What’s The Difference Between An Employee And An Entrepreneur?

What I learned this weekend from hustlers on Craigslist.

On today’s episode Russell talks about the difference between entrepreneurs and employees.He tells of some recent experiences where he realized that he no longer wanted to work with employees and only wanted to work with entrepreneurs.

Here are some interesting things to listen for in this episode:

• What made it obvious that a dude at Tate’s Rental was an employee and not an entrepreneur.
• What Russell had to do to get a pool guy out to his house to fix his pool by the 4th of July.
• And how you can go from being an employee to entrepreneur or even an intrepreneur.

So listen below to find out how you can be more than just an employee.

---Transcript---

Hey, everyone, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome to Marketing in Your Car.

All right, so I want to make that welcome a little more dramatic than normal. I hope that was all right and sounded cool. I’ll keep testing out different tonality on our intro.

Anyway, hope you guys are doing awesome today. So I have something to discuss with you that’s important, very important, for you who are business owners and for you who may be employees.

So my question for you is, how can you tell the difference between an entrepreneur and an employee?

Now by looking at them you might say, “I can’t tell by looking at someone if they’re an entrepreneur or an employee.” But it does not take much to figure out who they are.

Let me give you some examples of what happened to me over the last week. I’ll show you how simple this is to figure out. Who’s the entrepreneur and who’s the employee?

For example, last week I had Rob come out and he’s painting. We have a detached garage and he’s painting this huge wrestling mural inside of it. It turned out amazing.

But there’s part of it, because it’s a really tall garage, where we had to get one of these scissor lifts, that’s what they call them, so he could get up to the top and paint the top.

So we went to a place called Tate’s Rents, and they rent all sorts of stuff. So we’re at Tate’s and we walk in and we’re like, “Oh, there it is, that thing right there.” That’s what he needed.

So we pull in, we go talk to the guy at the desk. And we’re like, “Hey, we’re here to rent one of those lifts that go up really big.”

He’s like, “I don’t have anything like that.”

We’re like, “Are you sure? Because I’m pretty sure we saw one right out there?”

He’s like, “What, the scissor lift?”

We’re like, “Yeah, the scissor lift. That’s what we need.”

He’s like, “Yeah, we’ve got one of those.”

I’m like, “Cool. I want to rent that.”

He’s like, “Well, we don’t really have the trailer for that scissor lift, so sorry I can’t rent it to you. I don’t have a trailer.”

I’m like, “Really?” I look out the window and there’s like 18 trailers. I’m like, “Can we put it on one of those trailers out there?”

He looks at me kind of annoyed like, “Yeah, I guess we could.” He pushes a button and we go talk to the guys outside. “Hey, guys, get the scissor lift and put it on the trailer.”

He’s like angry at me that I wanted to rent something. He was trying so hard to not allow them to give me money because he didn’t want to annoy himself. Which all he had to do was click a little button and say, “Pick this up,” and somebody else had to go out and grab it.

All he had to do was push a button and tell people what to get. But he did not want me to do it because it was going to take time and effort or brain power or something to do it.

So my question to you: is that man an entrepreneur or an employee? Okay, obviously you can tell he is a hardcore employee.

Had that been an entrepreneur, and even if the scissor lift had not been there, he would have said, “You know what? That’s a good question. We don’t have a scissor lift here, but hold on. Let me find one somewhere in Boise.” And he would start calling every single place because he wants to make money.

That’s what entrepreneurs do: we figure out a way to make crap happened. That’s what would have happened if that guy had been an entrepreneur, right?

Another example, so our pool has nine issues we need to fix. I counted them. So I call pool company A and I’m like, “Hey, we got this pool. My goal is I’m probably going to be spending $20,000-30,000 over the next seven days to get this pool fixed up. I would love to get you guys out here to fix it.”

The person on the line is like, “Our guys are all busy, so no one can come out this week or next week. But in three weeks we can come out and have someone look at it and give you a quote.”

Three weeks. I was like, “Nope.”

So I hang up the phone. I was talking to an employee. I didn’t want to deal with him. So I called the next place. This place is like a high-end pool place here in Boise.

So I called them up and I’m like, “Hey, in the next seven days I’m going to be dropping $20,000-30,000 on my pool. I need some help. Can you send someone out here today to give me a quote?”

“Oh, well we’re about two and a half, three weeks out before we can send someone out to give you a quote.”

At that point it was going to be another three or four weeks for them to fix it. I was like, “Are you kidding me? I want the pool fixed today.”

The lady is like, “We can’t. The first opening for the guy to give you a quote is three weeks away.”

So this time I’m like, “Maybe everyone is going to be busy. Maybe I should just book it and I’ll cancel it if I need to.”

So I book it and I call around again. Same thing. This guy’s like, “I can be out there in two weeks,” so I got all excited. Two weeks later he didn’t show up, so I got really mad.

The earlier guy was supposed to show up. He had texted me. So I called him twice, texted him three times trying to ask him some questions. He didn’t respond back to any of them.

Finally the day of his appointment he texts me, “Okay, I’m coming out to see your stuff.”

I’m like, “No, dude. I texted you and I emailed you and you never responded back. So you are officially fired. I’m not working with you. I won’t work with people who won’t respond to me. It’s ridiculous.”

So then the third guy comes out. I give him a list of nine things to fix. He shows up at our house, doesn’t knock on the door or anything. He goes in the backyard, fixes one of the nine things and then goes home. Never communicated, never talked to us, never told us, never anything. Just fixed one of nine things and left.

So at this point I am infuriated, as you can probably tell. I have been trying to get crap done. I was like, “You know what? I’ve got to quit dealing with employees. I’ve got to find someone who’s hustling, someone who is an entrepreneur who wants to make money.”

So I post on Craigslist this ad that says, “$1,000 cash bonus for the first person who responds and can help me fix my pool before the fourth of July.”

And then the ad goes on to say, “The fourth of July I am trying to have a pool party. There are nine things broken on my pool. I have tried the three biggest pool companies in Boise to come out and nobody can make time for me.”

I said, “I’m trying to drop $20,000-30,000 in the next seven days to fix this pool. And for whoever will help me spend this money I will give you, on top of whatever you charge me hourly, you can charge me whatever you want, I don’t even care, I will pay you an extra $1,000 just to show up here and get the crap done because I am so sick of waiting on regular pool people.”

So I post that out there. This was like 11:00 at night. 3:00 in the morning the first entrepreneur responds saying, “I can do it. I will be there.”

Two hours later, the next entrepreneur responds. All through the night. From like 3:00 in the morning to like 7:00 AM, all the entrepreneurs who are hungry, who are up working their butts off, are responding to my ad, telling me why they’re the best person, selling me on why I should pick them over everybody else.

And then all day long for the next two days I’m getting messages from entrepreneur after entrepreneur after entrepreneur. “I can do it. I’ll drop everything.”

“For $1,000 I will call in sick to my day job and I will be there and I will make sure this happens.”

It was amazing. I was like, “These are the kind of people I want to work with.”

I want to work with entrepreneurs who will work nights and weekends to hustle to make some extra money. All these pool companies, I told these guys, “I will pay double what your hourly rate is typically if you can just send somebody out today or tomorrow or tonight or 3:00 in the morning.” And no one would do it.

And finally on Craigslist I found some hardcore entrepreneurs who are hustling, who are looking for money. So this one dude now comes every morning at 6:00 AM before his other job. He’s been working his butt off for some extra cash.

And when he was done, you know what he told me? He said, “What else can I do? Can I take your garbage to the dump? Can I mow your lawn? I noticed this.” All these other things he noticed about my house that I could use his help with.

I’m like, “Heck yeah, man.” He starts cleaning stuff up, he starts earning money like an entrepreneur.

I’m like, “That guy I have respect for.”

And then the one guy couldn’t do everything. We had a concrete slide that needed to be redone. So finally I get this dude who’s like, “I’m a concrete guy. I can fix your slide for you.”

So he comes out, busts his butt in 109-degree weather, cleans the whole thing all up. Then he gets so excited. He’s like, “Man, this is cool. I want to take ownership of this project. I want this to be the most amazing thing in the world for you.”

He goes home that night, spends like four hours watching YouTube videos to figure out the best way to seal and do my slide the right way. Comes back, “Hey, man, it’s going to cost you a little extra. This is why it’s important and what it’s going to do for you.”

He had a job he was supposed to be at this weekend. He cancelled his job because there was a better opportunity for him to make more money for me. He spent two and a half days, three days, working his butt off to get this slide done in time.

That man is an entrepreneur. So that’s the difference, you guys, between an employee and an entrepreneur. You can always tell in a heartbeat. If you walk into a restaurant three minutes before closing time and they’re like, “Oh, sorry, we’re closed,” that’s the employee.

If you walk in and the guy’s like, “Hey, come on in. We want to make this an amazing experience for you,” and he serves you and treats you well, that’s probably the entrepreneur of the business.

So a lot of times when I get bad service I just ask, “Who’s the entrepreneur here in the company? Because I don’t want to deal with employees who are going to whine about doing their freaking job.”

I want to deal with entrepreneurs who are going to bust their butts, who are going to figure out ways to make this happen, who are going to make some money. That’s the kind of person I want to work with.

So that’s it, guys. So my question for you is, which one are you? Are you an employee or an entrepreneur?

If you’re an employee, you’d better fix it quick. Because if you’re an employee, you’re going to stay that way for the rest of your life.

Even if you’re being entrepreneurial inside of another company, it’s different. We call those people intropreneurs, who are able to exert their entrepreneurship inside of their company.

I look at my company and I’ve got some people who work for me who are intropreneurs and some who are employees. The intropreneurs make more money. I give them raises all the time.

They’re the ones who are out there figuring out what to do and finding ways to make things better. The employees are the ones who do what they’re asked to do. They do a good job of it and that’s why they have jobs, but they’re not making way more money because they’re just doing what I asked them and not figuring out what they can do.

That’s the difference and it’s time for you guys to figure out which one you are. If you are an employee, you probably should stop listening to this podcast. If you’re an entrepreneur, you’re in the right spot. This is where we love and embrace your type.

From now on, I’m no longer hiring crappy companies. Craigslist will be my spot to find people to fix my stuff, because that’s where the entrepreneurs are hustling, looking form more money, looking for more jobs, looking for more opportunities to serve. And that is where I will be putting my money.

Have an awesome day, you guys. And I will talk to you soon.