I grew up playing hockey with those people in the more affluent areas and again, yeah, they are just constantly strapped because they wanna live this lifestyle that is way above their means. And I've made significantly more money than I am now, I still make pretty good money, but I'm kind of intentionally not doing that because I don't want to work so much. It's crazy what people do for the appearance of living instead of actually living. There's a place called Staten Island that is the epitome of what you just described of this perceived affluence where everyone goes every other week to do their hair and nails and stuff like that. But- When having your income is going to your
Norm MacDonald did an Ask Me Anything (AMA) on Reddit in 2018, and when asked what life's purpose is he said:
"Well, it depends on your view I suppose but it's been my experience is that life's purpose is to suffer. To abide the inevitable pain and to bear it in a noble way."
For many, particularly in the West, there's this notion that if someone "pays their dues," then one day they'll be able to do what they truly want to do. Their entire life they've been running, even chasing this horizon of retirement: the "dream" of just sitting on a beach all day. Then they can relax. In reality, this societally-shared concept of earned paradise is often a coping mechanism to avoid the uncomfortable work of confronting your current situation.
- What if that mindset is ironically guaranteeing an unhappy life?
- What is the cash value of living your life in a way that fulfills you right now vs. betting the farm on something 20-40+ years down the line, which is both untested and not guaranteed?
- Could true retirement exist within a flexible lifestyle?
- What is 30 years of the compound interest of increased happiness worth?
My guest today is Chris Giuseppini.
Chris is a cinematographer, entrepreneur, and founder of Sondor Media. He's helped YouTube influencers increase their reach by 100,000 subscribers and 2 million views in under a month, worked on videos that advertised for legendary video and photographic technology players, Sony, Canon, and Fujifilm. Now, with his own brand, Chris is taking his experiences working with some of the most fascinating video influencers to help entrepreneurs grow their business through authentic, powerful storytelling.
Some of the topics we dove into:
- The path of least resistance when creating content.
- How to be vulnerable while connecting your personal passions to your professional content.
- Finding the right online platform for your content that resonates.
- Emotional investment with client work.
- Creative risks, split testing, and the positive downstream effects of failure.
- How to ask provocative questions to get to know someone quickly.
- Breaking through tribalism.
- How creativity and innovation are wasteful processes.
- The new rich, retirement, and the arrival fallacy.
- Life as a series of split-tests and sprints.
- Boredom, dopamine-fasting, and cultivating resiliency.
- Why you should embrace seasonality in your life.
- Lifestyle-creep, freedom, and minimizing responsibilities.
- The subjective nature of status, influence, and imposter syndrome.
Connect with Chris:
Music by Kirby Johnston – check out his band Aldaraia on Spotify
