Parable of the Good Life

A young busi­ness­man was at the pier of a small coastal vil­lage when a small boat with just one fish­er­man docked. See­ing sev­eral large yel­lowfin tuna inside the small boat, the busi­ness­man com­pli­mented the fish­er­man on the qual­ity of the fish and asked how long it took to catch them. “Only a lit­tle while”, the fish­er­man replied.

A lit­tle sur­prised, the young busi­ness man asked, “Why didn’t you stay out longer and catch more fish?” The con­tent fish­er­man said, “This is enough to sup­port my family’s imme­di­ate needs. I don’t need any more.” “But what do you do with the rest of your time?” asked the con­fused young man. “I sleep late, fish a lit­tle, play with my chil­dren, take a walk with my wife, stroll into the vil­lage each evening where I sip wine and play gui­tar with my bud­dies; I have a full and busy life.”

The lad scoffed, “I am a Har­vard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fish­ing and with the pro­ceeds buy a big­ger boat with the pro­ceeds from the big­ger boat you could buy sev­eral boats, even­tu­ally you would have a fleet of fish­ing boats. Instead of sell­ing your catch to a mid­dle­man you would sell directly to the proces­sor, even­tu­ally open­ing your own can­nery. You would con­trol the prod­uct, pro­cess­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion. You would need to leave this small coastal fish­ing vil­lage and move to LA and even­tu­ally NYC where you will run your expand­ing enterprise.”

The fish­er­man asked, “How long will this all take?” to which the young man replied, “15−20 years.” “But what then?” The busi­ness man laughed and said “That’s the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your com­pany stock to the pub­lic and become very rich, you would make millions.”

“Mil­lions, sir? Then what?”

“Then you would retire, move to a small coastal fish­ing vil­lage where you would sleep late, fish a lit­tle, play with your kids, take a walk with your wife, stroll to the vil­lage in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your gui­tar with your buddies.”