Candid Conversation with Host Adrienne Barker, MAS
In this informal interview, host Adrienne Barker, MAS, chats with Heather Moxie (Heather Ann) about her long‑standing personal and professional ties to the Barker family, her dual‑business model—Moxie Consulting, an e‑commerce strategy consultancy, and Moxie Photo, a photography venture focused on music and portrait work—and how those enterprises intersect with her artistic passions. Heather recounts her early connection to the Barker Animation Museum, her move from Connecticut to Florida, and the mentorship she received from Herb and Gloria Barker. She describes her love of travel and photography as a visual language, and explains how she leverages those skills to capture musicians both on‑stage and in intimate portrait settings. The conversation shifts to a community‑driven Zoom fundraiser she organized for Widespread Panic fans, partnering with DJ Logic and the mental‑health nonprofit Nucci’s Space to raise money for displaced musicians during COVID‑19, detailing ticketing via Eventbrite, donation tiers, and plans for a virtual party atmosphere. Heather also shares how she has been working remotely for eight years, coping with pandemic isolation by maintaining virtual connections, doing small creative projects like grocery‑store floral arrangements, and offering Instagram Live floral‑design tutorials. The dialogue ends with plans for a follow‑up session after the fundraiser, mutual appreciation, and promotion of Heather’s social‑media channels.
Chapters
Heather, Heather Ann met my father through— wait, you tell the story, you tell the story so I don't mess it all up.
Well, first of all, Adrienne, it's great to see you. Oh my God, I love it. You make me smile all the time. I think it's something in the Barker blood. You guys always make me smile. You make me cry.
You look so beautiful.
Thank you. Well, I met Adrienne actually through her dad, and Herb and Gloria Barker are still with me. They're two amazing people, and I met them through my love of art and animation. I was actually originally from Connecticut. I grew up in a town called Southington and would go to the Barker Animation Museum in Cheshire, Connecticut, and it was always a place of joy and refuge for me. And I relocated to Florida about almost 13 years ago, and A friend of mine noticed that there was an exhibition. I think it was in Hollywood or Hallandale for Peanuts, for Charles Schulz. And I love Peanuts. And so my friend brought me to this exhibit, and we noticed it was sponsored by Barker Animation. And I was like, oh my God, I didn't know that they were in Florida too. So we went to their store, and I had the joy of meeting your dad and becoming a friend of his over the years. And him and Gloria, they were just like my— I would always joke— adopted Jewish grandparents. And I just, I love them to this day. They're amazing people, and I'm so thankful that you're part of my extended family as a result of knowing them.
Me too. I have to put the word trusted too, because my dad really trusted you. I'm gonna try this without the earbuds. My dad really— can you hear me?
Yeah.
Can you hear me? Hold on, I'm just— can you hear me?
I can hear you.
My dad, he really trusted you, Heather. He really, he loved you and then he loved your mind too. So put together, he just loved, he, you know, he would really ask you a lot of advice. He wanted to know what you thought. You were helping with the Amazon program. He loved your marketing. And he, you know, in a year when he was still alive, we were talking and I had found all of your proposals and I asked him, he said it was really something he really wanted to do. He couldn't, pull it off with his team, but he really wanted you. He knew that you would take him to another level of the gallery. But in the meantime, you and my dad shared some wonderful conversations, and he loved what you do.
So you—
can you explain what Moxie is and the two sides of Moxie?
I love it. I love that there are always two sides, I think, to every entrepreneur. So one side of Moxie, my businesses, is Moxie Consulting. And we are an e-commerce strategy advisement consultancy, and we help brands who are online currently or looking to be online grow their business and create a strategic roadmap that encompasses marketing techniques, technology, all the different components of what it takes to run an online business. And I feel very fortunate because I've always been an entrepreneur at heart. Even as a little girl, I was figuring out, out ways how I could just create and put things out there that people might be interested in. And being an entrepreneur, there is always this very excitement, I think, that lives within us. And part of that too, I think, comes from being an artist. I'm also a photographer and a huge music lover. And that is the other side of Moxie. So there's Moxie Consulting and Moxie Photo. And I'm always very thankful because Moxie Consulting, in essence, has been able to butter the bread to help Moxie Photo because I think that artists always need help and I think your mom and dad saw that so much. I mean, they really loved supporting other entrepreneurs and artists and were such advocates of that. And I always enjoyed talking to her because he, and like everyone in your family, is just so interested in what's new and what's next and how they could do things better. And it's been very exciting. I would say on both sides, being an e-commerce entrepreneur and also being a photographer right now. I think that there's a lot of opportunities despite the fact that we feel a little bit, you know, out of place right now. I think that there's a lot of positivity during this time to find.
You ever notice that both of those career paths can be done not very well by someone very novice? They could have an e-commerce site and not understand why they're not getting any business, or you could be a photographer but your pictures aren't really that great. But what you do, you, you've, you are the best in both fields. So you really are at the top, but I was watching you travel. Tell me about that. You were traveling and then the pictures you were taking were really, wow.
Thank you. Gosh, you know, like I actually picked up a camera when I was a teenager. I had a family member who gifted me an old Olympus camera and I was always an art nerd in high school. It was like, my social outlet was to be in the art wing, and whether it was photography or painting, I always just wanted to try things. And so I started doing photography as a teenager, and it was really my form of language and communication with others, was to like take a picture and share with them what I felt instinctively was going on, whether it was like in the world or within my heart or seeing in others. So, um, I love to travel. I feel like it's been the best, you know, master's program in life is just to get out there and be observant and also be a good listener. I think that that's part of tying in whether it is art or being an entrepreneur is just really being observant and a good listener and understanding what's happening around you because the more that you can see that, I think the more that you benefit from this exchange that's happening. So Yeah, I've had the opportunity. I feel like my photography, it touches upon a few different things. Like, I have a great love of music, and that is one component of my photography, which I love. I think it's pretty cool to capture artists when they're in that moment and just like letting it happen. And, but I also love to do things off stage. Like, I really enjoy doing portraits of artists and getting to connect with them in a one-on-one way so that they can tell me their story. So I love doing all types of pictures. Like, I would have to say, you know, I'm an experience junkie and my camera is really the gateway drug to it all.
Are you— your fundraising event that you're doing with Wideband, that is amazing. Can you explain that? Because that's unbelievable.
So I am a huge music lover, as I mentioned, and I love jam bands. I mean, it's like the weirdest thing. People who know me, they'd never think I like the Grateful Dead or I'm into Phish or any of this, but My favorite jam band in modern era is Widespread Panic, and I've been seeing them now for 22 years. It's kind of creepy. But they just, I love their music, and it's just such a great community when you really just get involved during the events. And I wanted to figure out a way that I could bring all the fans together for a digital event. And I was like, well, we can't be together right now, and we don't know when concerts are going to happen. So I was like, let me— what can I do here? And so I administer Widespread Panic's fan page. It's like the unofficial fan resource for fans connecting to each other. And thankfully, I, I, I am friends with the band and they, they support this very quietly. But yeah, I decided to create a Zoom event to bring all fans together, and I reached out to one of the top DJs, DJ Logic, who is very much involved in the music community and he agreed to be the like DJ for our event. And then I was like, well, we've got a— what charity would be the best one? So we picked Nucci's Space out of Athens, Georgia.
And I love that, nice.
They're amazing. Nucci's is— they are a mental health nonprofit and they have created a specific fund to help different musicians and artists who have been displaced displaced by COVID. And the thing I like most about this charity is because they can mobilize very quickly. So as soon as they are getting donations in, they are giving them out to different artists in need. And I think it's awesome because sometimes when you're working with nonprofits, there's a lot of bureaucracy and it takes months just to even get a response. But New Cheese has been on it and they've been really, really great to work with. And yeah, like so far we have had about 50 people RSVP and we've raised $500.
But, oh my gosh, wait, but what if you had, how many people can you get on a Zoom video call? Like, or is it live?
Or I like Zoom. So the way that I did this event was through Zoom and I created tickets actually through Eventbrite because I, a lot of people right now are doing just donate to Venmo, but I think that's a bit confusing. And so I thought that if fans could sign up and then make a donation, so we are requesting like $5 admission donation. And fans have been so generous. I mean, we've gotten everything from $5 up to $100. And the nice thing is, is we still have a marketing push this week. Like between the next 3 days, we've got some pretty big rollouts with, different media publications. And so it's kind of humble right now, like I'm waiting for it. This is the calm before the storm, really. But Zoom, you can fit up to 10,000 people on these things. Really? Yeah, you could fit up to 10,000 people on Zoom, and you can stream from Zoom directly live into Facebook and such. But we're creating— like, my whole hope is to make this feel like we are in a cool club, you know, like a party atmosphere. And we're going to have contests for best costume as well as best party room or backdrop. And we've got some amazing people, co-hosts, that are helping me with this that are part of the Panic community as well. And so I feel very fortunate. Like, I think it's important to be a visionary during this time right now and like taking your thoughts and put them into action. Because if you're just thinking about something right now and you've got all this time on your hands, you should be doing it. So I think that that's like been the biggest output right now is be a visionary. Don't be afraid. There's no right or wrong. If you mess up, no one's really caring. Just do it.
It's so true because I was told to do this years ago and I was like, oh no. And then I thought, you know what, actually I kind of thought exactly what you said. I'm just going to do it. If the dog poops, if my daughter comes in, the vacuum cleaner goes off, whatever happens, it happens. But you're right, just, just say yes and do it so you can move forward. I have to say you are so incredibly creative, and you're also a risk-taker. I love that about you. You know, you, you took a move when— and then you didn't really like that place where you were living, but you kind of came back to, um, to a little more south, which I think is great because it gave you an idea of— but you must feel really— I would think that you really feel a little cooped up because you've been traveling and you've been really enjoying the outside and going to all these locations. So before we go, I want to hear more of how are you handling really honestly being quarantined. See, my husband comes in here and tells me I have to pay his phone bill. It's crazy. So tell me how you're handling COVID-19.
You know, it's— I've been working remotely from home for some time now. I would say close to 8 years. And, you know, I'm guilty as charged. I don't have a structure to my Moxie office. It's like the creative in me is going to work whenever I want to work. Your dad and I and Gloria, we would call it the third shift and we work the third shift.
You really were up late. Late or early, like, wow, yeah, 1 o'clock in the morning. Who are you talking to, Dad?
I love it. To me, that's like, hey, if you're feeling something, get on the phone, talk to friends, collaborate. So I would say the work from home thing hasn't changed much, but the biggest challenge has not been able to like go out and see my friends and also just have like different places where I would like to work. Like I would go to a coffee shop or traveling on the road. Like I love working with people. Like, at the end of the day, my consultancy as well as photography allows me to connect with others. So that's been hard, is not seeing some beautiful faces, like, in person. But I will say things like this have been helping. Like, it's like I give you a hug, I give you a hug virtually. Oh, I love it. I love it. I mean, it makes me so happy to, like, see my friends. And I have been connecting with people more through Zoom and through just different video capabilities. It's funny because I'll have family members call and say, I'm so worried about you, you're alone. And I'm like, I'm alone but I'm not lonely. I don't have a significant other here and I'm okay with that. I have a lot of love in my life so I feel fortunate. And I've been doing little projects to keep myself busy. Every week when I go to the grocery store, when I do go to the grocery store, I love to design floral arrangements and that's a fun little project. It makes the house look pretty, and it's something for me to, you know, I grew up in a flower shop, so it's—
oh my God, I have to say, sorry, but that is— I have to get Alana. That is a great idea. Alana is able— Alana all of a sudden has come out to become an interior designer. She, she— her whole room— and embarrassed me because I— when I— she can't— she said like a week ago, she's like, come see my room. And I was like, oh my God, the only thing I could think of was like, did I— why did I think of this? She— no, so I'm on the phone with Heather, so I mean on the Zoom, but, um, I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna get— what do I do, get a bunch of flowers and then let her arrange them?
I would love— this is what I did on Instagram, and this is something I've never done before. I would love to do with you guys, but I've been doing like little Instagram Live of things that I love to do, and I did one class on floral design, and I would love to do something with you guys to show you how to do it.
Um, oh my gosh, Alana, would you like that?
Yeah.
She said yeah.
I'd love to teach her, oh my God, I think it's so much fun. All you would need to do is when you go to the grocery store, just make sure that you pick up 3 different types of flower varieties. So maybe there's carnations, lilies, roses, just make sure that you buy—
You'll tell me this afterwards, right? You'll just message me 'cause I don't have a pen.
More like individual flower bunches versus the prearranged designs. And then I can show you how to design. And make sure that you have a vase. I recommend if you have a fishbowl or a round base, those are the easiest to work with, or any base to work with. But I actually, you know, it's funny, I went to the grocery store yesterday and I bought some really simple flowers. I just bought baby's breath and carnations. And sometimes people disregard those as like, oh, those are boring, but you can really make something beautiful for under, I mean, at Publix you can get 3 bunches of flowers for $12, and you can make a beautiful arrangement.
I love that, Heather. I have to let you go, we have Sandy coming up Expert. You, you look beautiful, and I would love to do a part 2. Actually, can we do a part 2 after, uh, the— after wide panic—
wide widespread panic— fan—
widespread panic— after widespread panic, so you could tell me how it went? All right, I would love that. Thank you so much.
I miss you.
Thank you for always taking my call when I do need to speak to you.
I really— anything— I really appreciate it. Thank you. I can't wait for our next session. I'll talk to you soon.
I would love that. Thank you. Oh, everyone should follow Moxie Photo. I'll put the link again. Your, your, your Facebook page for consulting and the photo.
You can follow me at Moxie Photo on Facebook and on Instagram. I am Heather Moxie.
So I'll find it and I'll put it out there. Beautiful pictures, Heather. Thank you.
Love you. Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
