Episode 0008: Jonny Hoffner - Good > Safe

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In this episode, Kendall talks with Jonny Hoffner, co-founder of Paper Antler Photography and the golf apparel brand Good Lion Golf. Jonny lives in Madison, Wisconsin with his wife Michelle. They have been full-time photographers together since getting engaged in 2007, after a philosophy degree, a brief stint as a ranch hand in Colorado, and six months apprenticing under wedding photographers in Minneapolis who he found on Craigslist.

Jonny talks about what draws him to wedding photography: no control over the light, the location, the weather, or the people in front of the lens. He and Michelle worked for 12 years without bringing a flash to a shoot, letting whatever was happening exist on its own terms. He describes how the job became less about the technical craft and more about the interpersonal relationship with clients, and how the significance of the photographs tends to grow over time in ways you can’t anticipate on the day.

He’s candid about the financial reality of creative self-employment: seasons of no income, Groupon dental policies, and a year during COVID when every wedding on the calendar disappeared in two weeks. He talks about eventually scaling back from 42 weddings in a year to something more sustainable, and what it means to protect time as a parent when the income is never quite guaranteed.

The second half of the conversation turns to Good Lion Golf, which Jonny launched four years ago out of a single sentence his friend Taylor said on a golf course outside Chicago: “that wasn’t safe, but it was good.” Having just finished reading Narnia to his kids, the line landed differently. The whole drive to Savannah and back, Jonny turned the idea over: something good but not safe, applied to golf and everything around it. The first products were a denim hat, a gold necklace ball marker, and a jumpsuit for golfers instead of caddies.

Good Lion is not a subversion project for its own sake. Jonny describes looking around a golf course with Michelle and realizing everyone was dressed identically, a look he likens to escaping a cult in Cabo. But he’s equally put off by the loud, neon, fratty counter-movement. What he’s after is a middle path: clothing with intention and meaning, for someone who doesn’t golf as much as they’d like, that stands for something other than conformity. “Nobody cares what you have to say,” a former client told him. Jonny heard it and kept going anyway.

They also talk about therapy, the mud pit, and a simple question from a counselor that reoriented how Jonny thinks about what he wants. And Jonny turns the tables at the end, asking Kendall about his own creative arc, from painting and printmaking to web development to life drawing, and whether any of it was planned.

Question of the week:

How have you tracked your own creative arc? And could you have anticipated the path that got you here?