Things are quiet on the blog these days, but pretty hectic everywhere else, moving houses is such a big deal and I am looking so much forward to settling in, the transition is driving me slightly mad these days, maybe because there’s so many unsolved issues. But around 2 weeks ago I was so lucky to attend Roskilde Festival in sunshine. It was such a great time and probably one of my favorite festivals ever. (bands rocked, friends everywhere and great weather, what’s there not to like. Laura and Sami drove down from Helsinki to attend the festival as well and Sami made us come to this really cool and weird concert with the finnish band: Circle. It was a weird blast, but after a while people starting really getting into it – and I must say, it’s the first time I’ve ever witnessed a simulated decapitation of the singer by the bassist – with a guitar.
After the show the band members themselves started to clear away their equipment. It made me burst into a “be your own roadie” statement. One that I promised I would look into more on the blog. I mean being an online rock star and all (ahem=) Im the one to toy around with the statement as well.
And if you think about it “be your own roadie” isn’t really a bad statement for a company that wants to be more like a rockband. If you’re a rockband and you are your own roadie, it means that you’re relying on yourself to get things done. Epic. In my world it’s often the “being my own roadie” that’s the most exhausting, but also the place where you really can feel the entrepreneurial freedom. It means that even though you’re the band, you’re relying on yourself to make the show go on. Taking away the excuses for not getting things to happen for you and taking responsibility and not blaming the world for everything.
It’s up to you.
You need to do it yourself. Create it yourself. whatever.
Be your own roadie.
I am currently reading the book called “the element” by Sir Ken Robinson. Ken’s thoughts on education has inspired me for a long time, and it’s one of the reasons that I have chosen that my daughter is starting in an alternative school after the summer. Combined with my personal experience on how I have always wanting to be creating instead of competing, I am really fearing that the educational system is not only not embracing the rapid changes in the world, but they are educating people for a world that maybe doesn’t exists anymore.
I can only think of my own education first in primary school, then in commerce college and then at CBS. I am sad to say that no where along the lines was the discussion brought up, that maybe it would be wiser to create markets yourself – instead of competing for it. Keep on doing creative cool stuff that would have people getting nearer and nearer to you ( or further and further away from you – if they don’t like what you’re doing). Creating market share instead of competing for it. And start educating kids to take a stand, be a standpoint themselves and to create their way through life, instead of bashing other people down and compete for every single thing. I don’t know about you – but competition stresses me out. I love the fact that people who wants to work with me, most of the time wants to work with me because I am Henriette Weber, and not because “i do social strategies, counselling and speaking” – to me it’s not important.
It has been a long process for me to go from being bullied in school because my outlook was different and I was “weird”. To being the person shouting the loudest in the room trying to get everyone to understand my point of view and how they could use it for their business. To being me today – at peace with being the eternal outsider, a cool girl resting in herself and making money on being myself. And having people listening and involving because they, like me, thinks my points are as valid as everybody else. I think it rocks! Mostly it rocks because I have started to believe in it myself. I know you guys have gotten my back all the time =) but I needed to think of myself differently and that has been the hardest part.
One of the things I am most proud of, is that I am able to do this everyday. I make a living being myself. I still have to make a living and be able to get that fantastic red MG B roadster from 1954 that I adore. But I am buying a house soon and things are really good on my end (yep now I am bashing the idea of being the suffering entrepreneur living in a cardboard box down the road.) The biggest differences in my business life has been where I have busted my cute little behind and creating stuff – being structured and putting great ideas into context.
To me, the creative parts (or the products if you will) is what people has remembered me for and it’s really what’s making a difference to other people.
So what are you creating ? are you creating at all ? otherwise get yourself in gear and start creating something that’s important to you – and I bet also to a ton of other people out there
Glastonbury 98 “it rained every day, all day, for three days and three nights. I’ve not been back since” picture by Mark Walker Brighton
A person in my network is going to the Glastonbury festival in a couple of weeks – I’ve always had a liking for british music festivals because the lineup is often the most sublime. I was there in 98, 18 years old in the most horrible weather of all times and having the time of my life. This year I will be at Roskilde festival, dreaming of glastonbury and the leeds/reading festivals in the fall. Now about the festival there’s one thing I remember more clearly than other things, normally at roskilde festival you make a joint toast all over the camping site once every 10 mins or so. At glastonbury that year people weren’t shouting “SKÅL” which means cheers – they shouted “BOLLOCKS” (which I am quite sure they still do)… In one of those toasts where everybody was going “BOOOOLLLOOOCKS” a guy suddenly shouted “PINEAPPLE”. A guy from another camp then shouted back “why the f*** are you shouting PINEAPPLE”?. He didn’t get any reply. A couple of hours later the joint toast went on again and suddenly there where 100 people shouting “PINEAPPLE” after the “BOLLOCKS” shout.
Next day it was all of the area that we where camped in. Just because some guy started to shout “pineapple”.
All I am saying is that I am madly in love with people who shouts pineapple. They do it for about a day or so and then they shout something else that people can relate to. I can’t relate to a pineapple, but I love the story of being in the middle of a whole section of a festival that shouts pineapple.
I guess that’s just how we roll as people. That’s what I personally want: do things with a creative/unusual edge that people think is cool. To make the crowd go “PINEAPPLE”.
I am in the process of turning my Danish “handheld” book (entitled “return on involvement – how to use social web to create business unusual”) into a digital book in English – it’s so much fun and a very creative process for me. Also it’s frightening me a bit that I won’t only have to be completely open in Danish – but in English as well. That means that my book will be available to every english speaking person around the world (and that, my friend, is a huge deal to me – even though I know I have blogged here since 2005 in english) – then I see the digital book as a huge thing and one I am really excited to do.
So while I have been reading the book through in Danish, a lot of new ideas came up that I will add to the english version – it’s ok. I can. I have published the book on my own “press” because I hate when people tell me what I can and cannot do, so the world is open for everything and who says that the english version has to be the same as the Danish.
I have moved a lot personally in the last year and the english digital book will reflect that as well. I want to make it really concrete and really Henriette (because that’s how I roll and what excites me =). So in addition to the Danish book “just” being translated I am working on a workbook to accompany it and some interviews. Thanks to the magically wonderful Danielle LaPorte for making me realize that I could do this. That the world really needs more of me =) (and I have to love myself and all that jazz – well you know.. )
Also I can announce that for the 1st birthday of my book – I will make it available as a Danish e-book and as an audiobook =)
One of the things that I am really coming back to is the “abundance of stuff”. I did a talk about this at the amazing #ton40 un-conference in Enschede a couple of weeks ago. That in this world we can get everything we want. That we for example are so plastic abundant that we have it drifting around in a large part of our ocean. That we keep getting new. Luckily it seems like upcycling and adding value is becoming a bigger and bigger way of looking at products and life cycles. To me its super weird that we keep talking about abundant life, and getting the things we want – when we have so much already and we throw it away again and again..
I was surfing through my feed this morning and one of my favorite blogs: White hot truth by Danielle LaPorte wrote about the “help haiti blog challenge” that a friend of hers, Kelly Diels had made. it’s basically an idea that you give yourself to Haiti – and donate some of your work for it. Now here’s what I want to chip in with:
I will donate 50 % of every order (books, strategies, training, workshops, consulting, speaking - you name it -everything), I land in within the next 2 weeks to a charity helping out in Haiti.
And I hope you will do the same. At some point soon – the medias spotlight will be gone from Haiti, yet it’s still a tragedy over there – and we still need to focus on it in order to save lifes in one of the poorest countries in the world. Blogs can help this out. Creativity can help this out. We can all do more.
So help me out as well ?
ps. crossposted on ToothlessTiger.com (and everywhere else)
Today I write history – well a little bit of my own history that calls for champagne, dancing and a bunch of laughter- I uploaded the free introduction to my book called “return on involvement – how to use the social web to create business unusual” (in danish only so far – sorry non-danishspeaking people). The book in itself is going to be available for purchase medio june. But that’s not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about the process of writing this sucker =). It started out in January 2008 where I decided that I needed to put all my thoughts on the social web and business down in a structured format – which became known in my head as “the book”.
When the first draft of the book was finished – A danish publising house contacted me because they where curious about the book. We arranged for a meeting, and after a couple of meetings – they decided they wanted to publish it – i was exstatic for a while but my smile soon faded. The book they wanted my book to be, where not the book that I had written.
they wanted a how-to book on social tools
I wanted to write a book about why social tools are necessary and what effect they can have on business – which meant no deal, they called it off first, but I am glad they did today.
A couple of days after I decided to do my own publishing house – Toothless Tiger Press , mainly because I could not see what my former publisher could provide me with at high cost, that I could buy myself and with a greater gain in the end. I don’t really think we are going to be having that many big publishing houses anymore – to me, what I have encountered that a publishing house does – doesn’t really have a place in todays world of connectedness on the internet. You have to transform and you have to transform big time. =) Toothless Tiger Press has been used as a platform for my own (only) free ebook on rockbandism so far.
In January I decided to add two more chapters to the book, in february the first round of editing started, march 2nd round of editing and in April my hands where off the manuscript and I could leave it in the hands of my excellent editor for the 3rd round of editing. These days it’s having it’s final layout, a last round of editing and then it hits the bookstores in Denmark. Meanwhile I have hired someone to translate it all to english – so you english speaking people won’t wait long ( we are talking mid-september or someting here)..
The absolutely hardest part for me, has been to let go of the book. In this area of work you can continue to work on it forever and ever. It was my wonderful husband who told me that if I didn’t stop adding stuff to this book he would go insane – and I really couldn’t have that on my shoulders. I am one of those people who are so terribly afraid of being un-original and not-that-genuine at all. So I really wanted to do my best. I think it has it – a bit of everything that I believe to be important, combined with a couple of why? how-to’s and best practice.
I hope you will all enjoy it when it launches both in danish and english !
well I didn”t pass my french exam… it sucks big time.. every test out there says I am excellent at french. but my teachers say they don’t understand me…
and I really thought the exam went fine.. honestly I did.
So one has to wonder if I am doing the right thing? am I in the right education ? hell yeah !… I just have to learn how to speak french and every error needs to be corrected..
everybody is urging me to start doing design or fashion or something.. which I am not really interested in because it is so incredibly mainstream… and if there’s something I don’t catagorize my self as, then it is mainstream..
everyone I have met think I would be a good designer.. but hell, I like people, and I like design..
I like the business school and I do fine in all the other classes – or more then fine… but in french I completely and utterly fail…
so why am I still at the business school ? Maybe I should start at the ITU of copenhagen instead
I am so confused.
what do you guys think I am good at ?
anyway I will carry on my french classes, it’s really a challenge for me by now .. I want to succeed…
Livin' my dream by running the social web agency 
