We recently connected with Jeff LaPread and have shared our conversation below.

Jeff, appreciate you joining us today. Being a business owner can be really hard sometimes. It’s rewarding, but most business owners we’ve spoken sometimes think about what it would have been like to have had a regular job instead. Have you ever wondered that yourself? Maybe you can talk to us about a time when you felt this way?

I’m a lot happier as a business owner. Most definitely! I often think about what it would be like if i were to have a regular job, but I remind myself on how depressed and stressed I was. The only time I thought about working a regular job was when I first started entrepreneurship and my clientele was very low and to make matters worse, COVID put a slow down on everything and everybody. So, at that time I definitely thought about working a regular job, but things picked right up surprisingly at that time and i’ve been happy since.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’ve been a Barber for ten years now. I got into Photography by it just being a hobby. I like taking pictures, but I became a huge fan of Off Camera Flash photography. I love natural lighting photos as well, but Off Camera Flash is my favorite.

What I am most proud of and what I feel sets me apart from other people is that i am self taught. Some people went to school or had someone teach them. I, on the other hand had to figure things out through trial and error and consistent practice.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

My biggest flaw was putting myself on other people timeline and measuring their success to my failures. It was very discouraging. So i began to focus on myself and had to tell myself that it just wasn’t my season yet. Once I’ve accepted that and focused on me, the better things got. When people saw where my focus and passion was, the support followed.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Mind you, I have a huge following on social media, but I have enough to where people are seeing my work from Facebook all the way to Tik Tok. I am my biggest promoter so I advertise myself every chance I get. Consistency is key when it comes to social media. The one advice I can give is when you make a post, use hash tags. A lot of people do their searching through social media by using hashtags. That’s where your views, follows and potential clients will come from.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: instagram.com/fl4shphotography