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

Leyah, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

Growing up, photography was always a passion of mine. I would take photos of family members, friends, or anyone that would model for me. I always loved using my creative side through a lens. I started taking very minimal clients when I was in high school and gradually acquired more over the years. When I got married in 2016, My husband, who had always wanted to own his own business, really pushed me to dive into it more and he helped me grow it into something I never dreamed. Marketing was the one thing we lacked knowledge of on how to scale our company and in the beginning of 2020, we invested in a marketing course that truly set the stage for our business. By the end of 2020, I could not do it all by myself anymore so my husband left his six-figure job to help me run our company. Never in a million years did I think my art and my husbands business skills would provide for our family, but here we are almost two years into both going at it full time together and we are thriving. We now have one additional full-time employee that we adore and cant wait to watch our company continuously grow!

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

Photography has always been a fascination of mine. The ability to freeze a moment while the world keeps spinning around us is truly a remarkable experience. We love providing a service that genuinely brings so much joy to our clients. Whether its capturing the love between a newly engaged couple, snapping those devoted moments on a wedding day, photographing those first intimate moments of a mother and child, or pausing the growth of a family through a work of art, we truly love giving clients moments to cherish for the rest of their life.

We provide an array of resources to make every session as seamless as possible such as style guides, custom wedding magazines with so much helpful wedding planning information, custom wedding day timelines, planning meetings, gifts for every client, props for newborn sessions, a client closet, a preferred vendor list, and so much more. We try to solve our clients problems before they even know they have one. Trying to make every session or event as smooth as possible is of the upmost importance to us.

One of the things I am most proud of that we have worked so hard to build is our customer service. We sincerely try to be available for our clients throughout any part of the day to answer questions or guide them to have successful session. We try to take our clients vision and bring it to life the way they want, while providing our professional advice.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

We have many goals driving us to our success. One of the main reasons we do what we do is to bring joy to our clients through the resources given to us from our God above. We would not be where we are in our business if it weren’t for the drive given to my husband or the creativeness given to me by Him. God has truly blessed our business and our family. With that, our mission is to love and serve our community in a Christ-like manner and ensure our employees feel valued and our customers feel welcomed. If we can reach people and show the love of Christ through photography, then I can sleep at night knowing I have made an impact in someones life today.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

When I was first starting out in photography, I was a young and all I knew was that I enjoyed capturing God’s Creation. I never in a million years dreamed this could be my career. I had always heard that creatives could never make a living from their art, so I honestly never pursued it as a career. I always knew it would be a side hustle that I enjoyed. I went to college and earned my Bachelors Degree in Business, but still did not think that resource would help me grow a sustainable photography business.

One of the biggest resources that I wish I would have know about a lot sooner and how to navigate is social media marketing. This has been a complete game changer for our company. Using Social media to your advantage through running ads, engaging with potential clients, joining groups to learn from other creatives, putting your art out there, and telling people what you do, is such a huge resource.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.leyrephotography.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leyrephotography/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leyrephotography