The other day I got my social security statement in where it shows how much I have made each year since I started working. The amounts are all over the place, especially after I made Stardock my career.
There is something truly unique in the personality makeup of the entrepreneur that founds his (or her) own company from scratch to execute on some new idea and then builds it up to something that involves hiring employees and dealing with significant amounts of revenue.
For one thing, I think it requires a little bit of insanity. Seriously. Let me explain: An entrepreneur’s fortune (or poverty) is based on living off their wits. How much money an entrepreneur makes isn’t dependent on how long they worked or how hard they worked. In fact, many an entrepreneur sees their dream die and their fortunes turn to ash despite working amazingly hard and long. Few people understand “life isn’t fair” better than an entrepreneur.
Most people (as in, nearly all people) go to work and do a job in which they are, at some level, told what to do. Even the recently fired CEO of General Motors was merely a guy working a job. By contrast, an entrepreneur has to invent their job in the first place and then, later, invent the jobs for others to take.
If anyone takes what I wrote above as “bragging” on behalf of entrepreneurs, don’t. It takes a certain level of mental illness to motivate oneself to do what I just described.
I have a friend named Jeff Schader who ostensibly is a competitor of ours to a degree. Every several months we have a horrific flame war with promises of utter destruction on the other. Then, some months later, we start talking again as if nothing had happened. It drives some of my coworkers nuts. Why the hell am I talking to this guy? And ultimately, it’s an answer few can understand. He’s an entrepreneur. He has nearly an identical personality as I have (different skill sets, I’m an engineer, he’s a creative). At some instinctive level, we are always going to be kindred spirits.
As companies get larger, the wise entrepreneur will start to shield external partners, customers, and furry animals from himself (or herself) by hiring other people who aren’t as hyper-aggressive as they are. And in my experience, entrepreneurs tend to be hyper-aggressive to the point of self-destruction. There has been many a time where had I been the the one talking to a major (>$1M) partner after they did something to piss me off I would have told them to kiss my butt.
I remember one time, after dealing with some translation issue in one of our programs loudly promising (in our offices) that “Europe can suck it!” Luckily, cooler heads prevail around me and it’s not anything personal against the target, it is that the mental illness in most entrepreneurs that I’ve met (and including myself) is the requirement for personal freedom even at the cost of money. Because it’s not about the money, it’s about the freedom to do whatever the heck you want.