Welcome to the Purposeconomy!
The year is 2000, and I was sitting in a 13sqm “apartment” in Berlin, thinking about my life so far. I had just left Hamburg, my wife, and Advertising, aka everything that I had in earlier years deemed dear to me. Yeah, right.
In 1999, although I earned heaps of money as a successful Advertising Copywriter, I felt more and more that I lived the dream life of OTHER people. It was like in FIGHT CLUB which came out in that dreadful year — this … “life” was a caricature, a 24/7 infomercial about how to live so that others can envy you. Boring. Empty. Without direction, meaning, or Purpose.
So I retreated in a friend’s cabin at a lake for two full weeks in Feb 2000 and meditated about “What now?”. Everybody else seemed dedicated to become the next billionaire IPO or stock options superstar. Gordon-Gekko-times. Greed is good. Growth is everything. The mantra of the money sharks. I found this heart-wrenchingly boring and backwards-minded.
But what were my alternatives? Nowadays we have everything at our disposal to make a difference in the world — from blogs to webinars, from Social Media to eCommerce, from iPhones to cryptocurrencies -, and it might be hard to imagine, but back then, in the late Cambrium of the Internet, we had dumbphones and eMail and websites (some of us, anyway) and … yep, that was it. No YouTube. No Instagram. No Digital Nomad Conferences. Nothing but sticks and flintstones and a deep disgust against the Old Greed Economy.
In those two foggy February weeks as a recluse at a lake near Neuruppin, I wrote a 14 pages document titled “Flint 2.0”. My final resolutions read like this:
1) I will never work with or for a**holes anymore.
2) I will never again do stuff that I give a sh** about.
3) I will give my Best to make the World a better place.
But how on Earth should I do this in 2000? There were “normal” business ideas (re: Growth at all costs) and — charities. No “Socialpreneurs”, “Cultural Creatives” or “Corporate Sustainability”. That all came much later. If I had asked a SIEMENS manager about sustainability in those days, he would have raised an eyebrow and never spoken with me again. Nowadays, HE comes with this topic first — because his board asked him to — because the customers asked them to. But back then? No way.
I really had no idea how I should introduce my “Ideas for a Better Tomorrow” (my slogan since those cabin days) to the World and get paid for it.
Then: Luck struck.
A Berlin University asked me if I could teach students how to create radio commercials (I had done this hundredfold for the 1st German tv program in the Mid-90s). I said that I could but I wouldn’t. They asked “What about Online Marketing?”. Same answer. “So what WOULD you like to teach?”
I realized that THIS was my chance. My same-agers were seemingly unchangeable, locked in their old Success-is-everything mindset. But if I could inspire the next but one generation of business leaders with my visions of a human-centric economy and sympathetic marketing, sustainability and circular production, THEN I could make my dent in the Universe! This was the sign I had been waiting (and praying) for.
I created a “Future Marketing” course for them, taught it for 5 semesters at two universities and felt that I had finally found my vocation — teaching young people everything they need to know to make the Best of their Talents, Dreams, and Life.
This was not only the start of my teaching and coaching career, but also of two other exciting paths:
1) Since my predictions about the Future became Reality pretty fast and very accurately, I was approached by big companies to give speeches about the Future, starting with the Economic Council of Germany in May 2001. This lead to my second successful career as a Speaker and Trainer.
2) In 2003, I founded a Berlin-based company called SKILLY. It was a state-of-the-tech startup, one of the very first SaaS firms that I know of — globally. The idea was to give people a chance to create their individual Talent Profile out of 360+ skills and then being matched with people in their neighborhood who needed that skill, be it changing car tires, babysitting, PC repair or writing sales copy. My goal with this was to enable people to live their full potential on our way from the conforming 20th Century economy, based on Industrialism, to the individualistic 21st Century WEconomy. So I became a Socialpreneur by accident (a term that was just invented 6 years earlier by Charles Leadbeater).
At its start, SKILLY was presented in many newspapers, magazines, tv and radio in Germany. We even gave a Press Conference in the new Government Buildings, and for this I had written a philosophical piece called …
“Welcome to the Anthroconomy!”
I described this coming era “when it will be lucrative to be a good person” as a human (old Greek: “anthropos”)-centric economy in which our talents, dreams, ambitions, skills, and overall individual uniqueness are not longer regarded as “flaws” but as the new gold.
This term didn’t stick. Nobody could understand nor pronounce it, let alone remember and adopt it. So I thought about more “popular” or everyday-compatible formulations all the time.
In my German book “VENIAMARKETING” about the coming trend of “looking for your replacement families aka tribes” (venia is the celtic word for tribe, family, clan), written 2007, published 2008 (on 8/8/8), I mentioned the Purposeconomy (in German “Sinnwirtschaft”) for the first time. I admit today: I didn’t think much about this word at that time — for me, the human-centric, sense-making, purpose-giving Future Economy was my daily bread and butter by then.
In 2010, I gave a speech to about 70 economic leaders in Munich, and just to make sure that this wouldn’t violate an existing registered brand, I Googled “Sinnwirtschaft”. Nothing. Like, AT ALL. Just one guy called “Professor Sinn of the Wirtschafts-Institut”.
Woah, lottery win.
I called my lawyer, told him to Google that term, print out all the pages, bind them, seal them, sign them and throw them in his lawyer safe. I paid his bill, then I registered that term as a word brand. And what I thought was “a normal word”, became my own brand.
Yeah, I know — there’s a guy in America who in 2014 wrote a book about “The Purpose Economy”. I never read it (sorry), but I think it proves my point nicely. I was way first, though (11 years ahead, to be clear). And I am happy and proud about this. Because it again proves that I really can see and sense what the Future brings.
Nowadays, my predictions are not 20 or 15 or 10 years ahead. Just weeks or months. Change has accelerated. People feel left behind. More and more (especially young) people think they do not matter and that things get worse every year. They don’t. Really. Big Media just wants you to believe that. Why? Because Anxiety leads to Obedience leads to keep the Status Quo.
But trust me, my friends — if you are still reading this … you are a Person of Tomorrow. Because you obviously have developed a fine radar for bs on the one hand and value and truth on the other.
My story is genuine. My heart is clean. My goal is to support YOU.
In the last almost 20 years since my Purpose Crisis at that lake I have learned that there is only ONE way to become happy and successful: to be of Value to others.
Thank you for being here. You matter.
Let’s begin. Future is built TODAY.
Give your Best!
Your Friend Flint
“If you wanna have a better Life tomorrow,
you have to make better Decisions today.”
> Marc Flint
