Rhino Revolution

There are three elements that make up the entrepreneurial safari.  It is these three ingredients which allow the capitalistic system to run so successfully (except when the government sticks it nose in) and if you can learn to combine these elements, you are capable of great things.  They are money, energy and ideas.   All the great inventions, accomplishments and products have come about through the proficient use of these three key components.

Money is the most powerful of the three ingredients.  If you have a lot of money, you can always buy the energy and ideas of others.  Incidentally, did you know that the word “rhino” also means “money”?  Look it up in the dictionary if you don’t believe me.  If you don’t have enough “rhino”, don’t worry about it.  Of the three ingredients, money is the only one that is not natural.  Everyone is born with energy and ideas, but few people are born with money.   Just as money can buy energy and ideas,  so too can good ideas and energy secure money.

Energy is radically important for the entrepreneurial lifestyle.  Energy is most conveniently obtained by doing what you enjoy.  If you love what you are doing, you are going to have the energy to do it.  When you go skiing, do you lie in bed in the morning dreading getting up and having to go ski down those stupid mountains?  No, you are in line for your lift ticket before they are even open!   And do you quit early and come in before the lift shuts down?  No.  You race up and down trying to get in as many runs as you can.  Then you can’t wait until the next day!   That is the way you have to run your business in order to succeed, so make sure that you are doing something that you enjoy.

Finally, you must have good ideas.  Everything that exists today was once just an idea in somebody’s brain.   Who knows what could exist a year from now because of an idea you might have!   If you can think, you can imagine.  And if you can imagine, then you are creative.

Don’t forget that money is just an idea.  It has no tangible value.  Money merely represents goods and services.  That was a good idea, wasn’t it?  With your own brilliant ideas, you can devise means of getting some of that worthless paper.  You might as well.  What else are you doing that is so important?  Oh, skiing.  Well, when you are done, go for it!   Scott Alexander