Today we’d like to introduce you to Maxime Paul.
Maxime, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I am a polymathic, autodidact who designs, creates, and tells stories about equitable, regenerative, and holistic systems transformation. I know most people’s immediate reaction is, “What in the entire world?…”. And I understand why that pronouncement may stir up that type of reaction. My story is complex, adaptive, and may seem meandering, but it has definitely crafted this person I am today. I am still in the midst of my journey where I see even more value in my future. I also believe that my identity and the work I do will evolve as it has already throughout my life, especially my time after college where I tried to figure out what I wanted to do with my life.
My first job after college was in IT consulting. I had many different jobs growing up and during college (server, chef, bagger, salesperson, researcher, and liaison) so I knew work and was ready for a new challenge after graduation. Consulting was challenging because it was excruciatingly boring and felt completely worthless to me. I had just completed a difficult degree at a difficult school and my reward was now to stare at websites, take screenshots, and create complicated presentations. All that seemed like child’s play to me. On top of that menial work, I quickly realized that the work I was doing had a miniscule impact if any. And that impact was probably more harmful to people that looked like me rather than helpful. So, in my mind, I was hurting myself and my people, for my marginal paycheck. I always thought there had to be a more fulfilling, positively impactful way to make money and spend my time. That’s when I started my learning journey to figure out what that way might be.
I was initially drawn to education, epistemology, and eventually the transformative possibility of startups. I read, researched, went to conferences, joined groups, and thoroughly engrossed myself in these areas until I found my next move, toward the positive impact that I wanted to have on the world. I eventually left IT consulting to become a teacher. It was a great learning experience and I gained amazing new skills, but not a great fit. This led me to start my education consulting company and then building an edtech startup. All of this learning and jostling towards the positive impact career that fit me best. At the same time, I realized that I was missing the software development skills to build the education platform that I envisioned would solve the problems I saw in the classroom. That pushed me to spend time developing those skills which led me on a brief sidequest to create a software development consulting company, my agency.
With that agency, I delved deeply into user centered software design and development. Upon the completion of this sidequest, I returned to edtech and built a transformative education platform for feedback-driven learning. Unfortunately, despite the positive impact that my platform offered, I was too early for the market and didn’t know how to effectively launch and grow the usage of my platform. That pushed me to direct my learning towards sales and marketing. I did the reading and received feedback from experts as usual, but this time I got a job doing sales and marketing for a smart city organization in DC. This opened me up to the concept and the possible impact of smart cities transformation as I talked to cities and universities across the US. Doing all of this and already seeing the gentrification and cultural decline in Washington DC I was ready for a new start, something to spice up and elevate my learning journey. That’s when I got the opportunity to run an innovation team for Jaguar Land Rover in Portland, OR. It was so different and, I thought, malleable enough for me to define success in a positively impactful way that I had to take the journey out west.
That’s when I landed in Portland. Oregon, Portland, and the Jaguar Land Rover office were vastly unique, yet emblematic places. Places where I was vastly different and I felt the need to grow quickly. At work, I started the team, defined our purpose, crafted our procedures, and hired the team. Together we invested in startups, did customer research and design, built software and hardware, and coordinated with partners in the city and state to advance mobility solutions. I had glimpses of creation and impact I could birth, but It wasn’t what I expected. I learned immensely in and out of work. I learned so much so quickly that I had to figure out a better way to compile these learnings together. So I became a writer. I wrote my first book and set the stage for a whole host of follow-up afrofuturist stories. I guess even with all of that I didn’t have enough to do. I also ran a community group that brought together people of the African diaspora and a construction tech company that we pivoted into an experiential marketing platform. In the crucible of my life, I added all of my previous skills, learnings, and experiences. Placing them all in a new environment on the west coast with a new job, new community, and recent matrimony to my best friend. This combined and melded together when we (my partner and I) decided we had reached our limits in Portland, thus leading to our move to Atlanta. It was our move to put our learning into action, liberate ourselves, and to move closer to family.
Our time in Atlanta has been relatively short, but we’ve both enjoyed it. It has aligned with our memories of what we both loved about our experiences in Atlanta (mine from the time my father worked at Ft. Mac) and our connection with the creative community in the town building a better future for us all. We both see so much potential here and see Atlanta as our home base for our positive impact work. Through my varied –in skill, industry, role, environment, time, users, and more– growth, from my youth to my adulthood, I became a polymath. I love learning and it has become one of my superpowers, to be able to learn anything. Through my early consulting and JLR work I delved deep into design and creation with or without technology. Throughout my life, and especially what I saw and experienced in Portland, I saw the first principles of the positive impact that I was searching to design and create. This realization came to me when I took the time to truly incorporate all that I had learned and experienced. I explored below the surface of everything that was sloshing around in my mind through writing.
My storytelling synthesis revealed to me that I needed to build equity in all that I do to counteract the oppression many, including myself, face on a day to day basis. I needed to ensure that all solutions I develop regenerate the planet because it is the only habitable place in the universe at this point so we should rebuild what we’ve damaged on our home planet. And all of this work is connected. Connected through the systems of interdependent systems that run our world and institutions. These systems must be analyzed and balanced holistically because of their complex and dynamic interconnectivity. Currently, I believe and see much is broken in the world, but at the same time, I see the ways to fix it and make it much more fruitful for us all. Now my work is to put out some examples of that transformation, create some initial solutions, and spark the next evolution of where our world could be if we all were free.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
It has not been a smooth road at all, and I am still figuring it out. I am just finally figuring out who I am and what I do. Now, I’m working on telling the story so the rest of the world understands who I am and what I do. But today’s struggle with identity and my narrative extends to the struggle that I’ve endured throughout my life. Growing up I always struggled to fit in and let everyone know who I was. As a nerdy, athletic, short, introverted, community-oriented, creative, logical, black, Caribbean, Indian, new, mature, hood-adjacent, and broke kid I danced between many worlds. And being between worlds not only exposes you to many options, but I also confuse impressionable youth trying to figure out which path, direction, the world would fit me. So I felt lost most of my life. In a constant identity crisis that I am finally coming out of. Despite that dissonance, the world still had its foot on my neck. Bullying me for rent money, loans, phone bills, food, relationships, friends, and more while you have no chance to take a breath, much less take time to understand who I am and what I wanted to do with my time on earth.
During that consistent struggle, I had a traumatic experience in college that sent me on a tailspin of deeper struggle and then a new perspective. I was in a major car accident while studying for finals at the end of my sophomore year of college. The hood flew up on the car when I was on the Houston highway on the way back to campus. I ended up getting rear-ended by a vehicle and suffered a traumatic brain injury. I was unconscious for weeks including the initial coma I was in. I do not remember what I said or did after I woke up from my coma. The doctors said that I would not be able to walk, talk, eat, drink, or think the same again.
I had to build my life back up and recover. I had to return to school, run organizations, attend classes, and even complete my finals from last semester. On top of that, it required driving, something that had almost killed me. I was nervous and didn’t have any money since I was banking on the internship that I was supposed to have that summer. I hustled that entire summer to make money, recover, adapt to my new mental capabilities, find some comfortability with driving, and prepare for school. It was tough, but it gave me time to think and figure out my new obstacles going forward. It was extremely helpful because during that tough time –and the mandatory therapy I went through when I returned to school– I had to rebuild who I was and what I wanted to do with my life.
That’s where I realized that my life could be over at any point so I understood that I had to enjoy the fruits of my labor. I had to spend more time doing the things that fit me and brought me joy. That was the initial spark and struggle that pushed me on the self-directed, impact-driven path that I’ve been on, especially after graduating college. With the help of friends, family, therapy, and a new focus on my life I was able to finish my finals, graduate from college, and live my life. I think I’m living possibly more brilliantly than I believe I would have before the accident. Through this struggle, I’ve gained a new perspective and the ability to balance out completing what I had already started in school and work until I could get the proper escape velocity to live the life I wanted to live. I think I’m doing much better over 10 years later. I’ve had many doors shut on me, been broke, been ignored, and been dissed left and right, but I know that I may not have been today. Anything beyond waking up is just gravy on what I can offer to the world. I don’t think anyone would notice that I went through the accident or any of the other episodic or constant struggles I’ve faced in my life.
Tell us more about the business.
At Building What’s Next (“BWN”), we’re building and brainstorming what’s next. We’re building through our consulting business that works with non-profit and for profit businesses to offer the following:
Adaptive Business Design: We provide strategy and design for internal operations, business processes, and customer delivery that reorient your business to be able to adapt to a constantly changing business ecosystem. We do this through a thorough current state assessment and operationalizing an innovative equity and sustainability opportunities from sourcing all the way to the impacts after customer use.
Social Impact Product Analysis + Development: We provide product analysis and holistic customer research services. That analysis allows us to deliver strategy, road mapping, and MVP development that evolve and grow current products or develop innovative new product offerings that have a positive social impact while also remaining profitable. Much of this work requires careful coordination with strategic partners and a deft design/testing apparatus to truly synthesize the optimal solution.
Technology Strategy + Transformation: We provide technical analysis for businesses to understand their current technological infrastructure and prospective needs. We can then provide strategy and road mapping for software and hardware systems as well as internal tech team(s) that are effective for today’s needs and flexible to fit the needs of tomorrow.
The other side of my work is to brainstorm what’s next through unique, culture-rich writing, speaking, and media:
Writing: I’m writing prose, poetry, and crafting what a better world may look like. A world that is more equitable and environmentally sustainable. I have one novella and an illustrated collection of afro-futurist parables in the works currently.
Speaking: I’m speaking on complex adaptive systems transformation and how that is the key to our collective liberation. I speak on the vision of technology going forward. I speak on transforming cities to meet the needs of all people and unlocking greater economic activity.
Media: Along with my writing and speaking, I am working on a few web and broadcast shows focused on an afro-futurist lens of liberation and the into diversity of blackness.
I’m proud of our authenticity. We’re always authentic to who we are and to our mission to create the most positive impact for historically oppressed people and the planet as possible. We stay authentic to our black revolutionary voice in our content and ensure that we use that unique perspective to set us apart. On the consulting side, our deep experience, analysis, and creativity set us apart to set our clients up with mutually beneficial social impact products, services, or initiatives that help to grow their company and reach new customers.
Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
Luck has been integral to my life and business. I believe that much of my progression is due to intelligently-assisted luck. I have taken the time to prepare myself to be able to be in the presence of, identify within all of the everyday noise, and take advantage of the luck that I receive on an everyday basis. And one piece of luck typically leads to a trickle effect of further opportunities for good luck to work on your life.
I try to stay adaptable, prepared, and exposing myself to allow for me to increase the probability that I will have a serendipitous encounter. That may mean meeting the right investor, customer, employee, friend, book, answer, combination, move, deal, city, response, or anything else. I think you can always overdo it and stay in to keep preparing yourself, but to really take advantage of your preparation you must step outside and let reality shape and refine your preparation into something more useful that is more than theory. I think bad luck is always around. It typically rears its ugly head when you’re underprepared or that opportunity just was a lesson for future preparation. That perspective keeps me optimistic in even the toughest situations.
Contact Info:
- Website: heyitsmaxime.com
- Phone: 5108770910
- Email: maxime@heyitsmaxime.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/maxap23
- Twitter: twitter.com/maxap
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