Over the years, the life and business of the entrepreneur has, not only been a secret, but a highly-guarded secret. Every effort has been made to keep the masses out-of-the-know in matters of politics, government and big business. Today the Internet, though it too is a house of smoke and mirrors, the veil has been lifted on these issues and some entrepreneurs are willing to train the aspiring. What is entrepreneur mentality and can we really learn how to be one?
Employee and Entrepreneur Mentality Are in Opposite Corners
The entrepreneur starts his day with work in mind. The employee starts his waiting for that time to quit for the day. The entrepreneur seeks challenges and delves into them. The employee seeks security and stays inside.
These are but two of many opposing viewpoints held between the entrepreneur and the employee. There are many more known differences. Much of what develops the mentality of a person is experience, influence and education. The son of an entrepreneur is likely to become one himself because that’s the environment in which he was raised, though this doesn’t always happen. Though it is highly likely, due to employee mentality and consumerism being so common and widespread, that most employees never consider the life of an entrepreneur nor what’s involved, some do become exposed to entrepreneurship, mainly because of the Internet.
Employee mentality is far more common because there are vastly way more employees than there are entrepreneurs, and peer/group pressure acts as a wall in itself. Let’s take a look at a few items of interest here…
Creativity
Passion and Interest
You may have been fortunate enough to have taken your passions seriously and persued your interests at an early age in spite of the tremendous pressures all around you to be just anothe average Joe. Your thing may have appeared wierd, corny, downright stupid to those around you, but you are interested in it and you have a driving passion for it. Perhaps you get mocked and people laugh at you. Naysayers abound, telling you that you can’t do it! You’ve proved them wrong because you believe it can be done! You love what you are passionate for and this is what you desire to spend your time, your pastime and even your leisure time! You may even become a recluse, even a bit mentally-challenged, but the thing you are passionate for is your life and purpose. You won’t let anybody take that away from you!
Vision
Being highly successful requires the ability to look outside the box. Mediocrity won’t help you here nor will doing what everybody else is doing. Appearance doesn’t fool you and you can see things as they really are. As can happen, the wrong kind of education, superiors, family, friends, and other important people and entities can strip you of your creativity. However, you resist the temptation to succomb to conformity. Vision and creativity is different than knowledge and empirical knowledge, but these work hand-in-hand, the vehicle that takes you to unlimited heights, often leaving your competitors in the dust. Visionaries are the entrepreneurs behind the businesses that become a legacy.
Learning
You know the saying, “Fools despise wisdom.” You are well aware of the importance education has in the life of an entrepreneur and that learning never stops. Nothing is permanent and everything requires updating and improvement. This comes from trial and error, but it also comes from calculated risk-taking. If something doesn’t work, you try again and again and again until you rule out what does not work. This is a learning process. Your mind is the most important instrument that you use, so you stay healthy, excercise and eat right. It is likely you don’t fill your mind with the kind of stuff that offers little or no value. You don’t want that to keep you from moving forward.
Decision-Making
No doubt about it here – you are in charge and what you say goes. Of course, you do have a team behind you to help with the brainstorming. You know that knowledge is the key to making the right decisions and you listen to the advice of others knowing that more heads are better than one and more likely will leave no stone upturned. However, when all is said and done, you know how best to organize your business and you have the final say. You know that if you are not good at decision-making, you won’t get very far as others will quickly walk all over you!
Parameters
Nobody dictates how you run your business except perhaps government and legislation, but you run a tight ship and are law=abiding, so there’s no problem here. You can break the rules that is, the rules of industry, for this is what puts you at the top. It’s only people like yourself who are not afraid to go beyond the parameters of what everybody else does and not afraid to be called insane or a nut because you have vision and can see your way through it. You can afford to step away from your work but you are also disciplined and too eager to not stop. If you lack in critical areas in what you do, you outsource that and still get the job done in fact, you start businesses and get them running. From here on, you have commissioned an executive panel that will take the business where it is supposed to go so you can create new business. With enough thrust, your parameters could extend on out to Mars!
Time and Effort
Security
You depend on traversing the unknown. Unlike most employees, the comfort zone is the thrill of creating from nothing, exploration and discovery. You blaze your own trail and your borders are virtually non-existant. Outside of advisors, mentors and co-partners, every day is an adventure as you create your own security. You are not alone however, because you have dedicated teams to back you.
Time
You would make every minute count in your quest to formulate, plan, build, start up, run and maintain your business. Unlike most employees who, more likely than not, cherish the time they have off from their jobs. Your business is your passion and you love what you do, so you watch the clock, not for the quitting time, but for the starting time. It’s what you get out of bed every morning for. Unlike the employee, you don’t merely work like the cog in a machine, as an entrepreneur, you make sure every cog is in its place, oiled and working as good as it can. You own the machine and it is self-sufficient.
Quota
As an entrepreneur, you don’t worry about meeting quotas, certainly not the same ways employees do. The quotas employees are expected to meet are set by companies they work for. It’s not so much to do with quotas themselves but superiors imposing them. A better term for production by entrepreneurs would be the goal. Entrepreneurs must set and achieve goals to get things done, or have them done. Goal-setting of course, is beneficial to everyone. You would depend greatly upon setting and achieving goals, both short and long-term. Whilst the business plan is the framework in a proposed business, goals make up all of the roughing-in and finish work. Then, goals are an important part of running and maintaining the business as well!
Conclusion
To contrast what I’ve written in this article to that of an employee, I have written a sister article entitled, What Is Employee Mentality? This will probably help you come to a clearer understanding of entrepreneur mentality as you see both sides. The format and outline of both articles are very similar, producing the contrasts on the points made above.
Note that often, employee mentality goes hand in hand with consumer and entitlement mentalities. All these things are taught and encouraged by society itself and is learnt behaviour. This is not a one-size-fits-all situation. Each person is unique and may have varying degrees of each mentality, and one or more, not at all.
Today, more than ever, it is very possible to acquire the attributes that make up entrepreneur mentality. There isn’t any one of the things discussed above that you couldn’t acquire into your mind if you have average intelligence. The challenges of doing so does not rest with the education in learning them but do you the willpower, tenacity and determination to not only learn and master them, but to implement them into your life?
Aspiring entrepreneurs have to use what they have at their disposal (working in a sales department somewhere to learn how to sell for example) to get the experience. However, I have an opportunity for you where you do not even have to know how to sell, though some of the required concepts are taught. Your learning environment will be in an entrepreneur setting and the business model, affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing is, like any other new adventure – it can be intimidating at first, but with the right support and educational environment, you will overcome this normal issue. Wealthy Affiliate is well-known to be the very best online business training platform where you will get several layers of support, a million like-minded member-strong community and all of the education and tools you need to start and run an affiliate marketing business. Note that this is NOT multi-level marketing by any means! You actually work with businesses that provide products and services that you have high interest and are passionate about. You will be promoting for them. You will not be selling though you will be pre-selling. Your job is to align the prospective customer with the business whose affiliate program you have chosen.
If this sounds good to you, please check out my Wealthy Affiliate Review.
Thanks for taking the time to read this article!
Leave a Reply