ben ben benko blog

Land of Opportunity

As both my and H’s careers have been shaken up a bit with this “break”, I’ve been letting my entrepreneurial imagination spin. Afterall I live in the land of opportunity where anything is possible. A little elbow grease and hard work and commitment to a good idea and you can achieve anything. There are plenty of big ideas just waiting to be snatched up. Wait…did you think I was talking about America?

No no no, Croatia is the land of opportunity now. Everywhere I look there are ideas ripe for the picking. It makes me wonder if we wouldn’t stay here and try our hand at a small business if we had no obligations in the States. In American dollars, the start-up capital is pretty small, and the best part is that hard work really gets you far here. It’s not that there are no Croatians that work hard, but compared to Americans Croatians in general don’t have a strong concept of hard work. Of course this isn’t really a bad thing. In fact it seems pretty great to me. Having time for 3 coffee breaks and some quality time with a newspaper during the work day is something that could do Americans a lot of good (not to mention the standard 4-5 weeks of vacation time).

Part of this disparity in work ethic can be attributed to the “European way”. Most countries in Europe have a much more active café culture than the US, and there is also the social culture of the town square that encourages workers out onto the streets and into the coffee shops at all times of day. But I could spend days on that topic. However, when it comes to entrepreneurial efforts there are a few other factors at play.

Sure the money is an issue. The economy here is still struggling a bit. There are plenty of people with no jobs at all. So start up capital could be an issue. But there are bank loans to be had, and as I’ll talk about some other day, the support of the family and whatever money they can provide is much stronger here than in the US.

However, the bigger factor at play here in my opinion is what I call the Communism hangover. Croatians as young as 40 remember well what it was like to live and work in Yugoslavia, and of course the cultural influence of communism reach many generations back in time. In a communist system creativity is far from encouraged and the rock solid job security drives work ethic to amazingly low levels. Now that the market has opened up a bit there’s a lag in the realization of the amazing opportunities that small private business offers. Even the small private business owners that I know don’t fully realize that just a little more work, some good marketing, and a good handle on what your consumers want could lead to amazing things.

It will happen. Young people are starting to think bigger. Each generation is working harder, thinking more creatively, and earning more. And within the context of the European work day culture that I mentioned before I think that Croatian business owners have a real shot at striking a sane balance between work and play that Americans have clearly lost sight of. But for now, entrepreneurship will just have to be a fantasy for me. The best we can do is to invest what little we have in the market of a country where the government has not yet realized the killing to be made in capital gains taxes.

posted by Liz @ 2:38 PM