The State of the Industry
I was at Disney for 28 years and I’ve been at Universal for six. In college I was a Jungle Cruise Skipper at Disneyland; in grad school, I worked at Universal Studios as a tour guide. Professionally, it’s practically all I’ve known. And now, thanks to circumstances none of us could have foreseen just a year ago, the business that I love, that I dreamed about being a part of when I was a kid, that has taken care of me and my family all these years, has shaped my life and friendships and given me immense creative fulfillment, has vanished. All the amazing colleagues I have worked should-to-shoulder with making dreams come true for millions of happy kids and “kids at heart” all over the world find ourselves at a loss. We know we will soon be engaged in brilliant and clever projects in brighter days ahead but there’s the sticky question of “now.” Here’s what I plan to do in the days and months immediately ahead on this rocky path: I want to take all my personal passion, inspiration and penchant for magic-making and share it with the people both in and not in our business. Imagine infusing audiences with the possibility of magic and the magic of possibility, exposing companies to new ways of seeing old problems, and inspiring people to create in ways they never dreamed possible. This website describes how I’m going to tackle this exciting ambition. So, while this is my first week on my own after 34 straight years working for these two great companies, I look forward to taking on this new and scary challenge. Because making something new that never existed before is, after all, what we do.
And so it begins…
So 2020, well, well, well, the year of the pivot. I have long entertained the notion that there’d be a time when I could spend all my time sharing everything learned in more than three decades of working at Disney and Universal. I’d impart that knowledge to young designers, students, and people from other businesses who could use some of that magic to sprinkle it across their processes and products and make something special happen. I just didn’t know that day would be TODAY, RIGHT NOW! GO TO OFFICE DEPOT, YOU’RE STARTING YOUR OWN BUSINESS! HURRY! BUY YOURSELF SOME POST-ITS! I’m excited, because I have to be, that circumstances have presented me with the opportunity to jump into this scary-but-fraught-with-possibilities endeavor now. And terrified. Like asking someone to the Prom. What will you do if they say “yes”? Can you handle it? Are you going to do something stupid and awkward? Or will you fall in love, have babies, win the lottery, get divorced… but we’re getting ahead of ourselves. There’s an expression in Japanese, “chabudai-gaeshi” (チャブ台返し). It means “to flip over the table.” Sometimes when companies throw out their business plan, retrench and start over, they’ll talk about flipping over the “chabudai.” So here we go. The world has flipped all of our tables and they’re hurtling around and we’re not sure where they’re going to land. So I’m starting my own business. I just reread that sentence. Good lord. Yes, it’s true. Taxes. Accounting. Finally, my dad is right, I should have taken some business classes. Oh, and don’t think he’s not still saying it, at 93. But it’s happening, starting now. And you, dear reader, are all the luckier for it. I want to invite you to look over the services I’m offering elsewhere on this site and maybe there’s something I can do to help you be more clever about whatever it is you’re trying to be clever about.
What are you looking at?
This site hasn’t even launched yet so I don’t know what you’re doing poking around here. Not that you’re not welcome now but I’m launching Friday, December 18th, 2020. But since you ended up here, feel free to sniff around and let me know what you think. Especially if you find typos. Or things on the site that just don’t work or don’t make sense. I’m not sure what direction the blog page will take or if it will even stick around. But it seems like it might be good to have a section where it’s possible to have a conversation through online comments. I’m always up for a good chat about all things creative and so I’ll try and populate this page with provocative things that can stimulate our thinking about creativity, the creative process, and shiny new creative things. One week to go…