Meet Ashley Mazanec, a self-professed tiny home nerd and talented musician. Ashley just released a new song and music video shot in her tiny house! In this conversation, we will talk about what it's like filming a music video in a tiny house, why Ash was drawn to the tiny house movement, and what she hopes to achieve with this music video. Ash has also lived in 3 different tiny homes, all rentals, so we talk about the challenges of finding tiny homes as longterm rentals. It's a really interesting conversation and I hope you stick around to meet the charming Ash Mazanec.
In This Episode:
- Living in multiple tiny homes and seeking community.
- Tiny homes: eco-friendly and affordable housing option.
- Why living tiny aligns with Ash’s values, ecological activism.
- Policy changes for the environment and sustainable farming solutions
- The challenges of living tiny legally in San Diego
- Ashley’s music video and creative process
Links and Resources:
Guest Bio:
Ashley Mazanec
Ash Mazanec is the brain behind the just-released tiny house love song and music video, “Shelter.” A self-professed tiny home nerd, the highly-efficient environmental footprint is what drew her to live in her first tiny home in 2016. Now living in her third tiny home, Ash’s new song about the “Emerald Submarine” is a celebratory anthem for The tiny house movement at large.
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Ashley Mazanec 0:00
Well, first off, I want to say that I was really looking forward to the challenge and I was looking forward to the awkwardness of squeezing for musicians in tiny house and then having two people, three people running around with cameras. I mean, it was hilarious. You know, I would dance by one and they would just switch voices with me. I mean, there's a reason that none of the frames are really zoomed out. You don't really get turned like everything, but
Ethan Waldman 0:24
welcome to the Tiny House Lifestyle Podcast to show where you learn how to plan, build and live the tiny lifestyle. I'm your host, Ethan Waldman, and this is episode 267. With Ashley Mazanec. Ashley initially reached out to me because she just completed and released a music video that features a tiny house the video is called a shelter. And Ashe is actually a self professed tiny home nerd and has lived in three different tiny houses. In this conversation, we will talk about what it's like filming a music video in a tiny house, why Ash was drawn to the tiny house movement and what she hopes to achieve with this music video. And what it's like finding tiny homes to live in as long term rentals because Ash has lived in three tiny homes and they've all been rentals. It's a really interesting conversation. And I hope you stick around to meet the charming Ash Mazanec. But before we get started, did you know that I personally send a tiny house newsletter every week on Tuesdays. It's called Tiny Tuesdays. And it's a weekly email with tiny house news, interviews, photos and resources. It's free to subscribe and I even share sneak peeks of things that are coming up. Ask for feedback about upcoming podcast guests and more. It's really the best place to keep a pulse on what I'm doing in the tiny house space. And also stay informed of what's going on in the tiny house movement. To sign up, go to the tiny house dotnet slash newsletter where you can sign up for the tiny Tuesday's newsletter. And of course you can unsubscribe at any time I will never send you spam. And if you ever don't want to receive emails, it's easy to unsubscribe. So again, that's the tiny house dotnet slash newsletter. Thanks and I hope you enjoy next week's tiny Tuesday's newsletter
All right, I am here with Ashley mazanec Ash is the brainchild behind the just released Tiny House love song and music video shelter. A self professed tiny home nerd a highly efficient environmental footprint is what drew her to live in her first tiny home in 2016. Now living in her third tiny home ashes new song about the Emerald submarine is a celebratory anthem for the tiny house movement at large. Ash Mazanik. Welcome to the show.
Ashley Mazanec 2:48
Thank you Ethan. It's so nice to meet you.
Ethan Waldman 2:51
Yeah, so great to meet you and glad to have a fellow musician on the the Tiny House Lifestyle Podcast.
Ashley Mazanec 2:58
Absolutely. We should collab sometime.
Ethan Waldman 3:00
Yeah, I would love to I'm actually primarily a violin player. I've done like session work fiddle stuff on on people's recording. So feel free to send something over.
Ashley Mazanec 3:10
Lovely. Sounds awesome.
Ethan Waldman 3:13
But this interview is not about me. It's about you. So tell me about the story and the making of your music, video shelter. You got it.
Ashley Mazanec 3:26
I have a degree in environmental policy from UCSD. I got my master's there a few years ago and one of my good friends Christine had approached me about doing a climate related documentary or video of some kind. And I said, Well, what do you think about a tiny house themed music video, I was like, you can interview me all day long, I can tell you about all the stats. But at the end of the day, I think it'd be the most fun and effective if we were to make a creative project of it. And she said, let me talk to my partner Jason. So she talked to the person that actually ultimately edited and created this music video. And they got on board. And we I wrote the song in a day and I recruited the musicians, I managed to have full sponsorship from the talent agency that I was working through at the time San Diego music and art company and they recorded the entire song and we made the whole thing happen relatively quickly. I think we released it exactly a year after recording the music video.
Ethan Waldman 4:28
Which was this week. Nice. Yeah. And so the moment so many so many places to go with that. I guess we should back up because I'm curious about your own kind of tiny house journey. It sounds like you were you you were no stranger to tiny house living by the time this friend asked you to do this video. No,
Ashley Mazanec 4:59
in fact, in In 2016, I was living in a tiny home with my then partner in Encinitas, California. And APDS approached me about an interview. And I went ahead and said yes, at the time I was living in a place they didn't want any it to disclose where the tiny house was because I was duration, which has been nice for every single of the tiny ones. So San Diego County, you got a long way to go on your laws to make it easier for people. But ultimately, I moved in, we moved our tiny house onto this little farm and then status. And it was it was a beautiful experience. The only reason I left is my partner and I split. And after that, I was just absolutely intent on living in some type of community again, in an environmentally friendly way. So it took me a couple of years. But I eventually found another tiny house, I was going to build one up in the mountains, and I was sort of salvaging wood. And Windows started to collect things to build as on the cheap. And because I'm a teacher, so I gotta do everything on the cheap. And when I went to go salvage some items from this really awesome community near me, I saw that they had a tiny home parks on their nine acre property. And I walked by with my friend and I, my eyes sort of lit up because on the side of the house, there was a giant Beatles stained glass window. And I was like, Wait, this is like, this is like a musician has to live here. Right? Like, obviously, start with. And then the thing was like, it had like 10 colors on it, it was pink and purple with like an Easter egg. It was yellow. I was I was like, and I'm kind of that way, like I put all kinds of colors together. And I was like, I feel like I'm supposed to live here. But I'm also here for completely different reasons. So I went home that night, and I was literally bothered by this feeling of conflict around this tiny home. And I thought about it, I kind of close my eyes and meditate on it. And I decided I'm gonna go ahead and ask about living there because I wanted to try living in an already established community. And we're talking about like a community of 20 people together on nine acres, co owners very unique living situation, multiple tiny homes. And I thought wouldn't it be cool to have that experience before building my own and potentially creating my own little tiny house community? Wouldn't it be cool to kind of live with some veterans first. So I rented there for about a year and a half. And I ended up leaving for a variety of reasons. One of them is that my work is too far away. And now I'm actually in my third tiny I'm not fully moved in. But I'm getting there every day I get a little bit cozier here and I'm in a double shipping container tiny home also renting as a story brawling unit and
Ethan Waldman 7:50
somebody's on somebody's land. That's awesome. How are you enjoying the shipping container. I love it. So
Ashley Mazanec 8:00
this one is this is the biggest I've ever had in terms of tiny homes, because it's two shipping containers separated by a large deck that's about the same size as the shipping container pool. And so it's already you know, if you include the deck like three times, four times as big as my last home, because there's another duck behind me, which has a nice little view and there's a little shower out there likes to entertain. And so with the outdoor space, I feel like and that and they're super high ceilings and and there's just windows everywhere. I
Ethan Waldman 8:32
just feel like I have the time and space here. It's great. Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. Man. I think renting tiny houses is such a great way to get a better sense of of what you're looking for and what features and and kind of even sizes that that you like, I'm guessing the houses that you'd mentioned that this is the biggest what was the smallest?
Ashley Mazanec 8:55
Well, the Emerald submarine that one that I rented in the community was was the smallest I want to say it was like 100 and a little bit square feet, maybe 120 square feet and then the loft. You couldn't even sit up all the way unless you were directly in the A frame which you'll see in the music video. I'm sitting right in the eighth frame. Yep. And if you had a normal mattress up there couldn't even sit out. You know, you'd have to hunch the whole time. Yep. Yep. So I put a futon mattress, which I like sleep on apart from services anyway. So it actually was a winner across the board.
But yeah, that was the smallest. The first one we were in. I want to say it was closer to maybe more like the 202 100 220 square feet. Okay. Yeah,
it was optimized and it was taller.
Ethan Waldman 9:49
Okay. Yeah. So in this one I see behind you most most people are just listening to this. You've got your keyboard behind you. Do you have other other instruments and do you do well Most of your music making in in the tiny house?
Ashley Mazanec 10:03
Well, this instrument right here is built in, which is nice. I'm primarily a vocalist, although I do, I am in a communist, or a church on we do they do their masters once a week. So I work for a private Catholic school in Del Mar. And I do teach recorder ukulele. So I have plenty of space to keep all the instruments in the classroom and all the amplifiers. And you know, we have everything, we even have a clarinet floating around there. And we've got all kinds of percussion instruments and a cone and a drum set. And, you know, I
probably have seven keyboards.
So you know, I just have the one keyboard here that I own. That's the one where if I feel like writing, I'm going to turn to the piano 99% of the time. And I'm just getting my vocal setup here, actually, because there's a number of DJs that wants to do either remixes for shelter, or they want to collaborate on future works. And I've already featured on a ton of electronic music. That's how I got my started music. I'm looking to keep going with that. But to actually take a little more initiative this summer since I have some time.
Ethan Waldman 11:07
Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, yeah. So what were some of the the challenges of filming an entire music video in a tiny house or in and around the tiny house, I should say?
Ashley Mazanec 11:23
Well, first off, I want to say that I was really looking forward to the challenge. And I was looking forward to the awkwardness of squeezing four musician in a tiny house, and then having two people three people running around with cameras. I mean, it was hilarious, you know, I would dance by one, and they would just switch places with me. I mean, there's a reason that none of the frames are really zoomed out. You don't really get sure, like
Ethan Waldman 11:43
every close up shot, or everybody's closed
Ashley Mazanec 11:47
up. You know, we were in close quarters the whole time. And I thought it would be super funny to have the drummer kind of shoved into the bathroom. I actually wanted him halfway in the bath inside of the shower. But he didn't set up that way. So I ended up in the shower at one
point sort of dancing.
But, but the giant upright bass barely fit in the tiny kitchen. I mean, he's groovin like getting nothing but getting it in there. He was like biting his fingernails. Because, you know, it's a pretty precious large instrument.
Ethan Waldman 12:17
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Ashley Mazanec 12:19
But the keyboard was already in there, because I'm a pianist.
And so that was actually optimized
such that it was keyboard. And then I actually had a table that pulled out for mouse
and this kind of keyboard. Right, yeah. And then I have another table for the computer. And so
the whole desk was all optimized. And my neighbor, Dave Buddha, and another amazing musician, actually helped to build that custom so that I can fit everything in one spot. Need. I have yet to do that here. I would like to, but these are the kinds of things that don't happen overnight, you sort of move in and you're like, well, what's the essential thing? I need some shells? I need some hooks. I need some this and that. This This home is not fully optimized yet. I don't think anyone's ever lived to your long term.
Ethan Waldman 13:06
Okay. So it's gonna take a minute. Has it been hard to find tiny house rentals that are willing to do long term rentals? Because I feel like, you know, on Airbnb, tiny houses, you know, are such a great investment for people that that there might not be as much incentive to want to rent to somebody long term.
Ashley Mazanec 13:27
Absolutely. Yeah, I was looking for a while and you know, being a music teacher in San Diego, California, you don't make a lot of money. It's a very sad reality. All teachers, I mean, all the teachers I work with, it's just like, it's amazing that we even are able to survive in San Diego County, given how much it costs to live here. So I hunted I lived. I lived two places last year. One was a bad bad landlord situation. And the other one I lived in a trailer for a minute, but the train was so loud. Um, so I ended up moving in with my family. And I said, I'm not going anywhere until I find a place that I can live in for a while. Like I'm not lifting a finger. It is so much work to move. And to go through that process during you know, while your work disruptive. Yeah. And I gave on the weekend. So it's like, I never really take breaks, like I'm like working, working, working, digging, digging, digging, and then like do it again. Yeah, yeah. And so the move was just crazy. I mean, I was I was exhausted. So yeah, this was a magic miracle that happened at like five in the morning. I remember I woke up it was a Saturday morning,
and I just woke up full
of energy and I was like, I need to find a place I'm getting on Craigslist. I'm gonna look everywhere. I'm gonna look high and low. I was on apartment lists. I was on you know, special little roommate websites, I'd signed up for everything. Because I knew that I wanted to find something special ever since I've lived in the first tiny home I was in. I just don't like like a normal condo or apartment complex. Not excited me the same way. I wanted something unique that sort of fit my personality. And lo and behold, five o'clock in the morning, I see this post on Craigslist for a double shipping container artist studio. And I was like, Huh. Like all the things I am a headline. Like, I'm an artist, I'm looking for a tiny out home situation. And they talked about how it was under this giant tree and under this huge pine tree and, and how they have chickens and how they have, you know, a big yard. And I was like, wow, these people are like right up my alley. And it's right near some great walking trails. And so it was an instant. Yes. I mean, I came over and it was like, Okay,
Ethan Waldman 15:43
where do I sign? Yeah. Yeah. Nice. Good for you. Oh, I'm happy for you that you found it. Just from what I'm seeing. It looks awesome. Thank you.
Ashley Mazanec 15:53
Yeah, it was it was quite a fine. It was it was hard. It was months in the making? For sure.
Ethan Waldman 15:58
Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's talk more about the environmental footprint and those kinds of stats, because you mentioned that you, you You came armed with stats. And yeah, is that primarily what drew you to tiny house living the environmental footprint piece of it?
Ashley Mazanec 16:16
Yeah, so the partner that bought our first tiny home, my first tiny home, we just watched the most depressing environmental documentaries together. He knew I was into the environment, and he was a little behind on his, you know, knowledge. And so we were just watching all the movies about the ocean falling apart. And I thought but you know, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and all the plastic, you know, the, you know, the rainforest, whatever it was, it was like, we watched it all. And at a certain point, it got to him. And he also was someone who's very cognizant of his spending, and hated the fact that we have that we're paying rent every month is always money. He's like, Babe, you know, if I buy a tiny home, would you live in everything? I was like, Are you kidding? Like, do you know you're talking to us? I would live in a tiny home with you, that would be amazing. And he's like, Okay, well, if I have one built? Do you have to help me find a place for it? Because I had heard that that was the hardest part. And it is, quite frankly, the hardest part, anyone can build a tiny home. But then what yeah, you know, are you gonna buy land, or if you do buy land, good for you. But you have to pretend like you're gonna build a big house, you want to live in your small house on your land, because there are size requirement. And so one of the reasons this song and this project is so meaningful to me, is because we actually have a really long way to go in terms of policy to make tiny houses a normal, regular, awesome thing. And to reap the environmental rewards, one of which is that the average carbon emissions per year of a tiny home is about 2000 pounds, versus your average size home of 28,000 pounds. That's 40 times more carbon, that's just carbon that has nothing to do with the water footprint, nothing to do with the resource footprint, right? Yeah. Nothing else. Yes, carbon is carbon. Exactly. And that's only one way of measuring sort of the health of our environment is how healthy our our carbon emissions are, how healthy and stable Our climate is. So the average ecological footprint for tiny homes and what this means essentially how much of the Earth is required to make a tiny home versus a normal tiny home is about 3.9 global hectares versus the national average of 8.4 Global hectares. So in other words, it takes less than half the amount of land to produce the resources necessary to make a tiny home versus a big, normal sized home. So at the end of the day, no one's going to twist someone's arm and say you have to live in a tiny home. But as somebody that studied policy, and it's thought a lot about the environment, why wouldn't we make it easy for people that want to live small, and to have a minimal footprint to do it? It's great, it's wonderful. They're doing everybody a favor there, they're treading lightly on the planet. And 366 million acres worth of biological productive resources also could potentially be saved. If only 10% of Americans downsize to a tiny house. And I would bet you at least 5% of Americans would want to downsize to a tiny home if they actually had that option one because it's cheaper. And we at least in California, we have a major affordable housing crisis. So building smaller just makes sense for that reason alone, but then you add the environmental benefits to it. And it's like, I know that people want to do this, and there's a reason people are willing to do it illegally, like me, because I feel better about myself. I feel better living a lighter footprint. And I know that there's other people that want to do it too. So So yeah, the song is partly a celebration of how far we've come because there are a lot more legal roads to living in a tiny house now, but you still can't live in one as your primary volume.
Ethan Waldman 20:00
Fornia which I think is really sad. That is sad. And my understanding is that California has actually been fairly out in front in terms of allowing accessory dwelling units. Yes. Yeah.
Ashley Mazanec 20:12
Fresno, I know it was one of the first ones. Ohio is pretty good. San Diego has an ADU policy with tiny homes, you can you can have a tiny home as an accessory dwelling unit, I believe you have to remove it from wheels and put it on the foundation and all of these things, which I'm not seeing is a terrible thing. Yeah, but it does add a lot of expense. And then there's all the permitting costs, and all of that. So it's not like it happens easily, even though it's technically illegal. And I want to say there's less than 100 tiny homes period in San Diego County that are permitted, because of these reasons. So if we made it easier, we made it less expensive. I do feel like it would be a lot more popular. So I do think we still have a long way to go. And I know that the IRC the international International Building Code Council, yeah, I might have the acronym wrong. They also certify a lot of tiny homes. And so I think there's a lot of a push to allow anything that's that's accredited on that level to be an accessory dwelling unit and to not have to go through additional permitting process that's
so expensive. Totally. Yeah. So yeah, so I,
I live tiny for the ecological reasons. And that's one of the reasons I would love the opportunity to make more content around tiny homes. This was one song like I said, I wrote it in the day. I just, I mean, I went $400 out of pocket, literally everyone volunteered. But I just thought wouldn't it be cool to make more content like this, and maybe even make it branded for people's different tiny home businesses? You know, people have spent money on jingles for however many years, it's a common part of marketing is like get a song, you know, get some coffee. And so I just thought I'd put it out there as kind of this random idea that, you know, if the right person hears this podcast, to check out the Indiegogo campaign, not only if you're in San Diego County, could I just host you to come over and hang out on my pad and we drink craft meet together and talk tiny homes. But if you want to go a little further, I can write your custom song. I can have custom production as little as $1,500 for a rap song, or an electronic song. And we're talking like amazing artists, like I think he or she's working with like, one of the Wu Tang Clan guys. I mean, he's like, I mean, Eric is phenomenal. I used to tour with him with a group called inspired flight. These are not low talent people like I've I've toured the US as a singer and and I only work with really amazing people, quite frankly. So I would love the opportunity to take this next step and to work with some tiny house brands and create some really fun content.
Ethan Waldman 22:52
Awesome. Yeah. So tell. Tell us more about the the Indiegogo campaign.
Ashley Mazanec 22:57
Sure. So Lindsay would the tiny home lady and I have partnered in this endeavor was not really my idea. I don't think I ever would have launched a crowdfunding campaign on my own. It's just kind of like, I don't know, irks me, I'm like you. What? No, I don't want to do that. But she was like, you know, I think it makes a lot of sense for what you're what you're after. And it would be cool to do more, to do more homes to do more tiny house songs in addition to potentially touring the song. Yeah. And so one of the thoughts is, there's two tiny house festivals coming up in Colorado. And I thought I was gonna have to cancel one of the weekends, I might still, because there haven't been anybody that have purchased concerts yet. But I'm willing to go and hire a small band for any given tiny house to have a band, so people can tour they can get, you know, get a little bit of live entertainment. And you can also trap travels a guy and Travis who's this amazing van lifers gonna be there and he's offered to record everything and capture a ton of footage for people social media, you know, for all of their purposes. Super fun. And you know, we thought we could make kind of a party of it.
Ethan Waldman 24:10
Yeah, yeah, that sounds super fun. I hope somebody buys that one and there will be of course links to the music video and also to the Indiegogo campaign on the show notes page for this episode, which I will say kind of at the end. But I hope people go and check it out because it's really fun.
Ashley Mazanec 24:31
Totally and to throw it out there too. It doesn't have to be for business. If you live in a tiny home and your partner's birthday is coming up and you want to go big because it's like your 10th 10th anniversary or like a you know they're turning the IBO or something. You know we could do a type custom tiny house music video about your tiny home you know, or custom Tiny House song about your tiny house. Anyways, I'm just throwing it out there because it's a unique opportunity that I'm offering for a couple months.
Ethan Waldman 24:59
Nice. Do you? Did you find that that living tiny helped or hurt or changed your your creativity in any way?
Ashley Mazanec 25:13
Hmm. Well, I
will say that living tiny has made me feel like I'm living in line with my values
more than when I live anywhere else. And when that
happens, there's a sense of peace, a sense of ease that happens. And there's also this re emergence of, for me a desire and need to do something about our current ecological existence. We are in the middle of the sixth mass extinction. We're losing species faster than we lost species when the dinosaurs went extinct, I mean, at the same rates.
And that's super alarming.
I mean, I learned about the rainforest in the second grade. And I had stars in my eyes, because I was like, that sounds like a magical special place. And it's the lungs of the planet. And we're hacking it to pieces, or for agriculture. You know, it's like, really, we haven't figured out a sustainable way to farm yet. I'm sorry. But there's incredible books out there like regeneration by Paul Hawken that have all of the answers. And not just to the climate crisis, but to all of the soil crisis, the dead zone, ocean deadzone crisis, the overfishing crisis, like there are answers to all of these. And I don't understand all the naysaying about, oh, we can't do that. Or oh, it's it's anti economy. No, it's not, what's anti economy is robbing future generations of their opportunity to live in a beautiful world that's actually imbalanced ecologically, that actually is alive and beautiful. There are things in a teaspoon of soil that we still don't understand the magic of what is in there, there's so much going on in the smallest little bit of soil that we are still starting to understand. And I think to destroy places like the rainforest is arrogant, it's arrogant of our species. And we're only going to continue to see negative impacts from that over and over and over. And so it's not the environment versus the economy. They're one in the same. The cool thing about the economy is that we have control over it, we can change the economy to favor environmental decision making and decision making that also favors our health. And our well being, which we don't always do, right, we still subsidize Sugar, sugar, the thing that feeds cancer, this thing that this feeds diabetes, Alzheimer's, heart disease, sugar, white sugar, we still I still have to pay for that all of us are paying for that industry we exist. They're slashing and burning down in the tropics. I mean, this is an ugly industry that actually doesn't need to exist at all. I mean, that for one, it's just an obvious policy change that could happen that would that would overturn. So the way that so many of us live. So I have a lot of hope, that we can turn things around. And, and one of the ways that I kind of keep marching forward is is trying to live my values and trying to have fun along the way. Yeah, yeah. Well, you
Ethan Waldman 28:06
mentioned a book recommendation regeneration. I put it on my list. Now. I do like to ask guests for, you know, two or three resource recommendations. So like books, podcasts, YouTube channels, really anything that that, you know, has inspired you along the way that you'd like to share? Yeah, so this is
Ashley Mazanec 28:26
this is a regeneration book by Paul Hawken. I actually base one of my classes I teach junior high, I teach an elective called Creative regeneration. Okay. And so I spent a lot of time teaching kids about these solutions. And before that, I was an art teacher and I did the same thing. We do art projects, about each of these solutions, because I really want to make it clear to kids. It's not about scaring people. It's about like, hey, there are so many awesome opportunities to be a part of the solution. Yeah. So that one by far is like my Bible in terms of what I you know, when I feel down about our current states, like there are really great answers. The second go to media is, surprisingly, Mark Hyman, the doctors pharmacy with an F. I'm a total health nut. And it doesn't, it's not always clear to people, how the environment and our health are really one of the same. But Mark Hyman makes it extremely clear. I mean, he talks about, you know, the magnesium in our soil, and the reason why most of us are depleted in magnesium, for example, and that's because we don't treat our soil well. We, you know, we're not taking care of our planet. We're, you know, our magnesium is rushing out to the ocean, you know, essentially, yeah. And, and, and we're not putting any magnesium back into our soil. We're not building up our soils. And so I was into Mark Hyman literally every single day for me. He's like, the voice of reason in my life. I don't have a partner. I'm single. And so he's like, he's like a rock for me every single day. I use You know, my commute to work. I listen to these one or two Mark Hyman podcast episodes. Nice. And he's probably, in my opinion, one of the best, most cutting edge thinkers of our time, up there with Tony Robbins. I just read lifeforce, actually, I have that one right here. Like forced by Tony Robbins, which is also about all of the incredible cutting edge health technology that we have at our fingertips. There's a mis understanding in our world that as we get old, that we start to become less valuable. And if we treat aging, like the disease, that actually it is, according to data out of Harvard, we prolong our what we call our health span, people can live a lot healthier lives at the end of their lives and be much more productive citizens and volunteer and be helping and be contributing anyways, that is extremely valuable. And anyone who's I think Tony Robbins, puts that into really great. He just his delivery is fantastic. And he has such a positive attitude. So yeah, for me, it's really inspiring to read that stuff. Saying how healthy and and keeping your energy high so that you can do the things that you love and the things that bring you purpose, which of course for me, has a lot to do with the environment and
Ethan Waldman 31:22
creativity. Nice. And as I mentioned, all the links to your stuff will be in the show notes. But for people listening, you know, is there any, like a website or somewhere where you want to, you know, tell people to go right now to follow you or check you out?
Ashley Mazanec 31:39
Oh, thank you. I mean, the number one thing, I would love it if everyone would check out the music video because it's just such a joy, and it will literally just make you happy. You can't like you can't avoid just feeling happy when you watch this music video. It's it's pure joy. Nice. And please share it with other people, and especially in the tiny house movement that you know, would love to appreciate it like a silly fun music video squeezed into this cute little Beatles themed tiny house. Yeah, that would be the number one thing number two would be check out the Indiegogo campaign see if there's anything there for you. Don't be shy to message me. Because maybe there's something I'm not offering that I could be offering that you're looking and and I'm willing to negotiate? Well, I was in San Diego, if you happen to be in the general area, I might be able to do things that I can't offer somebody say that's in Colorado. So yeah, one of what for example, there's there's one person in particular that comes to mind, Lindsey called him the grandfather of tiny homes. He has a rap that he would really love to turn into a song.
So if you're someone who's like,
Okay, I kind of want to support this, but I'm not really I don't have a products or I'm not really sure what I do. J is looking for a sponsor to create a rap song. And there's just there's just a lot of creative ways to be involved with sort of the creative content production around tiny homes, and I just I invite your collaboration, feel free to find me on Instagram. That's an easy way to find to just message me out of the blue. My handles Ash mazanec as HMAZAN EC.
Ethan Waldman 33:12
Awesome. And my last question, which I've never asked a guest before, but I'm a huge Beatles fan. I was obsessed with the Yellow Submarine when I was a kid. And this might be a terribly hard question to ask. But what's your favorite Beatle song? Oh, my gosh, that
Ashley Mazanec 33:28
is a hard question. Because there's one that I can't I don't
Ethan Waldman 33:31
have an answer.
Ashley Mazanec 33:34
There's one I always do live because I get all the time in San Diego. Yeah. And it's come together, just because it's nice. Everybody responds to that song. Like, deep start tapping. People started singing along, they can't help them move their bodies. And so there's something about that song that I really love. I love the song. I want you as well that she's so heavy. I want you so that. Hey, that was really fun, too. There's a lot of nuances in that one.
Ethan Waldman 34:04
But yeah, the list goes on. And on and on. What's your favorite? Oh my gosh, I knew you're gonna ask me in return. It's i i would say that my favorite song on the yellow submarine is Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. I love something off of Abbey Road. I'm Looking Through You is a really fun one. That's those are ones that I sing to when I play. So it's like ones that I can play. I'm like, Oh, I really like these, but they're there. It's like choosing between our hundreds of children. Oh, yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Totally. Ash. Was that a thank you so much for being a guest on the show today. This is really fun. You're so
Ashley Mazanec 34:45
welcome. Thank you for having me, Ethan. I look forward to being in touch.
Ethan Waldman 34:49
Thank you so much to Ashley Mazanik for being a guest on the show today. You can find the show notes for this episode over at the tinyhouse.net/267 Again, that's thetinyhouse.net/267 There you will also find an embedded version of the shelter music video, links to ashes Indiegogo campaign, and so much more. So again, head over to the tiny house dotnet slash 267. While you're there, sign up for the tiny Tuesday's newsletter. This is a newsletter that I send well every week on Tuesdays with all the latest that's happening on the podcast in my tiny house world and also sharing news from the tiny house movement. That is the tiny Tuesdays newsletter, you can find that over at thetinyhouse.net/267. Well, that's all for this week. I'm your host, Ethan Waldman, and I'll be back next week with another episode of the Tiny House Lifestyle Podcast.
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