Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Brit Nicole. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Brit, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today It’s easy to look at a business or industry as an outsider and assume it’s super profitable – but we’ve seen over and over again in our conversation with folks that most industries have factors that make profitability a challenge. What’s biggest challenge to profitability in your industry?
Learning to put your blinders on and not comparing yourself to anyone else. Once you change your mindset, stay in your lane to what YOU want to do, and stop trying to be like xyz, you will start to see that people will flock to you. When you start to put the belief in yourself that you are indeed amazing, and telling yourself that you ARE worth all the good things everything changes.
You start going to the beat of your own drum while making your own path, a path that no one else has taken before.
Why in the world would anyone hire you if you’re doing the exact same thing everyone else is doing?
When I stopped watching other photographers and stopped listening to people who were not my ideal clients my life changed. I began trailblazing my own way, a way that wasn’t normal for my area. I upped my prices, created an amazing experience, and stopped being a shoot and burn photographer for sessions. Doing this allowed me to life in freedom for the first time in my life with my family.
You absolutely have to stop trying to be trendy, watching other photographers to see what they’re doing and change the way you see money if you want to be profitable.
So for me the biggest challenge I see in my industry for profitability is photographers standing in the way of themselves because they’re scared to try anything different. Be you, follow your own desires that set your heart on fire. You can do hard things, you’re worth all the good things in life.
Brit, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I was that child that took their camera everywhere- I mean everywhere. I vividly remember being in elementary we went on a camping trip and I woke up before everyone else just so I could go get a photo of the sunrise over the lake with the calming colors on the water and remember how it made me feel.
The middle of my career was hard, super hard. I was in an abusive relationship where he took everything from me, including my business, family, and friends. When I left, I didn’t have any money and special friends took me grocery shopping and 100% relied on God to provide, and did he ever. I told myself I was never going to let someone take a part of me away again, so I literally built my business from the ground up while I was also finding the healing I needed. Brit Nicole has a deeper meaning to me than just a photography business, and outside of God, it showed me that I had value, worth, and something to contribute to other people’s lives. I got to see the beauty God puts around us all and it breathed life back into me. Do you know how hard that is to pull yourself out of something like that and do the hard work to make your dreams a reality? It’s super hard. It takes a lot of emotional healing and reminding yourself that you’re worth so much more.
After that shit show, I put my blinders on and hustled like the best of them. I did my dues of footwork introducing myself to people, getting out of my comfort zone and really getting my name in front of peoples faces. I started to grow pretty fast into doing large weddings. Staring 16 years ago I traveled as far as Culver City California, Alaska, Barbados, New York, Jamaica and Mexico for my clients. The experience that my clients have on their wedding day truly means a lot to me, even down to the memories they will keep forever in their minds. About 7 years ago is when I started my transition to intimate, intentional weddings. This is where my branding of Brit Nicole separates itself in the industry as it allows us to be able to genuinely capture those real, raw moments between people without the “sit, smile, and say cheese”. Our thinking is kind of morbid as we walk into a room thinking, “if my bride’s father passes away next year, what will she need to remember. What will be his legacy?” that’s when we really zone in on the detailed aspects of what it was like to feel her dads hand touch her face, what silly thing did he say that made her hysterically laugh? What emotions did grandma wear on her face when she saw her granddaughter wearing the same dress, she did 50 years ago and wishing her husband would be here to see it.
This is where we started shaking things up, and opened doors to hiring on stellar photographers and training them to shoot as the brand. We now have a very successful PNW elopement business named “Untethered Journeys”, a super successful Texas State elopement business named, “Texas Adventure Elopementsᵀᴹ” (Texas is full of amazing hidden gems), and then the mother bear of them all Brit Nicole Photographyᵀᴹ. Brit Nicole is the big dawg of the photography business that does adventure family sessions, boudoir and destination weddings that also target over seas.
Our team of photographers are carefully hand picked go through the Brit Nicole training so every single one of our clients gets the same experience. The more intentional we got with our weddings the more we found our love for the outdoors and combing the intimate aspects with adventures, while still giving our clients the freedom to be themselves and our trademark raw moments. There is so much to think about and to nail down for just one elopement that we can’t afford to be wrong on so we spend hours personalizing each spot to our clients’ needs. Which *SHOUT OUT* to my team, Ellie and Sam! You guys are mother freaking amazing and sooooo good at what you do! I’m so daggum proud of you and I want you to know just how much I appreciate you and love you! So glad to have you in my life and giving the best Brit Nicole experience we can to our clients.
So now, we have a client base that is trading in their high heels for hiking boots. Church ceremonies for sunrise cliffside vow with fog under their feet (yes, we are legally ordained so we also marry our couples!), a celebration with s’mores over a fire pit, and first dances under the stars. We have truly built a unique, once-in-a-lifetime, stress-free, non-traditional experience for our clients to get married that fits who they are as a couple. Heck, even have couples that are trusting us to pick the location and the adventure so this year we have taken off to Alaska and did a helicopter glacier vow reading, went and had lunch, then chased waterfalls, whales and forest beaches from a private boat ride.
Because of our ability to shoot from emotions differently and give our clients an amazing experience as a whole, we have had the honor to been inducted into The Knots Hall of Fame, like, ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I literally cried when I got the call and then cried again when I got the plaque. We’ve got a lot of awards throughout the years, especially with The Knot, but this one hit deeper. It’s such a huge deal in the wedding industry and I wished it were seen as a huge deal outside of the industry because there has been a lot of tears and brokenness, and insanely hard work to get me there. It all started to just roll in over the years as we’ve been featured for our work in many places such as Junebug Weddings, Wandering Weddings, Martha Stewart Weddings, etc.
I am also well known for how freaking hilariously fun I am… I know, I know, weird thing to brag about, but I even crack myself up. I love to make people genuinely belly laugh over the dumbest things, even if I’m not in front of their face to see it. I’ve gone super viral a few times and it was over me poking fun at myself or putting myself out there in the dumbest of ways. It landed me on PopSugar, Parents Magazine, The Huffington Post, News outlets, etc.
And also, being interviewed for Disruptor’s magazine as being seen as one of the top 5 photographers in the NATION who are disrupting their industry… That was pretty cool.
All the accolades and awards sound amazing and it’s a huge honor to even be thought of, but to be honest, what I’m the proudest of is being able to show my team of photographers and children that they can REALLY follow their dreams. They don’t have to conform to what society says they should do, but if they follow their heart and be a good steward, they can do anything.
Why am I so passionate about what we do? It is awesome when I see a person that can take what they are deeply passionate about and make a difference in the world from it. Whether that be speaking into people’s lives to where they feel the confidence to follow their heart and leave the traditional wedding aspect where they are catering to everyone else but themseles or doing what I do; Building your tribe of like-minded photographers across the state to work with you so we are able to give a once-in-a-lifetime adventure elopement experiences to clients in all places. Experiences they didn’t even know where possible.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
One of the main things I had to unlearn was to stop giving a crap about what other people and photographers think of me. To stop asking advice from people who weren’t making over 6 figures, to stop being jealous of other photographers who got to where I’m at right now years ago. I love my husband that I’ve been with for almost 10 years so so much, so I’m going to preface this story saying that he came to me and apologized for not believing in me when I switched gears in my business. I had a deep fire raging in my soul that my personality would be best fit for small intimate weddings and elopements, instead of the larger weddings. I started to brainstorm and put my personality behind the intention of swapping, and where I live, you don’t hear much of people eloping. I told my husband what was on my heart and how strong of a passion was pulling me to drop traditional weddings and focus on elopements. With him not being in this industry or really seeing that I’m a bulldozer and just get what I need done, he first told me that it was a bad idea. I brushed it off, didn’t mope, didn’t fixate on the negative, or even get mad at him. I knew that he just didn’t understand the way I was going to DO elopements and small weddings, and how could he? Again, he isn’t my target client. I put my blinders back on and went to work. I unfollowed all photographers for this period of time and did things how I wanted to do them.
If I didn’t take the time to unlearn standard photography practices and still cared about what others thought of me, what they thought of my prices or crazy experiences I give people, I’d be miserable waking up each day doing something I didn’t feel passionate about.
Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?
Back in the early 2000’s I went to Barnes and Nobel to teach myself how to be self sustaining in this business. I grabbed all the photography books and read those. They were boring to me. I didn’t get the fulfillment of what I was looking for from them. But there were these two books that just threw gas to my flame, which is weird because it had nothing to do with photography.
I remember reading these two books and changing everything I did financially and make conscious decisions on what moves I do next within my photography business. How I could make Brit Nicole Photographyᵀᴹ successful and be able to retire from it?
Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki and The Midas Touch by Robert Kiyosaki & Donald Trump. These two books changed my life and how I view money.
The thing that I really took away from my “corporate” thinking was why am I putting in this much effort and work so the boss man can retire? I can put as much in from the 9-5 for myself and help myself retire nicely. Cool thing about the entrepreneurial mindset is we know we don’t have a cap each year with our income.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.BritNicolePhotography.com
- Instagram: @_brit_nicole @untetheredjourneys @texasadventureelopements
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/weddingphotographertexas
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsYCipJ5ievmL-Upme5Fwzg/videos
- Other: the other websites www.untetheredjourneys.com | www.texaselopement.com
Image Credits
They are all taken by me and my team