Do Good, Be Fruitful

As far as taglines go, I admit that I am partial to Accessiversity’s, “Leave your print on a more accessible world!” Besides serving as a clever word play on the thumbprint graphic in our logo, I like that it means what it says, it says what it means, and in my opinion, it perfectly sums up what we’re all about here at Accessiversity.

That being said, when it comes to these rare, inspirational mantras that accurately represent an organization’s mission and values – the secret sauce permeating the very DNA of the business, guiding everything they do from each project to every customer interaction – Good Fruit Video’s “Do Good, Be Fruitful” is just as fitting a tagline as any other...ours included.

It’s no surprise then, with this shared vision of operating socially responsible organizations, and the fact that our laid-back personalities and help-first approaches mesh with one another so well, that Accessiversity would be proud to call Good Fruit Video one of its most valued and trusted partners. It’s also why they were the obvious choice when we needed a vendor to help us create accessible video content for our new Accessiversity video tutorial series.

Be Kind, Please Rewind

The story of Good Fruit Video begins some 12 years ago, or maybe even further back, depending on how you look at it.

Now, I should start by saying that I consider both of Good Fruit Video’s owners, Justin Caine and Kraig Westfall, close, personal friends of mine. However, how we actually became friends – the unique circumstances that led to me forming my friendships with each of them – have been very different experiences, to say the least. 

Good Fruit Video owners Justin Caine and Kraig Westfall.

I still recall my first time meeting Justin. I want to say that he showed up to our offices at Capital Area Michigan Works! unannounced (which is totally something that Justin would do) and somehow made his way to my cubicle up on the second floor. Honestly, I would have probably dismissed him out of hand if he hadn’t mentioned that Dave Hollister had referred him to me, which, if nothing else, told me that he was someone who was well connected in the community, which of course is something about Justin that would continue to impress me the more I got to know and work with him.

So, for reasons that I never fully understood or could explain, Justin convinced me to drop what I was doing, and before I knew it, there I was sitting across a small circular table from him in the Looking Glass conference room in the northwest corner of the administrative suite at CAMW! listening to whatever fill-in-the-blank idea he had been cooking up that he was convinced was going to change the world.

Now, this introductory meet and greet would have taken place back when Justin still owned his business, Good Time Communications, that would eventually become the front half of the two-man horse costume better known as Good Fruit Video, which I will explain later. While I can no longer recall what the topic of that initial meeting was, I certainly remember the first impressions that Justin had made on me. On one hand, he seemed like any other struggling small business owner, which believe me, there were plenty of back in 2008 during the recession. But Justin was different, in more ways than one. He exuded a level of confidence, drive and determination that I remember thinking was unusual for any entrepreneur, let alone an individual with a disability, who at the time, hadn’t really established himself or accomplished much yet. Unusual, that is, until I realized that was exactly the point, and why he needed to come across as confident, and have the drive and determination that he did, because unfortunately, people do have these preconceived notions about persons with disabilities, and he needed to negate any doubts or negative perceptions people might have about him and his abilities. Being someone who has frequently deployed the same tactic throughout my professional career, I had immediately recognized this for what it was: A classic PWD (persons with disabilities) defense mechanism.

While there weren’t any significant outcomes resulting from that initial meeting and no concrete actions that were taken (at least none that I can recall) I did walk away with a greater appreciation for Justin and the work he was doing. As someone who saw a lot of myself in him, I figured it wasn’t whether the two of us would ever collaborate on a project together; it was simply a matter of when, and on what?

Now, fast-forward a year or two, after Kraig had entered onto the scene.

 As I understand it, Justin and Kraig had met when they were both tenants at the Technology Innovation Center, the business incubator in East Lansing that another good friend of ours, Jeff Smith, was running at the time.

Well, after getting to know one another during their almost daily shared office space encounters at the TIC water cooler, Justin and Kraig quickly hit it off, and after realizing that the sum of their combined talents would be greater than their respective parts, they decided to become business partners.

Kraig, who was an experienced videographer, owned a business called KiWe Productions (pronounced “kiwi” like the fruit), so when Justin’s company Good Time Communications merged with Kraig’s company KiWe Productions, it seemed only logical that they name their new business Good Fruit.

The next time I saw Justin, which incidentally was the first time I remember meeting Kraig, the two of them and their combined corporate belongings were all crammed into a nondescript cubicle on the far east side of the Technology Innovation Center (TIC). The IT Council had put out a RFP for video production services, which Good Fruit had responded to and been selected for, so I had traveled over to the TIC to talk with Justin about my vision for the project. Kraig, who was busy at work doing some editing on the computer, had pushed aside a stack of boxes sitting on the peninsula part of the cubicle desk to reach across and shake my hand, and again, in terms of first impressions – I remember Kraig being that same down-to-earth, genuinely kind person that I would eventually get to know much better, and one day even call my friend.

Good Fruit would eventually “graduate” from the TIC and move into their own office location in Reo Town, and then a few years later, into a different location on South Pennsylvania Avenue, which is when I next entered back into Justin and Kraig’s lives.

I had gotten reconnected with Justin through a mutual acquaintance of ours, Tedi Parsons, who had been helping LEAP with some disability outreach efforts.

After exchanging a few emails and pleasantries, Justin asked if I would meet him at the Stadium District Biggby to talk about a new venture that he had been working to get up and going.

Little did I know at the time, but that 45-minute chat with Justin over a cup of Biggby’s Best would be the beginning of our work together on Beyond Our Barriers, the organization that he founded to help connect individuals with disabilities with prospective employers and employment opportunities. Well, because I was frequently hanging around their office to meet with Justin about his Beyond Our Barriers stuff, I started running into, and getting a chance to talk with Kraig more, and eventually I would end up doing a little bit of consulting work for Good Fruit there for a stretch, getting an opportunity to work alongside of them and their videographer Marc and their video editor Nate.

I spent many a day working across the conference room table from Kraig and/or Justin, consumed many a Mountain Dew fountain pop or fun-sized bag of Skittles from the admiral gas station next door, officiated more of their ridiculous work spouse arguments than I think any of us would like to admit.

But there, in the makeshift meeting space with its assortment of mix-and-match office chairs and partially bricked fireplace. There, among a tangle of computer cords and surge protectors, on all those days we had to temporarily drape a linen sheet across the building’s massive front window to blot out the penetrating sun, in a feeble attempt to regulate the room’s ever fluctuating temperature. There, in that setting, with all of its imperfections, as Good Fruit was finding its identity, I found a couple of life-long friends.

Sure, at its core, ours is still a professional relationship, but it goes well beyond that. It’s exchanging baked goods with Justin’s family at Christmas time, or as the accomplished para-athlete that he has become, always eager to point out the various U.S. records that he owns. It’s the joy I get giving it right back to him, and reminding him that it was my blind ass that beat him in our one and only game of pool. It's getting out to watch Kraig’s band Double Shot perform at a local bar on a Friday night, or hanging out with him in his garage on the weekend when he’s brewing a new batch of beer. It’s having the chance over these last three or four years to get to know their wives and kids, and them being around our house and getting to know my family as well. It’s all of this, and so much more.

Kraig performing with his band, Double Shot.

Bearing Fruit

About a year and a half ago, not too long before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Good Fruit left behind that South Pennsylvania location for a nicer, newer office in Okemos. Then, a short while later, they moved into their current East Lansing location in the Biggby corporate headquarters building. 

And everywhere they have gone, success has followed.

In the 12+ years that Good Fruit has been in business, they have created more than 1,500 videos for nearly 250 clients and partners.  

But maybe the most impressive thing about all of their accomplishments, of which there have been many, is that they have never once compromised any of their beliefs or values to get to where they are now.

Justin’s cancer survivor tattoo.

It's probably worth mentioning that Good Fruit is a 100% cancer survivor owned business. Justin beat brain cancer as a child in 1993, and more recently, Kraig beat cancer in 2015. While Good Fruit is a lean team of five, three of the team members are individuals with disabilities – that’s 60% of the company. And that is another thing about them that is definitely worth celebrating.

I think one of the pinnacle moments for Good Fruit was how they handled things at the outset of the pandemic. Like every other business, they were wondering how they were going to survive a prolonged shut-down, but instead of circling the wagons, they actually expanded their tent, and then proceeded to invite everybody who wanted or needed in.

“We’re all in this together,” quickly became their calling card, as they started lending their expertise and resources to help Lansing area companies pivot to a post-COVID business climate. And as they had correctly predicted, when the local economy started to rebound, and things started to pick back up, so too did business for Good Fruit Video. 

“Do Good, Be Fruitful” is not a new idea. It’s something that Justin and Kraig were talking about way back during those formative days of the organization, when everybody was still crowding around that South Pennsylvania conference room table in their mix-and-match office chairs. But then something changed; a lot of things changed. Then, as if a curtain was pulled back, “Do Good, Be Fruitful” was just standing there, staring them right in the face, typifying all of those things that mattered most to them and their business.

In a relatively short period of time, something that had started as just another catchy tagline, some lofty goal to aspire to, quickly evolved into what is now the philanthropic arm of Good Fruit Video. “Do Good, Be Fruitful” is a deep-rooted value within their organization to help first and be a force for good in the community. That is why once per quarter, Good Fruit selects an organization to provide 10 hours of free video production services to help them share their story and inspire action.

Getting the Band Back Together

When I started making short recordings of my interactive test sessions as a way to help train other blind and low-vision users who are performing accessibility testing and QA work for the Sakai Project, I immediately recognized the potential value in the powerful video assets that I was creating. While I was able to easily figure out how to use the screenshare feature in Zoom to record the video segments, and even use Otter A.I. to create detailed transcripts of the sessions, I found that there were some things that I still needed help with, to transform my amateur footage into accessible video content that I would be proud to display on our Accessiversity YouTube channel.

So, I did what I’ve always done – I picked up the phone and called Justin and Kraig.

They were totally on board with my concept, and have really helped me take things to the next level.

Thanks in large part to this collaboration with Good Fruit Video, we will be able to achieve our goal of making this new Accessiversity video tutorial series as accessible as possible. Also, it’s worth pointing out that these videos will be made entirely by individuals with disabilities. In addition to Good Fruit helping us out with post-production, doing some light editing, adding in and syncing captions, etc., we will be utilizing a number of special guests who will be providing voiceovers to some of the graphics which will be appearing at the end of these videos, some real all-stars from the disability community like Lee Thomas, Television Journalist/Entertainment Reporter with Fox 2 News in Detroit, Lisa Webb-Sharpe, Chief Operating Officer for Peckham Inc., Brent Severance, Marketing Intern for Learning Experiences, and many more. And of course, because it's Justin and Kraig and I, we have some more surprises planned, other accessible video tips and tricks up our sleeves that we will be pulling out as we go along, so you’re definitely going to want to continue to tune back in.

Be sure to check out the first installment in the series, the aptly named “Introducing the Accessiversity Video Tutorial Series”. You can view that full video here: https://youtu.be/ke7NAycIhU8. and if you have a need for creating your own accessible video content, be sure to give Justin and Kraig a call, or visit their website at GoodFruitVideo.com to learn more.