Not every founder starts with a blank page. Some inherit a family business and have to figure out what to keep, what to change, and what to let go.
Lesle Lane, owner of Studio 13 in Indiana, is a third-generation commercial photographer. Someone in her family has been taking pictures for 95 years. And she was the last person her family expected to carry it forward.
In episode 320 of Gratitude Geek, Lesle and I talked about what it actually looks like to inherit a business without a real succession plan, survive every disruption thrown at a small business in one lifetime, and build something sustainable enough to outlast all of it.
Key takeaways from this episode:
- Inheriting a family business without a succession plan is its own kind of startup
- Pricing your work to reflect real business costs — not garage rates — protects your reputation
- Transitioning from a W-2 employee model to a 1099 contractor team can reduce risk and increase flexibility
- Gratitude isn’t soft — it’s what keeps you moving when the business hits the floor
She Was the Last Choice — and That Turned Out to Be the Point
Lesle’s grandfather started in photography in Georgia, working with Olin Mills when color photography was still new. Her mother moved to Indiana and joined a corporate photography business. By the time it was time for someone to take over, her brothers were the obvious choice. Commercial and industrial photography — manufacturing floors, architectural interiors, equipment-heavy shoots — wasn’t considered women’s work in the early 1990s.
Her family wanted her to shoot weddings. She knew that wasn’t right for her.
“They wanted me to go do what girls do and that’s shoot weddings. And I just do not have the personality for that.”
Being the unexpected heir turned out to be an advantage. She came in without the assumption that she already knew everything. She paid attention to what was changing. And when digital photography started disrupting film — the same kind of disruption that had put earlier photographers out of business when color processing became too complex for home labs — she jumped in early, just like her parents had before her.
That pattern of being a family of pioneers is, she says, the through-line across all three generations.
No Succession Plan Met Every Disruption at Once
Here’s what Lesle was not prepared for: three recessions, two major terrorist attacks, a global pandemic, and a technological revolution in her core medium — all within one career.
And then, after 25 to 30 years of running her business with the same W-2 employee, that person was diagnosed with breast cancer and died within 26 days.
“There I was, left on my own.”
There was no plan for that. There rarely is. Inheriting a family business gives you history and context, but it doesn’t give you a script for losing your key person, navigating a pandemic, or watching DEI-based contracting opportunities disappear overnight at the federal and state level.
What it does give you — if you’ve been paying attention — is the muscle memory of adaptation. Every generation before her had faced something that tried to put them out of business. Every generation had made the hard pivot instead.
Her Daughter Gave Her Two Years — and Changed Everything
After losing her longtime employee, Lesle’s daughter stepped in. “I’ll give you two years of my life to help you get this straightened out.”
That two years became the foundation for a completely different business structure. Instead of one W-2 employee, Lesle built a team of 15 1099 contractors — photographers, videographers, drone operators — each assigned only to the work they actually want to do.
The result:
- No one gets sent to shoot events if they only want to do headshots
- No one gets sent to do headshots if events are their specialty
- When work slows down, she doesn’t carry payroll she can’t sustain
- When a complex job comes in, she has a deep bench of specialized talent“It has taken a ton of pressure off me to know that if we don’t have work, I don’t have to pay them.”
This isn’t a hack. It’s a structural decision that took years and a crisis to arrive at. But the lesson transfers directly to any solopreneur building a team: match people to the work they want, pay them well, and give them an easy out. That’s how you build a contractor bench that actually shows up.
Cheap Photographers Bailed — and She Got the Call
The business case for doing things properly crystallized the week Lesle and I recorded this episode. A nonprofit conference coordinator called her in a panic. Their photographer had canceled three weeks before a four-day event. She was out of time and out of budget.
The photographer who canceled had been the low bid.
Lesle’s point wasn’t to celebrate someone else’s failure. It was to name something that every service-based solopreneur needs to hear:
“There’s a photographer. And then there’s a business of photography — and that’s completely different.”
Pricing your work to reflect actual business costs — not what it costs you to do it alone in your home office — is what makes you the person who gets called when someone else drops the ball. Your reputation is the thing that can’t be repaired quickly. Protect it by charging what the work actually costs to deliver well.
33 Years In, She Leads with Gratitude — Not Despite the Hard Parts, But Because of Them
Lesle has been on her knees. Broke. Alone in the business. Facing a changing industry that has tried, more than once, to make her irrelevant.
She doesn’t talk about gratitude as a morning ritual or a mindset hack. She talks about it as the only logical response to still being here.
“When you’ve been on your knees, there’s no place to look but up.”
After 33 years, she still gets excited about the difficult jobs — the ones that require everything she knows. Her 85-year-old mother still asks to see her photos. She sends them every time.
That’s the long game. Not growing fast. Not dominating your market. Doing the work well enough that the people who matter can’t wait to see what you did next.
What This Means for You
You don’t have to be a third-generation photographer for Lesle’s story to apply to your business. If you’ve inherited someone else’s mess, rebuilt after a major loss, or found yourself suddenly alone in a business that depended on one other person — her path is worth studying.
The practical takeaways:
- Have a succession plan, even if you’re a team of one. What happens to your business if your key contractor, collaborator, or system disappears tomorrow?
- Price for the business, not the task. Your overhead is not just your tools. It’s your time, your reputation, your reliability, and your 30 years of knowing what to do when something goes wrong.
- Match your contractors to work they want. Reliable people stay when the work fits them. Low-paying, ill-fitting assignments are why contractors ghost.
- Don’t sidestep your mistakes. Own it, make the client whole, and do it fast. Your reputation lives or dies in that moment.
- Slow and steady is a strategy, not a consolation prize. The clients who refer you are built over years, not campaigns.
About Lesle Lane
Lesle Lane is the owner of Studio 13, a commercial photography business based in Indiana.
Connect with Lesle
- Website: Studio13Online.com
- LinkedIn: @studio-thirteen
- Instagram: @studio13indy
Also Mentioned
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