Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Joel & Amber Palmer. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Joel & Amber, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today One of the most important things we can do as business owners is ensure that our customers feel appreciated. What’s something you’ve done or seen a business owner do to help a customer feel valued?
From the very beginning of our business, we wanted our clients to feel appreciated and valued. Working in the wedding industry means we work a lot with brides, and it’s a very significant time in their lives. There’s a lot of excitement, uncertainty, joy, and overwhelm when it comes to planning a wedding. We put a lot of thought into our touchpoints and crafted some meaningful ways to help our brides connect with us and create a relationship that goes beyond just taking pictures at the wedding. One of our favorite ways to show our appreciation for our couples is our J&A Coffee Days. Several times throughout the year, we partner with a locally owned craft coffee shop for our Coffee Day. Any of our couples – past and present – can stop by and get any drink on the menu. We pick up the tab, but the connection we can continue to have with our couples through events like this is really special to us. It’s especially rewarding to support local business owners and connect with the coffee shop owners, as well. It’s really a win-win for our entire community!
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
We’re a husband and wife wedding photographer team based in Huntsville, Alabama. We are blessed with two beautiful children who are still in their little years. Our faith is really important to us and we aim to use our business to shine the love of Christ through our interactions with others. Traveling and quality craft coffee are two of our favorite things. We incorporate both in our branding and marketing, which is really fun! We both love to read, walk around historic neighborhoods, spend time in the kitchen, and experience educational things with our kids. I’m a big Jane Austen fan, Joel really gets into space launches, and we both love an epic sea salt chocolate chip cookie and chocolate croissant.
Joel got into photography first. He dappled in college and took on a handful of weddings and events. We got married soon after graduation, and I came along with him to a wedding. He gave me his backup camera and let me play around. I had no idea what I was doing, but I kept shooting. He told me later that he never even offloaded my card! Fast forward a few weddings later and we decided to make a real business out of it. I dove in and learned so much about photography, business, and everything else. We like to say that Joel is the one who can get things started, and I’m the one able to keep it going. Our strengths, weaknesses, and talents really complement each other so well. Together we worked these past 12 years to build a business that’s become my full-time job and something we’re very passionate about!
We focus primarily on wedding photography and all the things that go with it: engagement sessions, bridal sessions, album design, timeline building, resource creating, and just a cheerleader when our brides need it! We take on some family portrait sessions and mini-sessions in the fall as our schedule allows. Having our couples come back with their growing families for mini-sessions is such a joy!
Entrepreneurship is addicting. Once you’re in, it’s hard to go back. We love the business aspect of entrepreneurship – it’s our favorite part! Photography is just a fun way of doing that. In addition to our photography business, we also have two real estate investing companies and published a children’s book. You can find Baby Barista: A Coffee Primer for the Youngest Fans on our Baby Barista website, Etsy, Amazon, and in coffee shops and boutiques around the US. Our dream is to set ourselves up for full-time remote work, explore fun new business opportunities, and be able to spend more time traveling with our kids.
When brides start looking for a wedding photographer, it can feel a little overwhelming. Our goal is to ease the stress from the very beginning and guide them through a beautiful journey that leaves them feeling welcomed, joyful, and confident. From our very first interaction with them, we want our brides to know how valued they are. From there, we take them along a path of thoughtful resources, intentional processes, and everything they need to have an amazing photography experience on their wedding day. By the time the wedding actually comes, we’ve created a relationship that goes beyond just showing up to take pictures. We’ve poured a lot of time and love into their interactions with them, and it makes the wedding day photography even more impactful because they feel comfortable and confident!
Content creation is a big part of how we serve both our brides and local brides who may have chosen to go elsewhere for their photography. We have an exclusive Resource Library specifically for our brides that is filled with guides, checklists, and other helpful things to use as they navigate their wedding planning journey. Our Best Wedding Venues in Huntsville webpage is a piece of cornerstone content that helps local brides explore venue options here in Huntsville. We also have endless planning and photography tips on both our social media and our blog. Our entire business (and our hearts!) revolves around being a resource for brides, blessing other vendors, and creating a joyful photography experience that makes the wedding day even more joyful. One of our favorite mottos is “Do small things with great love” (Mother Teresa). We aim to do all the small things well because together they add up to something much bigger.
What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?
Joel originally started our business around 2009, and at first did almost all of the work. He did the editing, built timelines, and designed albums. I’m very Type A and enjoy being organized and getting things done, so it wasn’t too long before I started taking over the admin and design work. Little by little, I also grew my skills as a photographer. At the time that we were serious about building our business (around 2012), I was working part-time as a dental hygienist, spent weekends as an assistant manager of a chocolate store, and was the special event coordinator for a local artisan tea company. I loved all of those things and really enjoyed my work, but things started to be overwhelming as each aspect grew. The first thing to let go of was the chocolate store, followed a few months later by the tea company. In 2015, I took a big step and said goodbye to my last part-time job. Dental hygiene was maybe the hardest to let go of because it was my original career path and what my bachelor’s degree was in. I started working just as a fill-in and dove into working in our photography business full-time. I say “in”, because back then I was just learning what it looked like to work “on” our business. With the extra time, I significantly built up our content. I blogged several times a week, which was a huge time consumer. Fortunately, I also really invested in educating myself on all kinds of aspects of running a business. Podcasts weren’t much of a thing back then, but Facebook groups and free webinars were very popular. Both of us were also committed to reading several business books a year. I learned as much as I could and polished up our business, piece by piece. Today I have much less time to watch webinars and blog with our young kids, but the solid systems we put in place back then have allowed us to run our business well without as much hands-on effort.
Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?
We love reading! Any new graduate or new entrepreneur we come across will hear us tell them how important it is to make education a regular part of your work. I have so many favorites, but here are a few top recommendations from over the years that I really found impactful:
Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear (everyone should read this!!)
The Go-Giver: A Little Story About A Powerful Business Idea by Bob Burg and John David Mann
168 Hours: You have more time than you think by Laura Vanderkam
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do In Life And Business by Charles Duhigg
Building A Story Brand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen by Donald Miller
Set For Life: Dominate Life, Money, and The American Dream by Scott Trench
Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets To Success, One Relationship At A Time by Keith Ferrazzi
Two podcasts I’ve really enjoyed are Business Made Simple with Donald Miller and Marketing Made Simple with Dr JJ Peterson. There’s a lot of great info without all the fluff, which I really appreciate.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.joelandamberphotography.com
- Instagram: @joelandamber
- Facebook: @joelandamber
- Twitter: @joelandamber
- Other: BabyBaristaBook.com
Image Credits
All ours! :)