The Most Important Thing Is to Find the Thing That Lights Your Fire So Hot You Can’t Stop Doing It

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'm here with Peter Hurley, the Headshot king named that. He didn't name it himself that way. He was named that by popular photographer. And I followed Peter for probably a decade and I could tell you there's not anybody I know that wants to compete with him for that title. He works out of New York City. He's a founder of the Headshot crew. He's probably the most in demand photographer in the world for headshots and really appreciate him taking the time and sharing winning ideas and concepts about winning that he's learned along the way. And so, Peter, thanks again for spending time and when you talk to people.

Around.

The world, you know, you're asked to speak and different things beyond what do you try to communicate with them? I think you, you, you talked earlier about it, but what do you think the most important thing lesson for people to get straight on if they're going to be successful in life? Because again, you could take the greatest headshot in the world. But like, you're talking about Miss Universe, if you have the greatest picture of her, she looks at, you know, she looks at the mirror and she sees ugliness. She's not going to be confident when she gets out to where she needs to be. So the problem is not you did your job, you've got her the product. But, you know, she, she's got to be able to project confidence if she's going to get the jobs, you know, that picture is not going to get the job. They don't see her, you know, as a confident person. They're not going to want her to represent, not going to pay her money, you know. And so when you're out and people are looking to you for answers, how do you explain these things to them? About the most important things about winning?

I think the most important thing about winning, at least for me, and this is what I believe, is that whatever it is that you want to do has to light a fire under your butt that's burning so hot that you got to go do it whether and nothing's going to stop you. Like, you don't have a golden parish, you don't have anything safe to land on. Like you're going for it, and there's no turning back. And when people do that, they're going to figure out they're going to get around the obstacles, they're going to build. The confidence is going to come through the process, which is going to build belief in themselves, which creates expectation. And once you expect stuff, then it just. It just. It flows so much easier. And you can gauge that and people can talk up the wazoo out their mouth, but the results are really in. Proof is really in the results that they get. And they can't trick themselves, so they could tell everybody how confident they are, but you can't trick yourself. So I always am big on people figuring out what they want to accomplish, making sure it's big enough to put things aside in their life to do it and have the discipline and the willpower to do it. I've been going through a lot of willpower stuff lately just to try things, to see how disciplined I could get with myself. And I'm really enjoying it, but I'm doing it all in terms of the goals that I've set for myself that I want to accomplish as well. So it's really interesting. And I find that the people who give themselves a command and can follow it are the ones that. That become successful. And they're usually working towards something that they just can't not have in their life. And it's finding those things because sometimes I've gone through times where I've floated and I've been like, well, what do I really want? Like, what is it that I want? And I think if you are in search for that, you've got to find that first, nail it down. And then, you know, as soon as your eyes wake open in the morning, that should be like, whoa, I know what I'm going for today, because that's where I'm at. And, and that, you know, obviously with the Olympics, there's a deadline, so that puts a fire under your butt, that's for sure. I always had that deadline with the Olympics, which was. Which was crazy, you know, And I feel bad for the athletes that are. That are, you know, engaging in the Olympics. I think they've got a month out now or something, and they had to wait an entire year because I remember that training for that, you know, huge stuff.

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Absolutely. And, you know, the thing is, and we talk about all the time, you grow, you either improve or you start to go stale. And if you reach. And a lot of times this happens to us subconsciously. You know, we don't give our. We don't really manage ourselves. We don't give ourselves something bigger to go for. And I guess maybe we need to, you know, you. You hit a goal. You need to recover and enjoy. But if you don't regroup and take a look at what your next big fun. Something fun to do, not because you have to do it, but something you could really get excited about doing, like you've got with the sailing, you're really going to flatline. And I've seen, I've been mainly.

Focused.

On this with people in business, you know, like, have a certain title, they want, a certain income level to get up to a certain number of offices, a certain amount of volume, and they wind up building the House on the Hill. I know there's a friend of mine that he got the House on the Hill, you know, everybody saw it. It was unbelievable. It was. I won't describe it because I don't want people to know who he is, but I said, okay, unbelievable. You know, he went and he showed me around in the fireplace in the pool and the game room, and the kids can go here and all this. And then at Christmas we got the views spectacular. And I said, okay, unbelievable. Now, what next? You know, what would be. What could you get super excited about next? And, you know, he never could come up with. The best he could come up with is, you know, maybe a second home on the beach in San Diego or Laguna or something like that. But we never could get him locked in. And you know what? That was pretty much the end of his career. But he certainly didn't grow and kind of flatline decline. But really the key to having the insane quality of life is having that thing that you're passionate about. And high achievers love what they're doing, otherwise they wouldn't, they wouldn't do all the extras because you really get massive performance because you do all the extras behind the scenes. What are some of the extras behind the scenes you did with the photography that you can think of, maybe that set you apart early on.

I mean, my thing was that I noticed a void in the market I was looking at and the way I always looked back at it. And I think if you can ever find a void and go fill it, you're going to be golden in whatever it is that you want to do. My thing was that I was. I was modeling and working with Bruce Weber, and I. And looking at. He was shooting a lot of. So he asked me one time, what do you want to do as a photographer? I said, we're shooting stuff like you. I think your job's awesome. You know. And he was shooting a bunch of stuff for a lot of actors, for Vanity Fair and things of that nature. And I was. And I'd look at the photographers of that caliber, like Annie Leibowitz and Bruce Weber and Richard Avedon and her Brits, and look at their pictures and see what. What the people, you know, conveyed to the camera through their work. And it was incredible. And then I looked at the photographers who were advertising for actors headshots in New York, and everybody looked stale to me and stagnant and like, no, no, no life. Nothing interesting. And I was like, okay, I want to bridge the gap between the celebrity photographers and the actor headshot photographers. I want to jump right in there and do that. I had. And that was the thing. And that was all I wanted to do. And plus, I wanted to, you know, make a living for my. For my family. I had twin daughters. When I. My wife got pregnant with. We thought. I just thought I was going to have one. And then we found out it was two. And I had just started my business. I wasn't. I was really, like, not prepared. My wife's Venezuelan. She said, there's this saying in Venezuela that the kids come with bread under their arm. And I was like, oh, my gosh, well, there better be a lot of bread. And there was. You know, it worked. I just. I think that's the other thing, is that. That lit the fire, too, right? You know, all of a sudden, it's like, whoa, I got to grow up fast here. And. And that. That was. That was huge, that time. And then I just, you know, I got sidetracked where. What were we saying?

Wherever.

Talk about things you did for the beginning to.

Oh, the void. Oh, the void, yeah.

Filling the void.

Oh, my gosh. Yeah, that was huge because that. I jumped right in there, and I took off like a rocket ship. And the casting directors, everybody was like, I just. One casting director from abc her name was Marcy Phillips. She called me. She said, look, I'm sending everybody to you. I said, why? She goes, well, you know, you make the actors that need the headshots look like they're already celebrities. And that was exactly what I was trying to do with my work. And that was it. And the other photographers couldn't figure it out because I was blasting by everybody and. And people were like, what is going on? And I think it was a little bit of work ethic, a lot of belief in myself. And the fact that there was that gap between those two gave me confidence because I knew I was feeling, I knew what I was doing, and then I wasn't going to be stopped. So that was kind of it.

Yeah. Fantastic. Well, Peter, this has been so much fun, so much information. You're just a dynamo in life and in business. I wish you the best with the sailing, and I'm going to look forward to coming up and getting a headshot sometime soon.

Oh, yeah, Larry, that's true. I got to get in front of my camera.

I got to get in front of your camera, man. So thank you so much, Peter. This has just been a treat.

All right, thanks for having me.

If you enjoyed what you've heard and are dead serious about finding out for yourself exactly how this works in the real world, I've taken the most valuable business lessons I've learned over 40 years and put them into something for you to watch. Go to Whiteellumwinning.com webinar now in order to move up as fast as possible. I'm Larry Wydell, and I run the Million Dollar Mastermind. Go, go, go.