We recently connected with Mandy Maxwell and Cheyenne Cohen and have shared our conversation below.
Mandy & Cheyenne, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?
Our mission is to create a modern creative studio that fosters positivity and kindness – this was a direct reaction to being continually poorly treated by others we worked for, from restaurants to other agencies. There’s truly no reason why anyone should be coming home from a day at work crying because of the way they were treated. While we want to create beautiful photography, we want to ensure we’re doing it through sustainable working environments for all (clients included!). People of all backgrounds and perspectives should be able to grow and contribute, even if we’re only working together for a short period of time. When you have a business you work for yourself – and you need to be the best boss to you and everyone around you.
Mandy & Cheyenne, 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?
We are a female-owned bespoke creative agency specializing in commercial food and beverage photography. As a partnership, we both come from entirely different backgrounds, which has shown itself to be one of our strongest assets! Together we are MAX+CO, separately Mandy Maxwell + Cheyenne Cohen; we met 6 years ago and have been working together nonstop since. We’ve been MAX+CO for the past 5 years and have truly (through many bumps and trials) grown into savvy business women who have been able to stay true to our artistic backgrounds. We create compelling and modern imagery for brands who are looking to showcase what makes their products unique – new companies looking to make a splash in the CPG industry, those with longstanding branding looking to update their look – anyone who’s looking for beautiful imagery backed by thoughtful creative.
What sets us apart from our competition is that we don’t think of them as competition – there’s room in our space for everyone, and lifting each other up will always be ultimately for the best for everyone. Practically, we consistently keep our overhead low, pay people their deserved rates, and pay people on time. We have a foundation of culinary experience and knowledge that we bring to the ideation and art direction that many creative agencies lack, simply because they often hire those with this background as contractors rather than having someone through the entire process with this insight. The involvement of a culinary eye and mind in the development is crucial when selling food and beverage products.
As a two-person team for the majority of our company’s existence, we’ve played the “every hat” game – it’s given us insight into all aspects of the production, and allowed us to be better leaders as we speak from experience while understanding we’re hiring other professionals that bring their expertise to the table. Our work ethic as individuals has always been intense, and it’s part of why we work together as a pair so well – we’re always down to do whatever needs done. This has been to our detriment before as it’s hard to turn off work-brain, but we’re working on it!
We went from finding backgrounds on the streets of NYC (hello cool scrap metal table!), to creating them ourselves, to supporting other creatives with their own surface shops. We find the big and small places to save money, and along the way have learned where it’s best spent and when we can do the tasks ourselves.We’re most proud of building this business from the ground up. We both invested $500 into our business at the beginning, and everything else has been earned income through photo shoots. We learned to take it slow, make smart decisions (sometimes after making the wrong ones), taking nothing for granted, and ultimately getting to where we are today with the blood, sweat, and tears we shed to get here.
We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.
We met working at another creative agency as their photography team, being sent out to capture content needs for digital media like websites and social ads. We clicked immediately upon meeting (and actually, couldn’t stop talking and were the last ones in the office… pretty good sign) and found in each other truly perfect collaborators in ways we’d never been able to successfully do with other artists before. We quickly realized we could be happier and create better work on our own, so we left the agency and started shooting. We took any jobs that came our way, led with kindness, and never stopped. It sounds cheesy, but that’s really how we approached it!
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
I (Mandy) started out as a fine dining pastry chef. I worked at the best restaurants in the world at the time (Per Se, Eleven Madison Park) and was a die hard chef. It was (and to a lesser degree still is) an identifier for myself. I kept getting promoted and with each promotion I gave up more of myself and more of my time. Eventually it became too much: stretches of months with no days off, working 14, 16 hour days. It wasn’t what I had envisioned for my life but I also still loved making food beautiful and creating new dishes. It was always an art form to me. I didn’t really know what to do, but I knew I needed to pivot. I quit, took a server job at a busy restaurant that allowed me to cut down on hours and mental labor, and started graduate school at NYU for Food Studies. That led me to learn about other jobs in my industry that went beyond restaurant kitchens. It created a network, and it was how I found the internship at the agency where I met Cheyenne. I ultimately never graduated from the program. Life got extremely busy and I gained everything I could out of the experience, and don’t regret any of it. Saved some money and time while still getting me to where I am today.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.maxandcophoto.com
- Instagram: maxcophoto
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/13035048
- Other: Behance – https://www.behance.net/maxcophoto?locale=en_US
Image Credits
MAX+CO PHOTO