We recently connected with Rebecca Zvejnieks and have shared our conversation below.

Rebecca, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?

My husband and I have an interesting last name, Zvejnieks. His family is originally from Latvia, and the meaning of Zvejnieks in Latvia is Fisherman.

We spent months trying to decide on a name for our wedding film business and nothing felt right. We were joking one day that we could just call it “Zsomething Films” because whenever someone tries to pronounce our last name they have no idea how to say it so a lot of people will just revert to ” Z something”.

After sitting on that for a few days, I decided I actually really liked that as a business name, so now we are Zsomething Films.

Rebecca, 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?

My passion for photography and videography started when I was 7th grade. My friends and I would film ourselves making silly videos at sleepovers and then I would have fun editing it together. My youth pastor at my church noticed some of our silly videos and asked if I would want to take photos and make trip recap videos for the youth group. I absolutely LOVED documenting our youth trips and creating edits that could be shared with our church.

I was known as the girl that always had a camera with her for every youth event and trip! I also would take hundreds of photos on every trip my family would take growing up and so my love for photography grew.

in 2018 I decided I wanted to start my own photo/video business, and so I slowly started offering very cheap family photo sessions to everyone I knew! As I gained experience, I was slowly able to start charging more and build my business to where it is now my full time job!

In 2021 I filmed my first wedding and absolutely LOVED it! I decided that was what I wanted to get into next and so for the last 3 years have been focusing mostly on our wedding film brand. I love getting to connect with couples to tell their love stories! I would say our wedding films are unique in that we really try to lean into the couples personality when telling their story. We love to do something extra with each couple that is totally them, weather that is going along on a hike to their spot they got engaged to read their private vows, or just capturing them in their home doing puzzles and making cookies together. We want each film to be as unique as the people themselves.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

I started offering family photo shoots in 2018 charging $30 for an hour shoot. At the time I was working full time at the YMCA in a teen afterschool program teaching teens how to to photography, video and graphic design. Having to teach what I was learning really helped me to excel faster.

Teaching someone else is the best way to improve your own skills as well!

After a couple of years I switched to part time at the YMCA and became their photo/video content creator as well as taking on the same role part time for my church. I continued to run my side photo/video business at the same time.

This last year, at the beginning of 2024 We decide it was time for both me and my husband to go full time with our business! A big part of our motivation for that was wanting to travel. This year we have gotten to travel to Wyoming, Colorado, Texas, the Oregon coast, and even Rome, Italy all for wedding photos and video!

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

We love listening to business podcasts. Two of my top ones I listen to are the How to Film Weddings podcast (Specifically for wedding filmmakers) and the Grow your Business podcast from Sam Jacobson (For wedding professionals). From these two podcasts we have joined a year long mastermind group and have purchased various courses/master classes that have really helped propel us forward and skip a lot of the trail and error that new business owners go though.

Contact Info:

• Website: Wedding Films: https://www.zsomethingfilms.com. Photography: https://www.rdewittphotography.com
• Instagram: @zsomethingfilms
• Facebook: @zsomethingfilms
• Youtube: @zsomethingfilms