{"id":5948,"date":"2012-10-11T22:59:36","date_gmt":"2012-10-12T02:59:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/joyfullyjobless.com\/blog\/?p=5948"},"modified":"2012-10-11T22:59:36","modified_gmt":"2012-10-12T02:59:36","slug":"a-lesson-from-venice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/joyfullyjobless.com\/blog\/2012\/10\/a-lesson-from-venice\/","title":{"rendered":"A Lesson from Venice"},"content":{"rendered":"

As my Facebook friends can attest, I\u2019m totally besotted by Venice. So imagine my excitement when the amazing Lisa Tarrant<\/a> came up with this new header for this blog.<\/p>\n

Take a look at those lovely buildings and what you\u2019re seeing were originally the world headquarters of many homebased businesses. The Venetians weren\u2019t the first, of course, to work from home, but they did it with more elegance.<\/p>\n

Those three-story buildings were designed to house both business and family. The ground floor served as a warehouse for goods coming and going in and out of Venice. The second floor was used for business offices, while the entrepreneur\u2019s family occupied the top floor.<\/p>\n

Although tourism is the top business in this magical place today, the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well as I was reminded on my last visit there.<\/p>\n

When my family and I arrived at the vaporetto stop in Venice, we were greeted by our temporary landlord Carlo<\/a>. He shook hands with each of us and then escorted us back to the 500-year-old building he owns which housed our apartment.<\/p>\n

The first thing I noticed about him was that he didn\u2019t actually walk: he bounced. And he smiled a lot.<\/p>\n

The next afternoon he stopped by to make sure that things were running smoothly. \u201cSo, Carlo,\u201d I asked, \u201cwhere did you learn to speak English so well?\u201d<\/p>\n

The grin got even bigger and he told us how he\u2019d decided to learn English when he was 16 and began his lessons by listening to Simon and Garfunkel. “Then I went to London and discovered I didn’t know how to speak it at all.”<\/p>\n

We invited him to sit\u00a0down and tell us more about this building which he was renovating. What followed was a delightful story about creative entrepreneurship.<\/p>\n

He said he\u2019d been a pharmacist, but when the building came into his family rather unexpectedly, he left his pharmacy to devote himself to this new enterprise.<\/p>\n

His parents occupied an apartment on the ground floor. There was another space he rented to a group of architects. Carlo lived on the top floor while the other four apartments were vacation rentals.<\/p>\n

Redoing the building had obviously been a huge undertaking and he seemed to be enjoying it all. I tried to imagine how difficult it would be to rehab an old building in a city\u00a0where everything had to be brought in and removed by motorboat. It seemed daunting.<\/p>\n

When Carlo told us that he was facing a couple of off-season months with few takers, my sister Margaret suggested he advertise on Craigslist, which he was unfamiliar with.<\/p>\n

To our delight\u2014and his\u2014he promptly got two bookings after posting on that popular site.<\/p>\n

The following evening we received an invitation from D.J., the occupant of the apartment next to ours. He\u2019s an American who calls himself a \u201cglobalnista\u201d who spends four months of the year in Venice.<\/p>\n

We accepted his invitation to stop by for a drink and once the seven of us were seated and had drinks in hand, I asked him a question about himself. That began a long monologue which involved D.J. and his own cleverness as the theme of the story.<\/p>\n

While I wouldn\u2019t call him a liar, some of the details seemed a bit fuzzy while other parts of the story were obviously embellished.<\/p>\n

When we left, Margaret said to me, \u201cI can\u2019t tell: was he fascinating or tedious?\u201d I laughed and said, \u201cHe could have used some editing.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it was more than editing that D. J. needed. The difference between him and Carlo really came down to authenticity. Carlo was genuine and D.J. was faking it. Just as important, Carlo paid attention to his listeners; D. J. paid attention only to himself.<\/p>\n

Whether we realize it or not, we\u2019re telling our stories all of the time\u2014to strangers as well as those we know. And storytelling can be a powerful\u2014or neglected\u2014business tool.<\/p>\n

The authors of Funky Business<\/em><\/strong> say, \u201cCommunicating a vision not only involves repetition and a carefully distilled message; it demands the ability to tell a story. True leaders are CSOs\u2014Chief Storytelling Officers…Funky leaders give rise to and spread stories.\u201d<\/p>\n

After telling a few good stories themselves, they conclude, \u201cThe message is simple: light the campfire, gather the tribe, and start preaching and practicing. Lift us up where we belong.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you haven’t done so, give some thought to storytelling and how it can enhance your business and your life. Collect stories, share them, find the stories in your business and pass them along.<\/p>\n

Make storytelling one of your business building tools.<\/p>\n

And while you’re at it, why not make this next year the one in which you write the best chapter of your own story so far?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As my Facebook friends can attest, I\u2019m totally besotted by Venice. So imagine my excitement when the amazing Lisa Tarrant came up with this new header for this blog. Take a look at those lovely buildings and what you\u2019re seeing were originally the world headquarters of many homebased businesses. The Venetians weren\u2019t the first, of…<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1203],"tags":[1213,24,27,1212,33],"class_list":["post-5948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-build-a-better-business","tag-authenticity","tag-creative-entrepreneurs","tag-growing-a-business","tag-stories-from-venice","tag-storytelling","jsn-master"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/joyfullyjobless.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/joyfullyjobless.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/joyfullyjobless.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joyfullyjobless.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joyfullyjobless.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5948"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/joyfullyjobless.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5960,"href":"https:\/\/joyfullyjobless.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5948\/revisions\/5960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/joyfullyjobless.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joyfullyjobless.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joyfullyjobless.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}