We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Sherri Phillips. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Sherri below.
Sherri, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.
It started with a discussion about where to go for our honeymoon. Brett and I had consuming jobs–I was a senior vice president at a major ad agency, he was a commercial litigator–but we were determined to take a full two weeks off together, something we had never done.
So where to go? As we started planning our wedding, a low-key weekend with loved ones in the Catskills, we batted around ideas. Cuba, Brett suggested. Brazil, I countered. We began consuming travel guides, read travel memoirs, and stared at the world map and dreamed. Japan? Morocco? South Africa? Vietnam? New Zealand?
Our wanderlust grew and grew. Could we negotiate a month off? We considered the money we had saved. One night as we fell asleep, we whispered the unimaginable. What if we ditched our jobs, gave up our apartment, stuffed a couple of backpacks with essentials, and traveled on the cheap? How long and far could we go?
What might befall us on the road, far away from home, bank accounts dwindling, with no jobs to return to? We were New Yorkers, and 9/11 loomed large in our memories, and a couple of years later, still was ever-present. It had destabilized the entire world. Why leave our cocoon–good jobs, a tight circle of friends and family, a city we cherished?
It seemed terribly risky. The world-at-large was like the apple in the garden of Eden, full of danger … should we take a bite of it? Would we?
“I will,” I promised in our vows on a sunny day in a big field a few months later. “I will,” Brett promised back.
Within a month, we’d handed in our notices, cleared the apartment, turned in our apartment keys, and driven a UHaul to Connecticut to store a few things in his parents’ basement. A few days later, we boarded a flight to Miami and onward to Ecuador.
Stories unfolded around every bend, in every little town, sprawling metro, and new country we set foot in, and I became hungrier and hungrier to ferret them out. The camera, which had practically become Brett’s right hand, became our memory. We’d scroll back through his images at night, inspired and energized to go out again the next day. And though the pictures of the physical wonders of the world were breathtaking, it was the people, the people who made our travels so fulfilling. The tenderness of a child with her elderly grandfather, the flirtation between two farm workers, the fishermen sharing a beer, the outbreak of a fist fight, the baby sleeping on the back of a woman in a rice field, the family of five on a single motorcycle.
Twenty-two countries and thirteen months later, we flew back to the United States. Playing non-stop gin rummy on the seat-back trays, we discussed how our big risk had played out and paid out. Our hearts were full though our pockets were empty. We wanted to continue to witness and document people’s stories. And where better to do that than in our beloved New York City?
By the time we landed, we were dreaming about our next big risk: Deutsch Photography.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Our passion is photographing people. People at play, at work, during key junctures in their lives, in private moments, dealing with challenges, celebrating together, even mourning. In other words, life.
Our intense interest in their stories is what fuels us and what makes our photography memorable. Even the smallest snippet of a life being lived is inspiring not only to us, but to others. There’s an electricity, a connection, that springs from images that capture even a little of someone’s story.
I believe that connection is ultimately what keeps renewing our world, and I’m so proud of any role we can play in that renewal.
Many business coaches advise their clients to specialize, specialize, specialize. We went the opposite direction, and diversified. Headshots, team portraits, corporate events, red carpet galas. Weddings, bar mitzvahs, birthday parties. Surprise engagements, family reunions. New business launches, intense speaker panels, worldwide gatherings at the UN. Building a practice in an organic way takes longer to gain traction, but OH! the payoffs are tremendous. The diversity of our client base is boundless, from the jobs they hold to the colors of their skin, from newborns to centenarians, from the poor to the very wealthy. Our headshot clients began hiring us for corporate events. Event planners began hiring us for weddings. Wedding clients hired us years later to photograph their newborns. And over the years, that’s how our business has grown and grown and grown.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
As small business owners, COVID nearly did us in. Our business and our love is photographing people, and COVID meant every event — business, private, non-profit — was cancelled. Employees were holed away at home, not centrally in their offices. And eventually as people did manage to gather, they had masks covering their beautiful faces. No company and no individual wanted to spend money that they might need tomorrow because of the uncertainty about the future.
And so, we launched a passion project for free. We photographed the essential workers, who in essence were the super-heroes of the day. And as we posted these images on social media, and in the growing world of Zoom networking, people began to take notice. We were referred to restaurants who had turned to home delivery because they needed enticing images of their food. As construction began to pick back up, developers hired us to photograph their projects. New entrepreneurs contracted us as they created new websites. Once again, our philosophy of and willingness to diversity paid out.
It was nerve-wracking after having experienced our best year ever to plummet to zero. But the good will of people, as always, buoyed us — and somehow our business scraped through. In 2022, we had an even better year than 2019, and the last two years, we’ve continued to grow.
What’s been the best source of new clients for you?
Referrals are by far our richest source of new business. Our referrals come by way of the people with whom we network, and from the people whose stories we’ve documented, whether at work or in their private lives. As an introvert, I resisted networking for a long time. It took a while for me to understand that networking is not about diving into a crowd and striking up an awkward conversation before handing out a business card. It’s about the careful tending of relationships, one by one. And happily, our clients tend to stick with us for years and years. The initial gig might be headshots for a corporate website, then getting hired for that company’s offsite a few months later, then for the wedding of someone who was at the offsite, etc. It’s organic, like life. By tending those relationships, our business benefits in ways both expected and unexpected.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.deutschphoto.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stories/deutschphoto/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sherriphillips/
Image Credits
Brett Deutsch