In two recent articles I discuss the nuts and bolts of how to "Do the right thing and do things right" with Bob Block, highly successful serial entrepreneur. This article features a special segment from my interview with Bob on the entrepreneurial journey. Enjoy!

Q: What advice would you give to entrepreneurs and small business owners?

Entrepreneurship, I find, is a sickness. You catch it and you’re stuck with it! Some people are entrepreneurs and some people are not. There’s a lot more risk in entrepreneurship and there’s actually a lot more rewards, but you have to think differently about things than people who are in the corporate world. Things like safety and stability come with jobs in companies, which are a lot more stable than when you’re trying to start a business and run it.

I try to be sure that people who want to become entrepreneurs really have a clear understanding that it’s a different kind of life and you’ve got to be prepared for that, and your spouse has to be prepared for that. You come home some days with great expectations and the next day with great disappointment. So there is a kind of cycle that is exaggerated when you’re an entrepreneur as compared to someone who has a job, who works the job. It’s very important that the lure of entrepreneurship has to match the personality of the entrepreneur and the family. The family has to be willing to go through some gyrations before the company becomes stable. That’s one thing I tell entrepreneurs. That’s something they need to hear and they need to discuss with their families, to see if they are ready for that kind of roller coaster.

Q: So you obviously experienced the roller coaster yourself?

Oh yeah. Nobody is an entrepreneur that hasn’t. Even if the first idea made him a billion dollars, then the second one lost or the third one lost. They go up and down in terms of cycles. In fact, the old adage, “Learn more from your failures than from your successes” is really true. When you’re very successful you tend to believe that you know it all. You know how people get very cocky and feel that they are powerful. And a lot of that is misplaced because sometimes it’s timing, timing, timing, sometimes it is being in the right place, sometimes it’s having the right idea.

When all of those things happen to come together then it’s great but there will be times when you’re not in the right place or you’ve got the wrong idea or the timing is wrong and you’ll feel the same buoyancy—because everyone falls in love with their own ideas—and it won’t work. And what happens is only then do you have some introspection and say, “Well, why didn’t it work?” “What is there that I can learn from that so I don’t do it again?” You tend to learn more from your mistakes than you do from your successes.

Q: But doesn’t it takes a certain attitude to be willing to do that?

Yeah, as opposed to blaming some third party or external force. So I think that’s really important. Risk taking comes right along with the whole idea of entrepreneurship.

Q: So did you sit down and have a conversation with your family?

Not really and my family has been incredible and they’ve gone through roller coasters. Sometimes they seem to resent it but at the same time they seem to understand that that’s just a built-in condition in our family. But they learned it fairly quickly because I’ve been doing this now for a lot more years than you’ve been alive. But a little bit of wisdom… at least I try to share that concept with other people so they can sit down and discuss it anticipate it so when it happens and you’ve anticipated it, it kind of buffers some of the problem.

Q: Did you have mentors on your journey?

Oh sure, along the way you meet people who are helpers and wise and you learn from some of their experience. Yeah, I certainly have. You have to learn from people like that.

Q: What are you reading right now?

I just finished Deep Smarts. I did read your dad’s most recent book The Art of Business. I’m currently reading 3 or 4 books, Freakanomics being one of them. It’s a fun book. I’ve got 3 or 4 that I’ve bought but haven’t started. Do you want the titles? One of them is The Underdog Advantage. Another one is Seeing What’s Next. And then A Whole New Mind and The World is Flat.

Read other articles about Bob Block:

Bob Block on Doing the Right Thing and Doing Things Right
Where a Company Has Been and Where It Should Be