We were lucky to catch up with Kendal Banks Paley recently and have shared our conversation below.
Kendal, looking forward to learning from your journey. You’ve got an amazing story and before we dive into that, let’s start with an important building block. Where do you get your work ethic from?
I got it from my mama.
But for real, my mom has always busted her tail to build the best life possible for her family. She didn’t have the easiest time growing up and worked hard to be able to go to college early, when she was 17. Shortly after – she found out she was pregnant with my big sister. She went from waiting tables, to selling phone systems to big companies, to selling computer storage space (aka “the cloud”) throughout the 80’s-90’s. To be a woman in tech at that time must have been wild! I know she dealt with a lot of sexism and harassment and I can only imagine having to navigate that as a 20 something year old woman, raising 2 daughters of your own, on your own. She was nearly always the only woman in the room. She took the tech boom, ran with it and was able to open her own sales business in the early 2000’s.
As that became successful, my mom took the space to explore her own different passions that she had never had the space to try out before. She entered a garden design contest and installed huge metal sculptures of spiders in our backyard, and won. She went to the culinary institute and started testing to be a sommelier. She sold her tech business and opened not one but two successful restaurants in Detroit. She started consulting for other wine businesses and restaurants. She started designing and decorating homes. The woman never stops! She has never been afraid to take a chance, follow her interests and reinvent herself. She has an uncanny ability to find what is going to be cool before it actually is. She knows when to keep forging ahead and when to pivot and try something else.
Seeing my mom do all of these things, while still being a parent to my siblings and I, is really what shaped us all to be so tenacious, a little bit brave and maybe a touch stupid – if you own a small business you know what I’m talking about here!
We’ve all made leaps without really knowing what would be on the other side. We’ve all reinvented ourselves and done something new that lights our souls a bit more.
My sister had a long career in retail operations before she went back to school to become a teacher in her late 30’s, with two small daughters at home. I left a long career working in HR to follow my photography dreams, with two small daughters at home. It really feels like my mom forged this trail that we’re both now following, in our own ways. I can only hope that with my own work ethic I’m setting a similar example for my babies at home.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I’m a photographer! I call myself a “love and life” photographer and I specifically love photographing college seniors, couples, weddings and babies. I do that under the brand “Kendal Banks Photography”. I also run a photo booth rental company called Ad Astra Photo Booths. I operate out of Lawrence (rock chalk!) and provide services throughout Kansas, Iowa, Oklahoma, Illinois, Colorado and Michigan. Honestly, I’ll go anywhere to take photos of cool, kind people!
I think what sets me apart for my clients is my ability to connect with others and make others feel comfortable. I initially started working in HR because I just love people and I’m so interested hearing others stories. I’m an open book and a bit of an oversharer so that definitely helps me get other people to open up. Personally in life I have a feeling that I want to be deeply seen and understood and that drives me to try to give that to my clients. I want my clients to feel deeply seen. I find people beautiful and it’s so important to me that I can connect with my clients, make them comfortable, put them at ease, and help them see their own unique beauty and perfectness during my sessions.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
1. Basic business management – I spent many years working in retail and throughout that time I had a lot of different roles. I worked in customer service, order writing or “buying”, sales planning, policy creation etc. That really taught me the basics of how to run a business, how to look at numbers and understand margins etc. It also really taught me my worth and how to value and promote what I bring to the table.
2. Tenacity – You HAVE to be tenacious to run your own business. You will find yourself in new and uncomfortable situations, doing things you’ve never dreamed of doing before (hello web design) and running into roadblocks. Most of the time, you’re doing these things on your own. You have to be able to look at what you’ve put in, recognize when it’s not working, pivot and keep going. If you don’t have the internal drive to bring your vision to life even in the face of challenges, you won’t be successful.
3. Flexibility – you have to be able to pivot, go back to the drawing board, change your plan and start again. I had a boss at one point coin it, “flexitude”. You have to have a flexible attitude. Having the ability to step back and say “this isn’t working anymore” and change how you’re operating is hard -especially if you’re a type-A personality like me. It can be difficult to acknowledge that you didn’t get something right the first time or that your business is going in a direction maybe you didn’t expect it to and you need to alter your path and follow that new momentum. There’s a level of humility you have to be able to find within yourself when running a business.
Any advice for folks feeling overwhelmed?
As a solo-prenuer it really is only me doing all the different parts of my business. I’m not at a place where I’m outsourcing things yet and I have 100% felt overwhelm and burnout. I cannot stress the importance of quality mental health care and self care enough. I’m not talking about massages and manicures here – although I love those – but therapy, medication if you need it, adequate rest, nutritious food, movement + sunshine and giving yourself time off. You need time to step away from the work.
Boundaries are SO important when you run your own business. That has been difficult at times for me. I feel a lot of self inflicted pressure to do ALL the things ALL the time. When you work out of your home it’s hard to separate those work and life pieces even if your work for someone else! A huge thing for me has been giving myself days off. I take sunday’s completely off. I don’t reply to email after 4:30 when my kids get home from school. I clearly set my “office hours” on my website and communications so that my clients know what to expect from me and when to expect to hear from me. This has worked for me and my family but it’s taken a bit to get there.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://kendalbanksphotography.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kendalbanksphoto/
Image Credits
Headshot: Sunshine and Shadows Photography
All others: Kendal Banks Photography
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
