Entrepreneur vs Employee mindset
If you’re serious about taking control of your life then you need to make destroy your inner employee.
The shift I’m talking about is from employee to entrepreneur.
Develop the right mindset and you’ll make the necessary changes.
A select few
At best, only 3-5% of men will become serious entrepreneurs.
95% of men, or even more, will stay in the mind frame of “employee” for the rest of their lives.
Few dream of having their own business, and even fewer that do dream follow through.
With he technology we have today an the internet, there’s ample opportunity to start a business.
But young people are starting businesses at a much smaller rate compared to previous generations.
If you’re a reader of RD or you found this article, then chances are high that you have the drive to become an entrepreneur.
Because you’re probably sick of the bullshit life you have to deal with as an employee.
Below, I’m covering 12 key areas you need to focus on to shift your employee mindset to an entrepreneur mindset.
If you can make the shift on how you view these areas, then you might have what it takes to be the CEO of your own life for once.
Ownership
An employee doesn’t own the company.
They own their “job”, and can become protective over keeping it.
But they don’t own the company, and therefore don’t care about it as much as the entrepreneur.
The entrepreneur owns his business. Whether it’s just him on his own or he expanded and hired employees.
If you want to be entrepreneur, then you need to look at the business you create as your baby.
You’re the owner. It’s your company. It’s your life for the first few years. Don’t think it’s a 9-5 you take a break from or quit.
With ownership comes hardship. But it also brings massive rewards that a employee can only be jealous of.
Longer-term Vision
Entrepreneurs have a long term vision.
They visualize the success they’re going to have before it happens.
There not just looking at this month, this quarter, or the next 6 months.
They look at the next year, 3 years, 5 years, and even 10 years.
Long term vision is what builds great businesses.
It builds amazing products and services.
It’s what breeds success, in business and outside of it.
The employee doesn’t see the long term vision because he’s just focused on the near term.
And it’s not enough even if the employee sees the long term vision. Because he’s just buying into the dream of the entrepreneur who sells that dream to him.
He doesn’t have any guarantee in being part of that or creating it.
Money
Money isn’t everything if you have it. But if you don’t have money, your life is shit.
That’s why every man in his 20’s needs to work to build wealth and get rich.
It’s a ruthless, competitive world.
However, you can have a great life if you build your wealth up.
I’m not saying you have to be a billionaire.
But you should be aiming for six figures and retire with a few million.
The key to having a comfortable life and taking care of your family is to build wealth.
And the best way to do that is to own a business, not by working for one.
You can do okay as an employee, but you can get rich as an entrepreneur.
What to do
Spend less money on stupid shit now.
Get the business started and invest in it.
Then when you’re older and have wealth, you can buy whatever the fuck you want and not stress about it.
The expensive dates and sports car will cause you stress when you can barely afford them.
Entrepreneurs know they need to avoid getting into debt in their personal lives.
They’re willing to sacrifice some sort term pleasure for long term gain.
Save your money, start a business, and then your money will grow 10 fold in years to come.
Then you can buy the Porsche and spend $150 on dinner.
The Market
Entrepreneurs are constantly evaluating the market their in.
Always looking at the demand from customers, competition, new opportunities, threats that can disrupt the market, and adjacent markets.
Employees may look at the market of it’s part of their job, but that’s about it.
Maybe if they’re a smart employee they’ll look at the best companies to join depending on the market.
But employees aren’t constantly observing the market like entrepreneurs.
If you want to be the business owner, stay aware of the market you’re in and always sleep with one eye open.
Responsibility
It’s not all fun and games.
Owning a business means you’re responsible for everything.
Especially if you’re a solo entrepreneur.
Everything is literally on you to do and see through.
At the end of the day, even the CEO of a big company still is responsible for the sales and stock of the company.
The employee only knows responsibility for their job.
Their main worry is looking good in front of their boss.
Making the shift from the employee mindset to that of an entrepreneur requires you to change your view on responsibility.
You have to make the leap and be ready to be responsible for the entire business.
Vacation
One of the benefits of being an entrepreneur is that you control your own schedule.
You can potentially take vacation off as long as you want and can cut off work at lunch if you wanted to.
But in the real world, you’re going to be working more, not less.
Vacation means you’re cheating on your business.
It means you’re losing money.
The entrepreneur can only think about vacation after 2-5 years of building up their business.
Once they’re successful then vacation can be whenever they want.
Employees live for vacation
Employees count down the days to vacation.
They mark it off o their calendars month in advance.
Vacation is a celebration for an employee.
For 2 or 3 days, maybe a week, they don’t have a boss.
It’s a temporary escape from their wage slavery.
If you want to be an entrepreneur, stop glorifying your vacation time.
You’re just going to go somewhere for a week and waste most of your savings doing it.
Instead, focus only on building your business.
Vacation should be something to do for fun, but not to escape your reality.
Entrepreneurs create their own reality and love it. They don’t need a vacation.
And when they do travel or take days off, they don’t have to cringe about going back to work.
Grinding
For the most part, the employee doesn’t know what real grinding is.
You can make some exception with doctors who don’t have their own practice or junior lawyers trying to make partner.
But in general, the average employee doesn’t know what real work is.
They think working an extra hour or two once a month is grinding.
The entrepreneur is willing to put in as much work as is needed.
And it’s not always hard work, it’s just working more.
What I do isn’t very hard.
But it’s hard to do it for hours upon hours, even if I love it.
Adopting an entrepreneurs mindset is easy if you learn to become a workhorse.
If you become a producer instead of a consumer, then working will become 2nd nature.
And in fact, you’ll need to become a massive producer.
Because it will take more hours than you imagine to start a successful business.
Revenue
Most employees don’t give a fuck about the revenue of their company.
The only ones who really do is sales guys like myself.
And even then, each salesman is focused on their own individual revenue. And in some cases team revenue if they’re a manager.
But the entrepreneur is always thinking about the revenue of the company.
Always scoping out new ways to increase the revenue.
- More products?
- Higher prices?
- Selling to different industries?
- Developing different persona’s to market and sell to?
- Creating partnerships with other companies?
- Changing the compensation to incentivize employees more?
There’s a million different ideas that business owners consider to increase the revenue of the company.
When you make the change from employee to entrepreneur, you have to keep your mind on the revenue.
And since it will just be you, you’ll need to not only grow revenue, but keep the company profitable.
If you’re bound to a job, then your #1 goal needs to be financial independence.
When your business takes off, you still keep that same mentality as your #1 goal is for your business to grow and be profitable.
Benefits
Healthcare, dental, 401k, PTO, etc., are all benefits the employee thinks about.
The entrepneur gets none of these.
Any benefits you had go out the door when you start your own business.
The entrepreneur isn’t motivated by little trinkets.
He wants to get the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
If you grind and become successful, then you’ll be rich or at least well-off.
Your benefits are much greater than the little perks an employee considers when choosing between job A and B.
Value
Understand value will make your life so much easier in every area.
Every powerful man understands value.
From CEO’s, to pimps, to military leaders.
They all know what value is, what value they provide, and how they can leverage that against what other people value.
Employees usually don’t understand value the same way. They know what they want.
But they never discover their true value, or bother up to build it.
Leverage what other people value
And they certainly don’t leverage the values of others to achieve the outcomes they desire.
Pimps know that hoes need a man to put them in place and basically act like the strong father they never had.
CEO’s know what their customers and business partners value, and work to make sure they get what they want.
Military leaders know they the enemy values, and will use that against them in combat scenarios or as leverage to negotiate a deal.
Study people, what they value, and then find a way to give them what they want.
If you can do that, then you already have the mindset of an entrepreneur.
Dreaming
Similar to having a long-term vision, anyone starting a business needs to be able to dream.
But it’s different with dreaming.
Most people already dream.
Employees look at their dreams with wishful sadness.
They think they can’t actually follow through on their dreams.
They never try.
Negative beliefs hold them back from achieving greatness.
Entrepreneurs are able to develop a long-term vision because they believe in their dreams.
They believe in themselves and what they’re capable of.
The entrepreneur uses dreaming as a tool to create.
It’s a way to explore the future and make it what you want.
Don’t view your dreams as fantasies in the wind.
Use them as stepping stones to take action upon.
Success
The next level of dreaming, after action is taken and goals are reached is success.
The entrepreneur views success as inevitable.
With a well thought out plan and enough persistence the entrepreneur knows that success is just a matter of time.
The employee views success as out of reach.
Or better yet, but still not good enough, the employee has success as very minor bucket list goals.
Having a good quarter or good year at your job isn’t bad.
It’s more successful than most.
But it’s not the kind of success you need to be aiming for.
To make the jump from an employee way of thinking to that of an entrepreneur, you need to look at success on a big scale and make it do or die.
When you develop your purpose and make that into a business, your standards for success scale dramatically.
The Entrepreneur Mindset
The best way to get the entrepreneur mindset is to become one.
But if you start thinking about the different areas above, you’ll be much better prepared.
You won’t blame others for your mistakes.
You’ll be able to create a long-term vision, understand the value you provide to the market, and you’ll be willing to put the work in.
At the end of the day, it comes down to working more.
You risk more by becoming an entrepreneur in the short term.
But in the long term, you’ll never have to worry about getting laid off, you’ll build wealth for yourself and future generations, and you’ll live life on your own terms.
The only difference between an entrepreneur and an employee is the mindset.
Change the way you think about things, and soon enough you’ll change your life.
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