Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jessica Kornacki. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Jessica , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?
I created my photography business as a way to uplift women in the community. To help women to feel confident showing up as their authentic selves through imagery. As women, we can sometimes hold ourselves back because we’ve been conditioned to believe that much of our worth is based on our looks. For many reasons, we also feel awkward in front of the camera, and awkward showing pictures of ourselves. My mission with Art of Her personal branding photography is to help women move past these feelings and step confidently into their personal brands.
It is my mission to lean into our perfect imperfections so that we can share our authentic selves without pretense. I want women to succeed in their businesses and in life loving who they are.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I’ve been photographing women since high school, and it was an obvious passion and choice for me to design my business with both my camera and my desire to uplift women.
As time went on, I received more and more requests from female business owners for personal branding images, and as a business owner myself, I loved doing this.
So now, in addition to offering headshots, I also offer personal branding photography as my specialty. Personal branding photography is different in that the purpose is to create marketing collateral for businesses rather than just create pretty imagery. Both can happen simultaneously, but there’s much more of a need to deeply understand a client’s business, and their needs for the shoot to be successful.
Since moving into personal branding photography, I’ve also begun to offer courses for other photographers to teach them to build their businesses as well.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
Yep! I had to learn that while you can do it all alone, you probably shouldn’t if you want to grow as a business. I think there is a place for being the person that learns to DIY everything when you’re just starting out, but as you get more comfortable in your business, you’ll hit a wall without help. Your time becomes much more valuable, and it makes more sense to ask for help.
My first years in business were spent doing it ALL. I taught myself so many incredible skills, but also wasted so much time doing work and tasks that didn’t serve my higher purpose. When you end up growing your family and having kids, your time takes on a different value and you can’t just trade your time in the same way.
During COVID I had a second child and realized I needed to overhaul my business to be able to spend the time I needed with my family. Getting outside help, hiring contractors, and outsourcing has been an absolute game changer.
How did you build your audience on social media?
Sure! I have several thoughts on this one. As a natural born introvert, and a person that works in the personal branding sphere, I walk a fine line here. There are a lot of messages out there saying you have to be on this platform or that platform to be successful, but my thought process here is that you should actually be focusing your efforts on showing up in places where you see conversions, and that’s it. Everything else is a time and energy suck.
I think it’s fine to be aware of your front facing appearance on all social apps, but you when you try to do it all, you are wearing yourself thin. So think about where your ideal clients are already hanging out, or better yet, where are they searching for you or your services. For photographers, that’s Pinterest. My business is now getting around two million views a month on Pinterest because people are searching for photography there. Knowing this, I’ve put more effort into this platform and even hired help over the years.
My advice to anyone building out your social media presence is actually to make sure that you’re not putting the cart before the horse. Before you build out your social media presence. Make sure that you have your foundation set with a stellar website. Your website should always be your home base that you lead people to from your social media. You don’t own any social media platforms and you don’t set the rules there. You do own your website, so make sure that before you invest your time in social, that you have put the work into your website.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.artofher.com/denver-photographer
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/art_of_her/
- Other: Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/artofher
My personal branding photography course: