On my way to a business counseling appointment one today, I was waiting at a stop light. As usual, there was a homeless person at one of the intersections holding up a sign. He was a younger guy with weathered skin, so my guess was he was chronically homeless and not homeless through some type of event such as an illness or loss of a job. I could not help but critique this guy’s act as I waited for the light to change.
He had a sign written on a plain piece of 8.5 x 11 paper and not a more rigid piece of cardboard. As a result, the sign kept flopping over, rendering it unreadable.
He used a light green marker to write his message. The color looked like it was part of one of those color blind tests. The lack of contrast made the message nearly unreadable even from a few feet away.
Rather than walking up and down the line of cars waiting for the light to change to try to engage his target market, he chose to just sit on a drain pipe. In fact, he never even made eye contact and just held up the illegible sign, hoping for a handout.
I think many entrepreneurs are just like this homeless guy. They don’t try to find the right tools (the cardboard). They fail to consider the customer’s perspective (text color choice). Finally, they expect people to come running to them without any marketing just because they started a business (sitting on the pipe).
Since I had some time before my meeting and had the homeless fella engaged me I was prepared to give him a quick lesson in entrepreneurship. I’d have told him I would go across the street to Kroger and buy him a $6 case of water, so he could offer them to cars in exchange for a dollar rather than just sitting there asking for a free handout. Since it was a pretty hot day outside, he would have sold out in minutes. The is known as retail arbitrage
Our society encourages takers to keep on taking rather than empowering them to become makers. We feel sorry for someone and give them a handout rather than giving them a leg up in the world.
We perpetuate the thought process of “Hey, feel bad for me and give me some of your money, so you can feel better about yourself.” That kind of welfare does not help anyone.
If we take the example of the homeless man a step further, he could have used the $12 of the money he earned from selling the first case of water I bought him and used it to buy another case of water and still have $6 he could use for consumption. Or he could have forgone the instant gratification of using the $6 for consumption and doubled down and used the first $12 earned to buy 2 more cases of water to sell. In the end, he would have had $12 for food and an additional $12 to buy 2 more cases of water to sell the next day, all from a single $6 investment from my first case of water.
Moreover, I’m sure that people would tip him in the form of an extra dollar here and there or with whatever products drivers give to help out the homeless since they would see that he was trying.
I have no issues helping people that are willing to help themselves, but I have little tolerance for people that expect others to help them. The principles of entrepreneurship are available to everyone, even the homeless guy on the corner.
I believe entrepreneurship is the pathway out of poverty for many provided that they understand some basic principles. Thinking more like an entrepreneur is valuable regardless of where you reside on the income scale.
How can you encourage more people to think like an entrepreneur?
