The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur

November 9New Energy

I consider this mutability of language a wise precaution of Providence for the benefit of the world at large, and of authors in particular. To reason from analogy, we daily behold the varied and beautiful tribes of vegetables springing up, flourishing, adorning the fields for a short time, and then fading into dust, to make way for their successors. Were not this the case, the fecundity of nature would be a grievance instead of a blessing. The earth would groan with rank and excessive vegetation, and its surface become a tangled wilderness. In like manner the works of genius and learning decline, and make way for subsequent productions.

Washington Irving—”The Mutability of Literature: A Colloquy in Westminster Abbey” (1885)

Every generation of entrepreneurs has something to offer the next generation.

If you are young and just starting your entrepreneurial journey, learn everything you can from those who toiled 10, 20, 30 years ahead of you. You don't have to make copies of their journey, but you can borrow the strategies and tactics that may have lost favor with your peers and still retain an element of fundamental truth.

If you are seasoned, you must know that it is wise to routinely look back and evaluate new tools, new techniques, new languages, new energy so that you can continue to grow and evolve with new opportunities and changing behavior.

This has to be more than advice noted well; it must become for you a substantial growth behavior and practice ...