“It's a really interesting partnership, but it works out great, and we are happiest in the roles we have." The different roles we play work very much in tandem,” she says. "I wouldn't be able to work or travel as much as I do if I didn't know the kids were in the best care possible. To Klein-Williams, the arrangement is a godsend. He helps with the administrative back end of the business, allowing him to work from home while taking the lead as caretaker for their 5-year-old son and 1-year-old daughter. “Knowing how to hire people for the jobs you're not great at allows you to spend time on what you are good at."īut among everyone in her studio, her most important teammate has been her husband, Keith. “I'm good at making money, but after it comes in, I don't want to deal with it,” she says. To stave off burn-out, she makes sure to hire others to handle tasks for which she has little patience, such as bookkeeping. Though she’s been able to control that side effect in some ways - commercial gigs have helped her limit the number of weekends she works, for example - she still maintains a hectic schedule. Indeed, this approach requires an around-the-clock time investment from her. "It works out well, except being the primary photographer for everything is exhausting." She has since altered the structure of her studio, and now only brings on new folks to fill supporting roles. At one point, she had a number of full-time photographers on her payroll, but creative differences made that approach tough to maintain. She says her team is critical to her success, though it took her awhile to find the right mix. Over the years, Klein-Williams has been reminded time and again about the importance of relationships. “We form relationships with companies we want to work with, and even write up proposals." Presently, they capture an average of 40 weddings and coordinate roughly 300 boudoir sessions each year. "We really go after work - we don't sit and wait,” she says. It helps that Klein-Williams and her team put a great deal of effort into the acquisition of every new customer. “When I decided to just work for myself, that's when the business really took off, and really began turning a profit." “It made me wonder why I didn't just jump in with both feet from the beginning,” she says. Almost immediately, she saw a significant uptick in her business. In 2001, she took another leap and decided to focus on her own studio full-time. "When I first started, my main advertising campaign was printing up handmade fliers and shoving them illegally into people's mailboxes,” she says. She had much still to learn in her early entrepreneurial days, though. But she soon found boudoir photography to be a natural extension that she could market as “the ideal groom’s gift.” Even many of the commercial jobs she took later on have tied into weddings - the studio often takes photographs for florists, wedding dress designers, lingerie brands and other related companies. ![]() Within her own business, Klein-Williams focused solely on weddings at first. "I was able to live - not well, but I did survive,” she says. ![]() To sustain herself while building a portfolio, she worked at other studios in the area and held down retail jobs. Not long after earning her associate’s degree there, she bootstrapped the startup funds she needed and officially opened up her own studio. (And, she never did move into that dorm room.) She used her college funds to buy camera equipment and enroll in a 10-month program at Hallmark Institute of Photography. Her parents weren’t thrilled, but she convinced them to give her a one-year shot at pursuing her true passion.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |