In Search Of Heroes Spreads Good News About Everyday, Real-Life Heroes Who Deserve Recognition For Their Good Works

Ralph Zuranski: That’s funny that you say that, because most of the other Heroes that I have interviewed, they all considered that it was the entrepreneurs, the people that made a choice to follow a different path, to strive to be the best they could be, to provide services that would be so valuable that people would actually pay them money for that, they are the real people that would transform the world basically in a good way.

Most of the school systems are geared just to turn people into employees. It suppresses their creativity, their ability to think. All they come out are people that are dependent upon the system. Do you think that’s true?

Jason Potash: I think it’s very true. Again, my wife is a teacher so I have to watch what I say.

[Laughter]

She agrees too. The school system, academia, is not geared toward grooming and molding entrepreneurs. It’s grooming you to hopefully find a skill, an area that you would think you would enjoy working within and basically take you down the path so you can become a good and effective employee.

I’ve been through university, dropped out of university, been to college, luckily made it through college. In terms of what I learned in college and university, I think one of my bosses early in life said it best. He said, “You go through grade school and then once you go through college/university, all it really becomes is an exercise in stress management.”

You look at business. There are constantly curve balls thrown at you. I don’t care if you are self employed or work for somebody else. You’ve got projects, deadlines, you’ve got things to do in an amounts of time you think that can’t be done. You are juggling multiple projects. Companies are downsizing, they are outsourcing. You’ve got more stuff on your plate than ever before, and in many cases, you are making the same money, if not less than you were several years ago.

It too, is an exercise in stress management. I really think that getting essays in on time, your thesis, working on projects, presentations and studying every night that just really develops the foundation for you having the skills and the stress management skills to survive in the business world. But it is not teaching you how to survive as an entrepreneur.

In many cases, it’s totally doing the opposite. It’s grooming you to become a cog, a wheel in the machine, a spoke in the hub of an organization to do your role and that’s about it. It’s a totally different world when you basically cut the apron strings.

You cut the parachute off and you survive without a net as an entrepreneur, knowing that there is no paycheck, no benefits, there’s nothing. And obviously you have a gun to your head every day of the week because if you don’t produce, you don’t eat, you don’t pay the mortgage, you don’t pay the car payments and everything falls down like a house of cards.

I totally agree that the school systems have really not done anything to address this, to encourage it. It’s kind of a shame, because as I said, we all know that small business is really what fuels the economy. It fuels job growth, and that starts with entrepreneurs.

It’s developing that fertile soil in the school system and planting those seeds at such a young age. People who do venture off into entrepreneurialism are doing that by accident or stumbling on it by mistake, or they happen to aspire towards or have an influence in their life.

But there are probably so many other people, if exposed to even Heroes early in their high school years, would maybe take a shining to some of the things you and I talked about and hopefully looking at being an entrepreneur as a “career choice,” just like being a doctor, nurse, fireman or firewoman, whatever it might be. It’s very important.