Extending a riff, what’s the real job of an entrepreneur?

Peering, Dublin, Ireland

Hugh MacLeod, why most artists’ blogs fail:

That’s the REAL job of the artist: To be a leader, not to fill the space with pretty “stuff”.

That’s also the REAL job of any blogger: To be a leader, not fill the space with pretty “content”.

That’s the real job of any entrepreneur: To be a leader, to create institutions and organizations that empower people to leave the world a better place than we found it, by giving them the opportunities to make individual decisions about how to spend their money, time and attention, that add up to better institutions, better systems and better lives.

Does your *real* job conflict with your actual job?

I’m moving to New Orleans, Louisiana. Here’s why.

Last year didn’t turn out as I had planned. This year I stopped planning and just lived, and in doing so finally created “The Good Year” that I had envisioned for a number of years.

My simple goal was to spend a year traveling, following my passions, exploring and creating without any expectations for it to pay off right away. I wanted to test my idea that the universe will take care of me if I let it and give myself the time and space to let the year lead to something bigger.

The original idea was to spend a month of two in about eight different places, to live, work and photograph lives in each city, to dig into each new place and culture as a temporary citizen. The goal wasn’t to find myself or explore the world, but to live and observe different lives around the world.

But it didn’t go as planned. For one, after I quit my job last November I spent the next twelve months driving across the USA, bouncing on trains throughout Europe and flying around the world. Each time I tried to stay in one place and slow down, I found myself moving on and going faster. Why?

In short, the draw of people and opportunities over the horizon, the beckoning of the next place, the next person to meet, the next experience to create.

And secondly, the planned year of observing became a year of interacting, creating and sharing. Each step forward, each hello, each exploration, each person and each story led me to another, simply by embracing the opportunity, listening, caring and giving. The solitary journey evolved into a shared adventure, connecting thoughts to thoughts, thoughts to people, people to people, powered by serendipity, part of an introvert’s awakening, thirty-one years in the making.

It wasn’t as glamorous as it sounds. Littered throughout the year were misplaced steps, missed connections, miscalculations, incomplete thoughts, failed challenges, hopes and ideas dashed by realities, limitations and mistakes.

But even with the numerous failures, I’m still looking forward to where it could lead.

And thus, with “The Good Year” drawing to a close, having tested and found the limitations of the way I lived this year, it’s time to change it up and find a better way to live another good year (and more). For me, for now, that means I need to live in one place and build a core to bring together the edges I’ve opened throughout the year.

I considered lots of places to live, focusing on the typical hubs of business, culture and recreation that regularly grace the “best places to live” reports and pop up in the “what is your city” quizzes I’ve taken repeatedly, trying to think about what’s important and envision alternate lives.

Nothing ever indicated New Orleans.

But that’s where this year has led me. New Orleans first popped up though introductions by Lyell to Chris and Jessica, my first real tests of a year of showing up, meeting new people and asking friends and acquaintances to help curate my life.

As the year continued, New Orleans kept popping up, interjecting herself into conversations, showing up in my mind, my heart, my memories. I lingered over photos I took of the Quarter and the Garden district. Every news article with a snippet about New Orleans drew my attention. I felt a tug every time I saw news about friends doing cool stuff in New Orleans, stung by a small bit of feeling of missing out. I extolled the virtues of New Orleans as an example of one of the few unique, culturally vibrant American cities, proclaiming my love for New Orleans to fellow travelers in Bulgaria, Japan, India, Australia, Malaysia and England.

But I never told New Orleans that I loved her, with the type of love that’s only seen a glimpse and is unsure what lies deeper underneath, but is sure of itself nonetheless. The type of love that needs to be demonstrated and shown, not just said.

What better way to show it than to move there?

And that’s my early Christmas gift to myself: a home, an opportunity, a life.

Of course, I’m going to need your help, New Orleans. I’m scared the rush of a new city will fade quickly. I’m worried it will take me awhile to settle in, based on my mixed past in establishing lives in past cities. I’m nervous about not living up to expectations. I’m worried about creating a professional life that fits my professional and life goals (more, later *). In a way, I’m scared of getting what I want.

But I’m going to try.

I’ve never truly loved a city or a community; New Orleans, I’m hoping you can help change that.

So New Orleans, I’m moving here for you and for me. I’ll love you and give you my all. All I ask is for you to love me back.

—

* Later, a deeper dive into why New Orleans is a great professional opportunity for me and many others. But first, start with Sloane‘s great summary of what New Orleans has to offer and my past thoughts on New Orleans’ opportunity to leverage its vibrant cultural life into a vibrant hub for entrepreneurs (video, about 1 minute in). More to come.

Kleenex, anyone?

Since UK and US immigration couldn’t understand how I create the means to travel and live like I do, I thought I’d share a little bit about how it works, continuing to explore how to live a (mostly) open and transparent life.

Dreams, Charleston, South Carolina, 2006

Many of the stories and photographs from my recent 89-day jaunt to Japan and across Europe are already online (click here for the map and links to all the posts; click here for the Flickr set of photos from the trip), but I thought this little pause in my trip would be a good time to share a bit about how I make it work, focusing on how much it costs to travel like I do.

This post will cover the details and expenses behind the most recent segment in my current year + of travel; if you’re interested in the expenses behind my cross-country road trip across the US, the details are available in two parts: Nov 30, 2008 to Feb 14, 2009 (including a detailed breakout of the expenses per-day) and Nov 30, 2008 to March 31, 209 (including some advice, thoughts and thank-yous).

Since UK and US immigration could barely understand how it all works, I figured this would be a good time to explain…

• $66

  Yes, $66 per day, everything included.* A bit higher than the $47 per day I spent driving across the US, but understandable given the different modes of transport and the distances involved. Excluding my travel costs of $2,900 (half of my overall expenses), my total expenses for “living” were $33 per day.

  The biggest components of my “living” costs: $19 for food, entertainment and eating out, a minimal $1.50 for phone and Internet charges, and $10 per day for “rent”. The rent charge is incredibly low for two simple reasons: 39 nights spent at hostels and 41 nights spent with friends, spending social capital instead of money. For the nights I had to pay for a place to stay, my average was $20 per night.

  I use quotes around “living” as a bit of sarcasm, because that level of frugality sometimes doesn’t feel like much of a life.

  But I’ll repeat:

  … it comes with a price: no big purchases, no clothes, computers, electronic gadgets or the “stuff” we spend most of our time acquiring. But it also comes with a certain peace of mind and soul: “what we own ends up owning us”, and by removing stimuli and focusing on true needs rather than wants, we can re-focus on people, relationships and experiences.

  Again: it’s not an expensive life, but it’s certainly rich.

• Where did that $66 take me?

  89 days in all, 40 days in the UK, 14 in Japan and 34 days in eastern and western Europe.

  Favorite places? Istanbul, Turkey; Sofia, Bulgaria; hiking in the Rila Mountains in Bulgaria; Brasov, Romania; Kyoto, Japan; and of course, London, England.

  But it’s the people and communities I met and re-met along the way that proved to be the highlight of my travels; I’ll remember the experiences, intellectual conversations and great fun more than the places themselves. You made my trip more than you realize.

• What’s next?

  New York City for PDN PhotoPlus, New Orleans for TribeCon, San Francisco from Nov 2nd to Nov 7th, Perth, Australia and Mumbai, India and then back to the US; beyond that, I really, honestly, don’t know. It’s a bit of a raw subject at the moment.

  Why? For one, I am no longer accepting new clients for Unstructured Ventures; while I will continue to answer questions and provide support for the free financial model for startups, smaller consulting gigs simply doesn’t interest me at the moment, and I find that larger, more holistic projects are better uses of my time and passion for me and for others.

  Secondly, living this kind of life, for this long, is proving to be tough for me, personally and professionally. I know many people that love living the nomadic life, and it’s because they have found better ways to do it than I have. Perhaps I will create a better way to live a semi-nomadic life after I finish my next couple months of already-planned travel, but in no way will my current year + of homelessness continue in the same form.

  Time to find and create new platforms, new edges, new hubs, new routes, new goals.

  Re-phrasing: it’s not an expensive life, and it’s certainly rich, but it could be far richer.

  We’ll see.

* Ok, a little bit of a cheat. Adding in medical and car insurance raises the total to $69. Still not bad.

A couple notes on business models and life models, and links to many cool people and projects.

Trolling, Bratislava, Slovakia, Sept 2009

Disparate but related thoughts, projects and people:

• Mike Masnick, DRM Doesn’t Enable Business Models; Blind Fear Disables Business Models:

  [DRM] cannot enable a new business model economically. That’s because it’s only purpose is to limit behavior. There are no business models that are based solely on limiting behavior.

  I hadn’t thought about business models in this way before; but as David Sanger pointed out to me over Twitter, others have, pointing out two highly relevant points by Umair Haque on property rights, noting “property rights have to provide … value when bundled with goods … current licenses only subtract value” and “consumers may be willing to pay for the good … but … likely not interested in paying for restrictions in consuming the good”.

• As much as I’m intrigued by Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers, I’m fascinated by the operational and business model behind the book itself. Alexander Osterwalder explains more about the process and learnings from creating the book in The Challenges of an Innovation Journey (an Author’s Perspective).
• Shifting from business model generation to life model generation, the Institute of You (@instituteofyou) is career growth subscription service that uses a mix of exercises, methods and mediums to guide people to finding work and life fulfillment. I haven’t tried the service yet, although I’m sure I could use it.

  Combined with Kareem Mayan’s Find Your Purpose Newsletter (here’s how Kareem found his purpose), I seem to be bumping into (online and offline) a lot of like-minded people working hard to help people define their lives. Thank you, and keep it coming, please.

  (Thank you to Alan Smith for introducing me to Institute of You.)

• I mentioned this on tumblr earlier, but I’ll mention it again. One of the keys to living a cool life is to keep creating new, awesome, meaningful, powerful, inclusive, valuable and simply fun ways to live.

  As a lover of awesomeness I’m biased, but the Cause It’s My Birthday philanthropic campaign / birthday party / life escapade by Sloane Berrent and Doug Campbell is simply too cool not to support.

• What’s the tie between these thoughts? Business models based on creating value and expanding the pie are more powerful than business models based on allocating and extracting value; lives focused on creating, aggregating and directing value to others are more powerful than lives focused merely on the extracting value for the self.

  Consider what businesses and lives you’re supporting.