Kevin Jones, Producer of SOCAP10 and founder of Good Capital reflects on a particular question from his interview with Julia Molden of Huffington Post, and speaks about What’s Next, not only for himself but for emerging social entrepreneurs.
Is your greatest work ahead of you?
I was interviewed recently by Julia Moulden, for her annual Huffpo piece on Socap. She is writing a book about people doing things after they are 50. She told me Liza Minnelli said when she got to 64 that her greatest work was ahead of her. What did I think about myself? I didn’t know how to respond to that. After all, being interviewed about yourself is a great temptation to inflate yourself to give them that better story, and then to become a bigger anecdote in the book, movie, etc.
So that’s where the question should have taken me, to think about myself and imagine big things.
I tried to give her what she wanted, but wasn’t really able to knock that softball out of the park, even though I could see it coming. I knew that it was not true for me, really, and if I answered like that I would be deceiving myself. As a journalist I hated not being able to play my part in the story she had in mind, I was not able to trick myself into playing the part.
Julia actually had asked a great question, once I took it seriously and sat with it a while. So, is my greatest work ahead of me? This is my answer: “No, their greatest work is ahead of them. I am going to be much more about celebrating and encouraging and guiding where appropriate, the work of younger people, like the people who work at the Hub or people in LifechangerU or the scholarshipped entrepreneurs at the What’s Next Clubhouse at Socap10, or with our new partners, Frank Van Beuningen and Margaret McGovern, who will be leading Socap Europe next Spring.
-By Kevin Jones (Good Capital Newsletter)
