We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Nata Salvatori. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Nata below.

Nata, appreciate you joining us today. How did you scale up? What were the strategies, tactics, meaningful moments, twists/turns, obstacles, mistakes along the way? We’d love to hear the backstory the illustrates how you grew your brand.

When I started my business a few years ago, I was a solopreneur. It was “me, myself, and I” as they say. That is how a lot of small businesses start. An idea, a motivated person, an executed plan. I was very fortunate to be able to grow at an amazing speed. My photography business took off like a blazing fire! I was able to combine my skills from a previous career in healthcare to be very successful at an early phase. Don’t let it fool you though, I worked VERY hard to accomplish everything. I knew that in order to continue to grow, I needed to invest in education, learn new processes, start to outsource tasks, and get help.
I started the growth path by adding services that I noticed my clients were looking for often. Many couples getting married, consider having both photography and videography to capture their wedding. I’ve also noticed that couples often get overwhelmed while planning a wedding. There is so much you “don’t know that you don’t know” when planning your wedding. Finding a vendor that offers good quality work in addition to convenience is key. Like it or not, we are problem solvers for our clients. In order to solve that problem, I started offering videography services as well. We also added a photo booth to our services and now, couples can get all three services in one spot with us!
Once we had the services and the inquiries started to increase, I knew I needed to take the next step. I wanted to be able to serve more clients and to be able to say “yes” more often but I can’t be in more than one place at a time. It was time to grow a team. After doing a few interviews, I found professionals that were willing to join our team and had the skills to do it well. I’m not going to lie, my expectations are high when it comes to how they represent my brand. It is, at the end of the day, my baby. It’s my name and reputation on the line.
I know that my team can provide amazing services and professionalism without me and that allows me to focus on continuing to grow as a company and as an entrepreneur.
For example, after working on solving the problem of my clients, I know started to look at how can I help my industry colleagues. I’m currently working on an app for wedding photographers, videographers, and planners that will help streamline timeline creation and communication between all involved in the wedding day. I’m super excited about this new endeavor and I can’t wait to share it more at the end of 2022!

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

In my previous career, for over 10 years, I helped people feel better physically as a Doctor of Physical Therapy. It was an incredible experience helping heal people’s bodies.

I don’t feel like I’m doing something much different with photographs, to be honest. ​When I delivered the photos from my first wedding and witnessed how it made the couple feel, I realized that I had the ability and passion to not only help people feel better from the outside in but from the inside out as a photographer. I found my purpose, wedding photography!

I now run an amazing team and we offer couples getting married piece of mind! We are your one-stop shop for photo, video, and photo booth services on the wedding day. However, the experience we offer goes way beyond that. I’m very proud of the fact that I would go above and beyond for our couples. It’s more than just showing up on your wedding day and our couples can attest to that. I want our couples to feel special because they are!

We love spoiling our couples. It all started with our consultation. I meet with all our potential clients in person. That is very important to me because we need to make sure we are a good fit for each other. You will spend more time with us on your wedding day than anyone else so we need to make sure it will be as fun and comfortable for both of us as possible! We offer several beautiful products to our couples from print collections to albums and canvasses. All are guided and ordered by us to minimize work for our clients. You won’t have to go figure out how to put an album together after your wedding because we will do that for you.

We also throw a party every year for your clients. Yes, you heard it right! If you are a past or current NS Photobook client, you will be invited. This is a great way to meet new people, give and get advice for the wedding day, and have fun! We are thankful for the trust and honor to capture their most important day and this is just a way to say Thank You.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Social media is probably my main source of referrals at this time. A great portion of my inquiries come from Instagram. Prior to owning my business, I was not much involved with social media. I very quickly realized that if I wanted to be successful, I need to become active on social media and treat it like a viable portion of my business.

I make sure to tag other vendors when posting pictures. It helps validate and promote their work and also helps me when they share my content. I also make sure to show up on stories every day. it doesn’t have to be long. A quick update or message, sharing an important piece of advice to the audience, etc. People buy from people they know and trust. Showing up on social media and letting people get to know you, is the closest you will get to that.
Many of my clients follow me on Instagram for a while. They often say they feel like they know me by the time we schedule our consultation.

I understand that most of us are not comfortable in “front of the camera” but neither are our clients! Showing up on social media is not about yourself, it’s about being there for your clients and helping them relate. Just do it!!! The more you do it, the more comfortable you will be.

Make sure that the content you are sharing is relevant. It’s completely fine to add a hint of humor in there but don’t forget to also add value! I dedicate time every week to creating content for social media, just like I do for any other aspect of the business. Stop fighting the changes and join them. You will see results too!

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

We all struggled to stay afloat during the pandemic. I watched colleagues in the wedding industry lose their income, and lose hope. I have always been good at working with change, with different situations but that was definitely a challenge. I was not ready to quit though. I was ready to fight. I analyzed the situation. Everyone is locked at home, not being able to do much but certainly with more time to do the things they “didn’t have time” to do before. The excuses were diminished, to say the least.

I got together with another photographer friend and we put out brins to work. How would we make money if we couldn’t take pictures? Several of our past clients were now at home, with time to spare. Why not make sure they order the prints and albums they always wanted and didn’t have time to? A lot of people were redecorating their houses so that was the best time to sell artwork. May and June of 2020 were the best months in regard to income. It was unbelievable to see that we were thriving in such crazy times. It really showed me that I can be resilient and that all I needed to do was to reassess and make a new strategy.

Contact Info:

• Website: nsphotobook.com
• Instagram: @nsphotobookweddings
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nsphotobook

Image Credits
the pictures are mine