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Dr. Antony Davies: Success and Discomfort
Antony Davies is associate professor of economics at Duquesne University. Dr. Davies authors monthly columns on economics and public policy for the Philadelphia Inquirer and U.S. News & World Report, and co-hosts Words and Numbers, a weekly podcast on economics and policy.
He has written over 300 op-eds for, among others, the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, New York Daily News, Washington Post, and Huffington Post. In addition to his academic work, Dr. Davies was Associate Producer at the Moving Pictures Institute, Chief Financial Officer at Parabon Computation, founded several technology companies, and is co-founder and Chief Academic Officer at FreedomTrust, a non-profit educational institution.
Dr. Davies earned his B.S. in Economics from Saint Vincent College, and Ph.D. in Economics from the State University of New York at Albany.
Podcast Time Stamps
[7:00 ] – Dr. Davies tells how he got interested in economics – it had to do with what his mother told him.
[8:04] – Dr. Davies talks about his specialty in quantitative economics but he shares that the field is about more than numbers and deals with human behavior.
[8:50] – Antony talks about experimental economics and the attempt to measure people’s happiness.
[9:44] – What can economics help us with when it comes to success? Economists tend not to use that term, but rather look at people who pursue objectives. You are successful if you are achieving your goal.
[10:45] – Dr. Davies talks about his understanding of success. It’s part financial, it’s partly relational, it’s partly spiritual and partly uncomfortable. This has to do with personal growth.
[11:57] – Growth is painful, but it’s a pain that is rewarding rather than one that leaves you broken. It’s about becoming more than you were before, not just for yourself but for the people around you.
[13:15] – Dr. Davies talks about the relationship between success and failure. He prefers not to think of those in dichotomous terms. Successful entrepreneurs aren’t usually successful until after 2-3 failures, so success is persistence – that you learn from your failures and continue forward.
[14:44] – Dr. Davies best experience and most difficult challenge as an entrepreneur? The most interesting ones are the ones that produced growth in his personal life, where he came out at the end different than before he started. Entrepreneurs differ from academics in that they can’t waste time.
[19:16] – Antony talks about utility in business and the difference in academe due to the primary concern of education.
[20:50] – We talk about what provides value vs. what provides dollars.
[23:20 – We talk a little about free markets and what imposes harm on other people in relation to how much the government should be involved in people’s lives.
[28:46] – Dr. Davies talks about his biggest failure as an entrepreneur and the life lesson he has learned from it – it has to do with interpersonal communication and his introverted personality.
Resources and Places to Connect with Dr. Davies:
Podcast: Word and Numbers
Website: AntonieDavies.org
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/antony.davies
Twitter: @antonydavies
Top learning moments
- Success is partly uncomfortable. If we are comfortable in life, it’s most likely the case that we are experiencing no growth. So it’s important for us to be outside of our comfort zones in order to grow and success is related, in part, to our personal growth.
- What distinguishes successful entrepreneurs is not the success or failure, it’s the persistence. It’s the determination to persevere through the failures.
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