Doug Bruns

Archive for the ‘Business’ Category

,

Bullet Point Number 2: Imagine “What if?”

In Business, Creativity on February 18, 2013 at 6:00 am
Book Series: Inside the Minds

Book Series: Inside the Minds

I contributed a chapter to a business book a few years ago. The book was part of a series called, “Inside the Minds” (Aspatore, 2002). My contribution, specifically, was in a book called, The Entrepreneurial Problem Solver. Other Inside the Minds books focus on venture capital, economics, personal success, and so forth. For a reason I’ve yet to fathom, I am now transcribing the chapter. Perhaps why I’m doing this will become apparent at some point–to me, I mean. Regardless, I close the chapter with a list–and we know how much I like a list. I thought I’d share it with you.

  • Be creative
  • Imagine “What if?”
  • Challenge the status quo.
  • Train for the summit every day.
  • Quest for leadership where it is not apparent.
  • Where leadership is apparent, strive to make it better.
  • Do not give up until it is physically impossible to satisfy a business need.
  • Fill the organization with complementary talent.
  • Be lean and never spend more than you have.
  • Honesty will earn trust.
  • Expect more
  • Have fun

It is obvious to me now that my business life was not significantly different from my current, non-business, life in the important particulars. Specifically, as an entrepreneur I was, by definition, not part of the herd; rather, I built a tribe. The ruling mantra, particularly during the early start-up, was that of creativity. In fact, my chapter had the clunky title, “Did I Say Entrepreneurialism? I Meant Creativity?” And, like much I think is right about how to live, starting a business and growing it is an exercise in vision, simplicity, and discipline.

In a significant way, business never provided me the degree of satisfaction I observed it often provided others. That restlessness is constant; it was then and it is now, and circles back to the question of imagining “What if?” If there were to be any wisdom a person might impart it should be close to this.

Thanks for reading. And to my last point above, Have fun!

d

, , , , , , ,

What the Hell?

In Business, Reading on June 11, 2006 at 7:33 pm

Paris

When I die does this blog die with me? Or, rather, does a bit of it, like a clipped toe nail forgotten on the tile floor, remain indefinitely until someone comes along and cleans it up: “Yep, he’s gone. Better clean this mess.” I was in Paris only five days, but guess philosophy is in the water–that at least is what they would have you think; as they must think stupid is in American water. (An easy assumption to make of a place where the bread is so bad by comparison.)

By What the hell? I mean what the hell have I been doing since February when I last posted to this sorry excuse for a blogg. As I said, I’ve been to Paris, also Maine, where I fulfilled a life-long dream to buy a house on the coast, a condo properly, but on the coast nonetheless, at least until the ice cap melts it gone, which might be any damn hour. It was E.B. White that set me on this path years ago, writing: “Once in everyone’s life there is apt to be a period when he is fully awake, instead of half asleep. I think of those five years in Maine as the time when this happened to me.”

Reading too, since I last posted, figuring that first I am a reader, then everything else, getting hooked on a Peguin Editor’s list of the Great Books of the 20th Century, being a big fan of lists and an advocate of self-improvement (believing that literature can accomplish such a thing!). Twenty books total, only six of which I’ve read previously:

Heart of Darkness (Conrad),

Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez),

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Joyce),

Women in Love (Lawrence);

So I’ve knocked off Dellio’s White Noise, which though wonderful and brilliant, seems debatable as one of the greats, but time will tell, and now, to the west coast and back again, On the Road, with Jack Kerouac. (In between, filling in three hours at Allie’s graduation, with Roth’s new novel, Everyman–thank god for college book stores open on graduation day.)

Also, since February, grinding halfway through 100 Gentlemen of Baltimore, the book project I have set upon, a collection of 100 portraits and interviews with 100 men living on the streets of Baltimore, where it is estimated the homeless population is between 3000 and 5000; a project which keeps a camera at my side and sharpens the tools of this Bodhisattva wanna-be.

And next? Next is this afternoon, sitting quietly with books at my elbow and faithful Maggie snoring as her sun-beam shifts and me working hard to remember that next is now.