To Be an Entrepreneur You Have to be Tough

Being an employee is easy.

Well, aside from all the corporate BS, the internal politics, and the need to perform miracles despite budget and staffing cuts, it’s a hell of a lot easier than being your own boss.

Nice guys really do finish last, especially in business. Not that you have to be as corrupt as Dr. Evil to succeed.

However, you do need to have enough of a backbone to put your foot down when needed.

I’m learning this the hard way, as things go past the wayside because I haven’t had the guts to take the lead when I needed too.

Not that I’m a stranger to making big and bold decisions. I made them all the time in the corporate world. However, in the corporate world, everyone on the team will follow whatever direction you take, because that’s what employees and contractors do to keep their jobs – toe the company line. As a leader in the corporate world, your head is often filled with an artificial ego boost, as regardless of the lunacy of your ideas, everyone follows, because no one dares challenge the hand that feeds them.

As an entrepreneur, I’m working in a different world – a more realistic and harsh world – where not everyone is on my team. From potential team players, to potential strategic partners, these people aren’t afraid to let me know when they think my ideas aren’t any good.

If you read last week’s blog you’ll know I certainly got an earful from a handful of potential team members – and in some cases I hadn’t even had the chance to get my ideas out there.

I’m a really open, honest nice guy. I’ve always been open to the ideas and opinions of those on my team, because no one is perfect – I’m certainly not – and I know the value of acquiring as much information before making an informed, educated decision.

And for the most part, those on my team have the team’s best interests at heart, so their voices should be heard.

I’d listen to those on my team, think about it, and then make any decisions necessary, sometimes going against those on the team – but I at least listened to them, and actually considered them before making and final decisions.

However, I’m learning when you’re at the top of the food chain as an entrepreneur, not everyone has you or your business’ best interests at heart, yet they will stop and put up a fight to voice their issues as if they did.

Not that everyone I talk to has their own agenda, but the biggest challenge I’m finding is trying to cut through all the clutter, to figure out who is on my side and voicing a real concern for my business, and who is just trying to push forward their own cause.

Nice guys really do finish last in business.

I’m learning I have to put my foot down, and carry on, regardless of all the clutter tossed my way. I know some of the people speaking up actually are in my court, but because there are so many more that aren’t, instead of taking that risk, it’s best to just act.

Because without action, nothing is done.

And when nothing is done, the business doesn’t move on.

I’m bound to make mistakes, that’s part of being human.

However, I’ll never learn and grow from those mistakes, if I just sit on the fence, and never take any action, because I’m cowering in the corner over an idea, rather than acting on that idea.

To be an entrepreneur, you have to be tough. You have to take the first steps, in the face of uncertainty, and despite the voices of others – because not all those voices are chirping in your court.

You have to listen your gut, because sometimes, that’s the only member of your team pulling for you.

When Job Interviewees Go Postal on the One Holding the Keys to the Cubicle

We’ve all heard about job interviews that go off the rails, usually caused by potential employers asking things they shouldn’t and forcing job candidates to jump through outrageous hoops just for the possibility of an interview.

What about when a job interview becomes hell on Earth, because of a snippy job seeker?

Last week, a potential employee exploded at me, within the first 15-seconds of the interview. I hadn’t even got off a single question.

I began as I always do, introducing myself, thanking him for his time, outlining the objectives of our meeting, and just as I took a breath he interrupted me saying: “Look, I’ve been around the block a few times, let’s cut to the chase. I currently earn a six figure income, have people begging me to work for them, and really just want to know if this is a contract, if it’s salary-based, if there’s a commission, and when do I start?”

I was completely unsettled by this abrupt interruption, by someone who’s last position on their resume was dated June of 2012.

I hadn’t expected to run into someone working at some mystery company that isn’t listed on their resume, earning a “six figure income” for a job where the industry average is about $60K. 

Nor did I expect to be pushed into a corner by a hostile job seeker that has “been around the block” and has “people begging him to work for them.” Though he did ask when we’d hire him.

I understand looking for work is a precarious and fragile situation. Some may be on their last nickel and dimes literally, as their prolonged job hunt bleeds their bank accounts dry. Others may have gone through the horrendous downsizing that unfortunately has become the new norm, replaced by temporary contractors. They themselves may have fallen into the unstable temporary contractor world, where the only jobs they seem to get are the ones with a start date and an end date.

I understand how horrible all of those pressures are.

But I never, NEVER – EVER – would have anticipated that pressure would explode, unleashing the worst in people – at a time when people are trying to show their best.

I’m not new to hiring people, and I always like to start off introducing myself, the company, the role, and then move into the job candidate’s background. I don’t conduct interviews, I like to think of them as conversations. 

It’s not my management style to lock people in a room and demand action, I’ve always had an open door policy, where I encourage an atmosphere of collaboration and openness.

However, I might reconsider that open door policy, as this hostile job candidate wasn’t the only job seeker to attempt to hijack the interview.

Several others over the course of the week jumped off my traditional job interview course, demanding I hire them at outrageously high salaries, with benefits, because as one job seeker declared: “I’m sick and tired of working on contracts that don’t materialize into anything ever good.”

When I was a kid, growing up, I was taught to always go into a job interview with a freshly pressed suit and tie. I still remember my high school guidance counselor telling our class: “to make sure your socks are pulled up, your shoes are shiny, your hair is perfectly combed and you don’t have any stains on your perfectly white dress shirt.”

I was taught to show up early, give a firm handshake while looking the interviewer directly in the eye and to be respectful and polite at all times.

Back then, the notion of interrupting your potential boss before you even had the job was not even a thought in the most devious of delinquent minds.

Our world certainly has changed for the worse over the past few decades.

I blame recruitment firms, staffing agencies, and the corporate managers gullible enough to think recruitment firms are the messiah of their staffing needs.

Recruitment firms and staffing agencies go in with these slick presentations – I’ve seen them myself – telling employers how it’s not cost effective to hire people anymore. It makes more sense to hire a third-party company (the recruitment firm) to source “resources” (that’s how they refer to people) on a per project-basis.

My biggest problem with recruitment firms is they don’t care about the people resources they deploy. Which is understandable – they are a business, and a business’ primary interest is to make money.

However, they are in the business of supplying people to companies, so it’s ultimately not in their best interests to show such disregard for their primary product – people.

I’ve seen the end result this week – the people that have been shuffled in and out of the meat grinder of the recruitment firm’s temporary contracts become bitter, angry and disenfranchised with the world of work. Because they’ve been spun from contract, to contract, they no longer have any respect for those conducting job interviews.

Again, I get it. I understand the horrors of being bounced from company to company, department to department. One month having a decent pay cheque, the next you are flipping sofa pillows desperately looking for change to buy a loaf of bread as your bank account is negative.

However, I’ll never hire a hostile job candidate.

They don’t give me the respect which I expect everyone in my company to give each other.

And that’s the ultimate tragedy here, because chances are, the hostile job candidate that claimed he was making a six figure income is the guy sifting through his sofa, looking for change, because he’s been without a real job for a very long time.

Want to Get Ahead in Business? Be Helpful

My schedule is always full. Starting a business is no small feat, it isn’t uncommon for me to put in 12-hour days, six or seven days a week – I sleep the eighth day of the week.

Eighth day?

Despite my hectic life, when complete strangers call me up and ask for help, I make the time to listen, and do what I can, if possible.

Be it a fellow entrepreneur, looking for guidance, an unemployed person looking for work, a recent university graduate looking for their big break, I’ve been approached by and helped many people, in many different situations.

Karma may be real, or some idea invented by a creative genius that just needed a word for the phrase: “what goes around comes around,” but that phrase does have truth embedded within.

Over my years as a print and broadcast journalist I saw all too often how what goes around comes around. Eager, young, fellow journalists, that stepped on and over others to climb to the top. Now, many of those people are out of work, struggling put food on their table.

When I was in the corporate world, I also saw how what goes around comes around too.

People kissing up to their bosses, or their boss’ boss, always looking for an opportunity to put others down so they appeared to be the only light in a dark room. They’ll probably die in a dark room, alone, because in the end, what goes around does come around.

All throughout my journalism career and my time in the corporate world, I was always very helpful.

I helped others track down sources, secure interviews with hard to reach people, or even just bounce story ideas off of – regardless of my own deadlines. I’d help PhotoShop images even though they had nothing to do with my project, I’d take on mundane tasks to assist an over-worked colleague, I’d even just listen to someone vent if they had a bad day.

My colleagues and teams all loved me, because no matter how dim their day was looking, they knew they could come to me, and I’d do whatever I could, no matter how busy I was.

And on occasion, when I needed an ear to listen, or an extra set of hands to help out, I could always count on someone to be there for me.

Because what goes around really does come around.

Not that I’d intentionally do things to reduce my workload. I think it’s part of being a good person to just be helpful whenever someone is in need.

If you’re walking out of a building, and you see someone walking toward you to enter that building, arms loaded with packages, do you not hold the door so they don’t stumble and drop their armful?

Maybe you don’t.

Sadly, in our ever increasingly busy world, I’ve noticed our society has become less compassionate and caring over the years.

Twenty years ago, it wasn’t uncommon for someone to hold the door for others behind them, to let others into their lane of traffic when their lane was about to end, to help a frail senior citizen across the street.

These days, people walk through doors as if they are the only ones that matter, they rush up practically scraping the bumper of the car in front to intentionally block anyone from cutting in front of them, and that frail senior gets honked at by drivers frustrated that they are still crossing the street, despite the light changing color.

We certainly live in less helpful times, which is really too bad.

Because what goes around comes around.

This is especially true when you’re building a business.

No one can build a business alone. You need a lot of help. You are the new person in the big bold world of business.

If you’ve been strutting through doorways letting the door slam behind you, you may prematurely end your business, before it even has a shot of existing.

No one likes someone that constantly ignores others, puts their self-interests ahead of anyone else’s, and barricades themselves in their office tower, ignoring calls from anyone they feel beneath them.

One day, the phone will stop ringing from those you ignore – they’ll get the message. And so too, will others who talk to those who you’ve ignored, pissed-off, upset, stabbed in the back, or in any other way been unkind too.

And one day, when you reach out to someone because you need a hand, and we all do eventually, your phone calls will be ignored.

Because what goes around does come around.

Karma really is a bitch. But she’s a fair and bright one at that.

Even direct competitive giants in the tech world, founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates and Apple’s founder, Steve Jobs, returned each other’s calls.

And we’ve all seen how successful Microsoft and Apple have become.

Being helpful shouldn’t be a second thought.

Always be helpful, no matter what.

Because what goes around, comes around.

Are Entrepreneurs Really Different from Everyone Else?

We all have different images of what our mind's mental picture of an entrepreneur is.

From the womanizing charismatic founder of the Virgin empire, Richard Branson, to the t-shirt, blue jeans and sneakers image of Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg, to the tailor-made corporate tie and suit image of multi-billionaire Warren Buffett, there are vastly different personas at play in the world of doing your own thing.

So, are entrepreneurs really different from everyone else on the planet?

Do you have to be bold, brave and bedazzling like Branson to be an entrepreneur?

Or can you be the geeky collegial-like Zuckerberg to make it big?

Or do you have to dress the part, to eventually get to the suits and ties like Buffett?

Truth is, you have to be all of the above – and more – to be an entrepreneur.

Which isn’t really all that different from anyone else.

Charismatic charm, doing your homework, and occasionally putting on your best business attire all are part of life – think about the last job interview you had. Researching the company you were interviewing at, dressing for the part, and even putting on the charm are all part of the job hunting process.

What does make entrepreneurs different from everyone else is they take the ultimate risk – they don’t do what everyone else does.

We are taught in North America, and most other parts of the world, that if you get an education, you’ll get a good job with a great employer that will keep paying you to do that good job until you are old enough to retire.

But there wouldn’t be any employers without entrepreneurs.

Someone has to start the companies that are to do the hiring of the educated masses erupting from post-secondary schools, eyes glowing brightly hoping for that one job that will turn into a career for life.

That's just not the way it is -- anymore.

Unfortunately, thanks to corporate greed, landing a good job out of college or university is like winning the lottery. Sure, someone you know probably will, but most of your friends are stuck in the same dead-end part-time service sector gigs they got to put themselves through school, so they could land that career-starting job.

Entrepreneurs are different because they scoff at society’s expectations of them, and decide to do something on their own.

It does take an enormous amount of bravery to go against the norm, because the second you do that, everyone else around you thinks you’ve lost your mind, are going through a mid-life crisis, or worse, they just don’t “get it,” and they treat you like you’ve got some highly communicable disease, won’t have anything to do with you.

Until of course, their CV lands on your desk, as they attempt to gain employment at the highly successful business you’ve grown.

You have to be a risk taker, a visionary, a leader, and you have to see the way through all the noise and distress in the world.

Entrepreneurs see solutions where everyone else just complains about the problem. It’s easier to complain, and to feed off each other’s distain for what ails us, rather than to think of a solution.

How many times have you gone into a meeting, listened to complaint after complaint about the same thing, but the second you discussed brainstorming solutions, everyone in the meeting instantly puts you down, telling you not to bother?

That’s happened to me so many times in the corporate world. And that’s probably the saddest thing about the corporate world. It feeds off of its own problems, rather than looking for and solving those problems, which is why it takes forever for anything to ever happen in large corporations.

Unless those large corporations are led by an entrepreneur.

Entrepreneurs are different from everyone else, because they look for solutions, rather than sitting back and complaining like everyone else.

That's why you don't hear about every company in the world, just the ones led by entrepreneurs. Not every company is like Virgin, Facebook, Buffett's army of famous brands under his Berkshire Hathaway umbrella, even Steve Job's Apple, Bill Gates' Microsoft, and the other big names run by people that dare to be different.

And that daring isn't really all that outrageous, they just solve problems, rather than following the norm of complaining about them.

So entrepreneurs are different from most.

The questions is, do you want to be part of the on-going problem, or do you want to be the mastermind behind the solution?