I talk about life entrepreneurship a lot on this blog. This is the idea that anyone can be an entrepreneur and think like an entrepreneur, even if you’re not starting new businesses or involved in high technology.
It’s enormously gratifying to meet readers of this blog who have nothing to do with business or technology, but embrace the spirit of entrepreneurship in their own line of work. It tells me me that the ideas I discuss here have diverse resonance. For instance, I got an email this week about a book recommendation from a 30-something baseball coach who’s a regular reader of this blog.
Today, I met a blog reader here in Shanghai, Eisen, who’s putting me up for the week in a spare apartment of his (yes, the generosity continues in ways that blow my mind). He’s been reading my blog for several months and reached out to me when he heard I was coming to the Far East.
Eisen is a Singaporean 40-something who’s dominating the Shanghai post-audio music production scene. He produces jingles. He plays live each week on a TV show (think the band that plays along with Jay Leno and David Letterman). His team of ten also records and edits local artists in their studios. He’s had amazing professional success in this niche. Very cool.
And I can’t remember the last time I blogged about music.
Baseball coaches, music producers, software entrepreneurs, college students, teachers, retired restaurant owners, journalists… What all of us life entrepreneurs have in common is a shared journey toward engaging this mystifying and too-brief life in ways that offer meaning and happiness.
The seriousness of this quest for knowledge and mission to change comes hand in hand with a sheepish acknowledgment of our own fallibility, a sense that the moment we take ourselves or our knowledge too seriously is the moment we’re ignored. Life entrepreneurs aren’t philosophers in an ivory tower; they’re out there doing, and laughing at their own failures. I laughed a lot with Eisen at dinner.
All this has nothing to do with me or my blog and everything to do with the power of average people with unusual passion. It’s super inspiring to know these people are spread across the world, across all industries (not just Silicon Valley) and backgrounds, reading and meeting and changing things. People like Eisen in Shanghai.
These people are true life entrepreneurs — incorporating the best of the entrepreneurial worldview into their work, kicking butt, and laughing heartily along the way. I’m honored some of them read my blog.