We were lucky to catch up with Hannah Davis recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hannah, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with education – we’d love to hear your thoughts about how we can better prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career.

If I could change anything about the educational system it would be teaching students more skills that create revenue without the highest level of education (welding, photography, etc.), encourage community college courses, and teach them everyday life skills. Also, I think it would be great if they could learn from less of a regurgitation method and break things down and really understand the concepts more analytically. Because of the lack of teachers and how under compensated they are, teachers don’t get a chance to really work with students in smaller groups. As someone who was homeschooled and who graduated from a private college, I think every student could greatly benefit from that. Oftentimes, I feel like most students don’t even remember what they learned after they go into the next grade. Even if they do, how can those things apply in their everyday life? I think more life skills like budgeting, finance, taxes, and more need to be taught in schools as well for world preparation.

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 background and context?

My name is Hannah Davis, I’m a 26 year old photographer, videographer, and entrepreneur. I got into photography my last semester of college, even though I wasn’t very good at it at the time. It felt challenging and intriguing and I just loved creating. But I was about to graduate, so I forgot about it and focused on finding a job in my field (public relations) after graduation. I did not however find a job in my field (even though I didn’t look very hard) and I ended up discovering that I wanted to work for myself a few months into post-graduation.

Fast forward, I have fallen in love with all things creative. As time went on with my business, I began to figure out what I liked to photograph, my style and where or if I wanted to expand things beyond photography. After a while I decided I wanted to add videography to my services because I really enjoyed doing amateur stuff for my church at the time. I wanted to go deeper and get into branding along with special moments, which is my specialty. Now I’m in the process of learning Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, and getting my drone pilot license so I can do aerial creative services as well.

I specialize in special moments photography, which most people have never heard of. But to make it short, I like taking candid and random moments of my clients. I never ask people to really pose, I just get to know them before the shoot and then use that information in the shoot to highlight their authentic selves. I usually ask my clients funny questions and shoot away as they have conversations if it’s more than one person. Basically, I am best suited for those moments you want to cherish forever. Weddings, family photos, engagements, baby showers, and special events. But I also enjoy doing branding services for other business owners and entrepreneurs such as myself and real estate services. I think my diversity in style and the varied services I will be offering soon definitely set me apart.

I would say I’m most proud of my growth as a business owner and creative. How I’ve been able to adapt and grow throughout this process has been very beneficial to my overall growth as a young adult. I’m always looking for ways to improve my services and make them better for returning or future clients. I am rarely satisfied with my final service unless it’s the absolute best I can do and the client is satisfied as well.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

One of the biggest things I’ve had to unlearn is how to put myself out there without it always being as good as I want it. For a very long time I was a perfectionist, until I realized that I was just using that as a way to procrastinate on what I was scared of doing. Since I got into photography at a transitional time in life and I wasn’t as experienced as other photographers I would see on social media, I would stop myself from putting my work out there. I didn’t feel like it measured up and to me it wasn’t good enough, even though my clients were satisfied with the final product. I was holding myself to an unrealistic standard that I wasn’t going to achieve anytime soon because I was still a beginner. I let that stop me for a while and I missed out on a lot of opportunities to promote myself and show my growth.

I haven’t posted much recently, but the last few pieces of content were posted without them being perfect. You can look at my social media now and see good content that isn’t perfect but that showcases my skills and my style as a creative. In the near future, I look forward to documenting my process, going more in-depth with my followers about my journey as a business owner and just sharing who I am with my potential clientele. I feel like being in this results based state of mind really hindered my growth on social media and with my audience, because I was overthinking everything before I even posted it. I’ve learned now after watching people like Gary Vaynerchuk and talking with other entrepreneurs, that you have to have fun with your content and not overthink it too much.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

This is such a loaded question for me, because I feel like I’ve had several moments within my journey that I could have chosen as reasons to give up. But I’ll talk about my most recent story of resilience in entrepreneurship. This year, I haven’t had any clients. I volunteered my services for an event earlier this year, but other than that I haven’t done any shoots. Honestly, as someone who loves photographing people, it was very depressing for me at first because It made me question my skills and my abilities to succeed as a business long term.

I tried so many times this year to reach out to previous clients for services, to think of special promotions I could run to attract more clients, posting content to hopefully attract more clients, reading books, and reaching out to new potential clients. It just seemed I was shut down with every attempt and it was very discouraging honestly. It just felt like things kept holding me back from succeeding, but honestly I came to the realization after conversations with a friend that I have to really promote myself like crazy. Entrepreneurship is very different and challenging, so this year was the first time I finally had time to really focus on my business structure and creative services since I had a job that was more flexible.

This was the first year in my now three years of HD Visuals being open that I realized how challenging it is to juggle everything and how much capital it took. I bought a drone in March because I wanted to add more services to my business and in the process of looking for that I researched and found out that I need a license for commercial work and had to take a test for a license. Plus I needed more accessories for when I got those clients. I also invested in a wide angle lens this year so that I could start working in the real estate industry. I was researching, purchasing and planning while also having to practice my skills to stay sharp, work my job, come up with content to post consistently, and market/network my company.

Honestly, this is the first year I’ve felt so defeated and overwhelmed with my business, so I decided to focus on me and my craft instead of the business side for the rest of the year. I wanted to give up, because I felt like no one wanted to work with me during the drought this year, but what I realized is that I just wasn’t doing all that I could to properly promote myself and I didn’t have the energy to do so at the time. But right now, I can honestly say I feel the best about my business than I have all year. I feel very hopeful and optimistic for the future. I’m in the process of slowly buying better equipment, improving my skills, and adding new skills for new services next year. At the end of the day I feel like being a business owner is all about learning lessons and growing from them.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://hannahsvisuals.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hannahsvisuals/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hannahsvisuals