In my world, there’s a new breed of fan fiction. Unlike most fan fiction, my latest work—The Ridiculous, Staggering, Whimsical World of Songa—is not sci-fi. It’s why-fi—a fictional story world that asks an aching world why, and perhaps more importantly, why not?
I’ve been called a visionary by some, a delusionary by most. There’s not much I haven’t been called, and if I haven’t been called it yet, I’ve probably called myself that—until someone else repeated it back to me on tape.
But you can call me the cofounder of Songa Studios St Louis.
I’m the Executive Producer of the immersive social musical where the surprising star is The Creator within …
I spent my entire life trying to find my people. 3 years ago, in a Nevada desert, I wondered, “What if I light a fire and made it easy for my people to find me? Rather than searching for belonging, when you create a place where others feel like they belong, you will never be alone again.”
So, I, the ‘bazillion heir’, became The Director behind the living script that’s being written before your very eyes, and ears, at songa.live, the social change game that saved the Soul of Business– and St Louis (with music), **songa.me.**
Long before my story began, I was born into a middle-class entrepreneurial family trapped in their struggling family business. I was a second generation entrepreneur and heir to the throne of our family’s business. As the oldest of my siblings, I was handed a company, and the expectations my parents thrust upon me as their ‘Golden Child.’ My half-brother Forbes thought he had it hard, but our dad was living vicariously through me. I felt the weight of his unrealized dreams and potential.
Until one day, I transformed our family business, but our family’s dysfunction didn’t improve.
It only grew worse when at the midday of my life, I became the divorced son, the brother, and nephew of one of the richest families in America, our net worth now in the billions. But behind the scenes we were emotionally, and socially, destitute. Those more salacious readers, as many a tabloid journalist before them, may be wondering which family business I’m speaking of, but the name is of no import.
Because I’ve left that life behind. After I sold our family business to Private Equity for a life changing sum, I left behind the Divided States of America, where Capital is King and moved to a state of Wyoming, one of the few remaining United States in America, if only United in my imagination.
I was an orphan of wealth, but it wasn’t until I lost my own family—my wife, Cheyenne, and our children—that I realized I was truly bankrupt. The accountants had told me my net worth had not changed, so where had my self worth gone?
I had no dreams. And when I took stock of my life’s work up until that point, I found out it had only added up and reduced to one thing: the increasing of shareholder value.
But who are society’s real shareholders?
And what, or who, did I value more than money?
The answer was not in those smoke-filled halls of industry’s tycoons, the ones I’d been allowed entrance to, where the real money is made.