Ep. 30: Branding for Balance with Charity Maurer
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Today, we welcome Charity Maurer. Charity is known for her luxury photography brand. During the podcast, this devoted mom of two shares her past experiences including being the youngest of nine siblings and Irish dancing for a decade of her life. Charity strives to have a great balance of family and work in her life and branded herself in order to do so. Charity is the true definition of motivated and explains how to prioritize the important things in life.
TURNING ART INTO A CAREER
Charity started as a dancer, which was her first form of art that she fell in love with. Irish dancing was her passion for around a decade of her life. Although, once she was about to get married, she did not see dancing as her future. She knew that she wanted to get into photography and decided she was going to be a digital photographer. She took a film class in community college where she thought it was irrelevant at the time. Four years later, she decided to shoot film and has never looked back.
HER LUXURY BRAND NOW
Now, she shoots both film and digital for her clients. Charity received $1,200 for her first shoot ever and now she will make $10,000 plus on a shoot for a client. In order to give clients a luxury experience, she focuses on two p’s: presentation and perception. She wants to give her clients a luxury experience and amazing photos to commemorate those memories.
When starting her luxury brand, she thought about the current amount she was making per shoot and wanted to market herself to make more money. Instead of shooting 20 to 30 weddings a year, Charity can focus on shooting 7 to 10 amazing weddings. This gives her time to focus on her two children and have a great balance between work and family.
Charity decided to release guides and literature for other photographers. She found out she has a gift for helping people maximize their full potential. In a way, she is coaching her competition but her viewpoint is that people are going to excel no matter what but, you can choose to be a part of their journey. If interested, you can find her website at shop.charitymaurer.com. Charity offers coaching sessions and SOON will have an online course!
NEW PHOTOGRAPHERS, LISTEN UP!
Her advice to new photographers is that they need to find their voice and brand as soon as possible. People look at everyone else’s work in order to understand what they want to represent but they need to look at their own values and what they want to uphold in their business. The first look at your business, a person is just establishing their WHAT but once that is figured out, you need to figure out the WHY.
Charity says her why is for her clients and her family. For her clients, she believes in the idea of legacy and living a life that matters. She values family and marriage and wants to be apart of a moment so foundational. For her family, she thinks it’s amazing that she can still contribute financially to her family and be a stay at home mom beside the few weddings she works in between.
HER BACKGROUND
Charity says her growing up was very unique. Her parents owned and operated a group home for adults with mental disabilities. Her family lived on the property and had people around all the time. She explains herself as an introvert and says she struggled with getting attention because she had so many siblings. She grew up in Arizona since they moved here when she was five.
She started Irish step dancing when she was nine and stopped when she was nineteen. Her dad showed her someone riverdance on the TV when she was seven and automatically became obsessed. Her school offered an elective class when she was nine and continued with it for ten years.
THE MOST IMPORTANT THING: FAMILY
Charity met her husband when she was 18 and he was 21. Her husband always wanted to be a marriage and family therapist and went through a grueling six years of school to get there. The first three years of marriage, they both decided they wanted to do marriage counseling in order to build their foundation. She said it helped them with solidifying their own stories so they both could understand each other better. She compares her husband to a toolbox, he is full of amazing answers and advice. Although sometimes unwarranted, Charity knows she is extremely grateful to have such a caring and smart husband.
Charity has eight brothers and sisters. She is the youngest sibling and has a eighteen-year span between her oldest sibling. Now that they are all grown up, she has 50 nieces and nephews and says she has honestly lost count. Impressively, she does know all their names. Since she is the youngest, so many names were already taken by her siblings having babies that they decided to go through the baby book from A to Z. Her two boys are named Achilles and Cyrus. Charity never thought she would pick unique names because she says she is a very traditional person but when seeing the names, she could not get rid of them.
CELEBRATED LIFE
Charity lives a celebrated life every single day. She says the world is broken but it is extremely crucial to cling to hope. Her faith is strong and looks to reclaim the good in God’s glory.
SOCIAL MEDIA
WEBSITE: www.charitymaurer.com
COACHING WEBSITE: www.shop.charitymaurer.com
INSTAGRAM: @charitymaurerphoto
