Shifting from an employee to entrepreneur mindset

Becoming an entrepreneur starts by expanding your mind and envisioning all new horizons.

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I don’t think it matters if you are thinking about starting your own business, currently splitting your time between a “day job” and your business, or are now 100% supported by your own endeavour. It is – in my opinion – simply a different beast. And I think it starts with expanding the size of your goals.

An employee considers what can be done to make themselves more selectable for a new project. Often the single biggest milestone is a promotion to the next rung on the ladder. And it’s generally about incremental progression. Let me be clear – there is absolutely nothing wrong with that at all!

But when you start thinking about being an entrepreneur in your own business, your goals tend to include multiple years and much bigger numbers. As an employee I may be thrilled with a 4% raise after 2 years, but as a business owner I think of 20% growth year over year with increased revenue and reduced costs, while expanding my market reach into 3 new genres.

I heard somewhere that when you work a “job” you’re always trying to achieve someone else’s goals. I asked myself if the goals of the company actually were my goals, or if it was just a narrative we all collectively heard while really just working for a secure and steady pay check. I contrast that to my own business and realized for me it was the perfect union of personal and business goals, because I am the business.

It’s not all sunshine and rainbows though. You may not have a snazzy office building or employees in various departments all working for you in their own speciality. You may well be the CEO and the janitor, the accounting department and sales & marketing. It’s all a bit terrifying at times. So learn all you can….then learn some more. Seek out experts and peers. And eventually you can mitigate the risks enough based on your own comfort level to take a leap of faith.

That all sounds great doesn’t it? It’s something you could have read in one of the dozen self-help books on your bookshelf. But there’s something to it if you can believe in yourself enough to do the work and go for it.

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3 Responses

  1. JD this was great! Very insightful and inspiring. Glad to have found a new blog. If you’d like, I’d like to invite you to our “Bloggers Consortium” Facebook messenger group – would you like that? It’s a great group of a bunch of us who regularly blog. If so I’d be glad to invite you. We also list all of each other on each other’s websites to support readership.

    Blessings, and keep up the great work of blogging!

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