Today we’d like to introduce you to Mary Boyle
Hi Mary, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I like to joke that my business has been a 40-some-years overnight success in the making.
I never set out to become a professional photo organizer (a job I never even knew existed up until a few years ago!) but realized it’s something I’ve actually been doing organically for as long as I can remember! My story (and the origin of my business name) dates back to my early childhood, where my love for order and all things organization started – as the oldest of 4 girls, I can confirm that the Birth Order theory is 100% accurate. I think my parents subconsciously had high expectations of me as their first child, leading me to naturally take on more responsibilities in the house once my sisters came along. Whether it was managing household tasks, overseeing my younger sisters do their chores or ensuring our shared room stayed tidy, I embraced this lead role and it no doubt formed the leadership and organization skills I am proud to have today. Over the years, and as camera phones became a greater part of our lives, my unofficial role of “family manager” also translated to “family photo manager”. I was the self-appointed gatekeeper of shared family photos, which meant I was the one to remind (nag) everyone for the infamous group shot on every trip, set up a shared album after an event, tag family members on social media, etc. Which ultimately helped me start to create a central repository of our family’s memories over the years, readily accessible whenever a family member needed to find “that one photo”. Needless to say, all of my photo-managing efforts paid off when it came time to make a tribute video for my Mom & Dad’s respective 70th birthdays! By that point, it became a matter of “which photos to use” versus “where do we find them”. Funny enough, I was also the designated “photo keeper” in my social circle over the years – my friends always joked that if I didn’t post the photos (from a night out) on Facebook the next morning, the night didn’t actually happen!
Career-wise, and long before I started my photo organizing business, I worked as an account person in the advertising agency world for almost 15 years, mostly across CPG clients, and was seen as an “early adopter” of digital technology. I was always curious about digital and had a constant thirst to keep learning more about it. This allowed me to advance quickly as a subject-matter expert in an industry notoriously slow for new technology adoption. But what ultimately led me to become a professional photo organizer was through experiencing first-hand an intense personal need to manage my own large collection of photos after becoming a Mom. After having my first child (another eldest girl!) I decided to take a career hiatus to stay at home for her early years. During that time, I quickly learned that the very notion of ‘photos as memories’ has no greater importance than when you become a parent. First steps, first birthday, first tooth, first steps…there’s a first for everything! I’m pretty sure I amassed 20,000 photos on my phone in just her first year alone. My dilemma? My photos soon became impossible to manage! My vision of having a perfectly edited camera roll full of themed/dated albums was quickly fading as my days became busier and more chaotic as a Mom (and then my second child came along…). I realized the stakes felt much higher to imagine losing any one of the photos sitting in my phone due to my own lack of organization.
So I made it my mission to get my photo collection in order – and while it wasn’t something I did overnight, I slowly made progress over the course of a year and am happy to report I am still using this system today!
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Like I mentioned earlier, my journey to become a business owner kind of happened naturally over time, so things have fallen into place in a really seamless way, like I never expected to happen. After my girls started PreK, I made the decision to return to work but not to my previous “9-5” grind that I knew would limit the precious time with my kids and my ability to stay involved with their school. An opportunity came my way to help out a friend and local small business owner (a professional home organizer) with some backend/admin tasks that she needed to take off her plate. The fact that this role was all about helping an Organizer stay organized is not lost on me and something we still joke about today. Getting to support all of the “behind the scenes” happenings for home organization (without having to do the actual physical work) was right up my alley – it was a role that brought me joy and minimal stress (and admittedly a bit of distraction) amidst the day to day hustle and monotony with young kids. This role gradually morphed into a bigger support role, where I was able to flex my marketing muscle and help the owner grow her business offerings over the course of 2 years. As the digital expert on the team, there was no technological issue I couldn’t solve! Due to my expertise, I helped her make the decision to introduce photo organizing as a complementary service offering to home organizing, and I raised my hand to lead this exciting effort. After months of business development and extensive training with The Photo Managers group, we successfully launched the offering in DFW – the work came naturally to me, but it never actually felt like “work” – I loved that it focused on helping people preserve their priceless memories. After several months, there was a mutually beneficial opportunity for me to acquire the photo organizing side of the business, which I decided to jump all in on, and flash forward to today where I’m now offering dedicated photo organizing services to customers as The Photo Sister.
In terms of struggles, I think the hardest part for me (as a self-proclaimed accidental entrepreneur!) has been learning – and quickly – how to run a service-based business as a sole proprietor. As a one-woman show, wearing multiple hats at all times is never easy, especially with 2 school aged kids at home, and learning how to pace my business’ growth is a constant balancing act. Thankfully, most photo organizing projects are not that time-sensitive, which allows me to pace out clients according to my schedule, including whatever “season” of life I am in with my kids at any given time! My vision is to eventually expand my business offerings and bring in a team to support me. For now, I’m excited about growing at a pace I am comfortable with in 2025 and seeing where that takes me!
We’ve been impressed with The Photo Sister, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
I am a professional photo organizer, which is essentially a specialized subset of home organizing, but it also stands on its own as a distinct profession with its own set of skills and expertise focused on organizing and preserving a client’s personal photo collection (which can be in digital, printed format or both).
I established my business, The Photo Sister in 2024 and most of my clients to date have been through word of mouth/referrals through the Southlake/Grapevine/Colleyville community. As a photo organizer, it’s my job to advise on, organize and help you manage your photo collection, which can mean a variety of things, depending on what type of photos you have and what your end goals are for your collection. For most clients, I will organize both their printed and digital photos into a core folder structure on an external hard drive (fondly referred to as your “photo hub”) and 90% of those are organized chronologically. This helps the client not only be able to find their photos easier, but finally put them to use, such as creating memory albums or gallery walls once everything is organized and in one place. There is a lot of backend work that goes into this process (including technology-heavy components for the digital photos), but overall it’s designed to reduce the quantity of files in your collection (prior to organizing) in a thoughtful, methodical way. I like to call it a “bespoke curation” process, which helps you remove unnecessary items such as duplicates, screenshots and other categories of photos that you don’t want to live in your collection anymore. Each client’s preferences and goals for their photo memories are uniquely different and I love being able to tailor my process to their needs.
What do I love most about this job? This is going to sound so obvious, but I love bringing to life the memories and stories behind someone’s photos. My brand’s promise is to help busy individuals manage their photo overload, so that they can actually start enjoying their memories again. So it’s one part functional, other part emotional. Because if you think about it, what is the point of taking photos in the first place if they’re just going to live in a shoebox stuffed in the back of a dark closet or buried deep in your phone’s camera roll amidst all of the photo clutter you’ve collected along the way? (And yes, screenshots are the bane of everyone’s existence, even for me personally as a photo organizer!) Most people know they need to do something with their photos, the hardest part is convincing them to actually get started, which obviously comes with a price tag and that can be a hurdle for many, amidst other cost priorities in life. This is where I think the notion of trust comes in, and something my business is uniquely positioned to deliver on – which is you can trust I will take care of your photos as if they were my own. I am proud that I can offer this promise to my clients, and it’s fundamentally at the core of everything I do. When someone makes that leap of faith to invest in their photos with me, and chooses to give me access to their memories, they are inviting me in to their inner circle and I essentially become part of their family for a period of time. This is such a privilege for me and something I do not take lightly. I get to see all of the big events and milestones in their life, but also a glimpse into their day to day and all of the little moments that happen in between – moments that actually aren’t all that unusual in terms of how we all experience life over the years. I often see so much of my own childhood reflected in my clients’ photos – from interactions and moments with siblings to the amazing hairstyles of the 80’s, and it makes you realize that we are all so much more alike than we are different! That’s a pretty neat perspective in my opinion.
What has been the most important lesson you’ve learned along your journey?
There have been so many learnings along the way, and I continue to learn new things about this profession with each new client project I take on. To that point, my biggest learning is that each person’s collection is uniquely different from the next – there truly is no one-size-fits-all method, as each client has different needs, pain points and goals with their photos. While someone may have the same type of overall goal as the last person, the devil is in the details when it comes down to the organizing process and what the end deliverable ultimately looks like, which is why I’ve built my organizing services to be flexible to accommodate different needs.
I’ve also learned that preserving memories is just as much about the people as it is about the literal photos. So many of my clients come to me feeling overwhelmed, paralyzed, not knowing where to start, and it’s hard for them to envision the end goal when all they can see in their phone each day is chaos. So while the technical skills and process of sorting, organizing and backing up photos is essential to this work, the emotional side of the job is just as important. As an active member of The Photo Managers group (a global community of professional photo organizers), I constantly hear stories from other seasoned photo organizers who give tips and learnings on the human/relationship side of this business. You quickly learn that patience, empathy and active listening are absolutely critical to helping your clients make meaningful decisions about which photos to keep, which ones to let go of and how to best preserve their memories for future generations. So in that regard, ultimately I think the goal of photo organizing isn’t “just” organization, it’s storytelling too.
Lastly, and this one is more functional in nature (learned mainly through trial and error), the best system for organized photos is one that actually gets used and is easy to maintain over time. So much of what I deliver to my clients teaches them how to create simple, consistent habits with sorting their photos in order to prevent future overwhelm. When a client comes back to me in a year, and simply wants help getting the last year’s photos in place with minimal clean-up needed, I know I’ve done my job, and that’s the ultimate satisfaction for me!
Pricing:
- $65/hour (for all organizing work)
- $0.55/item for standard printed photo scans
- $0.95/item for specialty printed photo scans
Contact Info:
- Website: www.thephotosister.com (currently under construction)
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thephotosister
- Other: Email: mary@thephotosister.com
