There are many different misconceptions in life.
Many.
And one of the things misconceptions tend to do is they tend to prevent people from
doing things that could benefit them.
They say things like, "Oh my God, I don't know if I want to do this" because in their
mind, this is what they believe, so they don't do it.
So the definition of a misconception, the meaning of misconception is a thought or an
opinion that is incorrect because it is based on faulty thinking or understanding.
So today, I want to clarify some of the misconceptions of entrepreneurship.
I'm right now at College Station, Texas, which is the home of the Aggies, Texas A&M University.
These guys invited me to come and speak to their next class of entrepreneurs.
They have a program here called Entrepreneurship Society.
And last time when I was talking to these young, aspiring entrepreneurs, they had so
many different misconceptions.
I have nine of them I want to share with you.
So the first one is this.
Here's one of the biggest misconceptions that I keep hearing about.
Entrepreneurs are born.
Constantly.
Entrepreneurs are born.
You are born an entrepreneur, which is an absolute lie, if there ever was one.
Yes, it's like saying one is born with a forty inch vertical leap.
Yes, you're right.
Larry Bird did not have a 40-inch vertical leap, so he cannot dunk like LeBron James.
Yes.
But that doesn't mean you are born to be a basketball player, and Larry Bird is not.
That has no meaning.
Michael Jordan was born to be a basketball player.
But Steph Curry was not, because he's 6'1" 170 pounds.
You can't say that because he's a tiny guy.
Muggys Bogues was a 5' 3" basketball player.
5' 3" and he played the NBA, nearly ten something years, and he was pretty good at it.
So the same goes to saying this person is not meant to be an entrepreneur because he's
too shy.
This person's not meant to be an entrepreneur because he had a 1.8 GPA in high school.
This person's not meant to be an entrepreneur because he's a certain nationality or color
of skin.
No.
Don't buy it.
It's misconceptions.
Someone's trying to persuade you, that you can't become an entrepreneur and it's not
the truth.
It's faulty thinking, and you need to question it.
You don't need to just say, "Oh, this guy on YouTube said that entrepreneurs are born."
BS.
Don't buy it.
It's a misconception.
#2: The second thing is something I struggled with is, you have to cheat or steal, to win
as an entrepreneur.
You do not.
You do not have to cheat or steal as an entrepreneur.
I've watched this for many, many years with my business.
I had to compete and some people did it the right way, some people did it the wrong way.
Some people had shortcuts and every single time there's a shortcut, we're tempted.
Everybody's tempted.
I was tempted.
Every time, I'm sitting here competing against a guy that's making 400 grand a month, and
I'm only making 30 grand a month, and I'm 25 years old, whatever it is, 26 years old.
And he's doing certain things that I don't want to do.
But if I have to compete with him, I have to do that to compete with him.
I didn't do it, he kept doing it.
He lost his licenses.
We kept going.
Now if I would have done it, I would have also lost my license.
You do not have to cheat or steal to win in business.
You don't.
You do not have to cheat or steal to win in business.
People say that, because it is a way out for them to say, I chose not to be an entrepreneur
because I am a noble human being.
And because I'm a noble human being, I refuse to cheat, because it's against my character.
That is not true.
You don't have to cheat or steal to become an entrepreneur.
There are laws, you break them, you're going straight to prison.
#3: They got lucky.
This whole lucky thing.
And by the way, I talk about lucky quite a lot.
On one end, luck doesn't happen accidentally.
For example, nobody is going to go on a date with a beautiful girl by not talking to her.
You have to take action.
There's got to be a conversation.
No one closes a big sale, without knowing anything about their products, because the
bigger the sale it is, the more educated the customer is.
You can't just go to a customer and ask for a $200,000 check and they're going to say
yes and you know nothing about your product.
It's not going to happen.
You have to work your butt off to become an expert.
You have to immerse yourself on it.
You're going to go through certain breaking points that you don't feel like doing anything,
and you want to throw in the towel.
Those moments are things that people don't see.
Nobody sees I'm in Hilton right now.
And I remember one time we were on the tour last year when we were doing the entrepreneurship
tour.
We stopped by Conrad Hilton where he accidentally bought this building, it was a hospital?
It was something.
It wasn't a hotel, right?
He bought this thing, he turned it into a hotel.
Next thing you know, it started growing.
There's Hiltons in Iran.
And I'm in Iran, I've gone to a Hilton when I was a kid growing up, Hilton was like insane.
We don't know the stories of when Hilton almost went out of business.
We don't know the stories of his arguments with his wife.
We don't know the times where he's at a hotel room by himself away from a kid's birthday
because he has to be at a business meeting, and he's absolutely feeling crap about the
fact that he missed an event for his kid or . . you don't know those moments.
So you can't say they got lucky.
There is luck involved in business.
I'm not telling you there isn't.
Nothing wrong with getting lucky.
But there's got to be a lot of hard work before you get lucky.
#4: Selfish.
Entrepreneurs are selfish.
You'll hear the word selfish, greedy, and all they care about is money, quite regularly.
They're selfish.
They're very selfish.
They're all selfish.
All they care about is themselves.
Listen.
You can't build a billion dollar company - when you build a billion dollar company, the guy
that built a billion dollar company, he doesn't keep the billion dollars.
The billion dollar company, he probably keeps a fifty million dollar salary per year, let's
just say if you build a billion dollar company.
Now if you own a big part of it, sure.
The value of the company is yours.
But if your company grows to a billion dollars per year, he takes $50 million a year income.
Even people say that's greedy.
Let's say he takes a $50 million a year income, because I'm picking a the greediest CEO you
can think about.
He's taking a $50 million a year income, he built a billion dollar company, okay?
Where does that $950 million go to?
You tell me.
Does that go in his pocket?
No.
It goes to what?
It goes to employees, it goes to healthcare.
It goes to building.
It goes to a lease.
It goes to construction.
It goes to long communication, Internet, servers.
These are all jobs being created.
A billion dollar empire is creating $950 million dollars of revenue to other people that lead
to taxes.
You can't be selfish and build a big company.
You just cannot.
You can be selfish and be a salesperson, because all you're doing is selling and it's all you,
one person show, one-man show, because it's all about you.
Yes, you can be selfish.
I agree with you.
It's impossible for you to build an empire being selfish.
It's mathematically impossible for you to build a big empire being selfish.
The math doesn't make sense.
You can't win an NBA championship without having assist.
You can't.
It's never happened, and it's never going to happen.
You can't win a baseball game without having somebody that's double playing the team, catches
the ball.
You can't have it.
You can't have a no hit.
I can go on with any different sport.
You cannot do it without having a team that's selfish.
It just does not work.
It is not going to work that way.
Not in the world of business.
#5: All you need is a great idea and product.
A lot of people message me and say, "Pat, guess what, man."
What's that?
"Man, I've got this product, you and I need to team up.
It's a billion dollar idea.
I promise you, bro.
You're going to be a billionaire.
You can do this."
I'm like, you really think ideas are what makes a billion dollar.
. you think the idea is what makes it a billion dollars?
Really?
You think an idea is?
An idea means nothing.
Nothing.
You know why?
Because very few execute.
Very few execute.
And here's another thing about ideas.
There are many crappy products in the world that are sold on the shelves of Wal-Mart.
Many.
There are many crappy products in the world that are sold at Macy's and people buy.
And their products suck.
There are many shirts that you go buy, where the strings are out with the shirt.
It's just terrible.
People buy them.
Why do they buy?
So your idea that you have, means nothing if there's no execution.
An idea's just an idea.
There are many great ideas out there.
Execution is the issue.
#6: All you need is to raise capital.
People say, Pat, if I raise money, man - like last time one kid was asking me, "I'm telling
you, if I had a million dollars right now, I'd do this."
If I heard, every single time somebody told me "if I had a million dollar investment,"
I'd be a billionaire today.
Everybody wants to talk about if they had money and raised capital.
It means nothing.
It does mean a little bit.
Don't get me wrong.
But you're not going to get a - I get messages, "Pat, can you do a video on how to raise capital?"
I'll do a video on how to raise capital.
Can you do a video on how to raise capital?
I will.
I'll definitely do that.
"Because if I have the capital, I'll do this, this, this with my business."
And I'll tell them.
I'll say, have you ever wanted a pass before?
Who are you?
How hard do you work?
What's your track record?
What relationships do you have?
What associations do you have?
Who needs to bet on you?
Would you bet on you?
Why should someone bet on you?
If you can answer those questions, you'll eventually raise capital.
If you don't have that, you ain't getting capital.
It's that simple.
Your reputation and track record and the relationships and the associations who validate you, will
attract the capital.
If you don't have this, there is no capital.
It's simple.
You have to have a lot of this on the front end, to get the money.
#7: They all had great initial connections, because it's all about the contacts and connections.
My connections were guys who went to the nightclub on a weekly basis.
My connections were guys who were chasing skirts.
My connections were my boys and we'd sit down and talk sports all day long and you know,
play spades or play whatever cards, play all these other games.
That's my connections.
So who are my connections?
I didn't go to university to be part of an alumni.
What are my connections?
My connections from the military never ever introduced me to anybody in business.
These are my connections from military.
They don't have a business background.
Who are my connections?
Connections are a by-product of a lot of work, of people seeing you saying, "This guy's legit.
He's working hard.
Let's connect him to this person."
It's not, Hey, this person had a father who's related to Vanderbilt and.
. . no.
It does not work that way.
If you have that, it's an edge.
I had zero.
My parents have never been entrepreneurs.
I don't come from a business background.
My dad stopped going to school after 8th grade to help support his family.
I'm not the smart kid on campus.
Nothing.
None of that stuff.
I had to work my tail off to get my connections.
If you're looking for shortcuts, misconception.
#8: It's a massive risk.
I've got to take such a massive risk.
This is why I don't want to become an entrepreneur.
I've seen so many people lose everything and all this other stuff.
Yes.
There are a lot of people that lose everything.
You're right.
There are a lot of people that go all in.
And we always want to watch on YouTube guys who go all in, who what?
Who win.
Oh, this guy went all in.
What a smart guy, man.
He went all in and he won.
Now that guy's a great poker player."
Okay, there's a little luck there, right?
But you don't have to go all in every single time.
Many people can start a business part time while you have a job and you just start testing
your product and see how people are responding to it.
Anybody can start a business part-time and work through it.
You don't have to start full-time.
When Apple got started, when I interviewed Steve Wozniak, we can put a clip of it.
But when I interviewed Steve Wozniak, they started their business while he had a full-time
job, and Steve had a full-time job, and they started messing around with this thing out
of their garage and then it grew and they said, "Let's quit our jobs."
And Wozniak didn't want to quit his job for a few months.
But they finally did.
They started part-time and they tested it.
You can, too.
#9: Last one is entrepreneurs are their own boss.
Everybody says, "You become an entrepreneur, you're your own boss."
That is the misconception.
You are not your own boss.
Like when people say, "When you have kids, you're the man of the household."
Really?
Your kids tell you what to do.
You have to drop them off at school.
You have to pick them up in the morning.
You get a lot more sleep if you don't have kids.
They wake you up three, four times in the middle of the night.
My daughter right now is waking us up in the middle of the night two or three times.
They're the boss.
I'm not the boss.
I happen to support and fund their life, but they're my boss.
So as an entrepreneur, my customers are my boss.
I have tens of thousands of customers that are my boss.
I have thousands of sales people that are my boss.
I have employees that are my boss.
I have vendors.
I have partners.
I have relationships, I have the media.
These are people that you yourself had to learn how to support and the more, the better
you improve and the more you grow your business, then the more leverage and influence and trust
you have, it's easier to move your business.
But you are not your own boss when it comes down to running everything 100% of the time.
That is a misconception of entrepreneurship.
So look.
I can go on and talk about many, many more things, when it comes down to misconceptions.
My challenge to you is, don't let these nine misconceptions prevent you from becoming an
entrepreneur.
Share this video with somebody else that maybe is on the verge of saying, "I don't want to
be an entrepreneur."
Or if they've said any of these nine things, have them watch this video.
And have them think about it from a completely different perspective.
Because unfortunately, unfortunately, unfortunately, many of these same misconceptions prevent
people from living their dream life.
Some kid asked me yesterday, he said, hey, how's it feel now, having the life that you
have?"
And I told him, I said, "I was this close of just being a regular guy, making 52 grand
a year.
This close.
I was this close.
This close.
Regular guy.
Regular guy, nothing is growing, nothing is expanding.
I was this close.
I almost bought into this misconception.
I almost did.
I almost was convinced by my family, friends, and many other media and associations that
I had.
but I didn't do it.
And I want to challenge you to do the same as well.
Now, we have a problem that I need your help with.
We're in Texas right now, without our favorite pillow, we left behind.
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A new subscribe pillow for 2017.
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