{{first_name|Hi friend}} -
In March 2016 - exactly ten years ago - I was a few months into starting OpenTent, and I was at a crossroads. I had plenty of Salesforce implementation work to do for my three clients, but I wasn’t convinced this was the work I was meant to do in the world. I debated between carrying on, or winding up my current projects and going back to the path I had thought I was on: becoming a rabbi.
Walking to the subway one day and looking for a podcast, I saw that Tim Ferriss interviewed Seth Godin (don’t care much for Tim but am a huge Seth fan). About halfway through the interview I heard this bit and felt like Seth was speaking to me:
Tim Ferriss: For those people who hear your description of entrepreneur and say that’s what I want: I want to be an entrepreneur…They desperately want to go from wantrepreneur to entrepreneur. If I had a sticky note to put on my computer to help me make that jump, what would it say?
Seth Godin: Let’s pick two different kinds of entrepreneurs.
One kind of entrepreneur says: whose need am I satisfying today and can I assemble assets in a defensible way so I don’t have to be the cheapest. And by that I mean…snow shoveling. We know there’s a need for snow shoveling. We know that if you spend time and effort, you can arrange a team of ten snow shovelers who don’t have the initiative you have, and you can use existing, almost free technology to assign the snow shovelers to where they need to go. And you’re not going to win because you’re the cheapest snow shoveling company; you’re going to win because you can get to customers faster and better and more efficiently.
That’s a very straightforward form of entrepreneurship; it is available to everyone without an enormous amount of talent or artistic creativity required. Because you just make a list of the thousand things around you that people need and want. You make a list of the kinds of assets and connections you can build and you go do it. And you do it and you do it until you’re big enough.
The other kind…is to say the purpose of my business is to change people. To change them from something into something else. And this is the kind of business that we remember generations later.
So Harley Davidson, my favorite example, changed disrespected, disconnected outsiders into respected family members, insiders. That’s what you get when you pay $12,000 for a motorcycle. Because if all you want is transport, buy a Suzuki.
The way to think about it is, no one gets a Suzuki tattoo. You can decide that you want to be tattoo worthy. That you want to change a population in a way that makes you indispensable. That kind of entrepreneurship requires insight at a different level.
There’s nothing unattainable about it; I encourage people to go do it. But know that it is a higher stakes game than being the person who applies systems thinking to an existing, clear need.
Well, shucks. Standing on the subway, looking around at the commuters hauling themselves to the office, I just knew in my bones: I want my business to be tattoo worthy. I want to change people.
That spring I doubled down on OpenTent, hired a first employee, got a WeWork office, and we took off.
To be clear, I am under no illusions that anyone would ever get a tattoo of a Salesforce consulting company. But a man and his AI image generator can dream.
In a time of great upheaval it is natural to fall back on: what do I currently have or can easily get, and what is the most straightforward path to persuading people to give me money for those things? As I try to figure out my next business, that kind of thinking tempts me often. I understand why so many people build these kinds of businesses.
But when I am able to slow down and look away from the roaring hype noise online, I remember: great upheaval means nearly everyone is asking the same questions.
Who am I?
Who are we?
Where are we going?
What really matters?
The answers are not in the chatbots. They're waiting where they have always been: in story, in community, in culture. And if you can help people connect to that layer, with enough strength so they feel they belong - that's tattoo-worthy work.
It's a higher stakes game.
It's worth it.
💪
I’ll be at SXSW for the first time next week! I’m excited - as far as tattoo-worthy conferences go, SXSW seems pretty high up on the list. Are you going or do you know someone who is?
Lol