Ever been at an important juncture in your life and asked for a sign? Preferably a recognizable one? If you have, you’ll understand why the one I got a few weeks ago left little doubt about my fairy godmother’s intentions for this little company of mine.
Like most entrepreneurs, I have more ideas than funds and have to discipline myself to limit the day-dreaming (new shoes, more bags, clothes…ah) to the business at hand and building this venture one day at a time. (It doesn’t stop a person from sketching and planning though, since a person never knows when a big bag of cash will fall on her head. Most unexpectedly.) Well, no bag of cash has fallen on my head just yet, but something pretty darn close has. I met Jane.
I was riding the Jitney into Manhattan just after Thanksgiving to leave the tension of driving the Long Island Expressway to someone else and give myself some rare down time. It’s a rare occasion when people on the bus talk to one another (we’re New Yorkers), instead we respect one another’s privacy – to read the paper, send emails, stare out of the window.
Don’t ask me why, but Jane and I struck up a conversation that lasted the full two and a half hours into the city. It flowed easily as we covered everything from real estate to politics to careers. She asked me what I did and that inevitably led to showing her this website and my work. I waxed on about new designs and big plans and the need for an angel investor. Kickstarter, she asked, ever thought about that? Ah, yeah. But you have to make a video, a good one, and that costs a lot of money, takes a lot of time. Not in the budget right now.
Jane told me her husband is a documentary filmmaker. (An understatement of seismic proportions.) She neglected to mention that he’d won an Oscar, been nominated for a second, won two Emmy’s, two ACE awards, five CINE Golden Eagles, two NATPE Iris Awards and the 2007 George Foster Peabody Award. The list goes on. It’s probably a good thing I didn’t know – because I’d never have had the cheek to ask if he was looking for a charitable project to work on. (Yes, I did.)
I half expected her to curl an eyebrow and change seats, but she didn’t. She said she’d ask him and then said something about how you don’t get what you don’t ask for in life, good for me, you never know, etc. As we disembarked at 39th street and Third Avenue we hugged and pledged to get together in the Hamptons for a girls’ night out when we got back.
You can probably guess the rest. The following day I got an email from Jane telling me she looked forward to getting together again and that, yes, her husband, Nigel Noble, Oscar-Emmy-Etc.-Etc.-Etc.-winner, would be delighted to make a crowd-funding video for me. Delighted? Sweet Baby Jesus. THE SIGN. (Writ rather large.)
Nigel and I had our first planning meeting today to get acquainted and strategize about the narrative and visual content of the video. It was a master class in the art of story telling from the master himself. To say that it was humbling – and thrilling – all in the same breath, wouldn’t begin to cover it. Lucky, lucky, lucky me. Grateful me. Thank you, Nigel, for your mind-boggling generosity.
I hope you all will stay tuned as I chronicle the process of creating a crowd-funding campaign with Nigel and log our progress toward the launch in spring. It’s sure to be as fascinating as Nigel himself. Kickstarter or Indiegogo or whoever’s interested, here we come!
Watch Nigel’s gorgeous PBS program, ‘Craft In America | Memory‘ .
To learn more about Nigel and his extraordinary career Click Here.
