I’m working on a book project with a client who accidentally bombed out of the Air Force… and then built a multi-million dollar business within about three years.
The guy is the quintessential entrepreneur (he would rather lose an arm than sleep in), so when he said recently that he thinks everyone has a little bit of the entrepreneur in them, it got my attention.
Normally I’m skeptical about this kind of claim.
It’s a great sound byte, but that is a loose thread I am absolutely going to pull on: Is that really true? What counts as an entrepreneur? Is everyone really cut out for it?
As we talked about it more, though, I realised that he thinks of entrepreneurship the same way I think of creativity.
They’re both fundamentally generative. Humans like to make stuff. We like to build stuff, draw stuff, record stuff. We like putting our names on things. It makes life feel meaningful and significant.
Like entrepreneurship, creativity is not the exclusive domain of a blessed few.
It’s in you, whether or not you’ve found yours yet.
Maybe not everyone is cut off for life as a full-time entrepreneur or creative, but I do agree that everyone has something that wakes up that generative impulse.
It’s not always going to be writing (as much as I’m biased towards it). It might be woodworking, gardening, bee-keeping. It could be a little Saturday morning side hustle or a weeknight moonlight.
Whatever it is for you, that impulse is precious.
It’s a clue about what’s going to make you feel more alive, more satisfied with your time here.
Don’t dismiss it as silly or self-indulgent or too involved or whatever the excuse is. That impulse connects you to all of us, and frankly, I think we’d all have a lot more fun if we put our gifts on display more often.
So don’t hide your light, . Let that baby shine. Creativity is one of the best bits of being human.