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I used to hate the phrase "perception is reality." Now I live by it. A few years ago I went public with my politics and lost 12% of my following, plus a handful of signed contracts. It came back bigger. Down the street, a small business made its own alignment public through who they chose to sponsor, and now they're finding out what that costs. Brand alignment cuts both ways. You don't get to be surprised by which side of that blade lands on you.

I've built and failed a business, built and sold a couple businesses, and I am now scaling creative businesses well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales a year - and have done so in art forward spaces with creative entrepreneurship for nearly 20 years. You can take my advice or leave it. WRITTEN BY COURTNEY SPECHT | photographer, writer, speaker, mentor | KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI Ten or eleven years ago "community over competition" was really a thing. Rising Tide

I've built and failed a business, built and sold a couple businesses, built am now scaling businesses well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales a year - and have done so in creative spaces with creative entrepreneurship for nearly 20 years. Take my advice or leave it. WRITTEN BY COURTNEY SPECHT | photographer, writer, speaker, mentor | KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI I get a lot of "can I pick your brain about marketing?" I love that, I genuinely do. But more often than

When couples start planning their engagement session, they tend to reach for the obvious — the location that photographs beautifully, the backdrop they've seen in someone else's gallery. What Michael and Marisa's Kansas City session taught us is that the right place and the prettiest place are rarely the same thing.