That Delicious Poison called : “Entrepreneurship”

by S.Ram Kumar May 06, 2021 7 min read

Music to read this article by:

BTOverdrive – Taking care of business - https://bit.ly/3u3jab3
Pink Floyd – Money - https://bit.ly/2PBpc3
Any Gangsta Rap choose your 'poison' :

Wu-Tang Clan - “C.R.E.A.M.”, Gang Starr - “All For Tha Ca$h”, Kendrick Lamar - “Money Trees” [ft. Jay Rock], Gangsta Boo - “Where Dem Dollas At?” [ft. DJ Paul and Juicy J], Eric B. & Rakim - “Paid in Full”, Boogie Down Productions - “Love’s Gonna Get’cha (Material Love)”, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony - “Foe Tha Love of $”, Junior M.A.F.I.A. - “Get Money” [ft. Notorious B.I.G.], Lil Wayne - “Money on My Mind”, Playboi Carti - “Broke Boi”

This article is target-audience-neutral. You could be an entrepreneur, self-employed, retired, manager in a firm…….or whatever. And I write this with the deep convictions that I have built up as an employee, B-school Professor, an entrepreneur and a fascinated observer and researcher.

Executive Summary

There is a huge gray scale between being an Employee and Entrepreneurship. It is NOT binary.
Entrepreneurship is not all that it is cracked up to be
Entrepreneurship is not hereditary
Scaling up saps the soul
Most entrepreneurs aren't quite sure why they are or want to be
Entrepreneurship is a personal journey, it can neither be taught nor learned.
The “Informal, Unorganized or Marginal “ sector – is your best bet
Whether ventures succeed or fail, “Shovel makers & Sellers” succeed for sure.

Gigged as LuckFogic Dispatch Live

Unabridged Version

Prologue : “Dip the apple in the brew. Let the Sleeping Death seep through. Look! On the skin! The symbol of what lies within. Now, turn red, to tempt Snow White, to make her hunger for a bite.”

-The Queen/Witch, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”

The apple represents wisdom, knowledge and all that is magic. Whoever eats the apple will go into a sleeping death and can be woken up only by love’s first kiss.

Apple = Entrepreneurship Love’s First Kiss = Successful IPO.

QED

The gray-scale between Employee and Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship is the creation and extraction of value. It can be commercial, social, religious, aesthetic, at home, in sports, science...go on… Examples include King Sejong-Language, Dr. Martin Luther King – Civil Rights, Jackson Pollock – Art, Virginia Apgar – Obstetrics and the Hu-Mongol Rock.

The Grayscale is Job-Manager, Self-Employed, Nano-Micro-Small-Medium Businesses and Large Scale Businesses. The entrepreneur can be ANYWHERE here.

It can be along a multitude of vector families: Type of ownership(corporation, proprietorship…), activity (distribution, manufacturing, assembly), geography(local to global), market(left-handers, fee solo climbers, gun enthusiasts..)...virtually endless….

Entreprendre – French & Enterprise- English are the roots.

The colloquial understanding of an Entrepreneur as an exceptionally rich person with unlimited power and vast resources is as reliable as any other word/concept that media, the general public, institutions and complicit academia have subverted.

Entrepreneurship is not all that it is cracked up to be

It is NOT an improvement on a job, for Entrepreneurs:

Have dozens of ultra-critical bosses: CA, Banker, Investors, Press, Board Members, CUSTOMERS...who regularly have to be appease

Cannot leave the job and choose another

24X7X365Xlife…...no 6.00 pm break and no leave. Work-life balance, haha. Go play advisor-advisor and lemme work.

Complete and merciless exposure to sure risks and uncertain profits.

At the mercy of pesky employees with endless egos and demands.

It is like being a parent: no job description, no pay, no promotion, no relief in sight, no delegation, all risk and very little chance of redemption !!

Entrepreneurship is not hereditary

While it may be advantageous to be networked into a 'Business community by affiliation, ethnic group, geography, or social networks, there is no 'hereditary cause or effect. It may continue within the family for a variety of reasons, not all of them to do with excellence and intellect. Examples of such successions are found to populate politics, entertainment, business, science, etc.

By the way, it is not biologically hereditary either. Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf have three children, none of whom play tennis! Bill and Melinda Gates have three children, none of whom has anything to do with computers or software. Warren Buffet And we could go on...

Scaling up saps the soul

It is so axiomatic in biology that one can tell the diet of even a fossil animal by looking at its size. The larger the animal, the more likely it will have a vegetarian diet….for its size makes it ponderous, less agile, slow and cumbersome. Geoffrey West traces this extraordinarily tracking the effects of scale on Organisms, Economies, Cities and Companies !!!! It is a brilliant science book worth reading.

The sources of funds like banks, venture capitalists, angel investors and so on create and desire an ecosystem that breeds legal, compliance, regulatory and financial systems for the organization which significantly subtract from its energies.

At the same time, these funds are deployed into IT, system, HR, Logistics and Supply chains, etc which add more and more costs, functions and departments to the basic structure.

At some point, this addiction to scale obfuscates the very purpose for which one became an entrepreneur. I started NeoTeny because I love woodworking. I need to work overtime every day to make sure I do not become any X in CXO. This brings us to :

Most entrepreneurs aren't quite sure why they are so or want to be so

They chant one or more of the following:

want to change the world (from Jobs vs. Sculley)

make the world a better place ( choose from any social reformer)

I have a dream ( from Martin Luther King)

Wanna make money ( ...the general public)

Wanna dominate the world (Catbert in Dilbert)

Extraordinarily charismatic people have indoctrinated the average app writer into a dangerous delusion that makes it difficult to establish a firm and run it while making sure employees do not grow insane.>

Apple, IKEA, Walmart, Tesla, Amazon…..are all incredible exceptions as are Branson, Jobs, Musk, Grove, Gates…...BHAGS, be my guest.

The most tragic of the lot follow the dictum: If you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life, Mark Anthony.

I can swear by everything I hold dear and scared this is the most destructive thing any would-be, current, or ex-entrepreneur can believe in. If you love something – keep it a secret.

The moment you make something you love, your profession, you will regret it forever. For you will now be forced to do it to meet payroll, bank interest, travel, communication, purchases, consultant's fees, haircuts, shaves and all manner of taxes, duties, compliance, regulatory and legal till you begin to hate it. And the worst thing, now you have nothing you love to go to for solace.

Perhaps what Mark Anthony meant was that you will never work again, literally, for you will have given up working !!!!

Entrepreneurship is a personal journey, it can neither be taught nor learned.

You need to go through it to understand this. It is a bizarre combination of Physical, Mental, Emotional and Spiritual experiences. It is hard to teach, harder to learn. Love, obsession, courage, leadership….how can one learn these in a classroom?

Education can be a powerful negative point, especially an MBA taken too literally:

A. look at successful entrepreneurs and the correlation to being a school dropout.
B. Case studies outline the past. How do you address the future with last year’s calendar !!
C. It is easy to dream. Wickedly impossible to execute and bring to market.
D. Swimming is difficult to learn by correspondence course. A refresher course on swimming online is even kinkier!
E. Unlearning, learning and relearning is an incredibly difficult art to master.

The “Informal, Unorganized or Marginal “ sector – is your best bet

Generating the vast proportion of employment in many economies, this sector is critical for survival indeed. Gardener, driver, cobbler, street food, plumber, carpenter, electrician, painter…...we cataloged hundreds of such ventures in our project – The Business Gym. Small, fast, agile and operating at minimalist levels, these are spectacular examples of entrepreneurship. Vector for vector, index by index, they can beat any other type of venture. My team and I work at The Business Gym that lives in this sector and am stunned by the results. Stay tuned for more on this.

And the reason for my vote for such Atomic Businesses is simple: Do you want to make a living or conquer the world? Please put on your own Oxygen mask before you help others !!!!!!!!!

Whether ventures succeed or fail, “Shovel makers & Sellers” succeed for sure

They say in the Californian Gold Rush, the only people who consistently made money, tons of it, are the people who sold shovels and other supplies !!! It is a 'Start-up Gold Rush' now. And there are a whole bunch of sellers trying to cash in on it: entrepreneurship coaches, entrepreneurship classes, entrepreneurship courses, entrepreneurship degrees, entrepreneurship off-line, on-line, VR, bus-stop, bar and tennis court. And of course, along with this lead team, there is a retinue of Venture Capitalists, Bankers, Private Equity, Head Hunters, Angel Investors, Soothsayers, Astrologers, Shamans, Medicine Men, Dowsers and sundry Feng Shui specialists all waiting to egg you on. All will make money. The odds are you won't!!! The choice is entirely yours…..And to end this …..back to the poisoned Apple.

But then the delicious poisoned apple is too tempting…one has to take a bite nevr mind…....and so the 'entrrepreneur' story repeats itself as if it had never happened before !!!!!

S. Ram Kumar is an Author, Speaker, Agent-Provocateur, UniCylist and Woodworker. lokilet@luckfogic.com

Graphics from Pixabay.com

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