Principles of Authentic Entrepreneurship #1

Authentic entrepreneurship in practice. A first case study.

Background story (jump ahead to next section for the how-to's ;) )

I'll be honest, as I've been exploring the topic of authenticity, its promise for people to live their best lives, and its expression in entrepreneurship, it's all been more or less a hypothetical undertaking. An understanding of singular pieces and a vision of how they might fit together to build something much better and much more beautiful than our current systems and their soul-crushing restrictions. But, lo and behold, there is at least one person out there who has actually walked this path, the path of living his life as an authentic entrepreneur. And who has explored its strange new rules in a real-world setting, stakes and shareholders and all. Let's call him Bartram. And this is his story and insights.

Bartram grew up in an entrepreneurial family. His Dad ran a print shop on the ground level of their house. It was a small venture with a good twenty employees who were treated and cherished like family. But even back in the 1960s and 70s printing was a difficult business to make money with. Which therefore, inevitably, was just one of the many  conversation topics that Bartram picked up over dinner. After school, he'd usually help out in the shop, too. And as early as his teenage years, he began to pitch new and improved business ideas to the small publications that were using their printing services. Most of them agreed, and so he ended up implementing these business models all before turning eighteen. It's fair to say that Bartram lives and breathes and loves entrepreneurship in all of its aspects. But with his youthful enthusiasm, and undoubtedly inherited entrepreneurship genes and mindset, he navigated himself into one of the many predicaments that unreflected entrepreneurship practices tend to harbor: 100 hours weeks. As he inched closer to his thirties, now mostly freelancing as the youngest-ever, interim CEO for various companies, that practice became unsustainable and another, almost-inevitable predicament hit: burnout.

It's of course a story that many entrepreneurs, and beyond, are familiar with..... tackling life through pure force and will power. Not that it has to be that way. But it does come with the territory if we're honest. Because that which allows entrepreneurs to flourish, namely their thirst and heightened tolerance for risk and uncertainty and challenges, is exactly what usually makes them design their lives to be a constant adrenaline rush. That is, until that inherent fuel turns into fumes as we encounter more and more adulting responsibility as well as health and personal challenges. For Bartram, that burnout was a turning point. He decided to take a sabbatical and get help for his mental health while simultaneously figuring out his life purpose. And to his credit, he stuck with that slowed down lifestyle even as he entered working life as an entrepreneur again.

His next venture was an interim CEO position for a company specialized in coaching people. Specifically, their B2B clients would offer their employees access to free coaching sessions provided by Bartram's company in order to work on topics like emotional resilience, grief, and life purpose. At the end of the month, Bartram's company would send the coachee's employer a bill but not provide any details on who took advantage of their services. This was an absolutely innovative concept in the early 2000s, which also happened to fit well into Bartram's own life purpose (enabling the flourishing of people and finances). So, no surprise then, sensing the immense potential while also beautifully aligning with his values, he ended up buying the company after only a short time as its interim CEO and has been running it ever since.

Back then, Bartram was mostly a business man who tried to implement mindfulness practices in everything that he did. I would say today, a good twenty years later, he would describe himself mostly as a mindfulness-practicing person with a good business sense. That shift didn't come about overnight. Rather, it was brought forth by years and years of things not working out satisfactorily while running the business "as usual". And realizing that there might be a better way to do it. A different way. An unusual way. Yet, one that is proving itself to be sustainable in our economic system. The numbers speak in favor of it. Not only is Bartram's company still well and alive after these formative decades, he is also employing more than 50 people with almost no turnover ever, has an impressive client list, and, most importantly, is able to run his ship while working "only" 30 to 40 hours weeks which gives him plenty of time to be present for his family. It's beautiful, really.

The (first) rules of Authentic Entrepreneurship

I bet you all would like to know his secret sauce, so let me share with you a first (superficial) glimpse on the rules of authentic entrepreneurship that he has discovered. In no particular order, there is:

One, decisions take themselves. Yep, you read that right. According to Bartram, a decision can take up to a night of sleep or sometimes ten years, but eventually, it will all become clear on how to move forward. It's the moment of simply Knowing, a clarity that naturally emerges, on its own time. One just has to learn to be patient and trust that this moment will come. Of course, that trust usually comes from failing, a lot, when trying to do it in any other way. When rushing or pushing on a decision, outcomes tend to be suboptimal. Most people actually don't realize it, ever, as they are too busy to stay busy. But for a person who is very much keeping an eye on balance, the difference is glaring.

Now, you are probably asking yourself what it means for a "decision to take itself"? Briefly said, it's felt experience going from complexity to simplicity, like swimming in a confusing data cloud, disoriented, then thankfully being sucked into a beautiful space where everything is incredibly clear and orderly. Sshllp (word for a "sucking sound" :) ). Think of buying a new phone. There are so many options, each one with their own advantages and disadvantages, as measured by specs and online opinion pieces. It's a confusing jungle of information that people will drudge through for days on end trying to come to a decision. Then, you walk into a store and check out your top choices, holding the phones in your hands, playing with their UI, exploring their software options and camera capabilities. And if you are lucky, you will find "the one". Frankly, the specs will be all but forgotten by then. Instead, it simply is the right phone for you because you love how it feels in your hands, how perfect the screen size is (for no measurable reason whatsoever), and how excited you are to welcome it into your life. It's as simple as that. No thinking necessary. All this information just clearly crystalized into a choice, a very obvious, clear, beautiful choice. And if you are in the store and that clarity doesn't hit, you walk back out and try a different store, you come back three months later, and six months later, and patiently wait for just the right moment where suddenly..... Sshllp.

Two, hire the right people. In order to be an authentic business leader, somebody who can show up to work as they are and always feel supported, you need a workforce which shares this inherent vulnerability and reflectiveness. Bartram's company operates in a country boasting more than 100K registered coaches, but his 50+ employees are hand-selected. For one, he has an HR supertalent on his team who instinctively knows which person might be a good fit for such a special company, and who is not. She scouts out people and invites the promising candidates to try out their lengthy interview process, which will only be successful when the entire leadership team of a dozen people unanimously agrees on the new hire in the end. One of the most important intermediate steps of the hiring process though is to ask the candidates "what do you find difficult?". People who struggle with that question tend to also struggle with being open and vulnerable, and are thus a bad culture fit for a company where the CEO openly admits if he's unsure about something and asks the people around him for help and their different views, actively seeking out the disapproving opinions. This is more than just being a well-functioning team. Building an authentic business is all about finding, hiring, and listening to your tribe.

Three, to always look for the quiet place inside of himself. Bartram, over time, has realized that it all starts with himself. Life will always be challenging. There is always something to resolve and to reflect upon (like the divergent views of his company tribe), there simply isn't a final state where everything just falls into place and stays there. And thus, he needs to bring clarity to the table for the company's sake, which naturally emerges from the quietness inside and by identifying what fundamentally drives him (his authenticity!). It takes time and dedication to know how to get to both of these. As well as time and dedication to actively seek them out on a week-to-week basis. His past has taught him that living life and building a business from a purely thinking perspective does not result in good outcomes. And so he has learnt to not only trust his brilliant mind, his thinking so to say, but to always balance it all with his heart and his gut, the quieter but decidedly "smarter" parts. Business know-how is important, but asking that quiet place inside of him for guidance is paramount for success.

Four, success is to live a fulfilled life while providing access to happiness for others. Life will not always be fun, but it can be very fulfilling nonetheless. What is not fulfilling though is 

• working long hours in absent-minded busyness, 

• beating the competition (he's a very competitive person but when you are in the business of empowering people it really doesn't make sense to kick out similarly helpful players), 

• and taking too much pride in profits (making profits is simply a marker for having played the business game correctly, which he very much enjoys in and by itself). 

What is fulfilling though is to work with fellow amazing people on a venture that, if it had to be personified, would be considered a safe, wise friend whom he trusts fully and to whom he can tell everything that is on his mind and heart. Success then boils down to having constructed a life that is highly aligned with one's life purpose and passions while being in a beautiful balance with loved ones and oneself.

And last but not least, five, not making plans for the future. The future will be what it will be. Bartram has learned over his career that plans don't tend to work out anyway. Thus, making plans and insisting on them is simply contradictory to the data. Instead, he makes sure that the dynamics of the Now, which are creating the future, are optimal for everybody involved. On the one hand, he makes sure that he has a good time and does something meaningful, something that is important to the world. On the other hand, he ensures that his employees all know very well what they do and why they do it, while guaranteeing that they have all the tools they could possibly need. The rest, aka the future, emerges from these "rules", as a chaos theorist would call it. Basically, every step into the future is an update to an existing system, and that update in Bartram's Game of Life and Business happens according to these above guarantees. As in anything complexity theory, you never know where exactly you'll end up with that, but two things are obviously true: the system is biased towards a future of increasingly happy people, and while in process, everybody is guaranteed to enjoy themselves. Now that's a great way to use the principles of emergence. All it takes from you, the authentic entrepreneur, is to totally accept to not plan for the future anymore and to instead trust in the flow of life, both good or bad, but with conscious decisions on how to influence its dynamics in the meantime.

Summarizing, living the life of an authentic entrepreneur takes tremendous guts and bravery. Not only do you need to know and understand the standard rules of business, you additionally have to transcend them all. And the only guiding principle on how to do that will come from your own inner authenticity, from that quiet place and awareness of what's truly important to you. And then, to act on it, trust it, and prioritize it no matter how counterintuitive it might seem to the rest of the world. However, if you accept that challenge, life might just take its most beautiful, highest pathway. Not always an easy path, but probably more meaningful and fulfilling than all the other options. This is not a life path that has been trodden a lot, especially in the business world. But I hope Bartram's insights and personal success can help you in making that choice and understanding what goes into it.

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Daily Shot of Insight June 7-10, 2022

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Thumbnail picture by Riccardo Annandale (Opens in a new window) on Unsplash (Opens in a new window)