THE PRICE OF DOING SOMETHING

 

I did a post last week in which I quoted Theodore Roosevelt a couple of times. He is a man admired not so much because he always succeeded but because he dared to try big things and keep trying until he found success. The famous speech titled “the man in the arena” that he gave years after his presidency defines a principle we need to fix what is wrong with America today. “It is not the critic that counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena…..”

The strength of our country does not come from the antagonist who gets an attorney and files suit in opposition to something. Our strength lies within the entrepreneur who risks his capital and spends his time to create an opportunity for himself and possibly some employees. The surgeon who picks up a knife and uses his skill and training to correct a problem just like the farmer who plants his crops is the man in the arena. My career, for three and a half decades, has been spent in the arena. Companies from around the world have come to our door to get production problems solved. We design and build custom production lines for manufacturers who are seeking to increase production or decrease miss-manufactured parts. Sometimes the objective is to build a new product or to upgrade an old product line utilizing new materials or techniques. The point is that our field requires that we take risks every day in the attempt to do big things for our customers. The number of folks who seek to oppose the creation of new things without ever offering viable alternatives is growing along with the supply of attorneys and regulatory agencies living off the countries productive class like parasites. Think for a moment about the risk a pharmaceutical company takes when it introduces a new drug. We all watch television networks who run adds everyday sponsored by attorney groups trolling for clients to attack the drug companies or businesses that sold asbestos insulation.

Our traditional business of building industrial production lines has not recovered from the crash of 2008. By the end of 2010 we realized that we would need to change markets to survive as a company. The recovery of our company is underway now with two new products in the market and employment coming back up. We risked our own money and time to achieve this progress while fending off foreign and domestic competitors as well as incredible piles of government red tape. You see our new product line consists of diesel powered orchard tractors. The naysayers warned us against trying to compete with the giant tractor manufacturers and how the farmers would not consider buying an unknown brand. We did not listen, we asked orchard growers what they wanted in a tractor that they could not get from the big brands and custom designed a tractor for their application. The American farmers are buying every tractor that we can produce even though the cost is higher than foreign alternatives. The tractors fit their needs better and together with the fact that we build them in America farmers are willing to buy the tractors from a company that they have never heard of.

America needs to support those of us willing to get in the arena and do something and start shunning those who simply oppose for the sake of opposition or personal enrichment. When and how did it become a bad thing to be successful in this country? I think that it is about time to elect pro-growth legislators and unshackle the greatest economy on earth. If Americans don’t tolerate the voices of opposition then businesses small and large will restart the engine of prosperity. Government needs to quit looking at business profit as their own piggy bank and let companies use their profits for growth. The price of doing positive things is high but the human cost of not doing them is higher.