Podcast Summary
In the latest episode of the Universal Method podcast hosted by Ashton Winningham, guest Kylee Joy, a Las Vegas-based wedding photographer and owner of Kylee Joy Photo, discussed her journey and aspirations in photography, emphasizing the importance of social media presence and online strategies for business growth. Kylee highlighted her goal to automate and outsource aspects of her business to facilitate expansion, particularly during wedding seasons. The conversation shifted towards the significance of an online presence, where Ashton pointed out, “Your social media is not your whole company,” underscoring the notion that businesses should not neglect their core values and foundations in pursuit of digital popularity.
Kylee’s approach to dealing with unsatisfied clients or associates was also explored, narrating an incident with an associate shooter as a learning and improvement opportunity. She stressed the value of providing exceptional customer experiences and maintaining the integrity of her brand and customer relationships.
The discussion further delved into the strategies for digital growth, with Kylee sharing her successful engagement on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, which significantly boosted her client inquiries. She reflected on the challenges of navigating social media trends and the utility of insights tools for refining content strategy. Additionally, Kylee underscored the professional credibility and enhanced customer rapport gained through her website, developed with Ashton’s assistance, acknowledging the role of an organized online presence alongside social media efforts.
Exploring advertising and market expansion plans, Kylee disclosed her intention to invest in ads upon relocating to Tahoe, aiming to penetrate the photography market there. She and Ashton advocated for leveraging expertise and outsourcing as efficient practices for scaling a business, emphasizing the value of focusing on one’s strengths and employing external resources to manage other aspects, such as advertising and social media management.
Ashton concluded the episode by inviting feedback and participation from listeners, reinforcing the theme of continuous improvement and audience engagement as pillars for building and scaling a successful business.
Podcast Transcription
Welcome back to the Universal Method podcast everyone. I’m your host Ashton Winningham and today I’m glad to have Kylee Winningham from Kylee Joy Photo joining me. Kylee, let’s hear a quick introduction of your company. Hi everyone. Thank you for having me Ashton. I am Kylee Joy, a wedding photographer in Las Vegas, Nevada. I have been shooting my Sony camera for about two and a half years now and I’ve been editing photos for Kristen Joy Photo for six years now. I love what I do and I am so happy that I was able to find this niche at such a young age. Nice. And what are some of your future goals coming up in this, you know, next year, next five years? What is your goals? My main goal is to be able to expand to a point where my calendars are full in the right times of the month, obviously, and year as well for wedding seasons. And to hopefully be able to automate a few parts of my business to where I don’t have to be putting so much time and effort into the back end of things. I also hope to be able to expand onto a point of outsourcing even photos themselves and taking the photos. I can already see myself working a lot harder and a lot longer for the things that I’ve come to. And so just to be able to automate and outsource those things is a huge goal of mine, but I’m happy to do it all by myself right now. Got it. OK, so thank you for the quick intro today. Our topic is going to be how important is a social media or online presence to a business? So I’d like to start this off by just quickly reminding everyone, you know, there’s a big rave online right now about having social media and having a website and all this stuff. Your social media is not your whole company. And I feel like that’s what a lot of people are now forsaking so that they can have this social media presence where they’re forgetting about their whole value of a company as a whole and their foundations as a company. So I just want to quickly talk about, you know, what are some of the core values of your business? Absolutely. Yeah. I like what you said there about how your social media is not your business, because I know a lot of photographers who have very few followers on social media. And they still make bank and do a really good job in the industry and vice versa. So my values as a photographer are being able to provide value. So that is the main point. I want to make sure that people like what they’re getting, the product that I have to sell to them and that it provides value to them and to their lives and to their families, especially with wedding photos. That’s the biggest day of most people’s lives. And so being able to capture that is not only an honor, but it’s also a privilege and a responsibility. And so that responsibility that I have to give them exactly what they want on their day while still staying true to my brand and my values as well is huge. And then another value that I have is that I have is the customer experience. This kind of ties into providing value for the customer, but making sure that my customers and clients never feel like they are alone or forgotten or left out at any point in my pipeline. Right. And I would like to quickly, you know, we can dive into this a whole lot more later, but I would like you to quickly touch on when someone is unhappy with your product. How do you treat that in your business? Absolutely. That’s a tough one. Honestly, I’ve had a lot of good luck as well as just extra, extra work that I put into making sure that my clients are happy. But when on the off chance that they do become unhappy with their services, I do my best and my very best to fix that. And if it’s unfixable, I will do my best to make amends with that person personally. So, for example, I recently went through this. It wasn’t with a client, but it was actually with a associate shooter. I was being a second photographer for a birthday party, and I misunderstood some of the guidelines that the main photographer had given to me. And so the photos were not ideal and they did not match her style. And so she came back to me and told me this. And I said, OK, well, why don’t we work something out? Because there’s nothing that I can do to change those photos. So instead of just giving you the raw photos, I’m going to edit those for you and make sure that they’re in your style exactly how you want. And man, it took me a long, long time to get all of those looking perfect for her. But I wanted to make sure that there was no loose ends and no burnt bridges in that relationship. And now I have a great relationship with her and it’s a very professional one. And I’m really happy with the way that things turned out. And I’m glad that I repaired that. Right. And I would add, like, even if you never decide to do business with her again, you stuck to your core values as a company. And now you’re practicing that and putting that into play rather than just, you know, rather than like some random online company who says they have all these values. But in reality, when you get the product, it’s, you know, it’s garbage. Absolutely. Like this. And there’s just one reason why I wanted to mention that, which is feedback loops are part of your customer experience, right? Feedback loops inside of that being like a subcategory that those are really important for your core values as a company as well. So, you know, obviously there’s more to this. You have your goals as a company. Those are going to be what is a really important thing that you’re holding to your company. And then also your teamwork and, you know, the people that you put around you, the way you treat those people, the way you teach them to treat your clients and all that. Your team is very important. You know, you worked as an associate photographer, right? And I still do. Right. So and, you know, that’s that’s such a valuable experience just to be able to work as a team. And so, yeah, that’s really important. And then obviously there are plenty of other values that actually build up your company. But I just want to stress this, that, you know, your social media is not your company. There are so many family businesses out there in the world right now who still haven’t quite, quote unquote, caught up with the social media explosion, basically. But that’s that’s still OK as a business. You’re not you know, you’re not definitely not a failure of a business. There are so many businesses that are unseen and yet wildly successful, like you said, and successful, you know, according to their values and goals. Not just financially. So it’s really important. So now that now that we reviewed, you know, you have this established business based on goals, values, teamwork, all these things. Now, what now what do you do? How do you grow? More specifically, my question would be, what have you done after building your foundation for your company that has helped you progress towards your goals? Well, that’s a perfect question for the topic of today’s conversation. The biggest thing that I have done for my company is reaching out on social media and just presenting my work, especially as a photographer. It’s so easy because it feels like the platform was almost made for us. You can take photos for people and your people who you’ve taken photos for can share those photos and they can tag you and all these things. So it’s just this perfect little network where it was almost undeniable to, you know, join that and be a part of that and just share what I’ve been able to do thus far. And so making that jump, I mean, I’m sure we’ll talk about it more. It has been incredibly successful and just worlds apart from before I had joined social media. Yeah, that’s great. Yeah. I feel like that is such a key. You know, this is really the topic that I wanted to dive into is like social media is a tool and this tool is super valuable for your company and in growing your company values and also being financially successful. Right. We have so much opportunity on social media today. You know, whether that be photography where you, you know, as you describe it, it’s the photos, it’s a great platform to be able to expand, you know, all sorts of types of companies can really find value in social media. Any type. Yeah. Right. So what are the differences specifically you’ve seen in your company after you establish an online presence? Like, what did it look like before? And now what’s the after? So as you had stated, I have been an associate photographer for my entire career. And so doing associate photography, I wasn’t really always sure. Like, are these my photos? Do I have the rights to them? Like, should I post them? But after figuring out those kinks and posting, my business has gone up so much. And I used to only get clients from my main shooter who I was associates with. And now I’ve been getting more shoots on my own just from inquiries that have come from Instagram specifically. That’s been my biggest one. But I’ve gotten a few on TikTok. Honestly, even a few people have come to me from Pinterest. And so, yeah, just a million more inquiries than I ever would have thought possible by literally just posting reels and TikToks and, you know, cute little stuff of just what I like and sharing what I do. Right. And, you know, that really just says, you know, business growth all over it. But are there any downsides that you’ve experienced? Is there any difficulties to navigating the social media side? I would definitely say that if you are maybe not a person who has grown up in the generation of technology, it’s definitely something that’s harder to break into. Also, if you are somebody who is not constantly on your phone, if you’re not an addict, good for you. But it is much harder to break into that scene without knowing all of the trends. And so I thus far have done all of my social media management on my own. And I do find it hard often to figure out the exact trends and figure out exactly what works for you and your business. The main thing that I’ve found helpful with that are the insights. So TikTok and Instagram both have these things called insights. They’re for businesses on social media, and it will tell you things specific to your business. So it’ll tell you what time of day that you post that gets the most engagement on your channel or not really channel, but your platforms. And it will tell you the type of audience that you have, whether they’re male or female, other, whether how old they are, where they live, obviously not exact locations. But these things have all really helped me refine my videos. And it’s been a very useful tool, and it has sped up the process immensely. Right. And I recall that we helped build you a site and everything and get you established in that way. So what was your approach to that when you were looking at, OK, I need a website, obviously, because a website establishes so much credibility. And that’s just it’s very similar to a social media channel, but much more accessible to the web, but also much less specific. Right. So that’s like one of your strategies when you’re looking on going on social media is like you don’t want to just have Facebook. If you are a super professional business page, you would probably want to focus most of your efforts on LinkedIn and that kind of stuff. So when you’re approaching website building, what was your thought process behind, you know, choosing universal method, choosing someone else to do that work for you? What was what was your thought process? Well, I had been trying to make my own website on my own since probably twenty, twenty one, twenty, twenty two. And it was just not working for me. I went through a bunch of different platforms that were just super hard to use and super expensive. And I didn’t want to waste my time with that. I wanted to make sure that I had something in place that looked professional. That was my main thing, but also was useful and was valuable to my clients as well as myself. And so when I found out that you would be able to do that for me, I it was a no brainer, honestly. And at the price that I got it at, I mean, I would do it again in a heartbeat. Since I’ve gotten my website, I definitely have gotten a lot better rapport with my clients as well as just with myself, knowing that like, OK, this is an established business. I don’t just work on social media, which social media is awesome and it does a lot for my brand, but definitely feels more professional and more just overall better experience for people when they look at me. They have a peace of mind knowing like, OK, this girl has a website. She posts on social media consistently. She is available to reach out. I can, you know, write down on my info on her inquiry forms. And so, yeah, I do it again in a heartbeat. Got it. Yeah. I mean, I look at something like Amazon or Google, you know, if they have social media profiles and are super successful on those things. But if they didn’t have some sort of centered site, that would also cause massive problems for their business. Right. When we think of Amazon, we go to Amazon dot com. So not to say that a website is your whole thing, but, you know, you have social media, you have your website and there are various other aspects as well. You have advertising, which, you know, have you considered advertising? When do you plan to start approaching that? I have. I actually am moving to Tahoe in the fall and I plan on expanding my brand to that portion and that region as my priority. And so I know that breaking into the Las Vegas market was hard, but honestly, it is very unsaturated in Tahoe. And that sounds nice for most people. But in the photography industry, it’s very hard to work in an unsaturated market. As far as I’ve seen, I’ve been trying on my own with organic outreach and stuff like that to get into that scene. But I think that it’s going to be a really, really good idea for me to start investing some money into ads when I move up there or as that date gets closer. Right. So, yeah, there are many approaches. And I just want to remind this point that, you know, all these things, all these approaches are tools for your company. So, you know, you’ve established a company. OK, now we’ve got our tools. Now let’s see how to use that tool belt. You know, you managed all your social media, but you leveraged some outsourcing for the other channels. And obviously, do you plan to do all of your advertising on your own? Do you plan to do any of it on your own? I absolutely do not plan to do my own advertising. I am going into marketing in UNR in the fall. However, there’s a reason why I’m trying to learn more about that. It’s because I do not know enough about it. And so hopefully I can get a head start by learning from somebody else or by even outsourcing that and learning my own analytics and things like that. But, yeah, until I until I know more about it, I think it would be honestly a waste of money for me to do my own advertising. Right. And that’s that’s been my viewpoint on that as well before in the past, because I just, you know, there are I’ve taken multiple like Google ad certification courses and all that stuff. And even after that, sometimes I was just lost about how do I make a graphic that’s appealing to someone? Yeah. So you’re pioneering. Right. So it’s definitely a something that you want to be able to get educated by other people on, especially if you want to take it all into your own hands. But also outsourcing is leveraging and that is such a powerful tool you’re always going to need to leverage. You will not be one guy who suddenly, you know, has wild success on this company values and company goals. Unless if you’re very specific to on your company goals to be a sole contractor that, you know, super flexible and all that kind of stuff. Well, even if you could, I mean, it’s there’s stuff behind that. There’s a lot of work and burnout is a real thing. And for a one man show, it doesn’t last long. And even on that, you know, if if you want to have a site, OK, you got to be a site. Let’s say you’re a dietitian, right? You’re going to have to build your site. You’re going to have to make all your socials. You have to manage your socials. You’re going to have to do your ads. So tell me about it. Right. And this is part of that transition that you’re talking about of of you’re starting to implement systems and you want to hire associate photographers. And that’s becoming, you know, working on your business instead of inside of it. And that’s something that I talked to Chris about last week. This is really just becoming, you know, a CEO rather than simply a photographer in your company. So and that doesn’t mean you can’t work inside it as well. You obviously need to maintain the cash flow. But, yeah, I just like to go over a couple of stats really just to draw a couple of these points. Nearly 40 percent of small businesses in today’s markets have no social media strategy. So they’re kind of just throwing things out there. And 30 percent have no presence. So what whatsoever. And even with websites, I believe we saw a slide show on this a couple of weeks ago, but it was like 25 percent of companies don’t have a site. And remember, these are the ones that have been digitally surveyed. Right. So the people who are already digitally active, who didn’t take that step. There are so many family businesses still who do not have any sort of social media presence and they were not part of these surveys and stuff. So that’s important to remember. 93 percent of small businesses struggle with at least one aspect of social media. Right. So that’s an important point there. But yet to ask the question, how many medium to large businesses lack, you know, lack knowledge on one aspect of social media. It’s kind of just not a feasible question because these medium to large businesses have scaled their company. And obviously that’s not the reason in itself, but in scaling their company, they have, you know, they’ve hired out, they’ve hired in, maybe they’ve taken it all in. But what they’ve done is found certain social media strategies, found all these things. And now they’re established. So it’s important to remember that you’re not going to become a medium to large sized business if you’re not utilizing your tools. If you’re simply just a workhorse, that’s not going to do a whole ton for you. You know, you 12 hours a day is much less effective than two people, six hours a day. You can really then decide to, you know, prioritize and focus your time. That’s also on the episode that I talked about last week was mainly just how valuable is your time. And it’s a really important question when you’re diving into business, even if it’s a career, even if it’s a just any personal endeavor, how valuable is your time? Make sure you’re prioritizing each moment to be able to make the most of your time inside of your company. Even if that’s spending three hours one day planning out all your tasks. Now, obviously you do have to, you know, hit the, not just hit the drawing board, but also, you know, get to work sometimes. And that’s very important, but so many people overlook that, just that planning portion. So that really is part of scaling and social media and online presence is just a crucial factor to taking your small business to an Inc. 500 business, right? To a medium or large sized business. So, and next on, I just want to say, you know, some people are very hesitant towards scaling their companies. But I would like to remind those people that if you do this in a holistic and sensible manner, then all it does is just scale your values. All you’re doing is just growing your values and you’re not necessarily, you know, you’re not forsaking all these different things that people are worried about when they’re scaling their business. It doesn’t have to just be you. That is you growing your business successfully is you scaling your values, you know, bringing in other people to work for the same values as you. And that’s, that’s really important. So scaling your company, you know, is a, is an important thing. And whether that means, you know, you don’t not have to be a super large company for your values to be super successful, but you do have to scale it outside of you and your family. Right? And that doesn’t mean employee wise, you can be a family run business, but you do have to scale your markets a bit out there and make sure that, okay, and analyze your business, right? Make sure that you’re doing these things. So you’re not defeating your values rather than growing. Yeah, I do want to say that when I first began the process of scaling my business, I was so wary of it. I was very nervous and scared and I almost felt like it was a selfish thing to do because I am my brand. I absolutely believe that Kylee Joy, my face is everywhere and that is what I represent. And so scaling my business, it was almost like investing in myself and that felt super weird. And I don’t know if that’s a woman owned business thing or if it’s an every business thing, but I’ve heard a lot of other accounts of that with the other influential women in my life that I’ve talked to. And so being able to break out of that and just understand that I was ready to take on more clients and that I was ready to scale and that I wanted that. That was a huge thing. And so before you scale, you have to make the decision on whether you want to stay a small business or whether you want to scale to a medium and large business. And like you’re saying, it is an investment in yourself in some senses, but you’re not just taking all your time and pushing you out there, right? This is your value as a company is you’ve established more than just you. Yes. And by taking that time away from yourself, you’re also investing in your whole life. There’s nothing else that we have other than time. And so when you’re ready to give up some of that time and allow other people to take care of things for you and maybe even be willing to pay them for that, that is a trade that is worthwhile. Right. And this isn’t supposed to be a motivational quote or anything, but really take everything that you do to heart and try to do it to your best. Because like you’re saying, time is all we kind of have. So really just take everything you do. And that’s just a word of advice from the wisest people that I know, whether that be some of the older people or even some of the younger ones. Whatever it is, take it to be not successful in such a financial and all those types of senses, but really get clear with yourself and your goals and just pursue those hard and do not forsake your own values in any support part of that process. Otherwise, you’re defeating the whole purpose. So one of our closing questions here, how do you use your online presence currently and what are some growth strategies that you’re applying? OK. We definitely tapped on this a little bit earlier, but how do I use social media? Yeah. Is the question. OK, wonderful. So right now I am part of that 93% that is just kind of having some small issues with it. And a part of that other percentage that definitely is just kind of throwing stuff into the wind. There’s a lot that I have done that has worked and there’s a lot that I’ve done that has not worked and has failed incredibly, especially in the times where I thought it would do really well. But the main thing and the main change that I’ve seen the most growth from is just looking at how your things perform. I understand as creative businesses and as creatives, it’s so easy to just post what you want and what you think looks good and what you think is going to work. However, when I took a step back and was like, OK, this is not even really what I do, but it has gotten me jobs on what I do. It was specifically one of my posts that I did for a series. I started a series called I think it was like how posting every day until Sony comments on my videos. And one of the videos that I posted got me like three, four hundred followers and it got 30,000 views, so many likes. And it was just a random picture that I had taken in Europe. Nothing wedding related, couple related, grad related, which is all the stuff that I do. But it got me all those followers, built a rep with my viewers. And I’ve seen people who have come up to me and been like, yeah, this is the video that I saw you from. Basically, somebody shared it with me and then I realized you do weddings and now I want you to do my wedding, things like that. So just watching what works and trying to replicate that because it will only work for so long also. So when I found that success, I kept running with it and finally Sony did comment on one of my videos. And that was actually one of the worst performing videos, which is it’s just funny the way that it works. And so kind of breaking out of that mental, I guess, shell of just like. Do what works and and not necessarily what you want to do all the time, but it’s still showing off your work and it is still building up what you have to do. And so if that means hiring somebody else to do your social media so you don’t have to think about it, stress about it or manage it. Yeah, that that might be worth it. Or if it means setting a bunch of alarms for the specific times of days that your post will get better engagement. That’s just another trade off that might be worth it for you and your brand. Right. And that’s such an important approach, I think. When preparing for a shoot, you don’t build your own cameras and lenses, obviously. Yeah. OK, so that’s just my recommendation is, you know, you know, you’re not a manufacturer. Don’t build your cameras and you can build a camera. I could I could give you a 500 hour course on how to buy all the right parts and then build the camera and then successfully test through and now have an actual product out of it. And was it cheaper? Some some cases. Right. If you got the right course and maybe. But your value of your time was not probably spent the best unless if you want to be a manufacturer. But obviously you want to be a company owner of a photography company. So what you what in my in my eyes that you would do is you would go to someone that, you know, knows how to run those things. And that is just a great approach for social media growth and online presence growth. You know, you’re saying do what works, not what you want to do. Well, then then the question would be, how do you know what works? And guess what? There are people that know what works better than I do better than you do. Right. Better than, you know, all these things. So always in every facet. Right. So this is where leverage becomes such a valuable, you know, it’s it’s all throughout your business. I hear about so many influencers talk about, you know, leverage and value over hours and, you know, just what you think people might like. Totally. And when you’re able to give that up and just outsource those types of things, you get more time to become the expert in your field and in what you do. And when I started outsourcing other parts of my business, I was able to focus more on my photography techniques and just actually going out there and doing what I’m passionate about. All right. Do you have any other closing statements? Honestly, I think we covered it all. All right. Great. So I just want to remind everyone, if you like any certain content, make sure to give me some feedback on that. Right. Talking about those feedback loops, you know, give me some feedback. Let me know what you like. And if any of you want to join Universal Method on our podcast and go ahead and reach out on any social media, you can also reach out on my website to email, whatever it might be. Just get in contact with me and we can definitely set anything up. Thank you for joining me today, Kylee. Thank you. All right. And have a good week, everyone. Adios.