Security

Driven to succeed

As a young boy, Robert Herjavec, technology and IT mogul, remembers his father escaping from a Croatian jail and fleeing Eastern Europe with his mother on a boat headed for Canada. His is the classic immigrant story.

"Well, I think anybody who comes to North America with no means is pretty driven to get ahead," he said. "We never had anything and it forced us to make do with the resources we had, another thing that I find with immigrants. We have a low tolerance for excuses."

Herjavec has certainly been driven to get ahead. After graduating from college, he went to work at IBM. In 1990 he founded BRAK Systems, which specialized in software for Internet security. Ten years later, as Canada's leading supplier of that software, BRAK was sold to AT&T for $100 million. Herjavec soon was involved in the sale of RAMP Networks, a major IT company, to Nokia for $225 million. He is currently the CEO of The Herjavec Group, another security software company, which he founded in 2003. He has also become a well-known television star, first appearing on "Dragon's Den" on CBC Television, and now also on "Shark Tank," the U.S. version, seen on ABC Television.

In addition, Herjavec is a bestselling author with his book, "Driven," published in 2010, in which he outlines the techniques and insights that took him from a young college graduate, waiting tables by day and launching an IT company in his basement by night, to one of North America's wealthiest entrepreneurs, with a palatial home in Toronto and a private island near Miami.

Herjavec was attracted to computers at an early age. "I'm 49 years old and have been in the computer business for 28 years," he said. "That was my first business and I learned that it's good to be an expert at something, especially in computers, where the field changes every three years."

Herjavec started his earliest businesses without backing. "This is one of the things we see on ‘Shark Tank,'" he said. "A lot of people who have small businesses think the key to their success is getting money. The key to a great business is running a great business, not more money; a bad business with more money is still a bad business. All the businesses
I've started, we started with credit cards, personal savings and bank loans -- once the business got to a certain size."

His philosophy for business success puts a special emphasis on the entrepreneur's emotional involvement. "Don't get into a business you don't love," he said, "even if you barely scrape out a living doing something you love. Otherwise, you will not be passionate about it. I have to love it to do it. Second, you have to have milestones along the way. Everything has a beginning and an end. You have to know how to let go sometimes.  Sales have always been my great realty check. People have to be buying and using the service, and if they are not, you must change."

His thoughts about the current economic climate are quite unique. "It seems every business I started in the last 15 years has been in an economic downturn," he said. "I find all great entrepreneurs have an extreme sense of paranoia. The question is, ‘Are you in the kitchen renovation business or the leaky roof business?' Kitchen renovation is something you can put off -- you lose your job or get laid off, you can put that off -- you don't need it although you want it. But a leaky roof is something that needs to be fixed. So I always encourage people to get into a business that people really need, like the leaky roof business instead of the kitchen renovation business." 

Herjavec still remembers a piece of advice that helped him in his television work. "The transition was incredibly difficult," he said. "I was awful at it and it was tough, but I got better because, like anything, you adapt. When I was auditioning, Mark came up to me and said, ‘Be yourself and don't try to act,' which sounds simple.  He said, ‘We have 18 cameras here. We will get you; it's our responsibility to make you look good.'  And knowing that kind of relaxed me. What he also said was,  ‘This is entertainment, not business.' I was trying to ask really technical questions, which doesn't work on TV."

He was candid about discussing Kevin O'Leary. "Kevin and I had this long conversation about money and Kevin's view is, ‘I would do anything that's legal to make a buck.' And I think that is a bunch of crap. You can't do anything just to make money. I don't think any great business has been built on the premise of simply making some money. I think great businesses were built because someone had a passion for them and wanted to bring something to the world.

"Kevin, in my opinion, is the reason why America, Canada and North America in so many ways are in such financial trouble.  People's only angle is profit and they don't create anything, they don't build anything, they don't employee anybody. We are not creating enterprises anymore and that's my fundamental problem.   Wall Street used to be a great place where great companies went to find funding to become bigger and better world-class businesses. That's not happening today."

In the end, Herjavec has a pretty good idea about what drives him. "I need to build businesses, it's just who I am," he said.  "I need to get up and do better; the money doesn't matter or the growth rate. I just feel I have to do a little better every day, and I don't know if that's my paranoia or being an immigrant and not having anything, but I feel that's just a part of who I am."

Link: http://abc.go.com/shows/shark-tank/bio/robert-herjavec/276271
Link: http://www.robertherjavec.com/

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