The Business as Manuscript

A quiet meditation on building, authorship, and the stories we live through.

Some businesses, I built with my name on the door.

Others, I built quietly behind the curtain.

Some were mine in title. Others were mine in soul.

But all of them,

every draft,

every venture,

every partnership, was a kind of manuscript.

A living, breathing document written in late nights,

tight budgets,

sudden pivots,

and moments of fleeting grace.

I didn't always know the plot.

Often, I was just following the thread. But now, with a little distance,

I see it more clearly: I wasn't just building businesses.

I was writing a life.

No business is just a business.

It's an expression. A pattern of choices.

A shape traced by values spoken or not.

Some of mine were full of hope but lacked structure.

Others had beautiful bones but lost their spirit in the scaffolding.

Some started as side notes and became full chapters.

Others were cut mid-sentence, closed by circumstance, not failure.

And a few... a few are still writing me, even now.

There's a difference between owning something and driving it.

Ownership is about title, liability, paperwork.

But driving?

Driving is presence. It's momentum. It's the sense that your hands are on the wheel even if someone else gets the credit.

In some companies, I was the founder. In others, I was the quiet force pushing the idea forward, unseen but essential. And in each, I learned what kind of story I want to live inside.

It's easy to confuse action with authorship. To fill the calendar but lose the narrative.

To scale something, but forget the voice behind it.

The real question is: what are you saying through your business?

Not in your pitch deck or your tagline. But in how you show up.

How you hire. How you treat a delay. How you recover from a mistake.

Is your business a poem?

A manual?

A love letter?

A revenge plot?

The form matters less than the intention behind the line.

I used to chase the next business like a new chapter.

Now I return to the old pages, the unfinished paragraphs, the edits I resisted.

And I write, slowly with care.

Not to be remembered

But to remember who I am.

Field Note:

Your business is not separate from you. It is your handwriting in motion.

Write with presence. Revise with love.