#LKNOut Front: Using Our Skills to Help Other Local Businesses

Don’t miss Ed and Kathleen speaking about this program tomorrow at LKNConnect’s Business Strategies Meeting — Click here for your Zoom invite.

A Small Business in Extraordinary Times

Kathleen Martin founded LKN Images in 2005 — a photography business based in Mooresville that specializes in high school seniors, families, team & individual sports and professional portraits.

Like most small businesses, when the coronavirus struck, our business came to an abrupt and unexpected standstill. We asked ourselves the same questions everyone did: What do we do now? How does everyone make it through this?

But on a Sunday morning in March, Kathleen came across The Front Steps Project. An idea that would consume our lives for the next 60 days: volunteer our skills to take pictures of families on their front steps in return for donations to a local charity. We raised roughly $50,000 for FeedNC by photographing more than 800 families. [Read LKNConnect’s article by Tesa Jones.]

#LKNOutFront Image by Kathleen Martin

Leveraging What We’ve Learned

As the world starts to return to normal, our focus has turned toward getting back to business and channeling what we’ve learned toward helping other local businesses:

• Personify and encapsulate a story through a photo. (A great picture is worth even more than a thousand words!)
• Leverage social media to create a movement and expose it to a large audience efficiently.
• Mobilize goodwill simply by projecting good news.
• Use our skills to help others – because we are all in this together!

How It Works

#LKNOutFront is designed to get your current information out in front of customers, make it easy to find, and personify your business.

#LKNOutFront Image by Kathleen Martin

We will come to your location and take photos of you standing out front. You provide the information about your current status (hours, how you are operating during phase 2). Together with location and contact information, we will create an electronic marketing “flyer” for you. You are free to use it across all your social media and marketing efforts.

“People like to do business with people they know. So, putting a picture of the owner out front really personifies a business. And as customers, we are more confused than business owners about how things are going to work as we progress through phases. #LKNOutFront is an effort to help everyone through that.” — Kathleen Martin, LKN Images

The program augments and complements everything you are currently doing. Adding the hashtag #LKNOutFront will make it easier for customers to find your information no matter where you post it online.

How to Sign Up

Go to LKNOutFront.com. A photographer will schedule a time to come out and take your photo. Using the information you provide, a draft will be sent to you for approval. The final PDF is free to use across all your marketing and social media efforts.

“As a local business owner and photographer, this is something we can do to help — And as customers, it’s exactly the kind of information that we want to know.” — Kathleen Martin, LKN Images

25+ years of making NASCAR video games led Ed and the Martin family to Mooresville in 2005.  With 3 kids now grown & flown, Ed likes to spend time working with his wife, Kathleen, in her photography business, LKN Images.  “Kathleen likes to say that she’s the dreamer and I’m the do’er.  I like that!  And after 30 years of marriage, it seems to work!”  LKN Images specializes in high school seniors, families, team & individual sports and professional headshots.  You can find more about us on our web site: www.LKNImages.com