We were lucky to catch up with Angie Walsh recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Angie thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. The first dollar your business earns is always special and we’d love to hear how your brand made its first dollar of revenue.

I had been doing photography as a hobby for years and was also using it while taking care of the marketing for my husband touring music act as well. We needed to upgrade our photography for this so I decided to finally buy my first “good” camera. Once I purchased it I wanted to test it out and see it’s capabilities. So I put a post out on facebook to see if anyone had a wedding coming up that they wanted documented for free. I put in the post, that I just got my new camera and wanted to use it. I had a couple reach out right away and I did the wedding. I had such a great time, that I decided to use those images from the wedding to start promoting online that I did wedding photography. That was the only event I did for free but it was worth it for the content and the experience to start the business.

Angie, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

In 2012 my husband and I sold all our processions and bought an RV to travel the US for his music tour. We wanted to make it 6 months and see what would happen. During this time I was managing and booking his tour as well as handling all his marketing including doing photos and music videos. I wasn’t using any fancy gear, but had a passion for marketing and making beautiful photos. What was planned for 6 months ended up turning into close to a 10 year music tour full time. In 2018, I wanted to up our photography game and decided to buy my first “good” camera. I documented my first free wedding I was hooked and tried to start filling up a photography calendar. This was a little difficult as we were still on the road for my husband music tour so I had to learn to be creative with getting jobs on the road. I took every job including pet photography and real estate. When 2020 Covid came along. I had weddings booked that were making the hard decisions on what to do with their day. I had a bride reach out asking me if I would be ok to hike to their ceremony location. I said “Sure! That sounds fun!” It was my first adventure elopement and I was hooked! I get to hike and take photos of happy couples! It was the best thing every! I started seeing post online about adventure elopements and eventually ran into the school put together by Maddie Mae of Adventure Instead. She specialized in elopements and running an elopement business. I took the school during Covid times and had plenty of time to work on it. It taught me everything I needed to know to bring my business to where it is today. Eventually we made the decision to move to the West Coast and settle in since my husband tour was put on hold still due to Covid. At that time, business was growing fast with the elopements as couples still wanted to get married in a fun and unique way, but couldn’t have any traditional weddings due to covid times. Since my husband was not able to play music we started incorporating him in with the business. He started officiating weddings as well as doing wedding videos. We finally made it a husband and wife team and the business grew even faster. Today, we offer full service elopements in all of Nor Cal and take on about 80 weddings/elopements a year. Our packages have photo + video + planning + officiant+ and live music! We also have been bringing our daughter into the business. She has been learning second shooting as well as content creation for weddings! We are very excited that she love the business and what’s to be a part of it. We are so grateful for the opportunity to have an independent family owned business in a creative field that makes the whole family happy.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

We do a lot of work with SEO on our website and have invested a lot of time and capital in a custom website with SEO optimization. We continually work on it by consistantly posting new blogs and Pinterest marking.

If you have multiple revenue streams in your business, would you mind opening up about what those streams are and how they fit together?

Yes, we offer multiple services as well as expanded the team by bringing in an associate. We offer photo + video + planning + officiating + live music and now content creation for weddings and elopements.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.mindfulmediaphotography.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mindfulmediaphotography
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mindfulmediaphotography
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@mindfulmediaphotography363
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/mindful-media-photography-grass-valley

Image Credits

All images are done by me.