Everything Has A Beginning.......
I can’t believe it’s finally here. ONE YEAR from the creation of the actual concept, name and decision to “go for it”. I found a quote by Earl Nightengale, an American motivational speaker, who said “ One great idea can revolutionize the world”. I am hoping that my idea for The Yellow Brick Road Project and Yellow Brick Road Radio will be one of those ideas!
So how did I get from there (15 years in local Boston radio sales and management) to here. Well I guess you could say that I’m a lot like Dorothy. I had passions and desires that I wasn’t fulfilling, internally, and the “universe” decided to give me a little push. Just like Dorothy got a little push with her “cyclone”. After spending most of 2008 in two very unrewarding media sales jobs ( remember the market was starting to crumble and ad sales were first in line), I was privileged, yes privileged, to be laid off in early December 2008. Needless to say I was not distressed with the situation. A month earlier I finally moved from my suburban home to a cozy apartment closer to Boston. (I was lucky and got out before the market really crashed) and I was also managing through a hip injury( a labral tear) that I had received the previous August of 2007 while helping to carry a 600 lb dresser up a flight of steps. ps. my days of lifting furniture are behind me.( I now have a new hip, thank you Dr. Scheller). January 2009 blew into New England as it’s usual cold wintery self and thru an acquaintance’s convincing I decided to help them in their on line restaurant business. I spent the next few months, mostly in Providence RI and between the gas and wear and tear on my lovely Avalon, I wasn’t making a lot of progress with where I wanted my new life to take me. Now, since you don’t know me yet, I will tell you that I have an internal default switch that puts my needs aside in lieu of helping others. I’m grateful for this switch because I know it means I’m a kind and caring individual. When this switch starts to smolder is when I know I have to put me first. My switch smoldered twice in that early part of 2009. Two people with their own businesses, taping into my experiences, my contacts, my skills and then I shut down....what was I doing, I was smart, creative, connected, so why was I giving away my best attributes, I needed to create my own world, a business that could help others, provide for me and leave a legacy. Connectivity seemed to keep popping up, from conversations with friends to random thoughts. While I was following one of my deepest passions, songwriting, I also still had the love of creating, selling, networking, sharing and inspiring. A friend helped me thru an affirmation value exercise( if you’ve never taken one they are fascinating) and my values that May 2009 were Inspire, Laugh, Wealth, Security. I had NO idea what it meant, but I was on a path to figure it out . I don’t know where that little voice inside us comes from but I personally think it’s a guide, giving us clues or triggering a single thought that can be expanded upon. As I mentioned previously, connection was a word that continually popped up and when a dear friend suggested it, again, over dinner one night, I had a flashback to some years earlier, when in NYC, a gentleman from Europe who I had helped with a connection, suggested the same to me. Was this truly my path? It was probably a few weeks later, I was driving somewhere when it hit me...I always used the phrase “follow your path, your yellow brick road”...that was it! That would be the name of my project, If I was following mine, then I could help others follow theirs.
From then on it was full speed ahead. I came up with a framework and developed it into a powerpoint overview of the YBR Project. I thought about which target group would benefit the most from the YBR Project and realized that connecting urban young adults with their passions in a “one off mentoring day” would give them the chance to experience multiple passions that may have never been available to them. Coming from a corporate environment I knew that I could implement a variety of mentors (wizards) who would be more than willing to participate if I kept the program to single or half days. A true shadowing of a wizard from a young adult would be much more valuable than days or weeks stuck in a cubicle, and removed from the real day in the life of their passion. Beyond that, I believed that this unique mentoring experience would connect the right individuals so that “one off day” or "mini internship" would hopefully expand into an ongoing wizard relationship and possibly other job opportunities for these youth.
Now I had enormous support for the idea from family and friends, but I didn’t want to jump in without some feedback from the same industry that I had spent my career in.
I created a rough draft of what I wanted my logo to look like and with that and my powerpoint in hand, I met with a good friend at a well known local advertising agency. MM and I had done a lot of business over the years and I trusted her thoughts. My meeting was a success, MM loved YBR.!! She offered some great suggestions and even connected me with this amazing free lance website, www.elance.com, where I found this wonderful freelance artist in the Ukraine to bring my logo to life , on a reasonable budget. While the logo was in development I continued to add layers to the YBR concept, ideas coming from conversations that just seemed to develop, sometimes out of nowhere, in those next weeks. I was feeling like someone was guiding me and never had I been so grateful. With a strong radio background I decided to add a layer of radio to the project. Terrestrial radio was my initial thought since I had a comfort zone there. I wanted to showcase these “one off days” and follow these youth on their journey. As I researched the local terrestrial radio I realized that the stations that could offer me a one hour show each week wouldn’t give me the audience I was looking for... until one day the suggestion of internet radio was on my radar. Of course, create Yellow Brick Road Radio as an internet radio station. My framework was becoming more complete, I had my logo, I had my business cards but I still lacked my “kids”, those recipients to whom the YBR Project would benefit. Well if I was Dorothy I would start at the beginning, and that is just what I did.
My first stop on my journey was The Home For Little Wanderers. This local group has an amazing charitable foundation and the work they do makes such a huge difference in the community, but their “kids” were a bit young for what Yellow Brick Road Project could offer. My second stop was at the renowned Bridge Over Troubled Waters. This is another amazing group who help kids for a single day or even weeks, and while their “kids” were closer if not the right age group, there were some logistical challenges. LIke Dorothy, I wasn’t going to be deterred from finding this group of youth.
From early in the inception of YBR Project, I had kept a dear friend abreast of my journey. PK had been a good friend for years, we worked together at WWOne and he’s definitely a one man incubator when it comes to ideas and connections. PK was instrumental in getting me to read The Secret a few months prior. He had read it on a trip to Europe and said it changed his life. Had I not read the book, perhaps I wouldn’t have truly believed I could carry out this journey, so I knew if anyone could help me PK could. The universe did not disappoint. PK sits on the board of Sport In Society at Northeastern University, http://www.northeastern.edu/sportinsociety, so he introduced me to DC, (Uncle Henry) the COO and from that meeting, DC felt that YBR Project would be a great fit for Foundation Year (Kansas), an innovative first year college program for Boston Public HIgh School graduates that offers a comprehensive program featuring rigorous academics, career exploration and support services. http://www.northeastern.edu/foundationyear . Research clearly states that successful completion of the freshman year of college greatly increases the probability of ultimately graduating. Foundation Year was created for just this reason and as it was also in it’s pilot year, Uncle Henry felt the opportunities and services that YBR Project could bring to this group of smart, amazing, young urban adults, would provide an experiential experience to their academic structure.
Over the course of the late Fall 2009 and into early 2010, I met with MD,(Queen of the Field Mice) the Executive Director of Kansas, her team, NB (Glinda) and AR (Aunt Em) and ES (Gaylette)and eventually one of the top guns attached to the Dean of the College of Professional Studies. (this is the arm at NEU where FY lives). On March 8, 2010, I received an email from Gaylette at CPS that we were a go for a YBR Project/FY pilot!! YBR Project would be working with a select group of students for the last ten weeks of their FY year. It was determined that since YBR Project was still in structural development that this pilot would create an advisory council (The Golden Cap) of 5-10 students who would assist me (The Noble Sorceress) in the creation of the social media aspects of YBR and if time allowed, start the YBR Radio piece to launch in the Fall with the next group of students entering Kansas.
So, we start our journey.....all of the characters come from the original book and the other many sequels of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. You may not recognize many of the characters, as most people are more familiar with the movie and not the books. Moving forward you will encounter many new characters and situations that will have a humorous but realistic correlation to The Yellow Brick Road Project and Yellow Brick Road Radio and all of OUR characters. We may even insert some of our own unique characters and categories. Within this blog, called appropriately Marvelings, there will be a dictionary called The Great Humbug, where you will find each character or situation defined. I highly recommend you read the original The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and familiarize yourself with the characters. Thru the book you will find yourself enjoying the experiences of the wonderful young people of Kansas much more as we start the journey of the Yellow Brick Road Project and Yellow Brick Road Radio.
