We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Christa Klotz a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Christa thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Risk taking is something we’re really interested in and we’d love to hear the story of a risk you’ve taken.

One of the biggest risks I’ve taken was opening a business with family, it definitely has been a life changing experience. My sister-in-law and I opened The Selfie Room in St Louis in 2019 when we came up with the idea for a photo studio that was open to the public. The Selfie Room was one of the first self service photography studios or “selfie museums” open within the United States. She and I however, had different ideas of what The Selfie Room should be long term. She wanted to follow a trend, jump on the bandwagon of influencers and creators. I wanted to create a space full of body positivity, joy and self expression for everyone. There is always a risk when opening a business with someone, especially when you don’t always agree 100%, and especially with family. Currently, the studio is geared more towards body positivity and creation, creating a space where everyone feels welcome.

Ultimately, we both took the risk to open The Selfie Room because we believe it could be something amazing, not only within St Louis, MO, but in other cities as well. And since our foundation in 2019, there have been hundreds of other “selfie studios” across the world. Examples include “The Selfie Museum in 2015” “The Museum of Ice Cream in 2016” and “The Selfie Wrld in 2020”

Additionally, The Selfie Room team changes our themes up quarterly to stay current with seasons, providing fresh content and selfie station designs. Each “selfie station,” “room” or “exhibit” we create is a small risk. We spend money, time and energy to create the design for the theme of the rooms. Sometimes the rooms are widely popular, other times, they fail to inspire the customers, which is when we scrap the theme and create something new the next quarter. If a room theme is popular we will keep it longer than others. For example, we just created a “Mirrored Tunnel,” that is extremely popular! The tunnel is in our “hidden room” where guests have to explore the studio thoroughly to find. This level of mystery and discovery is one of my personal favorites, because it really does provide a moment of “awe” from the guests, I love hearing the “Wow’s, Oooo’s and Awwws” when guests finally find the hidden room. The Mirror Tunnel is a 16 ft long tunnel, with two walls and the floor covered in mirror, while flowers gently suspended above on the “roof”. The tunnel is where most of our staff go to take a break, its quiet, peaceful and can provide a great space for self-reflection and tranquility. Plus its a great spot for selfies! The Mirror Tunnel in St Louis will be around for a long time!

Taking risks is simply living life and making normal day to day choices. One of the biggest risks anyone can take is opening their own business. It puts their own financial stability on the line, as most business owners invest their personal money or take out personal or business loans to fund their dreams. Life is full of everyday decisions, some are good and some aren’t, but the easy decision is “always go with your gut and follow your dreams.” There might not always be a good time or reason to take a risk, especially in business, but sometime you just have to take a risk.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I graduated from Emporia State University and Erika graduated from St Louis University, both with business focus. We independently owned and operated own individual businesses for years before meeting and collaborating to create The Selfie Room.

Shortly after I married Erika’s brother, we formed The Selfie Room to provide a self service photography studio or selfie studio to the public, with colorful backgrounds, rad props, great lighting, and a fun place to take photos. The Selfie Room originally opened in 2019 with 12 selfie stations, however since, we have expanded to 21 selfie stations or rooms. We believe what sets us apart from competition is that we do not create “cookie cutter” or “copycat” rooms/stations. Our creative team, comes up with unique themes that you will not see anywhere else. One of my proudest room ideas was a giant Chinese take out box; the box was 4 feet tall and 4 feet wide, a perfect large scale model of a real Chinese take out box, that clients could climb inside of thru the back and take creative selfies. After celebrating the Chinese New Year, the box was recycled to become another popular theme selfie station, a lifesize popcorn box!

I am most proud of our team, the people that we have supporting our company. Their ability to inspire guests, helping them feel welcome and empowered, especially women, is so encouraging, not only to other guests but to each other and management. Their kindness and positive customer service is what keeps our studio operating. Plus we’re extemely proud of the 160 total room themes we’ve created since our foundation.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

The strategy that we used to help grow our business to 16k followers is simple: Consistency, Reshares and Tags. These days being present on Social Media is critical to the success of a business. As I’m sure you know, branding not only yourself but the business can make or break a business.

Consistently being active on social media is essential, with todays “goldfish attention span” you have to be diligent about being a repeat brand that your followers see regularly. While they might not be a customer the first time they see your post/story/reel/brand, with consistency, you can keep reminding them that you’re a business to visit. Additionally, consistently communicating and building relationships with clients helps them feel like they aren’t just a number, that they are personally involved and invested in your company.

We Reshare our clients photos on our page and stories, using customer created content (CCC) to help advertise our studio. This not only highlights the customers experience and showcase their joy and creativity, possibly helping build their own brand or company, but we gain visibility in front of not only our followers, but the creators followers as well. We always tag the creator, not only to give them credit for the photo or the modeling, but so that they can share the photo too. This increase in visibility by having clients reshare our content helps spread the word with free marketing.

We encourage customers to tag us during each visit, By encouraging our customers to tag us, we can reshare their content in later posts, stories and reels. Which in turn encourages customers to reshare the post/reel/story that they were tagged and included in. For example: we have a Pajama Party coming up next month on December 10th. We’ve taken photos of clients who came in for fun photos during the holiday season in Pajama’s a few years ago. By using these photos from years ago, tagging the individuals in the photo, that guest not only is reminded about the previous visit and fun experience and might schedule another visit, but they usually reshare our post to their followers.

One piece of advice I would suggest for people starting to build their social media presence, especially those who have a team whom all manage one account: Use emoji’s as a signature. One emoji would be used exclusively and specifically by one person on the team. This small action is discrete, clients wont realize the coordination between an emoji and a person, usually. However, internally, as a company, you’ll know who said what and to whom. So if you are speaking to a client about an event or potential collaboration, with an emoji signature, the entire team will know who was speaking to that client and management can follow up with corrective action, if needed, or the conversation can easily be followed up with by the coordinating person. For example: A yellow heart left in your Dm’s, Comments or replies means your speaking to Christa, a Blue heart means your speaking to Erika. This is a technique we’ve used for the entire team for years and every employee that uses social media has their own heart color. But the idea could be applied to any emoji. Use emoji’s as signatures.

Do you have multiple revenue streams – if so, can you talk to us about those streams and how your developed them?

The Selfie Room in St Louis has a unique building, its 3,000 square feet of studio space, but in the back of the building, prior to our residency was an apartment. Its a small studio type apartment that shares a wall and a door with the business. Not only does this apartment generate revenue when its reserved on Airbnb, but it also can be reserved by clients for private events.

Ultimately, The Airbnb presents its own problems like any airbnb and investment property, but its treated as a separate business with its own expenses and income.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://theselfieroom.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theselfieroomstl/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theselfieroomstlouis
• Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/theselfieroom
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/the-selfie-room-st-louis