Why I Started Elastic Mind
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For me.
Before I began writing this blog one year and nine months ago, I’d never published a damn thing under my name. My past writing experiences consisted of:
- scratching angrily in my journal
- dreaming up poorly-constructed and never finished Lois & Clark and X-Files fanfiction
AND once I had left the tortured years of teen-dom
- penning mildly clever marketing copy
When I decided to leave corporate marketing, and shape a business around my vision for my life, what I knew definitively was that I wanted to write more. At the time, I really didn’t care how, I just knew I needed to do it.
So, I thought, to practice and to aid in my ability to get client work for Elastic Mind, I would start publicly journaling all that I was learning about building my own business.
The idea, Innerpreneuring, came later.
I’d been brainstorming about my business direction for a month or so when I noticed Geek Gods, Karma Queens, and Innerpreneurs in the Marketing section of the bookstore. I had been hanging out in the Business section of the bookstore a lot, hoping that by osmosis I would be able to calm my fears and shape my business into one that didn’t totally suck.
The word, Innerpreneur, kept calling to me, but the book seemed a bit silly, so I ignored it. I judged the book by it’s cover… and title. Shame on me. Obviously, on one of my trips I finally opened it, read the description of Innerpreneurs, and was completely compelled. Not only did it describe my vision of how my business could bring meaning to my life, it also described the exact group of people I wanted to work with. Eureka!
I’m no fool.
Having worked in Marketing, specifically online Marketing for years, I knew how the game works. When I learned about us, I knew I had found my niche, the group of people that I could create the most value for.
I was still getting clear on what I could do best (at the time I was offering web content consulting) and discovering our group helped me to see that I wasn’t alone in my values or in my views on entrepreneurship, life and everything in-between.
So I theorized that I could create Rise of the Innerpreneur and:
1. Document my business growth and learning
2. Express my Self and provide myself with a place to practice and publish my writing
3. Help other like-minded business owners (and soon-to-bes)
4. Attract my ideal client to my web content writing web consulting strategic coaching and web development business… it’s taken me a little under two years to get clear on what I do best… and I still feel like I’m discovering it.
5. Be a portfolio of my web wizardness
But it was still a gamble.
I didn’t know if you would care – about my business, about my writing, or about Innerpreneuring – but I needed to take the chance, for me. It was what I felt I needed to do, for my happiness, and I trusted that.
But it did seem like a decent bet that there would be at least one other whackjob Innerpreneur out there, like me, and that I could, perhaps, create some value in their life.
Almost two years later, I and my business continue to grow, and it is exciting and frightening to see how my little gamble pays out.
photo by: monkeyc.net
