Visionaries: Born or Raised?
Steve Jobs passed away today at the young age of 56.
He truly was a visionary and a pioneer of our generation.
I was talking with some of my friends about the impact he had on every day lives and appreciating his skills for envisioning a product that people would come to love.
I started thinking how rare it is to have something like him in our generation. I wonder how many other people we will see in this generation who will be able to have the same impact he had on this world.
This brought me to think about my question in the title…..Are visionaries born or raised? This goes back to the old debate regarding nature vs nurture. I don’t know who’s correct, but I can only speak from my experience.
Looking back at my formal education from K-12 to undergraduate college, I can’t help but think about how we were all trained to be the same. We all had to take the same classes, do the same homework assignments, take the same tests. Everything was black or white. You were either right or wrong. I can only recall a handful of instances where we were asked to be creative and come up with something imaginative. It felt like it was more an exception than the norm.
After I quit my job and decided to blog about my story, I found myself having a very difficult time being a visionary and coming up with innovative ideas. I felt like my entire life was groomed to become part of the “working” class. I always picture an office with hundreds of cubicles, where everyone looks and dresses the same, and is doing the same type of dull and boring work.
As an entrepreneur, I want to have the Steve Job’s mentality of being a visionary and setting myself apart from everyone else. It’s just so ironic that our school system seems to pump out endless cut outs of the same people with the same educational background and skill sets. However, I’m hoping I can “learn” to be a visionary, because I’ve been immersing myself with various industries, products, musical genres, cultures, and places to try and “open” my eyes to see a different view of the world. My girlfriend has also done a great job helping me see the natural beauty in things that I usually never notice.
I personally hope that people can learn and be taught to become visionaries, because we need more of them and mainly because…
A little off topic, but my friend sent me this article that I’d like to share with you. I think it’s a very entertaining read and discusses many reasons why you shouldn’t get a job:
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/07/10-reasons-you-should-never-get-a-job/
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In memory of Steve Jobs
Did this image just distract you when you were reading the title?
If so, great, because that’s exactly what I was trying to achieve!
Now that you’re distracted, stop “analyzing” the image and let’s try to re-focus here.
I’d like to share with you my personal experiences and several solutions which will help from being distracted by something like this again!
I wouldn’t consider myself a big spender. I rarely do any impulse shopping and most of the big ticket items I buy are never at retail prices and always require countless hours of online research. I would say most of my expenses come from entertainment (mainly boozing and eating). This is why I could spend pretty freely without worrying that I might live above my means.
However, everything changed when I quit my job and stopped receiving those nice paychecks people get every 2 weeks.
I really had to start paying attention to my expenses.
(Photo: Margulies Cartoons)
I’m sure you’ve heard by now that health insurance is very expensive! If you haven’t heard about the rising cost of health insurance, then you must be living in a bubble and have no interaction with the outside world!
Trust me, I know how expensive health insurance can be since I used to (and still do part time) work as an underwriting in the insurance industry. I would calculate the cost of how much companies would have to pay to cover their employees and it was definitely not cheap! Even the “crappy” plans with high deductibles and high copays would cost at least $200-300 for single coverage per month. The fancier plans, usually offered by cities, counties, and schools, could reach upwards to around $500-700 for single coverage per month!
Now here are several ways you can obtain health insurance:
What do I feel is the biggest challenge for an entrepreneur?
Taking a risk.
I fear that I’ll put a lot of effort into an idea and then it ends up not working out. It also doesn’t help when you tell people about your idea and their response is that is stupid or lame.
Most of my ideas end up tucked away in my idea jar, never to be seen or heard by another living soul.
However, when you don’t take any chances, you are essentially failing before you even start. You never even get the satisfaction of seeing if the idea works or not.