We had the good fortune of connecting with Jacob Hayman and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Jacob, how has your work-life balance changed over time?
Throughout what could liberally be called my “career” in entertainment, through shorter-form gigs and longer-term staffed jobs, I was simultaneously working 1-2 other part-time jobs on evenings and weekends, typically in the service industry, which was never really ideal, but I needed to pay my bills, and my aspirations alone certainly weren’t doing any legwork on that front.

Over time, I have slowly been able to shed what I typically called my “grounding jobs” one by one, and only recently have gone from a work/work/work/life balance, to more of a work/life one, which has been a great comfort and a huge challenge, especially since the front end of that binary is now no longer beholden to someone else’s needs or schedule, and instead exists in a much more nebulous state.

Holding space for my own personal self, while also juggling my professional priorities has never been so paramount: Do I go see a movie right now, and can/should I? What about that pile of scripts? Emails? Calls? Clients? Do I get escape the city next weekend? What about that party in town, or that friend visiting here from the other one? Would a hobby help, and which/when? Do I have the capacity to meditate, or the drive to exercise more, and would that help? Everyone else seems to believe so…

I’ve never been one to keep to a strict regimen in my day-to-day, but I’ve realized that I need further structure in lots of areas, and now that I’ve fought so hard to get to where I am, I suppose I gotta keep fighting to maintain the progress I’ve yet been able to attain, even if it takes more of a start/stop approach and is rife with disappointment and failure, but that’s the only way I’ve ever been able to learn and I did do all of this to myself… so, yeah, it’s changing quite a bit from day to day, but I honestly wouldn’t have it any other way, and I have faith it’ll all come together when it does. Hopefully sooner than later.

Please tell us more about your work. We’d love to hear what sets you apart from others, what you are most proud of or excited about. How did you get to where you are today professionally. Was it easy? If not, how did you overcome the challenges? What are the lessons you’ve learned along the way. What do you want the world to know about you or your brand and story?
The main lesson I’ve carried with me is that the people who take the most will always give the least, and being able to quickly discern where folks land on the front end of that has really helped a bunch.

Noting right here/right now that I feel the term “brand” is wildly reductive, I would say my thing is that I trust people (until I don’t) to do what they themselves need to succeed, and I expect the same from their end. I, myself, try to give as much as possible to those I’m surrounded by, operating on a baseline of simple decency and competence, and really appreciate folks who do the same. Hopefully, they’re listening to me as much as I’m listening to them, learning together (and apart), and if we continue to stay true to ourselves, there’s no reason we can’t all succeed together.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Oh, boy! A week? That’s a lot of time to plan around…

If I had a best friend visiting from out of town, it’s a fairly safe bet that I’d be offering at least a few rides all around the city, and would cover a lot of ground on any such sight-seeing mission, favoring inevitable hangs or tailgates during (or after) at the Mulholland Scenic Overlook to scope out the Valley, Elysian Park for more downtown-oriented views, and just about anywhere that puts us directly alongside the Los Angeles River. That said, I feel the company is always more interesting than the sights, and would likely insist at some point that we simply pull up to a fire pit and chat.

If it’s establishments that they’d favor, I’d need to check out some schedules, but I generally enjoy The Comedy Store, Largo, The New Bev, and Zebulon as far as smaller venues are concerned. For bars (and there are so many good ones), I’d offer up Boardner’s, Burgundy Room, Formosa Cafe, The Frolic Room, The Good Nite, HMS Bounty, The Prince, Tonga Hut, and The Varnish. As for museums… I’d go with The Broad, the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, LACMA, The Museum of Jurassic Technology, or The Natural History Museum. Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park & Mortuary is also a great, small, cemetery that’s got a stacked roster of interments, with a bunch of food nearby (and the Hammer!), if you’re into that sort of thing…

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
There are far too many to distill it to just one, but I will say that in the last two weeks alone I attended a ColorCreative panel with Ashley Calloway, Deniese Davis, and Syreeta Singleton about “Finding Your People” and also learned that Imagine Entertainment’s Brian Grazer has been conducting “Curiosity Conversations” for decades, and while I’m sure it simply amounts to something akin to confirmation bias, it was deeply heartening to essentially hear my huge, essential parts of my wider business model and approach being echoed back at me from such accomplished creatives.

That latter tidbit then prompted me to read both Grazer’s ‘Face to Face: The Art of Human Connection’ and ‘A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life’, which led an executive to recommending ‘Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets’… so I suppose that’s four people and three books now, somehow? I’ll stop there before I go completely off the rails and dip into my school years…

Website: https://www.jacobhayman.com

Instagram: @xoxo.jacobhayman

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacobhayman/

Other: https://fotologistics.com

Image Credits
Hal Bergman, for all photos included.

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