Entrepreneur Myths (6 page)

I was 16 years old. Our team was the best in the city in its age division, and we were playing against the second best team in the league. We were down 4-0 at half time. We were shocked. If you don’t know soccer, it’s kind of like 40-0 in American football. During halftime our team didn’t talk much. The coach was trying to keep us encouraged. It was an embarrassing situation because we’d never gotten our ass kicked before. To make it worse, there was a large crowd watching the game.

We just wanted to pack it up and go home. It was a very hot day — and in Texas, hot means over 100 degrees — so that was a pretty good, fucking excuse. My father marched up to me and told me to lie on the grass. He lifted my legs and shook them to get the tiredness out of them. He said in his thick Serbian accent, “You guys can win this. They’re not as good as you. You can do it.” And I believed him.

He poured a bottle of cold water over me, under the blazing sun. When the whistle blew for the second half, we played like we were possessed. Our team was flying into tackles, winning the ball, attacking as if we played for the Argentinean national soccer team
³
. Everyone dug into the grass, and we played our hearts out.

Within the next 30 minutes we scored four goals to tie the game. I scored the first and third goal, and my twin brother, Danny, scored the second and fourth. We thought we were back in the game — until the opposing team scored again. It was 5-4, their lead. That was a downer, especially after playing our hearts out to come back and tie the game. But failure was not an option. We pressed harder and our teammate, John Hedlund, scored a goal to tie the game again. A few minutes before the end of the game, John scored again to give us the lead and it was game fucking over. We won 5-6.

That game in particular taught me to never give up until the final whistle blows. I apply this same mentality to business. Positive thinking can take you a long way in sports as well as in entrepreneurship.

Positive thinking is a good trait to have as an entrepreneur. But it can be dangerous as well. I stuck with some ventures after everyone else quit, because I believed I could pull it out at the end. Because I had succeeded in pulling one venture out of hell, I was positive I could do it every single fucking time. I forgot that in soccer I was able to come back from behind many times, but not
every
time.

Failure should not be an option. But shit does happen. There’s a point in any venture where you must decide whether to throw in the towel. Yeah, take my fucking advice I wasn’t using. Stick it out only if there’s an end in sight.

Failure is not an option, but if you don’t address the consequences of failure, you’re going down with the fucking ship. Down hard, may I remind you. If you’re currently experiencing a failed venture, you have to determine the following:

(Q1)
Can you pull the venture out of its downward spiral? If you think you can, how? You better have a plan or you’re toast.

(Q2)
Why is your venture failing? Is it due to the economy, lack of capital, sales or poor management? Are you the problem? Is your partner?

(Q3)
If you need capital, are you willing to lose control or let go of a huge equity chunk? If not, then what?

(Q4)
If you don’t currently have sales, now what? What makes you think you can get sales in the near future, and how long will it take to ramp up?

(Q5)
Can you sustain the losses of your company from a personal standpoint? What is your financial limit? If you go beyond it, then what?

(Q6)
Is your spouse or significant other (if you’ve still got one) supportive? Are they telling you to throw in the towel? Are you listening to them?

Nobody likes to talk about failure. It’s kind of like going to Las Vegas. Everyone comes back from Vegas claiming to be a winner. If that’s the case, how the fuck are those casinos financed? I have failed before — more than once. Failure is not an option, but shit happens. It’s better to try to succeed — even at the risk of failure. I know entrepreneurs who failed and refused to start another venture. The failure took a mental and physical toll on them.

Failure happens. Failure is around you more than you realize. The failure index depends on the sector, competitive intensity, amount of capital available and other variables. The restaurant business, for example, has an especially-high failure index rate.

When you start your venture, know your limits financially, physiologically and psychologically. Most entrepreneurs have difficulty dealing with failure. I’m one of those crazy motherfuckers who looks at failure as a temporary obstacle in the journey of life. Nobody will care how many times you failed after you are gone from this Earth. It’s not the end of the world.

Learn from your failures so you don’t repeat the same patterns.

One of the biggest pieces of advice in this book: failure is an option when you learn to pivot. Twitter and Groupon are a result of failing and pivoting into a new direction. If you pivot your venture in a new direction, it’s not failure in my book.

Brain Candy: questions to consider and ponder

(Q1)
Have you ever failed? What happened after that? How did you pull yourself out of the situation? Were your friends supportive?

(Q2)
After you failed, how long did it take you to start another venture? Did you do it in the same sector or another one?

(Q3)
Do you believe failure is not an option?

(Q4)
Have you ever saved your venture from the brink of disaster then made it successful? How the fuck did you do it?

(Q5)
If you failed, were you embarrassed to talk about it?

(Q6)
If you failed, did you fail fast and cheap?

Entrepreneur
Myth 9
| Men are better entrepreneurs than women

You might have run across, on the ESPN Classic channel, the 1973 “The Battle of Sexes” exhibition tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs. Riggs thought he had the balls to beat the top female players in the world just because he was (and still is) male.

Riggs was a promoter, sports hustler and 1940s tennis star who, for three years, had been the World No. 1 tennis player. He challenged King to a match after beating top female tennis player, Margaret Court. Obviously he was in it for the money.

In his first challenge against Court, who was 30 years old and the top female player in the world at the time, Riggs won. In their 1973 Mother's Day match in Ramona, California, Riggs used his drop shots and lobs to keep Court off balance. His easy 6–2, 6–1 victory landed Riggs on the cover of both Sports Illustrated and Time magazines.

Overnight, Riggs’ balls grew even bigger. He taunted other top female players, and the queen of women’s tennis, Billie Jean King, accepted his offer to play against him in a much-televised match called “The Battle of the Sexes.”

A Hollywood-style show, it was. King arrived at the Astrodome in Houston like Cleopatra, carried aloft in a chair held up by four bare-chested, muscular men dressed as ancient Egyptian slaves.
Riggs arrived riding in a rickshaw pulled by scantily clad models.

The arrogance of male chauvinism got the better of Riggs. King totally fucked him over by playing a different game than Riggs expected. She played a non-aggressive strategy of staying back at the baseline and suppressing Riggs’ lob shots and soft shots. She made him run around like a chicken with his dick cut off. Riggs changed his strategy to a serve-and-volley game, however nothing would stop King from taking the throne as the King of Sexes.

Game, set, match fucking over — King beat him 6-4, 6-3, 6-3.

In reality, the match was pure entertainment because it compared apples to oranges. When I was in college, I played a girl in tennis and she kicked my ass. But, I’d hardly ever played tennis. Why a man in his mid-50s would think he could beat a world-class tennis player in her 30s is beyond my comprehension.

Does the battle of the sexes apply to entrepreneurship? Who makes a better entrepreneur, a man or a woman?  Does it matter?

I may be opening up a can of worms by starting “The Battle of the Entrepreneur Sexes.” But women make great entrepreneurs. I’ve worked with some and funded others.

Women are multitasking, multi-functional wizards

Entrepreneurs excel at multitasking. Studies prove women, on average, are better at multitasking than men. It has to do with culture as much as genetics.

Although we live in the 21
^st
century, women often end up juggling more balls than men do. They raise children, do more household chores and still bring home part of the bacon. We live in an equal society — on paper, but reality differs. You might think this only applies to older generations. But according to a recent article, “Key to Successful Marriage: Say 'Thank You,' by Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience staff writer, what is perceived as equality among men usually is not equality at all. Even with couples that believe they distribute household chores evenly, women usually do more than men.

Women had no choice but to become multitaskers. These same multitasking traits enable them to become excellent entrepreneurs. When you start a venture, you have to multitask to get things done. Even when you can afford to delegate the labor to others, you will manage several functions. The multitasking never ends. Women are good at it. No, they’re
fucking
great
at it. If you’re a man starting a venture, make sure you have women on your management or founding team. If you’re a woman starting a venture or you have an existing business, make sure you have women on your management team.

Women have less ego to get in the way

Most female entrepreneurs are able to leave their egos behind. Women are also more task and goal-oriented, and more nurturing by nature. They are open to working in collaborative environments. Because women usually have more of a “we” mentality than “I” in their managing and decision process, they are more open to making decisions as a group.

Men have a tendency to make decisions without getting input from others. It is not always the case, but men have a tendency to collaborate less if their egos are in jeopardy of being exposed or lowered.

Women’s intuition is an added benefit in entrepreneurship

Yes, men are from Mars and women are from Venus.  Women’s intuition is real. I’ve witnessed it a thousand times as an entrepreneur and investor. Women acquired better intuition because men, in general, are physically stronger than women, unless you’re my 17-year-old daughter who’s been known to kick a few guys’ asses. Women, over thousands of years, developed a strong subconscious to outsmart danger.

Intuition works well in entrepreneurship because startups are a tough gig. There are hundreds of variables at play. Sometimes it’s difficult to make sound business decisions due to incomplete, and often changing, information. It’s hard for startups to predict an emerging market because it’s an emerging market. Often, you must rely on intuition in order to move forward. Women are great at using intuition for making business decisions based on unknown variables. I regret the times I didn’t listen when a woman told me she just didn’t trust some person or situation — or she “just felt” a certain person would be a great partner. There are men who use intuition wisely and don’t allow their egos to get in the way. Famous male entrepreneurs like Henry Ford and Andrew Carnegie achieved great success by relying on their acquired intuition.