Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Allyn Childers & Logan Howard. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Allyn Childers & Logan Howard, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

Both Logan and I (Allyn) have degrees that we don’t use to run our business. Logan went to college and studied Food Science, while I studied Early Childhood Development. We both worked for years in our respective fields before stumbling into photography and falling in love with it. In hindsight, I know we both would have loved to find photography earlier but I feel like having other life experiences outside of the creative/service world is actually our superpower. I was a teacher for many years and it helped me learn how to really communicate with children and it gave me excellent problem solving skills. Logan’s past work experience made her into a brilliant businesswoman with an eye for details.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

We are Logan and Allyn and we run a photography company called Pear and Grace. We are digital and film photographers. Our specialties are capturing joyful family portraiture, branding photos for other creatives, and weddings for couples who appreciate storytelling and authenticity. We love what we get to do in sessions during the week for our clients but what really inspires us is capturing weddings. We love the fast pace, the candid moments, and the energy and excitement of a wedding day. For our sessions, we are on a mission to help families get their photos printed and in their homes, so one thing that sets us apart is that each of our sessions comes with a large print credit so that you can immediately order prints (on us!) to hang in your home. We believe photography is so important and that having it hanging on your walls has such positive effects on you and your family.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

Both Logan and I have had separate businesses in the past so we were thankful to get to approach this joint collaboration with a little more caution and financial security. We are really intentional about the finances at Pear and Grace. One of the things we agreed on right from the start was that we would move slowly and intentionally so that we didn’t ever overextend ourselves financially. We want this company to be a big blessing to our families so we felt like moving at the speed of our success and being more secure financially at the beginning was the wisest approach. We both work other side jobs and we split initial costs (like the LLC and software) down the middle with savings from our personal accounts. We agreed not to take any draws from the company until we hit a certain number which we did quicker than we anticipated so we were able to take home paychecks within the second month of business. We decided initially to use old equipment that we already owned and to rent new equipment until we felt like we could afford to purchase everything in cash. So far we have exceeded our goals each month and we have been able to pay cash for new cameras and all the equipment we’ve needed. Being a natural light photography business we don’t necessarily have to have a studio (and we rent when needed) so we are thankful business costs can be reasonable. We are hoping that our monthly revenue continues to rise but we are very proud of what we’ve accomplished so far and so thankful that run things fairly conservatively so that we have very little money stress.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

Our strategy for growing our clientele is to serve, serve, serve. We love the families, creatives, and couples we get to work with and we feel like the best way to get repeat clients is to let them know how important they are to you. We spent months when we first launched strategizing and rehashing our client experience. We have worked and re-worked every email, style guide, location guide, and invoice we send so that our clients have the best experience and the most access to information. We communicate easily and well with each client so they know exactly what to expect. We are open in our communication, set clear expectations, and we always follow up because we help our clients purchase prints from their sessions. We believe the more we serve, the more they see the value in what they are purchasing and will hire us over and over again. We have clients that have returned for years and we are so invested and thankful to get the opportunity to walk through life with them!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://pearandgrace.com
• Instagram: pearandgrace
• Facebook: Pear and Grace Photography

Image Credits

All of these are Pear and Grace images!