The spark* blog
Thoughtful insights for socially responsible entrepreneurs who give a ****! Honest conversations about impact, wellbeing and creating sustainable change.
Don’t look it in the eye
Time, money, experience - a founder I worked with knocked down every excuse for not building her new product, and still wasn’t building it. This is about the creature we call excellence, what happens when you look it in the eye, and the safer direction to look when you’re stuck halfway up. Written the week it happened to me.
The rules of a game I was already winning
At 17 I was told two in a hundred of us would make it as artists. I’d been selling work since I was 14 and had no idea that was unusual. This is about what happens when someone hands you the rules of a game you were already winning - a year of strange drawings, 1,200 wishes on three cherry trees, a founder whose gut was right, and the design I didn’t bother to protect.
Three steps back
Most founder advice assumes you’ve got enough in reserve to act on it. Often you don’t. This piece follows three founders who worked out that their real task was building the conditions underneath the work - recovery time, a space of their own, people actually building something similar - the unglamorous layer everything else sits on.
‘Always in beta’
Three words changed everything for one client who was waking up at 3am unable to breathe. 'Always in beta' sounds simple - but it's one of the most powerful tools I've seen founders use to break the loop of perfectionism and procrastination. This piece explores where that phrase came from, why the 'right moment' is usually a myth, and what it really means to give yourself permission to begin.