July 3, 2026 – America Rocks

Jim Beach 0:04
Hello, everyone. Welcome to a very special edition of School for Startups Radio. Thank you so much for being with us. It is the 250th anniversary birthday of our great country, America. We are the greatest country on earth. We need to say that more frequently, it is our semi quincentennial birthday. God, I looked it up for you, semi quincentennial. At the end of the show, I will teach you how to say it, because it’s a fun one. It’s a good bar bet for this weekend that you can do that. Anyway, we’ve got a great show for you today. I appreciate you being with us. Have a fantastic and safe Fourth of July weekend. We’re going to get started with our incredible show right about right now. Thank you so much for being with us today. What I’m going to do is this: I have made a list of 50, yes, 50 things that I am thankful for in relationship to being an entrepreneur. So, this is the top 50 things about entrepreneurship that we should be thankful for. We have the world’s greatest profession. There is no doubt we are so lucky to have chosen it. Is a choice chosen entrepreneurship, and I am going to talk today about the top 50 things that I love. I hope I have enough time. I hope I can get through it, because I will have stories, divergence, and tangents to go off on. And here is my first tangent: being grateful is so important to happiness and success. If you’re not grateful on a daily basis for the small stuff, the health that you have, the beautiful children that you enjoy the wonderful love of a pet or a spouse, then you’re not living life correctly. You need to be grateful each and every day, and so I hope that I can remember that every day, live that every day, and that you can too. All right, let’s dive in and talk about number one. The number one reason I am thankful to be an entrepreneur, it is fun. That is right. Entrepreneurship is certainly the most fun lifestyle. You get to do so many exciting things, but it’s just fun at its basis. At the inherent nature of being an entrepreneur is that it’s more fun than anything else you can do. You get to run around the world and live exciting lives. It’s just a lot of fun, and so that leads to number two. Not only is it fun in its inherent nature, you get to go to awesome parties. I have been invited to the White House, the Super Bowl, the World Series, all because I am an entrepreneur. I’ve been invited to parties that go until 3o’clock in the morning in black ties, I’ve seen the B 50 twos in a room for 100 people in Vegas, all sorts of cool things that only happened because I was an entrepreneur, and so one of the great benefits of being an entrepreneur is especially a successful one is that you get to do great things that other people don’t get to do. One of my friends, and this didn’t happen to me, but I’m so jealous, got invited to a special Disney day at Disney World, and you know how much I love Disney World, because she is an entrepreneur, and they were doing a special thing for people who had high social media profiles, and she got invited. So, number two, you get to do incredible things, have incredible parties, opportunities that you never have, only because you are an entrepreneur. Number three, in a very similar vein, you get to meet cooler, better, more exciting people. So I have met famous billionaires, I have met people on the cover of all the magazines. I have met famous celebrities in terms of the media. I’ve met sports stars, right, all because of my entrepreneurship. Maybe it’s because I’m at good parties. And let me make this point about parties: I never go to parties personally. I never get invited as a person, right. My wife and I are very, very home bodies, but as an entrepreneur, I get invited to a lot of cool stuff, and so anyway, at those cool functions I meet cool people, interesting people, people who are doing cool things.

Jim Beach 4:13
So imagine going to a party and running into a CPA, and you ask him, what do you do, and he said, I’m a CPA, and you go, oh, or running into a person who says, well, I’m starting companies in four different countries right now, and we’re off on an amazing evening already, right there. Someone who has interesting things going on, interesting things happening in their life, the type person that you want to get to know. I was at a party the other night, not a party, a function. There were like eight guys, just, you know, a guy’s thing. And three or four of us were entrepreneurs, and we were talking, and we were saying, “Oh, I’ll introduce you to that guy. For example, the guy I was going to introduce someone to was the screen writer for all the Disney movies. I know that guy, not all of them, about, you know, a bunch of the Disney things that come out for. Is, and so, anyway, one of my friends was actually a Super Bowl winner, and so I was introducing these two people, and the people who weren’t entrepreneurs kind of were looking on, going, how do you know interesting people like Super Bowl winners, by the way, can I see the ring, right, and Disney screenwriters? It’s only because I’m an entrepreneur. I meet those people in my entrepreneurial life. So, number three, you meet cool and more interesting people. Number four, I don’t got no job. It’s so awesome not to have a job. I don’t do anything I don’t want to. I don’t report to anyone I don’t want to. I am in charge of my own destiny. I am the one who will decide whether I am successful or not. I am the one who I report to. Oh, of course, my wife, so I do work for her. But you know what I mean. I don’t have the thing where I am responsible to others, and that is what we call a job, and that is awesome. I love not being responsible to you, to him, to her, and doing whatever I want. It’s just the fun of being free, and that is what so many people want in entrepreneurship, is freedom. And so I feel like I have tons of extra freedom, because number four, I have me no job, I work my butt off. I want to point out, but I don’t got a job, big difference. Number five, I am in control. I am the one who will decide whether I make billions or millions or 1000s or hundreds or 10s. I am the one who decides how hard to work. I am the one who decides when to get up, how many hours during the day to work, how many hours in the day to play. You don’t, and I don’t get told. And so I love the fact that I am in control of my own destiny. Very exciting, very scary. It’s exciting because I’m in control. It’s also very scary because I am in control, and I know what a moron I am, and so there have been so many failures, but you know what, they were my failures, not something that was imposed upon me, and I get to take the joy and the blame for that, right, and so number five, I am in control. Number six, there is a chance of extraordinary wealth for an entrepreneur, you know, for a normal person with a job, be that a teacher, a plumber, a doctor, you’re not going to make millions, of course. As a doctor, you’ll make millions, but you’ll also spend it along the way. You won’t become worth, you know, 10, $20 million in the end. And that’s what I mean by extraordinary. Of course, there’s the chance you’ll become worth 100 million or a billion, but you know, for most of us, worth being worth 10 million would be more than enough.

Jim Beach 8:00
That is enough to get by on and have the boat and have the cars and have the house and all of the trappings that you associate with wealth, that is sort of that cut off mark, and that is very achievable in today’s world, and so number six is the chance at the super wealth that you dream about, that you see on the life stars of the rich and famous, all of that sort of stuff. It is possible as an entrepreneur, and it’s possible within five years. You know, five years from today, you could be worth 10 or $20 million if you did things right. That’s not true if you have a job, right? If you have a normal lifestyle, the 80, I’m sorry, the 90% of Americans who have normal lifestyles don’t get that opportunity unless they win the lottery, and you know that ain’t gonna happen to us. So, anyway, number six, chance at extraordinary wealth. Number seven, being an entrepreneur is just more impressive, right? When you go back to your high school reunion, and you walk in the door, and everyone’s got jobs, they have lives, they are housewives, which I’m not going to demean in any way whatsoever. There’s nothing harder than being a housewife, I’m a house husband a lot of days, and I want to shoot myself at the end of the day, right? Need Mama’s little helper, as Nick Dagger would say, but still all of these normal lifestyles that people are living, and you walk in to your high school reunion after 25 years as the entrepreneur doing something sexy, you are the one that people are going to be interested in, you’re the one that they’re going to write articles about, you’re going to be on the cover of newspapers and magazines because you’re doing something interesting, exciting, unique, and sexy. You’re being an entrepreneur. It is simply more impressive. Number seven, number eight, and therefore people are jealous, and this is so important: jealousness versus envy. I should probably do a whole show on this. This is something I’ve been studying recently, that jealousy is good, that. I see a car that I wish I had, and therefore I work harder to get it, but envy is bad. Envy is, I don’t want you to have it, so I just, I don’t have it, so I don’t want you to have it. Jealousy is, wow, I’m impressed you got that, and I want to go get that. That’s cool. Sending out things that make people jealous are cool because it makes them want to succeed more. If your kids see you working hard and they’re jealous of that success, that is good. Hopefully, they will learn to work hard too. Envy is the thing that is bad. So, anyway, we’ll do a whole show on that one day. Envy bad, jealousness good. Number eight, people are jealous of entrepreneurs. Number nine, you get to join the club, and I mean a lot of different things by this. Number nine, join the club. I also, I mean, get to join the superstar pool elite country club, right? They always let the entrepreneurs in, and also you get to join the club, the elite club of being an entrepreneur. Why do entrepreneurs talk about risk? I think one of the huge reasons is they’re trying to scare off other entrepreneurs, you know. There is no union you have to get into. Any moron can be an entrepreneur, that’s why I am one. And so there’s no entry fee, and so I think that other entrepreneurs like to scare off people, so that the club is more exclusive, and it is an incredibly exclusive club. You know, some of the most inclusive or exclusive clubs are, you know, men who have been president. We got, like, what, five of those alive men who’ve walked on the moon. That’s pretty impressive. We have no overlap there, by the way. No presidents who have walked on the moon, but we, you know, anyway, ah, people who’ve slept with Madonna, another exclusive club, much larger pool, there, of course, right, you know, 1000s, and then entrepreneurs, right, the millions of us who are in the special club of taking control of my own destiny, so number number nine, you get to join the special e club. Number 10, here’s one of my favorites: you get to work when you want.

Jim Beach 12:09
As an entrepreneur, I work a lot of hours, I work 1819 hours some days, but you know what? I want to, and I get to do it when I want to. I drive a lot of car pools and take care of a lot of kids, I got me for the things, and I spend a lot of time with them, but you know what, I get to do what I want, that is the cool thing, I get to do it when I want to, and when I don’t, I do whatever I want, I want to work, I want to work at four in the morning, I work at four in the morning, going to swim all afternoon, lay in the sun, and work all night, I can, people with jobs or lives, normal lives, can’t do that. So, number 10, I get to work when I want, and therefore I’m cool. Number 11, I get to wear what I want, and for some people this won’t be a big deal, but I like blue jeans. I wear T-shirts in the winter, like now it’s starting to get cold. I will wear a sweater, but that’s what I want to wear. I wear what I want. I don’t wear a suit, I don’t wear a starched shirt, a shirt that you have to send to the dry cleaner, a button-down shirt. I don’t wear those, except when I’m speaking, or at a funeral, or an engagement or something, right? Or getting married. I don’t wear that fancy stuff because I don’t want to. I’m one of the few rare, lucky people who get to wear and do what I want, and that’s cool. I meet my friends for lunch, they’re in a suit and tie, I’m in a T-shirt, and I am more comfortable and better looking than they are. Number 11, I get to wear what I want. Number 12, this is one of my favorites too. I get to build something that lasts forever, and not only do I mean a business, but I also mean the life of my children. I am affecting the lives of my children, and their children, and their children for generations to come, an entrepreneurial lifestyle passes on certain things to the kids. My kids see me working late at night, they understand why. My kids help stuff boxes with me and put labels on, but my wife and I, they understand why, right? They understand that we are working hard for our own self deficiency, and they want to be a part of that. They want to emulate that. They’re getting taught, whether they know it or not, that that’s how you live as a responsible, cool adult. And so my children, not only are my children and the businesses, but I am creating things that will last for years. I love being an author, because that book will sit around for years and people will read it even after I am dead, probably more people will read it after I am dead. That would be so cool if I’m like one of those people who becomes famous afterwards, but anyway, building a legacy that lasts for a long, long time outlines. Ask your short life the 12th reason that it’s cool to be an entrepreneur. All right, I am going to take a very quick break to get me a sip of lemonade, and I will be right back, you Mellow Minute Maid Light, five calories, delicious. We are back going through the top 50 reasons that I am thankful to be an entrepreneur. Why the entrepreneurial lifestyle is the absolute greatest thing you can do with your life. And we are up to number 13, by the way. If you’re enjoying this type of broadcast, you know we normally do the interviews, and this is rare for us. I did a show just like this for the Fourth of July about why America is the greatest country in the world to be an entrepreneur. You can go and check the archives and listen to that. Number 13, entrepreneurs make the world a better place. This is another great one. So many of these are great. Entrepreneurship is the essence of improvement. The world gets better because of entrepreneurs. I will argue for a long time that entrepreneurs are better than governments at making the world a better place.

Jim Beach 16:31
Entrepreneurs come up with all the new cool stuff, like air conditioning, penicillin, you know, well, you know, a doctor came up with penicillin, but an entrepreneur is the one that sold it to me and got me better, right. Entrepreneurs are the people out there that see a problem and solve it, and no one else does that. Number 13, entrepreneurs make the world a better place. Number 14, and therefore they make people’s lives better, right? We are in fact happier, more comfortable, more healthy, more prosperous, better educated, all of those, because of entrepreneurs. We were to go back and track any single improvement, I promise you, someone made money in the process, right? And because of entrepreneurs, we are all living to be 85 years old. We’re living in incredible comfort, doing incredible leisure activities, having more leisure time than any generation before us, with so many more opportunities. Our lives are infinitely better because of the entrepreneurs that are in them, so number 14, entrepreneurs make people’s lives better. Number 15, this is a stupid one. You have to design your own office. I don’t know why I put this on the list, but there it is. Number 15, my office had a porthole in it. I am 100% serious. The last time I designed office space, which was a while ago by designing the office that I’m in now, but the last time I designed office space for hundreds of people, which I did, I put a porthole in the office in between, or the wall in between my co-founder and my office, so we could sit at our desks independently in our own office space, and look through the wall to each other, and we could even open the porthole up and pass items back and forth, or talk if we wanted to. I don’t know why we did that, but that’s what we did. And you can’t do that if you’re not an entrepreneur. So, number 15, entrepreneurs get to design their own office space. We had dancing logos, are those laser projection things, you know, like the NBA uses to project the logo of the home team on the floor. We had those for our logo, and we had three of those. I remember pretty impressive, isn’t it? Stupid. What’s the ROI on a laser logo projection system? Times three zero number 16. Ooh, the adrenaline rush. Very few other professions give you the rush of actual thrill of possible death, dismemberment, getting burned, going bankrupt, losing the sale. There’s just more adrenaline. The roller coaster peaks and valleys are higher and deeper. The plummets are steeper for an entrepreneur. It’s just more interesting. What other profession, other than astronaut and fireman and policeman, and of course, military, can you have the absolute adrenaline, adrenaline rush of being an entrepreneur? So, number 16, you just get more highs from the rush. All right, number 17, you’re a role model, you know. I look up to a lot of doctors and lawyers and CEOs and sports figures. Actually, not many of any of those people I look up to are entrepreneurs, and I think that is true for many, many others. And it’s not just the macro getting looked up to, it’s the micro in your own home, your children see it, but in the neighborhood people talk about you different, people acknowledge you differently, are more interested in your profession, there’s a guy down the street that sells concrete. No one ever asks about his job. There’s just nothing in, but anyway, people look up to entrepreneurs more. They want to emulate them more. And so, number 17, you are a role model to those around you, and that is a cool thing, something I am thankful for. Number 18, I never have free time. This is a weird one. You may say, ‘Well, that’s not fun. And by ‘free’ I maybe I should use the air quotes, right? I never have time where there’s not something constructive that I can be doing. I’m not sitting around watching useless sports, I’m sitting around watching useless sports with a laptop in my lap, doing something constructive, right? And I think that is true of entrepreneurs.

Jim Beach 21:03
I remember a conversation that my spouse and a another entrepreneurial spouse had, and the two spouses were complaining about their entrepreneur spouses, saying, you know, they always have an excuse for something else to do, and so if I want to get out of doing the dishes, I just say, “Honey, I need to go work. Really important, it’s pressing, but I’m saying I don’t have unconstructive time. I have time where I’m laying on the beach, but you know what, that’s part of the plan. I’m not lazily laying around on the beach, I’m not sitting around on a Sunday afternoon going, “What should I do? I’m doing something constructive, and I’m more proud of that, so number 18, I don’t waste time stupidly. Well, sometimes I do, but you know what? I kind of do it by plan. I don’t sit around, I do it by plan. Number 19, because of my entrepreneurial past, I have been able to travel more than the average person, right. So, there are certainly jobs where you get to travel a lot, those, you know, road warrior type jobs, but that’s not necessarily going to fun places like I’ve been able to travel all over the world because of entrepreneurship, to Australia, to South Africa, to Egypt, to Dubai, to all over Europe, all over Asia, all over the cool places of the earth, because of entrepreneurship, and that is by reason number 19. I get to travel more and go to more exotic, cool places because of my entrepreneurship. So, number 20, I get more upgrades. This may seem tangential, but I promise tangential stuff at the beginning. It is right when I do travel, I travel better than most people. I get more upgrades, I have more first class paid for by someone else. I stay at nicer hotels and resorts, right? And so that is a good benefit of being an entrepreneur. You need a better lifestyle. Ooh, I just noticed that I have two number 20s. I don’t have 51 I actually have, I mean, I don’t have 50. I have 51 incredible things to be thankful for. How did I get two number 20s right in a row? All right, so here is number 21 I hope I can keep up with the numbers now. I’m going to be all off. Number 121, Ooh, interesting tax benefits for being an entrepreneur. Right, as an entrepreneur, I can write off stuff that normal people can’t. I can write off that aforementioned travel. I can write off half of my telephone bill, a chunk of my power bill, part of my mortgage, because half of my house is an office. Are you coming to my house? I’ll show you boxes in the dining room. We call that a storage unit. Right, we got paper processing, we got mail center in the living room, where we process all of the boxes that come through my wife’s Amazon business. I have the recording studio as part of the house, I have video production and part of the house, that’s all office space, and so certainly some of that totally legally gets written off as legit office space for my business, so I have tax benefits. I am sure we’ve done shows on this. I know we have, because this is something that I really fond of talking about. Number 20, being an entrepreneur has huge tax benefits. Number 21 there are no ageism, no sexism, no racist barriers for entrepreneurship. Well, of course, there’s some right. There are less women VCs, fewer women get VC funding, but there is less racism, sexism, ageism, and entrepreneurship than in any other thing. If you can’t get a job as a 50 year old at Google, you can still go start your own business at 50, right? If you are African American and feel like you have been neglected by a certain employer because of your race, you can go start a business and put that employer out of business. Right, there is less racism in entrepreneurship than in any other profession. I’m not going to say there is none. I’m not going to say that. Problem is solved.

Jim Beach 25:00
What I’m saying is that I believe there is less racism in the world of being an entrepreneur than otherwise, and so number 22 I’m already off, I know, number 22 less sexism, ageism, all of the discrimination I believe in the world of entrepreneur, number 22 number 23 Oh, this is probably one of my favorite ones, if not my favorite, absolutely of all of them. Number 23 entrepreneurship uses your basket of God’s gifts better than anything else that you can do. So, I’ve talked about this on the show many, many times, and I’ve asked many guests about it. I believe that you are born with a certain basket of gifts, and maybe you think God gave them to you, or Yahweh, or Buddha, or Muhammad, or Kia, or evolution, or whatever – it doesn’t matter where it came from, but you are born with a basket of skills, and the best way to use those is to be an entrepreneur. There are certainly other ways that you can use them well, but to be an entrepreneur forces you to develop the ones you were given marginal skill sets with. You’re not a great communicator, but you realize that in addition to being a world-class programmer, now you need to learn how to communicate, so you can sell your software, and it forces you to become better in ways that just working as a software programmer for your entire career would not have forced you to do. By being an entrepreneur, you take more skills, more gifts that you were given at birth by your parents, by your gene pool, and you use them to a higher percentage than in any other profession, and therefore I think you are using the gifts to the ultimate utility possible, and that is so, so cool. And I am so thankful for that opportunity. I was the shyest, most introverted kid that I ever imagined. Now I am a communications type person. I communicate for a living, that is because of my entrepreneurship, and we will be right back, and we are back. We are going through the top 50 things to be thankful for, that you are an entrepreneur. Of course, tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and we have so many things to be thankful for, in addition to the normal stuff like health, happiness, kids, but just as entrepreneurs, we have a special group of things, basket of things, be thankful for, and I’m going through them now. I hope I can get through all 50. I might not be able to. I’m looking at the clock and starting to get a little afraid. I’m talking too much, which is really stupid, because that’s what we’re all here. I’m sitting here talking, talking too much. Anyway, number, where were we? We were up to number 24 You know that you are responsible for your own outcome. Just that knowledge is a gift. The fact that you can rely only on you and the fact that you have to put up or shut up, it’s just an incredible gift. Just that pure knowledge, so number 24 being responsible and knowing that you are number 25 better family life. This was one that might take a little explaining. I drive carpool every day, I take both kids to wherever they go for daycare or to school, and I pick both of them up, not every single day, but most, not a huge chunk, right? And have the freedom to do that, have the freedom to go to soccer practice at three in the afternoon. Have the other day, just went to Thanksgiving dinner at school, which was at 1045 I think, was when they served my kids lunch at school, right? 1045 in the morning is when he goes to lunch. Anyway, so I had Thanksgiving dinner. There we have a better family life because we have entrepreneurship. I really believe that not only the freedom, the flexibility, but also the cool opportunities, the trip to Disney that someone paid for, other than me, because I was there for business, and my kids got to go along, and just the I think cool moral, and I don’t know, maybe family responsibility of raising a kid that’s going to be interested in things other than the Kardashians. So, number 25 better family life. Number 26 make more money, right? You can make $250,000 as a doctor, lawyer, right?

Jim Beach 29:47
That’s getting harder and harder. Make $200,000 as a plumber, right? You make a million dollars, either have to be a super celebrity sports star, probably, or one of the top five lawyers around, right, or. Are an entrepreneur. I didn’t think that if you want to make high value income, best way to do it as an entrepreneur, your chances are much higher, right? How many NBA stars are there? Right, there’s like what, 24 on a team, and there’s 35 teams, something. What is that? Several 10 under 10,000 people, I have no clue what. How many million entrepreneurs are there? The odds are better, right? Number 27 Oh, this is another fun one. You can give jobs to your family, right, and friends. And so that’s a neat thing to be able to do too. And so number 27 the fact that when someone comes up to you and says, hey, I really need work, can you help, or can you do anything? The opportunity to say, ‘Hey, yeah, I know someone, I know another business owner, or I could personally use someone like you. That’s a really cool thing to do, is to be able to give those sort of job and advancement opportunities to your friends and family. One of the things I loved as an entrepreneur was watching my employees, who were also my friends, some were friends before they were employees, and some became friends through employment, advance and become better, and then after they left my company, move on to really cool careers and big steps up, you know, if you want to take a big step up in the title on your resume, working for an entrepreneur is one of the best ways to do it, and so I just love being able to provide jobs for friends, friends, and family. Number 28 good way to give back to society, right? Creating jobs, I believe, is a good way to give back to society. Paying taxes is a great way to give back to society, making people better and providing a product or service that people pay for is a great way to give back to society. Remember, they didn’t give you the money out of force, right? That’s called taxes. When you give out of force, when they give it to you voluntarily, that’s called entrepreneurship, and they’re doing it because you make their life somehow better. They wouldn’t do it if it made their life worse, right? So, this is something that we don’t talk about enough, that entrepreneurship actually is benefiting the consumer by making their life a better thing, right? If you take karate lessons, you are there for getting physical exercise that makes you better. You’re learning a new skill that makes you better. You’re learning to protect yourself that makes you better, and you’re gaining in self-confidence that makes you better. When you buy those karate classes at $58 an hour, or whatever, you are making society better in so many different ways, and so that is number 28 number 29 As an entrepreneur, you are less likely to get undervalued as part of a team, right? So remember when you were in school and they had teams and there was always that one person who did all the work and never got the value or the respect, that’s probably you now, right? You did 90% 80% of the work and got 20% of the grade, right? Or, you know, whatever. You know what I mean. That doesn’t happen with entrepreneurship as much. You get respected for your work better as an entrepreneur, if you are part of a 60 person team at some business, you’re much less likely to get the respect and accolades that you are due as an entrepreneur, or as a very important and valued part of the team. So, anyway, being an entrepreneur is the way to get the most value and respect for the work that you are doing. Number 29 number 30, entrepreneurs win award. That’s cool, right? It makes you feel good. It’s also a recognition of the hard work and the success that you are doing, and it shows that you are excelling vis-a-vis your peers, and that is a nice thing to do, and so any of these silly awards that you do and win are worthwhile, because they show that you are doing a good job.

Jim Beach 34:11
I always want to point out to people that you don’t win awards, you go get awards, there’s a huge difference there. People think that these guys who win blah blah blah award, especially in the business world, do it out of a vacuum. It’s not true. If you win an award, you somehow went and got that award, you applied for it, you had a friend apply for it, right? You just, you did something, you did really well on the interview process, you made sure that you were excelling through the entire process of winning an award. It doesn’t happen in a vacuum. I remember one time I wanted to win an award, mostly to impress my mother. I was 29 I thought it’d make her happy, and so I went hired a publicist, and the publicist said, What awards do you want to win? I was like, I want to be a. On that 40 under 40 list that everyone talks about, and they were like, okay, and I was the next time it came around, I was, I was actually number one that year, silly, because now I realized that I paid for it, right? It was just an accusation, an acquisition of commerce, it was not something I did because I was doing something special. It was because I had a really good publicist. That’s the only reason that I won some of the other awards. I feel like I have earned, in particular the awards I’ve gotten for volunteerism. I feel like I’ve earned number 31 flexibility of work, and by this I don’t mean time in the day that you are flexible. At 9o’clock you can sleep, and at 4o’clock you can work. I’ve already talked about that. What I mean by this is the variety of things that you can do. If you are a copywriter, you do copywriting. If you’re an engineer, you do engineering. If you are a fireman, you do firemanning, right? If you’re an entrepreneur, you do 7000 things, right? You do so many more things as an entrepreneur in your work life, the things that go on your resume, the skills that you use. Right, you use your marketing skills, and your finance skills, and your operation skills, and your janitorial skills. All of those things get used as an entrepreneur. Number 31 you have incredible flexibility of work things that you will do in your career, and I think that is cool. So, number 31 number 32 No more clock watching. So, what I mean by this is, when you’re an employee, you go home at five, right? And so, at 430 you start packing up, right? You’ll check Facebook, make sure everything is in your bag, right? Get your keys out. You are watching the clock. As an entrepreneur, you don’t do that. The clock is when you get the project done, when you get the sale completed. That is when the customer is happy, is when you get done. That’s totally different from watching the clock. I don’t sit around and go. Oh, I have another hour of work to do. I sit around and go, I have another sale to make. I have another paragraph to write. I have another person to interview. You see, it’s totally different. I don’t sit around and wait for work to get done because of the time. I sit around and try to get as much done as I can before I have to go get the kids done. You know what I mean, totally different. So, no more clock watching. Number 32 number 33 No boss, right? Having a job and having a boss, those are separate, but yeah, very similar things. We already talked about having a job, no job. This one is number 33 not having that horrible boss you have to report to, right? That person you hate, that you still have to suck up to be nice to report to, even though you know, even though you know that they are the CEO’s nephew, and as dumb as a brick. Right? So we avoid that horrible thing. Number 33 number 34 I like this one too. You get to work with people you respect, right? And like, as the entrepreneur, you build the team around you of cool people that you are simpatico with, people that you respect.

Jim Beach 38:14
All of the people I’m doing business with now, I like, you know, and that’s not always the case. My daddy of Southern, so I always get to talk about my daddy. My dad always said you don’t always get to do business with people you like. That is very, very true. My daddy was and is a very, very wise man, and the point is true. But as an entrepreneur, you get to do more business with people you like, right? As a normal salesperson for a company, right, you’re going to do business with a lot of people you don’t like, maybe 50% of them you like, maybe 50% of them you don’t like. As an entrepreneur, maybe 70% of the people you get to deal with you will like, and so that’s better. Number 35 Here’s the one that people will argue about all the time, including me, because I argue that you don’t have to be passionate about what you do as an entrepreneur, but I will say number 35 you get to be more passionate about it, right? I think that a job that you love, you will have less passion for that than an entrepreneurship type situation that you like a lot, right? So, I’m not going to say that you have to be passionate about your entrepreneurial situation to like it more than the job, but I think that being an entrepreneur, you will be more passionate about that, no matter what spectrum of passion you fall on, on the entrepreneurship level. In that entrepreneurship, you will be happier, more passionate than if you have a job, that is number 35 Passion, more passion as an entrepreneur. Number 36 it’s more likely that you will advance as far as you are capable as an entrepreneur. Right, one of the hard things about a corporate job is that necessarily. The top people rise to the top, right? You could be the best person, and because of politics, because of outsourcing, downsizing, right sourcing, offshoring, near shoring, or just you getting fired for some silly, stupid, dumb reason, because the boss doesn’t like you, because he is CEO’s nephew, and he knows that you think he’s a moron, and therefore he fires you. Right, all of those sort of situations are less likely to happen, and you’re more likely to advance as far as you can because of your own devices, right? Because of your entrepreneurship, you’re gonna get further and become more likely to become the CEO, right? What’s the easiest way to become the CEO? Start the business. Number 37 I already talked about winning awards, but you also get accolades, and I wanted to make these separate. Right, awards are trophies that you put on a shelf. Accolades are the people’s lives that you change who then say good things about you, and when things like that happen, it makes you feel really special and warms your heart. When a successful, happy customer writes a letter and says, You changed my child’s life. This is the type of letter I used to get with business I ran in the 90s. You made my child happy for the first time. Thank you for what you do. That kind of stuff makes you feel good for decades. Got the letter in the 90s, I still feel good about it. And we will be right back to finish up our list of the top 50 things that I am thankful for about entrepreneurship, and we will be right back. Back, and I am back again. I want to thank you for being with us today, listening to this very special edition of School for Startups Radio, the top 50 things to be thankful for as an entrepreneur. This is our special Thanksgiving show. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. I hope you all have fantastic times with your family and friends. We are, of course, having a big get together with multiple parts of the family, we have people we’re not really even related to coming, but we still call them family. I’m sure you have the same thing. I hope you have a wonderful time tomorrow. And thank you for listening. Number 38 on our list of top 50 things that I am thankful for. Number 38 greater security, right? The opportunity, or I just mentioned it, downsizing, offshoring, right sizing, just playing out getting fired.

Jim Beach 42:46
Right, there are so many opportunities to lose your job as an executive vice president, making $300,000 a year with a million dollar mortgage, and now you are SOL, versus as an entrepreneur, you lose, have 100 customers, and you lose one or two or five or 10, you still have 90% 95 99% left of your customer base, and therefore you have more security, right? Would you rather have one stream of income or 100 streams of income? Right, I’d rather have 100 ways to make money than one way, and so I have always said that entrepreneurs actually have less risk in today’s hardcore corporate world. I work for Coca Cola, and thank goodness I got fired early, but if I had gotten or stayed there longer, my career would have gotten sucked through three CEOs who got fired, and I just wouldn’t have survived that. I was on the path to get on that $300,000 a year, million dollar mortgage, and fired at 3538 4256 And then all of a sudden, you are sol. Greater security as an entrepreneur. I know it’s counterintuitive, but it’s true. Number 39 Oh, I love this one. Entrepreneurship forces you to continuously learn and get better, get smarter, become a better person, a better speaker, a better thinker, a better planner. Nothing pushes you further in your later career than being an entrepreneur. If you want to continue to learn as a person and therefore evolve and get cooler and more interesting and be the most interesting person in the room. Then you need to continue to learn, and that is what is so important about a long-term educational reading plan that you do as an individual. You need to spend time every day learning a little bit more. You need to know who the top CEOs are out there in the new business philosophy, and all of this stuff, and that’s just part of life. Being an entrepreneur, you’re more likely to do that, and to push yourself to continuously learn to get better. Go to conferences, take continuing ed, all of that kind of thing. Number 39 I think entrepreneurship pushes you to learn. More, as you get older and wiser. Number 40. All right, I just mentioned long-term security, that was number 38 What I want to say now is number 40. You’re not going to get fired abruptly, right? So, not only is your long-term career path better as an entrepreneur, the short term bad things that happen to corporate people are less likely to happen to us as entrepreneurs. Now, granted, we have our other, our own basket of bad things that can happen, right? The losing big customers, getting bank, going bankrupt, all of those sort of tiny little details like that, losing your home because of a loan, all of those tiny little things that can happen, but still the short-term bad things getting fired are less likely for us. All right. Number 41 I believe that the bad days as an entrepreneur are still better than the good days of working for someone else, right. So, again, this goes back to the would you rather work for yourself or would you rather work for someone else? I’d rather work for myself. And when I do that, those bad days that I have to suffer through, I still am happy that I am working for myself and not you. And that is really sustaining and gets you through those bad, bad days, and you realize, gosh, at least I can go home and wear blue jeans, you know, and quit work when I want to, and maybe go bankrupt, but at least I don’t report to you and get told what to do and have to wear a suit to a silly office and all of that stuff, and sit in traffic another day, you know. Oh, that’s not on the list, I don’t think. Just came up with a new one. I’m going to add it here to the bottom, and we’ll see if we have time for that. Well, I’ll just go ahead and do it right now, because I just gave it away. Number 42 you’ll sit in traffic as much as an entrepreneur, and I know that one sounds silly, but it’s true. If you work at home, you don’t sit in traffic.

Jim Beach 46:57
If you have the flexibility of an entrepreneur, why would you commute during peak traffic times, right. So I know that I spend a lot of time at work at home, and when I do go to meetings and events and things like that, I try to go in the weird hours. I don’t go at eight, I go at 10, right. And so I spend less time in traffic than you do. I bet you 100 bucks, that’s number 42 So now my numbers are off again. You’re gonna have to bear with me, see if I can keep up with this number. 43 you don’t sit through as many stupid meetings, right? Those moron meetings that you have at work, where they go on and on and on, and nothing ever happens, and it’s the same meeting every time. You, as an entrepreneur, are not going to let that happen. You, as an entrepreneur, are going to say, “No, we’re going to have smart meetings today. We’re not going to waste our time and be silly. We are going to stand up during the entire meeting, so that we move on quick, because we’re too busy to even sit down. Number 43 you have better meetings. Number 44 you learn how to get past no, right? So many people get told no, take it personally, right? Think that it’s about them. Us entrepreneurs realize it’s not about us, it’s about market, it’s about product, it’s about sales pitch. It’s not about us. And so we get thicker skin, we get better at deflecting criticism, we get better and become more self-confident, and therefore we sell better, and we developed an ability to be more self-secure and self-satisfying than the non-entrepreneur. One of my favorite little facts about this is that the number one car driven by an entrepreneur is what? Pasarati, Porsche, Ferrari, Lamborghini? No, it is the Ford f1 50 pickup truck. The number two card is the Ford Explorer. Why? Because entrepreneurs do not feel the need to prove themselves to others, and therefore do not define themselves by their car, because they have learned to get past no better than other people. Number 44 number 45 get to fulfill your dreams, right. Don’t dream small, dream big. And that happens when you become an entrepreneur. You want to spend a week on 100 foot yacht. You dream that, then be an entrepreneur, right? You want to be a big star at the parties and get accolades to yourself in a paper, right. Very beautiful person. All of those dreams become an entrepreneur. Number 45 number 46 You’re the coolest kid at the high school reunion, right? I’ve been to several high school reunions by now. I’ve been out of high school 612 years, and the coolest kid at the high school reunion is the one who was an entrepreneur almost always true, so be that guy, right? I did hear a really cool story. This is really funny. One of my friends, who is also an entrepreneur, went to his reunion, and he was there early and saw a friend, and they bumped into each other, hadn’t seen each other in 20 years, and the friend. And said he did x for a living. Later on, my friend ran into that friend again, and he, that guy was talking to a new person, said that he did y. My friend stuck with him after that, because he sensed something funny was going on. This guy was going around, and for every person he spoke to, he had a different profession, a different life, different number of kids made up everything fresh with each person that he spoke to at the high school reunion. Thought that was funny. I think that’s funny. So, what was that? Number 46 Number 46 you are the coolest kid at the high school reunion. Number 47 prove something to the world, right? So many entrepreneurs have a chip on their shoulder, they were not happy as a kid. They were teased, they were told they weren’t smart enough. They got fired in their 20s because they weren’t a hard worker. They were told they weren’t ever going to succeed. You’re a horrible salesperson.

Jim Beach 50:55
There’s something on their shoulder that says, I want to go out there and prove that I am great, and therefore you go out there and choose the way to prove that your protagonist, the mean guy, was wrong, and so you work really hard to prove that you are successful and deserving of not necessarily respect, but at least not beratement and crushing words. Number 47 I think I might be losing my numbers here. You get to dream big, right? One of the cool things I like being about entrepreneurship is that I get to dream crazy, outrageous, audacious goals. Right, corporate executives don’t set audacious goals. Entrepreneurs do. People who set audacious goals have already quit corporations, moved on, and are now dreaming big on their own. And so I think that is the essence of entrepreneurship, going out there and dreaming big. Number 48 I think, number 49 I believe. You get to create your own corporate culture. You want to work at a cool company with foosball tables, be an entrepreneur, you can make that happen. You want a company where everyone gets to go home at 3o’clock be an entrepreneur, you get to make that happen. You don’t like the culture where you are now, become an entrepreneur, make your own corporate culture. Have a culture where it’s dedicated to solving global warming, a culture dedicated to making the world a better place. You get to do what you want to do, you get to set your very own culture. And number 50, get to drive carpool when you want to, you get to be with your kids, you get to spend more time doing what you want, I work really hard, so I can spend more time at Disney and more time at woodworking school, or the mountain, or in the Caymans, whatever, playing with my family. Number 50 is, I have a better, happier life because I’m an entrepreneur, because I get to do more fun stuff, I get to travel better places, meet cooler people, wear what I want, do what I want, be passionate about what I am doing, not report to the man, not have a job. All of these things add up to a happier, better life. And I am thankful to be an entrepreneur here in America, God’s greatest country on earth. And thank you so much for listening. We greatly appreciate you listeners, and hope that you will tell a friend. And happy birthday, America. 250 your semi quincentennial birthday, an amazing accomplishment. If you want to learn to say it, I’ll do it again. Semi quincentennial, semi quincentennial. birthday, happy birthday America.