Word Spy - soul proprietor

soul proprietor

(SOHL pruh.pry.uh.tur) n. A businessperson or entrepreneur who balances work with emotional and spiritual growth.
—soul proprietorship n.

Example Citation:

He says coaching reflects an accommodation of sorts between baby boomers' 1960s pursuit of personal knowledge and their 1990s pursuit of personal wealth. Bringing those urges into alignment is the secret. "If every part of your life is working in balance, you will be more successful," he says. Another executive coach I met, Wendy Wallbridge of San Francisco, coaches businesspeople to become what she calls "soul proprietors."
—Daniel Pink, Free Agent Nation, Warner Books, 2001

Earliest Citation:

In a copyrighted essay titled "Soul Proprietors," Mahon talks about the "four Ps."

— Pausing: Time to reflect and pull away from the constant barrage of marketing-oriented messages.

— (A)ppreciating: "We have become very good in the age of science and technology at knowing things, but we're not really very wise at making connections anymore."

— Praying: "Absent the ability to modify or walk away from or transform one's stressful workplace, the best way to survive today is to learn some relaxation technique and practice it toward mastery."

— Participating: "Is it entirely appropriate to sink so much engineering skills into developing seventh- and eighth-generation microprocessors when 70 to 80 percent of the world's people have an immediate need simply for clean drinking water?" —Robert Bellinger, "EEs contemplate stress in classes at archdiocese's center," Electronic Engineering Times, March 2, 1998

Also:

Sunset Hill, with just over 100 graves, is the first Ohio college cemetery to be registered with the state under a law recently enacted to provide a statewide listing of graveyards...The task of filling out Denison's registration forms fell to Debra Stickley, financial services manager. The problem was determining how to categorize the cemetery's ownership, she said.

''We couldn't figure out how to classify it. We aren't a corporation, and it isn't owned by a family or one person,'' Stickley said.

She and the Commerce Department settled on the designation of ''sole proprietorship.'' However, the registration certificate issued June 7 classified the school as ''soul'' proprietor.
—Donna Glenn, "Cemetery shows Denison's history," The Columbus Dispatch, July 17, 1993

Notes:

The other day a junk fax wormed its way through my fax program's filters. Normally I delete these scourges with extreme prejudice, not wanting to give the purveyor of such tele-trash the satisfaction of his message reaching my eyeballs. But just as I was reaching for the Delete key, I spied (because, you know, that's what I do here) something unusual in the fax's text. In a bulleted list of people for whom this product (it turned out to be group health insurance) would be suitable, I saw "Professionals," "Employees On Contracts," and "Soul Proprietors."

Hunh? Upon further examination of the despised fax, I concluded this was nothing but a homophonic typo that should have read "Sole Proprietors." But I knew I'd seen the phrase soul proprietor somewhere before. It took but a few minutes of brain-wracking to remember that Daniel Pink had used it in Free Agent Nation (see the example citation, above), a book that's a new-word researcher's dream. Soul proprietor has also made quite a few media appearances this year, mostly because of a book with that title, which was published last year by Jane Pollak.

Categories:

Employees
Entrepreneurs
Jobs and Job Titles
Religion
Slowing Down
People

Posted on October 11, 2002