Investing five minutes into reading this [pst may end up being your equivalent to investing in Apple in 1980. I recently sat down with Kevin O'Leary, the entrepreneur, investor, journalist, author, and financial commentator best known as Mr. Wonderful, the honest and sometimes insolent shark on ABC's Shark Tank. The advice and wisdom he shared in our time together has changed the trajectory of my businesses forever. He offered a glimpse at his personal blueprint to success and today I'm sharing it with you. Do you have massive dreams, unstoppable drive, and the determination of a bull going after a matador? Then buckle your seat belt because you are in for a ride. Here are 5 important empire building lessons to winning in business and life from inside the tank with Mr. Wonderful.
If You Want Something Done - There's a saying which goes, "If you want something done, give it to a busy mom." O'Leary says that he couldn't agree more. At the start of 2015, O'Leary had 27 companies in his portfolio from Shark Tank. He says that roughly 1/3 of those companies were performing marginally or not at all and so he made a decision to write off those companies so that he could spend his time on the stronger performing ones. He then closely studied the chemistry of the companies he kept. He was looking to see if there was a common thread amongst all the businesses so that he could make better decisions moving forward as to the types of companies he would choose to work with from Shark Tank. The companies he was left with were in all different verticals and of all different sizes. There was one thing every company he kept had in common. Each business was lead by a woman. O'Leary says that he's come to learn that very busy women seem to have a knack for getting stuff done in business. He says that it is his experience that women have the intuition to know what will work in a business and the drive to make things happen. Two of his best performing Shark Tank businesses have been Wicked Good Cupcakes and Groove Book, both run by women with crazy busy lives. As a proponent of sound investments, O'Leary says, he's come to learn that there is little risk in investing in busy female entrepreneurs.
Listen to your Mom - O'Leary notes that the best advice he has ever received about money came from his mom. She came from a modest background but was able to provide a great life for Kevin and his brother. How did she do it? Kevin's mom would invest regularly in the stock market, and she would only invest in dividend paying stocks and bonds. She would then only spend the interest, choosing to rarely dip into the original investment. O'Leary says that even today he runs his own O'Leary Funds investment firm in a very similar manner, studying and investing in dividend paying companies with strong performance histories, then reinvesting the interest and dividends earned.
Speak Your Truth - Mr. Wonderful is often criticized as being the meanest of the sharks on ABC's Shark Tank. As he sees it, most people don't want to hear the truth, and he cannot find it in him to lie to people just to make them feel good. Killing money is a crime, says Kevin. He says that he's seen more than his share of entrepreneurs who come onto Shark Tank with horrible ideas. The whole crew of sharks will realize that the idea is stupid and so nobody invests. The problem, says Kevin, is that the other sharks will sometimes coddle the guest and tell them it's a great idea and that they should pursue their dream off the show. Nothing irritates Kevin more than sharks endorsing a stupid idea because they are sending that entrepreneur back into the world with a semblance of hope and too many entrepreneurs have wasted their life savings and countless years pursuing a business idea that will absolutely never take off. Kevin says he feels an obligation and duty to tell it like he sees it, offering real, heartfelt, honest advice to entrepreneurs even when he knows it's going to hurt.
Pursue Freedom - Mr. Wonderful has an interesting take on entrepreneurship. He says that when you ask someone why they want to run their own business, most say they are doing it for the money. However, he says that when you dig deeper, most entrepreneurs are really pursuing something much more important than money, they are pursuing freedom. What those entrepreneurs really want is the ability to control their days, their weekends, and their lives, which is something you have less ability to do when you are working for someone else. O'Leary says that he talks about this a lot when he's teaching classes to entrepreneurs. He says that when you drill down on the real motive for running the business, you make different decisions about your company. For example, O'Leary is not a huge fan of debt. He notes that there is a correlation between debt and freedom, or lack thereof. When a company or an entrepreneur takes on massive debt, they lose freedom, because now (like an employee) their time and their business is predicated on paying off that debt. Most entrepreneurs want freedom and debt is what often prevents that.
If It's Got Rabies Kill It - O'Leary says that if an animal with rabies comes into your backyard, you wouldn't feed it and send it off into the woods in hopes that it will get better. Yet, in business, too often we hold on to things we shouldn't. There are many areas of business in which O'Leary applies this mantra. For example, he says if you have an employee who is just not cutting it, fire them. Don't spend time trying to fix them. Get rid of them, move on, and hire someone else. If you have an investment that is under-performing, kill it. If you meet an entrepreneur with a horrible business idea, kill the idea for them. As O'Leary sees it, the best business owners, entrepreneurs, and leaders are really good at killing the animal with rabies.
He comes off as hardnosed and sometimes even belligerent on Shark Tank, but in my experience, he was anything but. In our time together, he offered honest advice from the heart on how to build an amazing business and life the Mr. Wonderful way.