Hello my lovely,
in today’s THE AUDACIOUS BABE Podcast episode, I had the absolute pleasure and honour to be interviewing Lex Fleming from Fleming Photo and chat with her about the community over competition mindset.
Lex and I met at the beginning of 2017 when I joined her London Wedding Breakfast Club and attended one of their breakfast meetings. Since then I’ve gotten to know Lex a bit more and when I started this podcast I just knew I wanted to interview her especially about the community over competition mindset.
As photographers and also in other industries, we get taught when growing up, may this be in school or at university, that we need to look at our competition and analyse them. While I find that is a very important step in your branding and building your business strategy, the word “competition” teach us to see each others as rivals.
In our industry, when I first started back in 2013 I found that was still really the case. As a newbie I got looked at as the new rival in town by other photographers. I simply did not understand that. Am I a threat to these people?! I guess I was. I got bad vibes thrown my way when exhibiting at fairs with other photographers, and the whole ‘let’s check out the competition” looks and so on. While this wasn’t the case with all photographers that I met, but it certainly was with quite a few in the beginning. And when you first starting out this makes you quite self-conscious and makes you feel small. I hated that feeling.
So over the years I’ve always made it a point of going up to other photographers at fairs or at any kind of meeting and introducing myself. And I think this is also one of the many reasons I felt the need to start this podcast essentially, to talk about these things.
The mere word competition is not one that I particularly like. We are all in this together. And quite frankly, yes we are potentially trying to get the same business, but I honestly believe there are enough fish in the pond for all of us. So I don’t feel threatened and I want to encourage you all to never feel threaten by your so-called competitors.
Some of my best friends in business are fellow photographers!
So go out there, peeps, mingle with the likes of you and if they give you bad vibes, brush them off and put a big fat smile on your face and simply go and introduce yourself.
Like I said we are all in this together. So I’d rather help and encourage and empower other photographers and be friends with other photographers than be negative and feel threaten and give out bad vibes. Right?
Anyways, long story short, when I’ve met Lex and got introduced to the whole London Wedding Breakfast Club scene, I instantly felt that same community vibe. She will talk about the LWBC in more detail in the interview.
I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I had recording it. She is one hell of an audacious babe, don’t you think?!
If you have any questions for Lex, she is already part of our online community, so just head over here and join us! I’m sure she is more than happy to answer any of your questions!
Below you will see some examples of Lex’s wonderful work as well as a few background information PLUS all her social media links where you can find more of her.
Enjoy, my lovelies!
Magdalena x
Name: Lex Fleming
Business Name: Fleming Photo
Website: www.flemingphoto.co.uk
Facebook Page: www.facebook.com/lexflemingphoto
Instagram: @lexflemingphoto
Twitter: @lexflemingphoto
Short Bio:
I’m Lex, an almost-30 year old Wedding Photographer. I’ve been interested in all things related to photography since I was 16 and after trying my hand at being a music photographer, a fashion photographer, being a photography teacher and even owning a pin-up photography studio, before I found my way into the wedding world in 2015 and haven’t looked back! I live and work in South East London with my pooch Matilda and love travelling the World with my camera, whether it’s for work or for pleasure. I specialise in alternative and fun weddings and taking the traditional out of the age old idea of getting hitched!
In early 2016, I started the London Wedding Breakfast Club, a wedding industry community event that meets once a month over breakfast. This has allowed nearly 900 people in London to mix and network not just for their businesses, but for peace of mind and to end any self-employed loneliness. It is my little labour of love project and I’ve recently spread to Essex with plans for Brighton, Bristol & Manchester by the end of the year.
3-5 fun facts about yourself:
- I’ve never seen Disney’s The Lion King (I know…I just never got to watch it as a kid and now it’s become my ‘thing’)
- I spent 4 weeks in early 2016 travelling Australia by myself. It was a love/hate adventure but I’ve fallen madly in love with Sydney and want to go back for longer next time
- I’m absolutely obsessed with dogs. Any dog will do. I have been known to cut across conversations just to awww as a dog.
- I’ve surprised myself at how hard fun facts are to think about yourself
- I am also mildly obsessed with Bill Murray. To count, I have 2 Bill Murray pillows, 1 Bill Murray sweater, 5 books and even 1 tattoo!! My dream is to meet Bill and have a whiskey with him.
