Dare to Suck

This is a real story about a friend of my dad, happened more than 25 years ago.

This dude lives in a small, rural town of Turkey. It's one of those towns that has more cattle than people, and it's a place that finding someone that speaks a second language is considered miraculous.

Our guy has some money in his pocket and wants to make an investment. The options in his hometown are limited, so he begins to search for opportunities outside his comfort zone. Nothing interesting comes out.

Then one day, he sees an article on a newspaper about a closing factory in Dominican Republic. In the article, it says the owners are selling the machines of the factory for crazy small prices to get rid of them as quick as possible.

The dude is already fed up with his own people, continuously telling him to stay in the safe zone. And he somehow convinces himself in shooting his shot on the Dominican opportunity. He buys a plane ticket and jumps on it immediately without knowing any info about the country, like what language they're speaking, in which continent it is located or anything like that.

So, our guy goes 9931 km to the other side of the world. No knowledge about where he is going, no language other than his native, without any real plan at all.

We don't have the details of what happened after he lands, but somehow he finds the location of the factory, explains himself and agrees on a deal with the owners, thanks to his body language skills. But the story is not ending there. When he says he needs a truck to deliver the machines to his hometown, he finds out that he is in an island which is 9931 km away from his hometown. After then things get complicated. The shipping costs come out to be way much higher than the machines, the deal falls through and he comes back to his town with no other than a funny story and a bunch of photos.

I am a big time -Knowledge is the King- kinda dude and not a fan of –Ignorance is Bliss- mindset. But this story reminded me the phrase "Dare to Suck" which is used by Aerosmith as a way of thinking to find the ultimately genuine idea, by generating the most stupid sounded ideas. So, for this guy of the story, maybe it seems that he is the silliest dude ever tried to do business in this planet. But it really needs courage to have an idea that would most probably suck, but it might also be the idea that will change your world.

Sinan