We recently connected with Andrea Lewis and have shared our conversation below.

Andrea, appreciate you joining us today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

It’s been a huge blessing to be able to earn a full-time living from our wedding photo/video business. It was always my end-goal to have my company become our primary income, and while it hasn’t always been perfect, it’s been far better than any 9-5 job I’ve ever had in the past. When I first started the business I had just gotten married and graduated college. I had my first day job as a graphic designer, and my boss wasn’t exactly ideal. I would often work way past my normal hours in order to meet unreasonable deadlines. It was stressful, demanding, and severely underpaid. Work would start at 7:30am and I’d often leave the office at 6:30 or 7pm. I hated it! I knew I had to find something better, so the hunt started for a new job. During this time, I was trying perfect my photography website and didn’t really know how to even get started with running a side hustle, let alone a full-time business.

I started participating in bridal shows and trying to connect with local wedding vendors. But I felt like a very small fish in a very big pond. Completely lost on how to get started. I ended up going back to college to get my MFA, and during the next 4 years I got a better job, had 2 kids, completed my MFA, and slowly started to figure out what it even meant to run a business, perfect my brand, and started to climb the local wedding vendor ladder to start making waves in the local pond.

By now it was 2019. My ideal day job had a major company restructure and I was suddenly and unexpectedly out of a high-paying job with no backup plan. My business wasn’t really “full-time” income yet, and so I was left in a lurch without a solid plan. I basically realized I had two choices: Try to find another day job and gamble the chance of having another horrible boss, or try to go full-time with the business…

I started pulling all-nighters working on the website, boosting SEO, honing in on our brand, and really trying to figure out the business thing. I ended up getting a side part-time remote job working for an app developer as well, which really helped bridge the gap between full-time business and regular 9-5. The only problem was my boss ended up being extremely demanding and just solidified my desire to finally work for myself and not someone else.

By the end of 2019, my business was really starting to flourish, but I wasn’t quite ready to pull the plug on my consistent part-time income. I really was struggling to balance both my business and the other job. Making that jump from consistent income to unknown income truly is terrifying when you’ve never done it before!

Then the spring of 2020 set in, and the global pandemic shut down everything. All the weddings I had booked were either rescheduled or cancelled. And my part-time app hustle let me go due to economic downturn. I was completely out of any ideas except going ALL IN on the business once and for all. Somehow by the grace of God we were financially able to pull through and we decided to put all our efforts into growing the business despite the unknown future of a post-covid world.

Our region of the country was one of the firsts to open back up, so we started booking again, and by the fall of 2020 we had more weddings booked for 2021 than we ever had before, and then 2022 was soon fully scheduled as well. My business grew past my personal ability and I immediately launched into teams scheduling multiple weddings on dates so we could serve up to 3 weddings at once! I was able to look at the next two years of income knowing I would personally bank over six figures each year, and for the first time in my life I had a solid outlook on what the future would hold. Talk about emotional whiplash lol.

Since then, we’ve been perfecting the brand, honing in on client experience, and streamlining the business workflow to make things simpler and better for our clients as well as ourselves in the backend. And while it’s not always sunshine and rainbows, working for myself and not for another awful boss has been an enormous blessing. And being able to celebrate each weekend with amazing couples documenting their most important day of their relationship has been truly a dream come true.

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?

I’m Andrea Lewis, owner of Amative Creative, a wedding photo & video company based in central Virginia. We offer a unique client experience by matching up hand-picked team members to document their wedding day that match them in personality and shooting style, and custom edit each wedding photo gallery and highlight film to our clients’ specific vision and personal aesthetic. No two weddings look exactly the same for this reason, as we often custom create edit styles for clients looking for a specific vibe on their big day.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

One of the biggest goals I had as a new mom with two kids 2 and under was making sure I found a way to be part of their daily lives more than I could be as a 9-5 mom. Even when my kids went to school one day, I didn’t want them to have to wait to see me until I was off work at 5 or 5:30. But I also knew as a full-time wedding photographer, my weekends would be severely booked and I’d miss out on their fully free days as well. The only solution I could see was to create a team-based system where I could hopefully one day pick which weddings I worked so that I could be more present with my children but still create the kind of financial support I wanted for them. That purpose still drives me as I push to create more streamlined systems of work so I’m not always on my computer editing or communicating with clients. It’s not always a perfect balance, but I try hard to make sure my kids know I’m putting them first even in our busy seasons.

Any advice for managing a team?

My number one priority with our teams is to make sure they understand how important they are to the business. Without them I would be completely lost and unable to satisfy all of our clients and reach the goals we’re currently setting. I let each member know as much as possibly how valued they are, and I’m always asking how I can improve as a leader. My background of dealing with terrible bosses has made me painfully aware of how intentional I want to be to make sure I never turn into a “bad boss” myself. One of the most important ways I show this is making sure my team is paid well and competitively in my area. I also offer bonus pay and travel pay which is rare in this industry. It’s not unheard of to be tasked to a wedding an hour away but not be paid for that time or travel. I make sure this is covered with my team, and also pay over what I plan when the timeline of their weddings run long. Instead of creating a bad client experience where my team leaves regardless of timeline when contracted, I let them know they can stay until required and I will comp their pay so they aren’t loosing out. In the end I pay out of pocket in those situations, but it’s worth it to maintain a loyal team and satisfied clients. I encourage my team members to also book their own weddings and share their wins with others in the team. I hope to create an atmosphere of family rather than mere cohorts.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.amativecreative.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/amativecreative
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/amativecreative
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreacaresse/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@amativecreative