Creative Women In Business, Interview #4: Valarie Myles
Last week we took our journey to the next level to interview creative women in business and learn about them in honor of Women’s History Month.
This week we conclude with our last individual who not only tells us working hard is mandatory but is in the process of making a comeback.
Interview four: Valarie Myles.
Valarie Myles is a photographer who specializes in portraits with creative styles. Working on her craft for years, she built her portfolio on styles such as headshots, individual portraits, and couple and family photos. She is also a digital artist and graphic designer with a wide range aesthetic.
For now, she’s continuing her education and working on her photography so she can finally begin her career and make her skills profitable.
Questions:
Why do you consider yourself not a business owner and what do you think is required to get to that next step?
Answer:?The only reason I don’t consider myself as a business owner yet is that I’m still in the process of learning and I keep treating my work as a side hustle. My business is just a baby.
Eventually, I would like to make it a full-time hustle but since I’m under the impression that I don’t know what I’m doing, I feel like I can’t call it a business. I do understand that in order to make a successful business you need to fail here and there but not so bad that you can’t get back up. I'm still in good spirits to go for it but it’s overwhelming at the time since I'm going to school and working full-time.
What inspired you to do this type of business?
Answer:?I’ve seen other people do what I loved to do and what sparked me the most was when I saw that you can make money from it.
I learned fairly quickly that it only works if you have an audience but I realized it doesn’t have to work that way.
What are your plans for the year?
Answer:?One of the things I would like to do with photography is have one free photoshoot every month so that I could practice with natural and indoor light. This way I can explore different portrait style photography I enjoy so I won’t be the ‘everything’ photographer.
As for digital art, I haven’t uploaded in like 3 years because I’ve been out of it. My twin sister Vanessa's followers visit my art page and they’re like ‘when you’re gonna upload your work?’ So I’ll probably make a comeback in June/July. I wanna see if I can at least stream once a month.
How has the journey been so far for you? Any setbacks, endeavors and/or wins?
Answer:?It hasn’t been as easy as I thought. Between working and school, I realize I needed to cut back some work hours. I was doing family sessions with portraits every weekend but I felt I was cheated from doing the sessions at my job. I realized that just because I might think I’m a good photographer doesn’t mean everyone might see it that way and that every client has different tastes.
A win for me is when we did that photoshoot in the summer of last year and I was shooting in Manual mode. My heart felt out of my butt when I found out that I was shooting in Jpeg and had to switch to raw!
Also when we did that shoot at Navy Pier, that was a win for me. May not be a win for anything else but that was a win for me.
As a businesswoman, have you ever dealt with setbacks based on your gender within your career?
Answer:?I never experienced this but where I work currently, I was around other female photographers and a male coworker said: ‘male photographers are better, female photographers don’t know what they're doing.’
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The majority of the photographers that work here are women and one of the best I know is a woman so we told him: ‘we can do it too, we can be photographers too.’
Who is your favorite woman in history big or small? How do they inspire you? Do you think the women of yesterday would be proud of what you’re doing?
Answer:?My mom and the reason is that she explained to me when I was a kid: ‘if you don’t work hard, you won’t be successful.’ I get my workaholic attitude from her.
I may not have a master's degree yet or a fancy house but I consider myself pretty successful. As long as I build myself as a better person I consider myself successful.
I want to say yes that the women of yesterday would be proud because of all the resources and access and use of them to make ourselves better.
How do you deal with doubt, Imposter Syndrome, etc? What’s motivating you to keep going?
Answer:?I still struggle with imposter syndrome, but I always think that if this random person can do this and be successful, I can do it too. I was under the impression that everyone walks on the same path but no, everybody’s path is different.
What’s motivating to keep me going? My sister Vanessa. When started our youtube channels back then in high school, I was creating animations all the time and I made it all the way to 950 subs! As of now, it dropped to 200 but she’s always motivated me to keep going. Her followers are motivating me and her followers’ followers are motivating me.
What mantra or quote do you live by?
Answer:?I don’t have a quote in mind but I think of it as: ‘when I wake up every morning I‘m thankful to see the next day’ and I ask myself, ‘what can I do to make myself better today than I did yesterday and how can I improve?’
For anyone that wants to be in your position or just starting off, what are 3 tips you would give them?
Answer:?1. Go ahead and just do it and if you feel like your work is bad it's okay, you gotta figure it out someway somehow
2. Stop listening to everyone. People tell me that my work is ‘bad’ and that I'm a bad photographer or a bad artist but how else am I going to improve? Telling me that my work bad is not enough.
3. Don’t be the ‘everything’ person. when some artists and photographers do everything, they have burnout quickly.
Is there anything you would like to share or anything our reader should know about you or your business?
Answer:?hopefully I can make a better comeback than I did in the previous years where I’m not blowing it off.
Me and my sister are still in the process of doing an online art shop together. Photography-wise, I would like to do a photoshoot with a princess in the forest concept this summer.
Check out her art page and photography page and give her a follow to track her journey!
Instagram art page: @Bunnyluvsusagi
Instagram photography page: @valariecphotography
Thank you so much for reading and can’t wait for you all to see what I have planned for April for Poetry Month! for more of my work, follow me on?Medium!
-Sade (till next month…)