Not long ago, I was invited to speak to a group of high school teachers about Entrepreneurship.

These teachers, all from the Pittsburgh Public School System, are tasked with instructing and motivating young people (generally 7^th through 12^th graders) to start and successfully operate their own small businesses.

During my presentation, a younger gentleman commented, “You know, I hear every word you are saying. But how do I, and in good conscience, tell a young student that there is also a downside to entrepreneurship? How do I let them know that they might lose everything they invested and maybe even more?

“For example”, he continued, “my senior year in college, we had a business that fixed up dilapidated houses and sold them for huge profits. I remember my buddies saying, ‘yeah, this is a great deal while you’re in college, but you are now graduating, and now, you need security. You need a real JOB.”

How many BILLION times have I heard this? Particularly here in western Pennsylvania, where it seems like no young person can get through high school, much less college, without being asked the question, “So, who are you going to work for when you graduate?”

It just seems that we cannot get out of our heads the proposition that there is some magical guarantee of life-time employment to those who work for someone else, and that working for one’s self is an absolute ticket to nowhere.

First, let’s just talk (job) security. Security is that guy you shave with every morning. Security is the person who dabs on your make-up. The same person who changes your kid’s diapers!

Security is, and quite simply, your productivity … and this is especially true in a small(er) company.

Because it is in the small companies where performance trumps politics, facial hair, and one’s alma mater. In fact, performance is really all that matters in a small company.

My father put in decades of loyal service to a local Fortune 500 company. (They had a big blue logo.) Four of ‘em, in fact. Never sick, always productive and always faithful, he nonetheless was dispatched to the boneyard of retirement the minute he became “too old”. (He was 61.)

Think Circle Dub cared about performance? Obviously not. In my opinion, all they could see was a senior guy making twice the money they could pay a thirty-something and so his ticket out was punched. (And, in fact, he died not more than a year or so later.)

Put this same man into a small, entrepreneurial-driven organization and age is a non-issue. If only he could have made the mental transition.

Make this same man Founder and Owner of his own company and watch him produce for at least another two decades.

Henry David Thoreau once wrote, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Wanna see a perfect definition of this? Just park on the Parkway Center Mall overpass any weekday morning, from 6-10 A.M.. Here, you’ll see all kinds of “quietly desperate” people “betting against themselves” by rooting for the clock to hurry up while they mindlessly “trade hours for dollars”, counting the “days remaining” before their next holiday/vacation.

I think it was Teddy Roosevelt who wrote, “One must enter the arena in order to play the game.” Unfortunately, so many of us tiptoe around the periphery of that arena … never summoning up the courage to truly see what or who we are by betting on ourselves, and not someone who is offering a mere “job”.

Ask yourself … is there anyone on this planet you trust in more than you? If your answer to this is “yes”, then I say to you, “Go, now, and work for that person.”

But if you believe that you are the best steward of your own career and thus, future …. well.

So, I said to that high-school teacher, “Why not quote Bob Dylan to your student … “When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose” … tell him that there is no better time than right now to start taking charge of his own life.

Life is so short. Just a few minutes ago, I was that same high school student. I was trying to figure out exactly to whom I should entrust my future.

Today, I sit at 57 years of age with two kids; an entrepreneurial career that was never for even a minute boring, slow, or predictable; and a very comfortable lifestyle that includes total “security” for those same two kids. (Well, assuming that I choose to provide them with such tenure --- and this jury is still out. WAY out!)

And all because I believed and trusted in me, and not some full-of-baloney recruiter who told me that he had MY best interests at heart.

‘Nuff said?

‘Nuff said.