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

Robin, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start big picture – what are some of biggest trends you are seeing in your industry?

I’ve personally noticed that being the first person to do something in the social eye can often lead to explosive overnight growth. That growth might not always yield immediately to new customer acquisition but is certainly successful in the eyes of brand awareness. Specifically pioneering a trend on popular social media outlets can be a catalyst for this. That being said, even more, people can find similar success if not piggyback on a pioneer’s success by copying, modifying, or outperforming a trend.

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

I got into marketing honestly by accident. My path into this field was through me picking up my dad’s old digital camera when I was around 19. After getting a few trips from a coworker at the time, I just learned by doing for a good year and was then given a few opportunities by friends to help out with their side hustles. It’s there where I learned I had not only a knack but a love for working with brands and what an honor it was to have brands reach out to YOU and be wanted at that level. While working sales for a lifestyle brand in La Jolla, I traveled up the coast with a good buddy of mine and decided to take a few pictures while on the journey with a few of their items, to which they looked at responded by making me theirs in house content guy. That was the first time that the thought of a career in the creative space was actually an option. From taking on their content, they saw what I was able to accomplish with my social accounts, which led to me running all said company’s socials. I just kept on taking on more and more responsibilities which ultimately led to me being our Marketing Director.

That experience led me on to bigger and better things such as head of Content and Social for an adult entertainment company (weird, I know haha) to a brief but great stint in an agency setting to where I am now.

I’m no longer really hands-on with content as I’m surrounded by people far better suited for what we do, but I’ve transitioned from mostly brand work to mostly weddings! For a lot of photographers, those tend to be super stressful situations, but I swear shooting weddings is almost like a vacation for me at this point. Everyone is (almost) always in the best mood trying to have the best day and I’m simply lucky to be a part of it.

Currently, I find myself in a leadership role for a startup and honestly am loving every second of it!

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

YES, PEOPLE. I can’t get over how instrumental collaboration is, and how while it maybe being intimidating, reading out to complete strangers or people who you admire can actually lead to great opportunities, knowledge, and relationships. My closest friends have been some of the people I simply reach out to on a whim, and some of the best skills I’ve learned in both photography and business have honestly been the ability to talk. Talking about anything, talking about shared interests, simply always leads to either something I didn’t know or a new perspective on something that I thought I did.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

My ultimate goal has always been happiness and fulfillment. That goal has never changed, but the means of how to reach it certainly has. For a while, it was happiness through financial freedom but has then shifted to happiness through a healthy work-life balance that works for my lifestyle. I, like many others my age, suffer from a high level of anxiety and mild ADHD, so being able to find a job that was more results-driven vs. heavily micromanaged and stressful really opened my eyes to how there are better ways to achieve my happiness.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://byrdphotography.co/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hey.byrd/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robin-bigge-2145a8101/

Image Credits
All photos by me :)