Connections

This title keeps popping up. I’ll tell you why.

I work with SCORE clients. SCORE is the ‘service corps of retired executives’ and it was started 54 years ago as an adjunct to the Small Business Administration operating out of the Commerce Department in Washington DC. Its purpose then as now is to help individuals start their own businesses, or help small struggling businesses survive their many challenges.

The thought has always been that small businesses are the job creation engine of our nation. That remains true to this day. So in our small way SCORE mentors help entrepreneurs form their small enterprises. One new job created. As it survives a person is hired to help keep the business moving forward. Two jobs now accounted for. Their activity meshes with other businesses and soon more work is generated and others are hired to perform that work. More jobs.

Last year SCORE was directly involved in creating 54,000 jobs. That’s a pretty standard outcome; year after year. Of course this doesn’t count the jobs saved by helping a small firm survive. About 40% of SCORE’s work involves small existing businesses; the other 60% of effort is devoted to startups.

Now, where do you suppose SCORE meets with their individual clients? Yes, there are meeting rooms and offices that are used, but mostly these are borrowed or shared spaces at local community colleges or chambers of commerce. A lot of mentor/mentee meetups are conducted at local Starbucks or Panera Bread coffee shops. And other restaurants and diners, too. Countless small enterprises hosting anonymous meetups of people intent on building new businesses.

Connections. All of this activity is about connecting people with one another. For what purpose, you ask? Well, to think about ideas that matter to those people, ideas that will yield newer ideas and finally possibilities of actions leading to fresh new businesses.

Inventive thoughts, really. Most of my readers would be amazed at the breadth and depth of the ideas discussed. Far ranging and climbing mountains of data that suddenly mean something completely new and dazzling.

The human brain is an amazing instrument. It creates concepts out of thin air. Those concepts can be connected to others and a synergy starts taking shape. Sometimes carrying a part of that concept to someone else develops partnerships unthinkable before. Soon odd pairings take place. Weeks later you hear of projects underway that would never have happened if the two thinkers hadn’t first met.

And we mentors often connect the dots so haphazardly that we don’t know what miracles we have helped create.

That’s something to think about. I often come home from one of these meetings walking about 14 inches above the sidewalk. Somehow this work elevates the spirit and mental acuity. The genius that is everywhere around us becomes obvious if but for a split second.

Future. Possibilities. All from connections. So tenuous, yet so powerful.

October 2, 2017