Kayla Butler of Ivory Mix is joining me this week to talk about how she started her business, what it’s been like growing a stock photography site, and how community has been the center of her business from the beginning. In this episode, I’m delighted to be talking all about joy, creativity, and stock photography at ‘Ivory Mix’ with Kayla Butler.
Having a background in interior design, Kayla found herself burnt out on working a 9 to 5. Like many creatives, she found that as she rose up to the director level, she was no longer hands on with creative projects, and instead managing people and business in her work. Wanting to find more work life balance, and return to the creative aspects of the work that she loved, Kayla started Ivory Mix in 2015.
Well Planned, Loosely Held
What I love about Kayla’s perspective is that while she didn’t fully know what “Ivory Mix” would be, she moved forward, working on a site that focused on community and design. She found that when she was shooting images for her own site, she had left over images she wanted to offer to her community. It became a very popular free download, and from there, Kayla saw that she had a viable business in creating niche stock photography for bloggers and other creative people.
Joy, Creativity, and Stock Photography at ‘Ivory Mix’ with Kayla Butler:
-Her early love of drawing Disney stories, and desire to be a Disney artist
-Going into interior design as a career
-Getting burnt out once she was in a director position and no longer creating designs regularly
-Choosing the name “Ivory Mix” as a blank canvas for her to try new things
-How creative people keep hitting up against the wall of possibly becoming more involved in running a business than doing the creative pieces, and how to juggle that
-How giving away quality, free, incentives can help build a strong community
-Growing a business while working a 9 to 5 job
-Creating a business that is niched, and different than a standard stock photo site
-Importance of building authority and how to do it
-Ways to jump start your joy: gratitude, random acts of kindness, and creating boundaries
