It’s late, down an alley at the Woodford Folk Festival, in a tent. A small audience watches a potter at her wheel, working carefully and intently as a group of musicians improvise and images are thrown onto her and the tent walls. Her name is Kari (just Kari) and she loves this. She also dances, and sings, and as a professional celebrant she marries and buries people. Her ceremonies are warm, personal, authentic, customised and redolent with the folksy energy she brings to such things as her improvised musical festival ceramics event. Kari wants to make money, to make a living from what she loved. Enter Edgeware, which helps artists like Kari to channel their inner weirdness and creativity into a sensible business attitude.
When Kari did Edgeware’s Build Your Business course she was
entangled in the profusion of possibilities thrown up by her diverse
repertoire of aptitudes and passions, though none promised to make
much money. In the Edgeware course, and afterwards, she brought
focus to just one of per passions, her work as a celebrant of births and
deaths, and she designed small, achievable goals to make that occupation
modestly profitable. Achieving these goals, she applied the same
approach to her many other passions, and step by step achieved a balance
among them, which in total made up (makes up) a creative, satisfying
personal business enterprise. Kari designed mastery experiences which,
together, inspired confidence that, step by step, she could reach the goal
of professional practice which brought together her many and varied skill
sets and passions. Kari is also weird.
Validating weirdness
Edgeware is a business training company focusing on the generic
value of creativity in ethical enterprise creation, which includes, but isn’t
restricted to, the creative industries. My friend Ian Plowman once told
me that ”Edgeware exists to validate weirdness.“ What does ‘weirdness’
mean?
It’s not a demographic, it’s a psychographic. Weirdos are not content
with the status quo. They’re more comfortable on the edge than in the
centre, they often have problems with authority figures and formal
systems, they have SOS (Shiny Object Syndrome) and are bullied at
school, if they’re not bullies themselves. They have a varied, uneven
career history and they’re more likely to be creative than most. They’re
more likely to suffer mental illness than most, they’re idiosyncratic and
they’re not a good ‘fit’ in prestructured roles. They’re often represented
in groups of creative artists, creative scientists, creative entrepreneurs,
creative activists, and criminals (sometimes more than one of these).
Weirdos embrace change, and they make change.
How do such nonconformists find a market for what they produce?
How do they find consumers so captivated by their nonconforming take
on a product or service that they are willing to exchange something
(usually money) to experience it, participate in it, even own it? They
can grow their entrepreneurial gaze. We can say there’s a ‘male gaze’, a
‘female gaze’, a ‘gay gaze’, and so on – ways of seeing the world, seeing
into the world, seeing things in the world that may be invisible or at least
obscure to most. The entrepreneurial gaze is a habit of mind, a way of
consistently asking the question ‘where is the opportunity here?’. In the
same way as a photographer sees the world as framed light, a composer
hears a world of sound, or a writer extracts language from the noise, a
successful entrepreneur is alive to the commercial potentials surrounding
her. She can grow and enhance her capacity to connect her skills,
aspirations and passions to the reality of a market place, the proposition
that there is value in there for someone, somewhere, sometime.
Mastery experiences
We like to work on three key strategies for growing this entrepreneurial
gaze. The first is mastery experiences, of the kind Kari defined for herself.
An experience of mastery is an experience where we set goals that are
realisable and yet stretch us just a little, then achieve those goals. And
then, very importantly, we reward ourselves. The reward doesn’t have to
be grand and exciting; the most important thing is just to see it (whatever
it is) as a reward, a marker of achievement. If we experience these
mastery events regularly we create a virtuous circle, a loop of experience
which confirms to us that if we make an effort, we will achieve our goal
and we will enjoy a reward. In our business practice we begin to seek out
the opportunity for such experiences, we sharpen our entrepreneurial
gaze.
The second key strategy is to identify and reflect on role models, on
people who have achieved or are achieving things we admire. We can
map our practice and ourselves into these people and their experiences.
We don’t want to ‘become’ them, but admire their achievements, which
suggest to us that such achievements might be within our capacity
as well. Role models are important for our indigenous customers.
Both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures are collectivist and
intricately socialised. Enterprise development is often characterised by
successful relationships, by conversation and interaction, by mutuality
and very personal values. This is very clear in the trajectories of three of
our indigenous Edgies (‘Edgies’ is the term given to themselves by our
customers).
Jandamarra Cadd is a painter who completed one of our courses at the
same time as Terri Waller, an educator and producer. The exposure of each
to the other’s aspirations and achievements was critical to their definition
of their own success. Similarly, publisher and author Leesa Watego comes
packaged with a keen sensitivity to the inclusion and engagement of
her people, and this commitment reinforces, and is reinforced, by the
mutual support which always seems to flow. We now partner with Terri
in a new brand, Edgeware Indigenous, which builds on shared cultural
values to create a sense of belonging, meaning and cohesion which is
often difficult for non-indigenous people to understand. The importance
of role models is strengthened by the inclusion in Edgeware Indigenous
courses of a Hero File, a collection of indigenous success stories which
demonstrate resilience, commitment and clear evidence of the benefit
of an entrepreneurial gaze. And it turns out that this has real value for
non-indigenous Edgies as well; both Terri and Leesa have become valued
members of the ‘mainstream’ Edgeware team.
Social context
A third strategy for building the entrepreneurial gaze is all about social
pressure, that is, surrounding yourself with like-minded people who tacitly
or explicitly support your vision. Or alternatively, to avoid or jettison
relationships which don’t do this. This builds momentum, confidence,
okayness, and it creates business as a social activity, something to have
fun with. (The Edgeware DNA is Make money, have fun, change the world.)
Ben Johnston has just turned thirty and his company, Josephmark
Creative, has grown from a couple of guys with a couple of computers in
a garage to a substantial design and web development house, currently
helping Myspace rebrand itself. From its base in Brisbane, the company
now moves globally, initially through a conscious youth focus and latterly
through sheer talent and innovation. From the beginning, corporate
togetherness and an almost pastoral care of the group have been critical
for Jospephmark Creative, and the fledgling enterprise has found ways to
combine friendship and professional discipline. In one way or another the
Jospephmark Creative kids have found a sense of belonging. The value of
the entrepreneurial gaze is inspired in the group, validated by the group
and in this way perpetuates itself.
Creative entrepreneurs are necessarily weird. The majority of our
customers, Edgies, proudly identify as weird, and usually affirm that this is
not a matter of choice but just the way things are. Edgeware’s job, in this
context, is to validate that weirdness by example, and through the contact
we create between and among Edgies themselves. We do this by providing
mastery experiences (and the capacity to plan these independently),
positive role models and a social context which supports a given vision
and pathway. In this way, Edgies identify and grow their entrepreneurial
gaze. We very often hear reports like ‘My business really took off, the
minute I finished your course!’ and this is what is happening, I think. When
someone reports this kind of outcome, it’s happened because they have
become alive to opportunities that were previously invisible. They have
changed the way they look at and process the world, gazing at the world
as creative entrepreneurs.
Michael Doneman is founding director of Edgeware
Creative Entrepreneurship. (www.edgeware.
com.au). He has twenty years of experience in
education and community cultural development,
which inspired work in communities in enterprise
development, vocational education and training,
and information technology. Michael is also member of the
Kaospilot International Advisory Board and travelling around the
world sharing his experience.
Auteur: Tekst: Michael Doneman Michael Doneman is founding director of Edgeware Creative Entrepreneurship. (www.edgeware. com.au).
