We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nick & Sarah Simile a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Nick & Sarah, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?
From our experience the biggest contributing factor to gaining success is hard work, and the willingness to work hard with consistency. So many blogs and publications love to throw out big headlines such as “How to make $100k your first year”, which sounds great but unfortunately we’ve found there is no magic bullet or substitute for having a relentless work ethic. Running a small business is hard, probably the hardest thing we’ve ever done. There are no days off and you’re never “off the clock”, but getting to be your own boss and create and dictate your future is 100% worth it. It must be said that loving what you do, which we do, makes the hard days a lot more bearable. Passion and hard work are the keys.
Nick & Sarah, 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?
We are Nick & Sarah Simile, owners of Simile Photography. We are a husband & wife wedding photography team. We are extremely passionate about capture amazing moments from the best day of our couple’s lives. It is an amazing honor for us to be trusted with such a monumental and important day and we love every minute of it.
We use a more candid / photo-journalistic approach to shooting our weddings. Less posed and more real, intimate moments. We want our couples to look at their pictures in 10, 20, 50 years and be instantly taken back to their wedding day, and how it actually felt to be there. We use warm, rich tones to create dramatic and powerful images that will stand the test of time.
One thing that we do differently than most wedding photographs is, we don’t have a strict “time-based” wedding day policy. Basically, when a couple hires us for their wedding, they get us for the entire day. We find this eases the stress of our couple having to worry about us leaving before certain things happen and missing shots. It puts everyone at ease and makes the whole day much more enjoyable for everyone.
We are most proud of how seamlessly we work together as a married couple. We honestly love spending as much time together as possible, and running this business together really allows us to do just that. We also find our ability to put our couples at ease when they are in front of our cameras to be one of our strongest suits. Most of our couples have never been in front of a camera ever, so it can be a little intimidating. We create a very fun and easy going environment which helps us get the best out of our couples.
Have you ever had to pivot?
Before we decided to go all inwith our photography business we both had full time day jobs. Nick was a barber and Sarah worked in an office. We both loved doing photography and doing it together but it was just a side hustle for a few years. Once we got to the point where it became too overwhelming to do both our day jobs and photo at the same time we made the decision to take the leap and pursue our photography business full time.
Now most people would say, “We went full time and never looked back”, which is partly true, but I don’t think it paints the full picture. Yes, we absolutely love working for ourselves, it is extremely fulfilling and we get to be creative and work together which is amazing. On the other hand though, it has been one of the hardest things we’ve ever done in our lives. There are literally no days off and the work never stops. Since a lot of photo work is done after the actual shoot, which is the editing process, you almost feel like you always have homework. There is also the business aspect of constantly answering emails, texts, calls, managing finances, working on your brand and social media. The list of tasks is never ending, and they all need to get done yesterday. So it is definitely not always easy, but we are extremely driven and we absolutely love what we do.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
For us the most rewarding aspect of what we do is hearing the feedback from our couples after they receive their images. It is such an emotion-filled process and when we get to hear how moved our couples are with the way we’ve captured their big day, it makes everything worth it. We have had couples call us in tears over how happy they were with their photos. It is absolutely our favorite part of what we do and makes all the hard work worth it.
Also, it must be said that being able to have full control over your schedule and lives while working together is such an amazing feeling. It is something we’ve always wanted and we finally have it. 
Contact Info:
- Website: www.SimilePhotography.com
- Instagram: @Simile_Photography
- Facebook: facebook.com/similephotography
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/simile-photography-burbank
- Other: The Knot: <a target=”_blank” href=”https://www.theknot.com/marketplace/redirect-2071796?utm_source=vendor_website&utm_medium=banner&utm_term=3e2d8bd1-54c0-462f-b1c0-10b30b43b31c&utm_campaign=vendor_badge_assets“><img alt=”As Seen on The Knot” border=”0″ src=”https://d13ns7kbjmbjip.cloudfront.net/For_Your_Website/TK-badge_AsSeen.png” width=”190″></a> Wedding Wire: <a rel=’nofollow’ target=’_blank’ href=’https://www.weddingwire.com‘ title=’weddingwire.com‘><img alt=’weddingwire.com‘ src=’https://www.weddingwire.com/images/sellos/partner–pp2138221.png‘ srcset=’https://www.weddingwire.com/images/sellos/partner–pp2138221.png 1x, https://www.weddingwire.com/images/sellos/partner–pp2138221.png?largeImg=true 2x’ style=’border-width:0px;’ /></a>
Image Credits
Personal photo by: Mark Daugherty / The Actor’s Collective All other photos by: Simile Photography