The Non-Creative Perspective
As business is ramping up Nick and I are starting to alternate writing the blog posts to give you a different perspective on our company. As the business development side of the equation at Lux Virtual at times I feel like I might not have as much to offer… How in the world did I find myself working as the Executive Producer of an Animation Studio? My only claim to fame in the creative side is being Artist of the Month back in sixth grade. If I remember correctly I managed to get a 134% in the class. This is not a testament to my creative genius but rather to my tenacious nature. I tend to overdo everything. The teacher allowed for unlimited extra credit projects if we had completed all of our assigned tasks, that’s how you get to the peculiar percentage that I managed to reach in the class.
When starting Lux Virtual the phrase that kept coming to mind was “Exciting and Terrifying.” Last year I finished my teaching contract at Peninsula College instructing business, marketing and entrepreneurship classes. Now I was venturing off in a new direction with a business partner that thankfully I trust implicitly and who has an incredible artistic talent. Something that is one of the furthest things from my expertise area.
Transitioning from teaching to having your own business are about as opposite of “energies” as you can imagine. While teaching you have control of your environment. I pulled together the curriculum, planned out the lessons, facilitated the conversations and decided how to measure and grade the students for evaluation.
I have recently come to like a farming analogy with start ups. You make a plan for the field, prepare the ground, plant the seeds, and then comes the long process of waiting, watering, pulling up potential weeds, and making preparations for the harvest. For a little over a year we did this. Going to mixers, talking to leaders of companies, meeting with mentors, assuring our wives that we knew what we were doing and praying for the best. The controlled environment of the classroom had evaporated and we were now experimenting with how to grow a business, going from an idea to a physical reality.
Sure enough our labor has started to slowly pay off. Connecting with strategic partners that we trust and clients that share similar life philosophies is starting to turn our excitement and terror into the reality of “nice, now we have a lot of work to do.” It’s a great problem to have and as we work through our second year of business it’s good to see the small fruits of our labor beginning to sprout.