Being Geek Chic is a blog about one woman navigating the male-dominated industries of production and tech. It's written by Elizabeth Giorgi, Founder, CEO and Director of Mighteor - one of the world's first internet video production companies. Learn more about Mighteor here.
My first business was a blueberry stand. While my friends and I had tried countless times to run successful weekend campaigns for lemonade stands, I noticed that the revenue on those operations were abysmal from the beginning. Instead, I focused on picking blueberries at my grandparent’s place with my dad. My brother and I would sell a cup of blueberries for $2 on our corner on 10th Street South. And the first weekend we did it, we made $48. Not bad for a couple of kids.
It should be no surprise to anyone then when in the 6th grade, I asked my mom if I could be businesswoman for Halloween. She let me borrow one of her only suits. And I traded the traditional plastic pumpkin for a briefcase for the occasion. I had no idea what businesswomen did all day, but I felt completely comfortable in that costume.
Despite all these signs, I had no idea I wanted to go into business when I started looking at colleges. I focused entirely on writing and journalism programs, because deep down, writing has always been my first calling. Or maybe it was my first medicine. I wrote when I was sad. I wrote when I was happy. I wrote when I fell in love. I wrote when I got my heart broken. I wrote to process my feelings. And I wrote to make myself feel safe.
Writing felt like this deep passion. I couldn’t help but believe that when people say: “turn your passion into your career and you’ll never work a day in your life” - that they were speaking to me. That’s the funny thing about platitudes. They apply until they don’t.
After finishing my journalism program and attempting to use my skills at the keyboard for good and a paycheck, I quickly burnt out on the constant screen time. I felt a constant longing to get out of my cubicle and into the world. I still remember turning to the cube next to me where our cameraman Justin worked and asking him to please, please let me go out on a shoot with him. He obliged. And today I’m so grateful. Having the intuition to ask for an opportunity opened the doors to what I wanted to do for the rest of my career.
Even after you find something to do with your career, it’s no guarantee that you actually know yourself. It turns out that knowing yourself is a process. The interior of the mind like a snow globe, constantly changing as new flakes and glitter distort the picture of life, the future and perception. Even now, I’m aware that my interior world is changing and evolving by the minute.
But that costume. Those blueberries. They were like veiled insights into who I am and who I was going to become that I had’t seen yet. And when the longing towards entrepreneurship initially took hold in my mind, I wasn’t even sure that it was the right decision. It took two years of studying my mentors who owned their own businesses for me to find the bravery to step into forming my own business.
I think about those blueberries far more often than I care to admit. Partially because wild blueberries in Minnesota are a rare, rare delight - nothing like what you buy in the plastic pints at the store. But more often because I wonder what things are taking hold in my own life now that I may not be noticing, serving as waving flags towards a future I have yet to imagine for myself.
Too many times, I have heard myself say to others: “what is the world putting in front of you that you can take advantage of if you’re just brave enough to try?” while knowing full well that I was scheming and plotting inside my mind to try and plan the perfect thing. Trying not to just jump into the thing in front of me, but rather, have a plan A, B, C and D.
There is no planning blueberries. Blueberries just happen.
