Rae Walaska Turned a Military Family’s Moves Into a Business Management Firm

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She Sells Studios is a business management and marketing agency founded by Rae Walaska, a military spouse whose family’s frequent moves made it hard to build a traditional career. “I ended up just deciding that I was going to start my own business,” Walaska says. She began with a murder mystery entertainment company that grew into a tour company.

After taking a hotel job in Virginia, she helped the spa owner with his marketing, procedures, and back-end operations, and other owners soon asked for the same help. “Next thing I was running a business management company slash marketing agency, and it just felt like it was the right fit,” she says. The agency now works with clients like the nonprofit Stix Academy, building its website, supporting back-end operations and creating a growth strategy. Walaska says the weight of the work is real: “One of the scariest parts of being a business owner is knowing that you’re responsible for other people’s financial livelihoods.” She keeps going anyway. “I can’t quit.”

Nick Schrein is a photographer and filmmaker based in Jacksonville, Florida, and the founder of Nick Schrein Visual. Over the past decade, he has shot everything from overnight endurance events with GORUCK to sit-down interviews and brand story pieces with small business owners.

He spent more than a decade working with GORUCK, filming everything from founder stories to some of the hardest endurance events in the world, and now works with brands and families through Nick Schrein Visual. Across his work, Schrein says, his attention goes to “people doing something that matters to them.”

Silver Lining commissioned this work from Nicholas Schrein as part of The Economy Is My Business: 25 Stories Of Small Business Resilience series, supported by Wells Fargo.