LKN Images

Transcript:

Narrator  

Welcome to The Best of LKN, a podcast featuring the best small businesses and the most influential professionals around Lake Norman, North Carolina. Each week, we spotlight those businesses and individuals that are making a positive impact here in the Lake Norman area. Thanks for joining us, enjoy the show.

 

Jeff  

Hello, friends and welcome back to The Best of LKN podcast. I’m excited to bring you this episode featuring a really well-known and respected entrepreneurial couple with a photography business based in Mooresville, North Carolina. But first, as usual, I have a question for you. Have you signed up for our email newsletter? Each week we send out a newsletter featuring links to the latest podcast episodes and written blog articles on thebestoflkn.com. We’re also sharing our favorite events for the upcoming week that are held by the small businesses we’ve featured here on the podcast. Signing up is easy. Go to www.thebestoflkn.com and scroll to the bottom of the homepage where you’ll find the email newsletter signup form. Simply enter your first name and preferred email address and you’re all set. We’ll update you every week with a single, concise email. And don’t worry, we’ll never share your email address with anyone else and we’ll never spam your inbox. Signing up for the newsletter is really one of the best ways to support the work we’re doing here at the podcast, and it doesn’t cost you a dime. Thanks very much for your support. We really appreciate it.

 

Jeff  

In this episode, I’m really excited to bring you a conversation with the owners of LKN Images, Kathleen and Ed Martin. Kathleen is a top photographer in the Lake Norman and Charlotte metro area. Her areas of expertise include high school senior photos, as well as family, sports, dance, and business photography. Her husband Ed joined the small business just a few years back after selling his company, and he joined to support Kathleen on the tech side and manage the back end of the business. Kathleen and Ed share the windy road of their entrepreneurial journey and the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the photography business. They also share details about their participation in the Front Steps Project, a photographic initiative that raised money for food banks. Their participation in the project alone raised $55,000 for the nonprofit Feed NC, based right here in the Lake Norman area. Finally, Kathleen and Ed give a few shout outs to a few of their favorite local Lake Norman small businesses and offer some great advice for aspiring entrepreneurs. It’s a very photogenic Episode 73 of Lake Norman’s number one small business podcast. Thanks for joining us, enjoy getting to know Kathleen and Ed Martin, owners of LKN Images.

 

Jeff  

Kathleen and Ed, welcome to the podcast.

 

Kathleen  

Thank you.

 

Ed  

Great to be here.

 

Jeff  

Yeah, I’m glad that you were able to join me and been looking forward to this conversation. I do love talking to photographers and fellow creators. I’m not an expert photographer by any stretch of the imagination but I do always enjoy talking to photographers. I usually walk away with some pretty good tips. Refresh my memory, Kathleen, who is the publisher of Lakeside Living Magazine that connected us?

 

Kathleen  

Joanie Baker.

 

Jeff  

Joanie Baker, yeah.

 

Kathleen  

She does Cornelius and Mooresville Lakeside Living, and they started the Mooresville one a couple years ago and I lived down Brawley School Road, so when I saw the new one out that they were looking for photographers I was like okay, that’s gotta be me because I live down Brawley and I like to work with magazines and stuff.

 

Jeff  

Shout out to Joanie and Lakeside Living Magazine, appreciate her connecting us, I really do. So, I normally start these conversations with a little bit of a background bios on the founders and owners of the small business and Kathleen and Ed, you haven’t always been professional photographers. There was a career prior to LKN Images if I’m not mistaken?

 

Kathleen  

Yeah, well for both of us. I mean, I started, I was, my major in college was art and photography. So, I kind of went with that, but then got out of college and, you know, in the 90s, there weren’t a lot of photography opportunities for me in Syracuse, New York. So, eventually went to work for IBM as a sales rep, and that’s where we met. We both worked at IBM in Boston. Took a little bit of time before I got back to photography, it was more once the kids came along. I have always had a camera in my hand but once the kids came along and I started taking their pictures I wasn’t as, didn’t have as much time to do that as I would like to because I was also working at a software company, doing their marketing and things but from there once we moved down to Florida, I started looking at doing that even more as a business. And once we moved up here to North Carolina I absolutely said, this is it, I’m gonna do this business and that’s how I got going on it.

 

Ed  

My story, well you heard about the IBM part so obviously we met there, I ended up getting into software development. And after IBM spent about 25 years making NASCAR video games, I worked for Hasbro, I worked for EA Sports, a number of companies, eventually moved here to Charlotte, you would think it would have started here because of the way NASCAR is, it seemed to be everywhere else, but eventually came here and started 704Games and we have the NASCAR license and sold that to a company out of Miami a couple years ago and started on a second or third career but instead of being the weekend guy helping her out with lights and loading up all the equipment I’m now full time with Kathleen helping her with LKN Images.

 

Jeff  

Ed, sounds like a dream job, developing video games.

 

Ed  

You know, everybody says that. You’ve got a great job too. Wow, you do podcasts for a living. It was, it was fantastic. Getting to know all the drivers and the owners and being around all that stuff was really, really neat. But everything honestly just becomes a job. You know, we were out, we were making entertainment, but the last thing I ever wanted to do in my free time was play a video game. It’s very cool and it’s better than most jobs out there, don’t get me wrong, but I’m actually having a lot more fun doing this right now because it’s so much smaller. We have 100 people working on a game, and it’s really just a lot of fun, where it’s two of us and some, you know, contractors we bring in from time to time and we really control it. So, enjoying this a lot more.

 

Jeff  

And forgive me, you’ve probably mentioned this, but how long were you with IBM?

 

Ed  

About four years, I started as a co-op during college, really just long enough to meet Kathleen. I did it about four or five years, I was a sales rep as well, but then also became a systems engineer. The technology was always the draw for me, and it still is for LKN Images. I push a lot of buttons in this company, but I don’t push the shutter button, I’m not the photographer. I’m the computer guy in the backend and the IT and, you know, billing and communications and all that stuff. So, I was always drawn to that tech side of things.

 

Kathleen  

And I was always more of the creative and you know, I did sales for IBM. And that involves a lot more talking and being out there and being a little bit more creative. And so that’s what I did.

 

Jeff  

Yeah, complimentary skill sets. We talk a lot about that when it comes to partnerships and small businesses. And it’s a topic we talk a lot about on this podcast and it sounds like you have amazingly complimentary skill sets.

 

Kathleen  

It’s worked for a long time now.

 

Ed  

Thirty-one years of marriage and three kids later it seems to be working.

 

Jeff  

Yeah, and you don’t have to worry about Ed giving you advice on how to take photos and Ed, you don’t have to worry about Kathleen.

 

Kathleen  

He’s really good at finding good backgrounds. Like when we’re doing portrait work, he’ll be like, oh, go over there, you know, and he’s very good at spotting locations. 

 

Ed  

Well, yeah, I always tell the people we’re shooting is Kathleen sees life through the lens, through the viewfinder of the camera, and she’s just so focused in on the subject she’s shooting and able to bring out their personality and do that stuff. And I am, I’m the guy in the background looking around like this.

 

Kathleen  

Like hey, look at that dumpster, we can do something with that.

 

Ed  

That’s a really cool tree over there and the light is exactly right. Hey, Kath, let’s go over there next. So, even when we’re out there it really is just sort of a handoff. I still don’t touch that shutter button.

 

Kathleen  

No, he doesn’t. That’s okay, I’m not a web person.

 

Jeff  

Very cool. So, you were in Boston, Boston was kind of like the Silicon Valley of the East for a long time. I would sort of say that the Raleigh Durham areas is taking over a little bit of that status. But yeah, I lived in New England for a while, worked in Boston for Sun Microsystems for a time and was overpaid and under qualified during that .com. But Boston was a really cool city, a really neat area of the country, and really enjoyed New England a lot. Where in Florida did you live?

 

Kathleen  

We were down in Lake Mary, just outside of Orlando. That’s when he was working for EA. And so, it was kind of our great adventure. We convinced the kids like hey, we’re gonna go do this and move down to Florida and you know, after living 15 years in Boston for me personally, and leaving the whole northeast where our families, mine are in New York, his were in Massachusetts, it was kind of a big adventure for us. But we moved down there 20 years ago, that was wild.

 

Ed  

Yeah, 2001.

 

Kathleen  

Yeah, and it was a really cool place to be, it’s like being on vacation all the time, it felt like, but it was nice, got used to the heat, got used to being you know, half an hour, 45 minutes away from Disney World, which was kind of cool, our kids like that. And then the opportunity came to go to North Carolina, which we kind of always knew we were going to end up here because of the NASCAR side of things. Just finally came along and got back up here.

 

Ed  

But one thing about Florida and living around Orlando, you never realize how many friends you have until you have a house with a guest room right near Disney World. We constantly had people coming in and you know, they are on vacation and it’s like hey, want to go to Disney World tomorrow? It’s like, I kinda have to go to work.

 

Jeff  

Yeah, friends and family, the long-lost relatives come out of the woodwork, I’m sure.

 

Kathleen  

Absolutely, but it was fun, we enjoyed that.

 

Jeff  

That’s awesome. So, you came back up to North Carolina, sold the software business, Kathleen, had you already started LKN Images at that time?

 

Kathleen  

Yeah, LKN Images, I started that pretty much as soon as I got here. I used to call it Redwood Grove Photography because that was what I kind of started in Florida because that was our old street, then changed it to LKN Images, felt that was a better name for it, did a lot of stuff, you know, family and kids and stuff because our kids were little, and I knew a lot of people in the area. And then I started hanging out on the sidelines of sports, you know, our kids were in cross country and lacrosse and things like that. And I’m not one to sit on the sidelines much so I brought my camera and started taking photos, pretty much started at the high school when our daughter, our eldest, who’s now 27, when she was a freshman at Lake Norman, more like when she was a sophomore, I started shooting cross country and football and basketball and all the things and really got tied into Lake Norman High School with that. I love working with all the coaches there, the staff are awesome, and just started doing that. And then at one point when my daughter was a junior, our eldest was a junior, I was like I should do senior portraits, and seniors at that time seemed really intimidating. I mean these kids look so much bigger than my kids and it was like wow, they’re so old, and started working with them, that was 11 years ago and right now I work with, you do your regular photography or the photos at school, if you’re a senior you have your yearbook photos you have to do, but a bunch of the kids like to do a little bit more than that, or a lot more in my case, and so I work with them, we do an hour, an hour and a half long sessions out in the environment instead of in the gym, because that’s where they do their senior portraits, and we have a blast. We just did one last night, did another one the other night where we went to a graveyard and did some photos for this guy, he was so cool. I mean full-length leather jacket; he had these platform boots up to his knees and it was awesome. The moon was just crusty, it was so cool. 

 

Ed  

We shot it after sunset. It was eerie but just really, really cool.

 

Jeff  

That sounds really cool. That sounds really cool.

 

Kathleen  

He was a riot.

 

Jeff  

So, sports and senior portraits. What are some other areas of your zone of genius, your area of expertise, the kind of services that you offer there at LKN Images?

 

Kathleen  

Sports has two sides, or a few sides to it. I mean sports action sideline stuff. I used to do a lot of that, a lot of football, basketball things. I was there when Lake Norman High School won their first state championship in basketball a bunch of years ago, 2011 I think it was, and you know on the sideline shooting like that and through the football and all this stuff. Got to a point though, you know, every Friday night, every this, and you’re just running around taking a lot of pictures and my kids got busier. So, I was like, okay, we’re gonna do something a little bit more effective and that’s when I got into the portrait business or more portrait. But with seniors, I started doing banners, which is really cool. If you’re at you know, Lake Norman, South Iredell, Hopewell, Lake Norman Charter, a lot of the schools in the area, I do their senior banners and so we go out there and do photos of the individual senior athletes. They’re a riot, they do the silliest things. And then I put them in some artwork that’s specific to the school for that year. Every year we have a different piece, a banner artwork for each school each year. And those get hung in a stadium, in the gym, we even shoot the marching band, and those guys are really cool.

 

Ed  

We’re actually doing one of those this afternoon, we’ll be at South Iredell this afternoon, about 15 seniors. They just look so cool, take a kid who’s not necessarily considered an athlete, but a band member and they look like a superhero on those banners, and they just absolutely love it.

 

Kathleen  

Especially the guys with the sousaphones, those are really cool. And the drummers, oh man the drums, they’re such a riot. We’ve also gotten into a higher volume team and individual work. Like this weekend we did a football, Brawley Athletic Youth or no Brawley Association or Area, it’s a Raleigh football thing for the little kids in the area and shot them and you know, Lake Norman Lacrosse is big in this area. So, they have the Running Rebels program, we shoot all their stuff and local swim teams and stuff. But we’ve learned a lot more and invested a lot more in this program that, you know, we can shoot at a very high volume of kids coming through but we’re able to create a product that is so much better than just the old bat on the shoulder photo you see or the football taking a knee and things like that. Ours are a lot more creative and really, really cool looking.

 

Ed  

And then the back-end systems to make it easy for the parents. Everything happens online, you don’t have to pay for photos ahead of time, you see everything and just hop on your iPhone, your iPad, or your computer and yeah, it’s really a cool system.

 

Kathleen  

And that’s where having Ed, we’ve been able to invest in that because first of all, it’s a lot more equipment and I can’t carry all this stuff. We show up with a Jeep full of equipment and set everything up with a trailer. Well, a little tote thing on the back Yeah. And yeah, it’s a big production. And it looks pretty cool, the photos are amazing that were taken out of that.

 

Jeff  

I’ve been on the website, the gallery, you have some galleries there, and the banners are really cool. It’s really cool how they turn out and I can imagine that the athletes do some pretty funny things.

 

Kathleen  

They showed up with pancakes one time. The offensive line for Lake Norman High School last year showed up with a stack of pancakes and I’m not familiar enough with football to understand the pancake reference, but they were excited about it.

 

Ed  

It made us hungry too.

 

Kathleen  

But on the other side of that we also do business work, we are doing some branding sessions, worked with some, a dental office recently and did some photos of them. We do a lot of headshots, people can come here, we have a little studio here that they can work in, or we go outside and do them environmentally. You know find buildings or trees and things like that. But so, we’re just you know, kind of rounding out the business. The idea is to stay busy all year long. You know, sometimes we’re doing sports, sometimes we’re doing seniors, sometimes we’re doing families, and all the time we’re doing headshots.

 

Ed  

Oh yeah, families, that’s coming, boy the holidays are coming.

 

Jeff  

The outdoor lifestyle type shots?

 

Kathleen  

We do we do. You know, we’ve got one family or one couple that they’re also working together we’re going to be doing some branding work with them. They’re into stand-up paddles, so we’ll be outside doing that kind of stuff. The families, we shoot them everywhere, you know, family reunions coming to the lake, a lot of people Google us and come up with LKN Images if you’re looking for family photography, and I’ll get these phone calls, hey, there’s 20 of us coming in. Can you do our photos? We’ve got this much time and they’re all on vacation and it’s a blast. Multigenerational, it’s really cool.

 

Ed  

It really is all over the place, sometimes we’ll be in uptown Charlotte and shoot the city or Noda or, we were just down there this past weekend. Davesté Vineyards are a fantastic place to shoot, a lot of stuff around the lake, and then we have something called house calls which we do literally at people’s houses.

 

Kathleen  

Fifteen minutes just coming in really quick. Dads and sons like that one because they don’t tend to like the photos and so they’re like I’ll give you 15 minutes. Cool, we can do it.

 

Ed  

We learned that through the Front Steps Project when we did that during the pandemic, that people just like having the photographer show up at their house and take some photos, so instead of, you know, just giving it away and raising money for charity like we did in Front Steps, now we’ve turned it into a product that people really seem to love.

 

Kathleen  

They do. They can bring their dogs and their cats and things like that out onto the front step and it’s easy enough.

 

Jeff  

Ed, you brought up the Front Steps Project and let’s expand a little bit more on that, that was really big during the pandemic. I followed that on social media it’s a really, really cool initiative. Share a little bit more of the details about the Front Steps Project.

 

Ed  

I mean total credit goes to Kathleen for coming up with this idea.

 

Kathleen  

Well, I was on Facebook one Sunday morning like when everything was just starting to shut down and I saw something out of Needham, Massachusetts. These girls, Kristen and Cara, one’s a photographer, one’s a marketing person, and they had started this front steps project, the Front Steps Project, and I looked at it and I said, Ed, this is what they’re doing, they’re taking pictures of people on their front steps that are, you know, on lockdown and all this stuff, we can do this. And so, by Tuesday you had most of the backend systems set up and we were out taking pictures of our neighbors. And we started out with like five or six people, got the word out into our neighborhood. Here’s the thing, you may think you know your neighborhood, you know, we live in the farms in Mooresville, and I was like, oh yeah, we’ll just drive here, we’ll drive there, we’ll go here, we’ll go there, we’ll text him and tell him we’re on our way, you don’t know your neighborhood like you think you know your neighborhood. It was so many turns and twists, we’re in places like, I have no idea how to get from here to there. It was really cumbersome at first, and that’s being kind.

 

Ed  

Yeah so, coincidentally I had really just started rebuilding the website and doing online signup systems and things like that when the pandemic hit so as we looked at this and like Kathleen said, we’re kind of going house to house in our neighborhood and realizing we need to try and be a little bit more efficient because we thought we’re gonna go out and raise a few hundred dollars for Feed NC or something like that. And like most things that go viral you have no idea that it’s going to happen but this one did and it just it went from the farms to the point to the harbor and eventually we ended up with a 13 or 14 zip codes of people that signed up online for this thing. We had over 1000 people signed up and we shot over 800 families and ended up raising over $55,000 for Feed NC in about a month and a half.

 

Kathleen  

Yeah, it was crazy.

 

Ed  

It was absolutely crazy, but it was the perfect storm of Kathleen saw this idea, knew that she could do the photography part of it, we had the backend systems to pull it off, and I learned a lot more about the backend systems as we had to ramp it up and it just kept going and you know, it was just, we were feeding on ourselves. It was so close like oh my god we’ve got you know 20 people uptown Charlotte area, let’s go. And the donations were going, and it just felt great. I mean we were able to volunteer, we’ve got all this great equipment and technology, we’re able to volunteer our time to a local charity that honestly, they were in really bad shape. If you think about Feed NC, you know, most of their food donations come from restaurants and grocery stores. Well, what shut down at the beginning of the pandemic? Restaurants.

 

Jeff  

Yeah.

 

Ed  

And food service had a lot of stuff they had to get rid of. But once that went away, they had no food donations coming in. And they really needed money. Well, in a pandemic people really didn’t have the money to give to charities. We ended up being the biggest donation to Feed NC last year, even bigger than the United Way at that point. It’s just the two of us. That’s crazy. But it just, it worked out so well, we we’re able to help, and you know you bring all these people out, we like to say that we’re responsible for you know, 800 people finally taking showers during the pandemic because they get dressed and come out on the front steps and just have a good time and they’d smile. 

 

Jeff  

Yeah.

 

Ed  

Because they were stuck in their house and it just, it was awesome. We really had a lot of fun doing what we did.

 

Kathleen  

It was fun, and social media was crazy on it. They all liked to see the pictures and people would, I’d constantly hear, oh my goodness it was great, I got to go look through and see all these families and I knew these people and they really just enjoyed it. You know, we still hear about it, you know, comes up on some of the Facebook pages, people were like, oh remember that? The very last day we went out and did this was interesting, talk about you know how efficient, because the first day it took us you know over an hour to get to four families, maybe a little bit of chatting going on. The last day we did this I think we went to 40 families?

 

Ed  

Forty or 44, something like that.

 

Kathleen  

Something like that, all through Mooresville and ended up our average encounter was six minutes. So, from the minute we pulled up into the Jeep, our jeep was with us the whole time, got out of the car, setup, talked, got back into the jeep, and went to the next place, six minutes for 40 families.

 

Jeff  

Wow.

 

Kathleen  

It was crazy. And that was routing software and sign-up things and learning how to text and be efficient about it. And it was interesting skills. We’re not sure what we’re going to do with them. But you know.

 

Ed  

We couldn’t knock on doors when we got there. So, we were relying on text messaging, which ended up being really, really effective. We were going house to house it was like, okay, you’re next Jeff, we’re coming to your next. And Kathleen, we’re coming to you next and then pop out and people were bringing props and

 

Kathleen  

Puppies.

 

Ed  

A lot of puppies. 

 

Jeff  

Yeah. Speaking of puppies, I’m at home, I’m recording this from my house today and my English bulldog may have been snoring so hopefully the mic doesn’t pick that up.

 

Kathleen  

We’ve got two over here sleeping, another one behind us.

 

Ed  

Our daughter just got married so we have, she and her husband have two dogs, they’re with us also, they’re away for a few days.

 

Jeff  

Oh yeah?

 

Kathleen  

It’s pretty much a kennel here.

 

Ed  

So, it might not be your dog snoring. It might be one of the four of ours.

 

Jeff  

It’s all good. Yeah, it’s totally fine. Such a really, really great initiative. The Front Steps Project. I caught it on social media long before you and I met and Kathleen and really enjoyed following along and it really did go viral. But just awesome, awesome work, really well done.

 

Kathleen  

Worldwide, it was 3.25 million. And it was international, it was all over the place. They you know, a couple books were done about it. And some of our photos are featured in the official book. So that’s pretty cool.

 

Jeff  

That is super cool.

 

Kathleen  

And we got pretty busy last year as a result, you know, you meet 700, 800 new people. They want photos eventually. It kept us very busy for a long time.

 

Jeff  

Yeah, who better to stay in contact with when you need photography done than the folks who are coming around and doing that.

 

Ed  

Yeah, doing two or three minutes on your front steps. Imagine what we could do if we do a real photo session. People really got that. So, that ended up being great for us.

 

Jeff  

I love it. So, LKN Images has been in business for how long?

 

Ed  

Sixteen years that we’ve been here now.

 

Kathleen  

Pretty much as long as we’ve been here.

 

Ed  

The beginning of 2005, when we first moved to Mooresville.

 

Jeff  

Wow, okay, cool, excellent. And your photos for Lakeside Living Magazine, the Mooresville edition are on the cover. Is that correct? You do the cover photos for that?

 

Kathleen  

Yeah, I do their cover photography with a feature inside. So, every month, Joanie sends me a new family that we’re going to be working with, and it’s a blast. We’ve met so many cool people, and they all do such neat stuff. And so, you go out and find a unique place to do a photo with them based on kind of the family and what they’re into and what they do and who they are. You know, some have kids, some are empty nesters. Everybody in between. We’ve had so much fun with that.

 

Ed  

The cover now, I think it’s the Days of Thunder barn family that’s on there now?

 

Kathleen  

Yep, right now. Yep.

 

Ed  

So, that ended up being an incredibly cool shoot because it was getting dark.

 

Kathleen  

Very dark.

 

Ed  

And we put a whole bunch of lights inside the barn, which is, you know, obviously, you know, falling apart after all these years and people have taken the wood off the back and things, but we lit up the inside of the barn and took pictures of the family outside.

 

Kathleen  

It was gold.

 

Ed  

It was spectacular looking.

 

Jeff  

I’ll have to find a copy of that. I’m down in the Huntersville area so I don’t get the Mooresville edition, but for folks who live on the lake in Mooresville, and you get the Lakeside Living Magazine, that is Kathleen taking the cover photos.

 

Kathleen  

Yeah. Yep, having a blast with it.

 

Jeff  

Yeah, I can’t wait to see the Days of Thunder barn edition. I bet that’s really cool.

 

Kathleen  

I think someplace I’ll have a couple of copies, eventually.

 

Jeff  

Well, something that I love to talk about during these conversations are shoutouts to other local small businesses in the Lake Norman area, either businesses that have been really great partners for you and Ed or just local businesses that you and your family love. We’ve mentioned Joanie Baker at Lakeside Living Magazine. Who else do you have for me?

 

Ed  

I’ll throw one in; this is sort of a unique one that we do in sports is Lake Norman Scuba. It’s right on 150 across the street from Lowe’s Home Improvement, and Andrew and Danielle Katsamas are just fantastic people. I get scuba certified there with our son.

 

Kathleen  

I did too, reluctantly.

 

Ed  

But we shoot their scuba camps. And they will do, you know, all summer long they bring in about 20 kids per week and get them fully scuba certified in their pool in their backyard and then out at the quarry down 150 and we just think the world of those guys.

 

Kathleen  

They’re awesome.

 

Ed  

They’re another family-run business. They’ve been doing it for about 20 years now, in that location and then in an earlier location here in Mooresville, we love them. 

 

Kathleen  

They’re awesome. A couple that I like that are women-owned businesses. I don’t know, do you know Kim Saragoni over at Four Corners Framing? She’s awesome.

 

Jeff  

Yeah, Kim and I have been playing a little bit of email tag but yeah, I’m looking forward to getting her on the podcast.

 

Kathleen  

In the 16 years that I’ve been here, and she’s been doing Four Corners Framing, Four Corners Gallery and Framing, she is incredible what she’s been able to do in the Lake Norman area, or downtown Mooresville specifically. I feel like all the improvements you’ve seen there, I mean, Mayor Atkins and his wife Kim, they’ve obviously been involved in this and done a lot, but Kim Saragoni has just been side by side with all those people doing those improvements. She is incredible. And also, she has a great business. So, if you’ve got some artwork or things like that, she can frame it. That’s our dog in the background, so I apologize about that.

 

Jeff  

That’s ok.

 

Kathleen  

That’s a great one. So, go visit them downtown Mooresville. They do a little event space and things like that too. But it’s just a great stop by to just go check it out. The other one is in Huntersville, or Charlotte, Metrographics, they’re doing our banners now. They’re our printing arm for banners and Jason over there who is one of the vice presidents is amazing. He is such a great partner for Hopewell High School and the other high schools that he works with, and he’s a great partner for us. It’s so nice to have somebody local printing for us, printing on our banners and things like that. He did stickers, vinyl stickers for our daughter’s wedding, which was pretty cool. And they’re just, if you’re looking for any kind of local print shop, and really high-end stuff, they do a great job. I mean not doing photographic printing there but all of our commercial kind of printing that we do for the banners.

 

Ed  

We’ve done about 700 banners with them, it’s really a great group.

 

Kathleen  

And so, my fifth and final is one of my favorites that you know we always joke around that Ed works for wine. So, when he used to help me out on shoots on weekends, you’re like, ah she pays me in wine.

 

Ed  

Still, she does. Some things never change.

 

Kathleen  

After a shoot we’ll usually stop by The Hidden Bin to go see Grady Lane and he is our wine whisperer. If you’re into wine, and you need to talk to him because he would do a great podcast with you. We teasingly called him the Wine Whisperer because you go in there and within about two minutes, he knows your profile and what you are going to like and comes out with all these amazing things and so he is our favorite person to go see after a busy day of shooting.

 

Ed  

He even put Wine Whisperer on his business cards and credits Kathleen with that because she gave him the name.

 

Jeff  

Wine Whisperer, I love it. Yeah, we are fans of wine ourselves. We wrote a really cool article for our blog on The Best of LKN, our 10 favorite wine bars around the Lake Norman area, had a lot of fun researching that topic.

 

Kathleen  

Oh yeah.

 

Ed  

If you redo that one let us know we’ll help you do some research.

 

Jeff  

Yeah, will do.

 

Kathleen  

Another good wine bar is Lowes Foods in Mooresville.

 

Jeff  

Yeah, we love Lowes Foods, we have one going in near our house in the near future, we’re really excited about that because right now we have to travel a little ways to go to a Lowes Foods, so yeah, yeah, big fan of Lowes Foods. What about reading material, not everyone is a reader, I truth be told I consume a lot of books but through audio. I subscribe to the Audible app and utilize all that found time driving, working, where I don’t have to, you know, I’ve got my ears available and consume a lot of books that way. But I leave it open to like podcasts or online resources, anything in the space of small business, entrepreneurship, or personal development. Anything in that?

 

Kathleen  

Well, I mean, I’m constantly reading, but the books I’m reading on downtime like two in the morning when you wake up, pull out the iPad, those are just, you know, trashy novels, so those are not the ones we’re going to talk about. When we’re on road trips, like we just drove up to New York State for our daughter’s wedding and I love having the chance to do an audible book, you know, like a 14-hour book. We’ve been listening to Brad Thor has a whole series with this guy who’s his character is Scot Harvath, and he’s a former Navy SEAL and Secret Service and now he’s contracted and all that so it’s, you know, the adventure book that where you get to your location, but you still got one chapter to go so you sit in the driveway, waiting to hear how it goes, those are the things. But for podcasts when I’m listening to podcasts, I really like to listen to more in the female entrepreneurial side. Jenna Kutcher is one of my favorites. She does a lot about marketing and she’s a former photographer who is now online educator, love listening to her stuff. She just, she’s got some great ideas on Instagram marketing and email marketing, and it all just kind of dovetails to what we do. Going through her I learned about you know, the backend systems, we use a CRM, a customer relationship management software tool that we use is Dubsado. But you know, I’ve learned a lot of that, that just kind of hits my marketing side that comes from the days of IBM and sales and working with software companies and things which is what I did for a bunch of years. So, just love to hear that and adds a little bit to our business you know.

 

Jeff  

Yeah, absolutely.

 

Kathleen  

Ed Mylett is another one I like listening to for inspirational stuff, he’s just this big New York/Boston kind of voice going on and he interviews some really crazy people. Some good stuff, so he’s, you feel pretty motivated after you finish listening to him, you’re gonna go run 10 miles or something, I don’t know, crazy.

 

Jeff  

Is that Ed Mylett?

 

Kathleen  

Yeah, he’s one of those guys who made a lot of money in finance. And he does some consulting, you know, he helps out athletes and different you know, high-end people, motivational speaking kind of stuff. And it’s fun to listen to him. He’s got some good people, you know, World Wrestling Federation type people that he brings on and all sorts of crazy people.

 

Jeff  

Yeah, I love podcasts, they’re so informational. There’s a podcast on every topic. There are 100 podcasts on every topic and some of them are really, really valuable. Really, really good. Amy Porterfield is another one that I would recommend. Have you checked out any of Amy Porterfield’s stuff?

 

Kathleen  

I do. I like her stuff, because and I’ve handed her off to a couple people that are looking at creating courses. And it’s something we’ve talked about, helping other photographers to do what we do, and we’re kind of looking at that right now. But Amy Porterfield’s stuff is great on that. It’s so cool to see where she’s come, how far she’s come over the years. So, I’ve probably been listening to her for a few years now. And she’s done some great stuff. I love that. I love her podcasts. She and Jenna Kutcher are kind of in the same area.

 

Jeff  

Same space. Yeah, she’s, you know her bread and butter is developing online courses, digital courses, but she also covers so many other cool topics and interviews a lot of really highly successful marketers and entrepreneurs and she has a really amazing network. So, yeah, I had a feeling that was probably another creator that you’ve had some familiarity.

 

Kathleen  

I think they’ve all like done masterminds together and things like that.

 

Jeff  

Yeah, it really is a small world when you get into those really highly successful, prolific podcasters in the digital marketing space, there’s a lot of interweaving of that network, they all kind of connect sooner or later. But you brought up a really good point about you know, helping other photographers or helping other digital creators and I’m circling back because I got out of order on the outline that I sent you for our topics.

 

Kathleen  

That’s ok, I live my life out of order.

 

Ed  

Creative people are dynamic.

 

Jeff  

We’ll go with that. Yeah, well, that’s a dynamic, I’ll use that from now on to describe this chaos. I would love to ask you, or I’d love for you to share with listeners who might be aspiring small business owners or aspiring entrepreneurs. I have two topics, one, advice for aspiring small business owners and the second topic, the second question would be on advice for aspiring pro or amateur photographers. What do you have for me there?

 

Kathleen  

Start with the business side, which you know I did this a long time before Ed came on board and then I mentioned eventually getting into you know the customer relationship management and things like that and you know listening to Jenna Kutcher and all those people is like okay I gotta up my game here. The backend of the business is so hard to do and so critical, you know, you got to pay your bills, you got to do all the taxes, you gotta have your insurance, and you know, there’s so many things that go on all day long in a business that don’t even involve photography, you know. I gotta do Photoshop and I got to do all those things, but how about the backup, managing the backup files, you know, what’s your situation there? There’s so many things to a business that it’s so much better now that I have Ed helping me with these things and working with me on this because he loves that side, I mean, the website, all those things, you’re just, that challenges yours and you love it.

 

Ed  

Yeah, likewise, I’m not the creative so taking the incredible pictures, like my mission in life is to make it so she can push the shutter button more and have more time for editing and not have to deal with the rest of the crap that goes along with running any business but the photography business in general. So, we come home from a shoot, and she’s done. I take the camera and she doesn’t see it again until it’s reformatted and ready for the next shoot. I handle all that stuff and get everything uploaded and ready to go and she can edit photos, we’ll be editing photos right after this podcast. So, just you know, organizing all of that and I think that that’s a great point is you probably can’t do it all on your own to turn it into a good size business. But you also don’t need a ton of employees. You know, we’ve got a great partnership, you used the phrase earlier Jeff, we’re complementary in our skills, and it just fits really well. It doesn’t have to be a husband and wife working together, although we really obviously enjoy that. But, you know, find somebody that can help you out to take the things off your plate that you’re not necessarily great at and you’ll be amazed by how much better the business is, and I don’t just mean financially it’s just more fun.

 

Kathleen  

More fun, yeah.

 

Ed  

It’s just more fun.

 

Kathleen  

Yeah, because when you’re tied up and trying to get things done and you know, you want to hit those deadlines you want to do everything, it’s hard to do if you’re trying to do this 24 hours and seven days a week and that’s the other thing, small business, probably not going to get a lot of days off.

 

Ed  

What are those? 

 

Kathleen  

Okay, our daughter got married last week so we did have a couple days off, but we were still working up there. You asked about a photography side of things, small business or somebody starting into the photography, I mean, iPhones have made it so incredible for people to take awesome photos. It’s just like beautiful things. There’s a whole world of iPhone photography and we always joke around if somebody that’ll look at my camera and I’ve got some big gear, all the toys and all that stuff and they’ll say wow, that camera takes amazing photos I’m like oh, thank you, I taught it everything it knows. And you know but the thing is, the best camera is the one that’s in your hands, learn how to use your tool. If your iPhone is your best camera then learn how to use that. Go and look things up and make it work for you. If you’ve got a small camera just starting up, you know, Jenna Kutcher we mentioned, she’s the one always talks about, I got a $300 camera off of eBay and started a photography business. You know, I didn’t start that way, I always had a lot of gear that I like to play with, but you know, whatever camera you have learned how to use it, learn everything about it, and how to take the photos, you know, a little technical on the back end, and don’t just count on putting a filter on it, you know, everything we do, I hand touch, you don’t have to touch those photos. Every photo that goes out the door has been hand touched, and edited and things like that, but learn your craft. But the other side of that is be a real business, you know, you got to pay your taxes, you got to pay your insurance, for me to be on the sideline of a high school athletic event, we’ve got a whole bunch of liability insurance that allows me to do that. Because you know, that’s the right way to do it.

 

Ed  

We’re also authorized as press in the state of North Carolina.

 

Kathleen  

Yeah, we do have NCHSAA, North Carolina High School Athletic Association credentials. Because, you know, do it right. And, you know, it’s fun to start as a hobby and if you’re doing that, that’s perfect and awesome. But when you are getting into a business, do it the right way, because it’ll make it easier for you in the long run, to have it all set up correctly.

 

Jeff  

Well, you have to protect yourselves, and you have to protect your clients also the venues, right. So, it’s very important. Yeah, and I totally agree. I’ve, as someone who launched and ran and is still running a couple, two, I tell everyone, I’ve got two businesses and about six jobs. And really, I have probably more like 20 jobs. But the first business I’ve been running for about 10 years, I’ve been pushing that uphill by myself for 10 years. And I don’t recommend to anyone that they attempt to do that. It is so much easier, and so much more enjoyable to have, to bring in partners who can handle things that are a little bit outside of your wheelhouse, you know, so that you can stay in your lane, focus on your zone of genius, your area of expertise. And that’s where that, you know, I keep I always mention that complimentary skill sets, it’s just so important. So, that would be my recommendation as well, to find someone who is just better at certain things, aspects of the business than you are.

 

Kathleen  

Yeah, well, and you know, I look at it, there’s some things I can do. But is it worth the time it takes for me to do that? With our banners, all those photos get extracted from the background and put into the art. Well, for me to be extracting those images, it takes a lot of time to do. There’s better ways to do that and I have partners that helped me with that. So, just like look at what you’re doing and optimize your talents and optimize the process.

 

Jeff  

Yeah, bookkeeping is not as easy as a lot of people may think it is, or nor is it enjoyable for a lot of people, especially if you’re the creative type. You know, that’s not an area that you’re going to really enjoy and you’re likely to fall behind. So, you know, that’s just an example of where a small business owner might get, you know, look for some help. But yeah, that’s really great advice, I appreciate that. And I love sharing, you know, the experiences of successful small business owners and sharing the advice, looking back, things you’d wish you had known, you know, when you started the business and luckily, Ed ended up unemployed and available.

 

Kathleen  

It was good. Things, I mean, if you told us 31 years ago, when we got married, that we we’d be, well we were working together at that point at IBM. But if you had said, hey, you guys are going to start a business. It’s just, you know, the photography was always gas and groceries and a lot of fun to do and you know, just kind of a side hustle. And then we just started taking on more and doing more and now it’s gas, groceries, and a lot more.

 

Ed  

Overnight success, 30 years in the making.

 

Jeff  

That describes so many overnight successes, right? Yeah, they usually take about 30 years. Well said. This has been a lot of fun by the way. I’m glad that we’re finally able to get this done. I apologize, this is our second attempt, I failed at our first attempt. So, thanks so much.

 

Kathleen  

That’s alright, I probably wasn’t ready the first time, this is much better.

 

Jeff  

Thanks so much for hanging in there with me and rescheduling and Kathleen, how can listeners learn more about LKN Images?

 

Kathleen  

By going to LKN Images, it’s lknimages.com or if you’re on social media at LKN Images whether it’s Twitter or Instagram, I love Instagram, I have some fun with my stories there. It’s like my playground. And I’m on Twitter too because all the high school athletic coaches are on Twitter and so I get to watch them there and see what we need to be doing. But everything is at LKN Images and that’s best way to find me. Our website is really nice, Ed put it together.

 

Jeff  

It is really nice, really well done. Yeah, excellent job.

 

Ed  

We have a lot of great material to put up there, it’s easy.

 

Jeff  

Yeah, well, exactly. And it helps when the content is so amazing too, I’m sure so yeah, I love that. LKN Images, Mooresville, North Carolina, owners Kathleen and Ed Martin. Kathleen and Ed, thanks again so much for joining the podcast.

 

Kathleen  

Thanks, Jeff.

 

Ed  

Thanks, Jeff, this was fun.

 

Jeff  

Big thanks to Kathleen and Ed for joining the podcast. Listeners, you can learn more about LKN Images at www.lknimages.com. I’ll have links to their business as well as links to the other businesses Kathleen and Ed recognized in the show notes for this episode. As always, you can find the complete show notes for all of our podcast episodes at the home for Lake Norman’s number one small business podcast www.thebestoflkn.com. While you’re there, please consider signing up for our email newsletter. Doing so is a great way to support this podcast and keep up with all of our new content. That will do it for Episode 73. Thanks so much for joining us. Get out there and shop a local Lake Norman small business or three this week. If there’s a local small business you think should be featured on this podcast, go to our contact page at thebestoflkn.com and send us a note. Until next time, cheers Lake Norman. Bye for now.

 

Narrator  

We hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of The Best of LKN. For more information about this podcast, show notes, video episodes, and links to our featured businesses, please visit www.thebestoflkn.com. We publish episodes weekly, so be sure to subscribe and stay up to date. Until next time, cheers Lake Norman.