We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Rafael Larin a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Rafael, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

A saying has stuck with me over the years and that is the worst risk is not taking one. I’m a calculated risk taker for sure. I don’t just take any risks, especially ones that are purely thrill-seeking that can end in personal injury. But risks that can alter the course of your life are important to take. The first one I took was to join the military out of high school. But I knew why I took it. The downfalls included not knowing for sure what path it would take me on for the next four years. I had no idea if I would end up in another state or country. So, it would definitely take me from my family. But the bigger risk by not joining the military was having an unclear path out of high school for a brighter future.

The calculated part was planning the benefits I wanted to gain from it. I knew I wanted tuition help to not go into debt to go to college. That part worked out perfectly. I completed two years while I was in the US Air Force, which was fully funded, and the GI Bill covered the other two after I was honorably discharged. I earned my bachelor’s degree as planned – not going into debt over it – by taking that first big risk out of high school.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m a headshot photographer in the Los Angeles area. I’ve loved photography going back to high school. That’s when I took my first class. I randomly selected it, needing to make a decision on an elective class. I was fortunate that I had a teacher that saw something in me and provided extra guidance and lessons. I fell in love with the craft and love it just as much today.

I continued throughout my professional career to rely on photography as a daily hobby. After college I went on to work for a couple of worldwide public relations agencies and then I went on to start my own consulting practice, another risk I took.

When doing public relations work for a client, they knew I did photography as a hobby and so my client asked if I could do the company’s product photography. This spawned my first idea of getting paid for a hobby I loved. The product photography turned out great. That turned into requests for headshots, and more requests. The rest is history.

Clients come to me for headshots typically for two reasons. Sometimes they come because they were ordered to get one from their employers. Others come because they know the importance of a headshot for their personal brand. It can be an actor, attorney, doctor, psychologist, real estate agent, or other client-facing professional. Many of them understand that their likeness is often the first thing a potential client uses to review them as a potential person to do business with. So, these clients rely on my headshot photography service to help them create a great first impression for their own potential clients.

I’m most proud of helping clients achieve their own success, even if my small part is just providing them a great headshot. I’m also proud of the reputation I’ve built over many years, having earned more five star reviews on Google than other headshot photographers in the Los Angeles area.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

When you venture out to start your own business, you might get a lot of supporters. You might also get a lot of negative noise. It is easy to listen to that negative noise and learn to let it get in your head. You might even have to unlearn it. I had to.

I had some colleagues that I turned to for advice because they had previously owned their own businesses. They constantly stoked the fear of it. “You can’t just show up for work anymore, be given work to do, and know you’re getting paid for it next week.” Or, “I constantly found myself wanting to turn on the TV or go shopping. You’re always going to want to not work. It just never works out.”

You immediately take this in as if you are going to do it too. You have to unlearn it. It helps to make rules to do the opposite. For example, on the statement about not knowing if you are going to get paid next week or not, instead make a long list of things you can do each week to make sure you find clients that will pay you. It can be a specific social media post or a lead-generation tactic. Figure out how many of these you have to do in a week, to fill your week with meaningful work, and to make sure income starts and continues to flow. Eventually, the balance of your time goes toward doing paid work instead of work to try to get paid.

On the advice that TV or shopping will be enticing, make your own rule that you are not allowed to turn on the TV during specific hours, or to shop either. Go a step further and don’t even put a TV where you plan to work – or other streaming device. If going shopping might be enticing, set up best practices that would create obstacles for this, like eating lunch in your office instead of going out for it. In simpler words, discipline is critical and setting foundations for good discipline is the first step.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Almost every business has periods where the economy will factor into your success or lack of it. There was one economic downturn where my business ran in the red for almost a year. But it was not just my business. Most businesses suffered during the great recession.

I had to go back to basics, like spending most of my time on activities that helped make sure new income would start flowing again. Considering business loans became a factor as did dwindling savings. Thoughts started crossing my head about going back to the corporate world.

But resilience is a requirement for almost all business owners. It is almost unheard of that someone starts a business and immediately turns a 500 percent profit or revenue increase, and it stays that way. Most of us know the statistic that most small businesses fail in the first five years. So, find a way to be extra resilient during the first five years when the risk of failing is the highest. Adapt to changing market dynamics. Address industry-altering risks head on. For example, there is genuine fear right now about the impact AI is going to have on a lot of jobs. Try to turn that fear into energy to figure out ways to instead compete and win against that technology.

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