Читать книгу No B.S. Business Success In The New Economy - Dan S Kennedy - Страница 19

For some, that’s a true statement. For others, it’s a big lie. There are some people who really will be happier and more productive in non-entrepreneurial roles. But there’s also great misunderstanding about the price of success.

Every lifestyle, every choice has its price. The person who follows the old model of staying in a good job with a good company for 40 years pays the price in boredom, frustration, and quiet desperation of unfulfilled, untested potential. Today, people who try to stay with that model often pay an even higher price: after many years of service, a merger, acquisition, down-sizing, bankruptcy, or even disappearance of an entire industry puts long-time employees out on the street. They must tackle a dynamic, tough job market with outdated skills and face the future without the financial security they believed was guaranteed to them for their loyalty and longevity. Entrusting your success to others in corporate bureaucracies is increasingly risky business.

Then there are the legions of “gray people.” I don’t mean aging; I mean pallid, pasty, near dead looking. Every morning they march off to a job they have no interest in doing well and derive nothing from but an unsatisfactory paycheck. Every night they come home bored and boring. The price they pay is huge, but it is a slow, almost invisible dying. If you look close, though, you can see it in their eyes.

Yes, entrepreneurial life exacts a high price. Often in ways everyone around you dislikes intensely. As chief cook and bottle washer, you’ve got nobody to call in sick to. While the employee leaves at 5:00 whether work is done or not, you can’t; if there’s a deadline looming, you must meet it, even if that means skipping dinner, your kids’ school recital, sleep.

In one interview, the daughter of Dave Thomas, founder and developer of the Wendy’s fast food chain, was asked if her father came to her school events. She said she doubted if he even knew where her school was! Yes, the entrepreneur’s family pays a price too.

However, I know plenty of fathers who are physically home every night and every weekend but mentally and emotionally elsewhere. Or who are constantly concocting excuses to get away from their families. Like golf, a game that clearly would never have been invented if marriage hadn’t been invented first.

The reality is this: you don’t get to choose a life without a price. There are options, but each has a different price.

There are two sides to the price of entrepreneurship. As an example, consider illness or death in the family. My father was ill in his later years, and there was some real risk he might be suddenly rushed to the hospital and die without much warning. I knew, if I was en-route to a speaking engagement or in a distant city honoring a speaking commitment, that I would not “stiff” the seminar promoter; I would honor my contractual commitment and my father would wait. That never happened. When the time came that he was rushed to the hospital, I was able to drop what I was doing, buy a ticket without blinking, and fly across country for a good, lengthy final visit. I also supported him financially, entirely, for over ten years.

The person in a “normal” job gets family leave. The entrepreneur does not. The employee has one boss, the entrepreneur many. In many ways, it is easier for the employee to do the things in family life generally regarded by most people as correct and appropriate, but it is quite often the “odd man out” entrepreneur in the family that everyone else turns to, to get out his checkbook and pay the bills the others can’t. His willingness to pay the price for entrepreneurial success is what makes it possible for him to pay the tab in family crisis or tragedy. When financial crisis arises in the family, nobody calls the poor relative.

The upshot of this is, you the entrepreneur must be prepared for, and be rather thick-skinned toward, the criticism of the nonentrepreneurs in your life about the price they perceive you pay for your success.