But there is that greater sense of it will be right when it's right.
If it's right.
If it's meant to be.
If the timing can align with whatever you believe, whether that's God, universe, spirit, whatever you want to call that.
That it's in alignment, that I'm co-creating because I believe it's in co-creation with all that is.
Welcome.
I'm Peter Williams and for the past 10 years I've been connecting with thousands of people from the stage and online to help them discover the importance of spiritual and energetic practices so they can thrive with confidence, clarity and purpose.
It is time to awaken your connection, align with your soul and achieve your own inner power right here on the Inner Power Podcast.
Hi, Nick.
How are you doing, mate?
Peter, thank you for having me.
I'm great.
I'm so happy to be here with you.
Yes, and talk about the long road around to get this episode recorded.
I think we've attempted two times, but we've ended up just connecting and talking too much in between and we never got anything recorded.
But for all our listeners, guess what?
We are here.
The recording button has been hit and we are ready to go.
And obviously I'm joined here by my family, my friend, mate, Nick Demos.
So for those who aren't in the know, Nick is a creative.
He's always described himself as that and he's also a professional storyteller.
He has so much wisdom and insight and experience.
Oh my God, it just oozes out of him and I'm hoping we can kind of cram this into whatever it is.
But if it goes longer, we might be able to split it up if we need to.
But for those who don't know, Nick, can you just tell everybody a little bit about yourself?
Yeah, so I like that you say I'm a professional storyteller because really that is what I do.
I am a Broadway producer.
I'm a filmmaker.
And in the entrepreneur space, I help a lot of spiritual entrepreneurs really and creative entrepreneurs use storytelling to connect with their audiences, to convert to sales, all of those marketing words to say that I'm a storyteller at my heart and my soul.
Yeah.
So you sprinkle it with that little, siles-y business of stuff, but at the heart of hearts, you're just a storyteller.
You're a real.
.
.
At the heart of hearts, I'm a storyteller.
And what I really ultimately do is help people get out of their own story, the inner stories, so they can share their stories and be that beacon of light, that flashlight for other people to lead them, to lead other people through basically the same path they've gone through.
Most of us help other people with things that we've gone through.
And so I help people get into those inner stories so they can share the outer stories.
But the marketing version is what I told you before.
Yeah.
I love that.
But I do love what you said there though, is about always helping people to find their story but to get into it so they can lead the way.
And I think that's honestly probably where we connected the most because that's what we are about.
The same thing for myself is, that's me, I know in my personal journey and even yes, in my entrepreneurial journey, I'm the same, just helping people show them the way that through the path that I have found.
But to also, again, I also, on record, I really want to say congratulations on your most recent film release.
So, Ed, because I know you've been busy touring.
Like again, I've been busy touring, you've been busy on the publicity circuit with that as well.
So congratulations on that.
Thank you.
Yeah.
It was a seven-year project.
That came to fruition this year, yeah, seven years in the making.
And to finally have it premiere and then to be embraced, really embraced really well.
It was really wonderful.
And we've then been on a very arduous but fun, as you know, touring can be both.
US tour basically of the cities of the US.
It's been a weekly, I've been on a US tour.
Yeah, I have, I've been watching like, you know, that's what I've been watching you along, like, oh, okay, that's where he is.
Oh, okay, he's down in Quicken, Texas.
Oh, New York.
Okay, that's the case.
I was thinking, so, again, we also share the pains and the pleasures of touring.
Everything in that respect as well.
But it's me, like, that's, like, I can't even imagine, like, I struggle to put together something for one year, let alone having something in the pipeline for seven.
How do you handle that?
So I'm a multi-hyphenate, multi-passionate.
I'm multi-hyphenate, I'm multi-passionate creative.
And you know, when you said, oh, you describe yourself as a creative, yes, I do.
And I have lots of projects because in the entertainment industry, in the entertainment business, some things bubble up, come up to the surface and they get cooked and people want to taste that and others kind of get burnt on in the pan, right?
They just, they fall away for whatever reason.
Okay.
And so you kind of constantly have different pots at different boiling points at all times.
You know, people will say, go all in on one thing.
If you do that in the entertainment industry, you're really in trouble.
So it's constant, this navigation of that or the cooking of that.
I'm constantly stirring different pots.
So some projects happen very quickly within six months to a year.
That's quick in my world.
Some take seven to 10 years.
Wow.
And that's just phenomenal.
But it's interesting.
Just what I take you on a little bit of a quick detour here or kind of look at this in a slightly angle or perspective.
And I love that analogy of cooking because it is like, obviously, you know, if you're going to have a, you know, something on the slow cook, you know, it's going to take 12 hours or more before you actually get to eat it, but you got to start that early.
So I really, really do love that analogy.
And when you look at with some of these things that you obviously have doing it, like, you know, body electric was seven years, how does that pan in or how does that play out with your spiritual connection?
And like, would you relate this to divine timing or how would you work this in or see this on that spiritual angle?
Absolutely.
It's divine timing.
I constantly say that.
I constantly remind myself that it's like a baby.
It's a creative baby.
It's creation.
It's channeled through.
So consequently, the timeline does not really matter to me.
And I constantly remind myself because yes, of course, the human part of me says, why isn't this happening faster?
Why?
And, you know, I'm like crying about it.
I'm crying, but there is that greater sense of it will be right when it's right.
If it's right, if it's meant to be, if the timing can align with whatever you believe, whether that's God, universe, spirit, whatever you want to call that, that it's in alignment, that I'm co-creating because I believe it's in co-creation with all that is.
And so sometimes what will happen is a project will take way longer than you think it's going to.
And then when it does, it lands in a way that never would have landed four years before.
You know, I can say that about this documentary.
If it had come out three or four years ago, it wouldn't have the same depth of meaning because the audience wouldn't have been ready for it.
The audience wouldn't have embraced it in this way because we needed to go through this pandemic.
We needed to go.
There were things that needed to have happened.
And now I can see that.
Now I can look back and be like, "Oh my gosh, that's why this took seven years.
It needed the seven years.
" But I will say, like I said on the past, sometimes I cry.
Sometimes I'm not happy about it.
But it's that constant reminder of what is to be is to be and that acceptance.
Divine timing is really an acceptance.
Yeah, I love that too.
I just had a curiosity saying that.
I want to just quickly come back to your pots and your pans and you're saying, "Some will just stay on the boil.
That's great.
Some will burn off.
" So I think I can just already hear my listeners and my viewers kind of going, "Okay, so Nick, I love that.
You've got multi-projects going on.
You've got this for a short time.
You've got this for a long time.
" How do you know or how do you deal with something that it just burns off?
How do you work through that process?
Because clearly you're a very, very passionate person when it comes to this.
So even with this, probably any project that bubbles up for you, you'd have an investment in.
So how do you deal with that burn off or that boil off?
Well, speaking of crying, sometimes I cry.
Okay.
Right?
Sometimes I allow myself to have the emotion around it, that it's okay to feel that.
In fact, it's needed to feel the disappointment, to feel the hurt, to feel the pain of, "Oh, my gosh, I spent two years working on this and it's not going to work out.
" I wrote a musical.
I was the book writer of a musical and I spent about six years working on it.
And then the collaborative relationship between the partners fell apart for various reasons.
And when that happened, I went into a mourning process, not only the amount of time that I put in and the energy, but also the mourning of, it was like, I think of them as my children.
These projects are like my children.
They're brain children.
They're creative children.
They're not real children.
They're not real children, Peter.
So, you know, it's not a child, but it's a brain child.
It's a creative child.
So I think of them and so I was in mourning for the loss of this part of myself and I had to allow myself to have that process, that feeling state, so that I could let it go.
Again, this idea of surrender, of letting it be what it is.
And it's true.
Like I suppose, because I've had similar experiences where a project's so, so close and yet it just, for whatever reasons, it just doesn't quite happen.
And then I ask myself, what can I learn from this?
What are the lessons here?
What are the nuggets?
What's the wisdom?
What can I take from this so I can grow?
Maybe it's really looking at that partnership agreement.
You know, for instance.
You know, maybe it's really trusting that intuitive voice inside of you the five years before that said, no, this is not the right partnership for you.
That intuitive knowing and knowledge was like, this isn't it.
And yet there was the part of me, the ego part was like, but I want to work with these people because they're going to help me get this out into the world, this idea, right?
And inside I knew, I knew, right?
Yeah.
So, ouch, ouch.
I know.
I feel the sting of that pain of like when it's happened and you go, yeah, damn it.
I knew it at the time, but I ignored it.
And it's like, and I think we all fall victim to that one at some point.
Yeah.
And there's gold in that though.
That was part of that fine tuning my intuitive, the listening of my intuition, my intuition of trusting it.
I had to go through that so that I knew that next time it happened, it was, oh, that's a hell no.
I'm not going around that person because I already know, right?
Yeah.
And I had to learn that trust.
I had to learn to trust.
It's a big word.
Yeah.
It's a huge word.
I always said, everybody that I work with, that's a lesson you're never going to stop learning.
It's always something to know that voice and keep going.
And it's like, it's listed.
It's like, oh, but is it really making any sense?
Maybe I'm being over paranoid or over analyzing it.
But it's like, if that voice is telling you, you trust it, it's 100% to me.
Otherwise, it turns out as both of us know, it turns out to be big lessons in some ways.
But again, there's, there is wealth and there is beautiful wisdom in that as well.
And it's a beautiful thing to kind of go through that.
But it's interesting to see like, you know, it's, I just, I've never had the privilege of talking to someone like yourself about this, where you've got like multi projects but longer projects, seven years, it's kind of fruition is being well received, which is great.
And obviously just talking about that experience with the Broadway booklet and going six years didn't happen.
So obviously it's lots of ups and downs.
But just so we can kind of like go through it.
Like can you just walk us through like, how does it translate?
Because it's a really amazing story.
And it's great because, you know, that's what you're all about.
Your story itself to go from like, you're in Broadway being in credit and leading into the entrepreneur space.
Can you walk us through like the stages?
What took you there?
How did you end up in this space?
Because honestly, if you didn't, I wouldn't have met you because that's obviously how we've met because it's through ourselves.
Lovely, you know, it's a spiritual aspect.
It's the entertainment aspect.
And then it's the entrepreneurial space that's brought us together.
How did you get to this point where you are?
So I had a really strange journey.
I started as a dancer.
So I was a Broadway dancer and I was doing the Radio City Christmas Spectacular with the Rockettes.
Okay.
You know, they kicked their legs at Christmas.
Yeah.
But there are some boys in the show.
I was one of the boys dancing and singing.
I was back up for the Rockettes and I was doing the show and in the show there is, there's a Nutcracker ballet.
But in this Nutcracker ballet, everyone wears bear heads.
Like you know, you look like we're all dressed as bears, but it's the Nutcracker.
I know.
Okay.
So think, you know, think like theme parky, right?
Yeah.
I'm trying to get there with the visualizations.
Yes.
I'm actually having a jump.
Nick with a bare head dancing away.
Oh, yes.
I'm like, I'm in the show.
I'm trying to see that.
People did.
I'm trying to see that.
In the show, the director had us jump off of a trampoline and do a Russian jump, which is like where you jump and you touch your toes and land on the stage.
And you did five shows a day there and it's a steel stage.
So I was jumping and I'm doing this leap and I land on the stage and it's a big, and I'm in this bare head, right?
And it's a big number system there.
As you can imagine, the stage is huge and you've got numbers across the front of the stage and everything's on the number.
You've got to stay on your number because it's really dangerous, right?
There's set pieces moving and so many people.
So I'm looking for my number on the floor.
Like I'm looking and I'm looking for my number and I can't find my number because the bare head is falling down across my eyes and tears are rolling down my cheeks inside the bare head as I'm so tang across the floor.
And it's Christmas day, by the way.
Christmas day.
I'm crying.
I'm in a bare head.
I get off the stage at the end of this and I'll never forget it.
I take off my bare head and I look at myself in the mirror and I say, "This is not your life.
You're going to change your life.
" And the very next day I made a list of everybody I could call.
Every theater I'd ever worked at, every producer I knew, and I got on the phone right after the Christmas holiday and I called everyone.
Old school, picked up the phone, called everyone.
Now, granted, this was before, you know, this was a while back here.
We were still retained, I was.
Get out that rotary phone.
Hang on, it's still a touch to the wall.
Okay, maybe it wasn't that long ago.
I do think it has cell phone.
Whatever.
Yeah, right.
But it was before email was normal.
Let's put it that way.
And as I called everyone and one of the people that I called said, "Oh my gosh, Nick, we just lost.
" I said to them, I said, "I'm directing and choreographing now.
" Had I?
No.
But I just knew that I was going to start changing my life, start to be the storyteller that I wanted to be versus what I was doing up there in a bare head.
And somebody said, "Oh my gosh, we just lost our director and choreographer for this show that in six weeks, will you come to Florida and choreograph this show?
" And I was like, "Florida in the winter?
Oh, heck yes, I am there because our winters are cold.
" And that really sort of began that journey of directing and choreographing and really being the entrepreneur.
I think that was the beginning of the entrepreneur journey because before that I had been told what to do, where to stand, how to do it.
And yes, as an actor, you're an entrepreneur in the sense that you have to audition.
But it wasn't work coming from me, if that makes sense.
And I began to direct and choreograph all over.
Three years later, I'm at a theater.
I'm now 28 years old, by the way.
And they say to me, well, they fire the artistic director of the theater while I'm there, the producer.
And they turn to me and they say, "Will you take over this theater for a year while we do a national search for the replacement?
" And the 28-year-old me once again said, "Oh, hell yes.
I'm going to go learn something.
I'm going to go learn how to produce theater.
What an opportunity.
" Wow.
And so I dove in.
And that's how I learned business.
I didn't know what a P&L sheet was.
I didn't know.
I mean, I had no idea what an SOP.
What's an SOP?
It's not like an SOB to me.
I had no idea what an SOP was.
I had to learn all of these business techniques and tools.
And that year happened, and it was a great year.
At the end of the year, they came back to me and they said, "We decided we don't want anybody else.
You've given us the best year we've had in over a decade.
Will you stay?
" And so I stayed in that job for about eight years.
Oh, yeah.
So that's a good chunk of time.
It's a good chunk of time.
And we grew that theater.
I talk about diving in, youthful energy.
In my late 20s, I've got absolutely no, I think I have energy now.
I had no, I didn't have a family then.
You know what I mean?
That was it.
That's what was my focus.
And we really grew the theater from when I came, it was about six employees.
When I left, we had about 48.
The annual budget went from under a million to an eight-figure business.
So it was really a growth time there.
But while I was there, I got kind of anxious and antsy.
And I went back to New York and I decided I needed to take a month off.
So I went to a yoga teacher training.
By the way, I'd been practicing yoga this whole time.
I had like a, at the theater, I had built a yoga shanty and I was like, you know, practicing to Rodney Yee videos.
So that should tell you how long ago.
It was like DVDs, Rodney Yee, VHS and DVDs.
This is how long ago it was.
And I didn't really know what I was doing, but as a dancer, a former dancer, I liked the movement and I was always a spiritual seeker, right?
In addition to all this storytelling.
So I went to come month off, I was going to go to teacher training so I could learn so I could deepen my practice and I just needed a break.
I was seven years into this job of 24/7 build, build, build, build, build time.
So I go to teacher training and I'm sitting in a meditation and this comes back to that intuitive thing, Peter.
Okay, yes.
And I got this hit and the hit was you have to leave your job.
Now you have to understand that my parents for the first time were proud of me, right?
A theater person that has a full-time job with benefits and in the United States has health insurance because we only get health insurance if we have a job.
And there was this part of me that was like, no, no, shut up, shut up, voice, shut up.
I have health insurance.
But the deeper part of me knew that that was true, that I needed to grow, I needed to expand and for the theater as well, this baby, this child, again, that child that I had developed, I was time for me to let it go and allow somebody else to take it on.
And I had taken it as far as I could because energetically I was already moving on.
I was already moved past it.
And so I had to summon the courage to quit the most amazing job I'd ever had, the only job really I'd ever had.
And it took me a year.
I took some soul searching and a year and savings and I wasn't stupid, I didn't go about doing it immediately.
It wasn't like I quit.
I had to take my time and I gave them some time as well to find my replacement.
And when that happened, I decided to go back to Broadway.
Only now I had a different knowledge base.
I had years of working as a director, years of producing and decided I would produce Broadway shows.
And I connected with an old friend who I had helped.
This is for anyone out there who's like, "Do you affect anybody's life?
Do you shift anybody's life?
Do you change anybody?
Do you help anybody?
" One time, 30 years before, I'd helped somebody with something.
They didn't know what they were doing and I helped them and I thought nothing of it.
You know how you'll do that?
You'll help somebody who think nothing of it.
Because you do it because it just feels natural to help them?
Yeah.
It just felt like something I would do.
And 30 years later, we reconnected.
We'd been in touch, but we reconnected and I said, "Hey, I'm really thinking of starting this producing company.
" And she said, "Well, you know, I want to do it with you.
" I said, "Wait, what?
How do you mean?
Because you don't know anything about producing.
" She said, "What if I write you a check?
" And that very day, by the end of the lunch, she wrote me a check for a little over a half a million dollars to start my company.
After not seeing the person for over 15 years.
Wow.
Because, and I said later, I said, "Why?
Why did you do that?
" You know, like, of course at the time, it was like, "Wow, okay.
Talk about like divine timing and, you know, the right moment, the right.
.
.
" And she said, "Because you helped me.
" That was a change moment for me in my life.
That is massive.
So you never know what that little thing that you do is going to shift somebody's life.
And then she then in turn changed mine by writing me that check.
And then I produced show on Broadway.
Now the thing that you have to know that I haven't been sharing with you this entire time is that I was very driven.
That's clear, right?
From all of this.
But what I wasn't sharing is that that drive was coming from this perfectionist little boy.
Okay.
And deep within me, there was a lot of that I was hiding and a lot that I was running from.
Okay.
So I all came to a head at the Tony Awards.
So the show that I produced is called Memphis and it was nominated for a Tony.
Fantastic.
This is like the biggest, best ever, right?
The best little boy in me is like so excited, so happy, so like I'm being seen.
I'm being validated.
And Tony Knight, I'm at the theater back at Radio City Music Hall now in a different way because the awards were held at Radio City.
I'm in the fourth row on the aisle, mind you, on the aisle on the front fourth row.
I'm a big wig now.
I'm not dancing in a bear head.
And Bernadette Peters comes out to give the award.
It's the final award of the night.
You have to sit there for hours, by the way, Peter, like four hours.
It's so long and you're not allowed to go to the bathroom unless you have a seat filler.
It's like, it's just, it's anyway.
Sitting there.
Bernadette Peters comes out, she opens the envelope and she says, Memphis.
And the audience erupts in applause.
People around me stand up and are hugging and touching me and I am shocked.
But it's more than that.
I had the first thought I had was, oh my gosh, thank goodness, my investors are going to get their money back now.
Okay.
I was really thinking about them.
And the second moment was, I felt nothing.
It was, this is it.
This is not how this is supposed to feel.
I've been working from Radio City to directing and choreographing to running a theater business.
This is supposed to be the crowning achievement.
This is as good as it gets in this field.
And I'm not feeling anything.
And I'm walking up onto the stage and it's like, they, you know how sometimes they'll say it's like an out of body experience.
And that's how I was feeling.
I was completely numb and completely out of my body.
And that was what was going through my head as I'm walking up the stairs to accept the award.
This is it.
This is not how this is supposed to feel.
And so that was when my real work, life work began.
That's when I had to dig in and dig deep.
That sounds absolutely amazing.
And I'm enthralled.
I'm like, because that's the thing that's beautiful to hear this and I'm so looking forward to it.
But the best thing is we're going to pick this up in part two.
So stay tuned and we'll pick it up.
You didn't lie.
You knew it was going to be a part two.
There's always a part two.
This is always too good not to have a part two.
But anyway, we look forward to hearing it in part two.
(upbeat music) [MUSIC]
