We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Maryann Gibbons a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Maryann, 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?
From the start, I was rarely the best at anything immediately. Learning early on to excel required extra effort, I stayed after school to tackle math as it evolved into a foreign language. My childhood was sad and lonely at times, but it gave me the space to dream in solitude and nurture a thirst through dedication to practicing whatever I wanted to master. My father regularly worked over 60 hours a week to meet my basic needs. Resilience is in my DNA. Anything I’ve ever been proud of required me to overcome the threshold of wanting to quit and persevere despite obstacles.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
Much of my growth as a human, artist, and business owner is directly correlated leading my life with curiosity while taking daily purposeful action despite little initial subject matter expertise. I’ve seen this attitude translate to my successes and have an additional positive ripple effect on others. I keep a close eye on the why. Having a clear mission provides fuel to the actions as kindling can to fire.
I’ve been described as a connector in the current act of life I am in. Being bold and committed enough to develop skills to be dangerous in any subject area has proven advantageous to delivering on target goals. I never knew how to start a farmers market 501c(3), run a plant shop or how to make a magazine. Those accomplishments required a strict regimes of focus and identifying supports and systems that I innately lacked. I also find comfort and trust in the fact that every class or job, conversation, and experience plays a role in my current abilities. I think it’s beautiful that we live in a time where we have resources that allow us to learn to master a task or endeavor with steady commitment.
I’ve always resonated with the saying, “A goal without a plan is just a wish.”
I am in the middle of the development process for our second issue (releasing in June). This process catapults my artistry, placing me in a beautifully concentrated zone where I arrange and lay out all the artwork. Pairing with taglines and typography, each magazine page is an empty gallery wall, and an opportunity to engage readers to learn more about the artists laid out before them.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Entrepreneurship requires “soft power” that is business-minded and intuitive. When your concept is fresh, building the foundation requires extra effort and miles from the Founder. A similar barometer is needed to know when to apply grace and instill support through delegation, shifting, or ceasing operations altogether when the mission is not serving you in a way that provides the quality of life you need to meet the full potential of your offering (or for your actualization as a person.)
I’ve experienced seasons of flourishing and droughts. Honest reflection and processing about the highs and lows will allow you to implement systems that enable your operations to thrive in business (and for your household). At first, you will need to do everything for your business, and as you grow stronger, you will need to create ways to handle less day-to-day so you can support the bigger mission picture of what you’re building.
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
Celebrating the creation and consumption of art in our community is something bigger than the region Artypants Mag currently covers. Artypants Magazine highlights creatives in New England. This poses an exciting regionalized opportunity for other creative entrepreneurs to create Artypants in their own city or state.
We’re seeking regional partners interested in becoming Artypants Magazine’s publisher under a licensing business model. If you have a passion for publishing, celebrating creativity in the community, and entrepreneurship, you may be a good match for reinvigorating print with this 7×10 print magazine with the publication tools, guidance, and branding guidelines offered in this publishing opportunity.
If you’re an artist, photographer, or writer looking to contribute, there’s an opportunity for collaboration in each issue. We seek submissions within each issue that we create. Feel free to contact Artypants Mag to explore how you can get involved in New England, start in your area, or as an Ad Partner to bring this publication to your community. We have rolling submissions for artwork, and you can view the guidelines at: www.artypantsmagazine.com
Contact Info:
- Website: www.artypantsmagazine.com
- Instagram: @artypantsmag
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/artypants-magazine
- Other:@herantenna and @artypantsmag
Image Credits
Third photo by @kristenloken
