E9. The Business of Creativity w. Jey Van-Sharp and Kwasi Gyasi.
08/09/20 • 92 min
Today’s episode is with management consultants and two of the three founders of MyUberLife, Jey Van Sharp and Kwasi Gyasi. With combined degrees in electrical engineering, physics, math, and business, these two men developed keen senses for dimensionality and the need to impact the cultural spaces around them. “Through conversations, people were always amazed by how smart we were, part of it was because of the pigment in our skin” (16:05). While seeing a gap between the creativity of business and the business of creativity, their consultancy, MyUberLife was formed. “Let’s create this company called MyUberLife so it would be almost a self-manifestation like I want my life to be super so lets create a company and teach business to creative people and it was that simple (18:53).
Jey and Kwasi created an ecosystem of intellectuals by inadvertently becoming the middle man between cultural intelligence and business intelligence. “What we do is teach creative people business; as we found out to do that really well we also have to deal with the money and teach the money how to deal with creatives so we start teaching corporations culture and that community. So we start doing two things, one part teaching creative people about business and the other part teaching business people about creatives” (19:16) MyUberLife’s method always starts with the Why. “The first thing we do when we start out is tell artists to write their manifesto out. I don’t care about what you do, tell me why you’re doing it.” (22:12). Afterwhich, they approach with practicality: what is your story? How much does it cost to make these goals a reality? “Then you start understanding, ‘How much does it cost to do my practice?’ My rent, my studio, my equipment, my paint brushes. A lot of people don’t understand how much it costs to be an artist.” (23:30). How do we generate revenue around your creative endeavors? “We have a rule of thumb we say you need to make 3x the amount of money that it actually cost you to do something” (23:52).
During this episode, we discuss the formula for creating impact in the world, “Creativity times organization equals impact (25:06), the importance of owning your ideas (24:36), understanding the value of your individual story, “everywhere you go is your ideology and your ethos representative in that moment and time, in that space” (29:57) and how to communicate that to consumers, “Marketing is communicating your value through someone else. Marketing is also understanding what someone else values” (24:18). Recorded before quarantine, this informative conversation will cause you to pull out your notebook and get organized about your creative pursuits. It is with great pleasure to introduce Jey Van-Sharp and Kwasi Gyasi to the IBI podcast.
Links we mention in the episode:
Jey's Instagram: @jeyofmyuberlife
Kwasi's Instagram: @kwasiofmyuberlife
Thank you for tuning in! Please don't forget to rate, comment, subscribe and SHARE with a friend (@blackimaginationpodcast). Support this podcast: anchor.fm/blackimagination/support
Additional editorial content provided by Kalimah Small.
--- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/blackimagination/support
Today’s episode is with management consultants and two of the three founders of MyUberLife, Jey Van Sharp and Kwasi Gyasi. With combined degrees in electrical engineering, physics, math, and business, these two men developed keen senses for dimensionality and the need to impact the cultural spaces around them. “Through conversations, people were always amazed by how smart we were, part of it was because of the pigment in our skin” (16:05). While seeing a gap between the creativity of business and the business of creativity, their consultancy, MyUberLife was formed. “Let’s create this company called MyUberLife so it would be almost a self-manifestation like I want my life to be super so lets create a company and teach business to creative people and it was that simple (18:53).
Jey and Kwasi created an ecosystem of intellectuals by inadvertently becoming the middle man between cultural intelligence and business intelligence. “What we do is teach creative people business; as we found out to do that really well we also have to deal with the money and teach the money how to deal with creatives so we start teaching corporations culture and that community. So we start doing two things, one part teaching creative people about business and the other part teaching business people about creatives” (19:16) MyUberLife’s method always starts with the Why. “The first thing we do when we start out is tell artists to write their manifesto out. I don’t care about what you do, tell me why you’re doing it.” (22:12). Afterwhich, they approach with practicality: what is your story? How much does it cost to make these goals a reality? “Then you start understanding, ‘How much does it cost to do my practice?’ My rent, my studio, my equipment, my paint brushes. A lot of people don’t understand how much it costs to be an artist.” (23:30). How do we generate revenue around your creative endeavors? “We have a rule of thumb we say you need to make 3x the amount of money that it actually cost you to do something” (23:52).
During this episode, we discuss the formula for creating impact in the world, “Creativity times organization equals impact (25:06), the importance of owning your ideas (24:36), understanding the value of your individual story, “everywhere you go is your ideology and your ethos representative in that moment and time, in that space” (29:57) and how to communicate that to consumers, “Marketing is communicating your value through someone else. Marketing is also understanding what someone else values” (24:18). Recorded before quarantine, this informative conversation will cause you to pull out your notebook and get organized about your creative pursuits. It is with great pleasure to introduce Jey Van-Sharp and Kwasi Gyasi to the IBI podcast.
Links we mention in the episode:
Jey's Instagram: @jeyofmyuberlife
Kwasi's Instagram: @kwasiofmyuberlife
Thank you for tuning in! Please don't forget to rate, comment, subscribe and SHARE with a friend (@blackimaginationpodcast). Support this podcast: anchor.fm/blackimagination/support
Additional editorial content provided by Kalimah Small.
--- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/blackimagination/support
Previous Episode
E8. Torkwase Dyson, Artist.
Today’s episode is with painter, sculptor, and multi-hyphenated artist, Torkwase Dyson.
Born in Chicago Illinois, into a family embedded with scholars and artists of many forms, Torkwase found her artistic path while studying Sociology at Tougaloo College, later receiving her Bachelors of Fine Arts at Virginia Commonweath University and her Masters at the Yale School of Art. Her work is about the reimagining of black compositional thought, while exploring shape and form as it relates to black bodies in space. In Torwkase’s words, “The works are deconstructions of natural and built environments that consider how individuals negotiate and negate various types of systems and spatial order.”
This multi-disciplinary approach was on full display during her show, “Nautical Dusk” which debuted at the Colby Museum of Art in the fall of 2018. Her sculptures, paintings, and geometric forms depicted the life of Samuel Osborne, a janitor at Colby College at the turn of the 20th century, who was born into slavery. Using Osborne’s text obituaries written by white authors this exhibition raised questions concerning creation, conveyance, and autonomy. In 2019, she was awarded the prestigious Studio Museum Wein Prize, and in 2020 she was added to the roster of the influential Pace Gallery. Torkwase continues to explore the language of structural constructs, black activism, and what it means to be and live in blackness.
During our conversation, we discuss the role language plays in her practice, how art allowed her to express her innermost being, why one must ALWAYS be prepared, and what black genius means to her. Recorded during lockdown, this eloquent conversation is one for the books. It is with great pleasure to introduce to you, an artist of many forms, Torkwase Dyson.
Links we mention in the episode:
Torkwase's Instagram: @torkwasedyson
Thank you for tuning in! Please don't forget to rate, comment, subscribe and SHARE with a friend (@blackimaginationpodcast). Support this podcast: anchor.fm/blackimagination/support
Additional editorial content provided by Kalimah Small.
--- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/blackimagination/supportNext Episode
E10. Writing Your Narrative w. Tarell Alvin McCraney.
Episode number 10, with playwright, Tarrell Alvin McCraney
Tarell Alvin McCraney on living freely: “I’m starting a new chapter where I try to live and be as free as possible rather than be chained to survival mode.”
What makes a person become a writer? An Academy award-winning, playwright, actor and co-writer of the 2016 film ‘Moonlight,’ Tarell Alvin McCraney likens writing more as a survival instinct, rather than a calling. Growing up with a constant feeling that change was imminent, Tarell found a way to take hold of that narrative, and rewrite it.
Tarell began writing the first draft of ‘In Moonlight black boys look blue’ which later became the source material for the Oscar-winning movie, “Moonlight” with director Barry Jenkins. He describes it as an effort of piecing together the scapes of memories that he had about who he was, who his mother thought he was, and who he could become. In January of 2019, his Tony and Drama Desk award-winning play, Choir Boy debuted on broadway, and later that year, he made his television debut as writer and executive producer of the critically acclaimed series, “David Makes Man” on Oprah’s OWN network. In 2020, it won the prestigious Peabody Award, a first for the network. And lest he stops to catch his breath, Tarell also serves as the chair of the playwriting department at the Yale School Of Drama.
Here are some highlights...
On His Super Hero Story: “When you grow up knowing that, that shift, that change is ever-present and can fall one way or another, it’s sorta something you begin to survive rather than live” (7:37)
On the Internal Journey: “If you look around and see change happening all the time and you can’t imagine yourself in it, then you begin to write yourself into stories”
On the Power of Word and Text: “Words are powerfully limiting in that we are often grasping, throwing, pulling at, shaking up vocal sounds, to form, to shape, sometimes the unimaginable, the unquantifiable, the unpalatable things that are ephemeral feelings”
On the way, Spirit informs the Diaspora: “Because capitalism is the zeitgeist or spiritual animism of the United States, it interferes with a real look at spiritual and the understanding and investigation of that which is free”
On the Power of Naming Yourself: “That’s what all religion, history, methodology, cosmology, are about trying to put some order to the world we live in through theses ideas of stories”
On the Idea of The Wounded Healer: “Empathy, If you too have been wounded, you know why it is necessary to heal”
On Advice to Young Writers: “There’s moment’s where you have to be still enough in what you’re doing recognize when you are doing what’s right for you and your work and your path”
Links we mention in the episode:
Tarell's Instagram: @octarell_again
David Makes Man on OWN: www.oprah.com
Thank you for tuning in! Please don't forget to rate, comment, subscribe and SHARE with a friend (@blackimaginationpodcast). Support this podcast: anchor.fm/blackimagination/support
Additional editorial content provided by Kalimah Small.
--- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/blackimagination/supportIf you like this episode you’ll love
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