What are your pivotal entrepreneurial moments?
Here’s another one of mine:
Most days I’m embedded in NYC with a macro focus on design and construction projects. With so much development and redevelopment activity in greater NYC, the macro often creates a rapid fire frenzy of where to focus next on any given day. In previous years, as a small business owner, focus was on the micro… micro and ultra micro economies, relationships and projects.
Results?: No matter what scale of opportunity I’m focused on currently, I reflect back on the micro of my small business experiences. Often, micro is more challenging than macro. There’s no hiding in a micro environment – everyone depends on, and knows, everyone. Full visibility on how your preferences, actions and choices effect your environment.
Pivot?: I move between macro and micro focus. The micro keeps me grounded. I work with small business owners and teams on a regular basis and love it. They’re doing everything large businesses do in a macro environment, but with full awareness of their power and affect in their micro environment. And I transfer this awareness to the macro – the large projects, customers and companies, because every action matters in the macro too.
I reflected on this recently, following meetings an hour north of NYC, waiting for the train back to Manhattan. Sitting on a bench, in a small town, watching small business owners working and interacting. Enjoying one of the best sandwiches I’ve had in a long time (from the shop at the Hawthorne NY train station – try it!) The micro economy of a small town – where everyone depends on everyone to sustain the community.
Also had me thinking about community investment in NYC and the potential to own a piece of your neighborhood – and micro economies that used to thrive and flourish in NYC neighborhoods. In a small suburban town people often stay in place for decades, or a lifetime, contributing and connected to their micro environment. But in a city like NYC, where development and redevelopment play such a large role, where do all of the people connected to the micro communities and economies that no longer exist go? Where do they establish and re-establish (if even possible) their community? Where does their history go?