We recently connected with Jay Chen and have shared our conversation below.

Jay, appreciate you joining us today. Talk to us about building a team – did you hire quickly, how’d you recruit the first few team members? Any interesting lessons?

“Hire slow, fire fast.” I feel like everyone has heard that motto, but every single lesson I learned from the process of building a team seems to tie back to that.

In the world of creative productions, a good team is crucial to the success of each project. I absolutely adore every single one of my team members, but it wasn’t always easy. I’ve gone through the hiring, training, retention, and firing process quite a bit. Overtime, I perfected that process for my specific business.

When I first started my business, I had a lot of social anxiety. I didn’t realize this at the time, but I continuously adopted the attitude of “making it work” as a means to avoid additional human contact. It wasn’t until my work suffered that I even considered hiring someone new. Despite my negative experience, I certainly learned what I don’t want in my team members.

I reevaluated the types of hires that would make my business successful.
The social anxiety was still there, but since I was finally aware of it, I pushed myself harder to meet up with people, interview potential candidates, and work with creatives on a trial basis.

Eventually, I found the magical unicorns.

Jay, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Ophelia Portraits is dedicated to creating beautiful portraits with a luxury experience. We got our start in the field of commercial advertising. Our team has produced content for the world’s leading brands and publishers across the globe, including Vogue USA, Instagram, Nissan, Kevin Murphy, and many more! It developed our technical mastery over the years, but we decided to focus on what we originally loved the most about photography – people. We love the heartwarming moments people share during our sessions. We love showing others the way we view them. And above all, we love seeing women light up when they see themselves.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

Cherish your team members.

It’s extremely difficult to find those magical unicorns that help shape positive experiences for your customers. Hence, it’s important to put in effort to keep your employees/contractors happy.

We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.

Ophelia Portraits specializes in celebrity experiences for everyday people. Part of the celebrity experience is the pampering hair, makeup, and wardrobe styling, but I wanted to think about even more meaningful ways to help each and every one of our clients feel like a star.

When I was little, I wanted to be in magazines – it was my ultimate vision of being beautiful. Because of this, Ophelia Portraits has a yearly magazine to celebrate all of our clients. I then hand deliver it to them with some flowers.
This is my favorite part of the Ophelia Portraits experience, and it actually comes at no cost of our client.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.opheliaportraits.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ophelia.portraits/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/opheliaportraits
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/opheliaportrait

Image Credits
All images by Ophelia Portraits. Makeup by Jay Chen. Hair by Sarah Lund. Lighting by Joseph McMillan.