Welcome to the first official episode of the Stephanie Kase Podcast! I have to admit, it feels weird to just be talking into a mic and not having to think about the camera and lighting and all that stuff that comes with my YouTube video. Today, we’re going to talk about my business journey from 2015 to now, in 2022. I want to share how I’ve gone from a first time business owner to photographer to someone who educates other brands on how to create content! So, let’s get started.

Starting my business…

We’re going to go back to 2014. While I didn’t officially start my business until 2015, I was already doing photography before then. I absolutely loved photography and was pretty artsy in high school. I even created digital art and sold it online. I made a few hundred dollars and honestly, I thought I was making bank as a 13 year old!!  While I was growing up, my dad was in the military so we moved around a lot. Right before my senior year, we moved to Columbus Ohio, which is where I still am today. I knew I wanted to get into wedding photography, so I began to follow a lot of photographers online. 

Before we moved to Ohio, I got connected with a random photographer who was from San Antonio and she asked me to help with a wedding. My parents trusted me to go with this random person online (my grandma did drive me there!) and I helped at the wedding. I then helped a few more before we made the move to Ohio. Once we got there, I began working on my senior year of high school – I was homeschooled – and knew for sure I wanted to go into photography. 

Around the spring of 2015, I officially began my blog and website and set up my LLC. Around that time, I started reaching out to local photographers to assist them on wedding days. I ended up booking 17 weddings for my first year after that! So, in 2016 I then photographed MY first wedding day as a business owner. From 2016 to 2019, I was primarily a wedding photographer in the area. I also completed my degree at Ohio State in marketing during that time, too. 

Building my wedding photography business!

For those few years, I really just focused on the photography side of my business. I knew that there were a lot of things I wanted to do, but I also knew I wouldn’t be able to grow my business or branch out yet. And, I loved what I was doing. So, for those years I photographed my own weddings, assisted other photographers for theirs, and graduated from Ohio State in 2019. At the beginning of that year, I realized I really wanted to begin the dive into educating other photographers. 

Launching the SK Shop

In January 2019, I had the first launch of the SK Shop. I just had a few products up there – Lightroom presets and some PDF resources. It was also the year I really started with affiliate income, which is something else we can also talk more about if you guys want in an episode. Getting started with that affiliate income was huge for me. I made $1500 from that and another $9K from my shop that year. For me, for someone who had no idea what I was doing with that, that was pretty cool to generate a little extra income on the side. 

At the end of 2019, I decided it was time to double down on getting into education.  I love everything about it: creating content, products, and digital products. And, I loved my YouTube channel (which I started in 2018). So, I made the huge decision to join Hope Taylor’s mastermind that year. This was a really big step for me, because it was a really big investment. At the time, it was the biggest investment I’d made in my business. But at that point, I knew like my heart was really leaning more towards educating other business owners.

Launching my first course!

The mastermind kicked off in January 2020 and I was able to launch my first photography course. That was all about photographing wedding details. It was pretty specific but it did super well for someone like me, who didn’t have a huge audience or lots of products yet. As 2020 got going, most of my weddings were getting rescheduled into 2021 and I knew, in those moments, I didn’t want to book any more weddings for myself. So, I began to pivot my business away from what I had been doing, which was really scary. At that point, 90% of my income was still from weddings. But, looking back, it was honestly one of the best decisions I have ever made for my brand! 

In May 2020, I launched more shop products because my schedule was open to working on these things. These were photography products – downloads, prompts, email guides. They all did really well and that was so awesome to see! At the start of 2020, I also jump started my YouTube channel again and made sure to move away from photography tips. If I’m being honest, I just made a ton of videos to find out what people wanted and what would stick! It felt crazy but it wound up being another smart move. 

Launching my second course!

During the summer of 2020, I was photographing a few weddings here and there still but mostly, I began working on my second course: The Business Confident Photographer. It’s a course on how to grow a profitable business, basically everything from systems marketing, client experience, all of those types of things. The course launched in November and that did really, really well with my audience because at that point my audience was still mainly photographers.

Pivoting into Reels education!

My YouTube channel was starting to pick up and I knew I wanted to move away from photography education still. It was around that summer that Instagram Reels dropped. As someone who had already jumped on Tik Tok and really loved using it, I began to create tutorials for Instagram Reels. Teaching about this content felt really natural to me. The platform was easy to use and understand and I loved it. So, I ran with it. 

Instantly, I saw a ton of growth on my YouTube channel. People wanted to learn about how to use this new platform! At the same time, my weddings were beginning to die down again, so I also launched branding photography for other business owners. I was working with my VA who helped me stay on top of all of those systems and easily added in this extra source of revenue to help while I built up my educational content. 

Moving away from photography education!

During this time, I knew that I wanted to keep expanding. I was doing well with the photography education, but it wasn’t where I wanted to stay. By now, I was able to show that I was a qualified educator. I was helping people get results. My passion was in business – not photography. And if I’m being honest… I still didn’t quite know what to do next. So, if you’re in a season like that, just remember to take it one step at a time. After some thought, I decided to launch my mobile presets which could be used by anyone – not just photographers. That launch was in June 201 and it went pretty well!

I was encouraged by it and wound up joining another mastermind with Kat Schmoyer. This mastermind was so helpful because I was struggling with what came next for me. I didn’t want to be defined as an “Instagram educator”. And, I didn’t want to put myself or my business in boxes. But, the group was so encouraging about how to frame everything and what kind of content to create. 

Because of that mastermind, I launched more shop products including my 100+ Reels ideas, my coverup hoto templates, content calendar template, and more in my shop. It was validating to see it do well and know what people wanted this kind of education from me. During those next few months, I began to work on my Instagram Reels Mini Course, which I filmed while I was pregnant! Once it was ready, I launched the course and honestly, it was the best launch I’ve EVER done. If you want to see a recap of that, check it out here!

No more photography!

By that time, which was October 2021, I was completely done with photography and not booking anything at all. My business is now 100% digital product income, passive income, affiliate income and those types of revenue sources. It’s been really exciting to see just how my business has evolved and how it has grown over the last 7 years. When I look back at everything, it’s so interesting, because I feel like it almost happened really fast. But, I know in reality that I was in the weeds trying to figure out what my next steps were all the time. 

What’s next?

Moving into 2022 has been really exciting to see just so much brand growth and how my revenue has changed and evolved. So, really, from here on out, it’s all about helping you guys with what you want in regards to social media and creating content and how we can best serve you with that.  While we don’t know exactly what that looks like yet, we have some ideas and I am so excited that you’re here with me on this journey!