Meet Jacob Estep

 

We were lucky to catch up with Jacob Estep recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Jacob, thank you for joining us today and sharing your experiences and acquired wisdom with us. Burnout is a huge topic these days and so we’d love to kick things off by discussing your thoughts on overcoming or avoiding burnout

I don’t. And then I burn out and regret that I did not.
In reality, I think the concept of burnout is a word and idea that is thrown around too readily in our culture. Yes, we can get exhausted and not want to continue, but it is often not because of a specific thing.
One thing doesn’t cause burnout; fifty things that all require 100% of us 100% of the time cause burnout. That is what we are fighting against. We are fighting against poor time management and a lack of ability to say no.
The World Health Organization defined burnout as “a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed” and I think they hit the nail on the head for this definition.
I am not “burned out” from school, I am burned out from school, running a company, being the content creator for my school, editing a podcast, and carrying 24 class credit hours. We need to re-evaluate our lives and how much we agree to, I am included in this “we”.
So how do I avoid burnout? I sleep.
I know that between the hours of 0330 – 0630, I have three hours alone to myself where I can work my butt off, getting different projects outside of school and other jobs done. I can focus on my brand, but as soon as that time is up, I clock into the “real world”. I allocate different times in the day to get certain things done, where I can undistractedly focus and optimize, and when that time is up, like closing a book, I quite think about it.
This is not to say I never think about it, but focusing on the task at hand and not the 900 things I have to do as soon as my workday is done helps be avoid burn out day to day.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

My entire brand is about changing the way we see the world, sure we all have eyes and for the most part we all see similar things, but so often this leads to a repetitive lack of seeing what is truly around us, the tiniest details in the everyday mundane. my goal is to bring those tiny things to light and share the beauty of those through photos and videos. Through my work in photos I have been able to share with other things that often go unseen, something i noticed living around Chicago for a while. While I was living there was really when my current mission statement took hold, because I saw too many people and knew too many people who were missing out on the small details life had to offer.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Learning to take criticism. In the early days of my career, I had some seriously negative people coming at me. And as a 15/16-year-old trying to navigate that, I was unsure of what that meant I was supposed to do. I learned that if I wanted to succeed, I needed to hear both the “haters” and those who were uplifting because even in the moments of reading comments and messages saying I should quit and that I had no talent, I was learning from the tidbits they accidentally left me.

Learning to not give up. Similarly to the previous one. I think understanding that nothing happens overnight is a key piece to success. you don’t build a Fortune 500 company over a summer. Our lives, brands, and personal achievements and pursuits undulate like waves in the ocean. there will be ups and downs and learning to take the momentum from both the ups and downs can help propells us up the future over the next wave.
When I started music I did not think I would even make it on the radio, and now half my streams come from radio stations, you never dream that you will get from points A to B, and then one day you wake up and you go from points A to G fast and are shocked it happened. It was all just the day by day one step at a time, and like compounded interest, they added up.

Learn how the internet works, and use it to your advantage. I was fortunate enough to get the hang of it quickl, but being able to utilize trends and popular topics to point to whatever it is that you do is one of the most impactful things you can do for your brand. Just like how a vain person can make any story about them, somehow loop your brand into anything you do with your online presence, what sets you apart from the 50,000 other people who are doing the same things you do. Why are you different, why does that matter, and why should i care?

How would you spend the next decade if you somehow knew that it was your last?

The hardest thing for me right now is time management. I am a full-time college student who also works part-time, so finding time for my passions and growing my skills on a more personal level is very hard. This also bleeds into staying inspired. I take photos and record videos when I am inspired and have a story to tell, but i have seen more and more that I am getting so bogged down in the mundane details of life that I forget how far a good story can go, and that building that story can take time.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

JacobEstePhotography

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