I’ve been interested in the history of the invention we call “money”, but the fascination doesn’t stop at the origination of this essential tool of modern commerce. Because two seconds after money was invented, some ancient farmer in Mesopotamia turned to his neighbor and said, “I’ll bet you four cows it doesn’t rain tomorrow”.
Sitting around the massive ash conference table were over thirty people who represented, and I am not exaggerating, a millennium of experience and knowledge. At least a thousand years of practical, priceless information. Free for the asking. The instant question in my mind was, why aren’t entrepreneurs from far and wide lining up ten abreast and a mile deep to take advantage of this incredible resource? If you were a budding business builder, risking many years of your life, many nights of lost sleep and most of your worldly assets, wouldn’t you want to learn from people who had succeeded, failed and succeeded again in the world of entrepreneurship?
A thousand families. When I think of Chieftan Corporation, and the role I played as Chairman of that company, that’s what I think of. If you apply the typical family size of about four people, that’s four thousand individuals. And if you multiply the economic impact of the spending of the company and those four thousand individuals by the average ratio, we’re talking about 28,000 people whose livelihoods are affected by the activities of Chieftan.
Inertia is a powerful thing, as any physicist will tell you: “A body at rest tends to stay at rest; a body in motion tends to continue its motion along its trajectory.” In other words, the power of the status quo. If one tries to apply forces to change a body’s inertial state, whether relatively at rest or relatively in motion, the power required is directly proportional to the direction of change intended.
