no matter what your beliefs. Whether you embrace the Abrahamic religions and aim for eternal life in heaven, or an Asian religion that seeks a better life next time around, or you just want to make the most of this one, everything points to specific goals that you need to accomplish in this lifetime. Your beliefs may provide your motivation but it is up to you and you alone to find your way.
Life is about self-determination within the value system that you embrace. Every generation has to adapt to a changing environment that forces individuals to reset goals within revised parameters. Governments change. Religions adjust. Regimes rise and fall. Economies move through boom and bust. All the while we’re immersed in evolution. The main difference today is the pace. The one constant is rapid change. The Dark Ages hampered progress for a thousand years; today the fundamentals of every aspect of our lives shift more than once within a generation. Welcome to the world of Big Data. We can’t possibly know everything.
In this state of near frenzied transformation, the critical characteristics for success, whether economic, social, religious, or political, are resilience and adaptability. These are the traits of an entrepreneur. We cannot think like Eddie O’Brien. Rigidity and blind faith in the status quo are limitations. This mindset is not limited to business. We are seeing increasing social entrepreneurship for a reason. Entrepreneurial ideas apply to every element of your life and will allow you to dictate your defining moments. Entrepreneurial thinking is at a premium. The rebels of the past have entered the mainstream of the present and will define the future.
Entrepreneurs offer a critical resource that finds ways to succeed under any circumstance, whether within democracy, under a dictatorship, in a feudal society, within communism, and even within religion. Free enterprise is but one system within which entrepreneurs flourish. The mindset of all entrepreneurs is to make things happen, focusing on a combination of opportunity and determination. We do not always know the way but we are committed to find a way, solving all types of problems in the process. George Carmichael saw opportunity because he needed to prove himself. Eddie O’Brien had nothing to prove.
Society has much to say about entrepreneurial opportunities but determination exists within the individual regardless of the context. It is a life philosophy that can be taught. The most important skill you can learn in this dynamic world is the ability to create and manage your career and your life, which means constantly looking for and recognizing opportunity, followed by finding ways to capitalize.
This mantra of mine is particularly true if you are in either of the shoulder groups of the work force; whether at the point of starting your career or facing the prospect of winding your work life down while needing to extend it. Both of these groups are thirsting for opportunity. The youth of today are facing barriers to entry that impede the start of their careers. In contrast the reality for seniors is that freedom 55 is one of those moving targets making it a necessity to extend their careers while downsizing, outsourcing, and technology are forcing them to the sidelines. There is no room for prison thinking in this “New Era of Entrepreneurship,” where necessity dictates the need to identify opportunity and each of us must carpe diem.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Writing this series has given me the opportunity to validate my career by sharing a lifetime of experiences as a serial entrepreneur at a time when entrepreneurship has moved into the economic forefront. I am grateful for the opportunity to have observed and interacted with the past two MBA classes at The Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto in the Creative Destruction Lab program, as well the chance to observe the progress of the ventures that participate in the Lab. Both of these groups inspire confidence as to what can be accomplished in Canada in the near future. With almost 400,000 Canadians living and working in Silicon Valley it’s time to focus on retaining our best and most brilliant talent. Too much of our intellectual capital has left looking for opportunity lacking at home. The Lab, under the direction of Professor Ajay Agrawal, is an important initiative in this regard and it’s working.
I would like to thank David Axon for sharing his experience with me regarding Juniors for Seniors, the business he started as a summer job. Resilient teens like David give me confidence that entrepreneurship is alive and well in the next generation, as it needs to be.
I am also grateful for the opportunity to interact with the developing entrepreneurship program at the University of Guelph and would like to thank Maryam Latifpoor-Keparoutis, the development manager of the engineering faculty, for her support and for introducing me to a wealth of excellent contacts at the university. As much as the recognition from the academic community means to me, these books are written for the average person engaged in the traditional economy. They are intended to prepare anyone from a high school dropout to a Ph.D. for the demands and requirements of living the life of an entrepreneur — an ambitious goal. The narrative style has been well received but only the reader can make a final determination of the result.
Whatever that opinion may be the most important acknowledgement I can make is to my wife, Karin, and all of my family for their ongoing and unconditional support of my career in general and for the books in this series in particular. This book, like every one I have written or will write, is dedicated to Karin.
INTRODUCTION
Our perception of aging is determined largely by the society in which we live. In most Asian cultures old age is celebrated. Once you have reached sixty, it’s incumbent in some countries for your oldest son to be responsible for you. In my travels to India I can remember having conversations about this with a number of friends who were looking forward to the possibility. In areas like these the elderly are revered for their sage wisdom and their advice is sought after. Isn’t this what all of us want in our old age; respect with no responsibility? In the west we seem to be all too willing to look at the elderly as a used up resource, out of date, to be discarded, a potential burden as opposed to a source of wisdom. Now to compound things the old and the young are being forced to compete for jobs, at least indirectly. By staying in the work force seniors are hampering the start of many young careers in a limited job market. Inadequate resources for retirement and increasing life expectancy give them little choice. The two groups are now rivals … or are they?
From the time we run our first lemonade stand or take on a paper route to the point where we are finally able to join the host of retired volunteers serving our community, we flirt with a path of self-determination and independence, seeking out problems to solve. Most of us take great satisfaction in solving even the smallest problem. It’s tempting to conclude that this is an inherent element of the human spirit. In that sense we are all entrepreneurial, fostering a desire to break down barriers and make things happen. This trait is never more evident than when our children or our grandchildren are facing any type of problem. Nothing can stop us from helping them. The contradiction is that many of us don’t pursue the solutions to our own issues with the same level of commitment. We let fear creep into decisions and prevent us from acting in our own interests, yet we have a mindset that’s totally instinctive, prompting us to protect our offspring from any threat. Somehow we find ways to defeat that danger; we will find a way at virtually any cost. In the west the old are responsible for the young. Being a parent and grandparent is a life sentence. One we willingly assume. Where our children are concerned there is no prison thinking. The essence of being entrepreneurial is this very mindset that does not allow us to fail, not some inherent skill set. Embracing this philosophy of accomplishment will impact the way you approach life — find the way!
For the past century the west has fostered the belief that our free enterprise society, tempered by education, will ensure unlimited opportunity for our youth. Western society has also created the expectation that one’s senior years will be spent enjoying a golden age of leisure in retirement. We have dreamt up a near utopia — easy entry to great opportunities for the young and a graceful exit into a full life of travel and relaxation at the end of the line. One problem: no generation has achieved this idyllic vision — not one. Oh, it looked like the boomers
