Relaunching You Matter Stories.

It's so hard to admit that there's been about a year and a half worth of delay with You Matter Stories. Once I moved to Oregon I had every intention to find people and keep it going. I was editing my California model stories and posting weekly, even without WIFI (uploading a video through mobile data takes a whole night!)

I quickly learned that moving states is extremely hard when it comes to making friends and running a business like photography or videography. When nobody really knows you, it's hard to sell something to someone without a reputation!

But it is time. And I am excited and announce that You Matter Stories is officially registered as an LLC! It's a good place to start for us and I'm glad I went ahead and did it. Now I'm waiting for the craze of wedding planning for myself and working my videography job on the side to wind down to be able to focus on going full throttle with You Matter Stories. I'm pretty nervous, not going to lie. There's a lot that goes into making something successful! Lots of rejection, most likely, and lots of e-mailing potential partners.

I'm nervous most about finding enough money to make this sustainable at first. The growing part is the hardest part for me. However, I am extremely grateful at the fact that I have support from my fiancé (almost husband!) and also some friends of ours that have given me tips and advice on how to get my business to a starting point after this long pause. Having support goes a long way in business!

On top of all of that, I've invited a new friend to join the team to introduce back the fashion side of things! Some people don't know this, but You Matter Stories actually started as "You Matter Clothing," in which me and my fashion designer friend at the time were going to start a clothing company that paid attention to the models stories while designing meaningful clothing to represent it. However, when I lost that sort of partnership, I decided to continue on my own with my main talents, and changed the focus to the stories, hence the name change! But we've not given up on making fashion a part of the creative shoots! Not only do I want to partner with other businesses, but I am excited to have a team member focus on the fashion side of it all again!

So here's to starting over after a long enough wait. Here's to late night editing and finding models and influencers. Here's to getting to know more people, finding true and inspiring stories in ways we often never think about! Here's to making a person's outer image reflect their inner storybook.

Here's to You Matter Stories 2.0. (Ehem, LLC!)