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

Alright, Frankie thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Coming up with the idea is so exciting, but then comes the hard part – executing. Too often the media ignores the execution part and goes from idea to success, skipping over the nitty, gritty details of executing in the early days. We think that’s a disservice both to the entrepreneurs who built something amazing as well as the public who isn’t getting a realistic picture of what it takes to succeed. So, we’d really appreciate if you could open up about your execution story – how did you go from idea to execution?

Storia Studio is a mother/daughter team, born from a love of photographer and filmmaking. In 2018, we made a huge decision. We decided to take a chance by starting a business together. Rena was 57 at the time and Frankie was 26! That decision seemed like the most important part at the time, but actually everything that happened up to that point is where our brand and dream began to develop.

Before the decision to join together and form Storia Studio, Rena had been a ‘friends and family’ photographer under another business and Frankie was forging a path as a videographer doing mainly weddings and videos for non-profits. Something naturally happened along the way as we began assisting each other on our projects and shoots, and more and more we found ourselves working together! Without realizing it, we began to take our passions and somehow combined them and eventually started to visualize a business together! We like to reminisce and joke that because we are Italian, the final decision was made at our favorite place, the kitchen table, with late night snacks, hands flailing, and what we call over the top excitement! We allowed ourselves to dream our biggest dream and Storia Studio was born! Storia is Italian for story and we began to embrace our story as place to attract clients to our business.

We are Storia, our ‘about us’ was something we had to decide right off the bat, we could either choose to embrace it or feel extremely awkward! We are women, we are mother/daughter, and we have a strong sense of wanting to tell clients’ stories that are empowering and that will make a difference. We are coming from a photography and filmmaking background and wondered how these two components fit to create one brand? Would we or should we have a niche? Would people take us seriously? We are mother and daughter, should we try to hide that or embrace that?

From the beginning, there were decisions to be made about our identity, about our brand. What colors define us? What is our style? How do we complement our brand with website and marketing design? We knew Facebook and Instagram would be key platforms for us. The look and feel of our brand were so important to us, we wanted every aspect of it to be thoughtful and intentional, down to the luxurious feel of our business cards!

But before we could move forward with a marketing plan, with a defined brand, with what we wanted to be known for, we had to face the elephant in the room, the root challenge to starting a business … self-value and confidence or lack thereof! It’s one thing to decide on the look, feel, and purpose of your business and it’s definitely another thing to really believe that’s who you are! We gradually developed a sense of who we are and that service is key to a successful business.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

With a background in documentary filmmaking, and photography we find great satisfaction in applying those experiences to our work as artists. We believe film and video are powerful tools. Our clients vary from nonprofits to businesses, and we love to help them connect with their audience to share a message. As it is truly a privilege to capture these stories, we love to work with our clients to maximize the value of their videos through presentations, the internet, and social media.

As a film and photography studio that focuses on great storytelling, we love working directly with our clients to capture their vision and take the audience on a journey! Something we are extremely proud and humbled by is the feedback we hear from our clients. They often comment that we are easy to work with and they feel heard when we are creating content for them. This truly inspires us as a team to work hard to provide a service-based experience for each and every client we have the privilege of working with. Our goal is to honor each and every story!

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

Storia Studio, like many businesses, definitely had to pivot during 2020 because of Covid. We went from a full calendar to seeing many projects being cancelled. It was a time of uncertainty and like so many other businesses, we needed a plan to deal with how to continue our business. One thing that happened that was unexpected was many non-profits were shifting their outreach to online events and still needed content. We were able to work with our clients and create new content from past projects until it was safe to resume in person filming. We also created a new service of social media coaching and offered personalized education for clients to be able to grow their on-line presence. We even offered clients the option of sending us product to be photographed for their social media. What started as an uncertain time for Storia, led us to find new and creative ways to serve our clients and helped us build strong relationships with them!

How do you keep in touch with clients and foster brand loyalty?

Storia loves to interact with our clients and we strive to communicate with them throughout the entire process of creating their video and photo needs. It usually begins with an inquiry and we will schedule an initial Zoom call to meet with them and hear their ideas and what they are hoping to create. After gathering as much information as we can, a proposal is created, complete with scope of work, a visual inspiration board, pricing and guidelines to booking with us. If the client chooses to move forward, we create a contract and schedule a ‘Discovery Day’, which is another opportunity for us to get to know more about them and for them to get to know and trust us with their story. Whenever possible we love doing this in person to demonstrate our loyalty and commitment to their project. We want our clients to feel taken care of every step of the way and communication is key to providing them the best service we can! Email is also essential for collaborating with clients to insure their vision comes to life.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.storiastudio.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/storia.studio/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/storiastudiollc