Conversations with Epic Endeavours

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ana and Artem Pikhota of Epic Endeavours.

Ana and Artem, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
We are a husband and wife due. We ended up eloping in the start of 2020. We had a wedding planned, but due to covid, we had to postpone. After we got married, Ana (my wife) started to dream of growing her photography business into more than a hobby. She specifically wanted to do elopements. Once she started to offer free shots to friends, I joined in as a second shooter and quickly began to love making videos (I’ve made a few as a hobby, but really started to love doing it as we started exploring our options.) The first official elopement we did was for a friend in the mountains, we knew we wanted to pursue more, so we slowly began to collect more gear and book weddings here and there. It was a crazy adventure when we started. We had no idea what running a small business meant.

All the customer service, 12 hour days of running around, 10 hour days of sitting and non-stop editing, taxes, legal things, contracts, finances and so much more. We had no idea what we were getting into. With that being said, we love our job and capturing precious moments that people can look back on. We view our job as documenting the most vulnerable and intimate moments and telling a story through our art. It’s a fun job, but a serious one that we don’t take lightly. We do our best to help and grow with our clients, guiding them and becoming friends with them in the process.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
When we first started, we had to be patient and had to reach out as much as we could to try to get some bookings. Once we got our name out there, business and bookings started coming in a little bit easier for us than it had been before. The hardest part has been the marketing side of it. It’s been hard to find clients in general, especially at the beginning, but now it’s hard to find clients in our niche who want us for our work and art, not just our low prices (because we are still starting out.) Another obstacle is all the legal business, we are still learning everything, but there’s just so much that it’s a bit overwhelming and hard to keep up.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
As of right now, Anna works full time as a photographer and she takes care of our Marketing and Meetings with our clients. I myself work full time as an Airplane mechanic, and once I come home, I work on our videos and other business aspects. We specialize in weddings and elopements but are known most for the weddings that we have done so far. We are most proud of how far we have come in such little time. We set goals for the year and we reached those goals before the middle of the year even came around. The one thing that sets us apart is the fact that we work together and offer a bundle where you can get both a photographer and videographer for your wedding that work well with each other to capture the best possible shots of your big day. The hardest thing for this industry is to hire a photographer and videographer that can work well together and not get in each other’s shots but instead work seamlessly around that problem. When couples hire us, this is one of the biggest things they get from us that they wouldn’t get from anyone else.

The crisis has affected us all in different ways. How has it affected you and any important lessons or epiphanies you can share with us?
We started in the middle of the crisis and didn’t really kick off till the end of the year so we didn’t really have any struggles with our business having to postpone weddings or other factors that my have come along with that stipulation. I think the biggest takeaway in general from the Pandemic would be to always be prepared financially because you never know what could happen in your life.

Contact Info:

• Email: epicendeavours.info@gmail.com
• Website: https://epicendeavours.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/epicendeavours/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Epic-Endeavours-117603306736945