Today we’d like to introduce you to Camille McCallum.
Hi Camille, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
They say sisters are your first best friends, but in my case, they’re also my first business partners. With my sisters, Kendall and Chloe, we opened Love Your Selfie, Tupelo’s first selfie museum. The initial idea came from Kendall, who visited a selfie museum in Atlanta and had so much fun she thought we should create our own.
We’d always wanted to go into business together, but hadn’t come up with an idea we all felt sufficiently passionate about. The selfie museum instantly clicked. We loved the idea, knew it would be a fun business, and got to work.
We assembled a team of contractors, artists, bankers, and more to help us turn our dream into reality. I spent time writing the business plan and securing the funding while Kendall put the team in place. Chloe worked on the creative and marketing, and it took just over two months to transform our space from an old t-shirt shop to a selfie museum. We opened on July 29th, 2021 to much support from our local community.
We each have some background as entrepreneurs, I’ve worked as a business educator for 3 years, Kendall owns a tutoring business, and Chloe is making waves in the resale world. We used all of our talents collectively to create the business we have today. Though it’s still young, we have big hopes for its future.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
There were many challenges on our journey to opening a business. As this was our first brick-and-mortar endeavor, there were many things we simply had to learn by doing, and with that many mistakes, we had to learn from.
Our build-out was delayed due to insurance issues, we ran out of money – twice, our wifi didn’t work for the first week, and setting up our tax status on our own was quite the challenge. Not to mention the general exhaustion.
But none of it could compare to the happiness and joy we felt knowing that we were building something we could call our own, and creating a legacy for our family. We battled hard against imposter syndrome and reaffirmed ourselves daily that we did belong in this position and we did have what it takes to succeed.
Running a business is not easy, and with Love Your Selfie being located in a mall, we are open almost 70 hours a week as congruent with mall hours. When we first began we were working ourselves to the bone because we hadn’t hired enough employees.
But we quickly learned from our mistakes and relied on our business mentors to lead us in the right direction. Now when we face challenges we view them as opportunities to improve.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Love Your Selfie is Tupelo’s First Selfie Museum, offering 20 unique sets for our guests to enjoy and capture “Instagram-worthy” moments. We provide a safe and fun environment for youth in the local community to experience entertainment they could once only get in the big city.
Our sets are unique to our store and not easily recreated so guests come to us for the highest quality photos and sets in the area. We pride ourselves on great customer service, we want each guest to feel like a star when they step through our doors and capture themselves accordingly. We aim to inspire confidence and happiness.
We are most proud of the way that our store connects to the community, whether for student field trips, birthday parties, or supporting local charities we want our community to know that we are there to serve them. Guests can come and see us anytime by booking their tickets online through our website loveyourselfietupelo.com
We’d love to hear about how you think about risk-taking?
Creating Love Your Selfie, was a major risk.
Because selfie museums are a new business in an emerging industry, there’s not much data out there on how the business performs. Some of the projections for revenues and costs we made were done based on the little research that’s out there – so we knew we were taking a chance in starting this business.
Because we are still very young, myself at 27 and Kendall and Chloe at 23 and 19 respectively, we felt as though if for some reason failed, we’d have time to rebound, but if we succeeded it would set us up for life. So the potential rewards outweighed the risks for us.
Our philosophy in business is to be risk-averse, so when we do take a risk the rewards are great.
Pricing:
- Love Your Selfie Admission $20
Contact Info:
- Website: loveyourselfietupelo.com
- Instagram: @loveyourselfietupelo
