Entrepreneurship is about being remarkable.
This is an examination of how entrepreneurship is really viewed. This article will examine an individual from America and how he is seen as an entrepreneur. Then we will look at entrepreneurship at the very bottom, the landfill entrepreneur. We will look at the characteristics of both to see what we discover.
Entrepreneurial success at the top – The exalted
Elon Musk as one of Americas top successes is one of the most remarkable billionaire entrepreneurs in America. As of January 2016, he has an estimated net worth of US$12.4 billion, making him the 39th wealthiest person in the US. [Forbes]
As an entrepreneur, most of Musk’s wealth has come from starting and owning companies, rather than salary. He is Tesla’s biggest shareholder, with a 23 percent stake, runs closely held Space Exploration Technologies Corp. and is chairman of SolarCity Corp.
Entrepreneur Elon Musk is a man with a vision. The founder of PayPal, Tesla Motors, SolarCity and SpaceX – all extraordinary companies in four completely different industries. Here is a short profile of the life of Elon Musk.
He grew up in South Africa without ever really considering himself South African. Like the rest of his family, he was just passing through. The Musks were a race nearly as much as they were a family, with a specialized awareness of themselves as wanderers and adventurers. Every Musk is able to tell the story of forebears whose accomplishments serve as an inspiration and whose energy endures as an inheritance — a grandfather who won a race from Cape Town to Algiers; a great-grandmother who was the first female chiropractor in Canada; grandparents who were the first to fly from South Africa to Australia in a single-engine plane. "Without sounding patronizing, it does seem that our family is different from other people," says Elon's sister, Tosca Musk. "We risk more."
Elon was born an entrepreneur into a family of entrepreneurs. His mother was a dietitian and a fashion model (and still is today) and his father, Errol, was an engineer and what a family member described as a "serial entrepreneur."
Today, he demonstrates the great drive of Entrepreneurship, his greatest asset is his will to succeed.
He takes and manages risks without concern and he does this daily. He witnesses his own failures almost every day and keeps moving forward.
Failures are those events that guide him on his path.
Is he remarkable? Yes, in a billionaire sort of way. He is obsessed with succeeding. His mission is to succeed in manifesting his “ideas”, not personal success and not the money, succeeding. Money is just a tool for chasing his ideas to successful completion.
Entrepreneurial success at the bottom – The Diminished
The most diminished of all Entrepreneurs
The Remarkable Landfill Children.
They are inspirational. They inspire because they too are born into entrepreneurship but they don't have entrepreneurial parents or homes or schools or safety or security. They have nothing but their own creativity and drive and their will to survive.
For those of you that are not familiar with what a landfill entrepreneur really is, let me introduce you to the members of the Landfill Harmonic, as an example.
“Their Instruments May Be Garbage, But the Music Will Bring Tears to Your Eyes.”
Ever heard of a town built on a garbage dump? We hadn't until last year when I discovered a community on the outskirts of Asuncion, the capital of the tiny, impoverished South American country of Paraguay.
It's called Cateura and there is trash everywhere — in its streets, its rivers, in people's backyards — but I decided to take you to Cateura tonight, not because of the poverty or the filth, but because of the incredible imagination and ingenuity of the people who live there. This story is also a reminder that, ultimately, music will triumph everywhere and anywhere.
Garbage is the only crop in Cateura and the harvest lasts 12 months a year. It is Cateura's curse, its livelihood and the only reason people live here, providing hundreds of jobs to peasant farmers who were kicked off their plots by large land owners.
They are the Trash Pickers. It is their profession. They sift through the stench 24 hours a day, scrounging for anything they can sell — 10 cents for a pound of plastic, five cents for a pound of cardboard.
Cateura didn't exist before Paraguay's capital Asuncion started dumping its trash here. The town grew up around the garbage and became one of the poorest places in South America.
Twenty-five hundred families live here now. There is hardly any electricity or plumbing. The drinking water is contaminated. Many of the children move from broken homes to crime and drugs.
The residents of Cateura, Paraguay, don't just make a living from the massive garbage heap in their town. They also make music and the instruments to play.
You'll be amazed at what else people here are doing with this trash…just look and listen.
The "Landfill Harmonic"
(Landfill harmonic – La armonía del vertedero – Orquesta de Instrumentos Reciclados de Cateura)
An orchestra for kids with instruments made from trash?
A cello made from an oil can and pieces of wood, that were thrown in the garbage; a saxophone made of spoons and buttons. These instruments are crafted by Nicolas, a 'recycler' with no previous experience making musical instruments, who is living 'hand-to-mouth' by the garbage dump in Catuera, Paraguay.
Inspired by this initiative and creativity, Maestro Luis Szaran, director of "Sounds of the Earth," formed the 'recycled orchestra,' with children living near the dump. "Our main goal isn't to form good musicians, but to form good citizens." Now 30 members strong, (and looking for more, for a full orchestra) listen to the sweet sounds of these 'recycled' instruments and the hopes and dreams of the children who play them. … Be Amazed and Inspired!
As demonstrated, entrepreneurship when viewed from this perspective, is a common essence that exists in all man kind and it is inextinguishable.
Elon Musk, the exalted, the remarkable, sees it as a step by step path to accomplishment, failures are just another step on the path to succeeding.
The landfill children, the diminished but remarkable, see no path nor do they have options to a path. The options for these children are very limited. Once in a great while an opportunity presents itself and is taken immediately and completely.
The children work hard each day to succeed as well, only they call it survival.
Both ends of this spectrum have the same qualities; inspiration, creativity, imagination, action, vision and risks. The Children of the Landfill are the most remarkable because they succeed in the most ”basic” way, through the veils of waste.
One attribute all successful billionaire entrepreneurs have in common is that they are willing to put everything they have on the line any time of the day. To them its all luck and risk. Its the same with the landfill pickers every day they put everything they have on the line, their survival.
Green Fire has a mission to improve the lifestyle of these amazing people and this amazing community.
Green Fire is preparing a crowd funding campaign for the implementation of Children of the Landfill – Village Project.
Note: Just in case you may have missed any of my previous blog posts, I post here on one of my active projects. It is a new social network for entrepreneurs, completely free, and very unique. It could be a great thing for your business. It is called MarketHive. Just click —-> HERE <—- to find out more.
If you are interested in participating in this effort to lift these children to inspiration, please join me in the Markethive group “Green Fire”. It is from here that we will start a crowd funding campaign to aid Green Fire in its mission.
David