The title of this blog entry says it all. Entrepreneurs are a different sort of person. They always believe they can do it better (Even if it isn’t always true). My personal experience tells me that about 5-10% of the people I meet qualify as the “entrepreneur type”. These are the people that stand in the line at the bank or at McDonalds and look at inefficiencies and say to themselves, “I can do this better! ”. The world needs these type of people. They are the ones who drive innovation and efficiency in pricing models.
Some are good, and some are great, but I appreciate anyone willingness to go out on a limb to do business when the outcome is not guaranteed. One thing I have learned about these people is that they have always been the way they are now. What do I mean? Entrepreneurs have a personality that allows them to believe and take risks and enjoy the process that other people find distasteful. If you are a person that loves to have work end at 5pm and then turn work off until the next day being an entrepreneur isn’t for you I left work a few hours early today to go home and set up a lemonade stand with my kids at a park corner a block from my house.
I left my wife with newborn Marissa at home and left with my four boys (twins that are 3, a 6 year old, and an 8 year old) to set up the stand. My kids had a mission to earn money to go to the “nickelcade”, a local arcade. They could only spend what they earned selling lemonade. In 1 hour and 20 minutes they had earned $23. 11. Not too shabby!! What was amazing to me is that Luke and Zane (The 3 year old identical twins) outsold the others by a long shot. They knew what they wanted and they went after it.
The other kids did great too, but it was obvious to me who was motivated. Even at an early age the signs are clearly visible. Think about what you did in High School to earn money? The average kid goes out and gets a job and I was no exception, but I did MANY other things on the side. See if you can tell the difference between my personality and others you know. Built a “zapper” in digital electronics class and gave people $10 if they could hold onto it for 10 seconds (I charged 50 cents per try). I did this at lunch for 3 months and earned over $200. I built “blitz cables” for a local Atari dealer in my hometown. It allowed people to copy “protected” disks on the Atari ST. The store had to buy them for $60, so I built my own and sold them about 40 of them at $45 (At a cost of about $9 each and 1 hour of my time). Wrote an upload/download Zmodem system for a BBS in GFA (Too long to explain). I made about $2000 doing this and it was really fun. My senior year I sold a lot of IBM Brand computer parts and memory to a local educational institution.
I didn’t want them to know it was just me, so I told them I was the delivery boy when I brought the parts over. I made about $1500 a month for about 6 months. Notice a pattern? None of those things required me to work for someone else. At the time I didn’t want to be an entrepreneur I simply wanted to make the most I could doing what I liked to do at the time. My attitude hasn’t changed since then and it probably never will. Entrepreneurs are born not made.
