Turned on
“I don’t want to be rich and brain dead. I want to be poor and turned on.”
So responds Jason McLean, the subject of our Back Page interview this month, when asked whether he believes money or ideas is more important in business. It’s my favorite line in this issue because it puts perfectly the leading motivator for so many business owners.
Not that Upsize readers think the two are mutually exclusive. McLean himself and probably everyone else we’ve quoted would agree that being turned on and pursuing wealth go nicely together. It’s just that most business owners are willing to sacrifice the immediate payoff as long as the road is stimulating.
Consider Linda Hall Whitman, the new CEO of QuickMedX and the subject of our cover story. She was brought in to turn a neat idea — clinics in places like grocery stores, where people can quickly get treatment for routine illnesses — into a substantial operating company with national expansion plans.
Her background is at huge corporations, and another one could have easily been her choice when she left Ceridian Performance Partners. Instead she went with a young company and didn’t draw a salary for six months while she raised funds. Quick MedX was a place she could really get excited about.
Mike Porter of Adesso Technologies has a big-company background, too, but turned down offers to instead join seven other partners last August. Adesso’s president doesn’t want to raise outside money for philosophical reasons, and Porter likes the fact that selffunding the company means he and his partners will call the shots. If that means delayed gratification, so be it. Porter offers advice to one of our readers this month in Dear Informer.
Sandy Myers of Visual Promotions made a comfortable living with her 14- year-old company. But a slumping economy turned restless feelings into a quest to fire her passions again. She tells about her new spin-off company in this month’s Upsize Informer. The risk is worth it, she says, because she’s excited again about her business.
All these business leaders provide inspiration to us at Upsize Minnesota, where we’re poor and turned on after launching the magazine last year when other more immediately lucrative opportunities beckoned. No question it’s the better option given the choice as McLean puts it.
Rich and turned on — now that’s sounding even better. Let’s keep working, at your company and ours, and we’ll all get there.
— Beth Ewen Editor and co-founder Upsize Minnesota bewen@upsizemag.com
