Lives of Adventure, Fulfillment, and Service

Christopher Gergen and Gregg Vanourek

Some people don’t just live a life, they lead a life. They don’t sit around waiting for a lucky break. They create opportunities for themselves. They go after their dreams and bring them to life. Rather than bending to the status quo, they change it. As with any great effort, their work is never done but ever-evolving, and it is often inspiring to those around them.

Welcome to the territory of life entrepreneurs.

We tend to think of entrepreneurship in the business context. A business entrepreneur creates a new commercial enterprise, while a social entrepreneur launches a new social enterprise. That leads us to the life entrepreneur—one who creates a life of significance through opportunity recognition, innovation, and action. A life entrepreneur deploys the principles and practices of entrepreneurship to create a life of adventure, fulfillment, and service.

In researching our book, we interviewed fifty-five business and social entrepreneurs, all of whom brought entrepreneurial flair to their lives and work. Nearly all come from ordinary backgrounds, yet they have created extraordinary lives for themselves and those around them by embracing the entrepreneurial mindset. They include the founding visionaries behind Starbucks, Chipotle, Cranium, RealNetworks, Bright Horizons, Share Our Strength, BUILD.org, and the KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) Schools. In these interviews, we sought to learn about the people behind the enterprises: Who are they? What makes them tick? What mistakes have they made? What have they learned?

The takeaways from these interviews were revealing:

• All made a conscious decision to walk their own path and forge their own future—often going against prevailing expectations.
• There was a direct correlation between the purposefulness and conviction with which they walk their path in life and the passion and joy they feel for their life and work.
• Many don’t think of themselves as dividing their time between “work” and “life.” For many, these are integrated—not compartmentalized—pursuits.
• All have experienced failure and dealt with significant setbacks, but each bounced back—focused on realizing their life’s vision.
• Several found great value in stepping off the path to renew, recharge, and sometimes reinvent their lives.

Entrepreneurship is not solely the province of the professional. It is a mindset, approach, and process that can be applied to any endeavor—including that of leading our lives.

The first and most important step in creating an extraordinary life is choosing to do so. Sometimes the hardest part of leading an entrepreneurial life is getting out of the way of the good life that wants to charge forth from within.  

Christopher Gergen and Gregg Vanourek are the co-authors of Life Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives. See their website at www.lifeentrepreneurs.com or contact them at .

Also see the Trinity Forum's curriculum on this theme, Entrepreneurs of Life..

Provocations, Being Human, Meaning and Calling, Thu 28 Aug 2008