Time Management, Passion and Motivation in Creative Business with Cait Pearson
Food photographer and podcast badass, Cait Pearson, comes on the podcast to chat all things time management, passion, and motivation surrounding the day-to-day lives of a creative business owner. Do you need a spike of motivation today?
What were some of the success that you have had and some of the things you had to overcome?
“Honesty, my first big client happened six months after moving. It happened because I was relentless in calling people and even just sitting in rooms with their creative teams. My first client was a restaurant group, that was very large in Portland. I had just started reaching out to PR agencies and different agencies in Portland and saying “ Hey, I am a food photographer in the industry, I would love to sit down and just be in the room with your team, even if you don’t have an opening. I’m just trying to learn more about the industry. I am super curious of the workflow and what that looks like out here because I don’t much about the industry on this side of the country.” I will tell you, I would send out about 10-20 emails per day and I would hear nothing back for weeks and weeks and it was so devastating. Finally, instead of sending emails, I would go onto their websites, find their phone number and I would just call them. I was just that annoying person, and it sounds so cliché. I just didn’t care, I wanted someone to talk to. When you know so clearly that you love to do something, and that you are going to deliver, and not just deliver, but over deliver – and knock the socks off whomever – because you will work circle over everyone else and you are really passionate to be there and love what you are doing, that matters so much more than anything on your resume.
What’s really disheartening is when I moved here 4 years ago, I wanted to connect with food photographers in the industry to get to know if they were doing hourly, where they doing packages, and no one – not a single person – emailed me back. I felt very overwhelmed, I felt very alone. The only way I am going to know is if I just do it and figure it out along the way. Finally, I contacted restaurant groups and went straight to the source.
I finally got in touch with someone who sent my email to someone else, which was then sent to someone else…. And then sent to someone else. Finally it went into the right person, and I was asked to take photos of food for this app that was being created and I lost my sh*t. Those photographs that I look four years ago, are still in my portfolio because they are such great photos and because the restaurants are so well known in Portland.
It’s just about being relentless and being unique and standing out in any way that you can.
The second year I was here, my camera broke and I lost all the images and a contract with a client. I sat on a street corner and cried my eyes out to my dad on the phone, because everything I worked so hard for was virtually done. I can’t work on any photography clients if I don’t have a camera. I had gotten fired from my last job at that point because my assistant, someone I had hired for the job, had a better camera then I did, so they fired me, and then three weeks later my camera broke – thank you universe.
I had gotten fired from my full-time job. I had started a Podcast, and I was just really curious as a millennial, where people where at in their journeys. I was just asking questions about your mid 20’s and I felt that I couldn’t be the only one who feels this way about trying to check off all the boxes and not feeling fulfilled. They had listened to my show and they fired me.
There monumental earthquakes in my life, where it was really about what I wanted to do going forward, who I was going to be and how I was going to show up. This past year, my podcast ranked on Apple, and it was amazing. It was just beyond, and I was so grateful. All these people kept emailing me about being on the show and pitching me. People that were bestselling authors, to someone having a show on the Oprah Winfrey network – I turned into a kid with a shiny object.
I quickly realized that these people didn’t care about my show, they wanted to promote their own agendas. I had to make a really hard choice, and I knew if I kept on this path, I was going to lose my “why” and I was going to lose why the people come and listen to the show. I stopped recording the show for the entire summer last year. I am not going to call that a failure. It was devastated because it forced me to be honest to why I wanted to show up and why people were coming to share their time with me and listen to the podcast. I stopped because I was losing that and I was losing the integrity of what we were doing,”
Cait really is an inspiration and you can hear it in her voice her true passion. She could have had fame, but she stayed true to herself, true to her values and most important true to her creative. Listening to her, it is very clear that she loves what she does, and it isn’t about the money, it isn’t about the fame, it’s about finding the “why” in your passion and continuing on that path and showing greatness, not being molded into someone else to please other’s or to increase ratings. It takes someone with great creativity, morals and true passion to stay on this path, to choose yourself and to choose your fans above all else.
Listen to the full podcast here.
Follow along with Cait:
Photography site https://www.caitpearson.com/food
Podcast https://www.sheshungryco.com/podcast
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/sheshungryco/