So you’ve decided you want to be an entrepreneur. You’ve read all those motivational articles about billionaire entrepreneurs who’ve failed in the past. You feel confident in your resilience. Your thinking goes: “Even if I fail, I will surely keep at it, keep developing new businesses. Success is bound to occur thanks to the law of averages, if nothing else!” You are right, young padawan! Indeed, you are right!
You’ve gone ahead and chosen a hot industry (hopefully the mobile one) and you’ve assembled a competent team around you. You’re ready to go!
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Well, let me give you one last piece of information before you hit the road. Let me share with you the last piece of the puzzle, the billion-dollar (let’s aim high) paradox nobody talks about. And you’ll never become a billionaire if you don’t understand this paradox! Understand it, use it and big wealth will be one step closer to you!
But first thing’s first: let’s set up a bit of context. We need to analyze how the business game works, understand the hidden shadowy workings of the game and truly comprehend how its players interact with each other. We’ll do this by first listing a few minor paradoxes which all lead to the big one. Ready? Set? Let’s go.
Paradox #1: Entrepreneurs Hate Jobs
Yes, they do. Entrepreneurs are generally not businessmen or managers. Take a typical businessman for a second. He enjoys having a 9-to-5 job. He thrives in that sort of corporate environment. Almost all businessmen love departmentalization. They love to have small plaques on doors with abbreviations such as H.R. or R & D, and they really enjoy working with accountants. That’s business folks for you.
Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate businesspeople. And while we all love and need them, I trust that you don’t want to be one. You want to be an entrepreneur, right?
How An Entrepreneur Thinks
In general, entrepreneurs couldn’t care less about that neat, structured corporation paradigm. Real entrepreneurs hate the illusion of security a ‘9 to 5′ job brings.
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Entrepreneurs are ‘shouting leaders’. They’re entropic. Messy. Heterogeneous. As a consequence, they all pretty much hate accounting. Entrepreneurs have more enthusiasm (compared to businessmen) for starting new ventures and they’re usually more risk-happy.
They generally put more value on how their business impact real people as opposed to cold numbers, quarterly profits or share prices for their investors. As you might expect, investors have a love-hate relationship with entrepreneurs and obviously prefer corporate businessmen to manage their money.
Paradox #2: Entrepreneurs Can’t Handle Growth
While being an entrepreneur is awesome, a paradox tends to occur. Entrepreneurs are less fit to run their businesses in the long run, precisely because of their intrinsic volatile nature. If you’re an entrepreneur, you always want to start something new, grow a new business or invest in a long-shot idea that will change the planet. This sort of approach is tons of fun, but it can, and usually does backfire.
The “screw it, let’s do it” idiom first preached by billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson sounds great on paper and works superbly for startups, but it’s not that good when you’re running a medium or corporate-size business. That requires full focus. That requires a safe-player at the helm, somebody who plays the game of business more cautiously.
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When you run a big company, there’s dozens or even hundreds of employees and millions of dollars worth of venture capital investment at stake. You can’t really afford to gamble that away. All this amounts to yet another paradox. Even though, after understanding all of this, you would think that entrepreneurs are not the most likely candidates to become filthy rich… the opposite is true.
Paradox #3: Most billionaires in the world are entrepreneurs
Yes, most billionaires in the world are entrepreneurs instead of businesspeople. They’re entrepreneurs who’ve figured out how to transform their businesses from full-time jobs to automated systems. They do this by employing a good businessman for a CEO, standing back and letting that guy run with the ball (hence letting the company grow). Once such an automated business is fully set up, the entrepreneur shifts his attention to another business – that’s how the cycle rolls.
Make no mistake, billionaires hate having a ‘job‘, just like you and me! So, why not hire a businessman who loves doing a job?
Most entrepreneurs who are also billionaires have learned how to deal with businessmen. They’ve learned how to recruit them and place them at the top of their growing start up. They’ve learned how to leverage CEOs and operational management for the sake of automating their businesses. And that’s how entrepreneurs turn their ‘startup job’ into an automated business.
That’s exactly how they become billionaires!
Finding The Right Guy
The only remaining problem you’d have (should you chose this strategy as a path towards billions) is to supervise your selected businessman and make sure he does a great job. It’s a win/win situation. You’ll have more free time to try your luck with another venture, and the businessman gets what he wants: a secure 9-to-5 job.
Keep Entrepreneuring!
While supervising the CEO you’ve selected from the pool of corporate suits, make sure to restart the process. Try to grow as many companies as possible. Throw different things at the wall and see what sticks. If one grows fast enough and you feel you’ve reached the point where your “screw it, let’s do it” type of management doesn’t apply anymore, go head-hunting for CEO-like businessmen to employ.
Sadly, those CEOs will never become billionaires. But you will. I truly hope you will. You’ll soon have dozens of automated businesses, and you’ll be racking in the cash! But hey, it’s not all about the money, right? Or… is it?
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