“Damn!”

Sucking the oozing blood from his finger, the young man motions to his elderly hireling. “Load this in the trailer please” he says after he weighs the finds on his heavy-duty scale.

He rarely helps mine for scraps these days. Before he got someone to help him do the “dirty” work; he cut himself all the time. Now it’s a different story. The old man digs for most of the scrap steel while he lounges around or drinks coffee at “Le Café Rubbish” in the middle of the rubbish dump. He weighs every bit of steel and later sells it at about 2.50 ZAR per kilo. That nets him between R14 000 to R25 0000 per month.

Makes him feel like a rich man. Besides, he’s no longer aware of the horrid stench that invades every pore out here, clings to every particle.

The money that came as the by product of his successful problem solving idea, smells too good. He has no shortage of clients either. They gladly pay for his solution.

Paul Hanase, the self made entrepreneur, is the king of rubbish.^*

^*****

 Mining filth.

As hard as it is to imagine, there are thousands of people who do this everyday and make a living out of it. Often, a good living; in fact, better than you think. Truly, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

But Paul’s story is just like thousands of other accounts about people who saw a gap and monetized it. Either in the interest of survival or because they had been entrepreneurially wired from birth and could not help spotting an opportunity and acting on it.

Like Chippy Brand.

Mining is also in his resume, but not filth per se. Although a lot of years, working like a dog in inhospitable circumstances, saw him roughing it; farming veggies and living in a mobile home with his wife and four kids.

Another king Midas

Civil engineer, construction man and farmer turned hotel mogul, Chippy monetized one opportunity after the other that eventually landed him around age 75 on his own game farm (farming again!) in South Africa’s Eastern Cape with more money than he can count and a family to die for.

Says he: “n mens moet self die geleenthede soek, somme maak en dit dan laat vaar…of aanpak” (one must seek the opportunities him-/ herself, do the math and either go for it or leave it) ²

 *****

 So, is there a difference between these two and if there is, what is it?

Some people seem to be born entrepreneurs. They can no more help seeing a gap in the market and capitalising on it than a lion can chase game. Among them are the Richard Bransons and Bill Gates’ of the world.

They always stand out. The many problem solving opportunities they spotted, grabbed, developed and monetized in their respective pasts, are littering the highway of their successes.

The zillion dollar question here is:” can this skill/trait be taught even if you did not grow up with it?” By now, there is enough evidence to give a secure answer to this.

Yes.

 It’s a bit like leadership (and a bit different too).

Some people are born leaders. They can no more stay hidden in some obscure hole than our lion chasing frenzied game. They’ll always emerge to take the lead somehow. To not do it, goes against their nature and will lead to self torture and slow death of the faculties.

Others, who are not born leaders, and somehow have to lead, can learn leadership skills and will apply them with a certain degree of success. Maybe they won’t become a Nelson Mandela or Oprah Winfrey, but they will lead in their own sphere of influence. Their pack will follow them.

Doesn’t matter how gigantic that sphere is. Or how tiny.

The one lot has the trait; the other lot will follow seminars or courses that teach them the skill. That’s not to say that the born leaders won’t follow any courses, because they might very well and in that case their leadership abilities will become even more amazing.

It just means that those with the trait, will instinctively exhibit leadership skills without having been taught to do so, while people in the other category will have to learn them from someone who teaches them and eventually will do very well regardless of whether he / she was born with the intuitive skill to lead or not.

 However, entrepreneurs are a bit different.

A lot of what the world perceives as an inborn entrepreneurial trait has to do with the environment someone grows up in. Environment plays a key role in the development of entrepreneurial abilities and can foster them in a youngster from an early age.

They’re not inborn as such, but rather inculcated from an early age. Just look at great entrepreneurs. A background study of their early childhood will by and large tell you this.

That’s a cool thing because it’s never too late to create the right environment for entrepreneurial thinking to flourish!  Allow me to explain:

Just say you’re 50 years old and stuck in a job you hate and have never entertained any kind of entrepreneurial thoughts in your life ever. You did not grow up in an environment that encouraged this kind of thinking, but lately you’re seriously considering breaking out of it, either because you’re fed up with the rut, or because you have to or whatever: do you still have a chance? Can an old dog really still learn new tricks?

 Absolutely!!

 Okay, so how do you become an entrepreneur?

 Without sounding simplistic, I’ll give you the short version: by changing your mind!

Shift your paradigm. Let your innate gifts and abilities guide you. Find out what you love to do, for it all starts here. Then look for problems around you in this area. Find a solution that people will want to pay for, market it and you’re golden.

Actually, it is a bit more involved than that. Hook up with us or some other credible institution that will teach you these timeless principles and get you clued up and fired up to entrepreneurial lift-off.

The Midas in YOU

The beauty of this is that the longer you find yourself in entrepreneurial mode and thinking, the more the trait will follow in the wake of the skills that you practise!

 You might not become an overnight millionaire or instant fairytale success. So what?

You will gain the priceless education and privilege of taking care of yourself and others, up your self worth and maybe even overcome some personal and other obstacles in the process. Paul did and he’s not the world’s next Richard Branson. At least not yet, not that I know of…

You get to cast the stones of entrepreneurial endeavour and its spin-offs in your own pond and see the positive ripple effects of income that’s generated, maybe relationships that are formed and strengthened and other benefits, such as something that has not previously been possible, but now is.

In your own orb of influence, you become the force field that impacts the lives of others through what you do.

*****

Chippy Brand is a super entrepreneur in whom both the skills and the trait manifest. And Paul?

It is not entirely clear from this account whether he mines trash simply because he wants tot survive or because he saw a gap he could monetize or maybe a bit of both. Question is: does it matter?

Probably not. Because if it’s not there yet, the trait will follow the skill he practices day by day. Just one day, whoop…it will pop up.

Bottom line: entrepreneurial skills can be taught and developed. Therefore there’s no excuse.

So, when do you start?

© Elmarie Bouwer

Resources

1. Mariechen Waldner. Your trash – their cash.  2011-08-07 10:00 .Accessed 20/03/2012.

http://m.news24.com/citypress/SouthAfrica/News/Your-trash-their-cash-20110806

* Based on a real account

 The spark plug³ with the ice-blue eyes

I had come to him for answers. Unprepared.

The blaze in his impossibly blue eyes pinned me to my seat and as he started talking, my misconceptions shrivelled away right there…right then.

The passion that exuded from him did not come from a text book in his extensive library. Or his multiple boardroom discussions. Or academic dons. Or anywhere else.

No. The fire radiated from within, showed in his eyes.

Until that moment, I often wondered what all his excitement all the time I had known him was about. If one wanted to get Mauritz fired up, just started talking entrepreneurship.

I never did understand its importance and unfortunately likened entrepreneurship to an optional extra, something like ketchup on your chips. You don’t have to order it if you don’t want to.

You see; in my faulty perception, I understood that we would never have any economic well being without business. Anywhere. Ever. Period.

If you’re confused because I’m right, just hang in there. Full explanation coming up…

But there is one part I never got.

His question from right across his ergonomic desk floored me and so did his answers: “Do we really understand the role this phenomenon has played in our survival on this planet?”¹

Nope, I thought. Enlighten me.

So, many words and aha moments later, it dawned on me that the part I didn’t get was the fundamental role entrepreneurship played in all human decisions towards advancement from the very beginning.

The business “out there” I saw and appreciated would never even have been there to begin with, if it weren’t for entrepreneurial thinking!

See, in igniting me, Mauritz acted like a spark plug. Because his own understanding sparked mine.

However, spark plug action does not actually refer to Mauritz’s and my interlude, it refers to entrepreneurship.

Why a spark plug?

Entrepreneurial thinking is a lot like a spark plug.

How come?

Well, for a car to start, you need electric current to flow into the combustion chamber of a spark-ignition engine. Once there, it will ignite the compressed air/fuel mixture by means of an electric spark to get you moving.²

Likewise, you need innovative/entrepreneurial thinking before you can have any meaningful change to the status quo.

Let me give you an example.  Take Thomas Edison.  He is considered as one of the greatest inventors who ever lived. He gave the world the phonograph, the electric light and more than 1300 other patented inventions. He was also given to profiting from his inventions and as an inventor with an entrepreneurial flair, he stands unequalled. His impact on the way we live, is nothing less than staggering.⁴

However, none of those inventions would ever have seen the light, if Edison didn’t think them first. Thinking them first, was the spark that led to their physical manifestation. It ignited the fuel that changed the status quo, which changed the world.

Spark plug phases

In its evolving economic history, the world went from wearing nappies to graduating college. Here they are in a nutshell:

In the extraction phase in the beginning, man discovered how to extract metal from rock. Building upon this, this period was followed by the artisan phase in which man made artefacts from metal. The industrial phase followed this in the late 18^th century where man learned to build machines with mass production capabilities.

This in turn led to many losing their jobs and becoming replaced by those very machines they built! Since all this production increased competition among the mass producers, marketing became necessary to gain a market share.

This marketing phase paved the way for customisation and niche marketing as the next phase. Now, with that too saturated, the world teeters on the brink of a new economic age, where revolutionary new products / services are needed to satisfy an ever growing global appetite and winning the favour of customers.

The point to make here is this: whatever the phase, entrepreneurial thinking and activity have been the trip switch that threw humankind into every subsequent phase that our world’s economy grew into.

Spark plug thinking is that fundamental to this planet’s economic growth and well being!

Some call this new economic age the information age. Or the age of intelligence. Mauritz wants to call it the Entrepreneurial age.

This new phase will require more lateral thinking and like Linda Naiman said “a whole new way of doing business to be successful”.⁵

Survival on this hostile planet demanded entrepreneurial thinking right from the start. Right now, it’s even more hostile to man’s survival with global warming and all. The whole ecological disaster looming is like a giant clock, ticking off the seconds to a final countdown that could see man exit existence on this planet, never to return.

Unless Mauritz.

Unless everybody, all 8 billion citizens, becomes a Mauritz with spark plug thinking, it is going to be difficult to survive.

So maybe we’ve come full circle. Survival in this furious melting pot called Earth – 2012 – and Beyond, will only demand entrepreneurial thinking.

Nothing less. Nothing else.

 © Elmarie Bouwer

Resources:

1. Mauritz Bekker.Entrepreneurial Business School.http://ebschool.com/people/mauritz-bekker/
2. Spark plug. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spark_plug
3. Thanks to Pieter Bouwer for likening entrepreneurial thinking to that of a spark plug’s energy. http://ebschool.com/people/pieter-bouwer/

4. ©MSNBC Interactive. Philipp Harper. History’s 10 greatest entrepreneurs. Accessed 12.03.2012.  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5519861/ns/business-small_business/t/historys-greatest-entrepreneurs/#.T12_Mew7pJE

5.  Creativity at Work. Accessed 13 march 2012. http://www.creativityatwork.com/CWServices/aboutus.html