Carolyn Jack

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

Pride or groceries?

I had to do something kind of weird today. At least, it made me feel weird. It was an entrepreneurial move, but in a direction I wish things didn’t have to go.

As any regular readers of this blog know, I launched Geniocity.com in June. … right into the maw of a howling, crack-of-doom economy. I guess it takes most start-ups a while to get on track and develop sales, but with people having essentially no money to spend right now on anything but the most basic necessities, Geniocity’s progress has been extra slow. 

For a year now, beginning back in our site-development phase, I’ve been partially supporting this venture through my consulting work as a writer and media specialist. That has worked well enough – but with the company’s cost basis rising along with the prices for everything we need at home, it recently became clear to me that I’m going to have to increase the consulting.

So I’ve been looking for more clients. And I decided that a good place for me to advertise would be the online membership network for Northeast Ohio performing artists that I used for years as a source of news tips when I was a daily-newspaper journalist. People in the local arts community post press releases, job notices and other show-biz-related information there and I figured quite a few of them might need help in putting together written materials, media campaigns and the like. 

But for weeks, I couldn’t bring myself to actually post the message. As a professional critic and reporter, I’ve always had to maintain a little distance from the people I cover, both for reasons relating to conflict of interest and because being the voice of record on a subject gives a writer some community standing, forces him or her to assume a certain authoritative dignity. After publicly investigating the issues and evaluating the work of the arts community for so long, I felt  queasy about asking its members for piecework.

This isn’t about them – artists in general are the most talented, friendly, appreciative, interesting and admirable people I know and many of these specific artists have become valued friends of mine.

What it’s about is me, wondering if I had the practicality and humility not to care that I’m no longer in a position to stay above the arts crowd’s daily struggle for survival – that, in fact, I’ve joined it. And I’ve had to admit to myself that I loathed the idea of any news colleagues or sources discovering that my new business was not an instant financial success.

I loathed it for three days and then I went ahead and posted the notice this morning, because I realized that it’s not shameful to need paying work and it is contemptible to worry that people will judge you for having to get it. I need to earn money to feed my kids and develop my new company and if my taking in washing – or whatever I have to do - allows them all to thrive, then a bruised ego has been no price to pay at all.

I thought parenting, with all those hours of having spit-up on my shirts and not getting to shower on time and running emergency errands with no makeup on, had permanently taught me not to be vain. But being an entrepreneur is showing me all over again, and in unexpected ways, that pride is a luxury I can’t afford.