The Have's And The Have Not's: Two Perspectives Of Business Reality

By: Jim Hart
Submitted: 2007-01-17 16:41:01
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I was thinking the other day about the credentials of business executives behind many of the websites on the net—amazingly educated people who are graduates of Harvard, Yale, MIT with MBA’s, JD’s, PHD’s and advanced engineering degrees. I am an educated person, as I am sure you are, but who has the time and money to get this level of education to compete with these people? You know, the executives who sit on the boards of companies like IBM…

Then I started thinking … where do these intellectuals come from? The answer is pretty simple; these people, for the most part, come from elite families that could afford to send them to Ivy league colleges, with all their expenses paid so they could focus on studying to get these advanced degrees without worrying about money, housing, etc. Then, when they graduate, they are recruited into elite corporations, who have massive capital to work with, say for example, in the “advertising department” of PepsiCo with billion dollar budgets to play with.

Now this tends to depress me a little—it all seems rather unfair. Most of these intellectuals are born into elite families, go to elite schools and get elite jobs—a ready-made path to success. Good for them…not so good for me and people like me I thought…you know, people who are born into humble families with little or no financial capital, who have to struggle to get through college, who only can afford the associate degree and not an “MBA from Harvard”.

And I, like many other people, am an under-funded entrepreneur who has an annual advertising budget about as big as what the elite boys and girls spend on a small lunch. And that can bring me down if I dwell on it….

Then I got to thinking some more and came to this conclusion: If Harvard and Yale And MIT are so great in educating people for success, how come they all don’t go out and start their own businesses from scratch like most poor entrepreneurs? You know, the people big on dreams and small on money. Then it hit me! These educated people are not taught HOW to create success, they are taught HOW to manage someone else’s success! Many of the businesses they work for were built by under-capitalized, entrepreneurs who preceded them—you know, the poor, uneducated person who was big on dreams and small on money…

After a little more pondering I wondered how many of these elite people who have never known money problems, with great degrees and jobs with unlimited operating budgets could start a business with less than a $1000.00? I doubt they could wrap their mind or hands around a concept like that… because we are talking about two different realities, two different planes of thought…

So the next time you are banging your brains out trying to figure out the market, building a website, trying to make a sale on a shoe-string advertising budget in a world full or deep-pocketed corporate elitists keep in mind that theses people probably could not do what you do. They don’t know how—Harvard didn’t teach them how to create something from nothing on a chicken scratch budget.

So the next time you get depressed because sales are slow and costs are high, when you are working hard and getting no reward, when everything is a struggle—go one step further. Keep the faith. You are doing something they don’t teach you in fancy colleges—you are doing what entrepreneurs do: dreaming, doing, learning and growing and hopefully it will pay off in the future. There is a difference though. When you are old and gray, instead of saying, “IF I would have tried I could have made a million bucks” you will be able to say one of two things: “I tried and it was a bitch out there” OR “I tried and I made it.” In either case, when you are on your rocking chair in your latter days, you will NEVER have to wonder what might have happened IF you would have tried.

Thanks for reading!
Copyright © 2006
James W. Hart, IV
All Rights reserved

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