Friday, September 29, 2006

Screw the Portage Trail

For today's key insights into the febrile minds of Canadian entrepreneurs, I present this hard-scrabbling evidence.


These pics come from an online photo album that Toronto entrepreneur Michel Neray (www.EssentialMessage.com) created of his recent canoe trip in the Ottawa Valley. I refer not so much to Brent and Stuart (I don't know them) but to the picture at right.

"Screw the portage trail" could stand as the timeless motto of entrepreneurs across Canada. Sure, the portage trail is likely easier, and undoubtedly safer. But it's also longer, and likely dull. If the point of a canoe trip is to be on the water, entrepreneurs want to spend as much time as they can on the water.

Impatient? Yes - though most entrepreneur would prefer to be labelled focussed.

The natural entrepreneurial inclination is to climb the rock, haul up the canoe, and get on with it. And not just because they like to work. Because they are more goal-focussed than most people. They see the big picture, and are eager to bring it about.

Or as Michel puts it in his album:


For more tripping pictures (you can also see how they lost a paddle and improvised a new one out of sticks, which is of course another another fine entrepreneurial metaphor), click here.

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