My Story: From Studying Education to Building a Business

My first recorded dream job was the title of “princess”

Lots of kids want to be royalty when they grow up, and I was definitely one of those. I would wear my little plastic high heels to the bank with my nan and clip clop all the way there and back. But I also had a super curious side and was often playing detective, taking “soil samples” from the backyard, and dreaming about being a business owner. But I’ve always loved art and been a creative. When I was younger, I would sit with my little art set in front of an episode of Out of the Box and just create. In high school, I took all the art classes I could and spent all my free time either in the art room or in the theater. Clearly, art has always been a calling of mine.

Couple my love of art with the fact that I’m bossy as HELL, and I thought I had found the perfect career for me as an art teacher! I LOVE teaching so so much, and I often default to teaching in any situation, even when I don’t intend to. (My student teaching in a middle school art classroom was a highlight of my life.) But as I worked my way through undergrad I slowly started to realize that I wanted more freedom in my life than teaching could offer me.

To be very blunt, I realized how overworked, underpaid, and underappreciated teachers are and I slowly became more cynical about the path I’d chosen.

I don’t give a shit about about standardized tests or committees or dress codes, and I really hated active shooter drills. I realized that I had highly idealized being a teacher before I knew what the job was actually like — all I ever dreamed of was a classroom of my own, an abundance of art supplies, and giving students a safe space to explore their creative sides and feel safe just being. But teaching is SO much more than that and I knew if I went into it right away I would become burnt out super quickly once the reality set in that teachers spend so much of their paycheck investing in supplies for their classrooms, are limited in how they conduct their classrooms with such a high focus on test scores, and all of the politics around education. Top that with just being less and less excited about it, and I was feeling ready for a shift.

Luckily for me, I had the opportunity to get a taste of what it would be like to own my own business when I got a job with a photographer while I was in college.

So I was feeling disenchanted with my choice of career path and was working as a Resident Assistant on campus when I had the opportunity to take on another part time job with a local photographer and it was a total dream. It was perfect for me; I had the opportunity to learn new things and add new skills to my resume, and the work was different every day. Of course there were tasks that were repetitive, but it was always a new challenge to solve. New questions to answer, new photos to edit, and new clients to photograph.

Being a photography assistant was right up my alley; it was challenging, fun, and kept me on my toes.

Over the course of the next few years, I continued working on my Bachelor’s degree and slowly got promoted in my job and began second shooting weddings and taking on more responsibilities in the studio. Over time, I began to realize that I really loved going to work, and I really didn’t love going to class. As that realization dawned on me, I had to sit down with myself and do a lot of introspection about what I really wanted for my life and what I valued.

I had started a little WordPress blog for fun, and had been taking photos for it with the camera my mom got me as a high school graduation gift, when I started to consider photographing people. I had been doing it a bit at work, and decided to test my hand at it on my own with my two best friends as models.

And they were both great models, but I was not good at posing or editing…. like at all. AT ALL.

These are definitely the best of what I got, and looking back it’s clear to see that I had so much potential! And there are a few from these first photo shoots that I’m still proud of. (Like that one through the glass? That’s a winner.) And I love looking back and seeing my progress from then to now, seeing how my self-taught skills have evolved as I’ve learned more and grown in my craft.

And I’m thankful I’ve always had really great friends who have supported me and cheered me on, and let me practice my skills on them whenever I wanted.

It was in 2018 that I finally decided to try my hand at boudoir. I got introduced to boudoir in my job, and really loved the boudoir experience and seeing the confidence it brought to women. So I gathered all my friends, we went in together on a huuuuge AirBNB, and we had a boudoir marathon! Kate made the most gorgeous charcuterie boards and did everyone’s hair and makeup, and I took pictures of each of my friends back to back until the sun went down.

As I was editing the photos that night while we hung out, there were SO many that I really loved. All I could think about was how beautiful my friends were, and they were loving the outcome too! I was really impressed with myself, and there are a lot of photos from that first boudoir experiment that I’m still really proud of to this day.

But what really sealed the deal for me was seeing the change in my friends after that first boudoir session we did.

I saw my friends break up with shitty boyfriends and level up, I saw their confidence increase so so much, and I saw them start to walk through the world in a different way. It was that moment that I realized that I really love shooting boudoir and I decided I would do anything I could to take photography full time after I finished my degree.

From then on, any spare moment I had, I spent working on the back end of my business. On vacations I was drafting email templates, taking calls for collaborative shoots with local creatives, and attending webinars to learn about marketing and editing. (Ask my family! They made sooo much fun of me for taking a call and attending a webinar before coming down to the beach with them, lol) I was reading articles and blogs, listening to podcasts, and taking my camera with me everywhere just so I could practice every chance I got.

I had to leave my position as studio manager when I started student teaching because there just weren’t enough hours in the day.

My last semester of school was horribly hectic. I was planning on moving to Bloomington after I graduated (and in with my partner at the time) and had began moving things little by little every weekend, but during the week I was completely swamped. I did my student teaching from 7am - 4pm every day, and three days a week had to go to USI for night classes. (Which was 45 minutes away from home.)

I would stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning every night working on my website, pricing, branding, marketing, alllllll the things. I was burning the candle at both ends, and really running on fumes for those few months. It was so exhausting but so worth it. In between work for school and work for my business, I was doing everything I could to get my business together so that as soon as I got settled in my new home in Bloomington I could hit the ground running.

As soon as I completed my program and finished my degree, I finished moving and launched my business 5 days before my 23rd birthday.

I did everything I could to get my business off the ground. I don’t remember giving myself a deadline I had saved up like $3,000 so I had the peace of mind of knowing I would be able to afford my bills and I just told myself it was time to sink or swim. Worst case scenario, I gave it a good try and could get a teaching job if it didn’t work out. That first year I booked any kind of session just to make ends meet - I shot couples, engagements, senior portraits, family portraits, prom portraits, headshots, personal branding, YOU NAME IT. I did anything I could, and the #hustle was real.

And I’m not gonna lie to you, the first six months of my first year in business were ROUGH.

There was one month in the beginning of that first year that I brought in just $200. When I say it was a struggle, I mean it was a struggle. I didn’t love shooting any and everything, but I knew I had to so that I didn’t have to search for a second job (though a few times, I did start to look for one. No shame in that at alllll.) And though my family was always supportive of me following my dreams, in the beginning they were pushing for me to get a full time job and do photography on the side.

Here’s the thing though — I knew that I could build my business as a side hustle alongside teaching or whatever I chose to do full time, but I knew it wouldn’t grow as quickly if I wasn’t focusing all my energy on it on it’s own. So I did what I knew how to do…

I worked, hustled, and exhausted myself to make my dreams of being a business owner a reality.

I found a studio space that I loved and began renting monthly alongside a few other creatives and decided to try to fill up my calendar with only boudoir. I hosted my first round of boudoir mini sessions in February of 2019 to kick things off, and I was lucky to completely fill all my spots and spend my day photographing seven babes in the studio for the first time! It was so so much fun, and it was the first time I realized that I could really make it work.

But my calendar was still filled with all types of sessions until I did my second round of boudoir mini sessions in May of 2019. I decided this time I was going to start an Instagram account dedicated to my boudoir work, and I think that’s what really took my business to the next level. After those mini sessions, I started booking full boudoir sessions regularly, and I started getting more and more clients that I didn’t know, which was a huge win! I had seen a lot of familiar faces in the studio and a lot of babes who would drive up from Evansville, and when I started getting clients in Bloomington who had no connections to my friends, I really felt like I was succeeding.

But even then, it was a lot of hard work, and it still is!

My business has completely taken off over the last few years since it began. I went from those $200 months spent anxiously hoping I wasn’t burning through my savings too quickly to doubling my revenue year after year. I’ve built something from absolutely nothing that sustains my life and makes me feel absolutely on fire to get to work every day. I get to work with some of the absolute coolest people on the daily and feel so honored that they trust me to hold this space for them.

It’s hard work a lot of the time, and it can definitely be stressful knowing that it’s all on me to get things done and make the decisions. It’s can be stressful feeling like if I’m not working, then nothing is getting done and I’m not making any money, and that feeling has caused me to push myself beyond my limits more often than I’d like to admit. But I’m getting better at keeping my boundaries in biz and I’ve always been learning a LOT as I go! I love this work, and I’m so stoked to have been able to follow my dreams from the start thanks to my supportive friends and family and my incredible clients-turned-friends. ❤