Playing at Business

 

Seems to me that no matter how interested and how serious I get about business, the art of making deals, entrepeneurship, all that good stuf,  I still feel kind of like a kid just playing at business.  It's prolly cuz I am not trained and educated formally in this stuff.  I been picking it up as I go, like just about everything else I learn.  Sometimes learning like this leaves me with a lack of security about the legitimacy about what I am doing.  How "for real" can I be without some kind of degree?  Then I kick myself in the ass cuz a lot of really successful people are without degrees, and a lot of people with degrees are homeless.  It's not so much what you have or where you got it, it's what you DO with what you have.     I have never been to a conference like what I went to in Albany.  It was the 1997 Small Business Conference along with the  Governor's Small Business Award Luncheon.  A New York State thing.  Yeah, I know, I live in Maryland, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to learn a bunch of stuff that can be used anywhere, and to get an idea of how New York treats its small business community so I can use that as a point of reference when dealing with Maryland.     There were two sessions, each with five concurrent meetings.  I caught part of one on special opportunities for women and minorities and part of one about alternative ways to access capital.  The one I stayed for its entirety was of course the one about technology and the new media, i.e. the net.  Learned a lot, but saw that business leaders also have a lot to learn.  I wished I was lecturing.     I was wearing thigh-highs, and at several points during the day, one stubborn stocking was hell bent to make a laughingstock of me.  I had to keep adjusting it.  At one point I was in the ladies' room at this, and a woman, very attractive, in courduroy pants came out of the stall.  "You certainly have the right idea," I said. "Sure wish I'd worn pants today."  She laughed and said goodbye as she left.  I passed her later on in the day in the corridor of the convention center.  Our eyes met and we laughed.  What a nice feeling.     I had hoped for a second visit to Javamug, but it didn't turn out that way.  Just as soon as I was in the City again, I had to catch the train back home.     Too short.  The visit was entirely too short, but what I got, I really enjoyed.