We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Becky Durigan a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Becky, thanks for joining us today. Folks often look at a successful business and imagine it was an overnight success, but from what we’ve seen this is often far from the truth. We’d love to hear your scaling up story – walk us through how you grew over time – what were some of the big things you had to do to grow and what was that scaling up journey like?

So I have a very unique story that is probably not a normal scenario. Unlike most small business owners, we purchased our business. But that’s the media story, but the nitty gritty to how it happened.

You see, my husband had lost his job in 2020. We had a newborn baby and I was working very part time. We were barely getting by and we had no business purchasing anything, nonetheless a company.

But when I found out Denver Photo Collective was for sale. My mind went wild, and so the process began of the most creative business purchase I’ve ever heard of.

From trying to get a down payment, to agreeing upon a lease to own, to working for free to create a sort of buy-on, it was completely non-traditional. But I didn’t care, because I kept pushing and asking and negotiating. Every step of the way, I thought for sure I’d get a ‘no’. But as luck would have it, I kept getting a ‘yes’. And after 2 months of working for DPC, negotiating the contract and price, we were able to legally buy the business.

It doesn’t always work out this way, but it certainly doesn’t work out this way if you don’t ask!

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

Denver Photo Collective is basically an hourly rental space for creatives. You can come take photos of clients or families, create elaborate sets or even throw a baby shower here. Either way, you leave with some of the most magical photos.

What sets our studio apart is the north facing windows, shallow white walls and insane bounce light. So even though you are indoors, you have beautiful lighting all day long. It’s truly the easiest place to take great photos.

On top of hourly rentals, we also provide a collaborative community. This includes, shootouts, networking events, classes and more. You can attend any of our community efforts and all of these are free for members.

The main thing we want our clients to know is that we are an inclusive environment, and our main objective is to help you build your business in all of the aspects. We do this by providing the space, the education and the network to help us all grow.

Can you talk to us about your experience with buying businesses?

Since we ended up unable to secure a loan, we negotiated two key things with the original owner. First, we would ‘work for two months at the studio as our ‘buy in’. We would run the entire business and the owner would keep the profits. This is so she knew we were serious and it also helped us understand the systems before purchasing. The money we made during this time went towards our agreed upon payment.

Secondly, we negotiated a price and agreed to pay monthly, directly to the owner on a 5 year plan, with 6% simple interest. This means we did not work through a bank and paid her directly. We had the option to pay it off early or be done in 5 years.

With these options, it allowed us to get started in the business and not have a huge overhead cost.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

I teach this one in business class. If you’ve ever heard of the Chick Fil-a training, it’s very similar. To grow you must have community. Community is just a fancy word for great customer service.

So to achieve ‘community’ you not only treat your customers with the upmost respect, every time, but you will want to do right by them, and also sing their praises as often as possible. Community is not a one way street, so you need to actively be supporting those around you as well.

When you have an amazing product AND great customer service, people will tell all their friends about you and keep coming back for more. This pattern continues to happen over and over again, if you can streamline your service, and ensure the same treatment every time, you will grow!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.denverphotocollective.com
• Instagram: @denverphotocollective
• Facebook: @denverphotocollective

Image Credits
All photos by me (@rebeccachristinephoto) except for photo of me with camera (black outfit) That photo is by @goodmooncollective