Just get on with it

Become an entrepreneur if that’s what you want. Get started. That’s the very simple advice I take from an interview with Jesper Pedersen in Bangkok: He wishes he’d become self-employed much earlier.

From soldier to his own security company

I’m by the river in Bangkok, just outside the Shangri-La hotel. Yesterday, I interviewed Jesper Pedersen from Armour Group here. Jesper is a former air force soldier. At one point, he trained as a civilian diving instructor in Thailand and met an American who had a security company.

The American persuaded him to help manage part of the business. Jesper quickly became the boss of lots of guards doing ordinary security and access control for companies. Later, he became head of airport security and ended up as a bodyguard for a wealthy American from Chicago too.

Eventually, he found the courage to start his own company. During the interview, he told fantastic stories about working with international golfers. I can’t remember all the names and try to recall whether Søren Hansen was one of them. That’s not what matters, either. He’s also helped the Danish royal family on visits to Asia. He does lots of interesting things.

Become an entrepreneur yesterday

I asked Jesper whether he had any good advice for other entrepreneurs. He did, and it was very simple: Get started yesterday. I’ve probably repeated that point a hundred times, but you need to hear it anyway.

He was incredibly frustrated he’d spent so long in the military and so long working for other people. Why the hell had he done it, then, I asked. He didn’t really know. He hadn’t had the courage and had imagined being self-employed was more complicated and difficult than it turned out to be.

He couldn’t put it into many more words. But he regretted only becoming self-employed so late when he could have done it many years earlier. I think you should consider that if you have the desire yourself.

There’s nothing magical behind the curtain

Don’t imagine entrepreneurship requires some magical thing you don’t have access to. What you see is what you get. Of course you need to work hard. Of course you need to bring in money. There’s uncertainty and lots of work to do. But there’s no mysterious trick hiding behind the curtain.

The vast majority of entrepreneurs are ordinary people with drive, who are willing to get up in the morning and make an effort. Some are special, of course. But my point is you don’t need a particularly high IQ or more courage than everyone else.

You need to want to do something for yourself, start your own business and be willing to take a chance. That’s the desire I think you should take seriously. I share my own experiences of becoming and being an entrepreneur in Iværksætter til jeg dør.

One employer or several customers?

How big is the risk really? If you have a job, one person pays your salary. As an entrepreneur, you often have lots of different customers. In the video, I argue that in those times entrepreneurship could in several ways be more secure than employment. Many people will probably disagree with me.

I also think more robots, more outsourcing and other changes could make employment less secure than entrepreneurship in the future. That’s my assessment in this video from 2012. And I think being an entrepreneur is ten times more fun.

So if you’re not an entrepreneur yet, follow Jesper’s advice: Become an entrepreneur yesterday. Get going and give it everything for both Jesper’s sake and mine.

One last view of the river in Bangkok

Before I finish, we’ll enjoy the river view again. I show The Peninsula, which I call one of the world’s most expensive hotels. A little further along, you can just make out the Mandarin Oriental, which I describe as one of the world’s very best hotels. You can stay somewhere like that if you’ve really done well.

See you in Denmark before too long. Take care.