“My father was the first entrepreneur in the family,” Rohan Marley, the sixth of Bob Marley’s eleven children, said the other day. “He started his own record label, his own restaurant. He knew that, in order to give something back to the people, he had to create. You can’t be no philanthropist, no Warren Buffett, unless you make something first.”
Bob’s Boys – All Natural in The New Yorker
The article focuses a lot on the marijuana trade, but the choice quote here is about creation. You may read many books and articles about giving back, and they’re usually written by people that have created so much value already, that it makes sense to give back. Some of the best books on this topic that I’ve read include Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company-and Revolutionized an Industry
by Marc Benioff and Business Stripped Bare: Adventures of a Global Entrepreneur
by Richard Branson.
This is also like mentorship. Sometimes you can’t mentor each and every opportunity because you’re stretched for time, and are still creating.
This comes back to my thoughts on advisors. How can you dole out advice if you’ve never been there (and done that)? How can you dole out advice if you yourself haven’t created? Sure, there are textbook examples at work, and people learn at schools (MBAs, etc) but sitting in a classroom is no substitute for experience.
So whether you’re looking for a mentor, an advisor, or a board member, remember that having some form of requisite experience (not just textbook knowledge) is something that will probably take you further.
Posted on 11/4/2013, 1:11 am, by Colin Charles, under
Business.
Seth Godin is spot on in Where are your assets? Please go read it.
Do work and get paid once. Build an asset and get paid for as long as it lasts.
Key takeaways: real estate pays regularly, stocks are the promise of a later payoff (maybe a little more regularly with dividends). Build your brand by overdelivering to earn trust. Ensure you’re always building value (people miss you when you’re gone). Gain expertise – don’t do the same thing over & over again. These apply to companies as well.
The picture shows a boxed set of Red Hat Linux 7 & 8. Shortly thereafter they became RHEL & Fedora. Red Hat built assets and look where they are now – listed on the stock exchange and arguably one of the largest companies in opensource. Cygnus started with no more than $6,000 in capital, had a great exit to Red Hat and formed much of the basic underlying toolchain.
A salesman would say, “always be closing”. I think the mantra should be: always be building assets.
Posted on 16/9/2012, 1:21 am, by Colin Charles, under
General.
Via Mozilla Webmaker:
“Mozillians are people who make things. Moving people from consumption to creation is Mozilla’s goal.” – Mitchell Baker, Mozilla Chair and Chief Lizard Wrangler
This is a brilliant goal. To build a generation of webmakers. Getting people to create more than just consume.
It is widely stated that 1% create, 10% curate, the rest consume (quote from Fred Wilson). Imagine if the tables were turned.
