I am inspired by organic companies that take the integrity road. That’s how I see myself and the people I work with. Seeds sprouting in concrete. Art on the side of the super-highway. Kindness. Persistence. Purpose.

I get annoyed with “grassroots campaigns”. It suggests taking something real and turning it into McDonald’s. Add x + y, and you get z. But there’s something reassuring there, too. Corporate wants what we have. Loyalty. It’s valuable. Loyalty and love. You just can’t buy ‘em.

Sometimes I struggle with being real. I wonder what that means as a professional and as a person. As my business grows, I have to know that staying small isn’t the only way to be grassroots. You can be one person and still be a greed-monster. You can have 10,000 employees and be serving a purpose higher than Self.

But often, the relationship between the size of the company and the level of “real” is inversely proportional (somebody correct me on that if I’m saying that wrong, but you know what I mean). More often than not, as a company grows they get disconnected from their grassroots…roots. I don’t want that to happen to me.

How I’ll know if I’m catching the corporate creep

It’s always easier to see how other people are inauthentic, so I’ve collecting examples to steer me around if I’m ever off-track. (These aren’t going to hold true for everybody.)

• Using corporate lingo or tech-y lingo to cover up the fact that I don’t know what I’m talking about.
• Talking about how busy I am and how everybody is dying for what I offer just so that I’ll get busy and people will be dying for what I offer.
• Trying to convince someone to buy, even if I know the product or service isn’t a good fit for them.
• Cutting back by eliminating air conditioning for my employees (yes…there are companies who are doing this. Insane.)
• Hiring people who don’t have soul when they’re working. Also, hiring people who think that if only they didn’t have to work, life would be great. (I guess we all sorta believe this, but purposeful, soul-filled work is natural and fulfilling.)
• Becoming like the parents in Coraline (I was watching it the whole time thinking, “Is that me? Please God…let that not be me!”).
• My right eye might start twitching. (Ummm…)

Okay, not the eye twitching thing. My eye has been twitching for five days now, and I remind myself of The Grinch or some other evil mastermind. I really should make a YouTube video of it, but I don’t know if I want to become known for that.

So what are your boundaries? How will you know if you’ve gone too far, gotten too big for your britches? (Yes, I said britches. Thank you grandma.)