James d. Gwartney

Video:
Haiti’s Solar Entrepreneurs
The bottom line is straightforward: Success-oriented attitudes are a highly important
determinant of financial success. You cannot buy these attitudes. Neither can someone else
provide them to you. You must choose them and integrate them into your life. Further, if you
do so, it is a near certainty that you will have a substantial degree of economic success. But the
opposite is also true: If your life is largely a reflection of the failure set of attributes, it is a
virtual certainty that your future will be characterized by financial troubles and personal
bitterness.
Entrepreneurial thinking is also a personal attribute that can enhance your productivity.
Entrepreneurship is often associated with decision-making in business, but in a very real sense
all of us are entrepreneurs. We are constantly making decisions about the development and use
of knowledge, skills, and other resources under our control. Our financial success will reflect
the outcome of these choices.
If you want to be financially successful, think entrepreneurially. Put another way, focus
on how to develop and use your talents and mobilize available resources to provide others with
things that they value highly.

---

218
Video:
CreAction
Providing others with goods and services that are highly valued compared to their cost
is the key to financial success. Consider the hypothetical case of Robert Jones, a land
developer. Jones purchases large land tracts, subdivides them, and adds various amenities such
as roads, sewage disposal, golf courses, and parks. Jones will profit if he is able to sell the plots
for more than the cost of the land, the various amenities he has constructed, and his labor
services, including the earnings forgone in his best alternative pursuit. If his actions are
profitable, they will increase the value of the resources and help others by providing them with
better home sites than are available elsewhere. Jones’s financial success or failure is dependent
on his ability to enhance the value of resources.
Once you begin to think entrepreneurially and think about how you can increase the
value of your services to others, do not underestimate your ability to achieve success.
Entrepreneurial talent is often found in unexpected places. Who would have thought that a
former Soviet state would become one of the world’s most advanced digital nations? Welcome
to Estonia, the birthplace of Skype and TransferWise, a country that runs completely online, a
place where Internet access is declared a basic human right.
Who would have thought that a middle-aged, milkshake-machine salesman, Ray Kroc,
would revolutionize the franchising business and expand a single McDonald’s restaurant in
San Bernardino, California, into the world’s largest fast-food chain? That the athletic shoe
brand started by Adi Dassler in his mother’s kitchen in 1924 would grow to $20 billion in
sales?
small showroom in the small town of Älmhult, in Sweden and make it the largest furniture
retailer in the world?
These are high-profile cases, but the same pattern occurs over and over. Successful
business and professional leaders often come from diverse backgrounds that appear to be
largely unrelated to the areas of their achievement. But they have something in common. They
are good at discovering better ways of doing things and strategically acting on opportunities to

---

219
increase the value of resources that have been overlooked by others.