Meet Maxim Jago | Futurist, Advisor, Author, Filmmaker & Founder of The Creativity Conference

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

Hi Maxim, can you share the most important lesson you’ve learned over the course of your career?
It’s always all about relationships. Ultimately, all of our decisions are driven by fear or love and you get to choose – at any given moment – which you will be guided by. Regardless of contracts in place, legal or ethical considerations, ultimately the test is on the quality of your relationships with business partners, colleagues, family, and friends.
It’s always possible for another corporation to slip a clause into an agreement that you find… disagreeable. If you have good quality relationships with everyone you work with, they are far less likely to do so – in fact, you are far more likely to arrive at agreements that are good for everyone.
Start with love, and work out the money later.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I set out to make films in response to one of the stages described in the famous Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. I believe it is a fundamental need for us to be causal agents – to bring about change in the world, hopefully to make things better.

If you have something to say, you’ll want as may people as possible to hear it – and I have always felt film is a fantastic medium for this purpose. Audiences experience fiction films in a way that is emotionally authentic and carries understanding – this means it’s possible to convey more than facts with a film; you can convey wisdom.

It’s experience that bestows wisdom, not age, and in a sense a film expands the range of experience for its audience.

I felt fiction films would provide the right medium to convey ideas that might be difficult to sum up with words or an image.

Getting any film completed it challenging but I suppose I’m most proud of my recent feature film project, It’s Haunted. We produced the film for so little money – and it was a real team effort.

We improvised the contents based on 77 scenes I had prepared. I was producer, director, scenarist (as we had no screenplay), main camera operator and supporting lead – so not much sleep during production! Everyone pulled together beautifully and I’m proud of what we produced.

I learned early on that the role of a film director, just like the role of an office manager or company CEO, is a service role. Your job is to do everything you can to enable everyone around you to fulfil their potential.

I suppose if there were anything I would wish for people to know, it is that I am here to enable people to fulfil their potential. This means they must do the work, and they should seek to fulfil their real potential – to live the life they have the real potential to live and not to live a life they believe other people think they should live.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I live in London, in the UK, and it is one of the most fantastic cities to live in, in the world. Just about any kind of experience you would like to have is available here. To show a visitor around town, I would divide our days into different types of experience.

First let’s visit some of the amazing parks – there’s Hampstead Heath, which is ancient woodland, open fields, and lakes. It’s absolutely gorgeous and huge – you can easiliy forget you are in London. We’d also want to visit Hyde park and Regent’s park. There are lots of beautiful green squares too.
I’d want to visit several of the museums – particularly the British museum and the Victoria and Albert museum.

We’d wander through Covent Garden (which isn’t really a garden) to look for lunches and head to restaurants like Circus for event entertainment combined with wonderful food.

A wander through China Town would lead naturally to exploring Soho, and maybe a visit to Soho House. Of course, we’d have to visit Trafalgar Square to see the lions, and while we’re there we could pop in to the Portrait Gallery.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Awareness Ties https://www.awarenessties.us/
This phenomenal charity does so much work for multiple diverse causes – we are fans and support them at The Creativity Conference.

Website: https://maximjago.com/

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