Kevin O’Leary stopped by TheStreet to give his best tips for up and coming entrepreneurs and the pitfalls to avoid.
Related: Kevin O’Leary speaks on one major key to business success
FULL VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Kevin O’Leary: The worst investment idea I’ve ever heard is this concept of never change your mind. Just stay focused on your original vision. That is a recipe for disaster. Great entrepreneurs learn how to pivot when the world around them changes.
The market changes, the prices changes, the competition changes, the regulatory environment changes. New facts, new direction. So if you’re an entrepreneur, you better stay very flexible, otherwise, you’ll just get killed. People who don’t have flexibility. Do not have their ear to the track. They are the ones that get run over by the train. I’d prefer not to invest in them.
The biggest investment mistake I’ve ever made is not listening to my gut because that is experience. And I remember once sitting in my MBA class, it was a two-year program and a guest lecturer walked in.
And he made everybody very uncomfortable because he stood at the bottom of the amphitheater and he looked up and he said, “you all think you’re so smart, you know nothing. You have no idea what you’re going to do. Half of you, maybe two-thirds of you are going to fail for the first attempt, you have in entrepreneurship.”
And I leaned over to Barry Nicole, who was sitting beside me. I’ll never forget this.
And I said to Barry, this guy is an asshole. You know who that guy is today? It’s me. I say the same thing to all of my business students experience is what you don’t have. When you start out. You need to listen to your own experience as the years go by, that’s what saves your heinie.
