Risk, Vision, and Sacrifice

" - but by working without a salary I was sacrificing immediate income in return for knowledge and experience that would pay off years down the road." (pg. 63)

In this quote from 'Driven', Robert Herjavec is stressing the importance of making sacrifices in the short term in order to achieve a long term goal. This appears to be one of the major themes in the book and seems to have contributed significantly to Robert Herjavec's success. However after reading the first half of the book I can conclude that sacrifice is only really a third of what it takes to achieve greatness from Robert Herjavec's perspective. The other two components are vision and risk. I discovered this earlier in the book when Robert Herjavec was referring to an example from the show 'Dragons Den', in which he wrote, "But that choice - the one that involved risk and vision and sacrifice - was the same one that every other panel member on Dragons' Den has made at some time in their lives, and it was a decision that most people choose to avoid." (pg. 49) Although this specific quote was not referring to a time when Robert had to sacrifice his time and work for free, I do believe that it creates a great foundation for this example because when Robert did decide to work for free he demonstrated each of these three main traits. During a time in which Robert Herjavec called the 'Computer Revolution' he applied for a job in Toronto at a Computer Company, without actually knowing anything about computers. After being turned down during the interview due to lack of sales experience as well as knowledge in the field of computers Robert Herjevec offered to work for free for the first six months and in exchange learn enough information about computers to have the job by the end of that time. This decision represented a huge risk for Robert Herjavec as six months is a long time to be working unpaid, it also represented vision as the computer industry has expanded greatly since then, and also sacrifice as Robert Herjavec could have been working elsewhere and received wages. It was that single decision that incorporated risk, vision, and sacrifice that lead to Robert Herjavec's introduction into the world of computers, an industry in which he has subsequently earned hundreds of millions of dollars.