We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Becca & Marcello Lira a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Becca & Marcello, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Earning a full time living from one’s creative career can be incredibly difficult. Have you been able to do so and if so, can you share some of the key parts of your journey and any important advice or lessons that might help creatives who haven’t been able to yet?

I’ve been an entrepreneur for the last 6 years now, and I firmly believe that creatives provide such an incredible perspective in the workforce. I graduated with a bachelor’s in Graphic Design in late 2017, and started my business right out of college as a wedding photographer. I had the opportunity to second shoot a few weddings while in college, and absolutely loved working with people, so I decided to pursue photography full time. In 2020, I felt like I was missing a key component in my creative work, and decided to go back to my roots of designing. After being in the creative industry for 3 years at that point, I saw a really incredible opportunity that was missing – helping other creative entrepreneurs build their own brands. I started using my knowledge of branding and design to create brand identities and websites for creatives.

In 2022, my now husband, Marcello, joined me in business. He handles all of the logistics, planning, and videography within our business, while I handle all of the design, branding, and photography.

Throughout the last couple years, I have truly seen the importance of investing into your business and how that can speed up the process of learning new business techniques and strategies. Finding mentors in your field that have done what you’re trying to accomplish is HUGE. Learning is such a crucial part of being a business owner, so finding like-minded people who will encourage your growth and keep you accountable is SO key in your success!

Becca & Marcello, 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’re Becca & Marcello, and we’re a husband and wife team who chose to do business and life together! Both of us came from backgrounds in the corporate world – Becca interning at Disneyland, and Marcello pursuing medical school. The values we saw in the corporate world didn’t align with the values we upheld together, so we decided to leave the 9-5 world and pursue entrepreneurship together. We realized that customers relate to brands and businesses that share the same values they have. We believe that your business was created based off of the values you already embody, and our biggest goal is to give a visual to your values. Through website design, photography, and videography, our goal is to create a space where the purpose your business has can impact others.

We offer multiple different branding and website design services that were created to meet entrepreneurs where they’re at in business. Whether that’s in the beginning stages, a few years into business, or established in business – our goal is to help entrepreneurs create a brand that resonates with their audience. In terms of photography and videography, we offer personal branding services that help business owners visually tell their brand’s story!

With all of our services, we believe that your brand should be an extension of you. When your brand is cohesive and clear, it attracts the clients you’re meant to work with.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

In 2020 when Covid hit the wedding industry, I had to pivot from full-time wedding photography into branding and website design. It was an important time in business and life because I had to re-evaluate what was important to me and figure out where I truly saw the business growing in the next few years. I had no experience building a design business, so the pivot into this avenue was completely new. It took a lot of patience and research to figure out best practices, how to build a new client experience, and how to create a new process and workflow. Looking back, this pivot was a huge blessing in disguise. Had I not been in a position where I was forced to re-evaluate my business, I don’t think I would have had the opportunities that have come my way in the last couple years. This redirection proved to be one of the most incredible opportunities in business so far.

Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

In the beginning, I had a mentality of “I can figure this out on my own” for every aspect of business. When it came to client processes, client guides, website, and social media, I DIY’d everything. I found templates that I liked and rather than creating my own and branding my own photography business, I tried to piece everything together to try and save time. In the long run, I ended up wasting more time and money because I didn’t do it properly.

Looking back, I wish I knew how to seek out education and guides that would help me further my business rather than trying to figure it out on my own. Investing into coaches that had taken the steps I was about to take and could guide me through the different aspects of building a business completely transformed everything for me. Finding community within the creative space has been such an integral part of our own growth over the last couple years – when you have a community of like-minded people supporting you, you’re able to make mistakes and fail forward in a way that will help your business growth rather than hinder it. Instead of failing and feeling stuck after, your community can help you evaluate what happened and help give you direction for your next steps.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://studio-atelier.co/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/studioatelier.co/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/studioatelier.co/
• Other: https://www.pinterest.com/studioatelierco/