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The world is just so interesting that it's impossible not to be fascinated by it, and the people who inhabit it. Join host Dave Moss on this long-form interview podcast, as he follows his curiosity to learn new things from some of the most fascinating people and hopefully introduce you to some amazing things along the way.
Dave Moss (00:01.438)
Hey Jake, how's it going? I always find podcasts like starts so interesting because everybody knows that you've been talking for a couple of minutes before you actually hit record, but you know, no, we just jumped in and hit record live. Well, I did do that to you so I could do a test record right away and you had a mild panic, but yeah. So I wanted to start this off. I had sent you a couple of questions beforehand.
Jake (00:02.422)
Hi Dave, how are you?
Jake (00:06.733)
Yeah.
Jake (00:11.122)
No, no, we haven't. None of that. Just jumped in here and hit record and was like, hi, let's go.
Jake (00:18.606)
Yeah, that scared me. I almost dove out of the chair.
Dave Moss (00:28.522)
just to sort of get your brain thinking. And like the keener you are, you actually sent me answers back. So it gives me ammunition to get going. Yeah. And you had, one of the questions that I asked you is about a favorite failure. And you said something interesting where you don't consider anything a failure, which I love, because a lot of people do. Can you talk to me a little bit about...
Jake (00:35.254)
from the side of a highway because I was ahead of schedule.
Dave Moss (00:55.99)
how you view failure. And I know this is a weird place to jump in for anybody who has no idea who you are, but I think it's a really interesting perspective.
Jake (01:06.158)
What's the best way to put it? I don't know. Like maybe, excuse me, it's maybe because I've never felt I've ever had some epic failure. Like I...
in life right like sometimes shit goes wrong that's just the way it goes and I think it leads into a lot of other areas where you know I don't really dwell on the past that much you know the past is there to teach you stuff or give you insight on things but sitting there dwelling on it you're never going to change anything. So I mean of course there's been points in life where things have gone wrong or it didn't go as planned but.
I think my wife Jess would definitely agree with. Like, it's, every day is, you start afresh. You wake up in the morning and it's, let's see where today goes. You know, we always wake up with plans. I gotta do this, I gotta do that, or the honeydew list, any of that stuff. But...
It's kind of all choose your own adventure at all times. You know, you might have a plan, but then something comes up and you can't do it. Does it destroy your life or do you just kind of adapt and keep moving along? So I don't think there's been any points in my life where I felt that it's just, that's it, walk away, shut it down. Like there's never been that pour the gasoline on whatever it is, throw the match and walk away. Yeah, I don't know. It's, yeah.
Dave Moss (02:25.238)
That's kind of the reason why I asked the question, because I also, in my later years, definitely not when I was younger, don't really believe in the concept of failure, at least in terms of personal growth, business growth, things like that, because I was reading a book by Adam Savage, the Mythbusters guy, Every Tool is a Hammer, I miss that show too, but he talks in that book about failure being iterative, and it was like,
Jake (02:38.476)
Yeah.
Jake (02:46.655)
I missed that show.
Dave Moss (02:54.762)
It was the first time in words, like, oh, this is exactly how I feel about failure, but I was never able to put it down before. But it's like, it's a branch decision, right? Like you get to a quote unquote failures, but it's not a stopping point. It's like, okay, well now I adjust and go this way, or I don't adjust and keep riding into the storm and see how it goes.
Jake (03:02.722)
Mm-hmm.
Jake (03:16.002)
I think it's one of those things too, I've never really had a plan. Like coming out of high school I graduated and then I'm like, well, I don't know what I want to do. So took the year off, ended up getting a cushy little like summer government job at the Manitoba Textbook Bureau where basically I just sorted orders into filing cabinets and got like $15 an hour in the year 2000 which was pretty damn fantastic considering I was living at home.
And I mean, like all things in life, there was a girl that I knew from my past and she was taking this course and told me about it. And I was like, oh, that sounds fun. It was going into media production and with the potential of working in television, stuff like that. And through my teenage years, being a preacher's kid, I always kinda, I always had to go to church till I was 18. So I had to figure out ways to make that more accommodating to myself. So it would be either teaching Sunday school to nursery kids where we just paint and draw stuff
volunteering for the local cable company and recording the services and putting those to air because you know people in the lodge who couldn't go to church still wanted to watch the services stuff like that but yeah I don't even remember what started this tangent but yeah no it's yeah life's funny it's there's no plan right?
Dave Moss (04:29.822)
Well, that was one of the reasons, yeah, why, yeah, that's one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you is because it seems like you're one of those, those rare people who follows their interest and on the surface, it seems like it works out for you, you know, like, when I reached out to you originally, it's like, okay, here's, here's a guy who has a pretty successful photography career, now branching into videography and gets a CBC documentary off the rip.
Jake (04:47.467)
Yeah.
Dave Moss (04:58.742)
pilot's license, like all the rest of this sort of stuff. And I'm sure there's lots behind the scenes, obviously, that we don't see and things that you've tried that haven't gone well or whatever. But yeah, I thought it was really interesting because I think we're moving into an age where more of that is going to come. I was reading a book by Martha Beck, who was my life coach teacher way back in the day. And she was saying in this book that her kids were going to school.
Jake (04:59.065)
Pfft. Hahahaha.
Dave Moss (05:28.79)
And rather than none of them wanted to be like professionals, right? They didn't want to be a lawyer or a doctor or an engineer where it's like you have to follow a specific path. And she said one of the things that I talked to them about was create your own major, because the job that you will likely do probably doesn't exist yet. You know, like when we went to school, YouTube wasn't a career. And and now it can be, you know, tick tock or. Yeah.
Jake (05:34.891)
Yeah.
Jake (05:49.902)
No. Google wasn't even a word when we were in school, Dave. Come on.
Dave Moss (05:56.546)
Well, it was just starting when I was in college. I'm old. But yeah, it's one of those things. So like, what has that been like for you just sort of having a life following your interest? And where has it gone well and where has it maybe not and taught you something?
Jake (06:15.386)
I think a lot of it just comes down to feeling. Like it's, I'm pretty whole ass on anything I kind of get into. And it, it can change too. I'm not like totally stringent. I was huge into playing guitar in high school and was in a band and we recorded a CD and all that stuff. Just, you know, I learned how to use a digital multitracker just to, to record the CD in our, in my parents basement. Um, and then put my siblings to work burning a hundred, a hundred.
DVD or CDRs, but no, if, I think it just comes down to personal attitude, right? Like if you're happy doing what you're doing, you can always find a way to make it work. There's, you know, for whatever crazy thing you come up with or product or idea.
Odds are there are a lot of other people that will be very, very much interested in that. It's just about also having patience to take the time to flush it out and make it work and realizing that most of the time there isn't that instant click luck factor that you're going to explode and this is the new thing and blah blah. But taking the time. So I mean with the video thing and getting the documentary. In the last year I videotaped a funeral. I videotaped a 40th anniversary party.
So there's never any shame in doing the things to make the other thing work. You know, if you're invested in it and you're excited about it, it's not work. You're going out to play. Like it's not this daunting task, it's not some stupid career you've had for years. It's just, yeah, you're plodding along and figuring things out as they go.
You know, like with all things, a lot of time it is kind of Feast or Fam. And so it's being able to have the ability and the time and the wherewithal to find those opportunities that you can say yes to and just building on those because you meet people. And I mean, like in any industry, everything is all who you know, basically, and going out and doing a good job and not being an asshole.
Jake (08:16.818)
That's 99% of it. It's just trudging along and being gracious for what you get and not blaming other people for things not working the way you want them to. I think we all kind of get stuck on that a lot where it's like, why isn't this working for me? You know, it's working so well for them, so they must have some thing and blah blah. It's never, you know, okay, they've been doing this for five or six years. This isn't instant success. It's not...
wake up one morning and hey, everything's great and perfect and everything works. But yeah, it's taking time and.
Dave Moss (08:49.926)
So what does your self-talk look like in the, you mentioned times of feast or famine, which I think any creative knows about, but in those times of famine, what does your self-talk look like to motivate yourself, either to pivot or to keep going or anything like that?
Jake (09:07.534)
I think a lot of it is just, I've come to realize the short sightedness of how we kind of treat life is what gets us, right? So you're sitting there and you're like, shit, I haven't worked for two weeks. My next booked thing isn't for another two weeks. What am I doing wrong? What's happening? Where have I failed? What can I pursue? What hustle do I have to do to make this work? But then all of a sudden a week later, you book five or six gigs. So it's learning that
when things are slow, they continue to still move. Like things are still happening. And I think if you go into that frantic panic mode, that's where things start to fall apart. That's where people tend to get stressed out, they get burnt out, they're scared, they're frantic, they're doing deep discounts on things and cheapening what they do. So yeah, it's just that patience and realizing that it doesn't take long for a week to go by.
And a lot can change in a week. You know, the things I expected a year ago for now are completely different. And they've gone a complete different direction, right? Like it's, wake up and see.
Dave Moss (10:20.778)
Do you think that because you do photography, you do videography, like you sort of cast a wide net, was that sort of done on purpose to hedge your bets or was that just because you found interest in those things?
Jake (10:34.206)
It was more finding interest. I mean, doing video stuff for years and years and years, like when the Canon 5D Mark II came out, I instantly had to have it because it did video stuff. I did probably two things with it, with video, and that was the end of it. I bought another camera at another point with the intention. So I mean, this has been going on for two decades. This is not a new thing. But then all of a sudden over COVID, where I time.
there was a Blackmagic 4K camera that came available on one of the camera sale groups I'm part of. And it was such a sweetheart of a deal. It was like, damn, I gotta get this.
And it just coincided really well with a local lady. She called me up. She ran an organization which basically does horseback riding with disabled kids. And she's like, hey, we're redoing our website. We need new photos. And I started talking to her about maybe doing some video stuff. I'm like, well, you know, I've been kind of dipping my toe in here. And as a first client who was just like, yeah, we'll pay for it. Like it was fantastic. So I pulled the trigger on buying that black magic camera. And all of a sudden I had a tool that was so much better
used in college or across the years. And it was...
easy to use with my lenses I already had. You know, and it was all kind of cobbled together in pieces like my camera rig, shoulder rigs with video cameras is a big deal. You know, everybody's got their brand. I like this one, I like that one. Mine is put together, I think, with four different companies' pieces. Like some of the screw holes don't even line up, but I just jam the screws in there tighter so it doesn't fall apart. Yeah, I know it's been a slow thing where it's just, yeah, get the pieces, find the pieces that work. You know, of course I'm sitting here
Jake (12:15.256)
our video cameras, I realize they will make me know better at what I do. You know, so much of anything is just the actual story and emotion and everything. You know, making it pretty is just a bonus factor, but yeah. I don't know.
Dave Moss (12:20.073)
Mm-hmm.
Dave Moss (12:30.33)
Yeah, you said something that sort of jumped out at me. It's like finding the pieces. And obviously you meant about your shoulder rig, but do you think, you grew up a preacher's kid and you had mentioned in the notes that you had sent me that made you a good talker. Doing that, having the band, making the CD, going through all of these things, taking the multimedia course, were you ever collecting these pieces?
Jake (12:37.235)
Yeah.
Jake (12:47.794)
Never.
Dave Moss (12:58.758)
intentionally or was this just moving forward through your life and then
Jake (13:02.046)
It was just moving forward. That's just how it all kind of played out. And it's kind of, me and my wife, Jess, talk a lot. And one of the things we've mentioned a few times, it's like, if you could go back and change something in your life, like anything good, bad, indifferent, would you do it? So even if it was the worst thing in the world that ever happened to you.
whatever that was still got you to this exact moment in life. And it's like, would you be willing to change the entire tangent of your life and the people that you know and love that are also part of your life? Their tangents would be all completely different as well. Like, is that, would you do it? Is it something that you would actually go back and change? And it's like, well, huh, no, I wouldn't.
Dave Moss (13:42.838)
Does that mean, I might be reading into this here so you can tell me where I'm off base if I am, but do you live without regret?
Jake (13:52.79)
Generally speaking, I think so.
Dave Moss (13:55.394)
It's a really healthy thing that I think not a lot of people live with a lot of regret, I think. Were you always that way or did that just happen in your...
Jake (13:58.304)
Yeah.
Jake (14:03.926)
I would say most of my life I was always optimistic and happy-go-lucky. What's the worst that could happen? Falling off roofs and out of trees. I'll go do it again.
Dave Moss (14:16.294)
Yeah. What was it like growing up in the church?
Jake (14:22.166)
I mean, not horrible. I have no like bad stories or anything weird. Like it was, yeah, no, it was, no. I mean, there's, in Winnipeg it was one thing because we were living in the city, I lived in, or we were in Winnipeg until I was 10. Yeah, you went to the church and then there was the church people and your parents still talked to or saw them, some of the folks during the week, but otherwise most of the congregation, they were off doing their own thing. Once we moved to small town, Manitoba, so going from Winnipeg to a town of, I think it was 1,600 people.
Dave Moss (14:26.334)
Oh yeah, I'm not baiting you, I'm just curious. Hahaha!
Jake (14:52.254)
It's a whole different ball of wax because we were now three and a half hours away from Winnipeg.
little town in the middle of nowhere. It's not like you could just go to Pizza Hut and grab a pizza. Yeah, it was it was isolated, but everybody knew everybody. So I don't know if it was, I can't say it was ever, you know, inherently implied, but it was like you're, you got to be good now because everybody's watching you and it's such a, no. I mean, my parents were pretty good in the sense of just letting me be myself within reason. I always had very early curfews till I think halfway through
12 but yeah it was just yeah it was life that's all I knew I don't know
Dave Moss (15:36.987)
Yeah, I have no bearing. My family quit going to church when we were six years old because my sisters would fight every time we got home from church. My parents were like, this isn't worth it anymore.
Jake (15:41.055)
I mean, it's, it...
Jake (15:46.206)
I mean, in some senses, it was amazing, and it's gonna sound awful, but I mean, the amount of funeral sandwiches I ate growing up, because my dad would come home with trays. And I mean, in a small town, he was doing like 45 or 50 funerals a year on top of everything else, so yeah. I mean, my dad was busy. My mom didn't go back to work, I think, till I was probably 15 or so, so. But yeah, no, it was.
Dave Moss (16:07.878)
Yeah. What's your relationship with faith now, if you don't mind my asking?
Jake (16:12.498)
I'd say I'm pretty agnostic, like I think there's probably something maybe, hopefully, but nothing... nothing definitive. No. I figure when I die, it'll be like going to sleep. Just won't wake up tomorrow, so...
Dave Moss (16:18.658)
Doesn't drive you every day. Yeah.
Dave Moss (16:25.614)
Fair enough. So one of the books that you had mentioned that has helped you a lot was The Daily Stoic, and I'm curious what it was about that. And stoicism is something that I've obviously, following other podcasters, authors, you know, so it's like stoicism is one of those things where it pops up from time to time. I would say
Jake (16:36.822)
This one?
Dave Moss (16:51.218)
and this is completely unempirical evidence, but I would say traditionally in male spaces. So I'm curious how you came about it and then how it's helped you. And if there's like a gem of wisdom you could pass on.
Jake (17:04.066)
So the way I ended up with this book was actually my good buddy Shane. He's a PhD in psycho robotics or something like that. Yeah. Well, if you ever watched the show, how I met your mother, my buddy Shane is basically the Barney Stinson of my life. He's just, I don't know what he does, but somehow he, he's always traveling places and doing stuff, but yeah. So he, he gave me this book for.
Dave Moss (17:12.682)
Psycho Robotics is the coolest thing ever.
Jake (17:30.518)
Was it my 39th birthday or my 40th? Can't remember, a birthday. Or maybe it was Christmas, I don't remember. Doesn't matter. He gave me that book and basically his reasoning for giving it to me, it's not something I ever sought out or anything like that, it was, and you can talk to Jess about this too, I mean, I'm pretty level 99% of the time. Like for me to get pissed off, mad, angry, takes a lot. And it's the one end of the spectrum.
Dave Moss (17:33.675)
Mm-hmm.
Jake (17:59.794)
Otherwise, I mean in terms of being depressed or having depressive feelings or anxiety is very rare. Like I couldn't even tell you the last time, like even on a down day, I've never laid in bed all day because I feel shitty about life and myself and everything. Like it's never been a thing in my head space. So it's, yeah, I don't know. He basically said, he's like, you're the even keel, so here's some studying. I'm like, okay.
And I mean, it just became part of the routine after you gave it to me. Every morning I'm down making coffee and feeding the kids and stuff like that. Yeah, sit here and drink my coffee and read the day's passage. Some are hilarious, some apply greatly. Some I skip, because it's just like, I don't know, this doesn't fit in my life or I can't see how it fits in my life and just flip the page, but yeah, I don't know.
Dave Moss (18:53.57)
Fair enough. That's interesting. Do you, so you don't feel the downs at least very often or for very long. What about the ups?
Jake (19:04.85)
They're sporadic too. Like, I mean, most of the time there's genuine feelings of happiness. Like, don't get me wrong, I'm not just some dead-ass robot. You know, sitting in the backyard, we sit in the backyard a lot. I work. My, the reason I go to work is so I can sit in my backyard and hang out with my wife and my kids. But yeah, there's still genuine happiness looking up in the trees and the sun is shining. Like, it's not like I'm just like, merp. But big, big happy moments. I mean, they...
Dave Moss (19:20.386)
Hmm.
Jake (19:33.158)
come. I figure if I'm hitting one or two a year that seems reasonable. Like I don't need this two, three, four day week long like, haha, euphoric moment, you know, book in the documentary. I was super pumped for a day and then I realized I had a shitload of work to do. So it was good. I was happy. I've been happy through the whole thing. But yeah, it's I'm not, not seeking specific.
big happy moments, if that makes sense. They happen when they happen. It's kind of like the best parties. You can't make every party be the best party. They just happen because the right ingredients are there and they occur, right? Like it's trying to force things never does anybody any good.
Dave Moss (20:02.026)
Mm-hmm.
Dave Moss (20:14.786)
So it's just like a state of being open.
Jake (20:17.718)
Yeah. If you wanna be happy, just, yeah. We're fuckin' alive, like how cool is that? Ha ha ha.
Dave Moss (20:23.922)
It's so simple. So, okay, you mentioned the reason why you work is so you can sit in the backyard with your wife and your kids. Is that, and this might be too broad of a question, but I'm just curious, because I'm following my interest. Is that your definition of success? Like, do you strive for something, or is it just sort of like you go through and what happens happens?
Jake (20:39.382)
There we go.
Jake (20:50.218)
I mean, I guess there's striving in the sense of trying to maintain enough to maintain the life we want to live. I mean, nothing specific like, I must hit this target or quota to make that happen. But I mean, roof over the head, yard to go sit in, happy kids, music, what more do you need? Like, it's not.
a steep request in the sense that it helps me not hustle. Like don't get me started on the whole concept of hustling. Oh God. Fuck.
Dave Moss (21:28.954)
I wanna get you started on the whole concept of hustling. Lay it down, this is the space for it, because I am also notoriously anti-hustle culture, so.
Jake (21:36.814)
But I mean, it's learning to work when you work. So I mean, I'm very routine-oriented in the sense that if it's a work day and my plan is to work, it's up with the kids to make them lunches and make them breakfast, and then they're off on the school bus today.
35 or whatever it is and then I'm at my desk and I work basically till 10 30 That's when I take my break and go check my mail and then I come back and work till about 1 30 And then I go do the dishes and then work till about 3 and then come 3 o'clock. It's I'm done I'm not somebody who works into the evening I think a lot of it has to do with my body's innate ability to have a very strict sleep schedule So I mean even yesterday
had a 14 hour wedding day and got to sleep last night at about 20 after 1. At 6.15 it was like wide awake and I was like okay and I tried to go back to sleep like I cannot once I'm awake I like the brain turns on and it's just go but yeah it's just I forgot what I was talking about I don't know oh yeah that's the question right see that I blocked it from my mind I didn't that's how far I wanted to run away
Dave Moss (22:42.43)
We were talking about hustle culture and how, yeah.
Dave Moss (22:50.082)
Yeah, I feel like culturally, there is a shift away from it right now. I think the 2010s are sort of defined by hustle culture and the grind and everybody having, you have to monetize your hobbies and you have to do all the rest of this and the explosion of Etsy and all the rest. I think the pandemic both helped and hindered that in some way. A lot of people lost their livelihoods, so side hustles became main hustles. And you know.
Jake (23:14.017)
Yeah.
Jake (23:18.58)
Yep.
Dave Moss (23:19.35)
They were grateful for that, but I think it also made a lot of people slow down and...
take stock, the number of extroverts that I found that became introverts over the course of the pandemic because they realized that they had just been going for the sake of going.
Jake (23:38.902)
Well, you forget. You forget what you're doing. It becomes your routine, right? So I mean, I think that's, we're having that time to slow down every day. Like I do not, unless I'm shooting, of course, I'll go shoot and do whatever in the evenings, but I'm not.
not editing weddings. I'm not doing engagement sessions, or like editing engagement sessions, like that time is done. My brain is cooked by that point because I've been staring at histograms for, you know, basically eight hours straight. But that focused work time is focused work time. You know, I might take just a minute to let my eyes rest every five minutes and look around or whatever, but that is my goal. If the kids are at school and Jess is doing whatever she's doing, this is what we're doing now. So I mean, it also, I think, created that discipline
where you know how stupidly fast I can edit. I was watching the demo the other day and yeah, in the time I watched, I think the latter half of the live, I called through a 2,000 shot engagement session and color corrected 290 photos and had them uploaded and delivered to the client before I think Angie had even imported the photos into Lightroom. So...
Dave Moss (24:50.898)
Yeah, for those who haven't watched the live or have no idea what Jake is talking about. Yeah. Angie Nelson did a live in one of our Facebook groups where she was showing how she uses this AI tool after shoot. And I think it was like 21 minutes long or something like that. And she called and started editing, which for a lot of people is like magical. Not everybody has the fast fingers of Mr. Oldencamp here.
Jake (24:54.146)
Sorry, comparing myself to the robot.
Jake (25:13.299)
100% no I.
Jake (25:18.887)
I would love to hook my brain up to a machine and just see it go poof when that's going on. It's just.
Dave Moss (25:26.962)
Yeah, it's definitely, I think it's definitely a superpower of yours. And I've seen you post in threads and stuff like that, how fast you do it. People are always like, how, show me, teach me. I don't know if what you do is a teachable skill. Oh.
Jake (25:37.207)
And I did a call with Dave Fay. No, it's not. When I did the call with Dave Fay, he's like, so the answer is just work faster? I'm like, yeah. Just go faster.
Dave Moss (25:46.962)
Yeah, we just, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I definitely feel like having this conversation, you are wired in a very different way than a lot of people. You know, like the way that you live without regret, the way that you can just sit down and have these work hours, the way that you are even keeled and all of the rest of that. Like I'm hearing all of this and being like, yeah, this is why I read so many books and listen to so many, I want to get to that place. Like I am...
Jake (26:13.524)
I got-
Dave Moss (26:14.246)
I am the person who does lie in bed all day and have depressive episodes and do all the rest of it.
Jake (26:17.678)
I think I've read three books in the last two decades, Dave. I'm a bad book person. No.
Dave Moss (26:21.234)
Yeah, that's all right. Not everybody's a book person. But but I mean, I do it trying to get to where you are and you're already there. So I mean.
Jake (26:29.342)
Yeah. I think a lot of the time too, backyards say, even if Jess is off in the city at school or shopping or whatever, if I'm just hanging out there by myself listening to music, you know, I'll sit some of the time and doom scroll on Facebook or whatever, but I know when to stop. I...
become aware of like, I've been staring at this for like fucking 15 minutes and nothing has happened. Like I've come back to the top and started again. But then it's a lot of self-reflection time. So just self-analyzing the day that was, like what occurred and what went wrong and what was good and relationship.
things and all that good stuff. I don't know. I spend a lot of time talking to the old self in the head. Yeah, I don't know.
Dave Moss (27:20.066)
Okay. Yeah, before these things came around, I did that a lot more. You know, like, I used to get bored and make stuff. And now I have ADHD, which seems like 90% of the population these days has ADHD. But I mean, for me, it's always, I'm just trying to find interest and my phone gives that interest right away. But it used to be, I could just get bored and.
Jake (27:25.848)
Mm-hmm.
Jake (27:31.564)
Yeah.
Jake (27:44.543)
Yeah.
Dave Moss (27:48.318)
you know, go out into my garage and make something or write a note or just sit there and self reflect or whatever. And yeah, absolutely. Like I used to be the kid, like when I lived in the UK for a couple of years, I would ride the bus to work every day. And thankfully this was pre-iPhone days, which probably was a big help. But like, I would just ride the bus, listen to music and stare out the window. And it was such a great.
Jake (27:50.658)
Mm-hmm.
Jake (27:54.302)
Yeah. Watch dust float in the sun.
Dave Moss (28:16.598)
Like I actually look back on those bus rides so fondly because it was just so simple and it allowed me to connect with myself and music and think and everything. And like now it's like, oh, I've got a podcast or an audio book going or, you know, I'm doom scrolling TikTok or I'm looking at Facebook for the 18th time, even though I have no interest in looking at Facebook, you know, and it's like, it was just, it was such a different experience. And like, I would love to be able to get
Jake (28:25.239)
Yeah.
Jake (28:36.538)
Yeah. No.
Dave Moss (28:46.102)
back to that place. But I think the only way to do that is to, you know, lock the phone up. Like one of the things I've been playing around with and wanna try more is Digital Free Sundays, where it's like no computer, no laptop, no phone, no anything else like that. Like the phone can be on and in the house. If somebody calls me, I'll get the notification on my watch or whatever, but just like turn off because I need that time to be bored again.
Jake (29:01.526)
Mm-hmm.
Jake (29:12.855)
I think my only benefit to my laptop is I've got so many hard drives and shit running into it that for me to disconnect this thing, to actually go use it as a computer anywhere else is so hard. So it just lives on my desk, even though it's a portable computer. Because yeah, it's just, it's too much work. Like, I don't need it.
Dave Moss (29:29.35)
Yeah, I like having a laptop because one of the things I've realized recently is leaving my house and going and sitting in a coffee shop or a diner or something like that for two or three hours. I'm so productive to do all the things that I wouldn't do at home, like emails or, you know, writing a document, you know, whatever, because I don't have a million distractions and I'm in sort of
Jake (29:39.874)
It's helpful.
Jake (29:50.381)
Mm-hmm.
Dave Moss (29:52.354)
There's so much going on in the environment that that's enough for my brain to be like, there's so many shiny things going on that we can focus on this one. Yeah, and I mean, like I'll whip through 30 emails in half an hour at a coffee shop, but if I try to do that at home, that'll take.
Jake (29:57.174)
Focus! Yeah. Do the thing you're here for!
Jake (30:08.758)
Yeah. No, actually me and Jess have talked about this a few times where it's, she will, you know, if we're trying to sit in the yard and relax, her focus will drift to the things that are not complete yet. And I've come to realize in my head, everything is very itemized on the list. Everything, the honeydew list, it's all in there. And Jess will attest to how much I love to be reminded about things. That will just get your shit knocked down the list.
But it all equates to like, you know, is something, somebody in risk or is there danger, you know, and it just itemizes down from that where she will always be drifting. And it's, yeah, no, if you can find that ability to actually focus in, like that's half the battle. Headphones help a lot. Yeah.
Dave Moss (30:54.706)
Yeah, headphones help a lot. Yeah, yeah. I live by my AirPods on noise canceling mode. How do you prioritize? Because I think that's something that a lot of entrepreneurs really struggle with, right? Like as an entrepreneur, the to-do list is always 100 items long. So where do you start? Like how do you make the choice of what to do next?
Jake (31:16.07)
make the... I mean, a lot of it comes down to time sensitivity of things, right? There's things that need to be dealt with today, there's things that can be dealt with tomorrow, there's things that really don't matter until next Tuesday, there's things that are in there, but they're not something in the near future, so it's floating around in there and they're still thought to it, but it's not.
up here, it doesn't need to be here. I don't need to think about it. It can be that thing that comes later. So I don't even, it's not even like a conscious itemization of things, it's just, yeah, it's what needs now, what.
I'm here now, what needs now? Not what needs 20 minutes from now when my kids come home from school and one of them's crying and something happened. You can't plan for that. You're just trying to over plan for things that you have no control over whatsoever. What is the point? Where is your time going?
Dave Moss (31:56.566)
Hmm
Dave Moss (32:05.715)
Yeah.
Dave Moss (32:14.802)
I think for a lot of the people that I work with, I think they do try to plan, not even just 20 minutes out, but two years out, things like that, because they have that strive. This is where I want to be. They'll launch a new project or have their new business or a podcast. This is something that I used to do, which I'm getting better at. I would launch a project and I would already envision.
Jake (32:23.18)
Yeah.
Dave Moss (32:41.97)
Oh, this is what it's gonna be like in two years when I'm, you know, I've got my own recording studio for this and I'm people, I'm flying people in and I'm doing whatever, you know? Yeah, exactly. But because of that, it makes the priority list get completely out of whack because instead of doing what I think what you're saying makes a lot of sense of like, do what you have to do now to move forward in the next step, you're leapfrogging. You're like, okay, but if I get...
Jake (32:42.25)
The end goal. Yeah.
Jake (32:49.645)
I'm interviewing Conan.
Dave Moss (33:09.278)
If I get 10,000 Instagram followers, then I'll have more clout to be able to get such and such a guest on. So I have to focus on Instagram right now, rather than, and I see this with photographers and creatives and stuff a lot, where the day to day of their business falls apart because they're so busy trying to be seen. Yeah.
Jake (33:16.652)
Yeah.
Jake (33:31.602)
I gotta get here, I gotta get there. Yeah, no, I'm not sure. I mean, even in terms of being an artist, it's neither myself or Jazz. We've never sat down and we're like, oh, we're artists. No, it's...
Dave Moss (33:48.45)
Do you see it as a job? Like, is it, for you looking at photography, is it a creative outlet or is this like the job that puts food on your family's table? Or is it both? I don't know. Yeah.
Jake (33:57.234)
all of it. Like, I mean, I don't feel I take the best photos. I don't feel I am the best editor. There's days where I feel really great about myself and like, holy shit, that's a really great photo. But but it's not like my ego is crushed because I'm not on the top of a list somewhere as the top 25 under 25 when I was 25. That was a long time ago. But you know, it's
I've never, I sit here actually at my desk with this picture of myself as like a, how old am I in here? A year, barely a year old, just over a year. I mean, that's the only person I have to impress is my one year old self in a box because that box was probably really fucking cool at the time. Outside of that, like I mean, I've never sought awards.
I really don't care. You know, it's, I think when you're making something for other people, they're the ones that are important. I'm more touched by an email from a bride or something. You know, you made me feel amazing or made me realize I'm amazing. Like it's, that stuff is way more important than winning a fearless photographer award. Like I just, I don't know, it's.
Keep the exp...
Dave Moss (35:23.114)
But there's gotta be some stock into those awards. Like, like, give me.
Jake (35:27.73)
I have no idea. Because I am so disconnected from the actual industry, I do not know who is a cool wedding photographer right now. The list in my head is from 2010. So are half of them even shooting anymore? I have no idea. So, yeah. That's it.
Dave Moss (35:44.478)
Yeah, I wonder if part of that is like the way we look at music, right? Because like all the photographers that I still in my head think of, like, these are the people who are doing things, we're all the people who were doing things when I was coming up, just like all the bands that I still love for the most part were the bands. Like, you know, you got a Foo Fighters shirt on, you know, it's like that sort of thing. I wonder if that's like, I don't know, I've never done any research into this, but like, I wonder if there's a part of like our brains that like when we're... When... Yeah.
Jake (35:55.799)
Yeah.
Jake (36:03.154)
Nothing has changed. Yeah.
Jake (36:12.754)
I think we get stuck. So I mean, no, I'm still stuck. And not stuck, I mean, we get molded, right? Like I think we have those formidable years from like 15 to 25. If you're not in a stressful situation where there's food scarcity or you don't have a home or you're from a broken family, if you're a stable-ish teenager into a young adult,
Dave Moss (36:15.594)
So what stops you from getting stuck?
You're still good.
Dave Moss (36:22.987)
Mm-hmm.
Jake (36:39.702)
I really honestly wonder how much the music of that 10 years actually shapes who you become or the music you're into, right? So I mean, I think back to the stuff we were listening to in that era and it's like, okay, those things are still in. Music repeats itself generationally. So I mean, it's a whole lost thing. But yeah, no, you attach to those things. And I honestly wonder like how much do they actually end up molding your brain into where you can kind of or where you kind of continue on.
Dave Moss (37:08.398)
Yeah, I mean, that's part of the reason why I'm doing this podcast and having these conversations with people is the concept of molding us and how much of that happens early versus how much is changeable later on. Like one of the things that I do is try to find new music all the time. I fucking love Spotify because it constantly suggests new artists to me that I never would have come across.
Jake (37:32.663)
Mm-hmm.
Dave Moss (37:34.898)
I know I'm late to the game. If you're out there in your 20s, especially if you're a woman in your 20s, it feels like this is the core demographic, but Noah Khan, like I have fallen in love with this guy's music, and he recently released an extended version of his latest album, and like this transcendental experience for me listening to this, and this is some 26 year old guy from Vermont. And I'm so grateful that I never would have come across his music if it wasn't for Spotify and TikTok. And I'm like, oh, this is...
Jake (37:52.13)
Yeah.
Dave Moss (38:03.962)
music I never would have listened to when I was 15, 16.
Jake (38:05.654)
Yeah. Oh, music's huge. Like COVID, that's how.
for the first at least six months of what the fuck is going on, that's how we survived. At one point I went through all of Apple's radio stations and we did full like, while we are awake today, we do the French station and the next day we're doing the Spanish station and the next day we're doing the Argentinian station. And yeah, no, I think music's just one of those things where if you're not afraid of
Jake (38:40.048)
cultures together, right? Because you realize the similarities and the emotion and all that stuff.
Dave Moss (38:48.322)
Yeah. Do you feel like, as a photographer and a filmmaker, have there been influences outside of those genres? So let's say music or movies, or I guess not movies, but music or books or people or anything else like that, that have shaped the way that you create?
Jake (39:11.098)
Am I allowed to talk about movies? Or was that off the off-limits? Yeah. No.
Dave Moss (39:13.77)
You can talk about movies. I was just thinking, yeah, I mean, I'm just thinking sort of like outside of the genre, but I mean, if there are movies that helped you, like I'm a photographer or was a photographer and Roger Deakins, like the way that he does cinematography shapes a lot of the ways that I look at light. So there's of course going to be relations.
Jake (39:33.694)
Yeah, I guess, I mean, in sense of that, like, my whole love affair with backlighting initially was all due to the movie Slackers. I don't know if you ever saw that movie. It's a horrible movie from like 1999. And during this scene, I mean, it's an ace of base song being played at the same time, but just this gorgeous backlight shot. And I watched that movie probably 15 times, but always at that shot, it was like, damn, don't see that much.
Dave Moss (39:44.994)
I'll put it on the list.
Jake (40:02.282)
So I mean, when we kind of got into the weddings and engagement, it was like, I'm gonna figure out how to do this because the idea of backlighting for a lot of people at the time was a terrifying, like why the fuck would you do that? Because I mean, a lot of people too, when we started, were still shooting film. So it's not the same as it is now where there's like a lot of conscious effort into pushing and pulling film where you're still scanning and still digitally manipulating. It was, yeah, you're shooting with fail flash
Dave Moss (40:14.099)
Mm-hmm.
Jake (40:32.376)
because that was safe, you know. You're not burning $2 per shot hoping that your backlit, sunny shot worked out. Whereas with digital, it was like, I can take 4,000 photos and if six turn out, right on. Like it's, yeah, perfect, tick the box. I got the thing I was going for, so yeah. I don't know. I think there's a, it goes back to the failure thing, right? There's a fear of failure, whereas if you're willing to try stuff, that's.
Dave Moss (40:51.294)
Anything.
Jake (41:00.69)
you know, if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. And you say you're working with a client. So with us with engagement sessions, there's been lots of times where I've said to people straight up, I'm like, I'm gonna try something. You may never see these photos. And they're like, okay. And nobody cares. Because for...
Dave Moss (41:15.658)
which I think is a really interesting thing because we did the same and I've talked to other photographers about it and they're terrified of the concept of shooting something and the clients not getting it. Like I remember back when we taught workshops and things like that and we would say the same thing, it's like, we'll tell our clients, hey, we're gonna go figure something out for five minutes, talk amongst yourselves and then we'll come back and do it if it works. And they're like, don't they ask for those photos? And I'm like,
Jake (41:40.332)
Yeah.
Jake (41:43.675)
No, they don't remember. No.
Dave Moss (41:44.278)
No, they're not gonna remember. But there's this like, I think it ties into that fear of failure is that fear of embarrassment, right? That we just assume that so many other people are thinking about us all the time. And the best advice I ever got is people don't think about, they don't think about you.
Jake (41:58.134)
But if people are giving you money, no, if people are giving you money, they already think you're good at what you're doing. They are not afraid of that factor. Like that is so self-imposed that, yeah, they're touching me. No, they booked you, so they probably trust you. Like, what's, why? Why do we have to be afraid of it?
Dave Moss (42:05.515)
Mm-hmm.
Dave Moss (42:12.651)
Yeah.
Dave Moss (42:22.87)
I think, I mean, why do we have to be afraid of it? I mean, that's somewhere out there in some, you know, psychology or philosophy class, they're trying to figure that out. But I think it's all self-imposed, right? Like, I think the fear of failure, the fear of making mistakes, it's not an external thing. Like, I think we attribute it to external factors. Like, I don't wanna screw this up.
because I'm afraid of the way that other people will look at me and we put that outward. But it's really, I'm afraid of the way that they will look at me, not they're going to be, they're gonna tell me I'm dumb. No, no, I'm afraid that they might tell me I'm dumb. So because of that, I'm not going to try.
Jake (43:00.428)
Yeah.
Jake (43:05.098)
But I honestly wonder, like in terms of the creative visual industries, how much it's not even a fear of the client isn't going to like it. It's fear of, oh, my industry peers are going to look at me as somebody who doesn't know what they're doing. But again, you were the one that hired, so nobody knows what you were trying to do. Like there's... We...
seem to think that everybody knows exactly what is going on. And like, you know exactly what I'm thinking about right now, Dave, don't you? Right? That's not how it works, really.
Dave Moss (43:42.922)
Yeah, I think that's true sort of across industries, but especially in the creative industry. Like I see people shit talking styles or trends or whatever out there. And I often think, it's like, you probably have, yeah, we all do it. I'm like, I'm guilty of it for sure. I try not to do it now because I'm conscious of it. But it's like, I probably back when I...
Jake (43:52.747)
Yeah.
Jake (43:58.07)
I mean, I've done it too. Yeah. I'm 100%.
Dave Moss (44:08.394)
I used to shit on, you know, there was a style of photography for, I don't know if it's still around. I don't look at other photographers anymore, which has been really great. But there was a style where like everything was super desaturated and brown. And it was super popular and lots of people were getting paid a crap ton of money for doing it and good for them. Like my inability to see the joy or whatever, the goodness in that style.
Jake (44:22.933)
Oh yeah.
Jake (44:27.699)
Yeah.
Dave Moss (44:34.39)
didn't take away from the fact that people were getting paid really good money to do it. And I think that, yeah, yeah. But it's like, we're so afraid of how we're going to be perceived by so many external factors that, like whether it's our clients or whether it's ourselves or whether it's our industry peers or whether it's our parents, you know, whomever, you know, like, and when we started, when I started photography, my dad was like, you'll never,
Jake (44:39.422)
and you were still getting booked to do what you were doing.
Dave Moss (45:04.382)
money in this. And then once we started making money, all of a sudden he was said he was cut. Well, no, he was cutting out every like newspaper clipping about photography, like all of a sudden now that I was getting an income, he was as a whole other, you know, bring that to my therapist. But but we make all of these decisions, oftentimes because of external factors. And so to drive this back into your journey, you had you had brought up two teachers in your
Jake (45:06.89)
Look what I did!
Jake (45:10.664)
Oh yeah.
Jake (45:14.805)
It was justified.
Dave Moss (45:31.394)
past, Ms. Zarn and Greg Sheris, was there anything about working with them? Because the things you said about them, Ms. Zarn telling you it's okay to let your freak flag fly, and then Sheris for work ethic and figuring out shit when it goes wrong. I think those are great lessons that have nothing to do with, I mean, I guess letting your freak flag fly is like doing shit in spite of others, almost. Not worrying about how they feel. Yeah.
Jake (45:32.037)
Mm-hmm.
Jake (45:49.249)
Mm-hmm.
Jake (45:58.614)
And I was that kid. Like, I, you know, being the minister's kid in a small town, one of my paper clients, I delivered newspapers starting at H10 and had a hellish paper route where I picked up newspapers and then had to walk about two kilometers out of town to start my route. So I mean, imagine a 10-year-old with a snow suit in the winter in Manitoba, where the wind is blowing 75 kilometers an hour. Yeah, no, it was character building. It was, we lived in a valley.
Dave Moss (46:17.319)
In Manitoba.
Dave Moss (46:22.906)
You actually can tell your kids you walked through the snow uphill both ways.
Jake (46:29.882)
But I forgot what I was talking about. Um, Oh yeah, freak flag. Yeah. Um, yeah. So basically she was a young teacher. So she was, I think was pretty much straight out of, at a, at a teaching school. Um, drama teacher and English teacher. So I, I is horrible of a speller as I am. I still do not know my vowel sounds. You can ask Jess and ask my children who I've tried to teach how to spell words. Dad, how do you spell this? And then I'm like, I fuck.
Dave Moss (46:33.508)
Your te- freak flag, yeah.
Jake (46:58.65)
It's horrible. I also grew up in the time of spell checkers, so it was great. But, yeah, love English. So as an English teacher, she has lots of good writing assignments, like super, super...
super easy to talk to. I think it became more of a peer kind of feeling than a teacher student feeling. But she was also the drama teacher. And as a, I would have been, I guess about 14 at the time and you know, angsty and I dyed my hair green and all that good stuff, listening to Nirvana and being, being in my head, a punk kid in a small town. Never doing anything bad because everybody knew everybody. So there was just no point.
Kid in town with green hair. So who's it gonna be? But yeah, no, she was a teacher that also, I think saw My ability in the attempt or in the in the sense of not being manipulative But potentially having that ability where I can get people riled up to do something very quickly So she came up with this plan one day. She's like, okay
You know the video stuff, you're gonna bring a camera, we're gonna hide it in the classroom, I'm gonna come in, I'm gonna be somewhat mean to you and you're gonna fly off the fucking handle. Get as many kids to come with you to the library as possible. In the span of, I think it was three or four minutes, I staged a full walkout of my classroom to the library. And then we came back and showed people the tape and talked about it, but it was...
somebody showing you that, yeah, you can do bad stuff very, very quickly. And it's, yeah, nobody's born bad. You it's, it's neglect. It's, it's all the shit things that turn people that way. Right. It's so having somebody like that who then pushed me to take one of the leading roles in this, this dinner theater that we put on for the small town where I cross-dressed and at age 14 in a small town full of farm folk.
Jake (49:04.702)
I'm like, whatever, I'll wear a miniskirt and stuff my shirt. Like, whatever, it's, yeah, it's fun. I'm going to play, like, people are paying money to come see this, like, it's a good time, yeah.
Dave Moss (49:16.566)
Does that influence the way you parent at all?
Jake (49:22.57)
in terms of just open.
Dave Moss (49:24.554)
letting your kids let their freak flags fly like...
Jake (49:28.438)
I mean honestly, it's anything in life, right? Like if what you're doing in your life and your personal choices, if it's not harming or affecting anybody else in any way, what the fuck's the problem?
Dave Moss (49:44.551)
I agree.
Jake (49:47.042)
However...
Dave Moss (49:47.81)
However, it just seems like today, which I don't necessarily agree with this take, but I see it a lot that people feel affected or feel put upon by so many different things. You mentioned cross-dressing, and there's all this stuff going on with drag bands and all the rest of that now, which I think is complete. Sorry, say that again.
Jake (50:09.241)
I have a trans family member. Like this.
Dave Moss (50:11.39)
Yeah. What was that like for you and your family?
Jake (50:17.898)
I mean, I can only talk to myself personally. I mean, there was no, there was friction, of course, in the family, but outside of that, like on my side of things, it's my biggest issue. I have a horrible time with names. The number of times I forgot the Brad and Groom's names yesterday at the wedding I was shooting is almost embarrassing.
So for me, I very much associate like click to click is a memory, right? So trying to change names was a very difficult thing. And there was never any ill will. It's not like it's just, this is how I picture this memory in my head. It was that person at that time. You know, the fact that the identity has changed now, that's great. I will call you by the way you want to be identified. That's not an issue, but those memories, you know, how do I...
You know, they're just so ingrained where it's difficult to be like, switch and be like, okay, gotta click that around and the name has changed. But no, I mean, as a family, it's, yeah. I mean, it was a change, but that's.
Dave Moss (51:26.71)
People change. Yeah.
Jake (51:26.826)
Nothing changed. All the memories of life are all the same. Nothing was different.
Dave Moss (51:34.086)
Yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, I definitely feel the same way. Like I've had friends transition and no one directly in my family, but people were close to me. And it's just like, okay, different pronouns, no problem. Different name, no problem. Let's just carry on and move forward. Is there anywhere that you personally, like, I feel like...
Jake (51:47.694)
Whatever. Yep.
Jake (51:53.217)
Yep.
Dave Moss (52:03.914)
You're a millennial, I'm a millennial. We're in this like weird, yeah, we're almost Gen X. I see so many of these things being generational issues, right, like the more that you look at LGBTQ issues, indigenous issues, people of color, all the rest of this, for the most part, I look at your kid's age or people who are teenagers, early 20s, like it's such a non-issue for them because they grew up in a world
Jake (52:05.626)
Yeah, barely.
Jake (52:14.123)
Mm-hmm.
Jake (52:32.542)
No, they could care less. Whatever.
Dave Moss (52:33.95)
Yeah, they could just totally care less. Was there anything that was hard for you as you grew up of like, I just don't, I don't see this, I don't get it?
Jake (52:45.578)
Not that I can remember. And I think that's just mostly because my parents were cool with me just kinda doing what I wanted to do. So like dying my hair and doing crazy spiky hair and stuff which was very, very abnormal for the place we lived. But I mean, compared to any other, and the church family.
Dave Moss (53:02.27)
Well, and for a church family, like that's probably not, yeah.
Jake (53:05.654)
But I mean, I was still, strove to not be an asshole. Like I still talk to everybody. You know, Melitta, the town I lived in, was the town where you just wave to everybody as they drove by. And it's not like I wasn't waving to everybody. Like, just because my outward appearance was different, like there was no, I'm still the same, same stupid kid that didn't have green hair yesterday. Like it's, I one time in grade eight decided I was gonna shave my head. I went home from school at lunch and.
Bicked it down to nothing. Just because I wanted to see what people would do. So yeah, I was always the kind of outlandish one and just trying stuff, going for reaction, just to laugh at people. Like really, there was girls in my class in grade eight who tried to start a petition that I had to wear a hat at school. It was.
Dave Moss (53:55.075)
I was just gonna ask, was there any pushback to that behavior? Because if you were the one that was on the fringe, oftentimes there's pushback against different...
Jake (54:05.402)
Yeah, it was it. I mean it was stupid stuff like that where it's like yeah, this is never gonna go anywhere but yeah, I mean I Think I was still able to maintain the person I was regardless of the negativity, especially because it was self-imposed I was always cognizant of that fact. It's kind of kind of like I Am one of those people with hangovers where there is very little self-bitty. I chose to do this This is my doing I still have kids to feed, you know stuff like that. Like it's
Yeah, you made the choice to do it. Being a whiner about it later is... Yeah.
Dave Moss (54:41.118)
You're like...
Jake (54:42.222)
Ha ha
Dave Moss (54:44.302)
It's unbelievable how chill you are about so many things. Like I hear all of these things, like I'm the worst with a hangover. It's one of the main reasons why I don't drink a lot anymore is not because I don't enjoy alcohol or anything and I don't have a problem with it, but it's just cause I don't do hangover as well. Like I am the worst with a hangover. And so I don't drink so that I don't impose that version of myself on my wife or anybody else. Cause like you just don't want to be around.
Jake (54:56.279)
Yeah.
Jake (55:03.713)
Yeah.
No.
Dave Moss (55:14.205)
I'm the man-cold guy.
Jake (55:14.626)
Well, it's even like stupid drunk promises. I will keep every stupid drunk promise I ever made in my life. 100%. If I told you I was gonna do something, I will tomorrow when I feel shitty, I will still show up. And I told you I'd come shovel. You'll probably still be in bed, but I'll be there to help. Yeah, I don't know.
Dave Moss (55:32.742)
Yeah, yeah, people need to study you for psychology textbooks. It's just, you just, you see that when you have your head on straight.
Jake (55:36.719)
Pfft
Jake (55:42.238)
It's, it's, I don't know. Overreaction to anything is dumb. Like it's, yeah.
Dave Moss (55:49.778)
I completely agree. I think overreaction is dumb, but it is so easy for most people. I don't wanna say most people. It's so easy for some people.
Jake (55:58.798)
But is it one of those things that has come more so now than it was when we were kids? Like, can you think back to being a kid and be like, no, you know, people didn't freak out as much, but it's, yeah, it's always been the same.
Dave Moss (56:09.982)
No, I think people always freaked out. I mean, yeah, I mean, you think about like the 80s when me growing up, I don't remember this directly. I remember it sort of secondhand looking back, but like the AIDS epidemic and the 80s and the whole princess die thing and the way that people looked at gay people at that time and how it was completely ridiculous. Like, I feel like as a society, we always have something that we look weird.
Jake (56:22.388)
Yeah.
Jake (56:38.988)
Yeah.
Dave Moss (56:40.126)
Clearly drag wasn't a problem 40 years ago because look at every metal band in the 80s, right? Like glam rock was a full thing. And exactly, but like now it's this complete sin because we have to have something to latch on to be outraged about. I think the thing that I realize now is, you know, this too shall pass, which is a very privileged thing, I think, to be able to say, because I'm not on the receiving end.
Jake (56:46.829)
Now it's horrible.
Jake (56:51.615)
Yeah.
Dave Moss (57:09.374)
You know, I will go to a protest or I will stand up for my friends or whatever, but I'm not directly affected by a lot of these things. I'm a white guy in Canada. Most things go well for me. Yeah, most things go well for me. And I mean, even like when I started identifying as non-binary, like most people, they don't, I look cis. But I looked like most people are like, sure, Dave, like you're a white guy with a beard.
Jake (57:19.155)
Middle-aged white guy.
Jake (57:30.478)
What's that mean? Yeah.
Dave Moss (57:36.83)
you're not out there wearing a skirt. And like, I would paint my nails or do whatever. And people are like, that's weird. I'm like, why is that weird? It's, but that's the most pushback I've ever got. So yeah, it's one of those things where it's like, I don't understand it, but I've never actually had to be affected by it either.
Jake (57:44.21)
Why is it? You're the only one who's weird about it.
Jake (57:57.79)
Well, I mean, it's, I don't think honestly a lot of us in our day to day are running around thinking about our gender or identifying ourselves, right? Like it's kind of a weird concept to be like in most day to day thought, I don't really ever think, oh, it's good to be a man. Like, I don't know, there's, we're all people. Like it's...
Dave Moss (58:17.106)
I thought about my gender a lot because I've never identified with most male experiences. Like I can look back all the way to like early teens and remember thinking like, I don't get guys. Like I just don't, I played sports because my dad wanted me to play sports, but I never really cared for that. I never really cared for traditional masculinity or anything like that.
Jake (58:36.052)
Yeah.
Jake (58:42.09)
No. My father-in-law makes fun of my pink hands all the time. Ha ha ha. Ha ha.
Dave Moss (58:46.618)
Yeah, but it's like, I remember my parents at the time asking me if I was gay because I had feminine traits. Like, I am as straight as they come. I love women. I think they're wonderful. But I had femininity. And so at the time that was attributed to homosexuality. Now less so, I don't know.
Jake (58:55.019)
Mm.
Jake (59:08.351)
Yeah.
Dave Moss (59:11.618)
of this, but oh yeah, you had mentioned like thinking about our gender. I was like, I did, I spent a lot of my time thinking of my gender. Like that was the one thing that I latched onto. Yeah.
Jake (59:16.37)
Yeah. And I mean that in the sense of actually agreeing with what you completely just said. It's just, I don't know. I don't.
Dave Moss (59:26.695)
Yeah.
Jake (59:28.011)
not out there fighting in the streets, right? It's proving it.
Dave Moss (59:30.782)
Yeah, but I mean, I think some people out there have to prove it. And I feel like, you know, I was at a conference recently and there's this wonderful woman, Tenniel Campbell, who's First Nations. And she was talking a lot about, you know, her mission right now is photographing indigenous joy because so much of the way that her people have been presented. Yeah, yeah.
Jake (59:35.254)
Mm-hmm.
Jake (59:53.718)
Have you seen the mermaid stuff or the merman stuff? Oh my God, that's so good. Ha ha ha.
Dave Moss (59:56.878)
Yeah, yeah, I saw it on my Facebook feed because of her. Like she was posting it. And I just thought that was so great. But it really struck me that from a media perspective, oftentimes when we're showcasing or showing these things, it's not from a place of joy. You know, it's like indigenous people are suffering. But yeah, of course, but of course we do because we're like, everything is so compartmentalized, right? Like I feel like...
Jake (01:00:14.57)
We all take ourselves too fucking seriously.
Dave Moss (01:00:25.514)
for somebody who is fighting, there's the whole, the missing indigenous women, I can't remember the acronym for the life of me right now, but they have to take themselves seriously because they're literally getting murdered. Drag people, people are in drag, or trans people, or things like that right now. They have to take themselves seriously. I think you and I, in our privileged seats, we have the opportunity to show
Jake (01:00:37.67)
Oh, 100%. Yeah.
Dave Moss (01:00:53.578)
our kids and show other people. It's like, hey, they get the, like we're gonna stand up for you to take yourself seriously, but then we can show our communities, like this is not a bad thing.
Jake (01:01:00.458)
Yeah. Well, actually, even my daughter, right? She came home with a joke that a friend had told her. And it was very terrible.
derogatory towards trans people. But as it was said, you wouldn't understand that unless you understood the context. So trying to explain to a seven-year-old, like, you can't tell this joke to people. It's not nice to people. I know we can't explain to you why right now, but that's something you shouldn't repeat. Like, that's… And I think, I mean, you probably the same way. Like as a kid in the 80s, late 80s, 90s, early 90s, the fucking shit we used to talk and say.
Dave Moss (01:01:37.728)
It was the worst. Yeah.
Jake (01:01:41.392)
Okay, I, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Dave Moss (01:01:43.762)
Yeah, it's one thing I'm grateful for about myself is during the whole political correctness movement and now into woke or whatever they wanna call it, just being a good fucking person is generally how I look at it. Yeah, if somebody else comes along and says, this word is offensive, I just go, okay, great, scratch it from the lexicon, move on. That costs me nothing.
Jake (01:01:58.382)
Don't be an asshole.
Jake (01:02:08.767)
Yeah.
Dave Moss (01:02:14.006)
the R word, retard, that was just such a common word growing up. Like that was just exactly like it was so nothing. And then it was maybe 10 years ago. So I had said it in conversation and someone's like, hey, by the way, this is why that's offensive. And I go, noted. I will never say that again.
Jake (01:02:19.371)
I was like saying dude.
Jake (01:02:34.47)
Well, I mean, you even watched episodes of The Office from 2012 where they're still being like, oh, you're being so gay. That was still a joke and that was fucking nine years ago. That's... So, there has been movement, but...
Dave Moss (01:02:43.462)
Yeah.
Dave Moss (01:02:47.094)
There has been, and there is movement, but like my father is a very old school, his British Navy grew up in a coal mining town. And he and I have these conversations quite often where I'm just like, hey, that's not okay. And he's like, well, why is it not okay? It was okay in my day. And I'm like, we're still in your day, you are still alive, but it is not okay anymore. And I have to explain it to him and go through that. And thankfully my dad is really patient with it. But yeah, it's...
Jake (01:02:53.847)
Yeah.
Jake (01:03:01.47)
Yeah, bye-bye.
Jake (01:03:09.15)
Nope. Things have changed. Ha ha ha.
Dave Moss (01:03:17.146)
I'm really grateful for myself and the people that I surround myself with. You know, I think they're one of the reasons why I have such great friendships with men is because I surround myself with other men who also don't get caught up in, you know, gender norms and things like that and just like are just people first.
Jake (01:03:38.73)
Well, and I think a lot of it comes down to just people have lost the ability to actually sit down and talk. We don't agree on everything. There's been times where we're sending messages to each other and at the end of it, it's like most people would be like, friendships over. Like it's done. Like there was some cliff, some whatever moment. But I mean, the next day is like a week later. How's it going, Dave? You know, there's it's okay to be.
not or not be but not agree with people like there's been times where you've quite honestly said in your head go fuck yourself Jake And I've said in my head go fuck yourself Dave But that isn't Then the end everybody's so focused on always having an end there needs to be a conclusion Whereas if you actually sit down and talk and agree that it's okay to sometimes not agree and that is
Dave Moss (01:04:21.855)
Mm-hmm.
Jake (01:04:34.686)
Fine. And if it's something that's not super important, you just leave it there and move on. And then continue to talk.
Dave Moss (01:04:40.082)
Yeah, this actually happened really recently. We had this totally like minor to the grand scheme of the world, but like this weird contentious issue that was going on with a couple of friends. And one of them had come over the other night and just as like everybody was leaving, I'm like, hey, do you mind holding back a sec? Cause my wife and Abby and I had talked about this a lot. And I'm just like, hey, I need to have this conversation with you. And we had this probably, you know, 30 minute.
intense conversation. It wasn't an argument because we all sort of like were just there for it. And at the end we all realized that like there's no conclusion to this. Like this is like you still feel the way that you feel. I still feel the way that we feel. But we all felt better by having the conversation. And Abby was saying afterwards she's like yeah but she was saying afterwards like I don't think I've ever had that kind of conversation with a friend ever.
Jake (01:05:18.718)
No. It's conversation.
Jake (01:05:26.506)
Well, cause you gotta have context.
Dave Moss (01:05:35.926)
She's like, I've had that conversation with you, my spouse, and with like family members, but I don't think I've ever had that intense of a conversation with a friend that I'm like, oh, I have those all the time. Like it is like, I will not be friends with someone if they are not willing to go to that place.
Jake (01:05:36.268)
Yeah.
Jake (01:05:51.742)
Well, it's a fear of being uncomfortable. And people don't want to be uncomfortable, right? So everything's always sunshine and rainbows and all that good stuff. But I know like in the relationships I've sought out in my life. So I mean, be it you, be it Cole, be it my buddy Shane, whoever it is, my wife. Like honestly, I had to go to...
deserted island and only take one person. I'm taking my wife. Like we can have fun anywhere. We have had fun everywhere. But, ah damn it, I had a good point and I lost it. But you gotta be uncomfortable sometimes and yeah, not afraid to actually be mad at the person but listen to what they are talking about and...
reflect on what they're talking about. Like I think so often we come up against things people say to us and that just becomes a wall. That is the be all end all. There's not okay but what actually encouraged that comment or that thing. And is it something I can deal with or help deal with without.
exploding things and yelling and shouting and taking it so personally that it's an attack on the person I am and you're done.
Dave Moss (01:07:11.206)
Yeah, I think there's this desire to surround ourselves with people who agree with us on all fronts. I've said it for years. I'm about as left as they come on the political spectrum. But the left eats their young. It's like if you're not a...
Jake (01:07:30.861)
Yeah.
Dave Moss (01:07:38.21)
trans-accepting, feminist, socialist, anti-capitalist, vegan, you're not left enough, you know, like that sort of thing. Whereas the right side of the political spectrum is like, if you're here, you're good. Like we just want you on this side. You're making that vote, you're good, you know? But I think, you know, it's just this interesting thing. I don't wanna stay on politics too long because it makes me angry, but.
Jake (01:07:46.318)
Mm-hmm.
Jake (01:07:52.01)
You here? Yeah. You're a vote?
Jake (01:08:02.57)
No, I know. Ha ha ha.
Dave Moss (01:08:04.882)
This concept that I think people in general will surround themselves with almost an echo chamber. The number of people who I have seen, who have unfriended me on Facebook because I have a take on one topic that is different. That's just like, oh, that's it? That's all it took?
Jake (01:08:19.062)
Yeah. Really? Oh, that was the point I was trying to get to was it was eventually taking that back to the relationships you actually develop or for foster, right? My my biggest thing in life is do not waste my time. That is all I have. I do not care how rich I am.
If I'm poor and destitute, all I have is time. Because eventually I'll probably starve to death. So finding people that even in those disagreement moments, they're willing to take the time to actually reflect on what you said as you reflect on what they said.
to work through things or realize things are just not worth talking about. And there's nothing wrong with not talking about some things sometimes. You know, if it's depending on the relationship you have with the person. Yeah, no.
Dave Moss (01:09:10.87)
So, okay, to throw this back to, no, no. But no, but it did. It made me think about something that you had said earlier about, you know, you had mentioned, you know, doing the things to make the other thing work, like doing the shooting the funerals to make the documentary happen or something else like that. So where is, it seems like you have this level of patience in your...
Jake (01:09:13.813)
Sorry, that circled back a long time later.
Jake (01:09:25.911)
Mm-hmm.
Dave Moss (01:09:37.314)
professional life that may be slightly disconnected from your personal life, where you don't want other people to waste your time, how do you look at the slow burn of a business with a level of patience that I think a lot of people don't have, right? Like they wanna be successful now, they don't wanna be successful a year from now.
Jake (01:09:57.162)
Well, I think even those personal relationships, the patience, it's still there. Like, I mean, it's like anything, right? Like any new friend is essentially like dating somebody. Um, it, I think the good relationships, the good friendships, like, I mean, it's no different. It kind of circles back to even the whole gay situation. I can say I love another guy as a person, as somebody who supports me, as somebody I support.
It's not sex. Everybody's so confused with what people are doing in the damn bedroom, like who the fuck cares? Like it's okay to love other people. And it's not a scary thing. It's what makes the world go. Because if people are supporting and concerned and empathetic and all that good stuff, that's how shit goes forward. If you're afraid and think everybody's out to get you, yeah, so I mean, there is that testing period and the trial period. Like I met you on the side of a rodent
Vancouver. What are we here now? Seven years later, there was that feeling out period. There is that immediate when you meet somebody new, friend, spouse, couple, whatever, there's an excitement. It's like, oh shit, your shit jives with my shit. We should hang out more. We should talk more. It's feeling through that. And then...
eventually there's always things that bubble to the surface. So as you get to know somebody all of a sudden, now you can talk about politics, because you've known each other for more than 10 minutes on the side of a street in Vancouver. Generally, we agree on a lot of things, so that's kind of a null point. But that's where those things eventually surface. But those good relationships are the people that, even if you don't necessarily agree,
with their thing, as long as it doesn't outwardly affect some group or some person, it's okay to have that thing. As long as it's not a thing they're trying to drop on top of you all the time, and it's always that thing that you always have to talk about and circle back to, and all that good stuff.
Dave Moss (01:12:01.59)
What do you do in a situation like that? If somebody is constantly trying to drive you down a specific topic or whatever, how do you react?
Jake (01:12:11.818)
Honestly, I just eventually just stop talking to them. If it gets to a point where it's just not worth my time, it just fizzles out and die. It's those things that kinda, I think, it's never like an ultimate be all, end all, blow out, fight, end a friendship thing. It's just something that fizzles. The communication dies and it just, psh psh.
Dave Moss (01:12:30.73)
Yeah. I think that's kind of how I take it. Like if it's impossible to see eye to eye on something or whatever, I'm just gonna stop reaching out. And eventually one of us will get the hint and we'll move on. I think a lot of people are really hesitant to do that. Like I talk, oh, terrified. Cause it's hard to make friends as an adult too. Yeah.
Jake (01:12:37.12)
Yeah.
Jake (01:12:51.042)
People are scared to lose friends, like it's a terrifying concept, but... Oh, it's weird.
Dave Moss (01:12:58.578)
But I got big into minimalism maybe about a decade ago, reading books and stripped everything out of my house. And one of the concepts of minimalism was also minimalize the relationships you have, like literally have friendectomies if somebody is not beneficial to your life and everything else. And at the time I'm like, oh man, this is so cutthroat because I didn't know I'm a recovering people pleaser. But...
Jake (01:13:10.968)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Dave Moss (01:13:23.778)
At that time, I wanted everybody to like me. That was a big part of who I was as a person. And so not being liked by sliding somebody like I would literally sit and have hours long conversations with people whose beliefs were abhorrent to me because I didn't want them to dislike me. And reading through that process, I was like, Oh, this doesn't have to be I don't have to be like, we are not friends anymore. Like I just have to not Yeah, I just have to not talk to them anymore. And it was like I needed that guidance to get there. And I think there's
Jake (01:13:46.846)
Yeah. It's over.
Dave Moss (01:13:53.942)
plenty of people who just like, how do I end a relationship? You know, it's like, you just, you can, you, yeah.
Jake (01:13:58.826)
Quite honestly, you don't have to it just that's the natural progression because obviously if you're feeling frustrated odds are they are too So it's not like you're just breaking up with them on random over text, right? Look, I don't like you anymore So, so, I mean, I think a lot of the time it's just a natural thing that happens and
Dave Moss (01:14:06.623)
Mm-hmm.
Jake (01:14:20.434)
I think that's where alcohol affects a lot of people. I'm not a drunk texter, generally speaking, but people reach back out, like, how you doing? Or Christmas, you know, or some holiday. And it's like, why? If it's somebody you haven't talked to, especially if it was somebody that was a actual, like, direct friend, not just an acquaintance or somebody you know from your past, if you're trying to end that relationship or you feel it needs to end,
Dave Moss (01:14:31.584)
Mm-hmm.
Jake (01:14:48.978)
Re-igniting that at these random moments is the worst thing you can ever do. We're so afraid to just tear off that band-aid and be like, okay, I'm just, it's done. Like the communication is over. We need to stop. I can't do it. I need to delete the contact, that kind of thing. Cuz yeah, I mean, we all do it eventually.
Dave Moss (01:15:10.182)
Yeah, I was talking about this with a friend a while ago and I said are you still friends with everybody you went to high school with? And they're like no I'm like what happened. Oh, we just drifted apart I'm like let that happen because we were having this exact conversation with like they have this friend who just like I really don't like them but they blow I'm just like just let it drift man like Take a couple of days to respond back to the text message say you can't come to the barbecue whatever and eventually it will just
Jake (01:15:19.726)
Mm-hmm. Ha ha ha.
Jake (01:15:28.406)
I essentially...
Jake (01:15:34.698)
And you don't even have to reply. Like, I think so many of us in those kind of moments are so afraid to just be kind of mean about it and just not reply. And just, it's, because you're digging your own grave. You're just digging yourself back into the whole cyclical thing of it. If you actually do reply.
Dave Moss (01:15:57.214)
Yeah. Okay, I would be remiss if I didn't, this is my first opportunity talking to you since you got to do the documentary. So I'd be remiss if I didn't talk to you a little bit about, yeah, we could definitely take a pee break. Yeah. Yeah, we'll take a pee break and we'll be back.
Jake (01:16:07.314)
Can we take a pee break? Can we pause for a second? Oh, thanks, Jess brought me a beer, but I might have to just kind of fill a can under my desk here. Okay.
Jake (01:18:55.649)
And we're back!
Dave Moss (01:18:56.292)
And we're back.
So.
A, how did the CBC documentary come about? And B, what was it like? What was that process like doing? I mean, I feel like if you're Canadian working for the CBC, it has this like, it's like, oh, you've done it now. You've worked for the CBC.
Jake (01:19:11.745)
doing a thing.
Jake (01:19:19.166)
I mean honestly I would say that was definitely a bucket list thing. I grew up in a household with three channels and whatever mom and dad were watching was what I watched and whatever was on the radio in the car growing up was CBC. So I grew up watching documentaries like even now.
editing photos is a lot easier to watch stuff, so it's always documentaries generally speaking, or I mean that change to more watching YouTube videos to learn stuff for the whole video thing. So, yeah, getting to that point was, yeah, the working with that one organization with the disabled kids with the horseback riding, it was like, I like this. It was different in the sense, I think, with weddings.
Often you're just looked at the person that should be in control. Like if you're the wedding photographer, you're steering the ship. Which is great. I have no problem steering the ship. I've done it fucking six hundred, seven hundred times. Nothing fazes me. I'm not afraid to go shoot a wedding. It's...
Jake (01:20:30.83)
commonplace? No, no, it's habit. I know the functions of it, which is not a bad thing. I still enjoy it. I still love people. Like, it's not like I'm phoning it in on a wedding day. It's still looking to try to find moments. I summarize it as hunting, essentially. Like, I'm out there with my 70 to 200 just stalking people trying to nail things down. But with the video stuff, I think with age too, it came to a point where...
Dave Moss (01:20:33.558)
Mm-hmm.
Jake (01:21:00.97)
you realize with weddings you're affecting, you know, potentially the 200 guests that were there. They might see your work. Otherwise you're just directly affecting the bride and groom essentially in the wedding party and mom and dad, which is good. You're having an impact on a couple lives and showing them that they threw one hell of an event and people had fun and the day was great and they got married and all that good stuff, but.
maybe it comes down to legacy and wanting to have some sort of further impact on the world. Like I think one of the most impactful moments in my life, and this is going back to like 1996, in Air Cadets, we used to volunteer at
bingo at the Legion every week. We would sell snacks and bingo cards and basically get inundated by secondhand smoke in a basement and it was great. But you know of the people I hung out with I've never been somebody when it comes to women, you know, I'm not somebody who pursues anybody. It's it's something that happens. You know, you suddenly connect pinkies. I'm not...
somebody who's doing grand gestures of anything. But I stole her journal and read one page, and it was her list of guys from town. And I was number two, and my reason why I was number two was a rebel without a cause. So it was like, oh, damn, okay, no. And tying that back to the class where trying to get the kids to join me in the library, it's, you know, you wanna take the things you're able to do and hopefully,
them into something good. So I mean if I can eventually get to the point with shooting documentaries or something like that, and I love documentaries, to shoot something that causes people to think differently, right? Like it's wanting to leave something behind that makes...
Jake (01:23:02.41)
the world better. And I mean, I get to do that every day. I've got two kids that think I'm fucking cool. Like, that's great. My son's almost ten. Like, he should be getting to the age where parents are kind of passe and blase. I'm only talking quiet because he's in the other room. But, you know, it's just like chess pursuing school. It's trying to...
Dave Moss (01:23:15.765)
Yeah.
Jake (01:23:28.654)
Take what we have available and trying to do something to directly or indirectly help other people and just leave the neighborhood better than we found it. You know, it's the whole pack out all your garbage when you go hiking. Don't be the dickhead that leaves your granola by rappers because you're just making it worse for everybody.
Dave Moss (01:23:51.786)
So you were a rebel without a cause, do you feel like you have a cause now?
Jake (01:23:54.926)
I have no cause. I just sit at home and listen to Rage Against the Machine and try to come up with one.
Dave Moss (01:24:04.788)
Is doing more documentary film making something that you're trying to pursue now?
Jake (01:24:09.662)
Indirectly if it happens it happens
Dave Moss (01:24:11.554)
Cause I know you had that personal project you were doing for a while.
Jake (01:24:15.05)
Yeah, the YouTube project. And I mean, that was one of those things. I don't feel it was a failure. It was something I attempted to do because I had time to do it at the time. But then to make the other pieces move, it was shooting a funeral instead of doing a YouTube video. And I mean, I don't care about if people know who I am. You know, it's, if you do a good job and you're nice to people, that's where the work comes from.
Dave Moss (01:24:30.879)
Mm-hmm.
Jake (01:24:44.97)
people want to work with you, they will seek you out and pay you to work for them. It's be nice, don't be an asshole. That's how you can basically summarize everything. Right? Like it's, yeah, it's not hard.
Dave Moss (01:25:03.646)
I mean, I feel like that's a great capstone for this whole conversation. I mean, you said it a couple of times and you had said it in your notes to me, it's just like, just don't be an asshole.
Jake (01:25:04.592)
I don't know.
Jake (01:25:15.494)
Actually, I have a very good traffic analogy for this. So in terms of the whole hustle culture, we'll circle back to that. But if you look at traffic, there are the people in the world that we perceive as lucky. They get a free ride. They get to the point where they get. We have people that push and try to get to where they are going. And we have people that.
flow with the way things are going. And we have people that will take a complete detour and, and never get there. The lucky people. So say for example, the asshole that cuts you off in traffic, he manages or she manages to hit the green light and the next green light and the next green light and the next green light. Those are your lucky people. Outside of that, you have the people that are hustling.
They're the people that are weaving in and out of traffic, potentially killing other people, hurting other people. Eventually you catch up to them at the next stop sign, even though you've just gone with the flow of things and felt things out and changed lanes when you needed to change lanes. So it's very structured. The people that are gonna push, they're gonna push and sometimes win. Most of the times they're not. They're gonna get in an accident. They're gonna end up at a red light right beside you.
slow down. Like, we try so hard to go and go and go and it's just, you're never gonna get there. Or you're gonna get there at the same time. Like, it's... you choose how to get there.
Dave Moss (01:26:44.041)
Yeah.
I like that. I think I was a hustler for a long time and then became a non-hustler because I realized that hustling is basically just a choice of what you're sacrificing. Like everybody's gotta sacrifice something. I was big into the fire movement for a while, the financial independence, retire early. Until I started, this is something that I do,
Jake (01:27:02.614)
Yeah.
Dave Moss (01:27:15.134)
whenever I make a decision in my life, and I'm like, this is a path I'm gonna go forward, I researched the hell out of it. And I researched both sides of it. And so I started looking at like, for people who achieved fire, why did you regret it? Or like what went wrong or whatever. And the thing that I kept seeing is there was all of these people who had gotten to a point of financial independence, they're an expat in...
Thailand or whatever and they'll never have to work a day in their life again Without fail. I mean I would say probably 95 plus of these people Had no relationships. They had no friends. They had no family. They had they had put everything into this and I just went Nope, that's not for me backed off of it immediately and just went like, you know That's the that's not the choice that i'd be willing to make and I think a lot of people don't make these Informed decisions when they make decisions, you know, they're just like
Jake (01:27:44.532)
Yep.
Jake (01:27:53.247)
No.
Jake (01:27:59.454)
No. Ha ha ha.
No.
Dave Moss (01:28:10.514)
I want this thing, I'm gonna go for it. And then sort of like snap into reality a year or two later down the road, this was me. You know, like we had our wedding photography business and we were, we hit the ground running hard. We were speaking at conferences and shooting around the world and doing all the rest of this. And then we came home one time and we're like, when was the last time we got invited to a birthday party? When was the last time we saw these friends? When was the last time we did?
Jake (01:28:38.277)
Yeah.
Dave Moss (01:28:39.33)
anything like that wasn't work. We did not go on a vacation for 10 years that wasn't a work trip.
Jake (01:28:49.298)
Well, I mean, you're preaching to the choir here. Yeah. So our honeymoon, it was 10 years late, but there was no
Dave Moss (01:28:51.59)
Yeah, yeah, even our honeymoon, we shot a wedding. Yeah, but it was just one of those things that we realized that, you know.
I wasn't being an asshole to the world, I was being an asshole to myself.
Jake (01:29:06.326)
However, if you take into account too, all of the other flexibility that comes with that. So I mean, if I decide not to work at all tomorrow, the only person that, I mean, it doesn't benefit is myself, but it's accepting that I need a day off and that's okay. The work will still be there. You know, if you have a routine to do the work otherwise.
It doesn't become this big scary pile of, oh my God, I have so much to do. We're generally half-assing it most of the time, where it's just, you know, well, we're doing the work, we're not really doing the work. And I mean, that's the biggest fear I think of every wage-based or hourly wage-based employer, right? You're paying people to work. They have no vested interest to work other than the paycheck and not getting yelled at.
You know, if we give people the option to actually be part of profit making and stuff like that, and I won't even keep going because this is long, another hour long chat, but that was a good trailing off point. No, but I mean, there's no vested interest, right? Like if we, we expect people, I think as entrepreneurs to be invested in us, but
Dave Moss (01:30:03.476)
Mm-hmm.
Dave Moss (01:30:15.354)
Finish the thought at least, finish the thought.
Hehehehe
Jake (01:30:28.21)
If the rest of the way the world works doesn't have that vested interest in the people that are working for them or the companies hiring wage-based employees, nobody is ever going to be happy because most people are just slogging through their eight hours to go hang out on the weekend. There's no incentive to work, there's no other than personal morals and stuff like that, but yeah, if you don't want to be there, you're not going to work.
You know, it's, it's finding your place where you want to be and wanting to be there. That it's not work.
Dave Moss (01:31:09.77)
Yeah. I mean, you know, there's that old adage of, you know, love what you do and you don't work a day in your life. I always think that that's kind of a load of bullshit. It's love what you do and you accept the suffering that comes along with it, because nothing is perfect.
Jake (01:31:11.411)
Hahaha
Jake (01:31:26.894)
And most of the time it shouldn't be suffering. Like, I think especially with the arts and visual arts and any sort of arts job, you know, the starving artist. Like it's such a, maybe that's changed now with different generations. But I mean, for us growing up, it was, that was the concept if you were an artist, you didn't have a real job, you were probably, you know, barely making rent and could barely afford to eat. But...
Dave Moss (01:31:50.93)
I think that's still the case for people who aren't willing to accept the suffering that comes along with marketing now. Whether your marketing is networking or your marketing is social media or your marketing is whatever. For a lot of the people that I worked with as a coach, that was the piece that they could never wrap their head around. They'd like, I just wanna create. I just wanna go take photos, make dresses, do this, do that, the other thing. And it's like, well, if you're gonna run a business, the part, the suffering part, the part that sucks, the shit sandwich you gotta eat is running the business.
Jake (01:31:59.647)
Yeah.
Jake (01:32:11.308)
Yes.
Jake (01:32:17.619)
is running the business.
Dave Moss (01:32:20.402)
And we can do things to make that easier, but that's the piece that's like nothing comes with, you can't have sun without the night. It's like everything comes with a downside. It's just, are you willing to accept that downside and hopefully minimize it so it's not miserable. Like I'm not a creature of suffering, I love joy, but I also understand that I love doing this podcast.
The suffering for me is like doing the editing afterwards and then creating the TikTok videos and the reels and doing all the rest of that. I don't wanna do that, but I'm willing to accept it because I love doing this part of it. And so, yeah, it's worth the pain. And so I think for a lot of people, they wanna do the weekend, they wanna sit in the backyard, they wanna have the boat to go fishing or do whatever. And so the suffering they accept is the nine to five. Yeah, it's...
Jake (01:32:57.33)
Yeah, it's worth the pain.
Jake (01:33:11.05)
Yeah, which is a larger percentage of your life.
Dave Moss (01:33:14.802)
It's absolutely, but we can't all be entrepreneurs. To a certain scale, yes. I really believe in entrepreneurship as somebody who was an engineer and lived the office life and had a cubicle and all the rest of that. I've seen the other side of it and it has its pros and cons for sure. And in my dark nights of the soul with entrepreneurship, I'm always like, maybe I should just go get a job. And then I really remember what that was like.
Jake (01:33:17.806)
Can't we? Ha ha ha.
Jake (01:33:32.195)
Mm-hmm.
Jake (01:33:42.286)
Well, there's so many days where I wake up where it's like, oh man, somebody else to tell me what to do and I just go do it. Like that sounds great. Wow. And then they give me money. What?
Dave Moss (01:33:49.534)
how nice would that be? Yeah, no. Yeah, but I mean, I think it's ultimately, A, you have to accept whatever the suffering is going to be and entrepreneurship is not just all beauty and joy all the time, but neither is a desk job. I think the-
Jake (01:34:07.83)
But it's expectations too, in a sense. Like you think, for example, you know, working a nine to five hourly job versus somebody who shoots a family session per week for $500. Like the number of hours, you're basically covering half a minimum way job with a one hour shoot. So I mean...
we need to look at the expectations in the sense that I should be making this or I should be getting this many bookings per week. But when you actually compare it to a normal person, it's like, oh, it's not so bad. It's normal. I just have way more time to sit around and think about it instead of actually just working.
Dave Moss (01:34:44.606)
Yeah, well, yeah. And there's the other side of, you know, the people who are like, okay, you know, I have to accept the business as the shit sandwich that I eat. And so they start going and diving down that road. And I don't know if this is the same with other creative industries, but you know, in the photography industry, it became that six figure number and everything else. And people are starting to think that they're a failure if they're not at that point, because that's, yeah, that's the education that they see is like, oh, I have to be making this.
Jake (01:35:07.506)
Yeah. Where do you live? What's the market you live in?
Dave Moss (01:35:14.689)
And so.
Jake (01:35:14.766)
To live in San Francisco in a small box, yes you do. To live in Winnipeg.
Dave Moss (01:35:17.202)
Yeah, absolutely. But if you live in, maybe not, you know? And so it's all about perspective and it's all about really understanding everything that you're going through and not, you know, compare and despair, I think is a lot of why people suffer. It's because they're not actually looking at their own situation and their own needs and their own everything else like that. They're seeing others' success and saying, why don't I have that?
Jake (01:35:35.942)
Mm-hmm.
Dave Moss (01:35:46.966)
we're just seeing a highlight reel. You know, this has always been my biggest complaint with social media is we see everybody else's highlight reel and we compare it to our behind the scenes and we're like, oh, well, they're just doing amazing. Yeah, but then like when I'm like, oh, I'm gonna rail against that and like post something, you know, shitty that's going on in my life.
Jake (01:35:56.301)
Mm-hmm.
All the things.
Dave Moss (01:36:07.698)
immediately. It's like it's just seen so weird. People are like, why would you post that? Or like, are you okay? And I was like, No, I'm just trying to give perspective. This is not the place. This is obviously not the place for perspective. But yeah, I did. It's it's one of
Jake (01:36:16.099)
Mm-hmm.
Jake (01:36:22.562)
But I mean, it's, well, and it's having the ability to just finally put something out there and unabashedly post it and not really care of what other people think. It's what you needed to do and might delete later, but whatever, it's.
Dave Moss (01:36:35.646)
Yeah.
Dave Moss (01:36:39.422)
Yeah, it ties back to what we're talking about with that sort of fear of failure being an external thing. Like if you have something that you wanna say, just say it. If you have something that you wanna create, just create it within reason. Obviously don't harm others. I'm not, but like don't do something or not do something because of other people. Do it because you feel like this is something that.
you're interested in or something that you think is beautiful or something that you feel like has merit to be out in the world. I was listening to another podcast recently and. The person was saying, you know, I put this thing out on Instagram thinking that everybody will just love this, you know, and they didn't. And it took a life of its own. It's one of those things like it went viral, but they weren't expecting it to go viral.
Jake (01:37:23.371)
Mmhm.
Jake (01:37:29.921)
Oh yeah, yeah.
Dave Moss (01:37:31.11)
And they eventually had to turn the comments off to protect their own mental wellbeing. And it's just like, yeah, that's social media. It's fine. That's, you know, learned a lesson. They moved on from it, everything else like that. It didn't stop them from the process. It just like, they had to take a step back and check. And that's okay. That's not a failure. It's an iteration. It's a change. It's a growth moment. Yeah. But don't be the person that leaves asshole comments on other social media stuff, because, god damn it.
Jake (01:37:38.612)
Mm-hmm.
Jake (01:38:00.366)
That's why I was on TikTok for like six months.
Dave Moss (01:38:03.511)
Yeah.
Jake (01:38:05.851)
And then I got off TikTok.
Dave Moss (01:38:07.762)
I still think, you know, I'm an old man, but TikTok has probably got the best social media algorithm out there for me, because man, it just serves up what I want.
Jake (01:38:13.998)
It co- oh, it... It was so confused with me. I was basically either freedom convoy or lesbians. The- the- Hahahaha
Dave Moss (01:38:23.91)
Oh, I'm 100% on lesbian TikTok. TikTok believes I'm a lesbian between the ages of 25 and 35. And I'm just like, you know what? Good enough. But yeah, I really appreciate you having the time, taking the time out to talk with me today. And yeah, I mean, you're one of those guys that I've been wanting to have deeper conversations with, but you live hours and hours away, and I don't like the phone. So I'm just like, I'm like, this is just a way that it can happen.
Jake (01:38:40.942)
Thanks for having me.
Jake (01:38:48.639)
No, me neither.
Like for the amount I talked on it in the 80s, like I'm terrified of the phone now. Every time it rings, it's like, oh God, mute. No, yeah.
Dave Moss (01:38:54.258)
Yeah. Yeah, me too. Yeah, yeah. I don't want to get a phone call. It's like text me or email me. But it makes long distance friendships harder. So I appreciate you taking the time.
Jake (01:39:06.69)
But it also goes back to my point about, yeah, time-motivated things. If it's something I need to know, text me and I'll see that I need to know it, but yeah. Ha ha ha.
Dave Moss (01:39:18.859)
Yeah, yeah. Well, Sanjil, I love the Jess, and I really appreciate this. Thanks so much.
Jake (01:39:21.03)
I will do. You betcha. Bye Dave.