We recently connected with Doreen Laskiewicz and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Doreen, thanks for joining us today. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?

When I was getting ready to create Grit & Goals Magazine, I had a couple things in mind for what I wanted to convey. Many times on social media we see lots of imagery that shows the smiling faces and wonderful end results. Sometimes work just… sucks. Even when you’re passionate about what you are doing and creating, the day-to-day grind of making it happen can be challenging, monotonous, hard, and even boring. Grit conveyed that determination required to play the long game. Goals implies looking to the future and moving forward. So those words together felt right to represent the magazine and the stories we tell. As to my photography, it’s what I create so my name felt like the right choice. My name is not common so I’m pretty certain there won’t be any confusing me with other photographers.

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.

Photography and publishing was not my original life plan. After graduating from Westminster Choir College with a degree in music, I spent 30 years teaching music and STEM in the NJ public school system. About half way through my teaching career I started to take pictures mainly as a hobby and to capture my own family. I had always had “point and shoot” cameras but once I got my first DSLR I was hungry to learn everything I could about photography. Fast forward to 2022 as I was getting ready to retire from teaching and wondering what my “next act” would be, I dove into page layout and publishing as a way to create opportunities for myself and women business owners.

My photography focuses portraits, personal branding, dancers, and lifestyle. What sets me apart is being able to create in a variety of spaces and situations. I pride myself on being technically knowledgable about the physics of light and I believe that technical skills are what allow you to be creative. I’m not afraid to take creative risks. Many of the features in Grit & Goals are photographed by me, but I’m also happy to showcase the work off other photographers as well. It often makes my job easier if someone can hand me the content for the pages and it allows me to feature women from all over.

I’m most proud of how my work is able to showcase women’s stories, create images that reflect who they are, and be an example of what it’s like to take on new things at all stages of life.

Have you ever had to pivot?

My entire life pivoted in 2022. I retired after 30 years of teaching, my husband retired from his career and my youngest son graduated high school and went off to the military. During all this we sold our house and moved to a different state. As we prepared to move I decided to start Grit & Goals Magazine. Since I love networking (I’m a complete extrovert) I started to reach out to women in my area that were small business owners to gather up their stories. My oldest son was getting his BFA in Graphic Design so he created my branding and helped me learn layout software. We had sold our house before our new house was ready so we spent a few months living at a family members house. Thankfully it was just a couple miles from a co-working space so getting a short term membership helped to provide the focus needed to complete the first issue. I’m not sure it would have happened if I was sitting at the dining room table in someone else’s house. There was a lot to learn a lot about publishing that I didn’t know from photography. Welcoming other creatives – writers, photographers, contributors – helped to round out the issues and generate more interest and visiblility. Many of the people I now interact with see me as an editor and photographer and not a teacher. I created a new life after the age of 50.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Building an audience for me has been about collaboration and being consistant. I consider a feature in Grit & Goals Magazine to be a collaborative effort – meaning that being featured comes with the expectation of highlighting what I’m creating on thier socials as well. Women that are featured are expected to reshare and accept collaboration requests on posts. I don’t charge anything to be featured, so I don’t believe that’s a big ask. I’ve started using scheduling tools to schedule posts ahead of time. I do it about once a month and I schedule something everyday. Even though I don’t have a large follower count the consistency is paying off in my views. Social media is alway changing, but what doesn’t change is how showing up every day delivers results. Also I’m starting to show more of myself on it. It sounds weird but I’ve always made it more about the work and not so much about me, but I think people are happy to connect with the creator not just the creation.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.gritandgoals.work
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gritandgoals/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gritandgoals
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/doreen-laskiewicz/
• Twitter: https://x.com/DoeMiSo