The Educated Emotion

When the remake of the movie,  Sparkle , arrived to theaters, I had to watch the 1976 version just one more time. This has been a favorite since I first watched it as a teen almost 20 years after it was released. Every time I watch the movie something different stands out. This time that I watched it, I noticed how sweaty Stix, the character played by Philip Michael Thomas, was when he hugged the girls mom. It was at the point that I experienced an epiphany as to why this movie impacted me so much. Here are three sweaty business lessons that I learned from the movie: 1. Sweating is Natural  In Sparkle, when Stix came to Sparkle's debut and hugged her mom he was sweaty. She didn't turn him away. In fact, she gave him a full embrace while in her finest threads. He had made a mistake and she knew it, but he had survived it and she was encouraged.  As a entrepreneur, I have to put in my sweat equity to get my business off the ground. There aren't ...

A Full Moon, taken around midnight on August 1, 2012, several minutes after  it reached its fullest  phase. Have you ever witnessed something so breathtaking that you wanted to capture the image and share it with the world?  At the top of August, I was outside when the moon became Full. It took up the entire sky. Due to street lights and limitations with the photography (lacking proper equipment and skill), I was unable to capture the full glory of the moon. But, whenever I look back at this photograph, I am reminded not only of what I can see in the picture - but the memory of what I saw that night. Similarly, most entrepreneurs and businesses begin with a vision. But one of the key purposes of a vision, is being able to share it. If a business is unable to communicate that vision with stakeholders, prospects, and employees - the purpose is lost. Here are a few necessaries to capture that vision to share with others: Focus - In order to focus, y...

One of the hardest things to do is start fresh, start anew. As an entrepreneur, you will inevitably find yourself in situations where friends, family, mentors, former coworkers...are simply unable to help. That is because you are doing something different, something that has not been done before.  A Template For Life   In an excerpt from a poem I wrote in 2010, "Blank Pages and Empty Rooms" I weigh the pros and cons of a blank page. I was raised on templates. There is a way to cook, to bake, to love, to study, to be a lady. As an adult, that has been expanded to include a way to eat, walk, talk, write a contract, and even begin a business. As much as I complained about all these "rules" of society, I realized recently that I had also been comforted by this structure.  As an entrepreneur, I have had to reexamine my fears of the blank page. In the planning stages, I still had templates to rely on - business books, business plans, financial sheet...