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

Alright, Michelle thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How did you scale up? What were the strategies, tactics, meaningful moments, twists/turns, obstacles, mistakes along the way? The world needs to hear more realistic, actionable stories about this critical part of the business building journey. Tell us your scaling up story – bring us along so we can understand what it was like making the decisions you had, implementing the strategies/tactics etc.

I first married into photography and together we built a really great volume photography business. “Volume photography” means that we do more volume at a time – or number of people. When we decided to get divorced in 2012 he kept 70% of the business and I got 30%.

We had a daughter who was 11 at the time. So I asked myself “If I could do anything….what would it be?” When I was younger instead of playing school, we played office. I was always in love with business and marketing. Did I want to go work for someone else and help to build their business, or did I want to put everything that I had into building my own business again. We are in a town of about 28,000 people, could we both survive in this town even though a lot of our business came from going to other states? The business name was Skarpness Photography. Did I need to keep part of the name to survive, to stay afloat, to get that extra brand awareness and not start completely from scratch?

I weighed the pros and cons and decided that the thing that I loved most was the flexibility of being my own boss and being able to flex my schedule with when I had my daughter or the activities that she had going on. I wanted to be able to be there for her above all else.

So I decided to keep the leg up and go with Michelle Skarpness Photography. I designed my own logo, branded my new company and we were off and running. The fear of failure was huge, especially with someone telling you all the time that you couldn’t do it. But my determination and my drive to survive surpassed all else. Failure just wasn’t an option, I had to put a roof over our heads and food on the table, and no matter what I was going to do that.

I sat down and came up with a monthly budget that we had to meet, trimmed all the fat in our expenses, and no matter what I was going to make those goals. In volume photography, it is either feast or famine. There are months/seasons that we work our butts off and there are months that we don’t photograph anything. I also had to budget for the lean months so that our expenses would be covered. Some how we did it!

I was afraid for my current customers to know that there was no longer a “man” behind my business. So I really didn’t say anything to begin with, or change too much at once. I took my business apart and divided it into segments. I was going to start at the very bottom again and relearn EVERYTHING, until I felt comfortable with everything again. I had several photographers that worked for me and they were more like family than employees, and they had been telling me that “We got this” and “Don’t worry.” So I started studying photography again and what I wanted my business to look like, to feel like, because now – this was “MY” business and I could do anything that I wanted.

Marketing was my thing, so I was designing flyers and mailing them out. I would study web site design after my daughter went to bed every night. I took a class from another photographer on blogging and social media and running your back office. I read anything that I could get my hands on that was free and business related.

We have now built the business up to doing three times what we were doing in 2012. We are setting up 2024 to almost double what we did in 2022.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

We travel 6 states doing dance photography. Tap, jazz, ballet, pointe – little girls in their tutus and ballet shoes so to speak. I am a very organized person and I am always striving to do better. I probably ask myself too much – “What can we do better!” Dance season is usually about March through mid June. Every time we pull up to a new dance school in our minivan and set up the photography studio for the day, the teachers are absolutely amazed at everything that we can pack in there! We have definitely learned to be masters at tetris! I think that I put my heart and soul into making our dance portraits the best that they can be. Not just on the paper that they are printed on, but my goal is to make that little boy or girl “feel” amazing! And to make that come out in the pictures that we take. Quite often I get a little over excited and have to show the dancer what I am seeing on the back of my camera. I want them to feel just as excited!! So often they are so nervous in front of the camera. I want them to be at ease and trust me to take a great picture of them! We usually have less than a minute for each dancer in front of us! We just came back from a dance school and on my camera alone, I had taken over 2000 pictures!! I love that we have moved to online ordering for our dance photography because we can take so many more images of that dancer! We take the regular posed shot, we do action shots, head shots and even some silhouette pictures. We did some fun silhouettes, where the dancers were in Harry Potter costumes and they even had the special brooms! They would jump up, and we would snap the picture and it looks like they are riding on the broom! Those were so much fun to do!

We also do sports photography in our area. Sports are more seasonal – Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter. We have taken pictures for many kids from little league through High School. I love sports, so that falls right into my wheelhouse as well. We are a business that is family. My Principals, and Athletic Directors have my direct cell number, they don’t have to go through a directory or bunch of prompts to be able to talk directly to me. We are a small business but we are still a business, we are not a bunch of soccer moms with a camera. We are in business to provide a great product to our customers, make a living, and to give back to our communities.

We of course also do senior pictures and family portraits.

One of my favorite pictures that I ever took, was a very random picture. I would drop my daughter off at school and then on my way to the office I would drive through the park. In the mornings there was always these three older gentlemen walking or just sitting on the bench in the park talking. One gorgeous fall morning, I drove through the park and the three gentlemen were sitting on the bench. It just made the most gorgeous picture. I hurried to the studio and grabbed a camera, and just prayed that they were still there. When I got back, they were still there! I hurried and took a couple pictures before they moved or noticed me, they were still sitting there talking about the good ol’ days I’m sure…and didn’t notice me, so I was able to play around a little bit and get exactly what I wanted. I then walked up and showed them what I had taken. They thought that was awesome! The three gentlemen have since passed, but I’ve now met all of their children and printed many pictures of that picture for their families and to be displayed at their funerals. I still keep one in my home also, to remind me to stop and take the pictures that you aren’t paid to take.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I’m sure that all of us still in business today have a Covid story. When Covid hit we had done one dance school and we were getting ready to gear up for our busiest time of the year. And…then…it didn’t happen. I immediately went through all of my credit cards and automated charges and canceled absolutely everything that I could. Then, I waited, I cleaned up files and tried to keep busy, still I waited to go to work. This was the time of the year that I made 60% of our income. I kept in touch with my dance teachers – what was happening in their state, when were we going to reschedule to etc. Things kept getting pushed farther back and farther back. I had just gone through winter and that is our leanest season, so I had been using money from savings to get through winter, like always, except now spring shoots weren’t happening. I was going crazy sitting in my office and not doing anything that I was normally doing at this time of the year. My Dad works on a farm and I called him up and asked if there was anything that I could do on the farm, just to get out of my office and out of my own head. He said he’d check and get back to me. So I went to work on the farm – picking rock. Now I had never driven a skid loader in my life!! I’ve barely driven a riding lawn mower! But my Dad had faith that I’d figure it out! The farm had cows, and the skid loader had a radio…so it was still better than being in my office! I did learn to drive that skid loader, I did get it stuck a couple of times, but I did also challenge myself to get better and better at it. What I also learned was that Covid didn’t exist at the farm. The work at the farm still had to go on regardless of what was happening in the outside world. I also learned that my Dad had WAY more patience than I had given him credit for when I was younger! Even when he was telling me for the fourth time that week that I missed a spot to grease the skid loader, he never gave up or got mad. I’m not a tom boy, I’m definitely a girly girl who like to dress up and wear heels. But on that farm I got greasy and dirty, I wore hat, and I had to pee outside where I thought I got poison ivy on my butt once and I learned to make “lemons out of lemonade” and I have a sign that says that hanging in my house to remind me what came out of Covid. I loved that time with my Dad and I never would have gotten that without Covid.

Being a small business I wasn’t able to get financial help like some of the other companies. I didn’t have enough employees, we didn’t do enough yearly etc. I also learned about family….I had family members who offered me loans when usually it’s me doing the offering. I had family getting us groceries. Family sticks together and they were going to make sure that I made it!

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I think that women in general on harder on ourselves than anyone else. We are supposed to be so much to everyone. One of may favorite things is to tell people to just to “Own it and Go”. Own who you are, what you are, don’t apologize for being you. I “Own it and Go” it all areas of my life…except my business when I’m the one out front. When I’m in the office or on the telephone, no problem. But out in front of people, I worry about what they think, if they think that we are just soccer moms with a camera, if we are professional enough, if when we show up and we have all women photographers at a sports shoot, if they’re thinking “Where’s the man?” I had to unlearn a lot of things that I had learned when in business with my spouse. You have to open yourself up to your clients, to your employees, to random strangers sometimes. I am a super organized – I suppose Type A personality, and in photography most people are creatives. I am an emotional “feely” person, I can’t always describe how I want something to look creatively, but I know it when I see it or when I feel it. I had to unlearn that I was meant to be the backseat driver. I am a front seat driver, and I am good at it. I like to make people feel appreciated and I like to make sure that everyone has a good time. When I “Own it and Go” my business thrives, we have a great time, and everything works out. I need to remember that and be proud that I am a woman owned company, that I have succeeded many times, that I have amazing people around me.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.michelleskarpness.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mskarpnessphoto/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/michelleskarpnessphoto
• Linkedin: Michelle Skarpness

Image Credits
Michelle Skarpness Photography