Laurel Belle Photography and Branding

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
It’s Episode 92 of the podcast. Welcome back, everyone. Thanks for joining us. We’re closing in on Episode 100 for the podcast. It’s really hard to believe, the last two years have been quite a whirlwind and we’ve come a long way with The Best of LKN. I’d like to begin by thanking our presenting sponsor Sodoma Law North for supporting this podcast and making it possible for us to provide a written transcription for each episode. The transcriptions make the podcast accessible for everyone, including the hearing impaired. Links to all of our generous sponsors can be found in the show notes for this episode or on our homepage at thebestoflkn.com. We’re also excited to announce that we’ve hired some very talented creative copywriters to help us grow our blog content. We’ll be adding a new article or two each week and we’re also adding a twist to the program. We’re giving our email newsletter subscribers exclusive sneak peeks to all of our new blog articles before they’re made available to the public. So, want to see our article featuring the top 10 realtors in the Lake Norman area? Subscribe to our email newsletter. Want to know the 25 best places around Lake Norman to grab lunch? Subscribe to the newsletter. You get the idea. Signing up for our weekly email newsletter is also a great way to support this podcast and it’s totally free. So, what are you waiting for? Sign up at thebestoflkn.com. In this episode, I sit down with the founder and principal at Laurel Belle Photography and Brand Design, Laura Tompkins. Laura shares the story of her entrepreneurial journey as well as some great insights into the value of high-quality brand imagery and content curation. Laura has worked with several local Lake Norman businesses and nonprofit organizations that have been featured here on the podcast. So, it’s great to finally connect with her and have this opportunity to feature her business on the podcast. It’s a brand-boosting Episode 92 of Lake Norman’s number one small business podcast. Enjoy getting to know the founder of Laurel Bell Photography and Branding, Laura Tompkins.

Jeff
Laura, welcome to the podcast.

Laura
Hi, thank you for having me.

Jeff
Great to have you. Thanks for joining us, I’ve been looking forward to this conversation. We have connected with we, meaning us here at the podcast, have connected with a few of your clients over the last year and a half. And I’ve noticed that we continue to connect with clients of yours. And I thought it made a lot of sense to invite you on the podcast to have a conversation. Most recently, we recorded an interview with the founders of Launch LKN, the entrepreneurship incubator in Davidson and I know that you have done some web design for them. And there’s been other companies that we’ve connected with too, that I’ve noticed that you’ve done work for. So, I’ve been looking forward to having this conversation. Your business is unique when it comes to, I know you got your start in photography, but you’ve really grown the scope of services that you offer clients over the years, and I find it really interesting that the services that you do offer, so we’re gonna dive into that, but before we do share, please for the listeners, a little bit of a bio on Laura Tompkins. A little bit like where you’re from and what inspired your small business.

Laura
Sure. So, I am from Charlotte, North Carolina, and I’ve lived in and around Charlotte, my entire life, never left. My best friend calls me a unicorn because there’s not many of us that have stayed in this area and not left. But I went to UNC Charlotte for college and had no idea what I wanted to do. I just went because I felt like it was what I was supposed to do. And that was what my parents wanted me to do. And I went kind of blindly not knowing what my purpose was and ended up leaving my second year and just kind of discouraged, not knowing what my path was in life and just really down on myself and thinking you know, all my friends know what they’re doing, I have no idea what I’m doing. And I took a lot of various jobs. I worked in a lot of doctors’ offices, orthodontist offices, which were fine, but it wasn’t what I wanted. And I always felt a calling to do something bigger and different. But my father, Charlie, he was a sportscaster for years for WBTV and always had a camera and always made sure I had a camera, because he was into video and camera work and was so good at it. And I just was always fascinated by that growing up and always having a camera around, I thought maybe there is something creative in me that I can develop. So about 10 years ago, while working at a nonprofit, which was another job that had, I started my business very, very slowly. And just started by photographing my friends just because I loved it, never thinking it would come of anything. And then one day decided maybe I can make money doing this, let me try this out a little bit. And slowly but surely, I did. I started out doing family photography and weddings. And quickly realized that that was also not my path because weddings and family photography are a whole different animal and ballgame than what I now do, which is brand photography, and headshot photography. But I learned a lot about, you know, lighting and camera work, and composition and things like that. So, I’m glad that I did it. And it helped me to build a really strong clientele. And then I ended up, because I kind of realized early on that I was really passionate about the marketing aspect of my business and getting my name out there and what that meant and how to make sure I could be found online easily. And it being not just word of mouth, but bigger because I realized that just my name being out there and people referring me wasn’t enough to sustain a business and to do it full time. So, I realized early on, like, I have to figure out how to do this, or this isn’t going to last, this isn’t going to work. So, I taught myself search engine optimization, I took all kinds of marketing courses, and just really dived in deep for a couple of years figuring all that out and was able to bring my business up to be one of the first that comes up in Google when you search for North Carolina photographers, which was really hard to do, but I’m glad I did it. And anyway, while I was doing all that I ended up taking a marketing position at a mall, I won’t say which mall, but at a mall that I thought was going to be like the jumpstart of my marketing career and I was going to do all this cool stuff. And I was going to run the social media and run all their ad campaigns and be behind their brand imagery. But long story short, what I ended up doing was getting coins out of the fountain and feeding them into the coin machine at the Harris Teeter across the street. And that was like the biggest part of my job. So, it wasn’t what I thought it was gonna be. But it was a push honestly in the right direction because having that job, which was fine, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it, it just wasn’t what I wanted, is what really pushed me to say, I’ve got it like go full throttle into photography, this is what I want to do, this is where I need to be. And so, my husband and I had a long talk about it, and he was like just do it, like give it a year if it doesn’t work, you can always go get a full-time job somewhere else, we’ll figure it out. And it was just like all the things fell into place. And I quit, that was about six years ago, and I haven’t looked back since and ever since then I’ve been focused more on the brand imagery, photography portion which I know we’ll talk more about, but it kind of led more into that. I just stopped doing weddings and now I solely do brand imagery, headshot photography, website design, and content creation for brands.

Jeff
Well, it turned out to be kind of a blessing, didn’t it? That that marketing position wasn’t everything you hoped. Yeah, marketing and branding fascinates me, and that fascination has grown out of a small service business that I started back in 2012 and from refining that brand and doing all the marketing myself, I really had a lot of ups and downs in the marketing space and learned a lot and just, it always interests me and almost to the point where often the marketing interested me more than the actual service or work that I was doing.

Laura
Yeah, completely. I totally understand that.

Jeff
So, that’s really cool that your business evolved from strictly photography to really a kind of a holistic branding and marketing agency. Where did the name Laurel Belle Photography come from?

Laura
So, my name is Laura. And my middle name is Elizabeth. So, I Googled when I was thinking of business names. I Googled what my name means. And Laura means Laurel, which is a flower, and Belle is short for my middle name Elizabeth. And I also, this is cheesy, but I really love Belle from Beauty and the Beast.

Jeff
Nothing wrong with that. That’s awesome.

Laura
And I just kind of ran with it.

Jeff
That’s cool. That’s cool.

Laura
So, I get called Laurel Belle a lot. And I’m like, that’s not my name.

Jeff
Yeah, I wondered, I was curious because it did confuse me at first. So yeah.

Laura
I’m sure.

Jeff
Well, share some details, Laura, about Laurel Belle Photography and Branding. What are some services? Just kind of like a broad view of the services that you provide your clients.

Laura
Sure. So, I do, my primary focus is brand imagery, which is basically any kind of imagery you would use to help create your brand. So, from imagery for your website, to imagery for social media, to imagery for marketing materials, I work with mostly small to midsize brands. And then I also do logo creation, content design, and website design for those brands. And people will have the opportunity to do all of that with me or just pieces of that with me, kind of depending on what they need.

Jeff
The content creation, or the content curation service is really, really interesting to me, I think it’s like a really important and relevant service, especially these days. It just gets to be more and more important to, you know, small businesses have to be on so many different social media platforms. And leveraging the time that it takes to create and curate your own content, I can see where that would be really valuable to small business owners and medium-sized business owners to be able to outsource that content curation. Getting back to brand imagery, though, I wanted to kind of pick your brain a little bit about the importance, like what are your thoughts on the importance of brand imagery to a small business? And where do you see a lot of small businesses coming up short when it comes to their own brand imagery?

Laura
So, I think that the biggest thing about brand imagery is that when you are a brand, or you have a brand that you need to be part of the face of that brand. You, I think a lot of businesses fall short, where they think the only thing they need to do for brand imagery is just pictures of their product or their service, or people getting their service, or using their product. And while all of that is very important, if you have, especially a smaller brand, you need to be part of that brand and in these images. Because that way people can see you and develop a trust factor, a like factor, a know factor. Where they can say, okay, well, I’ve seen this person, and they’re a real person and they’re not just a person sitting behind a computer screen, or a big machine working or a big corporation, it’s actually a real person with a family and with a purpose and who has likes and dislikes. And I think those kinds of things are what attract the right clients to you as well, just by putting yourself out there and saying, this is me, you know, take it or leave it. And, you know, if you want to work with somebody like me, this is what I’m like, and this is what you’re going to get from me as a person. And anytime you work with a brand, you are working with that person, and you want to make sure you like that person and putting yourself out there with that imagery and coupling that with content that is very real and authentic and true, is important.

Jeff
Absolutely. Know, like, and trust comes up over and over again in conversations with, you know, professional services firms and small business owners. Especially boutique small businesses, you know, you’re really, it’s not just the product or the service that you’re buying, but you’re really buying into that small business owner.

Laura
You are, yeah.

Jeff
Kind of that is part of the package. Right?

Laura
Exactly, exactly.

Jeff
Well, I’m really interested to learn a little bit more about the content curation subscription that you provide certain clients. And I know that you only have so much bandwidth and you only accept so many clients into this program. But share a little bit about what that content curation program looks like and how you’re able to deliver that for your clients.

Laura
Sure. So, I came up with this program, I guess it’s been about three years ago now, because I realized that when you are posting to social media all the time and you’re in constant need of content, you can’t keep using the same imagery over and over again. Because I’ve found that, say I post an image on Instagram and the first time I post it and I have great content with it, I get a ton of likes and interaction and clicks and all those things. If I post that same image or a different version of that same image, for instance, me in the same outfit looking the other way with my head, but it’s essentially the same image that the interaction goes down significantly and goes down even further the more you post it, just from some research that I did. And I started to realize that the more content and imagery that you have in your library, the better off you’re going to be. So, I developed this content curation subscription plan for businesses that need frequently updated imagery. And I have three different levels of the plan. So, I have a seasonal plan, a bi-monthly plan, and a monthly plan. And the seasonal plan, you get four photoshoots a month, the bi-monthly is six photoshoots a year, or excuse me four photoshoots a year, six photoshoots a year and then the monthly is a monthly photoshoot every month. And with each session, you get a pre-session questionnaire, which kind of walks you through all the different locations we could have your photo shoot at, a ton of different pose and content ideas, a ton of different hashtag ideas that will be trending within the month of your shoot, different holidays that are coming up, just kind of a brainstorming list to kind of get your mind going for, okay, this is the content I’m going to need to produce in March. So, when we shoot in January, I’ve already got this in my, you know, in my wheelhouse. Once we take those images, they get uploaded to a gallery just a cloud-based gallery. And these clients have constant access to these images and the library just grows and grows and grows each time we shoot together. So, they can always go back and pull an image no matter where they are, if they’re on a beach or if they’re at home or wherever they are and be able to post to social media or use for websites or marketing materials. And I was able to develop it so that it gives you a really good, discounted rate too. So not only is it good for your business, but it’s affordable too, which I think is important.

Jeff
Yeah, I’ve noticed, I think it was on your website or maybe it was in an email that I noticed the pricing for the program, it was really reasonable. I was surprised, yeah, it was very reasonable, I can see why it would be in demand. But having that library, that portfolio of content produced and ready to go and planned, right? It’s all about planning and scheduling and staying ahead of it.

Laura
Yeah, exactly.

Jeff
Yeah, I’ve struggled with that with The Best of LKN on Instagram and Facebook. And we don’t have, there’s not a lot of consistency as far as like what the imagery looks like throughout our social media, we, you know, we do publish one episode a week so that’s one post for sure that I’m going to do a week to share that out to social then usually a blog article a week or something like that. So, I post two or three times a week, but staying, like it would be so much easier if I had a portfolio and a plan.

Laura
Yeah.

Jeff
Months ahead, you know, like a month or two ahead would be so amazing. It would just cut down so much on the workload.

Laura
It just takes that pressure off, because you know how it is like you think, you get in this mindset of, oh my gosh, it’s been a week and I haven’t posted anything. I’m not, oh, gosh, I’m not being relevant. And then you go down this rabbit hole of what am I going to do? And then you end up posting something that isn’t real or true or authentic. It’s just, you’re just posting to post and then that’s kind of pointless, you know, it needs to actually mean something.

Jeff
Yeah.

Laura
And I think you can dangerously get into that hole if you don’t have a plan.

Jeff
Yeah, just random meaningless posts are not really going to drive engagement, will they?

Laura
Right. I mean, sometimes. It’s better to have it depending, it’s better to have a plan for sure.

Jeff
Yeah, I guess it depends. Yeah, for sure, on what the topic is and who’s posting it, I guess. Well, can you share a few examples of clients that you’ve provided the content curation service for, some wins in that space?

Laura
Sure. One of my clients is a brow bar, which is, I assume people know what that is. But just in case you don’t, it’s where they do like microblading on your brows. And they also do lash extensions and things like that. There’s a boutique in Charlotte that hired me a couple years ago for the content plan. And before they hired me, all of their imagery was stock, like every single thing they used was stock imagery that was found online, both in their marketing materials, in their boutiques, they actually have several boutiques now, and on social media, and they were using those same images over and over and over and over again. And they were, they were fine, but they weren’t branded at all to this boutique. Like they didn’t have the right color scheme. At all. It just didn’t make sense. And also, the woman that they use as the model for these images wasn’t even their target market. So, all of those things weren’t adding up to the kind of clientele they wanted to attract, and they weren’t getting them clicks on social media, clicks on their website. It just wasn’t working. They were doing okay, but they needed more. So, we sat down and had a meeting, which is what I do with most of my clients, we have kind of a brand meeting where we kind of go over their brand and where they want to go with everything. And they just said, you know, we’re not getting the engagement that we want. So, we did a bunch of really fun photoshoots, one of the things we did is we had a bunch of young girls between the ages of 12 and 15, come in and get their makeup done and have their brows threaded for the first time and do before and after pictures. And they ended up getting a ton of new clients from it just from these new people coming in and referring but also from this new imagery. We also got a lot of, I don’t do video, but I have people that do video, we got a lot of video content from it. And now they have a whole new marketing plan that is just aimed at teenage girls that they didn’t have before. And they’ve really seen that brand grow because of it. And the other thing is, these boutiques are local, and these people that go into these boutiques will see people they know on the wall, like a picture of them on the wall and say, oh, I know that girl. And that’s another great marketing thing as well. Another example is, I work with a lot of realtors. And a lot of them are so funny, like they joke, and they’ll reach out to me and say, you know, my headshot is from 10 years ago, and it’s on a gray background, and it looks like Olan Mills or Sears or something like that. And I’ve got a weird pose. And they’re like, I’m realizing that I need more than that. And I say, you’re right, you do need more than that. And I have a couple of content curation members that are realtors, and we go and photograph them in homes that they’re selling or model homes or out and about in Lake Norman and them, you know, in their environment and being themselves and that’s really helped them as well. And I’ve gotten a lot of great feedback with that where they’re saying, you know, I really stand out from my competition now because this is me and this great house on the lake or this is me, walking to Waterbean Coffee and getting a coffee, like this is me in my actual life versus this person that I’m competing with who only has this one seven year old headshot that hasn’t been updated and doesn’t even look like herself anymore. And it sounds really simple and obvious, but until you do it, I mean, I think it really does make a difference.

Jeff
Yeah, you brought up a really good point about knowing who your target audience is and marketing toward that audience, that that ideal client, right? Amy Porterfield calls that your ideal client avatar, ICA.

Laura
I love Amy Porterfield. She’s awesome.

Jeff
Yeah. She’s top of mind because I just took one of her email newsletter webinars yesterday during the snow day. So, utilized the downtime during this blizzard we just had this weekend to get in a couple webinars. But yeah, she’s amazing.

Laura
Yes, she is, I’ve taken a lot of her courses.

Jeff
Have you? Yeah, cool. I’ll have a link in the show notes for sure so listeners can have a look at Amy Porterfield’s stuff. She’s like really amazing at online digital course creation and email newsletter strategies and an amazing podcast host as well. That’s how I discovered her, through her podcast.

Laura
Same, that’s how I discovered her.

Jeff
Just punching marketing in that Apple podcast search bar, right? Just type marketing, and she’ll be one of the first ones to come up.

Laura
Yeah.

Jeff
Stock imagery, there’s just nothing worse than stock imagery, like you can just tell, right? What is it about stock imagery? It’s just, you just know it’s not authentic.

Laura
Yeah, there’s just something about the way it’s shot. And just the people in the imagery. I don’t know what it is, you can just tell. You really can.

Jeff
Yeah, we’ve used stock photos once or twice only in our online blog for a couple of our early articles. And ever since then, I’ve focused really on taking our own original photography.

Laura
Oh, that’s great. Good job.

Jeff
Yeah, it’s just so much better, you know, and my photography, obviously, is not nearly as good as your photography, but at least it’s not stock imagery.

Laura
Right. And I will, I mean, I don’t think that I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but I think it’s more important to have your own photography, no matter whether it’s like super-duper, high-end photography or whatever it is. I think that’s more important than using stock imagery.

Jeff
Yeah, I agree. I agree. And you’re, working with realtors, talk about a competitive industry, highly competitive.

Laura
Especially right now.

Jeff
Yeah, for so many reasons. Like the market’s hot, inventory’s low it’s a battle, right? So, standing out in that industry has probably never been more important than it is now.

Laura
I agree. I totally agree.

Jeff
Well, one of the topics that I love to bring up in these conversations is, I love to recognize other local small businesses. I like to put my guests on the spot and ask them to single out, you know, three or four local small businesses that they love. Obviously, we probably have 50 or 100 that we would love to recognize, but do you have a few in the Lake Norman area that you could give shout outs to?

Laura
Yeah, one is Jenny Melrose. She is amazing. She’s actually a client of mine. And she is an expert at Instagram and Instagram marketing and has a ton of online digital courses that you can go to at her website it’s jennymelrose.com. And she is in Lake Norman. She services clients all over the US but she’s based in Lake Norman and is just a great person to work with. She’s super smart. I’ve learned a ton of things from her.

Jeff
She sounds like somebody that I would like to connect with. There’s a lot that I need to learn about social media marketing and especially when it comes to Instagram.

Laura
She’s great.

Jeff
Yeah, that’s Janine Melrose?

Laura
Jenny, Jenny Melrose.

Jeff
Jenny Melrose.

Laura
Sorry.

Jeff
No, that’s ok. We’re recording via Zoom today and internet connection’s a little choppy. So, apologies to the listeners. But this is 2022, what can I say?

Laura
What can we do?

Jeff
Yeah. Anyone else that you can think of?

Laura
Another is A Well Dressed Life. She is a makeup artist in Lake Norman. Her name is, her actual name is not obviously A Well Dressed Life, that’s her business. Her name is Jaime Spencer. And she is a, she specializes in high-definition camera-ready makeup. So, she comes to you, or she also has a studio space out of her home in Lake Norman. And she’s just really great for brand imagery, headshot imagery, if you are looking for that, because makeup is super important for that, and it helps you to feel more confident and camera ready. And she is my go-to for that. Always. And she’s amazing. Her name’s Jaime Spencer, and she’s @awelldressedlife on Instagram.

Jeff
I’ll have that link also in the show notes. Jaime and Jenny both, anyone else?

Laura
Yeah, also, Brenna Morgan, Brenna Morgan Interiors, she and I have worked together a couple times. And she is amazing at what she does. She’s an interior decorator based in Lake Norman. And she’s super easygoing and easy to talk to. But she’s also really, really good at what she does. She’s great at making things look beautiful, and make you feel at home in your home, which I think is a great skill because I don’t have that skill. She’s really good at it. So, I admire her a lot.

Jeff
She is really good at it. And I actually, I had completely forgotten that that was another person that I had connected with on the podcast that you’ve worked with.

Laura
Oh, really?

Jeff
Yeah. So, that’s another, that was yet another business owner here in the area that has worked with Laura Tompkins that I connected with, so yeah, Brenna was, I forget which episode, I’ll have a link to her episode in the show notes also. But I interviewed her probably around a year ago for the podcast. And that was a really cool conversation. And yeah, she does some amazing work.

Laura
She does. She’s very, she’s great.

Jeff
Anyone else?

Laura
Oh, yeah, I do have one more, Rhana Kurdi. She’s a consultant, a business consultant, and she’s in Lake Norman. She is a vet, and she has built this entire business, consulting, kind of larger companies. But she and I did website design together. And she actually also is connected to Launch Lake Norman. And I’ve worked with her with Launch Lake Norman as well. And she’s just a very smart businesswoman. But she’s also super approachable and friendly and easy to work with, which is a really good combination. And I would recommend her any day to anybody that needs any kind of business consulting or help building their business in any way.

Jeff
Yeah, I met Rhana. I think about a year ago when I interviewed Michal Bay, the owner of Merino Mill and she was in the building that day and as I was getting a tour and another person, I can’t recall her name off the top of my head, was with Michal’s organization there at Merino Mill had introduced me to Rhana, so yeah, small world, like really cool. Yeah, yeah. I follow Rhana on Instagram, and I’ll have a link in the show notes as well. And I’ll follow up to see if there are other links for her business that I can include there as well.

Laura
That’s awesome. That’s so funny. I thought you might know her, but I wasn’t sure.

Jeff
Yeah, yeah. And as I mentioned, couple of the founders at Launch Lake Norman I met with last week, their episode will actually, off the top of my head, I don’t remember if it’s gonna be before or after this episode. But anyway, it’s on thebestoflkn.com at some point. Excellent. Well, those are all great recommendations and shout outs, I really appreciate that, those are interesting. I look forward to following up with a couple of them as well. What about online resources, we mentioned Amy Porterfield, any online resources about content creation or marketing that you would recommend for small business owners or reading recommendations?

Laura
Social Curator is a really good one, Jasmine Star started that, and she’s actually, her career path reminds me a little bit of mine, which is why I was drawn to her. She started out in photography, doing wedding photography, and then moved to more branding, photography, and now helps other businesses build their businesses through branding. And she has a whole course on curating your social media, where she literally gives you the exact captions to write and you kind of like fill it in with, that it makes it yours. And I found it really interesting because it gives you really good prompts. Not necessarily like copying what she says, but it kind of gets your mind going, thinking about, oh, I never thought about posting that, or I never thought about talking about this. And it kind of gives you a good outline of, okay, on Mondays I should do this, and Wednesdays I should do this, and Fridays this, and really gives you a good foundation of planning out that actual written content for social media.

Jeff
Having that plan, yeah, it can’t be overstated like how important it is to actually plan out your marketing and your social media content creation and curating that content. Jasmine Star, actually, it’s funny, total coincidence, we didn’t talk about this before I hit record, during my webinar, during my Amy Porterfield webinar the other day, she talked about Jasmine Star and I actually, I wrote down Jasmine Star’s Instagram handle because I was gonna, I meant to bring it up to you as somebody I wanted to talk to you about.

Laura
That’s so funny.

Jeff
Yeah, it’s funny that you brought her up. That’s interesting. Yeah, she was new to me. So, I’ll be doing some more following up, like some looking at the work she does, and also checking out Social Curator. So, I’ll have a links to that and her Instagram handle, both for Social Curator and I think her Instagram handle is @jasminestar, her personal Instagram. Both are awesome. So yeah. Very cool. And what else do you have for me?

Laura
I was gonna, I’ve already mentioned this, but Jenny Melrose is great for online resources and content. JennyMelrose.com, and she’s, a lot of free online resources. And similar what you’re saying about Amy Porterfield, she has a course on email marketing as well.

Jeff
Excellent. Yeah. And she’s local, so that’s cool. I will definitely have a look at Jenny, is it jennymelrose.com?

Laura
Yep.

Jeff
I’ll definitely have a look at that and have a link in the show notes, of course. All excellent choices and recommendations. Really appreciate that, Laura.

Laura
Of course.

Jeff
So, we’ve been working on getting this recorded for a little while. I want to thank you so much for taking the time to join the podcast and share a little bit of your expertise. And the story about Laurel Belle Photography and Branding.

Laura
Happy to be here.

Jeff
Really, this has really been great, Laura, how can listeners learn more about Laurel Belle Photography and Branding?

Laura
You can visit my website, it’s laurelbellephotography.com. Or I’m also on Instagram @LaurelBellePhotography. Those are the best ways to reach me and find out more about my business.

Jeff
And you practice what you preach, your Instagram content is really, really good.

Laura
Oh, thank you. That means a lot to me. Thank you so much.

Jeff
Excellent, excellent profile, I recommend listeners check it out. Laura Tompkins, the owner of Laurel Belle Photography and Branding. Laura, thank you again so much for joining the podcast.

Jeff
Thank you, Jeff.

Jeff
Big thanks to Laura Tompkins for joining the podcast and sharing the story behind her business, Laurel Belle Photography and Branding. Listeners, you can learn more about Laura and her business at www.laurelbellephotography.com. I’ll have that link along with the links to the local Lake Norman businesses Laura recognized during our conversation in the show notes for this episode. As always, you can find the complete show notes for all of our episodes at the home for Lake Norman’s number one small business podcast, www.thebestoflkn.com. While you’re there, be sure to sign up for our weekly email newsletter. Our email newsletter subscribers now have access to exclusive content that you won’t find anywhere else. Content like our latest blog article, The Top 10 Real Estate Brokers in the Lake Norman Area. This article highlights the 10 local Lake Norman realtors that are at the top of the game in 2022, and it’s only available to our email newsletter subscribers, so sign up and be in the know. Next week, we’ll be releasing an article featuring the 10 best bridal boutiques in the Lake Norman area, again, only available to our email newsletter subscribers. We have a lot more content on the way, so stay tuned. Food and beverage is still high on our list of topics. And we have a big article featuring the 25 best spots around Lake Norman to grab lunch, and Lake Norman’s definitive craft brewery guide, and so much more, the list goes on and on. Thanks again to Sodoma Law North and our sponsors for helping us grow The Best of LKN. You can find links to our sponsors in the show notes or on the homepage at thebestoflkn.com. They are all amazing small businesses and I encourage you to support these businesses that support us. We still have a few categories available for sponsorship, especially in the professional services space, real estate, mortgages, financial advisor, etc. If you’d like to receive information on what our sponsorship agreements look like and how we can promote your firm, please request a media kit. There’s a link on our homepage. Okay, so that’s going to do it for Episode 92. Thanks as always for joining us, and for following along as we connect with the best and brightest in the Lake Norman area. We’re back next week with another episode. So until then, 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.