The Job Forum

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Welcome to the Job Forum. My name is Mana Azizoltani and I am a PhD student at the Harrah College of Hospitality here at UNLV. On this show we discuss the journey through college and into the workforce with recent graduates of different disciplines. Welcome to the Job Forum. Alright let's get this party started. So in today's episode I'm excited to bring Jen Funderburg here. She's actually someone that I personally have admired from afar for a long time now. I think her work is awesome. I love seeing her stuff on Instagram and I pretty much like every photo and I try to comment on everything just because I love it. I really do. Jen, do you want to give a little brief introduction?

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Hi, I'm Jen and I am born and raised in Vegas. And of course, I still live here currently. Hopefully not for too much longer. But only because I love traveling and new places. I went to University of Nevada, Reno for college. I know.

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True.

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And I actually majored in English and I minored in fine arts drawing.

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What the heck?

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And now you're a photographer? Yeah.

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So how does that work? So I'm a photographer. So I actually went into college wanting to be an author. I've wanted to write a book since I was like 11. What the heck? I didn't know this about you. So I went to college basically saying all I'm going to do with my life is write a book. I don't really need to go to college, but I kind of want a degree. So I guess I'll just go to college. And yeah, I ended up finding a lot of opportunity there. And I worked for a marketing team for my university. We did concert, club, event, marketing. And I started out as a graphic designer and then I worked my way up to director where I had to like kind of work in all of the spots where like if someone couldn't show up then I would have to show up for them and so I did a lot of photography work and then I just ended up kind of falling in love with it. Me and my roommate would go out on like a Saturday and just take pictures together and then eventually people were like, oh my gosh, that's so cool, I love that photo, can I come with you guys next time? And then it got to a point where I was like, maybe I should be like charging people to take their picture all the time. And I paid, or I charged someone $30 to take their grad photos.

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Are you serious? People charge, like 500 bucks for that stuff?

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Yeah, now, but at the time, it was a hobby, I didn't know what I was doing with it. It was like a meal, sounds great. A 30 bucks an hour maybe? That would also have been better, but I just had no expectations. I did not think I was gonna make anything of it. And then I graduated in 2020, and what else was I gonna do except for something crazy and potentially unsuccessful? So I started a business, because there was nothing I really had to lose. All of my friends were either in school or not really working anyway, so if I started it and it didn't work out, I was only missing one year, and then I could start fresh with everybody else. And I've been doing it ever since.

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Did you graduate college early then? Did you graduate college early?

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Yeah, so I graduated in three years because I don't know how to stop. I just don't know how to tell myself to slow down. So yeah, I graduated in three years and then I spent my fourth year making a business. Wow, that's insane. I mean, so like I'm

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like you, I graduated in three years, but like I wish I would have like done something cool, like make a business. Dude, that's sick. Like I just was a bum.

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Straight up.

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Well, I mean, I see a lot of your travel photos. I know that's not true. But I definitely just got to a point where I think there was a lot going on in the world and I knew that there wasn't a book I could write that really needed to be heard more than a lot of other stories that were being told at the time.

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Do you mean this from like an author perspective, like trying to make, write your own book or

0:04:24
do you mean?

0:04:25
Yeah, like I, like that was my goal all through college I was like okay I'm gonna graduate I'm gonna move somewhere I'm gonna work in a coffee shop and I'm gonna write my novel it's what I'm gonna do with my six months post graduation that was like a big plan that I had and then just a quick side

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note I think is it true do you know about JK Rowling story about how she wrote Harry Potter I think she like was in some library in Portugal somewhere that like was so crazy that like the stairs were some type of way that she like got inspired to write seven books

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Wow, no, I did not know that but my plan was to go to London. Okay, so That's funny. I guess I'm a copycat Connection. Yeah, but yeah, that was my plan and then the world was crazy and I was just like well What else should I do with my time? This isn't the right time for this, so.

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So you're in your own company.

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I did that, yeah.

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What was that like, exactly?

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Terrifying, it's, I feel like a lot of people have a really big sense of, like, security is important. And when you're doing anything that isn't so secure, it feels like a bad idea to a lot of people. Especially like a lot of people in my life. A lot of my family has government jobs.

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A lot of structure.

0:05:44
Yeah, lots of structure. A little too much for me. So I think it's sometimes discouraging to kind of want to step outside of the box that you grew up in.

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So where did you find support then?

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That's such a good question.

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I actually think mostly my friends, a lot of the people that I had worked with before that had been on the other side of my camera or just next to me while I'm figuring it out, they really believed in me and kind of pushed me to start to see myself with that kind of potential. basically told me that I was someone who was going to have the potential to make a lot more money than he could in his stable secure job and one day I would be possibly the kind of person that would be hiring people in his major to work for my company in a stable secure job and that kind of idea, I think, really encouraged me to maybe be someone with a vision that might end up successful. And it doesn't always feel like that. I feel like imposter syndrome, you know, is always the death of creative jobs. But, I mean, I know that there's no one out there that's really doing what I'm doing. And even if they are, like, they have different ideal clients than I do. They have different ideas and hopes for their business than I do.

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So what exactly do you do? Do you want to talk about what your business is and what your job is?

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So I started out as just kind of like a graduation photographer, like portraits. Now I do elopements, which is great for a city like this.

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Can you explain what elopement is? I don't actually know what that is.

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Yeah, so it's like, I don't know what's a less glamorous term, a shotgun wedding. I don't know, like just people who are like, you know what, wedding planning is hard, and weddings cost a lot of money, so let's just go get married now. Let's go to the courthouse.

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I was just at a shotgun wedding. What was it? Last week Friday? Was it? Yeah. So I had to get in a photographer last minute. Luckily it was one of our friends. Oh nice. So yeah, exactly.

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I'm one of those. Also weddings. I do love a big wedding. I do like wedding weekend photography. Like I love traveling for work. So if someone like right now I'm looking at an inquiry for like a New York wedding like maybe Central Park and I'll like go for the weekend, we can shoot the rehearsal dinner. Just making it more of a storytelling than just me snapping photos of what they're doing. I think it's, even though I'm not writing novels, I think it's still really important to be telling people's stories. So that's what I try to do through my photos.

0:08:49
That's so inspiring to me. Thank you. It didn't work out the first way, but you found a way to make your dream a reality, even though it wasn't the way you imagined it at the beginning. I think that's so powerful and so cool. So kudos to you. Thank you. So, what exactly does your day-to-day look like then?

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Every day is different.

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Oh, every day is different.

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I don't really have any specific routine that I stick to, which is really good for me. I kind of hate routines.

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Okay, I was just gonna ask, yeah.

0:09:19
Yeah, I really thrive in chaos, which is not good. I'm working on it. But I think it's really good for me to wake up knowing that tomorrow might be different and a new challenge. And so I spend some of my days working on my website, which is both the bane of my existence and the love of my life. I work so hard on it, and I'm constantly updating it, so I spend a lot of time doing that. I spend a lot of time on social media, lots of connecting there. On the days that I have photo shoots, I'm shooting, running around. I do a lot of driving. I didn't really think about how much driving I would be doing, but I will be like, let's go to this super pretty exotic location that I found. It's an hour away. Don't worry about it. But also location scouting. That's a big one too. Like some days I'm like, okay, this person wants photos downtown, but they don't want them to look like anyone else's photos downtown. So then I have to go drive downtown, kind of like look around, find like cool spots. Like that's a really big part of the job that I think I wasn't really thinking of at first. I was just like, oh, I know five cool places. And now I'm like, I get so bored of my five cool places. If I have to shoot at Red Rock like three times in one week, I'm like, if I never see Red Rock again, it's too soon. But I love Red Rock, and then I'll go back again. I'm like, oh, I forgot it's this pretty but it's because it's like Hard to be there all the time no matter where it is. So I agree

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All right. Well, so Obviously you have a certain like a certain level of creativity that is I can see is just like the spewing out of you right and so How exactly Did that help you through college or is that something you learned? Is it like, okay, I want to take a step back and take a breath because like I'm not someone that's very creative. Like I don't consider myself someone that has like artistic talent. And so for me, it's like, I don't know anything about it. So I'm asking you like to learn. So like, is this something that like you were sort of born with or did you come out in college or did it like how did you sort of like manifest or like get

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it to manifest? Does that make sense? Yeah. So I actually, um, I have a lot of thoughts about the idea of talent.

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Okay, let's hear them, I wanna hear it.

0:11:43
So, I have always found it to be like a little bit frustrating, I guess, like the idea that if someone can't immediately draw something perfectly, they decide that they don't have that talent. I think that if you looked at drawings that I did when I was in fourth grade, when I first started really caring about it, or even when I was in high school and I drew in my sketchbook every day compared to what I do now, I probably should have stopped at some point. So it's like, I think a lot of people stop before they find out what they're really capable of, and they kind of put those limits on themselves, maybe because they've seen other people do it or because it just seems like too hard. But I don't really believe in like talents that you're born with in a way that it's like impossible for other people to be that good too. Right. Of course. So yeah, I think in a sense, like I have always been drawn to like creative things. I really enjoy learning and using like all forms of art, whether that's drawing, writing, I don't know, whatever, photography.

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I get it.

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But I think that it definitely comes with just being interested in it and knowing that the more effort you put into it, the more you're going to get out of it.

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Play to your strengths, but you can learn anything, basically.

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Yeah, exactly.

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I get it.

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I have a lot of people tell me that they don't have anything that they're artistic with, and then I'm like, hmm, I don't know about that. I have a friend who is like, no, I'm so logical-brained. I don't think creatively at all, ever. And then they make a website, and it's just the coolest, prettiest thing ever. How do you feel like that's not an art? Like that is absolutely an art. And I feel like we just kind of limit ourselves because we're like, this is art and this is not.

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Right, maybe it's society talking too, right? Like this is artistic and this is maybe not.

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Yeah.

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So maybe.

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And I think that it's more about the way that you go about it and the way that you kind of use your brain when you're working on it.

0:13:57
Cool.

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So it sounds like what you do for a living has to do a lot with marketing and managing connections and presenting yourself in a certain way, selling yourself, you could say, right? Yes. And so what exactly, what kind of skills do you need to be able to do that work?

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So I personally have found that most of the skills that I use on a daily basis when I'm either talking to new clients or like working with other photographers or with certain venues. Just in general, like a lot of my job I have to work with like adaptability, flexibility, like things like that. Like people skills I think tend to be a lot more important than like physical skill. Like you can always kind of like work on or experiment with a new way to take a picture or to successfully like write an email, but it's really hard to kind of use those skills if you're not able to read the room. Right. So I think that that's a really big one for me. So knowing your audience. Yeah, knowing your audience. I think just being excited for people, like that's a really big part of my business like I am working with people who Might want to hire me for the best day of their life Like you don't want your wedding photographer to be someone who responds to you and is like thank you for your email I will consider what my schedule looks like and get back to you like you want someone who's like oh my god I'm so excited that you're getting married. I would love to be your photographer. I am available on this state like with professionalism, but also like

0:15:42
Meeting their needs. Oh, that's actually a really different perspective than I've heard a lot of people come on here and say like, okay I speak professional in the business world, whatever but like it's so cool that you're like, you know, yeah

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Enthusiast I mean it's important though

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Like one of the things that I hear a lot is like, you know It's very important to be genuine genuinely care about someone genuinely empathize genuinely. Yeah, I'd be you know that kind of stuff.

0:16:05
Yeah, definitely.

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And then, so, you talk about knowing your audience, right? So, like, knowing your client base, right? So, what about your audience in terms of, like, potential customers, like, what you post on social media, marketing, that kind of stuff?

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So, I had an interesting perspective of what my ideal client was for a long time that I don't really believe in anymore. And, for me, at that point, it was someone who wanted to elope on a glacier in Alaska, or someone who wanted to fight the crowds in New York City with me. I really wanted the big, extravagant, most interesting and exciting stories.

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I feel like those are the breakthrough pieces that you see at maybe some kind of art exhibit that have big impact, big whatever, right?

0:16:49
Something like that. So that's what I thought I wanted for a long time. And now I've realized that more than anything else, my ideal client is someone who trusts me and really believes in what I can give them through my work. And that is so much easier to navigate and it's a lot less stressful. It makes me feel successful a lot more of a time than not.

0:17:17
Right, it's like little victories over one monumental.

0:17:19
Yeah, like I think getting an inquiry for someone who wants to do something really cool is super exciting and it feels successful in the moment, but they can also ghost me. Right. Like right after I respond. Whereas like when I give someone their photos back and then they send me like a really sweet text message about how they've been crying looking through them They're so happy and they feel like I really like documented them well like that feels like success to me in a way that I Definitely wasn't expecting when I was maybe starting this two years ago, so so

0:17:54
I want to it seems like a lot of things you do are like soft skill like you have a lot of soft skill. I mean obviously like you're an expert photographer, right? I mean you do a lot of editing also and you, do you code on your website? Is that?

0:18:08
No, thankfully no. Is it one of like the Wix ones or whatever? Yeah, I have a Wix website. I definitely probably shouldn't because I ask a lot more of my website than I think I thought I was going to at the time that I got it. And I was like, I just need something really simple. And now it's like 40 pages and just so much. But yeah, I have to deal with a lot of glitching and problem solving and technical stuff that I definitely was not expecting to have to work through at any point of my career path. And then I do edit in Photoshop and Lightroom mainly. But I don't really like to Photoshop to change things. Right. Just to enhance. Yeah, like colors and brightness and stuff. I'm not the kind of photographer who's going to take a picture somewhere and then you find out that I actually took it in my living room and then Photoshopped the whole background.

0:19:10
Oh, geez, yeah. I think it's amazing, though. I see those pictures from Hobby Lobby or whatever, right? It's so cool. Like they do the Hobby Lobby thing. Not my thing. But I mean, I'd love to be good at that, but I'm not.

0:19:20
That's not mine.

0:19:21
Are there any of the skills that, I mean, like obviously you did a degree in English and you like totally changed gears. Like are there any of the skills that you learned in college that you think you might apply now, that apply to your job?

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I think that aside from like the marketing job that I took in college, a lot of my skills from my major and minor really taught me a lot about perspective and I think I think just like getting to meet new people like when you're in an English class with 30 other kids that read into everything you learn a lot more about something in front of you that looks really simple. And I think it just taught me like...

0:20:05
To see things different way maybe.

0:20:06
Yeah, and also just to know that everyone else around me is seeing things differently than I do too. And I think that that was maybe not one of the main like educational skills that I got, but it's one that really stuck with me that I use a lot more often now. And yeah, I just think that the growth that you get from realizing that everyone comes from a different background and they're going to look at the same thing as you and come up with 50 other things that you didn't think of is just really cool and it makes you a lot more aware, I guess.

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Okay. I have a lot of buddies that like to do photography on the side. It's their hobby. So what kind of advice would you give to someone like that to turn their hobby into a business of living?

0:20:53
Yeah, that's a good question. I think that one of the biggest things if you're starting any kind of business is just finding your why, which is something that everyone will tell you. But I think more than that, it's just finding the thing that makes you different from everyone else that's doing the exact same thing as you like photography is incredibly oversaturated There are so many people like I think I know more photographers than non photographers at this but it's just like Knowing that you're bringing something to the table that no one else has Whether that's the way that you take pictures the way you edit pictures the way that you communicate with your clients, whatever it is like it's just something that you have that no one else has. So once you find that thing, it gets a lot easier to kind of be ready to sell it. If you don't know why you're doing something, then it's really easy to stop doing it or to stop believing that you can.

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Right, and how do you sell yourself? Or how should someone sell themselves?

0:22:03
So I, that's a really hard question for me actually. I definitely know how I sell my business. It's storytelling. I am a storyteller and that's the part of it that I love the most. So I really hope that when people are looking at my photos, they can feel the emotion that I was feeling in that moment, that my clients were feeling in that moment, the love that those two had for each other. For the record, they can. Yeah. Thank you. I'm exhibit A. But that's definitely my main goal, and I feel like sometimes it's really discouraging when you like look at photos, and they just feel like they look like everyone else's, or they look like just like, oh that pose was so staged. Like I really hope that no one looks at photos that I took and is like, oh wow, they look really uncomfortable and stiff in that. So I think for me, just the idea that I'm following you around and you just pretend I'm not here, but I will give you pointers.

0:23:03
Like a David Dobrik.

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Kind of, yeah.

0:23:05
Yeah, so I think my problem is that I have a hard time deciding if I'm selling my business or if I'm trying to sell me as a person, I don't really want to be famous. I think a lot of people assume that what I'm doing with my business is being an influencer, which I have nothing against. I think influencers are cool, but I don't want to be famous. I want my art to be famous. I want to make an impact with the photos that I take of other people. I don't want people to know my brand because they know my face. So I think it's really important for me that when I think about my why, it's about what I can give for other people. And when I have clients looking at photos of themselves that I took, I want them to feel as loved as they feel by the people who are closest to them, or as seen as they feel when they look in the mirror. I want them to really feel themselves and feel fully supported in that. I don't want to just take a picture that they make their profile photo because they look good in it and that's the end of it. I want it to feel like something.

0:24:25
To evoke something in them. Yeah. I got it.

0:24:28
Cool.

0:24:29
That's so cool. So, I want to change gears a little bit. Just a funny question that I wanted to ask you. I was a math major, and some of the guys that came around here were like, I think my one friend was, oh, he was also math, and the other one was stats, and the other one was insurance. And you were English, so what do you think about this whole major elitist idea?

0:24:49
idea. So this used to really upset me when I was first starting in college all of my friends were in engineering or pre-med and I got a lot of the oh what's it like with your fake major and having no homework which is so funny because I was reading like a novel every single week and writing like two essays for class but I think now I just look at it a lot differently because I think that even the people who are in math majors or in engineering majors or whatever, you need art. Life would suck without art. Whether it's the latte that your barista made you this morning or the TV show that you go home to relax to or the photos that someone takes.

0:25:36
Or a beautiful way to solve a problem.

0:25:38
Yeah, whatever it is. You make art in every aspect of your life. So the people that are doing that all the time, maybe sometimes it's harder, but I love what I'm doing and I don't come home from my job waiting to retire. I'm making just as much money as a lot of my friends that have real majors. And I think I have a lot more fun than they do sometimes. You show them, you know. So I think looking at it, looking back, it was really frustrating, I think, when I first started because I had a lot to prove. And now I think I'm just having so much fun and I feel like I'm really being honest and true to who I am to the point where I don't really care so much if I have something to prove because I feel it.

0:26:32
I really liked what you said about the way that in college it trained you to think a different way in terms of, I don't remember what you said, something like everyone looks something different, everyone picks everything apart, and there's beauty in that. And so I think there's definitely value in what you're saying in that everyone is just different. And that's what kind of plays to our strengths. And so in the interest of time, I want to ask you, what are some last sort of recommendations or advice you can give to someone that is maybe going through an artsy degree or maybe is doing a hobby on the side that they want to turn into a business? Or maybe just what kind of advice could you give to someone in a version of a past you? What advice would you give to a past you? That's what I want to ask.

0:27:18
I think just, like again, the idea of knowing what you bring to the table is really important. Knowing why you want something so badly is really important. But I think also just like sticking to what you know that you're good at because if you aren't good at something and you're doing it just because you know it's going to make you money or if you're doing something that is going to make you money but you don't love it like do you really want to spend the better years of your life like doing something that you don't actually care about at all or gain anything from because it's Like, just because artists aren't always looked at as successful people at the beginning doesn't mean that we don't know all of their names once they are successful. And I just feel like there's a lot of opportunity in the world and why shouldn't it be yours? So. Wow. All right.

0:28:20
Mic drop.

0:28:21
We're calling it on that. Jen, thank you so much for coming in here. I have enjoyed this conversation so much. I hope that everyone else will too. I know they will.

0:28:33
Thank you.

0:28:35
Thanks so much for listening to The Job Forum. If you want any more details or have any questions, visit my website at manaziz.com. M-A-N-A-Z-I-Z.com. M-A-N-A-Z-I-Z.com.

0:28:47
Welcome to The Job Forum.

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