We were lucky to catch up with Sam Al Esai recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Sam, great to have you with us today and excited to have you share your wisdom with our readers. Over the years, after speaking with countless do-ers, makers, builders, entrepreneurs, artists and more we’ve noticed that the ability to take risks is central to almost all stories of triumph and so we’re really interested in hearing about your journey with risk and how you developed your risk-taking ability.
From realizing that regret is the strongest pain I could feel. I’d rather take the risk and fail and learn from it than never do and sit up at night wondering what if.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I am a writer, filmmaker, and actor based out of Toronto. I like to create confrontational art, mostly through the lens of comedy, to sift through my own internal conflicts when it comes to things like my own identity, my sexuality, my philosophies and so on. If what I’m working on doesn’t scare me, it’s usually not worth writing.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
1. Self-reliance. I was never one to wait for the phone to ring or for things to happen to me. You have to teach yourself to go out and get it.
2. Persistence. Things rarely ever play out like you intend in the first go. You need to keep pushing until they’re closer to what you expected, despite what or who gets in your way.
3. Love to fail. You’re going to do it a lot. Once you learn that success is validation and failure is learnings, you strive more for failure because success will eventually come from it.
Advice — take action. Frequently. You can’t be a sitting duck in your own success.
As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?
Albert Camus’ essay ‘Create Dangerously’ is north star for all things creative and art. He spells out simply: the job of the artist is to find a place between entertainment and shaking up the world with some truth. You can’t have one without the other. And no one else in the world will communicate it with the same humanity as an artist.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://samalesai.ca
Image Credits
David Leyes, Mikell Virey
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
