(originally written in 2005)

I was recently awarded a Masters of Entrepreneurship and Innovation. It took me 3.5 years to study for and culminated in the normal pomp and ceremony of any academic achievement, namely a bunch of academic professors, etc., parading on stage in their respective regalia, a few mumbled words, pictures, hugs and a great looking A3 certificate naming yours truly as a pretty smart guy.

In the rattle and hum on the way to the city the next morning, I was overcome by a thought which I duly checked with a fellow MEI. If I graduated with a PhD in Astrophysics, or Mechanical Engineering, or any other discipline except say an Arts degree (sorry), I suggest I would truly have graduated. Perhaps I am wrong. Even the Arts degree is something the graduate can point to as something of merit.

I personally however, and I suspect a number of my fellow classmates, undertook the course because we sought the skills and tools to identify, evaluate and execute commercial opportunities that result in new and appropriate levels of wealth for ourselves and our families.

This somewhat stoical view comes from a degree of maturity and stands beside other worthy personal endeavours like the pursuit of health and well being, spiritual well being and, of course, the pursuit of knowledge and experience in things that ring my bell.

The school delivered reasonably well in the skills and tools department, but if I was a surgeon now and you the reader needed an appendectomy, you should be concerned.

A true entrepreneurial graduate, in my mind from my school (AGSE), Babson in the USA or wherever you went, is someone who took the learnings and applied them and put money in the bank.

Deal/Venture 1 is very important because it anoints you from the sidelines or the bench onto the playing field. In fact, you kicked a goal and chances are you’ll kick another.

Adding another layer of complexity is my situation (not unusual) where having recently and quite unexpectedly disappeared from the state of a 34 year old where life was a game laced with all sorts of the usual joys (loves, travel, excesses, half cocked business ventures), to the state of a 40 year old in the blink of an eye with two mortgages, a wife, a 22 month old and one on the way, and a new need to include ‘normality’ in my life so we can sleep at night.

To truly graduate as an entrepreneur of even the most basic merit, I need to deliver an outcome that ratifies my degree. Inside two years from graduation, I need, nay must, harvest a venture that kills my not so insignificant mortgage while maintaining enough income to prevent my wife from abandoning what may be been a bad choice in husband five years ago.

At this point I’ll quote my daughter … a gorgeous human being with insight of the whole universe … “Daddy, tick, tock, tick tock …”