This is not for those who have cushy jobs. It’s not for people who are cruising. It’s for people who may soon be losing their jobs, perhaps due to a corporate retrenchment. And it’s also for people who don’t believe they have the entrepreneurial blood in them.
Cut quickly to a scene I saw recently—a little girl with a basket of fruit, selling it in a semi-industrial area. Her mother had sent her out to sell the fruit. It was heartbreaking because one could sense that she came from a poor family. But there she was, on the street, selling her fruit.
I remember when my son was young, I took him to a taxi rank in Johannesburg and encouraged him to sell food products to commuters. He was keen. He did well. And the memory of that experience stayed with him. He’s had tough jobs since, but he has been able to handle them. Now he lives in a foreign land where he competes with everybody else on an equitable footing—not being held back like in other countries, one of which is the worst on earth, but we will not name it.
Some people say they are not entrepreneurial, but I’ve thought about this, and my experience with people tells me differently. One woman I know lost her job and got out there selling her own products until she found a new job. She did remarkably well. Where did that entrepreneurial spirit come from?
So the conclusion is: you don’t know that you’ve got it until you need to use it. That innate, inborn ability to trade, to barter, to negotiate—to hustle, if you want a stronger word—resides in all of us. Circumstances may bring it out. If you can’t do it, then forever you will be captive, the slave of someone else. You will trade your gifts and talents to become a slave of a master.
Nurture your entrepreneurial instincts. Think about what you can do. A time may well come when you will need to rely on them.
That movie-style “cut” is a great stylistic choice—it makes the transition feel sharp and visual.
