Ever since I can remember, I wanted to be involved in the entertainment industry. From making movies to being in them, I didn’t know how I would do it or what that journey would be like, but I was determined to see it happen—somehow!

When my mother first learned of my dreams, she arranged for me to speak with a friend of hers who was a well-known theatrical producer at the time. Although the conversation took place when I was 17 years old, I still remember it as if it were yesterday. He told me, rather directly as I recall, that “You have to want this more than anything in the world.” At the time, I didn’t exactly know what he meant. It was only when I started to achieve these goals that I understood his message.

Television came to me relatively by accident. What I wanted more than anything in the world in the early 1990s was to publish a magazine for the sport of figure skating. The moment I achieved that, television appearances followed from that work. From publishing, my early passion for making movies grew, and then I began appearing in them. But once you achieve far-reaching goals, you start to wonder what the next steps will be.

I have never been one to try to map out my entire career. I know what I wanted to achieve and just worked hard to make those dreams come true to the best of my ability. Nothing worth doing comes without sacrifice. While I may not have known what those producers’ words meant to me at the time, I understood as my career progressed.

When I was working 12-hour days launching my publishing ventures, my friends at the time were out socializing and “clubbing” several days a week. While I did allow myself some recreation, my response to most invitations was that I was working. Eventually, the invitations stopped coming. However, there was not a single day when I regretted those choices, as the results to date can be found on my IMDb and LinkedIn. I’m sometimes asked how I did it, and I generally respond, “Did what?” While I’m not coy in my response, I find I’m working just as hard now (if not harder!) as I did then.

Producing my second feature film, First Signal, was harder than my first, Justice Is Mind. Why, you ask? Because once you’ve done something, you understand what the journey is all about and you want to exceed it with your next project. By this time, you know the industry, so “blind ambition” doesn’t really apply anymore (I’m not sure if that’s good or bad!). But through it all, you have to have passion. It can’t be about money or fame; it has to be about enjoying the project. If you lose the passion, you lose the project. Because if your heart isn’t in it, no bank account will solve that. 

Case in point, over 20 years have passed since I published International Figure Skating (add another 10 since I founded it in 1993). But here I am in 2025 organizing a pitch deck (which is almost done) for a news organization to cover the sport. What reignited that passion for me was attending the World Figure Skating Championships a month ago. Where this new venture will go is anyone’s guess. But I won’t know unless I try. Because if I let an opportunity slip away just because I’ve done it before, I’ll never know what the possibilities could have been for doing it again.

Choices.