Something to Ponder

by James Fowler
http://www.mywebsource1.com/

I grew up in what is now known as the Rust Belt of America. The corpses of long-forgotten factories lie in ruins along streets that can no longer be maintained. Yet, somewhere amongst the ghosts of the Industrial Revolution, small business thrives. Time is almost reversing and people are making their livelihoods in local shops and home offices where they promote their skills rather than follow direction from big business management.

But, how do we get an entrepreneurial spirit? It isn’t like we were given this roadmap to look outside the box and do things on our own. Actually, it has been just the opposite. We are taught that there is structure in everything and it is our job to follow that structure. It is trained within our makeup to follow the establishment.

When you are young, we are told to listen to our parents. Meals are a set schedule, we are given orders to clean our rooms and take out the garbage, we go to bed at a certain time, and do what we are told by the management, i.e. our parents.

Next, we go to school and it is more of the establishment. The teacher puts you in a class, sits you in an assigned seat, and you study what the teacher instructs you to learn. In actuality, it isn’t even learning, it is memorization and regurgitation. If you do wrong, you are punished. If you do something right, you are rewarded with a foil star.

Finally, we graduate from high school and/or college, we go out to find a job and we are expected to be leaders – but we’ve never been trained to think on our own. We are still looking for direction.

So how does a person become a leader? How do these small business owners get the nerve to stand up against what we’ve all been trained to embrace?

Question: What made you decide to go into business for yourself?