If you live in a small community and you have big ideas, you have two choices. You can move to a city with a population large enough to support your dreams. Or you can stay home and try and make the impossible happen.
If you’re a theater actor and you’d like to appear in a Broadway musical or a professional production of playwrights like William Shakespeare and Tennessee Williams, you could move to New York, Chicago or Los Angeles. Or you could do what Nathanael and Anna Fisher did and found the Emerald Coast Theatre Company.
Nathanael Fisher, Co-Founder of Emerald Coast Theatre Company specializes in harnessing the skill and enthusiasm of amateaur actors and support staff and molding them into a professional-level theater company
In 2013 Nathanael and Anna had a traveling troupe, performing wherever they could find a suitable empty space. Then in 2016 they moved into their now permanent home, on Grand Boulevard in Miramar Beach. Today Anna is Emerald Coast Theatre Company’s Associate Artistic Director, and Nathanael is the company’s Producing Artistic Director.
Tom King, his iconic Central Square Records flies in the face every piece of conventional business wisdom, succeeding as a record store in an age of streaming music and in a retail space without a street-level entrance above the bookstore in Seaside
If you love music – from classical to jazz and funk to punk – and you want to go to a record store like you’d find in the East Village in Manhattan, on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, or the French Quarter in New Orleans, you could pack a bag and go traveling. Or, you could do what Tom King did. Following the blue-sky “Field of Dreams” business model –“Build it and they will come” – Tom opened Central Square Records in a space above Sundog Books in Seaside. That was 2003. Today, Central Square Records is a destination for music lovers who visit here from places like Los Angeles, New Orleans and New York.
Entrepreneur of the Week
Our Out to Lunch Entrepreneur of the Week is Connie Prather.
Fletcher Isacks and rebel accountant Connie Prather from Coastal Accounting, the Robin Hood of book keeping. Connie turned her back on the CPA world of corporate America to focus solely on small businesses who can’t afford a corporate level CPA, but in Connie they get one
Connie was a CPA – otherwise known as an accountant – for large companies and corporations before she decided to walk away from doing the books for big business and focus on clients with small businesses. Today she has a one-person accounting and bookkeeping business based in Panama City Beach called Coastal Accounting.
We all have great ideas. How many times have you been sitting around with friends or family and one of you says, “You know what somebody ought to do?…” The difference between successful people and the rest of us is, successful people follow through on a crazy idea and actually do it.
Nathanael didn’t sit around waiting for someone else to start a theater company. Tom didn’t sit around waiting for someone else to start a record store. And Connie didn’t sit around waiting for someone to offer her a job that suited her better. They’reall examples of the contention that one person can make a difference.
Tom King from Central Square Records and Nathanael Fisher from Emerald Coast Theatre Company, Out to Lunch at Farm & Fire restaurant on Highway 331, Santa Rosa Beach
Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Farm & Fire restaurant on Highway 331, overlooking Choctawhatchee Bay. Farm & Fire is one of Chef Jim Shirley’s family of fine restaurants. It’s open from 4pm, 6 days a week, and from 11am for brunch on Sundays.
Photos by Brandan Babineaux.