We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Katie Sikora. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Katie below.

Alright, Katie thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. One of our favorite things to brainstorm about with friends who’ve built something entrepreneurial is what they would do differently if they were to start over today. Surely, there are things you’ve learned that would allow you to do it over faster, more efficiently. We’d love to hear how you would go about setting things up if you were starting over today, knowing everything that you already know.

My brain immediately went to two distinct thoughts when presented with the idea starting over and what things I would do differently:

1) Get support for my mental health before I did anything else. Now that I have been in therapy on and off for almost a decade, I can look back and see how many of my decisions (or indecisions) were because of my then-undiagnosed anxiety disorder and the mental blocks that come with that. I know how to work and how to hustle and how to get better at my craft in the ways that make the most creative sense to me, but networking and sales and meeting clients and directing those clients in a photo shoot were all paralyzing to me and it wasn’t until I found the right therapist and the right medication that I realized how much of a hindrance that had placed on my growth an an artist and a business owner.

2) Be very wary of using my time, energy, and talent to build someone else’s dream (or scam). This one can be tricky because it can look a lot like collaboration of which I am a BIG fan and almost always encourage. I’ll use an example of a mistake I narrowly avoided making in my early twenties after I first moved to New Orleans. I was 24 and while I had learned a lot about creating photojournalism when I was in college, I had no idea how to build a business, was scared about the future and how I was going to pay for my life as a grownup, and was comparing myself to past versions of what my job used to look like (working underneath a manager or editor to create visuals or fulfill assignments) and generally feeling inadequate when I was approached by the smooth talking Creative Director of a major music-based nonprofit to apply to be their in-house staff photographer. This job would have required me to forfeit my ownership of any imagery I created while I worked for the nonprofit–an automatic dealbreaker for me now. But at that time, my desire for any feeling of safety and security in the form of a regular paycheck was overwhelming to the point that I not only considered the job, I went through the entire interview process and had accepted the position before I actually realized what I was letting them take from me in exchange for a paltry paycheck and access to insufficient health insurance. I rescinded my acceptance a few days later and about 5 years after that, that Creative Director as well as the CEO of the nonprofit were convicted of felony fraud. My long-winded point being, that even in situations where the boss doesn’t end up in prison it is so important to consider deeply any position where you are using your creative talents to further someone else’s business at the expense of your own. Set up your LLC early and get to freelancing. If a staff or salaried position does come up and ends up being the right move for you, you will know that you are making that decision based on your experience and desires rather than out of fear for where the next money is coming from.

Katie, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am a freelance photographer and photojournalist but I initially “got my start” because my father is also a photographer and cameras were always around me as a grew up. I graduated with a degree in Visual Journalism from the University of Miami and worked as a Photo Editor in Door County, Wisconsin, a Media Strategist in Chicago, and as a Digital Archivist at The National World War II Museum in New Orleans before pivoting to freelance photography and journalism with heavy focuses on the environment and music.
In 2016, I created The Sexism Project, a portrait and interview series featuring stories from female-presenting music industry professionals and sex workers. In 2020, I co-founded Feed The Front Line NOLA to buy meals from local restaurants that were closed due to the pandemic and hire laid-off musicians and artists to deliver food to overworked area hospitals, documenting the initiative for six weeks straight. Later the same year, I received a grant from the Pulitzer Center to photograph the recovery from back-to-back Hurricanes Laura and Delta in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

I am the Associate Photo Editor at ANTIGRAVITY Magazine, own a wedding photography side business, and love touring with bands and musicians whenever possible. I live mainly in New Orleans but have home bases in Chicago and Door County, Wisconsin.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

It may seem like the opposite of what you want to do in the beginning of your career, but during my very first year building my freelance photography business, I just got out and shot anything any time I could, paid or unpaid. I was young and had less expenses than I do now and of course I tried to get paid any time I could. But if I wanted to shoot something and there wasn’t money to pay me, I still went to shoot it. This gave me name recognition in a brand new city where I knew about four people as well as “cool points” for lack of a better way to put it. Showing other businesses and individuals in your community that you care enough to show up anyway is a currency of its own in the very early stages. But just be sure to monitor your growth and worth and be able to recognize when the moment comes to stop giving away the free samples.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I honestly feel like owning a small business and/or a creatively-based business is the process of learning how to pivot on both micro and macro levels constantly. With respect to my photography business, every single day looks differently from the last even when I try to make them consistent and flawlessly scheduled. Today, I see that as a blessing to my overall personhood but it took a lot of mental work to get to a place where I wasn’t trying to fit my alternative lifestyle into the expectations of the traditional workplaces and schedules. So, in a way, my biggest pivot has been from a place of anxiety, fear, and comparison to being accepting of myself, the parameters of my unique business, and the ways in which I navigate my experience in the world.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.katiesikora.com
• Instagram: @Katie.sik
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katie-sik-photo

Image Credits

Image of Artist: Adrienne Battistella

All Other Images: Katie Sikora