How to Find Your Niche and Become the Best You Can Be with “The Headshot King” Peter Hurley

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind.

I'm Larry Weddell.

And before we get started, if you want to know exactly how to win again and again, go to Wydell on winning.com webinar now to watch something I've put together for you. Now let's get going into this episode of Million Dollar Mastermind.

I am here with Peter Hurley. What a treat it is to have the headshot king named by popular photography and kind of a personal hero of mine in photography for a long time. Peter Hurley.

Welcome. Peter.

Oh my gosh, Larry, thanks for having me on. I'm psyched to be here.

I read about you and you know, I'm sure there's been all kind of articles over the years, but I read about you and copied your, you know, watch videos, some of your techniques with photography and you know, you've got the headshot down to a science, you know, holding the chin and this, that the other. And you really take it a common subject and really mastered it and show, you know, to me it just shows what attention to detail can make all the difference really in life. And that's what winners do. And so welcome. Glad to have you spending some time and talking about winning with us.

Oh my gosh, I appreciate it. I think the thing for me is that I found that niche, you know, it was like finding the headshot thing and then focusing on that and becoming the absolute best that I could in that, in that genre was really what it was. And that gave me a lot of juice and a lot of things to go after, especially here in New York City. You know, I was a struggling actor and I was like a model actor, bartender dude. And I was like, I had done the headshots and I saw what was being taken out there and I was coerced, encouraged actually to pick up a camera. So when I picked up the camera I was like, I'm going for this. And I think being focused on just that was really where the success started because I didn't waver and I didn't look at anything else. I didn't even want to. I'm trial and error guy. I'm like self taught photographer. So I was like, I don't need to know all of that other stuff, I need to know this. And that was it just, it was a recipe that worked. It was cool.

And how did you, how did that come to you? That, you know, lots of all the competition in the world in New York, everybody wants to be an actor, everybody wants to be everything and but how did it come to you that I'm gonna find my. I'm gonna find this one thing, and I'm gonna get known from doing that?

Most funny. I was trying to. I was just trying to make a buck. At first. I was like, all right, well, I don't want to be bartending anymore, and I want to focus. I wanted to focus on an acting career, which. I don't know. I think the acting that I did, I. I just was not cut out for that. So when I picked up a camera, there wasn't any. Any thought of, you know, whether or not. I just thought I was dabbling, but I fell in love with it. And then I don't feel like I work. Like, I really don't. Like, I take pictures for a living. And it's. It's phenomenal. It's just. It's just great. And it's escalated into me, you know, being able to travel around the world teaching it and talk to people about their. Their appearance and do some cool, interesting talks and educate people on. On how important their picture is and how important their relationship with their appearances and that kind of stuff. So I'm just having a blast. And I think that, again, it was. I mean, I guess we go back to where I came from and how this all started. I was actually kind of applied the principles that I applied when I was training for the Olympics. I was racing sailboats, and I had finished the Olympic trials, and I had lost, and I was, like, kind of miserable. But my. My girlfriend at the time was like, I'm gonna go to Europe and model. And I was like, all right, I'll follow you. So I went over there and met up with this photographer in. In Madrid, and he took some pictures of us, and he said, hey, I'm gonna teach you how to use a darkroom. And I'd taken photography in high school, and I had. I had worked in the darkroom a little bit. So I was like, oh, I think I used to like that. Even though I looked at one of my old report cards in my. My photography teacher checked off lax enthusiasm. I was like, oh, my gosh. Find that and frame it. So this guy, Ramiro Montoya, took me under his wing. I bought a camera over there, and I came back to New York, and I was like, you know, he had taught me how to use a darkroom, and actors headshots were all black and white. So I threw it in my mom's basement, and I would shoot New York all week, and she lived out in Jersey. I'd Drive out on weekends and do my, my processing. And what I saw was, you know, the opportunity. I saw what the top of the game was, like what people were charging, which was like around 1000 bucks a headshot or whatever. And I had been fortunate enough to work as a model with the likes, like the top of the game, which, you know, Bruce Weber was my inspiration, and he encouraged me to pick up a camera in the first place. But I did this polo ad with him. So I'm on the set of Ralph Lauren, like, hanging out with Bruce Weber, and the ad of me sailing my boat went all over the world. I ended up having this modeling career. So I kind of, when I picked up the camera, I was like, I'm just looking at what the top of the game was and then what the top of the game in headshot land was and kind of gauging where I fit in. And it was an uphill battle, but it was one that I enjoyed so much that I just wasn't going to stop. And I was. And I was like, I remember as a. As a model, actor, bartender dude, like, I didn't. I couldn't rub two nickels together. I was working. I was working pretty good too. My agency was happy with me, but I had never made more than $50,000 a year. And you can't really live off that in New York City, obviously. So I was like, I gotta up my game. And these, these, you know, people were charging $1,000 a headshot session. I remember at the time, the top of the, of the heap. And I was like, I gotta get on that gravy train somehow. And I wrote on a goal card in like 2000 that I wanted to make $1000 a week with photography. And, you know, I don't know when I started charging $1,000 to get in front of my camera, but, you know, it happened pretty rapidly. I think that was like 2000. I picked up the camera. 2002, I started shooting headshots. And by 2004, I was considered the best in New York city. And probably 2005, I was probably charging a thousand bucks by then.

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What an incredible story. And how did you come to talk about the sailing? You know, you start.

You would.

The whole time, you would rather have been sailing, I guess.

Well, I still sail. I just got off the water this weekend. I got my butt kicked. Talk about winning. I got to get like, I just, I won two regattas in this other boat the past two weekends. I went into a national championship this past weekend in a different boat that I haven't been practicing with, and I got tossed around a little bit. And it's those kind of. Those kinds of things that drive me. Like, I'm kind of reflecting, been reflecting all day on the past weekend. I am in the midst of training for a world championship, which is in September in Barcelona. So I always look at the sailing as a couple things. One is I kind of gauge myself, my thought process, my patterns based on how I train in the boat and how I. Competing at the top level. At my height of my sailing career, I was on the United States sailing team and I was ranked 17th in the world. It was at the peak of it right when the Olympic trials were happened and when I actually quit and picked up a camera. Because in the United States, well, all over the world, there's one representative that goes to the Olympics in the boat, and I finished fourth on the top five, made the team, but I finished fourth. And my buddy went to the Olympics in Sydney and I didn't get to go. So that was when all this started to happen, where I had to figure out what I wanted to do with myself. But I always looked at it like, you know, look back at how I trained for the Olympics and went from being. I mean, I think I, when I started, I, you might rank me like 30th in the United States to, you know, which is really nothing. But I got up to 17th in the world. So how I accomplished that and I want to. I'm a world North American national champion. I've been second in the, in the Laser Master Worlds twice, which is the one I'm trying to win. So. But what I, what I noticed was is that that work ethic in the boat and the, and the. I just turned that toward my photography. And that was really interesting. The other thing is that people say that I, I mean, I worked. I did a TEDx talk with this psychologist, and she said, she goes, you know, it's really tough to work with you, she's like, it's like I'm with a lot. Like, you're like a lighthouse. Like, when the beam's on me, I'm good. But then your brain just goes off into Never Neverland, wherever, and I gotta wait for it to come back around to me to work with you again. So people have said that I ADHD tendencies. And the two times that I noticed that I'm super focused, I'm most hyper focused is when I'm on a sailboat or when I'm looking through the viewfinder of my camera. And I think that those two things alone really changed everything for me. I think it was the focus and the attention to detail, especially with the photography. I mean, the photography is like, you know, I see things in the. Through the viewfinder that I think a lot of people miss. And, you know, I think that's super important. So just loving it, loving what I do and then, and then putting that attention on the things that I deem most important, which are the little things, the little minutiae that people miss. And I think when you miss that stuff, that's when, you know, you see other people taking off in areas and you're like, why is this not happening to me? And I think it's because they're not. That the attention to detail is not there. I like to have massive attention to detail on whatever I'm working on.

I want to follow up on that. But I'm curious about the TED Talk thing. How did you. It's one thing to do with TED Talk was somehow you were paired up with.

What did you say?

A psychologist?

Yes. So they go, well, I got asked. A friend of mine, another photographer I work with a little bit, had a friend who was doing the TEDx talking at MIT and he said, hey, I'm going to put your name in the hat on this one. She really thinks you're interesting. So this woman called me and she said, would you like to do a talk? And I was like, first of all, I was super honored because I knew, um, you know, I didn't get to do the real TED, but the TEDx talks were. I was just so amazed by the people and the concepts that get discussed on those things that I was honored to be even asked. And I said at the time, the coolest thing that I had going on is that I was working with a psychologist. My pet peeve and the biggest thing that I'd love to solve for the planet Earth, if possible, is having people accept their appearance and be. And be good with it and actually enjoy the body that they're born into and live in while they're here on this earth. And I think that. I think I just got too many people hitting me. They walk in my studio and they just glam base themselves like, oh, my gosh, I got bags under my hands. I'm tired. I don't look good. Look at this hair, you know? And so when she said, I want you to do it this talk, I started working with this psychologist. We met on a Microsoft job, and I was shooting for Microsoft, and she was the psychologist for them. And we ended up joining forces, and we started this company called Sci Fi, which ended up. We ended up doing the talk. Talk was great. And then we went separate ways for other reasons. But the talk was really what I've been trying to do on an individual basis with people that get in front of my camera, and that is make them feel good about the way they look and about the fact that that's the way they were born. And, you know, that's what we have to deal with. But society is so tough on us in that regard. So it's difficult sometimes. Sometimes I have the most beautiful person in front of my camera, and they can't get. They can't even see it for themselves at all. And it's so strange. And in the talk, I tell about a story I had, Miss Universe. I was shooting Miss Universe, and she or she had won in, like, 99. I had to shoot her for a cover of a magazine, and she turned to her husband and she said, honey, I can't stand my face right in the middle of the session. And I was like, oh, my gosh, Miss Universe can't stand her face. I was like, this is crazy. So dealing with that on a daily basis is really the thing that irks me. I mean, I just want. It's such a joy when people walk in and are just like, yeah, just take my pictures. It's gonna be fun. Let's do it. And then they have a healthy sense of their relationship with their appearance is really healthy, because I think I talk about that a lot. We have a relationship with our appearance, and it can change over time depending upon the shape we're in. And, you know, obviously how we feel about ourselves at that moment and our aging process, how we contend with our aging process. I think it's different for every single person. And trying to find a way to get people to embrace their appearances is what I've been attempting to do. And it's easier said than done.

Fantastic.

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