Category Archives: Entrepreneurship

A shark tale

“Back in the days when storytelling was the main form of entertainment, tales of mythical creatures abounded. Today we seem to indulge in the mere scraps of what was once an epic feast of legend.”

In this modern age, there appears another mythical creature, the shark, a protean-like coiling in the grass type of snake, ready to turn your business proceedings and agreements into dust with swift smooth-tongued, loaded Questions…

As an entrepreneur I have started small. I am still small fish and I deal with sharks, corporate companies. I have created my ‘corporate’ culture from scratch, and I have developed my business solely through growth hacking.
What I have learned when trying to impose my imaginative but new small company culture to the sophisticated corporates is to strike gold, provided you know who you are and consequently, the “protocol” to offer and create huge amounts of Value and solve problems.The more problems you solve the better you speak the shark tongue.

Tim Ferriss once said, “A person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.”

Sharks’ words are never comfortable as they know no mercy and smell fear and disorder from afar. Whomever has never been told that his/her products or services are useless doesn’t know how to shine a carefully chosen smile in the face of the creature with disposable teeth, and sink into the right order of things. Which is, there are other sharks. But when a big shark says to you, you are no good, then you are (good), because you are there sharing the same table, conference room and presentation…On this gleeful occasion I am thanking all the sharks in my life, the ones who have taught me to smile at the glint of rejection, and the ones who have taught me that:

“Everything you want is on the other side of fear.” – Jack Canfield

Besides trading my help for their help, I will thank them all in a more personalized manner.

Art by Michael Sowa.

Love

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“Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.”
― Ray Bradbury (August 22, 1920 – June 5, 2012)

Art by David Wyatt.

Tyrannosaurus writing

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“I’ve been blogging since February of 2001. When I started blogging, it was a dinosaur blog. It was me and a handful of tyrannosaurs. We’d be writing blog entries like, ‘The tyrannosaurus is getting grumpy.” – Neil Gaiman

The dinosaur in me writes the Iron Tales or ruminates about feeling nothing in the Equilibrium, when he is grumpy and scared. He writes about feeling nothing in order to hide away fear of feeling too much, to solidify the knowledge of being woundable…and to Live. “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”- Joan Didion

The Tyrannosaurus writing shapes all, sometimes in a no-win situation, sometimes in a win-win situation. A no-win is when you write for herbivores, and win-win when you write for your own kind. They understand. You write about something they would wanna have or feel at least for once in their lives. Being grumpy and a T-Rex saves a lot of trouble when your writings hit judgmental walls. Your skull endures…

“Honesty matters. Vulnerability matters. Being open about who you were at a moment in time when you were in a difficult or an impossible place matters more than anything. – Neil Gaiman

To write with the truth of pain in your mouth is gruesome poetry…You’ll have to cut out your heart with every word and show it to the world, then hope it will heal. This is how the light gets in, also the dark. To acknowledge fear, defeat, despair and pretend serenity of a lesson learned while patching up the wounds is…Life.

Art by Waldemar Kazak.

The Golden Age

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We are all stuck in a Golden Age, which can be source of grief, anger, deception and disillusionment but also source of power and inspiration. Always the optimist, I have chosen the latter.

“I am convinced that most people do not grow up … our real selves, the children inside, are still innocent and shy as magnolias.” – Maya Angelou

How can we use our childish un-perverted selves to be more and become better? How can we project and protect our Golden Age in the turmoil and perils of a suffocated Modern Age?

Children perceive things unspoiled. Their vision is as green as the waves and sea before the storm and unhampered by misgivings. They do not hold grudges. They see beauty in everything and for everything they have a story or a witty explanation…

My beautiful step-daughter Brigitta always admired my bags: “This is made of the skin of a python who ate rotten jelly fish for dinner.” The subject of her admiration was a turquoise bag, so obviously the poor snake had digestive problems…”This is from the skin of a giraffe who ate the blue sky after the rain…A black panther who swallowed up a rainbow.” For the general understanding of things, no python, giraffe or panther died for me to have my beautiful bags, it is just painted and customized leatherwork.

As for me, my childish projection was all about magic and to change things as if with a magic wand. The adult knew the hard truth that it couldn’t be done so swiftly, but I kept trying while not pushing the Golden magic too far away. I am not much of a story-teller but people believe me…

Maybe I have acquired a little bit of the gift in the gab, whose foundation was laid in my golden time of stories. From one “fabrication” to another, I have always offered the freedom of always doing something new, and the freshness of ideas.

Life is always beautiful when you travel with new words.

Art by Anton Lomaev.

Success as craft of magic

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Success is a craft of magic for the undone.

Our choices are in the ethereal mold of us. We choose to do the UnDone or just keep on walking the path of Done and Known.

The undone is hard endeavor. The undone is manifested in the idea of not knowing when to start, where to start, how to start and what to expect from some “judgmental” decisions. As everybody is here to criticize and be disgruntled. There is no time and knowledge for trial and error. There is just error.

It is like exploring without a map. You might fall off the edge of the world or get entangled in the murky waters.

When reading about Cristopher Columbus’ exploits I have always try to imagine their turmoil and fear when sailing the Sargasso Sea. They were way out of their comfort zones. Nevertheless, when they embarked on such adventures, they acknowledged the thin red line between life and death but blurred it with the courage and perseverance to follow a dream…

The opposite of our comfort zone is the Sargasso Sea; unknown, bleak, menacing, hard to predict. Something we do not fathom nor pin down. The Sargassum seaweed can be both menace and challenge…Dark and light…magic and mirror of fears…

Magic is always in the undone. It flickers like buried treasures in moonlight. You know it is hard dangerous labor when you start uncovering them in broad daylight that strips away the magic and the legend. Just jump over fear and move on. What if they were so scared and wouldn’t dare pursue in the Sargasso Sea? We wouldn’t have found out that it is a sea like any other. Nevertheless, the only sea without a land boundary.

“You have to finish things – that’s what you learn from, you learn by finishing things.” – Neil Gaiman

Finish your trip into the UnDone and UnKnown and give it a name. Sometimes we name it success.

Art by Vladimir Kush.

Passion and Persuasion

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“To succeed, you need to find something to hold on to, something to motivate you, something to inspire you.” – Tony Dorsett

Success is smoothly undefined. But when I get up at the crack of dawn burning with impatience to start work, I know that maybe I have done something good. Succeeding is not a battle. As keeping a diet is not a short term fight but a poised long term lifestyle. You do something different and more every day without solely concentrating on the scope.

My settlement for success is the place where I do what I like and what I want in an untainted sort of way. I like meeting new people and keeping their interest high on my way of solving their communication clashes. I love writing and using my words for attracting keepers of beautiful ideas that inspire…My passions are the same, persuasion has more ways now.

Temperament dictates living and doing. And succeeding. I do precisely what I want and stick to my plan. Nevertheless your words can persuade me on other paths. Gladly I desire good things for me and my people and I want to help first, and then to ponder over ways to practice what I preach. I love the words that unite…I abhor the words that divide.

“Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.” ―George Bernard Show

Mistakes are manifold and not important. Important is what we do with them. We can make them renewable or nonrenewable. Time is not renewable, it is just one flow “at a time”. It is said that successful people are able to do more in the space of one day. Time allows everything to happen and be created. Persuading time to stop is a way to success…? Time, imagination and temperament are the means of creating something as beautiful as this:

Art by Maurice Prendergast.

What is your Why?

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What is your why?
We all have a secret engine. It may be the fire in our hearts lit by a wondrous smile, or the sparkle of a new day, the uneasy warmth of doing something new, the hope of achieving something we only dreamed about, or just finishing a project, a new venture.

Why do you get up in the morning? To start all over, to rewind, to redo and to make it better. Time is what we really own. Time is what we really have to define Better. Time shapeshifts in what we make of it and in the colors of our feelings.

A Romanian folk tale tells the story of a brave king, one eye smiling and the other crying. We keep on doing the daily grind, one eye crying, and one eye laughing at the Why in our hearts. Our Why is the craving for doing something we and others will love.

Success is not something handed to us. But we can hand ourselves a bit of happiness at forgetting our daily pet peeves and shaping the time in something lovable. Love but attracts other types of love.

“I want no vacation – no surcease from my labors. If people would select a life work compatible with their temperaments, the sum total of happiness would be immeasurably increased in the world.” – Nikola Tesla

Spring is the season of goodwill. I contribute to the sum total of happiness with my (other) work of being the follower of seasons and the keeper of springs. For I have never found a love that pure as in the tree flowers whose scent quietly clings like stardust to the early twilights of March.

blenda-tyvoll-2

Art by Blenda Tyvoll.

Dreamers and doers

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“The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer.” – Nolan Bushnell

Yes, you will have to do a lot of things which are borderline between imagining, weaving your (business) plan and really implementing your idea and your strategy of creating value.
Because this is all about – helping and solving problems. Entrepreneurship is all about doing and working, which is not that unfathomable. We all do the heavy lifting, we all have exerting routines…Knowing what to do and how to do it is the conundrum. As sometimes we are not given the time for the Trial and Error, we have only Error and but a moment to make amends.
We are pilferers of experience and growth hackers. Our job is not to do our job, but know what to do next.

And craft a good plan with poised goals.
The plan should be realistic and thorough. I and plans mix like oil and water as I repel routines and like the spark of new things which renders me a little shallow. But then I thought, what if my life depends on my thoroughness? This made me make a very good plan with all the questions attached and answered.

Beneath the obvious goals of my business, I have another one: to change something in the people I get to know. For the better and for the happier, with a piece of advice, with answers, with some words they do not know and need. After all, happiness is what we crave. Inspiration may never cease and I have had good source in Seth Godin‘s words: “Who do you want your customers to become?”

Everything starts with an idea which can translate into purpose, project and product with a little help from tiny beautiful things – words. Dream about your story, but not too hard. Fight your way into new things and enterprises but don’t take yourself too seriously. As “life is not about how you survived the storm… it is about how you danced in the rain.” – Regina Brett

Art by Michael Cheval.

Iulia Halatz
She says: “Be the one who cares, make words so disruptive that they create new worlds, hopes and dreams. Even if we are unhappy dinosaurs and find shelter in an Iron Tale or ruminate about feeling too much, whilst declaring colorless apparel, we should take power and strength from our stories.”
Her published poems can be found in The Sudden Denouement Anthology Volume I.

What made you turn to entrepreneurship?

Word Debt

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Words are everywhere…They float about and run towards us since forever and shape our fragile childhood dreams.
Words make us humane. Our entire being is constructed upon words.
And then we become in debt… We owe a “Good morning”, a “Good night”, a “I miss you”, a “I love you”, a “Thank you” … if we are lucky.

Words storm over us in apprehension of our hearts. We name feelings, colors, sentiments, passions. We imagine stories and name our heroes. We become enchanters and share the limelight of our stories. We fall in love.

We owe nothing but WORDS. And promises, commitments, visions, dreams and magic…

Flock of words travel to us every day. Some we hear. Some are left in a deaf haze, unanswered and alone.

Words are powerful. Yet they need a power which does not lie within themselves. As it lies within you. Give power to your words! Shape them clear and make them swift, concise and lasting.

I run a words business. No matter how much I give, I am still in debt… For many years and many blissful days. I give power to your words and shape them correctly in sentences free of doubt and alive with promises…

We always keep.

inspiration-michael-cheval

Art – Inspiration by Michael Cheval.

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