Chase your passion, to find your purpose.
Timothy W. Leeds
VP of Growth | Pioneering the Future of Personalized Gifting & Business Engagement ??
An important component to great marketing is the ability to tell a story, reaching potential customers to take action that will prove to be beneficial to their needs/wants.
Recently, I came across an article from the Harvard Business Review talking about how often opportunities to lead, are missed by skipping over our personal stories in talks and presentations. Many of us in leadership positions skip over those stories when we could use them to build strong connections with our audiences. (view here: https://bit.ly/3eR4ZQ1)
So I thought I’d give it a try…I consider the video below (one of hundreds) to be one of my best. So much learning, so many memories.
The Prequel
Since I was a kid, I have always wanted to be a superhero. The thought of flying, superpowers, and saving the world consumed at least 75% of my playtime and imagination.
I used to draw…with a pencil and erasers. Remember those? In 1988, My uncle, Larry, got me started by teaching me how to draw what I see. He taught me how to replicate pages from my coloring books, by showing me his techniques without tracing. At the time, it was a lot of Spiderman and Batman. Drawing was a tool of creation for me, a place for me to focus and create.
The Backstory
Fast forward to 2011. At this point in life, I had experienced a successful career in 3D design and engineering. Neither of which I was passionate about. However, because of an eagerness to learn independently, and the ability to identify unique ways of leveraging technology, my career had taken off!
I contribute much of that success to 3 things: the example my father showed me regarding faith and hard work, creative learning from my uncle, and a spirit of competition learned through an extremely competitive basketball program in the Illinois public school system.
However, it was not the designing or engineering that I was in love with…it was an infatuation with 3D models and the ability to see and rotate what was being created on my screen. Right in front of me. Sure, back then it was not nearly as good as it is now, but it was happening! In addition, I could render a photo-real image in a matter of hours (yes, hours!).
My mind has been blown since my first encounter with 3D Animation and Rendering to create things and make them move.
The Training Montage
In late 2011, I dabbled in 3D scanning, specifically 3D scanning faces. That led to learning other software such as Blender3D and After Effects until I stumbled across a way to create a replica 3D face scan from a single image. Back then, this was very difficult to achieve.
During the same year, I won an animation contest, leading to a full license of a very new technology that allowed marker-less motion capture using 3 Xbox Kinects and a relatively powerful PC. So, to make a very long story short, naturally, I thought to myself, “How could one combine years of creativity and learning, plus professional experience to create a product for others I am also passionate about?”
Shortly after, in 2012, my wife and I launched an LLC called VIIZRO and a brand called “The Animation Adventure”.
The Enemy
I finally tapped into my passion. My dream side-hustle. I was going to conquer the personalized short animation industry in a single bound - - until I didn’t.
I had created 4 original Superhero characters, each with their own backstory and animated movie trailer. Superhero enthusiasts could choose not only their character but if that hero was an adult male, adult female, child boy, or child girl. In 2012, there was no such thing as “real-time” rendering and what did exist was extremely limited. Despite that restriction, it was taking me 2 minutes to get a 3D face replica from a single photo, fully animated. Even though I was able to transform a photo of a human into a fully animated Superhero character fairly quickly, I was facing an enemy that was a necessary evil.
That enemy was the 3D rendering times associated with video production. It was a gigantic roadblock for me to mass produce these videos and lower the cost.
One frame could take up to 5 minutes to render and at 24 frames per second, with each trailer being roughly 2.5 minutes, I was not able to scale and the costs to do so would have killed me.
My Kryptonite was roughly a 3-week total creation time from start to finish for a single custom Animation Adventure movie trailer.
The Victory
I was feeling defeated but had one more trick up my sleeve before I let this dream slip away.
I began to connect with software developers specifically with the open-source Blender3D software. Finding ways to speed up my renders, even using older render engines and fake lighting to simulate a "close enough to good" result. I was successful and most would not recognize the difference.
I was relentlessly researching digital marketing and guerrilla marketing techniques.
What could I do with a low budget or no budget at all? I quickly became a digital marketer during this time, unintentionally because it was necessary for me to understand and execute to carry out my vision.
Before I knew it, it was already 2014. I had worked on these skills relentlessly for 3 years and I felt as if I was finally ready to hit this with all I had.
I was ready to produce. I was ready to scale.
I reached out to as many writers as possible to help me generate buzz around this animation service I had developed. By this time, I not only had Superhero-themed personalized trailers available but zombies as well. I had 2 fairly well-known authors in their space hooked. One from a Wired.com digital magazine spin-off, GeekDad.com. At the time, Geekdad was trending very well for my target audience.
My brother and I co-created and published a mobile app for both ios and android. I created the brand images, my brother developed the app. - where Superhero lovers could take their photos and place them behind the masks of the superhero or zombie apocalypse characters and scenes I had created.
I connected with a Shark-Tank-winning company that took an image and created a 3D printed model of that person as a superhero. They were hooked. I was in. This was it.
The Defeat
By the end of 2014 my hard work and focused vision were beginning to pay off. That 3-week process was now streamlined without sacrificing quality down to just 1.5 hours from start to finish! With only 30 min of that time being “man-hours”. The rest, automation and rendering. I dumped all profit back into the business and hardware/software improvements I needed while remaining very lean.
I had 2 articles published, a mobile app, and connected with the “sharks”.
You can read the GeekDad interview here: https://geekdad.com/2014/04/animation-adventure-become-hero/
You can read the Zombie Research Society review here: https://zombieresearchsociety.com/archives/25672)
Everything should have taken off from there, right? That’s what I thought anyway but was quickly proven wrong.
The articles were great but honestly did not produce the lift needed for this to take off. A record spike to my website to purchase, but not nearly as many conversions as I needed.
That Shark Tank connection, well, they did not understand the vision and while we were negotiating, they were in over their heads and really didn’t understand how to leverage technology. They “tanked” shortly after I connected with them because they were unable to take their physical product and create a digital version before their funding outweighed their sales.
That was it, I was out of time, I had to make the tough decision to let my dream go. One of the hardest decisions I’ve had to make professionally.
Epic Ending
What’s a good superhero story without an epic ending?!
To this day, I still love to create things and make them move – now instead of Superheroes and movie trailers, I leverage what they taught me, and apply it to building teams and advancing technology. The experience created from The Animation Adventure allowed me to understand aspects of people, technology, sales, and marketing that would have taken me twice as long to learn and even longer to execute outside of that experience.
I’m no longer working on the Animation Adventure or my own product, but I am leveraging all of the digital marketing techniques, animation, storytelling, and software I had learned from pouring my heart and soul into a passion and sharing that with others professionally.
That passion is what led me to find a purpose in my career. I still wake up in the morning pinching myself and reflecting on the journey I have been blessed with from the Engineering world to the Leadership and Digital Marketing world.
Leadership, Story Telling, and Digital Marketing is my passion now. 3D animation is my hobby. Do not underestimate your hobbies or side-hustle. Think of them like side-kicks. Supporting your personal goals, giving your professional career an "edge".
I write this specifically to those looking for a purpose in their careers.
If you never chase your passion, you may never have a chance to understand your purpose.
-Me
How about you? Have you gone through this transformation? Are you living that adventure now? Post your thoughts and experiences below!
Director of Engineering at Austin Hardware & Supply, Inc
3 年This is awesome! I so enjoyed reading this. What a great reminder to follow your passion, and what a great story. Thank you for sharing this.
Predictable Growth for Mission-Driven Brands || Creator Of The COMPASS Method || Founder at Herald
3 年Thanks for sharing this!
I coach HR leaders to go from overwhelmed, overworked policy cops and form jockeys to positive work culture influencers and architects who grow people and profits.
3 年Wow Timothy W. Leeds thanks so much for sharing your story. We win. We learn. We never lose. Rock on my multi-talented, passionate friend!
Healthcare Professional | Veteran
3 年A lot of what I learned from the Army applies to my job now. The passion from serving others as a combat lifesaver, plays out in my day to day as a Nurse Practitioner. Our experiences shape us, and even if you aren't doing 3D every day those experiences help you in your current ventures, and the weeks and months of working on the grind are not in vain. Your prior experiences are like tools in your tool box and those experiences help make you, YOU! A lot of people can do the same job, but part of what you bring is your story and your passions, and that's what matters.
Commercial Broker at Beyond Brokerage
3 年So powerful! What a story. Keep on keepin' on, Timothy W. Leeds. You're a game-changer in the digital marketing space.