So tell me, why do you work 80 hours a week for low pay, crappy benefits and zero job security? My caffeine drinking, startup pitching, overworked friends?

Why bother when you could just as easily find a cushy job at Pierce and Pierce pushing papers and collecting Z3s in your spare time?

Why?

Well, entrepreneurial types never really have that choice. For us, it was either play around in startup land or buy some skinny jeans, pick up a Stratocaster and go on tour with Pearl Jam. In my case, my Vedder impression couldn’t even get me a call-in from Nickleback, so the decision wasn’t too hard.

What makes your typical entrepreneur tick? Besides unshakable narcissism and borderline megalomania it boils down to three big points.

We want to change something.

What that something is determines whether you decide to push PHP for a living or spend your days building a better vaccine.

The first question you should ask yourself when deciding to give up business casual for a tee-shirt and jeans is what you want to get out of your career. Understand that if you are looking for a quick payout, there are dozens of easier ways to get it and that every year you spend nurturing your business is twenty or thirty thousand dollars you would likely be making in a “real job.”

Build a business because you believe in something. Even if that something is just that you think you’ve found a great way to afford that Yacht you’ve always wanted.

We hate working for other people.

As a species, we are really bad employees. Really bad employees. We constantly think we’re right, we think everyone else is wrong and there is nothing you can do to change our minds about any of it. There is a direct relationship between being extraordinarily successful as an entrepreneur and failing at every attempt to work under someone else’s helm. For better or for worse, it’s just not in our DNA.

The advantage of this kind of psychosis is that when the chips are down, entrepreneurs always have one more rabbit to pull out of the hat. The disadvantage is that if taken too far, this kind of unbending hubris is a one-way ticket to failure.

Don’t take yourself so seriously and realize that the best among us are those who discovered early that there are plenty of people more clever than they are, and that the sign of a first-rate intelligence is the willingness to recognize genius in others and cultivate it.

We want to be filthy rich.

Somewhere in the back of your mind (or for some, right up front) you want to make a lot of money. Of course, creative freedom and a sense of living your dream are important but the only reason you put in the type of blood, sweat and tears that you do is because you know in your heart that it means that one day you’ll put that down payment on that island in the South Pacific.

Anyone who tries to tell you how to get rich is probably lying but I will give you the “secret” that seems to work.

Try everyday.

Wake up every single morning and ask yourself what you’re doing to reach your goal. I guarantee if you take one small step each and every day, you’ll start making headway. People fail for a variety of reasons, but the biggest is that they stop trying. They let whatever roadblocks jump out in front of them bowl them over and they end up giving up before they even start.

Be patient, be persistent and be certain that you give yourself time to be successful. If you look at any great success story it’s always prefaced by a carnival of failures. Take the lumps, lick your wounds and enjoy the ride.

As for how you become a millionaire, the best advice I can give you is to listen to everyone except other millionaires. Success and wealth are as many parts luck and timing as they are skill. Listen to yourself. Listen to people who care about you. Listen to people still clawing their way up. Once you’ve cleared the summit it’s really easy to lose track of the path you took, if you want to make it to the top it’s a much better idea to keep an eye on the people who are still climbing.

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