Raising Entrepreneurs – Thinking Outside the Box

Last night I had the privilege of presenting new material on Entrepreneurial Thinking to a group of fathers and young men (mostly college age). I thought it might be helpful to post a few comments to keep the learning process going:

1. Andrew Carnegie (in the early 1900s) wrote: Capitalists need compliant workers…willing to work for less than the value their productivity creates – this is profit….The answer to worker unrest is to build an educational industry designed to teach workers just enough to get them to cooperate. My comment – don’t accept average…don’t give into this kind of thinking. Get out of the box and do something great today.

2. In 1908 Publisher Henry Holt said, “There is too much enterprise, excessive overproduction of brains is the root cause…we must emasculate man’s entrepreneurial energy.” My comment; Don’t let this happen! Let someone else lose their ambition, but don’t you do it.

3. I meet people all the time who are wondering what they want to be when they “Grow Up”. Many of these people are well established in business, in their 50s, yet, and unfulfilled. Why? Don’t just go with the flow, sit down and think, how do I want to spend my life and what is my fulfilling purpose going to be? This is especially true for young people just entering or leaving college. Don’t just go to class, build a resume, and look for a job. Consider what great things are out there to do, then set about doing it.

4. Seth Godin Wrote, in his recent book, Linchpin; “Unskilled people are interchangeable – we’ve been culturally brainwashed.” He’s right you know.

5. We are too risk adverse! Our training has taught us never to try anything that isn’t already proven to succeed. We learned this from our teachers who insisted on us doing things a certain way; their way. The alternative was an “F” – failure. Entrepreneurs don’t think that way. Innovation is key – start being creative simply by creating. Assume most of your ideas will not be good, so set them aside and come up with new ones.