I used to be in a band. I’ve been in several, actually. I started when I was 12 years old. As teenagers, we wrote our own music, practiced it daily or weekly, recorded our music, produced records, distributed the records, booked shows around the Carolinas constantly, and even went on a couple of East Coast tours. We were productive and it was amazingly fun and passionate. The energy of creating together was what was so compelling.

I am driven to create. I do it every day, or I want to jump out of my skin. When I went on from my bands to write a novel, I was enjoying creating alone, but for most of my life I have created with a group of people. I may write songs alone, but they really take shape with the group. They become bigger than what I had created in my living room as other creative input is inserted into them.

RevenFlo is my largest creative endeavor to date. And there is a key ingredient that RevenFlo has that my novel and my music never had – service. Those other endeavors were essentially selfish in nature. Not in a bad way. But they were about me expressing my story, my art. I sought greatness, but I understand now that the greatness I was seeking was not greatness at all but notoriety, appreciation, and fame.

It’s kind of ironic, I guess, because I used to think that my art was above business because it was more true, more real, more honest, more authentic, etc. I thought that business was about money, and therefore was lesser and perverted by nature. But here I am now creating a business, and I believe it is nobler than my art. The reason is service.

With RevenFlo, we create to make the world a better place. Whether we are helping other business people be successful in their work and therefore support their families, or whether we are doing the work of the Hive and providing training to students while building free websites for non-profit organizations, or whether we are doing larger more experimental projects… any way you slice it, we are creating from a place of service. To help others be successful. It’s a powerful feeling. It feels so much larger than any of my prior work.