There will never be a business prodigy

In the social sciences it is often repeated that you should never make a never statement. The reason is because never is an awfully long time, and if the event does occur your credibility is damaged. Fair enough.

Having said that I will repeat the title of this post, there will never be a business prodigy. So, obviously, if there ever is a business prodigy my reputation will be damaged. And, I completely welcome that day.

The reason I invite being disproven is two fold. For one, I am a scientist and the scientific method revolves around a concept called falsifiability. In other words, if you live by facts and truth you must remain open to being disproven. But secondly, I am very confident my claim will never prove wrong. I shall explain.

First, we need to be clear with our semantics. In my claim, the only non-obvious term is “prodigy.” I don’t believe it is controversial to define a prodigy as a young master. But an immediate problem arises, namely the definition of the word young. So, hopefully you can agree with me that children qualify as young.

So to restate my claim, there never has been and never will be a child who has mastered business. The reason? The skills needed to master business simply cannot be acquired in the first 18 years of life.

I say this because free enterprise often incentivizes deception and bullshit. Specifically, there are lots of talking heads on the internet who promise they possess a super secret, revolutionary breakthrough shortcut, that can get you to business mastery in no time (if only you fork over $998 to join their inner circle mastermind lol).

The whole premise is built on bullshit. What they are really selling is a childish version of hope, because they can argue the inspiration alone is worth $1,000. So, when the promise of business mastery doesn’t materialize you don’t necessarily feel cheated. The obvious problem is inspiration rarely builds a successful business. Skills build successful businesses.