A Peachy Party: Interview with Lesley Reider
February 20, 2017
These days, it feels like we're consumed with email, web, and text interactions, but wouldn"t it be nice to have more face-to-face interactions with creative thinkers? That was the mission behind innovative salon-type event called A Peachy Party. It was hosted by Alison Chace and Sara Dietschy, two entrepreneurs who set out to collect a wide range of creative thinkers into one room. The crowd included YouTube celebrities and Snapchatters with lists of followers half a million deep, venture capitalists and comedians, educators and photographers, and more. Spiriting, insightful conversations filled the room and it was certainly a powerful networking evening. I had the opportunity to chat with Alison about her story and what inspired her and Sara to throw this party:
Lesley Reider: Tell me a bit about your entrepreneurial background. How did you and Sarah connect and what makes you support her so fervently?
Alison Chace: I founded and produce a website called Pink Wisdom, which is essentially a curated selection of video interviews with women who are experts in their fields, providing advice and support to other women. I'm big into female empowerment. I also have a special affinity for female tech entrepreneurs who often wind up wildly successful. If I had gobs of money, I would be an excellent seed start angel investor for female start-ups. Not quite yet, though. While I still have to work, I work as an actress and what's called an "On-Air Talent," which means that I star in TV commercials, corporate training videos, infomercials, and more" I once hosted a live morning show. And I love all things female comedy. For fun, I create and produce comedy videos for Will Ferrell's website Funny Or Die.
Comedy video is what led me to Sara. My son, Callum, is a big fan of Casey Neistat. It became our habit to watch his daily vlog together usually in a stop-and-go taxi after picking him from school. One afternoon, he showed me a spoof of Casey's vlog created by a YouTube vlogger named Sara Dietschy titled "How to Vlog like Casey Neistat." I immediately recognized in Sara the three things that impassion me: Smart females doing cool, successful online ventures with tangible measures of success, on-air talent (she makes it look so easy!), and a great sense of joy and humor.
We immediately went to her twitter, only to find a tweet that very day that read "Hey, if anyone has a lead for a place to live in NYC let me know." As it happened, my older son was away at school, and we had an independently-accessible space in our apartment. So Sara and I met through Twitter via my teenage son and wound up as housemates.
There's something about Sara that inspires and motivates the hell out of me. Sara has loads of confidence, which is infectious, and is also totally genuine on camera. Being this "real" on camera is not easy, as I know first-hand. She has a clear vision of her goals and she works like crazy to achieve them, although it doesn"t feel like work to her, because she has so much fun doing it. She is a total one-woman show who creates her own joyful life and her own opportunities. It just feels good being around her energy, and I'mnot alone in feeling this way. She has many admirers!
On another note, she also created a show called Creative Spaces TV, which essentially interviews creative people " it's very similar to what I created with Pink Wisdom. Clearly, we vibrate on similar frequencies.
LR: Why did you decide to host this salon-style party? What role do you feel that you play with this type of event and do you plan on hosting others like it?
AC: Shortly after her move to NYC, Sara had a great idea to throw a networking party to pull together the cool people she's met who are also doing interesting things. As I'm just a bit older and wiser than Sara, I"ve been throwing successful parties for eons, so it was easy for me. The party also happened to fall on my birthday, so I added a splash of my own interesting friends to the mix, too. We killed two birds with one stone. A room full of 60 people who are "doers" "artists, creators, vloggers, Snapchatters, venture capitalists, entrepreneurs "couldn"t help but be fantastically fun. And let's not forget Rico. My cat was the biggest star of the evening.
LR: What are a few elements that you enjoy most about these types of gatherings?
AC: I get energized meeting new people who give me ideas, or in whom I may want to invest. Bottom line: It helps me move the ball forward in my own life. Energy attracts energy. And I find it rewarding and gratifying to help people. Helping you, helps me.
I then chatted with Sarah about her story:
LR: What inspired you to create your YouTube channel?
Sara Dietschy: Honestly, it just came out of the fact that I play guitar and I was selling some equipment. So I thought, I can post this video playing the guitar pedal. Someone will watch it and want to buy it. I started falling in love with video editing. I started making travel films and tutorials. It just evolved into this thing. I got more into film-making and I made more shows. And now it's this awesome opportunity where I can mold this little media empire. It's really fun. On YouTube, you can really connect to an audience that you can have conversations with. I look up to Casey Neistat as a creator, and to hear him talk a few minutes about my channel and have him vouch for it was unreal.
LR: What inspired you to start this series with Alison?
SD: I"ve met so many amazing people and there's so much amazing talent in this city. I just wanted them all in one room shaking hands. And Alison was totally for it.
LR: As a recent transplant to New York City, was it tough adjusting to the city?
SD: It was a huge change, but I was ready for it. I lived in Dallas, Texas for 20 years of my life and then I moved to Nashville. I"ve lived in the suburbs most of my life so I really needed a change. I was definitely ready to move to New York. I recently got the Adobe Creative Residency so it's allowed me to make some leaps. I love the pace and energy here.
LR: What's next for you?
SD: Right now, I'mfocusing on Creative Spaces TV and what the next thing is that I can do with that. I think it has the potential to reach a bigger audience than just my YouTube channel. So hopefully I can create some episodes that are more TV like that I can pitch to HBO, or Netflix. I love YouTube though and I'mgoing to continue vlogging. It's cool to be in the filmmaking, creative, and entrepreneurial realms, and I'msurrounded by amazing people.
So inspiring! I then spoke to other guests at the party who also had a creative spirit:
"I used to work at Twitter, gained a snapchat following, left and started a snapchat production company called A Cereal Production. Got known because I did the first-ever stop-motion on Snapchat. Each one of the pictures you have to tap on Snapchat so it comes to life. We help celebrities, brands, and publishers make awesome Snapchat content. I was nominated for Snapchatter of the Year Shorty Award. I was actually a finalist. Sara and I met there. We both do [content creation] and we follow Casey Neistat. I'mnow trying to break in the fine art world, just trying to attack every creative avenue there is." -Harris Markowitz
"[Harris and I] went to college together- and we work on some snapchat stuff together. I have a few start-ups- one of them raises money for non-profits. Another one is like Dollar Shave Club, but for tongue scrapers. It's a product that I"ve been using all of my life, but I asked around and noticed that 90% of the people had never heard of one. It falls in that monthly cycle- it's a dollar a month. It's called Dollar Fresh Squad. We both were nominated for a Tribeca Snapchat Short and we got featured on Snapchat for a Snapchat story that we did." -Artur Fruman
"Adobe has always been a creative company. I do product marketing and have been there 4 years. The Adobe Creative Residency is great as it gives [artists] a residence for a year but also gives them access to the Adobe network." -Pollyanna Macchiano
"I'mthe founder of News-O-Matic, which engages students on news. It's a platform where they read about and see the news. They"ll have a map to show where the news is in relation to where they are, get suggestions on what they can do, and they can express themselves on the app. When kids know more about the world they live in, they not only will become better leaders but they"ll become more tolerant and promote peace." "Lillian Holtclaw-Stern
It's incredible to not only see creative people making their big ideas come to life, but to also see these people in one room cheering each other on and sharing great insights. The energy is powerful and contagious. Hopefully, this type of gathering will continue on as it will be interesting to see what positive direction it takes. Kudos to Alison and Sara for such a vibrant, inspirational event!