Today we’d like to introduce you to Zach Nichols.
Hi Zach, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
My photography story starts in college when I started dating a girl (who is now my wife) who took photos of an epic waterfall while we were on a date. I captured a handful of images on my phone and her camera’s images were infinitely better. I was big into the outdoors and hiking and bought a camera shortly after our date to capture photos of me and my friends in the outdoors.
I was studying Chemical Engineering in college and within the first few months of dating my wife, I decided to drop out after getting an internship opportunity and hating every second of it. I had wanted to do something hands on and interpersonal and I quickly learned this was not the career choice for me. Though it was hard dropping out right before my senior year after putting in all the work, I am so glad I did.
After dropping out, I decided to work and save money to try and figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I was working at Starbucks and a local restaurant as a server. Randomly, one day a photographer in a nearby city reached out to me to see if I would be willing to “second shoot” weddings with him and make some extra money; so I of course said yes. After capturing weddings with him for a summer, I decided to start my own photography business. In my first year of doing so, I booked 21 weddings, quit both my jobs, and never looked back. Fast forward to today and I am 8 years full-time and photographing nearly 40 weddings a year and doing all kinds of work.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I have been extremely lucky in this regard and took a lot of notes from my time with the original photographer I worked for. From his experience and my own expertise and logical mindset, I was able to become successful with very few struggles or hurdles to overcome. the largest one for me was marketing myself; but I was able to overcome this by learning about SEO and ranking myself on the first page of Google. When I did this, my income doubled year over year and I have not had to do any other kinds of marketing on social media or ads to get clients.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
As mentioned, I am a photographer primarily though I do a lot of marketing related work. As a photographer, I am most well known for my true-to life photography and specialty in nature. As a content creator, I am most well known for capturing photos of the Pacific Northwest forests and animals in the rain and fog.
I am most proud of my ability to diversify and try new things and well as improve myself and my business along the way to be as efficient as possible. Every year I try some new kind of marketing-related outlet or venture. A few years ago this was SEO and website design, then it was Airbnbs, and most recently it is e-bikes. You may be thinking, “what the heck does he mean by e-bikes?”. I do marketing photos and videography for many e-bike brands and have worked with over 20 companies over the last year. The e-bike industry is absolutely booming and I have recently worked with brands to build their marketing through visual storytelling. Not only is it extremely enjoyable riding ebikes and getting content for the companies; but it is also great money.
What matters most to you?
Time with my family. Though I am very driven and do a lot of exploring in my industry; time with my family is most important to me. It is why I have made my business as efficient as possible. My kids are 4 and 6 with a third about to pop any day now. Kids grow up so fast and I want to spend as much time with them as I can raising them. My dad worked a 9-5 and was not around very much when I was young and I am incredibly blessed to be around my kids a ton. We have a lot of flexibility too with my job and spend a lot of time traveling and exploring the outdoors.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.zachnicholz.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zachnicholz/
