I had a discussion with a self-proclaimed business guru awhile ago who told me that no one in the IM world would find interest in philosophy; indeed that trying to market philosophy would not, could not succeed.
I’ve had a long, long time to consider and evaluate what he told me.
I had breakfast with a new friend, a senior partner at Trizenter.com, Steven Krempl. He reminded me that when Howard Schultz founded Starbucks, the conventional wisdom proclaimed that no one could make money selling high-end coffee. Yet look at Starbucks today.
When Jeff Bezos founded Amazon.com lots of people (including, I must admit, me) roundly scoffed at the idea on the basis that it couldn’t turn a profit for years and believed that the investors foolishly threw away their money. How Bezos and those who blazed the trail with him proved all of us doubters wrong!
So the lesson learned…
If you have a vision, if you have a passion, don’t let anyone – even a guru – tell you that your idea sucks. If Schultz and Bezos had done that, if they had listened to those who needed to be educated into the vision instead of doing the necessary education and persuasion, some pretty important dreams would never have come to fruition.
I have a vision.
I have a vision of doing what W.C. Fields said one should never do: smarten up a chump.
I’ve been a chump as recently as last month. :) I’m not saying how; let’s just say I was Tom Sawyered really good. Won’t ever happen again.
I did not enjoy it, and if I can save people from getting chumped by predators, then that’s what I want to do (among other things).
I have a vision.
I have a vision of exploring the psycho-logics and the deep structuring of human participation as it relates to marketing and sales.
Why do we respond to adwords? Why do we go after cheap so-called silver bullet solutions that, if we thought about it for half a minute, we’d never pursue? Why do we feast on others foibles in order to make a buck? Is that really what we are about?
I don’t think so; and if you’ve gotten this far in this message, I suspect you don’t think so either.
I think we can do better than that; and make a ton of money in the process.
I have a vision.
I have a vision of exploring what I call the 21st Century Dream. At first I called it the 21st Century American Dream, but I think that’s too provincial. The fact is that the internet levels playing fields in huge swaths of the world, even in places I’d never have thought, like Iran and China; in South Africa and Pakistan.
This 21st Century Dream has evolved from the older 20th Century American Dream. That older dream was, and still is, uniquely American. In the next entry, I’m going to tell you about the new 21st Century Dream that I believe huge numbers of us hold; though many hold it unconsciously while consciously believing that they are stuck with the old ways.
I hold to the vision that the path out of the old is through intentional migration to the new.
There may be more, but that’s what I begin with.
I have a vision.
I envision all of us winning through spirited competition that honors the human spirit, enjoys competing, and values what Maslow called the “B-needs” even more. I don’t agree with those who think and act like we’re playing a zero-sum game. Almost all of civilization gives testimony to the opposite. We see that tides can lift all boats. And I see that technology forms this tide and that the human spirit pushes evolution from behind and calls to it from the future.
May my vision be so.
Yours in success,
Bal Simon
