Entrepreneurs have a tough job, but it’s really not a job, it takes work, and if you don’t love what you’re doing it IS work. But if you love what you do, then it is never work, it’s a joy to do it even though you have to put in effort to accomplish the task or endeavor before you.
Take the simple pencil. A simple tool. A tool that most of us don’t even notice any more these days with pens and computers.
It does not seem like much, but there’s a whole economy surrounding the pencil. It involves vendors, suppliers, and ultimately customers who buy them.
So who buys pencils? Writers (drafts of novels, stories, plays), News reporters and newscasters (interview notes), Engineers (plans and drawings), Carpenters (plans and drawings, estimating), Composers (creating music), Scientists (experiments), Teachers (lesson books), Business people (meeting notes and memos), High school and college students (class notes and homework), Golfers (scores), Parents (grocery shopping lists).
If you want to know about the economy and how it works, read the free article I, Pencil by Leonard Reed.
If you want to know more facts about pencils, see 5 Interesting Facts about Pencils: Did you know? and see some interesting facts, like “more than 14 billion pencils are produced in the world every year, enough to circle the earth 62 times.”
To learn more about pencils themselves, read The Story of Pencils: The amazing pencil, technology and tradition and see how far we have come. From the web site, “One pencil has the potential to draw a line 35 miles long, write an average of 45,000 words, absorb 17 sharpenings, delete its own errors and beat out an infinite number of drum solos.”
During a presentation I attended years ago given by a missionary to Mexico they discussed spending time with those that have less then we do and how taking the simple pencil to hard economic areas affected their view of resources. The missionaries gave out pencils to kids and since there were more kids than pencils, there were not enough pencils to go around. The missionaries did not know what to do.
But the kids knew what to do. These enterprising kids solved their own problem. They broke the pencils in half to give to those that had none so that everyone had something to use and share.
Notice the issue? The kids made the decision. Once they were given the pencil (the resource), the pencil became their property, they chose what to do with it and solved their own problems without much help from anyone else. No “pencil dictator” or “pencil czar” told them what to do.
Now that a resource was in the kids hands, they could now become writers, artists, teachers, and maybe even a scientist. A simple resource can launch someone’s life in a new direction.
Read a Zig Ziglar short story about “Recognizing Potential” about the person selling pencils, you’ll get a different perspective of this simple story.
Selling pencils can launch a sales career. But using the pencil can launch a hundred careers.
So what’s the Mac connection? How about Pencil animation software or a “Handful of Pencils, Four Rubber Bands = iPhone stand.”
(Smile)
Here is my next installment of Monday Motivations for MacStartups. Through email I interview a number of startup companies in various forms of their experience, both in business and using a Mac. Here is Caroline McClure of ScoutRock.com, they provide consulting and networking services to other corporate executive recruiting professionals.
