Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Patrick Shelton. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Patrick, we’ve been so fortunate to work with so many incredible folks and one common thread we have seen is that those who have built amazing lives for themselves are also often the folks who are most generous. Where do you think your generosity comes from?
Im reminded of a quote from zig ziglar, that goes something like this, “if you go out looking for friends, they’ll be hard to come by. If you go out and be a friend, you’ll find friends everywhere.”
You can call it generosity, but I think it really just comes down to being a good human. Do things for others without the expectation of anything in return and the world will give you all you’d ever want and more – maybe not in the way you expected it or from where you expected it, but it all comes around one way or the other.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I’m one of the founding partners at Current Resident – a production company and post-house founded in 2018 based in Minneapolis. We make tv commercials, docs, and branded content for brands.
We’re a small company so we tend to wear a lot of hats, with that said my main role as executive producer means i focus my time around finding good clients to collaborate with, managing the production teams and growing our roster of directors and collaborators.
We have this saying at Current Resident, Trust + Generosity = Community. Pretty much everything we do is an attempt to be more in alignment with that concept. For instance, last year, we took our directors roster off the Current Resident website. What, why?! Because we are in a smaller market and, in my hot-take opinion, if they haven’t signed the papers, they aren’t on the roster. All of our directors were signed, until they weren’t. I believe directors should be working as much as possible. And if that means they are on a roster, working all the time, great. Sign ’em, put ’em on the site, do what you gotta do to keep them working and evolving as creatives. But… If directors are sitting on a site not seeing the boards or jobs you dreamed of, I think we are doing them, the industry, and frankly, the production company a disservice. Since day one, we have been a director-driven company. And I believe we still are. Which is why we took the roster down and replaced it with The Off-Roster.
The Off-Roster is a chance for us to highlight freelance director talent in the advertising and entertainment industry. It’s a newsletter, and it goes out about once a month to cool creative people around the world. I want to continue growing and fostering amazing talent just like everybody else, and I could be sticking my foot in my mouth with all this, but until we can get these directors consistent, jaw-dropping, holy-shit work, we’re choosing a different path.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Well my business partner and I dropped out of school to start our first company back in 2011 – I like to think of those first 5 years as our MBA with less direction. So just starting and being curious was and still is a major win to beginning with.
We’ve always been ones to try something, fail quick and then try something new, I think that trait tends to do us well as we continue to learn and evolve in this ever changing industry.
I’m not sure readers should be looking for my advice but if I had to do something different I’d probably have taken a mail room job or something like that at a large firm and absorbed everything I could before starting out on our own. You can save a lot of time by learning from those that have been there before. With that said you can still achive similar results by surrounding yourself with likeminded individuals and seeking mentors while building something yourself. More than one way to cook an egg.
Before we go, any advice you can share with people who are feeling overwhelmed?
Exercise and get outside. Movement helps me a great deal. And if you are not the workout type I have found the key is to think of exercise more as play – if you enjoy it, you’re more likely to do it. We tend to spend a lot of our time in meetings, or at our desk, it can be as simple as the next time you have a meeting see if you can pair it with a walk.
Contact Info:
- Website: currentresiden.tv
- Instagram: currentresident.tv
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patlaine/
- Other: We have a newspaper that is open for submissions. Yes a production company that publishes a print newspaper. If anyone wants to collaborate they can go here and fill out this form. We’d love to have you. https://tr.ee/8wxu31QlUZ
Image Credits
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