Interview with Feed The Juice Curator-in-Chief
The Making of Feed The Juice
Could you share the evolution of the idea for Feed The Juice?
Feed the Juice is the culmination of a five-year journey that finally came together in 2019. My initial inspiration came from a janitor while studying late for my entrepreneurial management final at Boston College. I thought about a society that still requires individuals to clean defiled bathrooms just to make a living, and felt disheartened to see the dejected look on the janitor’s face after scrubbing toilets for way too long. I wanted to help this man become more than just a janitor, and bring out the best version of himself. But how?
Life after graduating from Boston College provided the personal experience to answer my question. My best friend passed away shortly after graduation, which really caused a profound reflection on what life meant to me. He was the board that helped bounce my “pie in the sky” ideas, and the friend that challenged me to enjoy life, instead of chasing after it. So a few days after the funeral, I wrote down my initial vision statement for Feed The Juice, which we had always discussed but never executed on. “To create a cultural change that favors a more chill, primal, and artistic culture,” which was essentially two college kids’ idea of lets just create, screw the business rat race.
Without his support, this idea floundered, and I entered into the world of management consulting, a step away from my passion. My heart continually told me to pursue these passions, and I struggled internally with trusting this feeling. Anger, frustration, and fear all took turns challenging my inner desire. In conversations with my friends, I found that no one was really happy with their jobs and would rather be chasing their passions, like singing, designing video games, or traveling the world.
Searching for some answers to our combined challenge, I turned to spirituality and my mentors, which became a routine ritual: reading the Bhagavad Gita, finding a clear-mind through meditation, and chatting with entrepreneurs. This practice helped me arrive at the root of my passion, and to define my personal vision statement – bettering the lives of others. Extremely broad and super-generic, I know. Still, I simply just want to help people live better, especially spiritually and emotionally. Watching my friends and colleagues slave as “corporate zombies” that spent most of their time away from their passions was wildly uncomfortable for me. I feared missing out on my dreams, and pushed my friends to chase their’s. Therefore, connecting my refined passion to my Feed The Juice concept required an updated vision statement, “To create a community of a passion-seekers that live life in spirit of their artistic dreams.”
So this is Feed The Juice 2.0, and will evolve into version 10.0 in years to come. For now, 2.0 is about creating a community to help people find and follow the passions that give them energy. I want to bring people closer to their dreams.
How will you foster this community?
The community for Feed The Juice is really essential to drive the network effect value. The world is filled with “closet” artists that can become superstars with the right community supporting and encouraging them. In order to help these artists, or Juicers, the website will be a home for collaboration, innovation, and inspiration. It will provide Juicers with a platform to spotlight their art and creative talents. Our social pages will drive a digital conversation with our audience until we can host more in-person experiences. Within the overall Feed the Juice platform, we will drive community value through:
Presenting valuable artist case studies
Organizing artistic collaborations
Connecting Juicers with the right mentors and workshops
Sharing interesting content to inspire new ideas
What is your goal with Feed The Juice?
I want people to feel like they belong within an artistic community, especially in a world dominated by social media that can make young artists can feel insecure about their talent. Helping artists take the first meaningful step towards chasing their dreams is my main goal. So essentially, encouraging a feeling of belonging within a community of like-minded creatives.
Personally, I realized what had held my artistic dreams back was this question of, “am I good enough?” Knowing this, I want to prevent that trap from hurting other artists, and to provide the push to share their art throughout their path to 10,000 hours. I feel that the world’s Instagram fetish has exposed young artists to only the most well-refined pieces designed by the KAWS, Murakamis’, and Virgil Ablohs’ of the world. Instead, I feel a more productive platform should provide the “come up” stories to make young artists feel confident in their own talent, and to become a part of a larger movement. So another goal is to collect and share these narratives via artist case studies.
What inspires you?
Generally, anything that makes me reflect deeper within myself is very inspirational. I once heard, “quality art provokes a feeling, whether it be negative or positive. Bad art leaves you feeling indifferent.” This is the key to my inspiration: a thoughtful provocation of self.
Through my meditative practice, I look to find the serenity and simplicity of a given moment. So just being aware of the day-to-day experience is very helpful to understand fundamental truths about people. I try to move around the world in order to broaden my perspective of people and their daily lives. Sometimes I just need a reset to remind myself there is only one way to live life, and that is to your own rhythm.
In addition, communities that lack basic amenities like clean water, robust sewage and plumbing, and public transportation really impact me. Seeing people continue to find happiness despite dangerous living conditions is quite moving. It really helps me find strength and meaning to know how strong-willed the human spirit is. It proves to me that it isn’t WHAT you have but WHO you have in your life that brings you happiness. More importantly, it reinforces the need for positivity and to make the most out of an uncomfortable situation.
Lastly, I am inspired by volunteers, who sacrifice their ambitions to build a better future for others. Aid workers risking their lives in war-zones or epidemic areas or scientific researchers spending time in extreme conditions, like Antartica or space, is insane to me. They are true patriots fighting for humanity, instead of being constrained by selfish pursuits. Although these patriots may never see the end result of their work, they have planted the seed, and fed the juice for sustained growth in someone else.
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