AIMbitious talks with Mark Rossier, Director of Development for the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), about entrepreneurship and the arts. NYFA, a nonprofit organization, has given grants to artists and writers of every stripe. Past grant recipients include award-winning novelist Jennifer Egan and artist Aurora Robson, who recently created a statue for Mayor Bloomberg’s celebration of Earth Day.

Can you tell me about how you see the mission of the foundation?

We are now celebrating our fortieth anniversary, and the mission has always remained the same, even as the programming has expanded: that is to provide artists with the resources that they need, whether those are financial or education–for lack of a better phrase–the resources they need to realize their artistic vision and further their careers.

Anything we can do to help artists, whether that’s giving them professional development training, financial support through any of our grant programs, fiscal sponsorship… all of that is what you need to have a sustainable career as an artist.

How did you get involved?

I’ve been here a little over two years. Before this, I was at the Alliance of Residence Theaters/New York. They’re a service organization for not-for-profit theaters in New York City. I was working there and an opportunity to work here came along, and it seemed a good move. NYFA works with artists in all disciplines. We do some support for organizations, as well.

How can young artists catch your attention?

Certainly they should be looking at our website, because there are any number of programs we have or activities we have. There are ‘doctor’s hours,’ which give visual artists the chance to sit down with curators and museum personnel to review their portfolios. Our classifieds have lots of listings for internships. I know it sounds trite, but it is true; internships are a great way to get your foot in the door and get to meet people.

At NYFA we have a pretty good track record of hiring interns. A lot of people who’ve worked here started as interns.

The key thing I’d say to recent grads is: you really have to get out there and start doing it.  Get out there and go to events, and start to meet people, and make your work, and intern, and try and find, if you can, try and find jobs, even if they’re only vaguely related to your artistic practice–find jobs where you can hopefully, if not practice your art, then meet people who might help you practice your art and get it seen or get it read and have opportunities.

There is that Woody Allen quote, “Eighty percent of life is just showing up.”

If you’re young, and if you’re just starting out, that’s the time you can most afford to take a little bit of a financial bite. Maybe take a lower-paying job at a not-for-profit organization, just as an example, where at least your life as an artist and your working life are a little more entwined.

Are you an artist yourself?

Not in any way. Which is fine. I’m perfectly happy being an arts administrator.

I’m very engaged with it, and I enjoy all disciplines of it, so this is a good way for me to know about up-and-coming artists, know about events, be going to places and helping artists and helping it all work without actually being an artist myself, for which I have neither the talent nor the temperament.

Is it the making it all work that sets you on fire, makes you happy?

Yeah, to be able to be one of those… to work for an organization that can really have an impact on people and really help them push their careers is great.

Have you made really meaningful connections that way?

I have lots of artist friends, people who run companies and all of that stuff.

How do you see the role of the nonprofit in arts and culture right now?

One of the roles that not-for-profits have, not just NYFA, is to some extent demystify the process, help people get access, and to some extent help them become better at talking about their work and presenting their work and giving feedback and giving advice and offering training. I think those things are all really important.

What’s one really great experience you’ve had with an artist?

You know, I don’t know that... I can’t think of one, but the general thing I’d say is I really like going to art events with artists. It’s always interesting to hear what they have to say. The event itself in many ways is far less important than that sort of conversation that happens afterwards, where it’s always interesting to get people’s takes on things and how they think and what they walked away with and how it sometimes makes them think about their work in a different way. All of that is really interesting just for those conversations.

New York magazine art critic Jerry Saltz with NYFA Board Member Marjorie Weiss Martay at NYFA’s annual benefit held February 25, 2010 at the James Cohan Gallery in Chelsea.

Michael Stipe with NYFA Executive Director Michael L. Royce at NYFA’s annual benefit held February 25, 2010 at the James Cohan Gallery in Chelsea.

It comes down to four words: Vivian, Maslow, Peak, Bhutan. At first glance, they may seem arbitrary, but for a California entrepreneur, inspirational speaker, and best-selling author, these words signify a thread of experiences on which a career was crafted and a calling created.

Meet Chip Conley, CEO and founder of Joie de Vivre Hospitality, author of the business best-seller PEAK, and newly minted speaker at TED Talks 2010. Fresh out of Stanford Business School in 1987 Conley wanted to put his knowledge and newly acquired skills to the test. Instead of following the corporate path of many of his peers, he chose to begin what would turn out to be a career as the front man of America’s second largest boutique hotel chain. But the road was not always about acquisition, nor was it easy.

Enter Vivian. In 1987 Conley met Vivian in an inner-city motel in San Francisco where she was working as a maid. At 26 years old, he bought that motel, which marked the beginning of his new boutique-hotel enterprise, Joie de Vivre. Vivian helped him to understand the difference between a job and a calling. Her calling wasn’t to become the world’s best toilet scrubber. What gives her inspiration and meaning is knowing that she’s taking care of people when they’re traveling on the road far away from home.

That lesson about callings served Conley well until about eight and a half years ago when he almost went broke. As the largest operator of hotels in the San Francisco Bay Area in the wake of the dot-com bust and 9/11, Bay Area hotels experienced the biggest percentage revenue drop since World War II. On a day when Conley was lacking “joie de vivre,” he dropped into a local bookstore looking for a business solution. Given his befuddled state of mind, he quickly ended up in the self-help section of the store. Enter Abraham Maslow whose enlightenment books and Hierarchy of Needs theory Conley spent studying the rest of the afternoon.

Over the next year, Conley became a bit of a Maslow junkie. Conley was able to obtain Maslow’s private journals from the last ten years of his life and found that in his later years he focused his iconic Hierarchy of Needs pyramid more on organizations–or the collective–as opposed to just the individual. Conley learned that Maslow believed that he could make a bigger difference in the world this way.

During that dot-com crash, curiosity led Conley to reinterpreting Maslow’s five-level Hierarchy of Needs into three key themes which he calls the Transformation Pyramid and which forms the basis of Conley’s book, PEAK: How Companies Get Their Mojo From Maslow. Conley wanted to help companies use the principles from Maslow and form a guide on how to build a culture of enduring success and one that could thrive in both the “worst” and “best” of times. Conley started applying these themes to his key stakeholders such as his employees, customers and investors. He started measuring intangible qualities such as his employees’ sense of meaning and customers’ sense of whether they felt an emotional connection with Joie de Vivre.

It became clearer to him that leaders tend to get overly focused on survival at the bottom of the pyramid–especially in a downturn–because it’s tangible and measurable, but quite often to the detriment of paying attention to higher needs further up the pyramid that tend to be intangible. “Since leaders typically manage what they can measure, most of us end up stuck at the bottom of this pyramid,” explained Conley. But it is in the top part of the pyramid, the emotional experience of business and relationships, where we need to spend far more of our time and focus–especially in economic times that put mounting pressure on our emotions and spirit.

In 2008 Conley traveled to Bhutan where he spent two months studying a culture that values the intangible. In the spirit of the Gross National Happiness Index (GNH) former King of Bhutan Jigme Singye Wangchuck started asking more pertinent questions like why do some of the “goods” we create that define GDP actually turn out to be “bads” for society. He suggested that the ultimate public good is happiness. Over the course of his three-dozen years as the King–based upon the principles of GNH–he started remaking how his country operated including voluntarily turning his country from an absolute monarchy into a constitutional monarchy. No bloodshed, no coups, just a peaceful transition to become the world’s newest democracy less than two years ago.

In summer 2009, TED Talk leader Chris Anderson called upon Conley to speak about his discoveries in Bhutan. Titled “What the World Needs Now” the TED talks are drawing attention to those key principles and pedagogical models that can help the world become a more enlightened place with better values. Clearly the world needs different standards that are going to not only give us economic profit, but in the model of Bhutan, enduring spiritual fulfillment. Few can aptly articulate and speak to this as can Conley. Perhaps it is time for us to borrow from the lessons of other successful countries and communities to find out what works well for them and apply those principles to our own structures.

While Conley might have cultivated a resume of achievement, one thing he’ll never forget is where he came from and what it took for him to get from where he was 24 years ago upon the purchase of his first hotel to leading talks at one of the most coveted speaker series in the world. For Conley, it took a vision, a desire to do things differently, and to follow his own heart towards creating his own calling.

While we might not all be on the path of entrepreneur, best-selling author, and acclaimed speaker, we can all have a vision, a dream, and a higher standard. Sometimes it can come in the form of meeting a “Vivian” or finding your version of “Maslow.” But whatever it is, be open to it and look for it because it will inevitably come, and as Conley asserts, it will mostly likely arrive in the form of not a tangible good, but an intangible feeling that will move you to follow your dreams and create a calling of your own.

Inspiration is that rare moment when optimism meets opportunity. This revelation is unique to each individual, but there are some cases, extraordinary in themselves, when inspiration is a collective vision. One of these visions is fostered in a bright New Jersey classroom.

In that classroom is Mr. Hank Bitten, supervisor of the History Department at Indian Hills High School. Mr. Bitten is one of those memorable teachers, always equipped with jokes and words of encouragement. Truly a motivation to students and fellow faculty, the history teacher also heads the International Studies and Business University Program, a specialized high-school curriculum program in a public school for students who earn admission. He mentors students throughout their high-school careers, advising them to pursue their passions through extracurricular activities, and always advocating higher education. There is power in this mentorship.

Mr. Bitten attributes his own love for teaching to a teacher he had himself while in high school. “In my junior and senior year, I had Mr. Ravo. He had a great sense of humor; he was inspirational,” he says, reminiscing. And so the cycle continues. Teachers are in opportune positions to encourage students to pursue higher education and to follow their hearts. “It’s all about motivation,” he says.

Teachers like Mr. Bitten take the time not only to teach, but to support students with their passions, helping the next generation to be more enthused about what they can do for themselves and the world. “The majority of my students are doing things that don’t really pay a lot of money, but really have a big impact on how we look at the environment or how we help people in poverty, and, of course, that’s a great feeling for a teacher to know that kids are in pivotal places following their dreams.”

Following your dreams–that’s what living is all about. With encouragement comes passion and with passion the pursuit of one’s dreams. With such nurturing teachers, the road to personal success gets a little less bumpy, and students learn that they have the power to take the road less travelled.

A vegan, six-time college dropout, and a $1.00 yearly salary—sound like the stats of the CEO and founder of the nation’s largest organic grocery chain? John P. Mackey, CEO of Whole foods, founded the company in the late 1970’s out of the garage of his Austin, Texas home. The company now boasts 279 international locations and recently became the United State’s first national certified organic grocer.

But as they say, behind every great man is a great woman, and John Mackey is no exception. Today, Mackey is more equated with his outspoken nature and plans to revolutionize business and the American economy. One would find it hard to believe that the seeds for this change organically grew from Mackey’s simple desire to “meet interesting women.”

A true unconventionalist–in a Pre-Match.com era–24-year-old Mackey felt moving into a vegetarian co-op would be the most effective way to achieve his goal. Using this strategic planning, he not only found a girlfriend in Renee Lawson Hardy, but a business partner and a new vegan lifestyle.

When asked about his humble start Mackey said, "I was 24 years old. I started out wanting to have a company that had good healthy food and to earn a living. Did I start out wanting to change the world or change people? Of course not, it would take a total megalomaniac to do that."

Change, nonetheless, was what he accomplished with Whole foods, the first grocery chain to institute standards for the humane treatment of animals and garner third place on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's list of Top 25 Green Power Partners.

Transforming the way a nation eats was not enough for Mackey. He set his sights on the American business model as the latest target for change. Having studied the works of free-market capitalism thought-leaders Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand in his younger years, Mackey developed a passion for Conscious Capitalism.

With Conscious Capitalism, businesses aim to reach a deeper societal purpose, as opposed merely to chasing maximum profits. Mackey explains that if companies aspire to achieve higher value goals, such as motivated employees, happy customers, top-quality products, and a reason for existence (beyond monetary gains), they will see a more profitable bottom line.

It is a common misconception that Conscious Capitalism encourages businesses to become not-for-profit. In fact, a successful and lucrative company can still be motivated and guided by a higher purpose. According to Mackey, a company can achieve a deeper meaning by pursuing one of four values, which he has admittedly borrowed partially from Plato: the good, the true, the beautiful, or the heroic.
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Whole Foods has been in pursuit of the good and the heroic, ideals of which Mackey is at the forefront. In 2006 he reduced his personal salary to $1 a year, donated his stock portfolio to charity, set up salary caps for executive employees, and stopped all company purchasing of farm-factory meats. The company serves as an example of ethical business practices, and Mackey’s personal consciously capitalistic standards have inspired voluntary cooperation from stakeholders in his company.

Mackey feels so strongly about the benefits of this business paradigm that he has become a self-nominated spokesperson for Conscious Capitalism, founding a Catalyzing Conscious Capitalism Summit and The Conscious Capitalism Alliance. Mackey has even written an educational audio-series for business owners aspiring to practice Conscious Capitalism and has toured the country speaking to universities about his formula for change.

Whether Conscious Capitalism ever becomes the business norm still remains to be seen. Mackey, the eternal optimist, however, is content with what he has accomplished with Whole Foods. He has been quoted saying, "If I get run over by a truck later today, I will have already in my life made a difference in helping many people, customers are better off because millions of people are eating in a way they never would have had we never existed. Our team members are better off because we've created a company that's a great place to work. Our suppliers have flourished along with Whole Foods and have made a lot of money from their association with us. And our investors have made a ton of money."

All the while Whole Foods remains an organic retail giant, and if Mackey has any say, the company will remain an example of how a passion-driven business can revolutionize the social and cultural standards of the food industry and achieve immense financial success, without compromise.

The large orange “Yes” hanging on the wall of La Grande Orange café in Santa Monica, California is an apt representation of their effort to serve happiness along with fresh culinary creations. Zen is one of the restaurant’s main ingredients.

Manager Araceli Hernandez shares that when it comes to service, they aim to “always make everyone feel welcome and accommodated.” She indicated the simple, yet upbeat poster on the wall: “We always try to say yes to whatever we possibly can.”

She feels that one of the best assets of the eatery is its laid-back environment and its ability to function as both a day and evening establishment. “It’s by the beach,” she comments. “All the employees are very friendly and seem happy to be here. You don’t necessarily find that type of atmosphere in any other place at all times.”

If others want to create a successful, positive environment, she recommends that “you just always want to remember [the importance of your] mentality when you come walking in the door. If you’re very positive and energetic, that’s the vibe you’ll give to your employees. You want to treat them the way you want them to treat the guests.”

The personal touch is elemental. It’s refreshing to find a restaurant where your servers savor the items on the menu, and when the timing is right, they are willing to talk about more than just the food. When one of the waitresses heard that I was a writer, she became excited, explaining that she also aspired to write. Another even suggested an inspirational novel that might interest me after listening to my literary aspirations.

They stress the upbeat and genuine, and just as their menu offers a refreshing variety from fish to pancakes, the bottom of their online menu provides the saying, “The customer is usually right… Orange is the new black… If you say, ‘I love you,’ mean it.”

This one restaurant embodies the core elements of life: Fresh, healthy food; saying “YES” to opportunities; treating your customers as family; and being passionate. The sweetness of this eatery isn’t found merely in the muffins and cookies; it’s in their people and outlook on life.