Edition 509 – Changing Lanes
I commenced a Creative Writing course last week, in Bronte, one of Sydney’s Eastern beach suburbs. It was my friend Greg Chambers, in Omaha, Nebraska, that mentioned it almost as a throw-away in one of our exchanges. He’d done something similar in his part of the world, and enjoyed the experience. I was intrigued. Perhaps I should find out more?
I’ve long talked about writing a book, about family business, yet find most business books actually quite boring. Almost formulaic. Some of them, a bit too “rah-rah’ for me, like you’ve just signed up to be an Amway distributor in the late ’80’s. I want my book to convey a message, but with the emotion of the stories that have led some to success, and some to failure.
On the first evening, we gather outside the converted church hall before start time. We’re a compliant bunch, asked to arrive 30 minutes before the regular start time, to spend time getting to know a few others. Most of the 28 of us are ready to go when the course leader opens the door, a little after 6.00pm.
The evening is action packed. Lots of exercises. A word is thrown out by the course leader, and we each have 90 seconds to two minutes, to put pen to paper, and write whatever comes out of your head. Hand write, too! Not typing on a laptop or a device. I still use pen and paper today, so it flows easily for me. Looking across the room, I can see those a generation younger than me, not quite struggle with the concept, but certainly acknowledge the challenge.
As the evening of almost 4 hours progresses, you’re thrust into conversations with people you’ve just met, and with whom you have deep conversations about what you’ve written. The lady sitting next to me is in her 80’s, and has a soft South African accent. Another lady that appraises my work, and I hers, is French. She’s dressed with casual elegance, and her accent is strong, so I have to lean in, amongst the almost heavy noise inside the church hall, to hear what she says.
Across from me is one of only six men in the room. He writes comics for a living. Who’d have thought? Along from him, a young lady who writes marketing content for brands. On the other side of the room, an English teacher who wants to publish two books in a year – one adult fiction, and the other a children’s book.
On the hour’s drive home, after 10pm, what sits with me is the eclectic mix of people I’ve come into contact with during the course of the evening. I spend so much of my time, driving in the same lane, on the same road, that my life is surrounded by business people, or advisors to business, talking about business stuff. How to tweak this in business? How to drive additional profit from a particular product or service line? Yet, on this evening, I’ve met people who’ve emigrated from some other part of the world inside the past year, presumably for love, and driven a stretch of road, in a different lane, at a different speed, seemingly inside a different vehicle.
When it comes to business, who are we not thinking of, that might prove an ideal client one day?
Who are we automatically discounting as unsuitable for our business, when in actual fact, they and you, might be the perfect fit for each other?
Why do we associate with people in the same social, or business circles, rather than broaden the net slightly, just to see who else, and what else, is out there?
Might that richness of diversity, lead us into something more bountiful, for our lives and our business, at some day further on in the calendar?
This Week’s Tip
“We have these pre-conceived notions about others that don’t look, act or speak the way we do, such that we fail to appreciate the “who else” and the “what else” that is out there.”