The image below is a remaining scrap of our very first website. This gem lived in a back corner on our about page between a miniature description of our business mission and our lack of personal bio’s because, “I mean, do people really care?” The concept came to realization when we had moved into the staging phase of our website development and noticed that we had neglected to plan for any personal images, we were blinded by the product and lost focus of the brand. So, days before we launched, we decided to pull out some of our design blue prints and take a photo.
These are the actual blueprints behind our logo design. From the proportions of the “T” that we took from my real signature to the The Home Depot paint samples that we used in deciding our brand colors. The photoshoot was staged around our dining room table, on a random summer weekend, and we took turns posing for the photo while the other would stand on a chair to capture a frame that was “close enough” to photoshop together. Honestly, I didn’t like this photo. It took a leap and a stride to figure out how to stage and capture the image properly, and our lack of equipment at the time made it 10 times harder. All that work and at the end it was just, “good enough” to post later.
I tucked the image away in a corner of the website and forgot about it, “The rest of the site is perfect, stock photos look better anyways.” I was going to focus on more important things, like expanding my network and building my relationship with clients. The more I connected with others in the industry and prospects the more I learned about what kept these people up late at night and got them out of bed early in the morning. The drive was admirable, I was immersed, and yet they would always say “ah, it’s not a big deal.”
Much like the stories I was hearing, I started to wonder if that was how I sounded. Was I down playing my hard work and robbing myself of small celebrations along the way just because I wasn’t where I wanted to be yet? I started to wonder why I felt safer behind a website riddled with stock images. Two years into my freelancing career and that was the only image that we had. I noticed that somewhere along the way I had seasoned this innocent image of two 20-something year old’s stepping out of their comfort zone to fit into a bigger dream, with something that tasted bitter.
I can’t pin point exactly where the shift happened, but overtime this photo became one of my favorite images and perhaps the best representation of why we picked “Tenacious” Marketing. Because, behind every great story stands the tenacious characters that drive the plot. Without the process and the push, the story would be lackluster. Be proud of the journey and enjoy the ride. Lastly, I’ll leave you with the advice I give my clients when the conversation comes up, “trust me, stock photos don’t look better anyways.”
Sweetest Regards,
Tanita Antonio