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

Yaneck, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?

I am originally from Poland and my official name is Jan. However, it is pronounced as Yan. The more casual form of my name is Janek or Yaneck (the spelling I am using).

A very casual form of my name, a name that my mom calls me, is Jasio. So I took that name and combined it with the first letter of my last name – Wasiek.

And this is how WASIO name was born for our photography business.

Now we have WASIO photography for family and dog portraits and WASIO faces for our business and professional portraits and headsots.

Yaneck, 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?

I am a professional portrait photographer.

I started to photograph when I received my first camera when I was 7 years old. It was a totally manual film camera that I actually still have. From the beginning, I enjoyed photographing portraits of people.

I had been photographing for many years and enjoying it as a hobby until I decided to do it professionally about 17 years ago. For the first 10 years, I was doing it part-time as I worked as a high-level manager for a global consulting company.

7 years we, my wife and I, decided that it was time to move from Chicago to California and try to be photographers full-time.

We decided to focus primarily on headshots and business portraits because we knew there is so much work to be done there. From seeing billboards to really bad portraits, through some advertisement and marketing materials, we knew we could help so many professionals with awesome portraits.

We differentiate us, is the ability to make anybody photogenic through our facial expressions coaching, and, more importantly, our clients have fun in the process. In our headshots, we deliver top quality, and our clients have genuine expressions. We usually combine approachability with confidence and professionalism in our headshots and portraits. However, this really depends on the person, their profession, and what they would like to communicate through their portraits.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

When we moved to California from Chicago, we were photographing primarily weddings and business headshots. However, we quickly realized that we had to focus on business portraits a lot more and put weddings on the side burner.

Booking weddings takes quite a bit of time with call and meetings in person. Once booked only the initial deposit is paid. As we moved to a new area we needed proper cash flow month to month.

Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?

When we moved to California from Chicago, we had to start our business practically from scratch .

Even though we were pretty recognizable and known in the Chicago area we were completely unknown in Southern California.

When we moved to San Diego, we rented a loft that served us as a studio and our place to live. We did have some money saved but we really didn’t want to touch it. Those funds were really the ultimate plan B if needed.

So we were looking for business everywhere. We joined local chamber of commerce. We also networked everywhere! Elevator, in front of our house, in our building, neighborhood and city.

We threw headshot sangria parties in our loft to introduce our photography to other people in the building.

We actually were going from business to business to introduce ourselves.

Government help was great during the first couple of years in California. It helped us a lot, especially when our first daughter was born.

We went through those tough times and made it work. The relationships we built back then still pay off even though it’s been so many years.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.wasiofaces.com
• Instagram: @wasio_faces
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wasiofaces/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yaneckwasiek/
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/wasio-faces-santa-ana

Image Credits
All the images are ours – WASIOfaces.com