I'm going to give a little acceleration
here okay continue what were you going to say the looming stressor of making sure that I have
a sustainable living is definitely real I'll be back but I would much rather take that stressor
over the stress of sitting down and doing something that I don't like every single
day and it becomes monotonous I'll do the end of a mon now each and every day is very
different from one another every day feels like an adventure which is extremely fun to me hi I'm Max
Gallow I'm 28 years old living in Brooklyn New York and in 2023 I made $117,000 working as an
actor and welcome to Millennial no money most of my income came from AC it didn't last too
long we went on a strike and I had to use some of the unemployment benefits and then some of
it also came from working at an exotic car dealership and those are my three sources of
income I did not like that job it made me feel like the bad guy at times where I had
to do what the company wanted and not necessarily what I would have liked to
do I'm not not actually reading this book I'm just looking at it it's a good book though
Power of Habit I was saving a good amount and it was very scalable I probably could
have put a deposit on a home but I wanted to take my shot I wanted to try to follow
my dreams because I knew that if I tried later in life I don't know if I would have as much
momentum as I do now and I could always go back to a more traditional path if I needed
to
that was actually really grateful I really tried to tell myself after the insurance job that I
really wanted to prioritize doing things that are fun and enjoyable and that I would do for free and
get paid for them welcome to P1 Exotics this is my survival job like a lot of actors have this is
our storage facility where we're storing some of the cars that we have here and this is a Ferrari
355 this is about 400 or
450,000 you can see the aerodynamics the wind and the air would go through the door so while
working for the car dealership I would get $20 an hour which was pretty good at least for me
in terms of like the fun that I was having but I put that sort of on the back burner because
it would require me to go back and forth from New York to New Jersey that becomes a lot but still
very much worth it to do it once in a while one thing that I I have noticed uh which is very odd
especially for being in the income bracket that I'm in I have a Honda Civic that I drive around
and I've gone to like some of the same places and I've been treated extremely differently
if I pulled up somewhere in a Lamborghini or Ferrari you're treated like royalty if you're
in a Honda Civic or anything normal you'll go very much under the radar um people have
no interest in paying attention to you and it's a little offputting [Music] My Lifestyle hasn't
really changed too much which is probably why I'm spending more than I'm making if you don't
want to spend money in New York City you pretty much just have to like lay down inside because
everything that you do if you like go anywhere it's going to cost you money I don't go out and
buy new things very often I like to spend my money on EXP experiences rather than an item
it's definitely been difficult I've relied on some of my savings to compensate for the losses
that I've had each month it's interesting because to acrw that savings took like a few years but
it's also being dissipated over the course of a few years so I don't feel too stressed by it and
then I put my camera right there and then this is like for auditions I feel pretty good about
paying my bills at least right now I know I don't have a huge safety net but it does feel good that
I at least have something there and I know that at any time I could go in the corner to Starbucks or
any sort of place and get a job that's going to meet my expenses cuz they're relatively
low hello welcome to my tiny little apartment um this is my tiny room I have a little editing set
up here I ended up getting a really good deal on this place it's supposed to be around 3,000 but I
ended up getting about $1,000 off per month I went to a real estate agent and I said do you
know of anything that's going to be on the market in about 3 months I'll take it as soon as the Last
Tenant leaves so that way you have no downtime and you're not missing out on like a few month's rent
when the apartment's sitting there and I said if you could pass that savings along to me I would
love it and they went for [Music] it frugality is really hard sometimes when you're trying to
be healthy a lot of the cheaper foods are not very good for you I will go to the grocery store
or farmer's market and see something that's relatively inexpensive that you have to cook
yourself I didn't buy the bmwm Roadster with an investment mindset I bought it just because I was
not really that happy at the insurance company I was trying to mitigate that by buying myself like
a fun little sports car it was actually not that expensive when I bought it it was around $10,000
but since then it's nearly doubled in value I never want to sell the BMW I would like to
keep that forever and have it be a part of my collection in the future if I had to I would
to put an extra $188,000 towards my dreams but I would much rather go out and get a part-time job
that helps me sustain [Music] myself when I was in class surrounding acting like it felt really
really good I was like I would love to do this for free let alone if someone eventually decides
to pay me for it it also felt like therapeutic do good good good I think a lot of us have like
played in an imaginary way when we're kids and that's what it kind of feels like as an adult
so it felt really cool and I wanted to do more of that I've been writing and working towards
like a few different things I would say I am happier now than when I was working for the
insurance company I feel hopeful that something great might just be around the corner I think a
lot of actors feel that way so I don't want to be delusional with the southern accent is that row
right we're doing the last one last certainly not least one thing I think people don't necessarily
understand about actors or artists especially from like a point of view of someone who maybe
has a corporate job or isn't into the Arts is that it's a way of life and this is a really
difficult path to take but for artists it's not as much of a choice as you think it is we don't
really feel whole we don't really feel good unless we're expressing ourselves and that's
really hard to do especially when you're not being paid for it and sometimes don't even
have the outlet to do it well like when you're when you finish a model like one of the first
things I usually ask is like you know left your own devices what would you do differently or what
would you want to adjust yeah I was planning on having a good amount of work booked myself
a vacation to five different countries then the strike came so I was out of work and also taking
a trip which felt very weird to me because I was now going on something that was Leisure and fun
and knowing that when I come back I have a lot of figuring out to do because there's going to
be nothing there is no plan B I will succeed as an actor um I don't know to what length I
will succeed I don't know if I'll have my own movie or my own TV show but I will become an
actor there's there's no option I will also be con considering and pursuing other ways to
earn money and maybe another career path um that will earn me a salary and not just like a gig um
yeah some of the goals for this year is to get an agent so that way I can get my
foot in the door for things that I currently can't get my foot in the door for and also to
start writing a little bit more on some of what I really want to make in the [Music]
future I'm willing to go back to a 9 to5 but I want something that has a good work life balance
that's been really hard for me to find I don't want it to affect what is essentially a second
job because I will continue to pursue my career as an actor I don't want to have anything conflict
with that but I do need the money so that's why sometimes part-time work looks attractive
to me because you clock in and you clock out so I definitely do have goals it's a long Pursuit it's
a marathon not a Sprint there may be a time when I need to put my dreams on hold to go do something
and then come back but as of right now I'm going to give myself probably about 2 more years to
really go full force in this and then I might have to put it more so on a back burner every
choice that I've made has led me to this point right now and I I don't regret it it's pretty
great