Business owners share some desires with artists.
They start businesses because they’re perfectionists. Control freaks. They hope to dictate forms of expression, without compromise. They want freedom.
But the urge to HAVE a business is different than the DOING of business.
The doing requires us to breathe life into something that might not respond to our control.
Why? Because the life we create is carried forward by money. No matter how we persist, if the money stops flowing, so does our creation. (The life an artist creates is carried forward by pursuit. If the money disappears, creation can still persist.)
I love the complexity that making money brings to the art of business.
And it’s one of the reasons why I’ve never wanted us to be a ‘not-for-profit’, even though at the heart of our business lives many things that are art-full and money-less (and there might be a grant for that!)
So what happens to the perfectionist in us if both art and money are given room to play? Perfect imperfection. Persistence without vigilance to a final form that fits the model we begin with. Vigour and striving driven from the heart but still filling the bank accounts.
Anne Lamott says that writing is like watching a Polaroid develop. You take a snap shot, but you don’t really know what you’ve got until the picture develops. It may yield figures you hadn’t expected to consider until you see them now, finding their form as the green fades.
People say to me when introduced, Oh, I’ve been to Wandering Cooks before! And I ask, when? have you been recently? Because to us it’s different already; playing out its infinite game against the green.
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