9/15/2011

Austin Baker visited the class this evening to share his experiences of becoming an entrepreneur at a very young age.  Austin is involved in a service oriented business as opposed to my goal of having a product oriented business.  However, there were two things he said that I wrote down because they had a special impact.

• "Avoid people who have a victim mentality."

The moral of the statement is that people who feel they are a victim will constantly feel that they are owed something and might go to extreme lengths to claim what they feel has been kept from them.  Sadly, these people are becoming harder to avoid as the victim mentality is spreading in this country and in the world.

• "I know I'm on to something when people think I'm crazy."

In the RSAnimate video from several classes ago, it was mentioned how a survey was given to a group of students throughout their time in grade school.  The higher the grade, the worse the students scored on creativity and innovation.  Most likely, the students who did not score well all had the same ideas and thought that the more original ideas of the higher scoring students were 'crazy'.  Perhaps 'crazy' is just another way of saying 'outside the box'.  

I'm not sure why this is the case but I have a theory.  To me, human beings crave innovation and creativity.  We always want something new because otherwise we get bored easily.  For this reason, we value those who have not had the creative and innovative abilities 'educated' out of them.  This can also cause some envy or jealously.  Therefore, in order to make themselves feel better, those who do not innovate call the others 'crazy'.

Personally, I have violated - at my own peril - both of the statements.  So it was very motivating to hear someone who had been through the same scenarios.  Also, more motivating was how he dealt with it.  So it is possible to come back from it.