We had the good fortune of connecting with Andrew Ackerman and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Andrew, how has your perspective on work-life balance evolved over time?
I struggled with work/life balance for a very long time. Then I read Creativity Inc by Ed Catmull and he shared that balance is not the yoga pose of perfect harmony. It is the football player almost getting tackled but just managing to stay on his feet and keep running, balance is a dynamic action. Reading that changed my life because for such a long time I felt so inadequate by not being able to achieve that “yoga pose” of life balance. Once I realized it could ebb and flow with my life it started working so much better. Sometimes I work in overdrive and lean more one direction, but now when I get the chance I can reign it in and work back to equilibrium.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Off the Map Media is an independent film production company. I think what sets us apart most is our mentality. I learned a great lesson from a mentor at the beginning of my career, he said “I don’t believe in conversion, I believe in perspective”. What he meant was don’t try to convert people to your way of thinking (no matter how right you are) instead share your perspective and be open to learning theirs. This has become a core ethic for us as storytellers and has created a listen first mentality. We may have a story we want to share with people, but our first job is to listen to the people and places in that story and make sure what we had envisioned lines up to our characters experiences. I think this has helped create a very empathic style of storytelling instead of an extractive one.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
The ideal Boulder day for me with a friend is to scramble the second flatiron, jump in the creek, then hit the farmers market to make something delicious for lunch. Over the course of a full week we would get Larkburger at least once, go hiking in Eldorado Canyon, and just walk down Pearl street wandering around town a lot.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Tom Murphy and Sweethearts & Heroes! Tom has been an amazing friend and mentor for ten years and I have learned an unbelievable amount from him. He has spoken to over 2 million kids about hope and hopelessness and is doing incredibly important work in that field.

Website: www.offthemap.media

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