Latest / The MOOD Podcast / From Private Jets to Creative Freedom: My $0 to Studio Life Story - Moments of Mood 2.4

Transcript

From Private Jets to Creative Freedom: My $0 to Studio Life Story - Moments of Mood 2.4 · The MOOD Podcast

• 0:14
  Speaker 1: This is the story of how I went from flying jets for a living to building a full-time creative career from scratch.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: I had the job and lifestyle most people would envy flying jets around the world, earning good money and ticking every box but I felt numb, unfulfilled and, quite frankly, depressed.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: This is the tale of how I walked away from it all to build a creative life that finally felt like mine.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: If you had told me five or ten years ago that I'd end up earning a living through photography, running a podcast, mentoring other creatives, opening a studio and specialty coffee and jewelry brand and building a life that revolves around storytelling, art and community, I think I would have probably smiled politely and then quietly dismissed the idea as something meant for other people, not because I didn't want it, but because at the time, I genuinely couldn't see how a life like that would ever be possible for someone like me.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: For most of my life, I was walking a very different path, one that felt structured, logical and safe.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: I'd grown up with a pretty strong sense of what success was supposed to look like.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: There were expectations and not.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: I'd grown up with a pretty strong sense of what success was supposed to look like.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: There were expectations, and not in a harsh or rigid way, but just those quiet, consistent messages from the world around me, from family, from school, from culture, about who I should be and how life should unfold.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: I internalized a lot of that, like many people do, and so for a long time I tried to keep things neat, stay in line, do what made sense.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: But underneath all of that, there was always this current, this subtle, persistent restlessness.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: I didn't always know how or what to name it and I didn't know really what to do with it, but it was there, it was ever present, and at about 20, I was diagnosed with cancer, and it was that moment, as strange as it sounds, that actually reshaped the way I saw myself.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Not immediately and not in some movie-like way, but gradually.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: It shook something loose in me.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: It pushed me to stop waiting for permission to make decisions for myself and, I think, more than anything, it gave me a kind of internal clarity that I hadn't really had before, not about what I wanted to do, necessarily, but about how I wanted to feel, about the things I chose.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: That's when I decided to become a pilot.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: It gave me a direction to channel all that energy into, a lot of anxious energy and it was something that felt both ambitious and grounded and something I could take pride in and would hopefully make my parents proud.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: And I went all in on that path.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: I loved the training, the structure, the systems, the learning curve, the challenge.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: The technical side of it really clicked with the way my brain worked and I enjoyed that sense of momentum that came from knowing I was progressing and going towards a dream.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: Fast forward many years and I found myself as a captain of a private jet which from the outside probably looked like the pinnacle High status work, well-paid international travel, get the status you get the nice hotel rooms, the uniform, the lifestyle.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: To be fair, a lot of it was exciting.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: Especially at the beginning it looked great and for a while I could almost convince myself that it felt great too.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: But then slowly and I can't even tell you exactly when it started that sense of restlessness returned, and this time it felt even heavier because I'd done everything right, I'd reached the place I was supposed to get to and still there was nothing.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: I felt disconnected, like I was moving people around the world, but I actually wasn't moving.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: I wasn't building anything, I wasn't using my voice, I wasn't creating anything.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: I wasn't really expressing who I think I was.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: Deep down, I was just performing a role that had once felt empowering but now felt kind of hollow and around that time that's when I started picking up a camera and it wasn't some big, profound moment.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Honestly, it started pretty casually.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: I've always liked gadgets, toys and equipment probably the pilot in me and I liked the idea of learning something new that involved buttons and gear and settings.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: I enjoyed that technical side of it.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: But also, if I'm really honest, I picked it up because I wanted to show off a bit.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: I wanted to share where I was flying to as this private jet pilot.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: I wanted to post the photos, maybe get a few compliments.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: It wasn't about art at all.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: It was more about performance, just another form of validation, and for a while I went down that path.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: I invested a lot of time and money into learning how to take good pictures.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: So I watched all of the tutorials, read the blogs, practiced a lot and I got better technically.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: I understood how the gear worked.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: I knew how to expose an image, how to frame a shot, but whenever I showed my photos to people, the feedback was kind of flat.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: It wasn't critical but it wasn't really enthusiastic either.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: It was just kind of polite platitudes oh yeah, that's nice.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: And that kind of hit me because I thought I was doing everything right.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: I was ticking the boxes again, but the photos just weren't landing the way I wanted them to.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: I wasn't getting the response I thought I'd earned, and eventually it made me reflect.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: Maybe the problem wasn't the quality of the photos but the intention behind them.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: Maybe I wasn't actually saying anything with my work.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: I was just trying to be impressive, not expressive, and that thought stuck with me.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: It didn't change everything right away, but it did open something up.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: And not long after that a friend of mine in Hong Kong which is where we were living at the time invited me to a photography workshop in Mongolia.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: I didn't really think about it too deeply.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: It sounded like an adventure and one thing I'd learned from actually going through cancer was to say yes more often.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: So I said yes, and that trip turned out to be something else entirely.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: So after that trip to Mongolia I came back with a bit of a different mindset.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: I won't go too deep into it here, because I've actually made a whole separate video about the lessons I learned on that trip that really changed fundamentally the way I saw photography and, honestly, the way I saw everything.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: But what I will say is that something definitely shifted, not in a dramatic way again, but quietly, internally, like a new question had been planted, and when I got home that question stayed with me.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: I didn't suddenly become a full-time photographer or anything or have some lightning bolt of clarity.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: Sorry if that's what you're waiting for, but I did feel something I hadn't felt before.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: It was kind of a creative momentum, a desire to actually try and take this seriously and see what it could become if I gave it more time, more energy and more intention.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: So that's what I did.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: And I was still flying full time at that point, so still doing lots of international trips, still wearing the suit and doing the job.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: But in every spare moment evenings, early mornings, off days I was learning shooting editing slowly but consistently.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: Learning shooting, editing slowly but consistently.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: And because I already had that technical side to me, probably again from all the years of flying, I found myself drawn to the mechanics of photography.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: First, I enjoyed learning about aperture and shutter speed and different kinds of lighting setups.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: I loved lighting.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: I liked experimenting with lenses and trying to figure out what all the gear could actually do and how it could change the image.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: That part of the process really made sense to me.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: But where I really struggled was the creative side.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: I could take a technically correct photo, perfectly exposed, cleanly composed, but I still felt like something was missing.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: And the more I posted, the more I realized that.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: The more I shared these images, the more I realized Because when I started sharing my work online, I was hoping people would resonate with it, that they'd feel something from it, that I'd get that little hit of recognition that said, yeah, you're doing something really meaningful, well done.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: But most of the time, obviously, the feedback was ambivalent.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: At best People would say, nice shot or, oh, cool colors.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: But it always felt like a surface level reaction and, to be honest, that kind of stung a bit.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: I wanted more, not because I needed validation although maybe I did a little but because I genuinely couldn't figure out what was missing.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: It was a calculation I needed to solve.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: I knew I was putting in the effort, I knew I was improving, but the work just wasn't landing the way I hoped it would and at that stage I hadn't really developed any kind of artistic voice at all, not even a style, really.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: I was just making images I thought looked good, photos that I thought might impress other photographers or do well on platforms like Instagram or 500px, but there wasn't any real meaning behind them, no real connection to the subject or, more importantly, to myself.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: At the same time, I was also battling that internal voice, the one that kept saying you're not a real photographer, you don't have any awards, you haven't done any commercial work, you're not shooting campaigns.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: Who do you think you are?
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: And because I was still flying jets professionally, I was also hyper aware of how I was showing up, especially online.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: I didn't want my colleagues or clients to see my work and think I was some amateur trying to build a hobby business on the side.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: So I kept it kind of secretive.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: I kept a lot of it quiet.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: I created in the background, slowly, deliberately, without talking too much about it at all.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: And I think for a lot of people, especially if you're watching this and you're in that early phase, this is the part of the journey that doesn't get talked about enough that long middle stretch where you are just grinding.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: You're putting in hours learning the craft, doing everything you can to get a little bit better every day, but it still feels like you're invisible, like you're doing all the right things but no one's noticing yet.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: Right, that was definitely my experience and, honestly, that phase lasted years, much longer than I expected.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: There were moments where I questioned whether I was actually cut out for this at all.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: If I just keep being a pilot and forget about this.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: I compare my work to people I admired, just felt miles behind.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: I'd spend hours on a shoot or an edit and still end up with something that just felt average, technically fine but emotionally empty.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: And because I didn't have a mentor or a guide or a roadmap or any kind of external structure, I just kept going the only way I knew how, through trial and error.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: I studied photographers.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: I respected a lot, I watched YouTube tutorials for what there was at the time, tried to reverse engineer styles and little by little I did start to improve, not just technically but creatively.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: I started to ask better questions about the work, like why am I shooting this?
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: What am I actually trying to do or say?
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: What do I want people to feel?
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: But at that point I still didn't feel like I had a voice.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: I was still trying to find it.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: Most days I wasn't even sure I actually had one right and I say that not to sound overly dramatic, because I know that's where a lot of photographers get stuck in that place between knowing you love the craft but not yet knowing what you're trying to express through it or what to do with it.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: That's the threshold I was standing on.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: I wasn't a pilot with a camera anymore.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: I was starting to become something else, more individualistic, more of like an individual person that had a voice, but I didn't know yet what that meant or indeed where it would take me.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: Looking back, one of the hardest parts of those early years was not having anyone to really guide me.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: I didn't have a mentor.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: I didn't have someone I could turn to for honest feedback or direction.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: I know, get the violins out right, but I had books.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: I had some podcasts.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: I consumed, someone I could turn to for honest feedback or direction.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: I know you get the violins out right, but I had books.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: I had some podcasts.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: I consumed what I could, the long form stuff mostly and I did try to piece some things together from bits of wisdom.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: I kind of picked up along the way.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: There was some YouTube as well, but honestly, it wasn't what it is now.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: Back then it felt a bit scattered and noisy, so I'd dig into whatever I could find read, listen, try things, make mistakes, repeat.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: It's all about the practice, really.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: I also reached out to professionals from time to time, sent messages, asked questions, tried to get feedback, and sometimes they replied, which I appreciated and this is the genesis of the podcast, really but most of the time it was either a brush off or something very surface level, and I get it.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: People are busy.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: No one owes you their time, but I do remember how that felt, especially when you're in that stage and you're pouring everything you've got into this thing and you just want some kind of sign, I guess, that you're on the right track, some kind of encouragement.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: There were a couple of small moments that did help that, though, and I think back to that trip in Mongolia, because there were two professionals leading that workshop, and the insights they shared were actually some of the most impactful things I've ever learned that I still carry with me today, not just about photography, but about presence as well.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: They weren't giving long lectures or technical breakdowns.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: It was more about how they carried themselves, how they saw light, how they engaged with people and that experience really changed the way I thought about image making.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: And there was also like small moments, like with Joey L, who was my hero at the time, who gave me some feedback on some of my photos.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: Nothing over the top, just a few words.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: But when someone you respect gives you a little nod like that, it really hits differently.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: It kind of sits with you right, not because it means you've made it, but because it gives you a little more confidence to keep going and keep testing.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: But for the most part it felt like I was trying to learn a whole new language without a teacher.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: So I did end up buying into a few mentorships and courses along the way, hoping they'd give me the answers, hoping they'd give me a clearer structure, but to be honest, most of them felt pretty transactional, time-based calls, follow the system type of thing.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: It wasn't personal and it wasn't built around what I needed or where I was in my very, very unique journey, and that started to frustrate me more than help me, because I didn't just want to follow a template.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: I wanted someone to really understand where I was and to help me understand what I was trying to say with my work, and that kind of support just didn't seem to exist, at least not in the way that felt genuine, or at least not in the way that I knew.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: And I think, without realizing it at the time, that gap started shaping how I thought about photography as a whole.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: I wasn't just learning to take better photos, I was slowly, awkwardly, building a kind of framework for how I wanted to grow as a creative and how I wanted to help others grow too.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: One day and at the time I didn't know I'd eventually build my own mentorship program at all or that I'd end up helping others through that process.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: But I do remember thinking, if I ever figure this out, I want to create something better than this, something that actually supports people in a way that's human and specific, and not just a template with a checkout link right.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: And maybe that's part of why I stuck with it through all of those difficult times, because, even though I was frustrated and uncertain, there were also these quiet beliefs forming underneath it all that this path, messy as it was, could lead somewhere worth building.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: As I started getting deeper into photography and beginning to take it much more seriously, there was something else that began to kind of stir alongside it, and it wasn't new really.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: It was more like a familiar itch that had been with me for a long time, this quiet, persistent urge to build something of my own, to create something that I made.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: And even before photography came into the picture, I'd always been playing around with ideas, small little business concepts, startup experiments, half-built websites.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: Some I pursued for a while, some I let go of pretty quickly, quickly.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: But that desire to create not just the thing itself but the structure around it was always in me.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: It just didn't have a clear home or path yet.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: But when photography started becoming more than just that hobby, that entrepreneurial energy really came rushing back in.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: Only this time it actually felt aligned with something real.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: It wasn't about trying to build something to prove a point, or chasing trends or finding the next quick win.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: It felt more like what if I could build something honest around this, something authentic, something thoughtful, sustainable, something that could last.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: And the more I thought about it, the more I started seeing entrepreneurship not as something separate from creativity, but an essential and integral part of it.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: Because, in the same way you shape an image through light, timing and presence, building a creative business to me became a way of shaping a life, a life that had space for the things I deeply cared about, a life where I wasn't just making things but making decisions, where I could design the systems and containers that really allowed creativity to breathe.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: And not just creativity, but connection, contribution and purpose.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: And that's when I began exploring bigger questions contribution and purpose.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: And that's when I began exploring bigger questions.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: What kind of structure would I have needed when I was starting out?
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: What kind of support system could I create now for others?
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: One that went beyond information and actually held space for their voice, their vision and, of course, their growth?
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: And that's really where the early seeds of what would become my mentorship were planted.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: But that's, I guess, for another day.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: Alongside this, ideas started forming for the podcast, the Mood podcast, the studio, the community I wanted to build, not as isolated projects but as part of the same ecosystem, something that reflected who I was and really kind of where I was going.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: And just to say, there was also another creative obsession running in parallel through all of this, through all of my years, even as a pilot, one that's been with me for well over a decade now coffee, specifically espresso.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: Since my early twenties I've been diving into that world just through education, consuming, obviously, certification, sensory training, roasting, experiments, everything and I saw that process as deeply creative too.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: It just kind of fit Dialing in a shot of espresso has always felt to me like a kind of art form, a balance of science, sensory feedback, rhythm and repetition.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: But that's a whole story in itself that I think we'll just save for another time as well.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: But the point is, I started to realize that everything I was drawn to had something in common.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: It wasn't just about the craft.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: It was about designing frameworks, creating space and potentially helping others step into something more meaningful as well.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: That was the real thread, and I think it was around this time that I stopped thinking of myself as maybe someone learning a skill, but started seeing myself as someone building something right.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: Not just a portfolio, maybe not just a business, but like a creative life that actually reflected who I was and who I wanted to become.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: After Mongolia, after the slow grind of self-learning, after years of quietly building in the background while still flying full-time, I found myself in that strange in-between place where I wasn't quite ready to let go of the career I'd worked so hard for.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: But I also couldn't ignore that something else had begun to take root and grow.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: I was still trying to live two lives, and for a while it worked.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: The pilot life gave me security and structure.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: The creative life gave me meaning.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: It was manageable, until it wasn't when COVID hit.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: Everything changed, like it did for many people.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: Flight stopped, work dried up and suddenly this balance I'd been able to maintain, where creativity could exist safely in the margins, was no longer a luxury I had.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: For the first time, there wasn't another contract around the corner or a roster to plan around.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: There was just a blank page and a question I couldn't avoid anymore what now?
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: I could have waited it out, could have held tight until the aviation world reset, but deep down I knew that wasn't the path I wanted anymore.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: It wasn't even a hard decision.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: In the end.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: It just felt obvious, like something I'd been preparing for without really realizing this wasn't a side project anymore.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: This was the thing, the work, the business, the life I actually wanted to build.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: So I made the decision to treat it that way.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: I didn't go all in with a grand plan or a huge launch.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: It started in the same way everything else had, just quietly.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: I looked at what I had, what I'd learned, what I believed, what I still needed to learn, and started shaping it into something tangible.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: I began outlining a mentorship program, not as a course but as a personal response to all the gaps I'd faced myself, and I wanted it to be real.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: I wanted it to be high touch, focused, not another cookie cutter solution, but an actual framework people could grow through.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: And, of course, then the podcast began to evolve again, quietly, slowly.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: It wasn't about building a brand or growing the channel I mean, that was part of it, of course but it was just about having the conversations I felt were really missing in the creative world Honest, thoughtful conversations that didn't try to fit into a viral reel or a 60-second highlight, even though that's still good to try and do.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: But I wanted to slow things down, to explore process, purpose, creative identity, to make space for nuance.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: And as that actually took shape, so did the idea of a physical space, this studio, a cafe, a place where creatives could come together not just to work but to connect.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: And, of course, underneath all that is the coffee, the specialty coffee, the wonderful espresso that I've been obsessed with since my early twenties and I'd spent years just diving into learning, experimenting, getting certified roasting, brewing, but yeah, that's another story for itself.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: I think the point is everything I cared about was starting to converge.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: There was some congruence happening.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: Photography, teaching, community creative direction, story photography, teaching, community creative direction, story conversation, coffee it all felt like it belonged together and for the first time I wasn't dividing my life into compartments.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: I was building something unified, or at least I'd hoped I was building something that was mine.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: None of it came with guarantees.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: Of course, it came with a lot of risk, and I'd be lying if I said I knew how it was going to play out.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: But there was a moment when everything else paused, where I realized I couldn't keep waiting for someone else to give me permission to take this seriously.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: So I gave myself that permission and I backed myself and I got to work.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: When I look back now, I think one of the biggest shifts wasn't in what I was doing, it was in how I saw myself.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: For a long time I was back.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: Now.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: I think one of the biggest shifts wasn't in what I was doing, it was in how I saw myself.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: For a long time, I was chasing clarity, waiting for that moment where I'd feel like I'd made it that I was finally a real photographer, a real creative, someone who had permission to speak with authority.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: Of course, that doesn't happen.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: What actually changed was quieter than that.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: It was just a growing sense of I don't need to become anything anymore, I just need to continue being this.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: And that small shift changed everything, because I stopped seeing photography as a skill to master and started recognizing it as a way of seeing, a way of being in the world.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: My images and my processes started to slow down and I became more present in the way I approached a subject, maybe, or more attuned to the light, the energy and the intention.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: I stopped trying to impress people with what I captured and started trying to connect more deeply to why I was drawn to certain moments in the first place.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: And that's when the work really began to evolve, I think, because it was no longer just technically good.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: It really started to feel like it had a heartbeat, like the images were breathing a little.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: I wasn't shooting for likes or clients or comparison anymore, even though that's all good.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: I was shooting from a place that felt real.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: I was photographing what moved me, what made me pause, what I wanted to remember, what I found meaningful, even if no one else did, and I think that's when my voice began to emerge, not as a style, but as a thread of truth that ran through everything I made, everything I tried to touch, and it didn't just show up in the photos, it began showing up in the way I spoke to people, the way I taught and the way I built things.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: And that's what eventually, I think, shaped the mentorship not as a product or a program, but as something more personal, a continuation of the path I'd already walked, a way to offer others the kind of presence and clarity I had spent so long searching for myself, because what I really needed back then wasn't more information, right, it was someone to reflect things back to me, to walk alongside me, to help me stay connected to what actually mattered.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: So that's what I tried to be now Definitely not a guru or an expert, not a system, just someone who's gone through it and knows what it's like to feel stuck, scattered, unsure of your work and of your worth.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: And, more importantly, someone who knows what happens when you actually give yourself the chance to keep going, even when it's slow, even when it's messy.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: And over time, everything I'd been building, I think, started to really get pieced together the podcast, the mentorship, the photography, the studio space, the cafe, the jewelry they stopped feeling like separate projects and started feeling like parts of the same body of work, different expressions of the same vision.
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: I wasn't switching between identities anymore.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: I wasn't photographer by day, podcast host by night, coffee guy on the weekends.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: It all kind of became one integrated, creative life, one that actually made sense, that I could sit into, not because it was perfectly planned, but because it was built on values.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: I really cared about Presence, intention, depth community, about Presence, intention, depth, community, expression.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: And I think that's what transformation actually really looks like Not suddenly arriving at some peak that's not life but quietly stepping into a version of yourself that feels way more aligned, one where your work and your values are no longer at odds, where your life is shaped by what feels true to you, not just by what performs well or fits well into someone else's idea of success.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: Right, I still have plenty of questions, I still wrestle with doubt all the time, but I no longer feel like I'm chasing something, I'm building something, and that, to me, is really the difference between performing and living.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: So when I look back at everything that's happened the transitions, the struggles, the learning curves, steep learning curves, the failures, the different versions of myself I've moved through.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: I've come to realize that this journey was never just about photography.
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: It was never really about creative success in any traditional sense or about trying to become some big name in the industry.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: It was always about finding a way to build a life that felt honest, grounded and aligned, something that made sense not just on paper but in how it actually felt to wake up and live it every day.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: And now, even though my life looks quite different to the one I started with, I don't feel like I've made it Of course not.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: I just feel like I'm finally walking a path that feels mine, a path that I get to shape and refine and contribute through in a way that feels deeply real.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: What I've noticed over time is that the more I've leaned into this creative work, the less it's been about me.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: I don't just photograph for the sake of making something beautiful.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: I don't mentor because I want to be seen as an expert.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: I don't run a podcast to grow a platform.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: All of those things obviously help, but the photography, the mentorship, the podcast, the studio space, even the cafe and the coffee, they've all grown out of the same intention to offer others what I wish I'd had when I was searching, when I was learning, second guessing and trying to find a sense of creative direction in the dark.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: Because I remember what it was like to try and piece everything together alone, to watch endless videos, scroll through endless, get caught between wanting to improve and not knowing which way was forward.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: I remember what it felt like to have questions but no answers and no one to ask, and I also remember how easy it was to start performing instead of expressing.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: That's the easy route right, to try and make work that looked good on the surface but it didn't actually mean anything underneath.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: That's the part no one really prepares you for.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: So a lot of the work I do now, particularly helping others, comes directly from that space and that philosophy, structure, guidance and clarity that I couldn't find when I needed it most, rebuilt with this kind of honesty and intentionality I would have wanted from someone else.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: I don't like curriculums nor funnels.
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: I like community relationships, creative partnerships and, of course, photography and the art of photography.
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: I love it so much that I love that I help others with it, which makes it even more enjoyable because I can share what I've learned and the scars that I bear from the path that I took and the lonely struggles that I had, and this is becoming insanely valuable to people, for which I'm eternally grateful because, as a result, people can eliminate all of the guesswork right and all of that pain that I've gone through or at least I hope they can.
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: And beyond this kind of mentorship and education side, I think that's become my approach to everything I create.
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: Whether it's a podcast, conversation, a workshop, a piece of writing or a photograph, I'm always coming back to the same question Is this me?
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: Is this helping someone else feel more connected to what matters to them as much as to me?
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: Because, at the end of the day, I don't think the world needs more perfectly lit portraits or viral posts or polished brands.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: I think it needs people who are more grounded in themselves, who are creating work with presence and who are willing to show up imperfectly if it means doing something real, are willing to show up imperfectly if it means doing something real.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: So if you're in that space right now, feeling like you're trying to figure it out, unsure if your work is good enough, if your voice matters, or even if you have one, or if you're ever going to break through.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: I just want to say you're not doing anything wrong, you're just in the middle of it, and that middle is where all the important stuff happens.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: That's where the shape of your creative identity starts to form.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: That's where your real work, the stuff only you can make, begins to emerge.
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: You don't need to be more impressive, you just need to get closer to what's true.
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: And if I can help you do that through maybe some guidance or a conversation or some structure or just space to reflect, that's what I love to do, that's the work I care about, because I'm still walking the path too.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: And if there's one thing I've learned is that clarity doesn't come all at once.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: It comes through practice, through presence and through the small, consistent act of choosing to build the kind of creative life that actually feels like yours.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: Happy shooting.