Were you ever "the new kid"?
My Dad is retired Air Force and my parents divorced when I was young, so I moved around quite a bit. Being "the new kid" has some pros, but mostly cons from my experience. Making friends was always the most challenging part about starting over in a new place.
Fast forward many moons and I'm "the new kid" in McKinney, Texas. A city of 200k north of the DFW metroplex. It's the largest city I've lived in all my adult years. Throw in the fact that the metroplex population is 7.76 MILLION as of 2021, you can see why I was a little intimidated about being the newest photographer in a community so large. I was afraid of getting lost in the sea of other photographers.
Well, it's been 6 months since the move and I have a completely different outlook on being new in town. Initially, I had to find out who my people were. It was important for me to plug into the groups that had the same values as I have.
First stop: Church
While I live in McKinney, if I drive 1.5 miles in one direction, I'm in Frisco, a different direction and I'm in Princeton; the cities just overlap one another. Therefore, I searched within a 30 minute radius of our house for a church home. Our first services were in McKinney, next was Wiley, and Allen, then we took the toll roads to Central Park Baptist in Carrollton. Scriptural preaching is very important to us. We're constantly turning our Bibles to the references Pastor White has studied. The congregation is all ages and they're friendly. We visited for over a month before we joined. Very happy to be a member there.
Second stop: Networking Groups
If you're unfamiliar with Alignable, it's an online networking platform that is gaining momentum. I met a couple of my favorite people there; Dee Nott of Virtual Tribe Marketing and Amber Gaige of Saber Strategy. I'll talk more about them later, but for now, here's how the ball started rolling; Amber and I had a virtual meeting where I asked if she was in any in-person networking groups. While she isn't personally, she knew someone who was overseeing one, Dan Fetsch of Network In Action. I contacted him and set up a one to one.
Dan could have let me know that since I'm so new, I needed to build my connections first, but instead, he took a chance on me. He allowed me to be part of the stellar group of people that I meet with once a month now. He also encouraged me to have one to ones with two of the people in the group: Mallory Smith of SignSmiths and Randell Holmes, director of sales for The Credit Union of Texas Event Center. Mallory hired my son and Randell invited me to the business networking event hosted at CUTX.
Before leaving the CUTX business networking social, I was invited by Stephen Snyder of Insure You Too to MMP Collin, where I met Sheryl Powers of Mpowered Advantage and Rob Bliss of Purple Cow Branding. Sheryl mentioned that she and Rob had started a podcast focused on networking, Network Today, which I binge-listened to and implemented. (Highly recommend this podcast to anyone who thinks networking is a waste of time. It changed the way I connect.)
Shortly after more one to ones, I got asked to photograph the Women Entrepreneurs' Summit by the Allen Fairview Chamber. "Super" Dave Quinn of the TX Economic Development Corporation kicked it off. He referred me to the Fairview Town Hall to photograph their Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony.
The first Network in Action meeting was where I met Angi Burns, the publisher of the Allen City Lifestyle Magazine. I've since photographed two covers for them and just signed a contract to be the photographer for West Stonebridge Neighbors Magazine.
Veterans in Business Dallas was where I wanted to offer to update Headshot Profile pictures for Veterans at no cost. Randy Watkins of Dream Home Lending was gracious enough to host the location and the nacho bar for that in December.
I've had the privilege to photograph individual Headshots, Beauty Portraits, and Branding Sessions since the move. Some have been in studio, some at The Millhouse McKinney, and some at The Enclave.
What Now?
Now I keep the momentum going. Today was the release of Episode 34: Always Be Learning where I was the guest on the Network Today Podcast. Considering I've only lived here since July, I'd say that's a pretty fair amount of getting things done, wouldn't you?
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