I used to look at Coors Beer trucks driving on the freeway as just the natural order of the world. It’s just there, and it makes sense, and it knows where it’s going and the huge logo on the side of the truck just happens. What I failed to realize is that every man-made progress or product is a direct result of the blood, sweat, and tears of usually unsung heroes tiring away every day to make the world go round. The irony of this example is I don’t give a damn about Coors Beer but the point stands nonetheless.
Only until I started working in real companies, and then creating and building some of my own, did I realize all the systems we benefit from every day had to be painstakingly thought through, set up, and organized by someone. The world does not self-organize, per se. When people complain about taxes and the like they fail to realize how much of a miracle it is that we have cooperated to the extent of birthing the modern world. Half the time I’m blown away we’ve been able to do really anything. Everyone is so innately self-focused that I’m just grateful we’ve been able to agree and put together anything. Hell, I haven’t even moved into my new home and I’m already disagreeing with my future roommate – a micro example of the macro phenomenon of us all having idiosyncratic and differing preferences, beliefs, and behavior patterns.
When YOU are the one who has to set up the system (payroll, a new CRM software, an onboarding process for clients, etc.) you realize just how ground-zero everything starts and appreciate the lift required to build anything of substance. Even the easy and simple businesses like the ones I build are still really hard; I can’t imagine the complexity of, say, trying to optimize costs and logistics for airlines.
Most news will depress you, but I subscribe to the rare few that are more uplifting and shedding light on cutting-edge technologies to improve our planet (my favorite is Peter Diamandis’ Abundance Insider). Appreciation is the best we can have for the past. Hope is the best for the future. I am hopeful that capitalism and the triumph of good, hard-working people will create the solutions we desperately want and need, such as:
- Ability to mass remove/repurpose trash for cleaner oceans and environment
- Compostable items to limit reliance on plastics
- Cures to diseases
- Better anti-aging products to increase health span
- Less reliance on pesticides and herbicides due to technological alternatives like drones
- Computer precision surgeries
- Cleaner and renewable energy
- The list goes on
I’ve heard depression is looking at the past and anxiety considering the future. I fight every day to keep it appreciation and hope, respectively. Here’s to our great past, present, and future entrepreneurs.