Community Highlights: Meet William Boggs of Boggs Creative

Today we’d like to introduce you to William Boggs.

Hi William, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I always had a love for psychology and an entrepreneurial spirit. My first “business” was in the fourth grade when I asked my mom to teach me how to sew so I could make cloth wallets and sell them to my friends on the school bus.

Finding my path:
When I was in college, I realized where psychology and business joined to become marketing, and my creative side was inspired by ads I would see walking down the street or on TV. I was also inspired by the creative storytelling of the character Don Draper and his ad agency team pitching to businesses in the show Mad Men. So, I decided to get into advertising. Not your basic ads where someone talks about the product while some video plays in the background, but those engaging, creative, make-you-think ads.

First Steps:
I knew that if I wanted to have my ad agency one day, I would need a website so people could find me, so in 2016 I started learning about web design and SEO and made my website. After I made my own, other businesses and friends began asking if I would make sites for them too.

Building Blocks:
Next came photography. In high school, I enjoyed taking photos of various things and my friends just for fun. I considered pursuing it professionally back then, but my (otherwise very supportive) parents advised me that they felt this was not a reliable way to earn a living. Fast-forward 10 years: visual content now runs the world of business (this ties into my next point below). I realized that the businesses I was building websites for could benefit from having custom visual content on their websites. After I graduated from college, I decided to give photography another go; I invested in a quality camera and watched countless hours of YouTube, learning all about the ins and outs of photography and video. Please do what you want; it will all work out in the end (probably).

I decided to ditch my capstone class in college on the day my group chose roles for our semester-long business startup simulation project. Like most people, if you’d have asked me to do anything that had to do with data or numbers, my response would have been “no way,” but I wasn’t there to be asked. So, naturally, I got stuck with CFO since nobody else wanted that position. Come to find out, I ended up enjoying it and learned a ton from being thrown to the wolves. This led to me managing finances for some nonprofits later on. The skills I learned working with spreadsheets also carried over to the advertising world, working with the data analytics that plays into it.

It still won’t be easy:
I moved to Tennessee the weekend NC went on lockdown for COVID-19 and got stuck working a dead-end, entry-level job for $12/hr. I knew this wasn’t what I was meant to do, so after about a year, I quit my job to channel that 40+ hours/week into doing what I wanted to do! After graduating from college with 2 bachelor’s degrees in business (marketing and entrepreneurship), a good GPA, and loads of nonprofit leadership experience, nobody in my field wanted to hire me because I didn’t have enough direct experience.

Do it anyways:
Within 1 month of quitting that job, I was bringing in 2-3x more money than I had made working there and was now only working a few hours/week, doing work that I enjoyed doing! Further, I signed that business as my first ongoing contract and worked with them until I moved to Montana again.

Back to square one, twice, but it’s okay:
Escaping the 9 to 5 was short-lived since I lost most of my clients when I moved to Montana and had to find a job again. I worked for a tour company as a photography tour guide in Glacier National Park and could sell prints of some of the photos I took there, bringing in a little bit of passive income. This job was the most incredible experience of my life, and I felt it was worth sacrificing the time I could have spent trying to hustle to get my business going again. I had several more incredible opportunities in Montana, the most exciting of which was doing photo and video work for a company that modifies exotic cars. This felt like a dream come true to me! That’s what life’s about for me – living out incredible experiences.

Just as I was starting to get a foothold in this new area, some life events unfolded, and I found myself moving back to the Raleigh area in December 2021.

Patience and perseverance:
Since beginning my journey as a marketing entrepreneur in 2016, I’ve created many websites for businesses across different industries, from local restaurants to medical technology startups and everything in between! I’ve gotten to work with some cool startups and awesome brands and even had some photo work featured by Subaru USA. I aim to continually improve my skills and the services I can provide to others. Each new experience leads to another. I now specialize in commercial photo/video and love to shoot products, business services, and vehicles. I follow the Clio Awards very closely because I’m inspired by the intricate and creative work of some big ad agencies like McCann, Ogilvy, and DDB. It’s my career goal to create ads worthy of being named among these agencies and maybe even win a Clio of my own someday!

We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
The most difficult parts for me have been
(a) starting over twice
(b) generating funds to invest in my business, and
c) time management.

As I mentioned, I got reset twice when I started gaining momentum. Sometimes things happen that you can’t control, and sometimes you need a change in other areas of life that can also affect your business. Starting a business also costs a bit of money—camera gear, laptop, web hosting services, advertising expenses, etc. The list goes, you may have to work that 9-5 for a while to save up what’s needed to invest in your business. When you’re working a 9-5 job or in a relationship, or (I can’t imagine) if you have kids, it can be hard to make time for your ventures. When you get home at 6:00 pm and have maybe 3-4 hours to work out, cook, maintain relationships, have a social life, have a little fun, learn new skills, AND work on your business, it can be hard to choose what to prioritize.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
It’s a business that does creative things! Website design is creating Photography and video are creative. Advertising is also creative. I’m happy to work with almost any industry to find a creative way to grow their business. Boggs Creative specializes in commercial photo/video, web design, and advertising. I LOVE shooting photos/videos of vehicles and outdoor adventure products. I’m happy to have the skills to help brands tell the story of what they have to offer through creative visual content and a modern website.

We love surprises, fun facts, and unexpected stories. Is there something you can share that might surprise us?
I’m red/green colorblind! As someone who shoots and edits photos and videos, I had to work around this when editing. Since getting into the photo/video world, though, I’ve learned how to notice more subtle differences in all colors.

Pricing:

• Varies depending on projects

Contact Info:

• Website: https://boggscreative.com
• Instagram: @whboggs
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/boggscreative
• Other: https://www.boggscreative.com/wboggs/linktree (for my book or prints)

Image Credits
All Photos by William Boggs | IG: @whboggs