Business from the inside out

Innerpreneurship Articles

Giving Space to Your Creations

There is immense value in leaving, and then returning to, your creations. With a little bit of space, your expressions feel all the less personal. They no longer feels so fully created by ‘YOU.’ Giving space to them leaves you feeling less like...

Distracted by the Noise

What distracts you from your goals? What leaves you questioning the path you are currently on? All around you are distractions and noise. People, places, and things clamouring for your attention, for your time, and for your energy. Some may have your interests at...

Your Toolbox

Every craft-person has a toolbox of tools and techniques they use to bring their work to life. You too have a toolbox full of the tools and techniques you’ve picked up over your lifetime that have helped you to shape your life into what it is today. Your tools...

The Art of Your Business

Creating a business is just as abstract as creating a painting, and while you can go to a million painting classes and learn a thousand difference techniques, what will end up on the canvas depends on you. Knowing how to do something doesn’t makes it...

What Being an Innerpreneur Means to Me (And Only Me)

What Being an Innerpreneur Means to Me (And Only Me)

InnerpreneurWord

[tweetmeme] I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll say it again, I did not make the word Innerpreneur up. I was only drawn to it once upon a time ago (early 2007) when I was starting my business.

I saw the book Karma Queens, Geek Gods and Innerpreneurs in the bookstore and despite the fact that I had little interest in the book’s overall themes, I bought it. I was compelled by the term, Innerpreneur, and intrigued by the people it described.

It spoke to me. I connected with it. I didn’t totally understand what being an Innerpreneur meant but I found truth in it.

What Being an Innerpreneur Means to Me (And Only Me)

What Being an Innerpreneur Means to Me (And Only Me)

InnerpreneurWord

[tweetmeme] I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll say it again, I did not make the word Innerpreneur up. I was only drawn to it once upon a time ago (early 2007) when I was starting my business.

I saw the book Karma Queens, Geek Gods and Innerpreneurs in the bookstore and despite the fact that I had little interest in the book’s overall themes, I bought it. I was compelled by the term, Innerpreneur, and intrigued by the people it described.

It spoke to me. I connected with it. I didn’t totally understand what being an Innerpreneur meant but I found truth in it.

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Create Your Own Economy of Integrity

Create Your Own Economy of Integrity

New Economy

You have a choice in the kind of market economy you participate in.

The type of economy you inhabit, as a customer and/or as a business, is yours to define. If you imagine a different kind of market society, and a different way of valuing the world, you have the opportunity to shape it. You are contributing to an integrity-driven economy each time you allow your values to drive your decisions.

Too often though, we betray our values when we find ourselves overcome by money pressures. In these moments, we see our integrity as a cost. But the true cost is acting on our price/profit-motivations, as we can make short-sighted choices that prove far more costly in the long-term.

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Business Planning, not Plans

Business Planning, not Plans

Planning
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I don’t believe in plans. But planning is essential.

Plans involve making educated assumptions on what the convenient future could entail for your business. But why plan for a future that isn’t going to happen the way you planned it to? In most instances, people think predicting the future is hogwash, but strangely not when it comes to business.

Planning involves educating yourself on where you are going, developing a strategy for how you are going to get there, and a vision of what you want to experience along the way. You don’t need to predict the future, you just need to know there is a route.

Process, not Product

I’ve found answering these 10 questions on business planning is a solid foundation on which to build a sustainable strategy for growth.

The Innerpreneur’s Guide to Planning Your Business

A. What You’re Getting Out of It

1. Why are you starting the business?

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Economics for the Innerpreneur

Economics for the Innerpreneur

Economics
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A perfectly rational world?

Conventional economic theory assumes perfect knowledge – of prices, markets and people. From this knowledge it extracts a “rational economic order” – a pattern to explain how economies work and how economic agents (e.g., buyers and sellers) interact. It is a theory that attempts to explain the production, consumption, and transfer of wealth.

Conventional economic (and business) thought focuses on elements from only the physical realm – such as resources, commodities and technologies. It does not extend to the mental or conscious realm.

Conventionally, wealth is seen as nothing more than what we have manifested in the physical realm.

A bigger view of economics

George Shackle was the first economist to challenge that the “algebra of business” is not a deterministic, linear science.

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It’s a Tactic, Not a Guarantee

It’s a Tactic, Not a Guarantee

Tactics

[tweetmeme] Tactic = an action or strategy carefully planned to achieve a specific end

Your business name, your tagline, your website, your brochure, your FaceBook fan page, or any other business tool – they are tactics – that you employ to reach a goal.

Tactics don’t make a business successful

No tactic, no matter how clever or cool, will keep a client coming back. The value your business creates will.

You, the person behind the business – you, the person creating and providing the product and/or service – are ultimately what will make your business grow or shrink, and make your clients true fans.

No enduring business I know of can thank their tagline, or their business name, or any of their ever-changing and evolving tactics for their sustained success. They may thank tactics for having helped garner them attention, but they see their sustained success is due to the value their business creates in the world.

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This Is Not For Everyone

This Is Not For Everyone

The "On the other hand" selfportrait (bw outtake)
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I’m a romantic.

But I like my stories to be realistic too.

Owning a business is NOT for everyone.

Fuck, no. Suggesting such a thing would be just crazy talk.

I don’t know what your career needs.

Only you do. If you do the work to discover what you feel passionate about, and find purpose in it.

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A More Accurate Innerpreneur Timeline

A More Accurate Innerpreneur Timeline

Innerpreneur Books

[tweetmeme] Almost two years ago to this date I had my first desire to write about Innerpreneurs. And, at the time, the only place I had ever heard of Innerpreneurs was in the cultural marketing book Karma Queens, Geek Gods and Innerpreneurs by Ron Rentel. Thus, I credited Ron for the creation of the word in my first article on the topic, Are You An Innerpreneur?.

It Ain’t So

Now that I am older and wiser, I’ve discovered that Rentel was actually the 3rd author, to my knowledge, to use the term.

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