We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Todd Jackson. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Todd below.

Alright, Todd thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Do you wish you had waited to pursue your creative career or do you wish you had started sooner?

I believe my creative career started exactly when it needed to. Of course, everything is clear in hindsight and in those moments, I’m sure I felt lost or meandering, but there are a lot of lessons learned that may not have occurred had I started this creative journey sooner.

Before I seriously dedicated myself to my creative career, I spent 13 years in retail. I did everything – customer service, hiring & recruiting, payroll, sales, team building, management & leadership, merchandising, inventory, running team meetings – I would sometimes be the only manager in a building of 20+ employees and who knows how many customers. Oddly enough, those experiences, as disconnected to my artistic journey as they seemed at the time, made me a stronger creative.

While it’s a massive mindset shift – going from retail & corporate to a creative career in any capacity – a majority of those skills can be directly applied to what I do now. And they show up in ways I never would’ve expected. There’s no way I would’ve predicted the mastery of sales and my experience in hiring/recruiting would translate to selling myself today. Something I had no idea I’d be spending so much of my time doing.

I just approach things differently because of my experience. But that’s what I believe is so beautiful about art. We get to see and experience a bit of life through a completely different perspective. So, whether I started this creative journey at 15, or 30, or 45, it would always be exactly when it needed to be.

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’m an artist who spent the majority of his childhood engulfed in his imagination. Once I hit “adulthood” though, I spent a long time putting those childish wishes of being an artist to bed. Locking them away and forgetting about them.

I’ve spent the last 8 years breaking down those walls I put around my imagination and getting back in touch with that imagination. I’m an award-winning director, an award-winning writer, a video editor by day, an actor any time else, with a photo & video production company on the side.

Simply put, I’m an actor who can edit videos and has done a whole lot of other stuff too.

As an actor, my experience behind the camera only strengthens my ability to perform in front of it. And my experience in front of the camera helps when it comes to directing those in front of it.

I’ve spent a long time dedicated to growing my skills and finding my unique voice. And whenever I work with someone, I only hope my energy shines through and they leave better than when they began.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

For me, the most rewarding aspect of being an artist is getting lost in the creation – getting lost in the art you’re creating. Becoming it, living it, being present in it. For me, it’s all about that magical instance of being completely in the moment.

This can be through an outline for a short story, writing a script, or diving into editing a video or batch of photos. It’s looking at the clock and checking a moment later to see 3 hours have passed.

This past weekend, I was the lead in a short film. What’s rewarding to me is being on set for 12 hours and the weekend feeling like a blur – the weekend going by in the blink of an eye because I was present in every moment. I was creating art.

That’s what I continuously strive for. And it’s not like it’s this extravagant experience every time. But it’s enough to keep coming back to.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

My entire creative career has been “a pivot” and I feel like every other artist can agree. But it’s something I’ve learned to love.

Because we as human beings love to feel in control of our lives & decisions, pivoting can feel scary. It can feel like failure and disappointment because something didn’t go the way we planned. That can lead to discouragement and quite often to quitting altogether. I’ve been there. And it’s honestly why it took so long for me to embrace this creative career in the first place. As soon as I failed once, I felt embarrassed and quit.

But when you’re meant to do something, that desire doesn’t just disappear. It keeps trying to find its way back into your life. And it never manifests the way you expect it to.

In 2021, I took 9 months away from work. I quit my well-paying corporate video editing job and tried to “figure things out.” I went from wanting to be a life coach, to a YouTuber, to a blogger, to a real estate photographer. Each one of those fell through and I ended up going back to work for a start-up as a video editor.

Not once did it ever feel like failure though. I was simply pivoting. I’m still pivoting to this day, but I’ve had to unlearn the connection I made between things not going my way and failure. Because things are always going the best way possible whether it’s going according to “my plan” or not.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm8265131/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/todd.alexx/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/todd-a-jackson/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/toddfoolery