Capturing the Best Version of Life and Work with Nicole Smith
In this episode of Good Enough for Now, we hear from Nicole Smith, who founded a company to help us visually capture all the chapters of life--from hometown moments, memorable vacations and everything in between. In the midst of a business slowdown during the pandemic, Nicole found the opportunity to step back and get really clear on the mission for moving forward.
In business and in life, it’s tempting to want to go and do, grow and scale, but taking the time to look at what matters most is what brings more joy to every chapter. In this episode, Nicole shares what this looks like for her at home, with one child off to college and another just a few years behind. And she talks about how she created a business foundation and culture that’s inclusive and supportive for a global team.
Tune in to hear more about leaning on curiosity, planting the right seeds, and why testing and iteration in business works.
LISTEN NOW
what we cover in this episode:
What it’s like to be in transition in every part of life and how to hang onto what truly matters.
It’s okay to not have all the answers; just get started.
How to start a business from a great idea, without expertise in the industry.
Some of the secrets to building a culture of inclusion and care in a global, remote organization.
How to choose to create the business culture you want, in the face of pressure to grow.
What Nicole does to help her stay grounded over time.
Resources
What Good Enough For Now Means To Nicole Smith
I turned 50 in September. My health is good enough for now, but what I really want to think about as a founder, as a mom, is how do I increase my energy? How do I increase my strength? How do I increase my health? And so looking at 2023, it's good enough for now. But that's something that I definitely want to be more intentional about next year, versus just letting life hit me and putting myself last.
ABOUT Nicole Smith
Nicole is founder of Flytographer, a global marketplace that connects people with hand-picked local photographers for fun, hassle-free photo shoots. It started with vacation photos, but has since expanded to headshots, personal branding shoots, and hometown shoots.
Nicole has grown Flytographer from idea to a profitable, multi-million dollar business that operates in 385+ cities across six continents, and was ranked as one of the fastest-growing startups in Canada in 2017 & 2018 by Canadian Business Magazine. Flytographer has been called “The Future of Travel Photography” by Conde Nast Traveler and “An Ingenious Travel Hack” by Oprah.com.
In 2018 she was selected as an EY “Winning Women” and featured in Mashable’s “Eight Women Shattering the Travel Industry’s Glass Ceiling.” She also pitched on Dragons’ Den.
Nicole is board member at The Forum, a non-profit supporting women entrepreneurs and spent 13 years at Microsoft, prior to launching Flytographer.
-
Stephanie Kruse 0:05
Welcome to Good Enough for Now, a podcast aimed at dismantling perfectionism one conversation at a time. I'm Stephanie Kruse and along with my guests on the show, we share stories of false starts unexpected you turns in moments of reinvention that happen as we move through life. Thanks for joining me, my hope is that our conversations will help you stay grounded, feel a little less alone, and a little bit more together.
Stephanie Kruse 0:40
My guest today is Nicole Smith, we were talking about life transitions. Not only professionally, she's grown a company from an idea to a multimillion dollar venture and has now got the ability to think about it from a cultural standpoint, not just scaling, the revenue, and also our life transition with her two sons, one of whom is a freshman in college this year, and one who's still at home, in high school, and what that presents in terms of opportunities to Nicole. I also loved her candor about sharing the fact that as a lone solopreneur she went from fear in worrying about how to kind of make the next dollar or grow her business to the next level, to a sense of curiosity about what was to come next. How would she think about who she wanted to have on her team, what values the company has possessed, and how they want to make a difference. And going forward. It's a great conversation. I'm excited for you to listen, so let's get into it.
Stephanie Kruse 1:48
Nicole Smith is founder of flytographer, a global marketplace that connects people with handpicked local photographers for fun, hassle free photoshoots. It started with vacation photos, but has since expanded to headshots, personal branding, shoots and hometown shoots. Nicole has grown flytographer from an idea to a profitable multimillion dollar business that operates in over 385 cities across six continents. It's been ranked as one of the fastest growing startups in Canada, and it's been called the future of travel photography by Conde Nast Traveler, and an ingenious travel hack by oprah.com. Nicole has been selected as an EY winning women and featured in Mashable, eight women shattering the travel industry's glass ceiling. She's a board member at the forum, a nonprofit supporting women entrepreneurs. And prior to founding her company, she spent 13 years at Microsoft. Welcome Nicole Smith.
Nicole Smith 2:44
Hi, Stephanie. It's great to be here.
Stephanie Kruse 2:47
I am looking at your background window and these beautiful green trees. So I can tell that you are in the Pacific Northwest.
Nicole Smith 2:55
You nailed it.
Stephanie Kruse 2:57
Since I'm talking about your beautiful scenery, where are you in your life right now.
Nicole Smith 3:03
So where I'm at in my life right now, it's, I would say one chapter is finishing and a new chapter starting across a few different levels. So I'm a mom, I've got two sons. And I've been working on my business for almost 10 years now. And so it's a really interesting time in my personal life and for flytographer in that I spent the last 10 years building this company. And it's finally at a point where the next chapter is not about kind of the grind and the hustle and getting the legs up on this business. But it's more about, okay, how do we scale it? Where do we take it from here. And so on the business side, it's all about kind of being more intentional, the kind of company I want to build in the future. And I could talk a little bit more about that, because it's really, really exciting topic for me to dig into. And then on the personal side, my oldest son just went to college. So I'm have one one son at home. And so it's just kind of having the recognition that time is flying by and to really make the most of the moments and the memories with Jack for the next three years. Because it is yeah, it's a really interesting life transition when your child is no longer under your roof every single day.
Stephanie Kruse 4:17
Yeah, you're about a year and a half ahead of me on that one. My eldest is a junior in high school this year. And I'm just beginning to sort of get the fact that it will be a very bittersweet moment as she goes on to her next chapter. And then that transition of having my son I have a younger son, who will be in high school when she goes on, which sounds like about where you're at. And thinking through like, wait, wait, how did I get here so quickly?
Nicole Smith 4:49
No, know. It's like when people just in diapers, wasn't it just they were learning to ride a bike and then all of a sudden they're driving and then they're in another city. And I think it's Really interesting this time of life because they changed. So I mean, in my case, anyways, your kids change so much. You can't peel them off you when they're younger to, like, they're repelled by the things you say and do. And then seeing this other side with my son who through grade 12, sort of came around the corner again. And now he is one of my favorite people to talk to like, he's just absolutely amazing. And so it's, I guess, they say, the circle of life, you know, go through all these changes, and they're all different and beautiful in their own ways. But some are definitely a little bit more frustrating than others, and some are a little bit more rewarding than others.
Stephanie Kruse 5:39
Yeah, and it's like, when the rewarding stuff happens, how do you just bask in that? Right?
Nicole Smith 5:45
I have to tell you a quick story. So I turned 50 In September,
Stephanie Kruse 5:49
congratulations.
Nicole Smith 5:51
And so my older son, Harrison came back from college for my birthday party for the weekend. And, you know, he was with his girlfriend, and they were talking to all these different guests at the party, and everyone came up to me after and I like, Oh, he's such a nice kid, and is so mature. And like, I think the difference of being away for a month at college and coming back home, I was so happy he was there and so proud of him. And it was just one of those moments where when you launch your kid, and they're out there in the room, they come back and they're just this like, wonderful human. It's just Yeah, it's the best feeling in the world.
Stephanie Kruse 6:25
Lucky you, you're already seeing that. That's great. Well, I will look forward to it because I am in the complete irrelevant stage.
Nicole Smith 6:33
Yeah, you took a lot of deep breaths and that stage and like, Okay, I'm gonna stay neutral. And totally.
Stephanie Kruse 6:40
You mentioned something when you started describing kind of where you are in this transition stage in your life, about scaling your company, and thinking more about how to build a culture that you're really into and excited about. And so I want to hear about that. Because often, when I talk to entrepreneurs, or women that it's gone on their own, whether it be a side project, or ends up becoming the thing they're doing, often it's the product or the brand, or, you know, how are we going to get the message out there, the marketing piece of it, and that is all front and center. But I don't often get to hear about how to intentionally build a culture and what that phase is like.
Nicole Smith 7:24
Yeah, it's a really interesting phase. I think there's a lot when you're an entrepreneur, and you start a business from scratch. There's lots of different stages that you go through. And oftentimes, just to survive, you're focused on getting product market fit and cashflow, and keeping the wheels on the business. A lot of times I think entrepreneurs don't really invest in being intentional about the kind of culture they want to want to build. I know I didn't I know that. You know, it's something you hear and you're aware of, you're like, oh, yeah, yeah, you know, and you think you're doing it, but you're not necessarily always doing it in in my case, it was more about in the early days, like figuring absolutely everything out from scratch. And it's almost Syfy and in those early days, you're just trying to stay alive, you're trying to paddle above water. And then in our case, we scaled the business, but then COVID hits, and then we had to like, sort of shut down and reevaluate everything. And I think through that, almost metamorphosis created space to think about what the next chapter for flytographer was going to look like. And so because things had sort of stopped, travel had stopped, people weren't booking, vacation, photoshoots anymore, had to really kind of like, get still and think about, you know, what the future of this business was going to look like. And one of the things that happened to most of us, or many of us is, we went from working in an office nine to five to working from home or working remotely. And so that was one of the big changes for flytographer as well. We also looked at hiring people in different cities. So the team is a little bit more geographically diverse now. And so as we started to scale back after COVID, we had this team that was no longer in an office in Victoria, all working together, Monday to Friday, we had a team that was kind of new, because we had unfortunately downsize the team 80% And then slowly rebuild as travel picked up again. And so what that meant is that we ended up having, for example, an entirely new customer experience team, and nobody had met in person. And so it sort of was a forcing function for me to think about, what kind of culture do we want to build because it was like, we have the opportunity of a blank slate in thinking about all the lessons I've learned as a founder and what didn't work in the past and how to, you know, make things different in the future. One of the big things was thinking about our company values and what were the things that as a company really mattered to us and so we went through the exercise of really identifying what those were, and what the values were going to be to take flytographer into the next 10 years. That was kind of like the first step. And you know, we also looked at, you know, reassessing our mission and all of those things. And then really bringing on team members that were deeply aligned with those values deeply aligned with the mission that we were going to be building and building in processes to make sure that we were living up to those values as a company, and that we were staying true to them. And so I have a leadership coach, goalie, who I know, you know, as well, and goalie has been fantastic, and really helping me kind of think through a lot of what she refers to as conscious leadership principles. And so a lot of that goes around self awareness, understanding where you're at, are you above the line? Are you below the line thinking about things like when a situation hits you being aware of where you're at? Like, are you reacting from a place of fear to this challenge in front of you? Or can you move into a place of curiosity. And so, as I started to learn a lot of these tools from goalie, it made me realize that I think in the first part of my journey, I was reacting to a lot of things from a place of fear, just because everything was so new and overwhelming as a solo founder for so long. And being able to be more intentional and think about, okay, like, how do I get to a more neutral place and react to these things from a place of curiosity. And so by doing that, work with goalie, and then taking those principles, and bringing that across to my leadership team, and then after we did that was bringing them to the whole company. So then we had this shared set of language, a framework on how we wanted to show up, and how we wanted to communicate in healthy ways as a team. And, you know, it's always a work in progress. But it feels so good to have this common vernacular and way of seeing the world.
Stephanie Kruse 12:04
Yeah, you know, you hear stories about company, mission statements, and policies and systems. And you know, you see this a lot in employee engagement groups around women's initiatives, or D AI. And that all sounds like a structure that should support a culture. But often, I'm sure you've seen this, too, it doesn't match up when you actually are inside those walls. One of the other guests that we had recently talked to talked about this, and what a challenge it is to live your values as a culture, and actually put that into the systems that drive your daily business. So you know, if you've gotten everybody on board, and you're all holding arms in values, what does that look like in practice on a daily basis, within your distributed office, right, your Dow virtual world,
Nicole Smith 13:07
you know, it's one of those things where you can't just write them and post them and assume everyone's going to adopt them. It's sort of like an ongoing, intentional effort to bring those in a few places that we do that is, we talk about our values regularly within our team meetings, especially like our quarterly all hands, when we have our town halls, we use examples and bring the language in. But I think more day to day, one of the things we strive to do, and it's magic, when you hear it happening, is to bring up the language and practice the language as a leadership team with your people and use examples. So one example would be, oh, hey, I'm gonna go into curiosity right now around this, because I'm like thinking about this issue. And actually just seeing the value and seeing the word because one of our values is curiosity. As a leader, if you're using that language regularly, it's just going to seep in through osmosis. And then when you know it's taken off is when you see your team members starting to just randomly pull up the language and use it as well. So I think it's gotta be modeled by leadership, you need to bake in reminders and refreshes in fun ways throughout team meetings and structures like that. And then you need to build it into your systems like how you hire people. So we have value based interview questions that we use as a filter so that when people come in, we have a set of questions that will help us understand if that candidate is aligned with our values or not. We also use that if there's like any sort of coaching opportunities within the company, where we can again refer back to our values and say, Hey, I noticed this and it's out of alignment with this value. Like, let's figure out how we get you back above the line. Let's work on that together. So I think it's it's a little bit of modeling and it's a little bit of putting it in your different systems.
Stephanie Kruse 14:57
When it sounds like to your planning seeds, and then you're starting to watch them sprout, which is so amazing. And what a gift. Because obviously you have done the scrappy part of getting the business off the ground. I'm sure that wasn't simple, easy, always felt great. Yeah, I've heard you talk about how you ideated flytographer. And that once you have the idea that you sat on it for a while. And as someone who sat on the idea of a lot of things for a while, as well, I can definitely relate to that. But as you look back at that experience, what did you not know, then, that you feel like you've grown from now?
Nicole Smith 15:50
I think that there's a couple things that come to mind. First of all, I really believe that almost everything is figured out double. And I know Marie Forleo first used that word. I don't know if it's a real word. But I love that word. Yes. I love that word, because it is really true. I'm not a photographer by trade. And I remember in the early days, when I was meeting with photographers, this was like before I even launched the site. And I met with some photographers, I was in Germany, and just telling them about the concept and trying to like, explain it. And I remember they asked me a very pointed question around. Well, okay, that sounds great. Now, what size do you need? Or what format? Do you need the photos delivered in? I had no idea. I didn't know how to respond to that. So I sort of frozen the moment moment thinking, Oh, my God, I'm such a fraud. Why did I think I could start a global photography brand when I'm not a photographer. And I just had that moment of pure like, kind of panic. So I just paused. And I thought to myself, Okay, how do I react to this? And I came back to him, and I said, Oh, well, how do you typically deliver them? And he was like, oh, did it did it did it? I was like, oh, yeah, that's exactly how we do it, too. So you have these moments where you're not going to know all the answers, you're gonna have to figure things out as you go. And to just trust that you are going to be able to figure things out as you go and learn. So I think that's the first thing is just knowing that you don't know the answers to get started. The second thing for me anyways, is you don't have to build the whole machine to start, you can test little pieces, and do things that don't scale. And you're going to learn a lot. So I remember in the first year, we didn't have a booking platform for flytographer. For actually three years, we used Excel, we had like an off the shelf CRM system, Gmail, bubble gum into fix, and it was just Wizard of Oz behind the screen. I think that you don't necessarily need to go out, raise a whole bunch of money build this whole complex thing. Because if you start smaller, and you test and you learn what your customers really care about, or in our case, it was also photographers as a marketplace, that testing and learning and iterating. And going through this feedback loops, really helps you build something that lands with your stakeholders. So I think that was something that I didn't really know as much in the early days, but just learn through the process of doing.
Stephanie Kruse 18:19
Yeah, I appreciate that example, because one of the thoughts I had about it, too, in hearing you talk was that that phrase, you know, the everything is figured out? Well, obviously, we're resourceful people, you know, you had a corporate career and education, right? You had tools. Maybe you weren't a photographer and hadn't conceived of this business before. But you had a skill set that you brought to bear, right, as you figured it out along the way. At the same time, not knowing answers. Right. But asking questions, brings me to mind the thought of like, you kind of always have everything you need. You just have to figure out how to use which part of you to go forward to vet next thing. Now you're building out the cultural piece. How do you know when to sort of continue to be patient on things versus feel compelled to scale and earn money and all of those carrots that dangle out there? When it comes to oh my gosh, I've got a responsibility. Now I have employees. I have a big platform. I have customers that are expecting something. How do you think about the balance of that pressure? And growing in that conscious leadership space?
Nicole Smith 19:35
Yeah, this is something I've been spending a lot of time thinking about over the last couple of years through the pandemic. Going into the pandemic. We weren't profitable. We were going to be hitting profitability in 2020. But we had raised money we'd raised an angel round and a seed round and we're very much focused as a business on hyper growth, like building out our platform, building up the dev team, investing in like customer acquisitions. You really grow the marketplace and you know, really own the space. And when COVID hit and there was this opportunity to think about, okay, what are the controllables? In my world? What are the uncontrollables in my world? And like, How can I affect things? And what kind of business? Do I want to run for the next, you know, 10 years, it was thinking about how do we continue to scale with ease and flow? What does that look like. And so for me, the most important thing is that I'm working with a team that feels appreciated, that feels like they're happy in the work that they do their balance, no one's working. Crazy, you know, Elon Musk, Twitter hours, everyone is working like, normal, healthy, full time job. But on top of that, on top of like, ensuring that that team feels appreciated, seen, that they're balanced, but also being challenged, and they're growing within themselves and within the team. The other part of that is really shepherding this company through profitability. And so we hit profitability in 2021. And we're profitable this year, we're gonna continue to be profitable. So we won't need to raise money, again, as a business. And that was really by intention that I want to continue to scale the business, we want to grow, but not at the cost of being forced to fundraise again, or being in a financially precarious situation when you face when your business death, like so many travel companies did. A lot of businesses didn't join COVID, it gives you this great opportunity to really think about what can change and what you want to be different. And so we looked at how do we really assess all of our operating expenses and make things more efficient, improve the number of automations across the company, and get us towards a pathway of profitable, sustainable growth and scale, balanced with the team being happy, the team doing work that matters, the team continuing to learn. And so that's all I think about right now is I'm not trying to be $100 million company, I want us to keep growing, and we're growing at a really healthy rate right now. And the team is happy. And I honestly, sometimes pinch myself because I can't believe we've gotten to this place, after all the ups and downs and things over the years that we're at this place where it feels really good.
Stephanie Kruse 22:22
And I know it didn't come at no cost, time and effort to you. What resources do you use to keep yourself really grounded in the midst of what could feel like a very intense experience?
Nicole Smith 22:37
I think over time you learn how to what I call surf the startup waves better because you're gonna keep getting waves, you're gonna keep getting these things that come at you and you just learn how to surf through them better. So it's a bit of a mindset shift of, okay, now this trap is coming out my head, what are the tools at my disposal? What can I control? What can I not control. And so I think, the more experience you have going through your startup, you're able to kind of like hit things that are coming at you with a neutrality. So remaining calm is something that I've been able to hone over the years. I think the other big thing for me is have a morning gratitude practice. I've been doing it consistently for about a year and a half now. And it's just literally three minutes. First thing I wake up, before I touch my phone or get out of bed. I don't even write it down, because I'm not a good journal, er, but I say it in my head. And I say five different things. That's my script that I kind of go through every day. And then I lean into, like, maybe something that happened yesterday, or like, you know, go off script, I'm grateful for my 15 year old son, dumped for the first time in basketball. And so until that, he had that moment of joy. And you know, like so could be like a little thing. But having the script of like, I'm grateful to be healthy, and you know, just really centers you into the things that matter. And so that exercise, as small as it seems that three minutes a day is probably one of the best three minutes I invest in my day. So that's something that I do a lot of, I think that as your business grows, there's just a lot more opportunity for you to get out of having just generalists doing a bunch of different jobs at your company and bring in specialists. And so we brought on someone new on the devtas leading our dev team who's incredibly experienced that has helped take a lot of pressure off of me in that capacity. So I always like think that when you get to a certain stage and your business can sustain it, bringing those experts that know how to take you from where you're at today through that next phase of growth. And that also helps manage your burnout as a founder as well.
Stephanie Kruse 24:46
Yeah, I can see so many similarities and just I mean, we started the conversation talking a little bit about being moms right. And you have to outsource and be smart. You can't do it all because you get burnt out, you know, whether you're a single mom married, you know, your kids walk to school, or you have to drive them. I mean, every iteration of a family life requires some help and systems to make it work, even if you're the only one getting things done, right. So I love how you describe that relevant to your work life, too. And, you know, let people be specialists like, yeah, I don't want to mow my own lawn. I'm not a specialist at that. I'm going to do that for me. Right? Yeah, you should not be the only person caring about dev in your company. Right? It frees you up to do other things. Absolutely. Yeah. So to wrap up, I have one last question for you. Because the name of the podcast is good enough for now, that can evoke some thoughts in your head about what that might mean to you? Would you share with me what it's good enough for now? brings to mind?
Nicole Smith 25:59
Well, there's a lot of things that are good enough for now. But I want to improve in the future. So
Stephanie Kruse 26:06
that's totally fair.
Nicole Smith 26:09
I mean, one of the things I've been thinking a lot about, as I mentioned earlier, I've turned 50 in September, and like my health is good enough for now. But what I really want to think about as a founder, as a mom, is how do I increase my energy? How do I increase my strength? How do I increase my health and so looking at 2023, it's good enough for now. But that's something that I definitely want to be more intentional about next year, versus just letting life hit me and putting myself last. And I know a lot of women do that, like we're holding all these things up, whether it's work or family. And we often put ourselves last. And I'm definitely mindful of that and trying to think about how I can be more intentional about that next year.
Stephanie Kruse 26:58
Thank you for that. I love that. So I'm going to stay with my family. And I've already been looking at booking photographers and I think what you have developed with it is the ultimate and self care for capturing experiences. If listeners want to know more about how to book a photographer, or the other products that photographers now offering, how can they find you?
Nicole Smith 27:22
So the best place to go is flytographer.com. Our website, you can learn more about the different we're in 400 cities, you can book a photographer view, each city of local photographers portfolios are there. If you're going to Madrid, for example, you can see Julia, one of our photographers, you can see her photos read a little bit about her and inquiring book directly there. Yeah, it's really turnkey, and all of our photographers are handpicked by us, we only hire about 3% that apply. So you're not only going to have great photos, and you're going to be in the photo when you're traveling with your family for once. But you're going to learn local tips and have a fun experience with that local photographer. So they'll give you tips that will help enrich the rest of your trip. So it's really fun experience.
Stephanie Kruse 28:08
Oh, that sounds amazing. I can't wait to try it out.
Nicole Smith 28:11
Yeah.
Stephanie Kruse 28:12
Thanks again for coming on today. I really enjoyed our conversation.
Nicole Smith 28:16
Oh, thank you so much, Stephanie was absolutely a blast.
Unknown Speaker 28:24
Thank you so much for joining me. Please share the show with your friends by word of mouth, send them a text and maybe leave a rating and review. It really helps people find good enough for now. Don't forget to also follow us on your favorite podcast player like Apple or Spotify. So you can get new shows automatically each time they're released. You'll find Show Notes at goodenoughfornowpod.com and you can connect on Instagram at goodenoughfornowpod. See you next time.
