We recently connected with Ric Dragon and have shared our conversation below.
Ric, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear the story of how you went from this being just an idea to making it into something real.
I know I’ve had a dream for many years about creating an alternative Art School, influenced by the Bauhaus and Black Mountain College. When I moved to Columbia nine years ago, and I was packing my books, there were many that I brought thinking that they would be good for such a project. So, I know that the idea had been percolating quite some time.
I then bought a car with the intention of traveling around the region seeking out a place. During those trips, I chanced upon this incredible very large former coffee plantation and thought wow, that would be incredible. The place was much too large and expensive for what I had in mind, but a friend and colleague encouraged me, saying, if this is the right place, we’ll find a way!
So, there we embarked on our very audacious journey.
The first months at the center – at the time basically a farm – it was empty aside from myself and a cat named la Llorone! We started by inviting volunteers to come, until finally, we started to attract some artists to what would become our artist residency.
A marketing CEO pal of mine suggested that our key metrics in our first two years should not at all be about money, but simply energy. In retrospect – and after having been a serial entrepreneur back in the day – I think that can be the best approach for many projects. Worry less about getting rich, and worry more about creating a tsunami of energy.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
My story is a difficult story in some ways, as my path has been rather unconventional. I’m a painter, an artist. but like many artists throughout the world I’ve had to find ways to make a living waiting for my great breakthroughs.
At one point the internet came along and by happenstance I started a web development company. It was a beautiful moment in the history of the web, as at that point, the field had not yet been saturated, yet businesses very much had a need to be on the web. That web development company in turn became a digital marketing company, and for 20 years I had some good success with that.
But always felt that I needed to return to my roots, to my studio. And that’s when I had the opportunity to sell my shares in my businesses. I did so, and I moved to Columbia where I knew I could make my resources stretch further.
Its no easy thing pulling up stakes and moving to a new country, all the while learning a new language. But its also one of the most mind-expanding things a person could do!
ArteSumapaz is a non-profit foundation dedicated to the arts and culture. All of that time back in the world of business was really, at least in my mind, training for this. Here, we practice a governance system called Sociocracy based on consent. So instead of creating a traditional hierarchical top-down organization, I’ve had to learn a whole new set of skills more based on collaboration.
Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?
Something that I’ve seen in both the for-profit as well as the non-profit worlds, is that a couple of key concepts have created magic in developing my organizations.
The first is responsiveness. I gained many new clients by responding faster than the competition. Media is filled with advice about not being a slave to email and other communications, but I don’t believe I would have built my businesses by anything short of extreme responsiveness. At one point I did some analysis of all of the income my company had ever made, and could see that 80% of my gross revenue game from clients that came from clients that came from clients. So those first connections were vital.
The second key concept is to “always take the coffee.” Again, that flies in the face of a lot of new advice – that you shouldn’t let people pick your brains for free. Again, being generous with my knowledge – whether with young up and coming people, competitors, and clients – always led to magic.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
We have a saying here at Fundacion ArteSumapaz, “Trust the F#$&G Process.” And it’s interesting, as its a idea that not only fits the world of creativity, but of business as well. At times, we are so focused on the outcome, or the artifact, that we don’t trust that somehow in the right process, things will emerge that we could never imagine. For me, that’s the exciting thing about each endeavor – that I will be surprised.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.artesumapaz.org and ricdragon.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ricpdragon/
- Facebook: ricdragon
- Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/ricdragon/
- Twitter: ricdragon
Image Credits
image of woman in chair at sunset, photo by Joseph Puglisi