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:
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. Recommended Articles:If you enjoyed this, here are a couple other articles I've written that you might like:
Michael
2/2/2019 10:02:45 am
This is wonderful advice. I think being yourself is extremely important not only to building your business but also to being happy. If you force yourself to maintain an image that's not your own, you will be out of your comfort zone and people will notice. People like genuine people for a reason -- when they see that you are true to yourself, they trust you to be honest with them. They also see that you are happier, and happiness is contagious. 7/9/2019 11:35:42 am
Thanks for the great comment, Michael! Happiness is super important, otherwise what's it all for?
John Ouellette
3/4/2019 01:26:42 pm
This is a tremendous post. It's clear that this was written from an authentic standpoint - You're right - most want to work with an actual human being who you can connect on. That is the key to growth - the authentic connections. 7/9/2019 11:37:34 am
Thanks John! I'm glad it was helpful to you... And yes, we do weird things for weird reasons, and it's funny to see how something done for one reason can be interpreted as a completely different reason by someone else! Comments are closed.
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