We were lucky to catch up with Andy Medway recently and have shared our conversation below.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Andy Medway and I think the best way to describe me is to say I’m an entrepreneur. I have always been creative as long as I can remember, I think of creativity in the purest sense of the word: the desire to create things. I don’t feel creativity is limited to things traditionally thought of as art but includes a wide range things.

My career path has been varied. I played in bands from my teens to early twenties. I had some success but never hit it big, I was also in school at that time and eventually graduated from USC with a liberal arts degree,

Shorty after that I stopped playing in bands, got married and had a son, At that time I started working at talent agencies for actors and eventually became an agent, My wife developed issues that prevented her from being an active part of our son’s life and when my son was two I became a single father.

I was never too fond of the agency business and I loved being a dad so I decided to try to find something that would allow me to spend more time with my son. A friend told me about eBay around 1998. It was still new enough at that time that my first question was “What’s eBay?” In the early days eBay was like the wild west. There were very few rules and not as much competition. I started an eBay business which allowed me to have more time with my son and was successful for a many years, Eventually the marketplace changed and my business model was no longer viable.

At that time I started working with my family in the lighting business, We made a line of high end handmade copper lighting that wasn’t selling well. I was asked to take over the brand with the goal of marketing it online and in print ads. I rebranded the line, created a new name, logo, slogan and website. When I began this project I had very little experience in all of these areas. but I have always been very good at picking up new skills and learning to do what needs to be done to get the job done. I learn best by doing so I dove in headfirst and learned – painfully at times – what I had to do to make the business successful,

In the end, the business did well and I picked up a ton of new skills including web design, artwork, accounting, sales and marketing. After seven years we got a great offer for the business and sold the whole thing lock, stock and barrel. It was hard to let go of business I had built up from scratch but financially it was a no brainer. I briefly worked for the new owners but we had dispute over my pay so that didn’t last long. Things got a little ugly for while, but we worked it out in the end, It was another good learning experience even though it was a tough way to learn.

After we sold the lighting business, I took a little time to figure out my next move. I decided I had enough of being an entrepreneur and took a job working for a home goods company as the online marketing manager. After getting the job I discovered that they had thousands of listings on each of half a dozen sites – Home Depot, Walmart, Wayfair, Amazon etc. They had about 30K listing total most of which had bad pictures, incomplete or inaccurate descriptions, missing info etc. They used an outdated inventory system which hadn’t been produced for a decade. They were secretive and didn’t want to give me access to the inventory system so it was a very challenging situation.

Unfortunately after just a few months on the job I was diagnosed with leukemia in early 2020 and was no longer able to work. Since then I have gone through chemo, radiation and eventually a bone marrow transplant. It has been a long road with lots of twists and turns but thanks to a great support system I am doing much better today.

As I began to heal I reunited with my old bandmate Frank Meyer (The Streetwalkin’ Cheetahs, James Williamson) to record some music I had been working on. The tracks came out so well that we got the old band back together and recorded the best of the old tunes along with a new song. Against all odds, in April the debut album by our band Highway 61 “Driving South” was released on Rum Bar Records 30 years after we broke up. The album has received a very positive response and I’ve been able to put my marketing skills to use to promote the band. It is certainly something I never thought would happen but here we are, I guess you never know where life will take you.

Professionally, my goal is to combine my interest in web design, market and music into creating websites and doing marketing for bands,

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

For me life has been a series of pivots. I went from musician to talent agent to husband to single father to eBay seller to web design, sales and marketing, to fighting cancer to being a cancer survivor and back to being a musician. Just when you get a grip on things, life pivots. At every turn I had to pivot and learn new skills to accomplish my goals. What I have learned is that life is rarely a straight line but each step in the journey has something to teach you. There are no wasted moves or effort because the skills you gain today accumulate. Each new skill leads to another new skill and a better understanding of the big picture.

As the saying goes “Man plans, God laughs” so you had better be ready to pivot when the time comes.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

For me the most rewarding part of being a creative person is having a vision in my mind and being able to bring it to life. I think for most creative people ideas are a dime-a-dozen but good ideas are much harder to come by. I once read Bono said something like “I can write a song in 5 minutes but writing a good song is another thing.”

And then translating those ideas into the real world can be a difficult and sometimes frustrating process. So when you are able to bring your vision to life, it is very rewarding. Of course being recognized by the public, your peers as well as having financial success is also very gratifying but that’s not the reason creative people create, My buddy Frank Meyer once told me that when he asked his friend and fellow musician Pat Todd why he made music he said “Because if I didn’t I would die”. I think that’s the bottom line for most creative people.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://highway61la.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/am1_la
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/andrew.medway/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOdojFMuTAHvsXY0O3ZFjSg