by William Wittreich - July 2018

If in the past you asked an author, artist or musician what it is like to sit in front of a blank piece of paper or canvas, you would have gotten a range of answers from sheer terror to happy exhilaration.  The fact that they had pencils, pens, paints and other tools of the trade to create with means they are not really starting with nothing.  A caveman (or woman) that created his own dye from berries and painted images of animals on the wall of a cave is about as close as it is to starting with nothing, and making something from it.

Jumping to current times, an artist or author sitting in front of a blank computer screen may have similar feelings, but they are certainly not starting with nothing.  Both graphics and authoring applications have libraries of templates from which to start an effort.  Even if they started with a blank screen, they would have components and tools available to plug in pieces and parts of what they are creating.  They still need to use the creativity to organize and format those components, so yes, they will ultimately own the end product as their own creation.  But something from nothing?  Not so much.

Creating a business often follows the “something from nothing” route.  That makes it scary for most people because being adverse to risk is human nature, with some people being more adverse than others.  Buying into a franchise definitely reduces that risk, and that is about as close as those people want to be to the risky side of business. For others, the thrill of creating a business where there was not one before is their adrenalin pump that keeps them going. Capitalism at its purest.  God bless profit!

But here again, starting a business in a developed country, particularly in the US, has a number of base entitlements that help a business grow.  Efficient transportation, reliable power and communications, stable law and banking systems and an educated workforce all play a part in making a business successful.  President Obama famously said to US businesses that they did not build the infrastructure in the US that they all depend on.  What he was essentially saying was that paying taxes is good for business because they support that infrastructure.  Unfortunately, his statement got misinterpreted and the true message lost in translation.

But business in general, where the risk of the owner is personal, is very pure when it comes to starting with nothing. Many a business person has put their personal assets on the line to get started, with business failure meaning personal failure.  When it is your own money, risk takes on a whole new meaning.  But, just to be clear, this is not daddy’s money that is being risked, it is a second mortgage on a house, or a personal line of credit secured by business assets.  Sweating to make payroll, or a bank payment, is a concept that can never truly be articulated.  You have to have lived in that moment to really understand the pressure and angst.

In contrast to the business person that has their own money on the line, there are many people whose self worth in business is based on the size of the budget they can spend.  Particularly in government, where there is no profit motivation, spending other people’s money is all they have.  Which is not to say that there is no skill involved in spending that money wisely, but seriously, these people are definitely not making something from nothing.

Celebrity, fame and fortune are appropriately awarded to those individuals that can create something from nothing.  It could be a painting, and novel, or a piece of music.  Many a child’s finger painting has hung on the family refrigerator because it started with a blank piece of paper and was the result of pure creativity.  Business people like Jobs and Wozniak, who started Apple out of a garage, are rightly elevated in the business world because of their “start from scratch” story. Which is not to say that the venture capitalist that takes a hundred million dollar company to a billion dollars should not be celebrated also.  It just does not have the same cache or romance.

Start with nothing, and see what you can do with it.

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Please send comments on this article to william@wwittreich.com.