We were lucky to catch up with Joshua Frye recently and have shared our conversation below.
Joshua , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Talk to us about building your team? What was it like? What were some of the key challenges and what was your process like?
During the first year or so of Maitri Multi-Media, I was our only employee. Beginning with three participants and my car, we drove around exploring the streets of Denver, Boulder, and surrounding areas and dreamed of what equipment and ideas we would fill our space with once we had one. Once we acquired a space, our next focus became finding amazing creative people that could help make this dream a reality. When it came to attributes, the main factors I was looking for beyond being a caring and compassionate person, were creativity, trustworthiness, and drive, as well as ideally filling in any deficits that I have. The first recruits came from friendships that I had made in my travels and required convincing some of the most talented individuals I knew to move to Colorado to help me create something amazing.
The first to join the team was my friend Trent, who is an amazing artist, musician, builder, and all-around incredible person and had recently moved to Denver. Soon after that, I convinced my incredibly talented friend Daniel to move up from Texas and together we were able to bring Maitri Multi-Media to the next level.
Around that time my younger brother Zach joined the team serving in a number of different roles. While with us he imparted a notable amount of working knowledge around the daily operations of an organization and helped us continue to grow and thrive.
A little while later we were lucky enough to find Laura. Early on Laura proved herself to be one of the kindest, most trustworthy, supportive, and detail-oriented teammates, and to this day continues to take on new roles and responsibilities and grow with us as an organization. We owe Laura so much and are infinitely thankful for all that she does for each of us.
Once my son Zain graduated from high school he too moved to Colorado, and soon after started to work with us. Since that point, he has helped us build and maintain a room in our space that we lovingly refer to as “the Dungeon” and is entirely devoted to gaming in all forms, particularly role-playing games such as the Dungeons & Dragons group that he has run every Wednesday for several years now. Zain continues to impress us all with his capability to handle a very demanding room, continually come up with new material to keep the game fresh and engaging, and to regularly level up his artistic ability. Additionally, Zain has become very adept at using D&D and gaming as a tool to help each of the players learn valuable communication and team-building skills. Each of the players and the DM have also worked to craft art and countless other elements of their world around each of their characters and the places they explore including some of the most amazing maps, sketches of Non-player characters, and weapons.
Another teammate that we are extremely lucky to work with is our in-house electronic music extraordinaire Rich, who makes music under the name Bankaji. Rich has helped guide so many of our participants on their way toward musical expression and has also created album artwork for several folks as well, and most recently has been instrumental in helping them get their music on all of the streaming services, such as Spotify, youtube, and apple music.
While we have had the pleasure to work with many truly amazing people throughout our nine years, once in a while you find those that truly see your vision in a way that helps it expand and develop in beautiful ways. By some sort of divine coincidence, we happened to hire two people that embody that and so much more, Robert & Kate. Robert is a truly talented musician, artist, and a perfect storm of compassion, creativity, and drive. Kate is a brilliant artist, one of the kindest people we have ever met and has an amazing brain that was seemingly built for the complex variety of tasks that are required of our unique positions. In addition to working tirelessly for the betterment of all of our participants, they both have painted entire room murals in our building, and work every day to build an inspiring and engaging environment for all of our participants and staff members. Together with Laura and the rest of the team we have built and rebuilt a place that has allowed so many to find their voice, and themselves, and a community of people that will value them for who they truly are. Both desiring to build skill sets that will help them to go on to develop their own similar creative programs or departments, Robert and Kate both show up every day to teach and to learn and shows in everything they do. It is through the collaborative efforts of all of us that we are able to do much good in this community, and truly make a difference, while getting to have lots of fun along the way. I am forever grateful for the time that I get to spend with these amazing people and for all they do for our participants.
Coming to us when we needed her most, Christal has proven to be the kind of person that seems like that they have always been with us, and at the same time you wonder how you ever functioned without her. From protection, to support, to guidance, and boundless compassion, Christal shows us all everyday the kind of person we were meant to be. Helping to bring out the best in all of us, and ensure that all runs smoothly, Christal was the missing piece to our puzzle that we are so glad to have found.
One of the most important lessons that I have learned more recently is that of building systems that will be helpful in the scaling-up phase. Having built everything from the ground up it was easy to miss things that appear to be obvious in hindsight, and realizing what can be taught and what can’t be is a valuable lesson that has taken years to learn. Learning to develop systems to ingrain the aspects of the culture that are important and represent the soul of an organization will be key in creating any lasting entity.
Joshua , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Maitri Multi-Media is an art /music collective for the extraordinary. Created as a way to bring tools of creativity and expression to populations that had not had the opportunity to experience those things, since its inception the goals of Maitri have been to teach and cultivate expression through the vehicle of compassion and loving-kindness. Foremost, we are students of expression in all of its forms, whether it is painting, drawing, dancing, making music, photography, video production, storytelling, gaming, or anything and everything in between. Designed on the framework of the traditional day program for adults with disabilities, Maitri Multi Media picks up where others have so nobly gone before. One of the more recent accomplishments of our program has been helping a number of our musical participants get their music onto all of the streaming platforms so that they can share their creations as broadly as possible. This has been an exciting development that has invigorated many of our people to develop themselves as artists and continue to find ways to allow their voices to be heard.
Have you ever had to pivot?
One of the most notable pivoting moments for us came in the earliest days of our inception. Originally envisioned as an after-school program for at-risk middle-school-age children, after much research, introspection, and a little serendipity we realized that the same program concept would actually make a fantastic day program, and like that Maitri Multi-Media was born. Another opportunity to adapt came with the changes brought on by Covid-19. During this time we had to find new ways to support our people, be creative across long distances, and adapt to the constantly changing landscape. To do so my team and I built a virtual day program on the discord platform, made dozens of educational and entertaining videos, and found smaller ways to care for our people under the new restrictions.
Where do you think you get most of your clients from?
The best source of new participants for us has always been word of mouth. I suppose it helps that one of our foundational goals is creative expression, so the promotional aspect of our program comes naturally to us and many of our participants. When you truly love what you do, getting to talk about your passions becomes another added benefit.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.moremaitri.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maitri_multi_media/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/moremaitri/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/maitrimedia
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/maitrimultimedia
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5lRow9HXkxXay0Zr3o1a4H?si=NzgaRniNRLidKVUTACykaA https://open.spotify.com/artist/5W3xy1vBfO4kNc1JDNgMj9?si=-QEC6-RqSVGcSpiKDpMH3g https://open.spotify.com/artist/1g9s77tk5hgCgdJ2eMk6JB?si=zKtUEpUnSkK27wbt0IG13Q https://open.spotify.com/artist/73CWIsadr2O1WHyuk6brg8?si=O9F0zl08SiagyJpQ7ivnqw https://open.spotify.com/album/0aAj27OkOPZ4QS0qkwGPtA?si=R9YwxE7vS7aj2m1a1SckJA https://open.spotify.com/artist/6e8kxnv9ZMPvVVixQ6NqPD?si=iE8yweGAS4qYtXu5pTIgEQ
Image Credits
Photos By DJ Barels & Joshua Frye