Freedom Lifestyle

Leaning Into Your Uniqueness: Building Your Portfolio, Turning Down Gigs, Creative Entrepreneurship and Freelance Photography [Lex Kilgour]

• Sam Laliberte • Season 6 • Episode 76

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Running a creative business, managing multiple revenue streams and finding the courage to say 'no' to free work, Lex paints a vivid picture of what it really means to be a creative entrepreneur.

Lex is an internationally published photographer and content creator, who started her career as an actress in LA.  Her journey to entrepreneurship involves leveraging her personality, leaning into her unique side and embracing non-conformity.
 
Key Takeaways:

  • Building your photography portfolio and finding your niche
  • Saying no to favors from friends and family when building your business
  • Putting a pause on dreams and revenue streams that aren't working 

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About the show:

Sam Laliberte -  entrepreneur, digital nomad and freedom seeker, hosts the Freedom Lifestyle Podcast to expose people to the many ways you can design your dream life and unlock your own version of the freedom lifestyle. Her guests have empowered themselves through flexible work as a way to “have it all” - financial, location AND schedule freedom.

Speaker 1:

When it comes to other relationships in your life, especially with people that have nine to five. They're not gonna understand how taxing it can be to be trying to build a business from the ground up. A lot of people don't have the ability to take an idea from their head and bring that into the real world. It's like having a baby, like it's literally birthing a creative platform or a creative endeavor. It's incredibly stressful and hard and it doesn't always look like you're working. But I think for us creatives, we know that the times where it looks like we're quiet or it looks like you know we're not doing much, we're thinking about everything. We're trying to bring that to life.

Speaker 2:

You're listening to the Freedom Lifestyle podcast series. I'm sharing relatable stories of freedom seekers who ditched conventional office life and courageously asked for more. The energy just completely shifted. My entire being just felt so free.

Speaker 1:

My business was still generating income while I was on the beach, I decided to quit and just stay at home. I really can't work for anyone but me. It's literally just doing whatever the hell you want to do.

Speaker 2:

As for me, I'm your host, sam, and I've spent the last four years creating a business that allows me to work from anywhere. The Freedom Lifestyle looks different for everyone what's your free? Today you're gonna meet Lex, who is a nationally and internationally published photographer, videographer and content creator. She got her start as a local event photographer and has since really expanded her business, considered herself a full-time entrepreneur. Now she has been a five-time official media person for Burning man and, fun fact, she actually shot my engagement shoot, which was, of course, a surprise that Jared had coordinated.

Speaker 2:

So she's a special person in my life. She's probably been in my life now for over five years and it's always been in a friend capacity, but as her friend, I've kind of been able to sit on the sidelines and watch her have this life committed to being a creative, committed to the life of going from gig to gig photography project, videography project, creative project not really knowing where the world is going to take her next and just seeing how she rolls with all of that. And so I really wanted to have her on the show today to talk about what it actually takes to commit to a life as a creative, and we got pretty personal. We talked a little bit about how, when she was in high school, she had kind of identified early on that she didn't totally fit in and she didn't feel like any of the traditional routes that were being pushed in her in a more academic setting were right for her, and how, even from a young age, she knew she was going to be doing something quite alternative. We talk about how she actually got her start being an actress. She had big dreams of jet setting around the world as an international actor and she did do that. For a while she was living in LA but ultimately has put a pause on that and has now been focusing on this business full time.

Speaker 2:

So we talked about what it was like to actually put a pause on that dream, to pursue something like this, to how she made the shift to thinking of herself as an actress to now an entrepreneur and a business owner and a professional photographer and videographer, and what her tips are for somebody who might want to pursue this type of business. Things like how much paid work should you be doing? That's been a big thing that's come up for her as she's built out her portfolio, along with what should be your niche Should you be a photographer that focuses on just portraits, landscape engagement shoots, event photography, going to Burning man how important is that? So we also got into the weeds of what are some tactics for someone who's pursuing this. You're going to learn a lot from this episode, so I'm just going to start passing the mic over to her. Here you go Meet Lex Lex. Welcome to the Freedom Lifestyle podcast. How's your day?

Speaker 1:

going yeah good, Definitely been looking forward to this and so honored to be on. It's good to see you.

Speaker 2:

I'm so happy to have you on the show After so much time. We've been in each other's lives for five, six years.

Speaker 1:

I'm not even sure.

Speaker 2:

I was trying to think back to. I've had a chance to see, kind of from an outsider's perspective of being your friend, how you've built your own Freedom, lifestyle and the journey that you've been on. But today I'm hoping it can be an opportunity for me to just like ask you all the questions I wanted to ask and understand what it's actually really been like for you from both a personal and a professional standpoint all these years.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, let's get into it.

Speaker 2:

So the first question is pretty easy when in the world are you taking this call from what time is it there, and what would you normally be doing if you didn't have this interview with me?

Speaker 1:

Well, I'm speaking to you from my room in Toronto. It's almost 2.30 now, and about this time of day I'd probably be pretty well into either doing some video editing or content creation for one of my clients, or maybe a couple hours into editing a shoot that I did recently. Usually around this time of the afternoon, I'm right into my most creative zone. So that's what this would be.

Speaker 2:

Okay, well, thanks for pulling out of that creative space and being here and chatting with me. We really appreciate it. I had you fill out a form to kind of get a sense of your story. I do this with all my guests and it just helps first probe them in terms of what we might be talking about and getting them to think about who the audience is for this, but also having me uncover different aspects of your own story that can kind of inspire the conversation. And for me, what really came clear is just your commitment to being a creative, and so my first question for you is what was that like growing up? I imagine you grew up in a traditional education system Was the career as a creative, was that role, modeled to you in any way?

Speaker 1:

No, not really. Everyone sort of assumes, because of the path that I've taken and because I am the creative that I am now, that I must have come from a very creative background, that this must have been something that was sort of passed down to me. I think in some ways, that you think of musicians or actors right, a lot of nepotism in those industries and that's not really the case at all. My father was in condominium law, my mother was in HR at a convent. They could not be like more kind of regular nine to five people. And yet both myself and my brother went into creative fields. So he became a musician. I started out my career trying to pursue acting, and so we did very, very different things than our parents did, but thankfully, despite the fact that they were so corporate style parents, you know, we both went into a really supportive family lifestyle around what we chose to do.

Speaker 2:

I feel like there's two types of parents. There's the parent who did the traditional path and is like this has given me so much stability, this is the only way forward. This is what you need to do. And then there's that parent that maybe is like oh, I wonder what my life could have been, or I wonder what if I chose something differently. Where would you say your parents were on that spectrum, and what kind of expectations were they passing on to you about what kind of life you'd be creating for yourself?

Speaker 1:

I mean, I think I was really lucky in that my parents knew that I wasn't sort of your typical high achieving academic student. I did really well in high school and I was a really good student. But I always excelled in the arts. I was always getting huge remarks from my art teachers and my drama teachers. My high school had a fashion program that I excelled in, so they could see that I had these natural tendencies in the creative sphere and so they kind of knew that in order for me to succeed that I needed to embrace those sides of things. It wasn't that there was any you know lax given to me if I didn't get high marks in you know geography or math or anything like that, but I think my parents just really recognized that my strength was more on the creative side of things and so that essentially is somewhere down the line that I would be leaning into that for a career path as well. So really lucky to have them be okay with that and they've continued to support me throughout this venture. So it's been really great.

Speaker 2:

That's awesome and also pretty cool that you went to a school that had those alternative types of programs where you could even get exposed to that. Like my high school didn't have any of that. It was just science, math, gym, history, maybe like religion here and there. But, we didn't have any of these alternative arts types of classes. Did that impact what your peers were doing? Was there a good mix, coming out of high school, of people pursuing or thinking about more traditional work environments as well as people pursuing a dream in the creative arts?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean, if I think back to some of the other graduates that came out of my high school, we have other people that went into music and acting and are doing very well to this day. I was lucky to have sort of a community of peers that were also striving in that direction. But at the same time my school changed to the International Baccalaureate Program, which is very academic focused. But I think too, I didn't really know of anything different. I didn't have an awareness of a creative art school. I think by the time I learned that that even existed, I was already in my final years of high school, and so I didn't even know that I could have pursued any of this to a larger degree at a younger age.

Speaker 2:

I think it was actually really helpful for me to have some traditional nine to five jobs and those more what I now call suffocating experiences, for me to really understand what I was fighting against. Did you ever have a more traditional nine to five job? What was that like? How did you know it wasn't for you? If so, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1:

You know, I think my first job outside of being a camp counselor which seems to be a lot of people's very first first jobs I went into being a receptionist.

Speaker 1:

I was answering the phones, I was filing paperwork, things like that, and I really kind of leaned on that as my only nine to five experience for a really long time. That skill set actually served me well down the road in a way that I wouldn't have anticipated. But, yeah, I definitely did my fair share of sort of nine to five corporate jobs and, as much as you know, they bored the hell out of me, which ultimately had me pushed into other areas later in my career. I'm also grateful for those experiences because it helps me relate to people that do that to this day. It helped me, you know, build certain routines into my day that I still sort of follow now as an entrepreneur. So you know, as much as it wasn't what I wanted at the time, I still, you know, borrow from elements of my, like past life of doing nine to five that still serve me well and supporting my own career now.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely, Whether it's learning some good habits and some routines or having the motivation to know that if I can't make this work, then this is what I have to go do. And for a lot of people they're like that is enough to keep me going on those days when things are tough, when things aren't working. And I'm imagining acting, photography, videography it's a lot of gigs here and there. That must be a roller coaster that you're riding on a regular basis. What drives you? Like, how do you define freedom, lifestyle? What does that mean for you?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think to your point. I am a creative through and through and I think the freedom lifestyle really embraces this ability to be flexible and go with the flow and, you know, find your own moments of strength in that like ebb and flow of your day to day or as your career path takes shape in different ways than you may have expected. I never really had this linear understanding of how to get to the top. I knew that I loved community. I knew that, whether it's from, you know, being a high school athlete or in productions in high school, I love the sense of community, of a team, of coming together to create something. And I understood that that process wasn't linear and I sort of thrived in those environments. And you thrive in those moments of what feels like you're slowing down and you're not getting anything done, but really that's like the calm before the creative storm. So, being in this sort of creative atmosphere, understanding that I enjoyed that type of community or work environment, it sort of pushed me to look at my career path differently.

Speaker 2:

I think there's a certain type of person who says this is who I actually am, and so I'm going to create a life and create a work experience based on that personality. And then there's other types of people who are like well, this is what I should be doing, or this is what's probably a good decision from here, this is what socially expected and I'm going to fit my personality in it, and there's some friction in that for people.

Speaker 1:

Yes, I think my personality is more of a free spirit. I've always been that way with my friend groups. I have always sort of been like an encyclopedia of knowledge, so I tend to be able to get into any conversation and find ways to connect with people and sort of be flexible in spontaneous moments, which I think is really something that's helped me in my creative endeavors. And I think to every once in a while you meet someone who has a regular nine to five job and they are more introverted, they are more regimented, they are more routine based and you can see that in their personality and I think that's great because I know that they're doing what they want to do and I know that my personality is lending itself well to a more creative industry in itself.

Speaker 1:

But yeah, I've always sort of felt like I was a little bit corkier, a little bit funkier than the average bee, I was a little bit more outgoing in weird ways, and it took me a while to figure out that, like my people, my community, my work style lent itself to the creative industries and not to your typical nine to fives, to those corporate lifestyles of I don't know whether it's like financial or legal work. That was just not going to be how I was going to roll and those are not going to be my people. So yeah, my personality is definitely pretty indicative of the fact that I'm a creative. I think that's true.

Speaker 2:

Did you always embrace being different as a positive thing? Because I know for me, like when you're just saying that I'm like, yes, same. Growing up, I always just felt like I didn't perfectly fit into certain things, definitely in my family. Whatever one's doing, then what I'm doing, it's just like a very clear distinction. I'm the black sheep, I'm the odd ball, I'm the weird one that doesn't fit into what everyone's doing, and I felt self conscious about that for a while. I felt like there was something wrong with me If I'm not conforming to what the masses are doing. What the masses are doing must be right. Can you talk a little bit about your relationship with being different and how you've played with that?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, when I was growing up we came from sort of the pre-social media era. We came from big TV shows, fashion magazines. That was sort of how we understood role models. Those are very narrow windows of understanding the way we were supposed to be as women, as girls. It was a very defined space, at least that's how it felt to me. It felt like a very rigid space that I had to somehow fit into, whether that was my body type or my hairstyle. I'm wearing my hair curly today. I haven't really embraced my curly hair, except for in the last three years. I wore it straight for decades. Little things like that. That definitely kept us in line and some people that I know really thrived in stepping in line and I never felt like that was where I was supposed to be.

Speaker 1:

I enjoyed playing with that scope, but ultimately I always knew that I was a little bit different. So I would find ways to take sort of the status quo of beauty or how people interact with each other and then I would find little ways to kind of insert my own personality, whether that was in the fashion I decided to wear, sometimes horribly wrong, and sometimes I felt really cool. So who cared? Yeah, I sort of felt like I would find ways to just sort of push the envelope to make myself feel more like me. It was never an overly confident move to make, but I think the times that I did make that, the more consistent I was in letting myself be myself, the more I realized that there were other people that felt that way. There were other communities that would embrace me regardless, and I think playing with that edge really helped me know that I could step out of this so-called comfort zone and kind of redefine my own trajectory.

Speaker 2:

Totally Such great advice. One of my favorite quotes is when we are ourselves, we give permission to other people to be themselves, and that always really resonated with me. And now what? We're seeing a lot, even in the traditional career space, applying for jobs, applying for opportunities, getting noticed, whether it's even in a corporate setting they're actually now telling us to lean into our differences. What makes you unique, what makes you special, how are you going to stand out? Which is kind of different than what we had been taught before, which is like conform, stay in line, this is what's expected of you. Now it's like well, how are you going to stand out from everybody that did that exact same thing?

Speaker 2:

So it's an interesting shift in that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean I remember, because I had these lofty ideas that I was going to be this international jet setting actress. And I did. I went to New York, I studied at a conservatory, I was in New York for five years and then on to Los Angeles and I really thought that I was going to make it. I thought all I had to do was outlast everybody else and I get there. And maybe that would have still been the case if I decided to continue that.

Speaker 1:

But when I kind of came back to Toronto which I would do periodically and I would take on temp jobs because financially acting wasn't paying the bills I remember I would put my headshot in the upper corner of my corporate resume and then my mom would say, oh, no, no, like take that out, like nobody wants to see a photograph of you on your resume, like that's not professional. And I thought, well, how are they going to know who they're hiring if they don't see me? You know, how am I going to get ahead if they don't realize that I'm a human being behind this piece of paper? And so at the time that was not a popular thing to do. And then I remember five, six years later I was working for a videography company and starting sort of my content creation career path, that the style of resumes that was coming across our desks were so creative and so vibrant.

Speaker 1:

And so this is me. This is why you have to hire me, not just because my skill set is so good, but because I'm this kind of person in my free time. This is what my smile looks like. This is what my hair looks like. This is my fashion sense. It was so much more inclusive of your personality and I think that's wild to see, because that was certainly not what it was when I was growing up.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely so. True, I remember making a resume in Canva fairly recently, like I would say in the last five or so years, for some type of opportunity, and it comes with the defaults upload your photo in it now.

Speaker 2:

So it's so true, like you knew back then, I have to stand out but you don't stand out too much. You know it's like stand out but don't be like too progressive, and so that's an interesting balance to always figure out. For sure. You have talked a little bit about acting and it sounds like is it fair to say you've given up on that dream Like of this jet setting international acting. Talk about what that feels like and how you came to that decision.

Speaker 1:

Sure, I think I've hit pause on it for now. Initially, when I decided to stop or sort of the first step that it took for me to stop, that was a huge blow. I was not ready to feel the repercussions of leaving LA, leaving behind an O1 visa that I had worked so hard to get, leaving behind what I really felt were some opportunities but just didn't have the financial stability that I also really needed at that time as well. So stepping away from that career path was really hard and I didn't do it in one blow. Leaving LA was the first blow, so to speak.

Speaker 1:

I took a nine to five job at a production company that knew that I was an actor, that knew that I was going to be going to auditions, and so I sort of baby stepped my way out of it and it just sort of happened naturally over the course of about two years, I'd say, where the acting gigs weren't really coming into play anymore, I wasn't going out for a lot of auditions, I wasn't booking the auditions that I was going out for, and so I realized that it really wasn't something that I could rely on and I also wasn't enjoying the process the same way that I used to, and at the same time I was getting hired on the side to do some social media work for friends of mine that needed a little bit of a boost.

Speaker 1:

They needed to sort of clean up their news feeds, and I had this sort of visual eye from photography that I started to kind of lean into or lend myself as a photographer and social media manager, and so it naturally progressed into these other quote unquote side hustles, pulling front and center. And so when my agent said, look, I don't think this is working, I don't think we need to work together anymore, it actually felt like the right move at the time and that sort of finally stepping away from that part of me or that part of my life. Even though it was difficult, it felt like, okay, one chapter is closed, one door is closed, let's see what these other doors have in store for me. It was sort of bittersweet, but it finally gave me the mental capacity to move on.

Speaker 2:

That makes a lot of sense and I love that you're saying now that the door isn't closed, because you actually said it was on pause when you started. So that's amazing and we can always come back to it. And I've seen a few friends over the past year start businesses, you know, create a brand around. It wasn't getting enough traction for them to do it full time so they've stopped it, they've gone back into the workplace. But all of that work that they've done to build that brand, to learn how that industry works, to build any type of product market fit, is still there and you can always go back to it, similar to how you can always go back to the job market.

Speaker 2:

So I love that you're keeping that door open a bit for yourself.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you know, it was a big part of my life and I still enjoy the people that are in it. I still miss set life, you know. So if it comes back to me in a natural way, I'm not going to say no.

Speaker 2:

Well, it sounds like becoming an entrepreneur then came to you in a natural way, like you just naturally probably had a camera and were taking photos, or how did you even start associating yourself as a professional photographer versus, I'm guessing, a hobbyist at the beginning, somebody who sees the value in higher quality photos, who wants higher quality photos when they're experiencing life? Do you remember the first time you thought, hey, this could be something I could get paid to do?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I started shooting when I was 16. I took a camera course in my high school. Back then we had a dark room in the basement and I was about to go on this volunteer trip to Thailand and I was obsessed with Leonardo DiCaprio and I thought, if I can just go and see where the beaches filmed, like I'll be closer to marrying him. I was 16 at the time. So there you go, and so I took this photography course and it was simply just to better be able to capture this new culture that I was going to find myself immersed in, this new country that I've never been to. I started shooting on film at 16. And I just sort of kept shooting. I kept shooting that trip and then, when I would come home, I started shooting landscapes and I just sort of kept. I guess at the time I didn't realize this, but I was defining my point of view behind the camera, and so it was really a hobby for me, for a really good part of my early career path, so to speak. And it wasn't until I had been living in New York, I had graduated from a conservatory, I was actively pursuing a career as an actress and film and television that I came back to Toronto to take some temp work to get some financial stability, that I found a photography and videography company that was looking for interns and I thought well, here's an opportunity to kind of show them my portfolio, just see if I'm good enough to get hired for this kind of work. It seems fun, it seems creative. My temp jobs suck Like maybe this is a way that I can lean into more creative work. And they hired me on the strength of my portfolio.

Speaker 1:

I'd been shooting music events for my brother. I'd been shooting parties with my friends and at that point I probably was about six or seven years into shooting casually. I had developed an eye and they saw something in me for that. So that job ended up giving me my first client. Again, it happened in a very sort of natural way. They booked a photographer on an event gig and that photographer got sick the night before and they didn't have anyone to take over the event. And my boss just said hey, lex, you've got a good portfolio, can you go shoot this charity event?

Speaker 1:

And I thought okay, I'll try, and that client ended up being my client for the next five years. So it was not in the plan, it was not something that I thought was going to take me to this new level, this new idea of, oh, someone wants to pay me for my photography. What it just sort of happened because I was in the right time in the right place, right, and that's sort of how I gained confidence and knew that I thought, okay, if they're paying me for this work, I wonder who else would pay me for this work. And so I just slowly started shooting parties with my friends, letting people see my work, letting people know that I was shooting, that I could be hired to photograph something that they wanted, and slowly but surely, that kind of picked up pace and I realized that I had a fun side hustle that was making me a decent amount of money that I enjoyed doing.

Speaker 2:

And is that the first time you started thinking of yourself as an entrepreneur? Because I imagine, as an actor, you're not really thinking of yourself as an entrepreneur in that way. Yes, you have a personal brand and you're marketing it, but now, all of a sudden, you're a true business owner. Had you ever imagined that for yourself?

Speaker 1:

No, and I honestly don't think I considered myself a true entrepreneur until maybe about five years ago. It really crept up on me slowly. If I look back, I can see all the signs. I can see everything just fitting into place. Of course, that's what I am and I was very proud of the fact that I was an actor and that I took myself and the business of being an actor very seriously. But I never thought of myself as an entrepreneur until I took the leap a couple of years ago. Essentially, when COVID hit was the real wake-up call of whether or not I could do this and whether or not I could really call myself that amongst my peers.

Speaker 2:

And you've always had. It seems like multiple. You're calling them side hustles, projects, revenue streams, going on at the same time. Social media, temp work, acting video, photography Is the dream to be able to do just one? Or do you like having a lot of variety and can you see yourself always having multiple things going on? Or what does the next level look like for you?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think when I was an actor, I thought I just wanted the one thing, but now that it's been a number of years, I obviously, to your point, have quite a few things on the go.

Speaker 1:

I feel like I really enjoyed the variety.

Speaker 1:

I think that's part of what draws me to this freedom lifestyle, this entrepreneurship, this remote work lifestyle, is the fact that I can have a little bit of everything that drives me. You're not always going to be in love with your work or your job, but you're gonna maybe have something like an extra curricular that really brings you joy, that brings you the community that you thrive in, that supports you, and so I feel really grateful in the sense that I have been able to make these side hustles, these kind of side communities, if you want to call them that, into like lucrative career paths, and I don't see myself really picking just one. Some may kind of pull into focus more at certain times, but I think if I didn't have this level of variety, I would just be so bored, my life would look so different, and I'm not sure that I would be happy to be fully honest with you. I think we all need a little bit of something to keep us going, and I've just so happened to take those little somethings and turn them into business for me.

Speaker 2:

Not only do you have variety in your revenue streams, but it also seems like you have a lot of variety in the types of content that you shoot Like you do Burning man. You do engagement shoots sounds like you're gonna do charity events. I know you do headshots and corporate stuff. Is that common for a photographer to shoot all of those things, or is it typical for someone to have a niche? And regardless of whether it's typical or not, what advice would you have for someone that might be starting out in photography?

Speaker 1:

I do do all of those things and a lot of that comes from just trial and error. When someone said, hey, I need a new headshot for LinkedIn, can you do that? Hey, I'm planning a surprise engagement. Can you photograph it? Yes, jared, I can. So some of it just sort of came through people asking me if I could do certain things and me just saying yes, even if I wasn't sure I could fully do it.

Speaker 1:

But I would say, starting out, I think it is important to sort of find one element that really inspires you, being open to anything that comes your way. But I shot landscape for a really long time before I shot portraits, before I ever had the balls to shoot someone's face and make them look down the lens directly into my eyes. At least that's how it felt. Right, it took me a long time to get there and I still love some of the landscape photography I did back when I was 18 and 19.

Speaker 1:

But I don't do that so much anymore because it's not what I love to do, and I think that if you're someone who's starting out in the creative industry, find one thing that really sparks joy I hate to sort of say that it's so cliche, but that really holds your interest, that gets you excited, to sit down and do whatever work is, to get there and play that out until something else drives you in another direction.

Speaker 1:

I think that's the only real way you're gonna figure out what you really like to do and what maybe you don't wanna do so much of. I think for people, if they look on my Instagram, they'll see one thing. If they look on my website, they'll see a little bit more of some other things that I'm starting to push into, and that's really because that's been the natural growth of my creative endeavors. It was one thing for a long time, it was events for a long time, and then I started to really love shooting people one-on-one or shooting couples. That kind of drew me in in different ways and unexpected ways that I now really try and focus on getting more of those clients, because that's what's so much more inspiring to me in this stage of my career. So I'd say, focus and then find new things as they present themselves to discover other strengths of your skills.

Speaker 2:

And so it's truly been more so, following your interest and what you enjoy to do, versus what's more lucrative or what pays more or what there's more work available for. Like how much, I guess, does the business side play into it? And there's no right or wrong answer here. I'm actually truly just curious.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'd say I think only now I've gotten to a point where I can be really picky with my clients or with the work that I choose to do, and sometimes it's still at the detriment of having a more financially stable time of the month or season.

Speaker 1:

But I really value my own time and I really value my own comfortability and I'm just not prepared to put up with certain jobs anymore and it can still be scary to say no. But I know myself and I know where I'm going to be able to really shine and I want to keep saying yes to those opportunities because I feel like having that high vibration, high frequency that you keep hearing about as buzzwords these days does make a difference in the quality of my life. It might not be the financial boom that I wanted, but if I get really inspired by working with a particular client, then I know that's gonna take me to the next step in my career and I'm so grateful for all of the times that's been the case. So I'm gonna keep following that kind of trajectory if that makes sense.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely no. I literally love that for you and I think that's amazing and it sounds like that really works for you. What has been your relationship with taking on free work in order to build your portfolio, because I imagine in this world there's a lot of that you need to kind of. I'm pursuing speaking and so a lot of the time, especially at the beginning anybody who would put me on a stage I wouldn't charge them anything, I would get photos, I would get videos and I was so happy I did that. Now I'm trying to transition to a place where it's like I only do paid speaking gigs. Can you talk a little bit about how you think about that? Is that still relevant today, x years in?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I still get requests to do free work and it's sort of, I think back in the early stages it was just enticing to be able to do what I wanted to do, so I didn't care if I made money on it, necessarily, but I was being given a platform to try, and so I would take on a lot of extra work that was unpaid, because either the client had convinced me it was gonna be worth my while or I had convinced myself that I should do this. And that's really where you cut your teeth and you learn. You know, sometimes the hard way, whether or not that really was the right move, and I've done that for a number of years. And also because I came from an acting background. I cannot even begin to tell you the number of breakdowns and auditions that would come through. That would say this is a passion project for me. So we're only gonna pay you $10 of performance because I wrote this play and it's my dream to put it on stage and literally you'd be making $10 performance for a month's worth of rehearsals and you know, because you wanted to be an actor, so bad you would do it.

Speaker 1:

That, I think, is exploitation, and we can talk about that term exploitation within the creative entrepreneur roles a lot. But you know, I feel like you will do some of it, probably more often than you want to, because you'll convince yourself. It's where you need to be in order to meet someone or to get in front of someone, or to add something to your resume. And then eventually you'll get to a point where you'll say to yourself hey, I said yes to that free gig a while ago and it really didn't get me as far as I thought it would, and this offer feels too similar. I'm not gonna walk through this door again. I'm gonna say no because hopefully, by saying no, another door is gonna open and that's gonna be the opportunity I need to take. It does get less scarier to do that, but I certainly feel like, yeah, you get to a point where you have to start saying no for your own sake and also for other people to start taking you more seriously. And no, understanding and knowing that you have value.

Speaker 2:

And just because what you do is maybe more subjective than someone else's job doesn't mean that you're not worth, however much money you're charging for your offer Sounds like it's one of those things where you can hear about how to avoid it and what you should and shouldn't do, but it's really something you just gotta learn and you gotta live through it and it's part of it, and everybody's timing and pacing is gonna be different, but it really is inner work to be doing 100%, and I think the times that it's still gonna be hard to say no is when it's friends and family, because they'll still ask you for free stuff and you're gonna wanna say yes because you have a relationship with them.

Speaker 1:

but you'll learn when and where to say no, and sometimes saying no to friends and family is the hardest. But it allows you to say no to those clients that feel like they're the big ticket or feel like they're the next opportunity and you say you know what? I said no before when my friends asked me to do something, and so I know I can say no to you too. Yeah, it's a real exercise in patience, but it's something that ultimately you'll find yourself doing, even if you don't think you will.

Speaker 2:

The friends who want free stuff from you. It's so uncomfortable and so awkward. I've had some difficult conversations with people who wanted to like pick my brain and I'm like this is actually something I charge for. Actually, this is kind of my profession and it is such a balance because we wanna give and it's even enjoyable to give, but if I'm constantly just giving for free, I'm not gonna get anywhere in my own stuff. So it's one of those delicate things. Which does bring me to my question around how has this lifestyle that you've pursued impacted your relationships around you and how does that come into play in your everyday personal life?

Speaker 1:

Sure, as much as you'll lean on friends and family for support when you decide to make that leap and become a creative entrepreneur, there's still a lot of aspects of this world that you will feel isolated in. I work remotely, I work on my computer, I mostly work from various rooms in my house and I do this job by myself. The only time that I'm really interacting with a lot of people is if I have a shoot that I've booked with a client which we're going into slow season, so I have these ebbs and flows in my year that can be really isolating and lonely. But I think a lot of creatives also understand that sometimes it's the quiet moments that really push you to find new endeavors and new ways of doing your work that end up being creatively inspiring and really drive you to the next stage. When it comes to other relationships in your life, especially with people that have nine to fives, they're not gonna understand how taxing it can be to be trying to build a business from the ground up. A lot of people don't have the ability to take an idea from their head and bring that into the real world. It's like having a baby, like it's literally birthing a creative platform or a creative endeavor, it's incredibly stressful and hard and it doesn't always look like you're working. But I think for us creatives we know that the times where it looks like we're quiet or it looks like we're not doing much, we're thinking about everything and we're trying to bring that to life.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, there are moments where it's gonna feel isolating.

Speaker 1:

I know that.

Speaker 1:

A lot of my relationships, especially when I was traveling or living in New York or LA when I was trying to pursue a career as a creative actor, I left a lot of friends behind here in Toronto and when I left New York, I left a lot of friends in New York and I was doing my best to maintain sanity and find new groups in the place that I had settled, to feel a sense of belonging.

Speaker 1:

But I also knew that the relationships that I'd left in those various cities were suffering because of the distance and that's something that I had to really come to grips with as I continued to pursue this career path. That, yeah, sometimes relationships are gonna come and go and sometimes you have to make decisions or choices to really put your head down and get work done for yourself before you can have time for other relationships that mean something to you in other aspects of your life. But ultimately I feel like the days where I bring a creative piece of content or I see that the photo shoot that I did with a client looks just as I hoped it would, the images turning out, that the video is cutting in such a way that, like I'm excited to see the next take you'll have those little wins that you know are just because of what you did, and no one else accomplished that but you that make all of this worthwhile.

Speaker 2:

I'm so glad you ended with something so positive and just the reminder for why you're doing it, because I admire that so much about you, lex. Like you've talked really openly about some of the challenges of going from gig to gig and having to have uncomfortable conversations with family, impacting your relationships, all of these different things and you've just stuck by it all because of exactly what you just said these moments where everything is worth it, and I think for those listening who maybe have had a taste of it, that is just such an inspiring story to hear that through it all, you have no regrets and, if anything, you're doubling down on it all and that's awesome. I'm so happy for you.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, absolutely no regrets.

Speaker 2:

No regrets. Well, thank you so much for coming on here. I know we're over time. I could literally talk to you forever. I have like a dozen more questions. I see in my notes that I would love to still ask you, but this has been great. Maybe part two at a future time, so overdue. It's been so nice to have more clarity into what your personal life has been like for you as you've built out your freedom, lifestyle.

Speaker 1:

Thank you so much for this opportunity.

Speaker 2:

If you are new here. You are new to the freedom lifestyle. You're trying to figure out which path to freedom is best for you. I have a new training. You can go to buymeacoffeecom, slash what's your free and you can learn my expert tips on what you should know before quitting your nine to five job. Essentially, I've uncovered three different paths to freedom and in this training you'll learn which one is best for you and what your next step should be. So that is a great place to start for those who are new to the freedom lifestyle, are ready to quit their nine to five job but kind of want to figure out what their best path should be.

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Sam Laliberte

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