We recently connected with Kenna Knight-Schoeler Photographer and have shared our conversation below.
Kenna Knight-Schoeler, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about how you identified some of your key partners/vendors and how you made those relationships work?
Fiinding key partners is so essential to doing business, and that fact cannot be overstated!
So much of our time as small business owners is devoted to lead generation and I have to say that it can be a disenchanting prospect. Big companies like Yelp, and WeddingPro dominate this area of our business and their practices, in my personal experience, leave quite a lot to be desired. We spend tons on marketing with these companies to have 5-star reviews indiscriminately removed from view and to be flooded with spam leads. Spam leads that are actually dangerous to our physical safety.
For example, not long ago I had a client reach out from WeddingPro to discuss booking a wedding. Everything seemed on the up and up and I moved this client through my booking process which entails signing a photography agreement. This client moved all the way through this process without raising any red flags and booked a wedding with me. Not long before the wedding date, their phone number went out of service and things started to seem a little fishy. I went ahead and reverse searched the address given and contacted the people at this location which happened to be a personal residence – not an uncommon setting for a wedding. It turned out that there was no wedding and had I not felt something was off I might have shown up to photograph a wedding that was definitely not taking place. This sort of spam is not just an inconvenience or a time sink, but actually a safety hazard under certain circumstances.
So to take a little power back into your own hands, it is so important to foster great relationships with other businesses and vendors in your market. By teaming up we are better able to move away from marketing with these giant companies that really profit on that lack of network between industry professionals.
Big firms profit on the scarcity mindset that pervades much of our industry. This is the pessimistic mindset that resources are limited. This type of thinking leads to feelings of powerlessness, fear, anxiety, and risk avoidance. Whereas the flip side of this mindset is what is called an abundance mindset. An abundance mindset leads to feelings of empowerment, having opportunity, taking responsibility, and embracing risk.
I’m going to take a moment here to remind you, my friends, that there is definitely more than enough to go around. When we all work together our lives are so much more fulfilling. We get to collaborate, inspire each other, our clients benefit, we benefit, it’s a win-win.
Some really great advice for finding partners is to just reach out to those individuals and businesses that resonate with your creative eye. Great questions to ask yourself are:
Who inspires me? Who seems open? How can I offer something that they might benefit from and how can a partnership work for both of us? What makes my work special and how does that fit my potential partner’s style or service offering?
With a willingness to work together we can absolutely succeed.
All good things come to those with an abundance mindset.
Kenna Knight-Schoeler, 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?
Photography is a way to let my authentic self shine. Before starting Kenna Shea Photography I questioned whether it would be possible. I wondered whether I could turn an idea into a thriving business – and as it turns out the answer is a resounding “yes”!
As a lifestyle photographer I have the privilege of taking photos for my clients at very special moments in their lives. I get to help them remember their proposals, their engagements, their wedding day, carrying their baby through maternity, and of course really beautiful moments together as young families. These are the photos that my clients will cherish into old age and one day, the photos that their children will cherish as well. This inspires me to always produce my best work.
As for my style, I absolutely love bringing my clients to the beach for golden hour sessions!
The way the sun glows at this time of day creates such a romantic, gorgeous image. Besides being a breathtakingly beautiful backdrop, another more important and underlying reason I bring my clients to the ocean is that being by the water helps melt away the stress of the day in ways other settings just fall short.
We all have busy lives, and sometimes clients will come to a session visibly tense. This is totally ok! Life is chaotic at times and we all experience that tension. To capture those truly magical, inspiring, and beautiful photos we love so much it is essential to decompress a bit.
I’ve noticed that it only ever takes a few breaths of fresh ocean air to do the trick. I’ll never forget one client’s reaction to a location I brought them to: “This is the most amazing beach I’ve ever been to!” they said with sincerity and gratitude. I felt so honored to have been able to give another human being such an amazing experience. It really does make you feel wonderful.
Just because the beach is my go-to location doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy doing shoots at various other locations around San Diego and beyond. Being from San Diego has been a great asset in terms of scouting unique, less-trodden spots. I love pleasantly surprising my clients with locations that perfectly match their vision. I also love going to client homes. If you’ve got an idea we can absolutely make it happen! I do travel domestically and abroad for bookings as well. So pack your bags and leave the memories to me!
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
Yes, absolutely. The mission driving my creative journey is connection. I strive to nurture connection in everything I do. Broadly and outward-facing this looks like connection with my community, other lifestyle, event, and wedding professionals, and with my clients. My hope is to encourage relationships with every person I cross paths with. This doesn’t necessarily have to be a lasting connection either. Even brief but respectful and caring connections matter. Everyone you meet has a very unique story, with motivations and dreams that can inspire your own journey. By embracing connection I’ve met some absolutely remarkable people with truly noteworthy and often surprising experiences to share. I firmly believe that much of our purpose is to connect. Whether we spend our time and energy connecting with other people or with nature and wildlife we are allowing ourselves the room to explore a higher self.
So personally, in business, and with family and friends I always strive for connection.
We’d love to hear your thoughts on NFTs. (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice
NFTs are interesting. There is a lot to think about and a lot to talk about. But for readers that are unfamiliar, NFTs stand for “Non-Fungible Token”. Anything that is fungible may be replaced by another identical item. So NFTs are not replaceable in this sense and are thus a way to protect the authenticity of digital content. This allows people to collect and invest in digital content with some sense of safety knowing that they have a built in certificate of authenticity. Celebs like Snoop Dogg release and sell artwork as securitized NFTs for example.
NFTs open a whole new market for creatives and its a bit like the wild west in that way, for better and worse. I kind of think of NFTs as a “gold rush” style of wealth generation. The Gold Rush was responsible for huge economic growth and making San Francisco the metropolis it is today, but also notoriously responsible for decimating regions of California and the native populations of surrounding mining areas. I see parallels between economic expansion as well as risks to the environment. The servers that store blockchain consume huge amounts of energy and while there is a lot to dissect here it can be understood as such: there are two ways to regulate the creation of blocks and the state of the blockchain. These are PoW (proof of work) and PoS (proof of stake) consensus algorithms. Without getting into crazy details and the mechanisms of each, PoW is energy intensive whereas PoS is not. The day the NFT market is is fully carbon neutral is the day I believe we can better discuss it’s potential. Good news, Ethereum switched to PoS last year!
My first question for any new marketplace or technology is always a question of whether there are responsible practices at the heart of its functionality.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.kennasheaphotography.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/kennasheaphotography
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kennasheaphotography
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kenna-shea-photography
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/kennasheaphotog
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/kenna-shea-photography-san-diego?osq=kenna+shea+photography
Image Credits
© Kenna Shea Photography 2023