(light music)
I was kind of at this point in my life
where I'd spin my wheels trying to figure out
what I wanted to do.
I bartended 'til like 4am,
I lived in a fifth floor walk up with my brother,
I went to one of Bob's workshops
and he'd gotten to know me
because I kinda was hanging around a little bit
and he knew I had trained for the Olympics
and he was doing a portion on decision-making
and he said to me, "Where's that sailor guy?"
And I was like, you know,
and he's like "stand up" and he said
"Why aren't you going for the Olympics?"
And this was like the beginning of '99,
the Olympics were in 2000, I hadn't thought
about going to the Olympics, I was like I had been done,
I missed the team, I was like I'm not going to the Olympics.
Well Bob's doing a two-day workshop
and this portion was on decision-making,
he said "look, I want you to go,
go home, sleep on it, come back in the morning
and tell us if you're gonna go for the gold medal."
I didn't sleep that night, I started thinking
about what am I doing?
I'm bartending 'til 4am, I'm like trying to make ends meet
as a model/actor dude, it's not working,
I was like I have this gift of sailing, I should go sail.
I go back to the workshop the next day
and Bob says "where's Peter?"
And I stand up, Bob had this guy who won the decathlon
in 1956 named Milt Campbell next to him on stage
and Milt stood up, and he said "I'm gonna coach you."
I packed up my apartment in New York,
I got on the plane, I rented a car out there,
I shipped my boat, got a van, threw my boat on top of it,
I started sailing and in 2000 I became a member
of the United States Sailing Team,
something I wouldn't have done
if I hadn't made that decision.
I finished the Olympics, I made the U.S. team,
which was great, but when the sailing was over,
I was like what am I gonna do?
Am I gonna go back to New York
and be the model/actor/bartender dude?
I was like I can't do it, I can't do it,
and I decided to pick up a camera.
(slow music)
It led into something huge and its been great,
I'm now considered the premier
headshot photographer in the world
and I just wrote a book called The Headshot
and I've been shooting headshots since about 2002
and I coach over 9,000 photographers
on headshot photography worldwide
and I have photographers that are my associates
in all areas of the globe, so it's been amazing.
My purpose is to pull a human expression
out of everybody that I shoot
that's authentic, reactive, and based on trust
and that's what I try and do every day.
I'd been away from the concepts
that Bob was teaching for a while
and I had been introduced to his coaching program,
it was amazing, it did everything that I needed to do
to get reinvigorated and get going again
and start to create these goals for myself
and look at my life in a different way
and try and figure out how to get
these multiple sources of income going.
When I trained for the Olympics
we had a sports psychologist work with us
and we were doing goal-setting and stuff like that
and I was doing visualization
and it was all this stuff that I was doing
that I didn't know what I was doing.
The first seminar that Bob did that I sat into,
it was like a light bulb, it was like an epiphany,
it was like boom, oh my gosh, all this stuff
that he's talking about, I think I was doing,
I wasn't aware that I was doing it,
but I was already kinda in that mindset, in that mode.
Being more aware of it made things click a lot faster
and made me be able to be successful
in all the endeavors that I really, really went for.
I may be shooting their head, but I'm aiming for their heart
and if I can teach people how to behave
in front of a camera, be better, and capture an image
that they're really proud of, themselves,
that's a huge deal and that's what I do
every day, right here.