From Fire to Flourish: Rachel Arbuckle's Journey to Photo Organizing Success

There are moments when life throws a curveball that ignites a spark within us, reshaping our future in ways we never expected. Rachel Arbuckle is no stranger to such pivotal moments. On the podcast today, she recounts a harrowing experience that nearly cost her family's photographic legacy to fire, prompting her to start 2000 Paces Photo Organizing. She transitions from the structured corporate world to the entrepreneurial realm of photo preservation.

Arbuckle walks us through the expansive growth from a cozy home office to a dynamic 1,400-square-foot workspace. and how the Photo Managers community became instrumental to her business. Looking ahead, Arbuckle delves into the intricacies of non-proprietary storage solutions, the ethical use of AI, and the increasing demand for services that help manage the digital deluge of customer photo collections.

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Transcript

Erin Manning: 0:02

Welcome to the Dead Pixel Society podcast, the photo imaging industry's leading news source. Here's your Gary Pageau, The Dead Pixel Society podcast is brought to you by Mediaclip, Advertek Printing, and Independent Photo Imagers.

Gary Pageau: 0:19

Hello again and welcome to the Dead Pixels Society podcast. I'm your host, Gary Pageau, and today we're joined by Rachel Arbuckle, the founder and CEO of 2000 Paces Photo Organizing, and she's way over there in San Diego, California. Hi Rachel, how are you today?

Rachel Arbuckle: 0:34

I'm excellent, Gary. Thanks so much for having me.

Gary Pageau: 0:37

So who the heck is 2000 Paces Photo Organizing?

Rachel Arbuckle: 0:42

2000 paces in ancient times actually represented a day's journey, and that's where the 2000 paces comes from. We're trying to capture our clients' journeys. Everybody's journey looks different, from the inception of the inventory they bring us, to the story that we're trying to preserve and capture, to the way that they want to enjoy their photos.

Gary Pageau: 1:05

You didn't start in the photo organizing business. It's like almost everybody I've talked to in the photo organizing business who had gotten into it as a business, something happened where they said, oh my gosh, my photo history is super important. I need to help other people preserve their history as well. What was your impetus for getting into the business?

Rachel Arbuckle: 1:28

Yeah, you're absolutely right. As far as I know, there's no degree out there for photo organizing, although I would argue that there probably should be. So my history is sort of my journey. I was in the military right after high school. I was a Navy corpsman for six years, put myself through undergrad and grad school. I was both. My degrees are in the geography department, in geographic information systems. So marrying technology with kind of trying to solve puzzles has always been something of interest to me, but clearly very different than what I'm doing now.

Rachel Arbuckle: 2:06

I worked for some environmental consulting firms. I worked for Sandag, a couple of big government corporations, and decided that I wasn't really enjoying that and I went off and worked in wealth management on the sales and marketing side. And then that brings us to 2014 in San Diego. Of course, there's fires, and now apparently there's tornadoes and hurricanes and floods, but at the time we only had fires to battle. So I've been evacuated multiple times from a fire and typically we have a lot of time to gather our things and they give us some warning, but this particular fire started a hundred yards from my home.

Gary Pageau: 2:46

And what was the cause of it?

Rachel Arbuckle: 2:49

Actually it was arson. A teenager apparently was bored and decided to light a tree on fire. And so devastating because, although we did not, thankfully, lose our home, there were other people in our community who did, and this was an outrageously intense fire.

Rachel Arbuckle: 3:06

And my neighbor knocked on the door and just pointed to the fire and I looked over and this is before the fire trucks had come, because it was so close. So we just grabbed what we could you know, obviously, family pets, etc. And and left. I grabbed a couple scrapbooks because I was doing that at the time a couple computers, but that was it, and I stood at the bottom of the hill looking up and I have photos of my husband and I looking up and all I could think about was my grandfather's World War Two memorabilia that somehow I had inherited right, my children's artwork from preschool and elementary school and photos of my parents and all these things that were all over the house. Some of them were framed on the wall, some of them were in boxes and envelopes and I and one of a kind right.

Gary Pageau: 3:54

I mean irreplaceable.

Rachel Arbuckle: 3:56

It's absolutely irreplaceable. It's absolutely irreplaceable. Everything else in the house could have been replaced, but this couldn't. And I had a pit in my stomach, Gary, I can't even explain to this day. I get chills thinking about it because I was so worried and I looked over at my husband and I said if our home and our photos survive, we need to figure out a way to protect them, because I can't go through this horrible feeling again. We had some smoke damage but overall everything survived and I started looking into options for preserving our photos and, quite honestly, didn't find anything that I thought our photos deserved. So I decided to create a solution and I quit my corporate job and started 2000 Paces Photo Organizing.

Gary Pageau: 4:42

Well, you know, back then there were some resources, right. I mean there's, you know, there's some online resources. I think the you know the photo organizing profession I guess is what it's called now, you know, the Associated Personal Photo Organizers. We're kind of it was out there, right. But I definitely want to touch on that because you're very involved with that group which is now The Photo Managers. But what made you decide it was a business, I guess, is the part I get to, because I mean there are certain people you know see a need for something and you know if you need to lose a few pounds, you start working out. Doesn't this mean you want to open a gym? That's right.

Gary Pageau: 5:19

So what was the business case for doing this?

Rachel Arbuckle: 5:22

Yeah, gosh, that's a great question.

Gary Pageau: 5:25

And did you have? One Is the question.

Rachel Arbuckle: 5:27

Yeah, did I have a business case right.

Rachel Arbuckle: 5:31

So many questions that were swirling around my mind at the time. I mean, obviously I didn't start looking into it thinking I create a business that I was, you know, doing the corporate job. I was doing the 95. I wasn't thrilled with what I was doing, I wasn't passionate about it, but I was successful and you know, we were doing our thing. And I think it was the emotions that impacted me so much at the risk of possibly losing our photos that when I started looking into options, there are a few things struck me. First of all, it was very confusing. There were so many different options out there. I was overwhelmed.

Gary Pageau: 6:10

What do you mean by options?

Rachel Arbuckle: 6:11

You mean like places to get yourself digitized, or yeah, places to get it digitized, or processes that people recommend, or online storage. There were just so many different options and for everything, and there were so many I don't know if I'd even call them options, but just possibilities that I didn't feel like there was. There was anybody or any solution out there that was saying this is what you should do for your situation, because I recognize that you know my situation and my goal might be different from you. Know somebody else of the street, and so I was so overwhelmed by that I I was trying to.

Rachel Arbuckle: 6:57

You know, I started obviously just trying to preserve my own photos and I thought, well, do I? Do I ship them out to get them digitized? When I do ship them out, are they going to organize them? What if they don't name them? What? What's gonna happen when they come back? What? What is DPI? What is resolution? Why is that important? And then, when I get them back, where am I gonna store them? And oh, I'm reading that I can't put them on this external drive because I need to back them up. And da, da, da da I was. I was so overwhelmed and I thought I cannot be the only one that feels so overwhelmed and and and stressed out by this, and I think a lot of people just decide well, I'm gonna. I'm gonna do what I can for the moment because I've got a graduation coming up or for Memorial coming up.

Rachel Arbuckle: 7:40

Right, I'm gonna take care of what I need right now.

Gary Pageau: 7:43

Which is not the way to do it, right, I mean. I mean I've run into many cases where, yeah, people reach out to me and they go. I need to have all my photo on scan because Aunt Betty died in her funeral Friday. Yeah and you're like what? I'm not gonna get it done, you're not gonna even know what's there and everything else. But right. But it's usually those kind of life-changing events. They like a fire or an earthquake or a tornado or tsunami or something that gets people to think like this you know.

Rachel Arbuckle: 8:14

so the idea that there are so many options you can Google anything, you know you can find anything but are they the right options for you? Are they updated? The software that is recommended is does it make sense? What if you decide to download some software and rename all your files and Now you've inadvertently stripped the metadata or and what is metadata.

Gary Pageau: 8:41

If you do that, you may not even know what that, why that's important, if it's right at all right.

Rachel Arbuckle: 8:47

Absolutely, and so I think, when I started looking into it for myself, I thought, oh, there's so many different facets to this and it was really important to me to do it right right.

Rachel Arbuckle: 8:58

And I realized that the business need was twofold. One is because, with all the climate change and everything going on and and just how we've entered this digital age in such a fast, rapid, powerful way, sure, people that had print photos are worried they're gonna lose them and don't know how to convert those, if you will, to these digital files. And then the people that have this overwhelm of digital files and don't know what to do. So I thought maybe I can help people so that they don't want experience that same anxiety I did and I can help them find this pathway so that they can get all their photos organized so they're ready when they do have a loss or something to celebrate.

Gary Pageau: 9:40

I'm really curious about your background because I'm looking at the you know geographic systems and you know I mean what's amazing me is actually see a corollary when you know that's a very detail-oriented I imagine I don't nothing about it, but it just sounds like it's a very detail-oriented, very lot of categorization. A lot of you know systems and processes in place to keep track of things. So do you think that played a part in your Interest in? This is sort of? You know, you were kind of wired that way.

Rachel Arbuckle: 10:38

Yeah, you know what it's. Um, you're very intuitive, Gary, because I never really made that connection. In fact I I think I make a joke saying you know, I got these degrees in geographic information systems and here I am running a business for photo organizing and I guess I'm. I Never really thought about the correlation, but you're absolutely right. The interesting thing is I was actually an information systems major initially and I took a geography course and I love, I love visiting national parks, love, you know, geography and history. I've just always been fascinated by it. So geographic information systems gave me this opportunity to merge these two things that I enjoy. And so I think you're right, the I love solving problems, I love the technology behind it, I love kind of figuring out the puzzle and and that's really what we're doing, but we're marrying that with a you know, real-life photos and real-life emotions.

Rachel Arbuckle: 11:31

And you know, Gary, I can't tell you how many times we have we work with clients all over the country Over our corporate offices here in San Diego. About 50% of our clients are all over the country, which is very flattering to know that people want to work with us. But I can't tell you how many times we've had people in the office and we have tissues at every corner of our office, because there's Photos are powerful. These memories evoke so much emotion and we've got people who you know stashed these photos away in boxes for months or years, trying to avoid some pain or a story, and there's truly a psychology behind that. I mean, it's so meaningful and powerful. So I think there's things that have come out of creating this business that I never even knew were possible.

Gary Pageau: 12:15

So it's how about the creating the business piece? Right, you know you've got a corporate office, you've got half a dozen or so employees. You didn't start that way right.

Gary Pageau: 12:24

So when you started out, obviously look for some resources and maybe connected with the Apple folks who are the Apple at the time and looked at the business side of it and I want you to talk about that. But also I know a lot of photo organizers who don't have storefronts right. They're home based or whatever and but you know there's a few you know that I've talked over the years who have actually gotten into storefronts and things like that. What was that process like? I mean, because you realize that you can't do it all yourself, you need some help, you need to expand and that's kind of a leap.

Rachel Arbuckle: 12:54

Yeah it. I feel like this should be over a glass of whiskey, because that was a big transition. Certainly, again, wasn't even my vision to start a business initially. So I did start out of my home. I had a real small 100 square foot, you know home office. I brought in, you know, some college kids that I knew to help with some scanning and figuring it out and at the time I think I always thought that it was going to be bigger than that, because anybody that knows me knows that's just kind of how I am. You know I don't believe Sky's the limit. I reach for the stars. I knew that I wanted to. That's right. And I knew, I always knew I wanted to do something that was bigger than you know what some people would envision. I wanted to help more people. I wanted to grow something that had some meaning behind it. But I think, with my background in both the military and in information systems, I'm very process oriented and I'm very systems oriented right.

Rachel Arbuckle: 13:55

So, if you ask my team, we have flow charts and training and checklists and backup systems and we've even got a Google classroom training for all of our, you know team members and I wanted to make sure, because everybody's journey is so different and because the inventory they're bringing to the table is unique and the way that they want their photos organized and access sometimes is unique, we needed to make sure, and I needed to make sure, that we had a plan for that.

Gary Pageau: 14:29

Right.

Rachel Arbuckle: 14:30

I recognize that people's photos are so powerful that they are so one of a kind that they are irreplaceable, and I wanted to make sure to preserve those in the best way I could. And the only way that I could figure out to do that is to create these systems and processes, and the only way to do that is to have a team working with me to make sure that happens.

Gary Pageau: 14:49

I mean chart for me. Consider a geography person. Chart for me the path, if you will. You know kind of in your home how fast was that, that path where you went from 100 square feet with a couple college kids to 1400 square feet with six employees, with, with a pandemic in between?

Rachel Arbuckle: 15:09

Right, that that was. That was a fun little blip that I wasn't expecting, but it was of course. So I would say if I had, you know, my my brain, trying to kind of wrap my head around the timeline. It took a little bit to get started because I wanted to make sure this was the path I wanted and I did seek out assistance from what was formally the Association of Personal Photo Organizers Appo to what's now the photo managers by Kathy Nelson, and I started out to Kathy shout out.

Rachel Arbuckle: 15:45

Shout out Kathy, we love Kathy and we really do. And now I'm on the advisory board and she and I connect regularly and it's a lot of fun. But I wanted to acquire as much information as I could. So for the first you know year that's what I was doing is just trying to understand and understand what's going on industry, because I couldn't help anybody if I couldn't even organize my own photos.

Gary Pageau: 16:05

Right, and I'm just curious how big was your collection, do you think?

Rachel Arbuckle: 16:09

Oh, it was one of the bigger ones. Yeah, because, like many people, it was. You know, all of my personal photos. It was all my parents' photos. You know I've got many siblings and that was my grandfather's.

Rachel Arbuckle: 16:24

I was the memory keeper and am, not surprisingly, the memory keeper in our family, and so I didn't hear it everything. So we had generations going back 150 years, yeah, so it was a very large collection and I didn't jump into all of it at once, but so, and then I spent probably a year or two in my home office where I was, you know, kind of slowly marketing and getting some clients and visiting them in their home, which was wonderful and I actually miss that. It's really fun to connect and we've just gotten bigger and can't do that quite as much. And then it was. So that was the fire, was 2014, june 2014. And then it was probably a year before I even, you know, thought about quitting my corporate job and kind of thinking that over, and then a couple of years at home, and then we got the corporate sorry, we got the brick and mortar in August of 2018.

Rachel Arbuckle: 17:23

And I had one employee, so this huge 1400 square feet. But again, that was my vision is that we were going to grow. Now we're busting at the seams I don't have room for anybody else but it didn't. Yeah, it didn't happen overnight.

Rachel Arbuckle: 17:38

I mean, it took a few years for us to get to that point and with the pandemic and just how life works in general. There were times we had more employees and less, and it's cyclical as we try and figure it out before we finally got to a place where I feel like we're really stable.

Gary Pageau: 17:59

So talk a little bit about the cyclical piece, right, because I do run into that when I talk to people who are in this business. Right, and it's interesting because there's always people who think how much stuff should there be for scan and it's like, no, you don't realize there's trillions of stuff out there. We're never going to get through it all. So, getting back to the cyclical piece, do you see that with your business Because I mean traditionally photo whatever and I'm doing air quotes for those who can't see is a fourth quarter type thing, right, where it's for holidays or whatever Are you do experience that in the photo organizing space as well, that people are like I need to get grandma's photos and make a scrapbook for her for Christmas. Do you see that?

Rachel Arbuckle: 18:38

Yeah, I mean, we definitely don't make scrapbooks, but yes, I do see.

Gary Pageau: 18:41

I mean, I know what you're saying, but that's kind of what their thinking is right.

Rachel Arbuckle: 18:46

Yeah, we do have. You know, when I've looked back at the years that we've been doing this, we can kind of start to see a pattern. And Q4 for us is absolutely the busiest time it's. In fact I give my team off. Between Christmas and New Year's we just shut the entire office down to give everybody a break, because people are. You know, I want to get this done. It's one of those things that we wait decades.

Erin Manning: 19:12

I'll get to it someday.

Rachel Arbuckle: 19:13

Right, I'll get to it someday. And then when they get this light bulb of wow, there's somebody that can help me and I can actually get this done, and now it becomes a priority, which I love, it's wonderful. So we do notice that Q4, where people want to get that done for the holidays this summers sometimes are a little bit slower, I think because people are on vacations, because we've created more of a presence throughout the country.

Rachel Arbuckle: 19:41

Now we keep pretty busy throughout the year but historically, and it's when the kids go back to school and parents think you know that, have kids at home still think, wow, you know, the kids are back. Let me start organizing some of their school things and school memorabilia and they realize this is just daunting.

Gary Pageau: 20:01

Right, Do you have a reasonable percentage of customers who maybe start the process and realize, oh my gosh, this is too much for me, I need help. And then you've got this sort of thing that's already been started dropped on your counter.

Rachel Arbuckle: 20:17

Yes, unfortunately we do. I say that because, of course, we'd love to help clients regardless of where their photo collection stands, but in fact, we just started working with a client a few weeks ago who called me and said I have spent 20 to 30 hours trying to organize my digital photos for my boys and I'm gonna lose my mind. She said I have tried to do online classes, I've tried to transfer things. I don't know. Now at this point I've got multiple duplicates and from the collection she has, we probably could have gotten the entire thing organized every file renamed, duplicates removed, cleaned up the cat memes and the screenshots and created a storage in probably less than 20 hours.

Gary Pageau: 21:08

Right.

Rachel Arbuckle: 21:09

So absolutely, we've got people who try and do that on their own. Again, I wanna empower people to do that. I would encourage you to give us a call first and let's do it again.

Rachel Arbuckle: 21:22

If you wanna do part of that on your own. We've actually had people that have also sent their photos into sometimes some big box companies. I don't wanna downplay any other photo organizing companies. There's different companies that are suitable for different people. What happens sometimes is people will think again, kind of not having that education, understand what they need, They'll take all their print photos, they'll take them all and they'll ship them off to somebody to get them scanned, but they're not organized person. So what they find is they've satisfied part one, which is preserving their photos, but they can't find any of them Because just having that scanned with no context it doesn't do any good. So then we get these previously scanned photos and need to go through and assign keywords and date them and sometimes re-scan them.

Rachel Arbuckle: 22:15

So it does happen, of course, but that's kind of part of the industry.

Gary Pageau: 22:21

Yeah, obviously this is a and a lot of peoples, even though you and I would consider it a must have. It is almost a luxury right In the sense that you can, you know a lot of. It's a premium service in the sense that you know you're gonna pay a professional to do this. So not to get specific into your exact price. But I was just curious how you decided kind of what was fair. What was the resources you figured out to say, okay, was it like per hour, was it per tens of thousands of pictures? Was it by videos, was it by slides or you know, or how do you factor in the organizing piece on top of that? And obviously, since you're a very process orientated person, you probably had, like you said, workflows, work charts. You kind of figured, okay, this is the throughput, yeah, so I'm just curious what that thought process was From the business side of it.

Rachel Arbuckle: 23:10

Sure, sure, you know, I will say, in working with a number of other colleagues around the country and really around the world, because there's photo organizers all around the world now, which is exciting, this topic is difficult and I would say that it's particularly difficult for the photo organizing industry because there's not really a benchmark right.

Rachel Arbuckle: 23:30

It's gonna hire somebody to remodel your bathroom and they said, okay, it's gonna be, you know, 20 to $30,000, depending on what you wanted. You might say, well, that makes sense. You know, you've got the plumbing, you've got the contractors. I know that that's what it costs. If I was gonna ask somebody to get my you know, to color my hair and they said it's 100 bucks or 200 bucks, I'd say, okay, that's reasonable, you know, we've got a benchmark. What I find is because so many people don't even know that there's professional photo organizers out there that they are often surprised by the cost, and not because they don't think the value's there, and I hear that all the time oh, this is so worth that I get it. They're just a little surprised because it's an investment.

Erin Manning: 24:12

It is a financial investment.

Rachel Arbuckle: 24:14

And you know, what I like to explain to people is this is decades of creating this journey, of creating these photos and the memorabilia and the videos. It's decades of creating it. So it's gonna take not decades, but it's gonna take a little time to get organized to satisfy what clients want, and so I am always looking at different ways to try and find that spot where I can make sure my team is taken care of. I really value my team members tremendously and I want them to be taken care of, but of course, I want our clients to feel like they're getting the value. So the way that we bill currently is our services are typically billed hourly, and then things like conversions and transfers, like digitizing- or transfer home movies, we digitize, print photos, memorabilia, slides, negatives et cetera.

Rachel Arbuckle: 25:16

We can quantify that a little bit easier through some data analysis right, so we can do that per item.

Gary Pageau: 25:22

So are you doing it all of that in-house?

Rachel Arbuckle: 25:25

Yeah, everything happens here. Nobody takes anything home, nobody works remotely. It's something I really pride ourselves on is that I think it's difficult enough for clients to feel comfortable to hand these purchase memories off to us.

Gary Pageau: 25:39

I don't want them to い that they're going somewhere else.

Rachel Arbuckle: 25:42

There are a couple of things that we do outsource, but we always let the clients know and get their permission before we do that. But that's why that's, I think, one thing that makes 2000 Paces for organizing unique is that we don't just focus on print or digitizing or digital or videos. We really try and we try and be a one-stop shop so that clients can consistently come back. So we have a number of clients on a monthly maintenance plan. So when we're done organizing their photos, we continue organizing them the photos they take on their phone on a monthly basis.

Gary Pageau: 26:14

Well, that's what I was talking about, cause remember that was sort of starting to become a thing with APPO/P hoto Managers about cash, I don't know what. About six, eight years ago they started talking about sort of the maintenance plan, right yeah, where you go in and you get to look at people's I don't know whether they put them into Google photos or what I mean, whatever online. Then they kind of call them and, like you said, so when and it's consistent with what their historical images are. Like you said, the key wording and all that stuff is super important, yeah.

Rachel Arbuckle: 26:44

I mean the. The idea in a nutshell is and again, everybody's situation is a little unique, but we have to have some kind of standardization right, and that's difficult to do when there's so much variability. But the idea is that once we create this foundational archive, if you will, of their photos, then every month, as they're taking more, we access their digital photos, we download them, we rename them up facial recognition and we put them onto whatever their online storage is.

Rachel Arbuckle: 27:14

And so they just got these kind of magic elves working behind the scenes. And you know, what I like to say is I want you to focus on making the memories. Let us worry about organizing them.

Gary Pageau: 27:24

Yeah, so let's talk a little bit for a few minutes about, kind of like, the technology platforms you use, right, cause there's a lot out there. Right, there's a lot of partnerships out there and there's a lot of people who say they can do some things, a lot of people trying to apply a lot of AI to some of this stuff, and whether they're successful or not we'll find out. You know, kind of like, how did you, who were kind of your technology partners that you work with and why did you pick them?

Rachel Arbuckle: 27:50

Sure. So I you know, Gary, one thing I will say is I made a commitment to myself and the company that we were never going to be myopic in the technology that we're working with. We're not going to work with somebody because we get a kickback or a deal, and we're also not going to employ just one system, and I know some people like to do that. You can do everything in this system. I just I think that that causes problems.

Rachel Arbuckle: 28:17

It's one of the reasons that I don't always recommend that people store their photos in an Apple ecosystem on iCloud, because it is so proprietary and it's really important to me. One of the biggest things that I share with our clients is I don't want your photos to be out of hostage. I wouldn't want mine to be held hostage. I want you to be able to access them, change them, modify them as you can. So when we use all the technology, we provide clients with an external hard drive that's formatted for both a Mac and a PC, unless they want it for a specific operating system, and it's organized in a native file system, so it's not dependent on any proprietary software. You don't have to worry about updates Now. In addition to that, of course we'll back it up on something else, but some of the technology when we use everything from, we'll use Adobe Lightroom, of course, for facial recognition. We use a number of other programs that we use. One program to find duplicates we use actually we have two different programs to find duplicates.

Rachel Arbuckle: 29:19

We use another Plug plug.

Gary Pageau: 29:21

You want me to tell you?

Rachel Arbuckle: 29:22

Yes, absolutely I want to know, but one of the ones we us e is Photosweeper, and I think it's absolutely one of the best out there. They're phenomenal. We're testing out a couple others, so I don't want to say anything quite yet, but Photosweeper is not always great at finding the videos. There's a number of the videos, because we're all taking this little snippet videos now instead of just the photos, so that's part of the whole organization. We use a Better Finder Rename for renaming right.

Gary Pageau: 29:49

Thumbs up for that one. I do use that one.

Rachel Arbuckle: 29:51

Oh, I love it. I don't know how anybody organizes without a Better Finder Rename. They are by far my favorite program To rename and categorize. We use a big mean folder machine to pull photos out if we need to. We have Photo Mechanic to assign EXIF data at times and for various other things. We have a number of Lightroom plugins and scripts Apple scripts that we write or have been written for us to try and apply. So we kind of take a little bit of this and that and then for storage, for backup and storage.

Rachel Arbuckle: 30:24

Often SmugMug is kind of our go-to for a number of different reasons. We really like working with them. We like what they provide. I like their privacy aspect. I like that they're only focused on photos and that we don't have to worry about ads and things like that. We're also partnered with a company called Image AI. It's a San Diego-based company. They're all over the world and they provide there's where your AI comes in AI specifically for photos, and we've been testing out their software and it's been incredible. It's just that's where we're heading. But we wanna do it ethically and we wanna do it correctly, as accurately as we possibly can.

Gary Pageau: 31:03

So yeah, and AI is great, I mean, but it's not perfect, yeah.

Rachel Arbuckle: 31:11

Not there, no, no no, it's not.

Gary Pageau: 31:13

I mean it's a great tool but it's not perfect. You've got into the, I got into the business thing and now I'm running the business thing. What is your objective with your business? I mean you've kind of got this national clientele going. What are your thoughts about the future of your business and the industry really?

Rachel Arbuckle: 31:37

But the future of the industry.

Rachel Arbuckle: 31:38

I mean, I think we're just at the precipice of something phenomenal and I think, with all the digital overwhelm and all the print photos and things were inheriting, as the baby boomer generation our largest population is unfortunately passing away. We're inheriting everything and so and we're taking more photos than we ever have because it's so easy on our phones, Right the need for professional organizers is, I think, more necessary than ever. I think there's so much, there's so many resources out there, right, that it kind of goes back to why I felt like creating this business was important is having somebody who can kind of guide you through this chaos of what's going on, and there's a lot of really good people out there that I work with that can do that. So I think the photo organizing industry absolutely I mean you see the money and the companies that are getting involved and wanting to partner this is absolutely, I think, in the next three to five years it's just gonna be a common industry that people just know exists.

Rachel Arbuckle: 32:53

For myself, I love being on the forefront of what's happening in photo organizing. Our team works really hard to provide the best service we like to. We've been called the Tiffany's of photo organizing. I always like to tell people I know so, bougie.

Gary Pageau: 33:09

But and it's Does anyone still get that reference anymore, though?

Rachel Arbuckle: 33:13

Right, what's that? Will anybody get it?

Gary Pageau: 33:16

Well, the Tiffany reference right. It's not quite what it used to be in terms of. I'm not sure what the high end brand is these days, but-.

Rachel Arbuckle: 33:22

Yeah, that's a great point. That's a great point, but the Tiffany's aspect is that we do set the bar high and we want to make sure that we're doing the best we can for our clients.

Gary Pageau: 33:31

You deliver the hard drive in a blue box is the question.

Rachel Arbuckle: 33:37

Right, it's not blue, it's black, but it's a protective box. That's a great point. But I'd like to say that we marry sort of that Tiffany's with an intimate bed and breakfast, because personally, I speak with everybody I would say 90% of the people who are inquiring into our business and talk to them. It's why we offer a free consultation, because I want to get to know you, I want you to get to know us, I want you to know what it is we're providing.

Rachel Arbuckle: 34:05

So, as far as where I'd like to see 2000 Paces go, I just want to continue to help people. I want to continue to be on the forefront of what's happening. I'd love for people to recognize us as a leader in the industry and what we're trying to provide. And, most importantly, I can't stress enough that when we get emails or text messages or calls from clients because they simply wanted to say I just gave this gift to my adult children and there were tears, or we just watched the video again that you created or converted, and a year after we've worked with them or they come back to. I had a client last week that brought her friend up here with boxes and boxes of photos and said I want you to help her the same way you helped me.

Rachel Arbuckle: 34:51

It's powerful and it's rewarding, and I want to continue to do that for as many people as we can.

Gary Pageau: 34:57

So where can people go to get more information about 2000 Paces for photo organizing and geospatial stuff?

Rachel Arbuckle: 35:06

Well, I can't help it that anymore, despite the education, I'm far from it, but in fact my husband would say I have no sense of direction and it's ironic that I have to get this geography but 2000paces. com, so it's two triple zero P-A-C-E-Scom. And of course I'm on LinkedIn and we have a business LinkedIn, and on Pinterest and Instagram and Facebook and right on our website there's an opportunity to click for a consultation If anybody's just interested in chatting, whether it's for your own personal collection or a family members, or if you're even thinking about starting a business like this. I love to encourage people. There's so many people out there that need help that I love to share with you. I love to share.

Gary Pageau: 35:55

And you may as well plug the Photo Managers Conference while we're here, because you'll be there right. So tell us I will. Where is that and when is it?

Rachel Arbuckle: 36:06

Yeah. So the Photo Managers again, I'm on the advisory board and it's gonna be April, I think, second to the sixth. You can go to thephotomanagerscom or you can reach out to me and I can connect you. It's in Columbus, Ohio this year. We do have a conference every year. I think that surprises people and we have photo organized from all over the world South Africa, Australia, England, Brazil, Scotland. It's amazing and we're gonna. I think there's gonna be some really exciting keynote speakers this year and they have breakout sessions and courses and there's a whole certificate program. So it really is very, very exciting.

Gary Pageau: 36:46

Well, great, Rachel, great to meet you. Hope to connect with you in the future, maybe in person. We did actually meet in person at the visual first event, but now we're chatting and hope to see you again soon. Thank you so much.

Rachel Arbuckle: 36:58

Thanks, Gary.

Erin Manning: 37:00

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