We were lucky to catch up with Nick Davis recently and have shared our conversation below.

Nick, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s talk about social media – do you manage your own or do you have someone or a company that handles it for you? Why did you make the choice you did?

For years, I managed my own social media. I hated it, you see, I am not the best writer, I spell things wrong very often or will use the wrong version of a word like your instead of you’re. It caused tension in my relationships, mostly because people would reach out to let me know I had made a mistake again, and then I’d be embarrassed or take it to personally. Everyone loves the engagement that social media can bring, and it’s exciting when a post dose well, I just couldn’t enjoy it because of the fear of making another error and not looking professional. It ended up becoming a drag for me, and I just dreaded having to come up with themes and writing the copy. I def needed a change because I hated posting to the various platforms, it was an absolute need for me so that I could stay in front of my potential customers. About 4 years ago I took a risk and added headcount to my team of 1. I hired a real, local, human that I enjoyed being around. I had them handle any inbound communication on my wedding business (closed that business this year), and all social media with a heavy hand of guidance on what I wanted to see happen. It was so freeing, after just a few weeks I started to have more time to focus on things that help me grow my business, I was able to start enjoying things like instagram an actually using it to connect with people. Now when I chat with my assistant on all things social media we talk about cadence, voice, and layout. We often have 6-8 weeks of content planned out, we are not stuck to it and will post things organically from time to time but it is very nice to have a plan that I don’t have to manage too often. I have gone through a few assistants since then, but I will likely never go back to doing it all by myself. Ive stuck to the same rules, a real person, local, and someone I could be good friends with.

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

I have worked in some for of the service industry my entire life, I worked for the Church serving people, Starbucks serving coffee, Chili’s serving beer and Apple serving an exceptional sales experience. I did not attend college and even grade school was a challenge. I was always good with people though and I excelled at anything that was centered around providing a service that made people feel valued. When I was 22 I moved from Lindale Tx to Virginia Beach Va (Did not enjoy living in this city but loved the people) and then at 25 I moved to Richmond Va (love the people and the city) and one summer after the retail store that I moved to Richmond for closed, I was in a place where I needed money and was waiting on Apple to tell me if I had a job, I ended up calling up an old friend to ask if I could drive down to VB to work for his landscaping company for a few weeks, well a few weeks turned into 6-7 months of pretty difficult manual labor. Digging up trees is hard work! So my weeks were busy, I’d work 50 hours a week and then head back to Richmond to spend the weekend with my girlfriend Lindsey. Towards the beginning of the fall in 2010 my girlfriend/now wife sent me a somewhat cryptic email with a CraigsList add with the question of do you want this? To my surprise it was a camera that I had wanted for years, it was a Canon 5dII, this gift was her way of saying thank you for working so hard in that season. It was also her way of letting me know she saw something in me that I hadn’t seen yet. I was ecstatic, I used it every day for several months I would take some online classed on editing. Fast forward 3 years, I am sitting with Lindsey now my wife, and we were kind of just talking big picture, like what does the next 5-10 years look like for us. We had been kind of talking about me taking the first step in starting a business for a while and that night at the bar, I asked Lindsey for permission to try and start a business, knowing it could likely fail, and that if after two years I wasn’t able to replace my income at Apple, I’d then, finally go to school or find a trade. I loved working at Apple, I just didn’t care for the schedule requirements of any sort of retail anymore, I was done with retail. We agree to a two year trial run where I am going to work full time at Apple but then have additional time to work on my business. I was also recovering from ACL surgery’s I had had a lot of time to just sit and think about this. So once I had the green light from Lindz, I called my friend Nate who shot our wedding. I asked him if he’d be cool if I came to visit and he… he stopped me mid sentence and said, you want me to teach you how to run a photo business? And I was like, basically… He said when can you get here. I drove the next day to Ohio, spent a week with Nate, mostly eating good food and drinking good beers and worked through a sudo bootcamp on wedding photography. I cam back with a slick brand, sweet logo, and a very nice looking site. So up to this point, I had multiple people tell me I shock pursue photography as a living, when I finally did it was crickets when it came to people paying me for photography. So I started a free CraigsList add offering an engagement session for $75. I had one customer, he wanted me to do a surprise engagement session where he’d gift the images to his wife on their wedding day. I knew this meant that I’d need to be fairly far away from them in order to hide, and only having a nifty fifty, I explained to him that I was just getting started, that I could do the work, but I’d need to rent a lens and that he’d need to pay for that additional lens rental fee. He agreed and we one forward with the job. Once the rental came in, I performed the job that he hired me for and then decided to take advantage of having a really nice lens for the weekend and I wen out looking for things to photograph. I ended up at the annual Dominion River Rock outdoor event where they had rock climbing, BMX, slacklineing, dog jumps and tons of other things to photograph. It was at this event that I Kind of by accident I landed in an active lifestyle photography, there was this girl Jamie that tapped me on the shoulder and invited me to take photos on top of their scaffolding, she simply assumed I knew what I was doing because of the lens that I had rented. Well that one “job” landed me some opportunities working in Vail at the GoPro Mountain Games two weeks later, which then got my foot in the door with Lululemon (3 months in and I can really feel some momentum building). Additionally before I started the business I shot a Crit race at a local park every Tuesday night, doing this and building relationships with the local cycling community led me to being able to photograph the Would Championship UCI race when it came through Richmond. The goal of replacing my income was accomplished in the first 6 months of being “open for business” Things were really moving.

I do remember reaching out to this wonderful photographer Emily Mae very early in my business, and I simply said, “I am sure you get asked this every day, but I am just wondering how you did it, how did you make it in the photography world of business” to my surprise/delight she responded. She said “I do get asked this question often, and I’ll tell you what I told them. Do good work and Good work will follow” That changed everything for me, I began to focus souly on the quality of my work.

Looking back, it was kind of the perfect storm. Lindsey was working a rotating night shift as a nurse and I was 40 hours a week slinging Apple products. She would be resting while I’d be woking on my side hustle. for about 6 years of my business I photographed just about anything and everything. I had siloed my business into two categories. Nick Davis Photography, and Nick Davis Wedding Photography. I shot upwards of 25 weddings a year the first few years, and then we had our first child and slowly I started moving more into headshots and commercial work not because I didn’t enjoy weddings, I loved them so much, but because my weekends became much more of a valuable commodity with kids. Also Lindz was now off on the weekends so it was especially important for me to be around.

So in full transparency, I didn’t quit after two amazing years in business, why? well I got the call that we were going from just us to a small family, I hadn’t put that into the equation of our life and my business. We both agreed that there were too many unknowns for me to quit Apple then and we diced to add one year to my time at Apple as we learned to navigate these new waters. But eventually I did go full time, and its been 5 amazing years as a full time freelance photographer. My daughter is now 6 and my work has literally taken me around the globe. In 2019 just before the pandemic I was in 6 countries over 9 months documenting orphanages. I have photographed weddings in New Zealand and in Moab where the couple were wed suspended over a canyon in a space net. Over the past ten years photography has given me so much, its given me freedom, it’s given us income that we very much need, it’s given me confidence in my self to be who I think I can and not listening to the voice in my head telling me i’m not qualified or good. And it all started with Lindsey being kind and being something in me that I had yet the faintest vision of.

So 10 years of being in the industry and the main thing I can tell you is relationships matter, don’t put stock in social media more than to stay in front of your customers, often times people won’t hire the best photographer they find but they will hire the first one that they think of. Invest in quality gear, it doesn’t need to be the best, but when working with artificial light, the quality matters.

One of my favorite things about making photos of people is that generally, they hate it. I joke that I feel like the dentist of the creative industry. When I can get a client to leave a session and I hear things like, that wasn’t as bad as I expected, or you made this painless, or wow I have never had a photo taken of me that I like but I like that one. These are my favorite not because of it’s praise, but because I am also an insecure person that struggles with imposter syndrome, and when I can help people see a better version of them than they see in them selves, I walk away feeling very successful, much more so than just making a bunch of nice images for a client.

I generally work at the nexus of a product and an experience with that product, it could be in the manufacturing phase, or the end customer use phase, I’ve worked with global companies and local knife makers, I love telling stories through my craft. I also use Profoto lights because I do believe so much in the quality of light that I am not willing to sacrifice it. Their light shaping tools allow me many different ways of problem solving, wether in a product shoot for a beverage client or in a corporate shoot where I have to light up a 3000 sq ft room of people working together, their products never fail me.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I mentioned earlier that in 2019 I visited multiple countries, what I left out was that it was also the best year that my business had ever had. I had grown my business to doing 4-5 times what I made at Apple, I literally could not believe it. In early February we were headed back from Armenia and we had to fly through China, Covid19 was just starting to get talked about but no one knew much. Two months later I am on a job at a hospital and I get a call followed by an email, essentially canceling my work for the foreseeable future that year. It made sense, they were an outdoor running company, Covid would obviously cancel some events, what I didn’t expect was to loose all my client work in a matter of weeks following that experience. Lindz and I had multiple conversations around me becoming a stay at home dad and pulling the kids out of child care, the only problem with that was that I needed to be able to work, there were some jobs that only gave me a few days notice and I didn’t want to have to find ways to get the kids covered so we kept them in daycare. Well a few weeks went by and I started to get a little cabin fever with no work to do and nothing on the horizon I reached out to my friend Paul and pitched the idea of offering free headshots to anyone that has been laid off due to the pandemic, I asked if he would be willing to offer resume review along side the headshots. Paul thought that was a great idea and encouraged me to seek out a few business mentors to join our small team. Long story short, SidekickRVA was born a few weeks later, we now have a team of close to 40 coaches from many walks of life and we’ve helped a few hundred people and I’ve made some new amazing friendships along the way.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

I’ve always been a relationship builder, I am kind, friendly, and I can handle myself in many different social circles. I believe in the old adage that it’s not what you know but who you know. That paired with a drive for results and offering a service at a level that people respect has helped me gain business and a reputation that is one of the better photographers in Richmond. I have also never taken a job that I didn’t know I could do well, I have protected my reputation and am know as someone who delivers.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://nickdavisphotography.com/about/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nickdavisphoto/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NickDavisRichmond/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/nick-davis-photogrpahy/?viewAsMember=true
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/Nickdphotos