Hello there old friends. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I hope this post/email/RSS feed finds you very well. Just a quick note to say that I’ve moved to Vermont and launched a new venture called URSA MAJOR, which means ‘The Great Bear’ in Latin. Please come visit! We’re trying to put into practice many of the entrepreneurial ideas discussed here on Indie Breakfast Club. And, btw, if you feel like partaking in the goods over at The Great Bear, I’ve set up a little promo for my old IBC friends (type in “IBC” coupon when checking out for 20% off your first order + free shipping), good for 30 days. OK, that’s it for now! Look forward to re-connecting if you feel like continuing the dialogue/journey. Onward and upward, Oliver

I went on holiday in search of a quiet beach and some rest.

We ended up south of Tulum in the Yucatan, just in time for a fierce tropical storm.

The wind howled day and night, filling everything with fine white sand, and the rain came sideways and hard.

Three days in, some fierce waves tossed this home-spun raft (from Cuba I’m guessing) onto the beach.

I’ve stumbled across these ravaged vessels before (in the Bahamas) and be assured they leave you standing cold…

Whose raft was this? What godawful circumstances pushed them to set out on such a risky journey? And, inevitably, how did the voyagers die?

Was it the sun? Did they run out of water? Starve to death? Or did a big, black wave fill their lungs forever with brine?

Does it matter? In face of such long odds, death was almost certain.

It’s hard to imagine a life so miserable, so utterly lacking in hope that it drives people to plunge headlong into the dark sea on little more than a stack of bound twigs for a slim chance at something better, far over the horizon.

But millions of course make this stark choice every year; thousands are on the move at this very moment, across mountains, deserts and seas, risking everything to flee dictators and misery in search of safety, shelter and food.

Let’s never forget the plight of all these courageous people, including the intrepid Cubans who built and set out on this little raft, above.

Let’s endeavor to help them, each as we can, in our own way (a note to South Africans and their pressed Zimbabwean neighbors!).

Finally, let’s honor them with a little quote from Ishmael in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick:

“Earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the independence of her sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore… better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety!”

My italics.

It’s good to be posting again, readers… more to come from Vermont and Lohas 12.

I followed this routine for about 10 weeks and after a while I began to notice a clear pattern in my thinking: nine times out of 10, about 45 minutes into my run/bike, my mind would light up on fire.

What I mean is, during any given day (24-hour cycle), I would do by far my boldest, most imaginative thinking during a 10-15 minute window three quarters of the way into my exercise routine.

I’m not a scientist, or an illustrator (clearly), but if one could measure and graph this effect, it would look something like this:

You get the idea…

Yes, I think Vermont’s clean air/quiet woods help, but the same thing happens here in the city when I run down the river or bike through the Park, albeit with more interruptions.

My assessment: I’ve read the articles. I know exercise is good for the heart, helps maintain a healthy weight and releases chemicals that alleviate stress.

But I’m also 100% certain it kick-starts mojo + imagination, unleashing powerful, gravity-free thinking.

I think it’s important to try and create this mental space every day…

Try it for a week (walk, run, bike, hike, swim) and let me know how it goes.

p.s. I’ll be experimenting with some meditation techniques this summer, to see how that compliments all the exercise activity, and will share any useful findings here.

“When you’re small, you can’t bully customers, so you have to charm them. Whereas when you’re big you can maltreat them at will, and you tend to, because it’s easier than satisfying them.”

The implication is that companies without the good gene baked in end up losing focus and abusing customers.

Instead, Mr. Graham suggests that by wiring benevolence into a company from day 1, a business can get big while staying friendly, customer-focused and successful (like Google, who’s tag is “don’t be evil”).

I think this is a nice idea, and a good one as well.

It also helps address the omni-present indie dilemma: at what point are we selling out? The neat answer is: never, as long as you stay benevolent and keep adding value for customers.

I would add that this works only if “being good” (in some form) is undertaken in a genuine way – in other words, one of 3-4 core values embraced by leadership and infused across the organization in a manner that fosters a healthy, benevolent culture.

I think it’s virtually impossible to reel good back into a business, once it starts slipping away (Starbucks, Jetblue), or to bake it in after the fact (Chase), so the advice here is to get started on baking good into your business, but only if it’s heartfelt.

Indie Breakfast Club explores the intersection of entrepreneurship, self-actualization and social responsibility.

Most of us spend 70-80% of our waking hours “working”, so why not make that work productive, fulfilling, useful to others and fun?

In the near term, our goal is pass along one or two on-topic nuggets a day (tips, insight and inspiration) to spark thinking, dialog and action.

Longer term, we hope to extrapolate a useful framework (and maybe some tools) to help people “self-actualize” (reach their potential).

A tall order? Maybe. But we think it’s attainable. Please stick around and participate in the exploration… who knows what’ we’ll discover together?

This is a project of Oliver Sweatman, a keen student of entrepreneurship, self-actualization and social responsibility currently living in New York City.

I also massaged IBC’s tagline (you know how I love to do that). It now reads: “Vitality for creative professionals intent on positive change.”

And now for our viral trailer (actually, it seems to be working as subscriptions to IBC are increasing faster than the price of gas):

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On the role of culture in helping us face the truth/reboot the consciousness (even if it means we must wriggle in discomfort while we take it in):

“I have heard that guilty creatures sitting at the play
Have by the very cunning of the scene
Been struck so to the soul that presently
They have proclaimed their malefactions.”

… kind of how I felt after watching Inconvenient Truth and Manufactured Landscapes… we need more media like this and it needs to reach more people.

And here, on sitting on the sidelines vs. taking action to affect positive change (you’ve probably heard this one before):

“To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
and by opposing end them…”

Take arms against a sea of troubles, I say!

Related post on IBC: The transformative role of culture

“We humans have an uncanny ability to reframe our thoughts and choose to find meaning in our scars. Thousands of survivors we have interviewed talk about growing stronger after a catastrophe. But they made healthy choices along the way; it was no accident that they rediscovered joy after debilitating loss.

…. It takes a village to survive emergencies, with help from the private sector, social sector and public sector. No single government agency or sector can do it all. We need our neighbors and civil society to come through for us. It is always a mistake to wait passively for bureaucracies and government agencies to “save” us.

OK, let’s take a breather… my copy/paste function is getting a work-out this morning!

… I do think businesses could learn more from the nonprofit sector, particularly with regard to tapping into intrinsic motivation, mission drive and passion. “Increasing shareholder value” is not a sustainable mission statement or business strategy. Employees want and deserve more.”

…. The question becomes not whether to be a global citizen—we all are—but how best to become an active one. And it gets personal, because you have to get to know yourself and ask: Who am I? What do I care about? What am I good at? How can I help appropriately? And then align these things in our lives, our work, our giving patterns. Give locally; act globally. Or give globally; act locally. Do it your way by mixing it up, have fun as you learn your unique value-add place in the world. Turns out that giving is simply good for you. Like exercise, it boosts your serotonin levels.”

Hot stuff, right in line with our values and thinking here at IBC…

Good Q&As are hard to pull off and they’re few and far between. This one‘s worth reading.

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“Common folks… are starting to understand that our ever-diminishing free time, the loss of sense of community, rising gas prices, the sub-prime mortgage implosion, and a whole range of other current societal problems are all pieces of a bigger puzzle. We’re starting to understand that all of this points toward a fundamental problem with the way America has designed and developed our communities over the past 60+ years. This shift in thinking among the American mainstream is beginning to bring about the popular and political will to rectify our past errors.”

While this may sound like a gloomy quote, I think it’s a hopeful one in that once enough people feel the negative impact on their lifestyle, they will realize that we have to make some bold changes in the interest of our collective well-being, leading to a flourishing of public/private partnerships designed to restore much-needed community (real community, not Starbucks-baked community) as the foundation for improving our quality of life.

This is in fact already happening in cities like Seattle, Portland, Denver and Vancouver — all of which are leading by example and redefining “local government”, community and the role of business.

Socially-responsible entrepreneurs should be licking their chops … if you’re interested in learning more about entrepreneurial opportunities in these cities, you might want to attend Lohas 12 in Boulder, CO in June (see you there).

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Sigg, originally uploaded by Oliver Sweatman.

I hooked another one (my activist streak is flowing today)…

I’ll admit it, this image is from an ad in a magazine (Outside). But I did take a photo of it so I guess it’s technically still legit for our bubbling flickr pool (as are screen-shots and video – let’s just get some material up there and see what happens…).

Anyway, the SIGG ad above caught my interest for its sheer educational value (1/2 the battle on moving the needle on mainstream awareness around these issues, I think). The ad informs us:

“100 million plastic water bottles are dumped into America’s landfills – every day! That’s nearly 40 billion plastic bottles per year, each taking over 1,000 years to biodegrade.”

What a disgrace!

One would hope that, faced with this knowledge, folks would stop guzzling through 3, 4, 5 plastic bottles at a seating, or ordering cases of bottled water for the home/office (look into a Brita filter, or a Sigg, I guess).