Alan Moore is a famed comic book writer who pioneered the “graphic novel” as a literary format.
Alan’s successes include “V is for Vendetta”, “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”, “Swamp Thing”, and many other works. Alan is considered a pioneer and a legend in the publishing world for his art. To me, he’s an extremely interesting guy – but then again, I have sort of strange taste in art and humans (each and every one being a work of art in some way to me).
Moore sat down for an interview series for Channel 4 in the UK several years ago, and here’s the section where he talks about magick, storytelling, and language.
While it’s a bit… ahem… esoteric – it’s important to understand these concepts as I dive deeper in my article.
In fantasy, a magickal creation’s success is based upon the words and incantations used by the wizard to breathe life into the creation.
Similarly, as a shamen… a storyteller if you will… an entrepreneur’s success rests in their ability to transmit their own vision into the minds of others.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” – John 1:1
The Entrepreneurial Struggle
The bane of any entrepreneur’s existence is the entrepreneur’s own “mind’s eye”… the dreaded “inner space”. When visualizing something new and innovative, that inner space declares war against time and reality itself. It’s a wretched, tormented existence.
The entrepreneur becomes a walking battleground as the struggle to manifest that vision requires bending time and space – creating resources, influencing the wills of others, changing the course of time and the trajectory of the cosmos.
Where there was once nothing, now exists something – even if it’s only a flickering reflection against the dark walls of the entrepreneur’s skull. This battle starts the very moment a visionary entrepreneur imagines a future state wherein something exists that presently does not – and makes the commitment to create that something out of nothing.
An Entrepreneur practices a form of magickal shamanism
An entrepreneur bends reality and manifests creation itself by channeling effort and energy into the vision that only exists within their own mind’s eye. As alchemists, entrepreneurs turn things like lead and water into gold… or sometimes mushy slime. All apprentice magicians have bad days from time-to-time.
The work of the shaman is rooted in the words and symbols used to convey the vision residing in that inner space of their mind. Storytelling was used as an early form of spiritual ideation, metaphor, adjectives, descriptions, painting the image of the inner visualization contained within the mind of the practitioner.
While this may seem fantastic or even insane to some, consider the fundamental basis of language itself – attaching specific phonetic noises and utterances to abstracted ideas and objects.
Cave drawings are a convenient canvas, but what if you’re not in a cave and need to explain the feast awaiting the tribe just over the hill?
Language conveys that image, and helps the entrepreneur transfer the visualization into the minds of others. Ideas must be communicated or they fade back into the dark universe from which they were born.
All human development, from the Great Wall of China to the microprocessor, started as an idea in someone’s head. Every business was once a ghostly image flickering against the inner walls of some inspired entrepreneur. And to a certain degree, the success or failure of that business rests upon the shaman’s ability to package and translate those concepts and ideas to others.
We all have the same limitation: The Time Lock of 24/7
Great works require more time and effort than what is owned by the entrepreneur magician – who is limited by the same constraints as every individual human being in history. We have but 24 hours in a 7 day week to expend our energy. Building something great requires far more energy – which means the shaman storyteller must convey those ideas and gain buy-in from others.
Communication skills become one of the most important fundamentals for any entrepreneurial success. A great entrepreneur must become a master practitioner of words, ideas, storytelling, metaphor, and creation. Not just eliciting the commitment of others to pitch in and help build something from nothing – but also packaging the story for those customers who would benefit from the product or service itself.
That marketing story is also the key ingredient in projecting a future state of benefit in the minds of others who would financially support the business as clients.
- What pain are you experiencing today?
- What future possibilities could exist if you simply altered your own reality by buying our product or service?
- What tension can I magnify within your own mind to cause you to behave in a certain way through my communication projections?
- What words and stories must I use to convey the emotional states?
These are all part of the marketing psychology of selling a concept – whether to prospective team members, a venture capital investor, or a customer.
Now, some may read this and think I’ve crossed over into some dark spiritual place where the human literary concept of evil runs amok – which is hardly the case. It is simply understanding the root basis of communication, language, and the transition between what doesn’t exist today – and the effort required to bring it into existence tomorrow.