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Know What Matters: A Humble Survivor Becomes An Entrepreneur
"Success has a thousand fathers while failure has none" is an old saying that describes how everyone likes to take credit when things turn out well while no one wants to be blamed for disappointing results. Seeking such success, many people struggle throughout their lives, often failing to achieve what they seek.
Ideas about what success is often begin with our fathers. As a result, many people never step back to consider what they should be seeking from their work and personal lives. When the goal isn't carefully chosen, people may seek to accomplish results that harm their best interests.
My earliest memory of talking about success is of a conversation I had with my father, who simultaneously held two or more jobs involving hard labor for most of his life. Looking up and down at my pale, short, and skinny frame, he commented, "Don, I think you should try to find indoor work with no heavy lifting when you grow up."
I found that advice to be sensible and often applied that test in determining what to study and which jobs to apply for. It's an interesting test because lots of people have physically demanding jobs, even after finishing good educations.
Here's an example: The father of one of my best friends was a veterinarian. His job didn't involve looking at cats and dogs in an animal hospital. Instead, he worked with heavy cattle outdoors in the broiling desert sun. After a day's work of dipping sick cattle, Dr. Shane often arrived home dirtier and smelling worse than my father did.
Let's look now at a self-designed goal. Teenagers often find it hard to go to sleep at night and even harder to wake up in the morning. As a result, after high school they look forward to a college schedule featuring no morning classes and all of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday off.
However, many are soon bored and listless from hibernating through most of the week's daylight hours. Even the ones who enjoy sleeping in will probably be getting up for work well before seven during most of their lives. If you like sleeping in, what's the point of doing it for only four years?
Others use an adding machine to figure out what success is: How much does it pay me? As a result, they may take stultifying jobs doing demeaning work just to be able to cash a bigger paycheck.
Let's define success more objectively. In our short lives on Earth, it's clear that we seldom have enough of the following:
1. Freedom to do what we want when we want.
2. A sense of accomplishment.
3. A feeling of lasting contribution.
4. Being appreciated for what we do.
5. Comfortable surroundings.
There is an obvious path to gain these advantages: Entrepreneurs often succeed in gaining these advantages, and many people want to be their own boss. But those who want to be entrepreneurs soon learn that it takes more than desire: They have to know how to do the right things.
Gain the right knowledge and employ it well, and you can design the kind of life that is well beyond your most optimistic goals now. Let's look at an example of someone who learned and applied this lesson well: Mr. Jude Zemel, from Nigeria.
Just growing up was a challenge for Mr. Zemel. His first name at birth was "Ozemele" which means "let it not happen again." Children in his family often died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, and his parents hoped that it would not happen to him.
They had reason to be concerned. There was a civil war going on in Nigeria, and good prenatal care was hard to acquire. In fact, his mother delivered him in his grandmother's bed. Surely, this was a humble beginning.
Modern medicine, though highly regarded by his family, was sadly not available. Mr. Zemel was prone to high fevers and convulsions caused by malaria.
While the normal medical practice today is to use anti-malarial drugs, analgesics, and warm baths to cool fevered bodies, Mr. Zemel was often taken instead to a traditional healer who would painfully mutilate his face and body in a vain attempt to exorcise the spirit believed to be causing the convulsions.
School was a trial, too. Even young children were flogged there. Fear of being flogged made it difficult to learn, and he could neither read nor write after three years of elementary school.
Despite this rough beginning, he passed the examination to attend Gbenoba Grammar School in another town. He did well there and was recognized as one of the best science students.
As a result of these family and educational trials, Mr. Zemel's first definition of success was simply to live long enough to become an adult.
From these and other experiences of suffering deprivation, Mr. Zemel became determined to do better for his children, his second definition of success, one that he believes in today.
Gaining admittance to a university is difficult in Nigeria. There are many more applicants than places. Mr. Zemel did well on the entrance exams and graduated with a second-class degree in the upper division of a biochemistry program at Edo State University, Ekpoma.
More problems lay ahead. After a year of compulsory national service, he moved to Lagos and spent two years searching for a job, despite his excellent educational credentials. Good jobs then were even scarcer than university diplomas.
His first job presented new obstacles. He was medical salesperson for a company that paid very little and had a discouraged staff. One day when he arrived at a hospital to take an order, hungry, looking wilted, and sweating from the stifling heat of his bus ride, he was immediately upstaged by a woman from a rival company who was well dressed and poised after her ride in an air-conditioned company car.
Mr. Zemel immediately adopted a third definition of success: to have a job where he would be encouraged, have the necessary resources, be recognized, and have a chance to improve and do his best work. He soon found such an employer and his career took off.
During that experience, his ideas about success expanded. He wanted to become wealthy, live in a nice home, provide more generously for his family and those in need, and retire young to start playing golf. Sounds good, doesn't it?
Accomplishing these results was going to take a lot more income than he could hope to receive by simply continuing to gain promotions and raises at his current employer. Mr. Zemel decided that earning a graduate degree from a non-Nigerian university could equip him with helpful knowledge that others did not have. An MBA degree seemed like just the right training.
He quickly determined that traditional universities in Europe and North America were too expensive for his budget. He didn't want to wait for a scholarship, a process that would be time-consuming and slow down his progress. Instead, he enrolled at Rushmore University.
From the beginning, he noticed large improvements in his writing. He also became more organized and gained helpful insights from the various business books he studied. By the time he graduated, he knew he wanted to earn a Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) degree.
With his new-found skills and perspective, Mr. Zemel noticed an interesting entrepreneurial opportunity to haul shipping containers by truck. With two friends, he founded a company.
Naturally, it fell to him to do the writing and other paper work to organize and operate the new company. Using skills he learned while earning an MBA, Mr. Zemel arranged to hire trucks and was soon leading a booming business.
He also noticed that his life had changed in an unexpected way: He now could set his own working hours. Being a business owner is a lot different from being an employee. What an improvement!
Soon, the company wasn't making a profit any more because the cost of renting trucks became too high. Mr. Zemel quickly adjusted his business model to partner with truck owners, and the company's revenues and earnings once again zoomed.
At the time of this writing, the firm employs 24 people and it has only been a little more than two years since he graduated. Imagine what he will be doing in five years after he earns a DBA degree that helps him make his business even more successful.
How do you define success?
How should you define success?
What do you need to know to achieve the highest forms of success you desire?
Remember, it's not where you start that counts, but where you end up.
About the Author Donald W. Mitchell is a professor at Rushmore University, an online school, who works with many students who want to become entrepreneurs. For more information about ways to engage in fruitful lifelong learning at Rushmore to increase your effectiveness and improve your career, visit http://www.rushmore.edu
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