Spirit Management
Exploring Universalities for Entrepreneurs, Artists, and Business Professionals
Today’s newsletter explores:
the intersection of personal growth and entrepreneurial endeavour
converting challenging experiences into a model for business
balancing Eastern & Western approaches in our life and work
Dear friends,
Ever get the feeling you’re doing life back to front?
I feel like I had my mid-life crisis in my twenties and am starting in business when some are beginning to dream of retirement.
Doing things the wrong way around offers unexpected opportunities though!
A reward for me is sharing the infancy of my new journey while combining it with the lessons learnt from my older life path.
At their intersection are, I hope, valuable insights for others. After all, isn’t it in the colliding of opposites where new worlds are born?
I am reading "The E Myth Revisited" by Michael E. Gerber. However, every précis I’ve read seems to miss the book’s essence.
It is Gerber’s understanding of psychological reality which underpins his business acumen. His spiritual insights intrigue me because he examines them through an entrepreneurial mindset.
“We all have an Entrepreneur, Manager, and Technician inside us. And if they were equally balanced, we’d be describing an incredibly competent individual.
It’s the universalities I want to outline here. They’re useful whether you’re
an entrepreneur
an artist
or in business.
It’s clear many of us feel out of balance.
We gravitate towards Eastern practices because we sense something is out of kilter in us.
And yet whatever we learn and however we tackle it, we still feel something is missing.
Why?
Because we apply these practices on top of our lives, not within them.
No matter how deeply we introject spiritual practices, they will not bring balance alone.
The Eastern and Western “systems” are not in opposition and are not in conflict. Like the Yin Yang, in the heart of the one, we find the other.
And yet…
Each is born from its own tradition.
We gravitate to the lessons of another culture because we cannot solve the problems and predicaments of our own.
I recognised this at the point of my own breaking in my 20s.
In the depths of my fragmented self, I discovered solace in the wisdom of Eastern systems, yet it did not provide a direct path to healing. Lao Tzu's language resonated with me on an instinctive level, reflecting a void within my own culture, but it could not fill the void itself.
(Dam, I even named my band Myriad Creatures…)
"The myriad creatures in the universe are born from Something, and Something is born from Nothing."
Lao Tzu
My journey toward mental health and a deeper foundation has taken 20 years, and its deepest commitment has been psychoanalysis.
Now, while I try to balance the 3 areas of my working life (creative, freelance and Solopreneur) I find an unlikely mentor in a businessman; Michael E. Gerber.
I resonate with the distinctions in the entrepreneurial self that Gerber identifies:
Entrepreneur: the visionary who seizes opportunities, imagines futures, redreams the world
Manager: the orchestrator who keeps the operation of your life or business smooth
Technician: the dedicated craftsman who immerses in the details which bring a vision to life
You'll begin to understand how devastating the tyranny of your strongest personality is to your life.
Michael E. Gerber.
And yet, how in conflict are these aspects of ourselves!
To balance them is our great challenge.
His diagnosis resonates with me because it’s a time of dynamism and expansion in my own life.
Juggling the different areas of my work is bringing many rewards, but there’s a fine line between feeling inspired and exhausted.
You have to look after your whole Self.
The paradox is that to do so, you have to recognise it as a society of opposites.
For me:
The entrepreneurial part is a bet-placer.
Having resolved my ambiguity about the digital world and social media, I’m in a time of deep experimentation. I’m chipping away on the next EP (in music), enjoying learning about podcasting, and making a discipline of writing. I’m aware that it’s a classic modern mistake to pursue too many rabbits but my current philosophy is:
- Conceptualize - Initiate - Experiment - Evaluate - Refine - Iterate - Repeat Here's a graphic (in case anyone wants to pinch!)
For me, the medium is less important than the message, I just want to find what feels the best fit for my life.
That means trying things, accepting some will fail, but trusting I’ll land in an improved environment.
The Technician (in me) thinks that the entrepreneur is a lunatic. After a packed week he admonishes the dreamer. There’s a podcast in the diary for the morning, and the next guy (the manager in me) has failed to plan research into the schedule. The technician will compensate for the cockiness of the entrepreneur by working deep into the night to make sure that:
cameras are set up
cards are formatted
white balance is set
audio is tested
the idiot has done the research after all
The manager is the newest part of me. I’ve always been happy to exist in chaos and have thrived within it. I’ve made my freelance career as a filmmaker because I’m identified like the “wolfman” in Pulp Fiction. If a production needs filmed with zero time or planning: better call Jim! It works in an artistic environment, where there is a limited pursuit. However, as my commitments spiral due to the panoramic dreamings of the nascent Solopreneur, the manager shrieks there’s no way to play this game without organising!
So my mantra is now:
Organise, organise, organise
(the artist in me shrieks as I write this - “keep the fucking anarchy man!”)
These conflicts drive my motivation to create a "Content Creation System" for artists.
The more I systematise my approach, the closer I get to aligning the impracticality of the entrepreneur with the technician and the manager.
This essay on Spirit Management has no resolution yet. I remain in a time of spirited animism, experimentation and discovery.
This revolution of my artistic world splurges forward, drunk on its own course.
I am enjoying the journey so far even if aware of the inherent fragility of kaleidoscopes; and the potential for shattering written into their nature.
10 Take Aways For Those Spirit Managing:
Know Your Why: This means knowing what you want to give and what you want to get
Keep Message in Heart: Let your message guide each action
Who Are You Helping? If service is at the heart of your intention work is joyous
Know Your Mission: Have a clear one-sentence mantra around which all rotates
Offer Gifts: When in doubt give your gift over and over
Abandon Perfection: Embrace progress over perfection
What Can You Outsource? Delegate what you can delegate!
Have Fun: If you’re having fun the struggles lighten infinitely!
Courage is a muscle: yes it’s scary, but less so each time (pinched from KP!)
Revelation is in Relationships: meaningful relationships make everything worthwhile
Have a great weekend everyone!
Jim
It is self-evident that businesses, like people, are supposed to grow; and with growth, comes change.
Michael E. Gerber