StemCell Therapy

Amy Seder, Co-Founder of Away Lands What is your business?Away Lands is a film and photography production company I founded with my now-fianc. We focus on travel and lifestyle imagery on a wide variety of scales from working with brands, hotels, and tourism boards directly with just the two us, to large full-production commercials. What was it like to go full time with your own business?We made the decision that we were going to change our lives very quickly and surprisingly easily. Brandon and I were living in New York, he worked in finance and I worked in commercial photo productions, and at first we just decided that we wanted to leave and travel full time and really give something unique a try before we settled down into marriage and children. We knew that it would take everything we had, so we set aside a year and a half to plan, build, and save as much as we could before taking off. During that time we got our first couple of film jobs and realized what we were really doing was starting a business. When the time finally came to quit our jobs and leave our apartment, and our whole lives in New York, it was both terrifying and exhilarating!

How long did it take you to turn a profit?We started turning a profit about 7-9 months into working for ourselves full-time, which I know is incredibly lucky! It was easier to be net-positive because we cut our expenses so drastically; we didnt have a car, or our own place to live for the first year, and were able to work enough that our food and travel expenses would be often covered, even if we werent getting paid ourselves. It was after about a year and a half that we felt financially comfortable enough to buy a car and get our own apartment.

What was the hiring process like for your employee?We decided that it was time to hire an assistant about a year ago, when our workload just started to become too overwhelming. We realized the only way to stay on top of it all while continuing to grow would be to outsource and delegate some tasks, and bring in another person to help handle the endless to-do lists. I had had assistants and interns at prior jobs, but never on my own. We came up with a comprehensive list of all of the tasks we wanted an assistant to handle, posted the listing to a few job search sites, and read through hundreds of resumes that came in. We ended up doing phone interviews with about 8-10 candidates, meeting three in person, and ultimately hiring one. As our business covers a lot of different aspects, we looked at a number of people with difference specialties some with more of an art and photography background, some with more of a graphic design and web background, and the assistant we decided to hire had more of a professional business background.

What is a common misconception about small business owners?In our business particular, there are a lot of misconceptions about what we do and who we are. Since a part of my business is social media focused, there are constant opinions about every aspect of influencer culture and endless assumptions about how we never work, dont have a real job, etc. In travel, there can be a glamorous air to being in a different country every couple of weeks and staying in fancy hotels, and I am extremely grateful for the experiences weve had and being able to do this work, but the reality of our job is that we are not vacationing. We are often up before dawn shooting, never stopping, and staying up half the night processing the work and prepping. I love what I do and truly feel like I made up my own dream job, but I really never stop working.

What advice would you give to someone who wants to start their own business?I have stayed in contact with my first boss from my very first "grown-up job" when I was 21, and when we were starting out she told us to, expect to wait 6 months for every payment, and make sure to hire a good lawyer. Both of which have been very true!

Read the original post:
8 Small Business Owners On What Its Really Like To Start Your Own Company - Yahoo Lifestyle

This entry was posted on October 22, 2019 at 7:43 pm and is filed under Stem Cell Tourism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. |