IAM1090- Entrepreneur Runs a Photography Business

Laurence used to be an astronomer, visiting telescopes all around the world, and working for NASA and at Universities in the UK. Then 15 years ago he changed his career completely to start his own photography business. We'll find out why, and what he's learned along the way.

• CEO Hack: (i) Password manager- LastPass (ii) Exercise (ii) Finding out when I have the best ideas
• CEO Nugget: Get good advice early on
• CEO Defined: (i) Loving what I'm doing (ii) Helping people

Website: https://www.kidsnaturally.co.uk/

Photography for business: https://www.ljonesphotography.co.uk/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurencerjones/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KidsNaturally.Photography

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Transcription

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[00:00:14.80] – Intro

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

[00:00:43.10] – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh, from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Lawrence Jones of Kids Naturally Photography. Lawrence, it's great to have you on the show.

[00:00:52.10] – Laurence Jones

Thanks, Gresh. It's great to be here.

[00:00:54.50] – Gresham Harkless

Super excited to have you on and great to have you on the mic, so to speak. And before we jump into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Lawrence so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. Lawrence used to be an astronomer, visiting telescopes all over the world and working for NASA and at universities in the UK. Then fifteen years ago, he changed careers completely to start his own photography business. We'll find out we'll find out why and what he's learned along the way. Lawrence, great to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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[00:01:24.59] – Laurence Jones
Very much so.

[00:01:26.20] – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Well, let's do it then. So to kick it off, I know I teased it a little bit, but I wanna hear a little bit more about what I like to call your CEO story. We'll let you get started with all the awesome work you're doing.

[00:01:36.09] – Laurence Jones

Yes. So as you just said, Gresh, I used to be an astronomer. So I was traveling to you know, I had the terrible job, awful job traveling to Hawaii, Chile, all these, places, Australia, Canary Islands. And, doing research, teaching telescopes, and so on. And, yeah, I worked for NASA for a couple of years, near Washington, DC. And you might think, why on earth would you leave that? That sounds perfect. But, the truth is it was always on I was always on a three-year, five-year contract and moving around. And eventually, you wanna put down roots, you know, start a family. And so, ended up back in the UK, in the middle of England near Birmingham.

And I turned a hobby into a business. And I'm doing I'm just doing something I love. We had a son was having a young son at that time. And I'd always loved photography. Always loved it. And then something clicked in my head when I was taking photos of him. And the big eyes and the little cute noses and all that other young kids and other people would say, that they love those. Can you do some for me? And so on. It was hard because I come from an academic background, a bit dry very one side of the brain.

And then I had to switch completely to, to business side. And and people always ask me, well, what's the connection between astronomy and photography? And the answer is there isn't one. It's just something I wanted to do. I'm much more creative now. I'm much more people-focused. I enjoy connecting with people. So it was quite a steep learning curve, you know, learning from as for many others, learning the marketing, the sales, the IT, and so on. But but, I do love it. I take fat photos of families and children outside.

They might be playing got a stick playing in the muddy puddle and jumping in the muddy puddle. I'm there. I'm right there with them climbing a tree, running around like crazy. And then I also do some commercial, photography headshots to make the CEO look good and make us look good. I have that under a separate brand, and I do some what's called personal branding photography. So, you know I'm sure people have heard of that. That's telling the story behind the business, providing a whole whole portfolio of images for that. And, yeah, I've been doing it for fifteen years. Nice.

[00:04:13.69] – Gresham Harkless

Well, I appreciate that. I appreciate you sharing the story. You're using a majority of one side of the brain and being able to switch over and use both of those sides now, and in running the business, but also being able to kinda tap into that creativity is grace is awesome because I think so many times people believe, or sometimes don't even believe they can reinvent themselves and start a new and to pivot or whatever word we might use. But I love to hear that you've been able to do that and that you've been going strong for fifteen years.

[00:04:45.60] – Laurence Jones

Yeah. I would echo that. You can change direction mid-career, and everybody's, doing that more and more. And it's possible. Not only is it possible, it's like you're starting a whole new life, a whole new world. It can be invigorating hugely, enjoyable, and satisfying.

[00:05:12.50] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Absolutely. I could imagine that. And so I know you touched a little bit upon, how you work with clients. Could you take us through a little bit more on that if you hadn't touched on anything? And what you even feel is, like, what I like to call your secret sauce or the thing you feel kinda sets you apart and makes you more effective and efficient?

[00:05:26.30] – Laurence Jones

I like that secret. My secret sauce. Yeah. Well, I can easily say it's my sort of creative vision because, you know, I've been a photographer. That's an easy one. It's my personality, what I bring, and how I see things in front of me that are different from other people. How I set up the lighting, the the everything that goes towards the the, making a powerful photo. So but half of half of what I do, one of my strengths is making the whole thing enjoyable. Unusually people say, oh, I enjoyed having my photo taken.

Can I come back and do it again next year? And you don't hear that very often. Most people hate it. So it's like going to the dentist. No way. So that's half of the battle. Just making it fun and being a people person. Making that connection with people. And and understanding all the different, you know, shy people. Well, everybody has some personality to bring out in a photo, and, that's what I try and do.

[00:06:35.10] – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. Absolutely. And so, I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

[00:06:48.50] – Laurence Jones

Okay. So I prepared. And in in the spirit of of giving great value, I've got three three hacks. I hope that's okay. It'll be great.

[00:06:56.10] – Gresham Harkless

Go for it.

[00:06:56.89] – Laurence Jones

Okay. So number one is is is something on your computer that I suspect, a lot of people use. If anybody doesn't use a password manager, they need to know about it. I use one called LastPass. And these I used to have, a four book full of pages written with passwords written down. And you think, oh, log in to this website. And then it it's it's a minute finding the the password. So now, it just happens autumn automatically. So a password manager and an independent one not tied to your browser. That's what you need. Okay.

Number two.  So exercise. Exercise is key. And if you and I use, ten minutes of exercise, and it's it's an old one. If you Google, Canadian Air Force exercises, also known as five b x. And only you have to spend ten minutes, which is what attracted me. Started in the fifties. So a doctor back then, and he seemed to know what he was doing. And it is scaled for different ages, and and different fitness levels. So anybody can do it. And as I say, you do it outside in the living room, but you only need to spend ten minutes a day. So it's no big time drain, like going for a huge jog or something. Okay. So that was number two, Canadian Air Force exercises. And number three is finding out when you have your best ideas.

So for me, I wake up and you're half asleep, you're half awake, and then you gradually you're fully awake in that little period that those sort of half hour I find, maybe my brain's been working on it in the night and things that I've forgotten just pop into my head. Oh, I need to do that. Or here's a solution for another for something else. So it's finding out that could be in the shower for somebody else. It could be going for a walk in nature. I don't know. Could be watching when you're watching sport. It but finding out when that is and treasuring that time, because that's when the great for me, that's when the the good ideas happen.

[00:09:13.20] – Gresham Harkless

I now wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you would tell a client or if you happen to be a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

[00:09:24.50] – Laurence Jones

What I would tell my younger business self, is that's a great question because it dives deep down into the mistakes you made. And we all have to make mistakes to get to progress. So mine would be one would be, I started my business with, little little money, not much investment at all. So my growth was quite slow. And so my advice would be to get good advice early on and invest in getting good advice. Could be a mentor. For me, it was advice on how to do your marketing best.

So I did it rather in a trial-and-error fashion to start with. However, finding the right person is not straightforward. So my advice would be to find somebody in your sector who's genuinely done it, somebody who you trust, and who has the experience to suggest what would work for you in your particular situation and not just a single approach that happened to work for them. So the classic person to avoid is an ad on social media and somebody in front of a jet and a and a sports car and a Ferrari and that and they're and they're saying, hey. Look. I got all this. You can do the same. That's the opposite.

That's the opposite of who we want. We want somebody who's your colleague, somebody's recommended them. They've got you to do your background research, and find out about this person. And when you find them when you find the right person, they're like gold dust because they can use their experience to know exactly what will work for you in your situation. Yeah. So that could be a mentor. That could be an adviser, or it could just be a paid course that you go on to learn their stuff. But they should be able to tailor the advice to you precisely. Yeah. So it's worth investing money to do that if necessary, would be my advice.

[00:11:49.20] – Gresham Harkless

Well, I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quotes and unquote CEOs on this show. So, Lawrence, what does being a CEO mean to you?

[00:12:00.20] – Laurence Jones

It means what does it mean? It means means loving what I'm doing. It means going through the highs and the lows, taking the knocks, and getting up again. But mostly, it's getting huge enjoyment, excitement, satisfaction, and pride in what I do building a business up, and then sharing that with my community so that I think for all of us, yes, we want to earn some money. We want to support our family. Some people want a bit of local celebrity status or whatever. But mostly, it's about helping people. And it's about when somebody says, oh, thanks for that, what you've done. That's made a big difference to me.

And, they're more than happy to to pay you. They'll come back again. And, for instance, there's a teenage teenage girl about nineteen or so. I just took some photos of her the way I normally do. And then afterward, when she saw them, she said, and this is the quote, you've made me feel confident and happy again about the way I look. And so that's changing somebody's whole self-esteem and and their whole, outlook on life just from a few photos.

So what we do can be more powerful than we think because we do it every day. And but up to other people, it's a whole big deal. It's new. And so, yeah, it's providing a service or a product that makes a difference and counts and contributing to the community and charities and so on. But mostly, it's because that makes us all you get that feedback and, yeah, you get a warm feeling inside and yeah. That's what it's about for me.

[00:14:04.00] – Gresham Harkless

Lawrence, truly appreciate that definition, and I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is just pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know, and, of course, how best they can get a hold of you and find about all the awesome things you're working on.

[00:14:18.50] – Laurence Jones

Thank you. I'd just like to say thanks, Gresh. It's been a pleasure. I don't do many of these, but this has been fabulous. I'll do more from now on. Yeah. If people want to connect with me, I'll give you websites. So, in the UK, it's kidsnaturally.co.u k. That's for my family photography. And then ljonesphotography.co.uk for my business photography and branding.

[00:14:49.29] – Gresham Harkless

Awesome.

[00:14:50.10] – Laurence Jones

And I'd love to connect with people. If anybody is, got experiences or anything that we've talked about resonates with them.

[00:14:59.29] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Well, I appreciate you, Lawrence, for sharing all the awesome things that you're doing and, of course, sharing your gift and the talent that you have and helping out so many people. So we would have the links and information in the show notes as well too so that everybody can follow up with you. But thank you so much for the reminder to lean into your gifts, your talents, your purpose, and your why of why we're doing what we're doing. And just reminding us you, get to do it visually and remind us of how your talent gets to shine in so many people and make that impact. So thank you so much for doing that, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

[00:15:31 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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