Latest / Next Act with Jeff Ornstein / Sean Greenhouse - Chief Operating Officer, Linita Design & Mfg. Corp.

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Sean Greenhouse - Chief Operating Officer, Linita Design & Mfg. Corp. · Next Act with Jeff Ornstein

• 0:02
  Jeff Ornstein: Hi everyone, and welcome to Next Act with Jeff Orenstein.
• 0:05
  Jeff Ornstein: I am Jeff, and on this show we celebrate people on the cusp of greatness.
• 0:10
  Jeff Ornstein: Those building on past successes in some of the curious and inventive and sometimes unexpected ways they have achieved those, and stepping into moments that could define their legacy.
• 0:21
  Jeff Ornstein: We'll talk about current projects, lessons learned, and the extraordinary opportunities ahead.
• 0:26
  Jeff Ornstein: So the best is yet to come.
• 0:28
  Jeff Ornstein: Today's guest is Sean Greenhouse, an actor and chief operating officer at Lanita Design and Manufacturing Corps, who has built an unconventional career spanning manufacturing, leadership, stand-up comedy, film and television.
• 0:42
  Jeff Ornstein: Since stepping into acting in 2021, he's appeared in projects including Cabrini and One of the Good Ones, all while continuing to lead a growing manufacturing company.
• 0:52
  Jeff Ornstein: Sean, welcome to the podcast.
• 0:55
  Jeff Ornstein: We're delighted to have you on.
• 0:56
  Jeff Ornstein: Thanks for having me.
• 0:57
  Jeff Ornstein: Okay.
• 0:58
  Jeff Ornstein: So your story sort of parallels my story, even though I'm a little bit older than you, because I still am running my company in design while I'm pursuing an acting career, but you have been a busy working actor.
• 1:12
  Jeff Ornstein: Congratulations.
• 1:12
  Jeff Ornstein: That's not easy to do.
• 1:14
  Jeff Ornstein: Thank you.
• 1:15
  Jeff Ornstein: Yeah, that's fantastic.
• 1:16
  Jeff Ornstein: So, first of all, I guess I want to get a little bit into the genesis.
• 1:20
  Jeff Ornstein: Like you're running this company, you're wearing a lot of hats as COO.
• 1:24
  Jeff Ornstein: What happened?
• 1:25
  Jeff Ornstein: Your phone ring and somebody said, Hey, dude, do you want to be in a movie?
• 1:28
  Jeff Ornstein: How did it happen?
• 1:30
  Sean Greenhouse: Well, it's a funny story.
• 1:32
  Sean Greenhouse: I started Lanita, I started here doing sales and client relations.
• 1:35
  Sean Greenhouse: That's how I originally started.
• 1:37
  Sean Greenhouse: And as time went on, my role started to grow.
• 1:41
  Sean Greenhouse: I in the end of 2014, beginning of 2015, the company was in trouble, was on the verge of bankruptcy.
• 1:46
  Sean Greenhouse: I was asked if I would be interested in doing HR.
• 1:49
  Sean Greenhouse: My introduction to it was to have to lay off like 80% of the staff and start a culture change rebuilding.
• 1:55
  Sean Greenhouse: And then I got into purchasing and project managing, and I was basically doing every position.
• 2:00
  Sean Greenhouse: And then around 2019, I could sense that my role was really starting to evolve here.
• 2:06
  Sean Greenhouse: And I really struggled with public speaking.
• 2:09
  Sean Greenhouse: So it was hard for me to like get in front of the team, get in front of the group, and convey the vision.
• 2:15
  Sean Greenhouse: And like I could do it one-on-one, but I was a little more gun-shy, so to speak, in front of the large groups of people, and that's where we're starting to grow a little bit.
• 2:24
  Sean Greenhouse: And so I decided to take an intro to acting course to help with that.
• 2:27
  Sean Greenhouse: So I did it, it was an eight-week course.
• 2:29
  Sean Greenhouse: I did a monologue at the end, and my acting coach at the time said that he thought it was pretty good and thought I should take some advanced courses.
• 2:36
  Sean Greenhouse: So I'm like, okay.
• 2:37
  Sean Greenhouse: So I did.
• 2:38
  Sean Greenhouse: And that was the end of 2019.
• 2:40
  Sean Greenhouse: I took a couple courses and then COVID came.
• 2:43
  Sean Greenhouse: And the classes just ended, and then our company was considered essential.
• 2:48
  Sean Greenhouse: So my workload like quadrupled when COVID started, especially the HR part of it, and the dealing with the accountants with the PPP stuff and so on.
• 2:57
  Sean Greenhouse: So I was spread all over the place.
• 3:00
  Sean Greenhouse: And so I didn't think about acting for a couple years.
• 3:02
  Sean Greenhouse: And then in 2021, my acting coach became the casting director for that film Cabrini, which was one of the largest films that I ever filmed in Buffalo.
• 3:14
  Sean Greenhouse: And they needed people that looked Italian.
• 3:16
  Sean Greenhouse: So I submitted, I hadn't used vacation time at that point in like two years.
• 3:21
  Sean Greenhouse: So I took it and I fell in love with the movie set.
• 3:26
  Sean Greenhouse: And that's really where I started to fall in love with it.
• 3:31
  Sean Greenhouse: And because again, I hadn't really taken any vacation, I'm like, oh, okay, this is what I'm going to use it for.
• 3:36
  Sean Greenhouse: So once the end of 22, 2023 came around, classes started back up, and I got back into the advanced courses.
• 3:43
  Sean Greenhouse: And I started going harder and harder at it while working.
• 3:47
  Sean Greenhouse: And I again I didn't take any vacation.
• 3:49
  Sean Greenhouse: It was either acting or work or running marathons.
• 3:54
  Sean Greenhouse: Those are my three my three options.
• 3:56
  Sean Greenhouse: But it all kept me disciplined and focused.
• 3:58
  Sean Greenhouse: So one thing always kind of played to the next into the next.
• 4:02
  Sean Greenhouse: And so I would say that the acting really helped me with work, and the work also helped me with the acting.
• 4:08
  Sean Greenhouse: And they've kind of played hand in hand.
• 4:11
  Sean Greenhouse: And so I became a lot more intentional about the acting.
• 4:15
  Sean Greenhouse: And then one of the good ones came around, and they wanted to cast local Buffalo people and thought I'd really fit the part.
• 4:22
  Sean Greenhouse: And that's where my it became my first major uh speaking role.
• 4:26
  Jeff Ornstein: This is so awesome because you know, we've had your classic next act guest that you're you've juggled these two things, and now you find yourself deeper into the theater portion of your career.
• 4:38
  Jeff Ornstein: Like, but there are people, a lot of people like I had a passion all my whole time as a kid.
• 4:43
  Jeff Ornstein: I grew up, I became an accountant, I became a florist, whatever.
• 4:46
  Jeff Ornstein: But it was always in the back of my mind, that's not you.
• 4:48
  Jeff Ornstein: And then we have people who are like, I retired after 30 years at Amex, and I was over somebody came over and they said, Hey, you know, they need extras for the zombie.
• 4:55
  Jeff Ornstein: You want to just step in and be a zombie or whatever, and I got bitten by the bug.
• 4:59
  Jeff Ornstein: But what's really unique about your story is that you used acting to help your other career, which it sounds like it did, and then your other career also enabled you to like pursue the acting on your when you could get away, because a lot of people are nervous about jumping into acting full-time because of the financial ramifications.
• 5:19
  Jeff Ornstein: So you're like a real hybrid, a lot of times, of people who take on the theater later in life, and that's super cool.
• 5:26
  Jeff Ornstein: I love it.
• 5:27
  Jeff Ornstein: Tell us a little bit about one of the good ones, just because that's like super hot right now and is streaming presently.
• 5:33
  Sean Greenhouse: Yeah, so one of the good ones, it's funny.
• 5:36
  Sean Greenhouse: I got this email out of the blue.
• 5:38
  Sean Greenhouse: I didn't have an agent for it or anything.
• 5:39
  Sean Greenhouse: I received an email from Tom saying that the director Julia O'Hara came across my IMDB page and was really interested in me reading for a certain role.
• 5:49
  Sean Greenhouse: So at first I thought it was some spam.
• 5:51
  Sean Greenhouse: I'm like, what is this?
• 5:52
  Sean Greenhouse: I'm like, I have anybody calling me about it.
• 5:54
  Sean Greenhouse: Some random.
• 5:55
  Sean Greenhouse: So I want to look them up.
• 5:56
  Sean Greenhouse: I want to look before I even reply to the email just to do my own homework.
• 6:00
  Sean Greenhouse: And I'm like, oh, these guys are pretty legit.
• 6:04
  Sean Greenhouse: All right.
• 6:04
  Sean Greenhouse: So I replied and I went and read for this one role, which was Mersurka that's in the movie.
• 6:10
  Sean Greenhouse: And I go and I read for it, I submit it.
• 6:12
  Sean Greenhouse: I don't hear anything.
• 6:13
  Sean Greenhouse: We a week or two weeks goes by, and they come back and they say, Hey, we actually loved your work.
• 6:18
  Sean Greenhouse: We want you to read for a different role, being Gunther.
• 6:21
  Sean Greenhouse: I'm like, all right, and I go and look it up.
• 6:23
  Sean Greenhouse: Gunther ends up being like twice the amount of lines and a bigger role.
• 6:26
  Sean Greenhouse: And I'm like, Cool, that that's a good idea.
• 6:28
  Sean Greenhouse: Good kid.
• 6:28
  Sean Greenhouse: That's that's a good sign, yeah.
• 6:30
  Sean Greenhouse: So I go and I don't even know what I'm getting into.
• 6:32
  Sean Greenhouse: I go and I read for it.
• 6:33
  Sean Greenhouse: I end up, yeah, getting the role, doing it.
• 6:35
  Sean Greenhouse: And what I did is I I went when I got the role, I went and bought the book that the movie was based off of so I could really understand the character.
• 6:42
  Sean Greenhouse: And I went and edited, and like a year goes by, and it released at the Dunedin International Film Festival this past January.
• 6:50
  Sean Greenhouse: That was its first, its initial release, and it won the audience award.
• 6:55
  Sean Greenhouse: So I'm like, wow, there's really something here.
• 6:57
  Sean Greenhouse: When everything was going so fast, and I was getting the role, doing it, it hadn't been released.
• 7:02
  Sean Greenhouse: I hadn't really seen it.
• 7:03
  Sean Greenhouse: You don't know.
• 7:04
  Sean Greenhouse: And then, yeah, to go to that and see that happen, I'm like, maybe there's really something to this, and because it didn't go to Amazon Prime until March.
• 7:12
  Sean Greenhouse: So I saw it in January, and then I went to Amazon Prime in March, and it started getting these fantastic reviews, and it is gaining momentum.
• 7:20
  Sean Greenhouse: Like I said, now it's in South Africa, they've sold out theaters, it's doing very well.
• 7:25
  Jeff Ornstein: Now, a lot of actors would have paid their dues significantly before they got some hit film that wins a really important award at its first film festival, and then it's streaming a couple months later.
• 7:37
  Jeff Ornstein: You that doesn't sound like that's your case.
• 7:40
  Jeff Ornstein: You kind of like nailed a great role in a great film right out of the gate.
• 7:44
  Jeff Ornstein: So the question I have for you is so you go to the film festival and all of a sudden you're sitting in the audience and you're up on the big screen.
• 7:50
  Jeff Ornstein: What'd you think?
• 7:51
  Jeff Ornstein: Did you see the character?
• 7:53
  Jeff Ornstein: Did you see you?
• 7:54
  Jeff Ornstein: Did you see a combination?
• 7:58
  Sean Greenhouse: It was a really surreal feeling, to be honest.
• 8:00
  Sean Greenhouse: It's a feeling I don't even really know if I can put in a word.
• 8:03
  Sean Greenhouse: In some ways, it was hard to see.
• 8:05
  Sean Greenhouse: At the time, I was my initial thought was, man, I look heavy.
• 8:07
  Sean Greenhouse: If I'm completely honest with you, when I'm watching, I'm like, oh, but the thing I'm watching it, I'm like, oh, it's actually it's actually kind of funny.
• 8:14
  Sean Greenhouse: Because naturally, I did stand-up comedy in high school.
• 8:16
  Sean Greenhouse: So my natural it ain't nature is to be funny and so on.
• 8:22
  Sean Greenhouse: But this guy, this character isn't the nicest guy, he's a little bit sleazy.
• 8:27
  Sean Greenhouse: And so to be able to be that and also make it funny, and I'm like, yeah, I think I was the character, and it was amazing.
• 8:33
  Jeff Ornstein: The stand-up comedy that takes guts.
• 8:36
  Jeff Ornstein: So you're getting up on the stage, there's no one there to bail you out if you're bomb.
• 8:40
  Jeff Ornstein: And for you to do that, I mean, I think it shows that you've got that ability that all actors need, which is to kind of just let your innovations go and inherit and inhabit the character.
• 8:50
  Jeff Ornstein: So that that experience, and that was 20 years ago, I guess, or I'm guessing by your age.
• 8:56
  Jeff Ornstein: So that probably served you well to get in there and just say, okay, I'm Gunther now.
• 9:00
  Jeff Ornstein: Cameras are rolling, and I'm Gunther.
• 9:03
  Sean Greenhouse: I would also say with where the part about my work, how that's really helped me with my acting, is because everything I've gone through here, especially with leading a turnaround and having a lot of headwinds coming your way in in the course of my life, a lot of the things I've overcome in my life, whether it's been overcoming drugs and alcohol and transforming my own life.
• 9:22
  Sean Greenhouse: My ability to take rejection and keep moving on and to be sensitive, but not to be like sensitive to myself and getting lost in my feelings has really allowed me to step into the acting and not take anything like personally.
• 9:36
  Sean Greenhouse: If I don't get a role or if I don't get a call back, I have the ability now because of the life experiences I've had of just washing and rinsing.
• 9:44
  Sean Greenhouse: And if something doesn't work out, I don't see it as a reflection on me.
• 9:48
  Sean Greenhouse: But that that's taken a lot, and I think a lot of that has been through my work that has helped get me there because I've been in very hostile and challenging environments along the way.
• 9:58
  Sean Greenhouse: But because of that, now there's not a lot that just that really blows me one way or the other, and it allows me to just be, especially in acting.
• 10:07
  Jeff Ornstein: Well, we talk a lot about the importance of like, you know, dealing with rejection and moving on if you're going to remain passionate about pursuing acting as a career.
• 10:15
  Jeff Ornstein: And what's so interesting is that what I'm hearing that your work at Linita is like this great source of support for you because you've been through it all.
• 10:25
  Jeff Ornstein: I mean, I understand it was near bankruptcy when you took it over, and then you're basically wearing every major hat in the C-suite to help this company to reinvent itself.
• 10:35
  Jeff Ornstein: And so you probably were near a dying breath at certain times.
• 10:41
  Jeff Ornstein: Also, this was come leading into COVID.
• 10:44
  Jeff Ornstein: I mean, there were a lot of things moving against you, there were headwinds, and yet you brought it there.
• 10:50
  Sean Greenhouse: You know, I'm sorry, I won't talk about the business too much, but when you do lead a turnaround, it's a little bit different than a startup.
• 10:55
  Sean Greenhouse: A turnaround, nobody inside the four walls of your company likes you.
• 10:58
  Sean Greenhouse: Your reputation outside of the four walls, four walls is terrible.
• 11:02
  Sean Greenhouse: No banker lender wants to give you any money, you've got no budget, you've got no sales or HR budget.
• 11:08
  Sean Greenhouse: You've so then it's very difficult to find people, it's very difficult to sell the work, it's very difficult.
• 11:13
  Sean Greenhouse: You know, you every you're in a very, very precarious position.
• 11:16
  Sean Greenhouse: So if you've got the strength and mind and the wherewithal and the resilience to be able to fight through all that, the other side is something beautiful, but it to get to that other side, you need to be able to go through the darkness, really.
• 11:32
  Sean Greenhouse: And if you do that, then you've you kind of built this muscle that takes you into other areas of your life, and so yeah, now because I've got that memory recall, and it's translated to acting very well.
• 11:45
  Sean Greenhouse: I mean, there's times I've done additions and I'll have dry seasons, and yeah, obviously you get that's part of the the game, and you get a little down for five minutes here and five minutes there, but you pick yourself up and keep going.
• 11:57
  Jeff Ornstein: So you it sounds to me like you're you have no intent of walking away from your COO responsibilities because it seems like you get a lot of enjoyment and satisfaction from your work at Lanita.
• 12:09
  Sean Greenhouse: Yeah.
• 12:10
  Sean Greenhouse: I mean, in unless life changes, but I don't have any intentions of changing a whole heck of a lot at this point.
• 12:16
  Sean Greenhouse: No.
• 12:16
  Jeff Ornstein: And so you know what it does, it takes a lot of perseverance because you could be giving up a lot of your personal time to squeeze in those acting jobs.
• 12:25
  Jeff Ornstein: But it seems to me like the acting jobs also they're having a pull upon you, too, which is fantastic.
• 12:30
  Jeff Ornstein: So you were this really competent, let's cut to the chase, really competent business person when you helped turn around Lanita.
• 12:38
  Jeff Ornstein: And then you went into acting kind of as a lark a little bit, and you were a beginner, even though you had some experience in front of an audience from your stand-up days.
• 12:47
  Jeff Ornstein: What'd you learn from being a beginner again?
• 12:50
  Jeff Ornstein: I mean, did it was there an impact on your sense of humility or on your confidence?
• 12:55
  Sean Greenhouse: Or yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
• 12:58
  Sean Greenhouse: I think it's great.
• 12:59
  Sean Greenhouse: I think it's great to stink at something.
• 13:01
  Sean Greenhouse: And I think it because you build up a certain level of experience in one spot and you become really proficient in the winter, and you might start to think to yourself, Oh, I got this.
• 13:10
  Sean Greenhouse: And that's a dangerous spot to be, actually.
• 13:13
  Sean Greenhouse: A lot of people don't talk about that.
• 13:15
  Sean Greenhouse: They think they've arrived, but you get there and then you coast.
• 13:19
  Sean Greenhouse: The problem with that, I think, is that then you kind of stop learning, and then you stop growing, and that's when you start inside your soul, you start to kind of fade away.
• 13:30
  Sean Greenhouse: And like at the same time, as when I got into acting, is actually when I also ran my first marathon, which is I was a terrible runner, so I sucked at that too.
• 13:39
  Sean Greenhouse: You know what I mean?
• 13:40
  Sean Greenhouse: And then a year or two after running, I won my I came first place in my age group and a shamrock run, and I ran a sub-4 marathon a few years into it, but I was terrible at it at first.
• 13:51
  Jeff Ornstein: I want you to go home and burn the steak tonight because it seems to me like there's nothing you can't do first time out of the gate and succeed at it.
• 13:57
  Jeff Ornstein: So I'm very impressed.
• 13:58
  Jeff Ornstein: I'm very impressed.
• 14:00
  Jeff Ornstein: So let me ask you this.
• 14:02
  Jeff Ornstein: You're in Buffalo, and so are you finding, are you tapped into a community?
• 14:06
  Jeff Ornstein: Because I've found that once you can sort of get into a little bit of a circle between actors, writers, producers, directors, they're very supportive of one another, which kind of surprised me a little bit.
• 14:17
  Jeff Ornstein: But are you finding, are you in a niche yet yet now, or is that too early?
• 14:20
  Jeff Ornstein: Are you developing those kinds of relationships?
• 14:23
  Sean Greenhouse: I am, it's it is tough in Buffalo because like let's face it, as much of a dream as Buffalo has to be the next Hollywood or something, it's still Buffalo.
• 14:34
  Sean Greenhouse: And the work here is touch and go.
• 14:36
  Jeff Ornstein: And if you really wanna, if you really want to pursue acting, like you, I mean, really, you gotta be in New York or LA or even Jersey now.
• 14:44
  Jeff Ornstein: That's Atlanta.
• 14:45
  Jeff Ornstein: Well, you know what?
• 14:46
  Jeff Ornstein: That very well may be true as as a baseline fact, but it's not slowing you down.
• 14:52
  Jeff Ornstein: You're jamming.
• 14:54
  Sean Greenhouse: Yeah, I've learned that there's also an up and flow to what I do.
• 14:57
  Sean Greenhouse: So like there's seasons where Lenita is really busy, and then I I can't even look at opportunities.
• 15:04
  Sean Greenhouse: And then there's seasons where we might have a little bit of downtime, then I can really hone in.
• 15:08
  Sean Greenhouse: So it's kind of figuring out the fluidity of the right season for things.
• 15:12
  Jeff Ornstein: You know, we had a great actor on not too long ago, and he said he was finding he was a doctor, and he gave up medicine, left MD Anderson, went to LA to find his career, started getting some acting jobs, but it would also have like two years downtime.
• 15:28
  Jeff Ornstein: So he actually started becoming a writer.
• 15:30
  Jeff Ornstein: So there are ways to fill in your creative in the downtimes with other creative endeavors and kind of continue obviously plugging away, trying to get the roles that are going to satisfy you, which makes me want to ask you okay, so you had this guy, Gunther, who is a sleazy comedic character, kind of is how I understand him.
• 15:50
  Jeff Ornstein: What's the character you want to play?
• 15:51
  Jeff Ornstein: What's the character that you really want to sink your teeth into?
• 15:54
  Jeff Ornstein: Do you have one?
• 15:54
  Jeff Ornstein: Well, it was a dream when I was a kid.
• 15:56
  Jeff Ornstein: I'd love to play a mob boss.
• 15:59
  Sean Greenhouse: Okay.
• 15:59
  Sean Greenhouse: And I know there is talks, and I don't know about what happened, that they are looking to make a movie about Lucky Luciano in Buffalo.
• 16:07
  Sean Greenhouse: So word on the street is either later this year or early next year, who knows?
• 16:12
  Sean Greenhouse: But my dream role would be to play a mob boss.
• 16:15
  Jeff Ornstein: Okay, so I gotta ask you.
• 16:16
  Jeff Ornstein: I mean, like there's mob bosses like John Gotti, who is really smooth and dapper, and then there's Tony Soprano, who was basically a cut-through killer.
• 16:26
  Jeff Ornstein: So is there a mob boss like that you would want to play?
• 16:28
  Jeff Ornstein: What's your MO for your mob boss?
• 16:30
  Jeff Ornstein: More smooth and dapper.
• 16:32
  Sean Greenhouse: Yeah.
• 16:32
  Jeff Ornstein: No, smooth and dapper.
• 16:33
  Sean Greenhouse: Yeah, yeah.
• 16:34
  Sean Greenhouse: Not the ruthless type, no.
• 16:35
  Sean Greenhouse: That's not me.
• 16:36
  Jeff Ornstein: Yeah, Tony was pretty ruthless.
• 16:38
  Sean Greenhouse: Yeah, that's me.
• 16:39
  Jeff Ornstein: What do your coworkers at Lanita think about this new jumping into the theater world?
• 16:45
  Jeff Ornstein: Do they have comments to you about it, to your face?
• 16:47
  Jeff Ornstein: Not really.
• 16:48
  Jeff Ornstein: No.
• 16:49
  Jeff Ornstein: Okay.
• 16:49
  Jeff Ornstein: I well, I think it's pretty impressive.
• 16:51
  Jeff Ornstein: My employees and coworkers are always asking me what's going up and everything.
• 16:56
  Sean Greenhouse: I've had some guys being like, Wow, that's really cool.
• 16:58
  Sean Greenhouse: It makes me think I should go do this or I should go do that.
• 17:00
  Sean Greenhouse: So I have had inspiring, I've had people comment about how inspiring it is.
• 17:05
  Sean Greenhouse: I'll remember this is how I really will really grab me.
• 17:08
  Sean Greenhouse: I remember being on set for Cabrini and seeing a bunch of guys, or they use a lot of extras for that, that were retired.
• 17:16
  Sean Greenhouse: And they had just gotten into it when they retired.
• 17:19
  Sean Greenhouse: And I'm looking around, and I'm like, oh, I'm not retired, but I'm not 20, but I don't want to wait till I'm retired to really pursue this because I don't know how much energy I'll have then.
• 17:32
  Sean Greenhouse: And then like like something went off when I was on that swap, like two or three days into it.
• 17:37
  Sean Greenhouse: I'm like, I gotta go now.
• 17:38
  Sean Greenhouse: That's what happened.
• 17:40
  Jeff Ornstein: Yeah.
• 17:41
  Jeff Ornstein: I gotta tell you, and you took the words right out of my mouth.
• 17:43
  Jeff Ornstein: I mean, you've really come across like you've got the energy to do all this and do it well.
• 17:48
  Jeff Ornstein: Between the running and the acting and the being the COO, but not just the CEO, but all the different hats that you wore within that company.
• 17:55
  Jeff Ornstein: What I think's coming across loud and clear, and that I think the listeners will tap into, is if you want it and you're really willing to work for it, look, Sean got his foot in the door in a big way, too.
• 18:08
  Jeff Ornstein: So, but you got energy, it's coming across loud and clear.
• 18:12
  Sean Greenhouse: Yes, I do.
• 18:13
  Sean Greenhouse: Holiday weekends have been spent working on auditions.
• 18:16
  Sean Greenhouse: The long Labor Day weekends, the long 4th of July is when people are out barbecuing and chilling out and you know, laying on the beach.
• 18:24
  Sean Greenhouse: That stuff's all great.
• 18:25
  Sean Greenhouse: And there's nothing wrong with it.
• 18:26
  Sean Greenhouse: One and I I took my dog to the beach yesterday for an hour.
• 18:29
  Sean Greenhouse: But the reality is there's a lot of sacrifice, and it's all about what you want out of life.
• 18:35
  Sean Greenhouse: And when you're 65, 70 years old and you're sitting in your rocking chair and you're looking back, do you want to look back wishing you had tried something?
• 18:44
  Sean Greenhouse: Or are you gonna be thinking about that barbecue you attended?
• 18:49
  Sean Greenhouse: My remember the barbecue.
• 18:50
  Sean Greenhouse: If you even remember the barbecue, and I do think though that partially because of how my life has gone, look, I don't have a lot of family, I'm the only child.
• 18:58
  Sean Greenhouse: In some ways, this this kind of like filled that part of it.
• 19:01
  Sean Greenhouse: So everybody, there's choices that we all make and where we want to pour our energy, and everybody's got the same 24 hours a day, and I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't use drugs, and all that stuff.
• 19:11
  Sean Greenhouse: This is where my energy goes, is to basically these three endeavors and for now, and we'll see where it goes.
• 19:16
  Jeff Ornstein: That's when I wrap it up.
• 19:17
  Jeff Ornstein: But it comes across, and I gotta tell you, that some of the people that haven't really decided to take the plunge and jump out there and say, you know, I'm still an accountant, or I'm still in the military, or I'm still doing whatever it is I'm doing.
• 19:31
  Jeff Ornstein: But I want to try to get myself a little bit immersed in theater.
• 19:36
  Jeff Ornstein: Hearing that it is a family, our industry is not known, but you don't associate it with all the support and love and affection.
• 19:44
  Jeff Ornstein: More commonly, you might think it's very competitive and the people might be out for number one.
• 19:49
  Jeff Ornstein: And it's quite to the contrary, my experience parallels your experience, which has been it's like a family that people you start, you know, working with.
• 19:57
  Jeff Ornstein: And you just said it loud and clear.
• 19:59
  Jeff Ornstein: And it's like this is like, okay, because you need support to do this if you're gonna make a plunge.
• 20:04
  Jeff Ornstein: If you're very determined, so you didn't leave your job behind, but some people might have to leave a job behind.
• 20:09
  Jeff Ornstein: There's financial issues, there's the support issues.
• 20:12
  Jeff Ornstein: Are their families gonna support this?
• 20:13
  Jeff Ornstein: Are their friends?
• 20:14
  Jeff Ornstein: Are they gonna be able to hear people encourage them?
• 20:17
  Jeff Ornstein: There are logistical issues which Buffalo or no Buffalo is Buffalo's served you pretty good so far.
• 20:22
  Jeff Ornstein: So I want to thank you, Sean, for being part of this.
• 20:27
  Jeff Ornstein: I think you got a great inspiring story.
• 20:30
  Jeff Ornstein: I want you to come back on when you get your mob boss role and talk to us a little bit about how you prepared for that.
• 20:37
  Jeff Ornstein: I hope it's not fitting people with swimming with the fish's shoes.
• 20:41
  Jeff Ornstein: But you're terrific having here.
• 20:43
  Jeff Ornstein: You've got a great story.
• 20:44
  Jeff Ornstein: I wish you all the best of luck.
• 20:46
  Jeff Ornstein: And you send a message to your buddy Tom that we're looking forward to having him when he gets back from South Africa.
• 20:53
  Sean Greenhouse: I'll do that.
• 20:54
  Sean Greenhouse: Thank you very much.
• 20:55
  Jeff Ornstein: Take care.
• 20:56
  Jeff Ornstein: Thanks for tuning in to Next Act with Jeff Orenstein.
• 21:00
  Jeff Ornstein: Follow, subscribe, and stay connected to your favorite socials at www.next actpodcast.com.
• 21:07
  Jeff Ornstein: Keep chasing your next act.
• 21:09
  Jeff Ornstein: The best is yet to come.