--Maturity includes the recognition that no one is going to see anything in us that we don't see in ourselves. Stop waiting for a producer. Produce yourself.
--"...Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
--In every community, there is work to be done. In every nation, there are wounds to heal. In every heart, there is the power to do it.
--Marianne Williamson
Having run out of land in my cross-country quest, with a hard-stop at the Pacific shore, it was clear that I needed to take my stand and commit. What I decide enroute to this point was that I wanted to focus on creating my own and fostering others' creative visions. It was also clear to me that to do this most rewardingly, I primarily wanted to put myself into collaborative environments with creative colleagues who shared the same passion for their projects and enjoyed the process of bringing them to life as part of a team. I also wanted these projects and relationships to be fun.
The onslaught of the Great Recession didn't make facing down these challenges any easier. Neither did the major technological and business-model changes that were then radically impacting on the entertainment and media businesses and continue to do so. Starting any new company is fraught with difficulties in the best of times and these were certainly not those from almost any perspective.
What I learned from my time in Austin was how to seek out strong creative souls with whom to partner and how to avoid those with whom I should not. Creative Projects Group had a history but it needed to hit its full stride by building more bandwidth and recasting its mission.
The economy drove more of the dynamics than I had hoped and forced certain pragmatic choices that made this creative drive less linear than I would have liked. In assessing what to do next, it seemed that a mix of "what I had done" and "what I wanted to do" would be required as a matter of practical necessity. This parsed out to our focusing on four key areas:
Creative Development
Coaching and Consulting
Alternative Dispute Resolution
Workshops and Events
For me, clearly the first of these areas is where my principal course was set. Having served as both production counsel and Executive Producer on several independent films, with multicultural and social issue themes, it became clearer to me that my goal was to be involved as much as possible with producing films, television programs, online and installation ventures. Socially oriented media, in the vein of www.participantmedia.com and www.takepart.com, seem to track well with my life story and goals. As I discovered, these all involve long development, financing and pre-production arcs, financial and other resources to sustain the journey. That's when the need to focus also on other areas came to the fore. The question was how to find a market for our skill sets. Artists, entertainers, athletes and entrepreneurs all need some form of coaching, consulting, forums for self-realization and the ability to resolve their differences. The latter required less hostile forums than courtrooms, with their attendant rules of combat and debilitating processes and inflated expenses. Alternative means for resolution, such as mediation and arbitration, are needed. Law firms are frequently inefficient and operate with outdated business models. Innovative, multidisciplinary approaches are needed today for the delivery of legal and other services to clients.
Our overwhelming conclusion was that we needed to create an out-of-the-box, cross-disciplinary business model tapping highly skilled teams of people. To be entrepreneurially and financially nimble, as an early stage venture, we needed people whom we could call upon to collaborate on specific projects, while they still maintained their own independent business ventures. Our principal goal was to identify and bring such colleagues on board. We did so and these are the members of the Advisory Board that we formed, the "kitchen-cabinet" that now serves as our "virtual enterprise" of people. We are all dedicated to being part of a collaborative, creative community and work together on a wide range of projects and ventures.
With this affirmative step, a new era in the history of Creative Projects Group has been launched. We have created a transformative business model that is designed to make a positive difference in the lives of all of its participants, which is the next chapter...
© 2011 by William Nix. All Rights Reserved
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