The Magic Of Travel Photos With Flytographer

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Meggan: Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the travel mug podcast. So Jenn and I both have upcoming trips planned for June finally. So we're inspired more than ever to share relevant travel advice and information, which definitely includes today's guest joining us today's Nicole Smith.

She's founder of Flytographer. So, what is Flytographer? I mean, we could try to tell you what it's all about and how it started, but I think obviously Nicole could do a much better job than we could. So before we dive in, Hey, Nicole, welcome to the podcast. We're so excited to have you.

Nicole: Thank you so much for having me you guys. It's great to be here.

Meggan: Awesome.

So Nicole of course tell us all about Flytographer, how it came to be. And I do love a story inspired by Paris. So I'm super excited to hear how all this came about for you.

Nicole: Yeah, so it basically the whole idea of the company yet started in Paris and it started with a personal problem that I had, which I'm sure many of your listeners have as well.

You go on this amazing trip. You're with this amazing person you're making these amazing memories and then you come home and all you have are these terrible selfies or like awkward shot photos by strangers that don't actually reflect what you saw or what you felt in the moment. And so that was happening.

I was,

um, I was in Paris with my best friend. She lives in Europe. So we hadn't seen each other in like three years. And we had this like magnificent weekend together. I was there for work and we had three days alone with no husbands and no children, which is, you know, that just never happens. Right. So we thought, okay, let's just walk around, soak up our favorite neighborhoods.

And we didn't even want to do the touristy things. Cause we'd been to Paris before. We just wanted to like soak up the architecture. Walk walk with a coffee and talk and we thought this is never going to happen again. We need to capture it. We need a moment so that when it's a rainy November, we can look back at this photo and it'll take us right back to Paris.

But none of the photos that we were taking on our own were reflective of that. Like we do a selfie and you know, when you try to take a selfie, pretty much all your heads in the photo, because at the. Or we give our iPhones to a kind stranger well-intentioned stranger who would then proceed to take photos where her head was cut off.

Or I had five chins and it just didn't reflect what we were feeling or the magic of the moment. And so the next day we were lucky enough to meet up with a friend of hers who lived in Paris. I gave her my iPhone and I just said, Hey, can you take a couple shots of us, but from a distance wide angle. So like, You know, we're, you know, 20 feet away and you're capturing the magic of Paris, the beauty of the architecture, like we're this big and then there's Paris.

And so she did this and she took, and she was from Saskatchewan, actually another Canadian. And so she took you know, 20 minutes worth of photos just as we walked down the cobblestones with our backs to the camera, or we'd go up on a bridge and it was really fun and playful. And when I looked at my phone after I thought.

You know, wow. This captured the spirit of our trip in a way that those selfies just weren't and this is going to be the best souvenir I bring home. And so that was the Genesis of the whole idea.

Meggan: Right! Oh, that's amazing. I love that. And you're so right. Like my husband and I have joked before that, like we come home from trips. This was before we get a selfie stick and I hate to say those words. When you're just the two of you, what choice do you have? So trips before that though, we'd come home and be like, oh, that was a fun trip you seem to have had by yourself because he's alone in pictures or I'm alone in pictures or you're right.

And he hates it when I like try to bother other people to like take care of it.

And I'm like, I don't care, or we're never going to have pictures, just the two of us if I don't. So I totally, I can totally see the evolution of how that happened.

Nicole: We hear from moms all the time that you know, 40% of our customers are our moms booking family shoots because they're like missing from the memories once chronicling them. They're the ones off. I mean, not always, but more often than not, the mums are missing from the photo because they're the ones trying to like corral everybody and Chronicle everyone.

And they either get left out completely. Or then if they, you know, give their camera to a stranger, it's just this like terrible unflattering shot that they don't even want to post. So.

Jenn: Oh, that's that important! I love that so much. And I hate to bring up the virus that shall not be named, but

Meggan: let's get it out of the way, right away.

Jenn: Talk about it now, because it has changed everything in the travel and tourism industry. So how did business change for you over the last two years?

Nicole: Yeah. So you think your business is full-proof because you're in 380 cities around the globe, so you don't really write a business plan for what happens if that entire world stops traveling.

So we were pretty screwed to be perfectly honest. We we were going in and, and like for everyone in the travel industry knows it's a highly seasonal business. And so we're coming out of low season. high season is typically, you know, March through September. So coming out of low season about to hit high season, super excited.

And then obviously the whole world shuts down. And so we actually had to lay off 80% of our team. We had to kind of go into like hibernation mode because it wasn't just the fact that. We, you know, we were going into high season and, you know, it was like peak bookings were starting to come in and all that revenue was lost.

We had the sort of, sort of like secondary effect of this wave or tsunami of refund requests. So people that have been booking for the last six months. Prepay. And so we had no cash coming in, but then we had all this cash going out because everyone's like, well, I can't travel. And so you know, it was really, really scary at the time.

And there's so much, you don't know, right? Like everything's unknown. We were all figuring this out as a world together. And so you know, Over the last two years, there's been a lot of really powerful lessons and dark times. But the thing that you know, I keep going back to is, you know, there was a lot of lights that came out of this.

And for us as a company, we, we became more diversified. We now do more than just vacation issues. So we do headshots and we do hometown shoots. And the team we've been rebuilding the team where we're back up to probably 70% of where we were before, but we've automated a lot of our processes. So we're more efficient.

We won't need to have such a large team anymore. So we've done a lot of things that have kind of helped make us be a longer company. A stronger company long-term and a lot of lessons learned and I think the biggest one was just the gratitude and the being grateful for, you know, little moments and like many people, our team is now remote.

So instead of going to an office in Victoria and having everybody live here, our team is now based from Honolulu to Montreal. And so now we're able to hire people across the country and have a more diverse team. I love it because as a mom, I can now like, look out the window and see the birds while I'm on zoom calls and pick up my kids and put the chicken in and you know, it's just a little less chaotic, but still you know, the team is working better than ever. So anyways, like lots of light and lots of dark, all mixed in.

Jenn: Yeah. I think that's everybody else

Nicole: relatable.

Jenn: I mean started our podcast, like in the, you know, the first three months of the pandemic. And it's like, what are we doing? Starting a travel podcast. Nobody's traveling, but it's kind of given that hope to people, right? Like it's given up. And I know Meggan and I. I have talked about this. It's like, it's something to do while you're waiting to go again. So yeah, it's,

Nicole: that's so true. And I think that even when the travel was on pause, it didn't pause you know, the kind of daydreaming and the planning and, and all of that stage.

And we ended up launching a travel shop while we weren't selling any photos. And we sold down like sweatshirts that had airport codes on them. So YYJ would be Victoria for example, and people were excited because then they could still, you know, feel like they have a piece of travel with them.

And so it was really cool.

Jenn: I love that. So how many photographers do you currently have as part of your business?

Nicole: We have over 600. And we are in a hiring frenzy right now because travel is coming back and we're seeing a ton of demand. And so we have a, yeah, a team of people like re you know, just growing that our busiest cities.

And so I think that number will be probably close to 700 by the end of the summer.

Meggan: I never would have dreamed that many. That's incredible. And so like, I guess what's that process? Like, how do you find, or vet photographers? How do they find about you? Or how do you come across them? Like how does that piece of your business work?

Nicole: Yeah. Well, it evolved a lot, so we've been around for 9 years this March. And in the beginning it was just me and I would be hunting them down on Craigslist or on the internet telling them about what it was. And of course people were like, what is this? And cause there was no such thing as a global vacation photography marketplace back then, but over the years, You know, has spread.

And you know, now we have a ton of photographers, inbounding, or coming to us. And so I think we've had about 15,000 photographers apply and we've hired, you know, around 600. And so what we do is it's a very what I call handpicked process a very intentional process because we look for a few things.

We look for people that have that have professional experience and need to have been a photographer for at least two years. It might be three years now. You know, they've got a website there, you know, they're, they're doing lifestyle type photography. So not just someone who did that does land landscape. They need to be photographing people. Second thing we look forward is are they the kind of person that you'd want to spend one hour of your precious vacation time with? Are they someone who is excited to host people around their city and tell them their favorite things? Cause that's a big part of the Flytographer experience.

It's like. I'm learning from Roberta in Rome, like what our favorite coffee shop is, or that there's a cool street fair happening on Saturday that your kids will love. So those kinds of people that are just, you know, people, people, and you know, curious and love to connect with the others. And then the third thing is just art.

Are you responsible and organized because you know, brand trust is everything. And we want to put our customers in front of someone. Who's going to show up. Who's going to deliver the photos on time. Who's going to be ensuring that the editing is done properly. So. We look for really those three things, professional experience personality, and like, will they make you feel comfortable quickly and be excited to host you around the city?

And third thing is like responsibility, reliability. And so we have the team of people that do interviews. That a lot of our photographers are coming through word of mouth as well. And we have lots of mechanisms once someone's onboarded to um, Matt, like reviews and feedback from customers to make sure that the delivering the kind of experience that our customers expect.

And you know, sometimes there's coaching involved. If we need someone to kind of get to the next level. And sometimes there's off-boarding, if there's like a value misalignment or something like that, right.

Jenn: Yeah. That's I mean, the, the trust thing is totally key, right? Like you want someone who's going to show up and, and deliver photos in a timely manner.

Like you could hire somebody probably on Craigslist, wherever you're going. And they could be like a person with an iPhone or a person with like, like camera who doesn't really know how to use it or whatever. So, yeah, it's definitely good to have that like vetted of time. So you know that you're getting something that's, you know, worth your time

Nicole: and like, Well, I think that's the one thing that if people, we see so many customers come back to us again and again, because they know that.

And even for me, I've probably done 20 photo shoots with my family, just because I try to meet photographers when I travel, with my kids. And I get nervous in front of the camera all the time. I am uncomfortable all the time. And I think most of our customers are. And so you need that photographer. That's going to be able to like, Direct you I've put you at ease and make you feel safe so that you can relax in your best self can shine.

And so by being really intentional about who we hire that helps get that result for our customers.

Jenn: I love that. Yeah, for sure. What is your favorite part about this business that you've created?

Nicole: Oh, hi. There's a lot when I read that question I was like, there's so many things that I could talk about because I truly, truly love the business.

I think that you know, I want to say to. Because there's really two things that really matter one is the photographer community. So I, you know, we, we meet up once a year at a global meetup. We, you know, they travel a lot. And so over the last nine years, Good friends with so many of our photographers in the community and they become good friends with each other so that, you know, crystal and Paris might fly down to Santorini and second shoot for Como and one of a photographer down there.

And so there's this community of it's like having a friend in, you know, behind a door in every city around the world and getting to see how they live like a lens into how they live. As someone who just loves travel and meeting others this community, I, I can't think of a better word than gorgeous.

They're just gorgeous humans. They're kind they're fun. They're creative and they're so inspiring. So being connected to this community globally is the big part, but I'd say the second thing is like the stories that our customers share about why they're, you know, doing a shoot because oftentimes these are milestone moments in people's lives.

So it can be an incredible. Surprise proposal or like a multi-gen reunion spanning, you know, three generations or, you know, just like best friends connecting after years apart. And so seeing the reasons and the stories behind why our customers are choosing to capture that moment. Just endlessly it's like, I read them like, it's like little bites of candy.

I'll like read them in my inbox and mmm it just feels so cool. And you see. I think in, especially in like crazy times, like we're having right now that people are more alike than different in general. Like we all just want love and we want joy and want a family and friendship and celebration. And we see this across age, race geography through the stories of our customers.

And it just gives you like hope for humanity.

Meggan: Okay. That just almost brought a little tear to my eye. Like my nose got all tingly and I think like, I think like I need all this stuff and you just talking like that. I'm like people aren't so bad after

Nicole: they really aren't. And some people, I just, I dunno, like it just, you know, people, people are.

Meggan: They are good. Thank you for telling us that.

So before I totally boo hoo here. So I would like to talk about, I'm not an entrepreneur. Jen is an entrepreneur, and I'm sure that when you sort of start your own business, there's so much that comes with it. So besides COVID, we'll leave that in the past. Hopefully, literally and figuratively. Talk to us about like challenges or early successes, even that maybe you had, that you didn't expect in terms of the evolution of your business. So I think obviously this is about the travel piece and, and the, the romantic side of the photos, but this is also your livelihood. So sort of talk to us about that aspect of it.

Nicole: Yeah, I mean, I think some of the challenges in the early years for me, I. I wasn't an entrepreneur going into this. And I was what I was for sure, a reluctant entrepreneur, because I worked at Microsoft before this and corporate corporate marketing for 13 years.

And I kind of was reticent to become an entrepreneur. And now that I am, I can see why, because it's so hard and you're trying to build this thing and they always say, oh, you're, you know, building the plane as you fly. And it really is like that because you're trying to figure it out. All the things to take the seed in your brain.

So for me, that was like the idea of how do we enable people around the world to capture photos on vacation, to like putting it into the world and making it have legs and walk. And so in the early days, you're trying to figure out, okay, like, what's the packaging pricing? Who should I hire? And like customer service, marketing, accounting, there's so many different little pieces you have to.

Really figure out on your own without a roadmap. And so I found that the biggest challenge for me in the early years was like, I was just burned out, was so there was so many things to figure out. I felt like every day was a little bit specific and just pushing that Boulder up the hill, trying to figure out like, what am I like?

And not knowing. At all what I was doing, I just did it. I just took action and did it. And I think that what happened was in the first year and a half, I was working full-time at Microsoft doing this at night and I just hit a breaking point where I thought I can't keep doing both. And I'm also two kids, a single mom.

So I was losing my mind. And so I had to make a decision. I'm going to leave Microsoft, the state stable, steady paycheck, and jumped full force into Flytographer. And this was about a year and a half in and the company was not profitable. And like, there was like, you know, a major financial risk. And so.

That those are some of the early challenges. And then I tried to fundraise and so many people were like, oh, I don't get your business model. And I don't think it's, you know, this. And I realized that I was talking to the wrong people. And so fundraising was a challenge. There's a lot of challenges in the earlier, especially when it's a new market, wasn't an established market before, and I'm a new brand and I'm a new entrepreneur.

So there was a million challenges around that in the early days.

Jenn: Yeah, I, I relate to this so much, especially talking to people who are kind of more in the traditional business world, where they just don't understand the, the world of like digital entrepreneurs or yeah. Something that you're building as you're going, they're like, what are you doing?

And yeah, I've definitely had that challenge too with my blog and my virtual assistant business and people are like, what, what do you do? Like how do you add yeah, it's a challenging world and for me, totally worth it and rewarding, but also terrifying at the same time.

Nicole: Yeah. I always say like, people would say, well, you're working too much.

I'm like, well, you hot, you know, you can think about it. Like chapters. Like those chapters were not forever. They were chapters where I knew I had to get the foundation of the business up and I was going to work along a lot of long hours. So I think it's okay to like, you know, focus on chapters and know that, you know, you're gonna, you're not gonna live like this forever, but on the other hand, when you start to burn out and you see it's, you know, it's too much, then you got to figure out, okay, I've got to also take care of myself.

Jenn: Yeah. So you did, you've hired a team now and we saw that your your headquarters is made up of 90% women, and we love that. So, so much to talk to us about that and why that was important to you.

Nicole: Yeah. So, I mean, we have, our head of dev is male and that's the only currently the only male on the team.

I think one of the. Big reasons is that women are 85% of our customer base. And that's really who we service and who we talk to. And I think just in terms of people that are drawn to the business to apply for roles in the business it's more often women that. Are there. So we're very much open to hiring men and bringing men on as well.

Meggan: I'm not against it, you guys,

Nicole: but it's just worked out that way. And I think it's also because probably we have values. Are, are pretty distinct. And you know, one of our values is to celebrate and celebration, whether it's celebrating our customer stories, which is what we kind of do as a brand. But celebrating big moments and little moments for our team, for our photographers, for our customers.

And so yeah, I think there's, it's just women seem to really connect with that.

Meggan: Oh, that makes me happy as well. We turn it over to you for a couple of like personal travel questions for yourself before we do that, if our listeners are interested in booking a flytographer a session. How does that work?

Nicole: Yeah. So when you go to our website, flytographer.com and you can search by destination.

So let's say you wanted to book a shoot in Tokyo, for example, you would type Tokyo. It will pull up all the photographers in Tokyo that you can choose from, and there'll be photos of their customers. So you can see their portfolio and their style, and there'll be a little bio or write up. Who they are as people and what they like.

And so you can also see their calendar and choose the time. So I think that gives people a little bit of, like, I know there's this one customer who booked someone because they have the same breed of dog and like, oh, well, they've got that dog. I'm going to, I want to book that person and other people, but because.

They like the lighting or the composition of the photographer, or they read reviews because all the reviews are automatically posted thereafter customers write in. And so they can kind of see who's going to be a good fit. And so then you submit your request and, you know, pretty quickly the photographer will come back and say, Yes, that's great.

You pay through the platform. It all happens through our booking platform. And it's funny because our booking platform has a name and it's passport, so everything's traveled themed across our business. But yeah, so you'll, you know, you'll just get all the details and we have on the website. For every city predefined routes.

And so they're basically the best places to take photos in the city. And we have a mix of like the established classic, like Trocadero Eiffel tower in Paris, or some more off the beaten one, like Montmartre like a little back alleys of Montmartre in Paris. So you can look at all. I see the photos of those routes and imagine your travel memories there and choose the route that you're most excited about.

And that's all part of the booking process as well. So that's sort of the booking and then the day of the shoot, you're going to meet the photographer and destination. And you'll do the shoot. They start at 30 minutes, but you can do, you know, a couple of hours, if you want, most people do about an hour to an hour and a half and then within five days, you'll get your gallery sent to you. You'll get a set number of photos based on the package size you purchased, and you have the ability to download those high-res digitals and you can put them through us or you can print them at Costco, but you have access to those, although all the, all the photos in your package and there you go, that's pretty much it.

Meggan: Awesome. Oh my gosh. I would, anybody's going to Paris do the backstreets of Montmartre that would be so incredible. That was probably my favorite spot in Paris that I went. So that would be

Nicole: amazing there. Isn't it. I love it too.

Meggan: It's beautiful. My dad and I had quite a day there.

So I guess in regards to travel for yourself, what's been your favorite travel destination.

Nicole: My favorite travel destination. I took my oldest son on a trip to Japan and we were there for two weeks and it was sort of a business trip where I met Flytographer. So he got to see a little bit about the community there, but we went to three different cities. You went to Tokyo, we went to Kyoto.

And then we went to this really off the beaten path part called Kiso valley. And it was the old samurai trails. The samurais would travel from Tokyo down to Kyoto. So it was in the mountains and in the forest. And then there was these like 400 year old buildings that like were completely you know like reflective of what they were like 400 years ago. So we were just wandering through this old village and my local flip Flytographer there. He would just like talk about like, you know, all the culture and the history. So we got this really personal tour, in this really off the beaten path part of Japan called Kiso valley.

And just that whole trip in general. It's just great. One-on-one time with my one son. So I'll always remember it.

Meggan: That's amazing.

Jenn: How old was he on that trip?

Nicole: He was in grade nine. So he would have been 14.

Jenn: Yeah. That's such a neat time to go away with him, to you to really like bond.

Nicole: And it was really cool because like, they've got like so many neat things for teenage boys. Like, you know, the bullet trains and like just all the samurais stuff and the. All the anime and the food. I mean, it was just, everything was, yeah, it was just really, I could talk about it for hours. It was highly recommend Japan.

Meggan: You give us some social media, pictures, maybe you'll include one or two of those. That would be incredible.

Nicole: I would be happy to. Yeah.

Jenn: So our last couple episodes of, before you, we're talking about travel fails with people. So do you have any travel fails from past.

Nicole: Yeah, I have like a really bad travel fail. So when I was 25 my, my best friend at the time I was living in Korea.

She flew over to meet me and we spent four months in Southeast Asia and so she had just gotten this new camera and we were really excited about this was a film camera, because this is, again, this is going back a ways because 25 years ago I was 25. So anyways, we have this strategy that because we're, you know, traveling around Southeast Asia, I keep a bunch of film rolls and worry that if you go through the x-ray, they would get damaged.

So we have this strategy of once a week, mailing the film rolls back to Canada. And so you know, at the end of the four months, we come back to Canada and she, she was living in Banff and she gave me a call and she said, I've got some bad news. And I was like, what? And she's like on day five of our trip, the photo starts getting black and black and black and black.

And from day six on all the photos are black. We're talking dozens of film roles across like five countries. So we didn't have like, aside from the first few days as single photo from that four month backpacking trip. And so, yeah. For sure. My biggest travel fail.

Meggan: Oh my God. My heart just like broke for you.

Nicole: I feel bad for my friend who had to make the phone call to tell me this. Cause I know that was that was really hard for her because it was not something that would happen in this day and age, but back then it yeah. Yeah. So that's my big, oh yeah. But now I'm in the business of memories, but.

Jenn: Never happened again

before we let you go with, what is one of your bucket list destinations that you haven't been to yet?

Nicole: Oh, so my boys and I are dying to go down under to Australia to take a trip down there and go to New Zealand and Australia. And yeah, that's. That's the next one.

Jenn: Those are on both of our bucket list. We can't wait to someday get there, although I'm dreading the flight to do

Meggan: a touch closer for you, Nicole though. So that will be, yeah, that's true. You're already not halfway, but at least partly partway.

Jenn: Yeah. All the way across Canada. That's amazing. Nicole, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today.

Where can people find you and photographer online if they are interested?

Nicole: Yeah. So Flytographer is@flytographer.com. We're also on social Flytographer on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. And then you can find me personally on Instagram. I'm just at Flytographer life. L I F. So yeah, that's how you can find us.

Jenn: I'm sure people will. I had no idea that Flytographer existed until probably like six months ago. So I'm sure we're getting the word out there to other people. And and I know I was looking at a little something for our coming trip to Scotland,

Nicole: so exciting.

Jenn: Very exciting So that's it for this week's episode of the travel mug podcast, you can find us on travel mug, podcasts.com on Facebook and Instagram at travel mug podcast.

You can buy us a coffee. You can fill our mugs now by button.

The link is in our show notes and we would love it. If you would share the show with a travel loving pal, and we'll talk to you again. Bye everybody.

Meggan: Bye.