A month ago I had a conversation with my Dad about my choice to start a company. Before that day, I don’t think I had every really known what he thought of it. It wasn’t that he hadn’t previously sat me down and gave me the teary eyed “son I’m proud of you” speech but this time around he truly spoke from his frustrations. What he said changed my life.
“Son”, he said, “I’ve spent my whole life working for someone else’s success…..being an entrepreneur you’re making the future happen. The only thing I can do is fix yesterday and hope tomorrow is better for me. You’re creating a better tomorrow for everyone.”
Those words recreated what I believed an entrepreneur to be. I was always taught that an entrepreneur is someone that owns their own business. When Steve and I started our company we quickly realized our vision had to be much bigger then simply filing some state documents and getting a EIN. It wasn’t until my dad said those words that I decided to actually investigate my belief and settle on an actual truth. I read everything I could and finally concluded that “Entrepreneur” isn’t a person or an action its a set of qualities:
empathetic: the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit mannner.
visionary: tending to envision things in perfect but unrealistic form; idealistic
ingenuous: skill or cleverness in devising or combining
agile: marked by ready ability to move with quick easy grace, having a quick resourceful and adaptable character.
Coworking is giving entrepreneurs the chance to recreate the world around them. People will envy our freedom. They’ll criticize us for being idealistic. They’ll say our plans will never work. Despite that, there will always be someone like my Dad in the shadows with heart gripping pride in what we do. They’ll live vicariously through us as we innovate vicariously through him. Coworking is everything and nothing society has taught us to be….but I like that. In fact I cherish that. I hope you will too.
"It seemed I could either have a job, which would give me structure and community or I could be a freelance and have freedom and independence. Why couldn’t I have both.” - Brad Neuberg, Hat Factory, San Fransico
LET’S ALL BE FAMOUS!!
