Tell us a little bit about yourselves and your business!
Julien: My name’s Julien and I’m co-director of RoadWorks Media.My background is in theatre and film, and I met Quince on a music production program a number of years back.One aspect of the company is that we do Youth Engagement work.
Quince: I’m Quince, I also co-direct RoadWorks Media. Julien and I met on a course as he said, and it was a course to do with sound.Basically we got speaking about films and we just got talking about what we thought we could do if we were working in the industry. Julien was unemployed at the time, I was unemployed, and we just thought it would be very enterprising to get involved, and find a niche to make films.Also, we thought that at the centre where we were at, they could be doing so much more there, so wethought let’s try and do it ourselves, and that was it!
What RoadWorks Media does is, we provide mentoring, training and experience through media and media activities. The media activities which we have going on at the moment are, film, we got the Podcast and the magazine.
What made you want to set up RoadWorks Media?
Julien: I guess Quince sort of touched on that, we met on a program that was being run by Lambeth, it was rubbish and it didn’t let us use the equipment when we wanted to and we just knew we could do something a whole lot better. It feels like it’s always been something that I’ve always wanted to do.For me, art is about community and it is about society and raising these conversations and bringing it to people.
Quince: Yeah, just what Julien said really!
What is the best thing about starting RoadWorks Media?
Julien: Freedom. We get to choose, you know? You’re not told you have to turn up here at this point, at this time, and you’re going to have to work for this amount of years before you get a pay rise, you know? It’s independence. It’s an ability to choose what you want to be doing with your time. I think that’s definitely one of the bonuses for me.
Quince: Yeah, and I think that the fact that even when things are going bad, you still can appreciate the fact that you know, you’re dependent upon yourself, so you can’t blame anybody else. The buck has to lay with you…I can’t tell you how many times I’ve fired myself…
Julien:(Laughing) Yeah?!?
Quince: I have! Then I’m rehired as somebody else, which is another manifestation of me.
Julien:Hired and fired the same day!
Quince: Yep! So I become somebody else. I’m constantly changing every time I fire myself.That might sound funny, but there’s a certain element of truth in that.That’s a way of me and of us evolving.
Like you know, we’ve had a way of doing things and we’re realising that parts of our personalities are getting in the way and not good for the bigger picture of the company.We’ve had to dispel these attitudes, and that sometimes can create a bit of a malfunction… When you’ve thought,the whole time that it’s meant to be this way, but no! It’s not that way, then you start implementing the new way into the company, and I think you gain more strength from that because you’re looking at things in a wider perspective.
What are some of the struggles you’ve faced?
Julien: One of the areas that I found as difficult in setting up RoadWorks is that a lot of the stuff is new. Like it’s not stuff that I’d studied beforehand and so we’re learning a lot of things from scratch and have to research it and see how the system works, so in terms of business, finances and all of these sort of things. A lot of stuff we had to learn straight away.
Quince: When we first got started, I think me and Julien had lots of scepticisms and lots of fears about how the system is run and I think, the more we started to really get involved and do stuff, and interact more with other businesses, we started to realise that there is more corporate businesses that do want to support organisations like that we are ourselves. More than what we expected.
I think this then started to make us realise that actually, there’s more going on with both of us and how we also push the company forward, and I think you know with ourselves I think we had to learn how you engage with different businesses, different people. With that in mind, I think that’s really pushed us to you know, steer the company in going in the direction that we ultimately want.
If you could have any enterprise related super power what would it be?
Julien:An enterprise related super power? Well it’d have to be something about like, wealth generation. I’d just look at my bank account and it would just start filling up, you know with money, because that’d probably be a pretty good super power to have.
Quince: Yeah, if I could have any superpower, anywhere I turn up I would be paid bucket loads of money and I can choose a fraction of that to go to different charities I guess.
Julien: Yeah, and I guess a nice super power to have would be like to get the best result you want from every meeting. That’d be pretty cool. So every meeting we went to, we’d just be like POW! “Yeah, you got that grant”, or “Yeah!we partnered up with these people”, like that would be pretty awesome.
Quince: Or I would like to have an outfit and on the outfit … let me finish… ok, it’d be C.F.R. and then I’d turn into Charity Fund Raiser Man
Julien: And then people would start throwing buckets of money at you!
Quince: Yeah!
(In a weird voice) “Charity Fund Raiser Man will you come and save us?!” I’d come flying, and then you know. They’d give me the money and I would go back, “Go back and give this to the Cancer Research foundation, yes that’s right! – Take it, the money!”
And Cancer Research would be like: “Thankyou Charity Fund Raiser Man! Thankyou!”
Julien: We can now cure cancer!
Quince: Yeah, we can cure cancer!
Julien: Noone will ever have cancer ever again now because we have enough money.
Quince: I can’t think of anything more worthwhile to be honest. I can’t think of anything else.
Julien: What other superpowers could you have as an entrepreneur? You could have like bid-writing skills I guess couldn’t you?
Quince: Oh yeah!
Julien: Like super bid writing skills, just like booom!
Quince: When you know that could never get turned down.
Julien: Yeah, the golden bid!
Quince: Yeah! You write your name on the top of it and every bid writers like
Julien: Oh my god it’s a golden bid!
Quince: Oh my god it’s RoadWorks Media! Don’t bother reading it. Just give it to them.
Julien: Just give them the money.
Quince: Yeah, that’d be a good one!
Where would you like to see the business in 5 years?
Quince: I would like to see the business in different pockets of the globe, providing a service to communities. I’d like Roadworks to be a company that creates more social cohesion, so you know if you notice somebodies down, you know, you try and help them up.
Julien: Amen. Yeah. Definitely.
