A warning that said 'wannapreneurs are not accepted' made me question whether or not I am

A little stories about two guys we all know:

He had dyslexia and despite being very intelligent, his teachers did not seem to understand it. His loving mother, on the other hand, knew of her son's abilities and trusted him. To such a degree that one day she got him out of the car and told him to find the way to his grandmother's house from there, which was several kilometers away: he was six years old. As a teenager, he dreamed of having something to do with the world of music, so he founded a student magazine on the subject. Shortly after, they put him in jail for a full day for piracy (he sold records that he was passing illegally from abroad). Our friend had many dreams, one of them was to become an astronaut. He never studied engineering or any scientific career (a prerequisite to be) his entire life went unnoticed by NASA or any space agency. To date, I could not enter any agency; how to do it if you studied until you were 16 years old. Never changed. All his life he has dreamed of impossible feats and business.

His stepfather gave him his last name, and in contrast to our friend mentioned above, this was a great student: he was given valedictorian recognition in his high school, and then he graduated summa cum laude as an electrical and computer engineer from one of the best universities. of the world. Of course, his intellectual level allowed him to belong to the best club, the best fraternity, and the best association in the university. Recently graduated, he was offered a job in the best companies of the time such as Bell Labs, Andersen Consulting and Intel, but he decided to work in a Fintech, then in a traditional bank, to finish Wall Street in an investment fund known for its use of complex mathematical models. He was an exceptional bureaucrat, highly regarded by his bosses. He quickly rose to the vice presidency in his thirties, but he dreamed of something else: owning a bookstore and selling his books online. When he told his boss, he talked to him at length to make him see reason; it seemed to him a madness produced by a typical crisis of age. It should be remembered that when he gave his high school graduation speech, his dream was much more ambitious: he said he wanted to colonize space and turn the earth into a national park.

If you're a true wannapreneur , I'm sure you can guess who we're talking about. Indeed… The first is Richard Branson , who as of July 11 officially became an astronaut ; he traveled in his own ship into space to "evaluate the customer experience" (always so joking) of Virgin Galactic : the first space tourism company.

The second is Jeff Bezos , who became an astronaut on July 20 and is in the space race along with another wannapreneur ; Mr. Elon Musk who also wants to colonize other planets.

Although it must be said that recently Bezos was surpassed by Musk and his company SpaceX in obtaining contracts with NASA —as in the Artemis project to return to the Moon—, and for this reason he has decided to compete with Branson in the suborbital tourism niche; a promising market said to reach $ 5 trillion by 2025 (others estimate even $ 30 trillion).

• You may be interested: Richard Branson is successful for these 3 reasons

^{Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Galactic & Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin. Image: Richard Branson via Facebook / El Español.}

How dare you

I did not like the administrative solutions that an advisor gave me for an issue that I have to solve in another country (I will not say exactly the issue because the walls hear), so I googled, and voilà !: I found a tutorial that spoke exactly about the topical. There was even a link to a Facebook group for people with the same problem - I confess that I had not used this platform for a long time, but I decided to join.

I was stopped by a warning that said: Wannapreneurs not accepted .

I'm not a millennial , but I was immediately offended. And I had a strange internal dialogue with my shadow:

Me: —How can I be a wannapreneur… If my family has always started businesses from scratch, it is in my blood… As a child I sold imported “ scratch n sniff ” stamps at school, in fact, I was 17 years old when I started to sell stuffed animals on my car on the street (illegally) to raise money for my beach vacation: I was sorry, but I put up with it to earn extra money.

My Shadow (MS): —You are a wannapreneur

Me: "How dare you?" Nor that outside of those who put on checkered shirts rolled up or wrap themselves in pashminas to go to the "coworking" and waste time between cushions and coffee macchiato, I do have real clients, I don't go around imagining things.

MS: —You are a wannapreneur.

Me: —Please… I have founded niche magazines, and I have even had my good failures, as should happen to every innovative entrepreneur : I have sold spy equipment for jealous boyfriends… I was even a pioneer in giving seduction courses in Mexico, which I say Mexico , Latin America, what do I say Latin America ... The Hispanic world. All of them resounding failures that prove that I am a true entrepreneur.

MS: —You are a wannabe, and you know it ...

Me: —Let's see… I give training and consultancies in renowned companies; I advise politicians who, by the way and by chance, won elections even in governorships; my team is compact, but it grows with me; I try so hard that I even take time to teach master's degrees; one of my books has even been a best seller in advertising for several years. Do you have a short time?

MS: —Enough! Please ... What petty examples are those. I know you and you are simply a wannapreneur. That's it, don't kid yourself.

Me: "How dare you ...?" How dare you!? Argh ...

The power to aspire to be

A little conscious and honest observation is enough to understand how the world works:

My girlfriend's cats live in an apartment. They are very spoiled and are always at the window aspiring to one day go out on the street, they always try to escape and when they succeed they cause a real family drama.

My neighbor says she takes care of two stray cats. He feeds them and lets them stay in a utility room on the patio. Although I do not vaccinate or operate on them, I try not to judge her because her work is good and I do not do better than that. They are beautiful and strangely they both have short tails; I imagined terrible things but my neighbor clarified to me that they are born with that characteristic. The youngest kitten always seeks to break through all kinds of obstacles that I put, in order to expand her territory and do "mischief" in my home (she calls other cats to mate). Never stops… Always aspires to expand its territory.

They are two cases that reach the same point: What being in nature does not aspire to expand? All living beings and even some that are not, like viruses, do. That is why communism that limits the individual always fails and that is why we are all wannabes in one way or another, even Bezos and Branson. It is more than an ideology, it is more than biology, it is a primordial force: the universe wants to "be", it wants to expand infinitely and always.

Okay ... I accept it shade , thinking about it: I am a wannapreneur .

How dare you: part two

Bezos was a wannabe , and still is. Even in the face of his obvious failure against Elon Musk, he still wants to be that which, for the time being and although he is the richest man in the world, he will not be able to.

Me: How dare you imply that Bezos or Branson are wannapreneurs? Don't you dare compare yourself.

Branson is worth $ 5.2 trillion, Bezos is worth that times seven, which is more than Qatar's GDP. Do you think, in those leagues, he doesn't look like a wannabe? Do you think that a genius in science does not think that someone like Branson without a formal minimum education "pretends" to be what he is not?

Do you think Musk was not a wannapreneur when he lived under his desk thinking about a digital bank that ended up being PayPal? Even as an 80 million dollar "little" millionaire, wasn't he a wannabe wanting to compete with a billion-worth Mercedes Benz, Ford or Toyota with a poorly made little electric car? Thinking of launching rockets better than NASA or ROSCOSMOS without having the slightest idea of how, wasn't it considered being a pretentious wannapreneur?

It can even happen to you judging the next Bezos: If at your graduation, a smart classmate with not many economic resources says in his speech that he wants to colonize Mars, would you think that he is a pretentious wannabe?

The ego of the human being and the frustration it generates is a force of nature, a shadow that we must assimilate and stop denying: I know employees who want to be managers, managers who want to be directors, and directors who want to be CEOs. I also know CEOs of millionaire companies who dream of putting up a small cafe; Directors of the highest level in transnational companies who secretly accept to envy you who are reading me, because you have a small independent business when they consider themselves luxury slaves. I know businessmen with a thousand employees who would like to own the competition because the others have five thousand.

And I also know very young people who can't find a job and all they want is an opportunity: I was one of them. And when I was no longer ... What would have happened if I had not wanted something else even as a newly hired employee? What would have happened if me being "the director" had not wanted to be what I am now? Whatever that is.

If you still do not achieve what you want, I will not tell you like others: "do something about it." If you haven't done anything, it's because you don't feel so frustrated yet. And it's OK! I swear I am not saying it ironically: I am content if you imagine it and wish it even if you are 20, 45 or 65 years old, because imagining is the very seed of life. If you stop being a wannapreneur, you stop having what it takes to honor the sheer force of our nature.

Or what do you think is the percentage of wannapreneurs who read Entrepreneur ? Understand that we are the true heroes of history.

Now I am clear about my frustration, and maybe I will always do what the kittens want and try, without really being very different from them: the only difference will be to be a little more aware.

PS: I was accepted into the Facebook group.

"There is no point in starting your own business if you don't do it out of frustration." - Richard Branson