Three principles of Awakened Entrepreneurship: An intentionally personal approach to building a business
Written by Alison Gilbert
In the movie You’ve Got Mail, Meg Ryan’s character faces her small bookstore going out of business due to a bigger chain bookstore coming up around the corner. As she considers options to fight back, Tom Hanks’ character attempts to psych her up, “It’s not personal, it’s business,” he pulls from The Godfather. In response Meg Ryan’s character implores, “What’s wrong with being personal...Because whatever else anything is it ought to begin by being personal.”
In many ways, “It’s not personal, it’s business” has been the unofficial slogan of our last hundred plus years of Capitalist society which has fueled a culture of profit worship, materialism, hierarchy, toxic competition, fear, and scarcity thinking. My work of the last decade has been an exploration of how to navigate and improve upon this cultural reality through the medium of business. And what I’ve learned from working with hundreds of entrepreneurs, and from my own business-building experience, is that the modern business is flourishing precisely because of how personal it is.
I’ve observed a growing movement of entrepreneurs building in this intentionally personal way, modeling a healthier way of doing business and collectively reshaping our culture and economy. I call this way of building Awakened Entrepreneurship and below are the three core principles of this approach:
1. Business is vehicle for systemic change
Our business endeavors are a part of a larger social, environmental and economic ecosystem. What we create has a ripple effect on others. We build more responsible, sustainable and impactful businesses when we consider our own emotional needs and the emotional and social needs of others in what we offer, the effects on the environment in how we operate, and the ways our businesses can give back to the ecosystem itself.
2. Entrepreneurship is an art form
If we adopt the idea that we entrepreneurial minded people are actually artists—people who have the ability to express truths and incite inspiration through an external medium, business in this case—we have the opportunity to shift the definition of business from being a purely bottom-line, means-to-an-end type endeavor, to an art form that becomes an expression and driver of connection and transformation.
3. Business is an opportunity for awakening
The more you look inward to understand your inner world experience as you take steps on this unknown path—the good, the ugly, the uncomfortable—the more you will connect with the heart-centered intention for what you are creating. In many ways, to take the Awakened Entrepreneurial path is to engage in building a business almost as if it’s a spiritual practice. The more you invest in learning the deeper reasons you seek to do this work, the more you will make an impact outside of yourself.
As the tectonic plates of our society and economy shift we have an opportunity to guide how that shift takes effect. Business is a powerful medium for embodying the values and practices on a micro level that we hope permeate the institutions and systems that uphold us on a macro level. As we individually wake up to the depth of our entrepreneurial creativities, we become the very ripple effect that empowers the healthy change our communities, environment and culture, crave.