Many entrepreneurs in Latin America wonder every day what is happening with them since - according to them - they no longer achieve profitable results within the order to which they were used.
In a previous Workshop we have heard voices where they pointed out this situation and even many of them were inclined to think about other activities and companies or to leave the world of companies completely.
The temptation for almost all of them was about “sell and retire; I've been working for too many years now and every time I try harder and harder for less ”.
This orientation to try to "sell the company" and exchange it for money has been manifested by several entrepreneurs. According to them, if that money were invested in a financial institution, the money they would receive would be enough to "live without working" and this temptation was around their heads.
In principle I would like to make some clarifications. It is not very easy for me to understand the idea of "living without working" especially for those who have been endowed with the wonderful virtue of being able to Create and Innovate, which is a characteristic that all innovative entrepreneurs have.
And it is even more difficult for me to understand the conception that this money has been invested in a financial institution. I do not know people who have become rich as a result of giving their money to Banks and financial entities; but I do know many of them who have lost their money and in some cases all their fortunes.
Possibly what has been happening in recent generations is that the emergence of systems, entities, companies, institutions and regulations on money have not always been in favor of those who are within the profile of entrepreneurs.
As Sharon Lechter points out, "Without financial literacy and the knowledge of how money works, people are not prepared to face the world that awaits them." Lechter points out that this deteriorating situation is not the privilege of employers but has become widespread, and that even professionals graduated with University Diplomas who are married and both are fortunate to have good jobs, end up trapped in what he calls a "Rat Race" for the rest of his working life working for the government paying his taxes and also for the banks by paying interest, mortgage payments and pledge plus interest on the credit card, among others.
Now, this Rat Race is what many people (apparently successful in their professions) have to confront during their working careers; But what happens when they retire? Sharon points out that in the United States of America the majority of North Americans have little or nothing saved for their retirement and makes the following judgment: we are facing the “imminent bankruptcy of the welfare services and social medicine”, to finally point out “We we ask if people realize how risky it can be to depend on a pension plan ”.
A question that was asked me in the previous Workshop has to do with what entrepreneurs should then do with regard to raising, educating and directing their children in life, and an audacious participant emerged who said he would like to learn “what is what he would have to do as a businessman ”since if he did not do well, there was little he could do for his children. Sharon (in "Rich Dad and Poor Dad" where she is co-author with Robert Kiyosaki) responds to the first question: "Encouraging children to be employed is advising their children to pay more throughout their lives. taxes of what is fair, with some or no pension promises. And it is true that taxes are the greatest expense of a person.
In fact, most families work for the government from January to mid-May, just to pay their taxes. "
Robert Kiyosaki introduces us to the second question that is addressed directly to entrepreneurs. Kiyosaki asserts that "taxes punish those who produce and reward those who do not." Let's dedicate a little more attention then when during the break of the previous day a businessman stated that he deserved to earn more money since he supported personnel who attended jobs in the government, the province and the municipality, he supported bank employees and officials in addition to its shareholders, maintained an organization such as credit card issuers, and on the other hand, did NOT receive the money that they paid to the Minister of Labor despite the fact that he created jobs,They also did not allocate part of the money from the Minister of Security and the Interior despite the fact that he kept many people away from crime for many hours, and he did not receive the money from the Ministry of Education as a result of teaching them to write letters, and improve spelling and calligraphy to the staff he hired, among other things.
The question we ask ourselves then is: What can an entrepreneur do in this situation? Their Clients, their suppliers, their staff, their expenses, their income, even their lifestyle is studied by others very carefully, and what they learn is not always used to defend the employer, but rather the opposite. You Jorge, have stated that the government audits your financial statements, your banking position and your cash situation in the company that you have created while on the other hand you do not have access to how they spend the money they collect through what you have produced. And he declares that as a consequence his main interest lies in learning about what changes he must make as an entrepreneur to protect himself and get ahead in this life.
A question that many times is asked by entrepreneurs is related to what are new businesses and new companies. This is a very good question since it means that more and more entrepreneurs are realizing that "their company or historical business" is near or entering its Terminal phase and therefore it is necessary to think of something new. So that is a good starting point.
But it is also important to know what "companies or businesses" are available to do. And this is the point that many entrepreneurs are still not very clear about what is understandable since no one "makes things easy for genuine entrepreneurs." Companies and businesses have increasingly taken on a financial and technological turn. It doesn't take a scholar to realize the vast number of small businesses and startups that have closed their doors in the last two decades.
Thousands of small businesses such as hardware stores, bazaars, bakeries, greengrocers and butchers, among others, have succumbed. In Argentina alone and in just the last 10 years, more than 2,000 service stations have closed their doors. Restaurants and bars have lost an important market share as a result of “imported” fast-food that operate under franchises that have sold meat, chicken, vegetable, pasta and pastry foods. And this has also reduced the number of "! Local" entrepreneurs.
Some of you have participated in Courses, Workshops and Conferences where they show some tools regarding how to get and retain Clients and that the "specialists" have called CRM (Customer Relationship Management). They have tried to learn about how CRM works in their companies but they have not yet achieved the results they expect and need.
There has been a textile entrepreneur who in two previous days stated: "I don't know if it's that over the years I'm getting dumber since every day I work more and more and earn less and less."
So in this race with various categories, the important thing is to take into account which are these different categories. The first of these is the one chosen by the vast majority of people who decide to become employees working for an organization, institution or company that can be private, public or mixed.
In the introduction to the book Rich Dad and Poor Dad, Susan Lechter notes that “Encouraging children to be employed is to advise your children to pay more taxes than is fair throughout their lives, with some or no promise. pension. And it is true that taxes are the greatest expense of a person. In fact, most families work for the government from January to mid-May, just to pay their taxes. "
Many people some two generations ago thought that through the Profession they had an option in addition to being employed; It consisted of practicing the profession independently based on a personal and independent relationship carried out directly with the Client. Robert Kiyosaki calls this second category of people under the name "self-employed."
For a time these “independent” professionals found a more or less safe haven both in terms of having the job they wanted to do and in relation to an independent source of livelihood. But little by little, and regardless of the degree of resistance they offered, they began to succumb to the "company that provides professional services."
Law firms, auditing firms, and other organizational arrangements accepted professionals as employees. So that we already find a third category that is the "Owner" or "Entrepreneur" where some professional - or some of them - are the owners of the business.
And there is something we should pay close attention to in Kiyosaki's work. Robert emphasizes that school is the appropriate place for one to spend his life working for money, and this presents a very important drawback: it is unlikely that whoever does it will focus on “money working for him”. Without proper financial education people have to find that they will spend most of their lives working for money and it is very likely that when they die they still have debts to pay.
Hence, Robert's “Rich Dad” expressed himself this way: “Learning to have money working for you is a lifelong learning. Many people go to college for four or more years and finish their education there. I know today that my study of money will continue throughout my life, simply because the more I discover, the more I find that I need to learn.
Most people never study this topic. They go to work, get their check, balance their accounts, and that's it. And on top of that, they wonder why they are in financial trouble. So they think the problem will be solved with more money. Few realize that the problem is the lack of financial education. "
The fundamental problem is that the vast majority of people - even their own parents - think that college - university is a goal rather than taking it into account as a starting point.
And for the worse it is a starting point after having invested many years of life, energy and resources to which must be added everything that the person has stopped earning. Of course, college and university are places that provide utility, benefits and knowledge, but it turns out that this is not always enough. Says Robert Kiyosaki: “Look, school is very, very important.
You go to school to learn a certain skill or profession, and thus be a contributing member of society. Every culture needs teachers, doctors, mechanics, artists, cooks, merchants, police officers, firemen, soldiers. Schools train them in such a way that our culture can flourish and flourish. Unfortunately, for many, school is the end, not the beginning. "
Therefore, when professionals graduate and get a job in an organization, however important it may be, what they are doing is finding a short-term solution, for what is a long-term problem.
Most of the professionals, executives and managers employed within the corporate world are outside companies and organizations before they reach 50 years of age, and many of them do not have the possibility of reintegrating in another company for the worse, as they do not Reinsertion cannot receive conventional retirement benefits since it does not “accumulate enough years”. Something similar is what happens today in the "private" world of health. When professionals are young they are employed and reasonably well paid, for which they make their contributions to a pre-paid medical service. But it turns out that when they are young there is little use that they can give to this benefit.
On the other hand, when they are older and really need it, they are deprived of this benefit because, being without work, they have not been able to continue making the monthly contributions and therefore the "service has been discontinued."
Robert suggests that the money collected through a job is unreal or fictitious - compared to the investment that an entrepreneur or investor can make by putting the money to work for him - to what we suggest must be added “a false sense of protection".
Robert points out that at some point the money system on which the economy of the United States of America is based would collapse and “When this happens, all hell will break loose. The poor and middle classes, and the ignorant, will have their lives ruined simply by continuing to believe that money is real, and that the company they work for, or the government, will take care of them. "
There is no doubt that people in categories one and two (employees and self-employed) are practically condemned to work for money and cannot put money to work for them.
Even the "sense" of independence of the self-employed today does not offer many benefits over the group of "employees"; the immense amount of hours that this second category shows that it has limits of progress at present because very quickly it realizes that the apparent independence that it enjoys is nothing more than "self-exploitation". To gain more by exploiting yourself one reaches a limit; are the net number of hours one can work.
And the death blow to the advantages of the professions (both dependent and independent) is dealt by Robert when he emphasizes that “Today, doctors face challenges that I would not wish even my worst enemy: insurance companies taking control of the business, managed healthcare systems, government intervention, and malpractice lawsuits, to name a few. Boys are no longer so interested in going to school and university since they already know that professional success is no longer related solely to academic success, as it once was ”.
Even when people in their capacity as employees or self-employed (the first two categories) make even more money, they do not find a solution to their financial problems. “For most of the people, the biggest expense is for paying taxes. Many think that the highest is income tax, but for most Americans, the highest tax or contribution is Social Security.
As an employee, it seems that the Social Security contribution rate in combination with the contribution for Social Work and / or Health Services is approximately 7.5%, but in reality it is 15% given that the employer it must match the amount of Social Security.
In essence, it is money that the employer cannot pay you. And in addition to that, you still have to pay income taxes on the amount deducted from your Social Security contributions, income that you never receive because it went directly to Social Security, as withholdings. "
All of this leads many employed and self-employed professionals to go through what Robert Kiyosaki calls the "Rat Race." Every day employed and self-employed people find themselves running… to get nowhere.
In Dr. Donald W. Cole's book with Eric Gaynor Butterfield as co-author (“Professional Suicide or Organizational Murder”) it is shown how many corporate professionals find themselves being expelled or self-expelled from them.
It is proven that people can work long hours but at a more or less reasonable work rate and that we can also work very short hours at a dizzying rate. But what we can't do is run for long at a breakneck pace. If Formula 1 cars ran at full speed for many hours they could lose a race to a conventional car from 40 years ago; And the same is true of high-speed motorcycles. These very high speed teams have been designed to run for reasonable and rather short times.
In the aforementioned book, Dr. Cole and Eric Gaynor highlight how the lack of clear and precise objectives, increasingly scarce resources and the reduction of times to achieve the goals, often lead organizational participants towards the process of “ professional suicide or organizational murder ”.
So what do these expelled or self-expelled people do? They strive to be businessmen or entrepreneurs. And this is the third category that Robert Kiyosaki refers to.
It is definitely very important to give effect to the popular adage that reads: "The master's eye makes cattle fatter." But the process of becoming an owner and having to generate income for yourself is often not as simple as waiting until the end of the month to get paid. Even if it were able to do so, it would not belong to the category of entrepreneur but rather to the second category of self-employed. Putting yourself on your shoulders the fact of paying salaries to others "who assist" your company is not an everyday task and very few can do it. This is what characterizes an entrepreneur.
There are not a few senior managers and executives of corporations who, while in their positions and upon receiving the visit of a consultant, quickly learned that the following question should be answered:
What business is your company in? These consultants made him see that hierarchies did not exist only to shape a pyramid, but so that whoever was above another in the vertical scheme would be in charge of “getting more from others” and above what they paid to him. he. He also learned that in order to survive in the corporation he had to think in terms of business units and departmental profitability or by area under his charge. It was not easy for corporate managers and executives to adapt to this situation and they thought that once they were out of the company - and already operating within their company where they were owners - this would not be difficult to do.But in addition to paying yourself, generating money to pay others - who often do things against the employer and the company - is not something very simple. And only when one can absorb these personnel costs does one become an entrepreneur. And then you must define "what business you are really in"
But managers, executives and professionals in corporations and organizations cannot always answer this question. And as Robert Kiyosaki says “There is a big difference between profession and business. Many times, I ask people, What is your business? And they answer me, Well, I am a bank. So I ask them if they own a bank, and they usually answer, No, I work in one. "
You all know Ray Crock for his privileged position at McDonald's as owner. His profession was always the same: that of a salesman. At one time he sold blenders and at another time he had the profession of salesman but in another field: he was a franchise salesman. Regardless of his profession as a franchise salesman, Ray Crock's real business was not selling hamburgers but accumulating properties that could generate income.
And here we have to go back to what happens to us as a result of the years we spend in college and university. One tends to become, sooner or later, what one studies. “In other words, if you study, for example, cooking, you become a cook; if you study law, you will be a lawyer; and studying automobile mechanics makes you a mechanic.
The mistake of becoming what you study is that too many people forget to take care of their own business. They spend their lives taking care of someone else's business, and making that other person rich. " What actually happens is that it leaves room for others who - without having their profession - can take care of their "professional business" which is paradoxical, but which is real anyway. The financiers, under different institutional schemes, are the owners and shareholders of the main medical provision sites today.
There are several additional problems that entrepreneurs experience every day because many people have not yet learned how to differentiate the genuine entrepreneur from the "state contractor." The latter operates under the "cost + one plus" system and does not run the risks that are implicit in the activity of any genuine entrepreneur. Labor lawsuits related to the provision of work and health risks have staggered, fainted and died many genuine entrepreneurs. And taxes - and their steady growth - have also added a significant additional share of business fatalities.
The State has assumed the right to act as Robin Hood which is - in our opinion - something that equates those who produce and believe with those who do not produce and do not create. Almost all governments in Latin America talk about redistributing wealth as if they were Robin Hood and what they often do is shift resources to those who insist on not-doing. And this has very serious consequences for a society as it removes the incentives that are necessary for all entrepreneurship. The entrepreneur is the result of "what he brings since he is in his mother's belly" and what "the context stimulates or does not stimulate."
And this equation does not consist of a simple addition but is a multiplication: when either of the two factors is zero, no result is reached. And there is too much evidence of it in Latin American communities; Very few local companies have been able to be successful internationally, but on the other hand we can witness how many outside organizations (not Latin American) have successfully established themselves within these communities.
And here we have to begin to privilege other aspects that are also important if we want to develop genuine entrepreneurs who in turn generate genuine work. Fear often causes people to overvalue "security" and invites them to back down.
Entrepreneurs in Latin America are very afraid to continue with their companies when the possibility that they do well is not high and they also have the government as a partner. And that is why we see that every day more and more value-added products are brought from abroad, despite the fact that they have - paradoxically - raw materials that were exported from Latin America.
And leaving the entrepreneur as the third category, we can gradually enter the category of the entrepreneur who sees his business from a financial point of view as if he were an investor. The stimulus is no longer the product or service of your organization; is money.
We are facing the financial investor who tries to make new rules that many times genuine entrepreneurs have not fully understood and are then at the mercy of these financial experts. Remember what the golden rule is: "He who has the gold (the money) is the one who makes the rules."
There are only two main actors who do not have to make an effort to "make money" and are authorized to do so: the Banks and the Government. For now we have to take a little break, but I am going to leave you a question hovering in your heads: What is the real business of McDonald's, Microsoft, General Motors, among others? What role do Banks really play? What do many governments even do for their own communities?
And please bear in mind that a huge number of establishments and companies have disappeared because their existence has no justification under the current way of operating where financial and technological globalization has exceeded the limits. The car dealers have serious difficulties to survive as the factories can market the cars directly; thousands and thousands of service stations are ceasing to operate in Latin America as a consequence of the commercialization that is carried out directly by the oil companies; the immense number of IT businesses - which have had to report their sales to the large software and hardware companies - see how their Clients buy directly from the manufacturers;Many travel agencies have not been able to maintain themselves as providers of many of their services and it is not necessary to list the huge number of bakeries, hardware stores, bazaars, greengrocers, butchers and thousands of other businesses that now "exist" within large supermarkets. These large corporations or conglomerates have come to privilege the financing aspect over the commercial aspect and a small commercial and industrial utility is no longer so important as long as financial utility is present. And the last question, assuming that you governed a community, would you find it sensible to give up your raw materials and natural resources for paper money? And could you conceive that by making this "exchange" of material resources for paper money, your community would be even more in debt over time?And the last question, assuming that you governed a community, would you find it sensible to give up your raw materials and natural resources for paper money? And could you conceive that by making this "exchange" of material resources for paper money, your community would be even more in debt over time?
We've already covered a lot of things related to the top three categories regarding how each one is related to making money.
Each of them have particular and distinctive characteristics and also each of them have consequences and achieve different results.
The categories of employee and self-employed have been the first two of the three of them.
People positioned within these categories according to Robert Kiyosaki, in one way or another, are oriented to generate money "through the sale of their own time" and are also characterized by "working for money" instead of doing work money for them.
These first two categories stand out in that they offer you - apparently - a certain sense of security and comfort.
In any case, we already know what awaits those who have this preferential orientation, for which we have highlighted what an expert in human behavior says when it comes to aspects where people compete for various reasons and especially when the rivalry has to do with the appropriation of resources.
William Shakespeare does not hesitate to put in the mouth of the "main" witch who - faced with the mediocre type of solution proposals from her subordinates - takes charge of the situation and assures that the greatest "evil" consists in hitting the opponent - adversary - rival a "sense of total protection." In the introduction to Robert Kiyosaki's book "Rich Dad Poor Dad" it is pointed out how little is left for the social security system as well as social medicine to break down.
But perhaps, what person who is young and currently has a job can think that having contributed to the pension funds and prepaid social medicine companies, he would be left without protection when he was old? Furthermore, Kiyosaki illustrates that this does not simply work with what we have inside our heads when we are young but that when we "do not feel or live like old people" we cannot conceive what is going to happen to us later in our lives.
Kiyosaki shows that the rules of the game have been completely altered and it is unfortunate that many people still want to play by the same rules. The idea of studying and completing primary, secondary, and later university studies to get a "good job" that will give us some peace of mind for the rest of our lives, worked until more or less a little more than the second half of the last century in the United States of North America, and in the different Latin American countries until the moment in which they have been reached by technological and financial globalization. And the problem with studying and with a diploma from an excellent university is that "one later tries to earn a living with that profession" and with what that profession has taught them.
The behavioral sciences and the Organizational Development Profession gave unequivocal proof to everyone just over 50 years ago that professional efficiency - while necessary - was not always enough. Intrapersonal as well as interpersonal competences and skills are essential and - paradoxically, it is sometimes more difficult for those who are professionals to incorporate and develop them than for those who are not. To do this, you only need to turn to the work of notable experts in the field (Chris Argyris, Donald Cole, Edgar Schein, Richard Beckhard, among others).
The employee gives much of his destiny to others who do do things to control their destiny, and also have different plans for them.
These others are made up of three main categories: shareholders, bankers and their shareholders, and government. It is too much of a burden for a person as an employee to be successful. In this sense, the Professions gave - initially - the Professionals the possibility of becoming independent and some were able to take good advantage of this initial situation. However, too quickly shareholders, bankers and the government found that through new rules the professionals "would not achieve their dream of independence." And this is how many excellent professionals who moved from the category of employee to that of self-employed after an arduous struggle became convinced that "what many of them were doing was simply exploiting themselves."
To make things even more difficult for these professionals their last years as employees were not easy. In Dr. Donald Cole's book ("Professional Suicide or Organizational Murder") it is exposed how the last times that an executive - professional spends within the corporate world, is extremely hard and that many times he is pushed out of the company or in Instead, he prefers to expel himself.
Today thousands of excellent professionals, executives and company directors live and undergo this process in different organizations within the private world in Latin America and the situation does not seem to change since the trend of recent years has increasingly shown increasing difficulty and problematic.
Kiyosaki makes it clear that "There are rules for money by which the rich act, and there are also rules by which the remaining 95% of the population acts." And it is unfortunate that these rules that 95% of children learn both at school and at home are not the rules that the rich and the money-makers play by. " And under these rules that 95% of people play, many may be advising their children to do things and to choose a path that will make them pay more taxes throughout their lives than they really are entitled to; In general, this group of people pays taxes equivalent to their income for almost 5 months of work in the year.
Now we find that the first two categories that seemed to differ greatly over the years have become more similar. The self-employed "exploits himself."
Accountants have to find jobs in auditing companies, experts and graduates in information technology are preferably oriented towards the corporate world that markets computer products and services (hardware and software ”), lawyers find it difficult to develop independently and privilege working in legal and legal services companies, and even doctors have found that their services can also be "routinized". The latter are paid by pre-paid service companies per person served, which is not much different from the pay per piece that was made before the industrial revolution when many people worked at home.
If these two categories do not end up being what they are really trying to make them see, sooner or later - often distressed by the need to support, and feed their families - professionals are heading towards new paths and options. Possibly one of the final blows of grace to the dream of the "independent profession" has been given by the "ISO Standards" that regulate the processes through which something is done. As the processes have to do with more than one person, it is difficult for a Professional to be certified and as, on the other hand, companies and organizations increasingly require that their service providers be “certified”, independent professionals find that their The funnel to enter a company is getting smaller and smaller, which gets even bigger each year with the simple passage of time.Eric Gaynor Butterfield points out that in a meeting with a senior manager of a local Bank that had passed into the hands of an International Bank, he told him:
“People who have all their white hair can no longer work as independent advisors or consultants here,” as I had. I found this new rule that the new shareholders who acquired the local bank had adopted interesting, which has led me to respond to the manager stating: "How creative they have been in terms of the selection criteria!"
The ways to get out of self-employment after having experienced the growing difficulties that people belonging to this second category face, are not easy at all and even more so if they are people with Diplomas in Universities.
Making a career within a company as an employee once you have graduated and graduated as a Professional is very different from developing as an entrepreneur.
The entrepreneur is usually in the beginning tied to a particular territory while the individual is more willing to follow the territory that "others" have defined for him. Entrepreneurs are true artists, who move intelligently on the basis of intuition, while the professional tends to rely more on theoretical conceptions and frameworks.
It is common for the entrepreneur to think of his company from the point of view of his family, and has a tendency to link them within it, while the professional within the corporation tends to make what is "the family" independent from what it is done in the company. It is very common that the entrepreneur, even when using a legal figure, owns almost all of the shares of the company, while the Professional has little or no access to the shares of the company.
The multinational organization is characterized by having a very diffuse shareholding and the professional has to learn what the shareholder wants, usually through what he interprets by other people who often differ regarding their positions before the shareholders, their preferences, their interests and also your needs. The entrepreneur is a born creator and must inspire others to follow him; the professional, manager or organizational executive spends much of his time "looking up waiting for instructions that must then be transmitted to others, the subordinates".
In particular, the founding entrepreneur is a typical artist and creator, starting from nothing but perfectly imagining how his work of art will be finished. The Professional tends to think from today on and how things are going forward today. When Professionals study a new investment project, they start from a zero moment that is that of the initial investment and then advance in the project calculating the income and expenses of each year starting from year 1. The entrepreneur, on the contrary, tends to position himself in the finished project, that is to say the last year. And this has a huge advantage over what the Professional does.
When positioning himself in the last year, he visualizes achievement and success, while the professional, when advancing from year 1 onwards, what he begins to see is the income - expenses of each one along with each of the problems, difficulties and obstacles. And the problems, difficulties and obstacles that appear under this different perspective in the eyes of the Professional make it take into account different and lower chances of success.
To begin to be successful as a business owner - as an entrepreneur - the professional has to meet the attributes of the founding partner that, as we have seen, are not commonly developed even in the best Universities on the planet. But even having been successful as a founding partner then other characteristics and competencies are required to transform the founding partner into a successor partner. Usually, without an entrepreneurial founder, a family business cannot grow, but only with him it cannot continue, and this is where the figure of the successor appears.
The tasks performed by the founding partner are different from the successor partner since the founder takes care of the entire business from the beginning. And then he must learn to pass on his knowledge to others as well as to choose others as the most appropriate.
Professionals and executives in organizations are not always oriented to teaching others since the environment is competitive and much of the success they achieve - depending on the way the company carries out the rewards - is sometimes at the expense of others. The successor usually does not handle the areas that have to do with the Clients or with the finances of the business, although they can be in charge of the finances of the company. In general, the successor partner must be able to show the founder that he has been able to effectively manage a part of the company or a business unit or a series of projects.
Professionals tend to see problems as their own professors at the University often see them. Many students from India who did Master's studies in the United States of North America in the 70s of the last century returned to their country suggesting to their parents - businessmen that they put into effect organizational arrangements many times supported by the principles of the division of labor. which contrasts with the model that we have learned as more efficient, which is the one where we work in a participatory way and as work teams. Paradoxically the culture in India has historically been one of teamwork.
It is very difficult for the professional to see the company from the perspective of a businessman and as an owner. In principle, it is not easy for a person who has worked as an executive and manager and who used to receive a fixed income every month, and who also had a computer, secretary and infinite resources at his disposal, then have to adapt to a situation as an entrepreneur where you do not receive any fixed allowance and you even have to pay others "on a fixed basis".
A research work carried out by Eric Gaynor Butterfield (Entrepreneurs and Innovation Conference; November 2004) shows that in the transition process where professionals try to become entrepreneurs they take into account the companies and businesses as they exist at that time.
What they do not really know is that what they are seeing as the business of the existing entrepreneur is not the true business of the entrepreneur. Usually businesses go through another side that is not the one that is visible. Many shoe stores have stores in streets where the rents are very high and professionals may wonder how they can pay them since the frequency of incoming customers cannot even justify the payment of the rent alone. What happens is that only one of these Customers can be a Distributor or Wholesaler from another province who may be ordering hundreds and thousands of pairs of shoes.
The Professional tends to “talk” about what he knows, that is, about his Profession. And you are rewarded for speaking effectively on matters that relate to your Profession. When you are an entrepreneur you can do many things, but you cannot talk about what you have learned; that has cost too much to give to third parties. In addition, secrecy is something important for the businessman, unlike the Professional who, being successful, is invited to a Congress to share his new findings. The entrepreneur knows very well that "The secret of success is the secret." Therefore, and taking into account that at some point "your business" has to be visible to third parties - or to meet other people of the same specialty - the employer again behaves differently than professionals do.:develops activities other than the one in which he is "succeeding." Something that the professional is not used to doing because it tends to persist within what he does and even more - if he is successful there - he has to go deeper into that same discipline or content or product or service.
But one of the biggest differences between the professional and the employer is that the latter does not speak as much about the concept of synergy - he may even not know it - but he is capable of applying it anyway. In other words, the entrepreneur anticipates the concepts and may be applying many of them without even having knowledge of them.
Rather, the professional goes to the concept and then tries to go into action, something that unfortunately does not happen naturally. And under this practice of synergy, the entrepreneur is predisposed and gets ready to lead others with the responsibility of meeting some requirements of these third parties who have to be part of the team.
The professional does not generally operate within this vision; Furthermore, within the different Latin American cultures, university professionals generally have a predisposition to perceive the employer from the perspective of Karl Marx, where he is perceived as an exploiter who benefits from the work of others.
This concept of added value within Latin American universities even has a highly negative connotation and has become part of a cliché that has been widely accepted.
Now, I would like to ask a question: What would this planet be like if no one had had the perspective that we would work even occasionally as a team? Even the main sports and entertainment are performed by humans cooperatively and the orientation towards work as teams prevails over individuals.
Is there an invention that has been developed by the sole intervention of a single person? And more, if people were not willing to work under the leadership of another.
Who would create and generate work? Of course, a very simple answer arises: That is the role of the State. But we have very concrete experiences of what happens when the State wants to assume the role of the entrepreneur that implies, among others and at the very least, acting creatively, taking risks and being innovative.
How many states do you know that have operated creatively, taking risks and taking innovative positions? Today in Latin America, a continent full of primary resources that are there offering to be taken and transformed, we see that most of what happens with the transformation of these raw materials (energy, mining, agriculture, fishing, forestry) is in the hands of foreign corporations that many decades ago had entrepreneurs in those foreign countries.
And when we hear that governments have created so many hundreds or thousands of jobs, we only have to observe what these companies are doing and producing, and it is obvious that most of these activities are not creative or represent generation of new income. genuine, since they are performed, among other things, through non-genuine work.
In some Latin American countries this situation is more critical than in others. For example, Argentina with immense resources and in much greater proportion than those that God has distributed for what Chile is, exports to the world just like Chile. But an important difference is that Chile exports products that carry much more added value where transformation processes take place that create work for others, in short, genuine work. In a workshop with businessmen held about 3 months ago, many Argentine businessmen stated that even with the possibility of growing they were not going to do so.
Do we have any idea of what it represents for a country or for a community that those who are a creative, innovative force and are predisposed to take risks, there comes a time when they decide to “not grow”? It is as if we have inventors who begin to stop doing work related to the innovation process in a moment and begin to stop inside the automatic gaming machines. To kill the incentives for entrepreneurs is to condemn a country to live without them and the strong generator of genuine jobs that they originated must show in a short time the government's income with plans and proposals where genuine work is not generated and that can be sustained only as a consequence of being within the world of money which is consistent in turn with the policy of John Maynard Keynes.
Unfortunately, the concept of creating money through international financial organizations that later found support in the Central Banks of Latin American countries instead of basing it on the genuine creation of products and services ended up eliminating the incentives that every Latin American entrepreneur needs to carry on. your mission.
The creation of money through international financial organizations that later found the Central Banks in Latin America as allies, decreed the beginning of the death of the genuine entrepreneurs and the “State contractors” appeared, who closed the circle with the already structured alliance of international financial entities with local banks. As stated by a leading businessman in the metallurgical industry in Argentina: “We work very hard to have a company where we must buy machinery, keep equipment updated, hire and employ staff, we pay high interest costs to Banks, we must pay taxes to the government before having the profits "while the Banks and the Government can create money with a little machine."To really compete with the cost of “making money with a little machine”, the effort of the genuine entrepreneur is disproportionate and even the most enterprising Latin American entrepreneurs have realized that it is preferable not to innovate and not take risks, and to associate with governments as suppliers and state contractors. That assures them a safe profit and they are also covered from risks.
And we already know what happens when people "work safe." William Shakespeare has been an extraordinary teacher on the subject and it seems that his lesson has not yet been absorbed by the Latin American rulers. To make matters worse, they do not even give importance within the best universities to the thought and conception of the excellent German economist Joseph Schumpeter who was convinced of the enormous power of the employer as a generator of genuine work.
In today's China, which has strongly supported the practice of the creative and innovative businessman Joseph Schumpeter, they reward their local entrepreneurs and those entrepreneurs who are also capable of taking other markets outside their borders, considering them as "Leaders Undisputed ”who deserve to receive even greater rewards.
Argentina, which was positioned among the 10 richest countries on the planet when its exporting entrepreneurs were rewarded, has now moved to a totally impoverished position as a result not only of the lack of incentives for creative entrepreneurs but also because through mechanisms State regulations withhold money from exporters in terms of withholdings. Do you know of any country that retains money from the exporting entrepreneur and is one of the most developed countries in the world?
There is no doubt that - as the Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset declared - people's behavior is the result of combining “the person with their context”. Today, not even in the best universities in the world, there is no plan or program through which entrepreneurs can develop.
Countries like Australia, the United States of America, New Zealand and also Argentina grew through the entrepreneurial spirit of those who settled in those lands. All of these countries are still among the richest countries in the world with the exception of Argentina.
About 60 years ago, all of them were within the privileged group of developed and rich countries on this planet, but Argentina began to do different things since then from what the leaders in the USA, Australia and New Zealand did.
The innovative business policy in force until the 1940s was gradually replaced by government assistance to "new entrepreneurs" who were not really such: they were simply state contractors. And you know what characterizes the entrepreneur who is a State contractor: it operates under a system of "cost + one plus". Any cost is good because the "company" is protected anyway and the Clients have to pay for the inefficiency.
Robert Kiyosaki highlights that this practice is consolidated through the thought and action of governments that refer to the fact of having to dedicate themselves "to redistributing wealth." And Kiyosaki shows how this thought and philosophy is lethal for the community that adopts him, and Argentina is an excellent example of this. Through the redistribution of income that has been carried out during the last 60 years, what is clearly visible is a greater impoverishment of the population… and furthermore, it has not been possible to "redistribute wealth more equitably". It is that, as Robert points out very well, "the rich know very well what they have to do" unlike the people who make up that vast majority who are grouped in what is known as the middle class.
At this point we can send you a form of "self-assessment in business matters" that you have to complete and we hope that it will help you to appreciate yourself as entrepreneurs, and that it is of special application for those professionals, executives and corporate directors who want to take the initiative to start “your company”. We (www.theodinstitute.org) are here to help you, for those who seek our help.
I would like to receive a little feedback from you as participants and in particular everything related to the “Transition” process towards the category of entrepreneur; more specifically from the position of employee or self-employed to that of owner of his own company. Robert Kiyosaki has done an excellent job that we hope to enrich by incorporating the different components that are linked to the transition from “lower stages” (where one reaches the limit of exploiting himself) to that of the entrepreneur. And we can group ourselves in tables of 3 exploring how we appreciate ourselves by making use of the “self-assessment form as an entrepreneur”.
