I want to bring up what ought to be an obvious point, but one that was made to me recently by a man who started, and grew, a successful business.
In these hard times, I asked him to post what he had learned here. His response? "I got the information from ECN .... but everytime someone who knew what they were talking about said something, all the nay-sayers would chime in and drown them out!"
So ... here, more than in any other forum ... book learning and great ideas are fine - but actually successfully doing something is entirely different!
The same point was made by a customer of mine. Operator of several successful mini-marts - failing businesses that he turned around - he told me of one of his business school instructors. Seems the 'professor' actually took a sabattacal to grow a business - and failed miserably. That is, he was competent to 'teach,' but not to 'do.' Therer's a lesson in there, somewhere
