We recently connected with Nikki Hedrick and have shared our conversation below.
Nikki, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. 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?
Managing social media is absolutely an important skillset – and it can become incredibly overwhelming. I do my best to routinely post across platforms and use things like META’s built in scheduler to make the most of our presence.
The thing to remember when you have any type of business – is that keeping content flowing helps you stay at the front of people’s minds when they are looking for a similar service. Even when it feels like you aren’t getting a reaction from your posting – that doesn’t mean people aren’t seeing them in their feed.
A lot of times, it just takes one really incredibly client to elevate what you are doing – so you have to keep finding ways to put yourself out there to ensure you find each other.
Nikki, 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?
There is the obvious of photographing and interviewing bands that I’m a fan of – but there is a lasting imprint beyond that. Nearly every friendship in my life exists because we met through a show – including my marriage!
850ME has never been a financial undertaking – but the skillset of concert photography has been so important for our symphony, ballet, and theatre clients under Edward A. McGrath Photography – the more traditional photography brand that I have with my husband.
It’s easy to look at something as just a numbers a game – just looking at that bottom line. 850ME is more than that to me – it is an avenue I’ve traveled that’s helped me grow as a human, have incredible experiences, and build a life through other connections that I would have never guessed possible.
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
Honesty and communicating from an authentic place.
It’s weird to think of your personal life as well as your business life as all part of your ‘branding’ but those lines are continually more blurred. How you react, comments you leave, public perception of conflict – it all affects your reputation.
Photography is a continually saturated market – so approaching each interaction from a place of kindness makes your overall service more likeable.
That doesn’t mean you don’t have boundaries or are a pushover. Everyone who operates a business, especially a service-based business needs those boundaries to operate a business effectively.
It’s just important to understand that every in-person and online interaction could be with a potential client or someone who could refer a client your way. It doesn’t mean you ‘hard sale’ everyone – but those interactions become a reflection of your business and other’s perception of your business.
How’d you meet your business partner?
Birth?! 850ME began as my mom and myself. So our meeting was out of my hands. Without her love for music, 850ME wouldn’t exist and grown to what it is today.
Later, I crossed paths with my now husband at a concert, and later he expressed interest in photographing under the 850ME brand. Down the road came the first date in 2015. Married in 2020.
With him we’ve continued 850ME and grown our traditional photography company Edward A McGrath Photography to the point that it is our full-time job.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.850ME.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/850musicentertainment/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/850me
- Other: www.EAMphoto.com
Image Credits
All images by Nikki Hedrick of 850 Music & Entertainment / Edward A. McGrath Photography