Passion … and business.

For those of you that don’t know my story, here is a shortened version.

I spent 8 years working on varying documentaries for the BBC. During my time there a friend invited me to attend a djembe workshop. And it was that day that inspired me to leave my job and head to West Africa to study this special instrument.

On stepping off the plane in Africa it felt like I had come home – no surprise perhaps given that Africa is the cradle of humanity.

And when learning djembe in Africa, something awakened inside of me. I felt fully alive, and almost immediately aware that if I could connect to others in the way that the African rhythms allowed for me to connect to myself, that everything could become possible.

That has become a powerful message for the teams and leaders that I work with. And as I tell them, passion is what brings strategy alive.

Playing djembe became my passion and it was that 'awakening' that I wanted to share with the world.

But turning that passion into a business comes with its challenges. A part of the focus has become the lifelong journey of how to facilitate, how to engage the groups I work with, and how, above all to make the programs I run relevant, impactful and useful.

And the other part of the focus has everything to do with running a business: legal, budgets, people management, logistics, innovation, feasibility, accounting, marketing, sales…..

And so with all of that there are days when the djembe passion gets lost, and at times almost becomes a burden.

So how do you keep the innovation flowing, and the motivation, passion and energy alive?

Make sure that you have more than one passion – even if they are entirely incompatible!