I see a world that could be. So rich and vibrant, people walking around in bliss creating amazing pieces of art that inspire, motivate and promote positivity, progress and an even greater sense of bliss. Collectively, the humans are integrated with the highest vibration that radiates outwards into a world equally as radiant.
Here the organization and structure of society is interwoven between a seamless merging of technology, humanity and the environment. No side of the planet is the dumping ground and bastard child of society’s progress. Children are immersed in a rich environment that stimulates their growth, development and sense of infinite possibility. The structure and order of this life contains all the vicissitudes in it—both the ups and downs–with the sheer understanding of its necessity and beauty. No corrupt head, no pessimistic naysayer. A reality of bliss.
This life you say is impossible to achieve, impractical, unreal. I proffer a different answer for I have seen it. I have tasted from its sweet nectar and cognize what it is like. I have a vision for it and wish to play my part in helping it become a reality. My strength lies in connecting pieces, differing ideas, building the framework and let other captains take it onward from there, utilizing me as a trusted torchbearer, mentor and advisor. The act of deciding motivates me, the feeling of connecting amazing souls excites me, the cognition of playing my role elates me.
Meeting motivated people passionate and ethical in their desires and dreams keeps me going, keeps me wanting more, knowing that there is more to be done until we achieve this dream together.
I do not see it as a straight line of evolution, but rather a prescribed set of moves that setup the natural flow for society to evolve that way. It is not of my own creative mind that I know these pieces, it is merely understanding fact patterns and cognizing what is possible of the human race. This capacity I continue to research and invest my time, talent and treasure into, for it is this capacity that is what is a necessary prerequisite to the successful ideation, execution and attainment of this vision.
This is why I have felt for a long time that in order for me to be in this position, I too had to undergo the transition and experience. Seeking self-improvement and self-development from an early age, each of life’s setbacks propelled me further into the depth of my own development. Some on-point, others deviations, never undaunted, through will persistence and the support network I’ve been blessed with, it has revealed layers to reality previously unknown and aspects of my own incompletions needing resolution.
I have shaped companies and ideas based on my awareness and understanding of the world and recognized this was the fact pattern inherent to most innovators. For an entrepreneur is a mindset, a hardwiring of an individual mixed with the thought current of experience and exposure. Optimism mixed with stubbornness and a potential illogical tolerance for risk is what fuels a winning combination for entrepreneurship. The challenge of course is that this personality type often comes riddled with unethical behavior, misunderstanding of how to translate a vision into actionable steps, and a perpetual balancing act between stubbornness and delusion.
What I have observed within myself and others in this space is an intense need for spiritual awakening to ideate on a solution worth solving—a reality worth causing.
At first, I thought overworked entrepreneurs needed merely an improvement of their biochemistry and lifestyle in order to achieve success. While that was a major component to it, the question is success of what? Successful execution on a strategy to destroy the world or find a fifth alternative to delivering food in an urban setting takes us no closer to a blissful reality.
It was only after my exposure and experience with Paramahansa Nithyanada that I realized it was the improvement of the soul that is the necessary component of reality that is missing in today’s entrepreneurs.
For an entrepreneur capitalizes on his or her experience and understanding of how the world works. You take the reality as it is and infuse into it reality as it could be. Often it’s about taking a situation, identifying the problem and providing the solution. While this template has achieved many great incremental innovations, what inspires the changes that define our decade are the ones that are paradigm shifting. A previous word to describe it is disruptive; however, that puts a negative spin on what is actually happening and pits the incumbent with the new entrant in a win-lose situation.
The reality is that in order for innovation to be adopted and truly become a pillar of our collective realities, we need it to be mass adopted and sustained. This is what the strengths of corporations are. Their perceived bureaucratic nature and pervasiveness in society’s rule is in fact a valuable asset when appreciated as such and utilized to sustain paradigm shifting, enlightened ideas.
The concept of an entrepreneur doing one thing for the rest of his/her life is neither an ingrained attribute nor observable in practice. The rare success stories of entrepreneurs who stay with one concept their whole lives are those who have been able to redefine themselves and their roles in the growth of a company which often evolve into something far bigger and greater than the initial idea.
And in so doing, an entrepreneur in these success stories aren’t actually doing the same thing for the rest of his/her life. Look at the evolution of Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple and see how the founders have become powerhouses of innovation that far outreach their initial objective. They are taking stances beyond technological development and acting as governors of their lands—campuses—playing the role of lobbyist by commenting and advocating for global topics; embodying the role of philosopher on matters such as data privacy and the role of technology in society; playing the role of dreamers in terms of what the future could look like.
For those entrepreneurs whose ideas are just as valid yet not as paradigm shifting to create a cohort of tens of thousands to spend their lives advancing the founder’s dream, an acquisition and absorption by the corporate world is exactly what the artist is looking for. It allows for there to be recognition both financially and practically for the immeasurable risk, energy and effort given on the pursuit of an idea.
The simple truth is that entrepreneurs need corporations to survive and vice versa. And the more there is cooperation and collaboration amongst the two, the more successful both will become. And that is what the current structure is built to support. That structure infuses a vast amount of treasure and talent behind a concept to scale it up as quickly as possible, making it unstable in both it’s earnings, expectations and culture. A slip up could lead to disaster and often yields toxic cultures with a near endless revolving door of talent climbing on one another to be a part of a company that will exit.
Another approach to innovation is the homegrown, cash flow focused startups that focus on directly serving customers for profit from the get-go. Those are the “non-scalable” business models in which the old fashioned work-hard, find more customers, grow from referrals and jobs well done are born. These are often deemed “lifestyle businesses” and serve to meet the needs of an entrepreneur content to reap a steady return rather than roll the dice to hit it big.
This is contrary to the nature of the breeding of entrepreneurs in our society who has been force-fed the motto of think big, go big, live big. “A startup isn’t a startup unless it reaches 10x by sundown.”
So naturally, these slower growth companies do not get funding by the system because of the financially low internal rates of return and unsexiness of the concepts. These two aspects are what fuel the venture industry and the LPs that invest behind them.
The challenge of the venture structure is that the main focus is on maximizing customer growth, consumption and return on investment. And while these are necessary points, the idea of having those be the chief criteria for pursuit of an idea renders an ecosystem and environment predicated on pillars that are not necessarily the greatest for the long term flourishing of a blissful society. Constant studies are produced showing the lack of correlation of consumption with happiness, especially after a certain mark.
Behavioral economics and the primal nature of mankind both reveal that the willingness to pay for our base needs is often much higher than the willingness to pay for the attainment of advancing our enlightened self. So the pursuit of sex, drugs and rock and roll is going to outweigh pursuit of self-development and enlightenment on a mass scale—despite studies demonstrating that the latter is a defining characteristic of those who are successful and blissful.
Another component of the innovation ecosystem is with the emergence of social enterprises. These vehicles specifically state that their desire is not purely financial, that there is an intentional desire to improve society as well. This should not be mixed with charity or purposefully crippling a company’s success through a disguised tax on the profitability of a company—such as donating 1% of profits or capping the price to sell a product. Rather, it is a call to rethink how business models work in the first place, to rethink how societies interact, to reshape how individuals spend their days and craft their realities. These are true innovators within the entrepreneurial community. For their understanding and mastery of both the societal implications with the business concept is needed to ideate and execute properly.
With the idea of solving societal issues from a financially viable perspective permeating into the minds of the entrepreneurs, the concepts and business models are able to reveal themselves and the ending results are a win-win scenario that should often be emulated across the entrepreneurial landscape.
However, many of these incredible models are isolated in their reach and/or don’t make much business sense to scale into the size needed to provide returns tantamount to other concepts. Scaling a “local” and “sustainably sourced” company/product is both counteractive and improbable to maintain the same ethos and commitment to quality and service as when it attempt to scale at a specific size. Further, adoption of the masses is another major challenge with social enterprises who often price things at a premium for consciousness. This approach is out of touch with those who live beyond the shiny rainbows and bubble wrapped rooms of cacao ceremonies, music festivals and other communions of awakened individuals.
Another great innovation is the emergence of impact funds. Specifically geared towards addressing social issues first, profit secondary. The challenge with this is an inability to quantify, measure and report on the actual impact delivered. The next challenge is how to weigh the impact of helping one group of people in one way versus the impact of helping another group of people in another. Investment dollars are fixed, so what to do? This brings up a long-term challenge with the administration of investment decisions and beliefs about how a society should run from people far removed from it. While there are many immersive trips and people dedicating major portions of their lives on the ground, the inclusion of the indigenous people often gets forgotten or perceived as a supplementary part of the process not primary source.
What is needed in the ecosystem are lifters. Lifters are lifters that raise an entrepreneur’s concept of self and reality, elevating their experiences to identify a greater understanding of their reality, the situation at large, and thereby identifying greater problems to solve with improved solutions. Lifters are messengers sharing the upcoming trends in technology with the corporations who need to prepare themselves and their staff with how to embrace rather than resist the trends. Lifters are weavers that weave together the practical applications of business and operations with the deep understanding of the long-term implications on society of scaling these businesses. Lifters help improve the culture of fast-paced startups while also helping those social startups maintain their core values as they scale. Lifters help to involve local members of regions in the ideation and creation of solutions for their communities. And Lifters are themselves individual shining lights, champions of personal development of the mind, body and soul. They are constantly expanding their own view of reality, intentionally representing examples of responsible growth and evolution, and perpetually inspiring others to achieve a state of bliss.