Dear Mr. Trump,
Yesterday, I found a blog that was new to me. It was by Shannan Trenholm. Her post was on people who hear what you are up to and tell you to "Be Realistic" every time you share an idea or dream with them.
Most of my "seemingly successful" friends who have this "Be Realistic" Attitude are successful because they had chosen to work for companies instead of starting companies of their own.
These friends judge the worth of a company or a business idea by these two things:
*Are they top among their competitors in profits
*Does the company have a good reputation among the community.
In other words those businesses have to be paying big salaries and on the social fast track.
One of these friends once told me "I will never put my name with anything that is not successful."
Not to fault my friend, because she is amazing in every way and worth every penny of her hire, but her perspective is that she doesn’t see potential in people or small businesses. This means she inadvertently says and does things that show me that she doesn’t believe in what I’m doing. Or so I thought.
This past week I was talking with another friend of mine. I told her how exciting everything was becoming how many new possibilities were opening up in my business. Her response was "What do you mean, you just do some of your art on line on t-shirts, right?"
It hit me like a ton of bricks.
My successful friends had been demeaning my work all this time. I never noticed. Maybe I let them do this because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my work. It has taken me a while to have a clear plan and really run the numbers. Then I mistakenly thought that my friends would support what I was doing simply because they were my friends. In effect they were not taking my business or me seriously. I had let them demean my business. I wasn’t accepting what they said, I simply didn’t correct their negative attitude and words about what they thought I was doing . I, of course didnt let her demeaning of my business stand this time. I admit it was a little painful standing up to a friend I assumed was being supportive. Amazingly, we are still friends.
I have to say that my world view of being a self starter and taking the risks, while noble to me, it was not something my successful friends could relate to. In fact, those friends would never be able to run a business ever. They had no desire or talent for it. They are highly paid skilled worker bees that provide, sometimes white collar, services to large established firms. That sort of explained to me why people making 6 figures feel like they are middle class. They are workers but they just get paid more and have more social exposure.
Here is the thing, every business out there started with an idea or a dream. All of them had small beginnings. The success of a business is simply the pay off in the gamble in my opinion. All those successful friends of mine would not even have a job if someone like me and you had not taken the risk. It takes creative people with big ideas that they are passionate enough to make it happen. As you know it can take a life time.
I am not against being "realistic"; however, I must say that realistically without people who have the dream and the passion to take the risk there would be no place for any one to be successful.
~L
If you would like to see Shannon Trenholm's blog you can read it here: http://shannatrenholm.com/2011/work/be-realistic/
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