We recently connected with Henry Woodman and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Henry, thanks for joining us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

Forty years ago, in the early 80s, after graduating from the University of Arizona, I moved to LA with dreams of directing and producing movies – cue scratching record. That did not happen. I did acquire the rights to a book. More on that later as we go full circle.

I ended up on a traveling film crew as a PA (production assistant—aka gofer). Eventually, that led to producing travel films for airlines, tourist boards, etc. More than 10 years passed, and I wanted some stability. Chile had converted from a dictatorship to a democracy, which opened an opportunity to produce TV content. I pitched a game show, from an idea I had, to a new TV network, and soon we were on air.

While in Chile, I was introduced to the new digital world, and I fell in love with the ability to look all around with a 360-degree virtual tour. As the Brits say, I was gobsmacked. I decided to start a company to travel around and create 360-degree virtual tours. Back to traveling. Eventually, clients would ask how to put these virtual tours on the new World Wide Web thingy.

As there were no standards, I soon found myself helping distribute content. During the research, it was clear that hotels could deliver the rates and availability via the Global Distribution System (GDS), but there were no photos. Photos were never included in those reservation systems. Hmm. Opportunity. A pivot was in order, from content production to content distribution. I created IcePortal to help hotel clients who needed to distribute their photos everywhere — with different sizes, formats, IDs, room codes, captions, languages, etc. Now, when booking a hotel online and seeing their photos on any travel website, that is the business. Twenty years later, I got an offer I could not refuse and sold.

Now, going full circle, while in LA with dreams of breaking into movie production, I was fortunate to purchase the film and book rights for $1 (that almost caused an overdraft in my checking account at the time). It was a passionate manuscript written by my father (a travel writer and adventurer who passed in 2011) as a tribute to a friend. A historical fiction that left me in tears about the reincarnation of Marie Bashkirtseff.

Now, after exiting the business, I will publish The Reincarnation of Marie on the anniversary of my father’s birthday, June 24th. I will narrate the audiobook, and one of Dad’s grandsons (my nephew) will provide the Chopin music transitions. Once the book has been published, my partner and I will start developing a TV series for streaming.

Loosely based on a true story, the series will be a rich narrative blurring historical reality with supernatural love that defies space and time. Ultimately, readers are left with one question: can love truly conquer all—even death?

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Looking back on my journey, I’d say I’m a hedonistic entrepreneur. As a teenager, with a love of photography and animals, I started a small business called Pet Portraits. I’d take photos of families’ pets and develop the images in the darkroom at home (really, my bathroom with aluminum foil on the window).
During my sophomore year in college, with a full-blown addiction to video games, I sat in a local laundry mat with a pocket full of quarters and two hours of boredom. I did not want to crack the books because I was jonesing for Pac-Man. That afternoon, I called all the laundry mats in town and asked if they had video games. No. Nope, sorry. So, I asked: “Would you like one … I’ll maintain it, and we’ll share the profits?” By the time I graduated, I could buy my dream car (a used BMW) with quarters.

With that business sold, I went to LA to seek fame and fortune. If you read earlier, that is when we cue the screeching record. There was no fame and certainly no fortune. However, I loved life working with a traveling film crew. It was a blast! Call it fate, but I was at the right place at the right time, and eventually, I was able to produce many travel videos. That led to my producing a game show in Chile. The hedonistic spirit was alive.

Fast forward to my introduction to the digital universe. While trying to help hotel clients get their virtual tours on the Web, it became clear that there was a need to help distribute all visuals, mainly photos. I knew nothing about technology and next to nothing about running a real business. Early on, I was delivering a presentation about the business to a group of CEOs with MBA students around at a lecture hall, and it hit me. I was an imposter! These MBA students could teach me a thing or three. Imposter syndrome slapped me in the face.

Now in my 50s, I returned to school to get an MBA in entrepreneurship. I also read a book called Traction by Gino Wickman. The company was on the verge of bankruptcy multiple times, and I had to take out a line of credit on my home to keep it afloat. Slowly, things started to come together and what I was learning started paying off. Eventually, opportunity came knocking, and I sold the company.

Back to the my hedonistic passion—bringing a story to life. In June, will publish The Reincarnation of Marie, written by my father, Jim Woodman. Following that, my partner and I will develop a series for streaming on TV—our working title is Slippin’.

Slippin’ in a love story about reincarnation and slippin’ through time. Most of us are intrigued by time travel, which is often seen as a science fiction fantasy. However, what if time travel is less about controlling time and more about transcending our perception of it?

In our dreams, time is not linear—it bends, jumps, and warps. This introduces the concept of “Time Slippers,” individuals who experience time non-linearly, even while awake. More common than believed, these people navigate a reality where they confront their “Shadow,” as Carl Jung describes it—the dark, repressed aspects of the psyche. Facing these aspects is crucial for personal growth and connecting with one’s true potential.
“Slippin'” follows our hero, whose journey is not just about navigating these experiences but understanding the mystical power he’s had since childhood and falls in love with the reincarnated Marie Bashkirtseff. The series delves into themes of self-discovery, the metaphysical, and the quest for understanding beyond our conventional perception of time and space.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Life and business is really a series of pivots. IcePortal, the business I recently sold, was a pivot from World Travelvision. In the early 90s, the digital revolution was gaining momentum, and I fell in love with 360-degree virtual tours. That would allow users to look up, down, and all around a location while on their computer. At the time, that was the coolest thing ever!
I purchased the world’s first one-shot 360-degree camera and a partner and launched World Travelvision. The plan was simple: we’d travel the world and create virtual tours for destination and hotel clients. They’d get a CD-ROM to use at trade shows (that was the big deal then). It did not take long for our clients to ask us to help them distribute their virtual tours on the Internet.

Distribution of that content was the 1st pivot. We’d take the virtual tours and even videos of hotels and destinations and, fingers crossed, prayed the technology we paid a friend to create would not fail. It did, many times. That content was “nice” to have, but not the “need” to have – those were photos. It soon became clear that the reservation systems that pre-dated the Internet did not have photos.

If anyone is old enough to recall going to a brick-and-mortar travel agency in the 80s, you see an agent staring at a green screen with cryptic codes. At the time, the limited bandwidth would barely allow much textual information and no photos. The first travel websites online would get their rate information from the old agency booking systems (the GDS) – but not photos. Now, we need to pivot again from the limited world of “nice” to have 360s to the “need” to have world of images.

I had no idea what I was doing. I did not know how to write code; I barely knew how to run a business. I had the “build it, and they will come mentality.” Fortunately, many in the new online industry were learning as well. Now, there’s a bigger challenge. Imagine you believe it’s a great business opportunity. Build a great tech stack to help hotels manage and distribute their photos to online travel websites. Easy Peasy, right!?

Then, you go to a hotel chain like Hilton and show them your superior technology that will automatically size, tag, and categorize all their images. It’s frictionless, it’s cheap and they like you. Then, they ask if you are integrated with travel sites like Expedia, Booking, etc. If you have not integrated with ALL the travel sites, there is no deal. And a travel site will not integrate with you if you have nothing to provide. Classic chicken and egg.

We had this same problem when we started World Travelvision. Who will be interested in a handful of hotels’ virtual tours? We reached out to a larger production company that had 100s of hotel videos that hotels paid them to create and use as they wanted. There was no online distribution. We offered to distribute that content for free on behalf of the hotels. We wanted a plethora of content that would open doors for our customers. It worked, and once we had integrations for the videos and virtual tours, it allowed us to pivot to photo management and distribution.

Now, my dream from the 1980s to produce movies is coming full circle with the development of a TV series for streaming. It starts with publishing the book The Reincarnation of Marie this summer and then developing a series about a guy who falls in love with Marei Bashkirseff, who died 80 years earlier, after reading her journal. He finds her reincarnation, or has he slipped through time?

This is not just a love story; it’s a journey through the human soul, a celebration of art’s immortality, and a tribute to those loves that, though lost to time, continue to shape our very beings. It’s a story that resonates with anyone who has ever loved deeply, felt the sting of loss, and dared to dream of love that lasts beyond a lifetime.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

As a hedonistic entrepreneur, ventures that piqued my interest were pursued. This changed when I had to pivot from content production to creating a tech stack for delivering content. This change revealed two significant gaps in my skill set: a lack of coding knowledge and a complete absence of business acumen. I was in uncharted territory, struggling with fundamental and foundational business concepts such as Mission, Vision, Values, and KPIs—all of which were as foreign to me as Greek.

Everything changed when I was introduced to Gino Wickman’s book, Traction. It was as if a light bulb went on above my head. I purchased copies for my small team and declared it our new guidebook. The book was transformative, providing a clear overview and roadmap for implementing the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS). It outlined six key components that empowered us to strategically design and grow our business. The impact was so profound that we even adopted the author’s name as our backdoor password for our tech stack.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.anemoiamedia.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/a_n_e_m_o_i_a_
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/henry.woodman
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hwoodman
• Other: The book webpage – http://www.mariethestory.com

Image Credits
Photos by Hellevi Woodman (wife)