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You are listening to take it personally, a podcast for photographers about the personal side of business and the art of standing out. Here. I'll help you build a business and a brand that is uniquely you if you want to attract dream clients and stop looking at the competition to decide your next move. If you are ready to show up as a confident branding authority to help you serve your clients and consider your goals and priorities too. If you want to make your mark in a new, underserved niche of photography, then this is the place for you. I'm your host, Maddie Ashong, South Dakota brand photographer and educator. I'm a straight shooting Instagram obsessed. Diehard Swifty who has built a multi six figure business on the back of brand photography all while raising a family, and I know you can do the same. Let's get ready to take it personally.

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In late 2019, I found a studio space that seemed like it could be perfect. I had to have a vision because at the time it had a black ceiling and pepto bismol pink walls. The previous tenant had just moved out and they were running a doll clothing store. So there were literal doll body parts laying around. The tile was chipped and broken. The door handles were not in ideal condition, there were definitely things about the space that were far from perfect, but there were great big Western facing windows and tall ceilings. And I thought, okay, this could be it. And by February of 2020, we were moving into the space after a fair amount of renovations. By March of 2020, we were moving and grooving and people were starting to rent the space and by March 15th 2020 the world shut down and we had officially opened a business in a pandemic when I was about Five months pregnant with our third kid so the journey to get to white space has been filled with ups and downs and the fact that we are now five years Into this space and celebrating one full year in our new space feels like a pretty massive accomplishment.

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So this episode is celebrating five years of white space and one year in our new, bigger, better building that honestly, the Maddie of five years ago, even the Maddie of two years ago was literally. Only dreaming about like the space that we are in today, truly only existed in my imagination and for as much work as having a studio space is, which we'll get into in this episode every day. That I get to set foot in that space and spend time there and blast Taylor Swift and water my plants and see my clients and host other photographers every day that I get to do that. It truly does feel like a dream come true. And I know like I, that's so cheesy. It really is. And it's not been without work and it's not been without many months where I'm like, we should just sell it and cut our losses. That two things can be true, but it really is a dream come true. So in this episode, we're going to do a little bit of an ask me anything about having a studio space as a brand photographer.

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In the show notes, I'm going to go ahead and link episode 97 of Take It Personally because I didn't ask me anything about my studio in about August of 2023. So that episode goes more into the initial investment that we made into the studio, initial changes that we made, how we found the space, what expenses look like, how we make sure we're bringing in enough revenue. How our member system works how long it took to break even and make a profit. And some of that we're going to get into in this episode, but a lot of those foundational type questions we actually talked about in episode 97. So I will make sure to link that in the show notes. For today. I took to Instagram and said. said, what do you want to know? What do you want to know about white space specifically now that we have been in this bigger space for a while? So let's get into your questions. The first question is how did you find your first studio space? Did you start with a realtor? So again, refer back to episode 97, but yes, we did start with a realtor and I would recommend starting with a realtor. That was incredibly helpful. With our second space. I had a relationship with that realtor and probably about a year and a half, maybe even two years before our four year lease was up on the first space. He and I started talking about what the second space was going to look like. Are we going to renew? Are we not? We knew immediately that we weren't going to renew. I feel like we would have closed before we would have renewed because we just had such a Gross experience with our landlord. They were super hands off We had a couple of really simple issues that they never fixed We were promised a lot of things when we moved in that we never got. I told my realtor that, and I also around that same time took him some concepts from spaces that I had found literally all over the U. S. I love the studio realm in Denver. I had shot there in 2023 I think and they had this like big cool garage door that I was just like, Oh, that would be so cool to have this like big garage door and tall ceilings and there was another studio that had a balcony mezzanine area. That would be really cool. I wanted, oh, there was another studio that had a kitchen set up. And as a brand photographer, I'm constantly having to rent houses for my clients that need kitchen spaces. So I thought having a kitchen would be great. I knew that I wanted a bathroom attached to the space. I didn't really want to deal with wood floors anymore. I wanted concrete floors. Took that to my realtor and I said, I think that spaces like this could do really well in Sioux Falls. I think that people would respond really well, both photographers. We have a lot of photographers in our community and also people who want like a really cool event space or just like a unique. Building to rent out for their business, but it doesn't exist here. So if you can help me find something similar to this on a budget, I'll move in. I have to give it to my realtor. He really went above and beyond and ended up looping in a builder. And the two of them came to me and the builder said, we love this concept, we want to build it. And if you will be our first renter, we'll give you a deal and we'll let you design the space how you want to design it. At this point, I'm panicking because that's what we do when good things happen to us. But we felt like in the old space, we were pretty. Maxed out on what we could make and with what we were making We did not understand how our expenses could be higher than they already were, and we knew that if we moved into a bigger space, our expenses would be higher. Hopefully, so would our revenue, but you don't know that when you're just like putting numbers on paper and seeing what might work. It's possible that we could move and nothing would change and our expenses would be higher. So all of a sudden this started to feel really real and I start trying to come up with reasons why this isn't going to work out. Because this man literally just said we will make your dream studio and here is the price. And it was a very fair price, but it was obviously much higher than what I was paying. And so immediately I'm like I. Don't want to be on this side of the building. I want to be on the other side. It was a building with six suites that were all identical. I'm like, I don't want to be on this side. I want to be on the other side. He's it's fine. We don't care where you are. I said I want the southern facing wall to have a bunch of windows and the original plan didn't have windows on the sidewalls. They only had windows On the front and the back. And he was like, yep, cool. We'll add really big picture windows. How's eight feet? I was like, damn it. I said, okay. That kitchenette that you're talking about, I don't want like a builder grade kitchenette. I want a really cool L shaped kitchen that looks like a kitchen you could find in somebody's house. Yep. That's fine. No problem. We'll probably, we can probably work it into what you're already paying. Oh my God. And I know that it sounds, it's, it sounds insane to repeat it back. Like I really was so lucky and the, like this guy is just, he's just like a good dude too. So I knew that this was going to be such a better experience then. My previous experience and I'm getting to build my dream space and I'm not building it. I get to just be a renter and if there's a problem, like I make a phone call, but it still felt really scary. And so we went back and forth for a while and Jeff was really tentative about this. So if you listen to the episode 97, Jeff is my husband and he's my business partner. With white space, and he definitely is more conservative financially, just like in general across the board and honestly, thank God for that because I Most of the time, I'm like, it's just money. We can make more and you can't have two of those people in a relationship. Like it's not going to end well. So thank God for Jeff. And I, we were standing in our bathroom. he was just spiraling and I was like, here's the deal. This is how we can make it work. We're going to get this many more renters. We are going to start offering events, which is something that we wanted to do in the first place. Small events, nothing where we have to manage it, but baby showers, wedding showers graduation parties, that type of thing. We are going to do more marketing than we have done in the past. And this is how we're going to make this extra money every single month. I know that we can make it work. Let's do this. And he was like okay. And then part of this was also, I was going to be increasing. So my Maddie Pichon photography business pays my white space business. Like I pay rent to the other business. And that was another part of it. Like I'm going to increase my rent and if I need to, I can increase it even more. He was like, okay, like we have three backup plans. Great. Let's go. And we tentatively. Signed the papers and started down this process. And let's see, we were able to get into the space in May of 2024. And honestly, it's been mostly a really good year. We knew that moving in May, March, April, May. Are always our lowest revenue months along with September. And that's, I think it's because people are finally able to go back outside and then in September they are also able to go outside and not be super hot. The leaves are turning like those times of year can be really nice to shoot outside as photographers. We knew that moving into the space in May was potentially going to hurt. So we tried to have a savings account as best we could and be responsible and all that. And I will say that toward the end of the summer, beginning of fall, we were spiraling a little bit. September was one of the lowest revenue months that we had in a long time. And we looked at each other and we're like, we should sell it. We should be done. Like we just moved in, but we should be done. And by October we had our best month ever, which I think in retrospect, if I would have sat down with my spreadsheet, I could have probably predicted that's pretty typical for. The way that this business works, but at the time I was, like I said, I was just totally spiraling. And so October picked up massively continued through the end of the year. And now I'm recording this episode in March and things are going really well. So I'm very happy about that. I am hopeful and excited about the future of white space in the next, four years that we are in this space. And for what happens next, like after those four years, I don't know, but we're going to make the best of the next four years. Okay. That was a very long winded answer. I don't think that they're all going to be that long. Next question. What is the most important thing to look for when looking for a space? This is a great question. I would say it's going to be the things that you can't change or would be difficult to change. So when I was looking for our first space, I was looking at things like layout windows. Yeah, those were the big things. Layout windows, architecture. And I would say with building the second space, Obviously, we were building it, so we got to put some of the things in place that we needed, like adding the windows and that sort of thing, but it was really the same, like those were the things that I was concerned about, and then the other stuff you can figure out as you move in, but you want to make sure like the layout, the architecture of the space is what you want and something that you can make work and You have, if it's a natural light studio, you have enough windows. Something else that I think would be challenging to know ahead of time, but if at all possible, I would look for a place that has a good landlord. Having our first experience versus this experience has been. night and day. Our landlord now is like relatively hands off. We do have a property manager who we communicate with. And so that's more his role than the actual landlord. We actually had a very similar situation like that in the last space, but it felt totally different. Like we were constantly getting passed off to the next person. It seems like it was a role that had high turnover. There was no empathy. They didn't know us personally. The very minor issues that we had, they refused to help us out. Whereas in this space, like our property manager slash landlord is so proactive. I literally have his personal cell phone number and I'll call him. He'll call me Jeff and him communicate. Like it's just, it is night and day. So that's something that's difficult to know ahead of time, but. If you can ask around and just get the vibe, a good landlord makes a huge difference. What were my non negotiable needs with this second space? We wanted it to be bigger. Our first space was right around a thousand square feet. The actual shooting space was probably less than that. And so we were looking for Probably 1500 plus square feet of shooting space and we ended up with right around, I want to say 3000. It's split though. We have the majority of shooting space on the main floor and then we have the mezzanine that has a little bit more square footage, but I think it's right around like 2500 3000 square feet. So we about tripled our size. I wanted windows on more than just one wall with Western facing windows. I really only felt comfortable shooting in the afternoon. I did not like how the light looked in the morning, but I would rather shoot in the morning. I would rather go to the studio early and just get her done and then go back and edit or whatever. So I really wanted windows on more. Then one wall, I wanted a better landlord. We also really wanted an external door in our old space. You entered through the door, like off of the street, went down a hallway and then went into our room. We just liked the idea of not having to deal with that. Just like having an external door. That you walk right into the space just felt a little bit more like our business as opposed to like a room within a building We wanted our own bathroom. We had so many stupid bathroom issues in the old space my Most annoying story is when I was shooting for little sleepies, which is if you haven't listened to previous episodes, they are a pajama company that I worked for a few years. And so there were days that I would have dozens of kids and parents in the studio and I'm shooting for little sleepies and I've got tons of families in the space with their small children who need to use the bathroom they came out and were like, Hey, there's no toilet paper in the bathroom. Okay, great. So I text the property manager who I have no idea who this person is. And they're like, Oh, okay. Like I'll let so and so know a third person. So not the landlord, not the property manager, but someone who's supposed to come restock the toilet paper cleaners, maybe. I'm like, okay, like they need to get here soon. I have a full studio all day today. By mid afternoon, I think it was still not taken care of, so I called again and just chewed him out because he was like I called them and they said they were on their way. And I'm like, okay, they're not here and this is a problem that I am still having to deal with, but it shouldn't be my problem and suddenly it's become my problem. So at this point, if you're telling me that you can't have someone here within the next 15 minutes, I'm going to literally run across the street to Hy Vee, this grocery store, and get toilet paper myself, which feels really inappropriate because that's not my job. And he's like, you're right. Yep. Yep. I'll go to Hy Vee and I'll get you toilet paper. Okay. Great. Just like the most. Irritating thing and stuff like that happened all the time. So anyway, that's my long story of why we wanted our own bathroom. And let me tell you, I have yet to run out of toilet paper. We wanted the space to be big enough to host events. Again, baby showers, wedding showers, graduation parties. I love to host the ladies in my neighborhood every year for a Christmas party. I wanted it to be big enough to do that. So nothing where like we would necessarily want to have a wedding there, maybe like a very small wedding, but more opportunity to be able to rent out events. I have a community of photographers and studio owners that I chat with on a pretty regular basis, and all of them have said events are what have been the game changer, That's what really allows them to have consistency and keep the studio afloat. And I will say, at least in the last couple of months, particularly March obviously we're only like right now I'm recording it's March 21st. So almost through the month of March, but this has been the biggest March that we have ever had. And I think that's. do heavily in part to booking events for April and May. So events have been a really big game changer for us, even already. And I hope that continues. I hope that I don't regret that in a couple of months. And I'm like, Oh, events are a whole other like headache, can of worms, whatever. So far they've been lovely. And the people who have rented the space have been so wonderful. So that's been great. And then the last thing that I wanted or had as a non negotiable was to have some sort of a lockable storage room or office. We were able to do a double door lockable office, so we can move furniture in and out really easily, we can lock things up, members can keep things at white space That is awesome. Love that. How did we furnish the space? So the first time I talked about this in the previous episode, we had a savings account. We took out a line of credit. We made this big Ikea trip. This time we had quite a bit of furniture, but I knew that I wanted to refresh things. And I also knew that we were going to need a lot more furniture because again, we're tripling the space that we had. We actually ended up working with my friend, Cassie, who is a designer. I've had her on the podcast before. Cassie from Made with Grace and Grit. She's also a photography client of mine. One of my favorite people in the world. So I worked with her to figure out like the floor plan, the furniture that we need. That was such a game changer to be able to see. The floor plan and furniture To scale within the floor plan. So I knew what we needed and I will say even doing that When we were like unboxing everything and getting the space ready to go I was I panicked because i'm like this is not enough furniture like this space is so huge Which is a good problem to have but also it looks Is it does not look good and it all ended up coming together. I think one of the things that really made the space come together was adding rugs. So once we added rugs and gave that like base to the furniture, that helped a ton. But yeah, it's, it was a lot of space to fill and we spent a fair amount of money. Furnishing it this time around. I can't, I would have to go back into my budget spreadsheet to see what that was exactly. Last time we spent about a thousand dollars furnishing the space that was in 2019, 2020, and this time we were closer to two or 3000 and we also had quite a bit of furniture already.

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This is Maddie from the Beyond. I'm editing this episode and I went back to check my budget spreadsheets, and we definitely spent more like between three and $5,000 to furnish the space. Plus we had a much bigger deposit when we moved, so it was a very expensive couple of months. Actually, I, I take all of this back.

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Next question. What are some of the lessons you have learned the hard way? This is a good one. Honestly, I think that for as much good that has come out of white space and getting to work with other people, other photographers and have a space that they can use, like all of the good, right? There's also it's. Disheartening to see the amount that people will try to get by with. There are some people who just suck. And I think that's true no matter your industry, no matter where you live. And I also really try to have empathy for like, you have no idea what people are going through. You have no idea how their morning was or what they're spending. I don't know what my spouse said to them today or how much drama getting their kids off to school was like, I really try to have empathy for that. As someone who tries really hard to be a good person and give the benefit of the doubt to have to deal with some of the stuff that we have had to deal with people just being like totally unreasonable is kind of insane. And sometimes I want to say what was your expectation here? What did you expect to happen if, when you ruined that couch and expected me to not ask you to repair it or pay for it.

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I really try to be a reasonable person and I don't want to be like fining people and sending out additional invoices like one, it's a pain in the ass. And two I just don't want to have to deal with that. I don't want to be that person. So a lot of the time if we have people break something and it's something small or it was an accident or whatever, we're like, no problem. Thank you so much for letting us know we will take care of it. We've had chairs break. We've had vases break. We've had picture frames break. Like we have had, there is a lot of wear and tear in a photography studio. And so we are very reasonable when people tell us as long as they tell us that there was damage to be like, cool, no problem. We'll replace it. All good. But when people People almost go out of their way to ruin something or to not tell you about it or just leave the studio in a huge mess or openly break the rules. Like when it seems like they are genuinely trying to do harm, which sounds insane, like who would do that? Who would walk into somebody's house and just destroy stuff? People do that. People who you think wouldn't do that or would have more common sense than to do that, they do it. That's been, that's just like so disheartening. Cause I want to believe that most people are good and most people mean well. And again, I really try to have empathy of maybe they are just fricking going through it right now, but it still sucks to be on the receiving end of that. Oftentimes, as a business owner, you have to default to the customer is always right. Not always. I should probably do an episode about that because I have thoughts on that too. But oftentimes, like to Make sure that you maintain a good reputation and maintain good relationships. It can come at the expense of just rolling over and being like, okay, we'll eat that cost or we'll buy another seamless role or whatever it might be. And so there are times that I just want to scream what did you expect? Like you, you are screwing us over and you don't want to take responsibility for that. And now we have to take responsibility for that. And that. Sucks. So that's like a major bummer, but I would say that's the biggest thing like there are days that it's just so disheartening to deal with some of the stuff that we deal with and I know other studio owners feel the exact same way because I've Had these conversations with them. The next question is much happier What are some of the joys and positives? I would say the people that I get to meet, like the people who are not unhinged but truly like the people and the new people that I have met, the new photographers, the baby photographers, I'm 34 now, almost 34. And so when I moved to Sioux Falls, I was like. This young, new photographer. I was like 21 years old and I'm not that anymore. And so much of the photography community is really young. So that's really cool. Getting to meet this new generation of business owners and photographers in this area. I also love getting to help people with the space. I've been. Getting a little bit more involved politically and to be able to say I have a space, I have a space that we can host this town hall at, and I have a space that you can hold your meeting at. That's really cool and makes me feel happy that I'm contributing something in that way. So that's definitely a positive. We've also done like donations through the space. People will come to us asking for donations for like events and that type of thing. And quite frankly, like we just don't have the profit margin to be able to give money. I do from. My like Maddie pong business, but whitespace, like we just simply don't have the margin to be able to make like a monetary donation, but we can donate time. And so being able to say we'll donate three hours that you can give away on your live auction or silent auction or something. I love being able to do that. Biggest tip that you wish you would have known? Gosh, I don't know. Probably a couple of things. While it is much better now than it was when we first opened, it's really emotionally draining to have a studio space because it does feel so personal. That's where having Jeff as a business partner has been really helpful. Although I will say there are times that we both are like very mopey and then that's not very helpful, but usually we kind of balance each other out, that has been a challenge. It feels personal. It feels like when stuff goes wrong or when people are mean, like it feels like an attack. We try not to take it that way, you can't help how you feel. So that is something that's a challenge. I say this a lot, but I wish I would have known that it would be a second job, like it is a distraction from the parts of my business that are going really well and that are more scalable and probably deserve more time and attention than I can give them because I'm split in three directions right now. I don't necessarily think that means I wouldn't do it, but we've had very real conversations about okay when this lease is up. What are we doing? Are we selling the space? Are we closing it? What's that gonna look like? And I don't know the answer to it I'm a lot more at peace now with selling or closing than I have been before and I'm saying that from a place of like things are going really well And it's still a lot of work and I don't know if I want three businesses like that doesn't seem super sustainable and at the end of this five years, I might be like, okay, we're done we've done what we came here to do and I would love to sell it like that would probably be ideal, but I don't know. I would have to just figure out how that works. It's something that I've talked about with my lawyer, but not like in detail. So yeah, we'll see. I think that those would probably be my biggest tips though, just that it's more emotional and it's more work than I thought it would be. Which brings us to the final question. Is it worth it? And would you do it again? This is so hard to answer. Cause like I said, like it's more work than I thought it would be. It's more of a distraction than I thought it would be. It's more emotional than I thought it would be all of those things. And yet I think I'd still do it. Question mark it. It's really hard for me to answer that. I do feel like having the space has legitimized my business in a weird way. I think because I have a physical space, people take me a bit more seriously than they did before I had the space, which is so ironic because when I look at my coaching business versus my photography business versus white space, white space makes the least amount of money by far. And that I'm not saying that to like crap all over the studio, but like the profit margins of a studio space are so slim. I don't, and that's actually, that's something that I wish I would have known because I don't think that I knew that going into it. To have a studio space be a legitimate full-time business. I know that people do it. I don't know how, because I don't understand how you're making enough money to pay your expenses, have a little bit of profit, and pay yourself and pay like a cleaner and internet. And I don't understand. Like I said, we have been really. Pleased with moving into this new space and how it's increased our revenue, but like we're not taking a paycheck. We don't pay ourselves from the business. We have a little bit of a savings account now, which is really nice, but That's something that you should probably have as a business. So like we're not really touching that we usually take ourselves out to a really nice dinner in december talk about business call that dinner a write off and that's what we pay ourselves from The business like that's about it. So that feels a little bit vulnerable to share, but that's the reality of it. We just, we do not have big profit margins. And I wonder if I would have realized that if I would have still done it. And I don't know, again, like that's still just so hard for me to answer. Cause I also know that if I were to. Take the marketing a little bit more seriously. Take the sales a little bit more seriously. Do Facebook ads, do more events where I'm talking about white space. Like it probably would look different, but I can't do that because I have other parts of my business. That I'm doing that for or spending time on. So it's a complicated question or a complicated answer, to what feels like a simple question. Okay. That was a long episode. If you have stuck with me through all of that, good job. This feels a little bit more of like a Debbie downer of an episode than the last time I didn't ask me anything about white space. And again, I love the studio space and I've learned so much and I do think in a lot of ways it's made me a better business owner. But I also want to recognize that like it has made me a more distracted business owner. It has made me spread way more thin as a business owner. It's presented some of my biggest challenges as a business owner. Like all of those things are also true. So I'm really excited to see. What happens over the next four years in this space. And I hope that we're just like blown away. And I also think that even if we are blown away by the next four years, it's very possible that those four years will be the last four years that we have the studio. And I think that's okay too. I think it's okay when something has run its course, whether it's run its course for the community or whether it's run its course for. Just like Jeff and I, and maybe we're able to sell it. Would it make me sad to close the space? Yes, for sure. It would be so sad, but it would also free up so much time and so much just like energy. That I think I would be okay with that. So it's going to be interesting to see what happens in the next couple of years. And I'm excited to see where it goes. Thanks for listening to this episode. I'm always happy to chat about studio things. So if you have any other questions that you want me to cover in future episodes or conversations that you want to have, feel free to send them my way. Send me an email, send me a DM on Instagram, and I will chat with you next time.

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Thank you so much for listening to take it personally. If you haven't already, would you head over to iTunes and leave us a review? This is the best way to let other photographers know about the show and help keep us creating content you crave. And if you want more tips and tools to build your personal photography brand, head over to my website, maddie pong.com. Here you can access my downloadable ultimate personal brand session shot list to get your clients singing your praises and browse my blog for more trade secrets to help you hone your craft and grow your business. Love to learn while you listen. Visit maddie peshan.com and click on podcast for all things. Take it personally. From show notes to recent episodes and incredible guest profiles, remember friend, the most important part of any brand is the people behind it. Branding and business is personal, so let's take it personally.