Are you a budding entrepreneur?

I just listened to an interview with Netflix Founder and serial entrepreneur, Marc Randolph on the Diary of a CEO podcast. Marc described the story of Netflix and shared his recipe for success. The podcast was packed with value for any budding entrepreneur.

Here's what I learnt:

Lesson 1 - Don't fall in love with your idea

The single worst thing you can do as an entrepreneur is fall in love with your idea.

You should assume your idea is bad. The only thing you should think about is how quickly, cheaply and easily the idea can be tested with real people. You need to find out whether customers would want this or not. Generating ideas is the easy part, it's trivial.

Before you spend hours working on your business plan and sink your life savings into prototype development, your job as an entrepreneur is to test your idea.

Lesson 2 - Balance in life

Make time for relationships, family and your passions outside of work.

Marc is proud to have grown two multi-billion dollar companies. But he is way more proud of the fact that he managed to do all that while staying married to the same woman, seeing his kids grow up still finding time for his passions outside of work - backcountry skiing, climbing, kayaking and mountaineering.

In the grand scheme of happiness, you need all elements in balance.

Lesson 3 - Hard work does not equal success.

Being an entrepreneur isn't for everyone - it's hard work.

There are times when you'll have to grind it out and work harder than you've ever worked before. But you will soon recognise that this is unsustainable. The good news is that hard work does not equal success. You make 99% of the difference when you're smart about the things you choose to focus on.

The extra work won't change the outcome anyway - so don't kill yourself.

If you're going into entrepreneurship. Go in eyes open.

Successful individuals like Marc Randolph talk a lot about work life balance. But everything is relative. Marc is clearly an intelligent, hyper-productive, incredibly hard working individual.

I got the impression that his version of hard work is very different from the average person's.