Omnipreneurship and the Hippiepreneur: A Hippie's Guide to "Success" in the Fortune 500"

By Emile Raymond

For over nine years Emile Raymond served as the right hand man to the first Omnipreneur in history, Amr Al-Dabbagh, author of Omnipreneurship, co-Author of Governpreneurship, Chairman and CEO of Al-Dabbagh Group, former Governor and Chairman of the Board of the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority and Founder of Philanthropy University among other incredible things.

Referred to over the years as the "Governor's Office Guru", the "Corporate Hippie", the "X-Factor", the "Shadow", and eventually the "Hippiepreneur", there's no better resource for aspiring omnipreneurs and their unaspiring hippies than the author of the only resource book that exists, and that has ever existed since the founding of our universe over 13.7 billion years ago.

That's a long time to have waited.

What goes through the mind of a hippiepreneur that makes the role so fundamentally important to an omnipreneur?

To the world of all living creatures?

Guaranteed to change anyone's karmentum, Omnipreneurship and the Hippiepreneur is likely to take readers into a universe of cesium clocks, dying poor Thai men, the military-petrochemical-industrial complex, ants, worms, fluorescent green long-nose-whip snakes, private jets, the world's most celebrated or hated leaders, fascism, imperialism, Buddhism, mental illness, animal agriculture, sugar production, mercenaries, perchloroethylene, genocide, land grabbing and well, we'll see soon enough.

Emile Raymond has taught at universities in more than five countries, and during the last decade.5 of his life met and worked with Fortune 500 Chairmen and CEOs, Kings, Prime Ministers, Ministers, orphans, slaves, abandoned and lost, and learned from them all. Shinzo Abe once said to him, "that's a very good idea," Dr. Dieter Zetsche, "you're fast," Arnold Schwarzeneggar, "get some sleep," Michael Phelps, "thanks," Pra Tawat, "meditate like this, Ajarn Ray," and Taweekesangam, "your life is beautiful."

Emile Raymond now teaches English in Thailand and shares interest in the famous Olive Retreat, www.oliveretreat.com.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Emile Raymond
• Release date: Jun 9, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311256119

Emile Raymond

Emile Raymond is the author of the highly unclaimed novel, Shadowing Thunder. As a former communications professional working at the highest executive level, Raymond has published business articles and interviews in popular magazines and journals, brochures and marketing materials, non-fiction pieces for magazines, and has ghost-written a section of an academic text. Emile has lived and worked in six countries, and while an active communications advisor visited more than forty. With an MA in Anthropology, he began his professional career in academics, teaching branches of Sociology, Anthropology and Psychology, in the USA, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

Book preview

Omnipreneurship and the Hippiepreneur: A Hippie's Guide to Success in the Fortune 500

Emile Raymond

Copyright 2016 by Emile Raymond

Cover Design by Daniel Braha, SOS Media

Edited by Cristina Azcárate and Dan Brooklyn

With contributions from the Entire Universe

Olive Press

Disclaimer1 - This is a work of fiction in the following sense. If our lives can be said to boil down to the observations we make about them, and these observations are often experienced and stored as images (and expressed in words), and if in the standard equation each image is worth 1000 words, and we are recording experience at say, 10 frames per second, then each second of experience is worth 10,000 words, and each minute 600,000, and each hour, 36,000,000.

Now, if on average we speak at approximately 130 wpm, and each hour of experience is worth 36,000,000 words, then each hour of experience would take 276,923 hours to talk about, or 800,000 to write about (given we can type ay 45wpm).

In that sense nothing I say here could possibly be true, if not only because it's millions of words and hundreds of thousands of hours short of satisfying even the most common cliché.

Disclaimer2 - Due to time (and certain other constraints), the following hasn't been reviewed, edited or seen by anyone other than the author (me), so he (I) would be grateful for any suggestions and corrections, and will see that the property authorities (me) incorporate them into any future versions.

Also, should anyone wish to write an introduction, please let me (the author) know. The only slot available is still available.

Oh, and sorry about the 99 cents. It's the cheapest I could make it on Amazon.

Omnipreneurship

and the

Hippiepreneur

BOOK I

The Many Hippiefesto

The Hippiepreneur as Intraprenuer

author's foreword

In his Omnipreneurship: An Organized Approach to Living a Life of Meaning (2016:73-74), the author offers the following description of one of his former staff members.¹

An example was a very colorful American who was working at SAGIA when I joined the agency. When I met him, this fellow was buried in the marketing department of the organization. He was unconventional in every sense. He seemed a little crazy; he always said the last thing you’d expect and saw things very differently than other people. Saudi Arabia is a famously conservative place, and here was a guy—basically a hippie—who didn’t like to wear shoes, had Buddhist leanings (he was actually something of a mystic), and insisted on wearing bolo neckties instead of regular ones. He was the kind of fellow who liked to work in different parts of the world just for the experience of it. He was friendly, smart, and highly emotionally intelligent. But given his idiosyncrasies, people were suspicious of him. What, they wondered, was an American doing working for a Saudi government authority in the first place? Despite his eccentricities, it was clear to me that he was a really creative person with original ideas and a lot of knowledge. I put him in a position where he could use his creativity, his knowledge, and his emotional intelligence, which I leveraged greatly.

- Amr Al-Dabbagh, Omnipreneur

Nearly twelve years have passed since the omnipreneur found me buried in SAGIA's marketing department. It's a long story how I got there, as are all our getting-there stories, but for the record I was less buried than I was just trying to stay out of trouble. A sizable gut feeling told me something remarkable was just around the corner if I could hang low and keep cool, so I did.

That something remarkable was the omnipreneur, who to this day remains one of my most venerated teachers. Should there be any doubt as to my admiration for him, one need only to scan my contact list in any one of its locations, from my recently squished android phone to my mac, to where it's stored in any number of places that don't exist in any world I understand. In scrolling down the list of names, one would find a suspiciously familiar one, Dalai Lamr.

I imagine very little elaboration on that is necessary. No other name seems to invoke such near universal affection as the Dalai Lama's does, even if very few people have any idea of what he represents or whom he is, including the billion or so who wish he'd disappear.

It also more or less summarizes my feelings for Amr, and how much I valued his perspective. Not that we agreed on everything or always meshed, because we didn't, but that I saw in him a source of wisdom and compassion I should defer to, as well as a worldview I would not otherwise have the chance to experience.

His genius in creating the role² for me he did was widely acknowledged by those who understood us, which would be quite a few recognizable brands over the years. During that time I would be given many imaginative names in the attempt to pinpoint what exactly I brought to the organization, including the Governor's Office guru, the x-factor, the shadow, the corporate hippie, the right hand man, and yes, at the same time, the go-to guy. I accepted all of it with a certain sense of satisfaction because in this combination was expressed what I always felt to be true but found difficult to prove: the likelihood of the statistically improbable becoming real, and with extraordinary results.

I also felt genuine support for my values, which though at the time I didn't always recognize as being hippie, I guess in retrospect many were, and I am, kind of.

But not really.

I mean - there's much more to the story. Right?

Isn't there always?

In Governpreneurship, Establishing a Thriving Entrepreneurial Spirit in Government³, co-authored by the omnipreneur in 2012, public sector agencies are urged to adopt what is called the Ping Pong Strategy to counter any press deemed negative. In this activity they should explain their position as clearly as possible.

That's why I'm here, to explain my position, and to go one more - my karmentum - as clearly as possible.

See, beneath the surface of what has been revealed for our benefit is a deeper, more subtle story of connectedness - the thoughts, rationalizations, living creatures and events that combine to form what appears on the surface as a position.

Hippies, at least of my breed, are probers and diggers. We are archaeologists of experience. We can't help but wonder what more detailed and intriguing explanations can be found for what is perceived on the surface to be simple, obvious or true.

It's never so easy as what we perceive.

It's never so easy as surfaces and depths.

Depths are merely surfaces to greater depths, and no depth can be found deeper than another.

What follows on these pages then can be viewed in two ways. One as the clarification I have been advised to give regarding my position, and two as an almost natural consequence of that clarification, the first hippiepreneur's guidebook on the market, written by the first omnipreneur's hippie for the first omnipreneur.

Imagine. This is the first time this has happened in the history of our universe.

And it took only 13.7 billion years.

Wow.

The years I supported the omnipreneur contained some very beautiful and extraordinary moments, and I will be forever indebted to him for the sincerity with which he acknowledged my uniqueness and find value in who I was and what I was able to offer. I'm sure it wasn't always easy, as will become clear throughout these pages!

In addition to the more magical moments those years would convey, it's only natural they would also convey some of the antitheses, and indeed those years contained some of the most painful experiences of my life, for no other reason than that's how life is sometimes. From these I have learned, and have devoted myself to using both the magical and the painful in giving back to the world as the omnipreneur taught me, and with the same sense of obligation and gratitude, or as he himself stated, love.⁴

It is a local belief that whatever God takes away and gives belongs to God, and we are advised to be grateful for the time we were recipients of the giving, and accept with a good heart the taking away (because Allah knows and we don't know. Holy Qur'an, The Cow, 2:216).

I am grateful for the many years I was the omnipreneur's hippie, and for all that it brought to me. I am also grateful for my sweet first wife of twelve years who was one of the many pieces of my life God would take away, and who whenever we did speak in the years following her departure, would always ask me, how's that beautiful Amr?

to Starheart.

OMNIPRENEURSHIP

&

THE HIPPIEPRENEUR

UNITS, NON-STANDARD

00. A HIPPIE MORPHOLOGY OF {OMNIPRENEUR}

01. A VERY COLORFUL AMERICAN

02. UNCONVENTIONAL IN EVERY SENSE

03. HE SEEMED A LITTLE CRAZY

04. ALWAYS SAID THE LAST THING YOU'D EXPECT

05. ALWAYS SAW THINGS VERY DIFFERENTLY THAN OTHER PEOPLE

06. BASICALLY A HIPPIE

07. HE DIDN'T LIKE TO WEAR SHOES

08. HE INSISTED ON WEARING BOLO NECKTIES

09. HE HAD BUDDHIST LEANINGS

10. ACTUALLY SOMETHING OF A MYSTIC

11. THE KIND OF FELLOW WHO LIKED TO WORK IN DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE WORLD JUST FOR THE EXPERIENCE OF IT

12. HE WAS FRIENDLY

13. HE WAS SMART

14. HE WAS HIGHLY EMOTIONALLY INTELLIGENT

15. HIS IDIOSYNCRASIES MADE PEOPLE SUSPICIOUS OF HIM

16. ECCENTRICITIES

17. A REALLY CREATIVE PERSON WITH ORIGINAL IDEAS

18. A LOT OF KNOWLEDGE

19. WHICH I LEVERAGED GREATLY

00

A HIPPIE MORPHOLOGY OF {OMNIPRENEUR}

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when [s/he] contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day.

- Albert Einstein⁵

1

only questions

Hi.

I'm the original omnipreneur's hippie, or more simply, hippiepreneur⁶.

If I were to have been born with any kind of purpose, it was very simple, to question everything, even what I just wrote.

The questions I could ask about what I just wrote, including what I just wrote, and that too, include -

- why did I write it? (as in, what compelled or caused it)

- did I write it? (as in, how do I know I am me)

- how much of what I wrote is figurative or metaphoric?

- is not all language metaphoric, given arbitrariness?

- in using the conditional or counterfactual, am I being redundant?

- what does purpose mean, and is it a marked or unmarked noun?

- is it important to have a purpose?

- does questioning myself imply two of me?

- three of me, if I can observe the process?

- how can anything exist?⁷

Questioning is the only thing I'm really good at, and the only thing I never grow tired of.

It comes natural to me, as natural as hunger and thirst. As natural as laughter or anger. As natural as love and hatred, in spite of having been told I shouldn't feel the latter.

There are many things I feel that I shouldn't, and many things I should that I don't. In these failures to comply with any sense of the conventional is where I excel. Where I also excel is a near total failure to understand myself in any finite way, to choose among the many appearances of me the most enduring one.

Understanding how little we can know about ourselves, and the universe into which we are enfolded (and which is enfolded in us), is the most important understanding we can come to. In this do we become humble with reference to our perspective and that of our species.

It, if nothing else, makes me the hippie.

Has anybody seen me?⁸

2

division and recombination

Having spent so much time questioning the relationship between language, thought, identity and meaning, first as a clumsy student and later as a clumsier pseudo-professional, words nearly always signify the beginning of my journeys, but never the endings. Words are at best maps, and maps, we have been told, are never the territory they represent.⁹

It's always important to keep this in mind.

Even now, as we examine a specific word, we remember the word only guides us to what we are looking for, but is not what we are looking for.

What we are looking for is ourselves.

And we are only ever what we find.

The word omnipreneur is actually three smaller pieces of words joined together to make one long one, and according to a pattern found in its inspiration, the 293-year-old French word entrepreneur.¹⁰

This familiar word would get its first detailed treatment by an Irishman living in France named Richard Cantillon, who in 1755 gave us his famous Essay on the Nature of Trade in General.¹¹

When you divide entrepreneur into pieces it looks like the following, with French above and English below.

FRENCH (entre-)+(-prendre)+(-eur)

ENGLISH (between)+(to take, or grab)+(-er)

The first piece in French, entre- is a Latin prefix meaning between.

The second piece in French, -prendre is an irregular French verb meaning to take, or grab.

The third piece in French, -eur, is a suffix used to turn an action into the person who does it, just as -er added to seek gives us seeker,

And -er added to paint gives us painter,

To consume, consumer,

To conquer, conqueror (we write it with -or),

To give, giver (here we just need the -r),

To love, lover,

To make new words from pieces of words is quite normal, and that's how we begin to make entrepreneur, by joining -entre- to -prendre to get entreprendre, or - to take between.

This is where I first thought Cantillon might be going with the word entrepreneur when I began considering it. His Essay can be read in English online for free.¹²,¹³

See, in those days - during the reign of Louis XV -Cantillon was writing about a class of people who were taking things between places, like from the country to the city, and often adding value to them during the interval. This is how they earned an income during a period of economic growth in France that would slowly lead to a period of economic crisis, and not too long after, the abolition of the French monarchy, or dictatorship as I