We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Manny + Ashley Peralta a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Manny + Ashley, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?
Investing in our wedding photo and video was something we didn’t do, and to be honest we regret it.
The purpose of our business is to support others during a stressful period of their life so that they’re able to relax and fully soak in all the little moments on their wedding day, and relive those memories with Candid, Intimate and Authentic photos and video.
We believe every relationship is unique. Because of that, we use prompts to authentically showcase who they are as a couple. . We don’t want them feeling posed or stiff, rather we want the Intimate, Real and Unfiltered version of their love story to shine through and be the main event!
Our goal is to provide our couples with an experience that leaves them feeling heard, included and more importantly CONFIDENT! Crafting beautiful images gets us STOKED, but making sure we are able to support our couples and be a listening ear is the foundation upon why we love what we do.
Manny + Ashley, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Manny grew up in an artistic household, and videography and photo was woven throughout his career. What started as a side hustle, eventually grew and grew, until finally, we combined forces as husband and wife to take our wedding photo and video business to the next level.
OUR LIVES CHANGED WHEN WE FOUND OUT WE WERE HAVING A BABY.
We sat down talking about the future, thought of what we’d name the baby, what we were excited about, or what if we had 2 kids? LOL
In passing, Manny mentioned the names Iz and Liv, and we liked the sound of it!
Naming our Company Iz and Liv Films, represents the moment we realized the reason why we shoot weddings and the day Manny and I decided on our future together. The name has evolved in meaning for us, just like we continue to change as people.
Because Connection, Family and Trust are vital to who we are as people and as a business, we not only want to form genuine relationships with our clients, but it is just as important to us that we find a way to dedicate time to raising a child and any other future children we may have. Iz and Liv Films is the vessel to help us to do just that!
Me and Manny love to converse with each other, often while cooking and playing a board game, theorizing and connecting on so many topics. It’s in that time we become stronger as a family. Our hope is to meet couples that love life the way it is and go with the flow, and trust us to deliver them a product that feels authentic, unfiltered and handcrafted.
Our intimate photo and video approach allows us to capture the emotion and feel of each day. We would describe our editing style as natural, shadow embracing, and filmic with a focus on enhancing earthy tones.
We aim to create Authentic, Timeless & Natural art. We help couples who enjoy customized, quality experiences; by providing them with personalized timelines, coordinating a strong and efficient team and delivering a hand-crafted product.
What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?
Facebook Ads have turned out to be the best source of new clients for us. Last year we started learning how to implement structure to our business, how to write ad copy, how to find our ideal client, and how to view our business as an entire machine that works together.
Paid Advertising through Facebook Ads has been amazing, but equally important has been our investment into our Google SEO. This coupled along with posting our work on Social Media, and making tutorials on YouTube that assist couples in planning for the biggest day of their lives, has been vital in keeping our marketing funnel overflowing.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
Let’s just say, we’ve had some extremely rough months as parents, as business owners and as people.
Recently, between our daughter starting school, getting sick, and lack of physical energy, it was extremely difficult to sit down at the computer and take care of all the back end stuff we WANTED/NEEDED to do, and keep up with our habits that we’ve been building.
It can be extremely hard knowing that you wanted to workout, eat right, be productive but you literally couldn’t.
HOWEVER…
We cant emphasize enough that even if its a 1% effort you can give, GIVE IT. In our case, this meant chugging some tea, putting cold water on our faces and giving it all you got for a consult. The habits you build BEFORE unforeseen circumstances happen, can almost put you on autopilot to get the work done, or get that call done.
We found ourselves doing 5 min workouts, or walking to the mailbox even, just to stay healthy and feel human, and we became more and more ok with understanding that prioritizing REST is part of your heath.
Doing that gave us enough energy that one month we were sick, which was the most important part of our work that needed to get done, the other things can wait., We closed with 100% accuracy at our most popular photo and Video Package, we are super proud of that.
It took a team effort, and analyzing what parts of our business can rest while we rest, and which parts needed to be pushed with our BEST effort.
We all have bad months, but staying consistent before the bad months happen, will aid you in having momentum even if you cant fully sprint. Crawling is better than stopping. Prioritize your health, the most important aspects of your business, AND stay consistent even if its just 1%.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.izandlivfilms.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/izandliv_films/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/izandlivfilms
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/iminnaband1234
Image Credits
Some screenshots provided by: https://www.instagram.com/b.v.cooper/