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Steel Roses Podcast
Steel Roses is a podcast created for women by women. Social pressures for women are constant. Professionals, stay at home moms, working moms, we are here to tell you that you are not alone! This podcasts primary focus is providing real honest content shedding light on the daily struggles of women while also elevating women's voices.
All women are experiencing similar pressures and hurdles, and yet, no one is talking out in the open. If these topics continue to only exist as whispered conversations then we further permeate a culture of judgement and shame.
Join Jenny weekly as she discusses topics that effect women in a relatable, honest way.
Steel Roses Podcast
Cathi Nelson and Preserving Family Histories with Modern Technology and Passion
Cathi Nelson, an innovative force in the realm of photo organizing, joins us to unravel her journey from a dedicated mom and scrapbooker to leading a global movement with over 700 professionals dedicated to preserving our digital memories. Discover how Cathi's passion for storytelling and photography has evolved alongside technological advancements, paving the way for a unique business model that addresses the soaring demand for digital photo organization. Her inspiring story highlights the power of recognizing and cultivating one's talents to carve out meaningful career paths, emphasizing that it's never too late to reinvent oneself.
The episode sheds light on the societal biases women encounter when they pursue new passions and the significant generational shift in how we manage our photos. Cathi underscores the profound impact of legacy storytelling, showcasing how modern technology equips us to capture and preserve personal histories for future generations. This conversation serves as a potent reminder that growth and transformation are continual processes, unbound by age or conventional career trajectories.
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Good morning everyone. This is Still Rose's podcast. This podcast was created for women, by women, to elevate women's voices. I am very excited today for our guest for this special series episode. We have Kathy Nelson with us. She is the founder of the Photo Managers and she has revolutionized photo organizing. Her expertise isn't just technical, it's transformative, From calming the clutter to love and legacy. She'll empower you to embrace your memories with intention. She's also the author of Photo Organizing Made Easy, which is available on Amazon. I'm going to link that in the description of the podcast. Kathy, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining us this morning.
Speaker 2:Yeah, happy to be here. Important topic.
Speaker 1:Yes. So why don't you just tell the listeners a little bit about yourself? Well, how did you get into this space? Yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 2:It's an interesting story. I created a profession that didn't exist, essentially, but I was a mom. You know, as a mom when my son was, I was always interested in photos and stories. If I look back at the trajectory of my life which is funny for anybody any of you that are women thinking you know I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up. You know you can make it, you can decide that you at 50, I was really at 50 that I realized what I wanted to do when I grow up. So that's a little encouragement to not feel like you have to know everything. But as you start to look for the things that you cared most about, and photos and stories were always something that I was interested in, and I'm an adopted parent.
Speaker 2:So when my son was born, I wanted to create for him a light book that told him the story how he joined our family, and in those days there was no, you know, we were using analog photos, so you had to print your photos and I discovered scrapbooking, which was really big in the 90s, and so I did a lot of scrapbooking and would host scrapbooking events, and I noticed that I would think you know, women aren't here, cutting photos into cute little shapes, which is what a lot of people thought scrapbooking was just like. It is a creative hobby, but it was. Also, I could tell that what was happening was connection. You know, women were sitting around and telling each other the stories of their life, showing the photos, sitting around and telling each other the stories of their life, showing the photos here's Johnny at three. Or look at, look at us before we got married. Or here's our dating photo, or here's my parents, and all that and I knew that something really special was happening and I knew that what was happening was the way we interact with our photos is.
Speaker 2:I believe we're a people of stories and as humans, we've been wired to tell stories our whole life. Podcasting is another form of storytelling and the minute we were, cameras were put into our hands, we became visual storytellers. And uh, but what's happened today with the, with technology? The shift from an analog where we had to take our you know rolls of 24 exposures or 36, down to our local camera or cbs or whatever and wait in the parking lot to get our, our rolls of film back, has totally been transformed, where now we're taking thousands and thousands of photos in a second and never really interacting with those, but so I was. I was watching that happen in the late uh in around 2008, 2009, 2010. And a lot of your listeners probably, if you start to think about those one hour photo labs that were on every corner are no longer there.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And Kodak also went out of business and it was a huge disruption. And the camera industry has been extremely disrupted by this technology and we just weren't ready for it. So, as my friends would start to try and figure out, how do I get my photos from my memory card to my computer, cause in those days it was memory cards?
Speaker 2:They started asking me and I was helping them cause I had learned how to do that early on. And then a friend, a good friend, finally said well, what do you charge per hour? And I was typical, you know, no, I'm not going to charge you, maria, you're my friend and she's like no, kathy, I insist you have to, let me pay you. And I paid a residential organizer once to help me move with downsides and things, and I was. I never had heard of that. So I got to her house and not only did she have boxes of photos that she had inherited from her parents who had just passed away, she was one of four siblings. She said Kathy, this is a mess and I really want an album of my dad who loved his garden. And can you make me an album of my dad? But she had. She was PC, her husband was Mac, her kids were straddling the analog digital world.
Speaker 1:And she said Kathy.
Speaker 2:I don't care how much it costs, but I guarantee hundreds of other Marias would pay somebody. So that was the beginning. I came home, I decided to call myself a photo organizer because to make that album for her dad I had to go through, I had to organize the photos and I started telling people. That's what I did and it grew very quickly and then others started finding what I was doing and I decided to create a trade association. Essentially, we're not a nonprofit. I own the photo managers, but we have over 700 professionals throughout the world now who offer photo organizing services as a living and it's a wonderful business and it's it really makes a difference in people's lives and the need only continues to grow. So that's a quick thumbnail of how I got started.
Speaker 1:So I want to highlight something here to the listeners, because I actually, on other episodes I've actually talked about as women, like there's things and there's talents that we have that in the moment you think to yourself and I especially, like my generation, was very much like you have to go to college, Like that's the, that's the only way you're going to be able to be anything is go to college, and we know now today like that's completely inaccurate and I want to highlight that you took this passion. You took something that you were like I'm good at this, I like it. You know, I'm going to just go ahead and do this. That's what you went with and it turned into something. So I want to take a moment and recognize you for that, because you leaned into something and you ended up turning it into a business. I also think it's interesting and I want to highlight this because this is actually specific to women almost like the struggle to accept money for a service. I actually am experiencing that right now because of podcasting and what I do for podcasting.
Speaker 1:Everyone's like, oh, like, do you like? Do you, do you do like, will you produce, like digital things or digital media for us, and I'm like, I'm always like, yeah, sure, happy to help, what do you charge? And in the beginning I was very much like, oh no, I'll just do it for you, like I'm happy to support you. And now I'm like, oh wait, no, you have to get paid for your expertise. So, one, you took passion and turned it into purpose and you took your passion, you're helping other people.
Speaker 1:And then, two, you actually had the. You know, I don't know how to say like the word, but you had like the, the oomph in you to be like, you know, yes, like let's get paid for this. So that I want to just highlight Good for you on that. That's a huge struggle for a lot of women and you were able to do it. And I want to say to other women listening, this is a great example of something that she took on and started doing that somebody else could also do. And if you're a mom at home and you're like, oh, I have great organizing skills or I, you know this is also a path that you could look into, because this is sorely needed um, it's, it's, um.
Speaker 2:I just want to say two things on that. One is um, we just did a. We do one of the foundations of our, the photo managers, is education, right, and we just yesterday we did a all day boot camp on money mindset and marketing. I've been doing this for 15 years now and our members some of our top members have been doing this for over 12, 13 years, who have multiple employees and outside locations. I'll still join the money mindset because, as women, especially around photos, memories we love, we care so deeply about what we're doing and we get very close to our clients. So, if you I always say, if you love people, love stories, this is amazing business because, like Jenny, if I came in and started working with you with your photos, I'm going to learn a lot about your life pretty quickly, like who are your parents, who are your?
Speaker 2:you know your spouse's parents, maybe? Who are the siblings, who are the aunts and uncles? It's just because those were all you know. Those are all the photos. Where do you go on vacation? What's your first day of school? Photo series look like?
Speaker 2:And so it's really meaningful work and that it makes it hard sometimes to charge for it, so we work really hard on that. The other thing I want to say is I have two signs behind me. One is everything is figureoutable, which is Marie Forleo, which I have to live by, because even just now, starting this podcast, we had a little issue with our audio. Right, we were both generally okay, turn this on, plug this in, and you know, you just got to keep, take that second breath. You can't panic and throw your hands up and think, oh, this isn't going to work. Yes, and that's with technology and anything.
Speaker 2:And the other one is Brene Brown it's okay to be brave and afraid at the same time, because every time I've done any of these things, I was terrified in it, and I still have many days, but, but at the same time I keep moving forward. So I agree, those are important messages. I know for women because I'm one, and and also I love the message lately that I'm telling because actually I am now 65. You know, what's amazing is my son is 30. And he does this for a living.
Speaker 2:He's been he's a photo manager too, and he just spoke at a conference yesterday and he told the story of his adoption and he's owning that in a different way, about how not have having photos. Well, we met a cousin through 23andme and and he but I was really proud of him. I thought, wow, I can't believe he gets it. He gets the legacy piece, he. So a lot of people think, oh, this younger generation doesn't care about the photos as much. He didn't at 25. I would have told you he was driving me crazy and I, you know he was laying on the couch and he was miserable. Now he's married and this is what he does. So anyway, that's just another.
Speaker 2:The point is that I want women to understand that you can reinvent yourself at any point. There's no point when you can't. And so I think I didn't know that. You know I, the reason I started this at 50 was I called it my incredibly shrinking paycheck because scrapbooking totally was disrupted as well. I was earning an income on a just on a reusable product, right, I've, you know women would buy tons of photo albums and scrapbooks and things, and I had people that sold it as well, and you know it was a nice income. And then all of a sudden that started and I remember being terrified like who's ever going to hire me? Even though I had an amazing career in my 20s and early 30s, I by then by by my early 40s, 10 years out of the traditional work environment. I felt insecure, unvalued, yeah, so anyway, that's. Hopefully that's inspiring to people listening.
Speaker 1:That's really honestly, it's inspiring to me because I so I I work corporate and I have a daytime job and podcasting is like my passion. I love doing it. I was actually just telling, I was just telling my husband last night that, um, we were, we were watching something and I was like, oh, and this is what the producer is probably doing. And I said to him I was like I feel like I totally missed my calling with being in broadcast production, because I love it so much and I get so excited about it and I get I'm like this is the coolest thing and you know the producers, this is what they do in the background.
Speaker 1:And to to hear you talking like this and about like it's. You know you can reinvent yourself at any age. Because I've often in my head been like you've been doing what you do for 17 years. Just keep doing that. Podcasting is your passion, but you can keep doing that too. But like kind of in the back of my mind, being like, well, it's still just like your little side passion, so it's very comforting to me when I talk to men that do podcasting as a side gig.
Speaker 2:They never call it their little side thing, they never do. No, I've been men that do podcasting as a side gig. They never call it their little side thing, they never do. Now I'm talking to a guy right now it's getting us to do a podcast, but the way that he's approached it, the way he's pitched me, the way the pricing he's asking for, it's fascinating. It totally adopted because that I think, as women, that is where we go. The other neat thing with broadcasting and production which I love myself, which is what I always wanted to write and produce documentaries. That was my passion when I was in college and then I got a job selling advertising and I never ended up doing that. Now, with technology, there are ways for you to, or for people that love legacy storytelling. You can start a business telling people's legacy stories and doing really amazing things with with the way technology has come today. So that's another aside. We can talk about that ever if you want to.
Speaker 1:That's a yeah, that that is interesting. I do want to, I want to focus in on the photo management because, yes, like that, honestly, that was very inspiring for me and and again, like I think women, we have these challenges that we produce in our heads because of all these other elements, and just hearing what you just said, like men never call it their side gig I'm like, ooh, I have to, I'm going to put that pin in it for me to think about later. But for the, for the photo managing, you know you mentioned, you know, maintaining legacy, and so I was the gen, I was part of the generation that, like you know, witnessed the whole transfer into digital state, like we, you know we know what's interesting about that too.
Speaker 2:Just so you know, we I think it's 18, anybody who's 18 or younger is a is a hundred percent digital. But before, but still, anybody 18 and older still straddled the analog digital world. So it's still.
Speaker 1:There's still a lot of analog go ahead, but yeah, well, no honestly, it's interesting, though, because you like the, so, like my children, my kids are all growing up in a total digital era where, like, everything is online, everything's on the phone. They're already talking about, oh, we want, you know, when we get older, we want to have YouTube channels. Like, everything's very digital. That's where the focus is, and I'm always like it is interesting to see that transition, because then I think back to when I was growing up and my mom would be seeing, like, the technology transition and she'd be like this is insane, you know. So it's interesting to see that, and what I wanted to focus in on is, like, the preservation of the legacy. So you know they're outside of wanting to make sure that you're preserving your family memories. You know, when your kids were little or what have you, there's also that through line of, you know you do have to think about it, like every step you take throughout your life with your family. That's a lifetime of memories that you want to really make sure that you have to look back on, and not just for yourself, but for your family members.
Speaker 1:My grandmother is turning 96 in March 2025. And we, for her 90th birthday. The family had pulled together a bunch of photos and I managed the photo, the setup and getting the table set up and doing the display and everything, and so I must have taken I believe I took pictures of all the older photos because I needed everything to be the same size. So I had taken pictures of older photos and had them reprinted and everything. And recently my phone produced a video for me and just sent it my way and I looked at it and I was like, oh my God, it's my grandmother's life in this, and so I sent it to my whole family and I was like, hey guys, this kind of randomly popped up on my phone, it decided to send me this memory. Everybody was like this is so beautiful because you saw my grandparents getting married, like the whole thing.
Speaker 1:My point here is that I didn't do that. I didn't take time to do it. My phone did it on its own. But being able to have that nicely organized is so critical because then you can look back on it. One of the things that I have always wanted to do and I've never done it is like I've seen those like almost yearbooks of like you know that you can have all your digital photos printed out into a book that you can then like kind of flip through. I've always wanted to do something like that, but to me this seems like incredibly overwhelming and it's loads of photos to get through, like thousands of photos that's the.
Speaker 2:that's the, so the reason. So what we really do is we help people curate their photo collections to tell their legacy story. That's honestly the truth of it. I always say the idea of organizing photos is like watching paint dry. Right, it's not sexy, there's nothing exciting about that, but it's the end product. Like you're talking about that visualization of a product, and I think for photo to this day than there is a digital photo.
Speaker 2:A digital photo loses its value very quickly. It's kind of like a moment in time. So when you're curating your photo collection or you're deciding which photos to keep and which to delete, which you should be deleting because your kids do not want to inherit your entire like Apple photo library, it's going to be crazy. Right, it's way too many photos. It's delete, delete, delete. But that's one thing, but also, to favor it, the ones that tell the story. So think of your life in terms of and then print those because one thing a couple of quick thoughts is we have younger children. We know that screen time is too much, right, kids are, we know we try and eliminate screen time. I'm sure I don't have grandchildren just yet, but I'm sure I will, and I know my nieces and nephews have grandkids? They are not.
Speaker 2:they're really working hard at understanding now what screen time does to the mind and things like that. Well, what's the first thing kids want to look at when they? They want to look at your phone because they want to look at the photos when they're even by the time. They're an ABC book you know and teach your grandkids like, or your children their ABCs like. A is for Aunt Jennifer, b is for bath time, c is for you know, whatever you know, aunt Kathy. D is for dog, m is for right.
Speaker 2:I did that for my niece and we would every time she came over over the years. Now she's almost six. She loves to look at that book because, of course now she can read the book back to me. But I put in there pictures of her dad. He was her, and this is your dad, when he was a baby, and this is your dad when he was a teenager, and this is your dad. That's a cute idea, yeah.
Speaker 2:So the thing is to not what's overwhelming is you got to break all projects down into small, like manageable buckets, right? So that's just one little bucket. That's an idea of what you can do and that's what we help people do, right? So so, thinking in terms of when you're organizing your photos or you're thinking about your photos. What are the themes of your life? So I'll ask you that, jenny, like because thinking about organizing photos chronologically, which is what our phones do for us now.
Speaker 2:So I'm not talking analog photos, but any your digital. It's all going to be geo tagged, it's going to be face recognition, all that piece. It's good news, like a lot of it's been done, but it's not telling the true story yet. Now, uh, the algorithms told you that story. It would be hard to delete that out because the quality of those photos are going to be condensed and things, and it would be hard to delete that little video that Apple probably created for you. But so you want to, you want to be more intentional on that if you can doing it yourself. But what are the themes of your life? So let me just ask you, like what if I asked you that right now, what are some themes that you think of?
Speaker 1:Um, like oh well, so it probably would have been. So the way that my, my, like the past, like 15 years, have been um, the first five was um my me and my husband before we were married with my stepkids.
Speaker 1:The next eight to 10 was my babies being born and then growing up, and then also my grandchildren being born, like my grandchildren and my kids, all being kind of born at the same time and everybody being so that has been tremendous to see like in real time, so just seeing it in photos would be phenomenal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the theme could be you know we're a big pile, a happy pile or I don't know. I'm just like to get the picture like a bunch of kids but or like, how do you celebrate? Uh, what joke. Do you go on a vacation? Let's just say, like, what's your vague? Do you guys travel is? What are the things that you love to do? Do you celebrate holidays a certain way? Do you love Halloween? Some people are big Halloween people. Then the idea of creating a photo book or printing those photos or organizing them in a way that you can access them around the themes is much more interesting than scrolling through a million different photos.
Speaker 1:Oh, I see what you're saying. So like a Halloween book, specifically, that would be like okay. So if it's like, okay, I got you. It's interesting.
Speaker 1:My husband's family, my family, was never really big on taking pictures and when I met my husband it was like a shock because they were like adamant at every family gathering that there was photos of my, my in-laws, which are the grandparents, like the patriarch, matriarch, and then the siblings and then the like. They made sure they got every generation every holiday and I was like totally shocked and honestly, I was actually irritated in the very beginning, cause I was like what is the big deal? Like what are we doing here? And now I'm the one who's like running in my family functions, because my side, again, we don't really take photos like that. So when we're all together again with my grandmother for grandparents day this past year she had, I think what does she have?
Speaker 1:Like 12 grandkids in my generation, or roughly about 12 of us, and I think it's 10 to 12 of us, and we were only missing two, I think two or one grandchild and like one great grandchild from the mix, but everybody else was able to show up and I was the one who was like, oh, we need to capture this and, like, have everybody line up. So then, the key for that is.
Speaker 2:Is that? Oh no, no, I'm stressing printing. Okay, the reason I'm stressing printing so much, too, is not that you have to print, but otherwise it's like a it's it's gone right. So I think about. This is something to think about for families. If I close my eyes and think about or do you do the same thing, my are my family living room.
Speaker 2:Growing up, I can picture that better than I can what my college dorm looked like or what the apartment I lived in throughout my 20s, right, and I can picture the photos on the wall and I can picture the photos, the little carousel of little photos that was next to the couch, and so put those photos, print that whole family photo and have it framed. And now, today, the technology, my gosh, they have magnetic frames. You can, you know, switch frames in and out. I mean, there's so many great things that you can do, but have it visible, just, even if you don't talk about it, there's, there's a, because we know that self-esteem in children is created by understanding that they're resilient and family and understanding the resilience in families, and so not all family is a happy story, right, I'm sure in that mix of people there's probably some different stories that are important to tell, that those are important stories to tell. So I think that's an important component of why this is so important in terms of taking those photos and printing them and doing something meaningful with them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, it's, you know, and that's the other thing I think like the printing of it and actually having it show up is, um, you know, having it up on the wall because so, because of my family's, my husband's family's love for photos and because of all of that, I now like have photos.
Speaker 1:We have a whole hallway of photos, basically, and one of the very first gifts that I had given my husband was a really large collage of him and his kids, and I had me in there, and so it's very cool now, because when people come to the house they have to walk through this one particular hallway and in that hallway you see pictures of my stepkids growing, and then, when I got introduced into the mix, and then you see our trajectory and our story of the four of us, and then I have a second collage, like big one, that I put on the wall.
Speaker 1:That then pulls in the almost the timing of my son being born, photos of him, and then my twins being born, photos of them, my grandkids being born, like my, you know, my stepdaughter through her early relationship, and it's, it's very it's, it's like a beautiful thing to see. And when, before we moved, when we moved into our house before we had the photos up on the walls. It didn't feel like a home. And it's very interesting that you made that pull through, because when we started hanging up the pictures was when we started to feel like, okay, now this is our house and, like you know, that was really one of those things that, for us personally, was such an important thing. So I love that you're pulling that through line through because you're right, like I think, a lot of people don't print photos or, you know, they don't have those like those funny candids that, like you did used to see a lot like growing up, like back in our, you know, back in our day when it was just the photos everywhere.
Speaker 2:So, um, I think that's an important thing, and the other piece that I want to mention before, uh, as we continue on a little bit too is then the story story. Like the matriarch, like your, your grandmother's 96, if she's still, you know, take the time to ask the stories, get her to tell, if you can. There's great technology as well to capture their stories, because that's that's his historical documentation of you know. What does she read right now? Your kid, you know young children might not care, but how fascinating for them to be able to. She's experienced at 96, the biggest disruption or the biggest change in history, like in the world, right, I'm sure at 96, she remembers, you know, party lines and she listened to radio.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, that's right, my mom told me about those. Yeah, yeah, that's like fascinating Right, I mean. And she could tell that story. My mom is 93. So I know like she always would tell the story of listening to the radio and I was annoyed by that when I was a kid. I remember like oh yeah, yeah, yeah. But now I really like I just marvel at it and those are stories that I think are really important to pass down to the next generation over time. So your stories do matter.
Speaker 2:And the other thing in terms of merging analog I just want to mention that to analog photos with digital photos. So one of the big things that most photo managers do with a family is they scan and digitize those backlog of analog photos. We believe that you should organize the digital photo of this analog photos and curate the collection before you scan them. To save money, it makes no sense, in our opinion, to take, you know, those boxes of photos and ship them off to you know like, yes, photo, right, photo, whatever memories and let them just send it all back to you. It's just garbage in, garbage out, and then you'll have all these photos. What you want to do is add the metadata which is really important and that means that's like writing on the back of the photo. So to identify those photos, then with with technology, you can, if you're, if you tag them correctly, you could quickly find them, like right now I could pull up on my phone. I'm a twin, I'm an identical twin. I don't know if you do yeah, and she doesn't.
Speaker 2:She's never taken photos and so I'm still I'm the one she comes to. But I can pull up my baby picture right. I can just pull up my phone and put in 19 you know, uh, 62 or 1964 and find in my baby or twin, and my baby photos are going to show right up because they've been merged. My analog photos have been merged into my digital photo collection so that I have the whole arc of our lives in one place. So that's a big part of the process as well, but it's not what we I curated all those. We didn't digitize every photo, and not every photo that we ever had is in that timeline. So that's another thing. That's really for those listening. And then those old home movies that's the other thing.
Speaker 2:I was shocked when I started my business. I thought it was just photos, but people kept coming to me with what about my kid's artwork? What about I have this old VCR? Or I have this camcorder video? Well, nobody can watch those anymore. Those are filled with amazing stories. You need to have those digitized. And again, I keep saying technology, but like something called Projector is a great company that now you can stream it on an app, on your. I could go in right now and pull up, turn on the app and I can watch my kids when they're like seven and nine, or watch them during a snowstorm. It's when they're like seven and nine, or watch them during a snowstorm. It's right there on my smart TV because we've had all that done and it's so much fun to go back and relive those memories. So those are the key things that that professional photo managers do for clients or that you want to make sure that you do for yourself. You're not going to probably digitize your home movie collection. You're going to need to outsource that to somebody else.
Speaker 2:And it's worth the investment and we recommend. We really believe firmly in the idea of a white glove service, free pickup and delivery. Don't put it in the mail, you know. That's kind of the model, the service model of a professional photo manager. Right, we're really all about you know, walking alongside you through this process so that everything is protected, and we're using best practices so that everything is in the way that you're really going to need it into the future.
Speaker 1:I think this is so amazing and so important because it feels like I don't know if it's just because of where I am in my life, but I feel like things happen so quickly now and we're running at such a fast pace that you almost don't even have time to digest what's actually happening, because things are running so crazy and quick. So taking that time to and even if it's like starting small right, because what you just said I actually think is really important, because that's what's always been a barrier for me is like I have 15 years of photos. We're talking about hundreds of thousands of photos that have been taken over the 15 year period. I'm like I can't organize all that. Who has the time for that?
Speaker 1:But you know, looking at just like, okay, well, why don't you just organize the Christmases, pull out all the Christmases and have like a specific Christmas? You know, like that I think is doable. And then your idea I mean what a fabulous idea for young kids to make an alphabet book based off of family photos. Like I never would have thought of that. That's such a really wonderful, just something wonderful to have that they can just cherish for the rest of their lives really and then pass on to their own kids when they have kids. I can't believe. Yeah, I did it. What a great idea.
Speaker 2:I did it for my daughter analog. Now she's 27. So I have her, I have her ABC book and then I have Avalon's ABC book and hopefully, yeah, and it's so much fun to go back and look at her ABC book to you know, we're so much younger. Another just quick, funny story about that was my own, uh, another example of something that I did. So I had a rescue dog who I just adored. I picked him up off the highway. It was a little Chihuahua. It was this long highway exit ramp. It's amazing that I stopped. This was like 2015, 17 years ago, whatever. I pulled him out and it was like you are my mother.
Speaker 2:Everybody that knew me knew that Wiley only had eyes for me. Anybody that came to the house, he would just stare at me. He just he loved me more than anybody ever has, in such an unconditional way, and he died last, just about a year ago, and I wanted. He's the only dog you know. I don't know if people are pet people, but he's the only dog I would have made an album of. But I knew one of our members. Actually, she her focus and she only does a pet. She makes photo books and does beautiful work around pets, so she's. That's her business model, that she's decided. So I knew that she's the person I wanted. So she called and she interviewed me. Though it's funny, she asked me to. I think I sent her 3000. I went on my phone you know you can pull up dog I sent her the photos and then she called, interviewed me three different times. It's part of her process and she's like well, there's lots of other dogs here.
Speaker 2:Who are these other dogs? And I realized well, everybody in my family has dogs and most of my friends have dogs and we've had dog birthday parties. I've never had never, that's.
Speaker 2:I had never given this a thought, like I know I didn't know that though, like right until she looked at the arc of like 15 years and was just looking at that. She created me. Actually, it's the story of all the pets in my life. It was going to just be for Wiley, but she ended up and so I have my, my, you know dog from my childhood and then it's I want. That's the book I want at my funeral. It's so funny because in that book it's not it's about the dogs, but it are all the other people I love and the friends I have and my kids with, holding their pets at different stages of different lives.
Speaker 2:So that's, another example of how you can think of it differently. So with all my photos, the rest of my photo life is never organized. That book itself will tell a big part of my story, because you're just going to know things about me that that you know. There's me sitting on the couch like I mean like with the dog, a dog, two dogs on my lap, watching tv, and I'm like. It's not a very flattering photograph because I'm, you know, half, half awake and stuff but that's, that's what.
Speaker 2:I do that's. That's a big part of my Friday night activity is watching like a mindless tv show with dogs on my lap.
Speaker 1:So what you know.
Speaker 1:What a wonderful way to really um memorialize your memories and also like pay homage to them Because, again, like we move so quickly, everyone's constant.
Speaker 1:And, honestly, I'm a big advocate of like you have to be in the moment, like don't spend your whole time on your phone trying to capture it for social media, like, yeah, get the pictures you want to get, but then, like really truly be in the moment and enjoy it. And what a wonderful way to really like be able to relive that and then tell that story. And, honestly, as you mentioned and I was going to mention this to maintaining a good, you know photo log and maintaining a collection is going to be something that not just you're going to cherish but also, like beyond your time and when you do get to that point where, like, you do pass away, you know at your funeral arrangements, like that's a big thing. I met with, I went with my mother. She's very proactive and we were going through she's in fine health, but we were going through you know future arrangements just to be, you know, ready for the time when it comes.
Speaker 1:And she told me she was like you know, future arrangements just to be, you know, ready for the time when it comes. And she told me she was like you know, I've gone through this with my parents. I don't want you to have to go through having to at the end, you know, when you're trying to grieve, deal with this and make all these decisions. And the person who was at the funeral home said he was like you know, a lot of people get to the end there and then they're scrambling like who has pictures, who has this? And he said he was like it's a really good idea to start just kind of collecting things now and having it. And he was like people think it's morbid, but it's really not, because you really want to be able to pay respect and homage to people when they're gone Now there's an interesting movie.
Speaker 2:So we've actually added a new certification. So our members become certified and they're vetted and they have to go through the process to be listed on our website. We have a new one that we've put together a legacy certification as well, because more and more people are realizing why are we waiting to honor somebody's life after they've passed away? There's kind of a movement towards doing a legacy celebration before they pass away which includes getting all those photos together, like why should they not hear all the wonderful things that are being said?
Speaker 2:but also, though, the same idea of getting those photos ready, because that's the moment when the family gathers and people right. The photos are critically important at that time every funeral. And so that's another big, important piece. And it's not morbid, it's actually being realistic. And, like you're saying, we're moving at such a fast pace, the world is changing so rapidly. We're hanging on by the skin of our teeth a lot of days, but at the end of the day, I always say one thing I know for sure by doing this for a living and we have members in Australia, we have members in Europe, we have members all over the world. If you asked most people to gather the 10 photos that tell the story of their life or that are most important to them, I don't from every country in the world. It's not gonna be a mystery what they're gonna gather.
Speaker 2:They're gonna gather the photos of, probably a birth or an elder, a wedding or some kind of celebration Nature. A wedding or you know, some kind of celebration Nature in a way, something that they feel is beautiful to them is going to be part of it, and probably like a milestone event of some sort. We're so much more alike than we're different as humans. Right, those are the things that we care about, and our photos and videos are the ways that we document that. And then one more thought too. When you mentioned you don't take that many for social media. There's we're actually working on a presentation. I love this.
Speaker 2:Somebody came up with this. Well, as a photo organizer, she said you know what's been amazing? I'm amazed that people took much better photos when they were taking analog photos. They take terrible photos now that they're digital photos, and she's been thinking a lot about that and she realizes what we want to put up on social media is not necessarily what we want to remember. So a lot of times I think we're thinking about, like I'm going to get with my cousin today, who's my, my husband's I mean my first cousin's wife, cause he passed away tragically two years ago and she's coming down from Maine and we're going to spend the day together. You know we're going to take a couple group pictures with my sister and her and we'll probably put it on Facebook and say, oh, it's so great to be with Carol, but those aren't. That's not going to be a, that's not really a memory that I want to keep, necessarily right.
Speaker 2:It's a photo I'm going to take, but it's not really I'd have to be to think about a photo that I want to take, that something I'm going to remember. I'm going to have to think about it before she comes. A little bit more about what is it I really want to take a photo of with her. So that's another way of thinking about how we look at our photos. Right, taking the ones for social media are great. We're going to do it in our food, whatever all the things that we do but be a little bit more diligent about the photo that you're going to take that, you know, is one that you're going to want to keep into the future. So, just thinking about how you take photos a little differently.
Speaker 1:Oh, I like that. I like that thought because it's more mindful approach to taking photos. Then just the way we do it.
Speaker 2:You know or you hand. You know you're out to dinner and you hand your photo, your camera to the waiter. And he's like, all right, I'll take it and then they're like you know, and then it's the next day and something else happens and you go back and you never deleted, you know, all those photos.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, actually that's fair, Because I have streams like that on my phone right now that I'm like I don't, I don't need all this.
Speaker 1:Kathy, this has been really honestly inspiring discussion, just even from like your startings, on how you began this business, and then even through to like really making your memories last and really making your memories last and, you know, honoring them in a way that makes sense. I really appreciate your insights here and for the listeners, I mean. We holidays are upon us, which is actually part of why what inspired me to chat with Kathy, and you know you're about to embark on another season, no matter what your religion, it's coming and everyone's having their celebrations now and you do want to commemorate them and make sure that you have those lasting memories, so, being mindful of the photos you take and then, you know, get some support. I mean, we have people like Kathy out there now that are really helping to make this easier and make it something that, like you, can have for the rest of your life. Like this is an investment that's worth being made. So, kathy, thank you so much for joining us on the show today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's been a great conversation, thank you.
Speaker 1:And listeners. I'm going to link Kathy's information in the description of the podcast so you'll be able to access her services, you'll be able to see her book and I encourage you to really look into this. I know I'm going to because this, because this has been something that's like one of those things in the back burner that I'm like I need to address and I never got around to it.
Speaker 1:So I think the time is now, and what a wonderful way and time to really do it. So, kathy, thank you again for joining the show.
Speaker 2:All right, thank you. Thrilled to be here.
Speaker 1:And listeners. Thank you for joining us today and we'll see you on the next one. Take care.
