Taking the Leap Even If You Aren't Ready with Kelly Harvill | 27

This week’s inspiring teacherpreneur journey is with Kelly of Speaking of Images. I loved chatting with her about how photograph has weaved it's way through her teacherpreneur journey and the importance of taking risks before everything feels 100% ready!

Kelly is a Preschool SLP, National Board Certified Teacher, and Professional Photographer. She helps Teachers with  Online Businesses to level up their business branding with modern images and mock-ups designed for Educators. Members of her Image Maker Membership have access to over 3500 images to customize for their use on TpT covers, thumbnails and previews, Pinterest Pins, blog posts, marketing assets and all social media posts.

We chat all about 

• how she got started on TPT

• her shift into creating digital mockups for teacher business owners

• how she collects, stores and donates the materials she needs for taking her images

• her amazing membership (including some of the unexpected image requests she gets)

• how her love of photography has helped shape her teacherpreneur journey

• Freebie Fridays and other ways that she's marketing her business

I hope you enjoy this chat as much as I did!

Connect with Kelly
Instagram:  @speakingofimages
Website: Speaking of Images
TPT: Speaking of Images

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Thanks for listening to this week’s Inspiring Story! If you would like to share your story on the podcast head to www.marketscalegrow.com/journey to apply today. We would love for you to join us and can’t wait to hear about your journey as a teacher business owner.

Episode Transcript:

Intro: Hey there, I'm Jenzaia and this is Market, Scale, Grow. A podcast created for ambitious teacherpreneurs looking to have a bigger impact on the world, achieve freedom, flexibility, and ultimately make more money with weekly strategy sessions and inspiring stories from fellow teachers just like you, my goal here is to help you create a customized marketing strategy so you can grow your teacher business beyond your wildest dreams. Okay, so before we jump into the episode, I am super excited to share a brand new freebie with you. It's my targeting ideas for Facebook ads. If you've dabbled in Facebook ads or you've done them and you've tried them, and you're just looking for some fresh inspiration for your audiences, this freebie is for you. I share my top Facebook ad targeting groups for you so that you can have inspiration and find those people that are perfect for what you have to offer. From warm audiences to cool lookalike audiences, to cold interest-based audiences. I cover all three in this freebie. Head to marketscalegrow.com/audiences to grab your copy today.

Jenzaia: This week's inspiring story is with Kelly Harvill from Speaking of Images. I absolutely adore Kelly and we had such a great conversation. As a bit of a disclaimer, we did have this conversation over a month ago. I can't remember it was the beginning or middle of June, but quite some time ago now. Because of that, some of the things we talk about the end of school and the COVID protocols that are in place, are no longer the current situations. So if you're like, "wait a second, what are they talking about?" It's because this is a good four to six weeks ago at this point. If you don't know Kelly, like I said, I absolutely adore her, and I had such a great conversation with her. Kelly is a preschool speech-language pathologist, national board certified teacher, and a professional photographer. She helps teachers with online businesses to level up their business branding with modern images and mock-ups designed for educators. Members of her image maker membership have access to over 3,500 images that they can use to customize their TPT covers, thumbnails, previews, Pinterest pins, blog posts, marketing assets, all their social media posts. So many things. If you haven't checked out her image maker membership, I highly recommend you do that. It's linked in the show notes. Without further ado, let's jump into our conversation.

Jenzaia: Hi Kelly, how are you today?

Kelly: I'm good. How are you doing?

Jenzaia: I'm wonderful. Welcome to Market Scale Grow. Do you want to start by telling everyone where you're from and if you're still teaching and what you're still teaching?

Kelly: Sure. First off, thanks for having me. I love doing this. I love chatting with my teacher friends. I grew up in Southern California. I went to graduate school in Boston, and now I live in Seattle. So I consider all three areas home and I am still teaching this week even because we don't get out of school until Thursday. I'm a speech pathologist. I work with preschool students and I haven't been in the classroom this year. I'm on the preschool assessment team. So I do tests for children ages two through five, and there are a lot of children, two through five, who have communication delays. So we're busy. I'm wrapping it up this week. I have eight more reports to write and then I'll be done.

Jenzaia: Yay. That's so exciting.

Kelly: I know. Me too.

Jenzaia: I'm not in school. I'm on maternity leave this year, but my school board isn't until June 26. So I feel your pain from previous years of going this far and seeing everyone else online that, "oh, we're done" and you're like, "I still have so much more to go." So Thursday isn't too far now.

Kelly: No, it's not. I know that in August when I'm still on break and people are going back to school, it'll be my turn for them to feel bad. But it's all good. It's all good. It's just time management.

Jenzaia: So how did you get into the teacherpreneur world?

Kelly: Well, I have an interesting backstory on that. As a photographer, I used to have a family photography business. So whenever teachers at my school would be pregnant and we would have a baby shower for them, I would give them a gift card for a photo session for their baby anytime within the first year of their baby's life.

Jenzaia: I love that!

Kelly: It was great. Our school is pretty big and there are a lot of teachers. One year we had three first and second-grade teachers pregnant at the same time. So they did their shower together and I gave them all their gift cards together. Emily, who has a TPT store called Emily Education, was one of those teachers. So she was brave enough to invite me into her home the first week of her daughter's life. So we're talking teeny weeny baby. I'd never done an infant shoot that small, or a baby that small. So while I was there, I mentioned to her that I had heard from someone else that she was the teacher at our school that did Teachers Pay Teachers. I work with preschool students, so I wasn't using Teachers Pay Teachers because I wasn't using any technology, and I don't use a lot of paper products with my three and four-year-olds. It's all Potato Head and Play-Doh, so I didn't really know about it. So I asked her about it while we were doing the shoot. The more she told me, I thought, well, this sounds kind of fun. I like doing crafty things and I'm a speech pathologist. I've worked with gen-ed kids. I know how to, you know. So we ended up, by the time I left, we had a deal where I said, I will do the first year in the life of her daughter in images, so four sessions, if you, as a trade, if you teach me how to do Teachers Pay Teachers. Her husband said, "we're getting off real easy here" because she'd been doing it for several years and so it was so easy for her. Well, I don't use PowerPoint with preschoolers, any of that. So it was a foreign language to me for that first year. Emily and I would meet up at this coffee place and she would explain it to me. It probably took me a year to start to put together what she was talking about when she would use the vocabulary. So I started making resources in 2018 for speech pathologists or for language-based activities. Then I switched to photography when I realized that educators needed that.

Jenzaia: That's where your business is now, is the photography piece.

Kelly: Correct? Yes. I have been a photographer since before I was a speech pathologist. So to be able to put together my love of photography with my education career has been fabulous.

Jenzaia: For those who don't know you and your photography, can you just explain a little bit more what you do because it is amazing.

Kelly: Well, thank you. I do a couple of things with educators. So I do personal branding photoshoots with teacherpreneurs. That's what I was doing in Denver at a retreat that Shelly Reese put on once. I met 23 amazing educators and did their photo sessions. As we were together that weekend, everybody was creating resources and talking about it and all of the things that go with TPT. That's what the retreat was about. So I started asking them, and all of them were saying they hate the photography part. They love creating resources and that's where their strong point is. They know their curriculum, they know their state standards, but then they would have to take pictures of it for marketing. That's when everything fell apart because it was just such another thing to do. So I started asking, well, what if that was something that I could do? I could set up a mock-up basically, and then you could just drop your resource into it. They were like, "yeah, we want that." So that's what I do. My business is mock-ups for educators primarily.

Jenzaia: That's the piece that's different. There are photographers, you can send them your products, they'll print them off and take actual pictures. But what you do is almost like a background, right? Then you put your product digitally on the background.

Kelly: Correct. One of the members in my membership told me recently that this has taken her back to her love of scrapbooking. So basically, they get to play with all the digital pieces and they never take out a camera. They put their resource right on top of the background that I've created and the end product looks like they set up the whole thing with the props and the lighting, but they didn't have to. So that's exactly what it is.

Jenzaia: If TPT was still the main part of my business and something that I was actively marketing, this is exactly what I needed because it's the entire reason why I never check any products pictures. I just did digital layering, but I never had a pretty background and it never looked set up. It was really just whatever color I was using for that cover, like purple or pink or whatever. So it was really obvious that that's what I was doing and it never looked great. So, I am totally the TPT seller that would be in your membership if that was still my main avenue because I've seen the pictures that you do and some of the work, and I absolutely love it. I think it's great.

Kelly: Thank you. Yeah, it's super fun and it's great for me to be able to hear from the sellers what they want because I have in my head, "oh, this would look really pretty" or "this would look great in composition." But if they don't need it, it doesn't matter. So by having a membership, I was able to have an ongoing dialogue with the members and them requesting things. So now I know about things like algebra tiles that I never knew what that was. I learned all about interactive notebooks and things that I had, as a preschool speech pathologist, no background knowledge. So it's been really fun for me because it's amazing what our educators are creating for classroom teachers around the world.

Jenzaia: It's such a cool learning curve that you were going through too, for it.

Kelly: It is. I have two closets that are my prop closets because it grows exponentially all the time. I used to be able to just have things sorted by color for brand colors. Now I have things sorted by grade level and subjects within a grade level. So I'm looking forward to having the time this summer to really just go to town and be able to shoot things without having a full-time job on the side of my other full-time job.

Jenzaia: It's such a balancing act. You have, especially with a job like teaching, where not only are there very scheduled hours, you can't just be like, "oh, today I'm going to work." There's no flexibility in your hours. But it's also being with any kids is an emotionally draining job. I don't know about you, but I've never had a year that I haven't had a kid that I take home, like emotionally take home with you. I've never actually taken a kid home with me.

Kelly: Well, that's good.

Jenzaia: But emotionally, you take this kid home with you. So there's that level of exhaustion, and then you're also working this full-time passion hobby job on the side. How do you do it?

Kelly: Yeah, it's a challenge. I work in special needs with little, little kids who aren't speaking, and I take all of them home with me in terms of that brainstorming where you're trying to think of something to help this. They're in that age three to five where their brains are just so malleable and we really need to get in there. Right. So, yes, I hear you on that, taking them home. I also live in the Seattle area, so it is not great lighting for natural light photography for several months of the year. So now we come into summer and I have light until 9:30, 10:00 at night. It gets light at five in the morning. So now I have an abundance of light and I'll have an abundance of time. I started my business last September, so this is going to be my first real full summer where I can shoot and my members have not disappointed me with their wishlist. I have got lots of things on them, and I'm excited to be able to get to that.

Jenzaia: That's awesome. I'm just imagining something that has never crossed my mind, but your closet is just full of props and all of these beautiful little things that you would need for these pictures. My mind is just spinning about all the cool little things that you could have.

Kelly: Yeah. I need to do more behind the scenes of what the storage looks like. Right now, it's downright frightening, so I would not bring that on camera. However, this summer, when I have a little bit more time to reorganize things, I will do some of that because I've had several people say, "we want to see how you store everything" and "how do you separate things as it's grown." I've had to reorganize and as I said, rethink things in different manners based on what I'm shooting that, during the year that weekend, but now more frequently this summer.

Jenzaia: It sounds like it's grown pretty quickly over the last year. So when that kind of thing happens, you're like, oh, buy, buy, buy, and then shove, shove, shove, or at least that's my organization style.

Kelly: I know the Amazon people very well. It's been crazy, the collection growing quickly, but what I love about it is, when I buy materials, I can shoot a lot of them, I can then donate them back to a classroom teacher. So some of these things I don't need to keep for a long period of time and I can shoot, shoot, shoot, and then I work in a school district. I can always find somebody who actually needs these things. So that's the other thing that I don't mind about it. It's not like I'm buying stuff that I'm going to take to Goodwill. It's things that educators will need.

Jenzaia: Absolutely. That's a really good way to look at it, too. Give back, and to educators who really need these things.

Kelly: Exactly. My preschool is housed in an elementary that goes through fifth grade. So the teachers, I'll do trades with them and say, "okay, I'm going to bring you these, and you can use these in your classroom, and now I need those counting bears for the weekend" and they're like, "okay." I have carte blanche to open the cupboard, particularly in preschool and kindergarten, and go through things. Now I'm getting requests from the secondary teachers. So like I said, now I'm asking secondary teachers about stuff that I don't even know what it is. I'm like, "do you have a, hang on..." and I'm looking at my list. "Oh yeah, we have a T13X42 calculator." "Okay, great. Can I borrow it for the weekend?"

Jenzaia: You're expecting a regular calculator, but it's one of those ones with the giant screen, isn't it?

Kelly: They have, I've learned, that there are graphic calculators, and then there are other kinds of calculators and certain grade levels use them for different things. It's fascinating, but, as I said, I'll call the teachers. "Okay. I need..." I also do model shoots for students, where I hire a student model, their parents sign a release, I pay the student model. During COVID, that has shut down considerably. But again, this summer, I'm looking forward to that picking up again. I'll go to my membership and say, "Okay, I've been able to book a freshman high school girl. We're going to have to shoot in the house because we can't go," I really can't shoot in schools anyway, "do you guys have any requests?" And, oh my goodness. They come pouring in of, "I need this", "I need this". It's hilarious the difference in things. Then I go and I meet with the student and she's like, "we don't do this at our school." I'm like, "yeah, you're right. But you know, I have some teachers who are in Puerto Rico. I have some teachers who are in all different areas." She's like, "we haven't used a textbook in two years. Everything is on the computer." I'm like, "well, that's not the way it is all around the world." So it's been really fun to be able to go in and do these shoots and give them images of students using the tools, so then they can use in their resource pictures, too.

Jenzaia: That is pretty cool. Having a student in there is one of those pieces that like brings in the realness of it. It's not just a picture of a product, there's actually someone using it.

Kelly: Yup, or using the tools because I don't really bring in somebody's resource. One of my requests was, one of the teachers asked for a picture of their feet. I'm like, "their feet?" She goes, "well in their shoes" and I'm like, "explain more." She said, "I do gallery walks. That's one of the things I do in my middle school or high school, and so I would love to have pictures that show a kid walking because then I can put it on a pin or a blog post and talk about gallery walks." I'm like, "oh." So I get to the girl's house and I'm like, "and now I'm going to lay on the floor and I want you to walk by me" and she's like, "okay."

Jenzaia: She's like, "You're paying me!"

Kelly: Exactly. She's like, "okay." Then I have to find light in her house, like a place where I could take a picture where there's good light at floor level because I don't bring in all of my lighting stuff because that would take the full hour just to set that up. But yeah, they're very good sports. Then when I do it with the preschool kids, it's all primarily toys they want to play with anyway. So they're having a great time.

Jenzaia: They probably forget you're even there.

Kelly: Oh, they don't know. I just work around them. They're my people, that's who I work with all the time. So I get goofy with them and we have a great old time. They're not posing. There's no posing going on with a three or four-year-old. It just doesn't happen. It's my job to capture what I need to capture without asking them to stop what they're doing.

Jenzaia: It's so cool how your love of photography has morphed through your journey and grown and expanded. It clearly, I know everyone listening can't see your face, but you are lit up right now just talking about it.

Kelly: Yeah. I can talk about this forever, between kids, like littles, and photography. It's definitely my joy place.

Jenzaia: We've talked about a lot of the awesome things that happened, so what are some of the challenges you've experienced in this journey?

Kelly: Well, COVID has been a major change. COVID has been a gift for my business and a challenge for my business. I have connected with more people because we're all stuck at home and we're online. It's given me the time to be able to do more shooting because this is the most flexible my job has ever been, particularly in the spring when we were really locked down at home. It wasn't like I had a huge plan to start a membership last summer. I just had a couple of coaches who really just pushed me and said, "you're never going to feel ready. You're never going to feel like it's perfect. Just get a beta group going and find out, just jump in because this is the time. Everybody's home." So I just jumped without a net and the net caught me. So it kind of worked out. So the challenge of being able to get the pictures of people, because that's really something that all of my members want, has been difficult because of COVID. Like I can go in, I would wear a mask. Some of the families that I've worked with would allow me to come in, but I didn't want their kids to have a mask off. That's not fair to them. So we had some of those kinds of challenges. So I'm looking forward to scheduling more of that this year.

Jenzaia: It'll be nice for that, but also just in general, the world opening up again will be good for everyone.

Kelly: Yeah. I mean, I know that you're in Canada, so you're more shut down than we have been. Seattle has been pretty tight. I went grocery shopping today and I would say three-quarters of the people in the stores still had masks on, even though you don't necessarily have to if you've been vaccinated. But, it's not as open as some of the other places where I see pictures of concerts and stuff. It's like you're in a foreign land like, "whoa, look at all those people!" We're not there yet. So I'm not there yet.

Jenzaia: Yeah, we still have a mask mandate in place. So it's 100% masks still. Stores have just now reopened. They have really low capacities and can only be open if they have a street-front door, so malls aren't open yet. But it's progress.

Kelly: Absolutely. It's all progress. It's all progress.

Jenzaia: Yes. So, with all the pieces of your business, how are you marketing it since this is, after all, a marketing podcast? So how are you getting the word out?

Kelly: Instagram is my place. It's a photo-based place. So needless to say, that's the platform that I like and I'm most comfortable on. For more than a year now, I've done a free photo Friday, which means on Fridays, I post two images that can be screenshot, and then you can use them however you want. That has really built some credibility and has allowed me to have some fun creatively and give people ideas that I added on some Canva tutorials in that. Then I have email marketing and I'm finally starting a website and a blog this summer. I have not had one yet. I have not started Pinterest yet, even though I create pins for everybody else, but I haven't started it yet. So my two big goals this summer for my own business are Pinterest and getting that website up and start blogging for some long content, you know, long-term content. But, I have to say in our field, word of mouth is huge. So you have one teacher who's happy, she's going to tell five of her teacher, friends who are going to tell five of their friends. That has been a gift to me, the word of mouth too.

Jenzaia: Yeah. Word of mouth. Referrals are huge. Yeah. It's definitely that relationship marketing and the networking piece are game-changing.

Kelly: Exactly, exactly. That's all I've done for my marketing. I launched four times a year. I have one coming up starting on Friday of this week. So I tried to learn something new from each one and try something different on each one. So this one was doing this challenge that I'm doing right now. I thought, okay, that would be kind of fun. I didn't really think about the fact that it's also the last week of school, but you know, that's just how it fell. So it's been a blast and it's again, giving me an opportunity to get feedback from the educators that are in the group of what they need. To me, that's what I need, is I need to know what you guys want and I'm happy to do for you, but I need to know what it is you want.

Jenzaia: Absolutely. I think that's a really good way to approach it, is each time trying something new and pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone, just a little bit so that you can figure out if it works and if it doesn't work. And this challenge, if it's a complete failure and you're like, I hate this, you never have to do it again. But you'll never be sitting there wondering, could a challenge work? Maybe. I don't know. If it goes amazing, then you know, okay, well we'll do a challenge again and keep moving forward in this direction. But if you don't try it, then you will never know.

Kelly: Exactly. For September, I might actually try Facebook ads because I've met with you now and I'm learning about them. So we'll get there too.

Jenzaia: That was actually my next question. How, because Facebook ads are my jam, so I always want to know how you, as in my guests, how they feel about Facebook ads. So how do you feel about Facebook ads?

Kelly: I think it's a tool that we need, that I need. I actually am running one right now because I had met with you and you'd given me some really good help with coming up with an audience. But again, in my world, if I don't understand the vocabulary, I don't want to just jump into something that I don't understand. So I'm learning the vocabulary. I've got a coach that's helping me with that. So I'm not afraid to put money behind something if I understand the purpose. I understand that you might not get a return on your investment the first few times you do it, but you're learning more and more. So then it's like, okay, this makes sense to me. I think Pinterest and Facebook and Instagram have been free platforms and they're continued to be free platforms. At some point, these businesses need to make some money. So I don't have a problem putting some money in if I have somebody that can explain to me the data that you get from that and how I can make it effective for what I want the end result to be. That's where you come in, that's where my other coach comes in, to help me understand some of those kinds of things.

Jenzaia: That's such a good attitude of wanting to understand, but not being afraid to take those baby steps and learn as you go.

Kelly: Right. I mean, I think for any business, you have to have a marketing budget. I have to put a certain amount of money aside to say this money is meant to grow my business. Part of that is with buying numerous amounts of props from Amazon and various toy stores. But also part of it is the growing of the business. I'm a one-man show right now. I dream of being able to have some people help me down the road, but in the meantime, it's a big learning curve, but it's kind of fun just to see what people are doing and how they're doing it.

Jenzaia: Absolutely. I agree with that. I learned so much just from these conversations. People have, like you have a very different business than I do, but I always take something away from these conversations and I find it so like enlightening just to see the insides of someone else's business. So I appreciate you being so open with me and everyone listening.

Kelly: Sure. I love it.

Jenzaia: Okay. Rapid fire questions at the end. First one, what's your favourite social media platform?

Kelly: Instagram.

Jenzaia: Your favourite tool or software that you use for your business?

Kelly: Lightroom and Canva.

Jenzaia: I love Canva. It's coming up more and more in these conversations. Then last one, what piece of advice would you give someone who's just starting their teacherpreneur journey?

Kelly: I would say don't compare your journey to somebody else's journey. It's so hard to see that when people are doing that online or even in Facebook groups. You'll see someone ask, "how many products do I have to have to be able to earn my teaching salary?" These kinds of questions are kind of impossible to answer. I have a coach for a couple of different aspects because my business is so split. I've got branded photography and I've got stock photography and I've got all these different avenues that are very different than most in the teacherpreneur world. One of my coaches has a very successful stock photography business. She's also been doing it for five years. So although I'm getting support from her that she didn't have when she started out, I remind myself that doesn't mean that I should expect myself to be where she is. It took her five years to get there. So as long as I'm growing and I'm learning and making, I'm not against talking about money. I would like to make more money, don't get me wrong, but I recognize that it's a five-year plan for me. It's not a one-year plan. So I think that's what I would say to people is this isn't a short-term game, but if your passion is in it, it's worth the time.

Jenzaia: Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. If people want to find you, can you let us know where they can go?

Kelly: Sure. On Instagram, I'm @speakingofimages. On my soon-to-be summer, I'll be speakingofimages.com, but it's not there yet. I have a Facebook page, but I'll be totally honest. I rarely post anything on there. I have a TPT store, Speaking of Images. It's Speaking of Images everywhere. I came up with that because I'm a speech pathologist and a photographer. That's where Speaking of Images came up.

Jenzaia: I love a good story behind it, and one that molds everything together. I will make sure that those are all linked below and thank you so much for coming.

Kelly: Thank you for having me.

Outro: Thank you for listening to this week's inspiring story. If you'd like to share your story with us, then head to marketscalegrow.com/journey and complete the quick application form. Then, head to our community at marketscalegrow.com/community so you can join our group of inspiring teacherpreneurs who are working on growing and scaling their businesses, too. See you soon.