188 | Photo Organizing with Rachel Arbuckle of 2000 Paces
Today we are talking all things photo organizing with Rachel Arbuckle of 2000 Paces, a photo organizing business that provides services to clients all over the US.
When I added photo organizing to my list of client services, it was one of the best decisions I made for my business. Clients are overwhelmed with the volume of photos—physical and digital—and helping them release that burden as a part of the home organizing process is a great gift to give them!
You can listen here, read the full transcript below, or find us on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you love to listen to podcasts!
LINKS FOR LISTENERS
Learn more about Rachel’s business 2000 Paces Photo Organizing: https://www.2000paces.com/
Connect with Melissa and Pro Organizer Studio: CLICK HERE
If you are interested in our Inspired Organizer® program, you can find us at www.inspiredorganizer.com and don't forget, we have a whole library of podcasts here, our YouTube channel, and you can find us on Facebook and Instagram at Pro Organizer Studio.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Hey pro organizers, it's Melissa. And today we are talking to someone that has a very special corner of the organizing world. And she is happy to occupy her corner. She'll even say, I don't want your corner. I just want my own corner!
But this is one of my favorite subjects in organizing, I actually offer this to clients and I encourage other organizers to do so, too. And that is photo organizing.
As we all know, we have clients that are like, Hey, I have this random VHS tape of my kid's sixth grade graduation, or 72 trillion photos from when I was growing up or I have all my family photos, photos can really overwhelm a client. And there is a lot that goes into photo organizing.
So my guest today, Rachel Arbuckle of 2000 Paces runs a photo organizing business, and we are talking about all. Of the things. So I love offering the service to my clients. I got a scanner a few years ago and it paid for itself in about two and a half minutes, but I'm not a full service operation. You know, I really can just do photos, but for a lot of people, even just doing that, you're like, no, thanks, not my jam, but—if you want to add this to your services, I want you to know that there are resources out there that you can provide to your clients. And that is what Rachel does. So I am thrilled for you to hear all about photo organizing. And all of the things today, if you have any questions about anything, about this podcast or ideas for future podcasts, or just want to say hi, I am at hello@proorganizerstudio.com.
I answer all of my emails directly, so it's really me. I would love to chat with you and organizers. I'm just going to give you Rachel. I hope you have an awesome week.
Meet Rachel of 2000 Paces—now and back then both!
Melissa Klug: Okay. I, I get caught a lot because I always say I'm so excited to talk to my guests today. And it's always factual. I am I do not have people on my podcast that I'm like, I don't know. But I am really excited to talk to you because you do something that I personally love and I think is important for organizers to have in their offerings, whether they Do it themselves or outsource to a very good professional.
But I get a lot of questions in our Inspired Organizer group about photo organizing. So I am thrilled to talk to an expert. How are you, Rachel?
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: Melissa, I'm, great. I'm excited to be here too. Your energy and everything that all of you do on your team is remarkable. And so I'm excited to be a part of it.
Yeah. Awesome. Well,
Melissa Klug: we start really easily. Just give us your story. What's your, what's your organizing
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: journey? Yeah. I love that you use the word journey. It's a great place to start because my company is called 2000 paces photo organizing and 2000 paces in biblical times represented a day's journey.
A day's journey was 2000 paces. And that's what we're trying to do is help capture and preserve our clients journeys. Every journey is so unique. Everybody that walks in the door, very similar to residential organizing in the sense that, you go into somebody's house and it's never going to be the same.
There's some standard things. Most of the people keep their pots and pans in the kitchen, right? Things like that. Most of them. I'm sure. And I'll have to hear that story sometime. But but overall, everybody's journey is different. And so is mine. Very much like you, I worked in corporate America, kind of.
Doing the grind. I personally wasn't terribly passionate about what I was doing, but I was good at it. I, I enjoyed it and I was paid well. And then a fire, forced our family to evacuate from our home. I, lived in Southern California for many years. So being evacuated from a fire is not uncommon, but this one was particularly scary because it started a hundred yards from our front door.
And I truly thought that we were going to lose everything. We didn't. So just to kind of plug happy ending to the story. Yeah. Yeah. Just, I always like to jump right to that before I pull on too many heartstrings. Unnecessarily we had some smoke damage, but there were people in our community that lost.
everything, including their precious photos. And when I was standing at the bottom of the hill, although we grabbed our computers and a couple of scrapbooks and some albums, we literally had minutes to get out. And even if you had everything organized in bins in a corner, I don't know that we would have had the time or the room with the animals and the family and everything to grab everything.
And I looked at my husband and I just said, we are going to lose everything from I'm the memory keeper in our family. And, and I imagine you probably are too, I think organized people often are, right? And those are the people that inherit, whether we want to or not, all the photos and somehow our family thinks that we need to be in charge of that.
And I am that person in my very large family. So I was thinking about my grandfather's World War II Mementos and journals and our children's artwork and report cards and and photos of my parents and their wedding. And I just thought we're about to lose all of it. So I decided that I wanted to get them preserved.
And when I started looking for a solution, I really didn't find one that Met the needs that I had and was really like up to that level that I thought our photos deserve. So I created a solution. I love
Melissa Klug: that. You saw, saw a need and you go, I've got it, which is, that's how all the great things happen, right?
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: That's the idea. Yeah, absolutely.
Melissa Klug: So did you start right away? Did you just say like, Hey, I'm going to do my own thing. I'm just going to preserve my own things. And then you decided you had a real affinity for it or how did you turn it into an actual business?
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: Yeah, that's a great question. I wish, If I were independently wealthy I, I would have been able to do that.
But of course it involves some planning. It was sitting down with my husband and and the idea too was, can I even make a business out of organizing people's photos? Even today, years later, When I tell people what I do and the company I founded, it's not uncommon to hear you do that for a living.
Is that, that's a business, right? You know what I mean?
Melissa Klug: Yeah. It's a sentence I hear a lot. It's actually very offensive at this point. Like people pay you money for that is my favorite. Oh, I know.
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: And I find that people are actually quite stunned when they come in our office and they see over 1400 square feet of office space.
And we have a full time staff and we offer health insurance. And that's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. So we've really grown it into something, but it certainly didn't start that way. So, conversations with my husband, looking at finances, deciding what I needed to do for my job. And so it took some time, obviously, and I kind of started researching it.
And then I started working on my own photos. And as I was doing it, I was finding solutions. But I knew that I had to dig deep. I had to read a lot of blogs, listen to a lot of great podcasts. Talk to a lot of people. I wish I'd known all of you when I was starting because it sounds like it really helped us out or help me out rather.
And then I had to create a lot of solutions myself. I always tell people that because this industry of photo organizing is still so new, there really wasn't a blueprint. I kind of started with a piece of paper. And now, for example, we have over 300 pages of operating procedures. So it took a while.
Once I decided to leave my corporate job. I was full board, but I did start out of my home and I had like 100 square foot office space and I consult and go to clients homes. And then the next step was hiring an intern or a college student to help me out. And then in 2018, I got this office space and really that's when I think it turned into Something that was very real.
Like, wow, this is actually, this is happening. This isn't a side gig. Right. Oh no, it's a
Melissa Klug: real business. If you have that big of an office space, it's a business.
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: So yeah, so that's, that's what happened and we're just trying to grow it from there.
Melissa Klug: Well, tell us a little bit about what you do. Like, do you so if you have that big of an office space, I assume you have thousands and thousands and thousands of pictures and film, I assume, film, DVD, all those things. Tell us about all the
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: things that you do. Yeah, absolutely. So, One thing that I really pride myself on or, or this company on, is that we provide sort of the full gamut of organizing services.
So, photo organizing services, rather. We don't do any residential organizing. I will leave that to all of you. And But so print photo organizing, digital photo organizing, digitizing or scanning of, prints, slides, negatives. We convert videos. So all the old VHS tapes, the high eight, remember those, the camera.
Yes.
Melissa Klug: A client will still have one of those in their home. And they're like, what do I do with this? And I'm like, I don't think
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: there's probably not a lot for it right now. Yeah, exactly. And and we make photo books and we make online photo sites. So it's really, the idea is that we want to take all of your photos in whatever format they're in, videos, whatever format they're in, and memorabilia in whatever format they're in.
Consolidate that all together. Organize it, clean it up add some tags and keywords and then put it in a system that can be enjoyed and accessed and protected for years to come. So, we, we have a process Consolidate. Clean up and storage, right? So consolidate is taking all the things and putting them together.
If I were to compare to many of your listeners who are residential organizers you don't go into a garage. And just start working on one shelf. You take everything out, you look at it, you evaluate it, and then you start grouping it, right? It's the same with photos.
We take it out of the the print out of the albums and envelopes. The digital we're going to take from your iPhone, from Shutterfly, from CDs, thumb drives, memory cards. Even floppy disks. You remember those?
Melissa Klug: I do. I'm like, so one of the things I want to talk to you about is equipment because I'm just intrigued as like, you are probably one of the only people in the world that still has a floppy disk reader,
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: right?
We do have one. We do. We barely get them, but it's It's such a nostalgic thing and there's it's rare that there's any photos on it, but it's just fun, once we consolidate everything into one place, we start the curation, which essentially means organizing it. So curating based on what your needs are, what the client's needs are.
I always recommend we, I would say 95 percent of the time we recommend that you organize chronologically. And I can talk more about that. And then the cleanup, right, is getting rid of the duplicates, getting rid of, the, the ones we ordered and duplicate and triplicate on our digital phone or any digital photos where you thought, I don't know if I have these backed up.
So you've copied them onto multiple drives. Yeah. Or even on with everybody using their phone, right? Let's get rid of the cat memes. Let's get rid of the picture of the receipts and the fabric and the accidental screenshot. Right. And then all of that gets organized. The level of detail of course, is dependent on what people want, but the typical is major holidays milestone events, graduations, baptisms, bar mitzvahs and then trips.
A lot of trips and and then facial recognition from there, that all goes on to an external hard drive or, or in addition onto an online photo site. So I know that's a lot of information all at once. Okay.
Melissa Klug: So here's what I want. Here's what I want to say. So I, I do, I have some clients that I will do this for like treasured clients that I love.
And. What you just described, like I'm just thinking of one client I've been working on like basically a family history project for him. And it's, it's so many photos. So what you are describing is actually extremely complex. And I'm working with someone one on one and I'm like, Hey, is this aunt Esther or like, who is this?
Right? Like, I'm just impressed that you're able to do this and do it well. Cause that, what you are describing is A huge amount of work.
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: Yeah. Yeah, it is. And it's it's really interesting. And there, there were times in the beginning that I thought, am I really taking this on? I went and spoke at I was on a panel, recently for the NAPO, San Diego NAPO chapter, and I was thrilled.
The women that are in that group are just fantastic. Like you, you and I talked about before organizers just friendly and welcoming and I just totally felt that spirit and it was encouraging But it was funny because I I asked everybody who here has clients that have photos and of course every single person raised their hand, right?
The next question was who here? Organizes their clients photos and not one person in the group raised their hand as something they offer as a service because it is very different and it is very unique. And it's the reason we can focus on that. But I also need to refer out for any, garages and kitchens and closets and all that.
It's completely different. Well, and I'm
Melissa Klug: a big believer in I mean, the reason that you're on the podcast today is I am a huge believer in we need to give people resources for things. And in the same way that organizers, I say are a lot of our job is to be resource managers. Like my clients ask me, All sorts of questions, from do you have a handyman to you?
Do you have an electrician? I've been asked for some weird referrals, right? But one of the things that comes up in our group, like I said, all the time is I have this client with all these photos and I don't have the interest in doing it myself. I, I don't want to just send it to some random place, and having someone That really, really cares about this deeply.
Like I think it's important to have resources for people to say, Hey, I'm not going to be good at this because a lot of organizers don't want to get into it or they don't have the ability to do it or don't see the
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: path to the end. Right. Well, and it just involves more, I'm sure that, that, the residential organizers that want to include this in their business, I'm sure they could.
I always suggest to either partner with a food organizing company like ours or, or to get some training and, and do it yourself. But it's just taking on. And an entire, additional business.
And so it makes sense. I think we, it's great when we can focus on what we're really good at. There's a reason that you go to a dentist, that you go to a prosthodontist if you need a crown, because that's their specialty, right? Right. Right. Not to put braces on. And I don't think I'd want my prosthodontist to, right.
And so, so anyway, I totally agree with you. It's, it's, Great to know that we've got sort of a village to help our clients.
Melissa Klug: Yeah, absolutely. So when someone, so let's say, do you just get a box, like a giant box of stuff? And they're just like, here you go. And then you like, do you work with the clients one on one to say, how do you want this organized?
Like, I'm just thinking about my client where we had to decide how does he want them organized? And he wanted, about 112 different categories or whatever. So how does that work with you
guys?
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: Yeah. Yeah, so we do have a whole team and we've got some processes. So we have some standardization that we need to employ to make this work.
But, but everything we do is customized based on what the goals are for the client. So step one is having the conversation. So that's one thing That I really pride myself on is that I will have a phone consultation with everybody before they can move forward. It's a free consultation. Let's chat.
What are your goals? Let's see if they align with what we can do for you. It's rare, but on occasion, I've had clients say, I want to do X and I'll say, that's not really. What we recommend and so we might not be a great fit. That doesn't happen very often. What I want to do is provide that education.
So I'll listen to what your goals are. And sometimes clients will say, they'll say, this is how I want it. And I'll say, well, have you thought about this? Right? I'm sure you've used that line before. And it's really because we are experts in our field. So an example would be I had a husband wife that came in and she still bakes cookies for us to this day.
She's amazing. Yeah. And she has four adult children and she said, I want to organize the photos by each of these children. And I said, I love That idea, I love that, you want each of your adult children so that they can pass that down to their kids, your grandkids, et cetera. I said, but the problem with that is after child one, it's rare that you have children by themselves in the photos.
So how do you decide, right? Who gets what? And a lot of clients have this issue. And so my suggestion then was let's organize everything chronologically. That's how we live our journey. So that's how the story should be told. But what we can do is add facial recognition so each of the kids can go on this online photo site, right, and type their name in or type multiple names in, and now all of a sudden they have all the photos they want and can download.
And so once she understood that there was a solution that would solve multiple problems. She was totally on, she and her husband were totally on board. And so yes, they brought us all of their stuff. Often it's in multiple boxes. Sometimes we've gotten small collections. We do work on a lot of very large collections.
We've had a client that I had to make two trips in my SUV to get all of her things. We had one client bring 17 suitcases of just photos and videos.
Melissa Klug: Okay, I can't lie, that stresses me out. There's not a lot of, that stresses me out. What you're describing is stressing me out a little bit. So like ginormous, like I'm just happy that you do it because that just seems Like a lot,
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: and I've had a lot of people say that, they drop it off and they go, Are you, are you sure you want to take this project on , and my team and I are truly excited.
So it's, it's about just like, you, when you go into a home or somebody that you coach goes into a home and they're like, Ooh, kitchen, let's go for it. Right. I don't want anything to do with it. To me, that causes me anxiety when I see the photos. But the difference and what really sets us apart is we have processes.
There's a way that we go through and do this. So we gather family tree. We create online timelines. We've got techniques to help us identify years. And then I have one technique that I call bangs, broken bones and braces. And that I know, what is that? Oh, I'm excited to hear this. Yeah.
It's kind of fun. I noticed that Somebody cutting their hair, like getting bangs for a year or the braces for a few years, or there was a broken bone and there's a blue cast and then there's a pink cast. It's these little identifiers that actually help us do our detective work. So I tell people, organizers, sometimes we're therapists and sometimes detectives, right?
So we've got these techniques that help us achieve the final goal as to the best of our ability. Obviously, if you don't know who this person is. We're not going to know who the person is, but we can at least categorize that into all right, this is, trips to the zoo or trips to SeaWorld and things like that.
So at least now you've got some control over this collection and they're protected. Yeah.
Melissa Klug: Yeah. Well, you just reminded me of now she told it, she was on the podcast just a couple weeks ago. So if someone listened very carefully, they'll remember the story, but I had some, and she was talking about, she was helping a client with some photographs, just kind of put them in.
They weren't digitizing. They were just putting them in chronological order. And she was helping her figure out, what are the duplicates, all those things that you've talked about. And she had one photo that she was like really staring at intently. And so my, my friend, the organizer was like, Oh, I bet this is like a really special picture.
And she's like having memories and reminiscing, and she was like waiting for a story. And the woman's like, I have no idea who these people are. And I was like, well, that happens
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: sometimes. It does. The interesting thing about that, and I love that because we see it all the time, and we'll ask somebody, hey, do you know who this is?
And they're like, no, I have no idea. And to me, that brings up two ideas or, or two thoughts. One is it's okay to get rid of photos, right? Just like it's okay to get rid of stuff in the drawer, right? I
Melissa Klug: think that's a really important point because anybody, so if any organizers were like, even if you're just helping people get a collection together to then send to your company to kind of get them together it is okay.
I think we feel especially badly about, I don't know who's in it, but I still can't throw it away. Just can't. It's, it's a
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: I, I had a client that We converted all of her video in addition to her photos, but her videos as well. And, when people bring just like when you guys work on something, you've consolidated it through purging through organization.
Same with photos, right? When we have this. Huge collection. Somebody comes in with many, many boxes and they say, I don't want this back. And I say, well, give us a second to show you how great it can look in these organized archival boxes. That makes a difference. But I, so I had a client that we converted a bunch of old home movies on various types of videotape.
And she said, you know what? I don't think I want to keep those now that you've converted them. She said, but I'll go ahead and take them. So she took them home with her and probably nine months later came back, wasn't even expecting her to come back, came back to the door and said, I don't want to keep these, but I can't throw them out.
Can you throw them out for me? And that's okay too. But I think giving permission. To throw them out when the story it's, it's not part of your story, even if you know the people and, and, and you go, well, these are kids I went to elementary school with and I remember hanging out with them, but they're not important in my life anymore.
But on the other hand, and I don't want to say, but because it is. It's important to give everyone permission to purge. I would also say that it's important to take the step if it's important to you to talk to family members about these photos while you can. Unfortunately there are so many clients that have come to us and said, I lost a parent, I lost an aunt, I lost a grandparent and I inherited all these photos and I don't know who these people are.
And you still have permission to get rid of those. But if you have the opportunity to get that story while they're still here, I want to encourage people to do that. Even if you're not ready to organize, just show a picture, take your phone out, just put it on record and listen to the story. Because it's powerful to know that that story can be passed on.
Melissa Klug: It really is. I totally second that as like just thinking about this client of mine that I've done so much work with, and he's the one that I've done the most of this type with, but he's not my family, right? Like I, we are strangers, more about his family. Then a lot of people in his family like he has told stories because I'm genuinely interested like his pictures went back to 1890.
And so I'm like, tell me the story about this picture. Who are these people? That's my great grandfather. That's my great grandmother. And he has told me so many stories that I genuinely treasure, even though these people are. Not my family. And so imagine if you did have those stories for your own family and writing that down.
And that's where the magic is not necessarily the physical picture itself, but that's what the good feeling
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: is. It is. I mean, absolutely. You're right. And how great of you to take the time to listen, because there's sometimes that, we have clients that want to tell their story and maybe they don't have anybody that'll listen.
And so it's great. Our photos do tell a story. And, it's one of the, the things I've talked about with other people and other clients is we spend all this money to insure our home and our car and our jewelry and our art. But you can't insure your photo memories because they are irreplaceable.
It's not possible to replace them. And they're so precious to us. You're absolutely right, Melissa. It's because of the stories behind the photos.
Melissa Klug: Thinking about my, my mom's pictures that are, from our childhood in the eighties that are in those albums that had like the sticky backs and the plastic, like one of the things too, that I've seen with clients is sometimes their pictures are degrading because they're in these non archival albums that like, they're really starting to, to break down.
And I think that's an important thing too, that there is a timing factor of some of this. In terms of, hey, I know that this seems like a project you can just put off and put off and put off, but if you want to preserve these, or if you want to have all of these memories, it's pretty important to start finding these and making sure that the pictures are okay.
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: Melissa, you absolutely have your finger on the pulse of the industry because you're absolutely right. I think it's one of those things that I think most of us I would venture to guess I haven't pulled everybody in the world, but I would say most of us really want to protect and preserve these memories.
And most of the people I talk to want to do that. And they think I'll do that when I retire, I'll get to that eventually. And you're right, it's, it's, the photos could be degrading from the chemicals in those albums in the 80s, and I had a bunch of those when I started. Or the heat, they're not, are they in a climate controlled room?
The heat, or, you're in Minnesota, so it's, The frigid cold. I hear it gets cold there. A little bit.
Melissa Klug: Not this winter, but
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: other winters. Okay, great. We've had hurricanes here in San Diego. For the first time ever. It used to be fires, and then we've had this flooding. I've seen on the news, people's photos, and, Scrapbooks and albums are a mile down the road from their house, and they had no idea because who would think a hurricane would come to San Diego, right?
It's, and then there's things that are, that are a little more close to home, like, the loss of somebody close to us. And sometimes, unfortunately, that happens very suddenly. And we've had people that are going to have a, they want to throw a celebration of life, of course. And what do they want to do?
They want to show photos, remembering this person and their photos are all over the place. And the last thing you want to do when you're dealing with the loss, is to try and find these photos. Or like you and I have just experienced you and I both have freshmen in college and last year our daughters graduated from high school.
It was great that I was able to type my daughter's name and I typed the word school and professional and all of her professional school photos came up and I. I had this great banner up and felt like a rock star mom. And it's, so there's times that it's good things, but there are things that come up these milestone events.
And you're absolutely right. I think taking the time, if we have the time and the patience and the energy to do it, or finding somebody. That can work on it for you.
Melissa Klug: Yeah. Listen, if you are listening to this and you are the mom of I, I, we'll give you, I'll give you freshman in high school onward.
Okay? If you're a mom of a junior extra listen up, right? Do not sleep on the graduation party preparation photo, just photography. I'm not even talking about all the other stuff, the photography requirements. And the archival requirements of a graduation party are significant, so please be prepared, because
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: I was not prepared.
Even though I'm
Melissa Klug: an older, I was not prepared.
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: What did you can you, do you feel comfortable sharing that? Oh,
Melissa Klug: sure. Yeah. , so her whole senior year, I was like, you know what? I really need to start getting these like photos. She was born, our kids at this point were born in the digital photo era.
And so all the photos are on a computer and mine are decently well organized. Right. But they still weren't, I didn't have a Reilly file. I just have all. Mine are all chronological. So then you have to pick out like, oh, they're really cute baby ones. And then they're really cute little kid ones. And where's her first day of kindergarten picture.
It's a lot of work. Then you have to go get them printed out then. So doing some of this work before you have to. Right. Really critical. Don't be like me, you guys.
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: Listen, you are still steps ahead of many people having them totally organized. So, we can only do what we can do. We are busy, as we're business owners and we're moms and we're wives and we're daughters and we're sisters and we're friends and we're all the things we're caregivers.
Women take on a lot, so I always say forgive yourself, but if you have the means and the ability to get some help from somebody I absolutely say do it. I a couple, just because graduation's coming up, a couple fun ideas for any of your listeners that have a graduate coming up. Photo books are great and there's different levels of organization you need for them.
So, I'll give you three quick ideas. So one is doing the first 18 years, right? So that's birth to 18 years and just capturing the story of your child. So, you give, you give them a copy before they go off to college and then you keep a copy for yourself, or maybe you keep that at home because you don't want them to go to college.
But just, Having that experience and being able to go through and have those memories. And it's amazing. And not just for the girls, but the boys too. They might not admit it right away, but they love it. Right. They love it. Yeah. They won't
Melissa Klug: tell you, but they, they think it's cool too.
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: Totally. My son is older.
He's 30. And so he has shared with me now how much he appreciates that kind of stuff. They do eventually tell you. So that's number one, but that does involve a little more energy and work because that's 18 years of memories. Another option is ABCs. So an ABC book, it sounds, obviously you can do an ABC book for a child, but this is like, N is for New York.
Or B is for basketball or V is for volleyball, right? Oh, I like that. Yeah, so that gives you the opportunity to capture some of the photos from childhood through their teenage years without the stress of having to organize every single photo. Is that first grade or second grade? Or what? Right, right. I mean, that's awesome.
Of course, I want people to get their photos organized and preserved, but if you're looking for something quick, and then the third option, and we did this for our daughter, is to include letters, so what we did was we solicited or asked for family and some of her friends to write letters to her.
And then we digitized them. So it was in their handwriting. And then what we did is each two page spread in the book would have the letter along with photos with her brother who wrote a letter to her or photos with me. Yeah. And so that's great because you can have friends send photos. And I will tell you, since my daughter, like yours, is in her second semester of school, she has told me on more than one occasion, mom, I was feeling homesick.
And I hope I don't get in trouble with her for this, but I was feeling homesick and I was able to open the book and look through the letters and she felt encouraged and she felt that little connection to home. So for
Melissa Klug: sure. No, that's a great, I love that idea because those things are really, really, the first year is hard for a lot of kids.
And so being able to have some of those memories from home is really nice.
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: It is, it really is. That's awesome. So
Melissa Klug: what kind of people work for you? When you hire people to work for you, are they photography professionals? Are they organizers? Are they just people that you think are great?
Like, tell me a little bit about the people that work for you.
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: Yeah, absolutely. So, I have six full time employees. And I'm so honored. Trying to figure out what we need. It's always trying to, find the best fit for them and for me. And because this isn't something like you can't go and get your You know, go to college for photo organizing, college for business and for accounting and landscape design.
Nobody comes prepared and has experienced this before, rarely, maybe little bits and pieces of it. So what I'm always looking for, first of all, What we do, I think, is so important, and I want to make sure that everybody on my team I understand that everybody has to make a paycheck and everybody has to pay their bills, but I want somebody that's truly passionate about stories, about the story behind people's lives.
And sometimes that is a photographer, but we've had people work here who have degrees in journalism, degrees in business, graphic design. Yeah, every one of my team members right now, although it's not required, but every one of them has a college degree. And, and I'm honored that they chose to work with me to work with 2000 paces.
And so we do provide weeks of training. So we've created Google classroom training to get them up to speed on our processes and techniques. And then we're constantly trying to update that because the reality is technology is changing all the time, but sometimes we'll get stuff from clients and I go, wow, I have never seen that before.
Yeah. Let's figure out a solution, so we're always kind of being pushed to grow. Yeah. We've done vision boards, we've done art projects, we do team building I think because it, it also takes a lot, we're taking on the emotion sometimes of these clients and, I also want people who are trustworthy.
Every one of our employees signs, privacy agreements and, NDAs all of the we have nobody working remote and that's for a couple of reasons. One, I think the team environment is just so critical right now, particularly after COVID with everybody kind of, often their own world and I respect people that make that work, but I love the camaraderie we have and the conversations, but more than that for our clients, I want them to know.
And we work with clients all over the country. But when somebody ships us their stuff or uploads it online or drives it to us we want them to know that it's going to stay here in our office, that it's not going to go anywhere else.
Because this is, it takes a lot of trust. Just like somebody inviting you into their home, it's a lot of trust to hand off decades of memories. And we want to respect that.
Melissa Klug: Well, and that's, that's a really good point. I'm really glad you brought that up because one of the things that I have thought of a lot of when you think about sending, like right now, by the way, you'll be getting some things from me because my client has a bunch of like, I don't know what to do with any of it.
Like, well, I have a
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: friend now,
Melissa Klug: You just think about if you're sending this out to just some. Who knows who right like that's why I want to have you on because I wanted people to know like you are a real person and that is a small yes, but that also you're a small business because there are a lot of places that do this kind of work right like Costco does it and but you just send it out.
And you, it goes to who knows where, and I'm like, it feels a little, it feels vulnerable to just be like, here is, here are decades of my family's stuff. Good luck. So, I mean, it just makes me feel good that you're like, no, we really take this seriously and we take our jobs, not just your job seriously, but that, these are really important things for people.
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: I think that that is one thing that. helps us stand out. And it's something that is really important to me is to have that relationship, no matter how much we've grown, I've started in my home. Now we have an office and we were only serving clients in San Diego.
Then we extended to Orange County and LA. So all of Southern California and now all over the country. And It's really important that clients know who we are and that we get to know who the client is. So whenever a client's project comes in, they're assigned to a lead photo manager who's working on their project and they get a weekly update every week via email on what's going on.
And there are big box companies. In fact, I don't think Costco, I think they stopped digitizing and converting video. Yeah,
Melissa Klug: they might have because I know they used to used to be able to take things into the store and then they got rid of the photo processing center and thought they were doing it online.
But they, yeah, I, I don't know if that was probably an example, but there are big companies that do this, but you just feel like I'm just sending it into the
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: ether. That's right. And I, I get it. Because they're sort of, if I made the big box companies, they can afford to provide it to you for probably more cost effective, but it's.
What are you getting? And what's the comfort level? So I don't want to, I think that for the right person, if they feel comfortable sending that off and they just want to get everything scanned and preserved I say more power to you. I think people should do what they feel is in their comfort zone.
What I like is that you are, providing your photos and giving us an opportunity to organize them in a really meaningful way. What I've found is we've actually had a number of clients that have hired us after they've gone to those types of companies, right? I know this, your show sounds familiar. Well, because
Melissa Klug: Costco is not going to, or like wherever, it's not going to be, Oh, this photo is from 1975 and it's in the 1990s.
They're just mass digitizing them. And then you're going to get back a soup of digital files. That's
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: right, which is harder to organize, right? And that's what happens. And then we get this collection of digital files. And, I explained, listen, we can do this, but it's going to take longer, and so I encourage people, if you want to do something like that, it's better to invest the time and resources initially. But just getting it done is really important, but that's, you're absolutely right. They, they scan it. I have two goals, two main goals for our clients.
One, because I was prompted to start this business after the fear of losing everything. My first goal is always preserving and protecting the photos, right? So getting them digitized, converting the videos. Backing up all the digital files, that kind of thing is critical. But number two is let's organize them in a way you can actually enjoy them.
Right? And so, those big companies are taking care of problem one, which is great. But then problem two is I've got, Melissa's family one, Melissa's family two. That's not going to do you any good. What I want you to be able to do is type the word lake or camping or soccer and find all the photos you need.
Melissa Klug: Well, and that I meant to say that earlier when you were talking about the keywords or the tags that you're putting on them to that's major because I, I know like for all of it, we, everybody now just has thousands of photos. And so having that simple tag, sometimes your phone does it for you, but a lot of times it doesn't.
And then obviously photos that you're digitizing definitely don't have tags. It's cool that you guys are able to do that. And then it makes it easier for the client afterward.
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: Absolutely. And there are like it for everybody that has an iPhone, sometimes people say, well, look, I've got faces and type of dog and you can absolutely.
But it's only in that proprietary software. If you're not in an Apple connected software, you're not gonna be able to export that and see it. And to me, I, one of the things that I learned about my own photos is I did not ever want them to be held hostage. There was a time where Walgreens said, if you want to get your photos back, you need to pay us.
These are people that just uploaded them. Shutterfly in March of last year actually got rid of all their shared sites. So if you had photos on the, Shared site, they're gone. And I want to have, and I love Apple, we've got Macs in the office, I've got Apple Watch, iPad, all the things, but what we do is organize it, embedding the keywords in the actual photos, and we use what I like to call a native file system.
So we put that directly onto an external hard drive, and whether you use a PC or a Mac, You're not dependent on any program or software. Do I know if in, 50 years that's going to work? I'm sure we'll just like touch our glasses and our photos will pop up and we'll be prepared for that.
But,
Melissa Klug: You'll start a different business to deal with what happens in 50 years, right? Like that's a problem for future you.
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: That's right. That's right. Yes. Really, I think that's what a company like ours provides that makes it different from some of the bigger comp, the bigger box companies is that it is personable and it is customized and it, it is specific to what your needs are.
Melissa Klug: So tell me about all the different formats that you guys do, like when you said floppy disk, I was just laughing a little bit. What are all of the formats that you're able to take in
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: for people? Yeah, so on the print side, of course, any size print photo we have traditional autofed scanners, right?
Where you, you. Put the photo through and you feed it. And that's going to be for most of the 8x10 and smaller photos that are not delicate. But we also use a camera scanning rig and I'm really proud of that. It's got an arm so we can lift it up and down so we can scan scrapbooks for example.
You know there were years that creative memories was a big thing and we've got I know you've come across some maybe and so There's a lot of love and money that went into those scrapbooks, right? And the last thing somebody wants us to do is take them apart so we can scan the entire thing. We also had a client that had her grandparents, she found these love letters they've written back from World War II on like airmail, right?
Really delicate. We don't want to feed that through something. So we camera scan it and we can do, we had a client Her mom was a nurse in I think the 1930s and she had this nurses cap and we were able to, scan that so she had a copy of it and we put it in archival tissue and things like that.
It's very cool. So any kind of print, any size memorabilia. So we've done children's artwork and report cards, ship manifests, any genealogy stuff. And then we can also do 35 millimeter negatives or really any negative. Sometimes people have much larger, but 35 millimeters that traditional strip, right?
That people used to get with photos slides. We do a lot of slides for a long time. Slides were really popular. So that's kind of on the print side. And then on the digital side. Any place you can have it, but the most common are your computer, whether it's a desktop or a laptop, external hard drives, CDs and DVDs, sometimes people say, hey, I want to scan all my photos and put them on a CD and DVD and I say let's rethink that.
Because it's outdated software, and the truth is you can get one scratch on that and it's gone. So converting all of those, transferring the data off of those is really critical. Then what about thumb drives? Those little flash drives that are in. The junk drawers. And you get those because you did a ziplining trip in Hawaii
the memory cards that used to be in cameras. That's another big one. The floppy disks, as you said, old phones and iPads. Although many of those are connected to online sites, and then there's all the online sites. Apple photos is a big one. Verizon photos, Google photos for people that have androids
places like Shutterfly and Snapfish. We can download photos from there. Dropbox is a good one. A lot of people have stored photos in Dropbox. So any of those online sites. So what we do is. Again, kind of depends on the goals of the client, but the ideal thing is to consolidate everything you have. And so taking a second to think about where have I put all those photos over the years?
Yeah. Yeah.
Melissa Klug: So again, just talking about my, my client that I've been working with. He, I've been joking. We're like, how, where are you hiding more pictures? Cause he has a very house, but I'm like, at some point you have to run out of pictures. Like the other day we found more and I'm like, how can there still be more?
But they're in, sometimes they're in a ton of different places, or maybe you want to gather them from, your mom's house or your aunt's house or whatever, like just getting them all together is sometimes the hardest part of the process.
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: It really is. And that's why Consolidate is always the first.
Consolidating them all together. It is a challenge and I, I love that you've had the, I love and hate for you that you've had the experience that there's more, there's more, I can't tell you how many times we've worked on a client project and they'll drop things off or ship it to us and they say, I think that's it.
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: And I go, You know what? It's probably not it. It's not. No matter how organized you are, you inevitably find another thumb drive or a box. Or, like you said, your cousin will come by and drop photos off. And sometimes people say to me, will it ever end? And they seem so overwhelmed by that. And I have two thoughts.
One is eventually we'll get to a place where you've got this foundation and you've got this structure that at least you feel it's okay if there's a few not in the collection. And I think that's where that grace comes in as women that we have to say it's okay. But I think if we get the majority of the photos, the majority of the collection, that's something to be really proud of.
But the other thing to remember is It shouldn't ever end because if we're not making memories, what's the alternative? Yeah, if you're not making memories, you're probably not taking photos of them. And then you're not living. So I think it's wonderful that we continue to do that. And it just means that you need to, grab a lifeline and ask for some help sometimes.
And that's okay.
Melissa Klug: Absolutely. Well, and the other thing, too, is this is not really going to the specific topic we're talking about. We're kind of I'm going a little more broadly here, but there's also a big thing where I read a very eloquent article. I'm not going to be able to remember where it was, but it was a few years ago and was about a mom Who said, I just never really felt good about myself.
So I never was in pictures. I was always taking the pictures and like, now I don't have a lot of pictures of me with my kids at all of these different times, or, and it doesn't even have to be, a mom with kids, it could just be, I'm not in a lot of pictures and, and then you lose that opportunity too.
So this is totally off the subject of photo organizing, but like also just be in some pictures because you're going to want them. You really are.
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: That's really important. You're absolutely right. And I, we probably read the same article cause I remember reading something about that and it was really profound and I do tell moms that and it kind of makes me sad when we're creating a photo book and for the last 18 years or 25 years or whatever it is and, and I go, gosh, we, there's not a lot of photos of you and you've got tons of photos your kids.
And of course we want to do that. They're adorable. And, and sometimes we, as women, get self conscious or simply don't have the time to take photos of ourselves. Right. I agree with you. Whether you love it or not, your kids will appreciate it. And it's good to look back at your journey. It totally is.
Yes. Yeah. And remember why you don't have that hairstyle anymore. That's okay. Remember when you thought that
Melissa Klug: the bangs were a good idea? They were.
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: Right. Right. And that's okay too. So I,
Melissa Klug: so I have told my mom that the next time that they drive to visit us, I'm like, I want you to bring all the photo albums because I want to digitize them like for myself.
And one of the, I'm going to be honest with you. One of the main reasons is because I tell my kids quite a bit how big my hair was. In the eighties and nineties, and I don't think they fully believe me because they haven't really seen the picture because I really don't have them. My mom does. And so it's really, it's very fun.
Like who told me that getting a perm was a good idea? It was a terrible idea.
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: We did. We did. Aqua net. Right. Oh my
Melissa Klug: gosh. Rave. Rave level four was my personal favorite. That was also very excellent.
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: Right. Right. Right. Right. No, it's true. And it's, it's, those are the things that I think at the time, maybe we thought was, we were embarrassed by it, just like our teenagers are embarrassed now, but the reality, they're really going to appreciate that stuff someday.
And I would appreciate it. I wish that I had taken more photos with my children and, and they're few and far between. And we can't do anything about that, but you can do something about it today. Totally.
Melissa Klug: Well, the other thing that you just made me think of too is. So teenagers could also use this service because their phones
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: are insane.
Right. Like they don't have a problem taking a photo of themselves. No, no, they don't.
Melissa Klug: The problem may be, do you really need 75 selfies from May 12, 2014? No, It could just be the kind of thing that, you know, when your kid is going off to college or whatever, this could also be a gift for them of like, hey, we're going to organize all your photos.
We're going to do like your own, because the pictures I have of my kids are one thing. And that is one part of their journey. It's not their full journey with their friends. So when I think about that, I'm like, Oh, they have a whole other journey that's going on on their phone. And all of the people in your family have their own journey going on.
So like, I could just see this going like so many directions. It's just really cool.
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: And I will say, so we have worked with moms who have teenagers. And the teenagers are like, Oh no. You are not touching my phone, girl, not touching my phone. And so what I recommend, and it obviously I, everybody should parent the way they want to, but if they want to just kind of not push that button right now I always say, let's just, just make sure that it's backed up.
So just have a backup and you can tell, so with my daughter, I say, okay, we set up a backup for her. I don't know the password. I mean, she sends me photos and, and I include those and it's great, but Let's create something so that at least it's backed up so that someday you can access them and share them and enjoy them.
So at least take that step.
Melissa Klug: Or just take the pictures off the phone that you really love. Put that in a file and then you can send it out. Like there are a lot of things with them, but, but it's just thinking about, that, that the whole journey word, there are a lot of different people that have a lot of different parts of your story
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: from your life.
You're absolutely right. And it's, I always compare photo organizing to a puzzle, like a traditional jigsaw puzzle, right? And, and I love puzzles personally, because it's, trying to figure stuff out and it's the detective work. And it's just kind of how my brain works with sorting and organizing, but just like a puzzle you don't just dump all the pieces out and go for it.
You think about it, you come up with a plan like we do for organizing. Typically, most people would do the outside of the puzzle. I don't understand people that don't start with the outside. But starting with the framework and starting with the structure and then we take these pieces based on color or based on size or based on shape and start working on it.
But sometimes there are pieces missing or we think they're missing and we have to wait to get to that point. And, and that's kind of the same journey for photo organizing. You're absolutely right. Having each of our kids photos and our parents photos, that's all part of that puzzle. But we can see the entire story when we have most of the pieces in, and that's what we need to appreciate, not the ones that are missing.
Yeah, I
Melissa Klug: love that. That's absolutely, that's absolutely perfect.
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: Ultimately I just want people to get their photos organized and preserved.
So whether you work with a professional, whether you work with me or another professional, there are wonderful photo organizers all over the country. Many of them are my friends. You can go to the photomanagers. com. I'm very confident in what we provide, so I have no problem sharing that. And if you find somebody you really connect with, go for it.
But just take the step, start consolidating. And just take little bites. You don't have to get it done all at once, but I would start working on it now.
Melissa Klug: Well, and like I said, I just think that we need to have good resources for our clients who, and also some of these stories to go like, here's why you want to think about this, because I do think it's an easy thing to put off and you had a story.
A major crisis. Thankfully, it turned out okay for you. But, I used to tell my kids when they're a little, they don't call them on purposes. They call them accidents. Things happen, right? Like no one anticipates their house is going to burn down. No one anticipates these things are going to happen.
And so do it before it's an emergency. And I feel the same way about organizing, what you said about, I want you to find someone you connect with. Like, we just want people to get organized. However that happens, whether you use a professional organizer or not, But it's just, it's great to know that, people like you are out there and that you have someone that really, really cares about this as much as we do as organizers.
So I love it. You're in your own important little corner of organizing that. Yeah, nobody wants to come into our corner apparently. Your corner is all yours, girl.
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: And that's, that's quite all right. We're, we're perfectly content. So,
Melissa Klug: well, tell us a little bit about how people can get more information. If they want to talk about, whether it's large scale services with you or just kind of one off things, how can, how can people get in touch?
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: So, the easiest ways to go to our website. So we're 2000 paces. com. At, so you can get some information there's before and after photos of Some projects and we've got a bunch of blogs and things like that. But at the very top, there's a button for a free consultation and you can just book it at a day and time that works for you.
Our phone number's there too. Some people like to actually pick up the phone and give us a call and that's great. Not me, but other people do. Most people don't. No, most people don't. But that's available. And then of course, I'm always available via email. It's just rachel r a c h e l at 2000paces.
com. And I love answering questions and meeting new people. So,
Melissa Klug: well, the people that listen to this podcast are lovely human beings. And so I hope, I think that you will. You will enjoy the people that, that come to you from here. And, and I just, I totally agree with you. I, I mean, I just have a warm fuzzy.
I know just because I like it doesn't mean everybody else is going to like it. I love looking through clients photos. It's like seriously something that makes me happy. And I just love, I mean, some of the photos are hilarious and some of them are, it's just, it's fun to see shirts from the seventies and it's fun.
Pictures from the early 1900s. I don't know. I just I totally love it. So I'm actually jealous of the work that you do because I bet you see some really cool stuff. And it's just nice to know that you're doing something really nice for families. So I love it.
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: Thank you. I appreciate you give us an opportunity to to share it.
This has been a blast. Yeah. Good. Yeah.
Melissa Klug: Well, get out those photos from your clients or maybe from yourself, send them to California, send them on a little journey. We're ready.
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: That's right. A whole nother journey.
Melissa Klug: That's right. Exactly. Well, thank you for, for being with us today. It was nice to meet you.
Rachel Arbuckle | 2000 Paces: You too. I appreciate it.
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