We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Teeg Stouffer a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Teeg, appreciate you joining us today. What did your parents do right and how has that impacted you in your life and career?

I’m a midwestern, middle class white kid. Or I was – that’s how I started out, some many decades ago before my hair was gone and my beard had so much grey in it.

My parents weren’t people of means, but they moved my brother and I into this tiny little corner of a school district that was good – like, really good. Perhaps among the best in the country. We were told that our school was among the top 10 average ACT scores in the nation my junior year. I would have a hard time fact checking that now. But it was a good move, and kind of a bold one for my mom and dad. It literally meant moving, but it also meant buying a fixer-upper and fixing it up. It was a historic home and we loved growing up in this historic neighborhood and this wonderful old house. It was a heavy thing to sell it a few years ago, after my parents had both passed. Now it’s affording another family the same kind of opportunity.

But that school district was resourced so well – we had amenities that are unheard of in most places. And for me, a kid bent on storytelling and communication, unbelievably, our high school had a radio station. A radio station! And it actually broadcast everywhere in the city. This was the 90’s and a new kind of music had come about – this thing called “alternative,” or “grunge,” and we didn’t have a radio station that played it in town, so our station flipped formats, and if you wanted to listen to Pearl Jam or Nirvana or Stone Temple Pilots or Weezer, you had to listen to these dumb high school kids. And I was the chief dummy. I became the student-manager of the station, and I hosted a morning show my Junior and Senior Year. So while other kids were doing normal high school kid stuff, I was literally getting up and hosting a daily morning radio show before school. It shaped the trajectory of my life in so many ways. It led to an internship and then a job at WHO-AM in Des Moines, which is where Ronald Reagan got his start, so … you never know where I might end up! (More likely in a movie with a monkey in it than the White House.)

My mom and dad were also both creative people – artists. My Dad actually had a fine arts degree from Iowa State University; my mom was never without an active creative project. Near the end of her life, she used their home as a canvas, painting on every wall. The outside of the house was eclectic – four colors, vibrant.

They encouraged creativity in my brother and I, and this is a terrific gift. In so many ways, children are geniuses but life pressures that out of kids – you’ve probably heard the research: In the late 1960s, NASA was keen on hiring innovative minds. To achieve this, they sought to understand the nature of creative genius and commissioned a study led by George Land. The focus was on young children, aged 3 to 5. Among a test group of 1,600 kids; 98% were labeled as creative geniuses. However, a follow-up revealed a concerning trend. The genius tag dropped to 30% at age 10 and further down to 12% at age 15. When compared to adults, only a dismal 2% maintained this level of creative genius.

My parents adamantly encouraged creativity in all things – not just art, or the arts, but in how we approached problem solving and our lives.

Perhaps problematically, it was woven into radical individualism: “be your own person.” At times that can be counterproductive – sometimes the crowd has it right, sometimes doing your own thing is less good than conforming to a community, if it’s the right one. In that way, conformity isn’t necessarily the kryptonite of creativity.

My parents also said something that too many parents say that wasn’t helpful, “You can do anything you set your mind to,” or “you can accomplish anything.”

That’s like, truth-ish. If I had really set my mind to being president, there is almost no chance I would have become president. I suppose more broadly, it is likely I could have a career in politics or could work in Washington, DC.

But sometimes we pursue the unhelpful and unhealthy. I am taking a different approach with my kids; “discover your God-given purpose, and then pursue it.”

Starting with our own desires and our personal proclivities and so often – at least for me – our ever-evolving interests, and then saying, “you can probably achieve this,” is actually a hamster wheel, or at best a slow road that doesn’t really lead to fulfillment.

But the school move, and the creativity – those were spot on, and my wife and I are embracing those with our own kids. Those two decisions: the initial decisions and those that followed to support them – have been a huge benefit to me.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

During my elementary school years, I was a kid who would find his way to a lead in the school play. I was in a short film – like, went to a casting call, got selected, was on a real set with real filmmakers, got paid.

We had a VHS camcorder and I loved making little movies with my brother and friends.

But when I found radio, that was it. Electrifying. It led to getting to start the country’s first all-digital student run radio station at Waldorf College, being on a BBC-affiliated college station in Oxford, England (Oxygen FM) and then a radio career that would prove to be a fantastic but brief one. My wife – who I met in college – went into television, and things were going so well for both of us … that we burned out.

We sold our house and everything we owned and traveled full time executing events. Think Oscar Meyer Wienermobile. From there I did so many things in Experiential Marketing, founding non-profit and for-profit companies, working for the Department of Homeland Security as a subject matter expert, building a retail chain and selling fishing lures to Walmart.

But the career move that makes me feel more than ever before that I’m in the very center of my purpose, my ability, and things people want is what I’m doing now: Fascination Film Studio.

I like to say that I make “Heritage & Legacy” films, which is a kind of documentary.

A heritage & legacy film could be about a person, or people, or places. And by places, that could be a company or a community. A community might be like – a town or a city – but it also might be like – a faith community, a church or something like that.

So it’s a documentary about someone, or a family, or a company – and there could be lots of reasons to want to do it.

A company might want to do it as a way to invite customers into being more than customers, but fans. A community might want to do it for similar reasons – to create community engagement or for a big milestone like a Sesquicentennial or something like that.

Families though: maybe this is the best of them all.

It’s a little bit of preserving the past, telling those stories of heritage, but it’s a lot of cementing someone’s legacy.

And that’s so important. It’s not arrogant. It’s not about you. It’s about the people who love you; who love US.

We have an anxious generation, constantly barraged with messages that lead to existential dread. It helps to hear that for generations before, there have been challenges, and for generations, people got through them. That helps.

We have an anxiety searching for identity. It helps to say, “THIS is who you are, because THIS is who WE are.” It helps.

So I feel very, very good helping people tell these stories … and oh, the stories!

I met a man who was one of America’s first fighter jet pilots. He held in the hand the 50 caliber armor piercing bullet that they had removed from the seat behind him, after he was shot with it. He showed me the declassified documents from his crash. He told the story about how he’d gone through life “half-assed,” after half his butt was shot off. And you know who did it? He did! Well, sort of – it was his gun. Coming in for a landing, his plane “failed to fly,” caught in the prop wash of another jet on a short runway, and when he crashed, his cockpit broke off, somersaulted forward, his machine guns going off on impact, one of the bullets ripping through him. And he lived. He lived. And I got to record his story.

The story that set me on this path is one of my own family – my great grandmother, who I knew in my life – she came here, came to Iowa in a covered wagon. They were making the journey because her mother had died in childbirth, giving birth to her fifth sibling. Her grieving dad was moving them closer to his parents to help raise the kids, and along the way, their wagon was struck by lightning, killing her siblings on either side of her. But she lived. She lived. And as a result, as one result, I live.

What I find is that behind every door is a fascinating story, and I’m overwhelmed at my fortune that I not only get to hear them, but help tell them. Share them with the world. And with the families, who treasure them.

And the same can be said of the blood sweat and tears that have gone into building communities, companies – these are magnificent testimonies to the people who have gone before, what they’ve done, been through, where we are now, and where we’re headed.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

For each person who I get to work with, I hope to inspire all the people around them and to inspire many who they’ll never even know through the story told through their lives. My goal for each piece – the benchmark – is that it would not just be a “that’s nice” video that they watch once and file away. That it would not be relegated, but relived over and over. And that the stories would be told well enough that they’d be interesting to people outside the families, companies and communities. So that’s my ongoing, every day, every project goal.

But the idea of Heritage & Legacy filmmaking is still not ubiquitous. People kind of have a loose sense for what it is, but it’s not mainstream. Not yet. I hope that my work helps popularize the idea. On behalf of all the people who are doing this kind of work – and the millions of lives that could be elevated by telling their story in this way – I want to do that. I want to help make it commonplace that this is just something we do by the time we’re 75.

That’s my big goal.

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

I love to read and love to hear what other people are saying: podcasts, social media, articles like the ones found here.

But the foundational text for me – the source of all inspiration and creativity for me – is really the Bible.

Like, the Holy Bible, the Christian Bible, the Word of God, the testimony – the good news – of Jesus Christ.

God is the Creator, and He made us in His image. That’s such a wild concept.

But as the One who created all things, who made us in His image – we are also made to create.

Not to consume. To create.

Not to consume. To steward.

This is like: radical, counter-cultural, wild thinking.

But it’s also timeless.

I know that the answer to these kinds of questions is supposed to be something that points to Simon Sinek and “Starting with Why” or “Steal Like an Artist” by Austin Kleon or whoever’s TED Talk is blowing up or the biggest voices on LinkedIn, and I think all of that can be good and interesting, but any of it would be a dishonest response from me.

Because for me, when I read the Bible, I literally find myself coming alive.

In prayer, I get my very best ideas.

If I’m stuck creatively, all I have to do is shift into the presence of God, becoming aware of Him, of the Holy Spirit.

This is not a universal idea, I’m not talking about muses, I’m not talking about a spirit of creativity, I’m talking about actually connecting with the Creator by way of his son, Jesus Christ, and the One who He promised us: the Counsellor, the Comforter, the Holy Spirit. Which actually can dwell within us, if we choose it.

Wild, I get it, I know.

Also: like, kind of – maybe – unpopular.

But true.

It affects not just my creativity, but the nature of my relationships: I am not primarily hoping to get money from someone, I’m primarily hoping to love them. To honor them. To elevate them. To bring them the very best that I can, and to help them get the very best out of life.

If I’m your manager, I’m not mostly trying to get you to produce the maximum amount of work for the minimum amount of pay, I’m trying the very best I can to support you, encourage you, help you achieve your maximum potential.

This is the nature of God, it’s the way of a life of worship, it’s the way of the cross, and it’s rare. I wish it was not so rare.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.fascinationfilms.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fascination.film.studio/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FascinationFilms/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/teegstouffer/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@FascinationFilmCo