“This story is for all the entrepreneurs who have read all the business advice and followed it for years, maybe even decades, like the book’s heroine, and feel they might be on the cusp of reaching the goal of financial freedom but have yet to arrive. The last climb is known to be the hardest, and this book is here to encourage you to make it.”
One great mind follows the story of Alice, who everyone calls Ali for short. Ali grew up in Berlin in times of major upheaval and anarchic conditions, where space was available, and people went to pursue their own creative endeavors amid a big dark hole of missing opportunities. For Ali, it led her to start businesses right after school to try and build for herself. In her thirties, with all the work she'd put in and the global operations she established for herself in pursuit of freeing herself from the economic downfalls of local places as she experienced with Berlin, she found herself in a place that grew from high unemployment to establishment fast.
Yet she was established only by image as a hard-working businesswoman, not reflected in her bank account. In her mid-thirties, she started all over again and moved to Athens. The Greeks had just survived a ten-year-long financial crisis and still lived in austerity. Here, she found the same opportunities of ample space for creativity again. She started to thrive for a while, with lower living costs and freedom of mind without the harsh regulations Germany provides.
The story starts when she's facing her forties, approaching fast. With her youth slipping away, she makes a pact with herself to go all in and give everything she can to become a self-made woman, as this was the only experience she wanted to live in life. She took on a significant investment that would force her to level up, only to find herself in a sudden stop of business, a major global recession, and artificial intelligence taking over. As Ali retreats to her human creativity, she reaches her goal.
Melanie Marten: “One great mind is a story I wrote as an experiment of narrative nonfiction with fictional elements for the business category. It draws from my business and very intimate personal life experiences to create a parallel, fictional universe.”
About the author
Melanie Marten is the founder of The Coup, a boutique public relations firm operating out of Europe for global campaigns since 2010. She is the founder of the growth hacking network 'PR on the Go', and the founder of The Athletic Coup, a film festival dedicated to amateur athletes and niche sports.
More about the book One great mind at https://pronthego.com/pages/book-one-great-mind.
