We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Chris Newhard. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Chris below.
Hi Chris, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
Resilience in and of itself is a tricky word: on one side of the definition is the ability to withstand, or rather, how much can you take before you break. The other, to recover quickly, meaning how fast can you get back up. While resilience may play many roles in our lives, for myself, it has proven to far more of the former. As a full time creative artist in the film industry and owner of a production company (among other entrepreneurial quests), I’m no stranger to taking a beating from the world. From going months without a paycheck or a job to go to each day (I’m the original “work from home” societal member) – how do I find value in myself if others do not, and more importantly, how can I keep from letting that destroy me?
For me, the answer has time and time again proven true to reframe my thinking – I am not a rock that takes a beating, I am not unbreakable, and I am not on this earth to “take” for myself. By changing my POV to giving rather than taking, it brings new meaning to my day – how can I give myself to this more thoughtfully, how can I help someone who needs it, or what am I willing to sacrifice to move forward. When we give selflessly to our passions, commitments, friends and family, we refill our own cup internally, and with a full heart, it’s difficult to ever truly feel defeated.
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’ve been apart of the Film industry since around 2008, the first part of my career as a freelancer, the latter as a founder and entrepreneur. After hitting some glass ceilings as a freelancer, in 2017 I created Booklight Creative, a production company for to serve clients and create amazing work for brands and companies. Since then, I have expanded our company reach with Booklight Film Company, a sister company for producing original ideas alongside my business partner Jacob Matthew.
Throughout my career I’ve been lucky to work with some incredible brands and talent over the years, like touring with the band Train, helping relaunch Sia’s career, shooting several projects for Netflix and more recently, co-creating with my friends a sketch comedy show called “Gilly and Keeves” starring Shane Gillis, which has amassed nearly one million followers online and has over 125,000,000 views on YouTube.
The last few years of my life have been involved with the health and wellness industry, directing the Alzheimer’s documentary “Little Empty Boxes” with health journalist Max Lugavere, and I’m in the middle of directing another film about the effects of a animal based diet on the body. I find that my work fluctuates with what’s going on in my personal life, so as challenging times have come and gone, I’ve created work that I feel helps me cope. I’ve always been drawn to human stories that are dramatic by nature. Being of German-Irish decent, I am no stranger to drama – it’s in my blood, and it’s something I carry with me that changes how my eyes see the world. We recently produced a short film called Self Tape about an aspiring actress who struggles with the current demands of the entertainment industry, something I’ve seen first hand and experienced in my own way many times. With Booklight, I’m able to tell those stories and bring my vision to life for others to enjoy and experience.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Of the many tool you’ll need to not only survive, but thrive – three come to mind as primaries. Everyone says it, and we always learn the hard way, but life is going to be hard 98% of the time, so learning to problem solve the things go wrong is likely the most important aspect of any career. It’s what makes us human, and it allows our brains to be exercised and used to their full extent. No one every got anywhere worth going without figuring out how to overcome any obstacles that got in their way. So problem solving without getting heated or stressed, dealing with life’s pressures, and overcoming what gets thrown at you is key.
The next trait that I’ve had to unexpectedly develop more is curiosity. Curiosity killed the cat, right? Wrong – something else killed that cat, curiosity is what got the cat started on something new and exciting.. Curiosity at new technologies, efficiencies, cultures, alternate paths of execution – whatever it may be, curiosity drives the car and keeps things interesting. It will keep you engaged, up to date, and drive you into conversations, relationships, products, places, and life paths you didn’t even know existed.
Last and unlikely, remember kindness. Kindness to yourself can go along way in the middle of the night when you can’t sleep and you’re staring at the ceiling in dreaded anxiety about life choices. Kindness in emails knowing Bob’s snarky reply might have been before his 2nd cup of coffee. Kindness to your family knowing every minute you take for yourself to work out your demons is a minute taken from them – spend those minutes wisely. Kindness can put someone else’s trauma to sleep so they can smile again, even if they’re just the server who accidentally messed up your lunch order. Be kid to yourself, and be kind to others.
Tell us what your ideal client would be like?
Booklight has worked with top brands and talent over the years, and some of those have been just delightful to work for/with, while others remain permanently scratched off our holiday card list. Clients come in every shape and size, from the solo entrepreneur just starting out to the multi-billion dollar companies with 18 stakeholders looking to make their mark at the company.
We have found our best relationships (and our best work) derives from human driven projects – clients who are looking to tell stories about real world people going through real world problems. Clients with projects that excite us are clients who favor people over profits, seek global diversity in their stories, and hope to capture the human experience on film. Not every project gets to be that – and we’re happy to deliver work for any client that wants to collaborate with us – but the ones that keep us smiling as we work on them at 11pm on a Tuesday are the ones that we emotionally align with.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.booklight.co
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/booklightco/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=BIxKUR1GVVU&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.booklight.co%2F&embeds_referring_origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.booklight.co&source_ve_path=MzY4NDIsMjM4NTE
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