I had the pleasure of spending an evening this week with two of my favorite entrepreneurial advocates - Dan Sullivan and EO. Dan was sharing his thoughts on creating a 10x mindset, and he made two points that I think are critical for all of us.
We live in crazy times today. Let's face it, things are messy. Messiness never creates comfort, and in today's 24-hour news cycle that discomfort is multiplied. But the reality is that, that's what progress is all about. As new innovations kill old standards. It's never pretty, and the amazing rate of progress we are all able to take advantage of, also means there's an amazing rate of destruction. As Dan shared, we're at a crossover from a world ruled by the laws of industrial production to one ruled by the laws of the microchip. Think about this. Dan pointed out that the very iPhone sitting in my pocket would have been valued at $1.7 billion in 1972. I can only imagine what the iPad I'm writing this post on would have been valued at.
The real battle we're witnessing is a battle between the philosophy of scarcity and the philosophy of abundance. While entrepreneurs tend to naturally have an abundance outlook, we must remember that many institutions and industries have a highly vested interest in scarcity. If it's a zero sum game, we need institutions to protect us from ourselves. If every time there's a winner, there's a loser (and the bigger the winner the bigger the loser), then we must have authorities to referee the game. A scarcity mindset leads to resentment, guilt and destruction. Abundance leads to creation, gratitude and cooperation. As economist and business profession Julian Simon professed, there is one - and only one - natural resource. It's called human ingenuity...and I wouldn't bet against it.