![]() Over the years, I have seen friends of mine buy homes and start their new lives only a few minutes from the street that they grew up in. It took only a few weeks to realize that a country is defined by more than just its language. My naïve younger self had full faith that this was the ‘right thing to do’ and there couldn’t really be huge differences between English-speaking London and English-speaking Johannesburg. So why then is it deemed to be something worth aspiring towards?Ī few years ago, I took the ultimate road not travelled by packing my bags and travelling 9,000 kms away from home with the intention of starting a new life. It seems therefore, that the road less taken – often characterized as lonely, challenging and fraught with uncertainty – cannot be a direct route to success. And unfortunately for these entrepreneurs, despite taking the more challenging path, this option has not made all the difference. Statistics, for instance, show that 70% of startups fail in their first year. In the poem, ‘The Road not Taken’, Robert Frost describes the process of being at a crossroads and making a decision to take the path less travelled in the hope that this will be the one “that has made all the difference.” Whilst ‘all is well that ends well’ in Frost’s poem, we know that the reality is often very different. Through this specific anecdote, the speaker sought to highlight how, in a lot of cases, the drive for pursuing the less travelled path of entrepreneurship supersedes the importance of being passionate about a specific idea or product. At a conference I attended a few months back, the speaker said he is approached by students on a regular basis who express a desire to be entrepreneurs and would be willing to commission someone to help them come up with a business idea. It seems to me that the notion of this metaphorical path has been glamourized to such an extent that everyone is actively seeking a means to stand out and leave a triumphant legacy. Over the years, there appears to be an abundance of literature celebrating those individuals that took a leap of faith and pursued a path that everyone else was hesitant to take. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
December 2022
Categories |