Finding the Riches in the Streets
I used to have a Russian babysitter when I lived in Switzerland. She would ride to my house on public transportation all dressed up. When she got to my house, she would change into sweats and take care of my kids. When she would leave, she’d shower and get all dolled up again and ride the public transportation back home. She was determined to meet a man while in Switzerland. She loved Switzerland and she had absolutely no intention of returning to Russia and “washing clothes in the river on a rock” . Her famous words which I quote to any American who will listen were “Money is just laying in the streets, all you have to do is pick it up!”
Now the segue, Sarah Lacy, author of “Brilliant. Crazy. Cocky.” details in her book how the top 1% of entrepreneurs profit from global choas. During her 40 weeks of travel researching this book, the individuals who crossed Sarah path proved my Russian babysitter’s words over and over. In the most choatic areas of the world, “legal” profit is available but sometimes you just have to have some insight to find it in the streets and PICK IT UP!
Ms. Lacy points out that the reason why some of these entrepreneurs survive is that they simply have nothing to lose. She explains the following about global entrepreneurship :
Great entrepreneurs’ minds just work differently than other people’s. They can see solutions to problems clearly. And while those solutions seem to make obvious sense when explained, few others would have come up with them. You can’t describe great entrepreneurs by the kind of companies they are starting, their ages, their background, or their ethnicity–it’s by the way their minds works. True entrepreneurship can’t be taught. It can’t be faked. It can’t be silenced. You either have it or you don’t. And just because we hear the most about U.S. entrepreneurs, that doesn’t mean we have a lock on it.
Lacy discusses how the U.S. has had a “death of risk” and details how countries (and individuals within those countries) like Isreal, China, India, Brazil, and yes even Indonesia and Rwanda are hot bed for capitalizing on profitable unlikely situations. The real life examples are what make this a fascinating book for me. Time after time, she discusses the elements which make a country seem impossible for fostering an entrepreneurial situation, yet she relates how an individual with an idea and a sense of the situation–and yes, a bit of luck and being in the right place at the right time, capitulated theirself into fortune.
Probably the biggest lesson that Lacy learns along the way is one that we in the U.S. all need to take to heart. Greed and fear are elements of third world country entrepreneurship, yet the movement is about more than cash and stock options. The entrepreneur is the one who will make the difference in these economies, bringing their countries up and quite probably past the U.S. in the next 40 years. Lacy provides suggestions and recommendations how the U.S. should and must participate or leave the “Money (and our principles) laying in the street.”
And my Russian babysitter? She understood how to play the game on a small scale–and trust me–she never went back to Russia and “washing clothes on a rock”. She found a way, as the entrepreneurs in “Brilliant. Crazy. Cocky” have, to navigate the new world economy and make her life much much better. After all, she too had nothing to lose either!