Do you have a business idea everyone says won't work? Still want to go ahead? For inspiration read Phil Tripp's business life journey - 20 Years Ago, It Was Our First Deadline. It will only take you a couple of minutes and is well worth it.

Phil is a Yankee who calls Australia home. He is a prominent entrepreneur in the Australian music industry with a business involved in print and online publishing, event management, and music book retailing.

When failure was predicted for one of his first business ideas here's what he thought: "Hey, these are Australians. They always find reasons for other people to fail and never forgive you for your success. I'm guaranteed an instant success!"

Scepticism is a remarkable, and at times admirable, feature in the national character of the Australian people. In this land of droughts and flooding rains this feature was captured with humour in a famous 1921 poem, Said Hanrahan, by priest and poet, John O'Brien (pictured above). With each new environmental shift, Hanrahan perceives the sky is falling and from his quarter comes the refrain: "We'll all be rooned" (ie ruined).

Lightbulb collects inspiration for local innovators. There's more in the further reading list below. 

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Further inspirational reading:

• Invention: Garage culture puts fun to work
• Wine:  Learning from the wine world of Max Schubert 
• Fruit: Striking gold with kiwifruit (it's a New Zealand success story, but we'll claim it as local!)
• Celebrity chefs: A recipe to make a high net worth celebrity chef 
• Internet ventures: Australian Internet start-ups 
  
• Television program format licensing:  Thank God You're Licensing Us! 
• Mergers and acquisitions: Billions made with Internet business exit strategies 
• Character merchandising and licensing: "Turn to warp speed. We're Australian" 
• IP for food: Intellectual property you can eat and drink 
• Beer branding: Trade mark law strategy kept simple for blondes 
• General: Entrepreneurship elevator speech