Making Economic Poetry
There you are, innocently travelling through your usual (busy) day following multiple trajectories, and then: *tumble*, you find yourself falling over something that you weren't expecting and: Aha! Struck by a new brainwave.
Entrepreneurs, especially those who are multi-passionate have a tendency to unexpectedly trip over inspiration.
This happened to me recently as I was moodling on Facebook. I was inspired in an unlikely way by a YouTube video excerpt from a George Stroumboulopoulos interview with Arlene Dickinson of Dragons Den fame. This was a startling source of inspiration. Not that I have anything against Strombo, or think him uninspirational. To be honest, I'm kind of a fan. If you don't know him, he's a Canadian talk show host who interviews celebrities, thought leaders, and newsmakers. He's also a great Twitter follow .
This happened to me recently as I was moodling on Facebook. I was inspired in an unlikely way by a YouTube video excerpt from a George Stroumboulopoulos interview with Arlene Dickinson of Dragons Den fame. This was a startling source of inspiration. Not that I have anything against Strombo, or think him uninspirational. To be honest, I'm kind of a fan. If you don't know him, he's a Canadian talk show host who interviews celebrities, thought leaders, and newsmakers. He's also a great Twitter follow .
I just wasn't expecting to click on the clip and find resonance. I wasn't looking for it. I was looking for some decompression time (being mindful) and taking a little break by watching YouTube. George coined a phrase in that interview. As he said it, I felt the zing of recognition thrum through me. His words? In describing entrepreneurs, he said: "An entrerpreneur is an economic poet."
Economic poet.
(Did you zing, too?) Dickinson gamely expanded the notion. Entrepreneurs, she said, "take business ideas and put them together in structure in a way that makes music, art or (in this case) money."
"Yes!" I thought. "Yessy, yes, yes!" (This is in fact how I think).
In the same way that seemingly random metaphors and images flirt and whisper to poets who craft them into imaginative compositions of thought and feeling that ultimately express meaning, entrepreneurs take ideas and make products, services, jobs and money.
Multipreneurs do this, perhaps more extravagantly, by relentlessly exploring new ideas and conducting an entire symphony of revenue streams simultaneously.
Laying claim to our status though, that's the tricky part. When someone says "I'm an entrepreneur", the reaction is much the same as when someone says "I'm a poet". Watch the eyes roll and the eyebrows rise.
Claiming to be a multi-passionate entrepreneur, well...
Mary Oliver said: "Poetry isn't a profession. It's a way of life. It's an empty basket; you put your life into it and make something out of that."
The same is true of entrepreneurship. It's a way of life. We are in it one hundred per cent. Heart, soul, mind. Filling the basket.
How does the notion of being an economic poet strike you? What about multi-passionate entrepreneurship as a way of life, rather than a definition of profession?
PS. If you haven't read Mary Oliver, you must. find and read her work. Onward.
Economic poet.
(Did you zing, too?) Dickinson gamely expanded the notion. Entrepreneurs, she said, "take business ideas and put them together in structure in a way that makes music, art or (in this case) money."
"Yes!" I thought. "Yessy, yes, yes!" (This is in fact how I think).
In the same way that seemingly random metaphors and images flirt and whisper to poets who craft them into imaginative compositions of thought and feeling that ultimately express meaning, entrepreneurs take ideas and make products, services, jobs and money.
Multipreneurs do this, perhaps more extravagantly, by relentlessly exploring new ideas and conducting an entire symphony of revenue streams simultaneously.
Laying claim to our status though, that's the tricky part. When someone says "I'm an entrepreneur", the reaction is much the same as when someone says "I'm a poet". Watch the eyes roll and the eyebrows rise.
Claiming to be a multi-passionate entrepreneur, well...
Mary Oliver said: "Poetry isn't a profession. It's a way of life. It's an empty basket; you put your life into it and make something out of that."
The same is true of entrepreneurship. It's a way of life. We are in it one hundred per cent. Heart, soul, mind. Filling the basket.
How does the notion of being an economic poet strike you? What about multi-passionate entrepreneurship as a way of life, rather than a definition of profession?
PS. If you haven't read Mary Oliver, you must. find and read her work. Onward.
