Rewind the clock 10 years and we find ourselves in 2009 (wow, 2009 was ten years ago already?). It's been about a decade since I started shooting headshots, but back then, during the first few years of my business, I consistently struggled with this big question:

How could I be myself without seeming unprofessional?

​It was a tall order, mostly because I kept hearing different advice from different people:

"You need to come across as super professional and ensure everything is perfect! You need your website to look like a big, professional company. In other words, you need to 'fake it 'till you make it.'"

And on the other end of the spectrum were people who would say things like:

"Show your personality! Show people who you are and be genuine. Have fun and don't worry if you don't seem so 'professional' and 'put-together.' People who don't work with you for who you are shouldn't be your clients."

Needless to say, I was quite confused. Was one piece of advice better than the other?

On the one hand, I wanted my business to seem very professional and large to make sure that clients thought I was trustworthy. But on the other hand, I wanted to show people who I was so they would feel connected to me. I didn't like the feeling of hiding things from my clients or lying to them.

So what should I do?

​For the longest time, the above picture was my headshot.

Crazy, no? I did not want to show my own face. And yet every day I preached to clients about how important it was to show their face clearly in their headshot to build trust online.

Why was I such a hypocrite? Because I looked really young. Take a look at the next photo down below and you'll see what I looked like back in 2009 (although I have to admit, I look almost exactly the same ten years later - I'll be turning 30 in a few months).

I remember when I first started my business, I had tried posting a clear photo of myself. But when I did, business slowed down significantly, so I immediately replaced it within a week. And business picked up again.

That was enough to prove to me I was too young, so I quickly removed all clear photos of me from the website and replaced them with shots where I was hiding behind my camera or looking away from it - you couldn't find a clear picture of me anywhere on the website.

On numerous occasions after finally meeting me in person, clients would ask, "So how old are you?" And in some cases, they seemed so taken aback with my answer of 23 that they would follow up with, "I thought you'd be much older!" And I could tell in their voice that they were disappointed.

It was very disheartening, and I was always extremely self-conscious because of it.

Well, fast forward to 2017, and I finally decided to try showing my face on the website again. I remember when I posted my 2017 headshot onto the About page and just said to myself, "Who cares! If people don't want to work with me because of my age, then they're not the right clients for me." I also figured that if business slowed down too much, I could just replace the photo with the hidden-face shot again after a few weeks.

Well, after posting it, bookings did slow down, but only for about two weeks. During that time, I had so much anxiety, terrified no one would want to work with me anymore. But I forced myself to leave the new photo up, and finally, in the third week, bookings started coming in again! And then within the next few weeks, no one was questioning how old I was anymore!

When clients would come in to shoot with me, instead of remarking about how they felt it was a "bait and switch" and they expected someone much older (yes, someone literally said those words to me), clients would comment on my business and say how cool it was that I had built something like this at such a young age. It seemed like people now wanted to work with me for who I really was, not who they expected me to be. And all this led to increased referrals and more business!

​Lesson learned, but I dealt with 8 long years of self-created doubt and fear.

​Well, at this point, I've learned a lot about being myself while still coming off as professional, and I've actually used it to build my business further. I'd like to share the three biggest tips I've learned thus far:

1. Be yourself and don't hide things. If I had to choose between showing my own personality or coming off as super professional, I've learned that my own personality will win out in the long run, even if coming off as super professional might feel like it's winning in the short run. I recommend showing people what you look like with a clear photo of yourself, and writing and speaking to people in your own voice. For example, don't create a website where everything is written in third person and your bio presents you as a large group of stiff, professional, and unapproachable people. Which of the following companies would you feel more comfortable working with: "City Headshots, founded in 2009, is a top-rated headshot studio that provides professional headshots to clients for business and acting purposes," or "I started City Headshots back in 2009 as a way to offer affordable, high-quality headshots to business people and actors, and would love the opportunity to work with you!"
2. Use professional media and put out high-quality work. You must be sure that your media and work is professional if you want to be taken seriously. This means that if you have a website or LinkedIn page, you should use professional photographs/headshots/etc., have an easy to navigate, professionally designed website, and consistently provide your clients the highest quality work. Just because the text on your website is written in your own fun, but grammatically-incorrect personal style, doesn't mean you should provide low-quality work. If your media, website, and other work is presented in a well-polished, professional way, and you combine that with your own words and photos that show who you really are, you're on the right track.
3. Figure out how your detriments are actually your biggest assets. This is something I struggled with for years because I never even thought to ask the following question: What is your current weakness, and how can you turn that into your greatest strength? For instance, in my case, I originally thought being young was a detriment because people wouldn't trust me. But eventually I realized it was a benefit because it meant I had more energy and drive, and I would do more for my clients than anyone else because I was hungry for success. So think about it... what quality are you worried about? Do you think you're too young? Too old? Do you think your resume is too short? Whatever you think your "problem" is, take five or ten minutes and figure out how it could actually be your greatest asset. Once you figure that out your entire life can change.

I hope this helps you in some way. Do you have ideas on how to apply this to your life? And do you have your own strategies to be yourself while still being professional? I'd love to hear them from you.

Shoot me an email or leave a comment below. I personally read every response I get. 🙂

And if you want more great tips like this, sign up to our email list. You'll also be entered to win a $650 headshot session!

I sometimes feel overwhelmed. As a business owner, I find myself cooking about eight things at once. My five burner stove is running full blast, I've got two things in the oven, and I'm trying to make a salad in a bowl on the counter. It's no wonder at least half of the things I've worked on in the past have burned.

Alright, I'll stop with the cooking metaphor (although I love to cook)!

Currently, as of January 18th, 2019, we are working on a bunch of things in the company - creating case studies for past successful clients, writing blog posts, getting our mailing list organized, training our photographers to be as great as they can be, reaching out to past clients and letting them know about our other videography and marketing services, and signing up new business consulting and career coaching clients. On top of that we're still running our usual day to day business operations.

My brain is all over the place. I'm usually thinking of 100 things at once (which is why my wife probably accuses me of never paying attention), and ideas come and are gone in an instant. I realized I needed start tracking all those ideas.

I eventually started to email myself every time I came up with a new idea. But pretty soon my inbox filled up with all kinds of things that I'd never actually have the time to implement and were not even that good, and unfortunately I started missing important messages from clients amongst all the clutter. So I decided to figure out an organization system for myself that would be both easy to set up and take as little time as possible to use. And I'm happy to say that over the course of the past 4 years, I have finally refined it enough to feel comfortable sharing it with you.

I like to use Mac Numbers (but you can use Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets) to organize all my to-do's. I find that it makes it really easy to sort things into whatever particular order I want to focus on.

Here is my exact system (and in a moment I'll offer ideas on how you can customize the system to yourself):

1. Column A: "Initiatives & Ideas." This is basically a place where I write down all the things I want to work on or need to get done. Think of it as a place where you'll just dump out everything that's in your brain in no particular order. At any point in the future when you get new ideas or new tasks, you can just add them in.
2. Column B: "Outcome Wanted & Why?" This column is where you'll write what the major goal is with that idea or task and why you want to achieve it. Think of this column as a place where you can keep tabs on your emotional juice - if you have a task you write and forget why you wanted to do it, it will never get done.
3. Column C: "Urgency." Here I write a number from 1-5, with 5 being the most urgent idea and 1 being the least. I want to rank things in this category on how soon they need to be dealt with.
4. Column D: "Importance." Here I write a number from 1-5, with 5 being the most important idea and 1 being the least. In this column, the goal is to show how valuable an idea is to my overall vision or goals in life or with my business. These ideas might be urgent or they might not be.
5. Column E: "Money Making." Here I write a number from 1-5, with 5 being the most profitable idea and 1 being the least. I want to track whether an idea will contribute to the bottom line of my company.
6. Column F: "Ease of Implementation." Here I write a number from 1-5, with 5 being the easiest idea and 1 being the hardest. In this section I track how easy it will be to actually get the entire idea or task done. Is this thing going to take a few minutes or a few months to do?
7. Column G: "Total." This column tracks the total of all the numbers, added up. It will always be out of 20, and you can easily set up a "SUM" formula so the spreadsheet adds up the numbers automatically for you.

As you can see in the image above, it's fairly straight forward. The benefit of this system is that it lets me track all my ideas on how urgent, important, profitable, and easy to implement they are. By having a total at the end, I can sort my ideas and figure out right away which things I need to work on.

Sometimes, I will sort my ideas by urgency so I can make sure there are no really important things that need to be taken care of right away (for instance, the Zenfolio idea in the image above has already been taken care of since it was a 5). Or if I want to bring extra profit into my company, I can sort on which ideas will be most profitable. Or if I have 10 extra minutes of free time and want to get something done very quickly, I can sort on which idea is easiest to implement and just pick one off the list really quickly.

I love this system because it's so simple and allows me to organize hundreds of ideas within minutes to get just the most valuable things done.

If you like this system, feel free to try it out for your own to-do's. The easiest way to start using it is to create a spreadsheet the same way as above, but instead of using the words Urgency, Importance, Money Making, and Ease of Implementation, you might want to use other words. Use whatever words make the most sense for you and what you're trying to achieve. Just remember that you always want 5 to be the best/easiest and 1 to be the worst/hardest so that the numbers add up to as close to 20 as possible for your best or most important things.

Before even beginning to implement a full system like this, I recommend taking the following simple action and seeing how it feels: Pick one thing from your To-Do list that you know is not really that important, and won't make a big difference in your life. Scratch it off and forget about it.

Scary?

​Yes. But the point is that you've deleted something that would probably never really help you. In my experience, most people overwhelm themselves with useless information or tasks that blind them from focusing on what really matters. Once you get rid of an idea permanently, it will make it easier for you to sort through things and only focus on what's most important. Try not to get overwhelmed by so many things when in reality, only 20% of what you spend your time on actually gets you real results. Have you heard of the 80/20 rule?

So are you going to apply this to your life? And do you have any ideas on how to improve upon my system? I'd love to hear them from you.

Shoot me an email or leave a comment below. I personally read every response I get. 🙂

And if you want more great tips like this, sign up to our email list. You'll also be entered to win a $650 headshot session!

​ - Martin

How many people tell you, "Oh you really gotta use LinkedIn more to connect to people and create opportunities for yourself!"

I feel like out of every 5 people I meet and talk to about business, at least one tells me I need to use LinkedIn more.

I used to have no idea what to do. Yeah, sure! I'll put my headshot on there and make sure my profile is up to date... but what else is there? Connect with people and send them a creepy "Hi, I just met you online and want to be friends," message?

I was stuck for years having no clue how to use for LinkedIn or what I'd need it for besides just having my presence up to date and looking professional to anyone who happened to stumble across my profile.

Well, all that changed for me last year when I realized exactly how I could use this social media tool generate new opportunities for myself and my business.

​I don't enjoy social networking personally. I'd rather do an email list or have coffee meetings and phone calls with people.

Maybe it's because I was born in the 80s?

Anyway, we recently had to start contacting numerous casting directors, agents, and acting teachers for a program we were working on. How would I find these people? We knew some, but not nearly enough for what we were doing,

After a bit of thinking, I realized the obvious answer. LinkedIn!

I decided to hop onto my LinkedIn profile because I had over 500 connections and I figured maybe I could somehow search for the people I was looking for. So I typed into the search bar "Talent Agent," and guess what popped up? Hundreds of talent agents in New York.

Wow!

Now if only I could email them... I normally hate sending messages to people through LinkedIn because let's face it, most of them don't respond or check their LinkedIn except for once every few months, right?

Well, luckily I figured out a way to find almost all these people's email addresses online. I'll save that trick for a later post, but suffice it to say, after discovering all these people I needed to reach out to, it was only a matter of getting in touch with them, making an offer, and we'd be off to the races and building our network.

Well, I'm going to summarize the exact way I now use LinkedIn to create new opportunities whenever we need them. Here is exactly what I do, in order. If you're going to follow this strategy, don't cheat and skip any steps!

1. Figure out what you actually want. You need to be clear on this to ensure that you know what your focus will be and how to stay on track. I think this was one of the biggest problems for years... I never knew what I actually wanted, and so I didn't see how LinkedIn would be able to help me.
2. Figure out who you really want to speak with and why. Who is it that would be useful for you to connect with? Do you want to meet people who can give you or your company specific opportunities? What are those opportunities you want?
3. What job title do these people you want to meet with have in common? Once you know the general job titles, you can actually find their names using LinkedIn.
4. What can you offer them when you get in touch with them? Why should they want to speak with you? What do you have that they will actually find valuable and helpful, and how can you offer it to them via email?
5. Write up a template message. After you figure out the answers to these questions, write up a template email you can send out that includes who you are and what you're offering to them and why you're doing it.
6. Search. Next, search for all these people using LinkedIn’s search feature and start going through pages, one by one, to find everyone you need.
7. Contact them. Finally, either message them directly within LinkedIn or, even better, use some free online tools to find their email address and remember to follow up.

In a future post, I’ll write some examples to give you ideas on how you can use this strategy for yourself. And I’ll talk about a free tool I use to easily find almost anyone’s email address online.

Now I want to hear from you… what do you really want with your career at the deepest level? And why do you want it so much? And if you were able to create opportunities for yourself out of thin air, what would they be?

Shoot me an email or leave a comment below. I personally read every response I get. 🙂

And if you want more great tips like this, sign up to our email list. You'll also be entered to win a $650 headshot session!

​ - Martin

Thanks for checking out our new blog!

​It's funny, I used to blog years ago, but got so busy with things that after a while I had to stop.

However, I'm starting it up again and will now be posting all kinds of great tips here on things like how to earn extra money on the side, how to used LinkedIn to move your professional career forward, and how to get more acting work.

If you ever have questions or want to reach out, feel free! You can call us at (212) 706-1902 or email me here.