Seth Epstein is a creative entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of Los York, a global creative company of self-described “global nomads of the arts.” In this conversation, Radim and Seth skip the business talk and follow the story behind it. ~

It starts with a furious client phone call in the mid-’90s, in the early days of Fuel, one of the first Mac-based motion design studios in LA. Inspired by the Zen parable “Emptying the Cup,” Seth asked to come in and simply listen. That meeting became the basis of how he listens, leads and wins work to this day.

Seth talks about growing up between a hippie philosopher father and a disciplined, self-improvement-driven mother. He sold Fuel to Razorfish at 31 and then spent nearly a decade lost, without purpose. At one low point, his family couldn’t afford groceries. 

A small passion film made with one camera, about his hero Shawn Stüssy, opened the door back into the industry. It led to taking over Stardust and eventually to Los York, whose name, ethos and clothing label all trace back to Stüssy’s International Tribe. The episode ends with a reflection on why creatives keep returning to their hands, and on the universal urge to grow towards the light.

Key takeaways

• You can’t have a breakthrough without a breakdown. Breakdowns are a signal that growth is around the corner, so go looking for them.
• Empty the cup. Let people say everything, don’t defend yourself, then repeat back what you heard so they feel fully heard.
• There are three kinds of listening: distracted, listening to respond (the cocktail-party default) and listening to recreate. The last one wins work and builds relationships.
• Write your own notes. Seth handwrites his and doesn’t let AI do it, because the quality of listening is the competitive edge.
• Money without purpose leads to misery. The “someday my prince will come” story falls apart without community and meaning.
• When everything is stripped away, go back to home base. Ask what you’re good at and what you’d do for free.
• Constraints create great work. One camera, no crew and nothing to lose made a hero-level ask feel easy.
• Comfort kills. Comfort is when we start trimming our dreams and ignoring the “wouldn’t it be cool if” urge.
• One meeting can change your life. Stay open and available, because a throwaway comment can change your direction.
• Find your North Star. Look for people living the life you want and let them pull you forward.
• Be a multi-hyphenate. Keep finding new ways to create, including being bad at ceramics.

Daring Forever. Podcast with Radim Malinic

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Seth Epstein: One meeting, one conversation, one comment can change your life, and you just don't know which one it's gonna be. And it can be somebody saying, "Hey, I met this guy who blah, blah, blah.

You should meet him." And those moments for me in my life have been the ones that have completely flipped the direction of my life. So this idea that where life happens is not in our head, it's not in our studio, it's not in our comfort zone. Where life happens is out there in the world in conversation, in physical conversation, in meeting people in these conversations.

And you never know, one person can say a throwaway comment, but that throwaway comment makes a ping for you,  

Radim Malinic: Welcome to Daring Forever, a podcast about being human, wired for wonder, capable of courage, perpetually becoming. It's about the waves that knock us under and the strange, stubborn grace with which we surface. My name is Radim Malinic. I'm an author, creative, and an eternally curious human being on a mission to speak to incredible people whom I call Forever Daring Humans, those in pursuit of an extraordinary life.

Every week, I share an interview that is packed with amazing stories, value, and I can only ask you, how will you dare forever? . This podcast is inspired by my upcoming book titled Daring Forever, which is now available for pre-order out in October

Radim Malinic: what do you do when a client tells you that you will never work in your town again? my guest today picked up the phone, asked to come in, and listened. That moment set the tone for the remarkable life of breakdowns and breakthroughs. Seth Epstein is a creative entrepreneur who built one of the first fully digital motion studios, sold it at thirty-one, and then spent the best part of the decade lost searching for purpose until a small passion project opened the door back in.

 Today, he leads a global team of creatives he calls Nomads of the Arts. We talked about listening to recreate, why comfort kills, and how one conversation can change everything.

 here's Seth Epstein.

 Seth, it's so great to have you on Daring Forever. Welcome. How are you doing? 

Seth Epstein: doing?

great. thanks for having me 

Radim Malinic: No, you're most welcome. Seth, I'm a big fan of Lost York and what you guys do, and as people would listen to this podcast, I would always introduce every guest with, "I'm a fan of what you do," because I am a fan of people who I bring on my show because they have something in common. And I think my idea of daring forever is pursuing the things that we otherwise regret never starting is a running theme, and it's something that you've been doing so well for so long despite, with the,troubles, obstacles, and whatever in our 

journeys.

it's nothing short of inspirational. So for those who may have not heard of Seth Epstein or Lost York, how would you introduce yourself? Who are you? What do you do? Where are you based? All of that.

Seth Epstein: Great. Got it. well, how I describe myself at a high level is I'm a mix of a creative first and also an entrepreneur. So you could say I'm a creative entrepreneur. I am the founder and CEO of Lost York. Lost York is a global creative company. we used to be out of Los Angeles and New York before COVID, and after COVID, we became truly what we call "global nomads of the arts."

We're scattered all over the world. We have people in Europe and Asia and South Africa and, the United States and Canada, and all part of the team. so that's how I would describe myself and, and, where we are today. 

Radim Malinic: I like the words global nomads. I think that makes perfect sense because the, the pandemic was a shakeup for everyone, and I from what I know from your story, which we'll obviously unpick very quickly, very soon, is how everything's changed for you guys, especially at that moment.

But I was lucky to see your talk at OFFF Festival in Barcelona just a few weeks ago, and it was very unconventional. I liked it. I think OFFF this year was a little bit more, I think, in content, a bit more mature, a bit more mature, and I think in a way more conceptual in a way of how we understand the behind the scenes of the work itself.

actually, as it happened, I published episode with Pep Salazar himself about how he really wants to go behind the unfinished, idea, like how everything happens. And as your talk started, there was a phone ringing. I was like, "This sounds like a rotary phone.

What's going on here?" And you answered the imaginary phone call, and everything unraveled from there. So Seth, tell us in a nutshell what happened at that moment, not on just on the stage, but in your life when you received a phone call that changed quite a few things for you.

Seth Epstein: Yeah. So, the talk in OFFF Fest, I started it with, I walked on the stage and I said, "Hello, my name's Seth Epstein. I'm gonna talk to you today about, failure." and then a phone rang out of the blue and it was as if it was, you didn't know if it came from the audience or where it came from.

And I looked around the stage, and I walked over to the podium, and I picked up a phone, and answered it, and I said, "Hello." and on the other end was a voice, and it was my client, from FX Networks, and he was yelling at me about how I had messed up this job. And so that was a junk... so people could hear my client yell at me and say, "You f- you effed up, and you'll never work in this town again, and, you put me in a huge bind," and et cetera, et cetera, and then he slammed down the phone.

And so that call was really just a throwback to when I had a company called Fuel. Fuel was one of the earlier, or earliest motion graphic,fully Mac-based motion design studios, in Los Angeles. And I started it in 1994 and ran it through 2000. And Fuel ended up being, a hotbed of talent.

 A lot of people came out of Fuel, who went on to found, Brand New School and Laundry and a few other companies. so that call was about the beginning of Fuel and a client firing me. and then the balls I had, I was so naive but so hungry to figure it out that I called the client back and asked him if I could come in and have a conversation, and he could tell me everything I did wrong. and that Was inspired by a book I was reading at the time called Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. And It was a book my father had given me, and in the book was a story about, called Emptying the Cup. And Emptying the Cup is this idea that, no new ideas or information can go into a cup or a mind that's already full of ideas.

And so the parable, the story is this guy comes t-to a Zen master for enlightenment, and the Zen master keeps pouring tea, and the cup is overflowing with tea, and the student or wanting... the disciple jumps up and says, "Can't you see the cup is full?" And the Zen master says, "Like this cup, so is your mind full."

and the obviously the parable is you can't have really enlightened thinking or smart thinking if your cup is already full with opinions of how things are. And so I love that idea. I love the idea of emptying the cup of a kind of listening where you empty people's cup of their concerns, considerations.

And, I wanted to try it. I was really into this idea. I'm a pretty philosophical guy. So I wanted to try it with a client. And so, I had this massive breakdown, that, he yelled at me, "You'll never work in this town again." And, in some respects, I suppose it could have been the end of my career and even though my career was just beginning.

But, I called him up and I said, "Hey, can I come in and listen to you.

Radim Malinic: Now I've got a question because What's happened to the work for the FX network that you got an angry client calling you saying you'll never work again? what sort of work did you promise and undeliver?

Seth Epstein: Sure. Sure. I skipped that part. So I delivered a, show open, and it was, rendered on a Mac, and it had dropped frames, it had no time code, it had no color bars, it had no slate, it had no two-pop for sound. It had nothing. It was technically unusable, so he couldn't put it on air. He couldn't use it.

the design was okay, the work was okay, but I didn't know anything technically about how, at that time, 'cause I was just starting out, I didn't know how a broadcast TV network needed things delivered. So I delivered it without the right technical specs. And so I ended up, on the phone call, he said, you have 12 hours to solve this.

It's going on air. You have to solve it." And so I picked up the phone, I called somebody who worked at a, I knew, and, he was the only person I knew, and I said, "This is my problem." He said, "Okay, let's call this person at P.O.P. Post. Let's go over there." And so we stayed up all night, and they transferred it to the right format and put in time code and color bars and two-pops and slates and all the stuff they needed, and we drove, rushed it over and got it to them in time.

and, the whole arc of the story, is important is because here you have the situation that truly the guy should probably never work with me again. I mean, I don't see why he would. and he, but he did bring me-- He said, "Fine, you can come into my office." And, that was an experience, to say the least. he, the office was at Fox Towers in Century City, and I walked in, and he had a glass office, and there's people working all out on the floor, and he had this big glass office, and he sat me down, and he got angry and angrier, walking around yelling and 

he would run out of breath and then pause for a second, and I would just sit there, and I wouldn't defend myself. I wouldn't respond. I had a notebook. I was just making notes. And the only thing I would say is, "Okay. I hear you. Anything else?" And he would go, "Yeah, there is something else," and da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, and I'd write the notes and blah, blah, blah, and then I would say to him, "Okay,I hear you.

I got that I fucked up the time code, the this, the that, that," and I would regurgitate back what I heard, and then I would say, "Is there anything else?" And by the end of the, I guess you'd call it meeting, he had emptied his cup. 

 He had dumped everything out. I had totally heard him in a way that I didn't defend.

I didn't say I was gonna fix anything. I didn't say I did things right or wrong. I just heard him, and I recreated what he said to me, So he knew that I had heard him fully. And he felt gotten, I guess. And, at the end of the meeting, I don't know if he was exhausted or he had just been fully heard, but I remember him just being, like, calm as a cucumber.

And then he said, "You got some serious balls to come in here. I'm impressed." And then I left

Radim Malinic: So normally I would ask people to reverse back to their origin story, like how the creativity entered their life, and obviously I would like to ask you that. But what actually what I want to know is how did you arrive at that moment with this, obviously a slightly, I was about to say tooled up, but also prepared with the book Zen Flesh and Bones, potentially giving you the right ways of understanding the situation.

I would like to understand that because what you've displayed in that moment is something that would potentially crush a lot of people. if you've got some exec, as we know in sort of mid-'90s, the mental health and, approach to creative feedback wasn't exactly, as kind as it can be now, even though, times have changed.

So what I really want to know is how did you know how to carry yourself in that conversation in a way that you were just happy to let him empty in his cup, be there, not defending yourself, just listening and listening and listening? Because you almost go against your nervous system.

Like we are hardwired to defend ourselves, to protect ourselves. We have physical reactions in moments of shame and fear. How did you do that? How did you get yourself ready for this? Because this mostly that seems like a very pivotal moment in your life, and I think lots of people can take from it to say, "Look, nothing to defend, nothing to suggest.

Just do this." So can we get to this?

Seth Epstein: Yeah. It's actually, a great question, and it has an answer. So at the time, also had a business coach that I was coaching with, and one of the things she would always say is, "You can't have a breakthrough without a breakdown." And, there's different ways to say it. You can say all breakthroughs occur on the back of a breakdown, or you can't have a breakthrough without a breakdown, however you wanna say it.

The phraseology is important, but this is a concept that I've operated on for the entirety of my career, which is a breakdown is as painful as it is, good news. You want breakdowns. You want the breakdowns. Go out and find the breakdowns. If you're really on it, you go out and find the breakdowns before they occur, and that's another level of operating.

But this idea that a breakdown happens, a blow to your nervous system, a blow to your ego, a blow to your self-perception, whatever it is, I saw it as, okay, there's a breakthrough around the corner here 'cause this is as bad as it gets. There's only one way up, And so I think to answer your question, I heard you say was like, "How did you prepare yourself or how were you able to go into that room and do that?"

Like mentally get in the state 'cause it doesn't make sense. It goes against our wiring. Which is absolutely true. However, I operated and do operate on this idea that breakdowns are the gateway to your breakthrough. So if you want growth, whether it's business growth or personal growth or relationship growth, the breakdown is the signal that a breakthrough is about to occur.

And so if you buy into this idea, you can't have a breakthrough without a breakdown, you should want the breakdowns because that tells you, guess what? Y- guess what road you're on. You're on, around that corner, through that door, through that challenge, whatever, through that trapdoor.

if you can find the light switch on the wall, you're gonna have a breakthrough. So you're right on the edge of a breakthrough. So that's-- was my mindset. That is my mindset. when things go sideways at Lost York or things at Fuel or even in my life, I have the physical reaction.

I have that fear, that survival, that shortness of breath, the nervousness, the sleeplessness, all of those things that, can accompany challenges and,a partner leaving the business, a client, a losing a big project that you wanted or really needed. the way I've approached it is when those things happen, I try to steady myself in whatever way I can, and I just live by the mantra, "Okay, breakdown, breakthrough. All right, here's a huge breakdown. There's a huge breakthrough about to occur. Where is it?" And then I start hunting for it 

Radim Malinic: I wanna ask you a question about your dad because you said he,gave you the book, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. tell me about your parents. What did they do? Did they inspire creativity in your life? Because I'm impressed that, you're in this situation where someone's yelling at you that you will never work in the town again, but you already have a business coach on the other side.

So I'm trying to sort of piece it together, like how you're building Fuel in around in the mid-'90s.

Seth Epstein: Yeah. So, it's actually a great-- question, and when I describe my parents, you're gonna be like, "Okay, that makes perfect sense." So my father was a teacher, he taught philosophy, and he was,a hippie. He moved to California in nineteen sixty-nine to Big Sur and Carmel and Monterey area, which is kinda was the center of the hippie movement, if you will.

so he was a very creative, open-minded, spiritually-oriented dude. My mom was German, survivor of the Holocaust, very disciplined, very rigid, very unemotional,and but really into business and self-improvement, self-development. So when I grew up, in our living room on the shelves were tapes from, Les Brown and Brian Tracy and,Tony Robbins when he was really young starting out.

And so I grew up in a family that had two sides to it. One was a father that encouraged me to paint and draw and be creative and do photography and read Buddhism and explore spirituality and listen to my heart on one side. And then the other side was my mom, who was also a teacher and then became a business consultant and eventually was into hypnotherapy. but she became like a, a speaker, and on her shelves were these tape sets from Tony Robbins and Les Brown and all these people, and I would listen to them. So think of it as the motivational movement of the '80s. I grew up on that. And, and so I would listen to those tapes, and so they influenced me, for sure.

And then when I had tried to start a clothing company in college and I failed, eventually. I did everything wrong. And, I, lost a bunch of money and I was like, "Wow, I really don't know what I'm doing here. I really don't know anything about how to run a business." And so I decided I needed a business coach.

and my good friend Howard Lim, who's a designer, he, he said to me one day, "Hey, dude, I'm going to a business seminar down in Orange County. do you wanna come? it's, whatever, Saturday." And I don't know if the word is desperate or if the right word is hungry or I was open, but he was successful I was like, "I wanna be like this guy." So, he was making a living as a graphic designer, so I just followed. I just was like, "Yeah, I'll show up." And at that workshop or seminar, I met the woman who became my coach, a woman named Patricia McDade, who has since passed away, and she had a huge influence on my life 

Radim Malinic: That's incredible. I think in my opinion, nev-never a better inspiration than seeing someone actually living and breathing the outcome of what they're doing. Because, those tapes, I believe you need to find your own way to that material.

Obviously, you, want to want it, Otherwise, you can't change anyone who doesn't want to be changed. And I think I always admire people with self-made careers. And I always try to imagine, what goes into that whole process of saying, "I'm following what I want to become," and never stopping.

And I find it really remarkable. It's just, in a world where you can be anything, you can be anyone, you can earn as much money as you want to be, as you can earn as much money as you really want to earn, it's magical that it's the careers and it's that drive that is your own expression that drives it forward.

And as you just said, your friend being successful graphic designer, that, that will do it. It'll show you that everything's possible. 

so unsuccessful clothing company, business coach, Patricia, where do we get from her and obviously having the right impact on you, showing you what to do, to you actually going to learn Fuel, going to start Fuel and ended up, with this phone call, with sometime afterwards?

Seth Epstein: Yeah. I think, I just wanna revisit something you said that I thought was really great, which is this idea that when you see somebody living the life you wanna live,that I would say, for people coming up or trying to figure out or maybe if they're lost or maybe even going through a reinvention in life, the cheat code is to really is to find your North Star and normally that and see and find that person out there in the world or persons in the world who you're like it pings and resonates and and you have that deep down feeling like, "That's the life I wanna lead."

I think it's a great cheat code, a great guide, a great magnet to pull you towards, When there's... Sometimes the mind can't solve it, you just have to solve it through your heart and that's the way for me that has been a valuable, feeling pulled or compelled, and that was one of those moments where Howard compelled me, in a certain direction.

And then the same thing goes with founding Fuel, that when I found Fuel is I was starting to work, freelance. I had a Macintosh. not a lot of people did. I was one of the using, After Effects before it was After Effects. it was called CoSA After Effects. It was before Adobe.

 and I was freelancing for a small company called Troon in, Santa Monica, and they were working on a industrial video for Apple. and I remember working on that job and working on some small little animations, and it hadn't really been done on Macs before, so we were pioneering this stuff as we were going.

And, Fuel came about 'cause I just was like, "I can do this better than these guys. They don't have great taste. I just had that, as a young man, I had a degree of either self-delusion or arrogance or fire or something where I was like, "I can do this better than these guys." And I just felt it in me, and As an entrepreneur, you'll hear entrepreneurs say they're not very employable. yeah, they're not very employable, and I would agree. I think, I even got fired as a busboy when I was a busboy, So I wasn't a, great employee. I brought too much of my own opinion to things, I think. And, long story short is that I was walking down the street with Howard, who clearly had a big impact in me, and I said, "Yeah, I'm gonna start a company, and it's gonna be called Jet Fuel." And we were walking on Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, and this was nineteen ninety-two, ninety-three.

And, he said to me, "Yeah, that's a dumb name." Then he goes, why don't you just call it Fuel?" And I was like, "Oh, shit, that's brilliant," 'cause it's like fuel for the soul and fuel for the this and fuel for the... that's fucking great. That's cool.

And so that's how the name came about. And, I would just started. I made up a fake demo reel of work. I put it on a VHS tape. I went to Promax. It was called Promax BDA, Broadcast Design Association, was happening in LA. I would send my little VHS tapes out to people, demo reels.

and, I was thrown little bones, I was given a job by E! Entertainment in LA to do an animation, and I did a good job. I, Showtime, this woman named Stephanie Sosola, who gave me a little job. they would throw me a, a nibble, and I would 

Radim Malinic: grow from there, yeah

Seth Epstein: Go from there.

and, I think messing up that FX job was just one of many jobs that over time, it wasn't the last job I messed up, There were many other mess-ups to make along the way 

Radim Malinic: What I know what's come up from that conversation, I think there's a sentence that you said. It's usually the last thing that someone says that is the most important. 

And as you said, your guy emptied his cup and, motivated you to fix things. then I believe that sometime afterwards, but not only you fixed the problem that you needed to fix, but they have everything went as it should have done.

And I think sometime later you had a phone call again saying, "You saved me." 'Cause not only you were in trouble, he was in trouble. 

And obviously

that's come on to do, different things but to this sentence about, is the last thing that someone says is the most important, you say it's different listening and different outcomes.

And I think

what you mostly demonstrated in that meeting already was like actually being able to sit there and sit and even bite your tongue or sit on your hands and not say anything, just listen. it's kind of skill of its own because it's so easy to have that, physical reaction and say, "Look, I'm here to defend myself."

But to be truly practicing active listening is a skill of its own. So how did you put it all together? Did you realize that the different listening is gonna give you different outcomes overall?

Seth Epstein: Yeah. there's a lot to say here. where to start? Well, so with going back to that FX Networks, and emptying the cup, that was the beginning of it, and I-- was the beginning of this sort of inquiry about listening and the power of listening. And I think that, there are different ways to listen.

So you can listen to somebody, but you can listen in different ways, So there's distracted listening, where I could be listening. there's call it traditional listening, which is waiting for me to respond. Or you could say listening to respond 'cause I wanna get my word in, I want you to hear what I have to say, or I'm gonna tell you my story that piggybacks off of your story.

That's kinda what you could also say is like default listening or cocktail party listening. And then there's listening to recreate, which is like emptying the cup. Listening to recreate is all my only goal is to recreate what you just said, not to have any opinion or spin on it. And the reason that's valuable is that it's valuable not only in business, but it's valuable in relationships, it's valuable everywhere.

and there's something that happens when you can go beyond distracted listening or listening to respond and go into this listening to recreate or emptying the cup. And I'll call them like distinctions. These ideas are things that I observed over time in business. and I see it all the time too.

 You can see it on any client call that, I work with our team a lot on this, and I talk about listening to recreate so that somebody feels fully heard. 'Cause and trying to get your opinion in, the only thing that's happening, particularly for a client, is they just don't feel heard.

So they get off the phone call going like, "Did they hear me?" and that's a problem. And I think these three ways of listening that we're jumping to are things that I developed over time. to simplify it, to try to explain it to my team was to how do I explain it to my team, and how do I help them realize the power of, listening?

And I think there is active listening, for sure, which is, fairly common thing. and I think that this idea of listening to recreate and emptying the cup is incredibly powerful for creatives. It's incredibly powerful for young creatives. It's powerful for experienced creatives.

 because it deepens the conversation. It opens it up in a way that, that is, unaccessible if it's a ping pong back and forth of call and response and trying to interrupt and getting your word in

Radim Malinic: there was a great exercise in a book, called What Got You Here Won't Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith, and he was talking about the fact that he was coaching some sort of powerful executives, and he was like, "How well do you listen to people?" He was like, "Oh, really well. I'm a really good listener."

"Are you really? Are you a really good listener? Okay, let's do an exercise. Close your eyes and count from one to 50 and find yourself how quickly your mind will interrupt you. how busy is your mind? How much do you hear yourself, and how much do you hear others?" and I stole that exercise, and I used it in my workshops.

And some people wouldn't even get to six. It was like one, two, three, four, five, six, need to clean the car. No, no, no, no. Need to... how to focus on the present moment, it's a skill. And we are basically living in a world almost designed to interrupt us at every possible moment because someone's got something to sell us.

 someone needs an interaction or engagement. And this is like the almost like Zen-like, ability to listen to other people, as you say, listen to recreate, is very much used in like marriage counseling. repeat what the other person said and say how would you understood and tell them back 

today.

It doesn't matter because what we'll try to do, our intelligence will try to kick in, our ego will try to kick in and say, "I think this is the opinion. My opinion is this. This is how we compare who's winning here." But being able to pull back and actually observe is magical because you realize you find out so much more about everyone, including yourself, that does really work.

So yeah, the one to 50 was something that I, I borrowed from the book, and I used it quite, in quite a few workshops, and I enjoyed it because no one ever got to anywhere near 50 because not that I'm bathing India in the misery of how distracted we are, but it was an, it's an experiment of how much work we need to do.

Because when you stop yourself from trying to say everything, and when you actually start, especially when you push yourself to listen to everyone, the magic really happens, obviously I'm always packing about three or four questions within one. I wanna go from Fuel and all of this 

breakthrough through the breakdown.

I wanna get to see where we are with Lost York. where did Lost York come from? And go into your side of entrepreneurship because you not only run an incredible agency with you guys producing incredible merch, incredible, clothing, all of that stuff, which is almost like a beautiful celebration of what creative agency could be with every single facet.

So how do we go from Fuel all the way to where you are now? Because I wanna put more color into this part.

Seth Epstein: Wow. Okay, so before I do that, I wanna just piggyback on one really important thing you said. You were talking about the one to fifty, 

Radim Malinic: Of course

Seth Epstein: distraction. so my cheat code, I already know I'm gonna get interrupted. 'Cause as a creative person. So what I do,I write the notes.

I don't let AI do my notes. and I win a lot of, jobs, we win a lot of jobs purely because of the quality of the listening. And so I would say, for anybody who's listening to this who's in our profession or on their way up or established, it doesn't really matter, I guess, but, if somebody said, "What's the trick to winning more jobs?"

I would just say listening and recreating, and that's the trick. So I just wanted to add that in. 

 so to your question regarding, how did we get to Lost York, there's the long version, and then there's the short version. I'm gonna give you the short-ish version.

but it's interesting. So we built Fuel Up, and we started in nineteen ninety-five, and we became known as a design firm that was a youth culture. We did the X Games. We were known as a surf, skate, snowboard, California, everybody who worked there was under thirty.

And it was just this really intense but passionate group of people, talented people that came together. And a company called Razorfish, saw us and, reached out and said, "Hey, we'd love to chat with you about your business." And, in a few short conversations, they said to me, "Hey, we wanna buy your company."

 I didn't know you could sell a company. I didn't know that was a thing. So, they said to me, "Yeah, we wanna buy your company." And It was over sushi at a restaurant in Venice with the two founders, and I just remember being like, "Wait, what?" my brain rewired.

"Wait, w-what? What just happened?" but the long and short of it is I sold it to Razorfish in, in two thousand. and, a bunch of stuff happened there around,I was thirty-one years old. I sold it for a lot of money at the time in stock, and it was in the beginning of the dot-com boom and eventually bust And so I got to experience at a young age what it was like to have a home run, hit a home run, basically.

and but I also I got to experience the downside of that. eventually over a series of years, I was profoundly unhappy, yet I had everything you could think that you would want. I bought a beach house in Malibu. I had pretty cars. I didn't have to work. the dream, you're like, everybody thinks I'm gonna win the lottery, and then I'm gonna be happy."

Or, "When I have enough money, then I'm gonna be happy." Or, "When I have the country house," or, "When I have the beach house," or, " When I marry the supermodel," or whatever the story is that we all create for ourselves, the someday my prince will come And, so I got to experience that someday when the prince comes or when things go your way the way you thought you want them to go, how miserable you can be, how one could be.

And I was miserable. And I was miserable because I didn't have a purpose. I didn't have a community, and I didn't have a purpose. And I was lost for a bunch of years, and I built a bunch of different kind of companies, a app company, a software company, a nutraceutical company. I was doing all of these things outside of my sweet spot, and I was miserable. And, but on the side, I was still making little films, and I love cameras. And the 5D Mark II came out, and I started making some really beautiful little films, and I made a film about, one of my heroes, a guy named Sean Stussy, who I had met, here in Santa Barbara at the steps, at Miramar, and we became friendly, and we'd see each other at coffee.

And I said to him one day, "Hey, 

I'm doing these little films. Could I come over to the studio and make a little film of you?" And, so I made this just me and him, and he was shaping a board, and I made this little film. I cut it together, and again, I was lost. I didn't know what I was supposed to do with my life.

I was running out of money, and, I made this little film, and, that film blew open a bunch of opportunities for me, and it was again, it was a passion project. I just did it 'cause it was bubbling up in me. and then I've stayed in touch over the years with the different people who worked at Fuel, and one of those guys, is a hyper-talented guy named Jake Banks, who founded Stardust.

And, I would t-touch base with him on a fairly regular basis. In one of those conversations, he said, "Hey, do you wanna buy Stardust? I'm going through some changes. I wanna change things up." and I had directed a campaign for him 'cause he had seen the Stussy film, and he said, "Hey, do you wanna direct a campaign?"

And then as we were starting to work together a little bit, he's like, " seem really lit up by this. hey, I'm going through some stuff. Do you wanna kinda jump in here?" And so I ended up taking over Stardust and in 2012, and that was my doorway back in. 

Radim Malinic: that's almost a long decade of being semi lost, looking for purpose, 

looking for happiness.that's not just a blip, Seth. I'm making my own notes by hand, and I'm thinking, okay, I just worked out how old are you now? How old it was like na, na, na, na, na.

And then you say 2012. I'm like, "Holy shit, man." that's a quite a block of time where 

Seth Epstein: Yes 

Radim Malinic: ultimately you found what you were looking for. And I really wanna ask you, right, about the Stüssy foremost of this encounter because it,has shown you a lot more ways of where to go next than just one.

But Before we go there, like how did you prop yourself up? Because, it can seem quite exciting, especially for the younger mind. I'm working out of... As you said, you were about... 31 when you sold your company. you got money, you got cars, you got beach house.

Everything's kinda on paper really good. But as you say yourself, happiness is purpose, right? You need to have purpose to go somewhere. So how did you prop yourself up? Because it doesn't seem like it was always sunshine and ice cream, was it?

Seth Epstein: Yeah, it was not sunshine and ice cream, There was a point where I couldn't feed my kids.I have three boys. they were very young, I think they were around three or four at the time. And I remember my wife called me and I was in Los Angeles, and she said, "Hey," she was crying, and she said,I couldn't get food today."

And I was like, "What do you mean?" She goes, I just had to walk out of the supermarket. There's no money in our accounts. I couldn't pay, the ATM doesn't work. The credit cards are maxed. We have no money. I had to leave all the groceries right on the checkout stand."

I walked out, and she was crying and embarrassed And remember, this is the guy who had sold his company for what seemed was an ungodly amount of money at the time. and here I was technically broke at the bottom, your question is, 12 years, how did you get through those years?"

and I think was a combination of things. not, I would say the first maybe six, seven years after I sold the company, I still had money and was living off of it?

and delusional, and, "Oh, this next company's gonna hit, and I'm gonna invest in this thing over here, and that's gonna hit, and I'm gonna start this, and that's gonna hit."

And I wasn't really dealing with the reality of how fast my money was going down 'cause I'm a creative, so I think that everything is gonna be workout. And so it hit me like kind of a ton of bricks, in 2000 and probably seven, 2008. but to answer your question, I would love to say that there's ideas that I employ, breakdown, breakthrough. There's philosophies. There's things you tell yourself. but,people-- we are all much more resilient than we have any idea, and we find out what we're made of when we're put in places we just can't imagine being put in.

And I never would have expected to be there. I'm still somewhat shocked that I was in that position, to be honest with you. It's it's still amazing. But I think that, Ultimately what got me through was returning to home base of what am I good at? 

When everything's stripped away, what do I just love to do? What would I do ifwasn't getting paid? And that's ultimately what got me back to doing what I love to do was I did need to survive. And so when you're in a survival thing, you're like, "How am I gonna make money? And what's my best skill?"

And it was making films, and I did some films, some industrial films, you know, film for a company here in Santa Barbara that did, software or something. you're like, "I just need to get food on the table." So you go to your lowest common denominator, and you're like, "I got nothing."

And you're like, "All right. how do I put food on the table? What skills do I have?" And so there's that, the survival side of it, but also there's the part of it where there's a reason I was good at doing those things 'cause that was my natural love. So it was a, a double-edged, in a good way, a, good double-edged sword in the sense of it was my survival skill 

Radim Malinic: When you think about it, when you got lions ready to hunt, they're hungry, they're sharp, they've been fasting. they are not comfortable. They haven't just had a slap-up meal and go, "Let's go eat some more." And I think what's really comforting in this discomfort is that you actually have almost this fasted-like, razor-like focus going, "I need to solve some problems."

And you realize that,some people are successful, and they go on this conveyor belt of success going, "Look, this is project after project. this is the repeat of the repeat." And then 10 years down the line, then 10 years down the line or 20 years down the line, they go, "Oh, I wish this ride was a little bit more interesting because, we did keep the lights on.

We paid everyone. We didn't bankrupt the company." But is that vision or is that, that drive and strive for something interesting, what I call the fear of the ordinary life? For some people, they'll be like, "Okay, we could have done something better." But your situation describing makes me feel there was some sort of comfort in the discomfort because you found that this is the lowest of the low.

It can only go one way back up. 

how do you reshape it? Because ultimately you found something that really was coming from, as the expression of your soul, it was coming from you, going, "What am I good at? Actually, what is my purpose?" And this Stussy film that you described,it's magical because it's like, how do you create something that doesn't need to exist, but yet is so essential to exist?

So that moment, do you remember obviously your encounter with Stussy and obviously how did you make it? And obviously, what was the feeling of like even making that piece? Because it's unraveling of the new chapter.

Seth Epstein: Yeah, I think so what a necessity is the mother of invention is the saying. I'm reading a book right now actually called Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better. and the hypothesis and the, whole book is based on the idea that it's not genius or creativity that creates great work or leads to breakthroughs or leads to great creative work, it's actually the constraints that you're working within that leads to great work.

And so I like that idea. after having read the book, I agree with it. So the constraint that I was working within was, that I had this camera. I felt I was capable. I didn't have a crew. I didn't have audio. I didn't have all the trappings of Hollywood. I didn't know enough about lighting at that time to probably put myself in trouble.

And so the constraint I was working in was a one camera and me, and I had enough chutzpah or balls, as you would say, to say to Sean, "Hey, I wanna make a film of you. I'm envisioning it with this jazz music and Duke Ellington kind of a thing, and you're just doing your thing, and it's really a vibey piece."

 and having gotten to know him a bit over time, I knew that it would, ping. So, It's like one of those things in life when you have this idea. There's so many times in life we have an urge or an idea, a good idea that comes up, and we go, "God, I'd love to interview this person.

I'd love to make a film about this or I'd love to..." And it's almost like childlike, "Wouldn't it be cool if I could?" And many times we don't listen to that urge. Most of the times we don't, and then that's how our lives become quieter and we suppress ourselves, and we quietly put a blanket over our dreams.

And I was at a point, like you said, like a hungry lion, where I had been stripped away of the niceties. I was back in Rawville, like just I was very fundamental. And so anything that was an opening for me, I was a yes to. One of the great things about being cornered or being in a box or being constrained is that, you're forced to make a choice.

You're then forced to make a move. and I think that had I been comfortable, I might not have said to him, "Hey, I wanna make a film of you." And when you're uncomfortable in every area in your life, it's not particularly uncomfortable to say to somebody you admire as kind of a hero of yours.

It's not that hard to say to somebody, "Hey, can I make a film of you?" 'Cause you're already in a tough spot, And I al- have the saying, "Comfort kills." And it's like when you're comfortable, that's when people start to modify their dreams or stop hearing that sort of primal, "Wouldn't it be fucking cool if?"

Radim Malinic: Sorry, I didn't let you finish your sentence, but when you talk about comfort, you reached your comfort at the age of 31. That was a comfort. You obviously, there was stock, there was money, there was cars, there was beach house. But it's so misleading because sometimes when people are searching, they'll be like, "Oh, I'm gonna check out really early.

I'm gonna reach the retirement really early." And you're gonna ask them like, "To fucking do what?" It's like, bathing your money? But,it obviously it stems from inside. Obviously, we are looking in those hiding places of like we are coming into this world more capable and more complicated than we ever are.

Like we, we are extraordinarily able to do many different things, but we are also more complicated than we ever like to,admit. And creativity or business,it's a place of hiding. You can hide yourself from your problems. You don't have to hear yourself. As you say, listen to recreate.

You don't have to listen to yourself to recreate yourself and go in, "These are my problems. Should we deal with them? Oh, no, let's actually do this. Let's work hard. let's make a lot of money." Reminds me, since we talk about Sean, obviously I was reading a book about Mark Echo from Echo 

Industries, where he ran himself to the ground in a very reckless way, and he said, "Look, I was ripped on the outside.

I was going to the gym. My mind on the inside was dying." Like it was really in a bad way. 

But we talked about Howard, and now we talk about Sean, and I've seen like there's potentially those two people showed up at the right time for you, where one of them showed you a business, coach, and the other one showed you a way of what creativity can be or what c-courage can be like.

So the encounter with Sean Stussy, obviously yielded more than just a, a documentary. Obviously it's a friendship, and it showed you visually an idea of what you can create with clothing, creativity, all of that.

Seth Epstein: For sure. Yeah, there's a lot, of lessons. There's a lot of lessons. There's a lot of things I pulled from observing him,being a student of, the brand.

But I do think an important idea when you talk about Howard, you talk about Sean, that 

One meeting can change your life. And I say this to people who are coming up, but I s-say it to myself all the time. I say it to- My, wife and I were talking about this the other day. One meeting, one conversation, one comment can change your life, and you just don't know which one it's gonna be. And it can be somebody saying, "Hey, I met this guy who blah, blah, blah.

You should meet him." And those moments for me in my life have been the ones that have completely flipped the direction of my life. So this idea that where life happens is not in our head, it's not in our studio, it's not in our comfort zone. Where life happens is out there in the world in conversation, in physical conversation, in meeting people in these conversations.

And you never know, one person can say a throwaway comment, but that throwaway comment makes a ping for you, and you go, "Yeah, I actually wanna go to the Dodgers." And that going to the Dodgers game is the thing that flips life around for you or opens up the new avenue. It's this idea of being open or being available.

I think going back to your original question in terms of... I think your question was some version of with Stüssy, what were the things that I grokked or pulled away from that? Well- 

 there's a lot there. I think the thing that was interesting about him is he had built a company.

He built Stüssy up, he sold it. He- his partner bought him out, and he actually moved up to Santa Barbara after he got bought out. And,in a lot of ways, just as I was trying to find where my home base was, where, what I should be doing with my life, he was going back to shaping surfboards and kinda doing this S double clothing line.

And so in a lot of ways, no matter how brilliant you are, Stüssy was a surfboard shaper, and he just signed his name on the boards. People liked the signature. He did T-shirts for a trade show. The people at the trade show dug them. But he was a, he was the-- he is and was the perfect blend of a curious individual who was playful and irreverent and loved street culture, loved the mix of hip hop and surfing, and was the first person who combined all of these things in a way.

he had the Stüssy International Tribe, which led to inspired Lost York. The name Lost York, is inspired, I only learned, really thought about it later, but the name Los York is inspired by that East Coast, West Coast thing that Stüssy really was. The International Stüssy Tribe inspired the idea of global nomads of the arts, that we're all artists connected globally is, was an idea that he promoted through the International Stüssy Tribe, which was, his friends around the world.

and so I would say that the Stüssy brand, the man in-influenced Lost York in a lot of ways, and influenced the name, influenced a lot of the ideas and also inspires me to do the swag line that we have, the clothing line that we have, Lost York Label. That's all and why it's part of a creative agency.

all of this is inspired by this kind of an artist or creator that works in multiple disciplines. I like that idea of not just doing one thing, but working across many disciplines and being a multi-hyphenate, the whatever it is. the type of creator who can shoot photographs and who can draw graffiti and who can design and who can work in many mediums and is a creative being.

And so that's my aspiration in life. that's my aspiration in life. The heroes I resonated with were the kind of people who were these multi-hyphenate creatives, and so that's what I'm trying to do with Lost York, is attract people who don't wanna be put in the proverbial box. We are all creators, and some of us, and I hope that I find many more ways of creating in my life throughout time You know, I wanna try pottery and ceramics.

That's something I haven't done. I wanna return back to painting. I haven't done much painting in the last 20 years. I did a graffiti trip with one of my sons where we traveled California, and we're climbing underneath bridges and tagging and that was really fun. So I'm trying to expand creatively.

What are all the ways I can express myself? and I wanna be bad at some creative stuff, bad at ceramics and bad at who knows what. I don't know what I'm gonna try, but I don't know. I just think that way of living, those are the images of Picasso or Miro in their studio in the South of France, and they're 80 years old, and they're still working away, and you're like, "That's the shit." that's the dream for me

Radim Malinic: What would you say that it is of our sort of human nature, especially with creatives, that we start working with our hands, we explore things, then we go into this heavily sort of digital business of still creating sometimes with our, like still using our hands, but going into digital noise and then finding ourselves on the edge of it going, "I wanna paint, I wanna do pottery, I wanna reconnect with the things that I really..."

As you said, going on a tagging trip. Like how many other people-- we're not unique in this way. Like I think it, there's a trajectory where people say, "Okay, now I need to start to paint." 

 where do the hands come back in?

And I think what you describe it, it's just like that arc of a creative, like, okay, this video stuff and this, digital stuff was great, but on the outside, like how can I actually touch stuff, smell stuff, work to more senses? 

I think that's what it sounds like that maybe that's the sort of natural arc.

Seth Epstein: Yeah,I think you're touching on an interesting idea here. I would say there's two things here. One, I would say that, more and more as AI and digital becomes more of a thing, this foundational urge to create is gonna become more and more important. Being in person together is gonna be more important.

Painting together, writing together, doing pottery together, all of these things are gonna increase in importance for spiritual, emotional, communal wellbeing. I think artists have the urge earlier many times. They're like an early, whatever, canary in the coal mine, if you wanna say it that way.

 Artists are tuning forks. They get the signals earlier, it seems. So I think what we're experiencing is this universal urge to reconnect to the Earth, if you will. And I also believe fundamentally that the universe is a yearning, wanting universe that wants to create.

you look at a tree, it grows up from the earth, away from gravity, and sprouts outward, away from gravity. And so what is that universal urge that causes us to want to recreate, that causes the trees that reach upwards towards the sky, away from what's pulling them back? What is that urge? 'Cause there's gotta be something.

And so this idea of this universal urge, is I think at the base of it all, that we all have this foundational need to experience, realization. And you could say realization could take many forms, And so I think the reconnecting back to, art is to connect back to the quieter Call it primal urge of creation, you could say. that's how I'm seeing it I think somebody else could go, "Yo, dude, I think you just wanna paint and, listen to some music." and that could be right too. I'm probably putting a lot more on it than need be, but that's the way I see it 

Radim Malinic: I absolutely love it. and I've said this before on the show, there's something that happens after an hour of conversation where the summary of what you just said of the meaning of what you do, how you create, where do you see this, this tree growing away from the ground, is beautifully summarized.

 I'm a big fan of what you do, and I'm glad we didn't really talk about business per se, because I wanted to really focus on your story of how you got to be where you are today. And I think I'm glad we got to uncover a little bit more of that middle part, which, showed more appreciation of where you are right now.

So as I said, big fan of what you guys do with Lost York. yeah, I didn't talk about your swag, but your swag is exceptional. it's something that, I'm originally from like a death metal sort of genre of sort of music, been a musician, and once you start making merch as a teenager, you will always make a merch.

it's just it's something that gives us a chance to really explore and go, "You know what? we are not inside a box on this one. we can do whatever we want." So Seth, thanks very much for being here today. I really enjoyed listening to you, finding out more about you, and I feel like I need to get you back on a, like for a follow-up episode of just get...

in the future to get you back and just chat some more, because I think there's a lot more to uncover. I think we got that tree, just halfway up from the ground. So 

I'll speak to you hopefully next time soon again. 

Seth Epstein: a lot more to... Once you get me going, I'm happy to talk. But, I appreciate you doing what you do, appreciate you and this podcast and that this is part of your tree growing, your natural expression, sharing it in the world, and I think that's what it's all about for us as creators is share our work, and I think it's a really special thing that you're doing, that you're allowing...

even if this conversation impacts one person, to me, that's, our job is done, and that's what I would hope. I would hope that just one person gets one thing that makes a difference. That'd be really fulfilling, and I'm grateful for the time 

Radim Malinic: Thank you so much. Thanks for being here 

Seth Epstein: Yeah, good talk.

Radim: Hey, thank you for joining me on this episode of Daring Forever Podcast. As always, I'd love to know your thoughts, questions, and even suggestions, so please get in touch via the show notes or social channels. This episode was produced and presented by me, Radim Malinic. Thank you for being here, and I hope to catch you on the next episode