I woke up one day and realized that the secret desire I’d been thinking about, but making no progress on, could no longer be held back. For years I’d fantasized about starting a lifestyle company focused on making things that were functional and stylish. Things I would gladly buy if I could find them.
I wanted to find a way to connect the work I’d done throughout my career, building brands and helping organizations and philanthropists do good in the world, with real products.
The Japanese have a term for this: Ikigai. It means “reason for being.” Or loosely translated, what gets you out of bed in the morning?
What kept me up at night was the idea of making the perfect men’s bag. I searched and searched. It had to be beautiful on the outside with everything on the inside thought through. Something that would start a conversation. My Ikigai was not a bag. It was being creative.
I wanted to be a maker.
You can make anything you want. Literally. And I mean that in the true definition of the word. If you can think it up, you can make it. That’s not a cliché. You can make tangible things. You can make change in your life and in your community.
So I created Publicwill as a way to realize my Ikigai. We are guided in everything we do by a simple belief: Make the world you want.