#GIRLBOSS Episode 1: Grace Elizabeth Images
If you’re a creative and aspiring #girlboss, start-uper or just love watching and supporting women in business then be sure to tune in to our YouTube channel (click me!) for more on this series - you won’t want to miss a single episode!
Here it is, I am so excited to finally share our local Girl Boss series. This is a project that I have been working on to unite, inspire and share real down-to-Earth stories from local Brisbane #girllbosses.
I recently caught up with local cool-girl and creative game-changer Grace Elizabeth to talk all things women’s issues, how she broke through in a competitive industry, how she feels empowered as a local #girlboss AND her biggest business fuck up to date! Grace and I both grew up in small country towns, so I feel especially connected to her through our experiences from rural life to big city girl bosses.
Mikki: Thank you so much for doing this!
Grace: Thank you for having me. It is very exciting!
Mikki: So, I just wanted to chat to you about being a girl boss and some tips you that might have for our community and some things that you’ve struggled with, and bits and pieces. But I thought that we would start with talking about a recent project that you’ve chose which I was lucky to be apart of.
Grace: So honoured to have you!
Mikki: Which is obviously around women’s reproductive rights, can you share a little bit more about the project and what it means to you to be able to open up this conversation for women.
Grace: Yep, so probably 2 months ago, when there was a lot of stuff happening in America about the abortion laws in Alabama, I kind of noticed that a lot of women took to social media expressing how they felt.. and I was really shocked because I just didn’t expect such a large amount of women to come forward and say ‘this is how we feel’ because a lot of people don’t really express that.
I THINK AS A PHOTOGRAPHER I HAVE SUCH A UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY TO CREATE PROJECTS AND GIVE PEOPLE A VOICE OR A PLATFORM TO SHARE THEIR STORIES.
So I went.. ok, well let’s do a project here in Australia with real Australian women sharing their stories on women’s reproductive rights! The project talks about nine unique stories of women that have either had to use emergency contraceptives, termination.. It also explores mental health and sexual health and the things that we don’t talk about as a whole. It’s not just looking at abortion, it’s kind of discussing a range of things that we dont talk about in society which I think is really important. I feel really honoured to have had a range of women come in in-front of my camera and allowed me to photograph them and be able to put this forward.
Mikki: Grace Elizabeth Images, I know that I have one of your subscription packages for your photography, it’s a really great idea. I think obviously it will allow business owners to have consistent images for their socials, but also it gives you a consistent cash flow. What made you decide to set up your business in this way and did you have to trial a few different pricing structures? Were you undercharging at one point? How did you figure out what to charge for these packages?
Grace: So I remember when I first - I’ve had my business now for about two years - and when I first started out, there’s no like go-to for pricing or you know like a stock industry rate.
Mikki: So you have no idea..
Grace: You have no idea. I remember when I picked up my first freelance contract for the Urban List and that kind of gave me like a little bit of an idea on pricing and then I guess I built up my client base from there. What I was noticing with being a freelancer is that it’s just so up and down as a creative when it comes to your finances and your income. It’s never just this routine amount - you’re either waiting for an invoice to come in or you’re chasing one up. It’s just very up and down and I went ‘there’s got to be another way, there really has to be another way’.. and I went ‘I wonder how I can create a retaining income that allows me to give me a base to work off and then frees up time to do other creative things that you wouldn’t earn probably money from’. And that’s where the idea came from last September! And I went ‘ok, if I can have X amount of subscriptions recurring and coming in it just gives me a stable income for a minimum 4 month period’, which is so rare. I think as a creative you don’t normally have that stability and I feel really lucky to have had this little light bulb moment to have that coming in.
Mikki: So clever!
Grace: That’s been a huge turn for me business wise.
Mikki: That’s so cool, and you work with so many cool friends as well!
Grace: So many, like here, so many different brands whether it’s product or service based, literally like so many different clients and it keeps it so interesting and busy. Which is great!
Mikki: What has been an online tool or app that has made your life a hell of a lot easier being business owner?
Grace: I would say XERO, like admin, accounting, invoicing.. once you get to know how to use it it just makes everything so much easier - when you’re invoicing people instead of having to do the chasing, it kind of does that for you with reminders and what not. It helps with tax time, it just keeps everything all together and it’s so easy to use. I think if you’ve got your finances and everything sorted I feel like that’s half the battle.
Mikki: When I started M.A.H. I was really nervous about standing out and looking like everyone else because there’s obviously so many hair salons out there and I think that’s what kind of.. it’s the little things that set us apart from different salons. Did you have the same sort of fear as well and do you have any advice for any other aspiring photographers, I guess in regards to how they can make their brand stand out and be different from everyone else because I feel like you have a very unique look. I can tell your photos from another photographer.
Grace: Which is good to know! I would say.. yeah look when i first started out, it’s competitive in all creative industries, like very competitive, and I think I kind of worried about that a little bit. I think now I’ve built my brand I feel more secure in that. I think my subscriptions have kind of helped me stand out a little bit and I also think just my editing style and how my work looks, which as you mentioned that you noticed.
PROBABLY TO UP-AND-COMING PHOTOGRAPHERS, I THINK TRIAL THINGS UNTIL YOU FIND WHAT YOU LIKE OR IF YOU HAVE AN AESTHETIC WORK TOWARDS BUILDING THAT.. AND DON’T BE AFRAID TO TRY THINGS. I FEEL LIKE THE WORST PHOTO IS THE PHOTO YOU DON’T TAKE.
My other bit of advice is to make connections and be really particular who you make connections with. I feel like I have such a community of people around me with my business and I love that and I know that it’s kind of great to approach people and talk about things and you’ve got go-to relationships which are really helpful but you never know that one client might lead to like 10 others because they have like-minded people in their circle. Look at today, we’re collaborating on a video for women’s health week and I feel like that wouldn’t be happening without this relationship that we have from working together.
Mikki: I would love to know about your first big job as a photographer - can you tell me what you were doing before you had your business as well.
Grace: Ok, so before I had my business I was studying full time and working at the Brisbane Powerhouse in hospitality. I was juggling both of those things, and then I would just take my camera everywhere and I would photograph anything and everything for me, and I remember the Urban List were picking up my photos of cafes, or I love a good interior and I love a good coffee.
Mikki: So they were reposting your content?
Grace: No, they just came across it and they were watching me for a couple of months, and then my editor (at the Urban List) basically hit me up and basically said let’s get a coffee like we’d actually love to have you on board. So that’s kind of where I picked up my first lot of work and I guess my business has hit the ground running from there. My first big shoot was a full day shoot for a Brisbane based clothing brand called Get Robe’d and we shot this fashion campaign down at this beautiful big Moroccan house in the Byron Bay hinterland. It was like stunning! That felt surreal because we had like a team of 11 people and me - I was like am I ready for this, like you know, this is a lot of people, there’s a lot of responsibility, and I guess sometimes I thrive under a bit of pressure, but it was amazing! It’s just kind of like added another element to my portfolio which is great because I would love to be doing more like that.
Mikki: We all make mistakes, I know I’ve had my fair share that’s for sure, and you learn from these things, but being an independant girl boss can you tell us your biggest business fuck ups to date?
Grace: I would probably say, it’s so basic, but T’s & C’s has been a huge learning curve for me. Like little things pop up especially when I first started my subscriptions and I was like oooh and you notice bits and pieces and then you realise like you know what I really need to fine tune my T’s & C’s. So I probably learnt to just go along and you just keep moulding them as you learn things and if you pick things up. So I feel like always have good T’s & C’s in place or if you can afford someone to do up a contract - go crazy! But I think just amending them as you go along, and as you said, as you learn. So I have like 50 million memory cards floating around, ok maybe not that many, but I find that sometimes I forget to, in my systems, I forget to when I get back to the office to file stuff straight away, so sometimes I might rock up to a job and my memory card is full and I didn’t realise but I’ve forgotten to file my memory card onto my hard drive. I nearly one day thought I would just overwrite an entire memory card of work that I hadn’t had the chance to edit, which is just so much time! So being more organised and holding myself accountable for those things is big. Oh and batteries, I love to push it a little bit with my camera batteries. I’ll be at a shoot and my battery will be flashing at me and I may have accidentally forgotten to pack my backup or whatever so I tend to live on the wild side a little bit. I love to feel a little bit of risk and whatever, but I would probably say they’re kind of my minimal fuck ups.