We were lucky to catch up with Autumn Weyandt recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Autumn thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How do you feel about asking friends and family to support your business? What’s appropriate, what’s not? Where do you draw the line?

When starting a business, we often look to our family and friends first for support. Within a healthy, intentional family or friend relationship, there is no shame in asking for their support at the start, and our loved ones often are the first ones to ask if they can help in any way. While this is appropriate in most cases, it is our opinion that you should not expect everyone to participate, and that is perfectly okay. Do your best to focus on thanking all those who do support you instead of criticizing those who do not. Although most people view supporting a business as placing an order, starting a subscription, or in our case, booking a photography session, this is not the only way that family and friends can show their support. They may share your posts or stories on social media, tell their friends or other family about your business, or share the work you’ve done for them and tag your business on social media. We don’t recommend requesting over and over for your family and friends to show their support. After your initial conversation, they will do what they are able, if they wish! We leave it at that and do not push further. Our belief is that along with creating a quality product, showing support and kindness to others will open many more doors for your business!

We believe in supporting your family and friends in their businesses, too. We have experienced this kindness and do all that we can to pay it forward to others. Our family and friends own businesses, too, and we show our support by sharing their business online, word of mouth, and collaborating with them. A perfect example of this is when we work with our friend, Evan Mitchell. He owns a transportation company and we photograph their vehicles and headshots for him and his employees. His support means the world to us, so we not only share the images we complete for him, but we also wear his luggage tags on our backpacks when we’re out photographing so others can see, and we use the cups he gave us with his logo on them, and share his name with others needing transportation services near the Twin Cities. We believe in giving back even more than we get. We are simply so grateful and want to show as much support and kindness to our friends and family with small businesses as we can. We would not be where we are without them!

Autumn, 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?

We are a married photographer team living in South Range, Wisconsin, about twenty minutes south of Duluth, Minnesota. Autumn has been photographing since middle school, and got her first Canon camera in 2012, which is where her passion for photography really started to grow. When we got married in 2016, we talked about ways to spend more time together as a couple and build a business together. After discovering that Justin also enjoyed photography, we took it as a sign that it was a perfect fit to pursue a photography business together.

From the start, we wanted to build our skills and offer a variety of experiences and services available for our clients. Our main services are wedding photography, family photography, and small business photography. We focus on being flexible for our clients while also being organized to create an experience as stress-free as possible, whether it’s a busy wedding day or a family session with little ones!

We are very proud of our growth in the Twin Ports area since starting our business in 2020. We have seen continual growth in our experiences and skills in all aspects of our business. Our goal is to have each client experience joy during their session and feel more and more comfortable in front of the camera as we go along, even if they’ve never done a photo session before! We love meeting new people & can’t wait to capture sweet moments for our clients, no matter what the occasion!

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

We feel the most rewarding aspect of being an artist is the feeling that our clients trust us to do our job and do it well. Part of what makes owning your own business so amazing is being able to produce a product that you can be proud of; getting to capture photos and edit them with creative freedom & have our clients enjoy the finished product just as much! We love helping others and creating experiences for our clients that are as enjoyable as possible, especially during these important moments in their lives. Getting to be alongside them during such a wonderful day in their lives is such an honor and joy that we never take for granted.

We also absolutely adore that our work is used to preserve such important memories and we love producing something that people proudly display in their homes or being shared with others.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

We are unique in this area as business owners. We started small and only got what we absolutely needed in the beginning and used our personal funds to do it. Once the business started making money, we continued to build our assets and get more equipment to create more freely (and conveniently). We spent the first four years solely reinvesting all our income back into the business, and we are now financially free (no debt) and we have all the equipment we need to give every one of our clients the best experience & finished product as possible.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.weyandt-photography.com
• Instagram: @weyandtphotography
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/weyandtphotography/

Image Credits
Weyandt Photography LLC