What has become a rewarding career for Raleigh photographer Kathy Howard started out as a leap of faith.
The Maryland native studied business management and marketing at NC State before moving, on a whim, with her then-boyfriend, now husband, Shannon, to Kailua, Hawaii. The couple spent 12 years on the islands before marrying, having three children and moving back to Raleigh.
Howard worked as a stay-at-home mom for years, a job she says couldn’t be better or harder. Once her children were in school, she decided she wanted to learn something new, which led her to picking up her first DSLR camera. At the time, online blogs were popular, and Howard challenged herself to photograph something every day for 365 days and blog about the photo, a bigger challenge, she says, than she originally realized. But Howard learned about cameras and the art of photography, watched online webinars, and, at the end of the yearlong project, emerged as a self-taught photographer with neighbors inquiring whether she was for hire.
So, in 2011, Kathy Howard Photography was born.
With her newfound passion, Howard signed a lease on her own studio space in 2014 in the historic Carter Building on Glenwood South. She reflects on the move and on wondering how she would balance motherhood and a job, whether anyone would hire her and the many other unknowns in opening a business.
“Turns out it was the best decision I’ve ever made,” Howard says. “I was fortunate to have found incredible online mentors to guide me through all the aspects of starting a photography business, from taxes to pricing to posing.” While Howard initially photographed families and weddings, she found herself searching for something more; after seeing work from the photographer Sue Bryce online says she fell in love with her portrait style.
“I knew that was it,” Howard says. “I wanted to empower everyday women (and men) with photographs that they love.” Kathy Howard Photography became Kathy Howard Portraits.
Howard says her clients motivate her daily.
“I love my job, when clients tell me ‘good luck, I’ve never owned a photo that I like of myself,’” Howard says. “Portraits can be so powerful, and many who come to me discover or rediscover parts of themselves they haven’t seen in a while, reconnecting to their value and their worth.”
In 2017 and 2019, WRAL named Kathy Howard Portraits “Photographer of the Year” and Howard was recently accredited as a Masters Level Portrait Photographer through The Portrait Store and Sue Bryce Education.
Howard also values giving back to the community and has worked with Headbands of Hope over the years to help with branding photographs. She supports local nonprofits such as Designed for Joy and Awareness Through Aesthetics, donating portrait sessions to silent auctions. She runs her own “True Beauty Campaign,” a no-makeup, black and white portrait fundraiser to benefit a suicide prevention hotline and empower girls and women of all ages to embrace their natural beauty.
“Believe in yourself,” Howard says by way of advice to other entrepreneurs. “Mistakes happen, always learn from them. Exude positive energy into the world and it will come back to you. Put out negative energy, that also comes back to you!” Her mantra in life and in business, she says, is to treat others as she would want to be treated.
“The hats you don’t like to wear, outsource as you can afford,” Howard says of being a one-woman business. “Always take at least one day (I try for two) completely off per week. Stay away from the computer. Rest and recharge is more important than answering that email. You’ll avoid burnout, be more productive and much happier and healthier.”
So how does Howard define success after nine years of work as a photographer?
“Of course, being profitable is a part of the answer, but honestly, success is loving what you do,” she says. “I am so grateful to have found what I truly love to do and to get to do it every day.”
Howard’s favorite place to shoot:
“The Warehouse District downtown Raleigh. All of the new architecture mixed with some of the old, it is a photographer’s dream for backdrops. And when you catch the light just right, perfection!”
A decade ago, Kesha Dozier asked herself what it was that she most wanted to do in her life. The answer: to open up a chocolate shop.
The New Jersey native moved to North Carolina to attend college at NC Central, where she studied biology with a focus in organic chemistry. She continued her graduate studies in physiology, worked as a medical examiner investigator at UNC and then specialized in the pharmaceutical industry—in which she still works full-time today. But chocolate, Dozier’s true passion, took her down a new path when she and her husband, Maurice, opened The Chocolate Boutique in Lafayette Village in 2011.
While working full-time, volunteering and being a mom, Dozier found time to travel the world—to Belgium, Spain, Italy and, of course, Hershey, Pennsylvania—to sample some of its best chocolates. Using the knowledge gleaned from her chocolate-tasting travels, Dozier’s boutique makes more than 70 percent of its own chocolate in house and Dozier has perfected a recipe for chocolate truffles.
Kesha Dozier
“It’s a lot of fun,” Dozier says. “You walk into the shop, put on your apron and it’s a happy and fun place to be. Everyone walks in the door and you see them take a deep breath in and they smile and their whole expression changes.”
Pre-COVID, Dozier opened up her space monthly for “Sweet Talk,” a local networking group she started to help market the store and reach the community. She also hosted chocolate and wine tasting events and founded the annual Lafayette Village Chocolate and Wine Festival.
While the pandemic has changed how Kesha defines success, she is confident that the boutique will succeed. Her sales were 95 percent brick and mortar before, but now, the boutique sells online, offers curbside pickup and ships to its customers.
“Control what you can control,” Dozier says. “If you can manage it, manage it and do it; if not, move onto something else.”
Dozier, a self-described extrovert and people lover, says she is proud to have been able to grow her dream into a shop that’s loved by many. But it wasn’t always an easy road and Dozier says she encountered plenty of obstacles that couldn’t be solved with a bottle of chocolate wine. She’s found that good planning tends to make the job easier.
“I love writing business plans,” Dozier says. “I will write a plan for everything, but what I didn’t account for nearly enough was the cost of overhead of a brick and mortar.”
With working full time, running a small business and everything else she’s juggling, it’s a wonder that Dozier finds time to do it all. Recently, she’s drawn inspiration from Richard Carlson’s best-selling book “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff.”
“It has given me a new perspective on things and reminds me to just breathe and enjoy the time I have,” Dozier says. “Life moves so fast. Don’t forget to acknowledge it [as] tomorrow isn’t promised to any of us.”
The other way to move through a full life with a busy schedule, according to Dozier? Find balance.
“Balance is enjoying little bits at a time,” Dozier says. “I may only get five minutes here or there, five minutes for meditation, five minutes on The Knowledge App, or I may actually get eight hours of sleep. Whatever it is, I take it all in and just enjoy it.
In this series, Raleigh Magazine takes a look at some of the women in our city who are getting the job done.
The owner of Petale, the boutique flower shop located on Hargett Street in downtown Raleigh, Alchacar immigrated to the U.S. more than 30 years ago, escaping the war in her home country of Lebanon. Alchacar made the long journey with her younger sister for the promise of a new life and the opportunity to study business management at NC State.
At first, simple things like knowing where to go to buy basics were a challenge.
“The first three years living in America were the hardest,” Alchacar says. “Learning the culture, the language, and, back then, Raleigh was so much smaller than today, it was just very difficult. My younger sister was living with my brother outside of Mebane, but I was alone in Raleigh, trying to navigate and find my way.”
“It was not like how the movies portrayed the USA,” Alchacar recalls with a laugh.
But upon graduation, Alchacar says she knew Raleigh was home and where she wanted to be for the long term. She married, found a job at an injection molding company and had three boys.
After leaving her job to raise her children, Alchacar says she realized she wasn’t meant to stay at home full-time. She started teaching fitness classes at the YMCA and says she loved connecting with other women, fitness and the fast-growing Zumba craze. Then, as her boys were growing up, Alchacar found a wedding venue that caught her eye. She bought it and soon was helping plan events, decorating and flower arranging.
Eventually, Alchacar sold her event space to the town of Apex. Her love for event planning and international travel led her to the next entrepreneurial adventure, with flower arranging as the centerpiece: She would open a boutique shop, Petale, where clients could find happiness and joy a couple of flowers at a time.
“Having traveled through Europe and Spain, I would see all of the little stands with flowers for sale where you could purchase a few stems,” Alchacar says. “This is what gave me the idea for downtown Raleigh needing a place where people could grab just a few flowers to brighten their day.”
Along with running her businesses, Alchacar has been a prolific community advocate, volunteer and fundraiser. In 2010, President Obama recognized Alchacar with the President’s Volunteer Award for raising money for UNICEF, which only 200 Americans are honored with annually. Alchacar also founded downtown Raleigh’s popular International Festival that takes place each year on Fayetteville Street, which she still helps to plan. Along with her role as a mother, Alchacar says serving as the festival’s founder and planner is one of her proudest achievements.
“These two [roles] are my pride and joy,” she says.
Alchacar now mentors international students who come to study at NC State, helping them adapt to American culture, as she remembers how hard it was when she first came to the U.S. She has also donated more than $20,000 to the university’s International Studies program.
Clearly, Alchacar isn’t afraid of hard work. Her parents died when she was only 5 years old and she says this experience taught her about taking care of herself, making sure to look at the bright side, finding happiness in every day and being grateful for opportunities.
“Never give up. Always, always find the joy in all the things,” Alchacar says by way of advice to young entrepreneurs. “Tomorrow is a new day. Hopefully, one filled with lots and lots of flowers.”
In this series, Raleigh Magazine takes a look at some of the women in our city who are getting the job done.
For Christina Kirkey Taylor and her PinUp Studio, the stars aligned behind her hard work to ultimately bring her success.
The 28-year-old Raleigh native, a self-described “very girly girl,” grew up loving hair and makeup—school and books, not so much. Pursuing her dream to work in a creative profession, Taylor graduated from high school a year early to begin school at Paul Mitchell and discovered a passion for cosmetology.
Taylor says her dad, William Taylor, was her biggest supporter. A painter, small business owner and entrepreneur, William would bring his crew into Paul Mitchell occasionally so Taylor could gain experience cutting their hair. But her dad suddenly passed and Taylor’s world came to a screeching halt.
Angry and unsure of what to do next, Taylor eventually finished school and started on her career path styling hair. She quickly realized she didn’t love working for others.
“I had purple hair and an edge,” Taylor recalls. She set her sights on opening her own, unique salon. To raise the money she needed to realize her dream, Taylor did hair by day and worked for an eyelash studio in the evenings to learn how to do lash extensions. Soon, Taylor was able to take her small portfolio of 10 clients and open her own hair and eyelash business, PinUp Studio.
“It was small,” she says, “but I had to start somewhere.”
The more Taylor’s business grew, the more she realized she needed to expand and have a team. On Facebook, Taylor saw a salon listed for sale in the same shopping center she and her dad used to frequent for lunch. Though she says she wasn’t quite ready to expand at the time, she called the broker anyway to find out more information. Taylor says it was clear the studio would become PinUp’s future home; within two months, the papers were signed, the remodel was completed and the doors were open. Now, Taylor has a team of 13 stylists working for PinUp Studio—including the original salon’s owner, who has been both employee and mentor—or renting studio space.
Christina Kirkey Taylor
Taylor credits much of her success to her dad who was also her role model. Though William’s education ended in middle school and he never learned to write, Taylor says he worked hard and always put people first. He became successful and profitable in his business and his hard work and the way he treated his staff left a lasting impression on Taylor, as did his focus on giving back.
Now, Taylor supports dozens of local causes including Gabi’s Grounds, a coffee shop and advocacy group for people with disabilities, and Redefined Courage, a nonprofit committed to supporting breast cancer survivors.
“If you do good, good will come back to you,” Taylor says. She adds that she spends a lot of time helping others because she remembers when she didn’t have any clients and was working hard to build her brand.
Taylor admits that success hasn’t always come easy or without hard work. She tells other entrepreneurs to never give up. At her first professional women’s seminar, Taylor recalls dropping her entire sandwich in her lap in front of people during lunch.
“I held it together, but at the end of the day, I cried in my car and told myself I wasn’t giving up now,” Taylor says. “Find what sets your soul on fire and that’s the reason you’re not supposed to stop.”
Taylor says she hopes she leaves a legacy like that of her dad’s.
“I want to be known for helping as many people as I can and making a positive impact in this world. Sure, riches are nice, but if you aren’t helping other people, those riches don’t mean anything in the end.”
In this series, Raleigh Magazine takes a look at some of the women in our city who are getting the job done.
The owner of Glenwood South’s Cupcake Shoppe has the business of sweet treats all figured out.
Glenwood South has seen the rise of many an entrepreneur over the years, but none quite like the Cupcake Shoppe’s Sara Coleman Fitzpatrick.
Just a decade ago, Fitzpatrick, an NC State graduate, was working for Johnson & Johnson, living between Florida and Georgia and traveling constantly to New York City for work. She baked to balance the chaos of her corporate career and dreamed of moving back to Raleigh.
One day when she was visiting town, Fitzpatrick saw a little shop with windows that opened out onto the Glenwood South sidewalk. She envisioned the “what could be” for the empty storefront—a warm, walkable gathering place for the neighborhood nearby, where lasting friendships could be born.
Fitzpatrick signed the lease.
Fast forward ten years and that “what could be” is now Fitzpatrick’s everyday reality. The Cupcake Shoppe welcomes all into its sweet space with light pink-painted walls, marble countertops, an antique cash register, cozy booths and fun light fixtures. Guests hunker down to work over coffee, cupcakes and savory bites, or they meet their friends there and celebrate life’s special occasions.
It’s been a challenging business at times, as Fitzpatrick will plainly tell you. In the Shoppe’s early days, guests would find Fitzpatrick smiling behind a tablecloth-topped table with a cupcake stand, offering samples and handing out business cards, serving as the store’s accountant, janitor, baker, event coordinator, marketing manager and more.
“When you’re first starting out, everything seems like it’s a big deal,” Fitzpatrick says. “Every negative comment, staffing issues, all the road bumps you encounter all seem so difficult.”
But where local and national chains in Raleigh have shuttered their doors—think Sprinkles, Crumbs, Gigi’s and locally owned Sugarland, which filed for bankruptcy last year—the Cupcake Shoppe has thrived and grown into one of the city’s premier bakeries, ready to provide a baked-from-scratch treat to the guest on the go or to cater at weddings serving cupcakes by the hundreds.
“It’s taken a very calculated approach on how to adjust to the market,” Fitzpatrick says. “Stay true to what you do and to your market. Do what you do and do it really well, stay current and relevant and have a plan of where you’re going.”
Fitzpatrick credits her business’s success with its ability to adapt. As dietary fads and restrictions became more marked among consumers, The Cupcake Shoppe reacted accordingly, offering a variety of dietary options—vegan, dairy- and gluten-free—as well as adding savory and sweet breakfast pastry options to the menu. There’s been a shift in the kinds of experiences consumers are seeking nowadays, too. In the past, everyone wanted elaborate options, where more was more, Fitzpatrick says. Now, they want more personalized experiences and variety.
These days, Fitzpatrick is in direct competition with everyone from out-of-state grocery chains to food trucks serving cupcakes on the go. But her classic branding, charitable focus and the niche she’s carved out in the local wedding industry means she’s found a way for the Cupcake Shoppe to come out on top.
Fitzpatrick says over the years she’s learned how to clearly communicate her expectations to staff and hires people with like-minded vision. She says she works to empower her staffers based on their strengths and skills, and she always rewards her team for jobs well done.
“While I love being an entrepreneur,” Fitzpatrick says, “it isn’t for everyone. Owning your own business can be glamorized, especially when it’s a pretty pink cake shop. You get what you work for, not what you wish for.”
But Fitzpatrick says she likes being able to set her own schedule, being her own boss and using her creative talents. Also, getting to taste cupcakes on a daily basis—for quality control purposes, of course—definitely doesn’t hurt.
Fitzpatrick’s Personal Favorites:
Pastry: Cinnamon Roll
Cupcake: Pretty in Pink
Martin is the executive director of Shop Local Raleigh/Greater Raleigh Merchants Association.
