A $23 Lesson in Selling

I was in downtown Indianapolis the other day, walking back to my hotel from a conference at the Westin. Near the Cirle Center Mall area, a fairly nicely dressed caucasian man stopped me. He asked if I had ever been stranded and proceeded to tell a tale of losing his bus ticket only a few minutes ago while in Houlihan's and not being able to find it, yet having to catch a bus back to his home in Ohio in two hours. He showed me a slip of paper with the math--he only needed $27 to get a bus ticket back home, pointing to the Greyhound station two blocks down the road. For good measure, he showed me his Ohio drivers license to show he wasn't from the area. Overall, he told a fairly convincing story. So convinving that I told him I would give him the $23 I had in my wallet. Although remained a little suspicious, he seemed genuine and figured if I was being taken then lesson in sales he just gave me was worth the $23.

The next day, I saw him in the same place doing the same thing to someone else. The day after that, I saw him in a different place. This time when he saw me coming he just went inside a building. I can only imagine he is a homeless man stuck in poverty who has learned the lessons of how to get money from passerbys. I just hope he can save some money and use his obvious ingenuity to get out of poverty. He could certainly get a job in sales.

In America, ingenuity can certainly set you free (either by telling good stories to pedestrians or in the business world). But what if there were a place in which you couldn't ask passerbys for money because they were poor too and no effective business structure (property rights, law, infrastructure, banking, etc.) existed while onerous regulations did that were designed to make it nearly impossible to start a business or small enterprise without money and connections. Unfortunetely, this place exists--it's called Sub-Saharan Africa.