During the sixteen and seventeen hundred’s, people from around the world left their countries and families for an opportunity to come to a ‘New World’. They left their homes for the opportunity to pursue a dream. Most of us are familiar with the stories of the hardships that the immigrants endured. The entrepreneurial spirit is synonymous with pursuit of a dream, innovation, problem solving, using one’s imagination, financial security, and ultimately achieving financial freedom. Unfortunately, with the prevailing trends toward global debt, big government, and the encroaching bureaucracy, the entrepreneur is on the endangered species list. Just as the environmentalist is concerned about fresh air and fresh water, so should those concerned about freedom be disturbed about the loss of the entrepreneurial spirit. The entrepreneurial spirit has long been rooted in Western Culture’s achievement of freedom. If the trend toward declining entrepreneurship continues, then the freedom that we’ve all been accustomed to goes with it. Recognize that there are forces that wish to control wealth and power that will oppose freedom and oppress the entrepreneurial spirit. If the loss of freedom concerns you, then you’ll want to know more about the entrepreneurial spirit.
A review of history teaches that it is our nature to want to be free. However, freedom’s health will be transferred to the ‘critical care unit,’ unless we gain an understanding of the original principles that freedom and the entrepreneurial spirit were founded upon. Unfortunately, the principles of freedom as passed forward by great thinkers like, John Locke, Algernon Sydney, Adam Smith, and Edmund Burke are heartbreakingly not recognized today. As with all great entrepreneurial minds, they too stood on a platform of great thinkers. One of the predecessors of the entrepreneurial spirit was Frederic Bastiat who had these thoughtful comments to pass on, “To tamper with man’s freedom is not only to injure him, to degrade him; it is to change his nature, to render him, in so far as such oppression is exercised, incapable of improvement; it is to strip him of his resemblance to the Creator, to stifle within him the noble breath of life with which he was endowed at his creation.” Where is the entrepreneurial spirit today that author Michael Novak writes about in, ‘On Cultivating Liberty’, “As long ago as 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville pointed out that, compared to Europeans, Americans delight in risks, opportunities, adventures, dreams.”
Being free to pursue the entrepreneurial spirit has profound ramifications on the world in which we live. Well known business and management guru, Peter Drucker said, “Innovation is the specific tool of the entrepreneur, the means by which they exploit change as an opportunity for a different business or a different service.” Norman Vincent Peale describes the effects of the entrepreneurial spirit in his book, ‘This Incredible Century,’ “A Detroit newspaper on January 5, 1914, printed an unusual story about industrialist Henry Ford that electrified the nation. Ford’s statement that the automobile would soon cause horses to disappear from American highways was proved true. And the automobile is credited with changing the business life of America, as well as affecting changes in social habits and even the morality of the country… The automobile may be credited with an historic addition to the economy by stimulating many new businesses such as tire production, the petroleum industry, all highway services, garages, motels, and others.” Drucker goes on to say, “We are indeed in the early stages of a major technological transformation, one that is far more sweeping than the most ecstatic of the “futurologists” yet realize, greater than Megatrends or Future Shock.”
The entrepreneurial spirit unleashes leadership qualities of vision to unleash the courage to improve the future. Faith and belief are also required along the journey. These are just a few shared qualities by great entrepreneurs who gave us the freedoms to live the way we live in the twenty–first century.
Ray Kroc, Sam Walton, and Bill Gates not only solved problems but changed the way we think about business today. In the book, ‘McDonald’s Behind the Arches,’ John F. Love writes of Ray Kroc, “He has been described as a visionary who invented a totally new form of food service geared to the faster–paced lifestyles he foresaw… everything in Kroc’s franchising plan was designed to encourage the success of his franchisees first, and on that McDonald’s itself would prosper… In sharp contrast to other newcomers to the fast–food business in the mid–1950’s, McDonalds directed much of its efforts toward defining, refining, and implementing its operating system.” Former COO of Walmart, Don Soderquist writes about not overlooking the obvious, “Wal-Mart grew into the largest company in the world out of one man’s vision… he never stopped learning and growing… We didn’t accept that the way it was being done was necessarily the best way, and we believed that we could dramatically improve the entire process.” Soderquist describes just a few of the methods of improving the distribution process, “We built our own warehouses… eventually converting these warehouses into full – line distribution centers… finally became the model of a vertically integrated supply chain.” “Today, our own trucks deliver over 50% of our inbound merchandise to our distribution centers… resulting in millions and millions of dollar savings and countless hours of savings in the movement of merchandise…” Although it appears that these famous entrepreneurs had some special talents that the common person lacks, it’s simply not true. They created a cycle of failing and learning and failing and learning similar to what systems expert, ‘Orrin Woodward’ describes as, “Plan, Do, Check, and Adjust.’ Bill Gates even created a memo to himself entitled, “Microsoft’s Greatest Mistakes.” Maury Klein writes about being able to learn from failure that all entrepreneurs must possess, “Like other creative people, too, entrepreneurs found that success and failure were cut from the same cloth. The very qualities that enabled them to succeed usually proved to be the same ones that led them into the worst follies… but they refused to be swayed.” Similar to Gates, what great breakthroughs await you from following your entrepreneurial spirit? By holding on to his vision, Bill Gates revolutionized the way business is done in the 21st century. He writes these reflections in his book, ‘Business at the Speed of Thought, “Business is going to change more in the next ten years than in the last fifty… these changes will occur because of a disarmingly simple idea: the flow of digital information… the internet will create a new universal space for information sharing, collaboration, and commerce… that together they will radically transform our lifestyles and the world of business.”
The widely respected German economist Joseph Schumpeter describes the entrepreneurial function as, “simply the doing of new things or the doing of things that are already being done in a new way.” What problems do you see that need to be solved that will ignite your entrepreneurial spirit? Perhaps there’s no greater problem staring us in the eyes than the global debt epidemic. This threat to freedom is draining people’s creative energy and extinguishing the entrepreneurial spirit. If left unabated, the next generation will inherit something so calamitous that it will replace their freedoms with a life of servitude.
The entrepreneurial spirit can find a solution to this threat. By innovating Kroc’s entrepreneurial idea, the ‘Financial Fitness’ program can create a turn–key model that systematically spreads information on debt reduction and asset accumulation. Like no other, the ‘Financial Fitness’ program innovates what Walton did and takes the middle man savings and pays it in a profit sharing plan as an incentive to spread the information. Let’s not stop here. Why not incorporate what Gates did in the ‘Financial Fitness’ program and use a digital platform that can have global impact so others can release their entrepreneurial spirit? What finer way to preserve the principles rooted in western culture than by releasing the entrepreneurial spirit and setting people free around the world? God Bless, George Guzzardo
