We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Josh Welles a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Josh, first a big thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and insights with us today. I’m sure many of our readers will benefit from your wisdom, and one of the areas where we think your insight might be most helpful is related to imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is holding so many people back from reaching their true and highest potential and so we’d love to hear about your journey and how you overcame imposter syndrome.
The more work I got, the more I realized that no one knows what they’re doing. Everyone is just looking to the most confident person to lead the way – even if that person is wrong. I started to do things the way I wanted to do them and all of a sudden I gained a little success.
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’m an actor originally from Billings, Montana. I played football since I was 7 years old and was an all around athlete. I have no formal acting training nor any upbringing around the art which has been my biggest strength. Many times people get caught up in the technique that they use as opposed to embodying the character and portraying a human experience on camera. Since I have no training, my acting is raw and genuine. I’m not acting, I’m showing you parts of my life through someone else’s story.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
First and foremost was following Christ. I am a broken person saved by grace. I would be nothing without my salvation and faith. Second, my life has been full of experience through beauty and pain. I’ve seen all kinds of things and I’m able to draw from these human experiences when I act. Finally, vulnerability. As an actor, you have to be able to show parts of your life that are painful and scary. Being vulnerable is incredibly challenging for me but I had to overcome that block in order to embody a character.
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?
Always! I want to connect with directors, producers, and anyone who needs talent. It’s also been a dream of mine to create an animated dark comedy so having an animator would be so fun. I’m also a huge Fantastic Mr. Fox fan and I’d love to do a claymation. All that to say, let’s create! I’ll work with anyone who wants to get to work.
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Image Credits
Ben Hansen, Mandysa Brock, Haldane Morris, Dhar Man
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