We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Paul Hanon a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Paul, thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?
I watched my dad work hard for our family. He was always working to provide a good life for our family. My grandfather also was an inspiration. He would always say, “finish what you start.” Those words ring in my head almost everyday. If I’m going to start something, I better keep going to finish it. Keep going… don’t give up. Another inspiration for work ethic–sports. I had a phenomenal cross country coach who pushed us, but also did his own training for marathons and iron mans. He EXPECTED us to push, and if we didn’t, he’d let us know about it.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
Hi! I’m Paul, a headshot and portrait photographer focused on facial expression coaching. I split my time between photographing in the studio and on location, but in either setting, I get the opportunity to create an experience that shows people how amazing and beautiful/handsome they really are. Reviewing images is my favorite part of what I do.
Premier Headshots has been a passion of mine for the last 6+ years. It started as a hobby, then a side hustle, and now my full-time gig.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Commitment, consistency, and courage. If I wasn’t committed, I would have kept treating this as a weekend project. And if life got busy, this would fall to the wayside. Commitment also kept me focused. This is what I wanted to do, so stay laser focused on it.
Nothing long term happens without consistency. I chose specific days of the week to work with clients. Then, I consistently posted on LinkedIn/Instagram/Facebook until those days were booked. It might have only been one or two time slots each week–which feels slow now–but it’s what I could commit to and be consistent with.
It’s easy to do nothing. But it takes courage to do something. I remember the first time I left my job to pursue photography. I would call that “blind” courage. I didn’t realize what I was doing. I just jumped. But the second time… that was a little more scary. I KNEW what could go wrong if I didn’t make it work. I knew the risks. It made me work harder to ensure the jump would be successful. But even then, it still was scary. It took courage to make that decision.
As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?
One of my all-time favorite books is Necessary Endings by Dr. Henry Cloud. The main premise of the book is about saying no. One analogy he shares is of a rose bush. A rose bush creates too many buds for them all to result in amazing roses. You have to prune the good ones so some can actually turn into great flowers. It’s similar in life. There might be good parts of our life, but in order to have GREAT parts of your life, you have to say no to some GOOD things.
Another book I love is Atomi Habits by James Clear. Toward the beginning of the book, James explains how we don’t rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems. It makes so much sense. I generally don’t highlight or underline in my books, but this one is marked up as much as my Bible. It’s a great read and very logical/practical.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://premierheadshots.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/premierheadshots/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulhanon/
Image Credits
All photos done by me. 🙂
