We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jonathan Nee a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Jonathan, appreciate you joining us today. Earning a full time living from one’s creative career can be incredibly difficult. Have you been able to do so and if so, can you share some of the key parts of your journey and any important advice or lessons that might help creatives who haven’t been able to yet?

In high school, I had a reputation for playing World of Warcraft far more than I should. I engrossed myself in the game to an unhealthy extent; raiding dungeons, slaying dragons and farming gold, Wow was my life. There was a point in which I wanted to make video content about World of Warcraft.

One of my electives in high school was a video editing class where I started using Sony Vegas to make high school interview videos. During that time, I would also record my gameplay and post videos to Youtube. While I didn’t earn a big following, I had fun making videos about my gameplay in World of Warcraft. I took a step back from that after high school to begin working at my father’s board game company. I didn’t really have any plans to go to college so you could say I was a bit of an unmotivated and troublesome teenager. Long story short, I learned to never work for family because that ruined my relationship with my father at the time. I decided to go back to school for a degree in economics. Going back to school was the best decision I made not because it was school, but it gave me an opportunity to learn about how I learn best. It got to the point where I was learning After Effects and 3D animation software during my upper level statistics courses. I became obsessed.

Knowing what I know now, being consistent is the most valuable skill. Before failing at my father’s company and realizing that I learn best when I am self-directed, I was aimless and mostly unable to stick to anything. Interestingly enough, World of Warcraft taught me enough about how to grind through boring and monotonous tasks (even though the game was fun). I was able to carry that to my obsession with creating videos by grinding through tutorials and my early work to build my skills that I have today.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I like to say I’m an i*iot with a camera. Most of my work lives in the realm of entertainment products where I create trailers, teasers and product launch content for board games, tabletop games, video games and live events. You could say that I loved watching Saturday morning cartoon commercials and have never grown out of that. Truly, I love the feeling you get when watching a big movie trailer or video game cinematic. When the orchestral hits sync up perfectly with the epic battle or the beat of the music lines up with the action on screen, i feel a warm and fuzzy feeling in my heart. I’m addicted to that feeling.

To get into the details, I do video production, 3d animation, motion graphics and overall video content consulting for my clients. My tools of choice are the Adobe Suite along with Cinema4D, Unreal Engine, Z-Brush and pretty much any other industry standard 3d software to create video content.

My latest work has been in Unreal Engine and involves creating live event motion graphics for various brands and game titles. Beyond that, I also have created multiple Kickstarter videos for board games in the last year that have funded multiple times over their target fund goal. The latest one is a game called Ascension Tactics Inferno which funded more than $300,000.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/stoneblade/ascension-tactics-ii?ref=yao4wv

In addition to making video content for board games and tabletop, I also have a Youtube channel. There I post tutorials and content about the software I use on a daily basis. Lately, I have been making content about lifestyles for freelance artists. Work life balance is very important to me because I struggled with balancing my life overall. I have an obsessive personality so I want to help others not make the same mistakes I have made.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

I believe that artists need to have more agency in their creative work with clients. There are thousands of artists who are taken advantage of on a daily basis because of mismanagement, poor planning and low budgets. At the tail end of a project when bad leadership makes poor decisions on being proactive, the artists are always the ones cleaning up the mess.

I believe that the modern professional creative is more than capable of being their own producers, creative directors and contributor’s to the end goal of a client project. Unfortunately, networking is a gatekeeping strategy that keeps artists from saving projects before they even need to be saved. The solution to this, in my eyes, is to bring the artists into the technical and creative discussions earlier with clients. Giving junior artists a say in the overall creative will help the end product as a whole. I have observed this with my own work. On any project where I invite all team members of a project to participate in all client meetings, everyone involved feels more invested in the project. Involving team members in bigger discussions also helps with team building and a collaborative echo system.

Failing to involve artists and creatives early in the business discussion has hurt me early in my career and now I am on a mission to help bridge the gap between what artists do and what we create for our clients.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

Another major part of my life is health, fitness and nutrition. During my days of World of Warcraft raiding, I was about 100 lbs heavier and consumed coke, pizza, hot dogs and doritos almost exclusively. This was most certainly not a way to live. During middle school, I trained in Karate but at some point in high school, I ballooned up to be unhealthfully overweight despite the best efforts of everyone around me. At one point, my father had a heart attack at 48 years old. Thankfully he survived and is still alive today but his event was a wake up call to my lifestyle at the time. From the ages of 15 to 18, I did keto. This was not sustainable but it helped me lose my first 50 lbs. After learning about calories at age 19, I lost the remaining 50 lbs through severe calorie restriction and excessive cardio.

My top end weight in high school was 250 lbs at 5’7″ and through drastic food restriction I was able to lose weight down to 136 lbs. The lowest weight for me was definitely not a good look and not a good way to live either. In 2014, I started lifting weights and in 2016, I hired a bodybuilding coach, Alberto Nunez. With his help, I now hover between 145 lbs and 165 lbs through periodic and strategic gaining phases and fat loss phases to help my body building and powerlifting goals. Today, I now train for strength and hypertrophy with an emphasis on barbell compound movements such as the squat, bench and deadlift. Prior to COVID, I did compete in powerlifting and achieved a 365 lb squat, 205 lb bench and a 420 lb deadlift.

This was a very long winded way of saying that my health and fitness lifestyle has gone through worlds of changes. These mindset shifts I have had to have for my body have had positive impacts on how I approach life, especially business and creative works. The habits and lifestyle changes required for getting healthier also carry over into work by emphasizing consistency and celebrating the small wins over time. My business mindset is now focused on creating a sustainable plan for growth and maintenance. Without the lessons I have learned through health and fitness, I feel that I would not be as successful as I am today.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.jags.tv
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jonjagsnee/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jon-nee-43468899/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/jonjagsnee
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/jonjagsnee
• Other: https://vimeo.com/jonjagsnee