We recently connected with Logan Lepper and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Logan, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?
Finding my purpose has been anything but linear. After dropping out of college following my sophomore year in 2001, I was homeless, living out of my car and jobless for a few months. Completely lost and literally wandering the streets of Portland, OR and trying to figure out what to do. After bouncing around the service industry as a server and cook for about a year I landed a corporate job with Penske Trucks. Wasn’t my dream job by and stretch but at least it was better than working in restaurants. After 2 years and 2 promotions at Penske I had what I like to call my quarter life crisis. At age 24, I thought, “Is this what I want to do for the rest of my life?” Sure, it was a good “job”, but a career, not so much. I knew if I didn’t make a drastic change, I would end up staying there for the next 30 years and most likely regret it. So I quit Penske, packed it up and moved to Austin, TX in 2006 to essentially start over. With no game plan, I was humbled having to jump back into the service industry to make some money and survive. I remember turning 25 in Austin and thinking, “am I going to make it here?”
Once again I found myself trying to figure out what to do while in the service industry and in 2007 I thought I had discovered my purpose. I was a fairly good athlete in high school so when I noticed people in Austin into fitness I jumped at the opportunity to become a personal trainer. I received my training certification in 2007, and immediately started training at Gold’s Gym. That first year was a grind and hustle building my training clientele while still working as a server, but I managed to become a full time trainer after six months. Following another six more months I was able to leave Gold’s Gym and run my own business as a personal trainer. At the age of 27, it was my first taste of entrepreneurship and not living paycheck to paycheck. I knew I would never go back to working for someone else. To make a long story short, my fitness journey consisted of independent training, opening and having minority ownership in a small boutique studio called Austin Simply Fit (still in business today with two locations), to selling my ownership in that business, to stepping away from training for a couple years, to then jumping back into training with a new company called Gym Studios.
As I said, I thought I had found my calling with personal training and helping others on their physical health journey, but that wasn’t it. Rewind a bit to the years I stepped away from training, I met my wife and we began traveling a lot together. It re-ignited my passion for photography and video, something I was into during high school and my years in college. During this discovery, I purchased my first professional camera, albeit during a time I had a mountain of debt, and was able to parlay my training skills, my social skills and my photography skill into managing events on content creation for Gym Studios. So for the majority of 2018 I was wearing a lot of hats, training, event coordinating, but I knew it was photography and video that brought me the most joy. So in 2019 I retired from personal training, left Gym Studios and went full freelance in photography and video. Authentic Exposure was born.
The jump to full freelance was tough financially without a huge portfolio but I knew it had to happen. All of my energy had to be focused on this new creative endeavor or it was never going make it off the ground. Since 2019 it has been an incredible evolution to Authentic Exposure. The first year was full of doing any projects that paid me. I was still building a portfolio, so saying yes was all I could do. By the beginning of 2020 I had moved into my studio, which proved to be difficult with covid hitting. I thought the studio would be mainly for photography but as we all witnessed the evolution of content, it became a desirable space for video content. By 2021 I saw the need for a podcast space, so I outfitted the studio with necessary equipment for podcasting. The studio has organically grown into what it is today which is a comfortable space designed for artists to freely express their creativity. It aims to create a peaceful and supportive environment that encourages creators to be authentic to themselves and their artistic vision.
If someone had told me when I bought my first professional camera back in 2018 that this is where I would be now, I would have never believed them. I really had no vision or attachment to how this the journey would look. I only knew what I no longer wanted to do, and what I needed to express through my creativity.
But here’s the thing, this is still not my purpose.
Throughout this whole journey I have shared, what has yet to be stated, is the healing journey that ran parallel to my career change. I never would have made it to where I am without my spiritual journey. Spirituality to me and in my experience is a deep dive into self discovery. Whatever methods used are individualist, but the goal for me was, ripping away masks, everything I was not, letting go of the things that were not serving me and healing from the past so I could create boldly in the future. Uncovering my true and highest expression to share with the world. This is why I say I would not be where I am without it. Humans far too often allow our mind to hold us back from everything we want to become or desire. Yes, it was important for me to learn my craft and understand how to run a business, but if I never mastered my mind, or opened up my heart and intuition, then I would have continued to get in my own way and hold myself back. I wouldn’t have take the necessary risks to keep grow my business and I never would have trusted my gut. Expanding your consciousness allows you to look at yourself objectively, detached from the emotional component and witness where your mind will try to stop you. Comfort is the killer to your dreams, discomfort is a sign you are headed in the right direction. My spiritual journey allowed for me to embrace that discomfort, to push past the limits of my mind and discover joy in the process not pain, which in turn affected every aspect of my life including my professional career.
This is would led to me discovering my true purpose, helping others do the same. It is still evolving, but guiding others into finding their highest potential, facilitating healing for those that need it, and weaving my skills as an artist to support others in their highest expression.
We all have a choice to change our story or narrative. I am living you proof you can go from homeless to living your dream. It more often than not takes the journey to find the purpose.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
Well for a little over two years now I’ve been hyper focused on being a dad. I have two incredibly magical kids, a two year old boy and an eight month old girl. If I’m being honest, I would say my business suffered a little during the past two years, but I wouldn’t change a thing because I’ll never get that time back with my children. So right now I’m super excited about building the brand of the studio – website, social media, etc…..
I’m also looking forward to building more relationships with local creatives and producing more podcasts here at the studio. Helping those spread their positive message is a huge passion of mine, so looking forward to doing more of it.
The readers that are parents will probably understand this more, but social activities are few and far between when you have young children, so just getting out and connecting more brings me a lot of joy.
I’m also very excited to be guiding more clients on their own spiritual journey, specifically men. Having gone through it and continue to do so, I understand the importance and value it can provide to men and dads out there. The more people that continue to heal, the more hope I have for our next generation.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
I think three important qualities to have is perseverance, hope and curiosity. If you possess those three you can really do almost anything. If you are curious, you will try new things and learn new skills which will help you discover what you are good at. It will lead you to your passion and purpose. If you’re never curious you’ll just continue doing the same stuff and never evolve. Hope and perseverance will get you to wherever it is you are going. The tough part can be developing these qualities because it requires you to practice faith. You have to be willing to put some skin in the game with zero attachment to the outcome. Keep taking actions towards your goals even if there’s fear. Keep taking action even if no one believes in you. Keep taking action even if it hasn’t “happened” yet. If you build the muscle of perseverance you can literally will your way to anything.
Speaking of, this is actually the single most important quality, your WILL. How bad do you want something? How hard are you willing to work for something? How many times are you willing to “fail” (which is really only learning) to accomplish your dreams. If you don’t have the will then you either have to re-evaluate what you are going after or figure out a way to strengthen your will. The way I strengthened it was through my spiritual practice.
If you got these going for you and release your attachment to time and outcome, you will accomplish anything.
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
I am always looking for people to collaborate with! I want to work with people who are helping people and not just to make money, but because they truly want to make this world a better place. Making money is just a by product to their service. People not just wanting to make an impact with their words, but with their actions. People of the highest integrity willing to sacrifice to help others. If you need help getting your message out there, lets talk!!
Contact Info:
- Website: theaestudio.co
- Instagram: theauthenticexposure and authenticexposurestudio
- Facebook: Logan Lepper and Authentic Exposure Studio
