By Brandon Shoemaker

When I hear the word “business,” my first thought is: “none of mine!” That is to say, business is none of my business.

I’m not exactly what you might consider a money-minded fellow. While I imagine that most people’s checking and savings account balances all graphed out look like gently rising slopes—as one might imagine snow-covered, ascending in a chairlift—my bank accounts more closely resemble the rise and fall of the stock market on a bad day: lots of jagged lines, with peaks and valleys. If it were the graph of an echocardiogram, a doctor would have me wheeled into the cath lab faster than I could spend a hundred bucks on Amazon.

When I was a teenager, struggling with the daunting task of planning my entire future at the ripe old age of 18, my father suggested that I should major in business. I stared at him with a blank expression and said (blink blink), “Seriously?”

He said, “With a business degree, you can do anything.”

Now, I loved my dad dearly, but he and I were very different people. He was—what you would call it—oh gosh, how can I describe it without sounding offensive? Okay, I’ll just come out with it: he was a math person.

I, on the other hand, was and am a creative in every sense of the word. In school, and even in college, I went into every math class with the same mentality: I’m going to make a C, so just skip the suspense, give me my C, and let’s call it a day and move on with our lives. And, in fact, I did indeed make a C in every math class I ever took, except for my senior year of high school, when I took pre-calculus.

“Why,” you might ask, “would a self-proclaimed non-math person ever take pre-calculus?” Only by force! We were required to take a math class all four years in high school, and by my senior year, that was the only option available to me. Yet somehow, miraculously—for it is only through divine intervention that this could have been possible—I made a B. I give all the credit (other than the aforementioned credit given to the Almighty) to my exceptional teacher, who, though she certainly was a math person, understood the perspective of non-math persons. She helped me understand mathematical concepts in non-mathematical ways that finally made sense to me.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t take her and put her in my pocket and carry her through every instance in my life that I’ve needed math. So, my stint of mathematics success was limited to that one course, one year before I went off to college.

Since I didn’t take my father’s advice and major in business, I opted for the o’-so-lucrative field of education. And now, I teach high school theatre.

One could argue that I, from my position of gainfully employed poverty, now teach teenagers to pursue their dreams of acting—a career path famous for its financial stability and robust retirement plans!

I say all of this to illustrate why—and just how much—I admire business owners. It takes a lot of guts to invest in a venture driven by passion that may or may not succeed. Actually, when you think about it, starting a business and pursuing the arts aren’t all that different.

A business owner looks at an empty storefront and says, “I believe people will come here and buy what I’m selling.” An actor looks at a script and says, “I believe someone will eventually pay me to pretend to be a 17th-century Danish prince.” Both statements, if spoken out loud at Thanksgiving dinner, will cause at least one relative to quietly ask about your backup plan. But the truth is, every thriving community needs both kinds of dreamers.

We need the people who understand balance sheets and supply chains and interest rates, people who can turn an idea into a storefront, a company, or a job for someone else. And we also need the people who take stories, music, theatre, and art and bring them to life—because after a long day of running those businesses, folks need to be reminded why life is worth all that effort in the first place.

So while I may never understand how to read a P&L sheet or manage my investment portfolio (Ha! As if I actually have one of those!), I do understand passion. I see it every day in my students when they step on stage and take a risk in front of an audience. And I suspect it’s that same spark that drives someone to open a bakery, a boutique, or a coffee shop.

Different dreams, perhaps, but the same courage.

Brandon with his students from The Shoe Box. submitted photo

If you ever need proof of that, you’re welcome to come visit my classroom—affectionately known by generations of students as “The Shoe Box.” It may not be an entrepreneurial business venture, but it runs almost entirely on the same currency: big dreams, blind optimism, and just enough faith that things might work out in the end.

Brandon Shoemaker is the director of theatre at Texas High School, where he spends his days bringing stories to life onstage and his nights overthinking them on paper. He is also the co-host of From Art to Atoms: The Ultimate Curiosity Show, a podcast that explores everything from pop culture to science, with equal parts insight and curiosity. When he’s not directing productions or chasing deadlines, he’s likely tending to a creative project from woodworking to bonsai styling, or falling down a pop culture rabbit hole. With a deep love for humor, nostalgia, and the beautifully absurd parts of everyday life, he blends wit with heart to find meaning in the mundane.

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