Meet Randall D Fox | Founder, Development, Production & Marketing

We had the good fortune of connecting with Randall D Fox and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Randall D, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
When we started AFFPS, it was built around the premises of “by Artists for Artists – by the Community for the Community”, with that, we brought together a group of local and regional artists and community leaders to build an Arts foundation that could give back in many different ways. As a means to create an environment for the folks in the community to come together and gather to mingle and be with friends, families, colleagues, and neighbors alike, and for the Artists as a way to display, market, and interact within the surrounding communities and sophisticated art buyers.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
We started in 2006 while the country was in its last recession, which as you can imagine not the time that you want to start putting an organization like this together. However, because we have such a dynamic team and we’re really committed to our believes in what we wanted to bring to the community, we were able to grow from a small kitchen table organization to one of the top event producers in the southeast, only parallel to other companies that had been around for three to four times longer. It took long hours, sleepless nights and always willing to change not our direction but the manner in which we approached it. Always remembering our core objectives: the community in which we were in and the artists as collectively we served them both.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Atlanta is truly one of the greatest cities in the southeast. Sure, folks complain about the traffic, but honestly, it’s not better or worse than the rest of the country. However, with the way in which Atlanta is laid out, there are many different pockets of the city to visit that offer their own unique flavors. I happen to be a fan of the Ponce City Market redevelopment as well as the Buckhead Shops off Peachtree and Pharr road. Follow that, by a quick trip out to Milton of Alpharetta to the horse barns. I ride at least once to twice a week, so you can easily jump in the car and within an hour be ankle-deep in mud and grit cleaning the barn or tack room, after spending the afternoon on horseback. I equally like to get on one of my three motorcycles and tour the city. It’s an amazing way to think, I almost find it as a form of meditation, as my mind is focused on the ride, yet, again within minutes, I can be grabbing a burger in Oakhurst or downtown Decatur. Couple that with my all-time favorite Lookout mountain, again just about 90 minutes away, but one of the best hand-gliding (or) paragliding runs in the southeast. A few years ago, I took a weekend and signed up for some lessons, and within a short period of time, I had my “wings”. So I am able to “literally run off a cliff at 3000 attitudes and spend the afternoon in the clouds. While that has afforded me the opportunity to fly at various locations across the country. There are very few places in this country that you get to take lessons, get licensed and soar. And, Atlanta is the gateway to it all.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I am lucky in that I have a very dynamic group of individuals that I work with, many of whom have frankly become in a sense family. We have worked together since inception (day one) and as a result, we have created a seamless integration of team-members, comradery, and pursue as well as being able to maintain our overall objectives. Each is able to identify their unique flavor and expertise and we are able to communicate the end goals and objectives. Meredith Ragain with the Georgia Lawyers for the Arts is a non-profit group that we work with, and as a result, our clients have a greater resource from which they in turn can tap into. Additionally, we have one of the nations top PR firms – Caren West PR, which is lead by Caren West and Chad Davis, While they handle national brands and events, they are always on the pulse of keeping us relevant and in front of folks across not only the metro Atlanta market but in some cases with national attention from coast to coast. You couldn’t ask for a better group to be at the table.

Image Credits
Sher Pruitt

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