'Shark Tank' investor: 'Entrepreneurs are the only people who will work 80 hours a week to avoid working 40 hours a week'

"Shark Tank"/ABC

Lori Greiner knows entrepreneurship.

The "Shark Tank" investor estimates that over the course of 17 years, she's created about 500 different products, and owns 120 patents, with more pending.

A key element of her success, and one she shares in her book, "Invent It, Sell It, Bank It!: Make Your Million-Dollar Idea Into a Reality," is that successful entrepreneurs will do whatever it takes to succeed.

In an interview with Daniel DiPiazza of Rich20Something, Greiner said that to this day, she's very hands-on — and she has that in common with most entrepreneurs.

"I have a quote that I always say, that I love, which is, 'Entrepreneurs are the only people who will work 80 hours a week to avoid working 40 hours a week,'" she told DiPiazza. "And it is true, because we like to be our own bosses. And so if you're one of those people, you want to quit your day job, you don't want to punch a clock, you want to have freedom and also be freedom of your own destiny, this book tells you how."

And an entrepreneur doesn't leave the work to someone else. They work those 80 hours because they're in control of their own success. "You have to be committed and willing. That's one of the things I find happens with a lot of people: They want someone else to do it for them," Greiner said. "And the problem is, when you're an entrepreneur, there isn't somebody else to do it for you. You have to do it for you. But if you're willing to do that, then you're going to make it. Or you have a likelihood to make it."

You can enlist other people to help, she explains, but it's still up to you.

For instance, she remembers, when she first started out in 1996, there was no Google, and no way to look things up with a few keystrokes. So she headed to the library to find a list of all of the retailers in the US. No one was going to get that information for her.

She continued:

"I just think that it's very important, if you have dreams to make a million dollars, to run a corporation and have it be really strong, and have it be really successful, you have to have your hands on the pulse of everything and you have to be the driver of that company. So when you leave it to other people, it's not going to be your vision."

Watch the full interview on Rich20Something »

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