A modern-day Epictetus, an Australian Seth Godin; entrepreneur and animateur Michael Doneman expounds wisdom with the calm and humility of a worldly sage – one who has come face to face with death and decided to turn in the other direction. It is this innate talent that has allowed him to lovingly craft his business, Edgeware Creative Entrepreneurship, where for the past three years he has provided a training ground for other entrepreneurs to develop their businesses creatively, equitably and ethically. Or put simply in his own terms, there’s a new wave happening in world, and he’s just helping people build surfboards to ride it.Michael’s first taste of teaching came when he began his career as a high-school performing-arts teacher in Caloundra. But he soon became disillusioned with the lack of connection that education was making with the kids, and in the late 1980s he seized an invitation to help resurrect the La Boite Youth Theatre. Several theatre projects involving indigenous youth soon followed, sparking Michael’s passion for working with indigenous communities.
What Michael learned from working with these communities was that, as soon as government projects or support ceased in the region, the people’s survival and future would be in danger. This inspired him to create a kind of entrepreneurship education for such communities, an initiative that he then applied to the general business community. Inspired by Denmark’s KaosPilots business school, which he describes as “playful and ethical business practice”, Michael aimed to do something similar in Brisbane – to create a new kind of entrepreneurship education. He was soon offered a position as a senior research fellow at QUT in the area of Intellectual Property and Innovation, where he stayed from 2001–2005.
The turning point for Michael came four years ago at age 50, when an encounter with bowel cancer left him flirting with death. Spending two months in a hyper-hygienic hospital room, dosed up on morphine for much of the time, Michael’s relationship with life was turned on its head. “Since then I’ve had this real commitment to the moment,” Michael reveals. “It sharpens your senses when you almost die. I remember when I finally came home from those two months in hospital, and walked through our house and onto the verandah – I just wept from the sheer beauty of what surrounded me. And I thought to myself, ‘I don’t want to lose this. This is what being alive is about’.”
It soon became clear that the life he had been living had been swept up in unnecessary trivialities. “I realised a lot of stuff wasn’t important,” he reveals sheepishly. “A lot of status games – like trying to win all the time, or trying to prove that my opinion is somehow better than yours, or trying to mark what I’ve achieved in material terms. I realised that it was more important than ever to take things lightly and not get too serious about things. Laughter is life affirming and if you laugh, you know you’re alive. Not taking yourself too seriously is a good way of avoiding those status traps. I think anyone who has been through a similar near-death experience would say the same thing – that the material things aren’t important, but relationships, love, laughter, humour and compassion are all very important. The trick is in maintaining that sense of awe and the sense of the miraculous in the everyday – how unlikely it is that we even exist.”
Redefining his priorities in life, Michael reaffirmed that Edgeware, which was still in its infancy at that stage, was his purpose. “Edgeware is like a dating agency for entrepreneurs, both professionally and personally!” he laughs playfully. “A friend of mine who’s an organisational psychologist says that Edgeware exists to validate weirdos – based on a theory he has that about 15–20% of the population is weird. If you’re one of that 15% of society that entrepreneurs fit into, you don’t necessarily meet people like yourself very often. Edgeware has become a place where you can meet people who are cool on your terms.”
Based around the motto ‘make money, have fun, change the world’, Edgeware provides a training ground for entrepreneurs who value creativity and ethics in business, as well as the community to interact with other people of a similar mindset. “The question I ask all of the people who do the Edgeware workshops and courses is: if money weren’t an issue, would you still be doing what you’re doing now?” To his delight, the response from most of his students is a resounding ‘yes’. And when posed the same question, Michael can answer with similar confidence. “I love what I do,” he enthuses. “And to be around people who can answer that question positively, really inspires me.”
Michael admits that one of his greatest challenges in the past has been trying to define exactly what it is he does, and while now he is loath to label his role, he reveals his fallback definition. “I’m an educator, entrepreneur and animateur,” he reveals. “An animateur is someone who animates nascent potential in people with a sense of spirit.”
The ‘people’ he refers to are the close to 300 budding entrepreneurs he has helped equip with the right knowledge to pursue their goals. “One of the things we can be absolutely sure about in the world is change – adapting to change becomes an important part of getting through our everyday lives. I think entrepreneurs are part of a group of people who are social outriders. They’re there to push the boundaries – to push the edges. That’s where the concept for the name Edgeware came about. It’s the notion that, particularly in a knowledge economy, innovation propagates from the edges to the centre. That is, it’s only those of us on the edge who have an interest in change. Those who are in the centre have an interest in keeping things the same.”
While Michael’s teaching approach changes depending on the needs and aspirations of his students, he describes the Edgeware training process as a means of equipping ‘edgies’ (as he so fondly refers to Edgeware alumni) with a series of tools that they can use to assist in building their business. One tool in particular that he emphasises as being essential, is good business ethics. “The good example for me is practising generosity,” he expounds. “If I’m running a business I can be very tight about the way I run the business, or I can be very open-hearted and generous. Generosity is very easily cultivated and it generates enormous goodwill. One great thing about generosity is that it makes you a better businessperson, because in order to give you something, I need to put myself in your shoes for a moment to think about what you really want. The other great thing about generosity is that in order to put myself in your shoes, I need to put aside my own petty anxieties for a moment.”
Michael’s generous and humble spirit shines through as he speaks with genuine pride about the accomplishments of his students. “I learn things from my students all the time,” he remarks enthusiastically. “It is said that if the student has not surpassed the teacher, then the teacher has failed. That’s a humbling reality check, because if you’re quite a clever person, your teaching can become a platform for your own self-aggrandisement. If my purpose as a teacher or mentor is to get my student to run circles around me, and I can take genuine pride in that, it will humble me.”
His pride palpable, revelling in the success of his students is undoubtedly one of Michael’s greatest achievements. “I can point to companies and individuals who are doing very well on material terms, but it’s not just about that,” he clarifies. “By now I’ve worked with close to 300 people starting new businesses. And of those, more than half would still be in business. The feedback from them is almost universally positive and that is enormously heartening to me. I think the fact that I’ve survived for three years doing something that I’m absolutely passionate about and love doing is the greatest achievement for me. I love my job and I get up every morning looking forward to going to work. What a rare gift that is!”
Looking forward, Michael’s dream now is to create an entrepreneurial haven with a cafe or bar attached, where like-minded individuals who share that penchant for ‘weirdness’ and pushing the edges can meet, socialise and network. But while he searches for the perfect partner for such an endeavour, Michael is content simply to live in the moment. “Find the joy in what you want to do,” he advises sagely. “I am convinced that the world is a good place and is full of opportunities to experience joy. If you’re lucky enough to be able to do that often then it will have a ripple effect through everything else, from your relationships to your business. Even in the most awful situations there’s an opportunity to find joy.”
Interview by Mikki Brammer
Photography by Adam Sebastian West
