Wine Growing on a French Roundabout
Travelling through France I was taught one major lesson by my daughter. The French didn’t invent the croissant apparently (although she couldn’t tell me who did). She remembered who didn’t invent it but not the actual inventors. I was reminded at this at literally almost every turn in France as I became aware of how the country had changed since the last time I drove through about ten years ago.
France didn’t invent the roundabout but, boy have they taken the idea and run with it.
Roundabouts used to be a strange phenomena in France, they were confined to the Grand Place like the Arc Du Triomphe and such. They also had a major peculiarity that if you were coming onto the roundabout you had right of way meaning that you took your life in your hands going round a roundabout as any number of nutters, usually British tourists who didn’t know this, would fly into your path as you stared at the Arc de Triomphe.
Anyway back to the story, about ten years ago I drove through France and there was the odd roundabout. These roundabouts had the ominous warning as you approached them that “You Don’t Have Right Of Way” just to disabuse the French of that notion, however generally they just ignored them. They were fun in a sort of novel way. Well now the roundabout has taken over France and my car doesn’t like them. I am pretty sure we went through over a thousand of them on our way from the Spanish border to Boulogne. My daughter even coined a new term, “Foundabouts” which is shorthand for “F***in Roundabouts”.
What is my point here then on this entrepreneurial blog?
Well you don’t need to invent something to actually run with it and be successful, although I would dispute how successful French roundabouts are. You can take a current idea and do it better or you can just spam the World with your idea like the French have done with roundabouts.
If competition in your market is tough is it possible to do a much greater number of actions, see the post on Check Moves here, or can you create a raftload of extra backlinks using Market Samurai knowing your competition’s backlinks and replicate their results and make them better? Remember that online as the apocryphal story goes you don’t need to outrun the lion, just the person standing next to you trying to outrun the lion.
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As an entrepreneur, I can definitely tell you that it is not always rainbows and butterflies. There are risks and compromises associated with it. But at the end of the day, I believe working for yourself and ding your own thing is definitely worth it.
I think a good entrepreneur needs a combination of vision, strategy, belief, action and ability to learn from experiences (his or others). This is a hard mix to find, but it is something we can develop in ourselves. The willingness to learn makes all the difference in the world.
Cheers,
Eduard
PS: Nice article. It got me thinking.
Foundabouts!!!!!!!!!!!!!
btw… the croissant was invented by the Austrians!! =P
I think the word foundabouts is a great way to describe the french roundabouts!!