You Can Learn a lot From a Dummy!

Wednesday, November 15, 2006 at 10:36am by William Quisenberry in Innovation

There is a reason that I always try to give back to others in my community that are in need if I truly have the opportunity to. It is largely due to the fact that when I was younger and in need somebody reached out a hand and gave to me.

This individual didn’t give me the typical materialistic items that come to mind when you mention the word “needy” like food, cloths or money. Instead he reached out to me with much more beneficial and longstanding possessions like knowledge, wisdom, hope and inspiration.

This person that I’m speaking about was my high school counselor/ social worker and his name was Steven. Steven was only in his late 20’s and had not been out of college very long so everybody in school typically listened to what he had to say more than some greasily old teacher who didn’t have a clue what life was like for a teenager in the late 90’s.

I could easily write a whole article or even an essay about how Steven took me under his wing as a mentor, taught me about the importance of life goals, work ethic, money saving habits, Christian values and even ultimately inspired and helped me to get admitted into college.

However this article isn’t focused on Steven per say, but instead on one of his quotes that he use to mention to me. That quote was, “You can learn a lot from a dummy.” Now I’m sure you’re familiar with this saying, it was made famous in the late 80’s to mid 90’s because it was the slogan for drunk driving commercials.

Steven taught me to apply this rule to life and the fact that you really could find strong lessons from the stupid mistakes that others committed without impeding the same faults yourself. Imagine if you use this quotation with your venture and entrepreneurship, you could save yourself loads of time and wasted money.

For instance if a person jumps off a bridge and splatters their body all over the concrete fifty feet below, do you really need to follow and do the same thing before you realize that it probably isn’t a smart move; Heck no, you know that it’s not a good thing to do just by judging the outcome of the person who tried it before you.

O K, so this example is a bit extreme and very basic, but I’m sure you realize my point. Using another example more close to home for us entrepreneurs, if you’re in the bottled water distribution business and one of your competitors has attempted to target middle school kids outside schools and their company sales suddenly dropped greatly.

Then you can learn from their mistake to ensure that you don’t try to target that market, but instead penetrate another area which possibly offers greater opportunities. The fact that you didn’t ignore their short comings and fallacies would allow you to have a competitive advantage and this knowledge was free of charge at your competitor’s expense.

I know that entrepreneurship and business sometimes can be very complicated career fields, however since society has continued to transpire and develop into a complex world many human beings have skewed away from the basics of life.

However if you can learn to embrace basic knowledge, common sense and practical principles like the one I just discussed then you stand a chance of developing a competitive advantage over others who fail to recognize, choose to ignore or simply don’t capitalize upon the subtle and simple lessons in life.

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