Taylor Shanton - Losing 40k, imposter syndrome, and the power of building a company as a freelancer.

In this weeks episode with Taylor Shanton, we talk about living with imposter syndrome and battling through self-doubt. Taylor shares his experience in scaling up and down multiple times with employees, and how to pay them well and distribute a workload when you're building out a post-production agency. 

Interested in coming on the show, or know someone who would be a good fit? Email us here - seth@sethlowephoto.com

Follow the show on Instagram - @thesolocreativepod

Transcript

Seth Lowe (00:00.75)
month past a haircut. Oh God, me too. This is why I'm wearing a hat. I've been, I'm so, so far, but I'm the beard cut, haircut, beard cut, all of it. Although compared to your beard, this is really, really nothing. I cut, I'll send you a picture. Actually, I might not. It's pretty gross, but I, um, I cut four and a half inches off or like three and a half inches off. Um, and, and then I took a picture of it and it was on the floor and it just looks like, you know, beard hair. And you're like, that's what I look like. I've sent it to like two people.

Well, this was like a month ago or two months ago, but I like sent it to two people and like both times they were like, oh wow, that's gross. You know, and I was like, yeah, I don't, I didn't really think about that. I should probably. Were your kids confused? They didn't, they like, who's that guy making out with their mom? No, because, because like the problem with beards is like, you cut a bunch off of it. And as long as you still leave enough to have a beard, you still look like the guy with the beard.

Seth Lowe (01:10.478)
All right, let me get a drink of water here and we'll do this. Stanley. Oh yeah. Did your wife get that for you? Probably. We have so many of them though. I'm actually like not embarrassed about that because I drink so much fucking water. It's not even funny. Like I drink like four or five of those a day and everyone's like, oh, you bring your Stanley. And I'm like, yeah, I mean, I will literally annoy waiters and I'll just be like, can I have some more water? Can I have some more water? It's just ridiculous. I just pound it. So.

Yeah, I drink a lot of water and my wife has the Stanley and I but I have like a I don't like a giant Yeti. I mean, it's like a giant. It's like a half gallon probably and my wife would always be like, yeah, he's always in the way. So now I just set the Yeti right next to her Stanley so she can't say anything because then there it's like, you know, a duo. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. We have them all over the place. Our kids like get them and they'll like fill it up with like an inch of water and then like tote it around. And I'm just like, OK, that's that's ridiculous. But you're four. So.

Yeah, that's how our kids are. So, all right, let's do this. All right. Hey, welcome to the solo creative. Today we're talking with Taylor Shantin. Taylor is a producer who is focused mostly on the post world and has been a good friend of mine for a long time. We've worked on some stuff together and so I'm really pumped to have him on the show today. How's it going, Taylor? It's going pretty good. Thanks for having me. I'm proud. This is one of those things that I think we what planned like four or five weeks ago and just kept pushing it because I got sick and yeah, we've and everything. So.

We've been happy to be here. Yeah, canceled and rearranged a lot, but here we are. Yeah. So for those of you or for people who don't know you, just give us a little like overview of your career path and you know, what's led you to post production and like, you know, being as kind of a producer in that realm. Yeah. So I've always kind of felt like and maybe this is a little too existential, but like I've always really felt like I'm I've never been like the creative that, you know,

the best at the creating of the art. And so that was something I got intimidated on when I was like pretty young and just like played music. And I just noticed that I really loved playing music, but I didn't care about it as much as like my friends did. And I didn't go home and practice, you know, it's just like, I was there for the fun parts, you know, but like, I didn't want to make it into a career and like dedicate music theory and all that kind of stuff. And so I kind of pivoted over to film and started making like music videos with friends and junior high and high school and you know, just kind of.

Seth Lowe (03:35.726)
any excuse to just be a part of the process and kind of make it all happen. And so at that time, you know, I always looked at that as like, oh, I have a bunch of DP friends and you know, I'm never going to be able to like compete with these guys who are making, you know, just like incredible frames with just like out even trying like we have the same equipment, but it just doesn't work. It just doesn't line up, you know, like to where I want it to be. And they just like, you know, breathe on and it's great. And so.

I kind of have always sort of followed around with the groups that I've been in and just kind of like been the person that finds the gaps and tries to learn the skill and fill it. And so that started out as like, you know, film for musicians. But then as it started to like turn into a career, it started turning into like, okay, cool. I can work with like musicians and bands at churches that I know. And, you know, maybe turn that in like to getting a job at the church. And then I would work at that church. And.

and then leave and then, you know, kind of do some agency stuff and, you know, and just kind of like always evolving and trying to figure out where there's a seat at the table that like could be filled well. And so in some ways, I think I just took 10 years to like define it as a producer, like somebody who likes to bring it all together. But, but yeah, so I mean, I started working with some mentors and stuff like early on in college. And when I finished college, moved back to California and worked with them.

a mentor of mine, Joel Stanton, who had an agency that he started up and we were just doing like video production and design and all that kind of stuff. And then they sold and I was freelancing and stuff and ended up moving out to Chicago after an incident on a set where I got run over by a car. And so we can get into more of that later if you want to talk about it. I don't know how intense that like part of my story is plotted for your.

for your podcast, but it's a part of it, so. Yeah, we'll figure how to work it in. God, I feel like I should maybe change the name of this show to like the I used to work at a church creative podcast or something. We all did, right? Yeah, at some point. I mean, in some ways that's the best part about like, oh, sorry, okay, well, I just. It's like the alternate film school almost. In some ways, that's a really sweet part of a lot of our stories where we like, we're surrounded by people that we trusted and you know, that trusted us and gave us like,

Seth Lowe (05:54.478)
more often than not, like unilateral freedom to do whatever the hell we wanted to. That's super awesome. But I think, yeah, there's definitely a frustration there. I remember when I left the last church I was at, I was really bummed at watching like all of the art leave the church. And yeah, I mean, at the time I've gone through a little bit more deconstruction of my faith and stuff. And I'm not like super gung -ho on a lot of that stuff culturally as like what churches look like in America. But I do think that, you know, the...

Fostering of like creative energy is something that I've always taken from the church as like worth investing in and worth kind of like dedicating yourself to whether that's a company you're building, a client that you're trying to tell a story, you know, like dedicating yourself to like figuring the creative out and like fostering an area of, not an area, fostering a like culture of progress and like, you know, going after the best story that you can find and you know, doing it well.

I think all that stuff was like, it's weird. I feel like there's a lot of really positive memories that I have there too. Yeah, I think an important takeaway for me is, and similar to if you go to film or photography school or whatever, I think more than sitting in a class or with a professor is the idea of being in sort of a place where you can flesh out ideas and be allowed to fail and take some risk and there aren't sort of the real world consequences of.

burning down the client's budget or you know what I mean? Like you can just try stuff and that's, I mean, for a lot of people, you know, church creative role is that it's an arena just to try ideas and explore ideas and you know, low, low risk, high reward sort of, you know, there's a little sandbox. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes. Yeah. It's, it's really just don't really know it's a sandbox when you're in it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're treated. Do you ever really know, you know, like,

when you're naive on the front end and then you like learn and figure it out. I don't think anybody ever really has it all figured out without, I mean, there's some people who are way more observant and smart than I am, but I feel like you experience things and learn from them and move on. I agree with that. I think one thing that's always stood out to me about you is that you've done such a good job of presenting yourself as like a business owner or like,

Seth Lowe (08:19.694)
you know, Shantin Films, I'm a post producer, I have a post production company, even if it's, you know, just been you and I know there's times where you've had employees and not, is that intentional or is it just the way your mind works? Yeah, I mean, I think in my like, you know, life where I'm filling gaps and kind of trying to find the places that I can be of value, you know, business has always been something that's come naturally to me.

at least maybe that's just like the idea of like protecting your ass, you know, but like learning about business and like strategy and kind of how to do it to where you can save, you know, your own back and all this stuff. Like it's always been very intriguing to me. My dad's a financial advisor. My mom had a professional practice in dental hygiene. So like there's a lot of professionalism that like both of my parents had. And then I was the kind of like artist kid that kind of screwed up and dropped out of college twice, you know, but.

But I think the ingrained part of it was like, you don't fuck around with things that can bury you, such as taxes and lawsuits and things like that. It's always been, and maybe this goes back to my accident stuff too, there's a lot of difficult things that come from just not thinking things through and I've always been afraid that like, oh yeah, I opened this business and I filed incorrectly or something and then boom, they're gonna take my house. There's always an element of.

protection that's a part of it, you know, but I do tend to find that like most of my friends when I was in, you know, early college and stuff, they weren't really thinking about how to monetize, you know, their skill sets. And for me, I was looking at it and was like, this is, I don't know where I'm going to be able to like afford to like have a family and all this stuff. And I don't think that the creative industry is necessarily the best industry for me to like go make a ton of money, but I got to do it because I can't, you know.

I can't be an accountant. I can't sit behind a desk all day. And there's an element of that where I could if I really had to and sacrifice and stuff. But when I was trying to make a decision on where I wanted to specialize as a human, it was really difficult to not look at film and wonder how is that going to actually get me to where we need to be. So business has been a part of it always. But I think the other part about it too is it's legitimizing. I was the youngest kid in the room for so long.

Seth Lowe (10:44.494)
every single time it's like, oh, well, I don't have that grade of a portfolio. I don't have this or I don't have that, you know, and it's like having a business kind of just legitimize me a little bit more when I was younger. And then, you know, I just kind of ran with it. Like it was just like one of those things you learn. You're like, okay, cool. So if we say we in emails, you know, people are going to be more accustomed to talking six figures, you know, and if we're not like, they're going to be like, what are you, you know, 500 bucks a day? Like, yeah, I would pay you 80 grand. So there's, there's a lot of that and just not having, um,

I've had a lot of mentors that have really, you know, exploded my like trajectory of where I could go and what I could do, but I didn't necessarily have like, you know, a partner or somebody that's like had 10 years more experience than me. So a lot of times it was just figuring it out as we went and just kind of like, okay, cool. If this client wants this, then I got to fix it in this way. And I can't assume I'm going to do a thousand hours of work every single week. So, you know, I got to build it out and find a team that can manage that. So.

Yeah, I think that also goes really hand in hand with what you said earlier about sort of covering your bases and having like your, you know, your business structured right, right? And your like legal stuff set up correctly so that you can take those risks and bring an employee and bring on a big client that doesn't bury you, you know, on the level of this mistake. Yeah. Evan said this on, I was on the podcast that I listened to most of the first one and I think half of the second one, but, um,

He said something where it's like, yeah, the big jobs actually are least profitable or the bigger the job, the higher the risk on your end of where it could bury you. And I think that's something I never was told. Definitely have figured out and definitely is worth passing on. Sometimes the fancy stuff is the worst. Sometimes the stuff that really everyone's jealous of doing, that you get to do is the stuff you're just like.

crying at night about, and just like might bury you and you're having like all these other clients kind of like basically cover the loss you're taking. And I don't know, I think that there's still a part of me that still wants to do that kind of stuff, because it's cool and it's fucking sick. There's also a part of me that would much rather have a lifestyle that I can kind of check out on the weekends and hang out with my family and invest in my.

Seth Lowe (13:07.886)
and all that kind of stuff and I haven't had a way to make those two like, you know, I don't know, symbiotic but I don't know if that's the right word. It's hard to like, merge those worlds and it's just weird. It's like very either or, you know? It feels like it, you know? It's like either you are working 80 hours a week, you know, and giving it everything or you're not and if you're not, you're lucky if you get it, you know? Yeah. Did you ever struggle with...

Imposter syndrome like early on you know and it's like we and you know you're like this 23 25 year old dude or whatever and you're you know you're it's just you or maybe you and like You know a contractor friend who's assistant editing for you? Was that was that hard for you? Do you just commit and go for it? Dude? I struggled with imposter syndrome this morning like Everyone struggles with that. I think that's the other part about it is like These facades that we build up of like who we are and like what we're capable of taking

It just is so less. It's always way less than everyone else can take. Like you can't, you assume that everyone's like, you know, just hitting aces and their home runs and just everything's a hundred percent all the time. It's nobody's like that. You see the best of the best, you know, and you're always comparing yourself and competing too, cause that's what, you know, the clients like to do is put us against each other and compete against each other. I think, um,

Imposter syndrome hasn't been something I struggled with when I was younger because I just was bullish and naive and arrogant honestly But I think that as I get more and more I don't know closer to the worlds that I want to be in like I do start to get that imposter syndrome because I see how much effort people put towards things I see how many you know hundreds and thousands of hours people will like

do something for free and just to like grind and grind until it pays off and you can't compete against that. You can't just get lucky and all of a sudden have 10 ,000 hours of experience in something. So I think there's a benefit to recognizing that everyone has that. Early on, I think, just to more answer your question, early on, I don't think I necessarily struggled with imposter syndrome as much as I struggled with...

Seth Lowe (15:23.886)
like self doubt, and just kind of like, am I good enough to do this? And I turned it for a really long year, for probably 10 years, really negatively internally, and so I had a very negative internal voice where I would just be like, you're not good enough, and that kind of, I would stress myself out, and I'd just have to push through it, and it just got exhausting to the point where I was realizing I don't need to talk.

negatively to myself about myself in order to pump me up to prove myself or you know, I just the cycle was very Detrimental so yeah, I I feel like a failure all the time or like I don't know it's I it's just easy to really be hard on yourself because you compare yourself and I think even Another challenge I have is maybe I'll be on a job and you know, a problem will be mine to solve or a responsibility of mine and sometimes I'll catch myself thinking like what would I?

someone, you know, maybe some creative eye look up to what would they do in the situation? And I have to remind myself, like, it doesn't matter. That's not their situation. They're not here. I need, it's my, my ownership and my, my thing to make the call on. And I need to step into the moment, not worried about what someone else would do or try to be them. I need to be me and do what got me here. But man, it's, it's a battle for sure internally. Yeah. Do you find it more often than the not like presenting itself on set or like in the moment with clients or do you find it?

in your off time, because I think I find the imposter syndrome way more when I'm trying to win a bid or, you know, like when I'm talking with clients, but I'm not necessarily like on set doing the work, you know, like in the moment I usually feel pretty good. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that. And that's usually just maybe the comfort of having people around you on set supporting everything, you know, like that that's hard to feel. But but I don't know. I mean, I've heard a lot of people like directors especially talk about that, you know, like where they feel really, you know.

isolated on set or whatever, but I've never had that. I've always been like at home, you know, like when I'm worried about where, you know, my career is going or something like it's never like attached to a project for me usually. Yeah. Likewise. It's usually not attached to a project. I mean, there's been moments for, you know, a project is maybe like an ongoing project has had those, those moments within it where you're like, okay, I got to get this across the line. Am I living up to the expectations that the client has?

Seth Lowe (17:47.534)
But yeah, there's you know, it's really easy for me to get into that sort of dark place in my head and just Really beat myself up. Yeah winter is really hard for me. Like the month of January is just like an emotional Like death trap for me like it's so hard. It's cuz you live up there dude. Yeah, I lived up in Chicago for a little bit and I didn't understand it and until like the third year and then like the third year I was like, oh

Yeah, it's like it's just a and then we left. Yeah. Yeah, it's my wife knows like I'll just I'll just like start an argument about stuff in January and she's like you just shut up It's winter and I'm like, I I know but it you don't understand like you don't understand what this does to me Yeah, yeah. No for sure. I I think that yeah, that's a big thing I haven't I've noticed it I've noticed seasons changing a lot around here. Like I've been craving summer for like, yeah since summer but I

I never really was like that as a person. I guess I grew up in Southern California, so the seasons didn't really exist or affect me until my mid -20s. But then once they started doing, once I started like understanding what seasons were, you know, like for a person who like lives through them day to day, I started loving winter and like, you know, the things I didn't have when I was younger. And now I'm just kind of like, nah, there's no benefit to winter. Let's get over.

You go snowboarding. Yeah. Vacations and stuff. But yeah, I would go to the snow for a couple of weeks. I think another thing that's helped me too is finding non film things that really require all of my attention. You know, like as much as I love watching movies, I almost can't even watch a movie because it's really easy for me to just like, oh, I'm going to check my social media or check an email or.

check an invoice to see if, you know, follow up with a client, why they haven't paid me yet, or maybe just, you know, check the profitability on that. You know what I mean? It's just really easy to let your mind wander. Like I have to get involved in things that just completely absorb me. Sometimes it's video games or like, you know, rock climbing or something, you know, just something that like I have to be so in the moment, you know, or weightlifting. I don't know. Those things help me a lot. Yeah, I am.

Seth Lowe (20:06.862)
I'm like a super addictive person. So I was drinking like 10, 12 cups of coffee a day, like without thinking, just brew a whole pot and it's like by two it's over. I like quit coffee just kind of sight unseen probably five years ago or so, I don't know, four or five years ago. And without, yeah, I know. I don't have, I mean, I drank coffee this last weekend too. So I'm kind of learning how to live with substances on like low levels, but I'm still pretty scared because,

With caffeine specifically, I wasn't really thinking and just kind of went to dinner one day and got a Dr. Pepper and was like, oh yeah, that's so good. And two months later, I had gained 20 pounds and I was out of nowhere, waking up at eight in the morning, pounding an entire Dr. Pepper. And I quit that and did that. It was two weeks of hallucinations and insomnia and stuff. And since then, I haven't gone back to caffeine.

But, and I also at the time was like 360 pounds and you know, have just kind of, now I'm like 219. So a lot of weight that's lost in the last like three years, but a lot of that's been around just trying to be healthier and not, you know, just going with whatever thing I've always done. You know, I'm drinking coffee and I was like 14 and it just got to an unhealthy level for me of like coping. And so I think the thing that you were talking about right before this, like having something to do with your hands and like,

that's not film related. For me, I think I've always viewed those as coping. Watching a movie, it's like, oh man, I just wanna forget about how stressful life is and I just wanna escape and then getting frustrated when I've seen a bunch of things and there's nothing that looks good. And then I get, you've always used that as more as a coping mechanism. And in the last couple months, I've definitely turned the corner on that and looked at like,

okay, what are some things that I can do to kind of like fill myself up before I feel like I need to cope? And that's one of those things that I've reframed recently and has been very, I don't know, helpful for me when I get frustrated. It was just kind of like thinking, okay, the reason that I'm feeling this way is because the last three days, what have I been doing to kind of like make sure that I'm not wasting away all my mental energy by eight o 'clock in the morning? Yeah, I know what you mean.

Seth Lowe (22:30.766)
So, you know, you're, you know, I've known you for quite a while and I've seen you kind of scale up and scale down different levels of employees. Um, at what point do you think someone who is, you know, interested in maybe more producing or like post producing, like you've done editing, they have that skillset. At what point should they start maybe outsourcing some of their work or scaling? Is it like a billing number? Uh, is it a type of client, a skillset? Like what, you know,

What do you, what did you do or what do you recommend to people? Oh man, it's so case by case. Like I feel hesitant really giving like a prescription, but I would say I've learned a couple lessons like over the course of my career and it almost always comes back to like, if you want to do better work, you need to do better work with better, like better people and just more people or not necessarily more, but if you want to level up, like I've learned that if I want to level up my, you know,

product that I'm giving to my clients, the best way to do that is to try and convince them to spend as much money as they can and then I can bring the highest level of talent on board. These are edge cases, they don't really ever happen. Maybe once or twice, I guess maybe like 10 % of the time, 5 % of the time, but for me at least, you're never really getting the client to say yes to everything.

But if they do, those are the ways where you can really kind of like scale your work up and reach into markets that like you can't by yourself. So I've always used that as a good metric. Like if I'm in a place where things are really safe, I tend to try and take a little bit of risks, you know? But then if you're building out something for the long term with a client, you know, and you're signing on for a year or some sort of.

Extended thing you want to make it as profitable and as easy as possible and not because of any other things other than month 11 It's gonna be pretty difficult to motivate yourself to do the same thing that you've been doing for 11 months so if you're Doing it all by yourself, and it's all you can do like and it's all of your bandwidth You know you're not going to be able to actually turn that into a company You just have a client so you have to kind of you know make smart decisions accordingly and sometimes those smart decisions are to just hedge the cash and just you know, I

Seth Lowe (24:45.902)
put the team on your back and just take it and do it. Other times it's, now let's spread it all apart, I'm gonna make a little bit less money, but it's gonna extend for a long time. I think that those are pretty case by case, but I would say betting on people, betting on myself was a big one. Knowing that if I do take the risk, I can rise to the occasion. That was something that really helped me with my confidence when I was younger. Now it's definitely the opposite because I don't want to make those risks that I took in my early 20s.

But, you know, betting on myself, betting on the people around me, and kind of like bringing in as much talent as you can is not going to hurt you. There's exceptions, obviously. You don't come in and kind of take it, and you don't want to just give talent, give projects to people with proven talent, because that's not necessarily, you know, the only way to do it. Like, you don't have to just always go hire Roger Deakins, you know, like, he probably wouldn't even take it. But the point being,

you know, you can't get certain levels of talent sometimes and it's not always appropriate, you know, but the more that you can kind of like do right by your client and not just like hedge the cash at all times, like the, that's going to be, you know, your way forward. I think it as a producer, you know, as somebody who's not necessarily the creator, you know, doing the, doing the creative stuff. How do you, in your mind, you know, maybe like, let's say you have a few clients and there's some that have like maybe like,

A level rates, like really high end commercial stuff. There's those B level clients and then those like C level. And these can all exist within the same client, A level work, B level, so on and so forth. You know, like commercial piece versus just some quick turn and burn social media content. How do you manage like creative expectations for yourself or employees, you know, and keep people excited or keep yourself excited?

when the work maybe isn't as exciting in that moment, but you know that it's healthy to maintain that client or take on a variety of, you know, levels of work. I don't know if this is exactly what you're wanting the answer, but I've always been a big fan of like, especially in my company where I had employees, like I always wanted to make sure that we were spreading the pain around equally and not like, oh, Taylor's the boss and he never has to deal with anything, you know, like. Yeah.

Seth Lowe (27:09.07)
or this person doesn't do motion graphics so they don't have to struggle through this with us. I think there's elements of projects that suck that everyone can kind of do. I think spreading the paint around as equally as possible is important, recognizing too, you kind of have to, at a certain level, start approaching this stuff like an owner and like a manager, and you have to start looking at your employees and seeing their strengths and weaknesses and doing all that project management shit. And I think we can lose sight of...

of the goal a lot of times, but I always just tried to be as flexible as possible with everything that doesn't matter and just kind of try and be like, hey guys, in the absence of all of that stuff, if shit happens, I need my team. I'm not putting you guys on salaries for it to all be up to me in the 11th hour on the worst time. So I think there's a mutuality that everyone's kind of fighting for the same thing. The other part about this is,

you gotta pay your people really well. That's always been my goal is to pay people more and better than I've ever been offered or expected from people. And so when they're not worth it, they're not worth it, but when they are worth it, you can capitalize on them tremendously. And that sort of like, I think is very important as a producer. You can't be making more than the people that are making you money. You need to be supporting these people and honestly making them like,

if you want to work with people in the creative industry, make them more money than they've ever been able to. Pay them so well that they're like, great. I don't have to feel leveraged or any of that. Everyone should get a piece. I know that to be true about you. I really know you've done that and I've seen you do that and that's awesome. Yeah, and it bites you in the ass too. I carried employees that I had...

more money than I ever thought I would in my bank account and none of it's there. So I carried employees for a year and I should have let them go when I knew that it was kinda gonna go down, which was about a minute after the conversation. But I didn't. I think other people too, weighing in on some of that kinda stuff, it's really difficult. I don't know, I'm not at all jealous of VCs who are kind of.

Seth Lowe (29:28.846)
you know, coaching businesses and like, you know, there's a lot of politics that go into like people and taking care of people and you know, I just, I think, I don't know, it's difficult, it's a lot of stress, there's a lot of ways to fuck it up, you know, and I think as long as you're focusing on the people and like, for me it was like, I want all my employees and like their kids and my kids, like I want us all to be at a barbecue together and I want it to just be like,

I trust you with my kids and you trust me with your kids and that's the kind of life I wanted to lead. So my decisions weren't always the most talented. I didn't get to always play with those things, but those are some of the structure that I had built out knowing where I wanted it to be. I wanted it to be sustainable and something where we worked with clients for a decade. AI comes in and just says, no. I think that's actually something that stood out to me kind of early about you is,

you are a systems builder. Like whether, I mean, you've explained things to me that are like so far over my head, but I know that you have like a system, you've built an amazing system and process. Do you think for you, that's almost like the creative, like the creative outlet is the building a process, not so much the work itself or you know, what you're making? No, I mean, and I say that because I think inherently, like I've always been the person that wasn't the most creative person in the room, but I've always been.

known that if I wasn't working in a creative field, like I would lose my mind. So creativity, art, the ability to move people emotionally, like spiritually, physically, like all of those things like have been, yeah, what I've been addicted to since I was 10, you know, just like seeing people respond to something.

that isn't necessarily like a conversation that we're having. It's like it's been made and it's been like intentionally put out there to communicate something and to relate with people. And so that's pretty hard for me to get rid of, but I think it doesn't manifest. I also think it's funny too, cause there's a lot of like super hyper creative people, quote unquote, you know, visual effects artists for instance, that are like, dude, you're way more into like...

Seth Lowe (31:44.558)
coding and tech than you are actually creating art. There's so much technical knowledge that you have to carry. I've noticed that too. I think there's a weird cultural shift on what creativity means in the last decade. I don't necessarily know how to define it, but I'm just trying to play with the words that are in my vocabulary. Do you outsource when you're like,

bringing on talent, whether it's hiring somebody or a contractor, do you find yourself outsourcing talent that has a skill you don't have at all? Or do you really try to build on what you already know? Like you're bringing in someone that can do something you can do so you can still speak to it. Or maybe they're better than you at it, but like at least you still know how to do the task or something like that, you know? So they're really just kind of leveraging what you already know. Like, do you separate those two things or?

Do you think about that at all? I do think about it. I think I try not well. And so I don't have any employees anymore. This has been about a year and a half now since I've like not shut down the company, but like we we gave up our office space almost a year ago. And that was about a year after things started making the business not profitable. You know, we had a long window because we were very smart with like saving and keeping cash and.

and not getting too high with our overhead. But we quadrupled in size in quarter one and then in quarter two basically went to nothing. And then three and four just like eight, the profits from the previous year. And so the ways that I did things then versus now are a little different because I don't want to carry W -2 salaries. I just don't wanna look at someone and tell them that their entire life has upended and they can't make any money anymore.

I just never again and I'm not gonna do it. So I mean, I might, but it has to be very clear on the front end that like it's not any forever thing, which is the opposite of what it used to be. And at the time I tried to make only like decisions on hiring based off of people and just like, is it the right person for, you know, like our group? Like, is there something that culturally, you know, like kind of drives the.

Seth Lowe (34:09.55)
the ball forward and then also skill like are they better than me at something? Is there an opportunity for them to specialize in something that I'm not as good at or something like that? And for a while I was the business owner that had a post house and nobody on my staff did anything with motion graphics. So I was the only one I had to design and animate everything. So I hated it. But I also knew that I could do it within the capacity that I had and kind of.

basically turn it into a mogurt and hand it back to my editors and make them finish it. So there was a path where it made sense and then I brought on a motion design, director of motion design and all that. And those sorts of decisions kind of were a little bit related to the type of work that I had, but they were kind of trying to round out, I couldn't have 20 employees, I couldn't afford that. And at 20 is where it felt like everything kind of could automate itself.

never could get there, so we were pre -automated, everyone was billable, so I didn't have any assistance. I mean, we had some loopholes and stuff where we, my wife and I were both employees so that we could have enough people to get a group health insurance plan in the early days and stuff, but whether or not that's even legal, I don't know. Now, I had a guy at the time that said it was legal, and so don't do that now without talking to some tax person. But, you know, like.

There's some of that kind of stuff, but everyone is billable and that was kind of the goal. And we hadn't gotten to the point yet where I felt like it made sense to bring somebody on for a producing role or something like that. We just weren't, we weren't busy enough in all honesty to, to where I felt like the ball was dropping. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, I think what you built, especially, you know, given your location and stuff is pretty incredible. I also got really lucky about that too. Like I never thought I was going to be in Greenville, you know, Greenville has been an incredible place to.

to build a company just affordability wise, like compared to Chicago or Southern California, my business probably wouldn't have gotten off the ground just because, I mean, I called, you know, Carrington was on your guys' podcast, but like we moved down to South Carolina. I called like two or three people that I hadn't, you know, talked to online and stuff like that, that I knew lived around. Carrington was one of them. We like grabbed coffee and I think probably like the next day I was like, yo, you want me to like.

Seth Lowe (36:29.422)
take over half your lease and like, let's do this together. And he was like, fuck yeah, let's do it. So, you know, there was a lot of like, and it was so cheap that it, for me at the time, it was like, dude, I could sign three of these, you know, and I'll still be making money, you know. You learn over, you know, how beneficial those things are on the backend. But at the time, you know, it made a lot of things happen. So. Yeah, I think about that a lot too, cause I'm in a smaller town and you know, initially getting started in a smaller town, I think is really hard.

because there's just not like a creative economy. But once you get rolling, you know, the cost of living is low and you can take more risk and acquire more gear, things like that. And it's actually really great. But the getting started part was really, really rough. Yeah, I will say I have such a weird difference on that where I came from, like I was, I remember I was like 20. No, I was probably, yeah, I was probably like 19 or 20, like.

freshman year of college and I was in Virginia and I was like running out of gas and I was like, oh, I'll stop by the gas station on the way back to my apartment, like just move there. It was like 1130 or something like that. And I just like, the gas station was closed and I ran out of gas and I couldn't get my car. And I was just like, what gas station? Like I had never met, I've never even like thought of or heard of a gas station closing. They just have always been 24 hour.

And that's just, you know, the product of where I grew up and like learned and stuff. So I definitely can see how difficult it would be because I've made probably like 20 grand in Greenville in like seven years. You know, I don't have any local clients. Like I don't, I don't know how to do that on a small market and like build a business, but I can know how to benefit from it. Like, you know, like work with people from San Francisco, you know, Los Angeles, Chicago, California, wherever. That's kind of my business model too. I have like,

one or two local clients, but it's definitely not my business model, because it's just the one thing that doesn't really exist when you're in a small area. Yeah, yeah, definitely. I'm going to kind of put you on a limb here. Do you mind? Well, I'm just curious, you know, I don't think there's like a hard and fast rule. How much when you hired your first employee, how much were you billing annually that you were like, OK, I can do this? Do you remember or are you willing to share?

Seth Lowe (38:53.326)
Dude, I, if, okay, so I advise nobody to do this because while it worked for me, I didn't understand, I really just didn't understand how risky I was being and how bullish and just like, to a certain level, like not smart with the resources that I was being given. I also felt like my back was up against the wall for a long time and I had like a seven or eight month dry spell like leading up to,

the first employee kind of situation. And so I was, you know, imposter syndrome to the neck. Like, you know, we were, our credit had dropped like a hundred points because we had like missed two car payments and I just didn't really know what those things meant. Like, you know, like I knew it was bad, but I just like, what am I going to do? I don't have the money, you know? And, you know, we worked along, it took, you know, on the back end of that, you know, it took four years for us to like get approved to buy a house and things like that. You know, like it's very.

very not recommended ways of doing things, but I just had a client that started just throwing me more money than I could ever imagine, and I realized that, I guess for me at the time, the only way that I could protect that client was by getting another. And the only way I could get another was by opening the work. So I had to say no to a lot of the profits that I was getting from it.

But then, I mean, and we're like two, three months in, you know, it's like 20 grand the first month, 30 grand the second month. Like we're not talking ridiculous amounts, but like for me at the time that was like 5X what I'd ever earned in a month. So, you know, I'm like looking at that kind of like trajectory and I'm like, okay, I really want to like make sure that this is something that I can bring into somebody, you know, maybe like 50 to 100, you know, 50 to 60 grand a year or something like that, you know, like relatively affordable within the range that I'm looking at, you know.

but also enough for me to get out of that client and start trying to get another one so that it's not as risky. And I hired two people actually. I hired Jordan Knott out of Chicago, which is one of the most ridiculous stories I've ever, you can't make this up. We lived in this rental house at this church that we were working at. It was like.

Seth Lowe (41:13.774)
half of market value that they were letting us pay and we had a pretty bad exit with the church and kind of just had to leave and stuff. But on the way out the door, I was like, I gotta make one more really good piece with my two friends, Lauren and Kyle. My wife was a roommate with Lauren and Kyle and I have matching tattoos because we're like that and we've known each other since fifth grade.

They're incredible musicians. I was like, let's make a music video. Shot it out at the like frozen pond behind the back of my house. And Jordan was like, dude, what are you doing in my backyard? And like messaged me on Instagram. I was like, nah, man. Like I thought I knew I met him when he went to Moody. So like I thought he was like, you know, lived in Chicago, not like out in the suburbs. And he was like, yeah, no, I like live like four houses down from you. And I was like, oh, wow, that's weird. I'm leaving. So we moved like that month. You know, that's funny. And then in about a year later, I was like,

posted on Instagram, was like, who wants a job? Who's looking for some work or whatever? And he was like, I'll do it, but I want a full -time job. I don't want part -time. And I was like, oh. That was the first time I'd ever heard somebody that was like, I don't want to do contract work. I just want a full -time job. And I started seeing the benefit of, well, if I pay him within this range, I can kind of guarantee that I'll have him for 40 hours a week. And that's actually super aggressively beneficial on my end.

kind of took the risk and then, and he needed a couple months to like move out to Greenville and hired another guy part time. And by the time he got here, we'd lost the clients. It didn't matter. And it was a shit. Yeah, it was really difficult for like eight months where it was like, Hey man, I really am so thankful for you to like move across the country and like sign a lease, like with nobody that you know, but like, I might not be able to pay you next week. And I, and it was literally that way for like,

eight months or so and I don't know why he stuck around, but he did and it was wild. It was so unhinged and so embarrassing when I think about it, how many times I had the conversation. And then also there wasn't much going on, so it's playing video games and stuff. We were just hanging as homies and stuff. It's just dumb. He's like your paid best friend. Yeah.

Seth Lowe (43:30.702)
I mean, and then we got some cool stuff and you know, like we started doing some like cool client work here and there and it opened up, but it was a, it was not, you know, like it was in every way the wrong decision. I shouldn't have hired him. Like that was too much risk for me as a business owner to ask of my employees without capital to support his salary. Like I just, in my head at least, I know it's probably not technically, but that's the way I view it. It's like, if I'm hiring someone, I don't have the capital in the bank account or like a very strong.

expectation of money, i .e. current contracts, not potential future, maybe make money. I think you're risking somebody's life. You just don't know until you know is kind of the crazy thing. I had an employee for maybe almost two years and she had produced some stuff for me as a freelancer and she was working at a small e -comm agency and didn't love her job and so she would just...

produce on the side or take time off or whatever. And I was like, hey, do you just wanna work for me? And she said, yeah, so I hired her. And it was, at the time I had like kind of one, I'd been freelancing for like two or three years and I had one kind of big local client. And in my head I was like, well, oh, I've only been in this for two or three years and if this is how it starts,

Well, obviously like I you know I need a lot of help for just this one client if I want this client to be the same mindset like if I want to be successful for this client I've got to have consistent help on my side so I can continue to add clients and get another or the you want to mean I just didn't want to be so tied to this one client so I hired her but you know, I just didn't realize that oh this is This is not how it always goes and this I'm already like at the top of my local economy like you know what I mean? This is how it started. It's gonna be amazing. I

So it's like, it's like, you're like, oh yeah, cool. Now I'm worth a thousand dollars an hour. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You convince somebody to pay you that doesn't mean you can. Yeah. And she, she was awesome, but then there'd be like a couple of slow months and you know, I quickly realized like, Oh, I have to give her something to do or otherwise I'm just like paying her to do nothing, which sucks. And you know, that, that part just killed me and I, yeah, I just hated it. I mean, she was awesome, but I, the, the figuring out what to tell someone to do.

Seth Lowe (45:55.47)
part is like the hardest, you know. So I learned a lot, you know, she, you know, did other things, like she'd help me with my accounting or email marketing or whatever, you know, whatever I was trying to do. But yeah, it's, it's, it was a funny kind of start. And I, you know, now I wouldn't, I wouldn't hire someone. Yeah. I've paid a lot of people to do nothing. Yeah. A lot. Yeah. I've been paid a lot to do nothing too. I don't know how to really get around that. And I think that's part of my stance on, I don't, you know, with W -2s.

And this is probably just a volume thing. I had a high volume business, but I didn't feel like I ever had a volume high enough to where I was actually like 80, 90 % of my employees. And otherwise, it's like, okay, cool, so then I should just go and make my life miserable. Since I can't fill up their capacity, then I therefore should make 120 % of the capacity that I have. It's a hard balance. I don't have any...

like tricks or tricks, you know, like I think I've made it so clear to my employees over the time, you know, like I am way more interested in doing right by them as human beings than I am capitalizing off of them that I've just chosen that that's where I'm at, you know, I don't, which is probably why it's not smart to hire employees, you know, like I can't see people as, you know, a commodity to like earn money off of any, like I just don't think I don't, I don't want to play that game then. Yeah, yeah, I understand that.

Because it seems in a lot of ways too, like that's how it's built. Like capitalism in America is built that way. Like you want a business that thrives, that's like making money. It's like, you gotta be making a lot of money and paying your people as little as possible and like high margins and you know, there's a balance for sure, but I didn't like playing that tight rope and like finding where the right balance was. And I mean, I did, I enjoyed it for a while, but I think knowing that about myself now, I don't think I'm going to open myself up into opportunities where I'm...

highly leveraged as everybody's risk is put on my shoulders, you know? Yeah, yeah. I'm the kind of person, I love the idea of building and scaling and I like business and I've always been into entrepreneurial podcasts and things like that. But if I'm honest with myself, the idea of employees and always trying to leverage them to make capital for myself is really hard for me. And at the end of the day, I'd rather just hire on a couple of contractors as I need, maybe mark them up a little bit to just kind of see why.

Seth Lowe (48:19.182)
and play that game. I just feel better about myself and life is easier. Yeah. Yeah. I got to the point where it was like, I got to pay everybody six figures. I got to pay, you know, everyone's health insurance is covered. Everyone has unlimited vacation time. You know, like I have to create all of these incredible incentives to back it up, you know, but then also I didn't, you know, and these are not like, these are things that I brought to the table. Like my, I don't, I don't, my employees, I don't think they ever asked for.

some benefit or, you know, like I think it was me more often than not giving them benefits that they weren't utilizing. And also there's benefit on my end as a business owner, cause I get like free, not free, but I can make the business pay my health insurance and you know, things like that, that like incentivize it, you know, but in, but for me, I was like, you know, I just never made enough, like I didn't make a million dollars and then have, you know, a hundred thousand of expenses, you know, it's like even.

in the biggest, you scale it, it's like you're in another tier and it's like automatically you're 100 % of cash that you thought you had is 5%. Because in order to play in that game, it's like, cool, you scaled big enough, but now you have an off week, it doesn't cost you two or three grand, it costs you 16 to 20 grand, just for market being in between emails.

And we weren't making the point, you know, the 10 million or whatever to where it's like, yeah, who cares a shit about 60 grand because, you know, next week we're gonna bill, you know, 4 .5, you know, whatever. So I think there's like a, there's a, yeah, there's a huge amount of like, you know, guts that it takes to like stay in those positions, I think. And risk too, I think.

you get to a certain level of clients and like you have to be investing in a lot of personal work and things like that that cost money to produce to stay relevant and to be in the game. And you have to, you know, like if you want those six figure clients regularly, you have to also be putting a lot of that profit back into just making stuff. And if that's what you want to do, that's totally fine. But it is, you know, your cost of being in the game goes up exponentially, the higher up the, you know, the price tier.

Seth Lowe (50:33.806)
quality, maybe not quality tier, but you know what I'm saying, the higher up the coolness tier you are. Yeah, well and coolness is most often just bigger budgets. I think related is a lot of people think that, those terms are related where it's like cooler I think is usually just like, wow you had 25 people on set, so that naturally was like a 40 grand day. I think those things are not as cool, but.

there for sure. It's hard to make like, you know, something truly like transformational to the industry without, you know, really having a lot of things go right for you. Yeah. You know, do you, do you struggle with self worth at all? Uh, yeah. Yeah. I think, yeah, for sure. I mean, I don't know how it is possible to look at chat GPT and, you know, have a commercial post production house.

and then, you know, be like, oh, okay, you know, I'm worth something more. You know, it's pretty difficult in our time, in our, you know, landscape right now to like see how quickly somebody can do something better than you or something can do something better than you, you know, and then like question whether or not it's worth doing. Can you hear my dog, by the way? Not, not really. Okay, great. She's like, she's behind upstairs. Yeah, I sort of get what you're saying. I think the reality is though, it's like,

It's not that it's better than us or doing better than us. It's just more like it's good enough and people don't care anymore. Yeah, no, I think my perspective on AI, like I think it goes back and forth. Like I see so much innovation and benefit on how it's gonna make us better, you know? But then also I've had some of the slowest months of my life. Like realistically, like.

I won't answer how much money I've made in the last 14 to 16 months, you know, because it's embarrassing to myself, you know, all these things, just expectations, whatever, but like, it's hard to like kind of not relate things sometimes, and I don't think that they're necessarily related, but I do think it feels like they're related, you know? And so for me, I do kind of go back and forth on that like self -worth train where it's just like, man, I don't know why.

Seth Lowe (52:54.286)
it's so difficult to convince people to do something. Clients will reach out to me, we'll talk, we'll have a good conversation about budget, all these things, and then it's just rug pulled out last second. That's been the story of the last year. So figuring out, I guess, the truth is just gonna take time. And I think the other part is, you see these ads getting made with AI recently, and it's just like, it's not really anything different than what was being made five years ago. It's a little different.

but there's still 14 people on, like yeah, there was in a DP, but I mean, honestly, I run a post house. I would try and most of the time convince people to not spend money on production so there's more for production, or for post production. Just like where I was like incentivized to convince people. Doesn't mean it always helped me. A lot of times if you're doing live action, spending more money on production's gonna make your post production look way better. But it's interesting to see,

like the tides like shift a little bit and then the ground gets like unsecure and everyone just starts fighting each other. And it just like that's kind of how it's felt with AI and like that development is like, oh man, like everything's coming for our jobs and stuff, you know, while recognizing maybe the jobs are just on pause because the economy shit, you know, maybe it doesn't have to do with AI. Yeah, I think it's and you know, strikes and all that stuff. How do you I mean, what do you look for like outside of work then to validate your self worth, you know, or?

How do you balance that out or what balances that out for you?

I had a pretty, pretty difficult time figuring that out. Like when things kind of ground to a halt for a while, I think I'd be lying. I mean, I definitely would be lying if I didn't say it. There wasn't multiple multi -month, you know, depression holes that I got sucked into and still am trying to fight to not do that. You know, like there's some really cool opportunities that I have in the future that I'm really excited about, you know, and I'm also terrified about because I'm just like, what's going to happen? What's going to give, you know, like where's,

Seth Lowe (54:59.95)
there's no secure future of like sustainable long -term relationships with clients. You know, things like that that I've worked for in the past, it doesn't necessarily translate to the future. So I'm like, yeah, I think, can you say the question? It was like, well, just, I mean, how do you, how do I combat it? Or how, yeah, where do you, where do you find, how do you find yourself worth or how do you, you know, balance out some of those, those darker moments? Is it, you know, with your kids or your wife or just outside of work things or?

Where does that come from for you? Yeah, I think it's that like, it took a long time for me to reorient my self worth. You know, I built up this business that I was very proud of and it was in a lot of ways my identity and I love telling people that I owned a business and was an entrepreneur and this and that. I think that identity shift took a really long time. But I now, I think it's mental health is a big part of it too. You know, my wife,

has gone back to school. She's about to finish up her master's program and she's, you know, she did like three years of undergrad to like catch back up because she wanted to go into marriage and family therapy. And you know, she's gotten straight A's the entire time. Like she's about to graduate with not a single B on any of her report cards from undergrad all the way through grad school. And like both of us, like we're awful students in high school. Like I mean, in college and in high school, you know.

like the first time we did it and she just killed it. And I've seen, you know, I've had a wife that's like turned into a therapist and, you know, and pushed me to be like, no, you can't just do that. Like you can't just cope. It doesn't go anywhere that you want to go, you know? And so, you know, thankfully I've had a lot of wisdom pushed into my ear, you know, and like, and like been like, nah, I need to figure this shit out and I need to not just sit down and let it happen because the expenses of my kids or, you know, like whatever those things are, you know, put the perspective together and, um,

Yeah, I'm just like taking care of myself. So yeah, I'd say my kids, you know, my wife, my family is for sure about it. But I think for me, the interesting part is like how little I like self -worth I had in a lot of that stuff because the business was like what I was just devoting my entire life to. Like, you know, like when you're in the middle of it and then it starts to like slip away and you start to have to figure out what those things are. And it's not it's not easy, you know, but that, yeah, I think the, you know, obviously my kids are, you know, mean the world to me.

Seth Lowe (57:29.902)
you know, my wife and the life that we're building and you know, the community that we have around us, which may not be, you know, exactly what I want it to be or whatever, you know, but like just doing right by the people around us and being very intentional with people, you know, like that's just a big thing for me. I don't know. I don't want to live in a world where I have to compete with every single person in my life. And that's just, you know, a decision I'm making every day. Dude, I love that. Like not wanting to compete with people in your life.

God, it's so hard separating your self -worth because everything you do is sort of an extension of the way you see the world or hear a story or want to help people respond to a story. And so you're kind of pouring your heart into every little thing you do because you want it to have a positive impact for either the business that hired you or the people that are gonna hear it and see it. So your self -worth is so.

so tied to everything. It's what we're taught too, you know? It's like early on, like you start taking photos, or you start taking, like I started as a photographer too, so like, you know, cause it just was tangible when you get a rebel, but like the, I don't know, you start seeing things and then you're like, oh, no, that is what I have, you know, and you're like, and you double down on it and you start to like build out this like importance around something that's not really there, you know? Yeah.

I don't know how well I articulated that. No, I think that makes sense. Like you almost build up the importance of something and then in a really unhealthy space, maybe you think that you're important because you think the thing you're working on is important and you're the one working on it. And. Or even if it's no ego, you know, it's like, oh man, this is something that I didn't know I could do. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you kind of impress yourself a little bit and you're like, oh wow, I want to like.

you know, no ego, throw my effort at it and like do as much of that as I can, you know, and so then you start doing it and then you start getting known as the person that's like got that, you know, that creative look and outlook on life and then clients want to pay you for it, you know, and that's like the cycle. I think it's just that you don't understand how. I don't know. It's hard to remove yourself from that on the back end, but if you're going into it and you can recognize that like, hey, anybody can take a photo, anybody can do this stuff.

Seth Lowe (59:46.094)
You're not like God's gift to the earth, but what you are is you're gonna give your work ethic and you're gonna give it your all and that's what the clients are gonna pay you for is like your effort and your dedication to bringing their vision to life. That's really all that there's there. No one's hiring you. I mean, some people, maybe in some select art ranges, but in the commercial world, it's like you're getting exploited on purpose. That's the definition of what's happening.

And we all should know that. It makes it hurt a lot less. I think I've seen people get really sucked into letting a commercial project determine, they invest their entire artistic value into someone else's commercial piece. And then every client revision and edit just kills them. And you're like, I get it. But.

At some point you should be like, look, this is not your art. This is their art. You're just the guy, you're paint, you know, they're just handing you a brush and say, paint, you know, like, because you have the technical skill that you cannot like let this be your portfolio piece. It never was, ever was as much as you thought it was, you know, you just have to do what they want and move on.

Yeah, I remember you and Evan talking about the revision rounds and I find that to be one of the things that, I've always loved working with Evan. We've done some cool stuff here and there. It's never been anything that's like, you know, the coolest shit that either of us have ever done, but I've always really appreciated his stance and his ability to, with clients, get him to a point where it's like, no, there's no revisions. We're gonna make you something fucking incredible and you're gonna take it, or you're not, you know? And you're gonna,

either take it or not before we even start. But like, I've always appreciated that. I've never been in positions with clients, and I think this is directly related to how high up the chain my clients are versus his. Like he's all operating more as a whole kind of service where I've always been like a supplement to production or a supplement to a production company or a supplement to an agency. You know, not really like.

Seth Lowe (01:02:01.614)
we're not going to produce the content. We're not gonna sit down and film and do this if we're gonna work with a company that's gonna do that. So I've never been able to kind of leverage myself into those positions. With my clients, they just are not, my clients are the production company who's already signed their soul away. There's just kind of is what it is. So I can either support my client, which is the production company, in making their work incredible, or I can be the dick on the back end who's trying to make them not.

make money and lose their client and then they'll never work with me again. So there's an appreciation while also recognition that I definitely sold my soul in order to monetize it. And I wish I didn't have to, but those are the contacts that I have. That's the network that I have. It's not the business owners and the CMOs or even creatives in companies. It's more often creative.

Networking in agencies that I know so I didn't really get that I mean my my experience with you has been you are Excellent at figuring out what the client needs like, you know before you over commit and even if you're not in that initial conversation I think you do a really good job of figuring out exactly what's been sold and Shooting straight for that target, you know because you I mean you've done some post work for me and it's been I mean really spot -on with what the clients expectations were and you you have put a lot of time into

understanding what kind of conversations were had and expectations that were set and You know where the project is going and kind of you know skating to where the puck is going so to speak I Appreciate that. Thank you. That's that definitely has learned that's been learned, you know, like of not knowing and like just getting blindsided in a project and then being like whoa Okay, got a reorient the whole onboarding, you know, like can't have that happen again. And you know, I think it's

It's always important for me that I'm, I have no problem like throwing my everything. Like I, I, like I have a pretty strong work ethic that comes from my parents and just from, you know, our station in life of, you know, the only way forward is to do it, you know, and you got to get your hands dirty and go for it. And so I, um, I have no problem like utilizing it, but I have definitely in the last year, like really pulled the rain back on like who is allowed to like, you know, take all of that effort from me. And,

Seth Lowe (01:04:28.046)
and I'm not just selling it as a commodity to the highest bidder. I think it's much more of a, I hate doing work where I'm super pumped about something and I think it's hitting the mark. And then to learn in the 11th hour that the mark is actually over here. That's the worst. Biggest fear for sure. In the business, biggest fear is giving a shit, doing something, being proud about it, and then someone just being like, this is super awesome if it wasn't.

what we wanted though, you know, and you're like, I think too, you know, how do I now fix this? You know, I think also like sort of a risk of being that person that isn't in the direct client relationship, be it a client or an agency, but you're sort of like, you know, there's a someone in between is it can be really easy to sort of be the scapegoat when things don't go to plan. Like, you know, someone changes a storyboards like after something's been shot or, you know, and suddenly you're the one that's not.

meeting expectations, but you don't have a voice in the room so you can't defend yourself and that sucks. I don't know if you've ever been there, but it's a really frustrating spot to be. Yeah, I've, a lot of times I've actually, I don't really know where I stand on this because I don't think anybody's ever used this negatively, you know, against me or anything like that. There's no worry, but I just definitely have pause saying this to people in the future. But I used to tell,

or other clients or people that I was in relationship with that we were both a team in making sure that the big client was served. I always would tell people, make me the bad guy. As long as you can sit there and tell me face to face that that's not true. If you need to leverage me in order to do right, let's do it. I don't have a problem being the bad guy. But I do think I got, I didn't understand necessarily to,

And I don't think I still understand like what that impact could be, you know, everyone, nobody wants to be viewed as the bad guy. And, and I tried to use it more of like a leverage that other people wouldn't use, you know, in order to like secure more value with the client, with my client, you know, my production company. I'm more interested in the street strategy long -term. Like I'd rather solidify, you know, a client for another couple more years than like, you know.

Seth Lowe (01:06:51.278)
win that argument in the minute. Like the sustainability long term has always been like the number one goal for me, finding a way to automate things and turn things into things that are worth existing. Yeah, I think that's absolutely true about you, as I've worked with you. I want to kind of circle back, very early on, you kind of talked about covering your bases out of the gate early on before you're even at a point where maybe you need.

to have a fallback or have protection, protecting yourself before you need it. So how can people do that? I mean, did you get a lawyer? Did you just pay someone to write a retainer, like a base plate contract for you? Where did you kind of start building those resources? Where did you start? I think there's like a couple things. And I'll tell, oh yeah, this is perfect, okay. So there's this company called. And I had had almost no work for like.

an entire year, super over leveraged, like just not a good place. It was like the first year of my kid's birth, like my oldest, you know, I have a baby, you know, just like all these things. They net 180'd us. So I was like, okay, cool, whatever. Signed a contract in like May, you know, and then I said, great, net 180, no worries. We'll do this production in 180 days. See you guys. Like if you're going to play that game, we'll play that game. And so that's what we did. And the check, um,

was supposed to come in for like 80 grand or something like that in August or something. And then like the second week in August or something, we were flying out to go film everything. So it's like, we didn't wait, you know, we booked tickets, like we did all these things and the check came in for like 45 grand. And I was just like, what? Like I have yours, like this is your contract. You guys wrote this contract that I signed. It says it here, I can read it. And the lady was like,

She like, I shit you not. She just said, I'm so sorry. I don't have any more money. So if, if you want to just not cash the check and not do the project, that's fine. Um, and if you want to just do it for that, that's fine. Or you could just like sue us. And I'm just like sitting there and I like, I had a contract, like I had lawyers, like I had already gotten these things in place, but like the lawyer is going to be like, you know, you're sitting against a, you know, a billion dollar company. Like.

Seth Lowe (01:09:12.782)
their lawyers are gonna be like, I don't give a shit. You sign this or you don't sign this and don't work with us. Like there's no leverage that you have, you know, with anybody. You could have like the Harvey Specter of lawyers. It doesn't give, it doesn't matter because they're not taking the meeting. They don't care. It's not a high enough priority. So, you know, like, what did you do? You just got fucked. You just got fucked.

We did it, we did the whole project and we just got fucked. Like there's no way around it. So you just took the 45K and figured out how to get it done for that. Yeah, I mean no money, you know? And it just is what it is. And it was an awful project experience. There was only three of us involved. So we kept it real small, real nimble, all that stuff. We were able to adapt, you know? But it's net 180. Like six months later, like, no, it was probably like 10, 10 or 12 months. Like by the time,

everything was said and done, you know, from like negotiating it on the front end and all this stuff. You know, it's like, by the time everything was done, it's like we were almost, you know, almost a year into something, like, and I had had a pretty slow year, you know, like I kind of needed it. Like there was no real way, like I could have afforded to just like take the hit for the travel costs, you know, all this stuff. Also, which the hilarious enough, it was supposed to be 80 plus travel. So it's like, they were going to reimburse us for all the travel too.

So it's not like I booked the best Western. I was like, great, for this sort of a thing, for the three of us to have rooms, we're gonna go stay at the Sheraton. There still isn't that nice or anything. No, totally, but I totally could have cut costs or I could have bought it with miles, things like that that I didn't do. So there's just an element of it where you just can get fucked. And I've had that happen a lot of times and I've kind of gotten to the point where...

I can guess whether or not it's gonna go there. You know, just like, you kinda just have to like really hold to that like, oh here, it's probably, you know, you hear those people that are like, oh I really am intentional about like the people, you know, and if I like get an off, like I'm just not gonna do a project with them. Like I just don't wanna work with people like that or whatever, you know. I was always like, how do you just not, like, how do you just cut that tie? You know what I mean? Like that's a net, like that's value to you that you're just like kicking out the door. Like I,

Seth Lowe (01:11:32.078)
I've always like, no, let's just make it work. Yes, there's that person who has this thing that I don't like about them, but everything else is okay. So let's go for it. And it's like, I just had done that. I'm sure there was warning signs where I should have not signed with a, you know, all these things, whatever. But it takes a while to develop a good bullshit detector, I think. You just have to step into it a few times before you know what you're stepping in. Yeah, and I think also there's some,

There's some, if something like that has happened to another person, there's something really important worth saying. It's just like, some people are just fucking assholes. Some people will do that to you, and that's just a part of life, and you're just gonna have to, I can't make sense of it still to this day, so I just move on. I will never work with any of the people that were involved in the corporate structure.

You know, I just, if they called, they haven't called me, obviously, but like if they ever did, like, no, you know, that's something I've learned now. But, you know, on the front end, it's like, hey, this is an opportunity for us to go make, you know, three little commercial spots for like 60 to 80 grand or whatever it was, you know, like that's a huge opportunity for my career, for the DP's career and for the, you know, director's career. Like we should definitely go for this and we should give it our all. Like we were pumped about, you know, so.

there's not a right or wrong way to kind of cope with some of that stuff. But like also, yeah, I think, you know, even when you get the money, you know, like even when you're like playing their game with the net 180 and with this and that, you know, it's like we had it, you know, but we didn't. Yeah. I mean, and so I have lawyers don't pay him too much because at a certain point your lawyer is just going to be like, what do you want to do? Spend 150 grand in order to get 50 grand. Like,

No, cool. So I'm not gonna sue you guys, sorry. Like I don't, you know. Yeah, I mean, you worked with me on that one project where the client was just like, you know, taking every opportunity they could to bend me over. And finally I just had it and I was like, you know what, you guys can go screw yourselves. Here's the hard drive, I'm out. Like, you know, I fulfilled every element of this. It was so frustrating. The clients are just, they're insane some days. Yeah, and I think there's,

Seth Lowe (01:13:55.598)
There's probably, for those clients that are listening to that, I mean, if you worked at, you're on the back end of that fucking, just generally fucking, but I think there's probably also some, there's some pause that I have too, where it's like, I also was not a project manager or some shit at a multi -billion dollar company. That person doesn't work at that company anymore, like who knows what happened.

they could have gotten out of a meeting where their boss was like, stiff them this money or you're fired. You know what I mean? Like, in which case it's like, fuck man, I really don't hate you, but I hate your boss, you know? But either way, I can't control that, you know? So I'm just gonna draw the line where I can go hug my kids and have a good day. You know, like, it's just. I had a really, my first like real big cancellation was a, I think it was like three countries. It was like maybe Spain, Uruguay and.

Argentina and it was like a week apiece spread out over the course of like two months or something like that or it was like a week home week off something like that and I mean it was a pretty big project and I was gonna be shooting stills for this whole campaign with a production company and like three weeks out the whole project got canned and you know it wasn't that it wasn't their fault like some VP at the client.

the client's client just boom, acts the whole thing. And you know, like, what are you gonna do? You know, I just, I think I just like got a pack of beer and went and sat on the hammock for an afternoon and drank, you know, like. It's just, you can't. I have the exact same thing. It's just, like not the same story with traveling and stuff, but like, I've had, we all have the exact same thing. It's just so dumb. You're like. Yeah, it's just. Yeah, we had this one project we did 14 months with a architecture firm. They built this huge,

tower in China and we were gonna go do an architecture film. Me and my buddy Richard Smith, like we were gonna go do the sick thing. We got in, we had probably five to 10 rounds of approvals where like we got the Chicago, like we started with the guy who did the tower, you know, and then he like ran it up the chain and got like the CEO of Chicago that approved it. And then that wasn't enough. So then he went to San Francisco and literally flew to San Francisco, met with those teams, like.

Seth Lowe (01:16:20.302)
They got it up and he did it in five or six different agencies to get this multi -national project approved. Took 10, 12 months. We were talking $150 ,000 to $250 ,000. We were gonna fly on the. Nice. To China. Shit like that, really cool opportunity. It gets to the end and the fucking billionaire dude who owns the company made an executive decision from Europe.

And he said, I don't know why we don't just make a newspaper ad and call it a day. And we were like, what are you talking about? Like we're making like, you know, a 15 to 20 minute doc and then like a thousand assets for socials. Like this isn't a nothing. Like this is a huge project. It's going to take us like four months of our time. No, I think we should just do a newspaper ad. It's crazy. I was just like, why? Why do we try? Like.

Oh man, a newspaper ad bro. Just retire. So, you know, from like a financial side of things, do you, if you figured out everything on your own, you use a CPA, like, you know, what do you do? Yeah, I, there's, there's an element where I was pretty scrappy on the front end. Like I used to do TurboTax and stuff. And then like even my buddy was, we were talking about it recently. He like did all of his taxes with ChatGPT4. Like, you know, there's like a lot of cool opportunities, but for me, like,

My dad's a financial advisor. I don't necessarily think I had any real purview into his clients or anything like that. I think he just was always very impressed on me. You don't screw around with some of those things. So taxes were always a bit out of my depth and I always wanted to make sure that I had just some support when I'm filing taxes that I'm not potentially gonna get audited or things like that. And contracts and lawyers are the same where it's just kind of like I'm.

at a certain point, like it's really, it's, I've never had a, you know, our current CPA, for instance, like I've never had a conversation that didn't result in him like saving me money. So like, why wouldn't you want to pay somebody the small amount that you pay them comparatively, you know, in order to be aggressive on your behalf? So that's, you know, for me, like James is the man. Yeah, yeah. We use the same CPA thanks to your recommendation a few years ago and the same thing. I mean, I've been using like a small local CPA.

Seth Lowe (01:18:45.55)
for a few years and the jump in knowledge and like bringing ideas to me and kind of helping me be smart with just how I was saving money or where types of assets I was, you know what I mean, like gear, a vehicle or whatever, really, really fantastic. Yeah, yeah, I've always been the producer that's like, yeah, I can really figure out how to save the most amount of money with this like rental car and like travel arrangements and all this kind of stuff. But then like,

Oh man, if I'm gonna buy a car at James, what do I do? What's the best? You know, because it's just, there's so many different ways that you can do these things and like save money. Like you can do the S -Corp and the non -S -Corp and like there's like benefits, but then like if you're one variable difference, it changes the whole game. So like having someone that can, yeah, James is. And the other thing that I love about James is I used to have meetings with him like quarterly. We used to schedule him for like an hour. Like the first thing, the first time I think we scheduled for an hour.

and it was like 12 minutes. The second time I think it was like a 30 minute call, you know? And it was like 12 minutes. Like every time I've like brought lists of questions to him, like I've been blown away at how sharp he is. It's just like, you're like, hey James, here are all my problems. And he's like, are you done talking so I can answer them for you? You know, like he's just, he knows it. It's like bread and butter. Like everything. They're like really awesome. And they've like saved me way more than I pay them by like by far.

Dude, I took my, they just did my. I'll never be able to pay them enough to like save the money that they saved me the first time we worked together. Yeah, for sure. I mean, that's like 10 years of costs, like at least. I took the tax, I just got my corporate tax return, because I'm an S corp, took it from them and just out of fun, I've been using Claude AI, which is like, Chad GPT, which is different. And I just was like, hey, can you look at my tax return for me and upload to the PDF? And it was pretty sweet. Like I just was like, you know,

give me a summary of what this tax return, because I don't know how to read a tax return. It might as well be Japanese, you know? And it gave me like an awesome breakdown of like, hey, here's, this is this business, you know, this is Pilgrim LLC, and here's how much money it made last year, here's how much money it spent on contractors, the owner, Seth Lowe, owns 100 % of the business, here's how much money he made, here, it looks like, you know, you depreciated a vehicle, it is all this really cool stuff, and it definitely is not replacing my account, but it was awesome to just have like,

Seth Lowe (01:21:09.166)
you know, in a matter of minutes, a really good breakdown of what the heck my tax return even says, you know? Pretty cool. That's funny. I actually like, James sends me over those, I don't know if he does it for you guys, but we get the tax returns and like, there's like all the different ones or whatever. Yeah, like the scenarios. There's always a one sheet on the front and that says everything and I've never really seen anything beyond those one sheets. I'm just like, I don't, I mean, dude, like, why? Like, why should I care?

Like I don't care what's on those forums. Like if I'm having someone that is smart as you that's doing it, like, I mean, there's an element I do like comb through them and stuff, but like really it's just to make sure he's not like writing asinine numbers. Like, you know, I don't know. It's like, it's really just, I don't want to be that guy that like wakes up and is just like broke because like the financial awareness is zero and all of the people around him spent all his money. But you know, beyond that, like I don't really care.

I just know that he's gonna do a better job than me. Every single time. Yeah, for sure, for sure. James Paul, hit him up. Yeah, I'll throw a link in the show notes. He's great. I just referred him to, there's a couple of freelancers, I know, a handful. And like every March or April, there's like all their gear for sale on Facebook because they did some dumb shit with their taxes. And I'm like, dude, just pay somebody. Like I promise, it's not worth it.

the sleepless month. You only fuck it up once. And selling all your gear every March because you're too cheap to pay an accountant. And just having people too that can, as you start to scale, those things are invaluable assets. The way that you can have somebody with a decade of experience in corporate finance to be your ally as you're trying to scale something that's above your head, that's wild. Yeah, invaluable. Yeah.

Seriously, like, you know, structure to like when I was like, oh, S corp or non S corp or whatever, like there's so much insight you can get from your specific situation that you will miss if you just plug it into a calculator, you know. I think it just goes like hand in hand with having like your clients having a good experience, you know, if if you're working with like larger agencies or companies and they're sending you a big contractor asking you for yours and being able to immediately send them, you know, yeah, here's the.

Seth Lowe (01:23:28.334)
10 .9 for my S Corp, here's the direct deposit info, here's my stuff. And if you're super prepared and have all those things ready to go out of the gate, and they're not having to hunt you down for just really basic standard onboarding procedures, it looks good on you and people notice that. It's also just that showing up on set, knowing how to set a C stand up the correct way and not looking like you. It validates you, you know what you're doing, you're not gonna, it's kind of that every time I get.

a W9 or somebody with somebody's like social security number on it. I'm like, why? You know, I don't want to take the time to educate you on this, but like all you got to do is just like go to the website and like they'll give you an FEIN like immediately. Like it doesn't change anything, but like then your social not on this. Yeah, it's yeah. I think there's some really good if you're, you know, new to freelancing, go get an FEIN number, pay 200 bucks and get an LLC. No, no, no, no, no, no. If you're new to freelancing.

culture. Yeah. There's just, just culture. Yeah. You know, no, I, but seriously, that's what, you know, you learn those things like, and that's what makes you look green or not. Yeah, totally. Perception. Perception is reality. Unfortunately. Yeah. It's also, uh, experience, you know, if your perception is, you know what you're doing, like it's because you probably were taught it at some point. Yeah. And I think that bleeds over. Like if people, you know, if you look experienced in,

certain areas people assume that you're experienced in other areas of business and being self -employed. Yeah, yeah, being self -employed sucks. If you've done it, everyone's like, oh, okay, you know, you know how much of a shit show it can get. Oh yeah, always had those sleepless nights. Do you think your career is a result of luck or hard work? Luck. Really?

Yeah, hard work comes with it. You can't, you don't get, like, what's the definition of a career is like just existing? No, it's like putting effort into something, you know? You have to have hard work in order to do something. So I think everything else is luck or opportunity or, you know, to some extent privilege, to some extent, you know, being in the right place at the right time. But I don't, I don't, I don't know. I don't value hard work in a,

Seth Lowe (01:25:54.222)
way of like a means to an end. I think that's kind of expected, you know? People are just not interested. I don't know, there's a lot of the snake oil, like, you know, people that are like, oh yeah, you just passive income, you know, I made $15 ,000 an hour while I slept last night. And it's like, cool. I don't, you don't seem to strike me as somebody who's ever struggled with money in your life. So why does it matter how much money you made when a lot of it's been handed to you? You know, like, I don't know. Like, I don't know these people, but like, you know.

that's really cool and you opportunistically like, you know, probably made some really great decisions and got lucky, you know, around something and were able to build this like, you know, passive income sort of thing. But then why am I having to pay you a hundred bucks for a quarter? That's not, you know what I mean? Like you're obviously doing something. So. I think that's like, that's actually probably my biggest challenge as a freelancer or like a self -employed person is, you know, you see those kinds of posts where someone's like,

like on my passive income thing, like on my passive agency income or whatever. And I don't, it just makes me feel like I've done it all wrong or something. And I know in my head, like it's probably not true, but you know, in a industry where you were almost, your value is almost directly tied to time on some, I mean, skill is, you know, obviously a part of it or whatever, but it's definitely a time for money, economy. And you can start to feel like a loser when you know, you hear about people making passive income.

Yeah, I mean, those things are cool, you know, like, I don't know, I would love to, I would love to. I also don't really know anybody. I don't think I know a single person, like real life person that's like made a shit ton of money off of not trying. You know, like the whole cycles or, you know, you're just like, oh yeah, you know, I owe, I'm a day trader and I, you know, I make 50 grand a day and I only work for like seven minutes.

You know, it's like cool that tells me that you have a hundred million in your bank account because you don't care about money like if you're only working for like 15, you know, it's just like you can't make that work You'd go broke like if you weren't at a level that that's that that high so we're not in the same game I don't have a hundred million dollars in my bank account So if I did maybe you know, but I think a lot more often than not like you talk to people who actually build things like you read books like

Seth Lowe (01:28:20.782)
Tools of Titans is like an incredible book that I've been reading for years, you know, just when I need some sort of like reminding that like the way through is not just by like getting lucky, it's by, you know, putting the effort in and like taking all that, but like, you can't create those initial circumstances, you know, those initial people taking risks on you without luck to some extent. And I think that that's all I can do is just.

I can try, I can get mad every single day about like clients not wanting to take a risk on me or not wanting to like greenlit the project that it seems so perfect, you know what I mean? But it's their money, it's their decision. So, you know, if they're not feeling it, they're not gonna do it, you know? And that's just, why would you, why would you take a risk on somebody that you don't want to take a risk on, you know? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think if we put ourselves in their shoes, it makes a lot more sense, but it's hard to do that sometimes.

Oh, totally. And this is hindsight's 2020. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Tell myself that all year doesn't make it any easier. Yeah, for sure. Are we the same age? How old are you? 31. Oh, I'm older than you. OK. I thought you were like 35. I just turned 31 in early March. OK. Happy birthday. No, I present a lot older, but if I cut this off, I look 40. That's why I have a beard. If you look at my wedding pictures on Facebook, the other part about it is like, this is where my chin ends. My head is tiny.

like without this, you know? Yeah, your wife looks like she married like a junior high kid in your wedding photos. Yeah, and I was like 22 at that time, but I looked seven, you know? Like now I don't think I'd even look 22. I think I still look like 14. I think I've got like the Paul Rudd thing. I think I've looked the same age for the past 15 years. So maybe in 15 years I'll still look the same. Well, so here's my last question. Would 20 year old Taylor be impressed with 30 year old Taylor?

No, no, I don't think so. And I think that's the imposter syndrome, you know? I have a lot of dreams, you know? I have a lot of goals and things I wanna do and all that stuff. And 20 -year -old Taylor would have been like, oh, you didn't do everything. You're a failure, you know? That was just the life I lived in my early 20s. But I'm so happy that I'm not in that cycle anymore, you know? Yeah, interesting. Yeah, I don't know.

Seth Lowe (01:30:43.822)
That's an, I mean, I actually appreciate your sort of pessimistic take on that because I think, well, no, I think like. It is generally pessimistic and that's something I've been, you know. Yeah, I mean. Recognizing doesn't always serve me. I think just dreams change, you know, like my, I haven't lived up to all my 20 year old dreams in a lot of ways, but I've also exceeded them in a lot of other ways. So I don't think 20 year old dreams are necessarily a realistic barometer, but I think, um,

It's something I enjoy thinking back on because my life has been much more unexpected than I ever thought it would be. Yeah. Oh yeah. I would say if I could have brought myself in my early twenties to a place of health and mental clarity, I think I probably would be on a positive side of things. I look at my 20 year old self and I see so many

things that need to get figured out, you know, like just as a human, as a person that can interact with people, you know, on a high level, like, and so I see that and I don't see the emotional maturity or the mental maturity or any of that, you know, that could like really understand that. So I think in my, you know, early twenties, I was pretty detailed focused on like, I wanted a specific thing, you know, but that was also just.

I wanted that because I thought that that meant I could afford my life. I could afford having a family, going on vacation, doing the things that my parents did for me. When I grew up, I always just want to be able to do that at the minimum and or better. It seems like that's what I wanted when I was 20, but I didn't know how to say that that's what I wanted. So yes, absolutely, I've been able to like.

carve out a life where I could do what I love to do and for the most part be happy. Seek things that make me happy and all that. But I do think, I didn't understand that you, I don't know, I was very singular when I was younger. So knowing that, I think I'm like, no, I don't think, but I think I would have not understood the value of where I'm at now. I think I had a really specific career.

Seth Lowe (01:33:05.326)
goals maybe as a 20 year old, maybe not 20, maybe like 22, 23, you know, I would really get attached to like, you know, sort of the greats, you know, photographers of like the seventies and eighties and stuff and think like, that's what I wanna do. But you can't control sort of, you know, that's not the economy in the world we necessarily live in in a lot of ways. You know, I have had some of those, like a few of those really big jobs where it's like, you know, you dream about having and you get those and then you get there and you're like, well.

I don't know if this is actually that cool or if I actually would want to do this every day. Like it's fun and I loved it, but it's maybe not what you thought it would be or doesn't give you the validation you thought it would. But from a personal life standpoint, I think, you know, I'm really happy, which is cool. Yeah. Yeah. I had, I met this older couple in Asheville that has been like photographers and you know, recently they've been doing like documentary kind of stuff for PBS and they don't need to be.

They're old enough to be retired and just enjoy their life, but they do it because they love it. And we were helping them with tech stuff or whatever and just spending time with them. And we were talking and I found out that they like, for the 70s and 80s, they had an agent, like a stock photo agent, and they were just photographers. And they would just go to the Olympics and they would just shoot for eight weeks. And then they would stay in country for another eight weeks and they would just enjoy their lives.

and it paid for everything. You know what I mean? It seems so incredible how awesome that would be to just be like, just go do whatever. You know what I mean? And then I'm gonna just send us all these files and we'll place them and they'll end up in time and in life and all these huge magazines. It seems like that's so much easier, but I don't know. I don't know how they got that agent.

It just, you can't really go do that now. Like, I don't think, you know, like make a life for yourself where you're, you know, maybe you can, maybe you're the last one left, you know, but like just the ways that they made money in the seventies and the eighties look so polar different than they do now. And a lot of times it's like, I tend to like think back and I'm like, oh man, that seems so easy because I know the prescription for it, like the instructions, the pathway to do it, you know, like they could tell me how to do it and I could do it.

Seth Lowe (01:35:29.998)
that would be great, you know, but I think now it's know that, you know, they carved that out and, you know, and like made that path. And now I can look back at the path, but I got to make my own path too. You know? Yeah. I mean, I think you could do it now, but you're much more at the like whim of like corporate brands, you know, funding every minute of it. And so you're everything you do has to be about them and you're tagging them or building a following to, you know, that like is valuable to them versus.

back then or at least with this couple, they were just making images that told a story and they owned. And that's the other thing. Yeah, magazines or brands or whatever were just on the backside finding use for them.

and paying for it, too. That's the other thing. The value of their photographs at the time, too, also weren't nothing because they're shooting on film, there's hard costs, there's all these things that I'm sure made it risky in some aspect, spending a tenth of your annual income on the film and then flying to a different country with it. That seems ridiculous, but nowadays it isn't, it's like whatever. It's just...

You know, there's like some aspects of that. Like I'm sure it's just, you know, but just because it's, you know, not something that you can go do now, it doesn't mean that it's like, I don't think they were trying to be stock photographers. You know what I mean? I think they were just trying to like make good shit and like enjoy their life and like, you know, that's cool. Be proud of what they did, you know, it's worth being proud of. Yeah, absolutely.

So, well, hey, Taylor, thanks so much for coming on today. I've had a blast just catching up with you. This conversation's been really fun and I really appreciate your time. Yeah, dude. And time. Thanks for having me. Hey, have a good one. You too.