My first Exponential Update
Hello,
I hope you had a good Christmas and New Year.
Last year I came across a great question at a friend’s party… ‘Which word would you use to describe last year, this year and next year and why?’
After a good pause the words I chose were ‘healing’ for 2014, ‘lift-off’ for 2015 and ‘momentum’ for 2016. Since then I have been giving the word ‘momentum’ some more thought and asking myself… ‘How can I make next year a ‘momentum’ year?’ This questions led me to deciding on a New Year’s resolution… to send out regular exponential updates (at least one every 3 months) to my network, reflecting on the work I am doing, the adventures I am planning and the lessons that I am learning.
I will try to make these updates as honest, thought provoking and informal as I can.
There have been so many highlights in 2015, but the most epic was definitely my trip to San Fransisco and Burning Man. If you haven’t had a chance to go to a burn festival yet, I seriously recommend it. For me, Burning Man is the ultimate immersion in the present moment. For a whole week you participate in an alternate reality. There is a spirit of community, a freedom, an inclusiveness, an openness, a playfulness and a level of consciousness that is often difficult to access in our default lives. Black Rock City really is a place like no other. You face extreme shifts in atmosphere and temperature. The swing from day to night is magical and breath-taking. The burner community has definitely helped me to push my boundaries and open myself up to new ways of being, feeling and relating. Thanks to everyone who shared this adventure with me. Next year my plan is to return to South Africa, to hang out in Cape Town and experience the AfrikaBurn which is perfectly themed as ‘X’ (i.e. eXponentials). I last went to South Africa when I was 15 years old and that was the first time I visited an eco-village and worked on a farm. It left an impression that has stayed with me throughout my life.
I feel that Burning Man has reinforced in me the importance of being more conscious and mindful in all aspects of my life, including business. I’ve just finished reading John Mackey’s book on Conscious Capitalism, it’s brilliant. When I look back on my last few years, what I get most satisfaction from are the quality of relationships and friendships that I have built, not how much money I earned or press coverage that I received. I just saw this TED talk from a Harvard professor about what makes us healthy and happy. So true!
When I founded The Exponentials in summer of 2013, I committed to a simple practice; to undertake one passion project each year that is all about bringing people together and exploring new creative horizons. In 2014 I rented a painting studio and held a small COLOURS exhibition at a local cafe. This year, I organised a nature retreat called WildJam at Embercombe, one of the UK’s most inspiring eco-villages. What’s your passion project going to be for 2016?
My passion project for next year has been inspired by an opinion paper ‘Redefining the Nature of Business in the Millennial Age’, which I co-authored with Giles Hutchins, an inspiring author and thinker. For a while now I have been researching and exploring these three questions… Why do some networks, communities and organisations thrive, whilst others fail? How can we prototype new forms of community and business partnerships? What is the lifestyle that the next generation of entrepreneurs and professionals will aspire to?
In June 2016 I will be organising an IO Retreat (at the Candili Estate in Greece), with the purpose of exploring these questions and undertaking some ambitious collaborative projects and adventures together with a group of entrepreneurial friends. We may even have the opportunity to transform a beautiful 10,000 acre estate into an eco-resort and festival venue that brings together entrepreneurs, artists and makers from across the world. Think Burning Man meets Hooke Park meets Y-Combinator meets POC21 meets Enspiral meets Summit Mountain in a beautiful, biodiverse, fertile landscape just 2 hours drive from Athens. I’m excited just writing about it. Please feel free to email me (Contact email: anton@exponentials.co.uk) if you want to get involved.
The IO Retreat is part of a wider ‘Vilivo’ vision that has crystallised within me over the course of this year. My long term crazy and audacious dream is to bring the concept of the ‘garden city’ into the 21st century, transforming undervalued land into thriving economic and cultural neighbourhood hubs. This is as much as I can say for now.
If you know any architects, landscape designers, php (ideally Joomla) developers & smart systems engineers who would be interested in collaborating please make the connections. Contact email: anton@exponentials.co.uk). Thanks.
I would also like to mention all the startup ventures that I have been a part of since starting The Exponentials.
StudentFunder — Ethical loans for post-graduate education.
Give Vision — Using smart glasses to act as eyes for blind people.
Brainiac— Reinventing school and making learning fun, relevant and social.
Startup Aid — Building startup solutions for the humanitarian crises in Greece.
I’d also like to thank Yancy, who runs Alternavida for inviting me to Puerto Rico in April. It’s been great fun working with all of you, and I can’t wait to see what you all achieve in 2016.
(If you want to get involved and support any of these ventures please let me know).
I also want to take a moment to celebrate the fact that this update will be sent out using our own custom built Rocket CRM platform (a simple tool that helps startup teams manage their contacts and send out targeted email campaigns). If you are are startup and want to try it out get in touch.
I’d also like to say a massive thank you to Marten for helping me build out Rocket CRM and also StudioXOnline (Wikipedia for Entrepreneurs).
I’d like to end with a simple call to action.
Take a moment as the New Year approaches to think big about your life and career. What will be the word that you use to describe 2016? What actions can you take today to make that happen?
Dream big. Try to visualise yourself in 5, 10, 20, 40 years time. Where are you? How are you spending your time? Write everything down. Every curiosity. Every intuition. Every crazy idea. Think about what you really want in a holistic way. How do you want to grow professionally, spiritually, emotionally, etc? What do you want to build? What moments of significance would you like to experience? What kind of friendships would you like to grow?
Then map everything out on a wall. See the big picture. Cluster your adventures. Try to sense intuitively the things that generate the most energy and excitement within you. Start to see everything on the wall as a map guiding you to where you need to go. Everything is interconnected, one adventure will fuse into and support another.
If you would like to share your adventure wall with me, I’d love to hear it.
Just email : anton@exponentials.co.uk.
Right, wow, thank you for reading all of this. I look forward to hearing your feedback, and exploring how we can best support each other in 2016.
Cheers,
Anton Chernikov,
Founder at The Exponentials