Mindset The Employee and Entrepreneurial Which One Do You Have?

Hey everybody, welcome back, I got a request by one noziroh, who asked me to talk a little bit about the difference between the entrepreneurial mindset and the employee mindset.

Mindset  The Employee and Entrepreneurial Which One Do You Have?

Now, I had a long career in the corporate and agency side as an employee. And I've also been an entrepreneur for about six years. So I know a little bit about both of those different mindsets. And I also know a lot of people who have been on both sides of that fence. 

And I have to tell you the mentalities of an employee or an entrepreneur, or in some cases very different, and also the motivations are also different. Now, the conditions for success can also be different. So one is not particularly better than the other.

 I'm not saying that they're just different. So I wanted to talk a little bit about the differences. Now, with employees, it depends a lot on the size of the company, if you work for a big multinational corporation, some of these things will be even pushed to the extreme, smaller startups, maybe not so much, sometimes they're a little more entrepreneurial. Let me talk to you a little bit about the differences between those two mindsets. 

So let's talk a little bit about those differences. Now let's talk about first of all, you as the individual, you as the employee, are really part of a larger team, or in some cases, part of a large corporation. If you're an entrepreneur, in many cases, you are the team or a very significant part of the team. For an employee, the goals of the business are really set by the C suite are set by wall street are set by the board of directors. 

But as an entrepreneur, the goals are really set by you, you have to come up with a strategy for growth, the strategy for development and you are setting those goals. Your actions as an employee, are really directed by your manager, they're directed by other people in your organizations or in your division. As an entrepreneur, though, your activities your actions are really self directed, they're self prioritized, you are not being told what to do by anybody.

As an employee, your role itself is one of IT specialists. So usually as part of a larger team, your role and what you do is generally more specialized. But as an entrepreneur, you will find yourself wearing a whole lot of different hats, you tend to be more of a generalist less specialized, you may have to do sales and account management and finance and you know, design or product development, or manufacturing, or whatever it is that goes around your particular business, you're going to be wearing a lot of hats, and you have to learn a lot of different roles. 

Now, in terms of support as an employee, there may be many departments and many supportive elements within that organization, from HR, to production, to sales, to merchandising, to, you know, whatever technology, whatever that is, there can be a lot, there can be a lot of support for you. But as an entrepreneur, there is less, you really have to go out and find your support, you have to find your specialists, you have to find people to teach you whatever it is that you don't know how to do. Or you have to be able to somehow locate and and develop relationships with people who do knows how to do those things. 

Now, as far in terms of impact, the kind of impact that you can have as an employee or an entrepreneur, if you're an employee, the impact that you have is really mitigated by the number of people in your company. So your impact is generally smaller, it's lower as part of a hole. But as an entrepreneur, you have a great deal of ownership. And so your impact on the business is significant. The complexity of being an entrepreneur versus the complexity of being an employee is also quite different. 

As an employee, the complexity of what you do, or the environment that you're working in, is pretty complex, meaning some corporations can be very complicated matrix environments, sometimes lots of different even international locations and departments that are in or working with each other. And navigating that environment can be complex and difficult and take a lot of learning. And as an entrepreneur, that structural organization is very much simplified and it also may totally reside within you. 

So navigating that is really more about juggling the the hats that you're wearing in terms of what you're doing. Now, when it comes to personal personal growth as an employee, your personal growth is really more linear, it's based on the usual you know, corporate ladder moving up from position to position within a specialized range. But as an entrepreneur, your path of growth is really usually less linear and it's more learning based and more based on the success of your business and

the growth of your business, one of the key things about the differences between entrepreneurs and employees is risk. When you are an employee, the company is really bearing most of the risk. And you have lower exposure to any kind of financial upturn downturn or any kind of change in the environment or any kind of impact on that company's business, you have less risk. 

As an entrepreneur, you have a great deal of exposure and a much higher risk in terms of what happens in terms of your business in terms of revenue in terms of the business environment. When it comes to compensation, the differences between an employee and an entrepreneur are pretty significant to compensation when you're an employee is predictable, right? It's your it's based on the health of your company and the level of your role. 

But you're going to get a paycheck every couple of weeks, and it's going to have benefits and it's going to be predictable, you're going to know what you're going to get. As an entrepreneur, it may be determined by the fluctuations in revenue in your business, or the number of clients you can bring in the number of projects that you can work, the number of products that you have the success of those products, so it can really fluctuate and there's much more risk involved in terms of compensation. Now, the last one is hours. 

And you know what I'm going to say, right? employees and entrepreneurs, when it comes to the hours they put into what they do, can be quite different. Now, I'm not saying that as an employee, you never work long hours, because you absolutely do. And having worked in agencies, agencies, in particular can have very long hours. But the hours are really more mapped out even though you may have to put in more, they're regular, they're set as an employee, but as an entrepreneur, they are irregular, and they are they fluctuate a lot. 

And you may have to put in a lot of extra time because you are wearing all those hats and because everything is relying on you. When it comes down to it the core skill sets of an entrepreneur are ambition, self motivation, being strategic, so being able to develop and set and achieve and motivate yourself to go for your own goals being really resourceful. So finding, you know the help of the specialists that you need that are outside of the range of what you can do as an individual. You also are generally generally more of a generalist, right, you've wear more hats, you are self directed more in your learning. 

So you have to understand what you need to learn what you don't know and go about in finding that learning. And then as I said, your tolerance for risk has to be a lot higher. Now the core skill sets of unemploy are a little bit different, you have to be open to being a team player, you have to be willing to take direction you have to pursue, you know with energy and vigor goals that are set by other people, you generally tend to be more of a specialist. So you have to know you know a lot about a more finite range of things, you also have to be politically adept. 

So like I said, you got to be able to navigate sometimes very matrix then complicated political and organizational systems and environments. And then you have to many times adopt the company culture, whatever that company culture is, sometimes they call it drinking the Kool Aid, you have to personify the culture of the company that you work for, rather than like an entrepreneur setting that company culture. 

And then you also have to really when it comes down to it, you have to thrive in a structured environment. So which one of these roles is best for you being an employee or being an entrepreneur? Well, I have seven questions that you should ask yourself. 

Number one, are you self motivated? 

How much does it take to get you out of bed in the morning and to get doing what you're supposed to be doing? 

Number two, do you have a broad range of knowledge?

 Do you know a little bit about marketing and finance, sales? 

product service? 

Do you have the motivation to learn those things? 

If you don't know about them? 

Now? Do you feel like you have the aptitude to wear all those hats? 

Number three is what's your tolerance for risk?

So this is one of the biggest questions that you really have to be honest with yourself about is what is your tolerance for risk which leads into question four, which is how much predictability Do you need how much safety how much security Do you need in terms of a paycheck and or in terms of support or benefits? 

Number five is how much business experience do you have if you don't have experience with you know that marketing finance sells products services, will you can you and you want to learn it because if you don't, you might be better off and more of an employee type of role. Number six is how much support you need. 

If you need a lot of support, then an employee role might be better if you feel like you have the resources and the drive and the interest and the networking ability to build resources and build a support system for yourself. An entrepreneur role could be a fit. 

And number seven is how much do you love learning and employees situation, you may have corporate training, you may have a lot of support again in terms of learning new things. And actually, sometimes the need to learn a broad range of things is less when you're an employee situation. 

But as an entrepreneur, you really have to be self taught you really have to have that drive to learn new things because you will be constantly bombarded with things that you don't know things you need to learn in order to drive your business forward. 

So that's it I hope you enjoyed this video on the differences between the employee mindset and the entrepreneurial mindset and if you did, please hit subscribe below so you see my videos when they come out, and make sure to hit that notifications button so when I go live or when I post a new video, you can get alerted to that. 

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