Episode 32: Cathi Nelson: Organizing Photos for Fun and Profit
Are you one of those people who have a photo management problem? Like, spilling out of boxes and envelopes, or taking up more and more space on your phone or laptop or multiple flash drives? You are not alone! So many people are struggling to organize their zillions of photographs that a new profession has been created: The Photo Manager. If you think you would enjoy the challenge of organizing other people’s photos, photo management might make a great full-time business or side gig. Cathi Nelson became a professional photo manager almost by accident. When she realized it was a new type of business that was needed all over the country, she founded The Photo Managers, a trade organization that offers training and certification. The Photo Managers now has 650 members worldwide and there’s lots of room for new entrants into the business.
Topics include:
Her move from scrapbooking to photo organization
How organizing analog photos is different from digital photos.
Her move from working with clients to setting up a framework for an entirely new profession
The “why” behind our motivation for take and saving photos
The ABC’s of photo organizing
Which photos can you safely discard?
The best way to save your photos before it’s too late
Steps to becoming a certified professional photo organizer
Easy-to-do side hustles that are lucrative
The Photo Managers’ annual education conference
Tips for DIY photo organizing
The 80/20 rule for photo curation
Resources:
Photo Organizing Made Easy: Going from Overwhelmed to Overjoyed by Cathi Nelson
Transcript:
Cathi Nelson (00:38):
When a family gives you access to their photo, you become part of their family. You get to see the weddings and the, the celebrations and the vacations and all the things that happened in a family's life, which believe it or not, aren't that unusual. We are all so much more alike than different in how we celebrate our lives together.
Betsy Bush (00:57):
We've been talking about families the past couple of episodes. Nancy Steiner on blended families. And last episode, Gerri Berger talked about adoptive families and finding birth families. Wow. All families though, it seems take photographs, lots and lots of photographs. For many of us organizing and keeping track of photos is frankly overwhelming. My guest today, Catherine Nelson has found herself at the nexus of what is becoming the new profession of photo management. It's also great for second act-ers looking for a home-based business. In 2009, Kathy founded The Photo Managers, the leading organization, serving entrepreneurs through training, a professional certification program, and a code of ethics Kathy's been featured in the New York times, the Atlantic real simple magazine, the wall street journal. And she's also the author of photo organizing, going from overwhelmed to overjoy, Kathy. It's great to have you with us today on the latest version.
Cathi Nelson
I am thrilled to be here.
Betsy Bush (02:12):
Great, great. I am so interested in what you're doing because to me, you're at the center of several different things. Ones all of us can relate to. People do feel overwhelmed by just the sheer numbers of photos they have in boxes and envelopes, the hard copies. And then of course, there's the digital world that's taken over, right? Photos on phones, on hard drives on laptops, and people really are needing help to, to figure out, first of all, how do I save? How do I secure all of these things so that I'll have them in the future and that my children and, you know, for future generations will have them. So tell me how you got started and kind of gimme an overview of what this whole photo management industry is.
Cathi Nelson (03:03):
Yeah, it's a great story in the sense that it's one of those examples of a business that there wasn't much the need for, but now it's an exploding need. And before digital photos, right, we would take our 24 rolls or 36 rolls down to our one hour lab and drop them off and wait, you know, in the parking lot or whatever, for your chance to see your photos, and then you'd get your doubles and you'd bring 'em home. And you'd flip through, 'em maybe put 'em an album or put 'em in a door or a box until the next event happened. So I spent many years helping people create scrapbook photo albums, which was really fun because I was an adoptive parent and I wanted to create for my son, what's called a life book. So he could see the photos. And, you know, I could read to him the story of how he joined our family and I needed a scrapbook to do that. And so I spent many years actually teaching people how to make scrapbook photo albums. But by 2007, 2008, I noticed people were coming in with little baggie of memory cards because they were switching to digital and they were perceiving it still to be like a role of film. And also they didn't know how do I email this photo? How do I get these photos from this memory card onto my computer? And I kept noticing there was an growing frustration too, and many women, I think as women, we tend to think we're not smart with technology. So in, in particular care so deeply for their photos, but felt like they were being held hostage by their husbands or somebody who else who knew better than they did where they were. Hmm. So I started helping people and a woman asked me a good friend, said when I offered to come to her home, she said, well, what are you charge? And I was stunned by the question because I wasn't charging anything. It's typical. And she said, well, no, you can't, unless you let me pay you. I'm not letting you come to my house, a good friend. So finally we went back and forth and I agreed and I got to her home. And not only did she have the memory cards on her computer that she wanted help with, but she also pulled out the boxes of photos. She had inherited from her parents who had recently passed away. She was one of four siblings and she had promised them that she would, you know, have those photos digitized and then, you know, give them back to everybody. So they have access to their childhood photos. Her kids were in middle school and high school. So they were living in the world between digital and analog photos. And she said, I don't care how long it takes Kathy. But I guarantee there are hundreds of other Marias who pay somebody to do this for them. Hmm. And there you go. In 2009, I thought that's a great idea. I think I'll start a business doing that. And I did. And not long after that people started seeing what I was doing and saying, I wanna do that in my area. Could you teach me how to do that? And it's a long story to where we are today, but we now have, you know, hundreds of members all over the world offering photo management and photo organizing services to clients, I've created a organization. Like it's almost like a trade association that supports through training and certification and helps them have very successful businesses doing that.
Betsy Bush (05:50):
You know, it's funny, so many conversations I've had with previous guests. We kind of talk about the industries that have gone away. Most prominently, you know, magazines and a lot of newspapers and journalism, but this is something that has appeared because of the digital world. And I think just that sense of, you know, you don't have one or two photo albums you can thumb through anymore. I mean, when I grew up, my family basically had one photo album. I mean, maybe that wasn't yeah, typical, you know, gradually there's just the pile up of things in boxes and those paper envelopes you'd bring back from photo hut or whatever. And maybe you say, oh, one of these days, I'm gonna to do it. And what if it never happens? You know,
Cathi Nelson (06:40):
When people ask me about what we do, it's really important to connect people with the why this matters. Cause it's really not about organizing. We call ourselves professional photo organizers. I would say organization is strictly a means to an end. Why do you take those photos? You know, what is captured in those photos that you so much about? And, you know, I'll ask you, like, for instance, if you think about your own family photo collection, what makes you take a camera with you somewhere or use your phone and why, what is it that you're hoping will happen
Betsy Bush (07:09):
When you take a photo? Well, you know, I think you all wait for that kind of special moment when you're all together and everyone's in sync and, and certainly when your kids get older and are spending time away from home, those moments when you're all together are really special.
Cathi Nelson (07:26):
And so I love to say that we are a people of stories and today, since the invention of the camera, the way that we tell, we used to tell stories around the campfire and different ways like that. But, you know, with the invention of photography and film, certainly using the video cameras and stuff, we started telling stories through photos. And you know, you look at social media and everything, right? It's in some ways maybe we don't love all the stories that get told today with photos, especially for young kids, but really it is a way of telling a story. And so the heart of what we do is help people find the photos that matter the most. And then we help them tell the story for themselves, maybe to enjoy in the future, the, or for the next generation. And that's really the heart of it is of what we do and why it's such meaningful work. When I first named my business myself, I chose the word organizing because Maria actually, what she wanted from those photos of her parents was an album of her parents' life together because that was her end goal. And I thought, well, I have to organize those photos first to make an album because I needed to create a narrative. I had have a beginning, middle and end. So that's why I tacked the word organizing on. And then I put on the word personal, I was a personal photo organizer because it's really deep and meaningful personal work when a person and our members that do this for a living will tell you over and over again, it's such a privilege when a family gives you access to their photo collection, you become part of their family. You get of see the weddings and the, the celebrations and the vacations and all the things that happen in a family's life, which believe it or not, aren't that unusual. We are all so much more like than different in how we celebrate our lives together. And so it's really personal. We call it personal photo organizing. Now we say the word management, because it's become much more complex with digital, but really that's the heart of what we do.
Betsy Bush (09:02):
What advice do you have for people who are kind of, you know, stuck with, you know, literally boxes of, you know, the snapshots and things like that that maybe come to them. You know, I know someone who got a box of black and white snapshots from his parents' generation, who, you know, has no idea who they are. There's nothing written on the back. You kind of wonder, you know, should I keep these, is there some inherent value in them? What do you think?
Cathi Nelson (09:32):
Well, the first thing I'd say is you wanna make sure that you don't do the same thing to the next generation behind you. So, because that's such a common experience, I tell a story, my great aunt, who I adored her. She wasn't my great op. She was 92 died just two years ago. And so everybody knows that I've been, you know, helping people with photos for a living in my family. And she promised me, I'd ask her auntie rose, are there any more photos in the family? You know, no, no, you have very family photo. It was. And sure enough, after she passed away, we went through her house. I now have in my basement boxes of beautiful black and white photos of which I don't know who they are. So I was like, oh, you told me this wasn't gonna happen. So I created an acronym called the ABCs of photo organizing that we use quite a bit. And it gives people a quick visualization of what to do. So if you pull out those boxes of photos, one is you wanna set a timer because you can only probably nostalgia overwhelms you memories and things like that. If you know the people in the photos, so maybe an hour at a time, it's not a weekend project. You won't finish this in a weekend and give yourself permission to take some time. But if you look at a group of photos, the, a ask yourself, is this an, a photos? What that means is that album worthy, archival worthy, whatever that goes into the, a pile. Is this a B photo? That means you can't really quite decide if it's a or not, which is quite a few of them. Cause it's hard to make these decisions. You put that back in a box. Is it a C photo? C is yes. You can throw photos away. So we recommend that you throw at least 80% of your photo collection and digital even, you know, deleting. And what we mean by that is the, blurries the doubles, the scenery shots. If you went to the grand canyon and you took, you know, 35 shots of the sunset, we really only need one of the sun, right? Yes. Not all 35. That's right. It's the people, because then you look as an S so a C S does it tell a story? And usually if there's people in that and that you wanna tell that story goes back in the, a, now those B photos, I always joke them, put them in a box and put a note on the box that says, I couldn't bring myself to throw these photos away, but you have my permission to throw them away.
Cathi Nelson (11:29):
Hmm. Because honestly, you know, that collection of black and white photos, you can donate them to some museums. If there's historical information in there, sometimes that's of interest, but most likely they are just what they are. And I think people really struggle with throwing away photos because they feel like they're throwing away a person and a memory. But really it is, it is a piece of paper in a moment in time. And it'd be more frustrating to have a big box of that in your house, not knowing who they are, then the relief you might feel with the permission that it's okay to throw them away.
Betsy Bush (11:58):
Thank you for granting permission, because I feel like a lot of people need that. It's okay to throw away a photograph that has no meaning to you, or really anyone else alive that you can pass it on to.
Cathi Nelson (12:12):
And what's interesting with digital today is that people still see a digital photo as a photo, but really it's digital it's information. It's data. It's not really a photo. We think of it as a photo, but we're much more willing to delete, you know, screenshots and photos right off our phones and things like that. Hopefully. Or if you're not, you need to, because then you're just really bearing your in the future generation, in digital data, that's completely meaningless with no information at all. But then the other thing I always tell with the ABCs that people find very helpful is you don't have to organize your photos chronologically. I always say we live in time. Day order, today's Friday, right? It'll be Saturday, tomorrow. And, but we remember thematically. So we're their family. In fact, with your family, did you go on vacation to a certain place every year? Or did you have like family traditions around Christmas or 4th of July or Halloween? Right. If you did, it's much more interesting to group your photos in terms of those family memories around themes or travel and they don't have to be in chronological order. It's more interesting to view things in terms of look how cute Johnny was when he was five and now on the next page or the next photograph he's 50. I mean, it's, it's much more interesting than it is to see a hundred photos of Johnny going from five to six to seven to eight. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah,
Betsy Bush (13:30):
Yeah, no, no, no. That's a great idea. Having an album of, of, you know, your kids and their different Halloween costumes through the years. So you're going jumping from year to year, but the thematic ideas, an interesting one, and that would spark a lot of creativity there. Just thinking about themes as opposed to chronological order,
Cathi Nelson (13:50):
It also can help you move from frozen to getting something done. Because if you say to yourself, okay, I'm just gonna pick one theme. And if I just complete one album or one grouping of photos, even if it's just scanned and uploaded into a folder labeled so that, and put on a flash drive for your kids, at least they have that, you know, and maybe take the time to write out why you pick that theme. Hmm. If they're printed photos, you just write it out on an indexed card and included in the index card. That's what we want. Right. We want, if I could go back to my parents who are passed, or my mom stole I, but my dad, but ask them, what was your favorite memory of growing up with us? Could you tell me what it was it that you remember and why? I would love that
Betsy Bush (14:34):
So many people think about or organizing photos until it's too late. And I think about the natural disasters we've seen recently with homes destroyed by fire or tornado. And I think of all the things that were lost, probably the photographs would be the most painful among the most painful. What should people be doing to save those memories? Save the photos. What's the
Cathi Nelson (15:02):
Best thing. We really recommend something called the 3, 2, 1 backup. But the first thing is you wanna make sure your photos are backed up. So if you have your photos on your phone or your computer, whatever you do wanna use, we recommend back blaze or Carbonite, or, you know, one of those type of that's just backing up your system without you realizing it. But the 3 21 backup is really it's about redundancy that you should have three copies of everything today. And what we mean by that is one copy in the cloud. One on an external hard drive that maybe is not in your possession. Maybe it's in a safe deposit box and then a third copy, which could be a physical copy, an album or something with your printed photos, really digitizing them, getting them scanned is critical because then it's terrible. It's a tragedy, right? And so many people don't get to that, but if their photos were scanned and they burned in those fires, like just say Colorado, at least. And they were back to, they would have access to those photos. And that's, you know, I know at some point you're ask about a career, but scanning people's photos is a wonderful second act career for so many people, because so many people don't wanna send them away to a stranger or to box them up. And if you enjoy the process of learning people's stories and it's just a great revenue dream and it's meaningful work and it's, doesn't take a high tech skillset to do it.
Betsy Bush (16:17):
Well, let's talk about the new profession or this area of business. Now that someone can become a photo organizer for other people. Tell me how that works. Yeah.
Cathi Nelson (16:28):
I mean, we just, so many people have wonderful businesses to that. We have a little quiz, you know, have questions to ask yourself, but do you like listening to people's stories? Do you enjoy meeting new people? Do you like history? Are you willing to learn new things I have on my wall? Everything is figureoutable, that's a good philosophy. If you kind of can come into it with that philosophy, because so maybe you've never scanned photos before. It's not that hard or maybe it might be hard to you, but you can figure it out. And what you're getting paid to do is you're willing to figure it out, other people aren't. And so that's why it's a great, you know, you get well compensated for doing something that other people want to do, but they just don't have the time to do it. So professional photo organizers have a myriad of different services. They offer clients everything from scanning photos and film and, you know, slides all the way to digital asset management, basically where they're going in remotely into a person's computer and reorganizing their folder collection, running deduplication software. And we do a tremendous amount of training on that. There's a lot of great products out there that the consumer isn't aware of, nor would they ever wanna. The learning curve would be too high to learn how to use, you know, a de-duplication software. If you are only gonna de-duplicate your own photos. If you're doing multiple people's photos, it's worth learning the software. It's not that hard. And it it's like magic to the client. Wow. So those are some, there's just so many different pieces of that that people can do.
Betsy Bush (17:54):
What type of person is drawn to this kind of profession? And I'm wondering if you have some things to pass along about, you know, who, who finds this an interesting sort of thing who is attracted to this kind of
Cathi Nelson (18:09):
Business? It's so funny, but I'm gonna pull up an email. I got the other day from Ed. So this is an example I retired last year and was a wildlife biologist supervisor with our provincial government for 37 years. So he has, uh, done a lot of data centric and metadata that said doesn't scare. And so he's does some ancestry work and he was interested. I talked to he and his wife yesterday and they are gonna be joining a service. Another example is an interesting fellow that joined six months ago, or so he's a retired geophysicist in Houston. He was looking for something that was of interest part-time in retirement and was deeply impacted by, or hurricane Harvey that went through Houston and destroyed a lot of the photos. And not only his own family photos, but also in his neighborhood. And so he is building like a, he actually built a truck like a van with scanners in it and is going to people's driveways and offering this as a service. Wow.
Betsy Bush (19:05):
That's a great idea. That's a great idea. Yeah.
Cathi Nelson (19:08):
He is a great guy, but many times people come from, you know, like, oh, it's crazy. The backgrounds, librarians, and it people project management. It really is usually what the common denominator is. Maybe they are the family photo person. They're the one who always, maybe cared about the photos, you know, maybe made the calendars for family members, made sure that they did a Christmas photo card. Maybe does the legacy really gotten into family genealogy work and finds that fascinating. Usually that's kind of a common denominator at some sort of people that are interested in doing the work. And then they figure out not everybody has that same interest and are willing to pay for somebody to do that.
Betsy Bush (19:47):
Your organization has a certifi program. You have best practices. You have a code of ethics. Tell me about the code of ethics.
Cathi Nelson (19:58):
That was very important. So when I first started and people started asking me if they could do this as well, this was in like 2009, right before computers were just people. We weren't even using our iPhones for photos yet, really. But I decided to create a, a website where everybody called themselves personal photo organizers. And I got a phone call from somebody who said your employee didn't deliver something the way that I wanted. And I was shocked that they thought she was my employee. So I went to see an attorney and they said, oh, you can't have everybody call themselves. That's like a franchise. You're creating a franchise. I was like, I don't wanna do a franchise. And so that's when I came up with the model more of, but association trade. And I did a lot of research about associations and things. And I realized that if I was going to endorse people, we needed one, uh, created a certification that we've established now more and more the industry best standards and also a code of ethics. So the code of ethics is about respecting people's privacy. You'd have to read through our code of, but what you would want because it's such personal work, right? So we require to be listed on our website now to be found, you go through certification, which is five to six mod. We have six modules, training modules, you download their PDFs, which really aren't teaching you how to be a photo organizer. They're teaching your best practices. For instance, we recommend you scan at 600 DPI. That's a standard in the industry. We recommend that with copyright laws, if you come across a professional photographer's photos, you contact that professional photographer, or you try to find them up to a certain point before you scan those that's best practices that you communicate directly with your client on all prices at all times. And so we have all of that. And then what they do is they take with their first real paid client, not a family friend, they document their processes through the entire, like, how did you invoice them? How did you stay in touch? And we're doing that because we know if they follow the steps that we recommend, it'll be a much better experience for everybody. And then they have to document that, submit it to us. Then we check their references, we call and contact the client, make sure that, you know, the client was happy with the work they did. They interview with me. Then they're certifi, officially certified and listed on our website. So in 12 years we've had, that was the one and only complaint I've ever gotten. Now, could it come again? Of course, but we really stress that importance of that because it's, we are setting an industry that didn't, and it's really critical. I think to that, we have the highest standards of excellence that we expect. Everybody. We encourage people to respond from. Nobody reports to me, you know, you are an independent entrepreneur. I get no reports of what people's sales are. You have nothing. I don't get into that at all, but we're a wonderful community. So
Betsy Bush (22:24):
This is very impressive. I mean, to have gone from, oh, let me scan your photographs to a few years later, developing this framework for an entirely new way that people can earn a living and help people out. It's very impressive.
Cathi Nelson (22:44):
When I lay my head down, what I'm most proud of, honestly, is that I've created work. I've got so many wonderful letters from members and, um, we've had members now been members for over 10 years. We're having our 10th annual educational conference. So we've been at this a while that I've created a vision for a profession that's been really meaningful for them. And I think that to me brings me great joy. I feel a lot of pride in that that makes me feel happy.
Betsy Bush (23:06):
What sort of things are covered at a typical conference, and you have one coming up in a couple of months, is that right?
Cathi Nelson (23:13):
Denver will be, we have 101 people right now registered to be in person in Denver in 65 virtuals. So we learned after the pandemic, we had always had him. Our first was in Chicago, then Dallas, Orlando. We moved him across the country. And then we were in Atlanta and in March I had to like fly to Atlanta and begged the it's so funny. Now I think about they weren't gonna let me out of that contract. And they had like $30,000. I mean, it was, and of course, now everybody lets you out of these things, but we had to pivot and we decided to create a virtual conference and it was a phenomenal success. We had never done that. Hmm. So I'm proud to say, we will always do both an in person and virtual conference and we know how to do that now, but a conference is everything from, so it's really, the education comes from our, we call the educational conference. So our members submit to speak and they know like one of the topics this year, a lot of people are, you know, how do I create a good quality contract with a client? And one of our members is an attorney. She was a contract attorney. So she has great contracts. She's gonna actually teach a breakout on how to create a really good contract. And then we also topics of like, how do you break down a large, you know, project with multiple pieces, maybe memorabilia letters, artwork, you know, all sorts of things. So here's a breakout on how a person, you know, documents that process is that that would be an example of a breakout. So we have over 20 breakouts that people choose to participate in. And then we just have a great time together. We have a lot of meals together and people just love getting to know one another and many great friendships have been formed through the conferences.
Betsy Bush (24:39):
So do you also have members who deal with historical documents, letters, autographs.
Cathi Nelson (24:48):
It's not just photos. It's we use photos, but you know, we have personal historians. We have genealogists. We have people who only deal in film, in video. It's really all about stories. We've kept the word photo in it because that's how we started, but we really are pretty all encompassing at this point. And the other thing is we recommend that people think of themselves as general contractors. So if you're, and that you outsource what you can't do. So if we have members who like, maybe they do come across a client who wants a, more of a personal historical, you know, document created for them, then they would go on our website, find a member. And then they would outsource that work to that member. Who's an expert in that or genie, you know, not our members do genealogy, but we have other members that they can't. So it's becoming a much more diverse population of people that offer services in all these different areas.
Betsy Bush (25:36):
Are you getting into kind of the museum archival collection sort of thing. So not just, not just photographs to me, it sounds like it's something preserving history in all of its different forms, trying to nail down that ephemera that seems to disappear so easily.
Cathi Nelson (25:53):
I was just thinking, I'll look quickly. The one of the speakers is an archivist at our conference this year, and I think she's gonna, and one of the topics is gonna be more on that, you know, on that topic. We also partner, I don't know. I won't look that up right now. We also partner with lots of major companies that are interested in having access to our members. So archival methods is one. We have a wonderful relationship with they're outta Rochester. They create archival products. In fact, our director of membership was their director of marketing and came to work for us. So Kate has a museum archivist background. She has their masters, I think in that. So we really do teach a lot about proper archiving techniques. And so a company like archival methods offers our members a 40 to 50% discount. It's a wholesale pricing on their products.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
They order directly through a separate portal. And so they can up price. You know, they charge their client the full price, but they give them a courtesy discount. As a member. We have many partners like that. Sony cameras and EP and scanners, and a lot of digitizing companies and things they want access to our members are the people I would say, we're the feed on the ground in the consumer's home, helping solve this problem. Right. And a lot of companies come up with a solution, but they can't get the customer to pay attention because we're too busy. Right. And so they eventually find their way to us. And then we vet those companies and then they're very excited to have access to our members. So they come to the conference. And so we do have a whole vendor show at the conference and things.
Betsy Bush (27:12):
So you have about 650 members, right. But you have international members. Yep. As well. And I think about looking at your site, there was about 500 in the United States.
Cathi Nelson (27:27):
Yeah. I'd say that's about, you did a good job. Yeah. Yeah. We're probably, you know, 80% us, but we're really focused this year on growing a little bit more internationally. They're so connected to one another, our UK group, our Australia group, they do monthly zoom calls with each other that we set up for them. And we have the small group in Brazil, which should be a huge market because they it's a big population. I think we have three members right now in Brazil. So they have found us over the years and they're coming to the conference. We have a small group in the Netherlands who are wonderful. I think they're six or seven in the Netherlands. And three or four of 'em are coming to conference. A couple of members in the UK will be here. They'll fly to the conference. We're hoping last I couldn't make it because of the virtual world that we live in. They can, you know, they join all our training virtually. We do everything virtual. So it's really, the world has become, you know, a small place and everybody has this problem. This is not a US-centric even that couple. I just spoke to last night, you know, they're from Canada. All their neighbors have this problem. It has nothing to, you know, it's, it's definitely an inter
Betsy Bush (28:25):
Well, it seems to me, if there are 500 in the United States and we have a population of over 300 million, it seems to me that that's, uh, an area where there's a lot of growth possibilities, right?
Cathi Nelson (28:38):
The growth is endless. You can only handle so many clients at a time. So the average member could probably handle if you're part-time you want me maybe one or two clients? So my son, for instance, from a scanning perspective, he and his girlfriend are both educators or teachers. They don't make much money. They work with adults with special needs. They do the scanning at home. Josh was taught Kate, how to scan. He learned from me when he was younger and they have my scanners and they earn, I think between a thousand to 1500, maybe 2000 a month doing one, maybe two jobs A month. Nice, Nice. They have a waiting list of people who want them to do their work for them. And so that works for them. So there's way more business than there are. I don't know if we'll ever have too many photo organizers. I don't think so.
Betsy Bush (29:19):
That is amazing. I don't know if there's any field I've ever heard of where there is just so much room for growth that I hope my listeners can, will visit your website and say, you know, this is something that appeals to me, it sounds like there's a lot of room for growth. And that there's a lot of possibilities for people who wanna DIY this. Can you give us three pieces of advice for people who are gonna say, I'm gonna tackle this myself.
Cathi Nelson (29:50):
We have a great advice from the pros Facebook page. If you wanna a photo organizing advice from the pros, it's free. And we answer people's questions all the time in there. That's a little tip. If you want some free advice when you get stuck. But I think if you're gonna DIY it yourself and I'm gonna speak to the analog photos first, the printed photos is we recommend is one is you set a goal. You have to have a reason to keep you going when you get frustrated or maybe you think now, and to break, there's a saying, you eat an elephant one bite at a time. I think that's true. So little bit based on what I said, what, if you could wave a magic wand over your photos, what would the end project look like? And if you can get really clear on what you want and write that down, you know, set a goal, this is what I want. That's a good starting place. And then from there, the second point would be to, we call it the hunt and gather stage. You really need to gather everything into one place to assess the mess we call it. So set up a separate, you know, table in your living room, even if it's a card table and go on this hunt. And this is now again, not an, this is not a weekend project. And so give yourself six months or a year. If you're like the average family, which has five to 7,000 photos easily, you're gonna have to go find them. So get all the albums onto the table of the, you know, the framed photos, graphs that you have, the photos tucked away in boxes and the drawers in the attic, maybe ask family members if they have things that you might want and then document what you have.
Cathi Nelson (31:12):
You know, we have five blue albums and what years they are, don't go down memory lane. Don't look at the photos yet because you'll feel overwhelmed. If you start the minute you open that box and you start, it would be the same for me. If I opened up my family box of photos of my kids, when they were little, an hour would pass before, I'd get through six or seven photos just because I'd go down memory lane. Right? So you don't do that yet. You have plenty of time to do that part, but you wanna get an idea. And then the average number of photos, one inch equals about 200 photos or 600 photos fit in a shoebox. So start counting. How many photos do you really have? So you have an idea of what you have.
Betsy Bush (31:50):
Wow. 600 photos in a shoebox. Correct? Right.
Cathi Nelson (31:54):
Okay. So that's why people really grossly underestimate how many photos they have. They'll say, oh, I think I have a couple thousand. And we all know, probably not because we know what the average family us, and then you look at your photos and you realize that's a lot of shoe boxes, I think, over there. And then from this, I guess the third advice would be based on that goal then, is it, are you gonna digitize those? Then it would be to actually use those ABCs and to really curate the photo collection so that you're, you're really caring for the photos that you care the most about. And so those would be my three top ways to get star.
Betsy Bush (32:25):
And don't be afraid to throw things out when they no, that's
Cathi Nelson (32:29):
Yeah. That's part of the curation. Right? So even that 80 20 rule, if you can give yourself permission, when you look at that huge say you find out I have 7,000 or 10, let's say 10, okay, I'm gonna end up with 2000 by the time I'm done. If you can really believe in that, you'll feel better. You'll feel a huge sense of relief. If suddenly you're looking at four or five albums or, you know, one box really nicely labeled and easily accessible and shareable, you're gonna be so happy. I promise.
Betsy Bush (32:58):
That's great. And if anybody needs some more help, they can look at your book, right? Photo organizing, going from overwhelmed to overjoyed by Cathi Nelson. Yep. C a T H I Nelson. And I encourage anyone who is really interested in photo management as a side hustle or a full-time post -career sort of thing. Please go to the photo managers.com and look for information on becoming a photo manager. And Cathi, this has been an incredibly fun, useful, you know, news you can use sort of podcast edition, and I really, really appreciate your being with me on the latest version today. Thank you so much. Thank you. Glad to be here. Great. So dear listener, I would love to know what you thought of this episode. Are you going to try some of Cathi's organizing ideas or maybe you wanna start a new photo management business? Let me know by emailing me at betsy@thelatestversionpodcast.com. And did you hear the podcast is moving to every two weeks, but you can sign up on our website, the latestversionpodcast.com for our in between episodes newsletter, checking in, because well, we wanna check in with you. You can listen to episodes on the website and read more about me and my guests. If you're listening to this podcast, please rate, review and subscribe. If you're watching on YouTube subscribe and give us a thumbs up, it really helps the show. I'm Betsy Bush. And this is my latest version.
