Career Growth Advice from Kelly Mooney, Marketing Leader | Career Tips for Women in Marketing

2B Bolder Podcast – Episode 16
Featuring Kelly Mooney

Episode Title: #16 Career Podcast Featuring Kelly Mooney, Professional Photographer – Women In Business

Host: Mary Killelea
Guest: Kelly Mooney



Mary Killelea (Host): Hi there. My name is Mary Killelea. Welcome to the To Be Bolder podcast, providing career insights for the next generation of women in business and tech. To Be Bolder was created out of my love for technology and marketing, my desire to bring together like-minded women, and my hope to be a great role model and source of inspiration for my two girls and other young women like you. Encouraging you guys to show up and to be bolder and to know that anything you guys dream of, it's totally possible. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the conversation.

Hi there. Today on the show, my guest is a wonderful woman I've known for years. She is bright, driven, and a successful entrepreneur. Kelly Mooney is president of Kelly Mooney Photography. Prior to that, she founded a successful PR firm called This Just In PR. She has been on the board of directors of George Fox University and the Kirk Spencer Foundation. Kelly has an innate way of turning her passions into booming businesses, and today I'm so excited that she's going to share her latest venture with us. Kelly, thank you so much for joining us. I'm thrilled that you're here on the show.

Kelly Mooney (Guest): Thank you so much for having me. This is fantastic. I've enjoyed listening to your previous podcasts and just think this is great.

Mary Killelea: Thank you. Okay, so let's just dive in. Tell us about your career, how and why you got into PR, and then how you made the move over into a successful photographer business.

Kelly Mooney: I had an interesting, very circuitous route to my career, really. When I was in college, needed to make some money and was working for the student newspaper, University of Oregon, selling ads. I stumbled into that job, but actually found that I loved it. So once I graduated, I got into some of the publishing industry. So I was working for magazines and some newspapers, selling advertising. Met my husband, who took me a little begrudgingly to Salt Lake City for a few years. But when we moved there, I worked for the local newspaper, Salt Lake Tribune, selling ads. And during that time, met some of the marketing directors for some of the big grocery chains and ultimately was recruited into one of them. They wanted somebody who could help manage an event. So, believe it or not, I left the sales job and became the manager of the second largest hot air balloon festival in the country.

Mary Killelea: Oh my gosh.

Kelly Mooney: It was, talk about random, but fantastic experience. I was training with some people who really understood event management. And one of the things that we had to do was hire a PR firm. And so I was working with the firm and seeing what they did. And once we wrapped the event, that had 35,000 people, it was great. But I went and did an informational interview with the owner of the firm that we had hired. And they hired me. So, it was not expected. I had to study the night before the interview. I actually went to a library to date myself. But I went and did some research on what is PR and learned pretty fast what I needed to do. And fortunately, writing came kind of naturally to me. So it's a PR ended up being a really great combination of sales and writing. And so I started working with mostly Inc 500 businesses and representing them, getting them media coverage in newspapers, on television. And then when I got pregnant with my son, I proposed the concept of remote working. And that was a little too progressive for the firm. So, I wanted to be home with my son and decided to start my own PR firm. And that's how that started. So, I did that for almost 17 years. I owned the PR and marketing firm on my own and loved what I was doing.

So I was working in New York with reporters and broadcasters and magazine editors. Got to work with the big ones. I was Oprah, Martha Stewart, the Today Show, CNBC. I mean, I had some really fun, fun experiences. But over time, the job became much more about metrics than it was about the human connection. And for me, that was really what motivated me. It was working with people, telling their stories. It wasn't about likes and clicks and all of that. And it was after some time I was I started using my camera just as a hobby. And my husband was one who said you seem happier when you're taking photos. So he bought me my first camera, which was he calls the smartest and worst day of his life. And it kind of took off from there. So really, at that point, I decided if I was going to switch careers, because at the time, my PR firm was incredibly lucrative. But I knew if I was going to switch this, I needed to go all in, it was all or nothing. And so, I took about a year studying photography, almost exclusively, and started taking little clients here and there. And it's just taken off.

Mary Killelea: The fact that you self taught your way into a new career with photography, and I've watched you over the years. Your talent is just incredible how you can learn a new tool and the creativity that you've put behind it from copying the Beatles album. I mean, you've done some innovative things. And then not to mention just your senior photography. And then I know you do business clients, but everything is so unique, and Kelly Mooney, you know what I mean?

Kelly Mooney: Thank you. It's interesting, I did not see myself as a creative person. I mean, in PR, the job is much more about… I mean, yeah, there's some creativity, obviously, because you've got to tell a story. Sometimes you have to make up a story. It depends. You can find trends in anything, really. But in terms of creativity, I didn't think of myself as a creative person. And honestly, our daughter was born creative. She really was. She came out with pen and paper, I swear, and doing things. But I started seeing some of the world through her eyes. And it I think it opened something up in me, literally, it really opened up something in me. And it's extraordinary to get to my, you know, at the time, you know, my mid 40s, and all of a sudden discovered this part of me, I didn't know existed.

Mary Killelea: That's amazing. And I think something that you touched on too, is that you're a storyteller. And so before it was storytelling through written word. And now it's a storyteller through a visual world.

Kelly Mooney: Absolutely. The bonus is that I'm Irish. So that comes naturally. But no, really, it's and that is my job, like, when it comes to anybody that I'm working with, one of the first steps I take is doing a Q&A, where I try to learn a little bit about their personality or their business, their brand. And my job is to harness that identify it and like and elicit it when we're working together. And I love that part of the job. I think it's so fun. To help people find the focus that quite honestly, I lacked for a long time. So, no, it's really great. it's a very satisfying part of my job.

Mary Killelea: That's wonderful. So being a business owner comes with so many stresses. I've been there before. It's tremendous. But so now add on top of it a pandemic.

Kelly Mooney: Yeah.

Mary Killelea: Typically even to photography business where you're getting close contact and all that. How has social distancing impacted your business or how have you had an opportunity to step back and look at the type of photography that you're doing or want to do?

Kelly Mooney: Right. I mean, needless to say, the minute the state home order dropped, my camera started collecting dust. It was at first really jarring to realize that my prime source of income is absolutely out of reach. And I definitely took some time to lick some wounds, feel sorry for myself, pay attention to what was going on in the world. But as I started shaking off that dust, I realized, you know, no, there's lots of work to be had out there still. And so, while I don't get to work necessarily during that time with people, I realized I do product photography, meaning I take photos for businesses that need to put their goods out on Amazon, on their websites, things like that. And it may not have been at the time really my strongest category. I've done some, not a lot. And I realized that that's the next task then, because obviously long term, we can all see everything, the importance of what you're putting out online is it has grown exponentially suddenly. So, I know the demand is definitely there. And so I had to start putting together packages and pricing so that I could put together some intelligent bids and then start approaching businesses and offering to shoot for them. So that's been good. It's actually been great because even though now we're back to I'm able to start shooting with people again, I've added kind of a new component to my business.

Mary Killelea: So speaking of rates, how do you determine your own rates?

Kelly Mooney: Oh, talk about the million dollar question. When I first started, I was like most photographers really underselling myself, undermining completely just as an effort to get started. And I was really fortunate. I went to a seminar in, it was like a three day event I went to in Seattle when I was kind of early in my business and met with a lot of very successful experienced photographers who made it very clear you push it. If you're going to offer something that is high quality, you've got to charge for the quality and taught me how to break down how much my business really does cost what I was making per hour. And at the time when I did the calculation, I mean, I would have been better off at McDonald's, really. And so that was enlightening. And I learned that I've got to take a look at what's going on in the market. And then price myself competitively. But it took a lot of research to get an idea of what other photographers were charging, what agencies were expecting. But I did, I pushed it and realized that my job now is to justify that cost because I am a premium rate photographer. But I do that through obviously the quality of the product I create, but also just all the back end, their experience with working with me from start to finish has got to be really streamlined, professional, organized, and make their jobs easier.

Mary Killelea: Well, and I love that. Premium comes with a price and also you're one individual. And so, you know, it's hard to scale. So you really are bringing your unique qualities and your unique expertise and it warrants a cost that sometimes we're just not comfortable asking for, but that we should require.

Kelly Mooney: Absolutely. Yeah. And when you talk about scale, that is as a photographer, obviously that can be a real challenge. There are some ways that photographers can branch out and actually leverage the assets they've created over time by dipping into things like selling stock photography. And that has become a lovely little passive income source for me. So, I love it. Every month I get a little alert that these different stock sites have sent me X number of dollars. And I mean, it may not be a ton, but hey, you know, 10 years ago, me would have been like, you've got to be kidding. I just made what? But it's a steady stream of a few hundred dollars a month that comes in just with very little effort. So, there are some ways that photographers definitely can leverage what they create and probably maximize it a little bit more than they typically do.

Mary Killelea: That's wonderful. What do you love most about being a photographer?

Kelly Mooney: Oh man, it's the people. I mean, it still is always the people. I think it's incredibly fun. I would say 90%, especially on the professional side, 90% of the people I work with on the professional side, I somehow always get a message from them that says, Hey, nobody's ever taken a good photo of me. Or I don't take good photos. Like I just can't, no, I just can't smile right. I hear that all the time. And I love when I hear that because I'm like, Oh good challenge accepted. Let's go. Because it's not about clicking the shutter. It's not. It has to be about what happens before that and during in what you can draw out of somebody. And that means really trying to find out what gets them excited, get the conversation going about them and boosting their confidence. And it's amazing how much you can pull out of somebody when they're feeling good about themselves. But it usually takes a little while. I usually have to do some crazy things. I don't care if I look, I'm jumping around like I want to trampoline sometimes, but I do what it takes to get them feeling comfortable. But man, when you see that happen, and then you get the response after they see their photos, they're like, Oh my gosh, I've never had a picture like this. That is, that's so fulfilling.

Mary Killelea: How would you define success?

Kelly Mooney: Okay. Good question. Okay, truthfully, I'm going to be first and foremost, it's still the paycheck. I really love seeing my bank account tick up. That's important to me. But also then feedback. It's when I hear from people that the experience of working with me, whether it was that they felt great about themselves, whether it was I nailed their brand messages, that I accomplished what they were looking for, or went beyond what they expected. That's huge to me. I love that. And success is also repeat business. When people come back, I think that that really is satisfying. And that's very fulfilling for me as well.

Mary Killelea: Oh, absolutely. I think the return customers or the referrals, that's so much about the job and quality and that people are willing to put their name out on a limb for you and what they experience. Okay, so this is a new question I'm weaving into the podcast. What does to be bolder mean to you?

Kelly Mooney: Well, to me, I would think it means, well, it's something that I think I like to say I've done for a while is taking risks, being willing to try something new, being willing to look at who insurmountable things. Like when I started learning photography, I had no idea what Photoshop really was. And it did, it felt overwhelming. And so I decided to go all in and learn this. If you're going to do this, you got to do it. So I took a lot of risks and trusting myself that I could learn. And I think that's fed on itself over time. I've learned that I am very capable of learning, but it took a lot of risk taking to get there.

Mary Killelea: Yeah, I love that risk taking is huge part of it. So you mentioned you taught yourself Photoshop, what other resources or classes did you take to help accelerate your learning?

Kelly Mooney: Oh, well, I started out obviously with YouTube. It was a lot of YouTube at first, but I became familiar with some really great resources at the beginning of my career. I started a photography career. I started working with these different, there's like some just creative Facebook groups where they would put out photo challenges. And it was like a photo a day and they would give you a prompt on what to shoot. And that started opening things up. And then I stumbled into a couple of sites. One is called creativelive.com. It's a fantastic website. If anybody, any of your listeners are into any creative pursuits of any kind, creative live has these amazing classes. But what's really great is that you can tap into them. They stream live classes 24 seven for free. So you can necessarily have to subscribe to benefit from what they're offering, just be available during those times. And then at that point, once I got into Creative Live, that opened me up to all of these, it became like the, the artery I tapped into and found a ton of other resources. There's so many great, talented photographers out there who are willing to share what they've learned. And at this point, I have some incredible places I can go if I get stuck on anything, I know where to turn now.

Mary Killelea: What advice do you give other women who might want to start their own business and particularly a photography business?

Kelly Mooney: I'd say I'd say the biggest thing is set up your team. You know, there's, as an entrepreneur, you've got to wear so many hats. And I did not understand going into it really what all was going to be involved. And obviously, I started building my team back in when I was in PR. But whether it was getting the right bookkeeper, CPA, web designer, and for photography, getting stylists and makeup artists. I need to know that I've got really great, solid people that I can lean on so that I can focus on what I do best. That to me was, I think that's absolutely essential. Then getting great communication tools. I've got through photography, there's a number of sites, but I use a site called Pixify, which is my full customer relation program. So, it's where any lead that comes in, I log that information. I can put notes in there. It's all of my invoicing. It's all of my communication. And it has a lot of automated material that you can set up your letter templates, so you don't have to spend time recreating everything. But it also has calendar prompts. So if I'm a week out from a session, I got an email that goes out automatically that says, hey, here's your reminder. Here's some suggestions on what to wear, things like that. So the CRM tool, and then just the other communications tools. I lean hard on things like Trello. When I'm working on anything that's group related, I use Slack. And when it comes to organizing a lot of my own marketing communications, I use AirTable for a lot of that. So...

Mary Killelea: Oh, I haven't heard of that one.

Kelly Mooney: Oh, careful. It's addicting. It's great because it allows you to, you can do all of your content planning and do your calendar management that way. And of course you can do all sorts of automated posts out of it. And you can link it up with Hootsuite. There's all sorts of things you can do with AirTable.

Mary Killelea: Oh, right. So, yeah. Oh, that's amazing. Those are gold nuggets. They're gold.

Kelly Mooney: It would take so long to find them, but yeah, at this point, I'd be kind of lost without them.

Mary Killelea: Even though you're helping build other people's brands through photography, or you draw that out to really help elevate their business, sometimes it's hard for us to do it for ourselves. And so we can ask, it's okay to ask, and we should ask when we can't see the trees through the forest.

Kelly Mooney: Right.

Mary Killelea: Or the forest through the trees, however that's saying goes.

Kelly Mooney: I'd go with either one.

Mary Killelea: Yes. Okay. So what have been some of the biggest challenges?

Kelly Mooney: Biggest challenges. At the beginning of deciding to go into photography, and even with PR, one of the biggest challenges was just having faith that the spending money to make money actually was legit. Because especially in photography, I had to shell out a ton of money upfront in order to do this. It is not an inexpensive pursuit, so just believing that I was capable of making that back was a big thing. Marketing. The irony that my background is in PR, and yet, my biggest challenge really is marketing is, I laugh at myself, but I've realized if I were going to take care of myself as a client, it'd be a full time job.

Mary Killelea: Right.

Kelly Mooney: It's really hard for me to do that when I'm trying to be a full time photographer. So, yeah, I'd say if I'd love to see myself as a much stronger marketer, ironically, than almost anything. But that's one of my big challenges right now.

Mary Killelea: Well, and like you said, it comes down to time.

Kelly Mooney: Exactly.

Mary Killelea: And priorities.

Kelly Mooney: And really, to do it right, to really do it targeted, it is a full time gig.

Mary Killelea: Right. So equipment, obviously, is quite expensive. How has the development and progression of digital photography changed your tool set?

Kelly Mooney: I mean, I kind of got into it when it was pretty much all digital anyway. So for me, what's happened is the it's more not so much the equipment, because the equipment is, I mean, it's there's some slight evolutions in terms of it's more, it's smaller, more portable, things like that. But I'll be honest, I mean, a really great photographer can take really great photos with an iPhone. And it's true. Now you can't print them really big. And there are some of the challenges as well. But it is so much more about how you see light, how you see composition, and again, how you pull things out of your subjects. So for me, on the digital front, it's been more the evolution of how I can communicate with people. Obviously, lately, Zoom has been a huge asset, because when it comes to revealing photos to people, I need to do that. Normally, I was doing a lot of that in person, I would invite people to my studio and show them what we had taken and discuss and figure out what they might want to do with their photos, more on the personal portrait side. And I won't be doing that nearly as much now. So, thank heavens for some of the amazing developments we've had from that from the communication standpoint.

Mary Killelea: So, you have I know we've talked about product photography, you do senior photography, you do portraits, and also, I mean, tell me, tell everyone what various offerings you do. And then do you have a favorite?

Kelly Mooney: Oh, yeah. The answer is yes. So my specialties really I do I work with high school seniors. And that's just it's close to my heart, because I started into that when my kids were high school age. So it really just made sense. And I am called mom by about 30 different kids right now. So it just made sense to do something like that. The commercial photography is really something I'm passionate about. So when I say commercial photography, I'm working with everything from an entrepreneur who needs all new images for their website. Whether it's just their headshots, but also what you might look at a stock photography, but it's storytelling images that you can use to communicate your brand. And then larger companies who need photos for their annual reports, and for their shareholder outreach, all of that. So I really do love working in those particular categories. Because again, with that business background, PR background of mine to be able to take their messages and communicate it visually, I think is really powerful. And it's very satisfying to be able to do. That's one of those are my biggest categories. And obviously now the product photography, I would say when it comes to product photography, it's got more of a lifestyle bent to it, meaning more of the photography I do while I can do the basic great looking images on a solid white or solid black background. So, you need that for maybe Amazon or something, showing the product in its environment, which I think, again, helps from a sales standpoint when people can envision. It's like staging for a home. You can envision seeing it and using it on your own, from your own perspective. When you can put a product into that kind of environment, I think it helps sell a lot. So I enjoy that as well. But those are my biggest categories.

Mary Killelea: That's wonderful. So when it comes to work, what's the biggest or should I say biggest or best, best piece of advice that you've received, that you kind of like have latched on and said that really helped me?

Kelly Mooney: This one will go way back to, oh man, this is actually going back to my dad. Okay. So, my father, just as a Becker, my dad was the vice president for Jansen Swimwear here in Portland Market many years ago, and then went on to be the vice president for Vanity Fair Corporation. So dad is a consummate lifelong salesman. And his idea of fun for us when we were at dinner, waiting for our meal was to hand my brother and myself napkins and he would ask us questions that we would have to answer that were sales related. So he would say, what's the most important word in sales? Well, the answer was you, you know, he would make us so the best one he would say was the is the what's in it for me. That to me was that became something that I kind of held on to for years, which is the idea is you look at your client and you see their forehead tattooed with the question what's in it for me? And you've got to always be thinking about that when you're talking to your audience is it's not about what I'm going to get out of this. It's about what am I bringing to you? And I think that's been centering for me. I always come back to that. If I am working with a new client, if I'm networking, if I'm doing anything, I have to think in terms of how am I going to make your life better? That's the job.

Mary Killelea: That's an incredible I would I mean, I could see a book in your future of just table, dinner table, napkin questions by my dad.

Kelly Mooney: You know, my brother and I need to collaborate on that one because dad still does that, by the way. It hasn't ended.

Mary Killelea: That's amazing. And look how impactful I mean, I'm telling you, parents just don't realize the opportunities of teachable moments.

Kelly Mooney: No, and I mean, and there you go. I'm so I'm so lucky because I had the consonant salesman on one side, my mother is a social worker. She taught me so much about everything, you know, active listening and, you know, reflective listening and paying attention to nonverbal cues, all of that was also part of how I was raised. So I had I had a really lovely balance from them that I think kind of gave me the eye and the ear for this.

Mary Killelea: Yeah, that's incredible that you're in tune to knowing the strengths and the goodness that was shared with you. That's awesome. What are three top tips you would give women on networking?

Kelly Mooney: Don't do it the way I did. When I started networking, I was kind of saying yes to all the different opportunities that were kind of thrown at me. And I wish I had done a better job paying attention, really paying attention to what the group's purpose was, who was involved, so I'd say the number one thing is just make sure that you're if you're going to be intentionally networking with groups is make sure that audience is the right fit for you. The other is show up. I mean, show up. I mean, be willing to go put yourself out there, stand up and introduce yourself and talk to people. And then I'm following up. I mean, like everybody does the business card exchange, information exchange, but you've got to make sure that you reach out to people and again, do the research, make sure that you can get an idea of what their business is and maybe figure out how you could help them. And it may not be that I can help them with my photography, but I might know somebody who can. And to me, that's the benefit of networking is when you can make a difference for people, whether or not there's something immediately in it for you.

Mary Killelea: Another nugget.

Kelly Mooney: The advantage of 53 years.

Mary Killelea: I know, right? So I'm sure you've had some bad days over the business life. How do you deal with bad days and disappointments?

Kelly Mooney: I've definitely had plenty. I mean, obviously, one of the things to deal with bad days is remember that it's a job and play. You got to you got to center yourself sometimes and make sure you've got a good balance so that it doesn't like knock you off your feet. But the other thing it learned from like, why is it a bad day? What was it that made it bad and how can you learn from it? I can tell you I had about five or six years ago, I had an epic bad day. I had a client that had hired me to do family photos, not my strength, but I can still do them. But she hired me to do family photos and had mentioned that, and it was ironic, because I mean, when I was talking with her, meeting with her, I did not know this, but she had a residual edema in her leg from cancer. And she had asked, when I do edit her photos, would I be able to help her with that? And I said, no problem, I could do that. I thought I could. I mean, it was a legitimate answer. I really thought I could. When she saw her photos, she told me she was very happy. Everything was great. They placed an order and I delivered all of these beautiful, like giant canvases and things to their home. And she ended up calling me and meeting with me at a Starbucks because she needed to express her severe disappointment in how I had not helped her make that leg look better. And I'll tell you, it was a real blow. It was an ego blow. I felt horrible that I had disappointed her. And there was a part of me that also got maybe even a little defensive about it.

But when I spent some time just thinking about it, I realized I've got two choices here. I can get upset or I can learn. And so it was a pivotal moment in learning really how to push my skills as an editor. And I took a little time off again and just devoted myself to really learning how to edit photos to make my clients absolutely thrilled. And so I can say it still was a bad day. It was a bad week. It was pretty much a bad month for a while. Really, that one was, it was a really pivotal thing. But I absolutely know that in the end it was, it made me so much better as a result.

Mary Killelea: That's such great advice to take in and acknowledge, okay, I might be being defensive or this isn't personal. Like, how do I turn a bad day into a learning experience? I mean, that's just so, so important.

Kelly Mooney: Absolutely. I'm, you know, like I said, it didn't, I'm not going to sit here and say it came to me instantly. But no, I'm really, I'm great in retrospect. I'm really grateful for that experience.

Mary Killelea: You talked about your mom and dad's influence on you. Have you had other mentors throughout your career?

Kelly Mooney: Oh, I've had lots of mentors. Absolutely. Back in the days of when I was in, early in my career, when I was in magazine working with advertising and marketing, I worked with a gentleman named Larry Walker, who was a publisher who launched a magazine called Washington CEO. Man, I was grateful to him. He put so much more faith in me than I ever had in myself. But it was something, there was something about that, that made me elevate expectations of myself. That he sat there saying, I believe in you. And I sat there going, why, you know? And, but it made me want to rise to the occasion. I wanted to make sure I didn't let him down. He was fantastic. Can I say it? My husband, because honestly, no, I'm so lucky. I've got, I've got, my husband has had so much faith in me. When I decided really to do any of these jobs, he was the one that's been kind of my champion. And he is my sounding board. Whenever I run into anything, any type of challenge, he's the, he's usually the first one I want to talk to. So he's been great. But yeah, I've been so lucky. I've had, I've had just a lot of incredible, strong people in my life, you know, but a lot of them are right in my family.

Mary Killelea: Ah, that's amazing. That's wonderful. You are lucky.

Kelly Mooney: I am. I'm spoiled. I know I am.

Mary Killelea: So let's talk about your new venture. Yes. So I didn't even mention it. I want to like, let you talk about it.

Kelly Mooney: Right.

Mary Killelea: Well, the floor is yours.

Kelly Mooney: Okay. Well, when the pandemic hit, and I did realize I'm not going to be able to go out and shoot for a while. I had this random thought one morning after I had been spending some time, as I say, curled in the fetal position, trying to figure out what to do. But I had reserved when we started hearing about the pandemic years, months ago, I had, I had actually gone on and reserved the URL for the social distance life.com. I didn't know what I was going to do with it. I did not know, but I just had a feeling that there was going to be something with that particular term social distance that was going to become part of our language. So, I literally woke up one morning and had kind of all the pieces of my career click into place where I thought there's a need for people to figure out how to manage these times. They need uplifting, you know, positive information and suggestions on ways to connect with other people. And I had a lot of incredibly talented high school and college students I've worked with that I knew were at this point finding themselves with a lot of time on their hands. So I reached out to some of them and we launched a magazine.

So the magazine, it's called the Social Distance Life and it is written primarily, you know, uh, by and for high school and college students talking about just creative ways to connect on, um, companies, businesses that are finding creative ways to make shopping enjoyable. I mean, we really do have, it's very fun. It's ways to get involved, how to help. And one of the things we realized too is especially right now, a lot of these high school students, they aren't getting their yearbooks. So we started profiling these high school seniors who were graduating and that's been incredible. We've, we've gotten such amazing feedback from parents were like, you know, you did this interview, you interviewed my kid and I didn't quite understand why. And you cannot know it was like a highlight for them in what has been such a dark time. And it's growing. It continues to grow. Right now the bulk of the magazine is really being managed. I'm now pretty much an advisor and the students I've really handed over the reins and we meet once a week and we put together the editorial calendar and make our assignments and they're going. The next couple of weeks are going to be amazing because the content that they are developing to unleash is phenomenal.

Mary Killelea: It's so beautiful that you've stepped back and are in an advisor role and that you're empowering them to lead this pioneering time of how do we want to be remembered or how do we want to make this pandemic social distancing craziness any meaningful to us? And so, oh gosh, I love what you're doing.

Kelly Mooney: Oh, thank you. It's been incredibly rewarding as my husband and I, you know, it did take me maybe a little off track from what I could be doing from a profit standpoint. Now, that said, I've come up with a revenue model for them that doesn't yet include advertising, but there's some revenue models that I've handed off to them that they're starting to incorporate so that they themselves can be generating a little bit of income through the magazine, which is, I, that makes me thrilled because I want to see these, these budding entrepreneurs really, you know, make a difference for themselves. One of the discussions that happened this last week is, you know, we had planned for this when we launched it is what do we do when the term social distance kind of disappears or dissipates and what is the message? So we had actually also reserved the domain emerge.media. And it's now it's going to slowly, if they're going to segue it into Emerge Magazine, the idea of it being obviously emerging back into being able to communicate in person, but also knowing that distancing is still going to be part of our lives for a while. So the concept of the kind of harkening back to when the internet started the E, it's the electronic version. So it's, it's how to use electronics to still stay connected.

Mary Killelea: Wonderful. I love the progression and the emergence. And I think to your point, social distancing will have its stigma at some point. So having the concept of the emerging and especially tying it to the media and how you could like put the legs on that and have monetization opportunities galore.

Kelly Mooney: Exactly. No, it's fun. They, they're putting together the, the, the transition plan to, to take it into emerge media. I've seen one of the, the woman who I've, the young woman who is now the editor in chief has taken over. Also she's founded web designer who has volunteered and they're redesigning the whole thing and getting ready to take it to the next level.

Mary Killelea: Helping them build their resume in a time where there's a lot of when we come out of this, there's kids that either are going to have just big gaps or they will have utilized this time to do good or, you know, taking on volunteering and future employees or employers are looking at how are people of all ages utilizing this time? I mean, not to guilt into anyone into doing something that they're not ready emotionally to do, but again, it kind of goes back to turning a negative into a positive.

Kelly Mooney: I've loved seeing the initiative. These students in particular, I mean, obviously I, I lucked out. I found some really talented young people, but even this week, you know, kind of in response to everything that's going on with the, the Black Lives Matter movement, they brought on board two new writers who are people of color and they're going to be creating a whole new category for Black Lives Matter and really addressing now also working, using the, this as a platform for educating.

Mary Killelea: Yeah, love it.

Kelly Mooney: And I'm so proud of them for taking it to that place.

Mary Killelea: Do you consider yourself a role model? And if so, what does that mean to you?

Kelly Mooney: I certainly aspire to be one. I mean, that's, that's been important to me. Absolutely. Humanists can be though, so, yeah, I'm a flawed one, but I do. I'm aware of the incredible fortune I've been given in my life through circumstance and birth and marriage. And so I feel like there's a responsibility, you know, we've got to take care of the next generation a little bit. So I, if I can help mentor students, anybody, I'm always interested in and eager to do that.

Mary Killelea: What would you tell your 20 year old self?

Kelly Mooney: Don't overextend so much would be one, but no, I'd say that honestly, the biggest thing, if I could go back would be, I wish I had learned a lot more about finance and investments. We're very lucky that we've, we've done some good investing by following just some of the basics in terms of leveraging your 401k, leveraging your IRA, doing all of that and maximizing it. But I wish I had a better understanding. I wish I had started aggressively saving at a younger age and investing even for my business. I just wish I had done a little bit more of that and really taught myself. So not too late. I'm working on it now. I don't believe it's too late at all, but yeah, I'd say 20 year old Kelly could definitely get a little more financially savvy.

Mary Killelea: Yeah, that's a common one. What's next for you? I know you just launched the social distance life, and you've got a great photography business. Where do you see yourself in five years from now?

Kelly Mooney: I kind of want to keep doing what I'm doing. I'm lucky. I love what I do. So, working with more of the commercial businesses would be fantastic. And I'm really, I'm enjoying this product photography. So I'd like to see that category grow as well. But this job at first, I wasn't great at balancing my time I was giving, I was putting a ton of 80 hour weeks and easily. And there's something about COVID that has definitely helped me re-center and prioritize a little bit more of my time. And so I think it's about working smarter in the next five years and finding the clients that need the help, but also might be able to pay for the help. So that's kind of where I'm at. But I really, where I'm at is great. I love my setup. I've got a great studio and I get to work with really phenomenal clients. So I just really want to keep doing that.

Mary Killelea: Yeah, that's great to hear. Tell everyone how they can learn more about your business and how they can connect with you.

Kelly Mooney: I am at kellymooneyphotography.com and kellymooney photography on both Facebook and on Instagram. So pretty easy to find.

Mary Killelea: Kelly, thank you so, so much for being on today. It was just a pleasure chatting with you.

Kelly Mooney: Mary, thanks. This has been great. I really appreciate it.

Mary Killelea: Thanks for listening to the episode today. It was really fun chatting with my guests. If you liked our show, please like it and share it with your friends. If you want to learn what we're up to, please go check out our website at 2bbolder.com. That's the number two, little b, bolder.com.