tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80038553010263773552024-03-13T11:34:11.466-07:00iDigital Dirtentrepreneural subduction and the digital landscapeLearning how to get out of my way…http://www.blogger.com/profile/01131783016903947999noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8003855301026377355.post-86617761784540637532010-11-15T12:00:00.000-08:002010-12-28T12:43:25.695-08:00Van Gogh never sold a painting...Van Gogh never sold a painting... and yet he is currently at the De Young in GGP. <br /><br />Starry Night is amazing.<br /><br />But did Van Gogh 'ship"? <br /><br />Steve Jobs famously tossed off the comment "Real Artists ship". But what does it mean to ship?<br /><br />Seth Godin says - getting your product out there to let people use it, is shipping. Holding on to it to make it "perfect" is not a useful or a successful pattern. <br /><br />Descarte said, " The perfect is the enemy of the good."<br /><br />In the last two years, we designed, we bootstrapped and we released a new product. I am trying to feel successful. <br /><br />My Yogi Teabag said " Joy is the essence of success."<br /><br />But now we are just at the starting line; we need sales.Learning how to get out of my way…http://www.blogger.com/profile/01131783016903947999noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8003855301026377355.post-37871298167442747582009-01-05T11:11:00.002-08:002009-01-05T12:44:07.563-08:00why I am an entrepreneur.<span style="font-weight:bold;">Risk and Creation in the New Year </span><br />When you are a serial entrepreneur, you gotta stay flexible. I have been learning a lot about that – this year and in this economy… I have part-timed as a sommelier, a coat check, a hostess, and now an event manager with a walkie-talkie. <br /><br />I lead an “interesting” life in the Chinese sense and find myself with time on my hands to think about how I got here.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Beauty from Dirt… my compulsion to create.</span><br />Early-on in my career as a workaholic entrepreneur, an Uncle asked me why I worked so hard and devoted myself so completely, when the pinnacle of success was so poorly paid? As an IBM sales executive he saw landscape architecture (my then business) as financially questionable. He seemed to me not very bright, quite risk adverse and an overly fat corporate cat. Did he really have no conception for the compelling act of creating beauty from dirt? Or the God-like rush of seeing a garden bloom in all seasons; or for the compulsion to create at all? <br /><br />My stupefaction at his attitude would merit a different response now but then even asking the question made him a contender for my least favorite Uncle.<br /><br />Now that I am considerably older, have four businesses under my belt and stalking a fifth, (2 in real dirt, 1 in hyper-media dirt, and 1 in Internet dirt), I have recently been reconsidering. Perhaps it was me, who was not all that bright. Let’s review: <br /><br />Why trade an 8 hour a day, well paid job for a life of 16 hour days with no pay and no weekends? Why work so hard and AND pay your own savings in order to get it going? <br /><br />My Beloved, who is an avowed AA twelve-stepper, recently said, <br /><br />“ Honey, sounds like you need to consider the second Step… that you need to acknowledge a higher power to return yourself to sanity” <br /><br />He has never been bitten by the entrepreneurial bug but he knows about addiction. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Why do entrepreneurs gamble like this? </span>Why do I insist on hitting my head against the wall of creation? Creating real value is the stuff of nations. (Take note: ping-pong derivative dealers, though you were clearly well paid and have the singular approval of my uncle…)<br /><br />I have two things that are bothering me that I am attempting to tease apart from my personal economic dilemmas. This series of posts is about outside forces and their affect on my entrepreneurial efforts; the second is deeper but perhaps even more important to our world, collectively. <br /><br />1. How does society <a href="http://idigitaldirt.blogspot.com/2009/01/husbanding-innovation.html">husband innovation</a>?<br />2. How can I /we be more successful at it e.g. <a href="http://idigitaldirt.blogspot.com/2009/01/killing-our-albatrosses.html">killing our albatrosses</a>.Learning how to get out of my way…http://www.blogger.com/profile/01131783016903947999noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8003855301026377355.post-7483645505235942332009-01-05T11:11:00.001-08:002009-01-05T12:36:39.876-08:00husbanding innovation.Malcolm Gladwell has typically brilliant things to say here in his new book about society’s “Outliers” – those real innovators that create and are successful at building companies... Check out what my good friend, David Brooks has to say in his 12/16/08 NY Times column:<br /><br /><br />“In Gladwell’s account, individual traits play a smaller role in explaining success while social circumstances play a larger one. “I am explicitly turning my back on, I think, these kind of empty models that say, you know, you can be whatever you want to be. Well, actually, you can’t be whatever you want to be. The world decides what you can and can’t be.”<br /><br />Tell me something that I don’t know… <br /><br />The Dali Lama says not to judge or compare yourself to anyone else; it will only make you crazy... But if you MUST look back – do it in five year increments and see how far you have come. I see back further: to my great grandmother on the prairie – 120 years ago. It was before women got the vote or had the right to own property. <br /><br />My great grandmother on the Nebraska prairie had three choices when her husband died in the 1890’s for supporting 7 young sons: <br />1. a teacher<br />2. a practical nurse<br />3. undertaker for women<br /><br />My mother went to USC on a full ride scholarship from Oklahoma 65 years ago - who cares if she had to submit with her application a glamorous coed picture, (She was a great beauty…) she got an equally great education. She supported herself as a self-employed CPA for 50 years; she took the opportunities offered to her. <br /><br />I clearly have it better, e.g. more options. I am not whining. <br /><br />Society still tells me now, as it told my mother, grandmother and great grandmother before her, what I can be but I have to buy into it for it to be effective in thwarting me. <br /><br />What do we ask of society as entrepreneurs? We ask for a collective open mind which creates real opportunites for success.<br /><br />see related posts:<br /><br />1. Intro: <a href="http://idigitaldirt.blogspot.com/2009/01/why-i-am-entrepreneur.html">why i am an entrepreneur</a>?<br />a. you just read it (husbanding innovation)<br />b. How can I /we be more successful at it e.g. <a href="http://idigitaldirt.blogspot.com/2009/01/killing-our-albatrosses.html">killing our albatrosses</a>Learning how to get out of my way…http://www.blogger.com/profile/01131783016903947999noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8003855301026377355.post-9744764881335635642009-01-05T11:07:00.000-08:002009-01-05T12:39:17.596-08:00killing our albatrosses.My “glass ceilings” as a white woman have NEARLY butted up against the only /most important ceiling for “Outliers”; it is the one that most matters in creating a world of our choosing: our beliefs are the ONLY things that ever hold us back. <br /><br />So the deeper point is why lament society’s limitations when I/we so effectively bitch-slap ourselves? I/we waste our own energies by self criticism and comparing ourselves negatively to society’s ideals (Those people in the glossies - the winners, the beauties, the successful e.g. white, male, ivy leagued (with a Verison—like army of powerful alumni backing them up. Ok now you know more than you should about MY particular demons…)<br /><br />But it is not a just a female issue. We humans shoot ourselves in the foot all the time by believing we can’t – when we actually can. Our own beliefs are culled from what society believes. When we, as “Outliers’ succeed, Society learns that it is possible. Then we learn from society that this new thing is possible.<br /><br />It is where the spiritual rubber meets the entrepreneurial road; it is a spiraling energy stream, an economic engine and social progress.<br /><br />African-American men got the vote 55 years before women and Obama will be President in a few days. He is there because he did not believe what society told him. He focused on the voices of his mother and grandmother to give him a powerful base of faith in himself. He also then grew by listening to his own heart. <br /><br />He believed in himself and that belief infected us, the society.<br /><br />Of course, he did the relatively easy stuff: worked hard and long, focused on the goal, showed up, was clever and strategic, kind and tactical…etc <br /><br />And he chose well; he chose fertile ground that had the possibility of success. He was able to fit his gifts to a pursuit that allowed him to grow those considerable innate talents and dream bigger. This opportunity for a better fit – the matching of his nurtured talents with real opportunity- is the financial and spiritual opportunity of our age.<br /><br />When he broke his glass ceiling, he gave us all an example of how we can shatter our own albatrosses. This is the real power base of an ‘Outlier’. They shift us all to a different playing field and mind set. We all see differently. The world changes for everyone.<br /><br />This brings us back to my irritating uncle. Why did I choose to create where I did? Because I simply loved the work and was looking for a fertile place to do it.<br /><br />see related series of posts:<br /><br />1. Intro: <a href="http://idigitaldirt.blogspot.com/2009/01/why-i-am-entrepreneur.html">why i am an entrepreneur</a>?<br />a. How does society <a href="http://idigitaldirt.blogspot.com/2009/01/husbanding-innovation.html">husband innovation</a><br />b. you just read it (killing our albatrosses)Learning how to get out of my way…http://www.blogger.com/profile/01131783016903947999noreply@blogger.com0