1. Great name. MLK, Washington, Independence, and the greatest birth ever recorded (see Luke 2:1-20) don't even get a full week of holiday. Compare that with Shark Week on the Discovery Channel. Seven dazzling days of delight. We are fascinated by sharks. Sharks enjoy people too.
2. Our society seems to have an insatiable interest in money. Who has it, who is losing it, and how they spend it. Whole TV series, documentaries, and movies are created primarily to satiate the public desire to know more about people who have made loads of cash. Even out here in the ocean, the Green Stuff can take center stage.
3. The American Dream, or some mutant form of it, is played out before our eyes. Every episode seems to have at least one success story, where a struggling entrepreneur makes millions because he/she teamed up with one of the business savvy "Sharks".
The story I wanted to share with you begins at 32:50, if you want to see for yourself, with a humble farmer named Jonny. He enters the Shark Tank hoping that one of these investors will use their experience and resources to help him accomplish something good - water conservation.
Seeing this story played out reminded me of a quote by C.S. Lewis.
“A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you're looking down, you can't see something that's above you.”
As the "Sharks" question Jonny about his profit margins on this product, most of them are baffled as to why he doesn't raise the price to make a better profit. Jonny's simple response to their inquiry is truly beautiful.
"I've never done that, I've always tried to be right."
"Because I'm working with farmers."
Most of these investors couldn't understand why Jonny would leave "money on the table" and keep the price so low. They couldn't see eye to eye with a man whose motivation was a little better, a little higher. Any of these gill-ty business types could certainly write a book on how to set an optimal price point, yet Jonny just taught a lesson that most of today's business world probably couldn't grasp if it was a 100 dollar bill dipped in crazy glue. He was trying to build a business without forgetting to see his customers as real people. (Luke 6:31)
Let's make sure we carve out a sizable piece of this ocean for those good souls who are shark enough to think and act a little more altruistically, rather than to applaud and idolize the typical, rapacious "business sharks" that infest our waters.
D
