By Kevin O’Leary
I learned at an early age that I was built to be an employer, not an employee. But that doesn’t mean I’m better than the people I employ. I’m different, but not better.
I’m telling you this for a reason. You must discover which role suits you best: employee or employer. Being a successful employee requires continually honing a talent for diplomacy and collaboration. In turn, you’re rewarded with security and a steady salary, with fewer of the headaches that entrepreneurs suffer from.
Running a business on the other hand, is an all-consuming, all-encompassing venture, which totally invigorates some, and totally exhausts others.
To determine your “EQ” (your Entrepreneurial Quotient), and to learn whether you’ve got what it takes to be a leader in business or industry, answer the following questions with one of these four options: always, true, quite true, rarely true, or hell no.
- I need to know exactly what I’m going to make next year, and the year after that, and the year after that.
- When I’m working on something, it has my full and complete attention, and I hate having that thought process interrupted by anything or anyone else.
- When adrenaline’s coursing through my veins because I’ve just made an aggressive offer on a competing company and I have yet to hear what the answer is, I feel incredibly uncomfortable.
- There is nothing more gratifying than knowing that someone else takes care of automatically depositing my biweekly paycheck into my account.
- I like the people I work with, and I hope none of them ever leave or move on.
- I like that my work duties re very clearly spelled out.
- If it’s not in my job description, I don’t do it—not because I’m lazy, but because it’s somebody else’s job and I wouldn’t want to offend them.
- Sleep is incredibly important to me.
- Work/life balance is so important. True success means a healthy amount of “me time”.
- I find living a life of extremes to be very stressful. The idea of being on a plane for twenty hours, or having people constantly need to speak to me, or being sought after for speaking engagements, or dealing with the ebb and flow of millions and millions of dollars—mine and other people’s, seems nightmarish.
If you answered always true or quite true to a majority of these questions, chances are the roller-coaster ride of entrepreneurship is not for you. There’s nothing wrong with that. Believe me, the economy—indeed the world—would be much better off if people ill suited to running businesses would step aside and let those who are equipped take the reins.
If you answered rarely true or hell no to the majority of these questions, get ready for the ride of your life. Deciding to become an entrepreneur is a lot like deciding to become an actor or writer. You’re going to be constantly dissuaded by people who don’t want to see you get hurt. They’ll tell you the odds of succeeding are slim. They’ll say that it’s a hard life, full of anxiety and uncertainty. They’ll remind you that you’ll be spending nights and weekends either at the office or thinking that you should be there. And they’ll be right. But if you still believe that there is no greater goal than working for yourself, creating jobs and opportunities for others, and being a player in your local, national, or global economy, then, like me, you probably have entrepreneurialism encoded in your DNA.
To be an entrepreneur, you must find a business you can fall in love with. It has to be something you want to live, breathe, and eat. It has to force you to make compromises you wouldn’t otherwise make. You know you’ve found it when, despite the fact that you eat on the run, rarely sleep, travel constantly, never see your family, and never relax, for some reason you’ve also never been happier.
Need Advice On Growing Your Business? TigerDirect Business Says, "Ask A Shark", visit
http://www.tigerdirect.com/sectors/campaigns/kevinoleary/askKevin.asp.
Kevin O’Leary is on ABC’s Shark Tank and is TigerDirect’s spokesperson.