Real Wealth
Jul 21st, 2008 | By Dawn Rivers Baker | Category: Policy MattersI came across a blog post a few days ago, written by Linda Stacey of Business Opportunity Connection. Listen to some of what she said:
Yesterday my friend Roy Montero, The SEO & Twitter Guy, asked me why I was limiting myself. In response to something he said, I had replied that I don’t want 100,000 people following me. He seemed surprised to hear it.
Of course I have goals and I would like to expand my business, but I just don’t see myself providing services to that many people. It’s just not my style. I understand the theory of “thinking big” and setting lofty goals, but I’m in the process of restructuring my businesses to offer more personal, more one-to-one direction. I can’t provide that to 100,000 people.
I guess I’d rather be the “little shop on the corner” where customers come to chat and exchange information over a cup of coffee. I don’t want to be the big chain that serves countless customers that I never get to know.
Why do people do this?
Most microbusiness owners are entirely willing to grant to the ambitious their perfect right to lust after fame, fortune and all the influence they can peddle.
It’s too bad the ambitious often can’t seem to grasp that not everyone shares their ambition. And, perhaps much more to the point, that there’s nothing wrong with that.
Our planet is teetering on the bring of ecological disaster, we’re running out of our favorite power sources, we’re starting to have trouble feeding ourselves, and we have levels of income inequality that create even more problems.
We are sicker as a nation than we ought to be because making money is held to be more important than our national health.
We stand on the verge of an epidemic of homelessness because making money was held to be more important than protecting people from predatory lenders.
I could go on, but I think you get the point.
So, in the midst of all this “greed is good” stuff, we have a nation of microbusiness owners who prefer to swim against the tide and be “the little shop on the corner,” finding wealth in simple but real human contact.
Speaking personally, I can’t think of anything loftier than that.