fbpx

Perspective

Last year I attended Chris Guillebeau’s World Domination Summit for the first time. I was ushered to Portland by my colleague and friend, Jim Hopkinson who simply said, “you have to go!” To be honest I didn’t quite know what to expect. Jim and I had co founded a conference Reboot Workshop the year before encouraging others to live outside the 9 to 5 and I suspected that WDS might attract the same kind of aspiring entrepreneur. Employees working full time jobs they hate and can’t wait to leave to start their own companies. That group attended WDS for sure, but was just one small group amongst many successful artists, world-travelers, adventure seekers and a wide spectrum of people doing the most imaginative things. WDS isn’t just for entrepreneurs, current or aspiring, but for any creative thinker looking to squeeze just a bit more out of life.

Surprisingly, being around a lot of non-traditional creative types gave me quite a bit of perspective on my career. It wasn’t just an industry conference like SXSW. It was a life conference. Now in my 3rd year of running my own business, I’m one year ahead of where I was at the last WDS and so I’m curious to see how the people I meet and the experiences I have will shade where I go in the next year.

Change

Like any endeavor without a definite end goal, it’s easy to get mired in the day-to-day. Last year I was still fleshing out my role as a teacher. I had some classes under my belt and some semblance of financial security but now I’m 100% on my month to month finances. Teaching has become my sort of “part-time job” that lays in a solid foundation that keeps my finances from fluctuating the way they did when I relied only on freelance work. Still this has come at the expense of taking on new projects. The time spent for preparing for class and working with students sometimes takes away from hustling for new business or launching new projects. When I conducted the New York City StartupBus in March I woke up to the fact that I really love being an entrepreneur and I want to build my business more. But I want to do it in the right ways.

Often failure to take the next step isn’t for lack of options but for lack of the right option. I hope that with WDS this year I can find new inspirations and ways of looking at projects that excite me and change the way I’ve been thinking about what I’m capable of.

Business

As some of WDS friends know, I’ve been working on a new beta project that I’m excited to debut at the World Domination Summit. It’s called Lemur and it’s the embodiment of a lot of the best things that I’ve done in my business over the last three years. It’s a product and a coaching service and it’s specifically designed for helping creative professionals, my favorite audience. While WDS isn’t specifically about business, I think it’s the perfect place to test out reactions to Lemur. That’s because Lemur, for me, isn’t just about making a high-scale for-profit businesses. It’s about helping others and empowering creativity. I look forward to hearing what others think about the project and ideas they have for getting it out to the right audience.

Contacts

Last year I met not one, not two, not three but 10 or so colleagues from around the world that I regularly check in with about business, life and everything else. I didn’t go to WDS to increase my global contacts but that ended up happening. I found friends in Europe, England, The Netherlands, Scotland, Portland, Texas, and Canada that I have either done business with or that I regularly bounce ideas off of. It’s been great to share my experiences with them and to see how we help each other with expanding possibilities of our own businesses. I also enjoyed the random encounters with strangers who, though we weren’t going to do business together, inspired me to think differently about how my business could be run. I met artists and life coaches. At one point I met an apothecary. People are really the reason to attend a conference. It’s not just the people on the stage but the audience that can grow your outlook and ideas. WDS presents one of the most mind-expanding audiences that I’ve had the pleasure to know and I’m looking forward to seeing who turns up this year.

Image from Flickr user R0Ng Creative Commons license.

Share This
%d bloggers like this: