people. They’re going to be flipping through their morning paper and they’re going to think ‘Oh my goodness. I am so happy to see this newborn photographer have this ad right here in the newspaper I’m going to give her a call right now!’ NO. That did not happen and I don’t even know if people are still getting newspapers right now but I’ll tell ya-nobody booked a session and said ‘I saw your ad in the newspaper and would love to book you for a session!’ That didn’t happen. That was not a good marketing idea. It’s pretty cringe worthy and I really can’t even believe, looking back on it, that I did that at all. 

The third thing that I did was, I guess it was built a little bit out of the trauma of having had a wedding videography business-remember I talked about that niche being so small-I was so scared to niche down too specifically that in my newborn photography services, I offered both a studio style session and a lifestyle style session. What I mean by the studio style is think of the beanbag posing with the backdrops and the artificial light and the wraps and the babies that are sitting with their chins on their little hands..I offered that style and I also offered the lifestyle style which is primarily what I shoot today which is babies in their cribs and in their natural environments, snuggled up with mom and dad but I was too afraid to lean too heavy to one side so when I had the luxury of having a newborn inquiry, I sent them both options. You can have either a studio newborn session or a lifestyle newborn session. Plot twist. I’m a brand new business and I don’t actually have a studio but that’s okay I will bring the studio to you in your home. So I had all of my props, all of my wraps, my PVC backdrop that I built myself, I had the giant beanbag and I would drive all of that into peoples’ homes, I would then unpack it all, set it all up somewhere in their home, and then photograph their baby in these posed situations-and I just-it’s so bananas to think about this now-all of this stuff with the heater that I would bring in and the light and to get them into those poses they have to obviously be very sleepy. It was a whole rigamorole and at the end of the day, when I would go out and shoot a studio session, you know I say studio when it was really in their house, but the studio style gallery that they received probably took me 4 or 5 hours just for the session alone. By the time I packed it all up, drove to their house, unpacked it, set it up, photographed the baby, packed it al back up, drove it home, took it all back out of my car, put it in storage-never mind that I still had to edit and deliver all of the images. So if you want to talk about a return on investment-that was not a good one. I was dumping tons of time into those sessions and tons of money on all of the props and the equipment, and it just was not smart financially. I was not making any profit at all at that time with that strategy. And you know what? I’m pretty sure that I offered studio sessions like that for a year and a half before I decided this is not working-this is not making me a profitable business, and I need to just stay in my lane, stick to the lifestyle and that’s okay if that’s a niche but get rid of the studio stuff. So I did that and I don’t mean to speak poorly of studios. I currently rent a studio space where I do offer lifestyle style newborn sessions but the style of photography that I was shooting at that time was not in alignment with what I was good at, that’s not where my talent lied, and so it’s funny to think now that brought all of that into peoples homes and set it up and marketed that as a positive for my business. 

The fourth and final thing that I want to share-I want to share it with a bit of a back story and a grain of salt. So this thing that I did came about from a very kind family and in fact, they are a family that I am still photographing today and they might actually be one of the families that I have been photographing the longest, they were here with me at the very, very beginning, obviously, and I am really thankful for this little nudge of kindness that they showed me early in my business and even though I turned it into something cringe worthy, I just want to make sure that you know that it was a me problem and not a them problem. So what happened was this. It was around Christmas time and this family owned a poinsettia greenhouse, like a poinsettia farm, and every Christmas time they would have a big poinsettia festival. It was a tradition for many local families to come and buy their poinsettias, they would buy their fresh garland, their fresh wreaths and they also had Santa there every year. This family very kindly invited me to come kind of help spread my business word of mouth and they invited me to take pictures of families or their children with Santa. They meant it, like I said, as a very kind gesture and I saw it as something completely different. I saw it as a huge opportunity to print out more marketing materials and make a little bit of money AND get my work in front of a much bigger audience. So what I did was kind of similar to the first cringe worthy thing that I did where I spent a lot of money printing things out, I printed a big huge sign, I printed out more business cards, more flyers, and then I also curated some packages. I believe that there were, like, three photo print packages for these photos with Santa. The most expensive one had to have been, gosh, maybe in the two hundred dollar or so range and then there were two others and I don’t know if they were bigger or smaller but either way, I walked into the festival that day really confident that this was going to be a stepping stone in my business. What happened, unfortunately for me, was the opposite of that. People did not come to the poinsettia festival to have a professional photographer take photos of their family with Santa. They came to the poinsettia festival because it was fun for families, they could grab a lot of Christmas gifts, they could catch up with a lot of their friends and because Santa was there, they used that opportunity to take out their phones, have their kids talk to Santa, share a letter, etc, they were shell shocked when they found me there and I’m saying ‘Hi I’m Kelsi and I would love for you guys to hop up on Santa’s lap and I’ll take your photos and then I have these print packages and then you, know, let’s do this.’ They were not interested in that at all. So what happened was, I had my DSLR on me, obviously, and I don’t think I took one photo with it that day. I took several photos of families with Santa with their phones and even when that would happen I would try to still share a little bit about my business ‘please feel free to take a card if your family ever needs, you know, any family photos in the future, if you know anyone who does, perhaps you could keep me in mind’ and maybe a family or two took those but I don’t think-like I said-it was not the right place and time for me to have been trying to drum up business that way. It was just a really low key family event and I saw it as like, an opportunity to be like the mall Santa photographer and have packages and make money and really try to reach a new clientele. So I was disappointed at the end of the day but mostly I just felt really silly for, again, thinking that it was something different than what was originally presented. So my tip here with that and the reason that I shared it is because it’s important, I think, when you are building a business, to kind of remember remember what the end goal is. The end goal, in a business is, yes, to be profitable and make money but it is also, especially in a service based business, it is also important to first build and nurture relationships and that is the part where I kind of stumbled a bit when I was building the business early on. I thought, built it and they will come, put out the fliers, they will come, put the ad in the newspaper, they will come, put hte packages together to photograph with Santa, they will come. I spent more time doing that kind of hard marketing and less time trying to build a connection with families who would be interested in building a connection with me. I think the long and short of it is just that-is that in the beginning I made a lot of marketing mistakes that only allowed me a facet or one side of a business that was yes the goal but not the ultimate goal. What I value the most about my business and the way that I have built it since then, is that it has allowed me the most beautiful and fulfilling relationships. I’ve had friends that have turned into clients, I’ve had clients that have turned into friends and I love nothing more than pulling up to a session, seeing a family for the sixth year, seventh year, eighth year in a row, hugging their kiddos, catching up on their lives, and leaving with a huge smile on my face. That is my favorite part of the business. 

So there you have it. No, I did not study photography in college but I did built a photography business and while I was building my photography business, I did four totally cringe worthy things that I would zero out of ten recommend. Whew. Boy am I glad to get those off my chest. Whether you’re a brand new client or a client who’s been with me since I’ve been Photography by Kelsi, I am so glad that we can sit together and chat about the good, the bad, and the ugly. Oh, and hey, mom, dad, if you’re listening I know I didn’t study photography in college. I did however, study TV and radio production so in a way, this podcast is in direct alignment with my degree. I just thought you’d like to see that I was putting it to use after all these years.