Jai Long

Interview by Madeleine Dore

Jai Long: creative entrepreneur, educator and photographer

Full transcript

“This is me being comfortable with myself and not everybody allows themselves to be comfortable like that because a lot of people will say oh, I can’t do that because people will call me a workaholic or I can’t do that because I need to spend more time doing this or this, and not giving themselves permission. So it was a bit of a game changer for me when I gave myself permission to be myself and to run at the frequency that I am born to run at and, for me, that is why can’t I take this opportunity right now to do all the things I want to do? Why can’t I? Who’s stopping me? Why is there a rule out there saying that I only can do a few things with my life? Or I have to be a certain somebody?”
– Jai Long

Madeleine Dore: How are you going? It’s the question we’re asking, being asked, asking ourselves. The answer might be unclear. Maybe, like me, you don’t really know. Are we doing enough or too much? Are we overreacting or underreacting? Are we okay or not okay? 

But just as I found that there’s no one way to be creative, that suits us all, there is no one way to navigate a pandemic. Even though I don’t have the answers, I find a lot of comfort in knowing that there are really varied approaches to everything.

You might need to lean into routine and keep busy during this time, be it out of necessity for your pocket or for your mental health. You may need to step away and rest and reset, placing productivity or creativity to the background either to focus on the people around you, what you need, or surviving.

You may also need to lean into the rut, to the ebb, to feel and thrash around and be in the confusion to see what it’s teaching you. Personally, I’m oscillating between all three all the time and, from what I’ve heard from you and from conversations with friends, I think many of us are.

Be it leaning into the routine or investigating the rut or allowing for the rest, it’s accessible to people in very different ways and it looks different to everyone because it always has been.

People have always had varying responsibilities, varying stresses, varying privileges, varying challenges, varying income or support, varying comfort or ways to navigate setbacks or circumstances, varying drive and desire, varying states of mental and physical health. 

And I think that this crisis amplifies that. But even through all the confusion, there is an opportunity to learn. 

As I’ve talked about before, for me, the best thing for being confused or sad or unsure is to actually learn something. I learn so much from the people I interview, as I really hope that you do too. And, in difficult times, I find myself wanting to take in more, to observe more, to feel more connected and less alone in what ails us.

For example, when I was heartbroken a few years ago, I put out an open survey to hear how friends and readers and strangers on the internet navigating the shift to our days that heartbreak can often bring.

I learned a lot. I healed a lot. And many people continue to turn to the collection of advice, feelings, and lessons I compiled in several articles since putting out that survey.

I wanted to do a similar thing. I wanted to experiment and invite you in so that we can all learn from each other right now. In a special episode of this very podcast, I’ll be sharing your reflections and challenges, your routines or ruts in these extraordinary times.

This open call survey is an attempt to both illuminate how it feels to navigate creativity in uncertain times and also uncover some gentle suggestions. I want to hear how your days are changing, where you might be stuck, what’s helping and what’s not.

If you would like to share, you can find a link in the show notes to leave both written and audio recorded messages that will be played in the podcast ‘When Navigating a Collective Rut’ and, while we all have varying degrees of change to our daily lives and different challenges, hopefully we can share what comforts and what helps, and maybe feel a little less alone and maybe more resilient.

For this weeks’ guest, resilience is what has helped him navigate the highest of the highs and the lowest of the lows many times over. Jai Long is a photographer, educator, and creative entrepreneur. Most recently, he’s been at the helm of three successful businesses, including Free the Bird wedding photography, Heartbreak Booth, and various workshops for creatives navigating business, which is complemented by this incredible podcast Make Your Break.

But it wasn’t always this smooth sailing. In this conversation, Jai shares the story behind his success, confidence, and his drive, and the times he’s been forced to press the reset button or simply chosen to let go.

We talk about being impactful rather than busy, how we’re all wired differently and that is okay, not putting your spark out for other people, the complicated relationship between money and the idea of designing your life, failure, fear, and so, so much more.

So to begin, because this podcast is about honouring the ebb and flow and how our daily lives are constantly in flux, here’s Jai Long on how he is today.

Jai Long: Yeah, times are a little bit strange right now, as we all know. Things are pretty strange when you go for a walk in the morning and you’re taking your dog, and everyone’s out in the park but there’s nothing else happening. There’s no coffee shops open near me, and there’s nothing actually open near me, so it’s weird times, to be honest. Really weird times.

MD: It is very weird times. For you personally, how are you dealing with this shift, the change that’s happening?

JL: I think the shift is interesting. It’s actually something that I kind of thought was going to come for a long time. With business, I’m so conscious of setting myself up so I’m not in any kind of risk and, even though I’m a high-risk guy and I like to fly on the edge of my seat and make bootstrap things and make things work with little to no money, I never go into debt, I never have credit cards, I really look after myself and scale myself on the basis of how much can I actually afford and how can I live in my means?

So even right now, I make good money, well, I did make good money in my businesses and I feel like I’m pretty financially stable and financially safe, but I don’t own a car and I don’t live in a fancy house and we don’t have a TV, we don’t have nice furniture, because they’re not the things that bring me happiness anyway. If I can’t actually just go in and afford to buy a car in cash, for me, it’s just not something that’s on my cards. It’s something I have to work towards, save towards, and then reward myself with the hard work that I put in. 

I think now it’s paying off, now that we’re in hard times and my income, overnight, came to a standstill, and I know that I can live for the next 12 months without any income coming in and I should be fine. But it’s hard. It’s hard to navigate around, for sure, and I think the thing that breaks my heart the most is that I’m not breaking my own heart over myself. It’s looking around and seeing the creative industry getting shook. Especially musicians, especially photographers, especially anyone in events.

It’s not something you can foresee, really. You could foresee a recession, yes, but you can’t foresee something like that, and you can’t foresee that your income is going to stop next week and the whole world is going to stop next week. That’s just a surprise, I guess.

MD: Yeah. As you acknowledged, you’re in this incredible position because you’ve built your businesses to such a successful level, but you haven’t always had it comfortable. This was something that you worked for. And I wondered if maybe you could take us back to the beginning in businesses, or even your schooling, to talk a little bit about how you built that? Because I think there could maybe be some comfort in not having it all to begin with.

JL: Absolutely. Life’s a funny thing, isn’t it? It goes full circle. I’ve always said, in the next ten years, I will be a millionaire but I’m also going to go bankrupt. People think that’s crazy, but it’s just a cycle. Things go around in circles and I’ve been to the lowest of lows and I’ve been to the highest of highs, and it’s an amazing adventure, I guess.

For myself, I didn’t really do much schooling. I was actually homeless when we were really young, so the earliest memories that I can remember, we were homeless and then we got on a waiting list for a housing commission house and we got relocated to [inaudible 09:15] in New South Wales and the first time I went to school would’ve been in Year 4 or Grade 4.

We lived in a tent for a while and then we finally moved into a home, I think, when I was about 11 years old. So that was the first actual house and it was in the roughest neighbourhood and the roughest street in the whole area, but it was a home and I loved it. There was loads of domestic violence, there was a lot of drugs, and my parents never worked. All that kind of stuff.

I don’t want to skip over that stuff because it’s obviously made me who I am today, but I don’t really dwell on my past too much because I’m so focused on where I want to go, not from where I’ve been, but I do have to acknowledge the path that’s brought me here and, I guess, what’s given me the hunger to want to do better and want to do more. And the confidence as well, to be honest, because when you do grow up on the streets, when you are a fighter, you have this confidence that gets instilled into you because it’s fight or flight. 

If you’re a fighter then you’re there and you stand your ground, and when times get tough, it’s when you flourish because you’ve been there before. You know exactly what it’s like and you’re not scared of it. People are scared of what they don’t know, so that’s why people get scared of being bankrupt or people are scared of losing everything. But I have lost it all and I have had nothing, so it’s not something that scares me. If I lose it all then I’m like, well, I can rebuild and start again. I’ve already got new ideas and new things. As long as I’ve got my health and my fitness and my mental health, I can keep going.

So I guess it was humble beginnings. When I was 20 years old, I started my first business and it was a café and it was a megastructure. This café could sit 350 people. I had stuff, a chef, I had baristas, and the whole thing. It was a big undertaking because I finished school when I was 15, 16 and I didn’t have an education, I didn’t know anything to do with business, I had no role models. And it started because I wanted to help my dad get a job and, at the time, he was in rehab and it was the only way that I could find employment for him. Was to become the employer.

So I started a business and then, just before we opened up, he passed away of a drug overdose and it hit the business hard. I was open for 12 months to the day before I went bankrupt. It was literally the best business degree I could ever have. Learning to lose it all so quick… someone actually told me the other day, if you want to get successful, learn to fail really quickly so that’s out of the way. 

And I actually believe in that. The quicker you learn to deal with failure and the quicker that you do fail, you get comfortable and then you free yourself for success, and I think that’s a really important lesson. It’s a lesson I learned when I was 20 years old, so that’s amazing, I think.

MD: I think that really speaks to where you are now as well, so I’d like to dive into that. Not to show that rags to riches story, I think that can be overplayed, but just show that it seems like it’s intrinsic to you to see opportunity or to even see money. And that can be so difficult for any creative or anyone, especially in circumstances that we’re encountering now, and so I’m curious to hear… I mean, it was 12 months to the day, and you closed up the café. What did that feel like?

JL: It was incredible. Imagine this. If you’ve got a business and it’s failing and you’re also grieving your dad who’s passed away, and you’re not empowered with the knowledge of business, so everything is new. Everything is unforeseen and it’s unchartered territories. My relationship was breaking down, I was losing so much money that I started living in the café just to make ends meet. I got a full-time job just to try to put the money into the till of the café to keep it running.

It felt like there was such a weight on my shoulders and I was holding everybody up and I didn’t want to let anybody down, didn’t want to let down my staff, and it was so hard. My partner, who is now my wife, she was the one that said, Jai, enough is enough, you’re killing yourself, it’s not worth it. Let’s close up.

And I was in denial. I was like no, I can make this work, I’m not a failure, I can do this stuff. I felt like I was a failure growing up in a lot of senses, but I felt like this was my own thing and I was so proud of it, and this is not me. I want to be successful.

So when reality kicked in and I did fail and we closed the doors, it was seriously the most bizarre feeling. We had an old van that one of my friends gave me and we went and drove to the beach, we closed the door for the last time at the café, we went and drove to the beach, and we had all our stuff in the car, and we were essentially homeless. We were sleeping in the car.

The next morning, my girlfriend’s next to me, Leelou, and I woke up and the suns coming through and I was looking at her and was just thinking, and she’s laying there and she’s still smiling and she’s next to me, and I’m looking out at the horizon and the suns rising and there’s air moving in through the car, and it felt so beautiful. It seriously still brings me tears right now because I felt free. I felt like, for the first time in my life, oh my god, the weights been lifted and I failed, but I feel amazing.

It also got rid of any kind of fear that I had because I was like, if this is the lowest I can go, if this is it, bring it on world. That day I was like, okay, we’re sleeping in the car tonight and I went bankrupt yesterday, but now I want to change my life. I’m ready now.

I was so pumped, full of energy, and I moved on with life. I had a goal, I had a vision, and I wanted to have a better life than what I had, and that was it. To this day, I would say it’s one of the best most liberating days of my life, and one of the most life-changing moments of my life, as well.

MD: As you’ve just so beautifully put, you can so find those moments in the lowest of the low, and I loved a message that you just shared for creative entrepreneur friends, and you touched on this idea that no one actually cares about your success or your money, they care about you.

I’m trying to look for little silver linings as we navigate this uncertainty, and I can’t speak for every creative, as you’ve said so many people are in varying circumstances, but for myself, I have felt that weight off my shoulders in terms of my projects, especially. It doesn’t matter if people enjoy them or if they’re successful or if they make money, so much as am I doing them every day? Am I in touch with the things that I want to be? Am I looking out at the sunrise?

JL: Absolutely. I think it’s interesting with our routines lately, especially for myself, I don’t know, I can’t speak for every creative entrepreneur, but I feel like this was happening. We’re starting to go into a bit of a rat race and, for myself, I was pushing, pushing, pushing, and I was starting to not enjoy life around me because I was so focused on my projects, so focused on my career, and so focused on so many things.

And all of a sudden, within a week, all that work dried up. Within a week the whole world if stopped and, people are even saying now, pollutions lifting, birds are singing, and everybody is starting to really enjoy each other. Even if you’re not going to work, you’re going to stay home with your wife or with your husband, and you’re going to learn something new about them, and you’re going to reconnect with people, even your partner that you don’t get to see every day, you’re going to reconnect and learn new things.

I think, as far as routines go, this is a bit of a shakeup that many of us really need, and it’s like a bit reset button. It’s like, wait a second, no one actually does care. I’m so caught up in thinking that I need to be successful, I need to show up and do this stuff, but I don’t, actually. People are still ringing me up saying, Jai, we care for you. No one’s mentioning my business that’s just flopped, no one’s mentioning anything else, they just want to know how I’m doing.

Right now, anyone listening to this podcast, if you’re going to get a strong message from this podcast, is really actually enjoy this moment. It doesn’t happen all the time. It’s never happened before in history, and it’s something to actually enjoy and embrace, as well.

MD: I do like to say that the beauty is actually in the break, and so that’s so well put. I guess let’s dive into the part, the break part, in terms of your businesses that have just really been put on pause. There are things that are very tied to an industry that has just been put on pause. How are you navigating that part of it?

JL: It’s very difficult. My business is pretty well established. I’m a wedding photographer. I’ve been running it for seven years and my business is very successful and it’s very well-know all around Melbourne and I get lots of work. Overnight, I didn’t foresee it, but it literally just, that was it, it just shut down.

We postponed about $100,000 worth of work within a week and I also lost a lot more than that as well from cancellations with my photo booth and DJ business, all the cancellations and people postponing there. People wanting refunds. I also have workshops and I had a workshop in New York City coming up, and Los Angeles, and people have obviously paid in full. And then me issuing refunds.

I think, overnight, I had about $100,000 drain out of my account and then, for the foreseeable future, it’s really crippled me as well because I can no longer take on new work for the start of next season, I have to look after all my clients that I have now. I’m going to do my best and fight my hardest to make sure that my business is around so I can continue to look after those people that did book me, even though it’s going to be running at a loss and even though it’s really hard for me right now.

I guess the silver lining is that right now I get to do more podcast episodes, I get to work on projects that I love. All the projects that I really love, like my podcast and things like that, it doesn’t make me any money, it just brings me joy. And I think the more stuff right now that I surround myself with, the stuff that I love and things that bring me joy, the better. So that’s what I’m doing right now. I’m just digging in and loving life.

MD: There’s time now for that kind of thing, but I would love to ask you, as someone who was able to take action on so many different projects and ideas, even when you were squeezed for time, how did you take an idea and run with it previously?

JL: It’s interesting. A lot of people actually ask me this and I think, for instance, right now, I’ve got three companies. I run a weekly podcast, I run live workshops, I do webinars, I do so many things.

MD: You really do.

JL: Yeah, but the thing is, I didn’t just start off one day saying I’m going to have three companies and I’m going to do everything. I built up my resilience and tolerance to stress. When you first start, say if you were a photographer and you first start, and you book a client, you have some sort of degree of stress because you’re thinking okay, what if things go wrong, or what happens, I’ve got to make sure I’ve got my gear, I’ve got to make sure I don’t double book and I’ve got time.

And, as time goes on, you book more work and more work, and your resilience grows, or your tolerance grows. And then it gets to a point when it becomes easy and second nature and then, when it gets to that point, you can take on something else and the same thing happens. So it has been slow for me in that sense, but it’s become a time where I can juggle things and I’m also really good at letting go.

Even if my business does go bankrupt right now, I’m so good at letting go that I’m just like, whoa, there it goes, that was a thing. Or seeing 100 grand taken out of my bank account, that would absolutely crush some people, but for me I was like well, was that even my money? I didn’t physically see, it was in the bank and now it’s gone, it’s a number. But whatever, we can keep moving and building.

I think that stress is the hardest thing. People don’t want to put themselves under huge amounts of stress and I, for some reason, if I have a tiny little bit of time, I keep putting myself under stress, and more stress, because I need to be really uncomfortable to be able to perform, and the more uncomfortable I am, the more I put myself into a situation where I am so far out of my comfort zone that I’m like, oh my god, how am I going to get through this week? Oh my god, how is this actually going to work?

And when I finally conquer it, then I say, well, you know what, I could probably do more, let’s do a workshop next week, let’s do this, let’s do that. And I keep building and building.

MD: Isn’t that interesting?

JL: Yeah, I don’t recommend that everyone should do it that way. This is me being comfortable with myself and not everybody allows themselves to be comfortable like that because a lot of people will say, oh, I can’t do that because people will call me a workaholic, or I can’t do that because I need to spend more time doing this or this, and not giving themselves permission. 

It was a bit of a game-changer for me when I gave myself permission to be myself and to run at the frequency that I am born to run at. For me, that is why can’t I take this opportunity right now to do all the things I want to do? Why can’t I? Who’s stopping me? Why is there a rule out there saying that I can only do a few things with my life, or I have to be a certain somebody, or I have to be a photographer, or I can’t be something else?

I don’t like those rules. I just want to be loving everything that I do and the second that I don’t love one of my projects, I just let it go. It doesn’t matter how much money it’s making, it’s gone. So that’s basically how my projects run.

MD: I love that you’re touching on this because it speaks so much to how we’re all wired so differently, and it’s really about finding out how you are wired so you can honour that, instead of seeing how somebody else is doing it and replicating that. And I love that we’re talking because I think we might be different sides of the coin because you have that high energy, putting yourself in that place of stress is when you do your best work.

But for me, I need a lot of softness, I need a lot of space, I need to mull to get my best ideas. And both of us are doing interesting projects, I would say, so there’s no right or wrong approach. It’s actually just about honouring the one for you, so thank you, because I think sometimes busyness can be shamed now, but neither should be shamed. Neither the rest nor the busyness.

JL: I think if you shift your mindset as well, and instead of being busy, because no one wants to be busy. Let’s be honest. No one wants to go to work and be busy. We all want to take the easy route. So instead of being busy, I’m always impactful, so everything that we do, and my staff do… I tell my staff, if you’re sitting there being busy, go out and go for a walk, I don’t want you to be in my studio and be busy right now. I want you to make an impact and, if you’re not doing that, go and rest or go and take a day off and then come back when you’re ready to make an impact. 

And we all work like that, so it means that I don’t do 12-hour days. I don’t even do 10-hour days. I probably do six-hour days, and so people probably think I work around the clock, and I really don’t, but I know what makes an impact and I’m optimising that all the time, so my time is really accounted for. I know what’s happening, when I can fit things in, and I’m really realistic with that as well.

MD: Just before we go onto how you structure your days for that approach to work, do you have advice for letting go to people? Because I think that it is an art.

JL: Yeah, that’s a huge question. Letting go is like one of the key secrets to any kind of success and also happiness. I guess it’s not undervalued, but it’s not talked about enough. If you can let go of so many things that have created your path or from your beginnings to where you are now, there’s so many things that have shaped you, and so many things that have shaped you in a negative as well, which is like creating fear or creating limitations, and things like that. And when you can let go of the fear of the limitations, you absolutely become limitless.

And it’s just the same as, imagine me right now and imagine losing $100,000. To so many people, if you’re hanging on and you’re scared of losing money, if you’re scared of the future and things that are going to happen, then I wouldn’t be on this podcast right now. I’d be in the fetal position in the corner of the room. And that’s the reality of it.

But when you let go, it becomes limitless and there’s so many possibilities. I’m looking around right now and I’m like, oh my god, opportunities, opportunities everywhere, and no decision I make is based on fear or of other people’s expectations. It’s only my own expectations.

So I don’t know if it’s meditating or doing things like that, but I think really honing in on what you know makes yourself happy and don’t change for anybody. Don’t change for your partner, don’t change for your friends or your business partners, or whoever it is. Know deep down, this is my truth. And I’m so ruthless with my truth.

If someone’s not bringing me positivity, I just don’t hang out with that person anymore. If I don’t have time for whatever. And Leelou, my wife, she’s always like Jai, sometimes you come across rude or mean, and I say yeah, maybe I do, but I know my truth and I know who needs my attention and where I need to be putting in my time.

MD: Did you have to experiment with that approach? Have you got it wrong, do you think, ever?

JL: I get it wrong all the time, and Leelou pulls me in and tells me, yeah, that’s all great, Jai, but you need to talk to your friends, or you need to be nice to that person, or something. And it’s not always easy. It’s also, a lot of the time, I have to dull down my energy because I don’t want to make people feel bad about themselves, and I know I have that effect to people sometimes.

If someone’s hanging out with me, all I want to talk about is, oh my god, this happened, and I’m excited about this, and I’m excited about that, but if they’re not running at the same frequency, then all I’m doing is like, look at my life, look what I’m doing, and I have to really reign it in and go like oh no, nothing’s really happening, it’s just a thing. And then, when I do get to that point, that’s when I’m like, I really need to spend less time with that person because I hate putting out my spark for anybody. But I’m also very conscious of how I make people feel. I’m so conscious on that as well.

MD: That’s a really lovely balance to be aware of. I know you mentioned, when I asked you about sharing a potential creative rut, it was interesting. Your response was actually about how the loss of a person led to a creative rut, and maybe this ties into finding people who do see your spark or you can share your spark with, as you put it.

JL: I think you need to have someone in your corner that has your best interests at heart and believes in you and is like a cheerleader, or someone that can really push you. If you don’t have that person, you need to be that person for yourself, for sure. And also, if you don’t have that person, you need to be that person for somebody else as well.

But I think, for myself, I really thrive off people’s energy, so I love hanging out with people that are also high-frequency movers. They are on a platform where everything’s happening and they are excited and they have energy, and I guess everything is limitless. 

I had one of those friends, and he was the guy that, when I was working as an electrician and I had a job and I was at the top of my job and everything, and I was making a lot of money at the time, but I just wasn’t happy. I wasn’t fulfilled creatively. I wasn’t fulfilled because I’d already hit my peak kind of thing. And he was the guy that said, stuff the money, imagine all the other things you could do.

And every decision that I made, my best friend at the time, he would go and he would support me and the stuff he would say, I would be like yeah, you’re right, if you believe in me, I should definitely believe in myself because that just makes sense.

And I also believed in everything he did as well. His name is Dwight and he grew up in a little town called Daylesford in Victoria, and didn’t have a lot of money or anything. He’s from a very humble family. But he moved to Melbourne and he wanted to race motorbikes and he wanted to race one day in the Isle of Man, that was his goal. And the Isle of Man, to race, is over in Europe, it’s just off the coast of England, and it’s the biggest, most dangerous, most prestigious race in the world.

So if he told anybody that dream, here’s a guy coming from the country, he rode a bike that was from the 80s. He couldn’t win any races because his bike was so old. Everything was going against him but, when you sat down and talked to him, he would say that one day he would race the world titles, he’s going to be at the Isle of Man. To race the world titles, you have to race all around Europe, you have to have a bike that’s worth about $250,000. To race in the actual race, I think it’s about $250,000 to enter, and it seems like an impossible dream. It just does not seem possible.

But when you listen to this guy talk, it was so possible that it was literally happening next week. It was like, oh my god, I can’t wait for you to race. And he was preparing himself. He was exercising for it, he was going for runs, he was racing every weekend. He was preparing himself for the world titles.

And then, as fate would have it, and he’s the type of guy that’s open to everything, his uncle passed away over in Europe, so he went over and went to his uncle’s funeral and, at this funeral, he met this guy. Very much an older guy and he was telling him, one day he’s going to race in the Isle of Man he’s going to do all these things.

It turns out, this guy happened to be a millionaire and he loves Isle of Man so, when my friend Dwight came back, he’s like oh, I had some beers with some friends, and it was amazing. And this guy rang him up, and my friend told me about it, he’s like oh, some guy reckons he’s going to send me a bike, but I don’t believe it. And I was at his house maybe two months later, and a truck showed up and this custom-made bike from Switzerland gets anchored off the truck, that just got shipped over.

And he is mind blown. He’s in tears. Like what? Like I actually don’t believe this. And, now that he’s got a new bike, he raced around Australia and he absolutely broke every record on every racetrack because, all of a sudden, he had a fast bike that could actually do it. And then that guy flew him to Europe, and he flew all around Europe and, within 12 months, he was racing the Isle of Man world titles. And it was the most mind-blowing thing. It was like wow. 

If you have that much dedication, your routine is all structured around that success, there’s no doubt in my mind that it could happen. And it did happen for him. I mean, I don’t want to bring down the story, but the second he raced one year, then the second year he actually passed away on the racetrack racing, and that was a massive impact for his family that were there, his girlfriend was there. His mum and dad flew over there, which was really hard for me to get the news here, but at the same time, oh my god, he died doing what he loved, and he lived life to the absolute fullest.

It gives me so much inspiration and so much hope, I’m like, man, he died at 27, but he lived 27 years. Most of us don’t even live, you know? How incredible is that? So I still have a smile on my face, but it also sent me into a creative rut because the 12 months after that was the first time I’d ever been through depression, the first time that I lost someone close to me who I actually really grieved.

I think when my dad passed away and when family members have passed away, they’ve been a little bit distant, it was a different situation, I guess. This was my best friend that I shared everything with, and he was just gone the next day. It felt like no one was in my corner anymore and I couldn’t continue, I guess.

MD: That is such a loss to go through, and obviously now it’s amazing how your friend Dwight can be so inspiring and will inspire you for your whole life, but that immediate grief period would be challenging. So how did you build yourself back up, and I guess take Dwight’s attitude on into your core without him?

JL: One of the things that’s really important that I’d really like to focus on is mindfulness and really understanding how I feel and allowing myself to feel that. So I knew for a good 12 months that I was gone for depression, and I just knew that I wanted to feel it because I’d never felt it before, and I felt like, in some sense, like I deserved it because I’ve had so much other stuff that I didn’t process in my life and I was like, this is the time for me to stop and think.

But I was going downhill pretty quick. I was sitting down in the shower for like an hour every afternoon after work, and I would just be sitting there thinking and contemplating. My wife would come in and she’s like, Jai, you need to change things up, maybe you should go to the gym, or maybe you should go for a run, or do something. And I think I was probably in that stage for a little bit longer than I should’ve been, but I was really trying to feel it and I was trying, I guess, to give myself that healing process that it needed without trying to skip past it, like I have done in the past.

And then, once I did feel like, yeah, okay, now I feel like I’ve grieved and I’m feeling good, then I just realised that I don’t really have any role models. I don’t know anyone that’s done the stuff that I’ve done, and I don’t really have anyone really close to me that’s a support like that anymore, so I need to be that person.

So I just had to double down on myself and I had to really believe in myself, and I was at that point, I was like fuck it, I was like this is my life, I’m not holding myself back, and I need to be my biggest cheerleader. I need to believe in this stuff so much that other people are going to believe in me. And, from that energy, that’s going to be it. It’s going to be limitless.

MD: I can just see that transformation from sitting in the shower to that upright, I’m ready. Just this evolution that so many people… it’s so difficult to navigate but can be so enriching. So I’m wondering, how do you know transpose that energy into your day-to-day? How do you ground yourself in routine?

It might be interesting to hear, because just last week you were incredibly busy with your wedding photography and your workshops, and so on. So I don’t know if you want to do a bit of a before and after kind of look at your routine, and I guess what’s changed since?

JL: Absolutely. Okay, so routine for me is really important. One thing that I find really difficult is that I’m actually a destination wedding photographer, so I shoot a lot of weddings overseas, and a lot of the times it really throws my routine. But, when I’m here and I’m in Melbourne, routine is so important because it keeps me grounded and it keeps things, for my mental health, so easy as well.

I get up at 6am every single morning. I don’t set an alarm because I’m not an alarm type of person. I’m like, if I want to sleep in, I will, but I never do. I’m creative in the morning, I’m so creative. My wife’s the opposite. She’ll be up at 2am working away, where I have to go to bed early. I need that rest

MD: That’s always interesting if you’ve got an early bird and a night owl couple.

JL: Yeah, it’s so interesting because, in the morning, I want to talk about everything. I’ve got all the ideas, I want to wake her up and tell her all the ideas, but she doesn’t want to hear anything until 11am, so she’ll just push me away. And so we can talk from about 11-2pm and, when we get to about 3pm, I’m done.

I think sometimes you’ve got to be honest with yourself and know when you’re creative. So, after three o’clock, I try not to do any podcast episodes because I lose all my creativity and I start going into just work mode, and just thinking, how do I get through something? But in the morning, I’m ready and I’m like, I could write a book, and I could do a podcast episode, and I can write a blog post, and I can do all that stuff. As long as it’s before 3pm.

MD: It’s good to know these patterns in yourself. So you wake up naturally and you’re ready to go.

JL: I’m ready to go. One thing is, I don’t have any days off, ever. Because I’m a wedding photographer, weekends are busy shooting weddings, so every single day has something a little bit different, but there’s no days off. So for myself to have my mental health, I need to have time to myself, and so I wake up at 6am, which is perfect. No one else awake. I’ll walk to my coffee stall with my dog and I’ll get a coffee, and then I’ll put on a podcast and I’ll walk to the park and I just walk around the park usually until the podcast episode is finished, but I usually do it for about an hour, or I sit on a park bench and just watch the sunrise.

And for me, that little bit of time, I get to learn, I get to listen to a new perspective, and I get to breathe fresh air, and I get to play with my dog. And I know that no one can disturb me from like 6am to 7:30. There’s nothing that happens. And I think that’s really important because, after that, after listening to, Madeleine, maybe one of your podcast episodes or something like that, I come into the studio and I’ve got a new perspective and I’m completely energised. I’m thinking, okay, I’m ready to go, what are we doing today?

And so when I get into the studio, the first thing I do is use Asana, and that’s a programme to schedule your day and schedule your team’s day as well. So we use Asana and it’s a great platform. It’s kind of like Monday.com or any of those, but I go in there and I just check what’s on for my day, and I make sure my whole week is basically scheduled.

So it’ll be 9am, there’s a podcast interview, 9:30 I will have to work for two hours doing some editing, and then at 11 o’clock something else is happening. So I usually get all my work done from nine until about three o’clock, and then the last two hours I usually just kick it around the studio and really waste time.

MD: I love that. We always need that faffing point. Just going back to your Asana, when are you doing that schedule? Are you doing that yourself, or is part of your team working on that?

JL: To do the list, I do them in the mornings, especially Monday morning where I schedule out a whole week. I have a project manager that works for me as well, full-time, and so she works on a few different projects. She’s really good at also delegating work around and making sure everybody’s happy and I’m not overloading everybody because, if it was up to me, I’d want everything done yesterday. Because I, for some reason, expect everybody can work as hard as I can and it’s not realistic at all.

Like I’ll schedule a whole bunch of work in for one day for one person, and she’ll go in there and split it across the whole week kind of thing, and make sure that everybody’s happy.

MD: That’s very helpful.

JL: Yeah, it is really helpful, and I think, for myself, writing lists is a massive thing. So when I’m gone for a walk, even though it’s my own time, I get so many ideas then and I’m getting so creative that that’s the time that I will quickly get out my notes on my phone and I’ll write some ideas. I’ll be like oh, I should do a little IGTV episode this week and give people a little bit of hope because I know for myself that I’d love to see something like that. And I’ll write that down.

When I get in, my content creator will walk in and I’m like, hey man, so today things have changed, we’re making a video. And he’ll be like oh, okay, and we’ll get straight into that. But then I also schedule things out, so he needs to do the editing the next day, and so on and so forth.

MD: Okay, so you can kind of change depending on what idea is really coming to the fore. How do you know when your task list, or to-do list, is too full? Do you car park ideas? Or how do you determine… I guess it comes back to that idea of letting go, but just on a day-to-day basis with ideas.

JL: Oh, that’s such a hard question. I have so many ideas and I want to do them all and we don’t have the manpower to get them all done. So there’s definitely ideas that get shut down by the team as well, and they say that’s a terrible idea, let’s not do that, and that’s fine as well. I can be very ambitious and I want to take over the world, but I also realise that not everything is possible straightaway.

MD: That reminds me of my favourite quote actually, it’s David Carr: “Don’t focus on the plan to take over the world, just focus on the next step in front of you.”

JL: Yeah, I mean, that’s what I need to do. I need to focus on those little steps, but sometimes I get too far ahead. I think having a backlog of ideas is a really good idea, so for instance if I’m thinking oh, I need to write a blog post, I have a notes page for blog posts or for podcast episodes, just ideas, and it’s pages and pages and pages. When I find the time, if I’m sitting on the plane and I’m flying to LA to shoot a wedding or something, I’ll sit down and that’s when I’ll start writing those blog posts. 

And I’ve always got something to do, I don’t have to remember those ideas. As long as I write them down and store them somewhere, then I know that I’ll come back to them and I’ll see them with new light, if it’s actually a good idea or if I should just pass it on.

Some things you want to get onto straight away though, so this week I’ve had a bit of an idea for my podcast where I want to interview people from different parts of the world and see what it looks like locally for them. So something like that means I have to put everything else on stop, and then the person that does my podcast producing, she has to get straight onto that, so we’ve got it out this week kind of thing. So it’s more of a reaction kind of thing, opposed to a full plan.

MD: Yes, that’s a great approach, and it’s also really illuminating to know that there are lots of different people helping you with these ideas. I think people could look from the outside at a business sometimes and think that, because it’s under someone’s name, it’s someone doing all the moving parts, but it’s good to know you’ve got a producer, or a content person, or a project manager.

JL: Absolutely.

MD: And something that you’ve built up to as well.

JL: Yeah, I also really like sharing that as well because I think that I look up to a lot of people. Just say, for instance, Tony Robbins. You look up to someone like that and it’s his name and you’re like man, that guy does a lot of stuff. But you also don’t realise, he probably has hundreds, if not thousands, of employees that also help him with all the stuff that he does. And we can forget sometimes that people never show the behind the scenes and show the team and how things actually work, they’re always just putting themselves forward.

So I really like to show my team off and go, hey, I obviously don’t do this all by myself, I’m not holding all the cameras, I’m not doing everything, check out the team. These guys work in sync together and it creates the dream, and it’s incredible.

MD: I love that. It’s like that saying, “Everybody has the same amount of hours in the day as Beyoncé,” but you’re forgetting that Beyoncé has a whole team around her. 

So you said that you work through until three, do you break for lunch or do you keep going through so that you can maximise your creative focus?

JL: I’m not very good at eating because I do find it to be a waste of time. It’s one of my downfalls and my wife says, Jai, you look so angry when you’re eating, and I’m like, I’m trying to get it down as quick as I can so I can get back to what I was doing.

I do enjoy meals. I enjoy dinner and I’m not working, but I don’t enjoy taking the time to stop what I was doing to have that break. But I do do it, and then I just get straight back into it. 

I know I’m so productive between nine and three that I usually try not to allow anything to distract me. I try and make sure I get everything I need done by then. I actually watch the clock and if I’m writing an article and it’s two o’clock, I’ve got one hour to get that done. 

Then, when I get it done, I allow myself for the last two hours just to get a little bit creative and get a little bit weird. Usually I walk around the studio and distract everyone else and I start writing out things that we could do that are never going to happen. Just play a little bit, I guess, just give myself that time.

MD: And so now I’m guessing there’s a few changes to your day at the moment with social distancing and isolation?

JL: Yeah.

MD: How are you finding that with a team?

JL: It’s very difficult because I don’t want to lay off anybody. I had to lay-off my full-time designer last week and that was really difficult for me. I still have my content creator coming into work and we’ve got the metre rule, so everybody’s in here working but we’re all apart as well, so that’s really good.

I want to keep them working for as long as possible, and so we are working around the clock just thinking up ideas on how we can make that happen because I know the answer is there, I just haven’t found the answer. I don’t want to say, oh no, that’s it, and I didn’t even try for my team. I know there’s something there that’s going to get us through these harder times, and I’m willing to put in the time and the effort and the work to make that happen as well.

MD: Just looking back on your trajectory, you’ve been a café owner, an electrician, wedding photographer, now creative educator. And also you’re writing a lot. Especially during these times and while you’re looking for this opportunity, and I’m sure a lot of people are going to be in that position where they really have to pivot their entire career, be it from A to a completely different B, in your experience, what advice could you share on that act? How do you accumulate so many different skills and change?

JL: You definitely have to get rid of your ego because you have to know that, even if you’re at the top of your game, even if I was the best electrician, I’ve become the worst wedding photographer, and then I become the best wedding photographer, I’m going to become the worst educator, because you’re starting at the bottom again. 

So letting go of that ego and just knowing that you’ve always got to have that child mentality, like we’re always learning. And I think that comes down to the ego as well. For myself, I just know that everything I’m doing, I’m learning. I learn off the staff that I hire. I hire them because they know more than me, and that’s why it works. I make sure that I’m not the smartest in the room in anything that I do, and I’m always surrounding myself with people that are [inaudible 48:39] achievers or they’re more intelligent, or whatever it is. Just so I can learn from them and get that energy as well.

But on the other side of things, if you’ve had a business before, all businesses basically run the same. It’s all the same principles. So yes, you’re learning a new skill set in terms of the craft that you’re doing, but business and projects all run the same. You still need to get out Asana, you still need to sort out your day, and it’s just that there’s new questions and there’s new answers to find.

And that’s all that you’re doing. You’re just trying to work out new ways to solve those problems. I guess, one last thing is, the incredible thing about not having an education in the industry, but coming in and learning something, you have a new perspective. You don’t do things like everybody else and you’re able to steal from other industries and bring it into the industry that you’re doing now, so it really means you become really innovative and unstoppable.

Even when I started my photo booth business for instance, I think I had three photo booth companies contact me saying, I don’t know how you came up with those ideas, but we’re going out of business now because you’ve just taken over everything, and they blamed me a little bit for them failing. But the thing was, they were failing anyway. I looked at their business and they weren’t innovating, and you need to always be innovating because if you’re not innovating, someone’s going to out-innovate you, and when that happens, you’ll become redundant. So it’s really important to understand those fundamentals of business and how you can innovate and grow your business, scale your business as well.

MD: Those are such great points. I’m curious about your particular opinion on the notion of talent, because my opinion would be that you’d still have to be kind of good at photography or have a natural talent to be able to be as successful as you’ve been with it, so are you either just this incredible polymath or is talent a little bit overplayed? 

JL: I think talent is definitely overplayed. I mean, here’s a good example. Have a look at a musician, someone maybe like Angus Stone from Angus and Julia Stone. He plays a song like Big Jet Plane and that song is really basic, three chords, the most basic song, the most basic chords, the most basic lyrics. But then you get these amazing classically trained musicians at weddings every weekend, and they’re covering that song that that guy made.

It doesn’t come down to them not being as good as Angus Stone, they’re actually probably so much better when it comes down to their skills, but someone like Angus Stone has released himself and he’s free to put music out there that is that basic, but it connects with people. It connects on a whole other level. And I think no one’s born with natural skills. I actually don’t believe that. Everyone that I know that’s successful in the creative industry, musicians, illustrators, everyone, the only reason why they’re so successful is because they’re so resilient and they just keep going.

If you listen to their first gigs or look at their first illustrations or see their first photos, they weren’t any better than anybody else’s, but they’ll just keep showing up and they’re so hungry for it, and they’ll do whatever it takes. They’ll ride their bike in the rain, they will take a pay cut. It doesn’t matter what it is, but resilience will get you there more so than anything else.

When I started my photography business, I didn’t know how to shoot my camera out of automatic mode. I had no background in photography. I quit my job as an electrician and I bought a camera, and then I was like, I’m starting a photography business, and I was terrible. I was terrible at photography, but I was so driven that it didn’t matter if I was terrible. I wasn’t going to allow that to hold me back. I was like, well, that doesn’t matter because I’m going to be a wedding photographer, and these are the things that I’m going to do.

And because I was so resilient and not listening to people that were hating my work and not listening to any outside influences, just knowing that tomorrow I’m going to do better than today, then with that drive, you become unstoppable, I guess.

MD: Yes, oh, I love that. For me, actually, I choose a word every year and I change my computer laptop screen to that word just as a reminder, and this year it’s trust. I think it’s the same sort of thing, it’s this combination of resilience, but it’s embedded in this idea that you trust yourself rather than outside influences, or whatever it might be.

JL: Oh, I love that.

MD: And that can be incredibly powerful. So I’d love to keep returning to your day because I think it’s very fascinating, your relationship with routine and how you prioritise the work but also the moments of joy. 

So you mentioned that you build this faffing time into the afternoon when you distract everyone. What happens after that?

JL: After that, it just turns into a really big lull and I literally get inside and read books, and that’s pretty much it. Sometimes I watch Netflix, but I’ve just been reading a lot of books lately. I try to learn as much as I can whenever I can. I just feel like I missed out on my education, I didn’t get to go to college or get any kind of degree, and I didn’t really do much in high school. I couldn’t really read and write that well in my early 20s, so I had to really learn how to do that.

I think those things, as a personal development, I love that I can keep growing like that and I use that little bit of energy that I have left to do that stuff. I also go to bed really early, so I think I’m usually in bed by 8-8:30pm. I’m a really good sleeper. As soon as I hit that pillow, I’m done, and sleep really helps with memory, it really helps with functioning, like brain functioning, all that kind of stuff.

So I have lots of energy, but I also really make sure that I’m looking after myself and I’m getting the sleep that I need so I can perform really well every single day.

MD: So how are you making sure that you get that good sleep? Is there anything in particular in terms of sleep hygiene, or some habits that could be helpful for other people?

JL: I think phones really hurt sleep. I do have my phone, I just put it in flight mode and I’m pretty good at just getting off my phone, but I think if you spent a few hours on your phone before you went to sleep, your mind would really be on. It’ll be switched on and it would be hard for it to turn off, so I try to read a book or something like that and slow my mind down.

I think because I do work at such a high energy, I’m losing so much of my energy all the time, so the second I’m in a car or if I’m in a plane or something, I can just turn my whole body off and just go dead asleep.

MD: It’s so interesting to hear that your workday really is quite short considering everything that you’re doing and how high energy you are, and I think people will be surprised to hear that the people that are quite energetic or “busy”, there’s actually often a lot of rest that needs to support that.

JL: Yeah, there is definitely so much rest.

MD: Is there anything in particular about your routine that you wanted to share? I think you would have so many different tools for people, questions people could ask.

JL: Really prioritising where you’re putting your time really helps, and then, with routines, having things really consistent. With my podcast, I knew it was really ambitious, but I was like, I need to have a podcast episode that comes out every Monday, and if I put that into my Asana, it means it will happen and it means, no matter what, I have to make that happen.

So I think having those deadlines, like you don’t always feel inspired, you don’t always feel like you’ve got all the time in the world, but when you have that deadline, it means it takes away all the excuses and you have to make it happen. Even if I have to work from 3-6pm and I really don’t want to do it, but I am going to do it because that’s what my business calls for.

Having deadlines and things like that, it also really helps you as a creative because you want restrictions. You don’t want to have everything easy and everything laid out for you. You want to have as many restrictions as you can so then you have less things to think about and you have to get more creative, I guess.

MD: Exactly, limitations can be so helpful in removing the indecision that can come up.

JL: Absolutely.

MD: How is it for you, jumping into podcasting? For me, it took a very long time. The procrastination journey was quite something. So, for you, your podcast is not only helpful content-wise, but beautifully produced.

JL: Oh, thank you.

MD: Any kind of pointers there?

JL: It’s pretty interesting. Every year, I usually take two months off work, so I do that during the winter, and in that time, I really allow myself to play with ideas and just think a little bit different and I come back so energised. I always say, after two months off work, I usually make so much more money and so many better decisions and I have so much more clarity because I get out of my business and I look at it from an outsider’s perspective of how people act with it and react with it, and stuff like that.

So last winter… I actually have an old car, it’s broken down at the moment, it’s a 1967 Valiant and I was like, you know what? I’m going to do a road trip by myself up to Byron Bay for two weeks, just to have some alone time and just to be in my own space. It was the first time I ever listened to podcasts, and I listened to a couple podcasts on the way up, and I listened to a couple on the way down, and then I was thinking about how I always get asked to talk on people’s podcasts and I always say no because I’m scared of it. I’m so terrified. I don’t want to record and sound silly on a podcast and then it’s recorded and then it’s out to the whole world and there’s nothing I can do about it.

And me being insecure with not going to school, not being able to read and write properly, I also can’t articulate some things that I’m trying to communicate and I’m really conscious of that, so I thought, why am I so scared? This is not something that should be holding me back, but it is holding me back because I’m not doing these interviews. Not that I want to be on a podcast, I just don’t want to be scared of something.

So I guess on the drive home, I was thinking about that and I was listening to a podcast and I thought, you know what? I’m going to start my own podcast when I get back and I’m going to do it weekly and I’m going to do it and it’s going to be terrible and every episode is going to get a little bit better, and it’s going to get a little bit better, and I’m going to do it until I’m comfortable talking on a podcast.

So that’s how and why my podcast came around. It was really a selfish thing. It was just me getting out of my comfort zone and really just saying that this is a project for me to grow, and I need to do this because I want to be able to speak to people whenever and wherever, and I want to feel confident.

MD: Well, you do that so well, Jai. That’s an incredible approach, I love that. I’m wondering, because you mentioned that every year you take those two months off, people could hear that and be like, well that’s easy for you if you’ve already got the money, or the salary to support that.

You hear a lot about people talking about designing your life and a lot of it does relate back to money in some ways, and also relating back to the privilege of having the freedom and the luxury to define your own day, but I’d love to hear from you because you hadn’t always had the money.

So if someone does hear that and think, well, I want the things that you have, Jai, but I don’t have the money yet, what would be your advice to them?

JL: I would say don’t use the money as an excuse. It’s pretty interesting because I’ve had no money, then I’ve had money, then I have no money, and I’ve lost businesses over the last ten years and things have gone up and down, but don’t concentrate on what you don’t have. Only concentrate on what you do have, and if you can have yourself two months off work, even if you don’t have two months off work, maybe just have two weeks off work, that’s good as well.

I didn’t just have two months off work my whole life. I definitely didn’t do that. I worked for ten years with not one day off, but when you’re thinking about designing your own life, when you’re thinking about how you want your life to be, I want you to really think about how would it feel, in five years’ time, if you could have two months off? Because that’s what you’re working towards.

You don’t want to feel right now, but what you don’t have and what your limitations are. If you have those in your mind, you’re already going to stop yourself from the success because you’re concentrating your energy on the wrong things. I want you to concentrate your energy on how it would actually feel if you could do that because, you know what? You can do that, it’s just that it hasn’t happened yet.

As long as you’re resilient and you’re constant and you keep showing up and you keep showing up with your work and the work that you do, you’re going to get there. Maybe not this year, maybe not next year, maybe in five years, maybe in ten years, I don’t know, we all have a different timeline, but as long as we keep pushing, you will get there.

But you do have to concentrate on the right things, and the right things is maybe you don’t have that much money right now, but you have more time. You probably have more time than I do. You probably have other resources that other people don’t have. If you’re anything like me and you live in Australia, like oh my god, how privileged are we? 

It’s not lost on me. I am literally the definition of the privileged person. I am a middle-aged white person living in a country where’s so many opportunities and, for me, my mum, she never had the opportunities I have. She didn’t have the job. She had a husband that would hit her all the time. So much domestic violence and so many restrictions, she was homeless, and she moved into housing commission and she’s relied on the government and all that kind of stuff, but she’s also the most powerful woman I’ve ever met.

When I see that she can do it, then I look at myself and go, oh my god, look at the privilege that I have. I have to make this work because I have to inspire the people around me. I feel like, if I’m not absolutely going out there every day and getting these opportunities, I feel like I’m doing an injustice to the people that don’t have the opportunities. Even if I had a hard upbringing, it’s still not as hard as so many people.

Imagine if I didn’t take this time to absolutely change the life of the people around me and to make the most of these opportunities? Because not everyone has the privilege to even have the opportunities that I have in my life, and I do have to acknowledge it and I have to make sure that I don’t waste this privilege because it’s not something that I chose, it’s something that I’m obviously born in, and it’s something that I have to make sure it does good. I don’t know.

MD: Well, it sounds like you definitely do know because you’ve inspected it and, as you’ve put so beautifully and articulately, the best thing that you can do with your privilege is use it, otherwise it is a disservice, so thank you, that was so well put. Do you have any final thoughts on the cycle that we’re in, the ebb and flow?

JL: With how we are right now in the business landscape, and I know a lot of creative entrepreneurs are listening to this podcast right now and not everybody has a business degree or has the knowledge of business, but just understand this. Everything goes in a cycle, things that go up and things that go down. And when we’re down, the things that flourish, and the things that will flourish, will be the things in the creative arts. It will be music that brings people together, it will be the art that brings people together, and you see this all the time. 

We saw this in the Australian bush fires. The people that stand up and help the whole community. It’s not the big businesses, it’s the small creatives that make the biggest impact, so you just know that the cycle is a normal, natural thing and it just moves things around. And it’s not all bad. It’s also a good part of a cycle and it will help in so many different ways. Indirectly, even if you don’t know it yet, it will help in housing affordability, it will help in opportunities that you don’t even know that’s going to open up and come your way right now. 

So even if it’s feeling like dire straight and everything you’ve worked for is all going out the window and stuff, now is the time to really hone in on your art and your creative aspect, and create something that means something to the world. Create that impact. You don’t need money, you don’t need anything else to do that, you just need you. That’s it.

MD: I hope you were able to be as inspired as I was by Jai and really note how crucial it is to find your own way. I’m keen to hear about what that looks like for you, and to invite you onto this podcast as well. As I mentioned, in a special edition of Routines & Ruts, I’ll be sharing what works for you and what doesn’t.

In the words of Eleanor Roosevelt, “most of the work that’s done in the world gets done by people who aren’t feeling all that well at the time they did it.” So thank you to each of you doing the work in the world, even if you don’t feel all that well right now. 

We’re seeing you.

Thank you.