How To Build Your Vision and Take Your Idea to Fruition
Building a vision is an ongoing process that can be approached in a number of ways. Through the process, you are working on bringing your idea or ideas to fruition. It is through my own experience of building my vision that I’ve found several building blocks that create the foundation for creators and leaders to turn their ideas into reality.
To set the stage, so to speak, building your vision starts with relationships and experience. My own experience began with Doug at a major tech company. Doug would give me new products to use on sets and then provide feedback. Doug also taught me the lesson I’ve written on previously: never do a free production, people (including myself) have bills and need to be paid.
This experience that fed my relationship with Doug soon turned into another opportunity to forge a relationship with someone else in the industry. Doug knew Chuck and Chuck needed someone to run his studio — enter me. I show up and understand what I see on set, but the details of the hiring are still fuzzy. I ask Chuck for clarity and he points me to Ed who offers the insight I need to better understand the hiring. In the editing booth, Ed explains the work — space, the moon, and NASA.
The other layer to building these relationships and experiences is that these people I’ve worked with (Doug, Chuck and many others) are high-level people in their field. But you wouldn’t know that by meeting them because they aren’t selling themselves. The way to connect with that high-level people like Doug and Chuck is to start with the relationship and then to gain experience from the interactions within the relationship.
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These relationships can continue in different ways. Recently, I called Chuck to offer him studio space I wasn’t using. The call about offering studio space, a simple gesture, turned into Chuck telling me about his own vision. He described his efforts to gather people he had known for years to put together a music, sports and tech event around the Super Bowl in Phoenix. This presented the opportunity for me to gain insight into what a particular industry leader was doing with their resources and learn from them.
People you know can offer opportunities to gain insight that influences your own vision, but you can also learn from those you do not know. Reaching beyond your network can provide opportunities for support and help on your own journey. For example, I was casting a film on location at the base of a mountain. One role was for an indigenous person, no tribe specified. So, I went into the community and started asking if I could post signs that stated the audition info, place, time, what it pays, and why as well as that I was looking to cast this specifically with someone who was indigenous versus an actor who would be portraying an indigenous person.
What I didn’t know at the time was that there were seven tribes in the area. Word got out about this gal from Los Angeles wanting to hire authentically for a role. I discovered this one night while soaking in the hot springs under the moonlight. A voice reached me that belonged to Spotted Feather. Her task was to find me and when she did, she helped set up meetings with some of the tribes from around the community. We ended up being able to hire authentically through this connection with Spotted Feather. This relationship forged between strangers led to one of the most authentic and fascinating experiences I have had in casting.
When it comes to supporting the relationships and experiences that help you achieve your vision, remember to keep in mind that they can come from anyone and anywhere. It’s up to you to see the opportunities in front of you. Above all, listen and ask to help your vision come to fruition.