Just how did all this get started?

Well, they say that necessity is the mother of invention, but they’re wrong, whoever they are - it’s frustration that’s the real mother. 

Geniocity.com and its parent company, The Genius Group LLC, came about because I had completely had it with the ossified, lockstep, corporate-style practice of journalism in the United States. I was also about ready to slam the refrigerator door on my own head (it would hurt, but there’d be comfort food) because the book-publishing, theater-producing and music-recording industries were so impossible to break into, try though I had.

Clearly, something needed to be done. Not that I thought I was the one to do it, at least at first – we journalists are famous grumblers and most of us quickly adopt as a lifestyle the find-fault-from-the-sidelines habit that our profession requires to keep us observant but uninvolved. As time passed, though, and as daily newspapers became Titanics, slowly going down while the captains bravely remodeled the staterooms, I realized that I had two choices: die of exasperation, or think up a new kind of boat.

The only problem with that was, I had never built one before. And I had no real money.

OK, two problems.

Yes, I knew something about news-gathering and newsroom operations, certainly, but essentially squat about business. The idea of starting my own consequently had a sort of surreal terror/euphoria to it. But I figured that, as I would with any news story on a topic i didn’t know much about,  I ‘d just do a lot of research.

And the way journalists do research mostly is to talk to people.

So I talked to my friend Dan, who had started a magazine a couple of years earlier. We were both eager to find better ways of informing readers about creativity and of giving artists and inventors some access to the public and the global marketplace that wasn’t controlled by traditional gatekeepers such as agents. The idea of a combined publication and shop grabbed both of us. 

When Dan decided to be a partner in the project, we started talking to everybody else. 

About 8,583,999 meetings later, I can say I highly recommend it to anyone starting a business, journalist or not. I think Dan and I singlehandedly kept four or five of our local coffeeshops solvent by conversing with local experts in law, entrepreneurship, arts, marketing, technology, economic development, design, fund-raising and retail. And in between meeting with all those people, we met with each other to discuss what we wanted our business to be, how we would like to set it up, and how we should go about translating our ideas into practice.

That part of it was the most fun – sitting for hours together over scone crumbs and half-empty cups, concocting ambitious new ways of changing our industries, our communities and the world for the better by creating a project both daringly innovative and head-smackingly logical as a solution to existing needs. 

I’m not saying we didn’t reach information overload after about a year.  (Once all the major themes have emerged, it’s hard to keep your eyes from drifting out of focus.) And at that point, we both instinctively decided we had heard enough to start choosing our own course.  But everything we had heard was useful, because it forced us to think, analyze and accept or reject other people’s points of view, thus solidifying our own. It allowed us to examine each other’s tastes and ideas, recognize each other’s strengths and understand each other’s weaknesses. It helped us find out if we could live with each other, professionally – a sort of business courtship every bit as crucial and nuanced as dating.

In fact, fittingly, when we had found out enough to feel ready for a commitment, the first thing we did was go to a lawyer. It’s important when you start out to know exactly what of legalized relationship you want your company to be. 

But what mattered most to me about all the brainstorming and questioning and note-taking was that, by the end of it, I was sure I wanted to carry out our idea – no small step for a lifelong wage-slave.  And being sure helped me cope when we got to the working-hard-for-no-paycheck part of being entrepreneurs.

And that part is a story for some stormy night when the power is out.     

    

  

       

 

 

 

And that’s why the focus of Geniocity.com is creativity and innovation – because nothing helps us solve our problems and save our sanity