Meet Nathan Hong

 

We recently connected with Nathan Hong and have shared our conversation below.

Nathan, looking forward to learning from your journey. You’ve got an amazing story and before we dive into that, let’s start with an important building block. Where do you get your work ethic from?

To start, I’ve always been a hustler. Whether it was selling candy or snacks in middle school to selling clothes and shoes in high school to pursuing my creative career in college, I was always looking to make sure I was doing something that could bring in some extra cash. I hated doing nothing because it always just felt like my time was being wasted, which, I feel as though is not a feeling that is shared in everybody. That’s mainly what keeps me motivated to keep working hard and pushing forward.

In terms of ethics, I think I have to attribute that to how I was raised. I was taught to do things the right way and to do things well, because the things I do don’t just affect me, they affect people around me too. The way I act reflects onto my family and friends, the way that I work reflects those who trusted me enough to hire me or recommend me to others. My own reputation is not the only one at stake when you work in this industry. So doing my best is just how I respect others’ trust in me.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

My primary work is in professional media, mainly photography and videography. I work mainly in the entertainment space (sports and music), but I’ve done everything from portraits, weddings, corporate events, headshots, product photography, car photography, etc.. Nothing can convince me that this is not the best job ever. I get to work with amazingly talented people, travel to the most beautiful places, hear such exciting stories, capture memories, and just share laughs with such precious souls. So if you’re in need of anything media-related, give me a shout and it would be my honor to work with you!

Recently, I have also been pushing into the content space. I have gained more interest in the business side of social media and digital marketing, so I have been learning how social media algorithms behave and how to go “viral”. It has been going quite well and I’ve been able to accumulate over 40 million views over my social platforms and I’d love try my hand in social media strategy consulting for different clients.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Willingness to Learn, Willingness to Fail, Willingness to Pivot. When it comes to learning, it’s pretty simple. Nothing comes easy. For my story, I feel as though I was naturally a creative person, but just because you’re naturally creative doesn’t mean that you are naturally amazing at the medium you choose. For example, I knew how to take a good picture because I knew what I wanted it to look like, but actually using a camera and editing those pictures to get to that final result took years of watching tutorials, testing it out new editing techniques, and just getting behind the camera thousands of times. This also leads into the second quality of being willing to fail. If all you’re thinking about is how you don’t think you’re gonna get the same result as the other person or if you’re not going to be good at something, you’ll just never end up doing it. It’s always better to try and fail than to never try and never understand your actual potential. That brings me to my final quality: willingness to pivot. Being able to understand yourself enough to know when you need to adapt or pivot is super important in being successful. For example, I knew that video was super important in this day and age, but I never really had an eye for it and I never really enjoyed creating videos. I tried cinematography and professional videography, but that just wasn’t for me. I realized that I need to pivot, but just giving up video didn’t seem like the right option. So I switched things up and I started learning how to make more social media optimized videos. That seemed to click with me a lot more and I actually enjoyed making them. These 3 things are what I feel like helped me get to where I am today.

What do you do when you feel overwhelmed? Any advice or strategies?

As a chronic overbooker, I tend to overestimate what I can do within a day or even a month. I tend to overbook myself a lot which can slow down my workflow and overwhelm me at times. The things that I do to get past this is to break things down and communicate. Firstly, I will break down my tasks by importance and due dates. I get the priority tasks done first and work my way down the list in easy chunks. Usually I’m only working on one project at a time so I will separate those by dates as well, and if I have overlapping projects, I make sure to communicate my workflow. I will make sure my clients know when my plan is to work on things and when they can expect delivery. Understand that starting is the hardest, because most of the time, you’re simply overwhelmed by the amount of tasks there are, but most of those tasks can be completed within 5-10 minutes. So just start.

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Nathan Hong

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