JJ – All round nice guy & CEO – Corporate Portraits in London.

2012 matches on remorselessly. I promised myself this is the year I grow up – don’t get me wrong, I am a grown man by all academic and social definitions of the term (but in many ways I am also a kid at heart – most creative people unfortunately are) but I’m determined to define the boundaries where it is appropriate to be and where it is not. Growing up is a hard thing to do, at any stage in one’s life, especially as there are so many bad examples all around. I have so many personal and business targets I’ve set for this year (sometimes they frighten me to be quite honest) when I look through the list. In my days at London Transport, I remember attending a customer service training course where we were taught about setting SMART goals, whilst I’ve lost the training documentation from the course, I very clearly remember the logic behind the thinking and embrace it totally.

So having made the decision to knuckle down and man up socially and entrepreneurial wise  - I had the great pleasure of meeting and shooting JJ’s business portraits. He is founder and CEO of a very successful business based here in the UK. I was referred by someone we know in common (thank you so much Kae). We spoke a few times on the phone, went through the usual questions and finally set up a shoot date. On meeting him I had no idea who he was, he was very polite and very clear (in a very nice way) about what he wanted and how he wanted it (a trade mark of people who know where they are going and are clear on how they want to get there). The shoot was done in 30 minutes and the images you see here were selected, edited and dispatched via email to him the next day.

As a rule I always send a thank you note with every work I deliver and did so (but this time via email) as I was not going to meet him again to deliver the job in person (he lives out of town and coming to the studio for the shoot was a long drive for him – and I respected him even more that he would go to all that trouble to have his portrait done at my studio). What is more remarkable is that he personally replied my email, saying quite simply “John, images received with thanks. Regards,” his name and CEO. Was I impressed, HELL YEAH!!. He had style and class.

I took the time to follow the link in his email to find out more about his company and business. Doing this made me more aware and focused about what type of business and business owner I want to be – and for that also, I say a big thank you JJ.