The Story of Weekend Creative : How We Started Our Business
Recently someone commented on one of our Instagram posts and said that they would love to hear more about us and how Weekend Creative got started. I was going to refer them to the first post we wrote which introduces us, but then I realized that not only was this post super brief, it was TWO YEARS ago, and there’s so much more that I could say now. It’s kind of hard to tell your story when you’re in the middle of it, and two years ago Weekend Creative was still a pretty blurry idea. We had a general sense of what we wanted, but it’s definitely evolved a lot, especially over the last year. I would never have guessed back then that a year later we would have our own studio or that less than two years later, we would be making enough to quit our jobs and go full time. It was really just a baby side hustle back then, and it’s definitely time to reintroduce ourselves and go into more detail about how Weekend Creative came to be.
One of the the shoots we worked on for Content. I think this was pretty much the only time that we both shot instead of dividing art direction and shooting. See some of the final shots here.
To start, let’s talk about ourselves individually.
I asked Arabela to share her story, and this is what she said:
“ I’ve loved photography ever since I took a polaroid manipulation class in my after school program when I was in the 4th or 5th grade. From that time on, I quickly made photography a regular hobby and even managed to learn Photoshop at a really young age (thanks to an illegally downloaded version). Starting with self-portraiture and street in high school, I then became passionate about portraits, still life, and fashion during college. Living in a Mexican household, a creative career wasn’t necessarily approved of and so in order to make my mother happy, I chose forensic science and psychology. After almost failing my chemistry class, I knew that I had to take a different path.
Luckily, I came across advertising as a major and was able to make that work while also pursuing a photography minor. Although I never intended to make money out of my hobby or pursue it as a career, the opportunities started presenting themselves and I realized there was a huge need for photography in my area. I started shooting for local stores, working with influencers to shoot their looks, booking portrait sessions, and eventually started working with Elle at Content Mag. With all these amazing opportunities, I knew that photography was going to be a part of the rest of my life.”
This was taken on our first business trip - to LA to teach a workshop with our friends at Pretty Thing.
Ok, my turn now!
I’ve always been creative, I spent most of my childhood playing imaginary games and working on craft projects. I was always starting little businesses by myself or with friends, but never stuck with anything for very long. I changed career ideas many times, but eventually settled on being a teacher. I transferred to CSUEB where I studied liberal studies. I really disliked all my classes, but I thought that once I was out of school and in the real teaching world it would get better. I went to my last counseling appointment expecting to hear that I was on track to graduate in a few months, only to be told that I wouldn’t graduate for at least another year, probably longer. I remember calling my mom and crying because I just couldn’t handle these classes anymore. She told me that it was ok to quit and try something else, something that I really wanted to do, but I just needed permission to feel I actually could.
I ended up quitting school and deciding that I would go back to community college in the fall, not really knowing what I wanted to study. Around that time I discovered that CSUEB had a wedding planning certificate program. I ended up taking that course, and during that time decided that I wanted to major in graphic design with the intention of being a wedding designer. I went back to community college to do some prereqs and then ended up at SJSU where I met Arabela. I majored in graphic design and accidentally minored in art history. I started an internship at Content Magazine that turned into a full-time job when I graduated. At Content I was lucky enough to art direct fashion editorials which made me realize that I loved working on shoots even more than designing behind a computer screen.
Arabela modeling in my bathtub for one of my classes at SJSU. I loved how she was always down to work on creative projects and would get excited about my ideas.
As I mentioned earlier, Arabela and I met at San Jose State University, specifically in a photography class called Intro to Studio Lighting in the fall of 2015. For this class, we each had to choose someone to be our partner for the entire semester. You would trade off assisting each other on all your projects so this was a pretty important choice. I actually knew a few other people in the class, but for various reasons didn’t want to be paired up with them, so I was desperately looking for someone else haha. Arabela was sitting behind me and mentioned that she liked my bag and asked if it was from Madewell. I immediately knew that I wanted to be friends with this girl. We chatted for a minute and then I asked if she wanted to be partners.
One of my favorite shoots that we worked on for Content Mag - Anjelah Johnson at the Winchester Mystery House.
We spent the entire semester learning about the principles of light, tag teaming on our projects, and getting to know each other. After the class was over, I got her an internship at Content where we continued to work together on photoshoots. While we were having fun, we both felt the tension of being creatives working to fulfill someone else’s creative vision and would often joke about “when we’re the boss.” We would casually mention starting a company, but never really had any concrete plans. I think we both thought that it never would actually happen, and if it did, it would be several years down the road.
One of the shoots that we worked on just for fun. You can see some of the final shots here.
At some point, we decided to do some fun shoots outside of work where we could experiment and just make things for ourselves. We did a couple little fashion shoots, and then I got the idea to ask companies to give us product to shoot. On a whim I e-mailed It’s It Ice Cream through their contact form and asked if they would send us ice cream in exchange for photos. To my surprise, they responded and said that they actually needed some specific images and wanted to pay us. We ended up doing two shoots for them, and made a whopping $500 which we spent on the props and equipment rentals for the shoot. We had absolutely no idea what we were doing, and really just faked it the entire time.
BTS of that first shoot, looking at this makes me realize just how far we’ve come haha.
Even though this shoot paid us basically nothing, it did make us realize that we could turn this into a business, something that had never really seemed possible before. We decided to create a business and started looking into the steps necessary to make it official. We spent several weeks trying to decide on a name. We wrote down everything we liked and tried piecing different words together. We wanted a name that would stand the test of time, and also tell a story. Somewhere, I think on Pinterest, I saw a Bando patch that said, “available for weekends,” and it made me think of including the word weekend in our name. We thought it was perfect because we were both working other jobs at this time, so it was truly a side hustle that mostly happened on the weekends (and Monday nights). In addition to telling our origin story, everyone loves weekends, it’s a word that has a lot of happiness and fun associated with it which we also loved.
One of our many lists of potential names.
Once we had a name, we threw together a website and created some business cards. We had decided that we wanted to go to some craft fairs in San Francisco to pitch ourselves to companies which was really good because it gave us a deadline. I think without that set date it would have taken us a lot longer to get all of this done. We have a post that we wrote about this craft fair experience here. We learned a lot about how to talk about ourselves, and we actually gained a few contacts that became regular clients after a few months.
We realized that if we were going to start making money, we should be legally set up, so we used Legal Zoom to file for our LLC. We literally went through the questions to see what it was like, not even intending to actually go through with it. When we got to the end we decided to just submit because it was all filled out anyway and that’s how we became an actual business haha. Needless to say, we really had no idea what we were doing. Neither of us had any business experience when we started, and everything that we know we’ve learned from friends/family, experience, and google, and we’re still learning A LOT.
On set with our very first client after becoming official - S64.
Our business became official in January of 2018, but it was a year before we got our studio (read more here), and neither of us fully left our other jobs until this year (2019). For the first year, we shot out of my house with rented lights or used studios we found through Peerspace. All of our equipment/props were kept in my garage. We would meet in coffee shops or on my living room floor. Nothing felt super professional or official, but that was ok. We started with what we had, and over time the business grew.
Shooting in my backyard for Femme Fair.
The first of many self-timer shoots. These were our first portraits for our website.
My garage where we kept all our props.
Our veeeeery janky setup in my bedroom using my screen printing board and some hot lights. You can see some of the final shots from this shoot here. To me, this shot is proof that you don’t need a ton of fancy equipment or a studio to make fun, professional, creative images. Just start with whatever you have!
One thing that I’m really thankful for is that everything happened so naturally. We never really set out to start a company or make it our full-time job, or even get a studio (read more about that here), but each next step happened when the time was right. Something really interesting is that we never even talked about focusing our business on shooting product, it’s just what came out of our mouths when we started pitching to clients. It wasn’t until recently that we realized that we never even had that conversation, it just happened. Honestly this is my dream job, and if you had told me when I was little that this is what I would be doing, I would have never believed you. It just seems too good to be true sometimes, and I’m super thankful.
The day we got our studio. So happy, but also scared and hoping we can make rent haha.
Our one year anniversary and studio opening party, accidentally coordinating outfits like always.
I wanted to share a couple things that we’ve learned through this whole process in hopes that it helps anyone else dreaming about starting a business one day.
There will never be the perfect time, so just start somewhere. You’ll never know everything or have it all together and if you wait until you feel ready, you will never start.
Set goals with deadlines. This is so helpful in actually getting started. Find someone to help keep you accountable.
Put yourself out there, even if you don’t have much work to show yet.
Create the kind of work that you want to be hired for. If you are in the process of looking for clients to get you started, create some fake projects to work on that will attract those clients and help you grow at the same time.
Ask for help. No one knows exactly what they’re doing, and you will need a lot of advice especially when you’re just getting started. Find people that you trust who can mentor and help you through the process.
BTS of a fun shoot we did to build up our portfolio
I hope that our story inspires you to start something right now, wherever you are, even if you don’t know where it will take you. If we can do it, you can too! As always, feel free to reach out to us with any questions, we love being a helping hand to others.
Is it the weekend yet?
Elle