You Can’t Teach Passion

The Power of Broke – How Empty Pockets, a Tight Budget, and a Hunger for Success Can become Your Greatest Competitive Advantage – Daymond John (Crown Business)

The story has been told thousands of times. It comes in many shapes and forms and from a variety of backgrounds, but it goes something like this; an entrepreneur, an ordinary average John or Jane as an idea and wants to start a business because they think they have a product or service that people want or need. Said entrepreneur pulls themselves up by their bootstraps and scrimps, scrapes and does without, working countless hours and through hard work and perseverance they grow a successful business.

Nowadays the story goes more like this; someone thinks up an idea for a product or service and then they build a slide deck, gather a bunch of venture capitalists or angel investors in a conference room and make a pitch for cash. Once they get the cash they rent a slick office with cool office stuff and try to find ways to make it to an IPO so they can really cash in.

Shark Tank investor and entrepreneur Daymond John, who built his fortune the old fashioned way, by scrapping and scraping his way to success makes the case for dialing back the clock and telling current entrepreneurs that the hunger to succeed and hard work in not a bad thing. John makes the case in the form of his new book The Power of Broke – How Empty Pockets, a Tight Budget, and a Hunger for Success Can become Your Greatest Competitive Advantage.

While everybody hopes for the rags to billions success, John says there is value to be gained from the struggle. When you grew up never hearing the word NO, it can be hard to take the first time you encounter it in the real world. Those who are accustomed to the no, work all that much harder to get to the yes. John points out that those who are in that boat, often come up with the most creative solutions to tackle those day to day business problems that most entrepreneurs face at one point or another.

By developing an early understanding of the value of hard work, many up from the bootstraps business people have a better understanding of value of success. It’s amazing how an intimate knowledge of how to do more with less can translate well to the business world. Fear is a great motivator and John makes the case that you should embrace the fear and continue to charge forward with passion.