then advertise to those people at that exact moment. Yet Google still
has to hire thousands of attractive people with average IQs and
exceptional EQ to sell the shit out of... Google. Entrepreneurship is a
sales job with negative commissions for the first three to five years, or
until you go out of business—whichever comes first.
The good news: if you like to sell and you’re good at it, you will
always make more money, relative to how hard you work, than any of
your colleagues, and... they will hate you for it.
Do you lack the skills to work at a big firm?
Being successful in a big firm is not easy and requires a unique skill
set. You have to play nice with others, suffer injustices and bullshit at
every turn, and be politically savvy—get noticed by key stakeholders
doing good work and garner executive-level sponsorship. However, if
you are good at working at a big firm, then, on a risk-adjusted basis,
you are better off doing just that—and not struggling against the long
odds of working at a small firm. Big firms are great platforms that can
scale your skills.
If, on the other hand, you don’t play well with others, have an
inability to trust your fate to others, and are almost clinically obsessed
with your vision for a new product or service, you may be an
entrepreneur. I know I am one: past potential employers viewed me as
such an asshole I had to start my own business. For me,
entrepreneurship was a survival mechanism, as I didn’t have the skills
to be successful at the greatest platforms in history, big U.S.
companies.
At small firms, the highs are very high and the lows even lower. My
greatest joy and pride are my kids. Second are the firms we’ve started,
even the failures. As with kids, there is an instinctive, genetic
connection with a firm you’ve founded. It looks, smells, and feels like
you, and you can’t help but feel joy and pride when it takes its first
step. And it’s like your child coming home with a good report card
when that company is written up as one of the fastest-growing firms in
Ronkonkoma, New York.
Just as important, and unlike parenthood, most people deep down
know they could never do what you do. There’s an admiration for