We recently connected with Josh Lundquist and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Josh, thank you for being such a positive, uplifting person. We’ve noticed that so many of the successful folks we’ve had the good fortune of connecting with have high levels of optimism and so we’d love to hear about your optimism and where you think it comes from.
I’ve asked myself this before maybe only once or twice. I think it must be a habit. I had a dad who was all about positive thinking, being patient, etc. As a teenager it got almost annoying how positive he was. And now having grown up and gone through so much, I have found that optimism really is more than just positivity. It’s not just putting on a smile when someone’s being disrespectful or challenging your point of view or making things hard for you. It’s all about what you tell yourself, how you let things affect you and how you react. Beyond that, I’ve found that optimism goes hand in hand with curiosity. Waking up every day with something you want to do, something you want to explore, is to me the greatest thing we have as people. To give yourself that fuel and desire. It took me a long time to accept that I don’t always desire the same thing, that it changes day to day and year to year. It took a long time to accept that it’s ok to not just be driven by one thing or to one thing. For years it was music and then it was 3D. When I was a kid it was drawing, then in high school it was filmmaking. It all leads to the same thing, which is having curiosity. Creativity is just acting on that curiosity.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I lived in Tokyo, Japan for about 8 years right out of college, teaching english. Teaching was just a way to get by so I could live in Japan, having studied the language / culture in college. After enough years of teaching to all ages in all situations, I found myself in a tech company with a bunch of business types and me being the only non-Japanese. I ended up at sort of a dead end there, not knowing why I was there other than to collect a paycheck, and I was tired of the Japanese work culture (going out to drink nearly every night with coworkers and the boss in a sort of mandatory fun type situation). I’d been teaching myself Adobe Photoshop / Illustrator / Premiere and After Effects to make a video podcast with a friend. It began to give me life back and the creativity that had sort of lay dormant came back and I found myself quickly learning and churning out ideas even on the sly at work. I finally made the move back to the states in 2014 and with a wife and child went looking to make a career change. I got a job as an intern at an ad agency and after getting hired as editor worked there for 8 years, moving out to LA. Now I am freelance running a post production studio called Conbini. I do video & post production, music & 3D. I’ve always been obsessed with learning new tools and so have been working on virtual production in Unreal Engine among other things.
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?
It’s hard to pick three things but I’d say an almost obsessive curiosity (not to repeat myself), a desire to make cool work and overall just caring about things. It’s so simple, but I was surprised when I got into the professional world about how rare genuine caring is. If you care and you show it, I think you’ll go far. Showing that you’re thinking about a project, a goal or someone else’s position. Beyond that, I think visualization is pretty important, and without having practiced it with my own visual work I don’t think I would understand how key it is. You gotta just throw a bunch of random ideas out onto paper, do it for fun, do it as a joke, etc. It’s like making a playlist for someone you care about, you are intrinsically motivated to do things because you care. That is my only advice really, showing you care is such a powerful thing and disarmingly so, people aren’t always used to that.
Before we go, any advice you can share with people who are feeling overwhelmed?
Going freelance I was lucky in that my first two years, I had a steady stream of work coming through and it was of every variety -some video editing here, some 3D project there, some motion graphics, some music.
In 2024 that started to slow down a bit and many freelancer friends had also felt it. I had my first dry spell in the spring and it kind of freaked me out. I didn’t know if I should go hunt down some new clients / generate leads or just let it come to me. I thought I should fix up my website and make a new updated reel of video work, but I also wanted to use that time to make some amazing personal project. I got in my head a bit and realized that in that state of waiting for work I was no good at concentrating on personal projects. Yet I grinded away and I finished an album through all of it and that kept me sane.
At the end of the year I looked back at my invoices and realized I’d literally billed nearly the same amount as the relatively breezy year I’d had in 2023. So all the worrying was kind of for nothing. So my advice really would be don’t panic, have some savings always saved up and also don’t be afraid to reach out and let others know your situation. I’ve seen this get people work more often than not.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://conbini.co
- Instagram: http://instagram.com/conbinistudio
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuaslundquist/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Conbini.
Image Credits
All images credit of Josh Lundquist (self)
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
