Carolyn Jack

Editor and CEO, Geniocity.com
A project of The Genius Group LLC

Where we’re going

It was like this: My business partner and I were lost.

Actually lost, somewhere among the fields and woods of Northeast Ohio. We had driven east of Cleveland to a picturesque country village for a meeting a couple of hours earlier and, on our way back to the city, I had taken a wrong turn.

And now we were both a little wild-eyed, me clutching the wheel as we looped around the two-lane, blacktopped roads on a cloudy summer afternoon, staring hopefully at signposts and at masticating cows, neither of which gave us any helpful information. The signs stated only route numbers – not west or north or anything – and as far as I knew, cows didn’t grow moss.

We needed to be at another meeting, it was getting later and later and neither Dan nor I had any idea which direction we were going.

We were both rattled to begin with, which is probably why I missed the turn. Our meeting in the village had been with a twentysomething designer we hoped could help us with the web site that was to be the core of our new business. But instead of offering us design ideas, this young person had spent an hour and half telling us why he thought our business idea wouldn’t work.

Our reactions had started at surprised and defensive, intensified to dismayed and were building into anguished fury as I aimed the car for – I thought – Cleveland. Deep in agitated discussion, we scarcely noticed that we had traded a view of ruburban yuppie chateaux for 360 degrees worth of sugar maples and late-season corn.

Who the heck did this guy think he was? We absolutely believed in our idea, in the goals of our plan, in the viability of our services and products as moneymakers and good influences on society. Yes, we were first-time entrepreneurs – an arts journalist/creative writer/singer and an arts journalist/artist/teacher – but we knew our fields, we saw a real need for what we wanted to offer and many professional people we trusted had said they liked our concept. What gall this character had, telling us we were wrong.

But what if he was right? He couldn’t be. But … what if he was?

We didn’t really believe he was right. Not really and truly. Yet even before we realized that we had lost our way, we had lost our confidence.

Off course, unnerved and alone (not counting the cows) – if that car ride wasn’t a metaphor for a big part of the entrepreneurial experience in general, I’ll eat my annotated Shakespeare.

On the long, strange trip to owning and running a creative enterprise, I’ve constantly rocketed up and down between bone-deep discouragement and euphoria, but that frantic drive was both the lowest moment and the literal turning point in my attitude towards my project.

I learned a lot about myself in the two horrible hours it took us to make what should have been a 45-minute jaunt – I mean other than that I could use a GPS in my car.
First, I found I was able to get back on track by using common sense and looking for familiar landmarks. Second, I realized that, even though all the conflicting input Dan and I had been given over months of seeking opinions from different experts had been informative in some way, what we had to do now was trust our own judgment and heed only the advice that helped. Naysayers could sleep wid da cows.

And third, I figured out that business isn’t that different from arts or journalism or raising kids or working with humans in any of a zillion other ways you can think of. Everyone you have to deal with thinks his way is the right way. Many people will try to talk you out of, and even prevent you from trying, your way. The overwhelming majority of people don’t have the imagination to understand your way until you show them a working example.

And since finding the road up and out of my pasture-ized personal wilderness, I have decided this: Above all, don’t let anyone talk you out of being innovative. A great many people are comfortable only with what they know and have seen over and over again, but that’s not how humans make progress. I mean, are you reading this in charcoal pictographs on a cave wall?

So welcome to Geniocity.com, where we encourage those who dare to think up new ways of working, expressing themselves and solving problems. From our initial focus on entrepreneurism to the broader information on creativity and innovation that we plan to bring you in time, we hope you’ll find this site helpful, entertaining and inspiring.
And just wait ‘til you hear what we’ve been going through to get this far ….