Today we’d like to introduce you to Ralph Strangis.
Ralph, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
If you had asked me when I was 6 years old what I wanted to do for a living, I could have told you. Career clarity so early was my greatest gift. I would have said I wanted to be on TV and on the radio and in movies, and I wanted to act onstage, and I wanted to write for the newspaper.
At 16, working nights as a DJ at an experimental 1000 watt am radio station, I learned how to back time and cue records and talk up the ramp and splice audio tape with a razor and read PSA’s and punch the cart button twice to reset those boxy contraptions. I had a tape recorder and mic at home. I spent my allowance money on audio equipment, Nobody ever told me to be excited about these things. Nobody had to urge me to spend every waking moment working on it and thinking about it. The heroes of my youth were sportscasters and Game Show hosts, television producers and authors.
Even at 26, fresh out of treatment, broke and battered, indeed nearly a fatality after chronic cocaine and alcohol abuse, I still had that clarity. I knew what it was going to look like, what I was capable of.
Now at 56, after doing every single one of those things, and most of them at very high levels, I find myself in the very unusual and quite uncomfortable position of not knowing what I want to be when I grow up.
School was a distraction back when, so little of it would transfer over to where I was headed, and so I dropped out. Now I’ve finally finished my undergraduate degree. I knocked out the rest of it after leaving my job with the NHL’s Dallas Stars after 25 years in the booth in 2015. That job I did well, and getting it marked the culmination of the long and jaggy climb that found me almost perpetually with a headset on and calling everything imaginable as I ran from high school rinks to college gymnasiums and fields to professional volleyball courts and to a ringside seat at professional wrestling matches. I earned a living by shooting and editing high school video year books and hustling wherever I could.
Along the way I learned the live events business, and how to enthusiastically sell the products I represented including my own and build a network and spot the opportunities. I saw the corporate hierarchy at work, felt the sting of how fungible they see us, and how arbitrary and cruel this business, any business can be.
Since walking away from it, I’ve done a lot, including being pulled back in to NHL booths as the Los Angeles Kings, seeking an experienced gun to fill in for their ailing longtime play-by-play man, called me back into action for the last half of the 2016-17 season. I’ve won 2 national writing awards as a contributor to the Dallas Morning News Op Ed pages. I produced and starred in a dramatic stage play last summer. I’ve traveled the country and bounced around the world.
Today, right now, I’m working at leveraging all my experience and networks to build my own business, Senseless Productions, into a collaborative company featuring others like me who are the raw materials and end products, who are looking to monetize their own intellectual properties and work within a structure of support, freedom and fun.
So small and shrinking is the market for a 56-year-old former hockey broadcaster and so I’m creating my own market and cultivating a new community. I’m launching a podcast with a married Catholic Priest, I’m representing musicians and corporate speakers and authors and content creators. The world is shifting, the old models are crumbling, and I’m investing everything I have and all that I am in this notion that I, despite for the first time not knowing what the end will look like, will be able to create one.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Nothing is hard to do, but everything is hard to do really well. And everything I take on I want to do really well. The most challenging thing over the years for me has not been in overcoming the large stumbles, but in keeping up the quality of my work and performance every single day. To do my best, to perform well on the days when for one reason or another I may not be at my best, that’s the biggest struggle, and greatest accomplishment.
To display one’s work to the public, especially these days when the public has the means to so easily and accurately fire missive slings and sharpened arrows back can be distracting and even debilitating. To tune out the naysayers, to stay on course, to believe and know that I will be able to navigate the morass ahead because I’ve already waded through so much just to get here, is to be someone capable of overcoming whatever lay ahead.
Senseless Productions – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
My Uncle Jimmy, the greatest salesman I ever knew, taught me an important lesson; “The deal is never the deal, the deal is the guy.”
In that way – Senseless Productions is me, and that’s what makes it unique and sets it apart. I have worked hard to establish a reputation that is beyond reproach and build a wide and eclectic network of contributors, partners and sponsors. Wherever possible, I articulate agreements with my word, and consummate deals with a handshake.
We are an entertainment and media company, specializing in producing live events and original programming and content. We also are a hosting site for my own and other’s intellectual property and retail products.
I’m very proud that I don’t ask anyone to work for free or the experience, and that we’re building a community of artists and creators that will work together to drive business to each other.
What is “success” or “successful” for you?
I’m less goal-oriented these days, and more focused on process. With everything I do, I ask myself, is this enjoyable? Are the people participating having fun? Am I with people who are interested in a collaborative effort?
To paraphrase Thoreau, success to me is, waking up every day with joy, going to bed feeling joy, and experiencing every moment of the day for what it brings.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.senselessproductions.com
- Phone: 214-274-6519
- Email: ralph@senselessproductions.com
- Instagram: @ralphstrangis
- Facebook: Ralph Strangis
- Twitter: @ralphstrangis
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