Having just completed our adVenturesAcademy annual Entrepreneur + Investor Summit – this time during Outdoor Retailer in Denver uniting the outdoor industry with the natural products industry – it was exciting to see co-founder, Alissa Sears, and her team of hard working, loyal creators, making the world of investor relations real, rooted in innovative approaches to relationship-building, and yes, fun. When one has to partner as the entrepreneur with a potential investor, both willing to experience the other’s strengths and weaknesses by pitching a tent together (and one is blindfolded!), one can see so clearly that business, like life, is a game, in this case, where everyone wins. This is truly Alissa’s art and by all definitions, a masterpiece. The dictionary defines a masterpiece as ‘anything done or made with wonderful skill, perfect piece of art or workmanship’. This event, like the earlier ones over the last five years, lived up to this definition.
By extrapolation, every business and relationship could also become a personal masterpiece, and not limited by number, but by one’s skills, by one’s ability to envision the goals, by one’s knowledge in identifying the needed resources to produce, by one’s ability to communicate, by one’s ability to persist through to completion, and ultimately by one’s ability to have the masterpiece accepted.
A funny ol’ Englishman once chided me for defining a bagel to a German client as boiled bread. He drew himself up and loudly broadcast over the entire restaurant… “Boiled Bread! Boiled bread! You would call a Rembrandt ‘oil on canvas.’” The confused German chose a muffin instead and I had to realize that a masterpiece is not about the flour and mechanics of how it was made, but how to communicate its value and make it admired and appreciated. I did ask the Englishman after the German left, what was a bagel? His answer… ‘boiled bread!’
Like those entrepreneurs who shared their stories and products at the adVentures Academy, they are still developing their masterpieces hoping to find the resources needed to complete the art of their companies that they are continuing to create and build, whether it was financial, new skills needed, or guidance. Like the story of the bagel, it is not important to merely define the mechanics of what one is creating, but to share the vision, the goal, the dream, the opportunity and show its value to those who would acquire it, with communications they understand.
Allow us to help you create your company as a masterpiece. Your creativity, persistence and grace will change the world.
Gillian