Water and Dirt

Often, hip hop artists use the phrase “out the mud” or “from the mud.” According to Urban Dictionary it means:

“When you've reached a certain level of financial stability, lifestyle, etc. and you started with far less, you got it ‘out the mud.’

While this phrase seems acceptable for recording artists launched from economically depressed areas, it somehow doesn’t apply to top CEOs or others who’ve risen from lowly beginnings outside the entertainment business.

Business people like the late Steve Jobs, who started in a garage exemplifies the person who starts with nothing at the bottom, and through smart work, reaches lofty heights. So why don’t successful business people seem to earn the same respect for their rags-to-riches achievements?

Some journalists malign them because of their extraordinary wealth, a few charitable organizations denounce them, and the general public tends to look upon them with suspicion.

While they enjoy the gadgets, vehicles, streaming services, software companies, websites, and apps produced by business people, they don’t seem to understand where those wonders came from, or the work and personal risks involved in producing them.

The common phrase is that “behind every great fortune, there’s a great crime.” Is this true though? If it’s not a crime, it's often a suspicion that the business was built by inherited money or family wealth, but let’s consider the rise of Bill Gates, he grew up in a middle class family living on far less than the gargantuan fortune he generated with the late Paul Allen.

Mark Zuckerberg started his business in his dorm room, and he was already wealthy, comparatively, long before Facebook was a household name.

Haven’t such men also “come out of the mud”? Didn’t they have to work nineteen-hour days, and sleep under their office desks?

Why is it that men like Elon Musk are denigrated for the wrong things? His involvement with the government to launch rockets into the sky is not something he should be vilified for.

After all, he started with nothing, and co-created PayPal, and founded Tesla and the Boring Company among others.

Would Oprah Winfrey or Michael Jordan or Rihanna be looked at the same way if they were decabillionaires or centibillionaires?

News outlets and social media sites gobble up scandals, and hope for these business icons to falter, or better yet, to fail. By rising up from relatively humble means, these men have all grasped hold of the American Dream and crafted the world into their images.

Being out of the mud should certainly apply to these winners. Even daughters of billionaires,like Dylan Lauren, have had to endure scrutiny for her candy company in New York City, reputed to be the largest candy store on earth. Did she just use Daddy’s money? Can she run a business? She shut up the critics and naysayers by running a successful company on her own without help from her famous father, Ralph Lauren.

The value that they create should be the defining trait of these business people. If they take on a project and see it through knowing that they came from virtually nothing and built even more wealth than they had started. Even if they had started with dollars, the mud would be keeping and maintaining the cash so that one day they could use it as seed money to launch their businesses.

Being out of the mud means that business titans ought to be recognized for creating a powerhouse amidst a wasteland. Their power lies in their strength to rise up from that muck and use their minds to produce wondrous products and services. Every time a multi-millionaire or billionaire makes something of value they should be lauded and applauded, not shunned or disrespected. Their virtue should forever remain a beacon of light shining a way for the next generation of entrepreneurs.