Jon, no offense taken. But your perception of me seems to strongly dismiss my real-world experience and chalk up my statements to \"what is taught in business school\" so let me offer up a little of my résumé to add perspective.
I started my first little business at age 11, and the first of my ventures passed $1M in revenue in 1992. I come from a third-generation family that started from scratch and built a company big enough to be #438 on the Fortune 500. I\'ve run over $100M in commercial real-estate development projects. I manage (alone, or as part of a team) nearly $50M in financial and business investments. I\'ve met payroll since 1991. I\'ve worked in 12 countries, in four languages. And I was exporting from the USA in 1991, I\'ve owned real estate in the USA since 1986, and I\'ve filed and paid taxes in the USA all along the way. I\'ve found my own jobs and started my own businesses, no exceptions and no family support. I went into my MBA program with 11 years of post-college experience, in addition to whatever I\'d done before then, the highest level of real-world exposure of anyone in my class.
I am not simply parroting what some professor said. I respect your 22 years of experience, so I\'ll ask that you respect mine. Your perspective has all the weight of your personal opinion, which it is, and you\'re entirely entitled to have it because it\'s a legitimate opinion. It does not have any less weight than the opinion of any other qualified businessperson, but it does not have any more weight either. And we all live with that \"constant pressure\".
I am not mad at you. This is not an argument. And I hope it doesn\'t sound like I\'m bragging, since I\'ve certainly had many (most?) failures along the way. I do not feel that my opinions are \"better\" than yours, I just prefer mine. But I do feel that your comments dismiss my contributions as ivory-tower book learning untainted by contact with the messiness of the real world. I hope to correct that so we can have a reasonable discussion about our respective opinions.
In response to your response.
I mentioned the downsides of government intervention (price caps and others) in my post. I\'ve always made a strong case for small government, low taxes, low intervention, and other things with which you agree. But I\'ll add that business management (in theory and practice both) does not fail because of government... businesspeople must include government intervention as one of the input/cost/risk factors that affect them just as much as hurricanes or Chinese imports are factors. I also did not say that the high end is the only place to be: I said that everyone must add value and differentiate themselves in some way, while of course those who manage to add the most value get the best price.
In the end, hopefully the \"reasoned discourse of ideas\" discussed in a diverse group where slightly- or significantly-different thoughts and beliefs are represented, will allow each of us to take what we find of value and leave the rest, but still achieve better results in our own lives than we would have gotten without the benefit of all diversity.
Nov 21, 2009 at 11:26 AM
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