All the World's a Stage

My early days in Theatre, which I pursued as a hobby, were formative in many aspects to my entrepreneurial days. In this post I explain why.

Not long after landing in Breach Candy at the age of sixteen, I took a liking to theatre, or should I say Theatre took a liking to me.

I started Lazer Productions, a theatre-production company, as a hobby. It turned out to be profitable enough to fund all my dates and gave me confidence at a young age. We did some magnificent theatre along the way and made lifelong friends. The productions that stand out for me even today are Ayn Rand’s Night of January 16th, Mark Medoff’s Children of a Lesser God, and the musical The Wiz. In fact, on the eve of the opening night of The Wiz, my daughter Trishya was born. I went back-and-forth between the hospital and the theatre for the first two days. For her whole first year, Trishya was nicknamed ‘The Wiz baby’!

Theatre taught me skills that proved to be especially useful later, in television and other creative endeavours. But most of all, theatre strengthened my communicative muscles and gave me tonnes of self-confidence. Few things are as vital for an entrepreneur as confident communication and the ability to stay calm and collected in front of a crowd. As I reflect on the lessons I learnt during those early days in theatre, Shakespeare’s As You Like It echoes in my mind:

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts…

These lines, and the images they conjure, perfectly capture the essence of entrepreneurship. In business, you’ll go through many stages and play many roles. But notice that first line: ‘All the world’s a stage’. No matter what you do or where you go, you must create opportunities to communicate in impactful ways.

Communication for entrepreneurs involves much more than elocution. Communication is a form of currency. And how you choose to use it—the speed at which you understand things, your clarity of thought, and your ability to deliver a strong message, so the audience has no doubt who is leading the show—can boost or burn your business.

This is an extract from my book Dream With Your Eyes Open, from a chapter called "All the World's a Stage"

[Dream With Your Eyes Open is the story of my entrepreneurial journey. To pre-order your copy, head to http://www.dreamwithyoureyesopen.org/buy-book/ ]