In the spring of 2020, when the Covid pandemic shutdown occurred, our live in-person corporate creativity training business shut down as well.

During the long, dark period of lockdown here in New York City, I felt a strong calling to help the creative community connect, stay inspired, and use this gift of time to develop and fortify themselves — to keep moving forward on whatever creative project, career or business plan they were working on.

To achieve this vision, I designed and led a series of virtual Creative Breakthrough Lab workshops for creative organizations such as CreativeMornings and the Rhode Island School of Design.

To my surprise, we had 400 -600 creatives (from all over the world) attend each workshop. I received emails from participants telling me how hungry they were to connect with other creatives and how inspiring, even life-changing they found my lessons and coaching.

The confluence of events – Covid, the long lockdown, the rapid adaptation of Zoom and remote working, and the great need within the creative community for connection, inspiration, and growth — lead to my realization that I needed to step up and use my 40 years of personal and professional development experience to help the creative community thrive.

To that end, my wife Liz and I founded an online membership business dedicated to helping artists, creative entrepreneurs and professionals go from self-doubt, struggle, and procrastination to self-confidence, flow, and achieving breakthrough results.

Each month in our creative membership community, I teach, coach, and facilitate peer-to-peer brainstorming sessions. A big focus of the Creative Breakthrough Lab is providing creatives with the strategies, habits, and support they need to prevail over the Inner Critic.

We had never built or run an online business before, or led a membership community. So we had to roll up our sleeves, learn what we needed to know, and DIY/MacGyver our entire online business platform.

We launched a beta version of our membership (with 20 founding members) in January 2021. We’ve learned a lot over time and our members have achieved many of their ambitious goals. This fall, we will be opening our doors to serve more of the creative community.

In the professional world, I’m known as an author, creative thinking expert, consultant, coach, and trainer.

I’m a co-founder of SmartStorming, a New York-based creative consulting and training company that teaches innovation-focused companies (like Google, Under Armour, CapitalOne, and Spotify) how to think more innovatively and become more effective creative problem solvers.

And co-author of the book, SmartStorming, The game-changing process for generating bigger, better ideas.

I’m also a co-founder of the Creative Breakthrough Lab. An online membership community that helps the creative community strengthen their mindset for success, clarify their creative purpose, vision, and goals, and learn effective strategies to overcome the Inner Critic, impostor syndrome, procrastination, and perfectionism.

In terms of background…

I’ve been a creative professional all of my career. I started out as an illustrator, and later became an art creative director in the NYC advertising world.

I left the advertising field after 9/11 to found my own creative consulting and training business. I wanted to create a business that combined my passion for personal and professional development with my love of teaching other creatives how to unlock their fullest potential for success.

I knew from personal experience that creative people needed to continually grow, evolve, and stretch themselves in order to acquire the inner resources they’ll need to meet their next developmental challenge.

But the problem was… most artists, creative entrepreneurs, and professionals I’ve met over the years lacked the guidance, strategies, and support they needed to master the internal and external challenges of making a successful living, career, or business as a creative being.

We founded the Creative Breakthrough Lab to help the creative community develop the skills and habits they need to thrive in the new post-pandemic world.

It’s funny you asked this question. My brother once told me the trait he admired most about me was my “indefatigability”. A word I had to look up to understand what he meant.

I have a number of stories of when my resilience helped me persevere over challenges:

When I was applying to colleges in high school, my art teacher told me I’d never get into the Rhode Island School of Design. She said it was “out of my league”. Instead of getting discouraged, I put my heart and soul into acing the application process — I got in — and had the sweet pleasure of showing her my acceptance letter!

When a Creative Director told me he didn’t think I was very good at coming up with new and original ideas, I eventually left and started a successful consulting business teaching other ad agencies and companies how to think more creatively and brainstorm new ideas more effectively. I even wrote a business book on how to generate bigger, better ideas.

When the pandemic shutdown shuttered our in-person training business for over a year, my wife and I pivoted and founded a new online business that helped the creative community stay inspired, growing, and moving forward in the things that were important to them.

And finally, when I lost my son in March, I paused my online business for 6 months to grieve our loss. Instead of losing faith in our business to help others, my wife and I doubled down and committed ourselves to build back better. My son’s loss provided me with the insight that life was fleeting, and if we were going to help others, and create the business of our dreams, we had to do it NOW, not “eventually” or “someday”. I also completed my NLP Coach Practitioner training during that period.

I think the 3 things that helped me build my reputation in the creative community were:

1) My passion for learning and growing as a creative being — and extending that passion to teaching others how to overcome challenges to improve their lives, careers, and/or business.

2) Authenticity — Being as down-to-earth and real with others as possible. In the age of Influencers, identities, and personalities, I think people appreciate someone who gets them, is one of them, shares their struggles and concerns, and freely shares whatever advice or help is needed. I strive every day to put empathy in front of ego when being of service to others.

3) Taking an unwavering stand for other people’s goals and dream. I believe everyone possesses the inner resources and abilities they need to achieve whatever they desire to create. I help them see what’s possible and provide whatever support they need to keep creating forward