Workin’ with The Second Row – Jason Frishman, The JourneyMen Foundation

We recently sat down to catch up with Jason Frishman, founder of the JourneyMen Foundation to discuss our client partnership and what his experience working with The Second Row was like. I certainly learned something, and we hope you do as well!

Matt, Jason and Matt’s daughter Tess

What was the scope of your project and why did you pick Matt and The Second Row?

First of all, Matt actually helped me to understand the scope of my project. He let me describe or explain all of my big ideas and what I had already accomplished to date. Ultimately, Matt helped me to see what the right priorities were and where to focus my time and energy. 

The project that rose to the top of that list during our brainstorming discussions was building a website and developing a strategy for sharing the work of JourneyMen through a number of different avenues. In order for that to happen, Matt patiently listened to me at length and helped me get to the foundations of my work, the essence of what I can offer to men and fathers. From there we worked together to create an underlying metaphor, which was the story that fully described everything within my business. After completing this component of the project, building the website and seeing what type of content and connections would support my work emerged easily and powerfully.

Picking Matt to support and help me in this project was simple. He is a talented storyteller, something that I highly value in all of my own work. He also possesses a unique ability to distill complex, intertwined (and in my case, rambling) stories into a foundational point that we can return to repeatedly. Matt is grounding in his persistence and gently relentless in his encouragement. His willingness to make the time needed to really understand my work gave me the confidence and trust in tandem with his strategic suggestions and tactical direction.

When you think back about the project, what was special about the collaboration with The Second Row?

Although we already knew one another, Matt made the space and time to REALLY get to know what about ME is inherent to the work that I do. Then he held onto that for awhile, helping me to truly bring my unique self into the way that I share my work. Without our collaboration, I would never have been able to put out the website – what was key was Matt’s ability to take my disorganized and perhaps manic and interconnected thoughts, feelings, ideas and work and find the common threads, organize them and *simplify* them so that I can communicate them more effectively and efficiently.

An example of this would be how he continually brought me back to the cooking metaphor and narrative, even after I had sort of let that go, because I could not locate where the metaphor would live in relation to the JourneyMen work.

How has it helped your business? 

First and foremost, I got the website finished and published. Which was a challenge that I grappled with for a long time. Additionally, I have been able to create short pitches and overall communicate about my work with a fluidity and engaging narrative that is (more) FOCUSED than I've ever been able to express. Because of working with Matt, I have been able to grab people's attention more effectively.