An Entrepreneur's Manifesto

Steve Mariotti

• Publisher: Templeton Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781599474786
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

In an increasingly competitive world market, how does the United States rank? Many Americans are worried about the economic state of their nation, especially now that countries like China are becoming ever more economically powerful. What does America need to both stabilize and energize itseconomy?

Entrepreneurship, Steve Mariotti claims, is vital. An Entrepreneur's Manifesto is Mariotti's rallying cry for the world to recognize the potential that business creation holds for the individual and the economy. Mariotti explores how entrepreneurship affects schools and prisons, developed cities and isolated villages, brick-and-mortar stores, and internet-based businesses. He takes a hard look at the research on entrepreneurial education, entrepreneurship, government policy, and the social and cultural attributes most likely to foster successful business creation, incorporating his discussions with some of the best minds on the question of entrepreneurship. Mariotti also examines how the rise of the Internet and Web-based innovations like crowdfunding have both changed—and not changed—the fundamentals of promoting those who take the ultimate gamble of going into business for themselves.

As the author of several leading textbooks on the subject and founder of the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), a global nonprofit organization that has educated more than 500, 000 students and trained more than 5, 000 teachers in 50 countries, Mariotti is both an experienced and reliable leader in what he calls the entrepreneurial revolution. Mariotti frequently writes for the Huffington Post and has been recruited by the State Department to discuss his ideas on youth entrepreneurship in Cambodia and other developing countries seeking to escape the shackles of centrally planned economic policies.

Neither a dry recitation of academic theory nor a scattered collection of feel-good stories, An Entrepreneur's Manifesto builds on Mariotti's unique perspective to offer a critique that is both inspiring and practical. Riveting stories complement enlightening real-world perspectives, making the work relatable and inspiring.

"There is no more revolutionary act, " Mariotti says, "than starting abusiness."

CHAPTER 1

Entrepreneurship Can Be Taught—to Anyone

It’s a very ancient saying, But a true and honest thought, That if you become a teacher, By your pupils you’ll be taught.

—RICHARD RODGERS AND OSCAR HAMMERSTEIN, THE KING AND I

ACCORDING TO MAPQUEST, it should take only twenty-six minutes to travel the eight miles from the Boys and Girls High School in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, to the Waldorf Astoria on Park Avenue in Manhattan.

It took me thirty-one years, one month, and seventeen days.

I felt awestruck as I entered the Waldorf’s elegant ballroom on April 23, 2013. It was packed for a gala celebrating the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship’s (NFTE) silver anniversary—and I was the guest of honor. The organization I had founded in 1987 to bring entrepreneurship education to at-risk youth had survived twenty-five bumpy yet exhilarating years. In that time NFTE had grown from a high school teacher’s pipe dream into a nonprofit widely recognized as the leader of today’s global movement in entrepreneurship education.

My first office was a wooden table at the West Fourth Street Saloon near New York University, where I went for the free popcorn (and to nurse my crush on actress Edie Falco, who was waiting tables).

Today NFTE occupies two floors at 120 Wall Street. We have certified fifteen hundred entrepreneurship teachers worldwide. Significant NFTE programs have been established in South Africa, Ireland, Israel, Belgium, China, the Netherlands, Germany, India, and the United Kingdom, and new programs are opening in Hebron and New Zealand. Over six hundred thousand students worldwide have graduated from our programs.

Given our humble beginnings, it was wonderful to see Goldman Sachs and MasterCard step up as the gala’s primary sponsors, along with such with business all-stars as Southwest Airlines, Ernst & Young, E*Trade, Microsoft, and Sean “Diddy” Combs.

The organization has even been the subject of a movie. The documentary Ten9Eight: Shoot for the Moon follows teenage finalists arriving in New York City for NFTE’s national business plan competition. In his January 24, 2010, op-ed for the New York Times, Thomas Friedman wrote, “Obama should arrange for this movie to be shown in every classroom in America. It is the most inspirational, heartwarming film you will ever see.”

At the 2013 gala, our Global Young Entrepreneurs of the Year winners presented their businesses: Tyler Hansen had opened a paintball arcade in his Central Valley, California, hometown; Lakeisha Henderson, from East Cleveland, Ohio, had been inspired by her pet-grooming business, Besties for Life, to major in business in college; Niall Foody, age sixteen, from Letter-kenny, Ireland, who has Asperger’s and dyspraxia had developed an ingenious line of luminous stickers to place around keyholes, light switches, and doorbells to make them easy to find in the dark; and Abdulaziz Al-Dakhel, age eighteen, from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, had developed a string of products from camel’s milk (“a new Viagra”), wool, and even urine.

These young winners were all from challenging backgrounds. They beautifully delivered their well-practiced pitches to the gala guests, making eye contact, shaking hands firmly, and making sure everyone who stopped by their displays left with business cards and brochures.

Later that evening, we heard from NFTE alumni like James “Jimmy Mac” McNeal, who took part in a NFTE BizCamp at Philadelphia’s Wharton Business School as a high school senior in the summer of 1989. Jimmy’s Bulldog Bikes became the first urban bike company in the bicycle motocross (BMX) market. Today his parent company, BDG Industries, is a major player on the BMX scene, with media, marketing, and event planning spinoffs. Jimmy remains active in NFTE as a teacher and mentor.

We also heard from Jasmine Lawrence, NFTE class of 2003. When she was eleven, Jasmine lost nearly all of her hair after using a chemical relaxer. She founded EDEN Body Works, a natural line of hair care products, and secured an order from Wal-Mart for over one hundred thousand dollars a year in sales—and her company is still growing.

AT-RISK YOUTH HAVE AN APTITUDE FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP

These amazing young people illustrate something I have seen happen many times. Teaching at-risk youth basic business principles changes their lives—whether they become lifelong entrepreneurs or become better employees and are able to enhance their careers because they understand how business works.

I believe the biggest breakthrough of the last fifty years in education is that entrepreneurship can be taught and that it helps students in critical ways—whether they go on to become entrepreneurs or not. Young people have wonderful, unique advantages in business. As any parent of a teenager knows, they are more comfortable with risk than adults. This generation has also grown up online, watching young entrepreneurs like Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) and Bobby Murphy and Evan Spiegel (Snapchat) turn fresh ideas into billions of dollars.

At-risk youth have additional advantages. They often display a natural aptitude for entrepreneurship because their challenging lives encourage them to develop assertiveness, independence, and salesmanship. They have a lot of experience handling risk and ambiguity. When these qualities are channeled into entrepreneurship, negative behaviors turn into positive ones. I’ve personally witnessed angry, disaffected, and disenfranchised children transform into creative, inspiring, empowered leaders once they’ve been taught how our economy works and how they can participate in it. Not only do at-risk youth exposed to entrepreneurship get excited about business, they become motivated to do better in school. They realize that there are many paths out of poverty, and they discover the power of their own potential, which enhances their self-esteem.

The entrepreneur has fascinated and frustrated theorists and researchers almost from the dawn of the study of economics. Ever since Irish-French banker and political theorist Richard Cantillon coined the term “entrepreneur” around 1730 (he also suggested “undertaker” as the English equivalent, an idea that mercifully did not catch on), economists and policymakers have been trying to pin down what makes a person an entrepreneur, how much entrepreneurs contribute to a society’s growth and prosperity, and how to encourage this strange class of dreamers, risk takers, and, at times, troublemakers.

I’ve made it my life’s work to teach entrepreneurship education as a pathway to prosperity for at-risk youth around the world. I won’t quit until every school in the world provides its students with this empowering knowledge.

LEAVING CORPORATE LIFE

This all began because, back in 1982, I wasn’t a very good teacher.

Standing in front of fifty-six unruly students as a newly minted math teacher at one of New York City’s most crime-ridden schools was not part of my master plan. My dreams ran more along the lines of becoming the CEO of a Fortune 500 company.

In 1977 I graduated with an MBA from the University of Michigan. During graduate school I won a scholarship to study at the Institute for Humane Studies with Friedrich A. Hayek, the 1974 Nobel Prize winner for economics.

After the summer program with Hayek I began my career at Ford. I had the best job a young MBA could get. I was an analyst for the legendary Ford finance staff.

I led a team that helped lower Ford’s interest payments by several million dollars a year, earning me the nickname “Stevie Wonder.” At twenty-six I was leapfrogging over career hurdles and getting an inside look at how one of America’s largest corporations operated. But I soon learned that speaking one’s mind did not go over well.

I was Ford’s South Africa and aerospace analyst. I’d also become a fan of civil rights leader Reverend Leon Sullivan. In 1977 Reverend Sullivan drafted the Sullivan Principles. These guidelines recommended that American companies operating in South Africa under apartheid refuse to segregate their workers according to race and pay black and white workers equal pay for equal work. Sullivan, who served on the board of General Motors—the largest employer of South African blacks at the time—also lobbied American corporations to withdraw from South Africa while apartheid was still in effect.

I began corresponding with Reverend Sullivan. I disagreed with him about divestment, as it would cost black South Africans jobs, but I did raise the issue at Ford about whether we should be selling aerospace equipment to a repressive regime. I made enough of a stink that the issue reached the board of directors. Eventually Ford did change its policies in South Africa, and as international protest against apartheid grew, Ford completed a divestment agreement in 1987.

I was told that I was too controversial, and I was sacked. Burned out on corporate life I moved to New York City, thinking I might start a business. I’d always had simple little businesses when I was a kid, reselling golf balls or doing laundry. In New York I discovered that if you made products in a third-world country, it was really tough to find someone to represent you in the United States. So I started a small import-export company. Soon I was meeting interesting people from all over the world, helping them sell wood carvings and jewelry in the United States.

Being an entrepreneur had an immediate beneficial effect on my self-esteem and outlook. I was making less money, but I was my own boss. I also felt really good about helping my clients from Africa and other distant places make money and improve their lives. I loved being self-employed and started thinking about expanding into other ventures.

But then I learned another life lesson—about living in a large city.

A LIFE-CHANGING JOG

One lovely fall afternoon in 1981 I set out for a jog along the East River. I passed a group of teenage boys lounging against the railing that ran along the riverfront.

“Get him,” one of them said.

They roughed me up and took the ten-dollar bill I had in my running shorts. They waved knives in my face, shoved me around, and taunted me. My hands were trembling. I couldn’t believe this was happening in broad daylight.

After knocking me to the ground, they sauntered off. Dazed, I got to my feet and blinked in the bright afternoon sun. No one seemed to have noticed a thing. I stumbled out of East River Park and made my way toward home. On the way, I ran into a group of policemen. They took me to their station to file a report.

Afterward, the entrepreneur in me wondered why these kids would risk prison for ten dollars. If they had been able to sell me something or ask me to invest in a business, they could have gotten a lot more money. That would have been a win/win situation for everyone.

After the mugging I developed flashbacks and nightmares. I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder by a therapist who suggested I confront my new fear of teenagers by becoming a teacher. My mother had been a beloved special-education teacher back in Michigan, so the idea actually appealed to me.

I had also been told I should become a teacher by Ayn Rand, although perhaps she was being sarcastic. I knew the great writer in her final years, and we talked at length about the power of free markets and the wonders of capitalism. One day she turned to me and said, “Steve, you talk too much. You should be a teacher.”

Back then, New York City had a serious teacher shortage. Basically, if you had a college degree and seemed reasonably sane, they’d let you teach. I told the school board that I wanted to teach in the most troubled schools and work with the most difficult children. The school board was happy to oblige.

A BREAKTHROUGH BORN OF DESPERATION

In 1982 I was assigned to Boys and Girls High School in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Boys and Girls had established itself as the most dangerous school in the nation. The student dropout rate was 70 percent. Seventy-two teachers simply refused to report for duty—they preferred to be unemployed. In 1978 the New York State Board of Regents took the unprecedented step of putting the entire school on probation.

My students were incredibly rowdy, and I had no idea how to quiet down my classrooms enough to even try to teach. On March 6, 1982, I was attempting yet again to teach a class at Boys and Girls High School. The day before, someone had set a coat on fire in the class. This day wasn’t going any better. Frustrated and close to tears, I stepped out into the hallway to try to gather my composure. The kids didn’t even notice that I was gone.

I racked my mind for answers. I had been bored and inattentive in high school, too. What had interested me? Money. I always had some little business going. Earning money was always what had interested me most. It was probably the only reason I had ever bothered to learn to read, write, or do math.

I whipped off my watch and marched back in to the classroom. I held it up and screamed over the din, “Hey! What is this worth?”

You could hear a pin drop, and, as if by magic, I became a teacher.

Tyrone, one of the most troublesome kids, said clearly: “I would pay twenty-five. Nice watch, Mr. Mariotti.”

Another echoed him, “I would go twenty.”

Suddenly, the class was debating the value of my watch, so I pushed them: “Where does the store buy it from?”

If the first question began my career, the second made it last a lifetime. The secrets of buying goods from a wholesaler in bulk a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Contents
• Preface
• CHAPTER 1: Entrepreneurship Can Be Taught—to Anyone
• CHAPTER 2: Nurturing the Entrepreneurial Mind-Set
• CHAPTER 3: Who Are the World’s Entrepreneurs?
• CHAPTER 4: Should Governments Help Promote Entrepreneurship?
• CHAPTER 5: A Teaching Revolution
• CHAPTER 6: The Digital Revolution: Technology Levels the Global Playing Field
• CHAPTER 7: On the Cusp: A Financing Revolution
• CHAPTER 8: A Prison Revolution: Desperately Needed
• CHAPTER 9: The Social Enterprise Revolution: Entrepreneurs Solving Social Problems
• CHAPTER 10: An Entrepreneur’s Manifesto
• Acknowledgments
• Index