Ben Chestnut on Business and Passion

“Do what you love is not the same as love what you do.”

Ben Chestnut

You always hear people say, ‘do what you love, do what you love.’ That’s partly true, but if it’s business, if you start a business doing what you love, it will kill you, it will kill your passion.

If you like to bake and you start a bakery, you will hate baking very soon.

I like ‘love what you do’ better because, it’s kinda like, wherever you are just be good at it, embrace it, love it, and eventually success will find you.

I actually kind of believe that.

But you never forget your passion.”

The work is spiritual

This is the life. This is the work.

The work is spiritual—it matters.

The work is sweaty. The work is followthrough.

The work is about solving problems.

Real problems—not problems that only exist in our heads.

The work is about fishing. The work is about farming.

The work is about insights. The work is about ideas.

But the work is mostly about sweat and followthrough.

Props to David on the whole “the work is spiritual” seed.

The entrepreneur’s bravado/insight/ignorance

A new restaurant has opened in Portland.

Shit—there’s already 34 on the list I haven’t tried.

How often does this sort of thing happen—starting up restaurants?

How many bars and cocktail-slinging, wing-frying places can this town support?

What does it take to think you can do it better than the other guys? Better than Clyde Commons. Better than Sapphire Hotel. Better than Toro Bravo. Better than Ned Ludd. Better than…

How many restauranteurs believe that?

Probably all of them.

Just like me.

The next site I start up I’m thinking to myself: I’ll do it better than the other guys in this space.

But it’s a crowded space with established names and some big guns. I’ll have a stronger brand, man. Better insights. More ME less fluff and tumble.

That’s the entrepreneur’s bravado/insight/ignorance/simplicity. We’re selling ourselves a bill of goods that won’t get shipped. Maybe. At least it’s likely.

Because for every successful restaurant there’s 25 failed attempts.

But NOBODY’s doing wings like this, man. Out of business.

Yea, we’re kind of like the previous restaurant that closed months ago in the same location, but this gonna be different—it’s ME behind the wheel of THIS one. Rent’s up. Payroll’s up. People just ain’t coming.

And yet there’s plenty of room in this town. There’s plenty of room on internet. Remember, we only need 1,000 true fans.

So maybe the right way to think of it is: this is a decent location, this is a hungry neighborhood, there are lots of families here. I’ll put in a play station.

Serve your audience. Your brand won’t save you. Either you offer value or you don’t.

That’s not bullshit. That’s big and heavy and cool.

I have a friend who started a blog recently. I was talking with him about finding the center of his message, the brand as it were. I read a thing this morning that reminded me of him. So I emailed it to him and decided to post it here as well.

This is what I want from you (if I was completely selfish, didn’t think about what you wanted, etc., only thought about what I want from you): to do the hard work of educating me about real justice issues, real lifestyle changes I can make to live more justly.

Read this: http://caterina.net/wp-archives/124

Caterina is really, really smart. She’s a business lady who does really smart, social-minded startups.

In reading this I realized I need someone to teach me about today’s justice issues.

All 30 year old’s want to live rightly, understanding tough issues, confronting our own racism, confronting whether or not the whole conversation is inherently too conservative, whether or not this “we all have the opportunity to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps” thing is total horse shit, whether or not urban kids were put in that position by their dead-beat parents or if it’s a systems thing.

And I need you to be able to bridge the gap for me.

Cuz i’m wearing topsiders, my grampa worked his ass off, I have a rental property.

I’m on one side of the conversation. But I have heart. I’m willing to learn and see and change.

But I’m not smart enough.

I care, but I don’t care enough.

Cuz I have my own shit to do.

Should I buy Tom’s shoes and call it a day? Smile to myself while I finger-stir my G&T?

That’s a thing I want to be a part of. That’s a thing I would rally around you for. It’s not cheezy. It’s not bullshit. It’s big and heavy and cool.

— Chase Reeves

Gene Wolfe on The Part That is More

“No one can say what that means, [to take someone’s life]. The body is a colony of cells. Divided into two major parts, it perishes. But there is no reason to mourn the destruction of a colony of cells: such a colony dies each time a loaf of bread goes into the oven. If a man is no more than such a colony, a man is nothing; but we know instinctively that a man is more. What happens, then, to that part that is more?”

Gene Wolfe Shadow of the Torturer

Aristotle on the human good

“If the function of man is an activity of soul […] and if we say ‘a so-and-so’ and ‘a good so-and-so’ […] (e.g. a lyre player and a good lyre player), and so without qualification in all cases, eminence in respect of goodness being added to the name of the function (for the function of a lyre player is to play the lyre, and that of a good lyre player is to do so well) – if this is the case, and we state the function of man to be a certain kind of life, and this to be an activity or actions of the soul […], and the function of a good man to be the good and noble performance of these […] – if this is the case, human good turns out to be activity of soul exhibiting excellence.”

Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics I. 7

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