Have you ever looked in the mirror and thought: “My life is pretty good.  But somehow, I want to do better.”  I’ve had that thought many times, usually when a sense of professional stagnation feels like it’s limiting my opportunities for personal growth.  Most of the time, I ignore the thought until it goes away.  After all, doing better is hard.  It usually means changing something, and that means first thinking of something to change, then thinking about how to change it, and then actually making the change.  Even then, there’s no guarantee that “different” will lead to “better.”  No, like most people, I spend most of my time playing it safe and keeping my life more-or-less as it is.  I stick to my job and accept the limitations it puts on my finances, my free time, and my social opportunities.

Still, some of the richest, most rewarding periods of my life have followed the days on which I chose not to ignore that thought.  Change, though frightening, is also exhilarating.  It opens doorways, creates possibilities, and ignites long-dormant dreams.  It frees us to see ourselves as we might be rather than as we have become, sets us upon journeys of deep self-exploration, pushes us to flex new muscles, and allows us to expand and to grow in wonderful ways.  We typically return from such journeys as improved versions of ourselves: stronger, bolder, more self-aware, closer to exercising our full potential.  One word fully expresses the extreme changes that we undergo on such journeys.  That word is: Reinvention!

I will launch The Reinvention Center in early 2009 to facilitate exhilarating explorations and journeys of reinvention.  The Reinvention Center will combine the best elements of co-working, incubation consulting, networking, and club membership under a single umbrella.  It will draw together people of diverse interests, talents, and backgrounds in ways that let them work together, play together, learn together, grow together, and share each other’s ambitions, dreams, and successes.  It will provide each of its members with a supportive, collaborative environment for professional and personal reinvention.  It will teach and emphasize the importance of aligning personal passions and professional development.  It will motivate its members to do well by doing what they love.  The Reinvention Center will be a social incubator that hatches an entrepreneurial community.

As its founding member, I have already started the work by reinventing myself—as a reinventor.  My first official act as a reinventor is a promise to all subsequent members:
Sound good?  Great.  But I have to warn you—there is a catch: 
If you are, I will help you to reinvent yourself as the entrepreneur you always knew you could be: freed from the constraints of a conventional job or boss; empowered to support yourself by providing the product or service about which you are most passionate; confident in the knowledge that you control your own destiny; transformed through the integration of your personal and professional desires; and rewarded to know that you are sharing the best of yourself with your customers or clients.
 
How am I going to do it?  The quick answer is by customizing a strategic reinvention consulting program that is right for you—sensitive to your personal desires, your practical business needs, and your ability to pay.  But that program is only part of the answer.  The Reinvention Center will provide a holistic environment to support your professional and social needs as you embark upon your reinvention—whether you are an occasional Networker who joins us for classes, discussions, events, lectures, and parties; an Entrepreneur who brings a business in for full-blown incubation; an Incubator whose on-site residence creates and maintains the environment; or an Intern who trades time and energy for learning.

In more concrete terms, over the next few months I will:

• Design and equip a live/work space to motivate productivity during work time and communality during social time.
• Attract a core membership by setting fees far below market rates for the services on offer.
• Work with each member to diagnose his or her desires and to customize a reinvention plan.

Organize the first few events to help us gel as a community, fund our operations, educate each other and ourselves, and attract new members.
In short, I will develop an infrastructure within which we can all be productive at work, enjoy each other’s company during our free time, feel comfortable inviting our clients, customers, colleagues, and collaborators to meet and to learn, and feel equally comfortable inviting our friends to hang out and be social.

So much for me.  What about you?  Here are some things that you can do right now:

• Review your own skills and networks with an eye toward unlocking their potential.
• Assess your own work situation and needs, and be prepared to move forward as we launch the social incubation model in early 2009.
• Approach the members of your social and professional networks to gauge their interest in membership in an entrepreneurial community.
• Book an initial reinvention session with me.

Commit to taking a role in shaping the social incubation concept, the entrepreneurial community, and their concrete realization in The Reinvention Center.

Most important of all,

Expanded discussions of this material are available on request.  Please note that this document is confidential.  Please do not share it with anyone without explicit permission.  And please direct all comments to TheReinventionCenter at gmail dotcom.