Today we’d like to introduce you to Haleh Shoa.
Hi Haleh, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I was only nine years old when I witnessed my parents talking about how they are going to leave our home county of Iran to flee the 1979 revolution in order to find a safe haven for their family. My brother, the eldest of 4 kids, was already in Detroit. My older sister was also smuggled out to the US via a sponsorship of Jewish organization that helped families get their teenagers out of the country. My parents only had to worry about me and my little sister and my grandmother. They decided that my mom was going to take us while my dad would stay behind to figure out how he would sneak out with my grandmother. Can you imagine the angst and the uncertainty that lied ahead? Where are we going? Are we going to be able to speak the language? Will we be able to feed our family of seven? Needless to say, they left with the shirt on their backs and a suitcase packed with all the photo albums and other family memorabilia. And not much else. My mom, sister, and I ventured through Switzerland and Austria, where we had other family members. Something about those countries didn’t feel right to her, and since my two older siblings were already in the US, we all ended up in Los Angeles.
I was never able to find or reconnect with any of my childhood friends. Other than writing letters or making phone calls, which were unaffordable for my family in the 1980s, there were no other forms of communication available to me. So, all those stories have become faded memories and the only reminders I had were the photo albums and the stories my parents would tell us. I started digitizing and preserving my own family photos and stories when I was in my 20’s and making calendars, photo albums and other gift items for family members, near and far. As one would imagine, the reactions were beyond amazing. So, I started organizing and making photo albums and calendars for my friends as birthday and holiday presents. They appreciated these gifts more than any others they would receive. And thus it became a tradition. Everyone would wait for the next year’s photo album or calendar of their loved ones.
In 2015, I started soul searching ideas of how I can be my own “boss lady” and through working with Andrea Quinn Coaching, I came to a conclusion that I love telling family stories through photographs, films, videos, and any other memorabilia to help pass on their stories for generations to come. From this life journey, Picture Life Curated (Picturli), was born.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The first challenge I had was to figure out how to manage time between my big-girl job in advertising as the global operations director for the agency that serviced Jaguar/Land Rover account and building a business from ground up. Luckily, there are enough ebbs and flows in advertising where I was able to figure out my schedule and still have a social/family life. Then there is the struggle of ego where I would go down memory lane of all the incredible brands and projects I helped produce in my 27-year span, like launching iPad Mini worldwide for Apple and launching new campaigns for Nissan, Infiniti, and many more. These are ethereal challenges. The true challenge comes in actually building a business from the ground up.
One always hears that owning your own business is very difficult but very rewarding. Building a business from scratch has so many challenges that one never considers. My challenges have spanned from finding a name that resonated with my soul, to building a brand that spoke with my aesthetics, to setting up a business structure, to learning all the platforms and tools needed to organize and digitize huge family libraries. Naturally, it has been an investment of time, energy, and emotions, all the while not getting paid. There have been many bumps in the road, but they have all led to a path of learning. The rewards of having my own business are that we provide invaluable service to families. I can’t imagine anything more meaningful.
We’ve been impressed with Picturli, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Picturli was founded in 2016 to provide personal photo organization, preservation, and design services. We help families and small businesses organize their files and memories. Our service offerings span from digital photo library consolidation and organization to scanning and digitizing analog memories to file and password management structures.
Our digital organizing services consist of gathering and consolidating all digital memory files such as photos and videos, from various sources such as computers, SD cards, external hard drives, cloud services, mobile phones, social media platforms, and any other place that our clients may have them. The finished library will be free of duplicates, and the files will be renamed and chronologically ordered so that our clients can enjoy a curated experience of their library.
Our scanning and preservation services include scanning and/or digitizing any analog format, including photos, album pages, children’s artwork, 8mm/16mm film, VHS, DVDs, mini DVs, Hi8’s, audio cassettes, and any other tangible media. If it exists, we can digitize it. The best part comes after when all the files are renamed and redated so our clients can enjoy a sortable, searchable, and consolidated library of memories.
Our file management and password structure services include setting up a system and a structure whereby our clients can access their files and accounts from any device, trusting that their files and platforms are completely secure and easily accessible.
So, basically the theme here is that we make your life easy to manage and enjoy.
We’d love to hear about any fond memories you have from when you were growing up?
One of my favorite childhood memory was when my grandmother and I went foraging for plants that had medicinal benefits through the streets of Tehran. We would cut samples from bushes and dried them and shampooed with them to strengthen our hair. Or we would make a paste out of them with eggs and put them on our skin. It really fed into my unquenchable curiosity about everything around me and taught me to be fearless and try different things. She’s been my guardian angel since 1985 and I’m very grateful to still “have” her in my life.
Contact Info:
- Email: hello@picturli.com
- Website: https://www.picturli.com/
- Instagram: @picturli
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/picturli/
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/picturli-los-angeles-3?osq=picturli
