Aurora Digital Imaging Studio

They say that you should never go into business with a family member. The reasoning behind this comment is based on how hard it is to make intelligent decisions if you put too much heart into them. For example, if you hire a family member to work in your business and they start missing work frequently, it is so much harder to let them go if you have a personal relationship with them. Matters of money should not be mixed with matters of the heart...so they say.

My experience was totally opposite. A while back I took an 18 month leave of absence (I quit my job) to start my own business. As a couple, me and my now ex-spouse had always talked about doing this but found it extremely hard to put on hold our engineering careers in order to take the entrepreneurial step of owning our own business. After some intense soul searching and an awful experience of having to supervise people during a huge budget cut, I took the scary step of quitting my job and giving it a try. As much as I imagined that I had thought it through with enough scrutiny, soon I learned that planning a business and doing a business are two completely different beasts. The good news was that my heart was really into it and I found in myself a lot of resilience I did not even know I possessed to charge forward. The even better news was that one of my two sisters was living here at the time in California and she accepted my offer to basically work for almost nothing in exchange of the learning experience of a lifetime.

In less than two hard working months we had built reception cabinets, assembled all of the office furniture, had signs made and installed, and purchased every bit of equipment we would need to open a digital imaging studio. The place looked great and now all we needed was customers. We placed ads in the Yellow Pages and a few local magazines to make it known that we were in business, plus we took our services in person to other local photography shops that could use our talents and services. At the time very few of these types of businesses existed in California, much less in the area in which we established our store front. The world needed us to alter their photographs and images, and we needed the world to make money doing it. My sister being the smart cookie that she is learned everything there was about my business in record time and soon we opened our doors to the public. Aurora Digital Imaging Studio, read the beautifully crafted sign on the side of the building we had occupied.

Nope, not once did I regret having my sister by my side running this business adventure. In fact, I think that I would of never gotten it off the ground if she would of not been there for me in so many different ways. Our relationship was completely symbiotic in a way that words cannot describe it. We ran the place like it belonged to both of us, and it showed. Soon we were doing photographic restorations and image manipulations for customers all over the state and even a few from Nevada and Hawaii. The city came to us to help them with one of their festivals, the University of California came to us to help them with specialized graphics, lawyers with images from ATMs, other business owners with products for their catalogs, and an endless stream of friends with old photographs that needed to be restored before they completely disappeared into dull pieces of paper consumed by time.

Business was good, but not good enough to generate enough income for both of us, much less justify the loss of my income as an engineer. Eighteen months into the adventure I made the choice of returning to work for the government in order to secure the income necessary to feed another baby that was on its way. My sister was kind enough to stay running the business for almost another six months so that we could meet our responsibilities, and while the lease term for the location expired.

Just one month before we closed down the local newspaper came to profile our business and an article on our business and the magical work that we did within. It was a full page and a half beautifully written presentation with many of our manipulated images in full color to show off our skills. Ironically, this made our business pick up many more clients which if I was not already engaged in returning to work for the government might of been our business salvation. My sister and I must of worked on over a thousand images and every single one of them seemed special in one way or another. Most memorable was a series of images that a widower was bringing to us to retain the memory of his late wife and his dogs. This wonderfully pleasant man would walk in and sit for hours telling us story after story of his life, his children, his wife, and his dogs. The contrast of his demeanor would show vividly when some people would come in with pictures in which they wanted to remove someone that was no longer important in their lives from an old wedding, family event, or other moment in their lives. Even after death he was still in love with his beautiful bride.

In a span of only two years I had the opportunity to peek into so many stranger's closets. Occasionally there would be the angry driven individual that wanted nothing more to do with someone from their past, but more often than not, the majority of the images we restored or manipulated had love as their main theme. An amazing perk to this kind of business was that in all of the financial transactions just one single person ever bounced a check on me. The man was a good man, he meant to have it covered by the time we would deliver to goods, but apparently we found ourselves being a bit too efficient for his wallet. Needless to say he apologized and made full restoration of the money he owed immediately. Another time we found ourselves working endless hours restoring an image in which much of the face had been literally destroyed of a picture brought in by a daughter of her mother. By the time we were done, the image was very good but obviously not perfect because of the poor condition the original image had arrived into our able hands. When the customer arrived we could tell that even though she was pleased, she apparently wanted more done. Later we discovered by her absence at the time to review the final product for a second time, that what was happening was that she did not have the means to cover the cost of the work done. My sister and I talked about it and decided to send her a letter letting her know that we were willing to settle the account for what was a ridiculously low price. The truth is we just wanted her to have her picture back, nobody should be without their mother's picture because of a financial burden. That felt good!

Over and over the theme would repeat itself. "This is the only picture I have of my dad ... mom... sister... brother... uncle ... son ... daughter ... grandfather... grandmother ... etc." Would say the customer as they would proudly show us their image. We would notice how some had a difficult time leaving the image in our strange hands, yet walking away in hopes that our work would bring back to life that which had been once precious to them and now was almost vanishing. Each image was considered a treasure, probably one of the most valuable possessions of the person who brought it into our establishment. We wore white silk gloves and treated them with the respect that they deserved.

It was a wonderful experience to be able to run this business, and an even greater joy to have the opportunity to do it with my sister. At lunch time, unless a customer had called saying they were coming, we would put our "Be Right Back" sign on the door and go out for a quick lunch together. Sometimes we were just exhausted from long hours at home or work and we would turn off the lights in one of our office spaces and lay back and take a small nap. Leaving this adventure was a very hard thing for me to do. I had invested a lot of money and the short two years were not enough to recover the investment I had made from personal finances. Yet now I look back and have zero regrets. If only for the time that I was able to spend with my sister, it was money well spent.

Dad