October 31, 2023 • 52 mins
It's been a YEAR since I've released a podcast and that's because my life is SO CRAZY!! So this podcast is a reflection of me finding more balance in my life so I can get back to things like the podcast as well as doing all of the other work that I have to do PLUS manage my personal life.
Everything we do in this life comes at a cost both financially, personally and professionally. So, this is what I'm working on to make it all work.
The 5 Steps Include:
*Setting Priorities
*Setting Boundaries
*Setting Timelines
*Managing Workflow
*Setting RECOVERY Time
I hope it helps!!
Everything we do in this life comes at a cost both financially, personally and professionally. So, this is what I'm working on to make it all work.
The 5 Steps Include:
*Setting Priorities
*Setting Boundaries
*Setting Timelines
*Managing Workflow
*Setting RECOVERY Time
I hope it helps!!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
A little Oh my gosh, guys, it has been so long.
Welcome to my podcast, Jason Lanier Unfiltered. This is episode
twenty nine, Finding Balance. I'm going to give you five
steps for making a crazy and hectic life work for you,
(00:22):
and I'm trying to take it from my personal experience.
I'm gonna let you guys know right now that part
of my steps, one of the steps I should say
in making this work is I'm going to record this
podcast and I'm not going to edit out any of
the flubs or the mistakes that I make with my speech,
(00:44):
because quite frankly, that's why it takes so long for
me to put out another podcast. The perfectionist that is
inside of me stops me from releasing more videos, doing
more podcasts, because I just have to have everything as
perfect as possibly be and as I as I you know,
go around the country or the world and I'm listening
(01:06):
to other podcasts, and you know, I listen to some
that are really, you know, professionally done, like Dateline NBC
for example. You know, listen to those and they're they're
obviously they have a huge team, so they should sound
very professional, and it's I definitely want my podcast to
sound professional, but at the same time, I don't have
(01:28):
a huge team, and part of me finding this balance
in order to even produce more podcasts or more videos
with the crazy life that I live, it means I
have to let go of some of those things. It
doesn't mean I'm lowering my standards. What it means is
I'm doing what I can to produce work because I
either output a podcast like this or I don't output
(01:51):
one at all. And so I figure that, you know,
putting out something is a lot better than just not
putting out anything. So I just wanted to to preface
this podcast by letting you know, if you hear any
coughs or sneezes or snubs or snubs, yea, that's what
I'm talking about. Normally I would I would edit that
out because I just misspoke. I meant to say flubs
(02:12):
or whatever whatever you want to call it. Today, my
lovely Friends is Halloween. It's my favorite holiday. It's Halloween
twenty twenty three. I looked on my podcast you know
whatever do you call it, the podcast platform that I
utilized and say I would have edited all of that out.
(02:35):
I looked and saw that I last released one on
November first of twenty twenty two, and I was like, damn,
it's it's been a long ass time. So this podcast
is going to get you guys up to date on
a lot of the stuff that I've been up to.
But really it's going to focus on finding balance because
it's been you know, my life is always crazy, and
(02:58):
you know, it just is the way that it is.
I have so many stories that I could fill two
million podcasts, and I think that is why I'm trying
to approach this podcast of mine and to start doing
it again, but in a more frequent manner. So as
we sit, or as I sit because there's nobody else here.
(03:20):
I am in Niagara Falls. I love Niagara Falls, but
I'm in Niagara Falls on my Airbnb and I'm recording
this on my phone and the phone is sitting in
my front pocket on my chest, and I'm just going
to speak. It's the first time I've actually done a
podcast where I'm not setting up all my professional equipment
(03:41):
or I'm more importantly, nine point nine times out of ten,
I'm doing it out of the studio of my home,
and I'm just that's just not a reality for me.
I'm too nomadic. I'm too much on the road. So
in the past year that I have been out and about,
it's definitely been a long time together or a long
(04:01):
time apart, I should say, I've done quite a bit.
And this is episode twenty nine, by the way, in
that time that we have not been able to chat,
it's been crazy. I've done. It's hard, and I apologize
(04:23):
if I'm starting to stop me because again that's part
of my personality that stops me from doing the podcast
or many of the projects that you're about to hear
about that I've been working on. The reason you haven't
seen them is that perfectionist inside of me that doesn't
want to release something until it's exactly the way that
I want it. And as a result, there's many projects
(04:45):
that just don't get released. Ask anybody who's worked with
me for any amount of time. There's just so many
projects that I work on, and that's part of that
compulsion that I feel. It'll be constantly moving. And that's
why I'm talking about finding that balance, and I'm talking
about the things that I've done to really to really
try to help rain myself in if you will, and
(05:06):
I'm going to talk about how you know, everything that
we do when this life comes at a cost. Where
we spend our time, where we spend our money, where
we spend our resources. You know, either positively or negatively,
everything comes at a cost. So we're going to talk
about that. But in that time, I've done an epic journey.
I went down to I've run from the cartels, I've
(05:28):
run with the cartels. I've done an eight country journey
where I allowed myself to be human trafficked. And I'm
not exaggerating when I say that, And I've filmed all
of this, and the stuff that I have is, in
my opinion, groundbreaking. I don't know anyone else in the
(05:50):
world who's ever done what I've done where I allowed
myself to be trafficked like all the other folks who
come up from South America to the United States. It
was one of the most dangerous, jarring experiences of my life,
running through the jungles, getting chased by people with guns
(06:13):
and machetes and seeing murders and bribes and is wild,
absolutely wild, to say the least. And the footage and
the stuff that I have from that is just as
I sit here and my brain is scanning and thinking
(06:34):
of all of the things that I saw and I experienced,
it's incredible. We're talking about going through Ecuador, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico,
the United States. It's it's just mind blowing walking the
border and wade is Mexico the murder capital of the world,
(06:56):
and having on the Mexican side and watching the Mexicans,
the National Guard or the police force, whatever it may be,
on the Mexican side of the border, telling me you
need to get out of here. You're going to get killed.
Just this kind of stuff that I've been up to guys,
is mind blowing. And again it's that perfectionist in me.
(07:18):
I don't want to release this stuff on YouTube because
I feel it's better than that, and I'm not trying
to denigrate YouTube, but this is really effing awesome stuff
that nobody else has the balls to do. Honestly, I
did this with no security, no producers, nothing, And even
(07:40):
now as I reminisce and think about this experience, it
blows my mind. And I don't know if I would
do it again. I probably would, but I don't know
if I would do it again now that I know
that what I've been through, it's just unbelievable. So there's that.
(08:02):
It's quite an experience and uh wow, yeah, even I
just so many stories I can tell you guys, just
from that alone, could feel ten podcasts. So in the
year we've been a part, I've done that. I've been
down to Italy and Ireland and Scotland for some incredible
(08:23):
workshops and trips and epic journeys, castles and all sorts
of just insane stuff. I've been to Niagara Falls three
times and again that's where I'm recording this podcast from
right now. I've been hanging off boats in South Florida
my buddy Steven and I you know, he cut his
(08:43):
foot open and he tried to make his boat not crash.
He tried, so he jumped off the boat. I know
I'm jumping around here with these topics, but I'm just
trying to give you guys a quick, quick, quick recap
of what I've been up to. And I know I'm
skipping at least eighty percent of the stuff I've done,
mind you, But we're out there doing planning, photo shoots
(09:04):
and stuff, and he's going to crash his brand new boat.
The boat swerving on to the side. He jumps out
barefoot because it's going to hit the rocks. He slashes
his foot open and there's blood all over the thing.
And I'm calling him Dexter because it's got the boat,
it's Floorida. There's blood all over the bottom of the boat.
That was quite an experience. But we're shooting models. I'm
(09:26):
going to well, it's just crazy. There's just so much.
I moved. That was another huge thing that happened for me.
I moved for the first time in over a decade,
over a dozen years probably, and I moved my sons
out of their home that they've been in honestly since
(09:46):
they're about eight years old, seven years old even, And
that's a really hard thing to do, to take your
children who have lived in that home, been in that
home for their entire life that they can pretty much
remember because we all know that, you know, a lot
of our memories kick on about five, six, seven years old.
(10:08):
So that was hard, and that's something that I had
to help. I had to take pretty much all of
the summer off to help facilitate that, but not only
the actual physical move, but actually being there for my
sons and helping them with getting new jobs and just
being there as a dad, and I took I didn't
work for three months professionally because I was working as
(10:32):
a dad, and had I not done that, I don't
think the transition would have occurred the way that it
has occurred. And it's been successful and I'm very grateful
and I love my sons, but that was that was
a life a life changing event, especially for them. And
so me taking that time again to cost, I had
(10:53):
to realize that I couldn't just move and say hey,
we're doing this deal with it. As a dad, I
owe than more than that, and so I knew that
would come at a cost professionally, but I was prepared
to pay that cost professionally because I didn't want to
pay the cost personally and hurt my sons. So it
(11:15):
was a great move. We did a lot of really
fun stuff and again there's I could fill ten podcasts
again with that. But that was quite an experience. I've
gone to Australia in that time. I went back to Australia.
I did my makeup workshops that I had. That's the
other thing is I've been doing these makeup workshops from
COVID and that's been a backbreaker. I'm not gonna lie.
And for anybody who's been in one of my workshops
(11:37):
that was a makeup for the COVID year, you know,
I love you and I am beyond grateful to have
seen you this year. But that was also very hard
professionally for me to go back and make up some
of these workshops that had lingered all the way from COVID. God,
I hate that damn word COVID. I know the rest
of you out there must hate it as well, but
(11:59):
good Lord, finally releasing the shackles and getting those makeup
workshops done has been big for me as well. That's
a lot. It's a lot to go back and do
these workshops of places that were supposed to happen in
twenty twenty. So you know, that takes a toll financially,
it takes a toll personally from time and money to
(12:22):
go back and do some of these things. But it
was the right thing to do because I had an
obligation to fulfill and I'm glad that I did it.
But again, that takes time and money and again finding
that balance. I mean, I just again that could feel
more volumes I was in Sydney and I drove all
(12:43):
the way instead of flying from Sydney to Melbourne. That's
something I've been doing a lot recently. I've been driving
more because I'm so sick of airports. I hate them.
And so I had about ten days between my Sydney
and Melbourne workshop and I went to the outback and
then I have a really crazy story of losing my
drone in the outback, you know where there's like, you know,
(13:07):
really awful snakes and other stuff. I had kangaros jumping
in front of my cars. I lost the drone and
I'd go find it at ten pm at night in
the outback using my roto lights. It's pretty funny unless
you know you're there in the moment. I wasn't laughing
about it. It's funny. I even recorded some videos even
saying this is when if I had a model with me,
she would kill me right now. That's when the models
(13:27):
want to murder me. So if you ever wonder, it's
not the model that would disappear on any of these trips,
it's me. The model would murder me on these trips
because some of the stuff I get myself into. They
just want to go back to there being be the
hotel whatever. And you know, I'm losing drones and doing
stuff that prolongs the agony of what I'm out there doing,
(13:48):
and that's when they want to just that's when they're
done with me, just to be fair. So I mean,
I watched the sky flaff as Motorcycle. I just, oh
my gosh, the stuff that again another one ten episodes.
And that's why I'm trying to get back to a form.
I'm trying to not get back. I'm trying to start
(14:09):
a format. Or I can sit there and just record
this like I am on my phone right now and
upload it so I can be a lot more consistent
with the podcast and the other work that I'm producing.
And I hope, I hope you guys are enjoying this.
I hope it's beneficial to you. In that time, I've
gone down to Spain, I've gone to Portugal and shot
(14:30):
a wedding and by the way, I shot that as
a real wedding workshop. The dad, the father of the bride,
showed up, showed up. He came to my workshop in England.
He's a photographer and he's like, yo, man, I would
love for you to shoot my daughter's wedding. We turned
it into a real wedding workshop. So if any of
you are listening out there, dude, I'm open for business.
(14:51):
If you want me to shoot your child's wedding, your wedding,
whatever it is, hit me up. I love doing them.
Lots of fun and I had great time down to Portugal.
Then I went back to England. I shot some incredible
estates with my buddy Paul and and man have I
met some crazy models along the way. I've met some
(15:13):
amazing ones, but I've met some crazy ones. So just
to be fair, you know, I try to, you know,
always be very positive. But I'm going to start to
share some stories of some of the crazy stuff that's
gone on because I think it will be beneficial for
all of you other out of you guys out there.
(15:33):
I had my buddy Steve reach out to me just
a couple of days ago, and I'll just leave it
at that. I'm not gonna say where he is and
who he is, blah blah blah, just to protect his
identity a little bit. But he sends me a screenshot
of a model that that he and I both know,
and she says, or somebody says, I'm just gonna try
(15:56):
to be vague because people do know one another, but hey,
if you want the model to show up on time,
you should pay them. Apparently this is a TF shoot
and this person said they're going to be an hour late,
and I said, no, dude, you got You're out. You
got to be out of that situation. If somebody isn't
going to respect your time, then you don't need to
(16:21):
be there. You don't need to shoot them. And that
that annoys me to no end because if you agree
to be someplace, be there on time, and you know
I was, I was having fun with them. I'm like, well,
you know that's like that's like you're saying, if you
want the shots to be in focused, pay me. You know,
if you want me to edit the pictures, pay me.
I mean it's ridiculous. But again, I can I can
(16:42):
go on and on and on, but I just wanted
to to say that I'm going to start to try
and share some of the stories with models, photographers, clients
that I work with and try to be you know,
anonymous to an extent to where I don't, you know,
I embarrass people, but but just share some of the
might might feedback on some of the things that you
(17:02):
could do when you are dealing with these other crazy
entities on earth called human beings, men and women. But
when I was in England, for example, I was shooting
with a dog and my buddy Paul is a dog trainer,
and we shot with a dog. We shot some old
(17:25):
disused as they say, we don't use that term in
the United States, but but it's kind of a that
that word disused is in between being abandoned and being
you know, just a wreck. But what these properties are
is they're they're properties that are used by the government
(17:45):
or BBC or the police for training purposes, but there's nobody.
There's no longer anyone occupying the buildings and so that
they're not like abandoned like people go in and destroy them,
which is cool, but they're abandoned as that nobody's living
in and or using them. So we got to go
do some really cool shoots in these with models and
police dog, which was super fun. I can't wait to
(18:07):
shore those with you guys. And oh yeah, I've on
the down low. I've been doing a really top secret
project with a really historic place in New Orleans. And yeah,
if you guys have followed me long enough. I was
arrested there. I've been doing a really really cool ass
(18:28):
project and doing some insane shoots in New Orleans at
my favorite place on Earth to shoot, big place, lots
of things to do, been busted there before. And yeah,
wait till you see the work I've been doing there
out out of the ballpark. It'll blow your mind. It's
(18:50):
exciting stuff. You'll see that very soon. And I'm I
think we're the NDA's ending on that. So hopefully I'll
be able to share a lot of that stuff with
you guys coming up. But be on the lookout for that.
It's gonna be coming soon. So and yeah, so that's
legendary stuff. And contrary to popular belief by some out there,
(19:12):
I have no team. So what does that mean. I
do all the logistics. I do the editing, I do
all of the planning. I do all the meetups, I
do all the communications. I do all of the booking
Delta dot com, Marriott dot com, Airbnb dot com, peer
Space dot com. I do all the office work. I
(19:33):
edit all of my own videos, and I edit all
of my own pictures. And I pause because it is
a lot and I'm a kind of guy who's all
in or all out, and I'm okay being all in.
But the cost that I pay is that I have
nothing else in my life other than my family. But
(19:56):
I have nothing else in my life that I do,
and I'm okay doing that. I'm okay, and I'm prepared
to pay that cost because I don't need to go
drink at a bar or go to a strip club.
To me, when I do those things, I'm wasting my life.
I don't unless it's with somebody special to me, Like
(20:18):
if you say, hey, let's go to a ball game, Okay,
if I'm going with my sons. Other than that, I
have no interest. So this the very successful people in
life typically don't have a lot of other things going
on because there's just not enough time to get it
all done. And this is why I'm talking about finding
(20:41):
that balance it and I'm going to be the first
to say it's a never ending pursuit for me, and
I keep trying to go back and retune and fine
tune who I am so I can continually get a
better balance. Because I don't know about the rest of
you out there, but the way that I am wired
(21:03):
is I am constantly feeling this pressure to produce, and
if I don't produce, I feel unfulfilled. And I feel
like there's a time clock. I don't know about the
rest of you guys out there, I feel like there's
this time clock that's constantly running and it's always it's
(21:23):
never running up, it's never increasing in time, it's always decreasing.
And if any of the rest of you out there
feel that, then you're gonna really relate with what I'm
talking about and what I'm what I'm trying to do
to manage all of those things in my life. So
because I'm doing all of the editing, because I'm doing
(21:44):
all of these things, it makes me realize that I
have to continually reassess who I am and how I'm
doing it because do I do reals? I do e TikTok?
Do I do YouTube? You know? And that does beg
(22:06):
the question because people asking, hey, Jason, why don't YouTube
as much? Well, a couple of reasons. A. It usually
takes me at least three or four days to release
to edit a full YouTube video, like especially if it's
like eight to twelve minutes, which is what most people like.
Most of my long term. Longtime fans really like the
longer form versions of YouTube videos. However, the current trends
(22:30):
are simple. The current trends are we just want, you know,
something quick, something easy, fifteen seconds, shorts, reels, TikTok's right.
And that's where as a business person, I have to
ask myself if I and this is just being straight
up with you guys, and if you guys are listening
(22:52):
to this. The place that I am by far the
most active is Instagram because I can do all of
it on one platform. I can do you know, I
can do the longer form videos, I can do the
short videos, and I can post pictures and I can
update my stories. I think it's the one reason why
(23:13):
that platform is so popular is because of that. But
it just as a business person, is it creative? You
have to ask yourself if it takes me through or
four days output a YouTube video and I get five
thousand views on it? Right? Ten thousand views? I used
to get a lot more views on YouTube. But now
and this not just me, it's tons of other YouTubers.
(23:36):
What happened well, we went from having YouTube as one
platform where pretty much everybody devoured their content toward now
just like anything else. It is spread out all over
the map. I mean it is just so spread out, Hulu,
Disney Plus, Amazon, Netflix, I mean, it's just everywhere. I
(23:57):
was listening the other day because you know, Matthew Perry died,
right and I was listening to the other day on
somebody talking on the radio about the fact that you know,
some of the higher like they average like twenty five
thirty million view viewers on a Friend's episode back in
the day. Now the most highly rated sitcoms are lucky
(24:18):
to get ten million. Same thing. The last episode of
Friends apparently got like fifty some odd million views or viewers,
you know. And now you're not even cracking even the
Super Bowl, well maybe the Super Bowl. I don't have
the stats sitting in front of me. But the point
is our attention has been spread so thin by having
(24:42):
so many different options, and I'm just as guilty as
anybody for this. I'll be sitting on my on my
iPad or my computer working on editing, and you know,
if I'm border who, Okay, I'm going to I'm going
to you know, Disney Plus, or then I'm going to Netflix.
So then I'm going to Amazon Primer, then I'm going
to sling or then whatever it may be, we just
hop around. So what I'm getting at is when I
(25:05):
work for three or four days on a YouTube video
and it may get five thousand views, ten thousand views.
But I can go on to Instagram and I can
upload a fifteen to thirty second real and I will
get forty fifty one hundred thousand views. Just as a
business person, Where's that ROI? And to be candid with you,
the only reason I still produce YouTube videos is because
(25:26):
of the allegiance that I feel to those of you
out there who have followed me for so long. It's
that loyalty to you. And I mean that sincerely, because
if I didn't feel that that level of loyalty, there's
just not the numbers there to do it. And that's
something I have to continually ask myself, is where's that
(25:49):
ROI for me? You know, I just had a real
go over five million views on Instagram. Well, I've been
on YouTube forever. I've had several videos go over million views.
I've never had any of my videos do five million views.
I think I have one that's done four million views.
But I just said one of the rules of a
girl setting of us setting a tire and fire in Australia.
(26:13):
Five million views on Instagram. So and if you heard that,
that's my neck cracking and I'm not going to edit
it out. Love you guys, but we're doing straight form
straight talk here. So this is you and I sitting
down just chat. But yeah, I mean so, if you're
listening to this and you are a YouTube follower of mine,
(26:34):
I'm going to really advise you and just implore you
to make sure to check out the Instagram because you're
going to see so many more updates on there. But
because of that allegiance that I do feel to the
YouTubers out there, I will still be continuing to publish
on YouTube, I promise. Then then it makes me wonder
do I do weddings, Do I do commercial work? Do
(26:56):
I do workshops? Do I? And where do I fit
my podcast into all of this? Because I travel so much,
I live off of podcasts, and as I listen to
these podcasts, trust me, every time I turn one on,
I'm like, Uh, you gotta do yours, dude, you got
to do it. And this is how I'm going to
(27:18):
try and find time to do it. And I'll say
one more thing. If you guys are listening to this,
Contrary to popular belief, money doesn't just fly in the
windows for content creators myself included. I know it may
think you may think it me. You may it may
be this perception out there, but it is a freaking grind.
(27:41):
So if you're watching the videos, watching the looking at
the pictures, listening to the podcast, if you want me
and other content creators to continue to do it, you
guys have to share the stuff, or you have to
come to some workshops or do something. I had some
I had some guy in one of my recent videos say, man,
you know I would like to YouTube on or a
(28:05):
YouTube video that doesn't have rotalight in it. And I
get it. But at the same time, I'm like, wait
a minute. So I produced all these videos for free,
and I wrote him and I wasn't I mean, this
is public comments. I wasn't, you know, privately, But I said,
when's the last time you signed up for my Patreon
or you came to a workshop or you attended an event?
(28:29):
When have you done anything to support the channel? And
I don't say that to be ungrateful, but guys, myself
and other content creators. We aren't rich, and we don't
have trust funds. And you may look at a Logan
Paul or Jake Paul or any of the other guys
out there that's not us. Those guys there's a reason
(28:55):
they're boxing there, not even youtubing. They can make far
more money boxing than YouTube. The point I'm getting at
is be patient with content creators. It's not easy. There's
no guaranteed paycheck, there's nothing, So we're constantly trying to
find something to pay the bills and to keep the
lights on while still pursuing our craft. So I say
(29:19):
that in humility, I really do. If you want myself
and other content creators to continue to create content that
you consume, try to find a way to support those
content creators. And I thank you for any of you
out there listening, because many of you have. I thank
you for those who have attended the workshops and done
(29:39):
those things, because that's what makes all of this possible.
Oh yeah, in the middle of all this, Ever since
twenty twenty two, this damn world has exploded, absolutely exploded,
and our leaders, which seem to all be che children,
(30:00):
are doing their absolute best to continue to keep it chaotic.
So that's the other frustrating part is, you know, all
of us are trying to deal with inflation and COVID
and unemployment and all this. You know, rigormarole and our
leaders just don't want the world to settle down. So
(30:22):
it seems they always do the opposite of what would
actually pacify and you know, make people happy, stay out
of our lives. So that's always been, you know, another
destabilizing force in my life, and I'm sure it is
in all of yours as well. All Right, See, these
(30:44):
are my five steps how do we find the balance? Okay?
Number one setting priorities, And these are my five steps.
These are the things that I try to employ in
my life and I hope they help, I really do.
Number one is setting priorities. First, what pays if you
(31:06):
are doing you any type of workout there, there either
has to be a financial or a personal benefit to you.
The financial benefit is obvious. In other words, you're charging
for a shoot, it's helping to pay your car payment,
your mortgage, your electricity, whatever it is that works. You
have to prioritize that work because you have to meet
a baseline of financial obligations to be able to continue
(31:29):
to produce, right, So you always focus on the paid
work first, but after that, what fulfills you personally as
well as an artist? What is gratifying to you as
a creative, and what is what is something that you
could use for marketing purposes? What is something that you
could use for your portfolio, things of that nature. Because
(31:54):
when people ask me how do you make money, it's
exactly what I'm showing you. It's by doing the combination
between you know, weddings and workshops and events and sponsored
work and commercial work. It's a it's a combination of
all of those things. And by the way, guys still
doing my Patreon. You guys can sign up for my
Patreon and that would be a big help. You can
(32:15):
learn how I edit and do all of that. I
can critique your work. I'm still doing it. I've been
doing that Patreon channel for five years now, or even longer.
I think, whatever it is, but finding out finding a
way to keep the lights on at home, that's that's
number one. Setting those setting those priorities. Okay, so before
(32:37):
you run out and do a bunch of work, and
I'm just gonna say, if this is going to be
Jason Lenairn filtered, then it has to be unfiltered. I
love shooting models, but you guys out there because it's
mostly guys listening, and if there's girls listening, this message
goes out to you as well. You will go broke
(32:58):
paying models for personal shoots. You will go absolutely effinge broke.
You got to stop, and I had stopped because you know,
you're paying for props A lot of times, you're paying
for outfits. Then you're paying for locations, and before you
(33:19):
know what, you're one thousand dollars deep into a shoot
that may not have any financial return. You could be
two thousand dollars deep into it. But whatever it is,
whatever the the you know the parameters are, the variables
are for that shoot. So you have to be very
careful as to what you do with your time and
(33:42):
money when you're shooting. Because I know what it is.
We have all these visions, but ask yourself, when you're
setting up a shoot, where's the ROI on this? Because
if you don't do that, you will run out of funds,
you will run out of time, you will run out
of everything, and you will not be able to continue
to do what you want to do. So there has
to be an ROI for these shoots, and you have
(34:07):
to set priorities and if you don't, you're you're not
gonna be able to sustain it. I promise you won't.
Setting boundaries, okay, learning no, learning when to say no,
And this has been my biggest struggle and it's something
that I have improved at significantly. You know, I'm very
(34:30):
polite and respectful when I when I decline to shoot
or do to shoot. But guys, unless the shoot's going
to really benefit you back to that last one personally
or financially, don't do it. You're wasting your time. So
you have to set boundaries with others around you to
where there really has to be a benefit. Okay, unless,
(34:54):
like I have people pitch me stuff all the time
and I'm like and I'm not like, no, I think
that's a horrible idea, even though sometimes I'm thinking that
it's just like no, that that's not going to benefit
me at all. Now I don't say that to them.
I'll say, oh, you know, thanks, I'd love to do it,
but I just can't do that right now. You have
to learn to set those boundaries. You know. I had
(35:15):
a model worked with me, and I did, I'm not
gonna say the exact shoot. I don't again I want to.
I'm trying to be careful. I don't want to. I
don't want to purposely call out people. But you know,
I did a shoot and this goes back to the
boundaries setting the you know. And she's like, one, are
the shots going to be done? And I said this month. Well,
(35:36):
then she started seeing me post other shots that she
had followed me closely enough to know that the other
shots that I was posting had been taken after I
did her shoot, and she reached out to me and
she says, hey, man, what's what's you posting these other
work and these other shoots and these other people have
gotten their shots but I haven't. I said, well, they
paid you and I did a TF. She goes, well,
(35:59):
I don't think there should be any difference between paid
work and the TF work, you know, collaborative work TF
many time for. And I wrote back and I said,
you really can't see why I would prioritize paid work
over a free shoot that we did. And I said this,
and I was pretty much verbatim. Now, I said, if
(36:21):
you don't see the difference, then you're going to have
a very difficult time running your own business because I
know for a fact that models prioritize paid work over
collaborative work nearly all of the time. Unless they really
want my shots. The models that really want my shots,
then they'll they'll prioritize collaborative work. But I can't in
(36:44):
good conscience be posting and editing to get back to
you setting these these balances. I can't in good conscience
take money from somebody and then be working on a
collaborative shoot before I return work that was paid for.
That's absurd and against. This individual was just trying to
(37:04):
apply pressure. And when people applied pressure, I said, look,
I told you it would be this month. I still
have ten days in this month. And that leads me
into number three. Setting timelines. The most important thing that
you can do, and that I have been doing, is
setting appropriate timelines, telling people when you are going to
give them their work, and then abiding by those timelines.
(37:27):
If you don't do that, you are just making sure
this is still recording. It is right, good job. Don't
want to be sitting here talking to a wall and
it doesn't record. That would make me want to blow
my brains out. But even when I just shot the
wedding down in Portugal earlier this month, they asked one
of the pictures to be done. Again, that's a paid shoot,
(37:49):
it's a wedding, it's very important. I was honest with
them and I said, I will get you the images
this month, because I looked at the timeframe and I
looked at the commitments that I had travel wise, produce,
seen videos for the road light and over Pro three campaign,
all of it, and I had to look at the time.
I'm gonna say, this is a reasonable time frame. I
can get you the images this month. And so yesterday
(38:11):
they reached out. They said, hey, it's the thirtieth were
of the shots. And I said, it's funny because they
are actually done. I finished them last night because I
was aware of that timeline. And so they got their
images yesterday and they loved them. And if you see it,
that's the image that's posted on my Instagram. But that's
very important. And so when this model was pushing me
(38:31):
for images, I said, look, I told you they would
be done this month, and they were, and well they
will be And now I have since given the images
to that individual. But setting those timelines and then not
letting people bully you, okay, because it's a lot. It's
a lot for us as photographers, because not only do
(38:54):
we have the shoot time that we have to do
with the model or the client, but we also have
all the work on the back end. When they go
home and they're relaxing, we're you know, we're sitting out
of computer editing for a long time. This model actually
said to me, I don't see why this is such
(39:14):
a big deal, and this just shows you the lack
of understanding. She said, instead of them just sitting on
your card, you could free up a card and just
send me the shots. Now, if you guys are listening
to this, which clearly you are obviously, that made me
laugh to no end because I'm thinking, what planet are
(39:35):
you on? Number one, do you think that it's been
two weeks since we shot? Do you think that? And
by the way, yeah, this was only two weeks since
the shoot. By the way, it wasn't like it's been
two months. And do you think I'm just gonna leave
work that I did on a card. No, I've already
imported the images. I've already created a light room catalog
for the images. But I'm not going to output work
(39:57):
to you that i'm not happy with because then you
post it and it has my name on it. No thanks,
I'll pass. And there's no big rush in these images.
There's nothing time. It's not even like a wedding or
an ad campaign or something. These are just shots that
you want. I get it, you want my shots. I'm
grateful that you do. But don't allow yourself to be
(40:20):
bullied guys, and don't. And if you set appropriate timelines,
you can help push back when you are getting manipulated
or bullied. On top of that, one rule that I
have is I never tell a model how many images
I take or client because if and a lot of
(40:43):
times they will ask, oh my gosh, how many images
have you taken today? I'll just say, oh, we've got
a lot, or we're doing good, or oh my gosh,
we we have a lot of great ones. I never say, oh,
I've taken one four hundred and fifty seven shots. They
don't need to know that because then when I deliver
or you know, however many half of that, a quarter
(41:04):
of that, because I'm not going to deliver tons of duplicates,
tons of this, tons of that, flash not firing. Whatever
it may be, right, I'm not going to deliver. I'm
not going to deliver those shots. So if you tell
them the image count, you're only setting yourself up to
get punished. Don't do it. Do not do it. Just
simply say here, you know, here are the eighty nine shots.
(41:27):
I'm just making these numbers up. But you guys get
my point, you know, and be done with it. The
other thing with setting timelines is I've gotten much better
forced myself to not procrastinate. And this goes back to
some of the stuff I said earlier. But because as
can be expected, some of the personal projects, the insane
(41:53):
stuff that I'm shooting, because I would artistically prefer to
edit in the past, I would edit those, and then
I would just the stuff that I was forced to
edit maybe you know, ad campaign or whatever it may
be right, because I have to edit those because there's
(42:15):
paying clients there. I would save that until the end,
and then I would feel this tremendous amount of pressure.
And so I've become much better at pro at not
procrastinating the work that has to get done. And again
this goes back to finding those balances, and so now
I forced myself to do the non fun work. Even
though I love all of my clients. I love everybody,
don't get me wrong. But you know, if I'm you know, shooting,
(42:39):
I'm just making this up. But if I'm shooting a
product shots for a soda Can, that's not as exciting
as shooting something with big fireworks going off and somebody
in an amazing outfit with amazing light and you get
my point, right, But I'm going to force myself to take,
you know, take those product shots of the soda can,
edit those, get those done so then I can I
reward myself by finish the work that I have to
(43:01):
get done, and then the reward is then I get
to start working on the work that is really fun
to edit. So that goes back to setting those timelines.
Managing workflow is number four. That's the fourth step, learning
to be even more efficient, and this podcast is an
example of that, right Like, if I'm going to produce podcasts,
(43:25):
my lifestyle is too crazy, there's no way I'm going
to be able to get it all done. I have
to find ways to be more efficient. It's one of
the reasons why I film almost everything that I have
on iPhones Again, back to the tiktoks, the rills, the instagrams,
the stories. It's so much more efficient for me to
film that stuff on an iPhone that I can air
(43:45):
drop to my other phones, airdrop to my computer, or
just freaking upload right to Instagram or TikTok or whatever
it may be. That's a much more efficient way to
produce my work. Well, again, here I am recording this
podcast on my iPhone because now all I'm gonna do
is air drop it, over load it up into the
podcast platform that I utilize, and it's going to go
out there into the ether ether, right right right out
(44:06):
there into the universe. So understand that. Understand that learning
to be flexible and look for ways to be more
efficient that work with your lifestyle, because if you don't
do that, you're you're just not going to produce the work.
(44:28):
And that's something I've I've had to get a lot
better at. I've had to really find ways to be
more efficient while I'm on the road because I do
love traveling. That's why I do what I do. And
the fifth step, the fifth step is setting time for recovery. Okay,
you're not going to have balance if you don't allow
(44:48):
yourself time to recover. And you know I mentioned some
of this earlier. I feeling this pressure to produce. I've
become much better. Anybody who's traveled with me in the
past will know that I would put off sleeping, I
would put off everything to get work done. And I'm okay,
(45:11):
like I said earlier, Like I said earlier, I'm okay
not going out and partying. It's not part of my life.
I don't fulfilled. I don't feel fulfilled by it. I
have no need to go and do this other stupid stuff.
I really don't. But one thing I have become much
better at, and it's really helped me to have much
better balance in my life, is I become much better
(45:31):
at learning to rest. Now rest for me. If someone
sat down and said, hey, just sit down and watch
a movie with me, Okay, if it's somebody I love,
I can sit there and do that. That's a different reason.
But just me sitting here in this Airbnb, turn around
the TV, I might as well be editing to me.
I'm totally okay doing that. It doesn't feel like a burden. However,
(45:52):
I have become much better at when I'm tired and
it's time for bed, I go to bed. I no
longer punish myself by staying up all night. I just
don't do it. And the other thing that I became
much better at is when I'm dealing with jet lag,
which I deal with a lot. I've been again, I've
just I've been in seven different countries in the last
(46:14):
five six weeks alone. It takes a toll on the
body to figure out where you are. And if you're
not giving your body time and your brain time to recover,
you're not going to be your best you. And today's
a great example of that. I had a rough night
sleeping last night for some reason, can't explain why. I
actually had a really weird dream, really weird ass dream.
I'm not gonna lie, not that we need to get
(46:35):
into people's dreams, but my son Jason and I were
going somewhere and people were chasing us and trying to
kill us. It was a weird dream. I woke up
and I didn't really get back to bed. And in
the past, I would have just forced myself to stay
awake all day, but today I didn't. About four hours later,
you know, I got up started working. About four hours later,
(46:56):
I said, just time for a nap, and I was shocked. Dude,
I slept. I took like a two hour nap wild
and as I was laying down, I said, you know, Jason,
it's okay. Rest ued, It's okay, man, it's okay. You're
not out partying, You're not out wasting money or wasting time.
You're allowing your body and your mind and your soul
to recover. That's been really big for me, and that
(47:18):
that's really led to a lot better balance in my life.
And I've also set a part time to get work
done while I am on the road, which is huge
for me because it used to be in the past
that I would go somewhere and I would do some events.
Because the reason i'm up here Niagara Falls is I
just did two events in Toronto. And another piece of
(47:41):
the balance is I hate staying in big cities now.
When I was in London, New York, all of these
places that I've been very recently, if it's a big city,
I don't want any part of it. I'll go and
shoot in it and then get out. But I don't
want to stay in it. I don't want to deal
with traffic. I don't want to deal with fifty dollars
parking and no parking spots and people smashing your car
and all of it. I just don't want to deal
(48:01):
with any of it. When I was in Lisbon, I
had an uber attacker drive me, an Uber driver attack me,
and just crazy stuff like I got to get to
all these podcasts tell you guys about all these crazy
experiences because it's wild. But this is about these steps.
But that goes into it as well. I feel a
(48:23):
lot more peace and this recovery time. I allow myself
this recovery time by staying out of the cities, not
hearing the hustle and bustle, and allowing myself time to breathe.
And I always tell people my life is crazy enough.
I don't need it crazy when it's to my time
to decompress. And so here I am at this airbnb.
(48:44):
It's quiet, there's nobody making noise. I couldn't be happier,
could not be happier, and that's important. And I did
my two events yesterday in the day before, and now
I have two days here sitting down and just editing
before I fly home, because in the past I would
just fly home the very next day. To me that's
too much. I'm just moving my body too many places
(49:08):
too quickly. There's no time to recover, and there's no
time to breathe. And that's why that's last step. Time
for recovery is so important in my life. And then
the final piece of that would be, of course, making
sure that I find time to be a home so
I can give to those who I love and make
(49:31):
sure that I'm fulfilling my commitments on that end as well,
because you only have one chance to be a dad,
and you only have one chance to get it right,
and that is by far the most important thing to
me in this world. So I hope you guys have
(49:54):
enjoyed this podcast, and luckily, I think that I have
a decent enough gift a gab to be able to
make this not too painful without edits. But I'm glad
I've been able to do this, and I'm glad I've
been able to record this, And now that I've finished
(50:17):
this first podcast in this format, I think I'm going
to continue doing it because I really like the way
that it's turned out. Having not even listened seeing it previously,
I would listen to all this and tweak it before
I wouldn't release it, and I'm not gonna do it anymore.
I'm just gonna listen to it. I'm not even gonna
listen to it. See Jason, that's me going into that
crazy mode again. I'm just gonna air drop it over
(50:39):
to my computer, upload it, and be done. So. I
love you, guys, I'm grateful for you. I really appreciate
everything that you've done for me over these long, many
years of us being together, either in person or on
the road, and I thank you from the bottom of
my heart. And if you feel so inclined to help
(51:02):
support what I'm doing by me by coming to a
workshop or Patreon or any of these other things, I
would truly appreciate it, and I thank you in advance
for that. And we're gonna be do just some really
cool stuff in twenty twenty four and I can't wait
to see you there. So until next time, keep shooting,
never give up on your dreams, find the right gear
(51:23):
that works for you, and remember you really do only
have one chance to get it right. I'll talk to
you guys later.
Speaker 2 (51:28):
Bye.
Speaker 3 (52:00):
M Gold gold gold, gold goldings, go lead good strings,
(52:27):
goas a gold rings
A little Oh my gosh, guys, it has been so long.
Welcome to my podcast, Jason Lanier Unfiltered. This is episode
twenty nine, Finding Balance. I'm going to give you five
steps for making a crazy and hectic life work for you,
(00:22):
and I'm trying to take it from my personal experience.
I'm gonna let you guys know right now that part
of my steps, one of the steps I should say
in making this work is I'm going to record this
podcast and I'm not going to edit out any of
the flubs or the mistakes that I make with my speech,
(00:44):
because quite frankly, that's why it takes so long for
me to put out another podcast. The perfectionist that is
inside of me stops me from releasing more videos, doing
more podcasts, because I just have to have everything as
perfect as possibly be and as I as I you know,
go around the country or the world and I'm listening
(01:06):
to other podcasts, and you know, I listen to some
that are really, you know, professionally done, like Dateline NBC
for example. You know, listen to those and they're they're
obviously they have a huge team, so they should sound
very professional, and it's I definitely want my podcast to
sound professional, but at the same time, I don't have
(01:28):
a huge team, and part of me finding this balance
in order to even produce more podcasts or more videos
with the crazy life that I live, it means I
have to let go of some of those things. It
doesn't mean I'm lowering my standards. What it means is
I'm doing what I can to produce work because I
either output a podcast like this or I don't output
(01:51):
one at all. And so I figure that, you know,
putting out something is a lot better than just not
putting out anything. So I just wanted to to preface
this podcast by letting you know, if you hear any
coughs or sneezes or snubs or snubs, yea, that's what
I'm talking about. Normally I would I would edit that
out because I just misspoke. I meant to say flubs
(02:12):
or whatever whatever you want to call it. Today, my
lovely Friends is Halloween. It's my favorite holiday. It's Halloween
twenty twenty three. I looked on my podcast you know
whatever do you call it, the podcast platform that I
utilized and say I would have edited all of that out.
(02:35):
I looked and saw that I last released one on
November first of twenty twenty two, and I was like, damn,
it's it's been a long ass time. So this podcast
is going to get you guys up to date on
a lot of the stuff that I've been up to.
But really it's going to focus on finding balance because
it's been you know, my life is always crazy, and
(02:58):
you know, it just is the way that it is.
I have so many stories that I could fill two
million podcasts, and I think that is why I'm trying
to approach this podcast of mine and to start doing
it again, but in a more frequent manner. So as
we sit, or as I sit because there's nobody else here.
(03:20):
I am in Niagara Falls. I love Niagara Falls, but
I'm in Niagara Falls on my Airbnb and I'm recording
this on my phone and the phone is sitting in
my front pocket on my chest, and I'm just going
to speak. It's the first time I've actually done a
podcast where I'm not setting up all my professional equipment
(03:41):
or I'm more importantly, nine point nine times out of ten,
I'm doing it out of the studio of my home,
and I'm just that's just not a reality for me.
I'm too nomadic. I'm too much on the road. So
in the past year that I have been out and about,
it's definitely been a long time together or a long
(04:01):
time apart, I should say, I've done quite a bit.
And this is episode twenty nine, by the way, in
that time that we have not been able to chat,
it's been crazy. I've done. It's hard, and I apologize
(04:23):
if I'm starting to stop me because again that's part
of my personality that stops me from doing the podcast
or many of the projects that you're about to hear
about that I've been working on. The reason you haven't
seen them is that perfectionist inside of me that doesn't
want to release something until it's exactly the way that
I want it. And as a result, there's many projects
(04:45):
that just don't get released. Ask anybody who's worked with
me for any amount of time. There's just so many
projects that I work on, and that's part of that
compulsion that I feel. It'll be constantly moving. And that's
why I'm talking about finding that balance, and I'm talking
about the things that I've done to really to really
try to help rain myself in if you will, and
(05:06):
I'm going to talk about how you know, everything that
we do when this life comes at a cost. Where
we spend our time, where we spend our money, where
we spend our resources. You know, either positively or negatively,
everything comes at a cost. So we're going to talk
about that. But in that time, I've done an epic journey.
I went down to I've run from the cartels, I've
(05:28):
run with the cartels. I've done an eight country journey
where I allowed myself to be human trafficked. And I'm
not exaggerating when I say that, And I've filmed all
of this, and the stuff that I have is, in
my opinion, groundbreaking. I don't know anyone else in the
(05:50):
world who's ever done what I've done where I allowed
myself to be trafficked like all the other folks who
come up from South America to the United States. It
was one of the most dangerous, jarring experiences of my life,
running through the jungles, getting chased by people with guns
(06:13):
and machetes and seeing murders and bribes and is wild,
absolutely wild, to say the least. And the footage and
the stuff that I have from that is just as
I sit here and my brain is scanning and thinking
(06:34):
of all of the things that I saw and I experienced,
it's incredible. We're talking about going through Ecuador, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico,
the United States. It's it's just mind blowing walking the
border and wade is Mexico the murder capital of the world,
(06:56):
and having on the Mexican side and watching the Mexicans,
the National Guard or the police force, whatever it may be,
on the Mexican side of the border, telling me you
need to get out of here. You're going to get killed.
Just this kind of stuff that I've been up to guys,
is mind blowing. And again it's that perfectionist in me.
(07:18):
I don't want to release this stuff on YouTube because
I feel it's better than that, and I'm not trying
to denigrate YouTube, but this is really effing awesome stuff
that nobody else has the balls to do. Honestly, I
did this with no security, no producers, nothing, And even
(07:40):
now as I reminisce and think about this experience, it
blows my mind. And I don't know if I would
do it again. I probably would, but I don't know
if I would do it again now that I know
that what I've been through, it's just unbelievable. So there's that.
(08:02):
It's quite an experience and uh wow, yeah, even I
just so many stories I can tell you guys, just
from that alone, could feel ten podcasts. So in the
year we've been a part, I've done that. I've been
down to Italy and Ireland and Scotland for some incredible
(08:23):
workshops and trips and epic journeys, castles and all sorts
of just insane stuff. I've been to Niagara Falls three
times and again that's where I'm recording this podcast from
right now. I've been hanging off boats in South Florida
my buddy Steven and I you know, he cut his
(08:43):
foot open and he tried to make his boat not crash.
He tried, so he jumped off the boat. I know
I'm jumping around here with these topics, but I'm just
trying to give you guys a quick, quick, quick recap
of what I've been up to. And I know I'm
skipping at least eighty percent of the stuff I've done,
mind you, But we're out there doing planning, photo shoots
(09:04):
and stuff, and he's going to crash his brand new boat.
The boat swerving on to the side. He jumps out
barefoot because it's going to hit the rocks. He slashes
his foot open and there's blood all over the thing.
And I'm calling him Dexter because it's got the boat,
it's Floorida. There's blood all over the bottom of the boat.
That was quite an experience. But we're shooting models. I'm
(09:26):
going to well, it's just crazy. There's just so much.
I moved. That was another huge thing that happened for me.
I moved for the first time in over a decade,
over a dozen years probably, and I moved my sons
out of their home that they've been in honestly since
(09:46):
they're about eight years old, seven years old even, And
that's a really hard thing to do, to take your
children who have lived in that home, been in that
home for their entire life that they can pretty much
remember because we all know that, you know, a lot
of our memories kick on about five, six, seven years old.
(10:08):
So that was hard, and that's something that I had
to help. I had to take pretty much all of
the summer off to help facilitate that, but not only
the actual physical move, but actually being there for my
sons and helping them with getting new jobs and just
being there as a dad, and I took I didn't
work for three months professionally because I was working as
(10:32):
a dad, and had I not done that, I don't
think the transition would have occurred the way that it
has occurred. And it's been successful and I'm very grateful
and I love my sons, but that was that was
a life a life changing event, especially for them. And
so me taking that time again to cost, I had
(10:53):
to realize that I couldn't just move and say hey,
we're doing this deal with it. As a dad, I
owe than more than that, and so I knew that
would come at a cost professionally, but I was prepared
to pay that cost professionally because I didn't want to
pay the cost personally and hurt my sons. So it
(11:15):
was a great move. We did a lot of really
fun stuff and again there's I could fill ten podcasts
again with that. But that was quite an experience. I've
gone to Australia in that time. I went back to Australia.
I did my makeup workshops that I had. That's the
other thing is I've been doing these makeup workshops from
COVID and that's been a backbreaker. I'm not gonna lie.
And for anybody who's been in one of my workshops
(11:37):
that was a makeup for the COVID year, you know,
I love you and I am beyond grateful to have
seen you this year. But that was also very hard
professionally for me to go back and make up some
of these workshops that had lingered all the way from COVID. God,
I hate that damn word COVID. I know the rest
of you out there must hate it as well, but
(11:59):
good Lord, finally releasing the shackles and getting those makeup
workshops done has been big for me as well. That's
a lot. It's a lot to go back and do
these workshops of places that were supposed to happen in
twenty twenty. So you know, that takes a toll financially,
it takes a toll personally from time and money to
(12:22):
go back and do some of these things. But it
was the right thing to do because I had an
obligation to fulfill and I'm glad that I did it.
But again, that takes time and money and again finding
that balance. I mean, I just again that could feel
more volumes I was in Sydney and I drove all
(12:43):
the way instead of flying from Sydney to Melbourne. That's
something I've been doing a lot recently. I've been driving
more because I'm so sick of airports. I hate them.
And so I had about ten days between my Sydney
and Melbourne workshop and I went to the outback and
then I have a really crazy story of losing my
drone in the outback, you know where there's like, you know,
(13:07):
really awful snakes and other stuff. I had kangaros jumping
in front of my cars. I lost the drone and
I'd go find it at ten pm at night in
the outback using my roto lights. It's pretty funny unless
you know you're there in the moment. I wasn't laughing
about it. It's funny. I even recorded some videos even
saying this is when if I had a model with me,
she would kill me right now. That's when the models
(13:27):
want to murder me. So if you ever wonder, it's
not the model that would disappear on any of these trips,
it's me. The model would murder me on these trips
because some of the stuff I get myself into. They
just want to go back to there being be the
hotel whatever. And you know, I'm losing drones and doing
stuff that prolongs the agony of what I'm out there doing,
(13:48):
and that's when they want to just that's when they're
done with me, just to be fair. So I mean,
I watched the sky flaff as Motorcycle. I just, oh
my gosh, the stuff that again another one ten episodes.
And that's why I'm trying to get back to a form.
I'm trying to not get back. I'm trying to start
(14:09):
a format. Or I can sit there and just record
this like I am on my phone right now and
upload it so I can be a lot more consistent
with the podcast and the other work that I'm producing.
And I hope, I hope you guys are enjoying this.
I hope it's beneficial to you. In that time, I've
gone down to Spain, I've gone to Portugal and shot
(14:30):
a wedding and by the way, I shot that as
a real wedding workshop. The dad, the father of the bride,
showed up, showed up. He came to my workshop in England.
He's a photographer and he's like, yo, man, I would
love for you to shoot my daughter's wedding. We turned
it into a real wedding workshop. So if any of
you are listening out there, dude, I'm open for business.
(14:51):
If you want me to shoot your child's wedding, your wedding,
whatever it is, hit me up. I love doing them.
Lots of fun and I had great time down to Portugal.
Then I went back to England. I shot some incredible
estates with my buddy Paul and and man have I
met some crazy models along the way. I've met some
(15:13):
amazing ones, but I've met some crazy ones. So just
to be fair, you know, I try to, you know,
always be very positive. But I'm going to start to
share some stories of some of the crazy stuff that's
gone on because I think it will be beneficial for
all of you other out of you guys out there.
(15:33):
I had my buddy Steve reach out to me just
a couple of days ago, and I'll just leave it
at that. I'm not gonna say where he is and
who he is, blah blah blah, just to protect his
identity a little bit. But he sends me a screenshot
of a model that that he and I both know,
and she says, or somebody says, I'm just gonna try
(15:56):
to be vague because people do know one another, but hey,
if you want the model to show up on time,
you should pay them. Apparently this is a TF shoot
and this person said they're going to be an hour late,
and I said, no, dude, you got You're out. You
got to be out of that situation. If somebody isn't
going to respect your time, then you don't need to
(16:21):
be there. You don't need to shoot them. And that
that annoys me to no end because if you agree
to be someplace, be there on time, and you know
I was, I was having fun with them. I'm like, well,
you know that's like that's like you're saying, if you
want the shots to be in focused, pay me. You know,
if you want me to edit the pictures, pay me.
I mean it's ridiculous. But again, I can I can
(16:42):
go on and on and on, but I just wanted
to to say that I'm going to start to try
and share some of the stories with models, photographers, clients
that I work with and try to be you know,
anonymous to an extent to where I don't, you know,
I embarrass people, but but just share some of the
might might feedback on some of the things that you
(17:02):
could do when you are dealing with these other crazy
entities on earth called human beings, men and women. But
when I was in England, for example, I was shooting
with a dog and my buddy Paul is a dog trainer,
and we shot with a dog. We shot some old
(17:25):
disused as they say, we don't use that term in
the United States, but but it's kind of a that
that word disused is in between being abandoned and being
you know, just a wreck. But what these properties are
is they're they're properties that are used by the government
(17:45):
or BBC or the police for training purposes, but there's nobody.
There's no longer anyone occupying the buildings and so that
they're not like abandoned like people go in and destroy them,
which is cool, but they're abandoned as that nobody's living
in and or using them. So we got to go
do some really cool shoots in these with models and
police dog, which was super fun. I can't wait to
(18:07):
shore those with you guys. And oh yeah, I've on
the down low. I've been doing a really top secret
project with a really historic place in New Orleans. And yeah,
if you guys have followed me long enough. I was
arrested there. I've been doing a really really cool ass
(18:28):
project and doing some insane shoots in New Orleans at
my favorite place on Earth to shoot, big place, lots
of things to do, been busted there before. And yeah,
wait till you see the work I've been doing there
out out of the ballpark. It'll blow your mind. It's
(18:50):
exciting stuff. You'll see that very soon. And I'm I
think we're the NDA's ending on that. So hopefully I'll
be able to share a lot of that stuff with
you guys coming up. But be on the lookout for that.
It's gonna be coming soon. So and yeah, so that's
legendary stuff. And contrary to popular belief by some out there,
(19:12):
I have no team. So what does that mean. I
do all the logistics. I do the editing, I do
all of the planning. I do all the meetups, I
do all the communications. I do all of the booking
Delta dot com, Marriott dot com, Airbnb dot com, peer
Space dot com. I do all the office work. I
(19:33):
edit all of my own videos, and I edit all
of my own pictures. And I pause because it is
a lot and I'm a kind of guy who's all
in or all out, and I'm okay being all in.
But the cost that I pay is that I have
nothing else in my life other than my family. But
(19:56):
I have nothing else in my life that I do,
and I'm okay doing that. I'm okay, and I'm prepared
to pay that cost because I don't need to go
drink at a bar or go to a strip club.
To me, when I do those things, I'm wasting my life.
I don't unless it's with somebody special to me, Like
(20:18):
if you say, hey, let's go to a ball game, Okay,
if I'm going with my sons. Other than that, I
have no interest. So this the very successful people in
life typically don't have a lot of other things going
on because there's just not enough time to get it
all done. And this is why I'm talking about finding
(20:41):
that balance it and I'm going to be the first
to say it's a never ending pursuit for me, and
I keep trying to go back and retune and fine
tune who I am so I can continually get a
better balance. Because I don't know about the rest of
you out there, but the way that I am wired
(21:03):
is I am constantly feeling this pressure to produce, and
if I don't produce, I feel unfulfilled. And I feel
like there's a time clock. I don't know about the
rest of you guys out there, I feel like there's
this time clock that's constantly running and it's always it's
(21:23):
never running up, it's never increasing in time, it's always decreasing.
And if any of the rest of you out there
feel that, then you're gonna really relate with what I'm
talking about and what I'm what I'm trying to do
to manage all of those things in my life. So
because I'm doing all of the editing, because I'm doing
(21:44):
all of these things, it makes me realize that I
have to continually reassess who I am and how I'm
doing it because do I do reals? I do e TikTok?
Do I do YouTube? You know? And that does beg
(22:06):
the question because people asking, hey, Jason, why don't YouTube
as much? Well, a couple of reasons. A. It usually
takes me at least three or four days to release
to edit a full YouTube video, like especially if it's
like eight to twelve minutes, which is what most people like.
Most of my long term. Longtime fans really like the
longer form versions of YouTube videos. However, the current trends
(22:30):
are simple. The current trends are we just want, you know,
something quick, something easy, fifteen seconds, shorts, reels, TikTok's right.
And that's where as a business person, I have to
ask myself if I and this is just being straight
up with you guys, and if you guys are listening
(22:52):
to this. The place that I am by far the
most active is Instagram because I can do all of
it on one platform. I can do you know, I
can do the longer form videos, I can do the
short videos, and I can post pictures and I can
update my stories. I think it's the one reason why
(23:13):
that platform is so popular is because of that. But
it just as a business person, is it creative? You
have to ask yourself if it takes me through or
four days output a YouTube video and I get five
thousand views on it? Right? Ten thousand views? I used
to get a lot more views on YouTube. But now
and this not just me, it's tons of other YouTubers.
(23:36):
What happened well, we went from having YouTube as one
platform where pretty much everybody devoured their content toward now
just like anything else. It is spread out all over
the map. I mean it is just so spread out, Hulu,
Disney Plus, Amazon, Netflix, I mean, it's just everywhere. I
(23:57):
was listening the other day because you know, Matthew Perry died,
right and I was listening to the other day on
somebody talking on the radio about the fact that you know,
some of the higher like they average like twenty five
thirty million view viewers on a Friend's episode back in
the day. Now the most highly rated sitcoms are lucky
(24:18):
to get ten million. Same thing. The last episode of
Friends apparently got like fifty some odd million views or viewers,
you know. And now you're not even cracking even the
Super Bowl, well maybe the Super Bowl. I don't have
the stats sitting in front of me. But the point
is our attention has been spread so thin by having
(24:42):
so many different options, and I'm just as guilty as
anybody for this. I'll be sitting on my on my
iPad or my computer working on editing, and you know,
if I'm border who, Okay, I'm going to I'm going
to you know, Disney Plus, or then I'm going to Netflix.
So then I'm going to Amazon Primer, then I'm going
to sling or then whatever it may be, we just
hop around. So what I'm getting at is when I
(25:05):
work for three or four days on a YouTube video
and it may get five thousand views, ten thousand views.
But I can go on to Instagram and I can
upload a fifteen to thirty second real and I will
get forty fifty one hundred thousand views. Just as a
business person, Where's that ROI? And to be candid with you,
the only reason I still produce YouTube videos is because
(25:26):
of the allegiance that I feel to those of you
out there who have followed me for so long. It's
that loyalty to you. And I mean that sincerely, because
if I didn't feel that that level of loyalty, there's
just not the numbers there to do it. And that's
something I have to continually ask myself, is where's that
(25:49):
ROI for me? You know, I just had a real
go over five million views on Instagram. Well, I've been
on YouTube forever. I've had several videos go over million views.
I've never had any of my videos do five million views.
I think I have one that's done four million views.
But I just said one of the rules of a
girl setting of us setting a tire and fire in Australia.
(26:13):
Five million views on Instagram. So and if you heard that,
that's my neck cracking and I'm not going to edit
it out. Love you guys, but we're doing straight form
straight talk here. So this is you and I sitting
down just chat. But yeah, I mean so, if you're
listening to this and you are a YouTube follower of mine,
(26:34):
I'm going to really advise you and just implore you
to make sure to check out the Instagram because you're
going to see so many more updates on there. But
because of that allegiance that I do feel to the
YouTubers out there, I will still be continuing to publish
on YouTube, I promise. Then then it makes me wonder
do I do weddings, Do I do commercial work? Do
(26:56):
I do workshops? Do I? And where do I fit
my podcast into all of this? Because I travel so much,
I live off of podcasts, and as I listen to
these podcasts, trust me, every time I turn one on,
I'm like, Uh, you gotta do yours, dude, you got
to do it. And this is how I'm going to
(27:18):
try and find time to do it. And I'll say
one more thing. If you guys are listening to this,
Contrary to popular belief, money doesn't just fly in the
windows for content creators myself included. I know it may
think you may think it me. You may it may
be this perception out there, but it is a freaking grind.
(27:41):
So if you're watching the videos, watching the looking at
the pictures, listening to the podcast, if you want me
and other content creators to continue to do it, you
guys have to share the stuff, or you have to
come to some workshops or do something. I had some
I had some guy in one of my recent videos say, man,
you know I would like to YouTube on or a
(28:05):
YouTube video that doesn't have rotalight in it. And I
get it. But at the same time, I'm like, wait
a minute. So I produced all these videos for free,
and I wrote him and I wasn't I mean, this
is public comments. I wasn't, you know, privately, But I said,
when's the last time you signed up for my Patreon
or you came to a workshop or you attended an event?
(28:29):
When have you done anything to support the channel? And
I don't say that to be ungrateful, but guys, myself
and other content creators. We aren't rich, and we don't
have trust funds. And you may look at a Logan
Paul or Jake Paul or any of the other guys
out there that's not us. Those guys there's a reason
(28:55):
they're boxing there, not even youtubing. They can make far
more money boxing than YouTube. The point I'm getting at
is be patient with content creators. It's not easy. There's
no guaranteed paycheck, there's nothing, So we're constantly trying to
find something to pay the bills and to keep the
lights on while still pursuing our craft. So I say
(29:19):
that in humility, I really do. If you want myself
and other content creators to continue to create content that
you consume, try to find a way to support those
content creators. And I thank you for any of you
out there listening, because many of you have. I thank
you for those who have attended the workshops and done
(29:39):
those things, because that's what makes all of this possible.
Oh yeah, in the middle of all this, Ever since
twenty twenty two, this damn world has exploded, absolutely exploded,
and our leaders, which seem to all be che children,
(30:00):
are doing their absolute best to continue to keep it chaotic.
So that's the other frustrating part is, you know, all
of us are trying to deal with inflation and COVID
and unemployment and all this. You know, rigormarole and our
leaders just don't want the world to settle down. So
(30:22):
it seems they always do the opposite of what would
actually pacify and you know, make people happy, stay out
of our lives. So that's always been, you know, another
destabilizing force in my life, and I'm sure it is
in all of yours as well. All Right, See, these
(30:44):
are my five steps how do we find the balance? Okay?
Number one setting priorities, And these are my five steps.
These are the things that I try to employ in
my life and I hope they help, I really do.
Number one is setting priorities. First, what pays if you
(31:06):
are doing you any type of workout there, there either
has to be a financial or a personal benefit to you.
The financial benefit is obvious. In other words, you're charging
for a shoot, it's helping to pay your car payment,
your mortgage, your electricity, whatever it is that works. You
have to prioritize that work because you have to meet
a baseline of financial obligations to be able to continue
(31:29):
to produce, right, So you always focus on the paid
work first, but after that, what fulfills you personally as
well as an artist? What is gratifying to you as
a creative, and what is what is something that you
could use for marketing purposes? What is something that you
could use for your portfolio, things of that nature. Because
(31:54):
when people ask me how do you make money, it's
exactly what I'm showing you. It's by doing the combination
between you know, weddings and workshops and events and sponsored
work and commercial work. It's a it's a combination of
all of those things. And by the way, guys still
doing my Patreon. You guys can sign up for my
Patreon and that would be a big help. You can
(32:15):
learn how I edit and do all of that. I
can critique your work. I'm still doing it. I've been
doing that Patreon channel for five years now, or even longer.
I think, whatever it is, but finding out finding a
way to keep the lights on at home, that's that's
number one. Setting those setting those priorities. Okay, so before
(32:37):
you run out and do a bunch of work, and
I'm just gonna say, if this is going to be
Jason Lenairn filtered, then it has to be unfiltered. I
love shooting models, but you guys out there because it's
mostly guys listening, and if there's girls listening, this message
goes out to you as well. You will go broke
(32:58):
paying models for personal shoots. You will go absolutely effinge broke.
You got to stop, and I had stopped because you know,
you're paying for props A lot of times, you're paying
for outfits. Then you're paying for locations, and before you
(33:19):
know what, you're one thousand dollars deep into a shoot
that may not have any financial return. You could be
two thousand dollars deep into it. But whatever it is,
whatever the the you know the parameters are, the variables
are for that shoot. So you have to be very
careful as to what you do with your time and
(33:42):
money when you're shooting. Because I know what it is.
We have all these visions, but ask yourself, when you're
setting up a shoot, where's the ROI on this? Because
if you don't do that, you will run out of funds,
you will run out of time, you will run out
of everything, and you will not be able to continue
to do what you want to do. So there has
to be an ROI for these shoots, and you have
(34:07):
to set priorities and if you don't, you're you're not
gonna be able to sustain it. I promise you won't.
Setting boundaries, okay, learning no, learning when to say no,
And this has been my biggest struggle and it's something
that I have improved at significantly. You know, I'm very
(34:30):
polite and respectful when I when I decline to shoot
or do to shoot. But guys, unless the shoot's going
to really benefit you back to that last one personally
or financially, don't do it. You're wasting your time. So
you have to set boundaries with others around you to
where there really has to be a benefit. Okay, unless,
(34:54):
like I have people pitch me stuff all the time
and I'm like and I'm not like, no, I think
that's a horrible idea, even though sometimes I'm thinking that
it's just like no, that that's not going to benefit
me at all. Now I don't say that to them.
I'll say, oh, you know, thanks, I'd love to do it,
but I just can't do that right now. You have
to learn to set those boundaries. You know. I had
(35:15):
a model worked with me, and I did, I'm not
gonna say the exact shoot. I don't again I want to.
I'm trying to be careful. I don't want to. I
don't want to purposely call out people. But you know,
I did a shoot and this goes back to the
boundaries setting the you know. And she's like, one, are
the shots going to be done? And I said this month. Well,
(35:36):
then she started seeing me post other shots that she
had followed me closely enough to know that the other
shots that I was posting had been taken after I
did her shoot, and she reached out to me and
she says, hey, man, what's what's you posting these other
work and these other shoots and these other people have
gotten their shots but I haven't. I said, well, they
paid you and I did a TF. She goes, well,
(35:59):
I don't think there should be any difference between paid
work and the TF work, you know, collaborative work TF
many time for. And I wrote back and I said,
you really can't see why I would prioritize paid work
over a free shoot that we did. And I said this,
and I was pretty much verbatim. Now, I said, if
(36:21):
you don't see the difference, then you're going to have
a very difficult time running your own business because I
know for a fact that models prioritize paid work over
collaborative work nearly all of the time. Unless they really
want my shots. The models that really want my shots,
then they'll they'll prioritize collaborative work. But I can't in
(36:44):
good conscience be posting and editing to get back to
you setting these these balances. I can't in good conscience
take money from somebody and then be working on a
collaborative shoot before I return work that was paid for.
That's absurd and against. This individual was just trying to
(37:04):
apply pressure. And when people applied pressure, I said, look,
I told you it would be this month. I still
have ten days in this month. And that leads me
into number three. Setting timelines. The most important thing that
you can do, and that I have been doing, is
setting appropriate timelines, telling people when you are going to
give them their work, and then abiding by those timelines.
(37:27):
If you don't do that, you are just making sure
this is still recording. It is right, good job. Don't
want to be sitting here talking to a wall and
it doesn't record. That would make me want to blow
my brains out. But even when I just shot the
wedding down in Portugal earlier this month, they asked one
of the pictures to be done. Again, that's a paid shoot,
(37:49):
it's a wedding, it's very important. I was honest with
them and I said, I will get you the images
this month, because I looked at the timeframe and I
looked at the commitments that I had travel wise, produce,
seen videos for the road light and over Pro three campaign,
all of it, and I had to look at the time.
I'm gonna say, this is a reasonable time frame. I
can get you the images this month. And so yesterday
(38:11):
they reached out. They said, hey, it's the thirtieth were
of the shots. And I said, it's funny because they
are actually done. I finished them last night because I
was aware of that timeline. And so they got their
images yesterday and they loved them. And if you see it,
that's the image that's posted on my Instagram. But that's
very important. And so when this model was pushing me
(38:31):
for images, I said, look, I told you they would
be done this month, and they were, and well they
will be And now I have since given the images
to that individual. But setting those timelines and then not
letting people bully you, okay, because it's a lot. It's
a lot for us as photographers, because not only do
(38:54):
we have the shoot time that we have to do
with the model or the client, but we also have
all the work on the back end. When they go
home and they're relaxing, we're you know, we're sitting out
of computer editing for a long time. This model actually
said to me, I don't see why this is such
(39:14):
a big deal, and this just shows you the lack
of understanding. She said, instead of them just sitting on
your card, you could free up a card and just
send me the shots. Now, if you guys are listening
to this, which clearly you are obviously, that made me
laugh to no end because I'm thinking, what planet are
(39:35):
you on? Number one, do you think that it's been
two weeks since we shot? Do you think that? And
by the way, yeah, this was only two weeks since
the shoot. By the way, it wasn't like it's been
two months. And do you think I'm just gonna leave
work that I did on a card. No, I've already
imported the images. I've already created a light room catalog
for the images. But I'm not going to output work
(39:57):
to you that i'm not happy with because then you
post it and it has my name on it. No thanks,
I'll pass. And there's no big rush in these images.
There's nothing time. It's not even like a wedding or
an ad campaign or something. These are just shots that
you want. I get it, you want my shots. I'm
grateful that you do. But don't allow yourself to be
(40:20):
bullied guys, and don't. And if you set appropriate timelines,
you can help push back when you are getting manipulated
or bullied. On top of that, one rule that I
have is I never tell a model how many images
I take or client because if and a lot of
(40:43):
times they will ask, oh my gosh, how many images
have you taken today? I'll just say, oh, we've got
a lot, or we're doing good, or oh my gosh,
we we have a lot of great ones. I never say, oh,
I've taken one four hundred and fifty seven shots. They
don't need to know that because then when I deliver
or you know, however many half of that, a quarter
(41:04):
of that, because I'm not going to deliver tons of duplicates,
tons of this, tons of that, flash not firing. Whatever
it may be, right, I'm not going to deliver. I'm
not going to deliver those shots. So if you tell
them the image count, you're only setting yourself up to
get punished. Don't do it. Do not do it. Just
simply say here, you know, here are the eighty nine shots.
(41:27):
I'm just making these numbers up. But you guys get
my point, you know, and be done with it. The
other thing with setting timelines is I've gotten much better
forced myself to not procrastinate. And this goes back to
some of the stuff I said earlier. But because as
can be expected, some of the personal projects, the insane
(41:53):
stuff that I'm shooting, because I would artistically prefer to
edit in the past, I would edit those, and then
I would just the stuff that I was forced to
edit maybe you know, ad campaign or whatever it may
be right, because I have to edit those because there's
(42:15):
paying clients there. I would save that until the end,
and then I would feel this tremendous amount of pressure.
And so I've become much better at pro at not
procrastinating the work that has to get done. And again
this goes back to finding those balances, and so now
I forced myself to do the non fun work. Even
though I love all of my clients. I love everybody,
don't get me wrong. But you know, if I'm you know, shooting,
(42:39):
I'm just making this up. But if I'm shooting a
product shots for a soda Can, that's not as exciting
as shooting something with big fireworks going off and somebody
in an amazing outfit with amazing light and you get
my point, right, But I'm going to force myself to take,
you know, take those product shots of the soda can,
edit those, get those done so then I can I
reward myself by finish the work that I have to
(43:01):
get done, and then the reward is then I get
to start working on the work that is really fun
to edit. So that goes back to setting those timelines.
Managing workflow is number four. That's the fourth step, learning
to be even more efficient, and this podcast is an
example of that, right Like, if I'm going to produce podcasts,
(43:25):
my lifestyle is too crazy, there's no way I'm going
to be able to get it all done. I have
to find ways to be more efficient. It's one of
the reasons why I film almost everything that I have
on iPhones Again, back to the tiktoks, the rills, the instagrams,
the stories. It's so much more efficient for me to
film that stuff on an iPhone that I can air
(43:45):
drop to my other phones, airdrop to my computer, or
just freaking upload right to Instagram or TikTok or whatever
it may be. That's a much more efficient way to
produce my work. Well, again, here I am recording this
podcast on my iPhone because now all I'm gonna do
is air drop it, over load it up into the
podcast platform that I utilize, and it's going to go
out there into the ether ether, right right right out
(44:06):
there into the universe. So understand that. Understand that learning
to be flexible and look for ways to be more
efficient that work with your lifestyle, because if you don't
do that, you're you're just not going to produce the work.
(44:28):
And that's something I've I've had to get a lot
better at. I've had to really find ways to be
more efficient while I'm on the road because I do
love traveling. That's why I do what I do. And
the fifth step, the fifth step is setting time for recovery. Okay,
you're not going to have balance if you don't allow
(44:48):
yourself time to recover. And you know I mentioned some
of this earlier. I feeling this pressure to produce. I've
become much better. Anybody who's traveled with me in the
past will know that I would put off sleeping, I
would put off everything to get work done. And I'm okay,
(45:11):
like I said earlier, Like I said earlier, I'm okay
not going out and partying. It's not part of my life.
I don't fulfilled. I don't feel fulfilled by it. I
have no need to go and do this other stupid stuff.
I really don't. But one thing I have become much
better at, and it's really helped me to have much
better balance in my life, is I become much better
(45:31):
at learning to rest. Now rest for me. If someone
sat down and said, hey, just sit down and watch
a movie with me, Okay, if it's somebody I love,
I can sit there and do that. That's a different reason.
But just me sitting here in this Airbnb, turn around
the TV, I might as well be editing to me.
I'm totally okay doing that. It doesn't feel like a burden. However,
(45:52):
I have become much better at when I'm tired and
it's time for bed, I go to bed. I no
longer punish myself by staying up all night. I just
don't do it. And the other thing that I became
much better at is when I'm dealing with jet lag,
which I deal with a lot. I've been again, I've
just I've been in seven different countries in the last
(46:14):
five six weeks alone. It takes a toll on the
body to figure out where you are. And if you're
not giving your body time and your brain time to recover,
you're not going to be your best you. And today's
a great example of that. I had a rough night
sleeping last night for some reason, can't explain why. I
actually had a really weird dream, really weird ass dream.
I'm not gonna lie, not that we need to get
(46:35):
into people's dreams, but my son Jason and I were
going somewhere and people were chasing us and trying to
kill us. It was a weird dream. I woke up
and I didn't really get back to bed. And in
the past, I would have just forced myself to stay
awake all day, but today I didn't. About four hours later,
you know, I got up started working. About four hours later,
(46:56):
I said, just time for a nap, and I was shocked. Dude,
I slept. I took like a two hour nap wild
and as I was laying down, I said, you know, Jason,
it's okay. Rest ued, It's okay, man, it's okay. You're
not out partying, You're not out wasting money or wasting time.
You're allowing your body and your mind and your soul
to recover. That's been really big for me, and that
(47:18):
that's really led to a lot better balance in my life.
And I've also set a part time to get work
done while I am on the road, which is huge
for me because it used to be in the past
that I would go somewhere and I would do some events.
Because the reason i'm up here Niagara Falls is I
just did two events in Toronto. And another piece of
(47:41):
the balance is I hate staying in big cities now.
When I was in London, New York, all of these
places that I've been very recently, if it's a big city,
I don't want any part of it. I'll go and
shoot in it and then get out. But I don't
want to stay in it. I don't want to deal
with traffic. I don't want to deal with fifty dollars
parking and no parking spots and people smashing your car
and all of it. I just don't want to deal
(48:01):
with any of it. When I was in Lisbon, I
had an uber attacker drive me, an Uber driver attack me,
and just crazy stuff like I got to get to
all these podcasts tell you guys about all these crazy
experiences because it's wild. But this is about these steps.
But that goes into it as well. I feel a
(48:23):
lot more peace and this recovery time. I allow myself
this recovery time by staying out of the cities, not
hearing the hustle and bustle, and allowing myself time to breathe.
And I always tell people my life is crazy enough.
I don't need it crazy when it's to my time
to decompress. And so here I am at this airbnb.
(48:44):
It's quiet, there's nobody making noise. I couldn't be happier,
could not be happier, and that's important. And I did
my two events yesterday in the day before, and now
I have two days here sitting down and just editing
before I fly home, because in the past I would
just fly home the very next day. To me that's
too much. I'm just moving my body too many places
(49:08):
too quickly. There's no time to recover, and there's no
time to breathe. And that's why that's last step. Time
for recovery is so important in my life. And then
the final piece of that would be, of course, making
sure that I find time to be a home so
I can give to those who I love and make
(49:31):
sure that I'm fulfilling my commitments on that end as well,
because you only have one chance to be a dad,
and you only have one chance to get it right,
and that is by far the most important thing to
me in this world. So I hope you guys have
(49:54):
enjoyed this podcast, and luckily, I think that I have
a decent enough gift a gab to be able to
make this not too painful without edits. But I'm glad
I've been able to do this, and I'm glad I've
been able to record this, And now that I've finished
(50:17):
this first podcast in this format, I think I'm going
to continue doing it because I really like the way
that it's turned out. Having not even listened seeing it previously,
I would listen to all this and tweak it before
I wouldn't release it, and I'm not gonna do it anymore.
I'm just gonna listen to it. I'm not even gonna
listen to it. See Jason, that's me going into that
crazy mode again. I'm just gonna air drop it over
(50:39):
to my computer, upload it, and be done. So. I
love you, guys, I'm grateful for you. I really appreciate
everything that you've done for me over these long, many
years of us being together, either in person or on
the road, and I thank you from the bottom of
my heart. And if you feel so inclined to help
(51:02):
support what I'm doing by me by coming to a
workshop or Patreon or any of these other things, I
would truly appreciate it, and I thank you in advance
for that. And we're gonna be do just some really
cool stuff in twenty twenty four and I can't wait
to see you there. So until next time, keep shooting,
never give up on your dreams, find the right gear
(51:23):
that works for you, and remember you really do only
have one chance to get it right. I'll talk to
you guys later.
Speaker 2 (51:28):
Bye.
Speaker 3 (52:00):
M Gold gold gold, gold goldings, go lead good strings,
(52:27):
goas a gold rings
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