On a plane home from Sydney (more on that to come) this weekend, I pulled out my trusty Moleskine and flipped through to land on a page of notes that I took when I spent time with Rob Morris. If you're a regular reader of the blog, you'll know that Rob is one of the founders of an organization near and near to our hearts here at Brains on Fire: Love146.
Rob is inspirational when he speaks to large crowds or when you have dinner one-on-one, but the note that caught my eye was this: "Will influencers give you sweat equity? No. But the PASSIONATE ones will."
That's gold, baby. And so freakin' true.
It might seem like we're hammering that issue home here at Brains on Fire. And you're darn tootin' we are.
Look, influencers are great. And often times we include them in the Participation and Insight portions of our movement-building projects. But how likely are they to bend over backwards to help, well, anyone except their immediate circle who keeps them influential? Not very. But the passionate folks, the ones that aren't afraid to roll up their sleeves and be a part of something bigger than themselves - they are happy to contribute sweat equity. Because sweat equity goes far, far beyond you tweeting or blogging about something. Sweat equity is a personal sacrifice. When you give you sweat equity, you give your loyalty. Your time. Your effort.
And I'll take 100 passionates who contribute that sweat equity just because they care as opposed to 1000 influentials who post a tweet and never think about it again.