He’s a video creator, business consultant, web site developer, college professor, choir director, and volunteer concert organizer. As a self-described “polypreneur,” Jon Forsyth is engaged in a wide variety of businesses—and he says he’s happier now than he ever was in the corporate world.
“I had a high-level position at a consulting firm, but I kept thinking about how I didn’t need that much money,” Forsyth says. “What I needed was time and flexibility.”
He earned his MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in 1990 after graduating with a BS in general business from BYU in 1985. He then started work in marketing research and strategic management.
With a two- to three-hour commute on top of his workday, Forsyth began to feel his kids were growing up without him. He left his consulting job in 1999 and has been mostly self-employed ever since. Now his week includes a wide variety of jobs, businesses, and volunteer activities.
He spends his days as a business consultant, web site developer, and teacher for an online management information systems course for the University of Massachusetts–Lowell. When he found out his daughter’s junior high school had no choir director and no choir, he volunteered for that job. He also volunteered to organize the town’s monthly folk music concert.
His latest venture is videojester.com. Through the site he teaches people how to create online promotional videos and offers his production services. “With the revolution of the internet, the next stage is video,” Forsyth says. “Video has the power to make a greater impact than a standard web site.”
He got started with web video when the hosting company for one of his web sites sponsored a contest through the video sharing web site YouTube. He wrote lyrics, recorded music, filmed his family doing “wacky” things—and beat out more than 140 other contestants to win the grand prize of $10,000.
With newfound confidence, he created a video starring his three-year-old son, Mark, for another web site—and this time he beat more than 130 entrants to win an $8,000 trip to the Alaskan wilderness. “It was like lightning striking twice,” he says.
With so many things on his plate, it’s easy to wonder how he can keep track of everything. “I like to have lots of things going at once,” Forsyth says. “It’s sort of like juggling, but I enjoy that level of diversity in my life.” For someone who calls himself “the video jester,” it seems fitting.
Working for himself gives Forsyth the ability to pursue his passions and spend more time with his family. “Lots of people have a variety of interests but, by choice or necessity, they focus on their job,” he says. “I’ve just been fortunate enough to give more attention to a lot of different things. I would be hard-pressed to return to a regular office.”
